Archive for the 'Plugging Things' Category

Leaflet Promotion a Sure Fire Way to Advertise Your Business throughout the Credit Crunch. How to Survive the Gloom

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

Employing leaflet distribution services are some of the cleanest means to get edge over your competitors. How? Direct Mailing is the answer. By using a sustained leaflet distribution promotion you can attain maximal
exposure via the letterbox. Its a very over looked advertising scheme which turns very good, that is ofcourse is using leaflet distribution

If your product is fashioned to attract to a wide market place and you want to focus on a very unique region, mailbox advertising is a good, low-cost way of getting hold of your direct market place.

But certain in the planning of your leaflet distribution efforts as this is all important if you are to make the most of your investment.

Leaflet distribution provides you to yield specified answer from directed groups of customers. It’s a particularly
multipurpose tool for small businesses because it permits you to concentrate limited resources where they are most probably to bring forth result and appraise the success of promotions accurately by analysing responses. But remember that the leads of leaflet distributoin aren’t assured. A poorly designed or targeted adverting campaign will be a waste of cash

There are a list of several methods in which leaflet distribution has been utilized in a semipolitical way. Some of these causes are as follows. One of the most everyday functions of booklet distribution is to provide individuals with info to return data that has been distributed by the opposition. The brochures can also be applied to endanger people with an assault. This is particularly probably in differences of opinion in which armies can inform opposition military personnels that they will occupy if no action is made. The leaflets in war situations are often used to encourage the opposition to surrender and if how to go about surrendering without facilitating a retaliation.

If you have determined that a leaflet distribution will be a easy form of advertisement in order to bring in some much required likely patronage, then you need to set about the job of choosing the most acceptable business to carry out the promotion for you.

In That Respect there are many elements to be considered when doing this, these are fundamental in obtaining the greatest leads from your campaign.

You need to think where you are going to target your leaflets and the coverage and penetration that you want to attain. If you are just thinking of a low-level promotion in the local area, it may be prudent to choose a smaller localised company who just handle the little promotions in one area. They are quite in all likelihood to be cost effective, and have smaller lead times. Accountability may be a problem if things do not go according to plan, so this requires to be counted against the number of financial spending.

Local-Search Upgrades Affect Traditional Local Businesses

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Have you used Yahoo!’s new local-search function? If you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to check it out. They’ve upgraded it with fantastic features geared to make searching for local businesses and services a breeze. Some of these features include user recommendations and reviews of businesses, real-time updates on local event information, and the ability to search for businesses, events, and more within specific neighborhoods rather than forcing the user to wade through the search results for an entire city. In addition, the search engine company has also upgraded its mapping capabilities.

Users also have the option to receive updated search information via RSS – Rich Site Summary, otherwise known as Really Simple Syndication – feeds. This particular feature has, arguably, impacted the scope of the heavy-hitting search engines in Internet users’ lives the most. The race between Yahoo!, Google, MSN, and AOL for market share is never-ending, and each has added its own brand of improvements. The major search engines’ new local-search features are all fantastic for the end user, but what do they mean for local businesses?

In the history of local search, there has been a lot invested in the form of user-friendly improvements by search-engine companies, but these improvements haven’t yielded a noticeable return-on-investment (ROI) for the companies. You might recall search trailblazers Citysearch and MSN Sidewalk – these two engines were an early example of the race to improve search functionality – then again, you might not remember them at all. It wasn’t until Google’s explosion onto the search scene in recent years that the general public really became aware of the power of search on the web. Now “Googling” is a verb.

Much of the public awareness of Internet search comes from Google’s innovations in technology, but until recently, local search wasn’t really a consideration for most Internet users or the businesses featured in search results. However, the improvements that the major search engines are adding are changing that, and if you’re an owner of a traditional local business, you should be paying attention.

More functionality for users means more accountability for business owners. Now that patrons can voice their opinions about the establishments that they frequent, potential customers have an all-access pass to virtually unlimited information about a business before they ever step foot inside the door. The days of businesses relying on a fancy faade and some good ol’ TV ads are quickly fading. Now businesses have to be accountable for just about every step they take, no matter how large or small they are. If a patron of a restaurant or theatre or dentist or landscaper has a bad experience, they have the ability to tell a lot of people all about it quickly and easily.

The prospect of being scrutinized at every turn might seem like a frightening one at best, but there is a definite upside. Just as negative views can spread like wildfire, so can positive perspectives. If you’re putting a concerted effort into your customer service and integrity is integral to the way that you conduct business, you’re bound to get good feedback. And, now more than ever, good feedback with go further than it ever has before.

Perhaps more importantly, though, it’s up to traditional local businesses to make sure that they have online presences. I live in a mid-sized community, and I was surprised to find as many reviews about local eateries, mechanics, and events as I did. It’s not just businesses located in large cities that need to take heed. The proliferation of the Internet – and local search capabilities – is affecting communities far and wide. Since more and more people are utilizing the web to find the goods and services that they want, it only stands to reason that you should ensure your business is in front of them. These folks are your potential customers, after all.

There are a lot of ways that you can improve your online presence, but the first step of putting yourself in a position to grow your traditional local business is being aware that the Internet will affect your business one way or another, negatively or positively. It’s up to you to take control of which way you want things to go. Take some time to surf the web. Use the new features that the search engines are rolling out. Pay attention to what customers are saying about traditional local businesses. Accessing that information now will be invaluable to your success later.

© 2005 Low-Hanging Fruit

Author: Tom Swanson
Web Site: http://www.lowhangingfruit.com
Email: tom@itimeinc.com
Phone: 563-323-4609

Tom Swanson’s experience in sales, design, marketing, copywriting, multi-media advertising, and publishing have given him incredible insight into the world of marketing both online and off. Combining creativity with real-world, hands-on experience, Tom writes articles to help local businesses learn to strategically leverage their Internet presence and capture easy online profits. His articles include thoughtful, down-to-earth explanations of various marketing media and philosophies, and local businesses can take away simple tools, ideas, and techniques that they can implement to shape their local Internet marketing efforts.

If you’re looking for some high-impact content that’s chock full of information, look no further than the articles of Tom Swanson.

© 2005 Low-Hanging Fruit

How Much Should I Bid? A PPC & Visitor Conversion Guide

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

So your logged in to your Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing account and your ready to start promoting your website when the question arises : how much should you pay for each visitor to your website?

The cost for a keyword or key-phrase can vary quite dramatically from a few pennies to a few dollars per click depending upon the amount of competition for that keyword/phrase!

$0.50 cents may seem like a lot to spend for a single click but is it really?

To answer that question we need to learn a little something about visitor conversion rate.

Visitor conversion rate is the percentage value assigned to the number of visitors to your website which turn into customers.

So if you receive 100 visitors to your website and one of those visitors actually buys something then your visitor conversion rate is 1% (1 in 100).

Before we continue let me say that a 1% conversion rate is not a guarantee. Your actual conversion rate may be much higher or much lower. There are many tools which can help you track your visitor conversion rate. A good place to start is at www.hotscripts.com :

Do a search for “conversion tracking” and you should find a good number of web-script applications which will provide you with the information you need to effectively use any PPC service.

For the purpose of this article we will assume that your conversion rate is 1%.

Now all that is left in this equation is the cost of your product. If you sell a product valued at $50.00 and your conversion rate is 1% for that product : then your maximum bid for a key phrase should be $0.50!

Lets check our math :

$0.50 x 100 visitors = $50.00

So if you bid $0.50 per click and your product cost $50.00 and your conversion rate is 1% : you should break even!

This should be enough to set you in the right direction when deciding how much to bid for your PPC keywords. Remember that PPC is about increasing your sales and website revenue. It is not about finding low paying keywords and drawing visitors to your website. Its a mathematical equation that states : if I am to spend [b>this much on promotion it will turn around an increase in sales by this percentage.

A simple concept but it is something that most people do not realize when beginning their PPC ventures!

Enough for today : good luck!

Come talk about PPC and website promotion in the Dubelu Talk Website Promotion Forums