Resource of Marketing & Advertising

1. E-mail courses are generally quick and easy to create. Contents for your e-mail courses are everywhere old articles, interviews, information from doing research. You only need to know how to organize them and make the content easy to understand and follow.

2. You can append your sales letters at the end of your e-mail courses. People who take your e-mail courses can learn something valuable from you first, and when they’re done, they will be more receptive to your follow-up letters.

3. E-mail courses can help you attract visitors to your Web site. You can’t put everything in an e-mail course so you can actually place links within your e-mail course messages. These links can point to more information found on your site. You can promote your Web site’s URL in each message.

4. E-mail courses can help you gain more subscribers for your e-zine. Make people aware that subscribers of your e-zine are always the ones to get first dibs on your e-mail courses.

5. You can run your e-mail courses hands-free. You just need to create and arrange your e-mail messages in the order you want them to be delivered to your participants, then put them in a sequential autoresponder. Your e-mail courses then become your 24/7 promoter!

6. E-mail courses can help you get leads and you can promote your products or services to these people. And by making your e-mail courses 100% opt-in, the risk of being accused of sending unsolicited e-mails is significantly reduced.

7. People won’t ever need to download any special software before they can take your e-mail courses. All they need is an e-mail address. They can read your e-mail course lessons straight from their e-mail clients (Eudora, Pegasus, Outlook Express) or on the Web (Hotmail, Yahoo!Mail or any Web-based e-mail).

8. You can tailor your e-mail courses to promote specific products or services you are selling on your Web site. If your e-mail course consists of 10 lessons delivered in 10 e-mail messages, then people who take your e-mail course are exposed to your product or service 10 consecutive times. This definitely increases your chances of getting your product or service bought.

If you sell services one of the biggest challenges is identifying qualified prospects who want what you have to offer and are ready to buy. It is possible to waste time on cold calls and other marketing activities that turn up little in the way of sales. Wouldn’t you rather have a steady stream of hot leads, leads that not only include contact information but give you an idea of what the prospect needs, the problem they want solved?

You have a web site, and hundreds if not thousands of people visit your site each week. If your site is working well it should be providing you with a list of hundreds of people who want to be on your marketing list each week and dozens of qualified leads, people who want you to call them right away about your services.

Use the following five tactics to generate a list of qualified prospects. Read More »

Stand Out in Ways that Matter to Directory Users A Yellow Page directory presents a difficult challenge for advertisers. All the competitors are packed together, within the space of a few pages. Each ad within the directory category screams “Notice me!” so insistently, they blend into an muffled chorus. It’s not easy for one to stand out with a clear, distinctive voice like a soloist above the choir. That only happens when the business is clear about expressing its unique “song,” and understands what buyers most want to hear.

It isn’t surprising that most Yellow Page ads say pretty much the same thing. They were all prepared by the same directory employees. What do they know about marketing? About copywriting? About what’s unique and desirable about your enterprise?

The people making the ads “grind them out,” using the same templates and guidelines for every ad, in every category. Originality isn’t in their job description. Following the formulas for how an ad “should look” is a formula for being ignored.

These quick fixes cut away the bland sameness afflicting most ads. Disregard for now the related issues like the ad’s size and placement. Such factors just amplify (or diminish) an ad’s impact. A poor ad is still a poor ad, even if it’s very large. Coupled with fine-tuned copy (its own topic), these fixes will improve the impact of any size of ad, for any directory heading. Read More »

Eventually every small business owner must consider what needs to be included in order to produce a successful advertisement or piece of marketing material.

You begin with a fancy graphic, your company logo, a slogan, and perhaps a special offer. However, more needs to be included in your sales copy to actually get your customers to buy. You need to include some your product’s features. But, more importantly, you have to list the benefits of your product or service.

Let’s begin with your product or service’s features. These can include the price, colour, options, or availability. Your customer will need to know some of these features to determine if what you have to offer is what they want to buy. Read More »

White space in newsletters is like pausing in conversation. Take a breath now and then to avoid overwhelming the reader.

It’s tempting to pack a business e-newsletter tight with content. After all, goes the rationale, the piece appears more substantial, more authoritative.

However, in the audio book, “Sound Advice on Publishing E-Newsletters,” author Michael Katz says that laying out text in big, chunky paragraphs creates an obstacle to effective communications.

Katz relates a recent experience with newsletters written by a professional services company. “What they had in place was actually pretty good – professional design, good content – and yet something was wrong.” The newsletters were difficult to read because the great content was too dense.

Katz sites three important reasons for inserting frequent paragraph breaks to increase white space.

First, it’s hard to read on screen. “By breaking up newsletter paragraphs into little pieces, you make it easier for your readers to get through the material.

Second, people like to skim. “Studies of online habits,” says Katz, “show that people jump around. Shorter paragraphs help readers pick out things of interest to them.”

Third, white space makes the text feel more conversational. “Think about the way dialogue in a book is laid out on a printed page. Lots of short, one or two sentence paragraphs. When your e-newsletter writing uses this same approach, it has a much more personal rhythm to it.”

Speak to almost any self employed professional and most of them will say that they love their job but don’t care much for selling their services. Here’s some advice to help all those reluctant professionals who need to sell to clients.

We have identified 9 basic selling skills that will help you to sell your product or service. Ensure that you and your sales team master these skills and you will be successful at selling.

Research shows that fear of selling is one of the greatest barriers to business success and, often, professionals are the worst of all. But whether you are an accountant, advertising excec or business coach you still have to sell to keep the business coming in.

We have found a few ideas that will help you to become successful at selling yourself. The main idea is to know your product, know your client and be prepared and professional. The following tips will greatly enhance your ability to sell. Read More »

Think for a moment some day and consider the kind of advertising you see in your post box, on the TV, on your computer, on the radio, etc. Then ask yourself this question, “Would I buy this or not?” If you say “No,” then ask yourself why. If you say “Yes,” then ask yourself why.

Consider what is it that makes this advert attractive or what is it that this person’s offer is deemed to be unattractive. By carrying out this exercise regularly you will be surprising yourself with what you will notice about advertising.

Most advertising you see today is written poorly. It confuses the potential customer, it does not paint a desired picture in their mind, it does not give him or her a good reason to order the product now and, it focuses on features rather than the benefits of products/services. Many businesses failures can be tracked back to poor advertising although it should be mentioned that there are many other reasons for failure.

If you want to stay in business, you must learn how to advertise effectively and how to produce orders NOW! The aim of this article is to help whoever operates a business to improve his or her advertising technique.

No matter what business you do whether it is as: a shopkeeper, a sandwich bar operator, a business consultant, a window cleaner, or a mail order business, you must learn to create advertising that gets results. If you don’t, your business will be painful and short-lived. Read More »

A few months ago, I wrote a guide entitled: 101 Writing Tips for Successful Email Marketing. In fact, many COPY TIPS subscribers have a copy. Since that time, I have worked on dozens of successful projects and have discovered some additional tips for boosting response.

1. Ask a question in the Subject line. This almost always gets the email opened. I suspect this is because questions are so much a part of everyday email between friends and colleagues. It’s a natural way to begin a conversation. Just be sure your question is honest and straightforward not cryptic, hyped, or suspicious.

2. Write a letter, not an ad. With the growing use of graphics in email, a lot of marketers are experimenting with formats that look more like an ad than a personal message. The fact is, an “email ad” is more likely to be deleted on sight than one that appears to be a personal message – even if that message is obviously promotional.

3. Don’t be afraid to go long. In the early days of email marketing, short copy was the rule. But this is changing. For some offers at least, longer copy that tells a more complete story is doing better. This is especially true when a transaction is involved, such as a subscription or sign up.

4. Beginning, middle, and end. Most click-thru responses will come from the hyperlink at the top, bottom, and middle of your email message, in that order. A lot of marketers forget the middle hyperlink. Don’t. Your response rates will suffer.

5. Show a picture. For graphics-enhanced email, consider including a picture of your product. This will tend to lift response. Of course, if your product is intangible, you’ll have to think of an interesting way to present it as an image. But, trust me, it’s worth the effort.

6. Link the images. If your email contains pictures and other graphics, be sure to hyperlink them. You’ll be surprised how many prospects will click on these to respond.

7. Drop-text images. A drop-text is a text message that appears when your curser hovers over a graphic. This is common on web pages. In email, this technique works like a picture caption or sidebar that displays as your prospect interacts. Very powerful.

8. Bribes work well. An offer of free shipping, a discount, an invitation, or a free gift is extremely effective in email marketing. For my money (and my clients’) information premiums white papers, guides, checklists, downloads, work best.

9. Add a toll free number. Most prospects will click thru and respond to your offer online. But some prefer to call and speak with someone live. A toll free number will often boost response.

A well-designed chart can be one of the most persuasive elements of your trade show booth display and literature. It illustrates to your customers why your product is the obvious solution to one of their specific needs. It can communicate major benefits or features more clearly than words can.

To make a great chart, you need to create a clear, compelling picture of the data that will call your customers to action. Your chart’s message must be easy for them to understand without having to study it. Three of the most easily understood chart types are:

1) Bar charts

Bar charts are an excellent method of comparing groups of data. Each data group can consist of a single bar for simple comparisons, or multiple bars breaking information down into subcategories for more in-depth analysis.

Bar charts are easy to interpret because most people are already familiar with seeing data in this format. You can use bar charts to emphasize the data represented by the tallest bar, the shortest bar, the overall trend of the bars, or a change in the bars caused by a certain variable.

2) Pie charts

Pie charts are useful for showing percentages of a greater whole. In a pie chart, the entire pie represents the total data, and each “slice” represents data from a particular group within the whole.

A pie chart is straightforward and easy to understand. It provides a clear visualization of the data class that represents the largest percentage of the whole (represented by the largest piece of the pie), and the relative value of each of the other data classes.

3) Line graphs (also called run charts)

Line graphs show or compare trends, cycles, increases and decreases over time. Typically a line graph shows events on the y-axis affected by time on the x-axis. Often a line representing an average of the data charted is included as a reference point. Or multiple lines may be charted on a line graph, with each representing a different product or variable.

Tips for a Successful Chart

Be sure your chart compares your data on an equal basis. Use the same scale for all data categories in one chart (for example, comparing data measured in dollars with data measured in hundreds of dollars isn’t equal). And use a consistent interval between your data categories (measuring one-week intervals against 5-week intervals isn’t an accurate comparison).

Use charts to communicate the significance of your statistics. Some of the statistics you may want to highlight in your chart are:

• Mean value (the average point of all data).
• Maximum value (the maximum data point in the series).
• Minimum value (the minimum data point in the series).
• Sample size (the total number of data points in the series).
• Range of data (the maximum value minus the minimum value).
• Standard deviation (how widely data are spread around the mean).

Once you’ve chosen the best type of chart for the data you want to show your customers, remember to keep your graphic as simple as possible. Trade show customers are assaulted by thousands of images. Don’t compare too many things, or include too many categories of data. Your goal is to educate your customers, not confuse them.

And resist the temptation to add fancy extras like pictures and 3-D effects if they make the chart look busy. If a chart is too detailed or cluttered, customers won’t invest the effort required to figure it out. They’ll bypass it as a technical output of mumbo-jumbo, and move on to something that clearly and compellingly calls them to take a closer look at a product.

1. Swap sponsor, feature, or solo ads with other ezine publishers.

Your swaps will create a win-win situation as both you and the other publisher will successfully get profitable promotion at no cost.

Swap your ads for at least three issues in a row or three solo ads for three solo ads to get the greatest results from these swaps.

2. Provide your visitors with a bonus for subscribing to your ezine such as access to your membership site, ebooks, a complimentary ad, or something else that your visitors would find to be valuable.

Increase the value your visitors place on your bonuses by telling them how much they would be worth if they were to pay for them or by making them available for only a limited amount of time.

3. Write articles.

Your articles will help you to establish yourself as an expert in your field and get more of your subscribers to visit your site.

Your articles can also be used as a valuable promotional tool that increases your circulation.

Add a resource box that promotes your ezine or a line to your resource box that promotes your ezine in addition to your business and then get the word out about your articles.

An excellent way to do this is to submit your articles to article directories, article announcement lists, and to other ezine publishers.

Also publish your articles on your site and let your visitors know that they can reprint your articles.

4. Have a privacy policy in place for your ezine. Let your visitors know that you will never rent, sell or give away their information to a third party.

Also let your future subscribers know that your ezine will have in house advertising and third party advertisements if you use your ezine to promote your products, affiliate programs, or sell advertising space.

Include this information on your site and in the email your visitors must respond to in order to begin their subscription to ensure that everyone that subscribes to your ezine is aware of this.

5. Add testimonials or endorsements for your ezine to your site. This will increase your visitors’ trust that your ezine will deliver quality information.

6. Submit your ezine to ezine directories.

Submitting your ezine to these directories will increase the number of people that subscribe to your ezine and also help you to find more people to advertise in your ezine or swap ads with.

7. Make sample issues available by autoresponder.

Pick a couple of issues that you feel best portray the type of quality content to be found in your publication, and make these issues available by autoresponder.

This will help you to get more of your visitors that are unsure about what your ezine has to offer to subscribe.

8. Promote your ezine in your signature file.

Your signature file will help you to get people that you come into contact with by email to subscribe to your ezine.

If you use email to answer questions or to network with people don’t neglect your signature file as a very viable way to attract more new subscribers.

If you post your tips and advice in moderated discussion forums also use your sig file to promote your ezine.

If you give beneficial, useful advice, people will be interested in subscribing to your ezine and you’ll increase your subscriptions.