Resource of Marketing & Advertising

Amid fundraisers’ growing concerns about the current charitable giving climate, dampened by the erratic stock market and shaky economy, a new fundraising opportunity has emerged.

What is a Life Settlement? A Life Settlement is the sale of an existing life insurance policy for a lump sum of cash that is more than the cash surrender value. A life insurance policy is property, like a car, house, stocks and bonds that can be legally sold in accordance with applicable laws. Through a Life Settlement, a policy owner can realize value today from an asset that is generally thought to only have a benefit when the insured passes away.

How can Life Settlements be used in Fundraising? There are many variations and complex estate and tax planning strategies that can be employed when utilizing Life Settlements in a planned giving program. However, in its simplest terms, a Donor who owns a life insurance policy gives the policy to the philanthropic organization that in turn immediately sells the policy for a lump sum of cash through a Life Settlement. Read More »

When you started your business, you dreamed your customers would love your products and services. They would be excited. You would make money doing what you love.

Then reality set in. You put lots of time in your business. You got fewer profits. Now you compete with every Tom, Dick and Harry to sell your product or service. The future is not secure.

Today, you get a second chance to change your business picture. A fresh start! In this article, you will focus on the second of five critical issues that influence how customers come to your business. Last issue we focused on your target population. This time, you can complete an exercise to clarify your marketing message. Read More »

You may have heard the term Marketing Mix used in connection with marketing planning.

Marketing Mix means the combination of promotions, products, places (distribution channels), and prices you chose for your business. Including both short term and long term strategies in the marketing mix can make for a more profitable business.

Long term strategies build brand/company awareness and give sales revenue a permanent, gradual boost. Short term strategies create a temporary, immediate revenue boost by giving buyers an incentive to purchase.

By implementing both long and short term strategies, you can attend to immediate sales goals while building your business reputation and goodwill. Some examples of both types of strategies are below. Read More »

Do you use mini-courses in your online marketing? If not then maybe you should! Mini-courses are an important part of Internet marketing. A mini-course is a tool that enables you to provide valuable content to your subscribers and promote your own or affiliate products at the same time.

A mini-course is fr*ee information on a specific topic. It is normally distributed as multiple articles in e-mail format over a defined period of time. The mini-course also goes by the name eCourse, free report or autoresponder course.

Before attempting to write your mini-course, identify a “niche market” that has a unique need for information. A niche market is a small segment of the total general market. It is a group of individuals with a common interest that have specific wants and needs. Individuals in a niche market may also have a common problem that needs a solution.

Creating a mini-course is similar to creating an ebook but on a smaller scale. You need to select a “killer” topic that is of interest to your niche market and satisfies a want or need or solves a problem. Read More »

A Yellow Page Ad isn’t Enough Any More

An unquestioned “must” for any small business has been to run an ad in the Yellow Page Directory. Since most customers were local, that was enough to establish itself as “open for business.” The annual Yellow Page ad represents the largest promotional expense for many enterprises.

Yet, Yellow Page directory use is declining, while expanding segments of the public don’t rely on them at all. Yellow Page advertising costs keep going up, and the complicated pricing structure is difficult to figure out.

Worse yet, having a Yellow Page ad doesn’t deliver like it used to. People can find most of the information they want without ever opening a directory. Your business needs its Yellow Page strategy to be in tune with the times and your market.

Like most business owners, you must squeeze maximum value from every promotional dollar spent. That requires you to move beyond treating a Yellow Page ad like it’s a separate, stand-alone way to promote your business. It’s not. Your Yellow Page advertising needs to work in tandem with all the rest of the efforts you pursue.

The Internet Expands Your Arena

Every business needs to put itself in front of the people looking for what it does - and that’s not just through the Yellow Pages any longer. An increasing percentage of customers, who spend their money close to home, are Internet savvy. There’s a major overlap between Yellow Page directory users and Internet users. That fact supports integrating your local and Internet promotional methods so they attract more new customers.

Yellow Page users are likely to be Internet users as well. And a business that ignores online activities entirely may have a tough time getting access to or credibility with those customers. It is possible to make online and traditional (offline) methods to attract customers work in tandem - improving the effectiveness of each alone. So it’s no longer an either-or, all-or-none choice whether to promote the business online or off.

People who subscribe to online services consult the Yellow Pages 23% more often than non-subscribers.

Frequent Yellow Page Users are:

18% more likely than average to be Internet subscribers

32% more likely to be among the heaviest Internet users

18% more likely to make purchases on the Internet

27% more likely to spend more than $1,000 on Internet purchases

Source: Simmons

Customer Behavior is Changing

More and more, people are going to the Internet to find, learn about, or select products and services. Even local ones. That doesn’t mean that they will buy online, however. People still prefer to spend their money locally when they can. But, even the smallest business can do a better job of being found by those who prefer to use both the Internet and the Yellow Page directory to make their buying decisions. And, it can be done very inexpensively, too.

Even a 100% local business can pull in more business by getting its low-tech and high-tech advertising to mesh. Visit http://www.yellowpagesage.com for lots of free practical assistance. As you broaden your visibility to buyers, your business will be found more often - by the very people you’ve been looking for.

What Else has Changed?

Buyers are less trusting and more willing to shop around

Customers have more options and ways to find what they want

Availability of Internet Yellow Pages

Aging population uses the Yellow Pages differently than young people

Development of unique niches and specialties

More choices for a “better deal”

More directories competing in a geographic area

More immigrants, or those from other cultures, unaccustomed to Yellow Page use

Area code proliferation fragments cities

Larger cities have multiple directories, rather than one large one

Development of specialized directories - like ethnic, non-English, women, minority, business to business

Become Visible Online - With or Without Your Own Web Site

If your business already has a Web site, treat it as a way to expand the reach of your Yellow Page ad and traditional marketing activities. Jettison the expectation that it should make sales - few do so. But an information-packed Web site can support your traditional marketing methods very well.

Even without your own Web site, your small business can establish an online identity that helps buyers to find you.

Get listed in a variety of Internet Yellow Page (IYP) directories

Send emails to your “regulars” with special offers and useful information

Position yourself for Local Search - a method whereby customers use search engines to locate local businesses by town, state, region, zip code, etc.

Expand the exposure of your business beyond your Yellow Page ad through a Yellow Page strategy that reaches the whole globe. Your operation, whatever its size, will gain more credibility and traffic locally when it puts itself in the bigger picture.

Bankruptcy is definitely not a pleasing word for everyone. Unfortunately most people nowadays are closer to bankruptcy because they must deal with so many debts and their condition is getting worse with the economical crisis. It is such a dilemma for people who must live in debt. For example, they have no cash to pay their children’s school fee, and it makes them have to apply for a loan. The loan is very helpful, but they have to spend extra money to pay the loan and interest rate.

What if we have such condition? We have to choose between giving our children good education and having a debt and even multiple debts that will lead us to difficult financial condition. It is just a single case, what if we have to face multiple cases? We should pay mortgage, credit cards, and many others. Without a perfect action, then we can say hello to bankruptcy. None of us wants to be a bankrupt person. We can get help with credit card debt or other types of debt on destroydebt.com.

This professional financial company will help us settling debt with their consultation services and programs. Some of the programs we can use are debt settlement help, debt consolidation, and many others. Therefore, you should make an action before you face bankruptcy and visiting the site can be your first start.

Every day, the average person is exposed to millions of visual stimuli including hundreds of company logos.

A logo is a unique visual image that represents a company or its products. It aims to create a positive and memorable impression in the minds of the people who see it. In addition, a good logo can make a sale by saying something about the company to customers when there is no sales person present.

Choosing a logo for your business requires much thought and it is essential that you work closely with your graphic designer. Logo design needs your input as well as the designer’s creativity.

You have to start with an idea of the image you want your logo to portray, i.e. what you want it to say about your company. Beware though of turning the logo into a metaphor for something. The most memorable ones are usually the simplest – think of McDonald’s golden arches, the Apple Computer logo or Nike’s ‘swoosh’. Less is often more as far as logos are concerned.

Secondly, you will have to decide whether your logo should be an illustrative representation or abstract graphic that represents what your company does, or whether it should be font-based. Alternatively, your logo could be a combination of these options.

Logo colour is very important. Bear in mind that the colours you choose will impact on all your corporate materials. Your logo should also look good in black and white for use in mono print applications or on faxes for example.

Size is also a consideration, as your logo needs to look equally good on a business card as it does on the side of a truck or building. Similarly, make sure your logo is designed for print first and the web second. Do it the other way round and you may find that a design that looks good on a web site appears mediocre when scaled up for use in print.

Choose your logo design carefully as it will have a powerful impact on your business. A great logo lasts and should look good years from now. It also stands out from its environment and from the competition.

As well as building brand-awareness and speaking for your company, a great logo helps you make great sales… provided of course that you have the product and service quality to back it up.

It’s well known that internet marketers are in the business of marketing. To become successful in business, it’s crucial to actively promote your business to gain new customers. Let’s face it! No promotion, no new customers. It’s a simple as that.

If you’ve ever spent money on advertising before, you will know that it can be a costly process. Whether the cost is measured in time, effort, money or a mixture of all three - the one thing that counts the most is the results. A lack of results from a marketing campaign can be a real disappointment.

More often than not, it is a case of hit-and-miss which leads to frustration and a wasted advertising budget.

This article will explain three steps that you can take to gauge how effective your marketing campaigns are and to rapidly improve the response rates of future campaigns. It also brings to light some relatively unknown tactics that some advertising companies are employing to rip-off their customers. I hope you’re not one of those customers. But you might have been already without even realizing it.

Step 1: T&T

You may or may not work out a proper campaign for your promotions, but let me make a suggestion to you if I may? You really should be Tracking and Testing. If you don’t know how responsive a particular ad is, how can you possibly gauge the ad’s effectiveness? Not by guessing, that’s for sure! It is essential that you T&T because this keeps you in control of your earnings.

If your campaigns aren’t creating the desired outcome signups, sales, opt-ins etc., something needs to be changed. By T&T, you can make changes, retest and gauge the results to repeat the process until you do generate the necessary effect and therefore increase your profits.

Step 2: Tweaking

What areas need looking at? Here is a short list of questions you can ask yourself. The answer to these questions should be ” Yes”. If the answer is “No”, then simply tweak the item and T&T to produce a better response.

Ad Copy:

Does it have an eye-catching headline? Is it well written with the correct grammar and punctuation? Have you edited it over and over to create what you’d consider a perfect advertisement? Does it use hypnotic words and phrases that grab the interest of the reader? Does it make the reader want to click through to your web site while pulling out their credit card? If you wouldn’t respond to the ad yourself, a rewrite is a must.

Product Demand:

If you truly aim to make sales, your advertising needs to be put in front of the people who will want to purchase your product. Have you carried out or have access to market research data on the product you are offering? If it’s a niche-target product, are you targeting the appropriate audience? Have you polled your list or web site visitors to find out what they really want? Feedback is precious and should be taken into serious consideration.

Sales Page:

Does your sales page load quickly? Does it look good to the naked eye without making you frown or close the site in pain? Does it have an eye-catching headline? Does it appeal to the reader’s sensibilities and rouse their emotions? Have you used short paragraphs? Have you included bullet point lists? Have you refined the copy over and over again to make it as sharp as possible? Have you made it so there are no unanswered questions for the customer to ask?

Order Page:

Have you included a guarantee that removes the risk taken by the customer? Have you provided several payment options where applicable? Have you made the purchasing process as quick and simple as possible? Have you included your contact details?

Price:

If everything else appears to be set correctly but you’re still not receiving the response you need, consider revising the price and T&T. Use a split tester if possible to see which price receives the better response (and it’s not always the cheaper price surprisingly). 100 is a good number to use for split-testing. ie: If you’re testing two pages, the first to receive 100 responses is the one to adopt.

Step 3: QA

Usually QA stands for Quality Assurance and it still does, but in this instance, it also means Quality Advertising. T&T and Tweaking can be an ongoing process that you continually carry out using free or paid advertising.

There are many forms of advertising available on the internet. Free advertising methods are excellent for T&T because they can illustrate how well an ad pulls through an ezine or solo ad. You can also gauge how effective your sales page is by click-thru statistics in traffic exchanges etc. But for now, let’s concentrate on the effective, paid advertising methods. Why? Because paid advertising brings results. Well it should but it doesn’t always!

It is imperative that you gauge the effectiveness of the advertising vehicle that you are utilizing through T&T. If you don’t, you could be throwing your hard-earned dollars straight down the drain.

If you have paid for an advertising campaign through a company and the results are less than you hoped for, you need to look into why the results were dismal. How do you do that? It certainly pays to ask questions and dig deeper to see exactly how your advertisement is being delivered.

In fact, I can save you some time and really open your eyes to some marketing methods that you probably didn’t even know existed! These are methods that are being used quite frequently by some online companies who provide traffic and advertising services.

You really need to know about them now so you don’t fall into that trap. Most of us have already and didn’t even know it, until now!

Without a powerful headline, your message stands little chance of being noticed in an increasingly competitive marketplace. If your headline doesn’t capture attention and pull prospects into your sales copy, than your marketing effort is a total waste of energy and resources.

Nothing is more important to getting your message noticed than your headlines. If you’re not allocating a sizable percentage of your time and creative effort to the headline used on each page of your website, you could be losing out on a large chunk of business.

Top copywriters understand this concept well. They know how essential it is to capture attention by literally stopping pre-occupied prospects in their tracks.

Here are five good reasons why your site headlines deserve greater emphasis and attention: Read More »

I’ve written before on the predictive nature of estimation software. Using cost estimating software products as project management software can help show you aspects of your project which you haven’t accounted for, particularly things like risk.

You can’t take that leap back

However, software estimation products can do more than highlight areas which you haven’t seen, they can also peer around the corner and show that which you haven’t done yet. Through the software’s rather developed, and mathematically sound, understanding of your project, that understanding can be leveraged towards making theoretical changes.

Think about it this way, software estimation project management software allows you, the project manager to play the “What if…” game. What if I doubled my workforce? What if I reduced everyone’s workload by 10%? What if deadlines were all extended by 10%? What if I assigned every part of the project to just one person?

The questions can seem trivial, even comical, however they point to a very interesting application for such software – they ability to control, limit, and even potentially mitigate risk. The questions I just posed all center around one significant area – the sharing of a workload to make a project easier on employees.

How does making project members work easier help to control risk? Well, for one thing, for projects which are heavily dependent on multiple deadlines all being satisfied in a particular order, specifically where one group is waiting on the work of another, each deadline represents a potential point of failure. By making deadlines easier to achieve, the risk of failure is thus avoided.

Of course, deadlines represent just one area of risk. I like to use them as an example because hard deadlines seem to exist in every area from newspapers to software companies to automobile manufactures. The flexibility of project management software which employees these estimation techniques means that project managers can juggle all sorts of variables in a project finding the optimal mix. In the end, such juggling helps to control the risk of uncertainty.