By Akintayo Binuyo

Pay-per-click advertising has been around for about the last 8 years but made widely popular with the success of search engine giant Google. The idea is that when someone does a search online, they are looking for something specifically and it is a good opportunity for an advertiser to have a relevant message displayed.

Millions of both small and large business owners advertise with pay-per-click but I doubt if most of them are getting a measurable and good return on investment. Keep in mind that Google provides great free tool to help measure advertising efforts but not all advertisers are making proper use of these tools.

The other reason for the poor results would be the fact that a lot of new comers to pay-per-click have not properly educated themselves in terms of the whole sales process online and what the searcher was actually looking for when they came online.

They fail to keep in mind that a “click” came from an actual person searching for information about a specific topic. If you direct that searcher to a page where you are trying to make a sale, chances are that it will not happen in that same session.

Advertisers simply believe they can setup and pay-per-click campaign and just have buyers lined up to buy their product or service, unfortunately this is not the case and if you plan to advertise using pay-per-click you have to spend a good amount of time learning and understanding what it is that the search users wants and needs.

I wasted 17 months trying to drive profitable traffic to my website, but you should not do the same. Instead click here to get a copy of my “Quality Traffic Report”. In it I will show you my results after testing Content Marketing vs. Google pay per click, you can use the results to start driving profitable traffic to your website and also increase your opt-in rate. visit http://www.qualitytrafficbuilder.com/traffic

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By Dennis H Lewis

As with any marketing initiative, the most important achievement is gaining your customer’s attention. Even something as simple as a postcard must overcome the natural tendency to “ignore the message”. Experts estimate that the average American is blasted with 3000 new market messages every day.

This means even your postcard must be taken out of the envelope.

In order to create a genuinely effective direct mail marketing campaign using postcards you need to consider the following factors:

Make sure each card only transmits one message. This message must connect directly to the customer’s interests hopefully appealing to his emotional and instinctive needs. A postcard can’t explain a doctoral thesis. Use a short poignant phrase that reaches out and grabs the reader by the throat.
Keep it extremely simple. The objective of the postcard is to move the receiver to commit one specific measurable action. You’re trying to shoot a poisonous dart straight to the heart. Remember a postcard isn’t a machine gun!
Don’t scrimp on your list. You’re trying to keep the highest number of cards out of the trash can. This means that the more adequate the mailing list the higher the probability of success.
The power of three. The human brain is able to easily assimilate three elements at a time. For this reason, you should limit the presentation to this number. Keep them balanced on the card and don’t forget to use plenty of whitespace.
You have to give if you expect to receive. If you want to motivate your customer to take action, you need to make it worth his while. What are you going to give in return? Is it a fair offer?
Measure your results. You can’t achieve success if you don’t use a scientific method. Start small, compare different cards to identify the most effective and scale up the one’s that generate the maximum results.
In this age of high-technology a simple postcard has several advantages over other marketing techniques.

First, your customer can touch them, turn them over and if you’re clever feel like he’s received a note from an old friend.

Second, the message can leap directly off the card into their minds. Use a bold well-written headline that captivates their attention. You’re halfway there.

Third, a postcard implicitly implies “I’m not going to occupy much of you’re time.” These days, that’s a real show of respect.

Dennis H. Lewis has been living in Alicante, Spain with his wife and two children for almost twenty years.
He currently runs three successful companies entirely in the Spanish market.
If you would like to extend your business to the Spanish-speaking world, learn more about Spanish business culture or find marketing opportunities in Spain you must contact us.
If you need an English-Spanish translator who understands business, we’re the experts.
If you read Spanish have a look around our website and you’ll be able to see for yourself the absolute quality of our team members.
You’ll be speaking with genuine business people with hundreds of years of collective experience making money in the Spanish-speaking markets.

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By Andrew R Michaels

It may be hard to believe nowadays, but there’s a lot more to marketing than the Internet. Offline marketing techniques still work, and work well. Direct mail still especially works well, according to a survey by Universal McCann, who found that direct mail spending has kept climbing in recent years by about 8% per year.

Just check your mailbox - I bet you get at least one direct mail piece nearly every day. And you look at that piece and either put it away for later, act on it or throw it away. If you do any one of those actions, you at least read it, and that’s the point of direct mail: get people to recognize your company and products. By reading who the direct mail piece was from, you’ve just created a memory. The next time you see that company’s name, you’ll reach back into your memories and remember it so it’ll feel familiar to you. That’s one benefit of direct mail.

Here are some other benefits of using direct mail:

You can target people more accurately. You can buy mailing lists that will tell you about the households you can mail your brochures, postcards and direct mail pieces to. You can find out who has kids, who has pets, people’s average annual income, further broken down by demographics - you get to know these people and you can tailor your message so that they’ll feel compelled to take action. You can’t do that with just an email address.

It can drive traffic to your Web site. According to the Direct Marketing Association, nearly 33% of people respond to direct mail online. Instead of telling people to call you for information, they can visit your Web site whenever they want to get more information. No phone sales pressure, no one trying to sell them anything in their face.

Direct mail pieces are more personal. Not only do you get to the target you really want to reach, the target feels like they get to know you a little better. Touching your postcard or feeling your shiny brochure paper makes people feel more in tune with your company and your product. They are interacting with something you’ve created. On the other hand, they can’t touch your emails.

People are curious. Brochure and catalog printing are great vehicles for getting into people’s homes. People like to browse through catalogs, even if they aren’t interested in buying, just to satisfy their curiosity and see what’s out there. These people wouldn’t go out of their way to go out and pick up your catalog, but hey, if you’re going to send it to their home ….

You have time to get into details. With direct mail pieces like brochures or letters, once you hook the consumer with a great headline and photo, they’ll want to read more info and you can give them the info they want. You have ample space with many direct mail pieces to describe your product (after detailing the benefits of the product). For those consumers who need to gather as much information as possible, direct mail gives them that detailed information and the options to read it at their leisure.

Visit this site for more information on >catalog printing

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By Terez Dunn

In this digital era, a handwritten mail has become unexpected and unusual. Because of that, a novel, well received, old fashioned means of communication to perspective customers delivers personal touch to them, one that seems to be missing in today’s commercial world. Whatever your industry is - retail, non-profit, professional services, or financial sales, handwritten mailings has turned out to be an efficient means of capturing the interest of your perspective customers and have been proven to boost response rates.

Nitty-gritty of direct mailing marketing

To reach your purchaser straight, the gist of direct mail service is that the marketing company chooses the special recipients of the communication, based on several factors considered in identifying potential customers.

Direct mail marketing has a number of benefits, the first one being that this is the most aimed type of advertising. The sender decides to whom should the communication be delivered, and when to send. Hence, this system helps to reduce squandering of time. It also raises the chance that the message you want to air out gets noticed- we at least take a glimpse of some rare mails.

At the outset, mail marketing should take place continually. This means that you have to dispatch attractive messages often than just once a month. Mailings should be sent with a good quantity of frequency. You should ensure that the format in each of the mailings is new and much more attractive each time.

How to send effective hand addressed direct mail

Product announcements, prospecting letters, and other mailings are more effective if with handwritten content. Recipients are more likely to give time reading one that an effortful sent them. If you want to perk up your direct mail return by using real handwriting, here are some words of advice in venturing on this campaign.

Any part of the mailing can be handwritten at our desire. But, if you’re looking for the biggest bang for your buck, be sure that the outside enveloped is hand written.

Since the outside envelope is what your prospects will take a glimpse of, a hand addressed will greatly boost the likelihood that your potential buyers will open and spend a time reading your message. Moreover, if you hand write your recipient’s name, you are telling you customers that they are special to you. This plus can be very effective.

With that said, don’t spend time writing your return address. Recipients feel special when they’re name is written on the outside envelop, and hand writing your return address won’t make them feel better. So, save your time and effort from doing that. Just focus on the customer’s name and mailing address. You can either exclude the return address, or use an envelope pre-printed with your return address.

Now that they have opened the envelope - then what? Although you were able to jump over one of the biggest direct mail obstacle, the definitive goal of all of this is to get a response. A handwritten call-to-action is attention grabbing and gives additional personal touch that makes it more beguiling for your potential customers to respond. This message should be concise but clear and sweet- at around ten to twenty words.

But you actually don’t have to hand write these stuff by yourself. There are a lot of better things to do than this tedious job. Outsource to companies out there that are dedicated in handwritten mailings. You just have to send them the mailing list and any mailing instructions you wish. They will hand write addresses on envelopes, insert letters, and handwrite some personal messages.

The next time you want to get in touch with your customers, you should use this powerful way that is special and effective.

Would you like to have a real web site business? Terez Dunn invites you to visit his profitable online business website for everything you need to start and run your own online business. His services include advertising, mentoring, and a full service training and support package to help guarantee your success. Learn more here: >http://www.milliondollarblueprints.net

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By Naman Jain

The Pay per click services of the search engines, work just as the way they are called. Pay- Per- click. When a website is ranked in the search engines through pay per click methods, a lot of factors work behind its activities. Websites that do not pay attention to these important factors suffer a great loss in their pay per click activity. Let us now discuss some of these important pay per click services criterion which will ensure that your business is flourishing through this online marketing method.

When a website is submitted in the search engines for paid listing, the most important factor which requires prior most attention are the keywords. It is the selection of keywords that reslut in the ranking of the website in the search engines. The website is bid for a particular keyword, which is made to rank in the search engines. The relevancy of this keyword with the website is most important. Your PPC Services campaign will work only if your visitors are able to find relevant stuff in your website when they enter your site through your PPC advertisement.

The selection of these keywords is quite a serious job. Website owners usually hand over the task of keyword selection to people who are experts in the field. On behalf of the website owners, the SEOs do a full study of the website, its niche market, the most suitable keywords etc. Ranking for those keyword widely depend on the popularity of these keywords. If these keywords are extremely popular ones it becomes slightly difficult to rank for them. Hence, it is advisable to settle for the mediocre keywords. That are less popular than the top ones, yet substantial enough to attract traffic into the website.

Once, your website has been ranked in the PPC Services provided by the search engines, and has also begun attracting traffic into the website, it is now necessary that your retain the traffic too. For this purpose, you need to keep refreshing the content in your website. A user will want to come back to your site, only when he is getting newer information every time. This will also work in the organic ranking of your websites.

A lot more can be done in order to keep your pay per click services working effectively. But for the initial stages things like this are enough.

About the Author- Naman Jain is an Online marketing professional, Presently working with Rupiz Media, one of the leading online marketing company offering expert UK web development services and website designing solutions over the globe.

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By Tim Hayes

What is Direct Response Marketing?

Well, direct response marketing is not advertising-it’s selling in print… and in emails, web sites, ads, podcasts, teleseminars, webinars, radio, TV, videos and all other media known and yet to be invented.

It’s clearly telling your clients and prospects what you do, what you have to sell that’s important to them, and how to get it.

Direct response marketing is the intersection where psychology meets math. It’s the one spot in the whole business universe where you measure your results–in the form of sales and deposits into your business checking account.

All businesses, regardless of their products or services, selling B2B or B2C can benefit from Direct Response Marketing.

Consider this:

* To survive, and thrive, all businesses must sell their products and services.
* Direct Response Marketing is selling (or pre-selling) products and services to in as many effective ways as possible.
* Adding Direct Response Marketing to your business, no matter what you sell or who you sell it to, increases sales.

What you can do:

1. With “fresh eyes” take a hard look at your marketing materials. Do they tell or sell?
2. Add the study of Direct Response Marketing to your professional reading. Some recommended authors: Jay Abraham, Bob Bly, David Frye, Ben Hart, Dan Kennedy, Marcia Yudkin to name a few.
3. Check out the free stuff offered by any of the marketers listed in #2. It will astound you how much great information is shared with you free!

Warning–starting down the road to master Direct Response Marketing will make you serious money!

Tim Hayes is principal of Timothy Hayes Copywriting/Consulting. His practice provides marketing communications, direct response programs and consulting for B2B and B2C organizations. With over 22 years face to face selling and marketing experience you get an unfair advantage in all your marketing communications. Tim offers direct response marketing consulting through his Half and Full Day with Tim program. To get full details on the complete services for Timothy Hayes Copywriting/Consulting visit http://www.thayescopywriting.com Tim can be reached by phone at (978) 269-4861, email at tim@thayescopywriting.com or fax (978) 453-1873.

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By Katrina Sawa

Assuming you have a great graphic artist who designs your marketing materials, mailers and collateral (which is a big assumption, I know)…

Where do you go to get them printed and/or mailed? How do you know which messages will be better to use? How often should you send mail out to your list?

Many small business owners I know typically do mailings hap hazzardly, meaning they plan a promotion or sale quickly to get business in the door or plan a workshop to happen in 2 weeks and then they say “I have to get a mailer out to my list”.

Does this sound familiar?

I’m suggesting you plan your mailings annually along with your sales, workshops and promotions (even holiday mailings or annual update letters). Then if you can plan the design, messages, who it’s going to, how you’ll get it printed and mailed it will not only go much smoother BUT I’ll bet you get a much higher response too!

You will give yourself time to come up with a strategy rather than throwing together quick mailings which might not:

- flow with your brand
- get a clear message across
- include all pertinent info
- make them take action

Many business owners will also go to Kinko’s or Office Depot (which are great resources for some things or really last minute jobs) for their printing and then fold, stuff, label and stamp their own mailers. NO, NO, NO, depending on the number of mailers you have it could be much less expensive and less time consuming to go through a professional printer, print broker or even online and then to go to a local or online mail house for mailing services.

You don’t have to do it all yourself.

Besides, what is your hourly rate? How much is your time worth? You would most likely be better off outsourcing these types of things rather than spending your valuable time when you could be working with a client or attaining a new client instead.

While I’m on the subject, how many people do you have on your mailing list or current database? Are you including EVERYONE YOU KNOW? If not, WHY THE HECK NOT? Everyone you know will either be a prospect for your business OR a referral source without question. They all need to know what you’ve been up to or what you’re doing now in case they need your services/products or know someone who does.

I could go on and on with suggestions on who to use for printing, mailing, and all the services that go along with doing this but we’d be here forever. So, here are -

5 tips on how to manage your direct mail efficiently:

1. Plan for large mailings.

Your lists must be large, since even good response rates may fall between 2 percent and 4 percent. If you don’t have a very large list - meet more people!

2. Choose the best format.

There are three basic types of direct mail: postcards, letters and packages. Successful direct-mail letters are complex packages and if you want to virtually guarantee your mail gets opened, you can put it in a box or some bulk mailing package.

3. Assemble your campaign.

Direct-mail marketing is rarely a do-it-yourself job. The steps include: designing and printing the creative pieces, choosing the lists, and delivering them both to a mailing house for labeling and distribution. Most mailing houses will be cost effective for a minimum of 500 or more pieces for your addressing and postage handling and some can even do printing as well.

4. Test and measure results.

Direct-mail success is measured one campaign at a time. It’s essential to test various components of the campaign- -the lists, your offers and creative approaches–in order to continually improve your response rates. The key is to test just one component at a time and make incremental adjustments until your campaign produces optimal results.

5. Contact a Marketing Expert.

They can help you put a PLAN together. You don’t need to research it all or figure it all out yourself, they love to do that part. A marketing expert can help you with the campaign itself, what the message or design will be, who to send it to, when and how. They can also find the best printing, mailing and delivering resources available based on your time frame, your budget and your quantity.

I hope for your sake you’re doing direct mailings pretty regularly in your business for part of your follow up and ongoing marketing to your list. Email is great but it certainly doesn’t reach everyone all the time so it’s not that reliable for your ONLY source of follow up marketing.

(c) Copyright 2008 K.Sawa Marketing.

Katrina Sawa is an Award-Winning Relationship Marketing Coach who’s helped hundreds of small business owners take dramatic steps in their businesses to get them to the next level in business, revenues and life. She offers one-on-one coaching, group coaching and do-it-yourself marketing planning products. Go online now to get started with her Free Report and Free Audio at http://www.jumpstartyourmarketing.com

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By Rachelle Ann Lim

Wear that attitude right. In business, you will be faced with so many adversaries and controversies as you last in the industry. This will especially be true if you are gaining momentum and success. So do not be caught unguarded. Be in the know about everything that will help you like the new technologies, the trends and services like postcard printing online.

In order to advance in the biz, it is a must to advertise. But you also have to learn how to conform your marketing tools according to the following.

1. Technology
Just when you thought that offset printing gives you the quality that you are looking for, comes the digital revolution. The latter presented new ways to get better deals with marketing materials at affordable prices.

Although offset is still the choice when it comes to the quality, the digital comes handy especially when you need to avail rush printing services. And this only goes with printing.

There is yet much other advancement in technology that you could adapt in your business throughout your stay. It is important that you stay updated what those are to be able to benefit from it while it is still hot.

2. Competitors’ materials
In order to strategize better, you have to monitor how your competitors are playing the game. It will do you good if you will get hold of their advertising materials so that you can top those off with your own.

You don’t have to panic if they are doing well with postcards and you haven’t thought about it yet. You can always avail postcard printing online to be able to compete head on.

3. Internet
The Internet gives people a lot of information. As a business person, you can also gain a lot of tips and tricks, especially for your marketing ventures, on the web. Educate yourself by browsing through the available data regularly.

If you are already successful, it must not stop you from wanting to achieve more or at least retain your current stature.

4. Pop culture
You have to know how your target market speaks. You have to know what appeals to them. If this means that you have to watch or at least stay updated with the latest reality TV craze, then do it.

Your ads must be able to relate well with your audience. And you can achieve such if you know what they are thinking. You don’t really need to stay tuned with every episode of the current TV hit. But you must know about the trend through reading and through listening what people are talking about.

It is easier to allocate a budget for a marketing strategy than to think of ways to execute an ad that will appeal to more people. But as the leader of your own business, you have to excel in both. You have to fund for the right ads.

Whether you will be availing postcard printing online or any other kind of material, make sure that you check the list above to be sure that you are not forgetting anything.

The author is a very energetic person. She loves to play badminton and volleyball. She likes taking care of dogs. She always wants to have fun in everything she does. Please visit our website Postcard Printing Online for further information - Color Postcard Printing

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By James W Brown

You Cannot Educate Small Business Owners

In the world of direct response copywriting, there is a well known rule of thumb. The rule states that you cannot educate small business owners…they just don’t get it. While I agree that it is very hard to get small business owners to sit up and pay attention-I believe it is possible to educate them-once they understand their profits can double or triple.

Many small business owners like dentists, chiropractors and acupuncturists-see themselves as doctors only. They are not in the mindset of being a business owner and therefore do not concentrate on their marketing efforts. In order for any small business to grow and prosper, there are a number of factors to take in.

All marketing efforts need to be tracked. A tracking sheet is very easy to develop with Excel. The person responsible for receiving phone calls to the business-records exactly how the caller found the business. Was it phonebook advertising, flyers, word of mouth?

Many business owners utilize phonebook advertising but have no idea how many calls they receive or how many clients are converted from the call. This is a waste of marketing money. Eventually the business owner will come to the realization that they are getting a small number of calls per month-that once converted-do not equal the money they are paying the phone company.

Let’s look at why the ads are not getting calls. When you pick up a phonebook and turn to chiropractors-it’s not unusal to see two or more ads that look the same. One tactic the phone company uses when creating ads for chiropractors…is to put a graphic of a spine in the ad. That’s a waste of space and then when you consider that two chiropractors on the same page-have graphics of spines in their ads!!! Well you come to the conclusion that the two chiropractors are of equal talent when treating patients.

The phone company does not use any direct response tactics when creating an ad. That is why most ads look the same, kind of like a business card. Very factual-leaving the business owner open to receiving many calls from what are called, “tire kickers”. These people are time wasters, bargain hunters-who are responding to the nice colors or graphics in the ad. What the business owner really needs-is targeted traffic that is responding to a keyword or two in the copy of the ad. it may be a headline or bullet points-that build rapport with the potential client. This brings them to pick up the phone and make an appointment.

Once the business owner gets this targeted traffic into the office or store, it’s time to close them. It’s not over yet though. The business owner need to retain the client and keep bringing them back as happy customers. Happy customers tell friends and co-workers-which in turn adds to the client base. The use of direct response copy in any business will have a viral effect. It brings the client in and keeps them coming in year after year- for as long as they need the service

James W. Brown is a Direct Response Copywriting expert. Focusing on writing for the martial arts and alternative health community-James provides copywriting for the web, print, including phonebook advertising through his second website. You can email James for details.

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By Jody Gabourie

The essential purpose of a small business or company is that your product or service provides some kind of solution to some kind of need or problem. In other words, people’s problems are your opportunities.

That’s pretty oversimplified but holds true. If you don’t know what’s bugging your prospects and keeping them up at night, then you won’t know what solution your services and products need to offer them.

From a marketing point of view, you have to be very clear about what your customer’s problems are in order to “talk” to them. When you think of what you are selling as a solution to your prospects’ problems or a way to improve their lives, you are speaking their language. And when you speak their language, they are much more likely to listen, because you are tapping into the conversation that is already going on inside their head!

People want to know you understand them, that you have compassion for their concerns and want to help with your services and products.

Your goal is to create a clear, concise and strong marketing message that resonates with your prospects’ wants and needs. Your marketing message needs to clearly show the connection between your services and your prospective clients’ needs.

Your target or niche market shares commonalities in the frustrations and issues they face. As a good marketer and business owner, you need to identify these and be able to talk about them in your marketing communications.

Your prospects are walking around with needs and problems and they are looking for solutions. They are not necessarily walking around looking for the product or service you sell. So, when you can position your product or service as a solution to their problem, you immediately get their attention!

To be more accurate, your prospects and clients experience various symptoms or emotions caused by their problems. For example, people come to professional organizers because they feel many of the following symptoms: stress, anxiety, feeling out of control, unhappy, inefficient, feeling bad about self, ineffectual and so on. They may have different problems, i.e. messy office, no workable filing system, cluttered garage, but they all pretty much feel the same and experience the same symptoms.

By tapping into people’s underlying issues and the emotions that are created from this problem or need, you can ensure that your marketing materials talk directly to these symptoms and problems.

So how do you figure out what your prospects’ and clients’ problems are?

* think about when you have been in the same situation and what your main issues and feelings were

* ask current and potential customers what the key issues facing them are

* stay current with any studies, literature and news about your target group and things that are “hot buttons” for them

* periodically check out your competitor’s websites and see how are they talking to their customers, what kind of language they are using

* do research on your target market (via websites, magazines, trade shows, online forums) to see what they’re talking about amongst themselves

You need to stay educated and informed of your prospect’s problems; otherwise you won’t be able to communicate that you understand their problems. And if you can’t do this, then your potential clients will not respond; and as a result they will not buy your products or services.

The principle is very simple: if you can clearly articulate a problem your client has, and you can demonstrate credibly that you can provide a solution to that problem, they will listen to you.

If your marketing message can clearly and compellingly “connect the dots” between the problems your prospects and customers have and the solutions your services and products provide, then you’ll have more qualified buyers and more success marketing your small business!

Jody Gabourie, The Small Business Marketing Coach, delivers simple, innovative and powerful marketing strategies to help business owners find and keep their most profitable clients. To learn more about how she can take your business to the next level, and to sign up for her *FREE* special report, ezine and articles, visit her site at http://www.JodyGabourieMarketingCoach.com

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