Archive for Ads
06.24.08
Posted in Ads at 11:39 am by
Bimboism is rampant in today’s media climate where those who do get their fifteen minutes of fame squander it with empty words and idiotic antics. Think about how much of YOUR time is wasted when you watch TV, listen to the radio or read newspapers or magazines. How long do you stay with a story if it’s not pertinent to your interests or if the interviewee is dull? With so much competition for your attention it’s easy to move on to the next best thing.
If you don’t want to become the next bimbo and instead touch the hearts and the minds of the nation, here are three things to avoid.
1. Give a fatty bone.
The quickest way to lose interest is to ramble. When you can’t make your point succinctly your audience tunes out-literally. They change the channel or they shift their attention. To keep your audience jazzed respect their time by getting to the point of what they want to know. Give them value every second you’re speaking. Shave off any unnecessary fat and get to the bone, the real core of what you have to give.
2. Be professorial.
In my experience people who have the highest degrees are the biggest bores. They speak with the jargon of their industry or training using long sentences and obscure ideas. Simplifying is the key to communication. One of my favorite clients, syndicated technology columnist and national correspondent for KCBS news Larry Magid, is an exception. He can take the most complicated ideas and turn them into a Zen garden. He puts each word stone in the right place at the right time to create order, simplicity and understanding. Follow Larry’s path to your own garden by taking the big idea down to its roots. Refuse to be high fallutin’ by making your knowledge inaccessible to the masses.
3. Praise the Lord.
Preaching will set people hellbent against you. I don’t know about you but when someone tells me what to do I automatically rebel. Whenever you’re attached to an idea and try to push it on someone it’s natural to resist. When you have an agenda people sense it. If you’re unattached to the outcome your audience will be more receptive to you and your ideas. Allow them to make their own choices based on the information you impart. Tempt them with heavenly insights and offers.
Susan Harrow, top media coach, marketing strategist and author of Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul, The Ultimate Guide to Getting Booked on Oprah, and Get a 6-Figure Book Advance. Find out what pushes producers’ love and hate buttons-and how they determine whether to book you on
their show or not: tinyurl.com/cys5j
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06.04.08
Posted in Ads at 1:25 am by
Sitting in front of a blank piece of paper? Wondering where in the world to start? I have a suggestion. Turn the page upside down. Or better yet flip it over onto it’s backside. Let it know who’s boss. If your first idea is terrible, write it down anyway. If the next one is silly, redundant or stupid, write it down. Who knows, it may end up being a comedy direction and that first terrible line may end up being the punch line. You never know. You are jumping off a precipice into the unknown world of creativity and you need to be a leaf at the mercy of the wind or you will come crashing down with your fears in a ball flames every time.
Throw as much as you can against the wall and see what sticks. I own a jingle and music production company and I had an assignment to create a jingle, positioning statement (slogan), campaign for Petaluma Auto Plaza in Northern California. They have a huge electronic sign on Hwy 101 and we decided that this landmark was our key. So, what do you do with a big sign? It’s huge and you can see it from everywhere. It’s so big, it’s like a monument. And what do you do with a monument? We decided to worship it. So I brought into the studio Jeannie Tracy (from Whitney Houston’s band), a gospel singing Diva, to sing the following full-on hand clapping gospel jingle I SAW THE SIGN: “I was lost in the gloom of auto dealers and sales pitches, then I saw a light shining bright standing tall (Where to turn?)… I saw the sign (chorus answers ‘I saw the sign’) in Petaluma (’Petaluma Auto Plaza’)” and on and on… If you’d like to hear it go to: http://soundad.com/sounds/ and click on Pet Auto Plaza. It’s a smashingly successful campaign.
Sometimes “getting outside of the box” is about simplicity. I had a chain of camera stores in need of a jingle to brand their company name and a positioning statement (slogan) to bring people in. We did a market analysis and concluded that they were trying to reach two buyers:
#1)Professional photographers who were developing their film. #2)New camera buyers who were serious about learning the craft.
We came up with a simple line that appealed and spoke to both: WE DEVELOP PHOTOGRAPHERS
Creativity is not something I pull out of thin air. There is a process that I trust will lead me to something spectacular. I throw everything possible up against that wall without judgement or self criticism. If doubt creeps in, I throw doubt up against the wall. If I’m getting bored, I throw boredom against the wall and suddenly there is a humorous side that begins to appear. If I don’t need humor, I throw it up against the wall and a new perspective opens up.
It’s all good in the creative process and those of us who live it should honor it. It keeps us young because it’s all about letting go, letting things flow and crawling outside of the box for a few moments.
Barry Volk - EzineArticles.com Expert Author
Barry Volk is a former producer/staff songwriter for ABC, MCA & Screen Gems-EMI Music Publishing, a 20th Century Fox solo recording artist, Musical Director for the West Coast Theater Company and National Director of Marketing for Metro Networks/Westwood One. His music production company, Barry Volk’s Sound Advantage http://soundad.com, creates and produces musical identities and jingles for radio and TV advertisers worldwide from small market to national campaigns.
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05.29.08
Posted in Ads at 11:50 am by
What do your customers say about your company?
Would you let your major competitor control your sales strategy?
Public relations is an inevitable consequence of being in business. Whether you like it or not, your corporate image evolves with every interaction with clients, investors, competitors, and even between your own employees. Thus, managing perceptions of your company is just as important to the bottom line as what you sell and who buys it. Unfortunately, many companies see PR as a reaction to external forces and lose control over market direction as a result.
As with all other corporate activities PR should be treated as a strategic process. Adopting a strategic PR campaign enables a company to not only compete better in the marketplace, but also be successful across market boundaries. Being proactive rather than reactive means establishing long-term goals that are measurable and repeatable and that will ensure longevity and achievement for the company. The setting of objectives, milestones, and metrics guarantees that any and all PR activities are aligned with the company’s objectives and will deliver real results.
By answering the following questions, a strategic process will emerge for PR that will support all of the company’s process and goals.
Who are you?
What do others say about us?
What are the corporate objectives?
How can we control the PR process?
Your Internal Identity
The reality is that good PR begins at the office: possessing a strong sense of corporate identity on all levels is key to having a consistent and credible public image. It is the responsibility of management to articulate to all employees the company’s mission statement and make it actionable. This is a message that will be repeated and demonstrated to external audiences daily through virtually every company interaction. Employees who believe in the mission statement will display the corporate image through their actions. Indecision, multiple, or conflicting messages at any level will have a negative impact and inadvertently kill any momentum that might be achieved.
By making PR a strategic process and not a reaction to external situations, a consistent message will be developed across all corporate segments. Applied correctly, it is a message that will eventually evolve into corporate attitude and culture. Actively defining the image of your company ultimately impacts the credibility obtained from all sectors: employees, investors, customers, competitors, and the general public. Actions speak louder than words and govern how all outsiders will interact with you. Establishing a mission that is accepted and adopted by every segment of your company will aid in verifying your value.
Your External Identity
Initiating a strategic PR campaign allows your company to control its place in the market by defining perceptions across all segments of the value network. It is more than just a clever marketing campaign to support your products - it is an extension of the corporate identity. Think about what others say about you - your customers, competition, shareholders, and the general public. In today’s economy the response needs to be in harmony.
A coordinated PR strategy is critical to delivering a consistent and compelling message across all of your company’s interfaces. The focus is on establishing the company image, and will impact the reception you garner from each of these audiences. Confirming the corporate message needs to practiced with all departments working in unison because conflicting signals will undermine the significance of any future efforts. For example, your marketing team cannot be contradicting what the product team asserts for product capability.
A company’s image is most important for non-customers. What do your competitors say about you? Do they take you seriously? Do your suppliers? How about industry analysts? Do potential employees want to work for your company? These impressions do count and can determine the company’s maneuverability in a dynamic market by determining access to needed resources and strategic options. Strategic PR delivers a consistent, credible message that establishes a foundation for future efforts and results.
Corporate Strategy Alignment
Knowing your company’s short-range and long-term aspirations is vital in setting the tone for any and all PR campaigns. Having a clear direction allows definition of long-term goals and short-term milestones to be set and success to be measured. As with other corporate processes, the PR campaign should be aligned with management’s objectives and reinforce the other corporate efforts. Buy-in is needed from all rows and columns in the company’s organizational table. Through strategic public relations initiatives, the necessary steps will be developed to implement the plan that will support and promote reaching desired results. Ultimately, by transmitting the company’s mission through the attitude and actions of all stakeholders, a common vision will take hold that will ensure success
Increasing Your Perceived Value
Obviously, not all of the aspects of external perception mentioned above can be controlled (i.e. competitors). This is the reason, however, that strategic PR must be implemented as a proactive process. A consistently delivered message, encompassing both words and deeds, across all facets of the corporate identity will mitigate even the worst things that others might say about your company. To ensure success, PR needs to be managed with the same seriousness as sales, product development, and marketing activities. The entire corporate team must believe in the goals (which will be infectious to all who hear the message) and the process (which will generate buy-in at all levels). Most importantly, an executive must be assigned to shape and coordinate the message across the various outlets and channels. Inclusion of an outside PR professional can be a valuable addition, to avoid group-think and maintain objectivity (which underlies credibility).
Conclusions
A strategic PR campaign is an often-neglected component in establishing a company’s market position and chances of success. It is not focused on just the marketing or sales team, but provides them with a strong foundation to leverage, built on the attitude and image of the total organization. Like all other important corporate activities, PR must be implemented as a well-defined process that is proactive instead of reactive, with short- and long-term goals as well as objective metrics. By developing this new mindset, your company can maximize its potential by controlling external perceptions.
Agnes Brousseau has more than 14 years of public relations, sales and marketing experience with emphasis on corporate communications. She joined BlabberMouth PR a Vice President of Client Services from JPMorganChase Bank, a leader in investment banking, financial services, asset and wealth management and private equity. As an Austin, Texas-based Branch Manager, she was responsible for over $7 million in sales and increasing the overall ranking for the branch to a top position. As a direct result of her expert communications strategies and sales planning, the branch assumed the number one position in Texas for portfolio growth.
The native Australian began her career in 1988 as a paramedic with Halifax County EMS /Hollister Volunteer Rescue Squad. She transitioned to public relations, where she headed the public relations initiatives for the organization. She was also an EMS, CPR and First Aid Instructor for the State of North Carolina and was the designated community spokesperson for EMS. In 1996 she received a Dedicated Service Award.
For more information, visit http://www.blabbermouthPR.com.
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Posted in Ads at 8:20 am by
Those of you familiar with my personal history know that I have a strong background in, and affinity for, digital marketing. Now that my bias is fully disclosed, I’m going to tell you what most traditional ad agencies will not…that the digital medium is far and away the most powerful, cost effective and measurable form of media available today. Advertising and MarComm budgets can no longer focus solely on traditional communications mediums; rather budgets must be spread across a broader spectrum inclusive of digital mediums.
Digital content is diverse. Like print advertising and direct mail, the content of the Internet is largely based on the written word. As with printed media, much of Internet related media relies on graphic images to support marketing messages. However, unlike print and direct mail, the Web enables moving graphics and sound to be conveyed to the prospect or customer. In that respect, it is more like radio or television and like the telephone, the Web can enable one-to-one, interactive communication with e-mail, instant messaging and voice. Yet, unlike any direct response medium, the Web can present the customer with a virtually unlimited amount of marketing information in multimedia format.
Print advertising is delivered through magazines and newspapers. Direct mail is delivered via the U.S. Postal Service or another delivery service. Radio and television are delivered via airwaves through passive listener or view devices. Telemarketing is delivered over telephone lines. Only the Internet is delivered directly via a computer. This is perhaps the most intriguing part of Digital Marketing and one of the primary differentiating factors that sets this medium apart from any other. Unlike any other medium, the computer delivers Internet based content in nonlinear information format. All other mediums are linear, meaning they have a beginning, middle, and end.
Digital Marketing is direct marketing at its most developed potential. It is the logical extension of a measurability mentality that is already inbred in business-to-business marketers. They recognize the importance of the brand, and they understand the need for awareness, but they also know that marketing must go well beyond brand image and awareness advertising. They need marketing that produces results.
As a marketing medium, the digital media has become the easiest, most cost-effective route to global marketing. The stunning cost implications of Digital Marketing in part, fuel the Internet’s unprecedented growth. The Internet is not only cost-effective; it is downright cheap in comparison to other media. It is often estimated that Digital Marketing is 60 to 65 percent cheaper than traditional direct mail marketing.
Used effectively, digital media can deliver personalized content to each and every customer, or even automatically to another computer desktop via push technologies. As a result, a marketer can initiate a one-to-one relationship via e-mail and the Web with a prospect, customer or business partner. The marketer can also learn from that relationship via database marketing and grow the relationship over time.
A marketer can build and host a Website and reach a worldwide audience at a cost that is far less than the cost of one national television commercial. E-communication has a whole different cost structure from traditional print, direct mail, telemarketing or television media. There are no media placement costs associated with launching a corporate Website or employing e-mail as a marketing medium. You may have to rent e-mail addresses, but you do not have to engage printers or mail houses, or pay postage when you disseminate e-mail. There are no hotel, travel or on-site materials costs for Webinars and other virtual events. There are no printing and mailing costs for e-fulfillment. Even order fulfillment is cheaper with the Internet, especially if electronic catalogs are used to replace traditional paper catalogs.
Research indicates that Digital Marketing represents a threefold cost-savings over traditional direct marketing. Moreover, Digital Marketing can bring up to 10 times the return of a traditional direct marketing campaign. The areas in which you will achieve the largest amount of savings are likely to be: fulfillment, delivery, the medium used and the analysis of campaign metrics.
Digital media turns traditional media cost structures upside down. With Digital Marketing, there is nothing to print and mail, there are no advertising materials to reproduce, no telemarketing calls to handle. Websites can reach one, a hundred, a thousand, or millions of prospects or customers for about the same cost. With the proper in-house tools, e-mail can be widely distributed without unit cost implications, unlike direct mail, and at least so far, the Internet is a tax-free commerce zone.
The question is not whether Digital Marketing works, or is Digital Marketing here to stay, but rather how can a business leverage an integrated Digital Marketing strategy that will service their needs both now and into the future. So next time your ad agency is getting ready to pitch, make sure that they include a sizeable allocation for digital media.
Mike Myatt is the Chief Strategy Officer at N2growth. N2growth is a leading venture growth consultancy providing a unique array of professional services to high growth companies on a venture based business model. The rare combination of branding and corporate identity services, capital formation assistance, market research and business intelligence, sales and product engineering, leadership development and talent management, as well as marketing, advertising and public relations services make N2growth the industry leader in strategic growth consulting. More information about the company can be found at http://www.N2growth.com
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05.26.08
Posted in Ads at 1:38 pm by
If you’re having problems generating a lot of sales
at your website, it may be because you’re not aware
of these 10 eye-popping powerful web site promotion
strategies that Internet promotion experts are using
to sky-rocket their sales:
1. Swap endorsement advertisements with other
web sites. Endorsement ads usually pull more sales
and traffic than regular advertisements.
2. Outsource part of your workload to save time
and money. You can spend more of your time and
money promoting your business.
3. Include a signature file on all the e-mails you send
out. Provide your business name, phone number,
e-mail and web address,etc.
4. Use pictures or graphics on your web site that
support the product you’re selling. They could give
your visitors a clearer vision of your product.
5. Create a friendly, long term relationship with all
your customers. Practice good customer service
and follow-up with them on a regular basis.
6. Create strategic alliances with other web sites.
You could exchange banner ads, sell each other’s
products as backend products, cross promote, etc.
7. Increase the perceived value of your product to
skyrocket your sales. Add on free bonuses, after-
sale services or an affiliate program.
8. Give customers a discount on their total order
to increase sales. You could give them a discount
for ordering over a set dollar or product amount.
9. Allow your visitors to reprint the content on your
web site. Just ask them in exchange to include your
resource box and a link to your site.
10. Provide a free contest or sweepstakes at your
web site. It’s a fact, people like to win things. If you
can fulfill that need, people will visit.
May these web site promotion secrets help you to make
a lot of money.
Warmly,
I-key Benney, CEO
I-key, a Millionaire CEO from New York City is the creator of “Mscsrrr: Millionaire Secret Cash System”,(investing online) program, which has helped thousands of ordinary people from all over the world to attain financial security and shining success during the past 2 yrs.
Mscsrrr Millionaire Cash System helps you to generate $1,500+/Week for life, from home or office, part time or full time. No large investment or hassles. Win $1000-$2000 free “cash”.
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05.16.08
Posted in Ads at 5:27 am by
I stumbled on this Adsense money-making tip almost by accident from a great affiliate program I joined that has the best online marketing training program I have ever come across.
One of the key aspects of the very effective online marketing program they were talking about at this affiliate program, was the use of safe lists to email ad messages out. Well, I decided I could do better and join safelists that allowed the posting of articles (and not just email ads). These are basically online ezines that publish content and distribute it to the list. By simply joining a few safe lists with a couple thousand of members, your promotional Adsense article will be reaching millions of email boxes, every time you send it out.
There is nothing online that is as effective as email. Even SPAM that gets through works. Why else would those SPAM pests keep on making everybody’s life so miserable at the risk of getting arrested? The big advantage here is that this bulk email marketing strategy of joining article announcement lists is perfectly legal and you will not be upsetting anybody. In fact in many cases some of the folk will be eagerly accessing and reading your articles.
There are of course other factors that come into play like the kind of headlines to use and the importance of ensuring that you target the right article announcement groups (more on that later). Still all the skills required can be learned. I learnt them myself by trial and error and constant testing.
Two days after spending a couple of hours setting up my safe list bulk email marketing program, I opened my Adsense account one morning and almost fell off the chair in excitement. My earnings had shot up almost 9 times above my previous average. But there was something else even more interesting, I was getting more clicks on my Adsense ads from fewer visitors. This is a puzzle that I am yet to solve because to date articles distributed through my safe lists do much better for me in terms of clicks than articles I post at high traffic sites. Still I do both activities regularly.
There was one more delightful aspect about this method of increasing Adsense clicks, that I noticed. After sending out about three or four articles via my safelists, I got so busy that I did not have the time to write good content to distribute via my safelists. So you would have expected my Adsense earnings to drop like a stone right back to where they were. Surprise, surprise, it did not happen. It stayed up there over one week after I had sent out my last article. That was when I was totally convinced that I had a winner in my hands.
But You must carefully target your market
You should have no illusions about safe lists. The cold facts are that a lot of the email goes unread. Most people who receive the articles will quickly scroll down looking for an interesting headline. Many others subscribe to the information at a desperate moment of need but then lose interest soon after and never actually open their messages from the list they’ve subscribed to.
The truth is that only a tiny fraction of people who receive the email will ever open your message. Even fewer will glimpse through it for a few seconds and fewer still will take the time to read it and understand the contents.
With these kind of odds your chances of being effective diminish dramatically if you don’t carefully target the right safe lists and groups to join. Always remember that relevance greatly increases your chances of being read. It is the same principle which has made PPC ads so effective.
Still article groups and safe lists are extremely effective, and here’s why.
Christopher Kyalo is a successful online writer and entrepreneur. Read the rest of this article and other valuable Adsense money-making tips in his free ezine. Subscribe now by sending a blank email to clickaffiliatesecrets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or get more details about it at his Google Adsense Blog. He can be reached at strongwallafrica at yahoo.com
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