Word Count:
394

Summary:
Market testing is the key to increasing the effectiveness of your advertising campaign. If you’re like me, just the word testing makes your shoulders slump and a groan escape your lips.

Keywords:
test, profits, risks

Article Body:
Market testing is the key to increasing the effectiveness of your advertising campaign. If you’re like me, just the word testing makes your shoulders slump and a groan escape your lips. Hey, it’s really not that bad… especially when you notice the substantial increase in your bank account!

Think about it… how much profit is your advertising campaign producing? Which marketing material is providing the greatest revenue? If you don’t know the answer to these questions, you’re gambling with your advertising money!

Cut Out Risks And Rake In More Profits
Wouldn’t it be great to be in total control of your business profits? Yeah, knowing that the simple act of putting a set of postcards in the mail with this week’s offer is going to net a 20% increase in sales feels great. The key to being in command of your financial future is effective and continual testing.

Break down your marketing products, and choose one of these aspects to experiment with:
* The offer
* Advertisment Copy
* Web page Design
* Sales Letter Wording
* Advertising Mediums
* Mailing Lists
* Product Guarantees
* Combination Offers

A word of caution: test only one aspect at a time if you want to be sure what is causing the success or failure of the ad.

Tracking each variation and the results it produces will increase your market knowledge. Incorporate your new knowledge into your marketins strategy, and then go one to test another aspect listed above.

I like to make a start by simply changing the headline on my Websites or sales letter before making any changes to the body of content. It’s amazing to discover the powerful impact a headline has on the consumer. You’ll also get a better idea of how to change the main content when you know what attract the reader’s initial interest!

Okay, for those of you who don’t have the time to invest in constant testing… here’s a rule of that will still get you a higher profit margin without stealing your valuable time. It’s the 80/20 principal. Keep 80 percent of your advertising in its current form, but take 20 percent of your advertising budget and dedicate to experimenting with advertising methods. Hey, it’s not the most profitable, but you’re still sure to see an increase in sales and gain valuable market savvy in the process.

Word Count:
513

Summary:
Getting customers is the key to success in any business. There are many ways to promote your home based business – the only way to know which ones are best for your business is to test. Here are some tips for getting customers without spending a fortune!

1. Tell everyone you know that you are starting a business AND ask them to tell everyone they know. Word of mouth is a great way to promote your business, especially if your business is local. And best of all, it’s FREE!
…

Keywords:
small business,marketing tips,advertising home based business

Article Body:
Getting customers is the key to success in any business. There are many ways to promote your home based business – the only way to know which ones are best for your business is to test. Here are some tips for getting customers without spending a fortune!

1. Tell everyone you know that you are starting a business AND ask them to tell everyone they know. Word of mouth is a great way to promote your business, especially if your business is local. And best of all, it’s FREE!

2. Join your local chamber of commerce (especially if most of your customers will come from your local area). Networking won’t get you customers over night, but you never know where you’ll find business – and where you’ll find others to help promote your business. Plus, you’ll also get access to a variety of services, discounts, etc.

3. Advertise in your local newspaper. Many local newspapers have sections for new businesses, and this is a great and cost-effective way to reach customers in your area!

4. Post flyers and hand out business cards whenever possible.

5. Advertise in national magazines and newspaper your customers read. Trade magazines are a great way to target your advertising – and reach the exact people who need and want what your business offers. Even a small classified ad can generate a large return.

6. Create a website. Whether your business is local or national, putting your business online is a must these days. Even if you don’t sell anything that can be bought online, you can provide valuable information to prospective customers through the Internet.

7. Promote your website in all of your literature – business cards, stationary, emails, etc.

8. Learn how to “optimize” your website to get free traffic on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. You can select specific terms that customers use in your industry, and you can promote your business world-wide – or just in your city.

9. Use Pay-Per-Click advertising on Google and Yahoo. You can select the terms your customers use to find information they are looking for, and pay each time they click on one of your ads. You can set the amount you pay for each click, test your ads quickly, and gain visibility quickly in the search engines (getting high rankings for free does take some time).

10. Advertise in print and email newsletters your customers read and websites your customers visit. This is another great way to get your business in front of the right people, without spending a fortune. Offer free information (course, newsletter, how-to booklet on your industry, buyer’s guide, etc.) to increase the response rate.

11. Write articles and submit to magazines, newsletters, and websites to share your knowledge and make yourself an expert in your field. Establishing credibility and gaining visibility will make people want to do business with you!

12. Create a follow-up plan to stay in contact with people who respond to all of your ads. The more you can keep your business in front of potential customers, the more likely they will be able to find you when they are ready to buy what you offer!

Word Count:
832

Summary:
Getting your blog off the ground is not as tricky as people make it out to be. If you follow some really basic steps then it can be as eating a piece of pie. I have found a couple great blogs that have taught be something very unique and extremely rare. What I have learned will benefit any and every blogger out there. Read on to find out more.

Keywords:
blog, promotion, blog promotion, web promotion, blog traffic, web traffic, traffic, business, startup

Article Body:
Getting your blog off the ground is not as tricky as people make it out to be. If you follow some really basic steps then it can be as eating a piece of pie. I have found a couple great blogs that have taught be something very unique and extremely rare. What I have learned will benefit any and every blogger out there. Read on to find out more.

If you talk to bloggers about how many readers they had from the word go most of them will say absolutely NONE. They will tell you that it takes weeks if not months to get a small, simple blog off the ground and get people reading, reviewing, and subscribing to your blog. How would you like it if I told you that you did not have to weeks promoting your blog? How would you like it if you didn’t even have to spend days promoting your blog?

Well I am going to tell you how you can get hundreds if not a thousand visitors to your blog in its first week. There are a few things that you will have to do. The steps are really simple to follow and you can either do it in one big load in one day or you can spread it out spending no more than half an hour or so a day over the span of about a couple weeks for best results.

Content

Many bloggers will start out with one to five post on their first day and then post once a day or week. This is the first thing that they are doing wrong to get their blog off the ground. You ask all of the bloggers that have done this and they will tell you that it took a week to a month before they started to get readers.

Having five posts when your blog is started is not enough to get people to hang around and keep reading. You have to have enough posts pre-written so by the time your blog goes live you can post them all one after another. This will allow a visitor to be able to have a look around at what your writing and the more they read the higher the chance that they will subscribe or come back for more.

To get returning visitors from the start you have to have ATLEAST 20-30 post pre-written and ready to post as soon as your blog goes live. If you have 20-30 quality posts ready to go you can be assured that your visitors will stick around and read.

Tagging

While researching blogs and blog promotion I came across something called Technorati Tagging. I had never seen this before and I didn’t have a clue what they did so I looked into it further. I found out that Technorati Tags are actually able to deliver mass amounts of traffic. They way it works is as your writing your post when you come across a word that could categorize your post you add and close the word with a ) around it. This will ‘tag’ that word and once your blog is pinged to Technorati your blog will be placed under the category of that word. When someone searches a word that you have tagged your blog will show up.

Social Bookmarking

You will definitely see results by social bookmarking. It is very simple and all it requires is a little time. All you simply have to do is notify them of your post :O that sounds so hard. I managed to find a great list of the best social bookmarking sites. Take your pick of these top 20. They are all great and will improve your search engine results greatly.

1. 30daytags
2. BlinkBits
3. BlogHop
4. BlogLot
5. BlogMarks
6. BlogMemes
7. BlogPulse
8. BmAccess
9. browsr
10. Fark
11. CiteULike
12. clipclip
13. clipmarks
14. Complore
15. Connectedy
16. Connotea
17. de.lirio.us
18. del.icio.us
19. digg
20. diigo

Tell Other Bloggers

If you are after highly targeted traffic then this is a MUST. Before your blog goes live search through Google and other search engines for blog that are highly ranked on the topic you are writing on.

Create some personalised emails for each of the blogs you find (I recommend around 30-40 as you should recieve 75% positive results). Do not email the bloggers until you have made your initial posts.By notifying other bloggers about your blog you will get the ‘word’ out and you should recieve some good traffic and links from these other blogs.

You’re Done!!

If you do all this correctly then not to long after you made our first post you should be receiving some quality views. This has to be the easiest web promotion for your blog ever. You will be receiving many return readers if you have followed these steps because the traffic is so targeted. If you wish to read more on this topic just head over to http://www.splur.net as we will be adding this full article to it soon.

For marketing experts this can work. For less savvy advertisers, it is a huge pitfall that draws attention away from the much more important aspects of a successful selling proposition. Faulty advertising costs its makers billions of dollars a year, and almost all are guilty of it, even the huge corporations.

You will see many of today’s internet marketing “gurus” recommending volumes several decades old. There is a good reason for this. Many of those volumes were written by direct marketers that engaged in extremely costly mailings.

These ads have to produce optimal results or they produce losses. The upside is that results can be measured and broken down to a ridiculously precise extent. In fact very small fluctuations in these figures separate success from failure.

First and foremost is the written word. Nothing replaces a captivating headline and solid advertising copy. For headlines, the goal is to grab attention and qualify. Prospects must immediately recognize that the ad is addressed to them and they must also be drawn into the main copy. Ad copy should be as abundant as needed to tell the whole story, or however much of the story is needed to lead to the action you are soliciting.

Here are the four biggest mistakes you can make in advertising.

1) Being pretty instead of selling. This is really deadly. You don’t need to impress with your design, you need to make a sale, and words sell.

2) Not following a formula. Formulas exist because they work. Use them.

3) Forgetting, even for a single instant, to concentrate on your MDA, Most Desired Action.

4) Not testing different models. This is one of the most painful shortcomings of many marketers. They try an ad and if it’s not profitable the first time, they drop it entirely. If it is profitable, they continue to run it. Here, there is usually an enormous amount of room for improvement. Fluctuations in sales of the order of 500 to 800% are not uncommon?

Advertising comes in many shapes and sizes, with different costs associated to them. Do your research, purchase and read books by the likes of David Ogilvy and follow formulas that are aimed towards direct mailings. The results you get will far outweigh any effort you expend or money you invest.

Take for example tv and radio commercials. You know for a fact that such medium can cost an arm and a leg that’s why these two are definitely out of the list.

But not all advertising methods are expensive. In fact, some of the most cost effective tools are being used often by most business owners and marketers alike. And these include print ads such as your brochure printing materials, which showcase all the products and services in your list.

As they say, most of the time, the best things in life are free. In advertising, the same adage is true. Many business owners in fact, even the big ones, utilize these marketing tactics because they believe that there are such things that can actually do the job without having to pay so much.

Here are some of the reasons why the best things in advertising are most often free:

- Print ads such as your flyers and brochures can be made without having to hire a professional brochure printing company to do it for you. Lessen the costs; reduce the hassle.

- It never fails to spread out the good word regarding your product or service ? word of mouth that is. Having your clients to put in a good word for you to their relatives and friends are the best free advertising there ever is. And remember, a good word can build your reputation steadily; but one bad comment and it’ll spread like wildfire.

- Preparing a special gift for some of your most popular clients can go a long way in endearing you to them. Bring your business cards with you so you can provide them with your contact information while you’re being appreciated.

- Exchanging links with other websites are basically free and you don’t even need to do extra effort in looking for most searched sites.

- Posting your print ads at your local bulletin board helps reduce your costs of posting it by mail.
- When giving tips at a restaurant, include your business cards or brochures. Nowadays, it’s very common to see glass bowls in the cashier area for putting your business cards.

- Press releases in your local newspaper and newsletter can help you advertise your business without having to spend a penny on your advertising campaign.

Lastly, give out free samples or promotional products to your target audience and they’ll definitely gobble up your promo. It may be the one thing that you’ll surely spend your money on but the outcome produces great rewards.

For more information, you can visit this page on Brochure Printing

The sad truth about people in general is that when people have a good experience with a business (or person, for that matter), they usually keep it to themselves. Unless the service is so over the top extraordinary that they simply need to tell others (or they just happen to be the type of people that like to share good news?a rare breed indeed), no one will ever hear from them about their experience. On the other hand, if someone is wronged by a company, they will climb Mt. Everest to make sure as many people as possible hear about it. If you don’t believe this, go to any message board or consumer reporting website and read feedback on companies and products. You’ll come away thinking that you should never buy from anyone at any time. Of course, this isn’t true, and you may think to yourself that you provide good service. Of course you do. Still, that’s not enough. As illustrated, just one bad experience can make the rounds far more quickly than a hundred good experiences. You have to make sure you have enough positive stories circulating to counteract the bad ones.

The best, most productive word of mouth is many times generated purposely, and comes about through hard work and direction, rather than through hope and happenstance. You can generate the direction and style of word of mouth advertising by enlisting the help of your friends and family members. It’s not unethical, nor is it uncommon. The best businesses do just that. Particularly in today’s internet age, and the advent of the viral marketing era, more and more seemingly grassroots movements have their origins at the company itself. How do you get it started?

Have your husband or wife tell her group of friends about your business. You don’t need anyone to be deceptive, or “hide” their relationship to you. In fact, so much the better if they don’t. Friends naturally want to help friends. When someone happens to ask a friend of your spouse where they get their dry cleaning done, they’ll happily mention your business, even if they themselves have never spent a dime there.

Word of mouth advertising is as powerful a tool as you can use in the marketing realm. But it is just that: a tool. Don’t make the mistake of looking at it like some mystical force you have no control over. If you want to take the reigns and guide the direction of your business, you need to have control over every aspect of your marketing. That includes word of mouth advertising. To do anything less, to let fate decide your company’s destiny, would be irresponsible.