Brands can benefit from advertising in social-media space. The approaches offer a means to engage consumers, enhance brand reputation and image, build positive brand attitudes, improve organic search rankings, and drive traffic to brand locations, both on- and off-line. The steps in any advertising campaign will begin with setting campaign objectives and end with assessing the effectiveness of the strategies and tactics to determine the degree of success in accomplishing the stated objectives and to inform the next campaign. The challenge is to develop a set of measures to assess success and plan for future strategies and tactics.

At this stage of development, social-media advertising lacks the standard metrics that have served as a primary advantage for online advertising. Online advertising as a form of direct-response advertising has measurability built into its very existence. Advertisers can measure reach (the number of people exposed to the message) and frequency (the average number of times someone is exposed), and analyze site stickiness (the ability of a site to draw repeat visits and to keep people on a site) and the relative pull of creative presentations (a comparison of the ability for different creative executions to generate response). They can also monitor clickthroughs (the number of people exposed who click on an online ad or link), sales conversions (the number of people who click- through who then purchase product), and viewthroughs (the number of people who are exposed and do not clickthrough but later visit the brand’s Web site). These metrics are applicable to the use of display advertising in social spaces. If L’Oreal buys display ads on Facebook, all of these metrics are available to gauge effectiveness.

However, for the more innovative approaches available, metrics like number of unique visitors, page views, frequency of visits, average visit length, and clickthrough rates are either totally inappropriate or irrelevant, or simply fail to capture information about the objectives of a social-media advertising campaign. Our tendency is to count — count impressions, visitors, friends, posts, players. There is a place for numbers. For instance, knowing the number of community members involved in brand-related conversations can serve as an indicator of exposure, and the number of message threads and lines of text within a thread can serve as proxies of conversation depth. However, counting does not capture the essence of the interaction consumers had with the brand, the degree of engagement felt during and after the interaction, or the effects of the interaction, exposure to brand messages, and brand engagement on measures like brand likability, brand image, brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand affiliation, congruency, and purchase intent. Jeep may have 8,500 MySpace friends, but the number does nothing to tell us how the friends feel about Jeep. An ARG may boast millions of players, but the sheer quantity of players does not reveal the success of the strategy. To measure outcomes of social advertising, organizations must balance quantitative metrics with qualitative insights.

The Measurement Process

The appropriate approaches to measurement will vary depending upon the campaign’s objectives and the social-media strategies and tactics used. However, these are the basic steps any measurement program should include.

Step 1: Review the objectives set for the campaign.

Step 2: Map the components of the social-media strategy used in the campaign.

Step 3: Determine the criteria that will be used to assess the achievement of objectives, and the tools necessary to measure the criteria.

Step 4: Establish a baseline or benchmark with which one can compare accomplishments.

Step 5: Analyze the effectiveness of the campaign components given the outcomes measured and propose changes appropriate for moving forward.

Step 6: Keep measuring.

Reviewing Objectives

Step 1, reviewing the campaign objectives, assumes that the objectives were set prior to pursuing advertising opportunities in social media. Not all brands set formal objectives. Some are simply experimenting with social Media, and for them the experience of executing a campaign using emerging platforms is sufficient. For most brands, though, failing to set clear objectives is a mistake. When it comes to assessing success, if there are no objectives, how do you know if where you ended up is where you wanted to be? The specific objectives identified can vary dramatically from brand to brand but usually encompass three overarching issues: (1) motivating some action like visits to a Web site or sales, (2) affecting brand knowledge and attitudes, and (3) accomplishing the first two with fewer resources than might be required with other advertising and promotional methods.

Mapping the Campaign

Step 2 calls for mapping all of the social-media aspects of the advertising campaign. This activity results in a visual representation of the tactics used and how they may interact. Mapping is a technique advocated by Chris Brogan on his blog (http://chrisbrogan.com). In a post entitled “Measuring Social Media Efforts,” he explains that maps can be crude, simple drawings but even a rough sketch can be valuable as brands seek to measure accomplishments in the social-media space. A map would display the types of branded messages produced and distributed (e.g., written vehicles like blog posts and white papers, ads in the form of display ads or rich media video, and podcasts) and invitations for consumer engagement with the brand (e.g., Games, consumer-generated advertising contests and promotions, and interactive brand experiences) as well as the online location for these materials. It should also include online locations where content relating to the brand may be distributed by others. For instance, are there viral videos on YouTube that highlight the brand? Are there product reviews on sites like Epinions.com? Are there MySpace pages with brand icons and information posted? Are there bloggers writing about the brand? Are members of delicious tagging the brand’s Web site, and are Digg members voting for branded content?

Once all the sources of brand information are identified, the map should sketch out the chain of touch points possible. A touch point is simply a contact point between the brand and the consumer. Mini Cooper “touches” a consumer when someone visits the dealer showroom, visits the Mini Web site or one of its microsites, receives brochures and other promotional material from the company, or brings a car in for service. These are all brand-controlled touch points, but many touch points that the brand does not control do exist, especially online. In addition to the consumer-generated content that relates to the brand, there may be conversational touch points going on. Are people reading the blog postings (or even responding to blog posts) that mention the brand? Are people watching videos posted on sites like YouTube? Are they voting for content on Digg? In other words, is the media (whether brand-generated or consumer-generated) being consumed by those it reaches and is it being “fortified” (as in CFM)? Ultimately, the map should show four levels of contact: (1) brand-generated content, (2) consumer-generated content, (3) consumer-fortified content, and (4) exposures to content consumers.

Choosing Criteria and Tools of Measurement

In step 3, the criteria for assessing effectiveness are determined, and the tools necessary for measurement are selected. The objectives and the map should direct the identification of criteria, as well as the best tools. For example, imagine that Secret deodorant seeks to develop brand awareness for two new products, Secret Clinical Strength deodorant and Secret Scent Expressions body spray. It also wants to drive traffic to the product Web sites and increase sales of these products. Lastly, it wants to reinforce Secret’s image of celebrating women, their strength and their secrets. The brand enters the social-media space with an advertising campaign, which also includes traditional media components, called Because You’re Hot. The campaign, by Leo Burnett Chicago, plays on the definition of “hot” to connect to the efficacy of the Secret brand benefit while recognizing characteristics that make a woman hot (being strong). The Secret Web site and two microsites, http://www.becauseyourehot.com and http://www.sparklebodyspray.com, would be sketched on a social-media map, along with other tactics like the Rihanna’s Secret MySpace profile (which features Secret Body Spray as a sponsor). Visitors to the Scent Expressions microsite are encouraged to participate in a quiz to identify their ideal scent, and those visiting the Because You’re Hot site can vote on what’s hottest using Secret’s Hot-o-Meter. Secret also runs a promotion in MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach, encouraging women to “share their secrets.” Secret could expand the social-media aspects of the campaign by frosting a blog with contributions from a slate of strong female celebrities, having a virtual dance party with a Jennifer Lopez avatar (to tie in to the dance contest featured in the traditional media component of the campaign) in Second Life, and inviting women to develop videos that capture the essence of the slogan, Because You’re Hot. These videos could then be hosted on a Secret channel on YouTube. These are some of the brand-generated messages and invitations for participation in the campaign. Consumers are generating content about Secret. Technorati lists blogs, posts, and videos that mention both products. YouTube also includes videos tagged with Secret deodorant and Secret Scent Expressions. Internet users have opportunities for exposure and can fortify the messages with comments and product reviews.

What criteria and tools then should Secret use to evaluate success of these techniques? Secret’s objectives emphasized a desire to (1) build awareness of its new products, (2) drive visits to its Web sites, (3) drive sales, and (4) strengthen the Secret brand image. Objective 2 is easily addressed with traditional Web site metrics and measurement tools. The Secret sites can track hits, page views, and unique visitors; the sites enable registration, which can also be tracked. Organic search engine rankings can also be assessed for the brand name and its slogans. Secret is not performing well on organic search. The word secret generates a third-place spot for the Secret brand; the word deodorant places Secret in sixth place. Searches with the slogans “Because You’re Hot” and “Share Your Secret” result in third-place listings.

Awareness can be suggested with the Web site traffic and traffic to other branded components. For instance, Rihanna’s Secret MySpace profile boasts over 24,000 friends, some of whom have fortified the profile with comments. It can also be suggested with brand mentions in other online space. Secret might ask, “Is the brand being talked about? If so, how much, and where?” The criteria for answering these questions are straightforward. One simply needs to identify evidence of the brand in online conversations and publications, get a count of those occurrences, and note the source of the material. The tools necessary for this could include a virtual version of a clipping service to determine what is being said about the brand and the brand’s competition online. This can be an in-house project, or outsourced to companies like CyberAlert, which can then monitor specific publications or the entire Internet for brand mentions. Collecting brand mentions in house can be accomplished with tools like Google Alerts. These tools can provide a count of mentions, and the sources, but they should be combined with other tools to determine whether the communication was positive, negative, or neutral for the brand.

Next Secret might ask, “How many people are exposed to these third-party messages?” To assess the impact of these brand mentions across the Web, one can turn to companies that measure the size of a site’s audience. Media Metrix, Nielsen Net/Ratings, and comscore offer measurement services that include hits, unique visitors, and page views for sites. It will need to consider all the locations of postings mentioning the brand and the audiences for each location.

Secret, in our example, also set out to strengthen its image. Its image can be influenced by what the target audience thinks and feels about the branding for the campaign. Are young women engaged with quick games like the Hot-o-Meter? Is the association strategy using Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez as celebrity endorsers effective? Do they feel that the Scent Expressions quiz and scent recommendations enable Secret as a brand to symbolize their own self images? The campaign itself will influence the brand’s image. Secret may use primary research in the form of surveys and focus groups to answer these questions.

A key to social media is that the consumer-generated content and consumer-fortified content can also influence image. The viral nature of brand-relevant communication is why social media is both an opportunity and a threat for advertisers. To determine the relative influence and nature of that influence on a brand, one must consider the source of content, the relative authority of that source, and the content itself. Katie Delahaye Paine advocates a list of criteria for assessing the influence of blog postings about a brand. It is easily applicable to all forms of social publicity, including mentions in news media (on- and off-line), online comments — whether a blog posting, responses to blog postings, or comments about videos — profiles, photos, message board postings, and online product reviews.

The above is an excerpt from the book Advertising 2.0
by Tracy L. Tuten
Published by Praeger; September 2008;$24.95US; 978-0-313-35296-6
Copyright © 2008 Tracy L. Tuten

Dr. Tracy Tuten
http://www.articlesbase.com/networking-articles/socialmedia-impact-balancing-metrics-and-insight-for-advertising-success-642697.html

You might think that you have a product or a service that you sell in your home business that actually sells itself – therefore you don’t need to worry about setting a budget, or Advertising, because as soon as you start your business you are going to be bringing in the cash and you are going to find that you don’t have to work very hard. If you think this, chances are pretty good that you are deceiving yourself, because this is simply not the way that it goes with a home Business. If you want the best chance of success, you are going to need to start with advertising, and you are going to need to always continue to be advertising, no matter how successful you think you are.

Choose A Type

When you begin to do advertising for your home business, you are going to have a decision to make. There are several types of advertising, and you have to decide which of them is going to benefit you. The differences in them are what makes them good for one business and bad for the next. The two main types of advertising that you might be thinking about would be either online or internet advertising, or local advertising. In order to decide which type of advertising is going to work best for you, the first decision that you have to make is where your target audience is. If your home business is something local, like a day care or hairdresser, or something that relies on local customers, you are going to want to focus on localized advertising. However, if you are selling a product that can be shipped any where, or doing some kind of service that you can do from you home, you are going to benefit more from having internet or online advertising. This is because you can have a business that is always open and ready to receive customers this way, and you can find that this is very rewarding and also going to be very beneficial for you.

No matter what you think, advertising is going to be benefit you because advertising is the only way that your idea, your product, or your service can get into the hands of the general public. You aren’t going to be able to make the money on your own ,and so you are going to have to rely on advertising to get the word out about you and about what you are looking for. By using advertising in a smart and correct manner, you are going to help build the infrastructure of your business, and be way more successful in the long run. It is simply the best way to go about it.

Orlando Thompson
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-opportunities-articles/why-advertising-your-business-can-pay-off-322665.html

With the growing population of the world, it is a natural thing that there is a great demand for products of all kinds. This demand for products means that there is an obvious need to create such products and launch them in the market. Another factor at work here is the growing industry which manufactures everything imaginable under the sun. Hence, there is a subsequent need to let people know about these myriad products. Herein comes the concept of advertising. Most individuals are ignorant about many products. Since the company has come to the market with the objective of selling its product, the onus is on the company itself to let more and more people know about their product. It is through advertising that this can be done.    

However, many companies are not sure about how they can go about promoting their product. There are many ad agencies that are professionals in the matter of advertising and are ready to work for companies who need to figure out how they will construct their advertisement campaigns. Ad agencies have experts in Marketing and advertising working with them and they can help you create advertising campaigns with your products in mind. 

There are so many competitors in the market that it is indeed a difficult task to grab the attention of people and transform them into your faithful customers. Your advertising campaign has to be such that it grabs the attention of people and forces them to take a look at your products. A good advertising campaign is important because even good products can go unnoticed if not advertised properly. 

The Advertising agency has to be one that can understand the thrust areas of your company and create a campaign that perfectly showcases your product and its salient features. This has to be done in the most attractive manner possible.

After you give the details about your company and your product to the advertising agency, they will work on the campaign. There are some basic objectives that most advertising agencies have. These include increasing the sales of the products that they are advertising for, attracting people with the advertisements and creating something out of the box which will make people take interest in the company.    

There is a whole team that works on the advertisements. The advertising agencies always try to give their best for your product because they want to create a good impression on you so that you will refer others to their agency and remain faithful to their work.  

There are certain companies who take advertising to the next level by giving all the responsibilities, right from creating advertisements to brand development and strategy, to the ad agency.

There are ad agencies of different capacities, ranging from small ones that only do campaigning and advertising to bigger ones that handle the product development, strategy and marketing. Although many companies have benefited greatly from outsourcing the work to ad agencies, you must do a decent amount of background research on the ad agency before bestowing a massive responsibility on them.

Johnny McCollister
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-Business-articles/the-importance-of-advertising-agencies-750265.html

The Best Online Advertising Options

Online Advertising.  SEO.  Video.  Ad Words.  Pay-Per-Click.  Articles.  Blogs. What are the best options for your business?

Sometimes confusing and mostly over whelming, we face more choices as business owners than anyone when advertising our company, it’s products and services.  Our ultimate goal is to drive traffic to our site and ultimately cash to our coffers.  So what is the best way to advertise? 

The answer to that question is especially difficult if you are currently growing your business and facing the daily challenges of running your business.  Business owners make choices based upon the best solution at the time and time is a scarce resource.  Sometimes, with limited inform-ation and the difference in the options rarely understood, a business owner will opt for one way or another based on their feelings and a recommendation from a peer.  You might base your decision on price alone.  My hope is to share briefly a bit about your online SEO advertising options so you can make an informed decision.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO.  This is a comprehensive and one of the ways to move to the top of search engines.  It works by effectively taking your money and in return giving you a chance at traffic form all sorts of folks from all sorts of places.  It is not without it’s own set of problems.  It can be expensive especially if you hire outside resources to set up accounts with several major search engines and you start paying for your keywords.  I know.  I have been down that path and sometimes, I would pay out much more for the exposure than the profits I could make on the additional sales.  If you are considering using adwords, pay-per-click and SEO strategies, set your budget.   Check out the person or company doing your SEO work.  There are great people out there doing SEO work but it may not be the best choice for your business unless you market nationally and have deep pockets to fund adwords and pay per click advertising.

The other thing I have found about this form of advertising and marketing is you are competing against the big dogs.  National companies have deep pockets.  The question is, can afford to pay more to get to the top of search engines?  As a local business owner, your market area may be within a few miles to a few hundred miles of your business.  Does it make sense to pay SEO companies to compete against national advertisers for your share of local business?  If you have high margin items and little competition, maybe so.  But if you own a nail salon, beauty parlor or hundreds of other types of service businesses, you probably have better options.

Local Business Owners need to get the most bang for their buck.  A watchful eye on results, a hand on the pocketbook and new technology and options offer the local business owners a way to get the most bang for their buck in their local market.  I recently was introduced to a company entirely focused on local target marketing for local Business owners.  Great concept and a great product.

I will discuss these and other options for local businesses and in detail in a future blog.  If you decide to pay to get to the top of search engine queries, keep in mind, you could be paying a premium price to have consumers outside your trade area see your ad.  Maybe that is not money well spent.

Until next time, have a great day.

Paul Clark is an accomplished speaker and leader in direct sales and Marketing.  Paul’s focus is on online advertising options and online advertising solutions for business owners.  Total business advertising solutions are key to market penetration for local business owners.

Paul Clark
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/online-advertising-options-744795.html

A recent research commissioned by Google and conducted by Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo has thrown up some interesting facts related to newspaper advertising. According to the report, consumers often research products and services on the Internet after they see them advertised in the newspapers. The study indicates that two-thirds of the people turn to the Internet to research for more information for the products advertised in the newspaper. Then again, 70 percent of the people from this group actually do make purchases following the research.

The results of the research aptly demonstrate the importance of advertising in newspapers and other print media to boost online sales. Earlier research on the subject also points to the fact that newspapers continue to dominate as popular mediums of advertising for consumers in the USA and the UK.

Confirming this trend, John F. Sturm, Newspaper Association of America (NAA) president and CEO, said, “The study also shows the trust consumers place in newspaper ads and the benefits of advertising in both mediums to reinforce consumer confidence in those products and services.”

All said, the study lends support to the belief that the print Media plays a powerful role in driving and motivating people to conduct additional research on the Internet for more information. In other words, this means that newspaper advertising is an effective method to drive traffic to websites. Combine newspaper advertising with online advertising and what you get is more consumers purchasing your offerings. Both forms of advertising reinforce consumer confidence in the products and services.

One reason for the impact of newspapers in advertising is that newspapers form an integral part of people’s daily experiences. Given the type of consumer interactions that are now taking place online in social networking sites, it becomes all the more important to reinforce brand images and direct responses through newspaper advertising.

It is not without reason that more and more companies are today turning to the print media as an effective channel for their advertising campaigns. That newspaper Advertising plays an important role in increasing web traffic, is reiterated by the figures released in the report. Of all the people who researched the product advertised in the newspaper, 67 percent went online to search for more information. Compare this figure to 48 percent who visited a store, 23 percent who called a store and 23 percent who asked a friend and you will realize the power of newspaper advertising in driving traffic to websites.

Around 48 percent of the people polled for the study revealed that their trust level towards a product advertised online increased manifold when they saw it advertised in the newspaper also.

Given the above, it becomes clear that if you want to succeed online you must advertise offline also. So if you want to increase traffic to your website, advertise your site in the newspapers and magazines. In the UK, you can advertise your services through Web Windows, an online company that ensures that every advertising pound you spend is spent wisely. Through them, you can have your advertisement placed in all major newspapers in the UK at very cost effective rates. So advertise your online Business in all the major newspapers in the UK and see the results in the form of increased numbers of web enquiries, increase in sales, increased number of repeated purchases and improved customer loyalty and long-term competitive advantage.

Webwindows
http://www.articlesbase.com/branding-articles/webwindows-how-to-boost-traffic-with-newspaper-advertising-733755.html

In dental advertising, one of the best ways that you can do to get more patients to come into your practice is via creative marketing. Remember that the most important goal that you should have in your practice is to get more patients to come to your doorstep. And this is something we focus specifically at our dental Advertising website. Dental advertising can help you with this… but you need to be more creative in the way that you do it.

Why Creative Marketing?

The whole point of creative marketing in dental advertising is to have a different and a much more different approach in getting people to become your potential patients in your dental practice. Now, you can do this by sending letters in “unique” format (more on that later). Now, the first goal is to get our marketing piece opened. The first thing is that the recepient of the mail opens the envelope, or whatever it is that we’re sending them. Then the second goal is once we get them to open the envelope is we need them to read the letter, or whatever is inside of it. And finally, the third goal is we want the recepient become our patient. We want to get them to call us or get them to come to our Office. So by using creative marketing, we can accomplish those goals easily!

The Effect Of Technology In Marketing

Now, what I mean by technology here is the development of E-mail. E-mail’s a big thing right? Some people are getting a hundred e-mails a day, while some of them are getting a thousand. And that’s a lot of pieces of what used to be the traditional “mail in the envelope”. And it has eliminated the amount of personal mail. I mean, when was the last time somebody wrote you a letter? We hardly even get birthday cards in hand-written form (we now usually get them through e-mails). What comes to our traditional mailboxes are just bills and junk, and we hardly find time to look at it anymore. So, with this, as e-mail has promoted the diminishing number of the traditional letters that get to our traditional mailboxes, it’s time that you get creative in your dental advertising! When you get creative, you catch your readers attention! You want to grab them in the back so that your letter doesn’t go to the pile, or to the bin and get it looked at on a Sunday when they go through the rest of their mail. And also you want to invoke the child-like curiosity of your recepients (just like Christmas, when you cant wait to open the packages because you’re excited to know what is inside of them). And we all get that envelope in the mail that has a pen in it, where you are just being compelled to open it because you know that there is a pen in there. So you know that the mailer is going to sell you a pen, but you just have to open it.

How Can You Be Creative?

In dental advertising, the way to be creative is just to use different kinds of stuff that you know will get the curiosity of your recepient. An example is the “message in a bottle”, where the message is literally put inside a bottle (and for sure the recepient couldn’t wait until the end of the week to open that kind of letter, right?). Another example is Mark Dolson’s Tube Mailer, wherein the letter is put inside a tube (now, if the tube showed up in your mailbox, could you let that go?). And then you can go for shiny envelopes, where there is a big probability that the recepient will put these on top of their pile of mail (because everytime you put more mail on top of a shiny envelope, tendency is it will fall again and cause the other letters to fall; and it also gets you to think that “Who would send me a bright, shiny envelope?”, and you’ll just wonder what’s inside of it and you’ll be compelled to open it! You can also send letters placed in silver platters, letters in hand-written fonts (like those of mass-produced mailer); among others. Just let your imagination run free!

Now you might say “I don’t have the time to keep creating new things…” or ” I don’t have the time to be creative…” or “I don’t have time to think about all of these stuff… so where am I going to come up with these ideas?”. The thing here in using this kind of approach in dental advertising is that you don’t have to create new marketing pieces; you can re-use the ones that you have already sent out. This means that you can use the same marketing pieces that you have sent out, but just in different forms. And also you want to be sure that your campaign contain multiple steps (you want as many steps as people will respond to). These steps may include expressing to them that they must have missed your mail (given that they haven’t replied yet to your mail) and that you’ll be going to send them another one. And what you want to do is put as many steps as you can just to have them respond. So, as an example, you can send out your first letter (you do it the way you do it, like say, you write it in a blue or black pen), and when you don’t get a response, you then send out another one… this time by using a red pen and put some more information on it (and it will also look like a new piece!).

And another important thing in this kind of dental advertising is that you don’t assume that your prospects have read your marketing… because its a big mistake that most of us make! You may say “I can’t mail that again because they already got it”. So with this you just assumed that they have already read your mail. Now, if they haven’t responded, you must assume that they either didn’t get it, haven’t read it, didn’t finish reading it, or they lost it! So you may inform them that “I sent you the information you requested a while back, and since I still haven’t heard from you, I assumed that you still haven’t gotten it, didn’t finish reading it, or that you must have lost it… so let me send you another one!” Sp you just shift your thinking that they still haven’t gotten it, therefore you must send it again. And as long as people are responding to it, keep sending it again and again!

So go for creative marketing in dental advertising, and who knows, you’ll keep sending in more patients to your practice than ever before!

Ed O’Keefe
http://www.articlesbase.com/Business-ideas-articles/dental-advertising-creative-marketing-744279.html

The direct response advertising Business is a $250 Billion dollar industry. Yes, Billion with a capital B. Yet people think they are not affected by direct response – until you find a George Foreman Grill in their kitchen. Even the most unsuspecting people are roped in by direct response (DR) advertising. This is why it is a growing industry for medium to small business owners to get their products and services sold.

Many of products you use today got their initial launch through DR advertising: TheraBreath; OxyClean, the Ab Roller®… and the list goes on.

Ironically, many people think they know nothing about it and are not affected by it. It is the most unsuspecting, yet highly workable, marketing method today. Why? TV. A newsblaze.com article Why You Can’t Ignore the Power of Direct Response Ads to Boost Sales, cites television as reaching a whopping 98% of the homes in the U.S.

And according to a study from the Electronic Retailing Association, called The Evolving Role of Direct Response Television in Multichannel Marketing Execution, multichannel marketers are growing the DRTV industry. (Multichannel marketing is offering customers more than one way to buy something — for example, from a website as well as in retail stores.)

Bob Francis*, the Vice President of Commercial Production for Event Management Services, Inc. is a pioneer in the world of direct response. With 25 years under his belt in the DR advertising industry and accolades like having been the creative genius behind the well-known 8-Minute Abs campaign, when Francis comments on what it takes to be successful in DRTV, people listen.

To hit it big with Direct Response, one needs:

• A product that has mass appeal

• A good ratio between hard cost & retail price

• An irresistible, generous offer — give away way more than what the consumer pays for (Victoria Principal’s skin care line is a great example).

An added advantage is to have a consumable product. “Once they [consumers] like it, wear it or use it and get compliments three days in a row, you can guarantee when they run out they will buy it again.” says Francis. “Consumable products have lifetime customers.”

DRTV is not just for celebrities. Today’s small to medium businesses can reap the rewards. The benefits include:

• Building brand name recognition

• Retail backup – in other words, take your product with proven DR advertising and sales backing it up, that retailer is already ensured they have a product that is going to sell in their stores.

What’s the ultimate goal of DR advertising? Going to retail. George Foreman made millions before taking to retail. Jane Fonda’s videos were once sold via Direct Response – now you can even rent them at video stores.

Francis’ acumen lies in not only writing, producing and directing Direct Response ads, but also in assessing what products are viable candidates for this type of Marketing approach. He imparts his knowledge to entrepreneurs from many different industries nationwide at marketing boot camps organized by Joy Gendusa, CEO of PostcardMania, and Marsha Friedman, CEO of Event Management Services, Inc.

One factor Francis claims he loves is disabusing entrepreneurs of the misconceptions of direct response advertising. Direct Response advertising is very workable today because:

• The costs of production is low

• With the advent of cable TV, media time is inexpensive

• You can target your audience with cable like never before

“You can’t just utilize one channel of advertising these days,” says Francis. “DR advertising coupled with an aggressive web and retail presence can boom your business.”

*Bob Francis is one of the pioneers in the direct response advertising industry. Bob began his career in 1983 as the producer of the hour long infomercials for the Lowry Group and National Super Star, two Real Estate seminar companies. Bob’s biggest and most notable TV commercial hit was “8 MINUTE ABS” which he wrote, produced and directed and which sold over twenty million dollars in the first eighteen months it aired. It is still being sold on the internet today.

Karla Jo Helms
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/direct-response-advertising-is-everybody-really-doing-it-248238.html

Before we go in-depth into the topic, we must analyze why advertising is done. Obviously Advertising is done to increase revenue and sales. Though advertising helps in increasing revenue and sales, it itself is an expensive task.

Advertising involves a large amount of money and is always a big risk, since its consequences are not known. To lessen this risk companies try to advertise through magazines, newspapers and as well as the Internet.

Online advertising is very important. This is because of the business’s other underlying main issue – The target market. The target market market usually consists of the people who are willing to spend on your product. And going online serves this purpose effectively. Isn’t the population today relying more and more on the Internet?

Online advertising is effective because it allows direct response that is beneficial to both the consumer and the seller. The consumer can just click to learn more about the product and even allow buying the product online.

Who can provide this for you? Well there are certain companies and websites that will help promote your business. But what do you have to do? Have an effective copy! Attentive headlines and captivating notions just help the customer sweep through your product. They can become top search listings on a search engine.

If you don’t know much about the Internet, or how to go about online advertising, don’t just dive into a deep pool. Ask for help. You’ll find various trust able sources that are willing to and have the capability to advertise your business online.

Now that businessmen have engaged themselves into doing business online, the need to advertise a product has become the quintessential factor in online advertising strategy. All forms of online advertising are being used nowadays from email Marketing to paid online advertisements like pay per click, to online ads etc. Therefore, the online advertising world is an amazing feat to delve into.

There are online press releases; the strength lies in being cost effective. Businessmen now attach professionally written articles and distribute it along the web by linking them to various other websites this creating sales promotion.

Deepak Kamboj
http://www.articlesbase.com/branding-articles/the-importance-of-online-advertising-476111.html

When the internet was still growing in popularity, the majority of advertising on websites was done in banner form. Believe it or not, not many people thought about utilizing the internet as an advertising medium until just a few years ago!

Those advertisements that did exist were in the form of flashing banners – the brighter and more garish the better (or so it felt to the casual web surfer). When companies like Google Adwords and Text Link Ads began to surface, banner Advertising took a back seat to the less invasive text ads.

Lately, however, banner advertising has become more popular as people have learned how to make different sized banners and have gotten better with flash programming and graphic design. If you would like to know how to generate traffic with banner advertising, here are a few hints to help you out:

1. Just like text-based ads, you need to find advertising services that can target websites in your niche. A banner for a video game subscription service won’t get as many click throughs if it is featured on a fashion website.

2. Do your best to get your banner advertising placed on websites that see a lot of traffic every day. It might be cheaper to advertise on websites that aren’t yet very popular, but the higher cost will be worth it when you see just how quickly your traffic numbers jump. A banner ad that runs for a single week on an incredibly popular website will be worth more than one hundred banner ads running for three weeks on less popular websites.

3. Make sure that your banner itself is designed well.
This is an advertisement for your company. You want the banner design to reflect your Business’s brand. Something that flashes and gives people a headache probably won’t get as many click throughs as something that is subtle and works well with the background of the site on which it sits.

4. No matter what anybody tells you, banner advertising that involves sounds or videos that play automatically are annoying and will not get clicked on. In fact, these advertisements are often the reason people click away from a website. Just because you know how to make a short video play in your advertising space doesn’t mean you should put that knowledge into play.

A few things to consider before you get start on your banner advertising. You’ll come across several different references to words such as CPA, CPM, CPC. They are all relevant to your campaign:

CPA – Meaning cost per action. This is a way of tracking a visitor that comes to your website and takes a specific action (such as adding an item to a shopping cart, or checking out, or requesting a quote).

EX: if you sell professional services then one of the actions on your website will be your quote form or your contact form. CPA will allow you to give that action a price. For some websites that action could be worth a few dollars and for some others a few hundred dollars. It depends largely on how many of those actions convert to sales and how much those sales are worth to you in the short term and even in the long term.

CPM – Meaning cost per 1,000 impressions. This means that each time your banner is seen it will be counted as an impression. So if a visitor on another website sees your ad then that’s one impression. If they go to another page on that website and see your ad again then that’s two impressions. This could also mean that potentially you could have 1,000 people see your ad and even click on your ad.

On average though the amount of people that see your ad and click on it will defer significantly. It depends on where you’re advertising, how well your ad performs in getting visitors to click on it and several other factors.

The secret here is to first find out how much each visitor is worth to you. Meaning if 100 visitors came to your website from advertising and 5 of them buy and generate about $500 in revenue for you then you could pay anywhere between 1 penny (99% Return since your cost is so low) and $5(0% Return since your cost is too high) for each visitor ( 100 visitors X $5 ).

CPC – Cost Per Click – This is the most common form of advertising that most businesses are familiar with. This allows you to set prices for how much you will pay for each each click to your website. Using the above example — on average each visitor to your website is worth $5 so as long as you can generate clicks for less then $5 you should have a profitable campaign.

These are just a few ways to generate traffic with banner advertising. Some simple research and a visit to our website will turn up even more hints to help you drive traffic to your website.

Sameep Shah
http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/how-to-generate-traffic-with-banner-advertising-544182.html

Free advertising is provided so that users may communicate with other visitors or post information to be accessed by others. When you do so, other visitors may collect your data as these are fully public. Free advertising is mainly availed by small companies who do not have the adequate funds to get their products advertised on a larger scale or platform.

Product advertising is more effective on mediums such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the internet. Free advertising is great if you are just getting started with your online business. But as you know, nothing is ever really free.

Free advertising is very time consuming, but it will be one of the strongest pillars in your foundation. For example, in order to make your website profitable, you need to first put proven products or opportunities on your website; you?re success will depend on what you have to offer.

Free advertising is a great way to get started in online business and good for a little extra exposure but eventually you must get serious about promoting your business. You can throw a fortune away at expensive advertising with very little results to show for it – I know because I’ve done just that several times.

Classified advertising targets customers predisposed to buying a particular product or service. Classifieds provide a unique marketing technique to finding qualified customers. Classified ads are primarily designed to sell and buy in a more personal, one-to-one setting. In addition, classified ads are now a preferred and cheap alternative for businesses to showcase their products and services due to the immense reach that they offer.

Advertising is the lifeblood of any business. If you do not learn how to advertise your products and services both efficiently and effectively, you won’t be in business long. AdBrite has launched Spottt , (yes 3 t’s) as a way for sites to get free advertising. The free advertising is, of course, not really free. Ad exchanges have become a top-notch way to get affordable, even free quality traffic will high conversions. Members from all sites are reporting great results.

Add some articles on your newsletters to educate your potential customers about your products or services to give them a reason to buy your products or services. Advertising something that has wide appeal and is also free, will likely yield the best results. A lot of the traffic at most free advertising sites is comprised of other advertisers, who are there to post their own ads, so having an offer that appeals to them is a good idea. Advertising is the key part of Business Marketing. If the advertisement succeeds, it can mean big profit.

Todd Ash
http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/free-advertising-is-a-good-thing-395672.html