Fax Advertising

To many people, fax advertising may seem like an archaic form of advertising. So many people turn to other forms of media for their new entertainment and information about what to buy and what not to buy that receiving an ad via fax may be ineffective. For this very reason fax advertising must be made that much more outstanding to the average consumer when they walk by the fax machine.

When creating a fax advertisement it is important to always keep the customer in mind. Think of things that they would like to see, like pictures and words that will get their attention and come right off the page at them. Making sure that they are able to get there attention and at least read the advertisement is half the battle.

The next step in that strategy is to make sure that the fax advertisement has something that will keep them reading. Incentives are the golden rule for fax advertising. With out something that will keep the customer reading they are most likely going to take the advertisement out of the tray, grumble about it being a waste of their paper, ink or both and then crumble it into a ball and throw it into the garbage. Everyone likes a deal whether it be a discount coupon or a new low rate the customer will want to see something being offered to them for the use of that valued ink and paper.

The final most important note about fax advertising is to make sure that they know how to contact you. Whether it be by phone, fax or website. They need to contact you to take advantage of that great deal that you are offering to them. It would be a complete travesty if they wanted to take up the incentive that was offered through the fax advertisement and then had no way to contact your business. That would be money down the tubes or just nonchalantly given to another competing business that did leave their contact information.

Fax advertising does not have to be a relic from the prehistoric era. There is still life in those fax machines and a great opportunity to spread the greatness of your business. It can be used to its full potential gaining business for your company by keeping customers on their toes so to speak.

Advertising and Promoting Using Articles

A very efficient method to advertise your professional services, the products you are selling or simply to show how educated you are in a particular niche is by using the highly beneficial method of article marketing.

These articles that enclose at the end a short presentation of you or your business can be about various solution to actual problems, about everyday life or any other topic that will interest and inform a reader about the subject.

There are many sites to which you can submit these articles to, or if you have a database of your customers’ emails, just drop them an email containing the article and a link to your personal site or professional site. Over time, it is hoped that your article will be syndicated on websites throughout the internet.

The articles can generally be copied from one article submission site to the other as long as the content belongs to you and you are not stealing someone else’s work. There is a huge demand for content on the internet, it's what keeps the search engines hungry, and with so many website owners and ezine publishers regularly looking for fresh content, chances are that your article will not only be used on article directories but also on several other sites.

The more interesting and informative an article is, the more people will read and remember it. Even if you don’t have experience with writing, there are some benefits that may persuade you to give it a try:

-    It may improve the way you convey your thoughts on a subject.
-    It will bring your website visibility.
-    If it’s written well it will may help someone.
-    You can prove your knowledge in your professional areas.

Publishing articles means they have to contain mostly useful information and just a little bit of advertising. If they don’t follow this rule, you might end up with an un-publishable article. The promotion area of the article is usually meant for the end of that article, known as the "resource box".

As an article directory owner myself, I know that there are many authors who insist on placing links to their website throughout the article, but I would suggest that having an informative article with the links to "futher information" in the resource box is a much clearer and better structured approach.

Articles are meant to inform the reader of a particular subject, and not merely persuade the reader to visit your site with every paragraph written. In fact, should you have a good enough article, the reader will more than likely choose to visit the site in your resource box in any case.

I recently received an article that contained 11 links in a 200-word article! This DID NOT include the resource box where a further 4 links were provided. Needless to say the article was rejected, so make sure your articles are interesting and informative with promotion left to the appropriate section.

There are other things you could do with articles if you are willing to spend some money. There are different publicity sites, ranked high in search engines that for a fee will publish your article on their site for a limited period of time. The fee is not high usually, but can provide publicity should you choose this route. But if this choice is the one that appeals to you the most, you must make sure the article is really good, so good that it can compete with all the other articles on that site.

The user can see them all at the same time and you must think of ways to make him choose to read yours. If you have tried and you are not confident you can do it on your own, you can always hire a professional.

A Guide to using T-Shirts for marketing

Promotional T-shirts have been a part of business promotion and marketing of brands for a long time.  Promotional T Shirts can be given to clients, to prospective customers, and also to your employees to give them the added feeling of belonging to a brand. You do not need be a world famous brand to benefit from promotional T-shirts.  Even new busineses have used T Shirts to create awareness of their product, brand or business.

giving Promotional T Shirts to your employees is a great way for brand endorsement. You can design T Shirts with your company brand and marketing message for your employees and if you are hosting a conference, exibition or promotional event, make it mandatory for your employees to wear promotional T Shirts.  It is a very inexpensive method to make your staff stand out from the crowd and you present an orderly unity among your employees, the same way in which a uniform serves.

Some businessesthink  that it is too expensive to buy a t-shirt online but they are often incorrect. Purchasing t shirts online is a fast and easy process and the choice of online shops is very much better than you expect it to be with some allowing you to undertake the entire design process and payment online.

Corporate branding on T-Shirts can significantly improve the brand awareness of a business in a very short period of time and aside from the obvious marketing advantages branded T-Shirts and other clothing can enhance the perception of customers to your business. 

Considering the relatively low cost of purchase and printing T shirts against the length of time a good quality T Shirt can last makes branded T shirts one of the most cost effective methods of marketing for many businesses.

It is widely believed that DTG tshirt printing is more environmentally than screen printing. DTG uses water-based inks to print directly onto clothing, this means that there are no excess inks used in the actual printing and the only waste that occurs is from the occasional print head cleaning – it’s worth noting that head cleaning does not involve any external materials only ink.

Then as long as waste ink is disposed of correctly, printing tshirts using the DTG method should have virtually no environmenal impact. Screen printing however has excess inks from parts of the stencil not printed to the tshirt and when screens are cleaned these excess inks are usually washed down the drain.

How to Authentically Target Gender in Your Business

A February AdAge article unearthed an old statistic that 80% of purchasers are women, yet only 3% of all creative directors are women. Many think this attributes to the seemingly huge gap in marketing relevance and effectiveness today.


The truly compelling part of the article centered on the role of the often-ignored male purchaser. Consumers’ lifestyles are always evolving, and as marketers, our strategies to connect with them should, too. Women balance work and home; it makes sense that men do the same. I have seen this shift in my own circle: many husbands are either stay-at-home dads or incredibly active in helping at home. Whether it’s shopping, diaper-duty or cleaning, they play an integral role in household operations.

Outside my experience, statistics show a larger sea change. This may be economically driven (more men than women are unemployed at 8.9% VS 8%1), but dads are playing stronger roles at home. With celebrity guys hosting popular cooking, DIY, decorating and landscaping shows, perhaps the stigma around “male domesticity” is changing. And millennial men, a growing purchasing group, are especially comfortable shopping. Millennials are all about self-expression, and 38% of millennial men see fashion and grooming as a means to self-express, versus 16% of boomer men.2

So I must ask, how accurate is the statistic that women control 80% of purchasing power today, especially if 52% of dads now say they are the primary grocery shopper in their household? More than 1/3 of moms admit that their male counterparts have more influence on grocery store purchases.3 Today, dads are:

• Creating a detailed shopping list (63%)
• Collecting coupons or reading circulars (56%)
• Planning meals for the week ahead of time (52%)
• Performing background research on grocery products (24%)


I can’t help but wonder why stereotypes, particularly ones pitted against men, continue to permeate campaigns. Six out of 10 fathers say that although they make household purchasing decisions, only 22-24% felt the advertising in those categories spoke to them.1 In fact, when it comes to the in-store experience, 40% of men feel unwelcome.1 Evidently, advertisers (and their agencies) are missing the mark, and aren’t authentically targeted men.
A couple examples come to mind. A recent Clorox Disinfecting Wipes spot features a bumbling dad amid dinner chaos, changing his baby’s diaper on the kitchen counter. Mom walks in and she does not approve. Wipes save the day. This not only feeds the misconception that dads are inadequate caregivers, it portrays mom as a belittling matriarch.

In another example, a 2007 Sony Cyber-Shot ad uses the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The spot features a family interacting with a real horse’s butt as their “dad.” The horse’s rear can’t cook, ignores a request to go outside and play ball, and starts an argument with his wife at bedtime. But hey, your dad can get his face in focus thanks to this camera!


The moral of the story? Despite shifts in culture, tradition and responsibilities, certain advertising truisms remain. First and foremost, know your target. Marketers may need to dig a little deeper and be open minded about who’s buying their products. It might surprise you. Let those discoveries lend truth and authenticity to the work. Let’s not continue to fuel stereotypes. It comes off as disingenuous and sexist, and consumers can tell. The best way to make a connection and build trust with your consumer is to be real, no matter what gender you’re targeting.
SOURCES:
1.) IDDBA, What’s in Store 2012
2.) Ad Age, Brand Messaging Focused Only on Women Is Stuck in the Past, Feb. 2013
3.) Cone Communications, Year of the Dad, 2012

Through the Lines

http://jacobsagency.com/throughthelines 

BY SOURCES

Changing Web Marketing Scenario

Almost everyone from interactive advertising agencies to any web advertising agency worth its salt to business owners who are looking to turn their online presence into a revenue-generating business venture has heard of "search engine optimization", although they all may have half baked ideas about what exactly it entails.

The earlier practice was to select some keywords, place them (or stuff them, as was the norm earlier) in the web content, throw in some meta tags (again stuffed with keywords), submit the website in directories and exchange of few links with other sites.
But that practice has for long been on its way out. Neither is it enough to make your website search friendly enough, not is it looked upon favorably by either the search engines or your customers.

Typical search engine optimization is not enough any more to established your online presence or your brand. With Web 2.0 firmly in and Web 3.0 peeping on the horizon, these are times to let people, the end users take the decision, take your message forward in so many shapes as Web-video, web-audio, web discussions, articles, blogs, forums, postings in social networking sites (SNS) and what not.

SEO in these times is about delivering the marketing message to the targeted audience, not just make it SE friendly. If latter is your choice, or you are still stuck in the old method of SEO, you will end up corrupting or distorting the message by techniques aimed at attracting search engine robots. This way you will drive away real people who may actually be potential customers.
8 Milestones To Success

With Web 2.0, audio and video content have become very effective method of delivering marketing messages over the Web. But before you as a web
marketer jump on to the bandwagon, do go over following points to ponder:

(a) These multi media messages should not be cost prohibitive so that even small and medium-sized companies could afford professional Web-audio and Web-video. They are the real revenue earner for you.

(b) Remember the website design is about delivering the marketing message effectively and unequivocally and not just search engine optimization. This point is particularly important for web design firms who double as web advertising agencies.

(c) Professionally done Web-audio and Web-video requires more than just the ability to use a video camera. So avoid a rush job as professional multimedia story-telling requires a unique set of creative skills and technical ability.

(d) Make sure that all messages whether on the web or offline confirm to each other whether you have been developer of all these messages or not.

(e) Evaluate business opportunities in the broader sense of marketing. Build viable partnerships by sitting down and taking a hard look at how various factors might complement your message.

(f) Don’t ever forget that the web is used by 87% of Internet users today to research goods and services and that extra knowledge is not available anywhere else. So do give the visitor something worthwhile. Ask yourself while designing a website or any marketing campaign, what as a user am I getting and will it add value to my life, career, business, etc.

(g) Spend considerable time to analyze what the competitors are doing. If they are successful you would know why, and if they are not you would know what to avoid.

(h) Do spend time to make a beautiful web site that is attractive and add value to the visitor, but it will all be wasted effort if it does not make it easy for people to contact your client. Take time to build a site that lets people communicate with the client. Very fundamental, but equally necessary and ignored many a times.

All this sounds great but how and who can implement the strategies. Pay attention to what those old marketing warhorses are saying. Web or not, the fundamentals of marketing remains right there, and companies with experience in marketing and advertising along with providing web development services are best equipped to show you the right and time tested way to do things.
These guys may not flaunt the latest PDA or be rather old fashioned in their sense of fashion but they have years of experience building successful campaigns behind them.

Changing Web Marketing Scenario

Almost everyone from interactive advertising agencies to any web advertising agency worth its salt to business owners who are looking to turn their online presence into a revenue-generating business venture has heard of "search engine optimization", although they all may have half baked ideas about what exactly it entails.

The earlier practice was to select some keywords, place them (or stuff them, as was the norm earlier) in the web content, throw in some meta tags (again stuffed with keywords), submit the website in directories and exchange of few links with other sites.
But that practice has for long been on its way out. Neither is it enough to make your website search friendly enough, not is it looked upon favorably by either the search engines or your customers.

Typical search engine optimization is not enough any more to established your online presence or your brand. With Web 2.0 firmly in and Web 3.0 peeping on the horizon, these are times to let people, the end users take the decision, take your message forward in so many shapes as Web-video, web-audio, web discussions, articles, blogs, forums, postings in social networking sites (SNS) and what not.

SEO in these times is about delivering the marketing message to the targeted audience, not just make it SE friendly. If latter is your choice, or you are still stuck in the old method of SEO, you will end up corrupting or distorting the message by techniques aimed at attracting search engine robots. This way you will drive away real people who may actually be potential customers.
8 Milestones To Success

With Web 2.0, audio and video content have become very effective method of delivering marketing messages over the Web. But before you as a web
marketer jump on to the bandwagon, do go over following points to ponder:

(a) These multi media messages should not be cost prohibitive so that even small and medium-sized companies could afford professional Web-audio and Web-video. They are the real revenue earner for you.

(b) Remember the website design is about delivering the marketing message effectively and unequivocally and not just search engine optimization. This point is particularly important for web design firms who double as web advertising agencies.

(c) Professionally done Web-audio and Web-video requires more than just the ability to use a video camera. So avoid a rush job as professional multimedia story-telling requires a unique set of creative skills and technical ability.

(d) Make sure that all messages whether on the web or offline confirm to each other whether you have been developer of all these messages or not.

(e) Evaluate business opportunities in the broader sense of marketing. Build viable partnerships by sitting down and taking a hard look at how various factors might complement your message.

(f) Don’t ever forget that the web is used by 87% of Internet users today to research goods and services and that extra knowledge is not available anywhere else. So do give the visitor something worthwhile. Ask yourself while designing a website or any marketing campaign, what as a user am I getting and will it add value to my life, career, business, etc.

(g) Spend considerable time to analyze what the competitors are doing. If they are successful you would know why, and if they are not you would know what to avoid.

(h) Do spend time to make a beautiful web site that is attractive and add value to the visitor, but it will all be wasted effort if it does not make it easy for people to contact your client. Take time to build a site that lets people communicate with the client. Very fundamental, but equally necessary and ignored many a times.

All this sounds great but how and who can implement the strategies. Pay attention to what those old marketing warhorses are saying. Web or not, the fundamentals of marketing remains right there, and companies with experience in marketing and advertising along with providing web development services are best equipped to show you the right and time tested way to do things.
These guys may not flaunt the latest PDA or be rather old fashioned in their sense of fashion but they have years of experience building successful campaigns behind them.

Bruce Berman Marketing Guru

From the internet to the real estate world to the corporate finance setting, Bruce A. Berman has achieved tremendous success. He also shares his secrets with others. Once nominated (by Sprint) "Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year" Berman is a self-made millionaire.

Berman has no qualms about telling others that he “squeaked by” in high school, just doing well enough to let the system pass him through his senior year. Junior college was an option, but after a few semesters Berman decided it just wasn’t for him. That was the point he entered the financial world.

When he was 23 years old and a junior associate at a financial firm, he took chances the other associates were not willing to take. Berman, who has an innate desire to succeed, founded his first start-up company with “OPM” (other people’s money).

With a mind for fundraising and a real time ability to turn over and capitalize ventures quickly, Berman was able to take this OPM and make his own capital. While it started with finances, Berman’s interests quickly spread into the fields of alternative energy, video producing, real estate, investing and dot com booms.

Bruce A. Berman (before the age of 30), was in fact the co-founder of the Wind Energy Association, he now is the CEO of Berman Marketing Group, Inc, and most recently the CEO of National HealthCare Alliance, Inc.

With over 30 years of direct experience in money-making strategies, Bruce A. Berman knows the path to a successful life and he is not one bit bashful about sharing this with the world. His program, appropriately entitled “Aggressive Wealth” has already helped numerous others create the lives they want.

The Marketing Concept of Pixel Ads

I believe that most of you have heard about the Million Dollar Homepage and it’s success story. The web site owner Alex Tew earned a million US dollar in a dramatically short time and brought public attention all over the world by selling pixels on his web site. However, it seems that the pixel craze didn’t last long as the copycats of the pixel advertising idea were mostly not doing well, especially the later ones who sometimes ended their site without a pixel sold.

      When talking about marketing strategies, the pixel advertising should be in the short-term category since curiousness of people don’t last long on a narrow topic. Alex Tew was smart to have noticed this point and that’s why he limited the number pixels to a million. This is not to ignore the huge demand out there but to generate an even higher traffic while pixels are limited in supply.

      The Million Dollar Homepage generated a huge traffic mainly because of the mass media, no matter the international ones or local ones, which are thirsty to find some amazing or crazy ideas that really work. People are always curious about news related to earning easy-money or becoming a millionaire while everyone is working hard in the society for money. In another word, this news makes people think out of the usual way. In fact, Tew’s whole idea including the web site’s domain name just hit the target. When people view the ads, the ads have their value.

      Although pixel advertising is probably out-of-date, there are still some innovative marketing strategies of the Million Dollar Homepage that web designers worth a reference.

      Since every page in the web site is about the advertising business itself, all visitors of the web site have a common intention – to try those extremely tiny pixel links and see what is it all about. In result, the ads owners receive a large amount of quality traffic, which other types web-based ads seldom have.

      Another point to note is about the price of a product. A higher price set for your product is not a scary monster that drives your customers away if it is used in a suitable manner. Just take a look of the Million Dollar Homepage if you haven’t and you will understand how small is a hundred pixels. It’s just enough to put a character of a novel in it. However, in fact, the values of the ads are beyond what you can actually see when the value of the ads themselves creates a high commercial status for the pixel owners. This is one of the successful usages of money itself in generating transactions in recent days.

      Indeed, many people were inspired by Alex Tew and have started their own new idea of advertising.  One of the examples is The Infinite Levels (http://www.theinfinitelevels.com) a new web site aims at building a virtual AdLevels construction starting with $10. What makes it different from the others is that it is not earning short-term revenue like the pixel advertising as it adapts numerous innovative designs and the Dollar Accumulation System which brings a continuous interest from the public. If this idea is successful, the designer of the web site may be able to go beyond Alex Tew’s achievement.

      Let’s wait for the second miracle in the advertising industry to happen.

A Guide to using T-Shirts for marketing

Promotional T-shirts have been a part of business promotion and marketing of brands for a long time.  Promotional T Shirts can be given to clients, to prospective customers, and also to your employees to give them the added feeling of belonging to a brand. You do not need be a world famous brand to benefit from promotional T-shirts.  Even new busineses have used T Shirts to create awareness of their product, brand or business.
giving Promotional T Shirts to your employees is a great way for brand endorsement. You can design T Shirts with your company brand and marketing message for your employees and if you are hosting a conference, exibition or promotional event, make it mandatory for your employees to wear promotional T Shirts.  It is a very inexpensive method to make your staff stand out from the crowd and you present an orderly unity among your employees, the same way in which a uniform serves.
Some businessesthink  that it is too expensive to buy a t-shirt online but they are often incorrect. Purchasing t shirts online is a fast and easy process and the choice of online shops is very much better than you expect it to be with some allowing you to undertake the entire design process and payment online.
Corporate branding on T-Shirts can significantly improve the brand awareness of a business in a very short period of time and aside from the obvious marketing advantages branded T-Shirts and other clothing can enhance the perception of customers to your business.  Considering the relatively low cost of purchase and printing T shirts against the length of time a good quality T Shirt can last makes branded T shirts one of the most cost effective methods of marketing for many businesses.

It is widely believed that DTG tshirt printing is more environmentally than screen printing. DTG uses water-based inks to print directly onto clothing, this means that there are no excess inks used in the actual printing and the only waste that occurs is from the occasional print head cleaning – it’s worth noting that head cleaning does not involve any external materials only ink. Then as long as waste ink is disposed of correctly, printing tshirts using the DTG method should have virtually no environmenal impact. Screen printing however has excess inks from parts of the stencil not printed to the tshirt and when screens are cleaned these excess inks are usually washed down the drain.