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It works:

Because the Advertising Agencies tell you it works without producing one iota of evidence to substantiate their claims as to the exclusive increase in sales that one advertising campaign has produced!

It works because we live in an over informed society, and the agencies are working very hard to increase the quantity (but not quality) of clutter

It works because the customer has become immune to advertising, so Advertising Agencies are attempting to cut through the clutter with brilliant creative work.

Advertising works – especially now that it is moving onto the Internet!

Advertising works because advertising agencies pay scant attention (if any) to the actual process of communication, and concentrate heavily on creativity and media buying.

Advertising works because the days are numbered for TV ads dominance…but they don’t know what to replace it with!

Advertising works because the correct model of communication is totally ignored by the advertising industry whilst they cling onto the reach frequency model beloved by the advertising industry but which has no relevance to the actual process of communication.

Advertising works to waste your money. Study the annual expenditure of advertising in America, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and Australia.
Apply the statement “50% of my advertising expenditure is wasted but I don’t know which fifty percent” the costly ineffectiveness of advertising is huge, to say the least. Now factor in the fact that there has never been any true accountability.

Then consider that this wastefulness has been going on since the end of the Second World War, now that’s wastefulness!

Advertising is clinging to a world that existed ten years ago as if it were trying not to notice it’s vanished. Advertising has to modernise and change.
Its effectiveness will regenerate itself because the information content of advertising is a fundamental necessity for the efficient conduct of a complex and free market place.

Instead of asking, “When are the good times coming back?” we should be applying ourselves to doing advertising in ways that are right for the time we live in.

Of course advertising works, it works very efficiently to kill off any good idea that was not invented within their own agency. It is amazing when you consider the many excellent marketing ideas that have been available, however the promoters of such ideas eventually gave up selling to advertising agencies because all advertising agencies wanted was to get their clients onto television.

That it might not be the ideal medium was totally ignored!

Of course advertising works, consider this: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, here’s what a current luminary of the advertising industry said recently

“The conventional stuff won’t ever go away,” said Kate Bruges, the Marketing Director of J Walter Thompson.

“An awful lot of this unconventional stuff is the icing on the cake, that extra bit of media mileage. But it’s never going to give you the cost-efficient mileage or get the message across consistently enough to a large enough number of people.”

Another example of the usual Advertising Agency bull. They will not accept that there are better ways of communicating with consumers than ‘conventional stuff’.

It is also fascinating that she talks about cost-efficiency when she has no idea just how cost ‘ineffective’ her cost-efficient mileage really is! Just where is the evidence to support this cost-efficient mileage? What factual piece of research has been done to measure the cost effectiveness of the ‘conventional stuff’? And without such why are people like Kate allowed to get away with making such audacious claims?

Paul Ashby pioneered interactive communication to the advertising and marketing communities some twenty-five years ago. The communication issues he addresses have been neglected during the explosive grown of advertising in the 60s, 70s and 80s, these are Cognitive Dissonance, Selective Retention and Selective Exposure.

Would you like to discover the incredible results to be attained by using interactive communication? Well these are revealed for FREE at http://effectiveaccountablecommunication.blogspot.com or contact Paul directly on paul.ashby@yahoo.com

Author: Paul Ashby
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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INTRODUCTION

“Advertising is a science, not an art”

Definition: The word advertising is from the root Latin advert: ad (to) vertere (turn), which means to call attention to. To advertise means: “to describe or praise publicly, usually to promote for sale.”

Advertising is a special form of communication intended to persuade consumers to respond in a positive way toward a product, service or idea. In Washington, DC, the home of many non-profit advocacy organizations it means to persuade or to change minds.

In other words the goal of advertising is to influence people:

-to buy something,

-to think well of something,

-to ask they take a particular action.

Contrary to popular opinion, advertising is a testable, provable, science, not an art. Effective advertising relies on a few simple strategic formulas. Done well however advertising can be done artfully. And should be.

It pays to advertise.

The basic purpose of advertising is to inform. Often, simply giving basic information about a product or service is sufficient. i.e., classified ads are simple information ads.

“Top of Mind awareness.”

Memory is the cornerstone of creative strategies in advertising. The basic assumption of this strategy is that the media environment is cluttered and memory is limited. Since memory is limited, it is important that our advertising give customers something worth remembering, otherwise they will simply forget you.

Frequency and repetition is crucial. Frequency and repetition is crucial. How many times do you have to tell a dog to sit in order for her to learn how?

Advertising exists along a continuum. Short-term traffic builders vs. long-term awareness builders.

1. Pricepoint ads are only sale advertising: Jerks.

2. Awareness and Image: Pulls.

How does Advertising really work? It creates:

1. AWARENESS, which creates:

2. INTEREST, which creates:

3. MOTIVATION, which creates:

4. DEMAND, which creates:

5. ACTION!

THE IMPORTANCE OF STRATEGY

I. Advertising is part of a larger plan

The most successful companies have an advertising or marketing plan as part of their larger business plan. Advertising is only one method of communication in this plan. It must be linked to other communication strategies to be truly effective

II. Starting to advertise

A. Position your product. This means to understand how your product looks and feels compared to other similar products in the marketplace. Jeep is positioned as an upscale outdoorsy anyplace-anytime vehicle, compared to Volvo, which is positioned as a sensible, safe, financially secure “investment in security”. Position means to be placed in a certain way in the consumers mind. Having a unique sales position means you can create a unique sales message:

1. Against other similar products (market segment)

2. In new areas (market penetration)

B. Create a strategy

1. Marketing Strategy is the master plan

a. in which you determine actual product, price,+distribution, promotional effort

b. From Marketing Strategy grows creative strategy

2. Creative Strategy is what you say and how you say it. You can’t have a good ad without the following:

Major Checkpoints of Creative Strategy

1. Objective: What the advertising should do

2. Research: Is there any and what does it tell us about perceptions, both positive and negative.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative.

3. Target Audience: Who is your consumer exactly. It’s ok to have more than one target.

4. Key Consumer Benefit: Why should they buy your product?

5. Support/lnformation: A reason to believe that benefit

6. Tone and Manner: A statement of the product “personality” or the personality of the “statement”

III. What works best

A. The three parts of any Ad

1. Benefit Statement: Headline

a. Get your basic message here and see it from the consumers side

b. Keep it simple

c. Inject news

d. Don’t be afraid of Long Headlines (Research shows more sales)

2. Illustrations vs photos

a. Photos generally better

b. Inject story appeal

c. Keep it simple

3. Information/support

a. Support claim or promise

b. Don’t be afraid of long copy. Resistance does not increase after 100 words.

c. Testimonials help, although cliched

4. Call to action–What do you want the consumer to do?

a. Coupons

b. Telephone

c. Visit

5. Forget everything but Rule 1. Benefit, benefit, benefit

IV. Media Strategy –Winning a place in the consumers mind

A. Campaigns–A series of ads with a single goal similar in style and execution, slightly different in message.

B. The importance of frequency

1. Awareness building

2. Opportunity improvement capture

C. Placement

1. Research Media Kits (refer to marketing plan)

2. Flight strategies save money

V. Media

Television

Advantages: Excellent medium for emotional impact and singular message. Fantastic reach.

Disadvantages: If bought with enough Total Rating Point’s, it is far too costly. It is hard to target and there would be lots of waste over the entire SMSA. Production costs to do quality advertising are expensive

Cable television

Advantages: Can select geographic areas specifically, television allows for high emotional impact. Cable is affordable.

Disadvantages: Networks skew too heavily toward particular targets

Radio

Advantages: Can be fairly targeted, allows for impact and emotional appeal through broadcast, cost effective.

Disadvantage: Fair percentage of wasted geographical listenership over SMSA.

Magazines

Advantages: Prestigious environments, color, room for more detailed information, can target psychographically.

Disadvantages: Very few magazines isolate specific areas, so there’s plenty of wasted circulation. Lack of reach with specialty publications. Require many different placements.

Newspaper.

Advantages: Can target specific areas with regional placements, large space units are emotionally impressive, newspaper has an urgent, timely feel, and there’s room for longer copy or more photography.

Disadvantages: Normally a retail medium, not usually good for impact or awareness. Limited reach. Poor reproduction

Direct mail

Advantages: Highly targeted, good for long, informative messages.

Disadvantages: Not a prestigious or “important” medium, relatively expensive to produce in 4-color, big impact or large numbers. This medium works best when linked to response offers. It is private and quiet in nature.

Outdoor and transit advertising

Advantages: Easy to target, great for short “reminder” messages.

Disadvantages: Public transportation users become primary target, uses up too much budget if done right, can’t stand alone as primary medium, “good” locations are very limited.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR TIM KENNEY: Creative Director and CEO of Tim Kenney Marketing, has 33 years of experience in the design industry. Tims work has been published in two volumes of American Corporate Identity, Logo 2000 and Logo 2001 and, under his direction, his agency has garnered 100 prestigious design awardsand still counting

Copyright 2007. Tim Kenney Marketing Marketing, Advertising, Graphic Design, Web Design

Author: Tim Kenney
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Success in any advertising campaigns depends on four things: a good product or service, good ad copy, the right market and repetition. The item or service that an advertiser is promoting is a major variable in the equation for successful advertising. Unfortunately, that is something that companies such as ours cannot help you with. Once you have the product or service that you are going to promote and you are certain that it will be of value to others, then we can help! Here’s where we start…

How to write an effective classified ad…

The single most important thing in an advertising campaign is GOOD AD COPY. We all understand the importance of having an ad that illicits positive responses from readers. What everyone does not understand is how to achieve this. To assist you, we have come up with a few basic rules to writing an effective classified ad. Here’s where you start…

Effective classified ads should have three basic parts.

1. THE HEADLINE

2. THE BODY

3. THE CALL TO ACTION WITH CONTACT INFORMATION

THE HEADLINE is the most important part of your ad. It is in the headline that you will either get the readers attention and pull them in or you won’t. If you don’t spark their interest with the headline, then you have lost them and they simply will not read you ad. A good headline should have action verbs that encourage the reader to do something. It should also be believable. Examples of how to use action words in headlines are as follows.

“Earn up to $3000 per month!”

“Save $$$ on grocery bills!”

“Get the financial independence you’ve dreamed of!”

THE BODY is where you need to elaborate on the headline. Don’t overdo it, keep it short and simple. With a classified ad, you are generally trying to keep the word count to 15 to 25 words, so you never want to actually sell the reader in the ad, you just want to spark their interest enough to make them want to learn more.

A common error that many unsuccessful advertisers make is trying to put too much in an ad. This results in a busy ad that lacks focus. To make matters worse they often abbreviate words to the point they lose meaning. Through the years, we have made many a telephone call to customers to have them explain to us what they are trying to say in over-abbreviated ads. Unless, an abbreviation is commonly recognized by the common person avoid using it. You do not want sacrifice an ad campaign to save a buck!

THE CALL TO ACTION is basically the end of the ad. Generally, it is not much more than a sentence in length. Effective classified ads will not have just a phone number or web address at the end of the ad. They will have contact information paired with action words. Sometimes in trying to keep the price down for an ad, advertisers will omit simple words like “call now” or “log onto”. This is not recommended as readers need this simple call to action to entice them one last time to respond. Studies have been done and it has been shown that these simple words increase response to classified ads.

Here are well written examples:

“For FREE information, call now! 1-800……”

“To get started, visit [http://www.....].”

“Call Toll-Free! 1-877….”

One last bit of advice for this portion of the ad is to pair it with a special offer. Being able to use statements like “limited time offer”, “special bonus to first 100 customers” or “this week only” can significantly increase response.

How will your customers contact you?…

Here are a few more pointers that advertisers should know. The means that customers respond will dramatically effect results. A toll free telephone number is still the best means to generate leads. This is not used by all advertisers for a variety of reasons, but those who have the capability and the budget are encouraged to include a toll free number. If a toll free number is not in the budget then a regular long distance number is the next best thing. A live person answering the calls is going to result in more sales than an answering machine providing the operator is knowledgeable and courteous. The easier you can make it for a reader to respond and buy your product or service the more successful you will be!

Web addresses are more and more popular in classified advertisements. Adding web addresses to ads, will generally increase the responses, but if it is in conjunction with a phone number (which we recommend) you will get fewer calls as some readers will simple go to the website instead of calling. So make sure the website is professional and properly functioning. If you are considering using a web address in the ad as a sole means of contact, please keep in mind that not all people have web access or are comfortable doing business online so you will be limiting the number of potential responses.

Anytime readers are required to write for more information, responses drop. However, the up side to this option is that there is less expense to the advertiser. Through the years, we have seen a variety of successful advertisers utilize write in responses, so it can be done. The most important thing to remember is to have professional literature to mail to the potential customers. This literature will make or break your sale so make it good!

Probably, the worst method of responding that we have seen time and time again is asking the customer to send money in the mail for a product or service. These will not work for a variety or reasons. First, you are requiring a small classified ad to sell something in three or four sentences. A difficult task to say the least. Second, most people are understandably wary of sending money in the mail to a company that they know nothing about. The public has been warned time and again about scam companies who prey on people using this means of advertising. If you have a good product or service avoid going this route. You simply will not be pleased with your advertising results!

Where to Advertise and How Often?….

Once you have a good ad written, the next step is to seriously consider your budget. We get calls from new customers regularly who ask for guidance in what program they should purchase. The first thing we always ask is what is your monthly budget. It is surprising to us that many advertisers cannot answer that question. Before you begin, look at your finances and figure out what you can comfortably invest in advertising on a monthly basis. Take that figure and divide it by four to get a weekly figure. Then, unless you are limited in geographic regions, search according to price range on our website. For example, if you have a $175 weekly budget, go to the $100-$199 buys and see if there is anything that would suit your needs. Keep in mind that you could run one buy for $175 or several smaller buys to meet your budget. If you are limited to a certain geographic region, you will want to search by state.

The most important thing is to stick to a budget so that you can afford to run the programs for a four week run. There are several advantages to this method. First, you will get repetition which will greatly improve your response rate. We will talk more about this a little later! Secondly, we have several programs that offer multiple week discounts at four weeks. If you purchase four weeks at one time you can save a great deal of money and possibly allow you to buy into an additional market with your savings!

As for the importance of repetition, we cannot emphasize enough how critical this is! Repetitive advertising builds credibility in your advertising campaign and allows the reader to feel comfortable in responding to your ad. Repetitive advertising also builds responses. In college, we were taught the Rule of Seven. Basically, the Rule of Seven claims that a reader must see an add seven times before he or she will respond to it. New advertisers are often surprised by this number because they are not realistic in their expectations. The facts are that a newly published ad may not get noticed the first few publications, then when a reader see it, they may or may not respond. Most customers do not respond to ads the first time they see an ad, but each time they see the ad, you are building trust with them. As you get more and more visibility, you will get more responses and increase sales. The first week you advertise will never be your best. If you do a four week trial run for any program as suggested, you will be off to a good start and get a good feel for what the program will do for you.

Professionals can assist you with copy writing when you order from their service like AdvertisingResults.com, but it is important that you learn to recognize a good ad when you see it. You know your business better than anyone else. Who is the best choice to promote your product or service than the one person that knows your business inside and out… YOURSELF!

copyright (c) 2005 Leigh Ann Kristiansen, American Classified Services, Inc.

Leigh Ann Kristiansen is the owner and President of American Classified Services, Inc. They specialize in print classified advertising placement and online advertising placement. View their advertising opportunities at http://www.advertisingresults.com

Author: Leigh Ann Kristiansen
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Craigslist is an online community where users can exchange information, buy or sell items, seek jobs or even find friends or romantic partners. There are a number of benefits for any smart business people or Internet marketers to take advantage of on Craigslist. Two of the most important benefits are the afford ability and the ability to reach a large audience. This article will focus on these two benefits and will also offer advice on ensuring your advertising is not just reaching a large audience but is reaching your target audience.

The Price is Right

Consider the cost of advertising on Craigslist versus advertising on other websites and there is simply no comparison. The vast majority of Craigslist postings are available free of charge to those who use the website. Only a limited number of advertisements including job advertisements in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York and brokerage listings in New York are charged a fee for posting advertisements. Even these advertisers are only charged a nominal fee for their advertisements.

This means all commercial advertisements for products and services are posted free of charge. Affiliate marketing, which offers business owners the ability to only pay the affiliate when the advertisement generates web traffic, a sale or a lead is an excellent bargain but even that is no match for the free advertising offered on Craigslist. Advertising on Craigslist becomes even more financially appealing in comparison to other advertising options where the business owner is charged for each time the advertisement appears whether or not it results in a sale being made or even a lead generated.

Reaching a Large Audience with Craigslist

In addition to affordability another benefit to advertising on Craigslist is the potential to reach a large audience. Craigslist receives approximately four billion page views per month from approximately ten million website visitors. This is appealing because it allows users to reach a large audience with only minimal effort.

Craigslist already has a large following and many Internet users already turn to Craigslist for whatever they are looking for before searching other resources. Having such a large audience means half of the work is already done for advertisers. They already have high traffic to the website, now they just need to write an eye catching and engaging advertisement that will attract customers.

A Large Audience is Not Necessarily a Target Audience

Craigslist certainly has a large pre-existing fan base of regular users but this large audience does not necessarily ensure advertisers will have a target audience just waiting for them to post their advertisement. Craigslist is an extensive online community and finding members of the target audience is more important than reaching the entire community.

Business owners can certainly invest a great deal of time and effort placing their advertisement throughout the different sections of the website but this is not likely to be effective. Craigslist is divided into a number of different sections and categories for a specific reason. This is to make it easier for users to find the information they are seeking. For this reason business owners should focus on placing their advertisement in sections that are likely to be visited by members of the target audience. Additionally, placing advertisements in multiple sections may result in the moderators of Craigslist interpreting the advertisements as spam and deleting them. Whether the advertisements are deleted as spam or rendered ineffective they are not likely to convince members of the target audience to purchase products or services.

With a little bit of research an advertisement can be placed in a category that will reach a large section of Craigslist’s audience thereby increasing the chances of acquiring more sales for little or no cost to the advertiser.

After an injury to his back Chris returned to college and began taking computer programming classes. He has been doing web design and development since 1997, and in 1999 he started his own web hosting and web design business called C-Double Web Development.

Author: Christopher Curtis
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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What is pixel advertising?

A pixel is a small dimensional square that is on a website. These sites are divided into a dimensional grid that allows people to pick a square or squares to advertise in them. You can submit a picture to be in that pixel area. The pixel then stays on that page for a designated period of time. Some people give away free advertising. Others sell the advertising and allow you to submit your advertisement for a designated period of time. It is effective with the proper amount of advertising.

Where did it come from?

It came from a British Student. He was looking for a way to make some extra money. He thought if he could make a pixel page and sell the pixel blocks that he would be able to make a couple of bucks off of the advertising.

How does pixel advertising drive traffic to your site?

Some pixel advertisements are completely able to drive traffic because they allow affiliates to post the pixel page on their site. When you click on the link that is associated with the pixel advertisement it will take you to a place to sign up to advertise. It also allows people to click on the pixels. Lets say that they have millions of associates that are advertising the website for free on their site. That means that millions of people who visit the different websites the chance to see your website.

Pixel advertising has been creating an income for many groups.

Some create these advertising sites for income, some do it for fundraising, and yet others use it to create a portal for for niche advertisers. It is simple advertising medium and it allows people the ability to make a great income online and offline. It drives traffic to peoples websites by advertising it. People come and they click. Trust me I know from person experience that it really does work. The best pixel site to visit are the wons with good traffic. A pixel site with good traffic will tell you that they are getting traffic from certain sources, and most of the time they will tell you the sources also.

It has been speculated that pixel advertising is a fad.

It has been said that is can’t last, but rather we have seen a growth in this type of medium. It has also helped to create other types of advertising. Without this very simple version of advertising, word cloud pages, such as 500words.com, wouldn’t exist. They would be creating other forms of advertising online. It is creating a different type of advertising that will continue to grow online. It has taken something as basic as banner advertising and turned in to a multi million dollar business online. Don’t expect it to disappear. You can find pixel advertising by searching for it in Google. The most recent search showed me that their were over 2 millions sites showing up in their database for pixel adverting. I would expect it to keep growing and changing over time. This is just the beginning of pixel advertising!

Curious about the latest rage in internet advertising? Come visit us at [http://www.clandistinekale.com] If you’re looking for the hottest way on the internet to advertise and promote your business then come check us out!

Author: Alan King
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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When it comes to Internet Marketing…Pay Per Click Advertising has been one of my favorites. What could be simpler then to sit down, come up with a few ‘key’ words that describe your business or product, list them with one of the PPC’s and instantly start to receive an endless flow of prospects and business. For the first year or so that I used this type of advertising, that’s pretty much what occurred. Unfortunately, a couple of things changed along the way that have made me re-think this type of advertising.

Pay Per Click advertising offers some obvious advantages over other methods. One, you don’t have to wait weeks or months trying to get your site listed on Search Engines. Once you’ve opened and funded your PPC account, and listed your keywords, you can start to receive traffic the same day. Another nice feature is that you can control how much you want to spend on advertising. Funding levels usually start at $25 and go up from there. Once you’ve funded your account, you’ll continue to receive website traffic until your funds are depleted, or add more money.

Keywords themselves can run anywhere from a penny to several dollars or more, depending on the popularity of the keyword. The higher you bid, the more visitors you’ll get to your website, and the more it will cost to get those visitors. When I first started, you could get some good basic keywords like ‘home business’, or ‘work from home’ at a reasonable cost. But as time went by, and more people discovered PPC advertising, the cost of getting a high enough listing to receive any traffic has become prohibitive for small advertisers. There have been several suggestions on how to get around this, but I’ve found the advice to be of limited value.

One of the suggestions I’ve heard by advertisers is to create a huge list of keywords. The thinking here is because you have so many keywords, some will be priced lower than others and it will bring the cost of your advertising down. Sort of like ‘dollar cost averaging’. The problem with this strategy I believe is that many of the keywords that you use are so general in nature that you wind up with a lot of people coming to your site that aren’t looking for what you’re selling. In fact, I tried using this strategy with a few of the more established PPC’s. I created a list of over 500 keyword listings for one of my websites. While it did lower the average cost of my advertising, I received little in the way of business. In this case, more was not necessarily better.

A more serious problem for Pay Per Click companies as well as advertisers is Click Fraud. Over the last year or so, numerous allegations of Click Fraud have surfaced. In fact, Newsweek, and the London Times recently ran articles on this issue. Click Fraud can occur in several ways;

One of the ways Click Fraud can occur, is when advertisements placed on an affiliates website are clicked on manually by the website owner, or others. Since the affiliate is paid by the number of clicks on the advertising links on his site, clicking on the links increases their revenue, AND cheats the advertiser. Most advertisers have neither the time or resources to monitor whether or not the people clicking on their links are genuine or not, so it falls on the PPC companies to find solutions to this problem.

Another type of Click Fraud occurs on the PPC site itself, and happens when a competitor clicks on your link repeatedly, driving up your costs, and depleting your account balance. This kind of fraud can quickly add to your advertising costs, especially when someone clicks on your links numerous times. For instance, someone clicking on a $1.00 bid ten times a day over a five day period will cost you $50. Ouch!

If you decide to try your hand at PPC advertising, keep a couple things in mind; Click Fraud does occur, so you’ll need to monitor your account for any unusual activity. For instance, if you notice a spike in your advertising costs over a short period of time, and much of it is attributed to one or two keywords, you could be a victim of Click Fraud by a competitor. It would be to your advantage to contact the PPC company, and let them know about your concerns. At the least they’ll check into it, and it’s quite likely that you’ll receive credit for the advertising costs in question.

Pay Per Click advertising has been a profitable source of business for me in the past. While I can live with paying slightly more for my keywords, I can’t accept paying for phantom clickers. Until the issue is resolved, I will be hesitant to spend a lot of money on PPC advertising

Bob Mathers has been involved with Internet Marketing for several years. His current website is..Create a SURGE of Free Targeted Traffic

Author: Bob Mathers
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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How do you measure the effectiveness of your advertising? Do you look only at whether or not you have had an increase in sales or enquires subsequent to the publication of an advertisement, or do you include product or brand awareness in your evaluations?

The most suitable criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of advertising, depends on a number variables, such as the advertising goals, the type of media used, the cost of evaluation, the value that the business or advertising agency places on evaluation measures, the level of precision and reliability required, who the evaluation is for and the budget. It is difficult to accurately measure the effectiveness of a particular advertisement, because it is affected by such things as the amount and type of prior advertising, consumer brand awareness, the availability of cost effective evaluation measures, the placement of the advertising and a range of things about the product itself, such as price and even the ability of the target audience to remember.

There are a number of different models for measuring advertising effectiveness.

o E. Pomerance suggests that advertising agencies might attempt to measure effectiveness under the five headings of Profits, Sales, Persuasion, Communication and Attention (Wheatley, 1969, p.91). He uses a cube diagram to illustrate how to evaluate advertising that recognises the effect of repeated exposures (Wheatley, 1969, p.93).

o Lavidge and Steiner suggest a model for ‘predictive measurement of advertising effectiveness’ (Wheatley, 1969, p.7), which recognises various stages of purchasing behaviour, and suitable measures for each stage. Kotler and Armstrong call these stages, ‘Buyer readiness stages’ (1996, p.463-464). They may be viewed like this: Awareness  Knowledge  Liking  Preference  Conviction  Purchase (Wheatley, 1969, p.7).

o Kotler and Armstrong suggest that two areas need to be evaluated in an advertising programme. They call them the ‘communication effect’ and ‘the sales effect (1996, p.507-508). To evaluate the sales effect, company information about sales and sales expenditure would be needed. To evaluate the communication effect, Kotler and Armstrong (1996, p.507-508), suggest using a number of research tests. They suggest that these evaluation measures are not perfect.

Surveys and brand/product recognition tests after an advertising campaign are sometimes used in a two pronged way to advertise and gather evaluation information.
Effectiveness of online advertising is sometimes measured in terms of the number of page views collected through various forms of counters and search engine page rankings.

One cost effective way of evaluating the effectiveness of the advertisement in terms of sales and movement towards purchasing is what Kotler and Armstrong (1996, p.480) call Integrated Direct Marketing. It is marketing that has a response section which can lead to more appropriate communication between the company and the prospect. This can also give the company the opportunity to trigger further movement towards purchasing, so it has the potential to have a greater impact on sales than a similar advertisement without the response section. It is not only online advertisers who are using this method of requiring an email contact address and giving the customer a choice of receiving more information or newsletters about their product/s. Vouchers and coupons have been used in a similar way.

All advertisements have the potential to trigger some form of purchasing behaviour.
Effectiveness may have more to do with the readiness of the viewer to consider the benefits the advertisement promotes, than the advertisement itself. It may be more cost effective to invest in finding creative ways to measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign that is part of an advertising campaign in itself, but at the end of the day your goals are the key. It may come down to estimating how happy you are with what you are doing.

Jennifer Phillips has published 5 books and created many websites. If you want an online avenue for free advertising try citwings.com or other marketing tips try moneymaking-opportunities.com

Reference:

Kotler, P. & Armstrong, G. (1996). Principles of Marketing. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, Inc.

Wheatley, J. (Editor). (1969). Measuring Advertising Effectiveness. Selected Readings. Ontario: AMA Reprint Series. Richard D. Irwin Inc.

Author: Jennifer Kathleen Phillips
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Introduction

Successful radio advertising campaigns require that certain fundamental pieces of information about the product (or service), customers, and business be clearly understood by everyone involved in the effort. Sales, marketing, customer service and the radio advertising agency should all have the chance to provide input from their perspective, and all of these groups should be operating with the same set of complete information.

Without this foundation of common understanding, the chances of your radio advertising campaign being successful are diminished. Why? Because you slip from a methodical, disciplined approach to building your business profitably with direct response radio advertising to a more haphazard and risky approach that relies on luck. Successful direct response radio advertisers earn their way to great wealth by taking a disciplined approach. The questions we’ll outline below are to be answered as part of just such a disciplined approach and they are meant to be addressed during the pre-launch phase of building your radio advertising campaign.

In many respects, building a successful direct response radio advertising campaign requires a mentality akin to that of a researcher. Researchers uncover knowledge about a particular topic. The first step in research is identifying the problem you are trying to solve. In the case of direct response radio advertising, you are trying to solve the following “problem(s)”:

- Creative: which advertising appeals will result in the highest number of most qualified leads?

- Media: which target audiences are most responsive to the product’s advertising appeals?

Answering these questions will minimize your media CPO, thereby maximizing your radio advertising (and overall business) profitability.

The list of questions that follows is aimed at guiding any potential radio advertiser down the road to solving the above “problems”. The answers to these questions are the input into creating and testing a hypothesis (again, thinking like a researcher) about which combination of radio advertising appeals and radio media targeting will result in the most profitable radio advertising campaign.

The 10 Key Questions

Note: we’ll use the word “product”, however the following thought process is also applied to services, events, and other items that are promoted in direct response radio advertising campaigns.

Product Questions:

1. What benefits does the product provide to its users? What problems does it solve? In what ways does the product make the user’s life better? Be sure to identify key claims that can legally be made about the degree of benefits to the product user.

2. How does the product work? It is important to note that this is input information only. One of the biggest mistakes in creating advertising of any type is an over-emphasis on features and not benefits. Discussing how the product works can lead advertisers astray, into the world of the “neat” factor and out of the world of what matters to your target customers – what the product does for them.

3. How is the product different? Be sure to compare the product to alternatives or substitutes, as well as to competing products. Also include information about any patents, trademarks or clinical test results.

4. What offers may be used in the radio advertisement? For example, is there a free trial, free shipping, or a bonus quantity with purchase?

5. What are the distribution channel(s) that will be used for the product? (Web, retail, direct)

6. Are customer testimonials, expert endorsements, or a corporate spokesperson available for use in the radio ad?

Customer Questions:

Answering the following questions requires at least some customer research. It may be primary research (for example, conducting a qualitative focus group or a quantitative survey), or secondary research (reviewing qualitative or quantitative research compiled by others about your product category that you can apply to your specific situation). Don’t overlook your current customer base and results from prior tests as a source of valuable customer information, but be aware that this data will not be randomly collected (i.e. to some degree your current customers will be a reflection of the advertising that brought them in). In any case, research will not spell out the exact appeals that will be successful for your specific direct response radio advertising campaign, which is why in-market testing occurs in the next phase.

7. Who is the target consumer segment? Describe them in terms of age, sex, socioeconomic, demographic, geographic, or other relevant dimensions.

8. What are the strongest motivations for this customer segment to buy this type or class of product? What does the customer hope to gain by purchasing, and what loss would the customer avoid by purchasing?

9. What objections or excuses might the customer use to delay or avoid buying the product? What is the answer to each of the objections or excuses?

Business Question:

10. How will you measure success? This a very important question and the one most often unanswered going into the testing phase. Ideally, you will know exactly what media CPO (cost per order) is required for you to achieve break-even profitability. Armed with this information, you’ll have a context with which to view the results of advertising tests. Without it, you are in danger of either pulling the plug on a profitable campaign or rolling out an unprofitable campaign.

Conclusion

Once you’ve answered these questions, you’re ready for the next step. It’s time to pull together a well-rationed hypothesis about which set of appeals, distilled into a creative approach that ultimately ends up as a radio ad, is likely to work the best. This is a challenging phase because it entails dealing with a large amount of information and a large number of alternatives. Additionally, identifying appeals is only the first step – articulating those appeals is also very important and nuanced. Most often your radio advertising agency will conduct this exercise because they’re experienced in dealing with these challenges, but it should be iterative with the client team.

Almost always it turns out that more than one creative approach seems to make strong sense. This is appropriate because you will ultimately test a minimum of two approaches (two different radio ads) since what we are trying to learn is which approach works best. As this is a comparative exercise, it requires comparing two ads.

For more information on how to conduct a successful testing phase in building a direct response radio campaign, see our article on that topic. It’s located in the Article Library on our web site (www.strategicmediainc.com).

Jeff Small, CEO of Strategic Media, Inc., a leading direct response radio advertising agency. Jeff Small has over a decade of experience building profitable direct response radio advertising campaigns. Learn more about profitable direct response radio advertising strategies at http://www.strategicmediainc.com or by calling (207) 871-9958.

Author: Jeff Small
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Netbook, Tablets and Mobile Computing

With the sudden but inevitable emergence of Internet marketing process, we have witnessed a prominent change in Global marketing scenario. Online marketing or the Internet marketing has highly dominated the marketing strategy and has become people’s favorite day-by-day.
Like any other business process involves some kind of advertisement to make people know about your presence and business process, online marketing also needs effective advertising strategy to make Web traffic aware of ones online presence.

When you enter the Web world to look out for any information, you might have noticed the number of small images, texts, video and audio clips that appear in the Web page. Not only this, you receive list of emails not from your intimate friends but from various companies who send such mails to advertise their products and services.

According to description given in Wikipedia, which is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet, online advertising has dual face – former is legitimate and latter is illegitimate. Legitimate online advertising involves search engine advertising, advertising networks and opt-in e-mail, whereas, illegitimate online advertisement is done through spamming.
Let us discuss in brief both legitimate and illegitimate face of online advertising-
Search Engine Advertising – Advertising your business process through search engine is the most effective way of advertising, because various Internet research have revealed that more than 80% of Web search is generated through search engines. People consider the search results gathered from search engines is pure and highly relevant. So, if you are serious about search engine marketing, you should concentrate on ethical way of website optimization and submission of your website to major search engines and directories to receive online visibility.

Advertising Networks- This process involves banner advertising and rich media advertising like audio, video, text, electronic mail etc.
Banner Advertising – Banner is the graphic representation of a company that represents a website. Banner is a tool any website can prepare to impart a prominent impression on people’s mind so that they may like your way of business promotion and remember your name as soon as they enter to the net to search the kind of products or services you sale.
There are two types of banner- static and dynamic. Static banner remains same each time a Web page is loaded but dynamic website keeps on changing and rotating for each visitors. Dynamic banner advertising is highly advisable since, more than one banner for the same product can be shown to the visitors and that help to increase people’s confidence over the products.
Rich Media – Online advertisement through rich media involves the use of interactive digital media such as videos, audios and animations which is done with implementation of advanced technological effects that catches the eyes of majority of Web searchers.

Opt-in e-mail Advertising – This is a process of email marketing where businesses are advertised through email. In this case, there is consent of willingness of mail acceptance between customers and advertiser. The advantage of such practice is the direct contact with the customers in low cost and the major disadvantage is the possibility of deleting the advertisements without being viewed. Although, such process helps website owners keep updating their customers regularly regarding new products/services or any new added features.

Illegitimate online advertising involves spamming, which refers to sending unsolicited email, instant messages, mobile messages to people who are not the willing recipient of such mail and messages. Spammers often harvest users address from Usenet postings, DNS listings, Web pages and by a unique way of guessing common names under each domain which is known as dictionary attack. Spammers also use Web spiders to find e-mail address on Web pages.
But, to achieve a long lasting advertising effect, one should never follow illegitimate methods, rather should always follow fair way of advertising. People often feel irritated if they are provided spam advertisements, but they obviously paid fair amount of attention to view and understand the advertisements presented in a graceful manner.

Sharon Lepcha is a content writer and an emerging author in the field of technology. She is associated with Midas Web Technologies which is a software development, affordable website design company India, e-commerce application development, online advertising, logo and banner development and ethical search engine optimization company in India

Author: Sharon Lepcha
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital TV, HDTV, Satellite TV

What is Banner Advertising?

Banner advertising are the small rectangular advertisements appear on all sorts of Web pages and vary considerably in appearance and subject matter, but they all share a basic function: “if you click on them, your Internet browser will take you to the advertiser’s Web site.”

A bit of HTML code instructs a Web server to bring up a particular Web page when a user clicks on a certain piece of text. Banner ads are essentially the same thing, except that instead of text, the link is displayed as a box containing graphics (usually with textual elements) and sometimes animation.

Because of its graphic element, a banner ad is somewhat similar to a traditional ad you would see in a printed publication such as a newspaper or magazine, but it has the added ability to bring a potential customer directly to the advertiser’s Web site. This is something like touching a printed ad and being immediately teleported to the advertiser’s store! A banner ad also differs from a print ad in its dynamic capability. It stays in one place on a page, like a magazine ad, but it can present multiple images, include animation and change appearance in a number of other ways.

Types of Banner Ads

Like print ads, banner ads come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) specifies eight different banner sizes, according to pixel dimensions. A pixel is the smallest unit of color used to make up images on a computer or television screen. The IAB’s standard banner sizes are:

1. 480 X 60 Pixels (Full Banner)

2. 392 X 72 Pixels (Full Banner with vertical navigation Bar)

3. 234 X 60 Pixels (Half Banner)

4. 120 X 240 Pixels (Vertical Banner)

5. 125 X 125 Pixels (Square button)

6. 125 X 90 Pixels (Button 1)

7. 125 X 60 Pixels (Button 2)

8. 88 X 31 Pixels (Micro Button)

The full banner (468 x 60) is by far the most popular, but you will see all these variations all over the Web. These are not the only banner ad shapes and sizes, either, but they are a good representation of the range of common banner ads. There is no universal file-size constraint for banner ads, but most Web sites impose their own limits on memory size, usually something like 12K to 16K. This is because banner ads add to the total file size of the page they appear on; therefore increasing the time it takes for a browser to load that page.

As you’ve probably noticed while surfing the Web, actual graphic content, or creative, varies considerably among banner ads. The simplest banner ads feature only one, static GIF or JPEG image, which is linked to the advertiser’s home page. More common is the GIF-animated banner ad, which displays several different images in succession, sometimes to create the effect of animated motion. Then there are rich media banner ads — ads that use audio, video, or Java and Shockwave programming. These banner ads, which usually have larger file sizes, are often interactive beyond their simple linking function.

How to implement Banner Advertising:

The designing of a simple banner ad is not so difficult. For example to create an image for advertising the code looks like this:

Text to be displayed

In short same as a simple hyperlink creation. Also the animated GIF banner ads aren’t much more complicated. We can also use a high quality media ad. We can use professional help for designing ads for us. Now we can get a professional banner ad for $50 or you can spend upwards of $1,000.

To make our banner ad more effective, we can also use the some of following methods:

Post banner ads on pages with related Web content — the more related, the better

Advertise a particular product or service in your banner, rather than your site generally

If you do advertise a particular product or service, link the banner ad to that part of your Web site, rather than your home page

Put banner ads at the top of the page, rather than farther down

Use simple messages rather than complicated ones

Use animated ads rather than static ones

Your graphic content should pique visitor curiosity, without being too obscure

Keep banner ad size small

If the page takes too long to load, a lot of visitors will go on to another page

One can also use the following ten tips to make an ad more effective:

1. Study the best examples online. When designing a creative piece like a banner ad, start by identifying the best banner ads that you have seen.

2. Be clear in your graphics and messaging. Your main objective is to have people take a particular action after viewing your ad. A strong, clear message will help capture their interest. Clear communication requires that you understand your message, what you are selling and the benefit that you are offering potential customers.

3. Control the file size. To minimize user frustration, you need to limit the file size of your ad. As a general rule a 468 x 60 pixel banner should be 12 kilobytes or less. The easiest way to achieve this is to limit the number of colors you use and save your banner as an animated GIF file.

4. Say it in seven words or less. This is especially important for a banner campaign, where you are limited to a small visual space. Using fewer words means that you can make the font size bigger, which increases the impact of your message.

5. Use power words. These are single words that immediately communicate a benefit. “Free,” “unbelievable,” “incredible,” “affordable,” “heartwarming” — a brainstorming session will help you create a list of words that are perfect for your campaign.

6. Select images carefully. Adding visuals is like cooking with spices. Too few will lead to a bland banner, while too many will destroy the desired effect. If you want to add an eye-catching graphic, royalty free stock photography is an inexpensive option.

7. Use contrast to capture attention. Your ad will likely include these elements: background colors, a bold text message, and a photograph or drawing, and animated. To be effective you need to have contrast between these elements. Contrast can be achieved using different font sizes and bolds and colors.

8. Limit your use of fonts. If you do use two or more fonts be sure to select fonts from different categories. There are three main font categories: serif (which have tiny “feet” on the letters), sans serif (with no decorative “feet”) and decorative (which include highly decorative and script or handwritten fonts).

9. Don’t overdo it with animation. If you plan to use animation in your ad, there are a few things to consider. You want the animation to draw the eye without offending the online viewer. When setting the animation speed, look for something that changes at a slow to moderate pace. It helps to set your animations so that they stop after three cycles; some sites may insist on this.

10. Less really is more. As you create your design, remember that less cluttered messages will make a stronger impact with the online viewer. Limit the number of elements — the colors, fonts, graphics and words — that you use in your ad and ask yourself whether your primary message is clear.

Web sites for the Banner Advertising:

Banner Exchange Programs: These programs offer a simple service. If you post a certain number of banner ads on your site, they will post your banner ad on another site. Usually, this isn’t an even exchange; you have to post more than one banner ad for every one of your banner ads they post. This is how the exchange program makes a profit. Their arrangement yields them more banner ad spaces than actual banner ads they need to place for their members, so they can sell the extra banner ad spaces to paying advertisers.

Buying Advertising Space: We can also buy a banner advertising space to place our advertisements and to do so we can use various sites.

Selling Advertising Space: Selling banner advertising space is a great way to use your site’s traffic to generate revenue, but it can be a bit tricky. The easiest option is to join a banner ad network, which will recruit advertisers, keep track of your earnings, and control banner ad placement on your site. In exchange for these services, the network will take a hefty percentage of the advertising money generated by your ad space. If your site gets a good deal of traffic, more than 100,000 impressions per month, then you should be able to join a good banner network’s CPM program.

How much money might you make through a banner ad network? Most networks are selling “run of site” ads to advertisers, and they are getting something like a $5 CPM rate for the ads. Then the network takes between 30% and 50% of the $5 as its cut. Therefore, you might expect to earn something like 0.3 cents per impression that appears on your site, or a $3 CPM rate. If your site generates 100,000 impressions per month, you can expect to receive a check for $300 every month. If you are getting paid per click, you might receive anywhere from 3 cents to 20 cents per click. 5 cents might be a typical average. If you get a 1% click rate and you have 100,000 impressions per month, that means that you might expect to receive $50 per month.

Author: Amit Doda
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Cellphone news