Another marketing myth that many business owners rely on is that advertising can sell any business. No matter what the marketing campaign, be it booklet printing, flyers or even print posters, advertising your business can increase your ROI. This means that whatever you choose to utilize as your marketing tool, advertising in itself is the main thing that can sell your products and services.

This may be true before when there are only a few ways to send your message to your target audience. But with hundreds and thousands of print collaterals, not to mention the 30 or more channels competing for your target clients’ attention on a daily basis; advertising is not anymore the only means to help you succeed in your efforts.

Advertising now is so different from what it was in the past. Before, it’s considered as the problem-solver for many businesses. If you’re not getting results for your business, advertising is the way to get the outcome you want. Advertising generally gets your business recognized and remembered.

Advertising in your collaterals such as your booklet printing for one can get your target market to react the way you expect them to. If you plan on having the outcome you need to boost your business, then advertising in print collaterals such as your print booklets can go a long way in getting you the ROIs.

Nowadays, however, it’s not anymore true that advertising alone is the remedy to any business problem. Advertising in your booklet printing is not anymore enough to solve your issues. With so many marketing collaterals competing for your target audience’s attention, not to mention that so many types of businesses are trying to get your target client to try them out, advertising should not only be your miracle worker.

Frankly, there is so much information out there vying for your target audience’s attention. That’s why you need more than your print booklets for example to help you get your target clients to consider your offer. You need then to come up with a much stronger vehicle in order for you to stand out and get your target clients to notice you.

The bottom line is for you to be able to reach out to your target clients on a personal level. With so many choices for them unfolding everyday and every minute, meeting your target clients’ needs on a personal level can go a long way in getting you noticed and remembered by them. Even with a million things to occupy their attention, you will surely stand out if you can only go to their level based on a service that is personal.

Advertising

Advertising is a non-personal form of promotion that is delivered through selected media outlets that, under most circumstances, require the marketer to pay for message placement. Advertising has long been viewed as a method of mass promotion in that a single message can reach a large number of people. But, this mass promotion approach presents problems since many exposed to an advertising message may not be within the marketer’s target market, and thus, may be an inefficient use of promotional funds. However, this is changing as new advertising technologies and the emergence of new media outlets offer more options for targeted advertising.

Advertising also has a history of being considered a one-way form of marketing communication where the message receiver (i.e., target market) is not in position to immediately respond to the message (e.g., seek more information). This too is changing. For example, in the next few years technologies will be readily available to enable a television viewer to click a button to request more details on a product seen on their favorite TV program. In fact, it is expected that over the next 10-20 years advertising will move away from a one-way communication model and become one that is highly interactive.

Another characteristic that may change as advertising evolves is the view that advertising does not stimulate immediate demand for the product advertised. That is, customers cannot quickly purchase a product they see advertised. But as more media outlets allow customers to interact with the messages being delivered the ability of advertising to quickly stimulate demand will improve.

Advertising

With the amount of people from home buying online expanding to now the billions and purchasing computers for their home, advertising online has grown to be one of the most cost effective forms of advertising. Stats show that the amount of users on the internet is growing at such a rapid rate that it is predicted that in five years time, eighty percent of the population in the United Kingdom alone, will have a computer in their home that is connected to the internet. With this in mind one can only imagine how crucial it is to prepare yourself now in the advertising world online for that period when the web will be the number one place to get people buying from your company. Advertising online is predicted to be the most cost effective form of advertising. Have a look at the way the world is evolving where the consumer does not have to leave their home to buy anything. All forms of advertising are crucial if you are out to corner your market in the business place.

Could either make or break your business. There are various forms of advertising such as magazine advertising, newspaper advertising, internet advertising and advertising via mail order just to mention a few. Advertising via magazines or newspapers are affective but extremely costly. Companies invest large amounts for advertising in the anticipation of large rewards and therefore far greater risks. It is obvious that companies are willing to spend large amounts on advertising if the advertising that they are paying for makes them a profit. To find the advertising that is right for you can be a troublesome period of test and trial. Most importantly you need to find the form of advertising that brings profits to the business in the form of sales to balance out cost paid for the initial payment on your advertising campaign.

For More information log on to http://www.indiabizclub.com or http://advertising.indiabizclub.com/

I decided to try something a little different and illustrate the marketing challenges of a small business. I’m using one of my clients, PrescottWeddings.com.

PWC is an online resource guide for couples planning their weddings. Along with a ton of information for brides and grooms, the site includes a resource guide where local businesses can advertise their products and services.

We launched PWC in November 2001. Like many start-up businesses, PWC didn’t have much money for marketing. Yet we had two major challenges (three counting the limited budget):

1. PWC had to attract two kinds of target markets to the site — advertisers and couples — essentially at the same time. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we had to appeal to each group even though one was dependent on the other — advertisers wanted brides and grooms logging onto the site, and brides and grooms wanted a complete resource center.

2. Several bridal print publications had come and gone in Prescott — and had burned their advertisers while racing out of town. Businesses were understandably hesitant about sinking their money into another bridal venture.

Armed with those challenges, we went to work. Now, just over two years later, PWC enjoys well over 40,000 hits a month and has increased its advertising base by over 600%. On top of that, PWC is well on its way to establishing a reliable brand in not just Prescott but throughout Yavapai County.

So how did we do it? A great Web site with great content plus three main marketing strategies:

1) Using print to drive traffic online

2) Thinking small

3) Frequency, frequency, frequency

I’ll cover number two and three in the next two articles. Today we’ll talk about number one: Using print to drive traffic online.

The cornerstone of PWC’s marketing program has been print advertising, more specifically monthly advertising in the local newspaper. Print advertising is an excellent choice for many businesses — from small to large. In fact, it’s not uncommon for small and medium-sized businesses to build their advertising program around print.

The strength of print advertising is its flexibility. Print publications come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can appeal to a broad readership or a narrow one. They can be published every day or once a year. This variety gives you a lot of flexibility in fitting print advertising into your campaigns.

You can also track print to a certain extent (coupons in newspapers for example). Print is physical, allowing your customers to carry something around with them.

However, print’s weakness is also its strength. It’s a visual medium only, so it requires more effort and interaction from your audience to make an impact (they need to stop and read it).

In the case of PWC, we chose monthly advertising in the local paper as the foundation of our marketing program. We decided upon the local newspaper because it has the broadest reach. Prescott isn’t big enough to have its own evening television news, so the newspaper is the best vehicle for local news.

If you live in a big city, the local newspaper may not be practical because of cost. In that case, you may want to try a niche newspaper or magazine, like a business or lifestyle journal, or maybe a regionalized newspaper. In Phoenix for instance, the Arizona Republic is the main newspaper, but all the cities around Phoenix, like Scottsdale and Tempe, also have their own papers.

Because PWC is a Web site, there’s an assumption we should be using only online methods to advertise. Online methods are good, and PWC does use them, but they only take you so far. Print is a part of the “real world” — something you can touch and pick up, not virtual like a Web site. Print has also been around a lot longer, and carries more trust with it. We found by using print, some of that trust and “real world” essence rubbed off, making PWC seems less anonymous and more like a “bricks and mortar” business (a business with a store front).

Also, since we were trying to drive local traffic to the site, it made sense to advertise locally rather than attracting people from all over the world. But even with our local advertising, we still have a substantial number of visitors from around the state, including Phoenix and Tucson, as well as all over the globe.

The point of our marketing program was to advertise regularly so we could both build the PWC brand and drive traffic to the Web site. Yet it was essential to keep our costs down. So we leveraged our monthly newspaper advertising to stretch our marketing dollar as far as we could. More on that and how we “thought small” in the next article