|
|
By:
James
Calvin -
The
media is a powerful thing -- the average person spends
an enormous amount of their life consuming it in one
form or another, and will spend a significant percentage
of that time looking at, listening to or watching
advertisements. If you want to use the power of the
media, though, you need to know what you're doing.
Advertising in Newspapers and Magazines.
There are two kinds of advertising you can get in
newspapers and magazines: classified and display.
Classifieds are the small ads towards the back of the
publication, while display ads can be almost any size,
from a small corner of a page to a massive double-page
spread.
|
|
If there's a publication you're interested in
advertising in, either go to its website (the rate card
section) or call its advertising department to find out
the rates it charges. Now pick your jaw up off the
floor. Yes, advertising in the print media really is
that expensive, and for most home businesses it probably
just won't be that economical.
There is, however, an exception: niche and trade
magazines. If you've ever looked around in a newsagent,
you will have seen just how many magazines there are out
there, filling every conceivable gap in the market. You
need to find the magazine that people who are interested
in your services might read. For example, if you're a
wedding photographer, look for a magazine called 'Your
Wedding', 'Bride', or something similar. Advertising in
these magazines will be far cheaper than placing an ad
in a general-audience publication, and far more likely
to actually get some responses.
Advertising on the Radio.
Wherever you are, the chances are that there's a local
radio station. Once your home business grows to a decent
size, you might consider buying some time on it.
Really, though, the only kind of home business that can
benefit enough from radio ads to justify the cost is one
that does anything to do with cars. Since radio is
almost entirely limited to use as in-car entertainment
now, you know that almost everyone your ad reaches will
be a car-owner, and so might be interested in what
you're offering. If you offer something that people need
cheaply or even for free, you can get a big response.
Unfortunately, that response could be a little too big
-- thanks to the time-sensitivity of radio, you'll get
mobbed the next day, and then everyone will forget you
again. Radio advertising offers the listener no
opportunity to keep your ad and refer to it later, or to
find it again in the future. You will find that any ads
involving a phone number are spectacularly useless.
Advertising on the Television.
Unless your business is getting pretty big, this would
be quite a bad idea. You'd have trouble producing and
airing an ad even on local cable channels for less than
$10,000. Of course, if there's a market for your product
and you've got the budget for this, you could take a
gamble and make a mint. The home businesses that tend to
do best out of TV ads are ones that have a 'unique and
useful invention' product with easy-to-demonstrate
benefits -- think infomercial. Research shows that you
can sell almost anything given a 60-second ad, a free
phone number and a price point of $19.95.
Advertising on Billboards.
Here's one that gets overlooked pretty often, but can be
very effective if you do it right. Billboard ads are
relatively expensive, but they do generally stay up for
a long time, and they can be very specifically targeted
to an area -- the one where they're physically located.
You'll have the best results with this if you can put
one near enough to your business that it could say 'turn
left at the next junction', or something like that.
Phone numbers are, again, pretty useless, although you
could have some luck putting a website address up there.
Advertising at the Movies.
Finally, here's one that often gets overlooked. If you
turn up to the cinema early, you might have seen that
before the big-budget ads, ads for local businesses are
run. This can be a great place to advertise relatively
inexpensively in quite a high-profile way, and it works
especially well for takeaway food businesses.
Article
Source:
http://articles-4-free.com
James
Calvin will show you how to market your product to the
World using the only REAL techniques that make the
Internet pay off. Go to www.MillionaireMarketingManual.com
NOW. You may freely distribute or publish the above
article as long as this bio and an active hyperlink are
accompanied with it.
|
