hiqbvmruu6 – One of the questions I’m frequently asked is: “How much should my company spend on marketing and advertising?” It’s a conundrum that vexes many corporate leaders, from emerging entrepreneurs to seasoned CEOs. Unfortunately, instead of seeking a rational answer to the question, many of them just ignore it and hope it will go away.

As a rule, emerging companies focus most of their time and talents on meeting the needs of customers, as well they should. If they don’t take care of the customers they already have, everything else will be academic. Strangely, however, many neglect the function of winning customers in the first place. Others naively assume that if they simply provide excellent products or services, their reputation will precede them. Call it the “build a better mousetrap” syndrome. But the world has too many other things to do with its time than beat a path to your door. That means you need to structure your profit-and-loss statement in such a way that you can profitably allocate a reasonable percentage of your revenue to marketing.

The Big Question: How Much?

While there is no definitive answer as to how much any business should spend on marketing, there are general guidelines any company can use to develop a formula that works for them.

Your first step should be to try to find out what the advertising-to-sales ratio typically is in your field. Public companies in your industry may give a figure for their marketing spending in their financial statements (found in their annual reports). With a simple calculation, you can figure out what percentage of their overall revenue that represents. If you can’t find any public companies that seem similar enough to yours, you might want to start at 5% and then adjust your projected spending up or down based on the size of your market, the cost of media, what you can learn about how much your competitors are spending, and the speed at which you’d like to grow.

You’ll also need to ask yourself if your business is built to leverage volume or to leverage margin. Even within industries, there are substantial differences in the marketing spend of volume-driven companies compared with margin-driven ones. Volume-driven companies tend to spend a tiny percentage of sales on marketing, in part because their large revenues enable small contributions to add up fast, and in part because of the margin pressures they face in having to compete with other high volume companies. By contrast, margin-driven companies tend to spend a larger percentage of sales on marketing: They have room in their margins to afford it, and they’re often working from a smaller revenue base.

The retail industry provides some good examples. While Wal-Mart (WMT) might spend a meager 0.4% of sales on advertising, the sheer size of the company turns that tiny percentage into a significant budget. Wal-Mart’s nominally higher-margin competitor, Target (TGT), spends closer to 2% of its sales on advertising, while Best Buy (BBY), as a specialty retailer, spends upwards of 3%. Finally, more upscale stores like Macy’s typically spend on the order of 5%.

The same kind of ratios can be seen in the car industry (automakers’ generally spend 2.5% to 3.5% of revenue on marketing), liquor (5.5% to 7.5%), packaged goods (4% to 10%), and every other industry.

If you’re in a services business, you might want to bump your starting point higher than 5%. For example, like most professional services firms, my company is more margin-oriented than volume-oriented, so fueling its growth requires that we spend a higher percentage of our revenues. Last year, our number was just over 8%, and I’ve seen companies spend upwards of 15% when warranted—especially young companies that need to invest to build their brand.

Marketing, Not Just Advertising

It’s important to make a qualification here. Giant consumer corporations such as automakers, packaged food manufacturers, and retail chains spend a huge percentage of their marketing dollars on paid media advertising, the most visible (and expensive) tool in the marketing toolbox. Depending on the size of your company and the business you’re in, advertising might not be the right (and certainly not the only) tool for you.

A professional services company like my own is a good case in point. While we serve a national clientele, we are much too small to effectively advertise on a national scale. As a result, we don’t purchase paid media advertising. But we do have an aggressive marketing program built around tactics like direct mail, online marketing and public relations. For a variety of reasons, paid advertising might not be right for your company either, but events, vehicle wraps, point-of-sale displays, or other tactics certainly could be.

The important thing is intentionally and deliberately to set aside some rational percentage of your sales to get out there. That way, the question you have to answer isn’t “How much should we spend?” but rather, “How do we spend most effectively?”

5 Ways to Market Your Small Business Online:

Build a Website – You don’t have to pay for web hosting even if you’re running a commercial website just as long as your company can be properly categorized as a small business. Having a company website is the means for prospective customers to learn everything they have to know about the products or services you’re offering. Compared to other online media, a website allows your customers to see and hear about your offer and perhaps interact with you as well.

Know about SEO – Your work doesn’t start and end with building a website. To make your website work as a marketing tool for your business, you need to incorporate SEO – or search engine optimization – elements in it. SEO can help your website zoom to the top of search engine rankings and provide it with all the exposure you need.

In regard to SEO, make sure that you focus on your design and content. Besides needing your website layout to be visually attractive, it must also have easily located links to facilitate navigation. Use HTML as much as possible as this is more SEO friendly than, say, CSS. As for the content, refresh or update it as much as you can because new information will always encourage old and new readers to visit your website. Also, think about the appropriate keywords for your website and use them as much as possible – without committing grammatical errors or ruining the coherence of your content – to delight search engine spiders all the more.

Have a Blog - A blog is one of the most effective online marketing tools today, and if you don’t have one yet then you’re wasting a huge opportunity day after day. A blog allows you to directly interact with prospective customers and almost immediately update them with anything new about your company’s products or services.

To increase the marketing effectiveness of your blog, make sure that you’re writing about one topic alone. This topic must be directly related to your company’s products or services. Furthermore, it must be something that you know and love a lot to enable you to write in a convincing and interesting fashion.

Build Your Network Contacts – Although websites sometimes seem to be creatures of their own right, always remember that a website can’t really operate by itself. It gets updated and achieves success because of its webmaster or owner, and that person should be the one you’re concentrating on getting friendly with. Do your best to build your network by establishing good working relationships with other website owners. This is a give and take situation so be ready and willing to shell out as many favors as you hope to receive. As you become good buddies with these people, you’ll end up exchanging links, and this, by the way, is called affiliate marketing.

Join the Podcast Revolution – Although the popularity of blogs is certainly not waning, that doesn’t mean you have to completely rely on blog marketing alone. There are other marketing fishes in the Internet, and one of them goes by the name of podcasting. Make new podcasts regularly and insert your ads in between. You have to make them short and interesting enough to discourage your listeners from wasting energy just to press the fast forward button.

Regardless of your career, you must realize that marketing is not a department but it’s the business and you must therefore from today, start thinking like a marketer if you want to achieve your financial objectives and stay away from debt.

Most Guru’s or Internet marketers will teach you ways of monetizing your business online and teach you on how to make money on the internet but none of them teaches you how to be a marketer.

For you to succeed online you must start thinking like a marketer and do so onwards.  You must try and see how you can make money in every way and every situation.

Let me break the news to you… Money is good.

Most arguments at home and in the workplace are a lack of money.

Money used as a source of power to do the wrong things and defy justice is evil on the other hand the lack of it can be a source of even greater evils, stealing, killing, and conning.

As you see the title above, it promises on 18 ways of making money online, before I reveal to you I’ve laid a foundation first, subsequently I’ve illustrated a cash flow quadrant that shows how all the money in the world is made. Thereafter, I’ve elaborated on the importance of being a marketer so as to make money online.

Lets get this clear, it’s not like I despise other careers and am obsessed with marketing after all who wants to be a “Sales Person”. However, if you change your attitude you will realize that no money can be made in the world unless a sale has been made. Other than just making money by being a marketer, you also improve other areas of your life, e.g.

• You sell your skills to others easily
• You get good social skills
• You pay for products at reasonable price other than hyped prices.
• You get others to agree with you more easily and much more.

Let’s head to the online Opportunities: but first answer the following questions:

Am I willing to run my own Business?

Am I willing to be a Marketer?

If you have answered positively, then I believe you are ready to embrace the context of Building an Online Business.  Below are the various opportunities and remember, my way is not way is not the only way, there are a million other ways. If you have all the time in the world, you might want to test every method out there or invent your own, just hope you don’t get lost in the wilderness and will make it eventually.

1. UzaNunua.com

It’s easy for me to write eBay as a portal for buying and selling but as a Kenyan am trying to remain in context to my subscribers and reveal to them opportunities that are for real and can make money for them. Here you simply list your products, whether it’s old furniture, used books, new or old cars or any form of services that can be paid for.

2. Information Products or Digital products

People want to benefit from your expertise, but the problem is, you have not written it down, maybe you know of an accounting formula on excel that can remove duplicate records, or you have much knowledge on child care and pregnancies. People are willing to pay for this information. That’s why we buy newspapers, magazines and hardcopy books. Sometimes don’t you wish you could have all these on an electronic book in your computer or by just typing a few keywords on Google? You can start your own site and start selling eBooks and software. A personal friend of mine George Ngondo is a good example on the same. He’s the author of “The Effective Job Search Guide” cv-guide.net he started selling the book on book stores but today he’s making sales in the Global marketplace.

3. Work from Home

There are diverse opportunities in this one. You can be someone’s virtual assistant, or writing medical transcripts e.t.c. You can also do personal services e.g. article writing, web design and shared projects. Also you can identify with companies abroad who have interest in your country for certain products, you can therefore develop a site targeting local people, send introduction letters when you identify a buyer they ship for your client and you are paid some commissions without incurring investment costs. You can try AliBaba.com and see how.

4. Adsense

Adsense is a program from Google. Especially if you own a content website you can easily join and allow Google to randomly place ads on your site and every time someone clicks on the ads you are paid for it. You could earn a few cents per click or even a few dollars per click. I participate in this program in my other websites and I receive checks every my cumulated earnings reach USD 100.00

5. MLM – Multi Level Marketing

These programs use the same marketing model as the offline businesses like Tianshi Kenya and GNLD. They are based on a technology that generates a special link to its members. A good model is the success university. Where members pay a monthly subscription fee to access internet marketing materials and the members make more money by referring others to fall under them. In this category one needs to be careful just like in the offline MLM there is genuine programs like Tianshi Kenya and scams like the pyramid schemes same case applies to the online business.

6. Coaching/ Consulting

Hope you have seen ads of online universities and so on. There is much in this field that you can explore. If you are an accounting expert and employed in an auditing firm you can choose to monetize your expertise by put up a website to market yourself. There are entrepreneurs and business people who prefer to get expert advice from individuals as opposed to companies.

7. Web Hosting

Most people think web hosting requires one to invest in huge servers and a satellite of bandwidth, but that it’s not true. You can always become a reseller of an established company and get to repackage the products in your own way. Follow this link to become a reseller; all you need is a general purpose Visa card.

8. Social Network or Web 2.0

Yes social networks like face book, digg or stumble upon. You can start one that is more targeted. The owners of these sites do the task of gathering people of similar interests together and when everyone is busy doing their thing they sell advertising space on a pay per action or rental basis.

9. Free Lancer

Don’t wish there is someone who can develop your company Logo, do some emarketing campaigns, draft a terms and conditions for your services, update something on your site, draw a balance sheet or profit and loss account for your business. You can make money in two ways in this kind of opportunity. One you can develop such a portal for the local market or participate in bidding for those jobs in the global sites. Check rentacoder.com

10. Business Process Outsourcing – BPO

This is a more advanced business model of freelancing where you can set up a call center and bid for contracts from companies willing to outsource some of their processes offshore. You can start here: outsourcing.org, however to get big contracts you might be required to travel abroad to seal deals with targeted business partners. Learn more here, Business Process Outsourcing in Kenya

11. Paid Blogger

An example of a blog is Supreme Internet Marketing I can get paid to review a product A for a company X and post it here, especially if the product is beneficial to my readership. However, there are 3^rd party companies that link advertisers and bloggers and get bloggers paid from USD 5 $ to USD 100 per post. PayPerPost is one of them.

12. Domainer

This is not the same as web hosting or reseller hosting. In actual sense a domain is like a virtual real estate. You can register a domain add value and resell it as a website or you can secure premium domains and sell them at a higher cost than the annual rental. Right now .co.ke domains are up for grabs and you can reserve generic names that cannot be trademarked e.g. “capital”, “finance”, “love”, and “kiss” and so on the list is endless. You might make huge amounts of cash but it requires patience. Also be careful not to be caught up in trade mark issues and so on. You can reserve .co.ke domains at the cheapest rate possible on this link: http://www.superprofitsmedia.com/eac

13. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is what drives the internet. It means that you refer people to the product owners’ site and they and when they get to buy you receive your lion share of the commission. Some service companies give recurrent commission for the period the customer you referred is with the said company, while others pay huge one off finders’ fee or commission.  These companies use an affiliate tracking software that places a cookie on the buyers’ computer and when they register their details the customer is placed on the affiliates account. You can promote you special link on social sites like face book, email signatures or even on your website. You can try several affiliates and see how the system works. Use these links and register at no cost, send the links to your friends and try to monitor your stats inside your account.

http://www.superprofitsmedia.com/eac

*On the landing page try and identify an “affiliate” or “Partner” link to register. Have this in mind and try to identify such links and you might just land on a program that will earn you money. I will post more on this topic in the coming days.

14. GPT – Get Paid To…

Maybe you have received these kinds of requests on your mailbox. Get paid to take surveys, get paid to view ads, get paid to read email, get paid to surf, and get paid to send eCards and so on. As for me I don’t consider them to be serious sources of income especially if you are a serious business owner. However, research companies can adopt these methods to take survey online. I believe most people are more than willing to give more information in governance, banking and other sectors. There is potential though, I know people who earn a stable income using such methods.

15. Sports/ Gaming

These involve opportunities like playing online poker, games, online Casinos. It’s just a form of Gambling. I don’t recommend it, but if your lifestyle is such you can participate in the same. A word of caution: Avoid Scams, refrain from giving your credit card details, your residential address, banking details and form of personal information. People are cruel out there and may use your identity to commit cyber crimes. As much so, there is need to worry if you are dealing with a legitimate company.

If you dream of the jackpot today might be your lucky day. Try this link

http://www.superprofitsmedia.com/gamble

16. Trading

In its broadest sense it involves trading of commodities both locally and in the Global marketplace. There are stocks that trade stocks online or even much popular is the Online Forex trading. With online Forex trading when you understand the online technicalities you just apply the offline tactics of buy low and sell high. The beauty of it is the business is legitimate and in any business you are bound to make profits or losses depending on various factors including your decisions and timing. I know several individuals who have invested in these systems

Copy this link to download Forex trading software

http://www.superprofitsmedia.com/forextrade

You can as well trade in commodities by being creative. Sky is the limit. I’ve a friend of mine who started an online car bazaar with only a small investment of Kes. 35,000. Like I told you earlier Building a business online is just about being a marketer. Allow me to call my friend “Joe”. Joe invested in a website after visiting various car bazaars and agreeing on a commission per lead and per sale. He took pictures from the car sales yard and posted them on the internet. He started promoting his site using different methods including email marketing and he was able to make sales of cars he has not invested a coin in. When you continue learning from my tips your creativity is the only constraint that keeps you apart from making millions online.

17. Services

You can offer services online and charge per transaction. A good example is mamamikes.com. I’ve also seen other websites coming up offering directory services, classifieds and so on. As for me I write killer email campaigns that have proven to be a success, I also let Newsletter subscription services, hosted and local mass email programs, sms and autoresponder services among others. There is so much more I do I even forget to market and package all my services. Knowledge is power and it increases on using. I want you to be rich and/or stay rich by increasing your revenue streams. Now keep your ears wide open.

18. Membership sites

In offline thinking, why do people pay for membership clubs? It’s the benefits that come along. Today you can start your membership site where members pay a passive income on a recurrent basis and now it’s up to you to think of the benefits. A site like Success University uses an MLM and/or affiliate marketing program to recruit new members. However, the principal foundation is that members acquire resources and training at discounted rates and at a centralized place as opposed to otherwise gets the resources for themselves in scattered places.  There are unlimited ways in which you can create a membership site.

19. Money Transfer Services

No matter how you automate services there still people who do not want to change and adapt to new methods. You can start a small business where, you can use your PayPal and/or Money Bookers account in and allow people in the Diaspora to send you cash through any of the above accounts and then submit the funds to their loved ones upcountry through m-pesa then earn some commissions per transaction or in percentage. You might need to find on the required licensing so as to run a fully fledged Business and win peoples trust.

20. Donations

NGO’s run on donations, so don’t be surprised. There are lots of Softwares and services out there offered out there where they are given for free and the users donate to support the programs so that they can continue benefiting on the same. There are products out there which are sold by donations i.e. there is no price tag, you just put the amount you want to pay and proceed to check out. In a society where people are obsessed with free things and no heart for charity, then you might not want to try this. Otherwise your efforts will be for nothing and offering your products henceforth might bleed you dry. Also if you believe in a course or some form of activism then this might be a good choice. Remember the Obama Campaign was purely run on donations from his supporters. If you have successfully run a not-for profit organization you might want to try this option.

2. Innovate – Be what everyone else aspires to be. Become recognized as an innovator. Be the consulting practice that finds unique solutions or uses unique practices to create unique solutions. Innovators capture attention. Never follow, always lead.

3. Keep it Simple – Regardless of the brilliance of your solutions, do not pontificate. Be prepared to explain your products, your services and solutions in simple, easy-to-absorb language. If necessary, educate the client and let them enjoy and savor your remedies. If your solutions are complex, break them down into explainable segments.

4. Testimonials – Resource testimonials surpass all others. If you have references and testimonials from recognizable third-party universities, think-tanks or well-known institutions, put them to work in your marketing strategy. Those are the type testimonials that are unique to your practice and that is what clients want to see and hear.

5. Guarantee Results – The consultant’s guarantee will look and sound good. Be sure you can deliver. Back the guarantee with strong performance and simple language. Your word is your bond. If you can reduce absenteeism, or increase productivity or increase value, say so. Do not force a guarantee. If you issue the guarantee, put it in simple language. If your intended guarantee is burdened with contingencies, do not put it on the table.

6. Be Honest – Clients are skeptical about consulting company claims of success. Be forthright about your consultancy’s successes. Do not overstate the complexity of projects or their results. Be real. Be prepared to explain stumbling blocks, what makes projects work and factors that are destructive.

7. Show Your Hand Early – Make sure your new client-consultant relationship starts well. Give away a tip, some work samples or show a genuine willingness to make the project flow easily by extending yourself early in the project. Be easy to work with and offer free, constructive solutions to developing a working relationship. Allow the client’s staff to excel. You are setting the stage for a win-win consultancy.

8. Be First – This is another way to set your consulting services apart from the masses. Identify the item or items that your consultancy accomplished first. This is another example of the uniqueness of your services. Even if the accomplishment is small, it is a beginning. Keep track of these “first to accomplish” tasks as your practice expands.

1. You Aren’t Getting Traffic

You’re excited about the big, expensive job the design team just finished on your site. It looks like a million bucks! Well it’s a shame it isn’t making you a darn cent. Just because it exists doesn’t mean people know about it. Announce it to the world by submitting it to reputable directories and sharing your useful content with others on social bookmarking sites (you do have useful content, don’t you? If not, I’ll cover this later). You can even do some link exchanges — provided the sites you exchange with are reputable — just to get your site crawled early on. Further optimize it for search engines by following good SEO practices, building quality content and generating inbound links from other sites. Once you do that, you’ll need to monitor progress with web analytics software. Google Analytics is free and it has a slick interface. And we know you like pretty things seeing as how you broke the bank on your web site design.

Make Your Monthly Google AdSense Payment Bigger!

If you’re looking for high ROI, invest your own time in learning search engine marketing. Better yet hire a qualified SEO firm if you have the budget for it. Don’t settle for quick-fix promotional ideas. Build long-term exposure and a solid reputation by attaining high rankings, keeping email/newsletter lists, targeted ad placement and social media participation.

2. You Have Worthless Content

What defines worthless content? Without knowing what topic your web site covers it’s tough to say, but if you have nothing that sets you apart from your top competitors then I’d say you aren’t in good shape. If you don’t know what kind of content people are looking for on the Internet today, take a peek at what’s popular on social bookmarking sites. Observe some of the story titles on the front page of Digg.com:

“Guinness Stout Beef Stew Recipe for St. Patrick’s Day”
“In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air”
“Kim Jong-Il Interprets Sunrise As Act Of War”
“Automatic bacon dispenser?”
“The 5 Best Obama Photomosaics on Flickr”

Words I would use to describe these topics, in order, are: seasonal, informative, satirical, comical, and trendy. This information is popular because it’s appealing in its uniqueness and is relevant to today’s market. To set yourself apart from your competition, you need to get creative. If you’re the kind of person who had trouble painting by numbers, then hire someone creative. Professional copy writers can be well worth the investment. Create free tools your customers will want to use; write funny or interesting commentary in a blog about your industry; put a new spin on a traditional product or service or offer seasonal discounts. Create a comprehensive F.A.Q. on your site that covers topics your competitors don’t.

Take the time to beef up your content. Be innovative – don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Use the top competitor in your field as a measuring stick.

3. You Have No Call-to-Action

Poor promotional language can have a sabotaging effect if visitors aren’t drawn to your conversion pages. A conversion page is any page that acts as the final step in a visitor submitting a form, making direct contact or purchasing a product online. Obscuring those pages or confusing the visitor on where to go next can make them leave your site. Internet users have a short attention span – give them a clear direction when navigating your web site.

Use your web analytics software again to find out what pages visitors are landing on first. If your home page gets the most traffic, make sure there are clear links to your sub-topics. If inner pages are your most popular landing pages, find out if the traffic is targeted. Once you know the type of visitor and the specific page they land on, then you can start marketing your content more accurately.

The bottom line is to always make clear why, and how, visitors can buy your product. Don’t get too cute with multiple steps, options or convoluted language.
Forget Expensive PPC Advertising – There is an Alternative!

4. You’re Getting Traffic But No Sales

Are you sure the traffic is relevant? If you’re running a pay-per-click campaign, ensure your ads are geo-targeted properly and your ad text or landing pages appeal to your customers. For organic search engine placement, have you done keyword research and analysis before optimizing your content? Look at your web stats and see where your visitors are coming from. What keywords were they searching for when they landed on your site? Are the referring sites relevant to your industry or topic? How much time does the visitor spend on each page? Sales won’t come if your visitors aren’t interested in what you’re selling. This is why preliminary keyword analysis is so important to search engine marketing.

If you’re running ads, it’s always good practice to experiment with different ad campaigns. If you put all your eggs in one basket you run the risk of losing out on potential revenue. Elements of your ads that you can change are:

• ad text
• landing page
• specific network your ads are shown across
• topics on which you focus the campaign
• geo-locations targeted

Remember, it doesn’t pay to skimp on initial product/market research and analysis.

5. You’re Getting Relevant Traffic But No Sales

This problem could signal a technical error or navigation problem with your site. Make sure you thoroughly test all functionalities on various web browsers and systems. Submit test forms. Do a link check to spot possible broken links. Is your web hosting service reliable?

If you’ve ruled out technical issues as the cause then turn your attention to the content and customer base. Has your market taken a downturn? Can the lack of sales be attributed to the poor economy? Have you fallen behind your competition in product quality, selection or pricing? Does your web site’s navigation system confuse users? Your web site is the first line of contact between the business and potential customer, but it’s not the only step you need to worry about. Telephone operators or online payment systems can present their own issues.

This is moving away from web site problems but if any part of the sales process takes place away from the site, investigate those areas of your business as well.

As we all know the internet is the preferred venue for business research. The consequences of your internet rankings are significant. As a new consulting practice you don’t have much choice … you need to understand search engine optimization and marketing techniques to compete with other tech savvy consultants.

Having a website, blog, or facebook account is just one part of the Internet marketing pie. The SEO game will take time, energy, creativity and will cost some money. Creating a stunning informational site and obtaining an Internet listing is not a stand-alone marketing or advertising solution. These are merely steps along the Internet pathway.

Committing to SEO
To boost your ranking and maximize the return on your consulting firm’s online presence, you will need to, understand the sometimes daunting process called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. There are many great blogs and websites on SEO out there for you to start learning and applying.

If you don’t want to learn it all yourself don’t fret, you’ll be able to find lots of firms that offer SEO services. Like all advertising decisions, you will need to proceed with caution. With Internet providers, it is easy to be misled, but making the smart, informed decision can reap huge results. Again, your consultancy’s marketing plan and advertising strategy calls for lead generation. The web should be a very cost-effective way to accomplish that goal.

Search Engine Optimization firms use keywords, back links, and a host of other strategies to boost your internet rankings. Some SEO companies will submit your consulting site to many search engine sites for a small fee. Usually these providers reap small returns. Like all forms of advertising, consistency is paramount to success. One-time gimmick promotions generally do not work.

You should consider approaching reputable SEO business consulting firms with credentials and references. Inquire as to their services and strategies and ask them to show you specific results they’ve achieved. I’d also recommend that you get the names and contact information of some of their past clients and call them up to get first hand information.

Get specific pricing for all services. Keep in mind that there are effective and ineffective SEO firms out there. When starting your consulting business, you will need internet leads, while SEO is one way to do this, Google Adwords, and other PPC options are a great way to do this.

There are many search marketing consultants, but treat them the same way you would a larger firm and demand all information and view their past results before going forward. You can take on handing your consulting business’ search engine optimization effort yourself – but be sure, SEO takes a lot of time on a continual basis. It may likely make more sense for you to get someone else to do this for you while you work on other aspects of your business.

Q: What do you think is a better advertising plan: $2,000 in direct postcards reaching roughly 3,500 people, or $2,000 in a newspaper ad reaching 750,000 readers?

A: It depends entirely on what you say in your ad. If your impact quotient is high enough, your best bet will be the newspaper. If the direct postcards are delivered precisely to “the perfect target” (which is not very likely), then the direct-mail route is preferable.

Based on the fact that I don’t know the answers to either of these questions, my guess is that neither the direct postcards nor the newspaper will work for you. My advice is that you keep your $2,000 in your pocket until you come up with an actual plan. These are the hard questions you need to answer:

1. What do you have to say that matters to your customer? I’m your prospective customer. I know you want my business, but why should I care? What’s in it for me? Most ads are written under the assumption that the reader, listener or viewer has a basic level of interest and is paying close attention to the ad. But customers tend to ignore all ads that do not speak directly to them. Your first task is not media selection; it’s message selection.

2. Can you say it persuasively? Most ads are ineffective because the writer was trying to say too much, include too much and be too much. Fearful of leaving someone out, these writers write vague, all-encompassing ads that speak specifically to no one. “We Fix Cars” is a terrible headline for an ad.

3. Are you speaking to a felt need? Let’s say the “We Fix Cars” auto mechanic has a great deal of affection for older BMW 2002s. He knows that 2002 owners love their cars like few drivers on the road and that the only weakness of the 2002 is its evil Solex carburetor. Every 2002 owner knows this, too. So he writes the headline, “BMW 2002 Owners: Aren’t You Tired of Fooling With That Solex by Now?” In the body of the ad, he talks about the fabulous new Weber two-barrel carburetor now available for BMW 2002s, raves about how it dramatically increases performance and reliability, explains that he keeps these new Weber carburetors in stock at his shop, then names the price at which he will install and adjust that carburetor for you. He closes the ad by saying, “You’ll rocket out of here in a completely different BMW than the one you drove in.” If a list of BMW owners in your area is available for a direct-mail card (such as the list from the local BMW club), then a direct-mail card or flier would be the way to go. But if no such list is available, the newspaper might be a second choice. In either case, you’d want to include a large picture of a BMW 2002 to serve as a recall cue and help gain the attention of your target customer.

4. How long is your time horizon? Some ads build traffic, some build relationships and others build your reputation. If you don’t have the financial resources to launch a true branding campaign focused on building relationships and reputation among potential customers, you’re going to have to settle for traffic-building ads until you can afford to begin developing your brand. To what degree do you have financial staying power?

5. What is the urgency of your message? If you need an ad to produce immediate results, your offer must have a time limit. This technique will simultaneously work for and against you. On one hand, customers tend to delay what can be delayed, so limited-time offers generate traffic more quickly since the threat of “losing the opportunity” is real. On the other hand, customers have no memory of messages that have expired; short-term messages are erased from our brains immediately. Therefore, it’s extremely difficult to create long-term awareness with a series of limited-time-offer, short-term ads.

6. What is the impact quotient of your ad? How good your ad must be depends on the quality of your competitors’ ads. A .22-caliber pistol is a weapon against an opponent with a peashooter. But aim that pathetic pistol at an opponent holding a machine gun, and you can kiss your silly butt goodbye. How powerful is the message of the opposition? If your competitor carries a machine gun, don’t go where he goes. In other words, don’t use the media he uses.

7. How long is the purchase cycle? How long it will take your advertising to pay off is tied to the purchase cycle of your product. Ads for restaurants work more quickly than ads for sewing machines, because a larger percentage of people are looking for a good meal today than are looking for a machine that will let them make their own clothes. Likewise, an ad for a product we buy twice per year will produce results faster than an ad for a product we buy only once a year. Remember, a customer first has to be exposed to your ad often enough to remember it, then you have to wait for that customer to need what you sell. How soon will he or she likely need it?

Trying to make an educated decision on what keywords for this Pay per Click campaign to use and of course pay for down the line. These days it is so easy to upload funds into the account and start running campaigns. There are a few points to remember when running Pay per Click marketing campaigns. Knowing them will keep you from wasting money.

1. Choose the Best Keywords

The wrong keywords will deliver hits that do not convert. Traffic is not what you want. You want sales and profit.

Stay away from too popular keywords with large traffic statistics. Avoid multiple word keywords. These get a lot of traffic; but not a lot of sales. With the wrong keywords, you could waste your budget in less than 24 hours.

Choose specific keywords relevant to what you are offering. The more specific the keywords are the less money you are wasting for traffic that does not convert.

2. Do not Bid on the First Spot

This tip is mainly to save on the marketing budget. The number one spot does get most of the traffic but is not necessary the most profitable. It is certainly the most expensive. Most browsers shop as we shop in stores. They will click on other spots besides the first one.

3. Write Ads that Attract Customers, Not Browsers

With the right ad, you will get the right visitor, and a sale.
It is not about writing clever ads and having much PPC real estate on search engines. After all traffic is not what you seek when you are paying for it. You want to attract visitors that turn into customers. Write ads for those visitors not for the mass traffic.

4. Make Your Landing Page Convert into Profit

Do not send PPC traffic, traffic that you pay for to your home page.
With only a few exceptions, the home page is never the relevant landing page.
A “landing page” is the website page that you send people to once they click your PPC advertisement.
Send browsers to the page that matches the search more. If it is a product search, send them to the exact product page, a service to the appropriate service. You want the browser not to look for what they left the search engine for.

5. Track your Conversions, Not your traffic
You want to know which keywords are profitable for you and which keywords are wasting marking dollars.

There are keywords in your campaign that are making you money and there are keywords that are wasting your money. By tracking conversions (leads or sales), by keyword, you’ll be more profitable.
These Pay per Click marketing tips are to avoid most common beginners mistakes. If these common mistakes can be avoided, you the advertiser will have better chances to succeed.