Smooth Move Marketing

Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category

As is true with any business, advertising in the food concession business is extremely important in order to get the word out that a new business has come to town. However, while it is very important to utilize advertising when you are in any industry, it is even more important to use it in the concession business. Food concession businesses are working at an uphill climb as far as advertising goes. You don’t have a fixed building. No matter how permanent your location may seem you don’t have an absolutely permanent location. There are many different obstacles. However, if you use advertising, you can really make a difference in the number of customers you have. There are different types of advertising. There is word of mouth advertising, print advertising, and tv and radio commercial advertising.

One of the best types of advertising is word-of-mouth advertising. The reason this is one of the best is because you don’t do it. For one thing, it’s coming straight from the mouths of your already customers to the ears of your potential customers. Secondly it’s free. You don’t have to pay for this type of advertising and it is one of the most powerful types of advertising there is. By having great food, great customer service and great value, you can be sure to get this type of advertising. Be careful that you have all of these things because advertising works in both ways if a customer is dissatisfied. Most of the time, advertising is even worse if it’s negative because it spreads faster.

Another type of advertising is print ads. These are becoming more and more obsolete with the ever increasing popularity of the tv, radio, and internet. Some types of print advertising are flyers, business cards, and mail outs. These can all be varying prices ranging from fairly plain and simple to decked out with color copies. Either way you go try to make a lasting memorable impression. The down side to this is that flyers and mail outs can be considered to be very annoying junk mail. You do not want to alienate your customers by making them angry that you sent them a flyer. This is just something you should consider before you choose your form of advertisement.

Finally we have radio and television commercials. These are great ways to advertise but can be costly. The reason they are so great is because they let you see and hear the advertisement. Something is much more likely to get stuck in people’s minds when it is both seen and heard rather than just read. There is a downside to this, however it is not as negative as that of the print advertising. The down side of the tv or radio commercial is that people get annoyed because there are so many commercials. The thing that gets you around this as a business is that they have learned to accept that there are commercials that must be run for the tv show or radio show to stay on the air. Another downside however that is a little more detrimental is the increased popularity of DVR, a recorder for the tv that causes people to be able to fast forward through the commercials.
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There are a couple of truths that seem to apply to many small businesses, especially ones that are also newly established. One of them is that budgets do not allow for all ideas to be implemented. Another is that advertising is necessary. A quick look over these two statements will result in a belief that they are contradictory factors of a business if they are both true. That is unfortunately a misconception held by many new business owners. As we all know the majority of new business to not make it past their second year in business.

One of the factors that can assist in the difficulties of establishing a new, small business is the belief that important money to sustain the business cannot be spent on advertising. The allocation of money to advertising usually has a very low priority in a small businesses budget. This is a mistake, advertising is necessary, but there are a number of ways that it can be done in a cost effective manner.

First on a businesses list should be the largest yellow pages ad they are able to afford. Although the phone book is an old form of advertising with the importance that the internet is taking on, this is still one of the first things potential clients do when looking for a business or product.
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Once a cherished project such as your first ebook or ecourse has been completed, we need to turn our attention to the marketing of your project.

Here’s where things sometimes turn somewhat difficult if the author and the marketeer are one and the same person, and here’s where we have to be cautious and take the right steps in the right order, so we might stay on track.

In order to write ANY form of marketing material for your ebook or course, you need to be completely FAMILIAR with all the benefits of your product.

Now it seems obvious that the author, of all people, SHOULD be familiar with the benefits but there is such a thing as over-familiarity, as well as having been immersed in the project for a long time and thus not seeing the proverbial forest for the trees any longer.

I was assisting just such an ebook author and absolute AUTHORITY on writing their major sales page the other day, and I was astonished that they couldn’t answer certain basic questions I put to them, such as:

“How many chapters are there in your book?”

“How many pages does your book have?”

“How many illustrations?”

“How many words?”

“What’s the ISBN?”

The answer was always something along the lines of, “Ahm … I guess I could look it up …”

Oooh!

These are the kind of “technical details” that are handled in a publishing house by “other people” – but of course, in web publishing they need to be known EXACTLY by the author, because these things comprise the “technical specifications” of the product and a prospective purchaser might well enquire or need to know up front before they make their buying decision.

But that’s just an example and in a way, it is the tip of the iceberg.

What became very apparent was that the author in question had missed out on the first step of ANY marketing analysis.

This important step, which is the core topic of this article, is ESSENTIAL to be able to write any form of advertising copy, to target the correct audiences with the correct approach and to market the product, full stop.

This first step is called “the benefits extraction”.

*** How To Do The Benefits Extraction ***

You need a printed out copy of your book or course, PLENTY of empty pieces of paper, a big pot of coffee and then, you take off your author’s hat and instead, you put on your marketing hat and go through the text, ONE PARAGRAPH AT A TIME, and “extract” ALL the benefits that could possibly accrue for the reader/user/learner AND all they come into contact with *if they follow the advice and procedures outlined* exactly.

There is a HUGE range of potential benefits that can and will be found in this process, and even before we get into the text and content itself, there’s also benefits such as:

Good sized print – easy to read for older people, avoid headaches!

Good use of white space – easy on the eye, relaxing reading

Well structured – information flow is logical, and thus easy to understand and learn

Fully indexed – things are easy to find, you can quickly get to what you need to know.

Helpful diagrams and illustrations – pictures say more than a thousand words …

… and so on.

Once you get into the content, you will notice that sometimes, a single sentence or paragraph hides a MAJOR benefit, such as:

“The SINGLE little known SECRET to all your marketing problems!” (Page 23)

Take your time and keep backing up and asking yourself over and over again, “What BENEFITS will the reader/user get from this?”

Immediately, short term, long term?

Don’t stop with things like,

“Reader will learn how to use the snarkometer …”

That’s not a benefit.

A benefit is what happens WHEN you use a snarkometer as its creator designed it to be used – so the benefit might be:

“Reader will be able to capture even well hidden, rare and elusive snarks.”

From there, you can go on to further future benefits, such as:

“Reader will become famous and rich from his snark sales.”

That’s the point, after all!

*** Sorting Out Your Benefits ***

If you do this properly, you will find HUNDREDS of benefits, big and small, and for all sorts of different applications, situations and people, and from all sorts of different angles, in ANY decent ebook or ecourse.

You will have them all written down, as they come, with the referencing page numbers on your many sheets of paper.

Now it’s time to sort them out.

Firstly, go through your list and find the MAJOR benefits that would make the best HEADLINES and major bonus lists.

As soon as you’ve got those, your advertising and marketing falls into place because now you know WHAT IT IS THAT YOU ARE SELLING!

“Deep down”, of course you knew that all along but it’s extraordinary how “deep down” this stuff often is and how hard one has to dig to get it out of the authors to bring it to the surface!

Pick out the top ten benefits and transfer them to a new sheet of paper.

Now, pick the next 20 or so which will become benefits in lists on pitch pages, or will be laid end-to-end in classifieds and sales letters.

Finally, take all the rest and sort them out in any way you want.

You might find that a particular market emerges that you hadn’t thought about before with their OWN benefits list that is quite separate from the general main benefits, and where you can then market your product accordingly.

You might well find material amongst those benefits that you can use to write articles or engage in customer “education” – explain how and why these benefits arise in separate articles so they get to appreciate what you do and how VALUABLE your product really is.

You will find ideas, headlines, tag lines, and pure advertising GOLD COPY in this benefits extraction and analysis.

And once you are done, NOW you are ready to write REAL advertisements of all kinds – and you’ll find that now you ACTUALLY KNOW what your product is from the marketer’s standpoint, you’ll also be able to SELL IT TO OTHERS.

Oh, and one more thing.

A benefits extraction is also possibly one of THE most motivational and exciting things any author or creator can do for THEMSELVES.

Yup, it’s all true. It really is THAT good, and it REALLY has all those benefits!
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Metro Hanger Advertising media is placed on home mailboxes, doorknobs, plus cars, apartment buildings, bikes, and other consumer connection points. Metro Hanger Advertising can consist of straightforward paper door hangers, plastic bag door hangers, and/or custom shaped door hangers. Our goal is to provide the Colorado small business owner with high quality, high impact, low cost door hanger advertising. We also will give you available advertising templates for ads, postcards, door hangers and flyers at no cost. Door hanger advertising can help announce to everyone in your area that you’re the .

Years ago, I started collecting junk mail and advertising gimmicks: door hangers, table top tent cards from restaurants, all kinds of direct mail especially letters. Thankfully, there are other methods of door-to-door advertising: leaving a flyer or door-hanger. Co-operative advertising is a variety of diverse businesses targeting the same neighbourhood and sharing the advertising space on a door hanger. mmLoadMenus(); Door hangers can be informative or advertising in nature. It’s basically a marketing material, where you hook the door hanger onto the door knob of a door advertising your product or service. Think of the promotional possibilities that door hanger advertising can afford a local bar or restaurant. The potential benefits of door hanger printing and door hanger advertising cannot be understated. The memo board door hanger is a visible and creative advertising medium. That’s not hard to understand

door hangers are just such a handy way to leave your advertising message. How it works Advertising messages are printed on door hangers, similar to the type used on “do not disturb” signs in hotels. Read the rest of this entry »