Many marketers these days have changed their focus from offline marketing to online marketing. But leaving offline opportunities is a big mistake. Offline marketing strategies are generally more personal, and if you’re more personal with people, they’ll feel like they know you and will be more apt to buy your products or services.

Several low-cost options in offline advertising are effective and easy to implement. Here are three of them that you should be using.

1. Business Cards. One of the first things you should do once you establish a business is get business cards. They are relatively cheap to print and are easy to distribute. This is one of the necessary marketing devices you need. Of course, an effective design is key. It should be simple, with no more than two fonts and your logo clearly placed. Your logo should be the main element on your business card.

Business cards are easy to transport and easy to distribute – just hand them out to people you meet at conferences, trade shows, restaurants, anywhere! If you provide a product or service a waiter might need, leave your card on the table with the tip. I’ve even heard of someone who leaves his business cards in bathroom stalls or on bathroom sinks.

2. Flyer advertising. Flyers are extremely easy to create – at home or you can pay a printing company to do it for you. You can create your flyer in many software applications, the most common being Microsoft Word and Microsoft Publisher.

You need to decide whether you want to use color printing or black-and-white. Color printing is more expensive, but the colors attract people to the flyers and you’ll have a better chance of bringing in more sales. When designing your flyer, keep it simple.

Don’t use more than two fonts if possible, and one main photo (you don’t have to use a photo, but it’s a good idea). If you use multiple photos, be sure to choose one as your main focal point – it should be bigger than the rest and placed on the top half of the page.

You can distribute your flyers to people on the street walking by; hang them up in supermarkets and other stores; or hang them in banks and community centers. Be sure to check the local ordinances so that you don’t break any laws by hanging your flyers in community spots.

3. Vehicle advertising. This one isn’t quite as conventional as the previous two, which is precisely why it works. People don’t expect it. If you commute in a city, you drive past thousands of people every day. If you’re stuck in slow or stopped traffic, people will want something interesting to look at. You might as well be that something!

You can stick magnets that have your company name and Web site address to your car. If you want something more permanent, you can have decals or an ad painted onto your vehicle.

You could also use your license plate holder as advertisement space. Many car dealerships do it, and you can too! There are many Web sites that will make custom plate holders for you. Vehicle advertising is on the rise, so get in on it while it’s still new so that you get noticed!

Author Info:

Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of developments in color printing industry and how these improvements can benefit small to medium-scale business.

You probably have gotten used to handing out your business cards quite regularly, which is good! Your business cards are great tools that can build your contact list and customer relations. If you are not already, you should get in the habit of handing out your business cards to everyone you meet that could become a business contact or customer in the future.

In addition, however, there are some extra tricks that you can use to increase the impact that your business cards will have on people. Here is a rundown of these tricks of the trade:

Handwrite Something
When you hand out a business card, get in the habit of hand writing something on it, such as a mobile number or office number. For whatever reason, this increases the likelihood that your card will be held onto by that person, and thus utilized.

Give Several Cards
Also, when you give your card to a customer, give them two or three extras. Ask each person to give the extras to friends or family members. This maximizes the effect that your cards can have, with no extra work on your part. It is efficiency at its best.

Use it in Surprising Ways
You can use your card in ways that most people do not think of. For instance, the next time you eat out, leave a card – along with the tip – for the waiter. Don’t you think that waiter will be quite likely to check out your business (assuming you are a good tipper, of course)? Here is another excellent idea if you regularly pay road tolls: as you pass through the toll booth, pay for the car behind you, and leave your card for the driver. At the very least, that person will likely call you to thank you, and you have a chance to make a new customer!

Always Have It
Never, ever leave home without your business cards. You never know when you will meet someone to whom you should hand out a card. Most of the time, you are going to meet someone like that, so you should always have some one hand.

Design Effectively
When you design your next business card printing project, keep some general design tips in mind. Use the available space properly, by using the back of the card, but being careful not to overload it with content. Remember to include more than just your contact information. Focus on one aspect of your company that you can talk about on your cards without making it look cluttered.

These are some relatively easy things you can do to maximize the impact that your business cards can have. But they can also be fun to try out, so go for it!

Author Info:

Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of developments in business card printing industry and how these improvements can benefit small to medium-scale business.

Just to underline the importance of online marketing and what your competitors are spending their advertising on to generate leads online. It’s fair to say that your website should be the hub of all your online marketing. Online marketing has one goal: Lead generation.
Just to underline the importance of online marketing and what your competitors are spending their advertising on to generate leads online.
Natural search (79% of respondents)
Email marketing with in-house lists (75%)
Paid search (71%)
These are still the three most commonly used online methods for lead generation.” E Consultancy: Online Lead Generation Report 2008.
What’s the difference between all of the different types of online marketing?
1. Natural search
2. Email marketing
3. Paid Search

1. Natural search results: Getting your website to the top of the search engines for specific keywords that relate to your business. It is known as search engine optimisation. There are a variety of techniques to search engine optimisation and it generally is a slow burn that will yield results in long run.

2. Email marketing: Gathering a list of email addresses of people you have previously had contact with and sending emails to them. This could be in the form of a special offer or a discount, or if you sell products a sale. If you are really feeling generous perhaps offers them something for free - your expert knowledge. Where possible it should be personalised and offer products relevant to them.

3. Paid Search: Advertising right at the point when someone searches for your product or service, and paying the search provider every time someone clicks on your ad. This is a highly targeted way to firstly get traffic to your site, and if it’s relevant to searches carried out it will be the number one way for instant generation of online leads. This is the quick win solution if done well.
Once you have visitors to your site it is a must to convert them into either leads of sales. This is done through the use of good landing pages with Calls to actions on. In the world of call to action you simply must specify what you want a visitor to do – whether this be to call you, contact you or buy, 21st century internet users must call them to action.

Author Info:

Mancala technology are specialists in http://www.mancala.co.uk”>Internet Marketing, SEO Newcastle and Web Design Newcastle.

If you are considering jumping into the world of Internet marketing but do not have experience in this type of marketing, it is definitely worthwhile to consider hiring a consultant to assist you in your advertising endeavor. This is important because they can do a great deal to assist you in ensuring that the marketing effort is a success. You may pay more for their services than you would to handle the Internet marketing on your own but the results you gain from the effort will likely be significantly higher. Hiring a consultant to assist you in your Internet marketing campaign is even a worthwhile endeavor if you have some experience in Internet marketing but are competing in a competitive niche and need some additional assistance to help you rise above the competition.

The key to hiring a consultant to assist in an Internet marketing campaign is to hire the right consultant. You will find there are many different options available to you as Internet marketing has become a huge industry. However, not all consultants are created equal. You may find that some consultants can create significantly better results than other consultants. There are, however, a few characteristics to look for when seeking a qualified consultant in the Internet marketing industry. Surprisingly cost is not one of the most important considerations. Experience and past performance are much more important. You can compare costs among consultants who are similarly qualified but using cost as a primary source of evaluation is not recommended.

Experience is very important when it comes to selecting a consultant to assist you in an Internet marketing campaign. Experience is critical because consultants who have a great deal of experience also have a great deal of understanding of which techniques work best and which techniques are not as effective. This can save you a great deal of time and money as there will likely not be as much experimentation necessary as there would be with a less experienced consultant. More experienced consultants will also likely be better skilled at dealing with clients and will likely answer your questions more quickly and keep you better informed about the progress of your Internet marketing campaign. All of this is important because you will likely be very interested in receiving progress reports and staying up to date on everything that is going on with your Internet marketing campaign.

Seeking out a consultant in the Internet marketing industry with an excellent past record of performance is also very important. This is so important because consultants who have had a great deal of success in the past will likely have a great deal of success while assisting you as well. Past performance is considered to be one of the best indications of future performance. This does not mean that new consultants are necessarily going to perform poorly but there is some risk involved in selecting a consultant who does not have a great deal of experience or who has not performed well in the past. You can feel much more confident putting your Internet marketing campaign in the hands of a consultant who typically generates the type of results you are looking for in your own Internet marketing campaign.

Once you have evaluated consultants on the basis of experience and past performance, it is time to start considering price. Considering price early in the process of seeking a consultant may cause you to be influenced by price over performance. Some consultants may be incredibly affordable but if they are not capable of producing the desired results, it may end up being a complete waste of money. However, once you have narrowed your list of potential consultants down to a few qualified candidates, it is definitely time to start comparing prices. Once you are confident each of the candidates on your list is well qualified, choosing the least expensive candidate is worthwhile. However it is important to note all of the fees involved to ensure you are making an accurate cost comparison.

Author Info:

Madoda Ngesi is an entrepreneur and has been doing business online for the last ten yes. He is an avid reader and writer. Visit his site at http://sabusinessplace.com

Many factors affect how long it will take for an ad campaign to start working. In other words, people want to know when they’re going to start seeing money pour in from new customers and the answer is: there is no definitive answer.

What I can tell you though, is what factors go into affecting this time period before you start seeing results from your ad campaign, called the “ramping up period.”

Product purchase cycle
The product purchase cycle refers to how many times per week, per month or per year a consumer is looking to purchase your type of product. For instance, the purchase cycle for food items, like one week for milk, will be much shorter than the purchase cycle of five years for televisions. The longer your purchase cycle, the longer you’ll need to advertise before you reap the rewards.

A general rule to estimate your ramping up period is to calculate 20% to 40% of your product purchase cycle. So, if your purchase cycle is 12 months, you won’t feel the effects of your ads for about 2.5 to 5 months.

Your percentage of the total ads for your type of product
This is referred to as “share of voice.” For instance, if you sell digital cameras, when shoppers research digital cameras on Google’s Web site, how many online ads do you have on Google compared to your competitors? How many television ads do you have running in prime time compared to other digital camera manufacturers?

The larger your percentage of the total ads for your type of product, the shorter your ramping up period.

The persuasiveness of your ads
If your ads only give information and don’t persuade people to take action, your ramping up period will be longer. If you don’t include a call to action of some sort, like “Call now” or “Visit our Web site,” no customer is going to be motivated to contact you at all.

People are comparing your message to your competitors’ messages, and whoever convinces the consumer that they need this product is who wins. Your message should be informative and persuasive. Show your product’s benefits and try to get the consumer to realize that they need your product now.

Your choice of ad delivery
You basically have two options for ad delivery: visual and audio. Of course, you can also have a combination of both, as in a television commercial.

A common myth is that people remember more from seeing words, rather than hearing them, but the opposite is actually true. Think about it – how many songs can you sing compared to how many television commercials you can repeat?

So you can surmise that products with a shorter purchase cycle should go with visual ads and products with longer purchase cycles should choose auditory ads, which is definitely a possibility. It’s only a possibility though, because of the other factors that influence the ramping up period.

As you can see, there are so many always-changing factors that it’s hard to pin down a definite time period to judge the effectiveness of your ads by. Your best bet is to use the 20% to 40% estimate of your product cycle.

Author Info:

Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of developments in the poster printing industry and how these improvements can benefit small to medium-scale businesses.

Are you sitting there staring at your computer thinking, “I don’t have the first clue how to promote my website?” If so then you’re not alone. There are literally hundreds of new site administrators and business owners who have absolutely no idea how to go about promoting their site and increasing their web traffic (and subsequently their profits).

The good news is that with a little Internet Marketing 101 you can go from clueless to maximum exposure in almost no time. The first thing you have to learn is that anyone going out onto the ‘Net looking for a product is looking for something else as well: Information. The information industry is the most profitable on the Web, and if you use your knowledge properly you could use this to exponentially increase the amount of exposure your site receives in a day.

The first concept all good Internet marketers need to know is that good sites are built around good information. If you can establish yourself as the leading source of information in your niche you’ll be able to capture a large percentage of your target market right off the bat.
How do you do that? You want to be the Wal-Mart Supercenter of information for your product on the Web.

Sound ridiculous? Think about it for a minute. Why do people shop at WalMart? Yes, they want to save money (and hopefully if you’re attempting to establish a business you’re doing everything in your power to do that too) but they also want to save time.
Consumers are basically lazy at heart. They’d rather spend an hour at one store getting everything they need than bouncing from store to store and taking up an entire afternoon to finish their shopping list. WalMart lets them find shoes, clothes, groceries, sports equipment, electronics, books, toys and automotive supplies all in one central location!

Internet consumers are just as lazy. They’d much rather find all of their information at one site than spend hours on a search engine scanning the ‘Net, and if they find a site that can provide them with that they will return over and over again-and they’ll send their friends as well! A well formatted site with plenty of up to date information on your niche will do more to increase your web exposure than any amount of flyers and banner ads ever would.

In order to keep your site popular you’re going to need to update the information it contains regularly. No one wants to read outdated information. You can further your cause by submitting articles to a popular article index like EzineArticles.com. Not only will the addition of your URL at the bottom of your article encourage readers to go visit your site to see what else you have to offer, a well written article will establish you as a subject matter expert in your particular niche as surely as a widely published academic paper will cement the reputation of a researcher among his peers.

By making your site a central hub for information and establishing yourself (and subsequently your site) as a subject matter expert you’ll be able to increase your flow of web traffic with very little effort and increase your profits with far less expense than you would using any other method of website promotion.

Author Info:

John is a contributor to Connecticut Mortgage, http://connecticutmortgagecalculator.com

Small business owners can have a hard time finding the right ways to market their product or service. There are plenty of right ways to do things, and plenty of wrong ways. Here is a brief overview of some of the mistakes to avoid when marketing your small business:

Mistake #1: Not researching your product need
Many people have a wonderful idea of a product that is needed in the market, and then spend all their money to create it. You need to research the market first to make sure there isn’t already a similar product out there, and whether there is even a need for your product.

Conduct market research, hold focus groups and only make a small run of your product – a few hundred or so – to test your target market with. This can save you a lot of money and heartache in the long run.

Mistake #2: Thinking that the product will market itself
Many small business owners think their product is so great that they don’t need to do any marketing at all – people will flock to you. That’s just not true, and I can’t think of one example of where it was true. Everyone thinks it’s because the “right product” just hasn’t been invented yet, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. It just won’t work that way. How can people flock to something they’ve never heard of?

You must consistently market your product, which means you need to create a marketing plan. You must define your target market, your unique selling point that distinguishes you from your competition; you must develop a marketing action plan and decide on a marketing budget. These are just the bare-bones basics of a marketing plan. You need some kind of plan to be successful. If you don’t know how to create a marketing plan, just Google “marketing plan” or “marketing agency” – many agencies are hired to just create marketing plans.

Mistake #3: Preparing and then not taking action
Many business owners have a fear of failing. Actually, who doesn’t have this fear? But instead of trying to prevent it, you need to follow your marketing plan (see Mistake #2) and forge ahead. It’s hard at first, no one will tell you it’s not, but you have to sell one product in order to sell a million. If you fail, evaluate what went wrong, try to fix it and try again. Repeat as needed!

Mistake #4: Constantly changing your marketing campaign
It happens a lot – the business owner and employees see their marketing materials every day and get tired of them. The same old poster printing images, the same old brochure copy…who wants to see that after six months of it being around? Your potential customers do, that’s who.
Just because you’ve seen your logo a million times, doesn’t mean everyone has. If your marketing campaign is working just fine, don’t change it for the sake of change. A million people haven’t seen your logo at all. Don’t change your marketing campaign until it stops bringing in customers.

Mistake #5: Don’t play monkey-see, monkey-do with your competitors
You should know what your competitors are doing, but you shouldn’t copy it just because it works for them.

If a competitor is known as a “low price leader,” don’t try to beat him out of that title – choose another like “high quality leader.” Find an important quality that your competitors aren’t giving to your shared target.

Author Info:

Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of developments in the poster printing industry and how these improvements can benefit small to medium-scale businesses.

The main reason for building a website or creating a blog is in hopes of either making money or getting people to read what you have to say.

In order to do either we need website visitors. And not all website visitors are equal. It’s best if a high percentage of your website visitors are people interested in the subject of your site, not people who wind up there by accident.

And, it’s better still if your traffic is free…if it comes as a result of places like;

1) Yahoo Answers.

2) Myspace.com

3) Yahoo Groups

4) Stumbleupon.com

5) Forums

6) Craigslist.org

7) Site maps

E-Book Giveaway

9) Website Design

10) Submit To Directories

11) Tell a Friend

12) Search Engine Optimization

13) Squidoo.com

14) Social bookmarking sites

15) Article Promotion

16) Site Explorer

17) Epinion.com

18) Alexa.com

19) Newsletter Box

20) Pay per Click search engines

21) Get Links from Relevant Websites

22) Increase the Size of Your Site

22) Send out Press Releases

23) Advertise On Online classified Ad Sites

24) Use Firefox Plug-in

25) Add a Forum to Your Site

26) Add a Blog to Your Site

27) Optimize Your Blog for The Search Engines

28) Comment on Other Peoples Blogs

29) MySpace News

30) Digg

31) Banner Exchanges

32) Traffic Exchanges

33) Pop Unders

34) Technorati and ping it when your blog content changes

35) Use a ping service like pingomatic to ping RSS aggregators

36) Submit your blog to all of the RSS directories

37) Link to other blogs in your posts
38) Use Stumbleupon to stumble your posts.

39) Ask your readers to submit your posts to social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, etc.)

40) Start a group blog.

41) Join SpicyPage and promote your blog

42) Join a webring.

43) Sign up for BlogWoods and promote your blog

44) Exchange Ads (not blogroll links) with complementary blogs.

45) Trade blog roll links with related blogs.

46) Use Twitter

47) Publish videos on YouTube

48) Search for Wikis related to your.

49) Join Hub pages and post links to your blog from articles you write.

50) Pray.

51) Create a MySpace Page. Put your blog on it, and get some friends.

52) Tell people you will link back to them if they review your blog

53) Most brands are not well established online, you review related content and it will rank well.

54) Review relevant products on Amazon.com.

55) Create product lists on Amazon.com

56) Review related sites on Alexa

57) Review products and services on shopping search engines.

58) Swap some links.

59) Try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages.

60) Sell items on eBay.

61) Target niche social news sites like DZone, Sphinn or Hugg

62) Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website url as a signature.

63) Do email signature swaps

64) Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites

65) Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords - Google Images generates traffic too.

66) Tag blog photos at Flicker

67) Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.

68) Outsource grunt work.

69) After someone orders from you offer a one-time offer that compliments your product.

70) Participate in Blog Carnivals

71) create a network of blogs in different niches, and then link them together

72) Give away stock images with a wee watermark of your URL

73) Find and discuss memes

74) Create a Yahoo Group in the niche your site sits.
75) Bookmark your site on Del.icio.us and if you’re really keen, add a Del.icio.us button to your homepage.

76) Place a free ad for your company on Gumtree.

77) Syndicate your site’s content by using an RSS feeds.

78) Submit your RSS feeds to aggregator sites.

79) Don’t worry about PageRank - worrying about PageRank is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.*

80) Get a custom t-shirt made with your website URL on it, and wear it often.

81) Get a custom t-shirt made with your website URL on it, and wear it often.

82) Send out a newsletter!

83) Giving away an eBook is an excellent way to generate word-of-mouth about your site.

84) Ask bloggers and other Web site owners to review your site and/or products.

85) Add a “Tell a Friend” function to your site, so people can easily recommend you to their mates.

86) Share your banners on banner exchange sites.

87) Create a “lense” for your site on Squidoo

88) Do you have really hot content on your site that geeks would love? If so Slashdot will bring you a mass of traffic.

89) upload a favicon.gif file so that your users have a nice icon when they bookmark your site.
90) Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search
91) Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.
92) Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.

93) Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts.

94) Increase the list you ping

95) Use Facebook

96) Social Networking

97) Micro

98) Email Marketing

99) RSS Feeds

100) Get outside links to internal pages

101) Use free hosting and build sites and link them back to your main site.

Author Info:

About Author, Janeth Duque, Specialist in marketing and web site design. custom web site desing how to make money custom silicone wristbands dating rants

The main features of the telemarketing are to handling proper skill, with using the proper technology solutions with good quality and good communication skills.

In USA there are many companies provides solution. There are many methodologies to select the information. The online B2B and B2C services provide the proper system to get the approach.

Here are the key tips to handle different types of call using the telemarketing services.

1. The first and foremost rule is to adopt the professional approach to pickup call at first ring.

2. The second approach is well come to the customer in a good manners with interest. Handling call is one of the important tasks. It requires good listening and answering habits. Finally it leaves your client’s impression good or bad depends on your ability.

3. The third important thing is when the reply call center telephone, clearly enunciates, maintains your sound capacity to be moderate and slowly and clearly speaks when replied the telephone therefore your visitor possibly easily understands you.

4. The fourth one is completely and accurately adopts the telephone messages. If has something you not to understand or is unable to spell then you can ask the caller again.

5. The last good quality phone answering ability is to do not use the Speakerphone. It will give bad impression on the caller and your client too.

Effective communication is one of the essential tasks for the tele call marketing agents. It needs lots of training and experience to handle the calls properly.

Author Info:

Gary Zivkovich is a writer for http://www.1855telemarketing.com, the premier website to find telemarketing, telemarketing services, mailing telemarketing, telemarketing service, outbound telemarketing, telemarketing list, free mortgage script telemarketing and many more.

Engaging interactive content is being used more and more to increase brand awareness on the web, quite simply because it works. Promotional Flash games can keep people focused on your brand for extended periods and coming back for more. When considering a web based Flash game there are two main options available to you. Licensing a pre-built, off the shelf game or a custom solution, designed and built from scratch. So, which is best for you?

On the face of it, it’s a bit of a no-brainer to many. Licensed games are cheaper plus you can browse and even test out finished products before choosing one. You know what you’re getting, so no surprises at the end of the project and you’ve just saved a chunk of your marketing budget which you can spend elsewhere. It’s a win-win situation?

If only it was that simple. Unfortunately, a relatively small, short-term budget saving and knowing exactly what you’ll get for your money from the outset are all licensed solutions have going for them. There are two big problems with taking the licensing route:

1) You are making do with the best currently available solution for your brand. This may seem fine, but in actual fact it’s likely to be worlds apart, in terms of how well it fits in with your campaign, from a solution that has been designed and built specifically tailored to your brand. It’s like trying to knock a square peg into a round hole. You wouldn’t use anything but unique, tailored marketing solutions for your brand in any other areas of your campaign, so why make this any different. For instance, imagine if every car manufacturer used the same off the shelf T.V. or magazine advert, just modified to include their logo! Which brings us onto the second problem.

2) Anyone else is free to license that same game for their website. Chances are the Flash game you are considering licensing is already available in at least a handful of locations on the web. Online games portal submissions are essential to maximising plays of your game and exposure of your brand. Most games portals will only accept unique submissions, so you are seriously limiting the potential of your campaign by going down this route. A custom Flash game doesn’t have this problem, because you can be sure your game isn’t already available on any of these sites.

The only surprises you should be experiencing with any design project are good ones. As long as you work with an experienced, reputable designer for your Flash game project this should always be the case. A good designer will be able to exceed your expectations in every step of the process from coming up with a game concept through to the finished product, without ever going over budget.

When it comes to marketing your brand, you want to stand out. Although the off the shelf solutions may seem slightly more attractive from a budget point-of-view, the disadvantages far outweigh the savings made. A licensed Flash game will not be unique to your marketing campaign and if it’s available elsewhere you will be seriously limiting potential exposure via external sites. At worst, your direct competitors could be using the same game to promote their own brand.

Author Info:

Simon Walklate is a partner in Custom Branded Viral Flash Online Web Game Designers and Developers The Motion Monkey, based in Bristol, UK.