7 Advertising Mistakes Most Small and Local Businesses Make

Advertising is crucial to the most small businesses, particularly small retail and restaurant establishments vying for the attention of consumers in medium to large size markets. And yet, most small businesses don't understand how to advertise effectively. There are many common mistakes that small businesses make in their advertising. Here we're going to take a look at seven of the most common mistakes that I witness on a nearly daily basis.Mistake Number 1: Advertising to Everyone. By making your advertising message broad, and trying to reach anyone and every who sees it, you are actually marketing to no one. Solution: Target your message to a subset of the population, and your advertising will resonate with them more effectively, because they identify with what your business is about.Mistake Number 2: Not understanding the true value of the customer. Most businesses look at the cost of advertising and think they need to recoup that full investment from the direct response of the ad. Instead, they don't recognize that new customers who come to them from an ad have a lifetime value that is greater than the revenue of their initial purchase. Solution: Recognize that customers have a lifetime value, and position your ads and business to maximize repeat purchases.Mistake Number 3: Focusing on one format of advertising. The fact is that your prospects need repeat exposure to your message before they remember seeing it. Studies suggest that, depending on your industry, you need to have your ad seen between 3 and 12 times before it is effective. And if you only restrict your advertising to one format or one medium, you are missing out on the opportunity to be seen more often. Solution: Diversify your advertising across multiple formats.Mistake Number 4: Creating weak ads. If you don't have a great message or a compelling looking ad, people will not notice it. Ads need to make an impact in order to be noticed, and if you have a weak ad, you are simply throwing money away. Solution: Look for ads that make an impact on you, and emulate their structure.


Mistake Number 5: Having a weak landing page. If you are advertising online, and sending people to your website, be sure you send them to a relevant page that's congruent with the ad. And that page needs to be effective at telling the prospect what they need to do next in order to buy from you. Solution: Make sure you are sending your internet traffic to the right place on your website with a purposeful landing page.Mistake Number 6: Cutting back when times are slow. If you are not doing enough business, that's the absolute wrong time to cut back on advertising, which, after all is a vital tool in generating more business. Solution: Budget advertising as one of your business's regular and necessary investments in order to remain relevant and grow.Mistake Number 7: Not capturing your leads and following up. If you are sending visitors to your website, chances are they won't buy right away. By capturing the leads who come to your site, however, you have the opportunity to develop a relationship with them and educate them about doing business with you. This approach builds trust, and results in much higher conversions of visitors to buyers. Solution: Create a lead capture and follow up system on your website.As you can see, nothing on the above list is all that difficult to put in place. By simply recognizing and avoiding these mistakes, you can put your business advertising in position to thrive. If you want more details on how to fix your advertising and build more effective campaigns, visit Baer On Marketing to download my free report on better advertising practices.

Small Business Advertising: Why You Need To Advertise In More Than One Place

Is your business getting limited results from advertising? One place to look when this happens is how widely your advertising message is spread. Many businesses who face this problem tend to focus on only one form of advertising, therefore limiting their reach.While it's not recommended that you have a large target audience, it is still important to have more than one form or venue for your advertising in order to reach your target market in multiple ways. The fact is that many businesses fail, in part, because they avoid widening their view and stay only with one type of advertising.A lot of advertisers think that the medium on which their advertising is, in fact, just as important if not more important than the message they are promoting. So when you say that you restrict your advertising to Google AdWords, you are missing an entire population of prospects who are not looking for you there.Let's talk a little bit about why you don't want to focus on only one form about advertising. Let's say you are focusing on billboards only or bus ads only or the newspaper display ads only... you don't get the attention of the people who aren't looking in those places. If your billboard ads are on three major highways and you will have the potential to reach an audience that never drives down those highways, well you're missing out on a huge opportunity. So you want to diversify the ways and the places in which you were doing your marketing in order to reach more people.Small business owners, of course, are not typically marketing experts, and most of us rely on advertising salespeople to guide us through the best choices for where to advertise. The problem is, of course, that salespeople have a bias toward their medium and their platform. And so, lots of small, local businesses find themselves restricting their reach and only getting their message out to a limited audience.These days consumers have so much competition for their attention that it now takes somewhere between three and twelve impressions of an advertising message before a prospect even remember seeing an ad. So putting an ad in that monthly paper 12 times a year, and nowhere else, is simply a waste of money for an advertiser. It's simply not the right investment unless you are running those ads as part a broader marketing and advertising plan on multiple platforms.So what sorts of platforms should you consider? Rule number one is to go where your prospects are... so if you are marketing a retirement community, you, obviously, don't want to be taking out ads in children's magazines.


Here are a few possible platforms to think about:• The Yellow Pages - Clearly nobody is going to the phone book any more, and most publishers have moved their services online. In some markets they provide valuable services and a great reach, but in others, they get very little traffic to their online properties. So do your homework before committing to this type of advertising.• Direct mail and postcards can still be a highly effective way to market, but it depends on your goal, your budget, the type of targeting you're trying to do, and the offer you are making. Ultimately, postcards require repeat impressions, which mean you need to be mailing to the same address multiple times before you can expect a reasonable response.• Online advertising can be far more cost effective than direct mail, and, on any platforms, like Google, Bing, and Facebook, you can target a very specific audience who is already looking for or has demonstrated interest in what you are promoting. In addition, online display advertising, or contextual advertising can be very effective at reaching a local audience interested in a particular topic. For example, a financial planner can advertise to people within a 15 mile radius around her office who are reading an article about retirement planning on the Wall Street Journal's website.The point is that there are multiple ways to promote a brand, a service, and an offer, and the more places you are seen (repeatedly) the more success you will have at getting prospects to take action on your ads.Small, local business advertising is easy to do when you have a strategy and know where you have the best chances of attracting prospects. Just don't shortchange yourself by advertising in just one place... and know what other mistakes to avoid. To help small business owners who are looking for help, I've prepared a report on 7 mistakes local businesses should avoid in their advertising. If you think it would be useful for your business, you can get access to it at http://baeronmarketing.com/7mistakes.

Five Reasons for Your Advertiser to Keep Advertising on Your Site

When you are able to obtain advertisers for your website, you will hope they stay with you for an extended period of time. The security provided by the continuous weekly or monthly payments is reassuring. This is especially true in the volatile online advertising market, where many advertisers will change sites with great ease if simply given a better offer elsewhere. If they do decide to stick with you, it will probably be because of one of the five following reasons:Performance
Only the advertiser can decide how well their ads are performing on your website. Some will be happy with a certain number of clicks, while others will focus more on the quality of those clicks and the sales that come from them. A good advertiser will know exactly what they want out of their ads, and will stay with your site for as long as their goals are being achieved.Value
The price you offer your advertisers is not necessarily the most important factor that determines how happy your advertisers are with your service. It is a combination of how much they pay and what they get in return. In other words, the return on their investment. Ideally, they should be getting a fair amount of ad impressions, leads, signups, and/or sales, for a reasonable amount of investment. Again, only the advertiser can gauge what is and is not acceptable in terms of ROI.Quality
Clearly, advertisers love it when visitors intentionally click on their ad and visit their site, but generally, that is not all that matters. What the visitor does after they click on the ad is just as or even more important. Visitors that mention the advertiser's site and products on social media networks are very valuable. Of course, any sales generated from the visitors or newsletter signups are also of great value. These are all signs of quality visitors which are what the advertiser really benefits from. The more people of this kind that come from your site, the more likely it is that the advertiser will stick with you.


Tech Support
Advertisers will often want to quickly change out or tweak the ads that appear on your website. They may also notice that there is a problem with their ad that needs to be rectified. If you can promptly address those technical issues and make all the changes that they need, the advertiser will be a lot more likely to put their trust in your abilities to take care of their advertising needs. This emphasizes the need for a good ad server that allows you and your advertisers to handle your ad operations with a few simple clicks.Customer Service
The same rule applies when it comes to all other details of your advertising program, such as billing and the ability to answer questions or concerns. It is essential that you respond to any such questions as quickly and as professionally as possible. The longer an advertiser goes without having their issues and questions addressed, the more likely they are to become disgruntled and take their business elsewhere. There are plenty of other options to choose from, so make sure you meet and listen to your customers' needs.

An Aspirant's Entry Into the Advertising and Public Relations Industry

What is Advertising?Advertising is the process of creating positive imagery for a product or service so that the brand becomes salient in the consumer's mind. It can make the difference between business success and failure. It is a cost-efficient way of telling buyers what is for sale and what the product's features are. At the very least, it seeks to persuade someone who is in the market for a given product or service to consider a particular brand. And it employs some of the brightest and most creative economists, researchers, artists, producers, writers, and business people in the country today.Why Study Advertising?Think you can come up with better ads than the ones airing on TV? How about successfully managing the rollout of new products and working to improve their perception by the media? You suit the advertising or public relations' industry if these possibilities interest you. The core activity is to take a product or the latest Transformers film - and construct promotional campaigns that get people excited about them. Advertising and PR firms help companies, non-profits and governments manage everything from speeches, to the look of brochures, and to major crises.Advertising Career PossibilitiesAdvertising agencies handle a broad range of marketing tasks requiring people with experience and ability in overall management and specialized skills. In all agencies, the jobs usually fall into five categories:• Account Management
The responsibility of the account manager is to be the client's representative at the agency, and the agency's representative at the client's organization. It is his or her job to get the best possible work from the agency for the client-but at a profitable return for the agency.


• Account Planning
Essentially, account planners make sure the consumer's perspective is fully considered when advertising is developed. The account planner works to continually focus and re-focus the agency's strategic and creative thinking on the consumer, helping the team-particularly the creatives-understand what "turns the consumer on".• Creative
The creative department of an advertising agency is responsible for developing the ideas, images, and words that make up commercials and ads. Entry-level positions may include a Junior or Assistant Copywriter who assists one or more copywriters in editing and proofreading ad copy, writing body copy for established print campaigns, and developing merchandising and sales promotion materials.• Media
The media department of an advertising agency is responsible for placing advertising where it will reach the right people at the right time and in the right place and do so in a cost-effective way. Planning and buying media at an advertising agency is exciting and challenging because ways of communicating are constantly changing and becoming more complex. Entry-level position can be an Assistant Media Planner.

Need More Traffic? Try an Explainer Video

A unique video can explain what your company does, what you offer and what you produce, all in 2 or 3 minutes, in the simplest way possible. This increases the chance that the consumer will buy your product. Sometimes these are called motion graphic videos.There are many companies who specialize in building explainer videos. Choosing one depends on the budget and needs of your company.Motion graphic videos are used by many people, not just companies with websites. They are used in kickstarter campaigns, meetings, blogs, book trailers. Inspirational speakers often use them as a sort of fast, powerful power point presentation. Non-profit organizations use them, as well. Anyone who has an idea they want people to remember can use them. It is easy to remember ideas from these videos because they are concise, witty, and cleverly animated.These videos work because people are already used to watching online media content; in fact, 100 million people watch online video every day. 80% of people who said they visited a website and watched the entire explainer video said they remembered 90% of the sites content.Video is now ranking highest in results of search engines. In fact, video results are found in about 70% of the 100 top rankings on Google. These motion graphic videos are having a huge impact on the retail world.4 in 10 customers go to a store or shop online as a direct result of watching a motion graphic video. Products are becoming more and more specialized all the time, and these videos present a message that people are willing and eager to listen to. Crazy Egg, a company offering a service that will show you where potential consumers clicked on their site, managed to generate an extra $21,000 in revenue each month, simply by adding an explainer video to their site.


So how does this video actually get traffic to your website? 75% of business executives surveyed say they watch online videos at least once a week, increasing business to business sales. Often they watch a video on YouTube and then they are likely to visit the marketer's website. fivestarvideomarketing.com claims that the "quickest most effective method to generate new leads for local businesses is the use of video and explainer type recordings". Videos can be shared and roughly 68% of viewers polled say they do share them, so it's possible for a video to go viral. This also leads to digital word of mouth. Explainer videos are not just the wave of the future; they are making an impact today.

5 Ways to Succeed With Facebook Ads

You know that feeling right after you've designed that great ad for your business, posted it on Facebook, and are certain it's the solution to all your revenue needs? You know what comes next... nothing. That's right, because most advertisers on Facebook are simply throwing their money away with ads that will never be seen or acted upon by their intended audience. Here are 5 tips to help you and your business overcome this all-too-common problem.1. Mobile-Only AdsSomewhere around three quarters of all Facebook users access Facebook on phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. When you create a Facebook ad, you are given the chance to decide where the ad will run - news feeds, side, or mobile. One strategy that many advertisers are using is to split their targeting between their mobile campaign and desktop campaign rather than creating a separate campaign for each. Just make sure you have a mobile landing page in place if you run mobile ads.2. Ads for your mobile appIf you have a mobile app for your business, Facebook allows you to track the downloads of your app downloads, which can be a great way to create your own community, because you now have direct access to those users. For a startup developer or business in growth mode, there is clearly tons of potential here. Just don;t abuse it.3. RetargetingFew people know the term, but nearly all of us have encountered ads following us around the web (or around Facebook). Let's say you are on a site that sells shoes, whether you make a purchase or not, it's highly likely that you will see ads for the shoes you were looking at all around the edges of the internet as you browse elsewhere.


Well, Facebook allows you to retarget your ads using their custom audiences tool. You simply need to embed a code (which they provide) in your website, and start building the list of visitors to whom you want to market or encourage a return visit to your site.4. Experiment with page postsOne of the ways you can advertise on Facebook is by promoting posts on your fan page. It's always important to promote organic page posts that have had a high degree of engagement and sharing among Facebook users. This will instantly add social context to your target audience and provide the highest ROI. And, more importantly, it will encourage Facebook to show more of your posts to organic traffic going forward.5. Rotate your creative designChanging up the creative components of your ads has long been a practice in advertising. And, when you advertise on Facebook, it's no different. Users see your ads multiple times, and to avoid them becoming blind to your content, it's wise to change an element of two so they keep looking.

How To Promote A Business With Promotional T-Shirts

Promotional gifts offer an effective and cheap form of advertising, compared with other types of advertising. They offer a great way of positively changing the perspective of audience's to the company brand. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to find many companies using customized t-shirts to promote different products and/or services. However, this trend began more than a decade ago when major brands discovered the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns when they implemented this marketing method. Some of the t-shirts were offered for free to buyers who purchased their products in bulk.Uses of promotional t-shirtsCompanies are increasingly using custom t-shirts to promote their brand. They realize people have no problem receiving free stuff. Therefore, they use these free customized accessories to achieve their sales goals. Attractive messages and/or images are often printed on the t-shirts to entice people to wear them more often. Promotional t-shirts can be used for various activities and events, including charity events, sports activities, or class reunions.Promotional t-shirts also come handy during exhibitions, launching a new product or promotional events. Regardless of the reason, printed t-shirts offer ideal clothing because they are absolutely eye-catching, simple to design and easy to wear. They offer durable and effective promotional clothing, making them different from any other cheap t-shirt.A professional image


Even if you are interested in a t-shirt for a stag weekend or a sports day, it is important to have professionalism, style and comfort in mind. There is an unlimited scope and colors to choose from, but always make sure to select wording and images that create a good impression of your promotional event.Printing the front and back of the t-shirt allows the viewer to get all-important information they may need. Rich purple and pink print colors are ideal with white t-shirts, giving them an outstanding readability. A professionally designed promotional t-shirt can go a long way in creating a massive public awareness for the business of the new product/brand or promote an existing product/brand to a new audience.Benefits of custom t-shirtsThere are many benefits associated with custom t-shirts. They can be seen by many people depending on how many people get to wear them, how far they get and/or how often they are seen. As a result, many of the companies offer free promotional t-shirts to their employees, customers and/or suppliers to help them spread the word. Custom t-shirts offer an advertising platform that is not time-bound. Therefore, people can wear this type of clothing indefinitely and have the company's message spread effectively. Furthermore, some of the custom t-shirts can be purchased for low prices and instantly become popular best sellers in leading clothing stores.