Steve Guttridge: aka Stay At Home Bum Marketer

by: Kim Medeiros
There are two schools of thought on promotional items. There are those that thing they are a waste of money and you should stick to newspaper ads and commercials, and there are those that think they are a great way to promote a business. Well, truth be told, those that see it as a great promotional tool are the right ones. Newspaper ads and commercials are great, but they are expensive and don’t always work as well as you would like. They often have a low return on investment as well.

Promotional items, especially items like personalized ceramic mugs, are highly effective and have a very high return on investment.

Let’s look at it in this example.

If you spend $5,000 on a commercial that brings 500 people into your store, then the cost per person to bring them into your store was ten dollars. If you have a $1,000 newspaper ad that brings 50 people into your store, then you have spent $20 per person to bring them in. If only half those people buy something, and if they don’t spend more than what you invested, your return on investment is very low.

However, if you buy personalized ceramic mugs, you will spend as little as two dollars per mug, especially if you buy them in bulk. If you give away 20 personalized ceramic mugs, and half of those customers come in, which is completely plausible, then you have spent four dollars per customer. All those customers have to do is spend eight dollars each and you have broken even. If one customer spends $50, you have a high return on your investment.

That is the power of promotional items like personalized ceramic mugs. These mugs have the ability to bring in customers to your business because they create customer loyalty. When you give your customer something that shows appreciation for their business, they will show you loyalty. If you take time to personalize something for them, with their name on it, they will be much more likely to do business with you. As well, they will advertise your company whenever they use the mug because along with their name, it also has your company name and logo on it. This is why it is so important that any company who wants to get customers in, needs to think about promotional items for their business.

If you are going to have a successful business, then you need to look at how much you are spending to bring customers into your business. If you find you are spending too much, then it may be time to cut back and look for other ways to promote yourself. Those other ways include promotional items like personalized ceramic mugs. They are the best way you have to get customers into your store, create customer loyalty, all for a very low cost. Start looking for ways to make promotional items work for you, and to help make your business profitable.

About the author:
Kim is the author of Discountmugs.com. If you would like more information about Ceramic Mugs, please visit http://www.discountmugs.com and http://www.discountmugs.com/nc/category/ceramic-mugs/

Article source: http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_4851.shtml

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by: Lynne Saarte
A recent study showed that customers are looking for 4 things when they engage in business or avail of any customer service:

1. Customers want prompt and friendly service.

This means having a front line person who is friendly and who can give them what they need right away. Fast and friendly service is the name of the game. Whether you do it on the phone or person-to-person, the way to generate clients and keep them is to provide them quality service ASAP.

The rule of thumb is to NOT keep your customers waiting. So if you are a poster printing company for example, you would do well to provide fast turnarounds for poster printing if you want to keep your customers coming back to your shop. You better instruct your employees then to give importance to providing prompt and friendly service, which your customers would definitely appreciate.

2. Customers want their problems solved.

It is a cliché really but your customers go to you because they have a problem that needs fixing. They need help. It is a no-brainer that they will not need you if they do not have any problem, right? And trust me, there are millions of problems that they need you to fix for them. They will seek you out if they know that you can provide the solutions to their concerns. And what is the best thing about it? You get paid for your efforts.

3. Customers want flexible policies.

Do not tell them “Sorry, it is company policy,” or “Sorry, we cannot do that.” That is the quickest way to lose your customers. Your clients would want to hear instead that you can be flexible – enough to give them what they need. Flexible enough that you fit their expectations of your company.

Do not make the mistake of driving your customers away by sticking too much to policies that you alienate your customers, and worse, impress on them that you do not want to have anything to do with them. Policies are made for your own advantage, not your customers. We all know that. But for you to really keep your clients, you have to shake your rules a little to accommodate what they need. That is, if you want your clients and customers to come back and tell their friends about you.

4. Customers want you to fix any mistakes you made, and give a little extra in return.

It is not just taking care of your customers when you make a mistake. If you want them to come back, you need to go one step further and do something extra for your customer.

More than the apology and remedy to a problematic situation, you also need to give yourself a chance to go beyond their expectations. This means seeing to it that everything worked out fine for your clients. By giving them a call to check on them, or giving a 10% discount on their next purchase; or even by not charging them for that particular purchase – you are giving yourself a golden opportunity to position yourself as a kind of business that they would want to go back to every time.

Great customer service is not just lip service. It is all about doing something more than a little extra to your loyal clients. More so, that they would keep you at the forefront of their minds every time they need the kind of service you provide. And it is also great for word-of-mouth marketing, by the way.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit:

http://www.printplace.com/printing/poster-printing.aspx

About the Author:
Lynne Saarte is a writer that hails from Texas. She has been in the Internet business for some years now, specializing in Internet marketing and other online business strategies.

Article Source: http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_4883.shtml

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by: Dan Flasco
If you have the budget for both methods, it would make sense to use both Organic SEO advertising and Pay-Per-Click advertising because both have advantages. That’s the problem though – paying for both can be extremely costly, especially if you want to maximize the visibility of your web site. And trying to do either one of them with a limited budget Is not a good idea at all. If you limit your spend on either, then neither will get the results you want.

So, if you have a budget for online marketing, which method is best for your site?

“Organic” Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Studies done a few years ago (but still accurate today) show that Organic SEO can give you some significant advantages that PPC advertising can’t provide. Research shows that an overwhelming 70% of all searchers click on the Organic listings rather than the Sponsored – or paid – listings. That’s a significant percentage of the searchers out there spending their time on organic listings.

Unbiased

The indications are that people trust the Organic listings much more than they do the paid listings because of the “unbiased” way that the organic result is listed. Because the Sponsored link was paid for, searchers think that they bought their way onto the higher rankings (which they did), rather than earning their ranking by being “relevant” to what people want to find.

In fact, some studies show that less than 15% of searchers trust paid results and almost 30% have been “bothered” or “annoyed” that the paid ads are even shown. Another in-depth study found that 67% of searching customers distrust paid listings. How would you like to have a searchers looking at your listing and thinking that your ad can’t be trusted?

Clearly, organic listings are trusted much more than paid listings for being relevant to their search. That’s one reason why one study found that, before they’ll click on a paid listing, people are six (6) times more likely to click on a few of the organic listings first

Sales Value

Because organic search results are considered unbiased, the percentage of searchers who actually engage a web site is close to 18% higher on organic listings than they are on paid results. Those kinds of numbers mean sales dollars being generated as a result of organic positioning. The value of the visitors searching on organic listings, therefore, tends to be higher because the PPC searchers are sometimes considered “tire kickers,” more interested in the price of a product than they are the overall value that the product will bring them.

Awareness

Not everyone knows the difference between Sponsored listings and Organic listings, but the numbers are growing. In fact, about 58% of Google’s users already know the difference. As the number of knowledgeable searchers grows, so will the effects on the marketplace relative to Trust, Sales Value, Bias, Costs, etc.

Cost

The costs keep going up for PPC. Over half (57%) of companies polled complained that the price for certain keywords are too expensive and that the cost doesn’t justify the results. Especially during the holiday season when keyword costs can double. Compared to the relatively stable costs of organic listings expense, PPC rising costs are a definite disadvantage.

Results that last

Even though PPC campaigns tend to produce results quicker than an organic listing campaign, the work done to optimize your site for organic listing can continue to work for you until the next changes in the algorithms of the various search engines, and sometimes even longer than that. If you have a PPC marketing effort and you decide to end it, or if your budget runs out, any results you hope to gain will end as soon as your campaign ends.

Are you relevant?

Yahoo searchers said that almost 61% of the time organic results are more relevant than the paid listings. Google studies come back even higher – 72% of their users said that organic listings were more relevant to what they looked for in products or services. And relevancy is critical to search results.

Advertising Using Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

In some situations it might make good financial sense to use PPC, especially if your budget is limited and you’d like results much quicker.

Immediate Return

An organic SEO campaign can take a couple of months to see and direct results and, depending on your business, you may not want to wait that long. If your company has business that tends to be seasonal, then PPC advertising may be more of an advantage to you, especially if you usually only promote your business during certain times of the year.

Results from PPC ads are immediate and that often means more to a company than the effort of a longer-term campaign.

Easier to Understand

Being able to control a PPC campaign with your own staff is sometimes highly desirable than to hire an outside company. Because you’re dealing directly with the search engines themselves – Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Engine Marketing, etc. – then you don’t need another company helping with the effort. PPC is much easier to understand and it’s far less complicated than Organic SEO, which makes it much easier for your own staff to control.

Also, using an SEO company that may not be as knowledgeable about search engines as you want them to be can actually cause some problems for you due to the “questionable” tactics they might use to get you noticed. Being penalized by a search engine can have far reaching affects on your marketing efforts and, ultimately, your success.

Reallocating money

Since you don’t have to sign a contract for a PPC campaign that you control yourself, you’re able to move your marketing budget dollars to a different program if the PPC effort isn’t getting the results you’d like to have. Because it does take some to see meaningful results, most of the companies that do Organic SEO require a contract for at least six months. When your advertising money is committed for six months or longer, you don’t have the option of using that money on different programs.

Usually Costs Less

PPC campaigns usually don’t cost as much as an Organic SEO plans. If your advertising budget is tight, paying for specific keywords that are relevant specifically to what you sell might generate the kind of search activity that you want – people looking for more “profitable” segments of your business, as an example. If your average ticket sale tends to run higher, then you might consider a PPC effort with specific keywords rather than an Organic SEO plan that might cost a few thousand dollars a month.

The Final Tally

Again, if you can afford both marketing efforts, it would make sense to have them engaged at the same time in order to attract volumes of searchers and those looking for very specific products or services of your business. Organic SEO has obvious and distinct advantages over PPC advertising but there are definitely some situations where a PPC campaign would make more sense for your business.

Before you decide on which campaign to enlist, you should look closely at your business model to see which one would probably get the best results for you long-term. Minimizing your costs but maximizing your visibility is critical. After all, the reason you’re spending money on advertising is, hopefully, to get the best results you can.

About The Author:
TopPageClickz is a full-service, interactive ad agency with over ten years in the advertising arena. Our pricing is very competitive and our experience is hard to match. If you need help getting started on a website, if your current site needs to be more effective, or if you need help getting your site indexed on the search engines, we can do that.

Article Source:

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_4865.shtml

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by: Jeyanth Watson
One of the problems that is associated with submitting the same article to multiple directories is that sometimes the search engines will flag some of the content on the article directories as being duplicate content, and then not give you credit for the inbound link coming from that site. Many of the article directories have already addressed this issue by adding in additional content to the page, or requiring that you only submit articles that are exclusive to them. I have found that when I submit the same article to many directories, I still get a lot of links, although I lose a few. I imagine this will get worse in time, as the search engines begin to do a better job of filtering content.

One way to ease this issue is to rewrite your article, changing a few crucial words throughout the article. You can do this in your word processor by selecting words, which you have used repeatedly throughout the article, and using the find and replace feature to replace the words with words of similar meaning. Change the intros to the articles and possibly add in or change existing sub topics. Many of the link building services too stresses on article submission over the other ways such as to buy high PR links.

Another way to do this is to purchase article-rewriting software. I have tried this in the past and have not been satisfied with the results – I feel it is too much work for the result. Some professional link building services too uses this software for link building.

I think that a better approach to this issue is to write one article per 10 article directories, and simply submit each article to 10 directories, then switch to another article to submit to the next 10 directories, and so on. This will not eliminate the problem, but it will give it enough of an improvement that I think it is a superior method of dealing with duplicate content on the article directories than rewriting.

About The Author
The author explains the significance of article marketing of link building and how the http://www.bookmarking-service.com/ Link Building Services using the article marketing can enhance your search engine ranking.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/online_business/article_6235.shtml

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