(Online business marketing) Some Simple Ideas For Running Ads That Get Results

October 31st, 2008 admin Posted in marketing |

By Robert Schumacher

People do not pay attention to advertising. They only pay attention to whatever interests them. If someone perceives a benefit in your advertisement, you might connect with them . . . get them to act. No benefit, no action. Seems simple. The facts say otherwise.

The reality most often missed in advertising is the fact that people buy benefits (what is in it for them), rarely features (what it is or does). Grab any publication in reach and take a quick look at the advertisements: chock full of features and almost devoid of benefits. Some examples:

*People do not buy patio heaters. They buy the opportunity to bring the comforts of the indoors to their outdoor patios.

*People do not buy wine racks. People buy the conversion of their storage space into an onsite wine cellar.

*Generation Y does not buy mobile telephones. They buy 1,000 tunes in their pocket.

Why is this concept seemingly so difficult? Advertising benefits must be complicated because virtually every ad you see has so few, if any. Most small businesses have proved that they can identify features (who you are, what you do, what it is, what it does, etc.) Fair enough! You can start there.

List every feature you can think of about your product or service in the first of two columns on a single sheet. Now answer SO WHAT? for every feature you list. The SO WHAT? is a benefit!

Narrow your list to two or three. Promote those two or three. Advertise the same two or three again. Then again. Tell your target audience what is in it for them to do business with you.

Remember to motivate your audience to DO SOMETHING: come in for a demonstration, call for an appointment, fill in a coupon, write for additional information, ask for you or your product by name, take a test drive . . . something specific. Tell people exactly what you want them to do. Never assume they will do what you think is obvious. Tell them! Do not just suggest. Tell! Order! Command!

Knock yourself out to make sure your message is aimed at the people you want to do business with. Take careful aim and then remember that no one consciously will pay any attention to your ad. You live, breathe and eat your business. The people you deal with do not. No doubt you know what you are talking about. Be sure your desired audience gets the message.

If you manage to stimulate interest with a benefit headline, do not blow it by listing only features and prices in the copy that follows. Headlines attract attention, copy closes the sale . . . or least initiates the action. Always sell the sizzle . . . never the steak!

An effective ad is one that gets results. Steer clear of creating ads that come off more interesting than the content IN the ads. We have all seen or heard advertisements that we remember but for the life of us, we cannot recall what the featured product or service was.

If you want to entertain people, that is your call, but never forget that the sole purpose of small business ads is to persuade people to take some kind of action . . . preferably with or from you . . . hopefully today . . . certainly soon.

Once you have a rough or a finished version of your advertisement, show it to ten people and ask them to tell you what they think the main point is. If one person misunderstands, that means 10 percent of your target audience will misunderstand.

If your media rep says that you should expect your ad to be seen or heard by 500 people, 50 of them will miss the main point. That is unacceptable. Scrap it and start again.

Bob Schumacher pens books and articles that guide entrepreneurs and small business owners on how to steer their business or profession into the top 20% who achieve 80% of the business and profits. Visit http://www.RedMeatMarketing.com and order your complimentary advertising book.

Tools And Ideas To Start Advertising Online Revealed
By Karl Sultana

When you have an idea for selling a product, you always have to think of what is the best way to go about advertising it. How will you know if people are seeing what you have for sale, the only way to go about this is to advertise. With online promotion you are able to reach a much larger audience than any other way you go about.

You will reach the world if you are promoting something online. You will get millions and billions of customers that can potentially purchase your product. But first they must know it’s out there and they need to know how to get to it.

A great way of advertising is those little banners that you see all the time, they pop up on tons of sites and they are an ad for something or another. Get one of these and find several websites to place them on, it will cost you some money, depending on how many sites you want it on. But you have to remember the more your banners are out there the more people will learn of your product and possibly want to buy it.

So you have a bunch of banner’s up on about 50 sites to start with, try to go to sites that are related to the product you are trying to sell. This will match the people up with your product better and you will get people coming to your site that are looking for what you are selling. This is very important, because if you put banners in the wrong places they won’t help you out much, if at all.

As you can tell you will need to set up either a website or a store on an auction site. Either will be fairly simple, most of the process is spelled out and very easy to follow. But one thing you will need to be sure of is how you go about showing your product on the website. You will need to have pictures and you will have to make sure that the pictures are clear and people can tell what you are selling.

Pictures are a big point to make sure that you have, because a lot of people will not purchase something without first seeing it. It’s a simple thing, everyone wants to know what they are getting before it comes in the mail and is something completely different from what the ad said.

With more banner’s you will attract more people to your site, and with more sales you will have more people aware of your site and telling their friends. This will be a big thing for you as a business owner, so you must always make sure that your customer service is good. Certain things will make or break a deal and you don’t want it to be something small like not answering a question that was asked about a product. It would be a shame to lose a sale for such a simple reason.

Check out Karl Sultana’s OutRankSmart software. The seo strategies you discover can help you get high rankings for practically any keyword you desire.

What A Medical Billing Company Can Do For Your Practice
By Ben Needles

Just because a doctor owns his own practice does not mean that he is doing particularly well. It might be true, but it also may not be. A physician does not necessarily have the right business skills to run his office and will not be very successful monetarily. They can be the best doctors in the world but they must have the right skills in billing for their practice to reap the rewards.

If the doctor is smart enough to recognize this weakness, he can hire the services of a medical billing company to take care of all his office needs.

Trained professionals who know all the ins and outs of insurance and medical billing staff a medical billing company. They are capable of handling all aspects of making claims to the insurance company and getting the payments in on time.

Insurance companies dont make things easy for the medical practice. They have a tendency to deny claims at the drop of a hat.

If the practice is very busy and sees a great many patients there will be a lot of claims that need to be submitted to the insurance company. If only one member of the practices staff is handling this they will have to manually fill out and submit the claims for every patient that goes through the office. If there is one mistake on these claims the insurance company will deny it immediately and send it back. Now that one person has to refill out the form correctly in addition to the new claims that they must do every day.

Even when everything is done right it can still take the insurance company a very long time to send the payment. For a small practice this can spell disaster. If there are a couple of denials and late payments this can effectively put the practice out of business.

A medical billing company can put all of those worries to rest. The staff of the practice will no longer have to do all of the work that is required for the insurance companies. The billing company utilizes professionals who will be able to get all of the claims filled out and filed in a timely manner. They will also be able to use electronic means to file the claims. This gets rid of the manual method of submitting claims.

The professional at the medical billing company will also make sure that the claim makes it all the way through to the insurance company and is paid. They take the time to monitor the claims all the way through the process. Medical billing companies have a very high success rate for getting their claims paid.

When a claim is submitted electronically it will be denied or accepted immediately. When it is accepted the funds will be sent to the practice within a few days instead of the months that it could take with a manual system.

For a smaller practice this is a big deal. To get their money in a timely manner is the one factor that will decide if they are in business in a week. For practices that think a medical billing company is too costly to justify, they should sit down and figure out what it is costing them to do it in their current manner.

This type of billing company will be beneficial for any practice, regardless of the specialty.

About the Author (text)

Peter Geisheker is CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing company. http://www.marketing-consulting-company.com
One of the types of clients that Peter helps are medical billing services and medical billing companies. http://www.apexmedicalbilling.com

best iphone 3g case

Your Source For Business Marketing Strategies Online