2.The ad needs to stimulate an action. This could be an instant purchase, or only a clickthrough to a website.

3.The ad needs to force an emotional response. Force is not an ugly word, we don’t wish to hold power over people – more like show them how good our product is.

4.Be helpful in your service/product and advert.

5.An advert should surprise audience. The headline, a visual image an unusual opening in sales presentation. These could have power to stop people, and make them take notice.

(I’m not going to tell you all my secrets – come on you have to put some effort in)

I’m now going to show you power of certain words (and why your idea has to be right in first place).

SEX This is one powerful word. Because it’s connected to a free, enjoyable pastime – that can’t fail to appeal to anyone. Why do you think that chocolate adverts and car adverts use stunningly attractive models???

That’s because they work, to sell product by appealing to senses and powerful motivations of both sexes. But there is a failure with this method. Some think that this particular method is not best way of branding products. There are so many ‘sex’ type adverts about, so how can you expect anyone to recall a certain brand??

But it works for some products very well – just not majority. Good communication is swapped for Raw stopping power in this case.

So following should be done:

Brand advertising – use communication

ROI - you need to use mostly Raw stopping power

Use Chocolate in adverts to sell Chocolate…

More to come...........

So if I followed suit and became no 36, that means I have only a 1 in 36 chance of being selected, viewed or phoned up by a customer – and I paid how much for that £335, eeeeek. £400 is quite a bit to spend on advertising for average start up, and in my opinion, it takes biscuit, it really does insult. Fact is, there are good and bad publications out there, some famous brands and some not so famous – but a lot of it is pot luck – and what you have to avoid, if you wish to be successful. Pot luck advertising methods are no good, as it’s a crap shoot, a roll of dice etc. What you need is to reach people who are interested in your product/service – do that and it increases chance of a sale.

DIRECTORIES 2 (online versions)

These are FAR superior than their paper brothers, and there are many:

Vortals (niche or vertical), County, Region or they can cover entire UK or even World. Space? Er, lets not be silly now. But they are better – much better, as lots can be done web design wise. Some have really quite good services, that can even rival search engine advert specs, but some just don’t have reach.

Personally, I feel that money is in directories, and it seems that with Google PR, this means that a link in a good directory, means your site gets picked up by engines, thus making you visible on whatever engine. Which is good right…..

A link is a link my friends. Directories are also very accurate – if not perfect!

My Top 10 directories to list your sites:

1. Microsoft small business http://sbd.bcentral.com/addsite.aspx

2. Gympsy http://www.gimpsy.com/

3. Google (if you can get in)

http://www.google.co.uk/dirhp?hl=en&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

4. Yell.com (Pricey, but well known)

http://www.yell.com/

5. JoeAnt http://www.joeant.com (An up and coming new boy)

6. KellySearch http://www.kellysearch.com (Established, but serves industrial needs only)

7. AnyWho http://www.anywho.com

8. Thomson http://www.thomweb.co.uk (Local UK reach)

9. Abrexa http://www.abrexa.co.uk (Dependable & Likely to stay around for a long time)

10. CountyWeb http://www.countyweb.co.uk (Nice PR image, but lacks originality – could be okay for reach)

But just beware that whoever you decide to use, just don’t engage in unnecessary overspending – think it through before signing a contract or writing that cheque.

Many companies you will deal with are exisiting or former salespeople themselves, and their goal is to get you to spend, and will use various techniques (some welcome, and some not) to do this. They don’t care as much if you waste your ad cash for year, not getting ROI – it’s not their business they are playing games with.

Remember that always!

Medium Cost Advertising:

Search Engine and PPC advertising

Sponsered listings are many and varied and can mean different things and results are very dependent on ‘design’ and whether people actually notice them. One engine will do it differently to another - and price rarely determines quality or exposure or even reach, infact each engine will stamp their authority, brand on it’s own creation and tell you it’s best. But basically what you need to consider is:

oMost are expensive and never deliver what you think you will get

oMost 'sponsered' anything is a rip-off of somebody elses idea!

oWhen you have 50 to 100 similar companies, products or services using these upgraded entries/promotions - effect of them is reduced considerably, but they are better than basic line entry styles which publication is built from. It’s just there is nothing else to compete with bog standard PPC, at moment.

It really depends on who you use, and a lot of testing, analysing benefits of various campaigns will reveal what works for you, and what doesn't! And never ever use just one type of ad company or campaign – success will be in ad space management, negotiation and reducing those costs.

Does advertising work?

Give you an example now. I was searching for imdb (internet movie database) and used Yahoo.co.uk to find it. Do you know, I ignored every single ad infront of me, as I was more interested in finding info on my film/video/dvd, than viewing some advert. Infact, I even ignored ‘movie’ PPC ads everywhere.

And I bet, I wasn’t only one either. How many more targeted movie surfers ignored those movie ads that day? Makes you wonder doesn’t it. But then again I wasn’t looking (did not want movie ads) for PPC adverts at that time. So that proves that even PPC text adverts failed that day, and it also proves that advertising can’t force someone to even view something, if they don’t want to! Can anybody force me to buy something? Nope. But you can makes something attractive, so that it catches my attention. That is what advertising is about. And that’s what you need to do to win (in a sense).

Advertising only works if someone is looking for that thing at that time. A movie advert campaign won’t work on everyone – so it’s pointless placing it in a General Site. You are placing image of a product, service etc into mind of someone else, who you have never met before – a stranger, and yet you expect them to trust you.

Difficult huh. So you need to invite them (invite), to come and see what you have, and that’s before they even think about buying from you. And advert has to take care of that. The ad itself doesn’t have to be expensively produced (write it youself, and you can use PPC, to test it, and when you are happy – then sink more cash into campaign. I won’t give a lecture on use of PPC ads, as that’s available everywhere), but if you have no copywriting skills whatsoever, then you are looking at £150ish for a decent ad copywriter fee. But it’s probably worth it for a good ad.

Once you have ad, and your rate cards – you need to choose your advertiser/s. And cheaper better…… But you must put it in correct publication for it to be noticed by right people.

One excellent method is to use Newsletters. You can buy ad space in 40 or so newsletters for far less cash than buying 1 ad in a major magazine or paper – but you will have to be patient and persistent, because electronic newsletters aren’t as obvious as medium than large newspapers or websites. And fact that it’s easier to buy a newspaper or something, than to advertise on web, could be a factor as well.

But there are some very good ones:

MSN Hotmail etc both have high readership levels.