Women are often intimidated by another person and feel they must justify their presence. That is why Ken will not work with one of our other female consultants. She didn’t understand this strategic maneuver. You see Ken always bragged loudly to us, his colleagues, but never to a client, because he never felt he had to. Ken, as with most men, think this way. If client called you and you are in their office, then you have client. You don’t have to justify being there.

Women feel need to “secure their position” with client even though have job. Here’s how Julie handled a job with Ken. They setup an appointment, but Julie arrived earlier. Remember Ken is one who set up meeting. Now who is Julie to this client - no one. Why is she here? Because she is there without Ken, she put herself in situation of having to “justify her presence.” She should have waited in car until Ken arrived. She makes it worse as game proceeds.

Ken arrives on time, but now appears late because Julie is already there. He’s not happy about that. Again, only his collected nature is shown to client. He follows his same steps, hands them a brochure, and business card. The client briefly reads brochure, asked Ken a few questions and just when client relationship is about to blossom. Julie interrupts by digging in her purse. Oh how men hate that. She pulls a tattered brochure out and hands it to client. He’s confused - who is she again? Ken tries to handle this situation and introduces her as his assistance. He wouldn’t dare call her his colleague after that outrageous display of behavior. Julie now realizes she isn’t getting same recognition. She continues to spit out her experience. Guess what, client doesn’t care and she looks like an insecure schoolgirl.

Oh, you say, but Julie deserves to let client know her skills too. Yes she does, but her timing was wrong. It was Ken’s approach she should have honored. You see Ken is good at getting clients, but he’s not good at keeping them. Every job that I went out with Ken, I now have his client. Ken’s approach works with men, but when it came to nurturing concept of training, women don’t like him. Therefore, repeat business was given to me not Ken. I waited and showed off my skills on job.

An advertiser wanting to use Google’s image ads service, have a specific requirement that is not currently being provided for by existing banner ad designers. Most banner design services charge between $80-$100 for a single custom made static banner.

An AdWords advertiser may have many hundreds of keywords that they are targeting for a specific campaign. For keywords that provide most traffic and potential profit, they are probably going to want banners that specifically target those keywords in their design.

This might narrow it down to about 5, 10 or even 20 keyword phrases. Now, this is a lot of different banners to order, and people aren’t going to want to pay $100 for each of these banners.

This is where an entrepreneur with his eye out for a new trend can take advantage. Special banner package deals can be created to specifically cater for requirements of someone using Google’s image ads service.

Once you’ve created a main template for a banner, it’ll only take a few moments to change a bit of text and save banner as a different image. You could offer different package deals to give advertiser more options.

To change text on a banner and save image with a different filename; will probably only take you a couple of minutes for each banner. For $80 you could easily offer 5 or even 10 different banners for same price that your competitors are charging for one.

Most of your potential customers will be running multiple AdWords campaigns and could provide you with a lot of repeat business. With this in mind, you might consider offering a good discount for first orders, to help get customer on board.

How do you promote such a service?

If you set up an affiliate program, a new service like this is ideal for a joint venture. There are a number of ebooks on market teaching people how to use Google AdWords. You could approach ebook authors and tell them all about your new service. Offer to create some complimentary banners for their own campaigns. If they like your work, they will probably promote your service to their list. They might even update their ebook and include a link to your website.

If you offer a good service at good prices, news of your service will probably spread quite well by word of mouth in newsletters and on message board forums.

Medium to Long-term outlook

As Google’s image ads grow in popularity, more and more banner designers will start to offer tailored packages specifically designed for this type of demand. Companies and individuals that build up a client list while this opportunity is still relatively unknown will be in strongest position.

If you can build up a client list of regular Google advertisers, repeat income from designing their ‘image ad’ banners for them could be quite substantial.

Jason Lewis, Copyright 2004