ACTIVE PROMOTIONS

Active promotions are type that require you to go out on a daily basis or a weekly basis and put out your advertisements. With active promotions, you will either place your advertising or you will not sell your products or services. Your choice is simple --- work or starve.

Examples of active promotions include Pay Per Click Search Engines (PPCSE’s), Direct Email, Ezine Advertising, Solo Ezine Ads, Newsletter Publishing, Ezine Ad Swaps, Classified Ads, Auctions, Site Sponsorship and Banner Ads.

Some people are able to utilize these methods very productively, while others are destined to drop their money into bottomless pit of failed Internet promotions.

PASSIVE PROMOTIONS

Passive promotions are those promotions that can continue to provide results for you long after you have invested work to make them available to Internet community.

Examples of passive promotions include: Link Exchanges, Articles, Ebooks, Content Exchanges and Writing Testimonials for others.

Let’s look at articles as a solid example of my point.

You are reading an article that I have written to promote my own business. This article is timeless and therefore could have been written five years ago and still have been as valuable as it is today.

Due to fact that article is timeless, it can and will be placed in newsletters/ezines and their accompanying online archives, on websites and in ebooks for many more years to come.

As a result, this article will continue to serve me well beyond time in which I wrote it and submitted it to publishers and webmasters for public consumption and publication.

This is best example I can give you of an excellent passive promotional method.

AVOID THE MONEY PITS

Many try and even fewer succeed to conquer Internet and to produce their dreams of online wealth.

My hope is that you will be one of people who conquer challenges before you and to make a nice living while working online. It will take drive, determination, study plus trial and error, but you can make it work for you.

Please continue to educate yourself so that you can avoid money pits - instead, strive to find money barrels. It can be done. I am living proof.

Yet, even most mundane of information could be spiced up to give real air of importance necessary to get your press release read and printed.

The great thing about a press release is that might permit you to get relatively inexpensive promotion on television, radio, newspapers and magazines; for far less than what it would cost you to buy advertising in those same outlets.

UTILIZING A SALES TEAM

Depending on what type of business you run and consumers you are trying to reach, you might find direct sales and telemarketing to be very lucrative ways to drive sales to your business.

Both are very similar in nature. Direct sales can be very expensive, as it requires a great investment of time to accomodate. Telemarketing seeks to minimize time expenditure, but it often leads to a smaller degree of respect and attention.

Depending on your product or service --- and always depending upon people you employ to task --- each method will be more suited to each business on an individual basis.

BRANDING YOUR BUSINESS

I grouped branding and billboard advertising together in my original list for a reason. I did this because billboard advertising serves most businesses best by helping to support process of branding.

Branding is process of establishing your business as supplier of a certain product or service, or in emphasizing a certain USP (Unique Selling Proposition) as it pertains to your business.

If branding and USP seems to be a confusing concept, think about Wal-Mart and their tag line: "Always Low Prices, Always."

Think about Ford Motors, "Quality is Job One."

Think about Visa Card, "It's Everywhere You Want To Be."

You see, these top corporations have managed to make their USP part of their branding.

Even if you are only competing in a local marketplace, your USP can and should fit snugly into your branding strategy.

NO MATTER THE MEDIA OR METHOD

Whichever method or media you should choose to employ in your advertising and promotion, you should become knowledgable about your market, and consumers reached by each media. It is important to understand which consumers can be reached by a certain media, and in what quantities.

However you choose to spend your advertising dollars, you should always track results of your promotional efforts. Failing to track successes and failures will ultimately lead to failure of a business.

When you know whom you are trying to reach and how you think you might be able to reach them, you will begin to learn how to use advertising and promotion to make your business successful. That is a good thing --- after all, that is why you got into business in first place, isn't it?