Take everything an advertising representative has to say at face value. They understand advertising, so they are helping me spend my dollars wisely, right?

Wrong! This is not a knock against advertising reps, but you have to understand, they have sales goals to reach. If making you spend your money with them will help them reach their goals, they are going to push for your business. Spending money on a certain media may not be best way to invest your marketing dollars. For instance, I had a client that opened an organic grocery store in a top 50 metropolitan markets. Before I started to assist them, a cable-advertising representative sold store on a cable network that reached viewers 20 - 50 miles away from them. They spent most of budget they set aside for first 6 months of marketing on these commercials. In turn, they had nothing left to spend on advertising in their own backyard. When I audited their advertising, they didn't even realize their commercial had never run in same marketplace as store. Therefore, buyers beware. The easiest way to prevent this from happening is to know your market, know your customers, and talk to many different ad reps from many different types of media. You'll usually get a better view of how you can use media to help your business. Advertising agency and marketing firms will also help you plan your media usage.

Joann Marsili has over 15 years of marketing experience from which to draw for both traditional and on-line guerilla marketing strategies. Her strength is conceptualizing and strategizing a marketing plan custom tailored for your business needs. Visit her web site at: http://www.b2bstrategicmarketing.com or mailto:marketing@b2bstrategicmarketing.com.

Your Ad Copy

Your headline and copy are most important part of your entire strategy. Your headline must grab your potential customers' attention and force them to read on. Your copy should tell them exactly what you have to offer and persuade them to visit your site.

Avoid attracting freebie hunters by not mentioning free stuff within your ads. By weeding out those potential visitors expecting to get something free, you will attract a more targeted audience of potential buyers. There is no need to pay for visitors that weren't interested in buying anything in first place.

Your listing should lead your potential customer directly to your product with no other distractions. In other words, if your product isn't on your main page, then don't direct your potential customers to your main page and make them search for your product. Direct them to your product's page.

Reviewing Your Reports

Once your campaign begins, make sure you take time to review reports provided by pay-per-click services. These reports will provide you with information in regard to how well each of your keywords are performing and enable you to adjust your keywords or change your bids accordingly.

To increase your traffic even further, don't just stop with one pay-per-click Search Engine -- try several at time. The more streams of traffic flowing to your site, better.

Here is a list of some of top pay-per-click Search Engines:

http://www.overture.com http://www.Bay9.com http://www.Win4win.com http://www.Findwhat.com http://www.7search.com

Visit http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com for a complete list of over sixty pay-per-click Search Engines and reviews.

If you're serious about your business and you're ready to drive a stampede of targeted traffic to your website, then give pay-per-click Search Engines a try. They're well worth small investment.

Copyright © Shelley Lowery 2001-2002