Archive for: September 2007

It goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway – small businesses don’t have the luxury of spending money on ineffective advertising. Everything that you do to promote your business must be well-thought-out and considered carefully to make sure the marketing budget is being spent wisely. So before you write your next ad campaign, here are some tips for creating ads that are attention-grabbing, effective, and deliver the right message.

1.  Consider Your Audience. Who are you trying to reach with your ad? Often, you cannot reach every single type of customer with the same ad, so you need to segment your market a bit first. Decide which group of people you want to target, then write directly for those people.
2. Find Something Unique. Make sure that you include something in your message that is unique – whether it is a product benefit, a special offer, or the subject matter of the ad, include something unique to help people remember the ad.
3. Be Clear and Concise. Decide on one single point to your ad, and don’t try to include every product, service, or benefit that your company offers. Stick to the point, and deliver your message in the simplest terms possible.
4. Motivate Your Readers. Use a strong call to action in your ad, and include a sense of urgency if possible. Highlight the benefits of taking action now, and make sure it’s easy for customers to follow through and contact you.
5. Use a Great Headline. Nothing grabs a reader’s attention like a great headline, so don’t be boring and predictable. Instead, write a short, interesting headline that asks a question, provides “tips” or “secrets”, or cleverly conveys the essence of your ad. It takes a little practice, but a good headline is one of the most important things you can do to write a successful ad!

Most small businesses know that a good link building strategy is essential to a web site’s success in the search engines. If you want your site to show up on the first few pages of search results, you really need other credible web sites to “vote” for you by linking to your web site. Up until recently, it was common for web sites to exchange reciprocal links in order to help each other build inbound links to their web sites. But while this used to be a useful strategy, the rules have recently changed and now you must learn how to play the new link-building game!

Be Picky About Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links can sometimes be helpful, but only in very specific instances. In order to be useful, the incoming link (from the other web site) should be on a page that has a higher page rank than the page on your web site containing the link that goes back to them. Plus, the text of the link on the other web site should match one or more of the keywords on your site. If you can get reciprocal links that meet these criteria, then they may be helpful to you in the search engines. Also remember to steer clear of inbound links from link farms, free-for-all sites, and paid links since these are almost always penalized by the search engines.

It’s Not a Democracy
The idea of a reciprocal link counting as a “vote” for your web site may be appealing, but there’s also a downside. Each link on your site that goes out to another web site essentially deducts a vote from your site as well. Reciprocal links can be a no-gain situation for you, and could end up hurting your site overall in the eyes of the search engines.

Voting Against Yourself
One of the new link-building rules that may surprise you is that one-way outbound links on your site may be a bad idea from a search engine’s point of view. For instance, if you have a “Helpful Links” or “Resources” page on your site that contains one-way outbound links to other sites, you are probably losing lots of ground in the search engines. To avoid these “negative votes” for your site, be sure your outbound links are coded with the NOFOLLOW attribute so the search engines know these outbound links should not be deducted from your web site’s score.

Link Content is Key
In order for your links to really be powerful, there must be a relationship between what you say about your web site, and what other people on the web say about your web site. How does a search engine determine this? It’s all in the link text. The text of each inbound link to your site must match the keywords used on your web site, or else the search engines may simply ignore that inbound link.

For example, if you want to rank for the keyword “travel” but the inbound links to your site contain just the name of your company, then there’s no way the search engines will know that these inbound links have anything to do with travel.

Send Your Site to De-Tox
Ranking well in the search engines can be a moving target, so it’s important to do everything you can to protect your site. Always try to build inbound links that contain your relevant keywords in the link text, and get rid of the reciprocal links on your site that are not working for you. Also be careful when coding your one-way outbound links so that you aren’t unintentionally “deducting votes” from your own web site. These simple steps can help you build effective inbound links, while avoiding those that may have recently become bad news for your web site’s search engine rankings.

Bottled water is big business….to the tune of $15 billion last year alone. So what makes this simple item – water – so appealing to us that we are willing to spend so much on it? Well of course it is convenient, sometimes flavored, and sometimes it even comes with vitamins and other nutrients in it. But what really makes it so appealing is the marketing behind it.

Great marketing can show even the most ordinary products or services in a new, more interesting light. With great marketing, you can enlighten and educate consumers so that they clearly see a need for your product. It can also plant your product branding firmly in the minds of potential customers so that they think of you first the next time they need something you sell. Great marketing can help you differentiate your products or services from the competition, making your company the first choice among consumers in your market.

Marketing your business is a commitment, but it is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure the health and success of your company. Create a marketing plan you can realistically implement, then stick to it. Take an integrated approach to your marketing – try several different initiatives and keep track of how well each one works. Over time, you will be able to identify the strategies that work well for your particular business, so you can keep using the winners and drop the ones that don’t get good results.

Great marketing can help you effectively promote your business and show potential customers that your business can help them solve a problem, fill a need, or make their lives, jobs, environment – or whatever – better. Here’s hoping your marketing efforts will help you sell an “old thing” in a “new way” and bring in a few billion for you, too!