Archive for the ‘ advertising ’ Category

Low Budget Advertising

There are many options available on the Internet to get started. Creating a website and then placing its link on different websites is one of the ways. Pages can be submitted to the search engines after applying search engine optimization techniques. Websites offer various payment methods. Some take money for simply placing an ad or link on their website, some take money only if a visitors clicks on the link or website and some take money only if the visitors visits a link and have bought something or availed some service. There are options available for the type of ad being placed. There are pop-up ads, banner ads, wallpaper ads, polite ads, video ads, etc. Businesses with really low budget can send mails to targeted customers.

Radio stations offer a good price to advertise during the non-peak time. Get in touch with the local station and try to ask for a discount. The same applies to television; even they have a minimal amount for advertising slots during the non-prime hours, especially after midnight. Contact different television station to compare pricing.

The age-old tradition of advertising in yellow pages directories is always a success. All businesses from small to big register themselves in the yellow pages and have sworn to be benefited from it. People can look up for contact numbers, addresses and services offered directly from the pages.

Newspaper is the next best thing. First analyze the audience to be targeted by age group, sex, and location. Choose the local newspaper and section where the ad should be placed depending on the audiences to be targeted. The classifieds department of the local newspapers have special offers, find out in detail about the pricing structure for the size of the advertisements, number of words, font size, etc.

Design the business cards with accuracy. Try to include all the vital information about the business like the name of the company, where it is located, services provided, working hours, and contact information like landline number, cell number and person to be contacted. Personalized business cards are good way of reaching the genuine customers.

Other way to advertise is to give presentations on your products. Brochures can be inserted in the business presentation package. Other than things like history of the company and annual turn-up, once again business cards can be included in the package. Distribute newsletters with information about the latest offers and discounts. Informational letters of a page length and e-mails can be sent too on a regular basis. All this can become lot easier by getting in touch with companies who can provide the mailing list of a particular locality and it comes for a very small price. Again the yellow pages can be referred to get information about such companies. After getting the information get in touch with company to get a copy of the latest mailing list. Different companies charge different prices

The word of mouth is also a good method of advertising. Try growing the links in your network and join organizations which deals with advertising like trade associations and chamber of commerce. Active participation in events of these organizations eventually helps reaching more number of people.

2010
03/09
CATEGORY
advertising
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Women in Advertisements

Many women right activists say that the women are being projected as merely an object by such advertisements. But the harsh truth is that advertisements featuring women is influencing viewers of all ages and advertisers have realized this. The advertisement starts with an attractive woman posing in seductive ways followed by the product or the service offered by the company. The beauty of the model already lures the customer, so advertisers do not have to put in more effort to motivate them.

But there are certain drawbacks in using women models in some advertisements and if a consumer is smart enough, it won’t take time for him to realize that. It is totally irrelevant to feature a female model or an actress in advertisement promoting men products. Some good examples of this point are showing a woman in axe deodorant commercial and comparison of a partially nude woman’s body to the body of a car. Second drawback is due to more concentration on the model, the attention deserved by the product is not sufficient. The main focus of the advertisement is lost.

Surprisingly only few male models advertises for male oriented products. Even a picture of a woman on an Internet commercial seems not logical to some extent, as there are thirty percent of female internet users and seventy percent of male internet users, worldwide. To add to it, advertisers cannot explain why beautiful bodies bring success to advertisement.

Advertisements are convincing and motivating tool, which can leave a deep impact on the minds of the viewers and plays a major role in molding the culture and attitude of the people. Expansive and extensive portraying of women in this manner merely reduces their image to an object of passion. Emphasis is laid only on the physical beauty of the woman like features, body curves. After the commercial has been shot, using graphical technology, any kind of imperfection of the body is altered which in a way sends out the signal that only perfect people are meant to use the product.

The companies have a moral responsibility also in the society. These commercials have a negative impact on the society and leads to problems faced for the common woman. The major ill effect is the pressure on woman to get those near-perfect bodies. They get so pressurized that they take the unhealthy way to reach the set goals. They develop eating disorders; their health gets affected which may sometimes result in irreparable damages. And those who never make it to that point, face humiliation and get taunted by everyone around them. This results in depression and other long-term psychological diseases.

According to researches and surveys conducted, most of the women vow that commercials lower their self-confidence and they visualize themselves as unattractive due to the image being portrayed of the perfect woman in ads. In America, seventy-five percent of healthy females think that they are over-weight. Half of the women populations are on some kind of diet program and nearly ten million women suffer from serious eating disorders. The weight of a fashion model is twenty three percent less than an average weighed ordinary woman.

2010
03/03
CATEGORY
advertising
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Writing a good headline for your advertisement

The headline should catch attention of the eye at the first glance. Words in headlines should act as tags for the advertisement. It should say it all about the content that follows. If a company is selling reasonably priced furniture, the headline of their advertisement should be ‘Durable furniture for less price’. This headline will attract the right customers who are on a look out for durable furniture as well as low cost furniture. If the customers to be reached belong to a category that are interested in decorating their house with beautiful furniture and aren’t concerned about the price to get the right look, then the headline can be ‘Change how your house looks by our oriental furniture’. Anything other than the prospects should not be included in the headline. If both men and women can use a product, both of them should be referred to in the title, missing out even one of the category is like losing a huge number of potential customers.
The title should be instant product seller. According to a research, five times more readers read just the headline when compared to those who read the complete advertisement. So the investment is of no use, if the title isn’t good enough to sell the product. There can be a possibility that the content of the ad isn’t strong enough. All the harm can be undone by having a powerful headline.
The headline should be centered on the product and not the company that is selling the product. The customer’s interest should be reflected and he should feel that he is directly addressed. Start with ‘you’ and not ‘we’. So if the client specified on mentioning the company’s name, don’t start the sentence with it. For example, instead of writing ‘Tylenol – solution for sever cold ’, write ‘Got sever cold? Try Tylenol’. Never forget to mention the name of the product in the headline. The product name should be of top priority.
A snapshot of the benefits of the product should be given in the headline. This is an important quality of a well-phrased headline. The customers look out for advantages when he thinks of buying a product. Keywords like whiter teeth, nutritious cereals, or miraculous growth should be incorporated in the title.
If inculcating all these factors have made the headline long, it should be remembered to write the product advantages in bold. If a visual is placed in the advertisement, it will be a good complement.

2010
03/01
CATEGORY
advertising
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Advertising on Television

When thinking of placing a commercial on television it is advised that you first understand what audience needs to be reached. Different audiences have different taste, which can be determined by their choice of television show like celebrity talk, cartoons, sports, reality, news, movies, soaps, prime time etc. Prime time is usually from 6 to 7 pm and is the most expensive slot. Following it is the news time at noon or 10-11 pm slots, which are proven to be the most effective time slots for the success of a commercial. More affordable is the 12-4 pm soap time. Always check out with the sales representative for the prices. When advertising on national level, check out an ad agency that usually works on commission basis. It’s highly recommended to negotiate during a re-run of the advertisement and stay away from paying the complete amount.

Compare the prices of different networks and different programs before you place an ad. Another money saving trick is to buy a thirty seconds slot and air commercials of ten to fifteen seconds of length one after the other. This increases the possibility of target viewers seeing the commercial without the cost of re-runs. But this is risky as the pressure of conveying critical information in a short period of time increases. So the commercials should not be so short that the actual message couldn’t be delivered correctly to the audience. Usually a reminder commercial can be of a shorter duration.

Look out for the people who would like to buy a slot that has already been purchased. This can be very tricky as it will be more like a bid for which they will be ready to pay a larger amount sometimes even double because they badly need a slot. This usually happens during the holiday season, which comes in the last quarter of the year around New Years Eve, Thanksgiving holidays and Christmas holidays. Best time of the year to buy slots for commercial is the first and second quarter of the year. Price is usually negotiable during the first quarter as the sales representatives give discounts to advertisers who have spend a lot of money advertising during the holiday season and are trying to recover from it.

If planning to pay for advertising commercials for the whole year check out the discounts that are being offered for advertising round the year. Usually a five percent discount is offered when signing for a six-month time period and ten percent when signing for a twelve-month time period. But do keep in mind to check out exactly when the commercials are being aired because these discounts are usually offered to distract people from this point and the commercials are aired during odd hours and also not during the holiday season.

The very first commercial to go on air was of Bulova Watch Company on WNBC, United States of America on July 1, 1941. And ever since then there have been no stopping and now commercials sell anything that one can ever imagine.

2010
01/22
CATEGORY
advertising
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Resources

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