Archive for March, 2010
Advertising Sales Letter
The task of writing an advertising sales letter need not be difficult. Composing advertising sales copy, a part of writing sales letters, has undergone very little change over the years. Applying a few tactics to writing such letters increases their success rate. One such tactic of writing effective sales letters is called “AIDA,” which is an acronym requires further explanation.
The first letter in AIDA is an abbreviation for the word “Attention,” which involves gaining the attention of the reader through catchy headlines. The reader should feel intrigued to read on, to find out what he or she stands to gain by reading the advertisement sales letter. The importance of grabbing the readers’ attention through headlines cannot be overemphasized.
“Interest” in your advertisement is the second letter of AIDA. It is imperative to maintain the readers’ interest. In the opening paragraph, be precise and supply them with what you are trying to convey. Avoid using unnecessary filler sentences, which will likely result in loss of interest. Get straight to the point of informing the reader what the entire letter is all about. Seeking professional help can prove beneficial for writing interesting salesletters.
The next letter, “D”, stands for means desire. Create a desire in your reader for the goods or services that you are offering by repeatedly informing them of the advantages of buying what you have for sale. It is advisable to also tell them the loss they will suffer if they do not purchase what you have for sale, which was stated in the headlines of your advertising sales letter. Entice your readers by using words that will will help them to imagine how your product or service will be beneficial.
The last letter — “A” — stands for “action”. End the advertising sales letter by prompting the reader to take action. A simple sentence like, “Don’t waste time, act now” can do wonders. Readers will be more tempted to take quick action.
An ideal advertisement salesletter could add a postscript or P.S., which instills a sense of urgency in your prospective customer. The postscript should be a brief summary of your whole letter, reminding the reader of what you are selling and how it is beneficial. People often go through the opening lines and then the P.S. part of the letter, but only read the rest of the article if they are attracted enough by these two shorter parts. They tend to seek the price in the headlines or the postscript and go through the rest of the letter if interested. This illustrates the power of the opening and closing components.
The Internet is the perfect place to seek various styles of advertisement salesletter writing services. Once you have browsed carefully through all the different techniques and selected the one that fits your purpose you will be better able to write your copy or explain what you want to a professional writing service.
By: John Halasz
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Get Paid To Drive – Wrap Vehicles In Advertising
Lots of people start a side job to make some more money. Here is a way for you to make some extra money without changing your regular life style. If you have a car, you can do it. What is it? Nowadays, you can get paid for having your car wrapped with advertisements.
Maybe you will wonder if people would be willing to drive around with advertising on their car. Actually, in these days when the price of gas and car maintenance rise bay by day, more and more people join these programs. Moreover, the ads on your cars are carefully devised and planed and they will not dirty your car. The money you earn can more or less cover the cost of gas for workday commute from your office to home.
Drivers must be insured and agree to a background check. They must also be willing to have a GPS unit attached to their vehicle so the company can create customized reports for their clients that roughly calculate “impressions” – or visibility – for their advertising. In daily life, you spend a lot of time in our vehicles. At a stoplight, at a gas station and stuck in traffic – all that time, a lot of people get to see your car.
Not everybody would be willing to have their car wrapped with advertising, and perhaps even fewer want to have their travels tracked. Many people would consider that a tradeoff for the money they could make, especially with today’s high gas prices.
Once the match has been made, wrapping the vehicle with its vinyl coating takes at least two days. The time is roughly divided between creating the ad design, printing it out on a large, special printer and then adhering it to the vehicle. Once a car is wrapped, the coating provides a layer of protection from light dings, scratches and UV rays. The adhesive lasts about three to five years.
By: sunshine02
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Deceptive Advertising – An Essay
The role of advertising in our free market society is to help develop products that satisfy consumer demands and to spur effective price competition. Advertising informs consumers about the availability of products, their features, and price information. Such information is vital to our competitive process. Advertisers employ unfair business practices in order to gain an unfair advantage above their competitors and to deceive consumers. The following essay examines the common types of deceptive acts and practices involved and the federal government agency that regulates advertisers. Government regulation provides a delicate balance between free business enterprise and consumer protection.
Businesses rely on advertising as a vital communication tool to reach potential consumers. Important information about the company and product features is conveyed to consumers in an attempt to offer them products that satisfy their wants and needs. In addition to print, radio, and television, laws governing advertising also cover signs, billboards, pamphlets, pictures or emblems, and direct and oral advertisements to consumers. To a certain degree advertising is protected by our courts under “commercial freedom of speech” guidelines. However, the information conveyed to consumers must be perceived as “truthful” in order to be protected against arbitrary government intrusion.
Consumers are protected from advertisers that intentionally or inadvertently mislead in promoting their products. Two main areas that consumers are protected from are false advertising and unfair acts or practices. False advertising is when an advertisement is misleading through a made or suggested statement, word, device, sound, or omission of material facts with respect to consequences which may result from the use of the product. This definition pertains to food, drugs, devices, and cosmetics. In addition, an advertisement can be viewed as being a false or misleading representation because of an implied representation.
Generally speaking an act or practice is considered to be unfair when it causes injury to consumers, injury to public policy or when it is based on immoral, unethical, or unscrupulous nature of the practice. A good example of how advertising leads to injury to consumers was when regulators decided that it was unfair for cigarette manufacturers to omit the health risks of cigarette smoking. This led to legislation requiring health warnings in cigarette advertising.
The Federal Trade Commission is the federal government body that regulates, monitors, and challenges advertising claims believed to be illegally deceptive. The FTC uses the following criteria when determining to challenge an advertising representation:
1) The ad makes a representation, has an omission, or uses a practice that is likely to mislead the consumer. The representation may be explicit (literal claim) or implied (indirect or by inference) in the advertisement.
2) The representation, omission, or practice is misleading when examined from the perspective of a reasonable consumer.
3) The representation, omission, or practice is material. The FTC evaluates the extent to which the questionable ad influences behavior or purchasing patterns. A representation, omission, or practice is material when behaviors or purchasing patterns are affected.
The FTC has the authority to punish offending companies that compromise deceptive advertising regulations. There are various types of remedies and sanctions available to the FTC to enforce the law. Such remedies and sanctions include:
Injunction – a court order that prohibits or compels future conduct.
Cease and desist orders – prohibits the firm from engaging in the act or practice that was determined to be deceptive.
Affirmative disclosure orders – the company is prohibited from making the claim in the future without making an additional disclosure.
Corrective advertising – compels the advertiser to state in all future advertising that the specific claims made in the past were false.
Multiple product order – applies to all future advertising of all products sold by the firm.
Consent order – company agrees to cease certain activities without admitting wrong doing.
The basic goal of the FTC is to increase the accuracy of product information available to consumers. They do this by imposing regulations on very specific advertising practices such as; mock demonstrations, endorsements or testimonials, promotions based on price, advertisements concerning the availability of credit, and product labeling.
In order to avoid FTC scrutiny advertisers must have the ability to substantiate their claims about a product’s attributes or performance through “reasonable basis.” An advertiser that claims their product “kills germs that cause colds and flu,” or “stimulates 25 pounds of weight loss in one week” must gather sufficient evidence of the claims validity, usually before the ad is printed or broadcast. If a complaint is made to the FTC concerning the accuracy of an advertisements claim, the FTC will assess the reasonableness of the advertisers substantiation in order to determine if it serves the public interest. The reasonable basis doctrine applies to food, drugs, devices and cosmetics because their effect to the public is direct and their use might endanger life.
The tremendous amount of money spent on advertising is a testament to the importance of advertising in our economic system. In a sense advertising fuels the economy. Unfortunately, the integrity of the advertising community must be monitored. Deceptive advertising legislation is continually being updated and improved to reflect the changing product lines that appeal to a public with specific growing needs and wants. Government regulation provides the balance between the important issues of commercial free speech, free business enterprise, and consumer protection.
By: Frank Cardello
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2008 Advertising Trends and Targeted Tactics
So, you run a small business and you are asking yourself where can I best put my money to get the most bang for my advertising buck? Well, let’s discuss this for a moment shall we? Everyone realizes that online advertising is the best way to save money, but you cannot always reach all your customers that way. Of course you could add a blog to your website for your customers to communicate your latest offers, perhaps even have downloadable coupons?
You should also add your company to local Internet Directories, and do all the free ones first. Develop an email list and fax list and ask your customers permission to send them coupons and information on your latest specials. Flyers are most inexpensive form of advertising next to websites and the internet, but to effectively distribute flyers you need a plan, one which DOES NOT involve flyer’ing windshield wipers of cars in the parking lots in town.
What about print advertising? Well, newspapers are dead, but sometimes inserts will work if they do not get lost in the clutter, try to do an off day when other companies are not inserting their mini-catalogs and flyers. When distributing flyers you must blitz the areas in sequence. Try a zone offense strategy especially if you have a location based businesses or a local service business with a small trading area.
Also consider Community Based advertising with small nonprofit groups. Try advertising in local sports programs. Be specific to your target market and area where you draw your best customers. I believe if you do these few things you will outlast the recession and it will be over before you know it and you’ll still be on top.
By: Lance Winslow
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PPC Advertising Campaigns – What You Should Know
Anyone with a website needs to find a way of promoting it and making it more successful. There are many different forms of website promotion. Two of the most popular types of website marketing include SEO and PPC advertising. Throughout the rest of this article we are going to look at using PPC advertising campaigns.
What is a PPC Campaign?
A PPC or Pay per Click advertising campaign simply means that you only have to pay when someone clicks on your ads. There are a number of different types of PPC ad but the most common are the text links offered by search engines.
Cost Effective
The reason that these PPC ad campaigns are so popular is because they are cost effective form of promotion. You will only need to pay when the ads are clicked and this makes it fairly safe. If the ads aren’t successful then you shouldn’t have to pay anything.
However bear in mind that it’s not just the click through rate that you are interested in. You must also consider the conversion rate. The conversion rate is the number of sales which result from the links.
Increasing the Click Through Rate
If you run PPC ad campaigns then you will need to try and increase the effectiveness of these ads. One of the best methods of doing this is to create a number of different ads and run them alongside one another. You can then compare how effective each one is. You can then continually tweak the ads so that they perform better and better.
Compare the PPC ads and get rid of the ones which aren’t performing as well. If you add tracking code to your ads you will also be able to find out which ones convert to customers. This makes it possible to perfect your advertising and make it perfect.
There are a few different strategies you can use to make your PPC advertising campaigns as effective as possible.
Keywords
You will need to carefully choose the right keywords for your PPC advertising campaign. You may be tempted to go after very popular keywords; however these keywords will be much more expensive to bid on.
Carefully choose the right keywords so that you don’t have to pay too much money but also target useful visitors. Select keywords which visitors of your website really will search for.
Running several ads together will make it possible to compare and select the best keywords for your campaigns. It’s also worth noting again that you are looking to increase the conversion rate, not just the click through rate.
By adding tracking code to your PPC links it will be possible to work out which ads are attracting customers. Creating an ad offering something for free will be very popular and have a high click through rate. However if you’re not offering something for free then people will normally leave your site without buying anything.
Experiment
You need to experiment by running your ads at different times of the day. You will find that this is a great way of finding out when you should run your ads. Depending on the types of customers you are trying to attract you will find that different times of the day work better.
PPC ads should be an important part of your advertising campaign; however you also need to use SEO and various other techniques.
By: James Copper
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