Advertising Extreme

On the surface it would appear direct mail, as a staple auto repair advertising strategy, has long since seen its heyday. Twenty or thirty years ago, a shop owner could send out a few letters and actually expect a response. Today, amid the thousands of other advertisers, the return on investments has left many asking if their message was lost in the mail.

During our normal screening process we ask each of our clients: “What response do you typically see from your mailings?” The answers have become highly predictable, as almost 94% say they send out mailers every so often, or not at all, as they see almost no response.

That’s not too surprising. Ask any group of business owners in any industry, and you will probably get roughly the same feedback.

What is surprising is that the remaining 6% report seeing anything from a 9% to a 22% return on their direct mail. What makes those repair facilities so special?

The answer is simple: They didn’t stop at one mailing.

Repair facilities seeing the highest rate of return, in almost every case, use sequential mailings with a clear message and a time sensitive call to action.

Before I continue, I would like to clarify something: the direct mail I am referring to is for new business development. These are the letters shop owners send out to get the car count up. Mailings to existing clients are a completely different animal, and we will cover that category a bit later.

Auto Repair Advertising – 5 Steps To Breathing Life Into Your Direct Mail

1: Use Postcards. Postcards do not require opening. A letter requires time to open, unfold and actually read. Consequently, a letter will, almost 10 times out of 10, end up in the recycle bin. Unopened.

An even better advantage is that postcards cost less to make and mail. In some cases you can save over 75%!

2: Have A Clear Message. Use An Attention Grabbing Headline. With each mailing the message you communicate must be clear.

Remember K.I.S.S.? Keep It Simple, Stupid. Less is more when getting your point across.

Also, your headline should address some sort of concern your prospective customer has. Don’t be afraid to be a bit extreme. People respond to the idea of life or death situations.

Example: “What Happens If Your Brakes Fail? Is Your Family Safe?”

3: Make ‘em An Offer They Can’t Refuse. Offer Value. Most people are starving for value. So many companies offer so little in return that when someone actually does, consumers are almost programmed to ask, “What’s the catch?”

Don’t have a catch. Be honest, open, and full of value.

A good idea would be to give them something free with no strings attached. But watch out! Never offer something that will eat up your time and cost more than it’s worth. The trick here is to find that hidden value, that mysterious gem your new customers will flip over. It must also be easy and low cost to produce.

Example: I will never forget Les Schwab, the tire guy from my childhood in Oregon. This man was insane enough to offer “Free Beef With Every New Set Of Tires!” Who in his right mind would do that? To this day, I can’t tell you how beef fits in with new tires. But even though I have not been back to Oregon in 15%2B years, I DO remember Les Schwab and always think of him when I see a set of tires.

4: Have A Call To Action. Make It Time Sensitive By creating a sense of urgency, you create a feeling of scarcity in the recipient’s mind. And by having a call to action, you give them a clear message of what they must do to take advantage of what you offer. Example: “Limited Time Only: Free Brake Inspections For Every Car before (DATE)” Just remember to give your prospective clients enough time to pick up the phone!

5: Don’t Pull The Trigger Once… You Need To Keep Shooting! Much like the scenes on C.O.P.S. where some guy is wigged out on crack and has to be shot 50 times before he goes down, the same can be said for the American consumer. In almost every advertising instance, frequency, clear communication, and repetition are the only 3 elements that will work. But they must be used together. Having a clear message and only sending it once doesn’t cut it. (That’s like a flesh wound to the crack head. He won’t even feel it.) You must have a clear message and send it multiple times to the same people.

Try This Auto Repair Advertising Schedule:

1st Mailing – Have a special time-sensitive offer and an invitation for the person to call/come in (AKA Call To Action)

2nd Mailing – 15 days later. Have a “So sorry we missed you” feel to it, and maybe offer an additional incentive to coax stragglers out of hiding.

3rd Mailing – 15 days later. Be bold. State “Last Chance!” “Offer Will Expire Soon!” Don’t be afraid to be a bit extreme.

4th Mailing – 3 to 5 days after the expiration date. This last mailing will have more of a “Congratulations! You won second prize!” feel to it.

Note: After each mailing you MUST remove those who respond from the list. Sending them advertisements for the same offer after they have already come in is not only annoying, it gets expensive. Why Does This Work? Multiple mailings tend to make people feel your offer is more valuable. A single mailing is easily dismissed as a potential fly by night gimmick, and will more than likely end up in the trash.

By repeating your offer, and adding an increasing, time sensitive pressure, you help emphasize the importance of your message.

Beyond even increasing your overall return, multiple mailings reinforce your facility’s credibility in the eyes of local car owners.

Auto Repair Advertising Final Note: How Many Should I Send? If, for example, you are currently hitting 1000 homes and neither desire nor can afford to send that same number multiple mailings, consider shrinking your list.

You will do better sending 250 homes sequential direct mail rather than sending 1 mailing to 1000.

By: Drew Turnbaugh

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Kansieo.com

Over 10 billion dollars is spent on fast food advertising to children annually in numerous fashions. The majority of these ads are for food and drink that is high in fat, sugar, calories, salt and low in nutrients. Its not as much the advertisement itself as much as it is the tactic used to entice our children to want their product. The most obvious media venue is television advertisement. The marketing gurus know how to get into childrens heads and how to get their most wanted response. They know that children can and do influence their parents when it comes to food purchases.

On an average children view over 40,000 commercials a year most of which are for candies, cereals, toys, and fast food restaurants. Fast food advertising to children is not only limited to fast food restaurants. If it is fast and it is food then it is fast food. Its fair to say that fast food advertising is big business. Additionally, trying to curtail children from television viewing is a daunting task particularly since many kids have televisions in their bedrooms. The methods used for advertisement are within the norm for advertising. Businesses spend money to get their product noticed by what should be their target audience. In other words, you’d be hard pressed to find an advertisement on 60 Minutes for Cocoa Krispies just like you’d be hard pressed to find an advertisement on the Nickelodeon Channel for T.D.Waterhouse.

Sneaky Tactics

Children today have more purchasing power, they are the consumers of tomorrow, and because they do influence their parents on purchases it opens a whole new audience for marketers. Children are much more vocal than they used to be and they are not afraid to speak up when they want something. Advertisers call this Pester Power. I call it nagging. In other words, kids aren’t afraid to kick and scream to get their parents to buy something. Fast food advertising to children is all about Pester Power and marketers rely on children to nag the parents rather than market to the parents directly. They know that marketing to children will net higher results. Marketers break Pester Power down into 2 categories. Persistence nagging and importance nagging. Persistence nagging is begging repeatedly . Importance nagging, on the other hand, is what marketers rely on. This is all about providing for their children and the guilt that comes with not being available enough for their kids. There are many tactics used in fast food advertising to children such as toys included with meals and monopoly game pieces. Fast food businesses will claim that this is to provide a more pleasant visit to their store for the parents but in reality it is baiting children to desire fast food.

Internet And Viral Marketing

Fast food advertising to children is not only limited to television. The internet; which is more cost effective and viral marketing have also become advertising venues. Internet marketers know how kids use the net and how popular sites such as MySpace and Facebook are. They also know that children love to click on links. If it says click here – they do. Many websites offer free ring tones and music downloads. In order to get the freebie an e-mail address is required and thus cross promotion campaigns begin creating fast food advertisement to children via e-mail marketing.

We can’t stop fast food advertising to children but we can control the television viewing time. Less time in front of the television as a family could reduce the pestering for fast food and create a more nutritious and healthy family environment.

By: James Rouse

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Nowadays, the world is all about mechanization. No matter where you turn there is someone trying to figure out how to make something to something else that way a person no longer has to do it. We as humans are stuck on having things done for us. No matter what it is, we would like to have a machine that would take care of it for us. In this day and age there are already a lot of things that require very little from us.

The same is true of factories the world over. To companies there is the matter of making more money and they are always on the look out for ways to cut the costs to make the products they offer. This is where factory automation comes into play. A factory that relies heavily on automation has less in the way of labor costs, making it less expensive for the company to produce products thereby increasing profits all the way around.

There is some debate on whether or not an automated factory is a good idea. Automation relies on machines, like robots to perform tasks that were at one time performed by a human. One of the problems is the fact that these robots and machines cost in the million or more dollars range for the most part, which means a very high initial investment for the company. Now they could, in theory, make the investment back in a few years by not having to pay an employee to do the job, but what if the job becomes unnecessary? This can mean that they spent a lot of money that was not needed.

Next is the fact that robots do not have the ability to think or solve problems without assistance from outside parties, namely humans. Most would say that robots only do the most mundane tasks in a factory so they have no reason to think. Well that very well may be true but what if something goes wrong with the process. Does the robot know to stop? Will it be able to solve the problem on its own? The answer to both of those questions is of course no. The robot must be told what to do by a human and has no thought process of its own.

The other factor is that using factory automation takes jobs away from the people who need them. This is the largest sore spot in the automation debate as it is known today. This is very true and it does harm the economy for the most part because the more people that are out of jobs the worse the economy is.

It is not the best idea for all intents and purposes it is not a good idea to completely automate a factory. The debate about this rages on and it is doubtful that machines will ever replace us completely.

By: Joe Goertz

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Nothing can beat vinyl car graphics or custom stickers to embellish your dream car, truck or SUV. There are a great variety vehicle graphics available in the market place and you can easily choose the one that captures your personality and creativity. From different vinyl colors to graphic styles and designs, there are almost endless possibilities when it comes to vinyl car graphics.

The designs of car graphics can range from simple vinyl stripes, vinyl lettering to complete digitally printed vehicle wraps. Most women like beautiful shapes such as flower decals, insect stickers, animals, scenery, and tapestry patterns while Men like to deck up their car with more extreme designs, hunting decals, flame decals and racing themed decals. Teenagers like a flashier look that can be achieved with complete vehicle wraps. These vinyl wraps can be of any custom design or even photographs. The image is digitally printed on large sheets on exterior vinyl then applied to the cars surface, trimming off the excess around the doors and windows. This process transforms the vehicle to an almost life like or living vehicle. As long as you have a high quality, high resolution image that can be enlarged to fit your car without distortion, the end results are breathtaking.

Most car graphics that you find in the market usually come with messages and not images. Truck lettering and car lettering are very popular for small business to economically advertise their business. These more commercial applications primarily use vinyl lettering and simple logos. Since these graphics are more affordable, people like to use them on boats, bicycles, truck, helmets, windows, mirrors and many other smooth surfaces.

Vinyl car graphics and vinyl lettering are considered to be the best quality car stickers, and very easy to apply. Thus making vinyl lettering and graphics a smart choice for do-it-yourself applications. The vinyl graphics come pre-spaced with transfer tape over the graphics to keep the letters aligned, aiding in the application. Once the transfer tape is removed, the letters or graphics appear to be painted on. These Vinyl Graphics are extreemly durable and car wash safe. Most vinyl decals last for 5-10 years or longer. Vinyl decals may also be reverse cut and applied to the inside of windows, thus eliminating any chance if weather damage.

Modern technique has also come up with car graphics that are UV and weather resistant. Special films and inks now make your graphics last even longer outdoors. These add to the initial cost of the decal or sticker but if you plan on a more permanent location for your vinyl graphics they are well worth it. Many online sign shops offer online design tools that allows you to design, preview and purchase the vinyl lettering and graphics without ever leaving your home or office.

There are many type styles and color choices available to match anyone’s taste and vinyl decal requirements. If you want to make your message really clear, you can opt for reflective car graphics and lettering. These are the perfect way to make your message loud and clear because they stand out at night as well as add sparkle to day time applications. The latest ones are equipped with full color digital printing technology to suit your specific requirements. These will provide the liveliness to your vehicles during the day as well as in the night. This is really beneficial when it comes to promotional purposes. Reflective vinyl graphics will help reduce the collision during night time by up to forty percent.

There are several benefits of applying vinyl car graphics and vinyl lettering to your vehicle. Here are some of the benefits you can enjoy via applying car graphics on your vehicles:

Decoration – Simply just to decorate your vehicle to make it more unique and stand out. Add or show off your personality to passer bys. Attractive vinyl car graphic will surely make heads turn.

Accident Prevention – Add Safety with the use of reflective vinyl letters and reflective graphics. Use reflective vinyl car graphics and you would be reducing the chances of collision during night time.

Promotion – You can promote your company via using vinyl lettering and car graphics on your car, truck or SUV. These graphics may be applied to the body of the vehicle or just on the windows. Window decals are the most common form of car decals and vinyl car graphics.

With so many benefits, easy availability and ease of application, consider purchasing car graphics & custom decals for your vehicle today! It’s very easy and kind of fun designing your graphics online and then applying them yourself.

By: Jamie Quint

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Difference between Graphic Design, Web Design and Advertising Design.

Based on the practices of these years and these last two months, I’ve noticed that when we offer our services as Web designer tend to confuse the customer by our very Confucianism in terms of the concepts of web design.

For this reason, I decided to write this article under the title of web Design, the title will probably not say anything, but I hope to get a lot of doubts about the concepts are concerned.

3 are the concepts that I am going to try, and I’m going to write my own words and according to my experience.

We started with Web Design:

Probably not need much eplicacion in which we do not have many doubts, however we tend to confuse Web Design India with Web Development, as well?, Simple, we offer Web design when in reality we are referring to sites that use only static HTML, something CSS and a lot of Photoshop.

In contrast, Web Development includes the above with the particularity that also adds PHP as a programming language to interact with the data base which usually is in MySql servers to Linux, or asp or aspx pages as a programming language and Sql as Bases Data for Windows Servers. Come right?

In summary for this section:

If the server is using Linux PHP Mysql; If the server is Windows will use ASP SQL.

If the site is static does not matter because the server will use HTML CSS which is supported on any of the above dimension servers.

Graphic Design:

The graphic design includes a wide range of services, ranging from the design of business cards, brochures, flyers, folders executive, and so on. Until the gigantografía (roadside billboards).

In the graphic design elements used to make nice to see the job, a photo downloaded from the Internet, background colors, letters that make the game, and so on. But this is pure Graphic Design, and the practice is more common among designers.

However, when a customer asks us to include in all their gear elements of its corporate identity, the thing changes and becomes:

Marketing Material

For the Marketing Material must meet the standards of the client, respect the tipografia, colors, sizes, relationships, separations and other items set forth in its Corporate Identity.

It is no coincidence that Major Companies invest thousands of dollars in making its corporate identity, these are large volume of documents that seek to standardize both the tape and the arts that the customer needs and will need.

For the preparation of a Corporate Identity intervene marketers (Graduates in Marketing) and study hard but the results are admirable, then that the marketers completed its work and entegó document to the customer, the latter will pass the document to your Publicist who is responsible for what is established in that document is fulfilled.

Therefore we can say that generally perform work of Graphic Design merely, but if it concerns the standards set in his client’s Corporate Identity and moved on to talk about Advertising Design Advertising and Graphic Design, as you want to call.

Besides that is heard more attractive offer “Graphic Design Advertising.”

I am sure that these concepts will help us better understand and provide better services to our customers or small businesses.

By: WDO Tech

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