Advantages of PPC Advertising

Pay-Per-Position or Pay-Per-Click or simply PPC advertising is an option of increasing site traffic, just like search engine optimization. PPC is based on a very simple premise.
Typically, people type in a keyword into a search engine and get a list of most relevant sites displayed. The additional sites listed in a small panel on the side of the search results are the ones that are using PPC advertising. The site owner has agreed to pay a specified amount to the search engine, every time a web surfer clicks one of these pay-per-click sites. The salient advantages of using PPC advertising are discussed below:

You get instant traffic routed to your site and since the advertising was relevant to the searched keywords, you can count on genuinely interested visitors who are seeking the kind of products, information or services that you offer.
This implies that your chances of converting these visitors into customers are already high. Search engine optimization also routes people to the site, and it seemingly does that for free. But you are forgetting the cost in terms of money and time that it takes to develop a website that can perform great in search engines. On the other hand, PPC advertising instantly routes traffic to your site at a cost.

You get complete control over your advertising budget with Pay-Per-Click advertising. As a PPC advertiser, you will have to bid on keywords. For example, someone with a website selling motorcycle parts may bid $.10 on the keyword "hog parts". What it means is that every time someone clicks your site, you are agreeing to pay the search engine a dime. And if you set your monthly budget at $50, it means you are buying 500 clicks, after which your site will disappear from the rankings screen. As in any kind of bidding, the catch here is that the highest bidder gets the keyword. So, you need to weigh the cost of the bid versus the benefit of directing targeted traffic to your site.

PPC advertising also has the advantage of allowing you to instantly adjust strategy. Companies offering PPC services will track information for you that you can use to refine your website and keyword usage. If you see that people are coming to your site but not buying anything, then you know that your website needs some work. Also, you can see where people are going on your site so you have a better idea of where to place ads and links.

The are really no downsides to PPC advertising. To have your website displayed on the first page of any search using keywords you have bid on is a huge marketing coup.
Instant traffic means instant access to a targeted customer base. With complete control of your advertising budget, there are no worries about things getting out of control. Plus, with the feedback provided, you can immediately make adjustments and constantly increase the profitability of your site. PPC advertising is the most efficient means of marketing yet devised and an indispensable tool for website owners.

Desmond Mantor is the Marketing Director of Have Traffic which offers a unique web site traffic generation service for commercial web sites. Recent, independent, split tests have proven their double qualified traffic more effective than the major pay per click sources.

Importance of Marketing

Marketing and sales are two different things and one should not be confused for the other. Marketing covers various aspects of business including advertising, public relations, sales, and promotions. Marketing will involve all the activities related to getting your product or service into the market, promoting it through advertisements, influencing customer behavior, and encouraging and increasing sales to increase profits of the business. Sales refer to the actual transaction of handing over the product/service to the customer for a price.

The present day marketing strategies are very different from those that existed 20 years ago, since Conrad Levinson introduced the concept of Guerrilla marketing.
The radical tactics that were brought then are in fact today considered quite basic and ordinary. Since today customers have access to such a huge variety of products, with advertising messages about each one of them, how will your product or message about your product be noticed by the customer. To survive in this kind of scenario the marketers have to be creative to get their messages noticed by the customer.

Companies without a marketing mindset are at a disadvantage in today's business world. Those who are still centered around their products, rather than their customers, are doomed to fail. Knowing what your clients' expectations are, exceeding them, and building a reputation based on that is the key to success. Pay attention to your customers, and they will come back time and time again. Ignore them, and they will disappear faster than you can spend your marketing budget to try to bring them back.

Marketing is not an exact science either; many people who know little about it fear that the marketers on their staffs are wasting valuable dollars. The truth is that it's an investment that always comes back to you eventually. So even though one campaign may bring mediocre results, another will bring astonishing profits.

Some people have a misconception about the term marketing, they feel that it is an easy task and anyone can do it. But as a business person you have to get rid of this view point and employ a professional marketing agency that will device your marketing strategy and help you execute it as well. Or you can also have the assistance of an independent marketing consultant who can oversee the marketing efforts that are being put in by the marketing department.

When you hire an outside agency or independent consultant, you are hiring professional experts in marketing. These are people who can focus on all your marketing needs and not be hindered by your internal politics, relations between employees, or lack of knowledge among staff in relation to marketing strategies and how they integrate with business strategies. These are people who can and do work in the industry and know ultimately what works and what doesnt. These are people you should take advice from.

Scott F. Geld is the Spokesman of Marketing Blaster, a Pay-Per-Click traffic source that repeatedly beats the major search engines in Conversion and ROI Ratios.

Marketing Strategy through Promotional Materials

Looking through your drawers and the whole room you will notice that you have a number of promotional materials of various companies, collected over a period of time. Promotional material from a company will have its logo, emblem and a brief message.

Such promotional materials include things like pens, magnets, caps, key rings, T-shirts, letter openers, golf balls and many other similar objects, which held your attention for a certain period of time.

These promotional materials are very cost effective, but companies are still not using them very often as a marketing tool to send their advertising message to the prospects. These promotional materials are called ad specialties. You can use a variety of items as ad specialties by printing your logo, emblem or message on them. These ad specialties have a long life because they remain in possession of the prospects for quite some time- a week, a month or even longer depending on the life of the product and how interesting and useful did the prospect find it in the first place. More the utility that the ad specialty item has, longer will be its life with the prospect and more number of times the prospect will look at the company emblem and the message.

Ad specialty items can leave a lasting impression on the prospect. Marketers on their part need to put in mind and effort to design new and creative ad specialty items, so that the customers hold on to these items for a longer time, thereby increasing the life of the item and the message of the company. These items can become representative of a special event organized by the company like a charity show or a fare or even an anniversary party. People cherish the mementos from these kind of events and hold on to them for years.

To get the most out of ad specialties, be sure to order well in advance. Turnaround time is often quick when imprinting products; a week or two is all it usually takes. But allow extra time in case you need to make changes, if the artwork is not received properly, if the specialty supplier makes a mistake, or if shipping is held up. Even with a reliable supplier, sometimes things go wrong. Also, distribute the products once you get them! They do you no good in their boxes. You need to get them in the hands of prospects, customers, and employees so they can start using them and remembering your name.


Scott F. Geld is the Manager of Marketing Blaster, Inc, a pay-per-click traffic source that continually out performs the other major search engines in conversion ratio and ROI.

Let Your Customers Select You

Almost a complete opposite to direct marketing, welcome marketing (or opt-in as it is often called) is where people have actually asked to be part of your marketing campaign. This is a relatively new, but highly effective marketing method.

People actually come to you; they tell you that they want to receive information by newsletter, email or possibly through phone calls. Think about it, how much time and money do you waste by sending information to people who are simply not interested?

By narrowing down your target audience in this way, you can reduce the amount of wasted time and effort that goes into unsolicited marketing.

Another great benefit is that your customers can actually ask you for the information that they want to receive. A lot of marketing material is unnecessary or unwanted. By being directly linked to your customers you can make sure that you tell them exactly what they want to hear.

This direct link is a great way to make your customer feel wanted and important. There is nothing worse than receiving information that is totally irrelevant; this does nothing to build the reputation of your company. Target people and build the relationships you have if you want to see marketing success.

Opt-in marketing is particularly useful online. This way customers can receive information directly to their home.

Customers are becoming very standoffish when it comes to marketing. This is most likely due to the overwhelming amounts of marketing that bombard us from everywhere. Not only are their advertisements and commercial everywhere, we also have telemarketers calling us, spam emails, pop up ads on the internet and even advertisements via FAX. This is annoying and sometimes marketers seem outright predatory.

By allowing customers to choose whether or not they receive information you are much more likely to get a warmer reception. Be sure that you stay around to help your customer after they have bought your product. This way they will remain interested in your marketing and will become repeat customers.

By allowing people the choice, you are automatically gaining their trust as a non-pushy and pleasant company. It is also extremely important that you have people available to deal with after-sales issues. There is nothing more frustrating than getting an email advertising a product when you have been 'on hold' about the very same product for the best part of an hour! Remember your customers are your future.

Scott F. Geld is the Head Manager of Marketing Blaster Inc, a pay-per-click traffic source that continually beats the other major search engines in conversion ratio and ROI.

Article Duplication Solution

Most content site developers are busy avoiding the infamous "duplicate content" filters on all of the major search engines. Those who (like me) submit articles for promotion, are especially affected. I think I may have found a solution.

It's going to save you a bunch of time, effort and money if you publish articles.

It's called ArtemisPro and it's the best solution I know of for avoiding duplicate content penalties.

I often recommend buying PLR articles and them modifying them to get around the duplicate content penalties.

It is important to keep your articles unique and different from others who might be submitting those exact same PLR articles. However, it doesn't solve the problem of your own modified version of that article being detected as duplicate content across all of the article directories and other sites it ends up being published. The search engines don't give nearly the credit to those duplicate articles as they do for the original.

This is a huge problem for people who've previously been using articles to help with their website rankings (like me) as your trusty old links can start to reduce over time until hardly any are left.

The only answer is to submit a different article to every site, so that every single copy of your article is different - but how much work would that involve? TOO MUCH!

However, there's now a great little tool which resolves this problem.

I have friends who all have their own little applications for taking their content and making lots of versions of it for their websites - well this does exactly that, but for articles.

With ArtemisPro, you write three different versions of your article and it then knows how to mix them up properly (while still having them make perfect sense to your human readers) while it submits articles to sites and newsletters... each one being 100% unique and different from all of the other submissions in that batch.

This is the first program I have seen that can do this during an article submission. It's extremely powerful if you are concerned about duplicate content penalties. I actually had this idea myself awhile back and was going have a programmer create a tool like ArtemisPro. Why reinvent the wheel? This tool is inexpensive and simply crushes the duplicate content problem.

If you don't already have Artemis Pro, I would grab a copy today. It's extremely cheap for what it does and I don't know of any alternatives yet. I love being able to submit thousands of unique articles in less time than it takes to write three articles.

"The Biggest Asset and Essential Ingredient to Creating Happiness and Success is a Positive Self Image and an 'I-CAN' Mindset". For more personal success information, check out Andy Henry's "Money And Motivation" site here: http://www.MoneyAndMotivation.com

Imaginative Marketing

The market moves so quickly that it can be hard to keep up with the latest trends and ideas. Competitors seem to bring out bigger and better advertising every day and keeping up can be a real drain, both financially and in time. With ideas moving so quickly, what you really need to stay ahead of the game is a sharp imagination.

These days marketing is everywhere. Every company, no matter how small, is out there grabbing attention. To stand out you really have to be different. Most techniques have been tried, from the incredible to the hilarious. There are all sorts of adverts to be seen in today's market.

Watching the ways that others market is a great way to get your ideas together. Somehow, you need to create feeling. Whether the audience bursts into tears or laughter is largely irrelevant, what matters is that your marketing touches them in someway or another. Your advert should leave an impression that lasts for hours if not days.

The problem with using creativity in marketing is that most people can't do it well. It comes out as cheesy or just plain out dumb. Sometimes it is over the top and other times its message just doesn't make sense. The biggest reason for using your imagination in marketing is to form a relationship between your product and your customers.

If your message is too confusing, your audience may not even realize that it is talking about your product. Instead of focusing on wacky messages, try telling your customer why they need your product instead of anyone else's.

The more people you talk to the better. Everyone will have a different idea. Talk to colleagues, friends and family to get inspiration and fresh ideas. You can also talk to professionals in the field of marketing, from web designers to copywriters there are all sorts of people available to help you get creative effectively.

Scott F. Geld is the Lead Controller of Marketing Blaster Inc, a pay-per-click traffic source that continually
beats the major search engines in ROI and Conversion Ratios.

Marketing Ideas

It is the marketing ideas and strategies that get converted into the promotional strategies for your company and that is what will ultimately bring in the sales and profits. You can come across or develop new marketing ideas by being observant and creative. The basic idea or philosophy behind any marketing strategy is to build and then maintain a customer list that will be loyal to your company and buy repeatedly from you.

To get better marketing ideas you need to jot down all the ideas that come to your mind. All the ideas about your product, all the ideas about your customers, then narrow down these ideas to a few good ones. If brainstorming is not working and you have not been able to come up with any good original ideas, then you can search the web for some other ideas which can help you to add on to it and then come up with a marketing idea that will be apt for your company and product.

A marketing plan should have been designed to include best marketing ideas. If you feel that being creative and designing your marketing plan is not your cup of tea then do look at the option of hiring a marketing agency that will help you design a complete marketing strategy for your company. These agencies have staff whose competency is in knowing which ideas work for which businesses because they are experienced in the field and have seen hundreds of campaigns.

The marketing ideas you come up with will need to be implemented, or they are of no use. If you cannot or do not launch your campaigns, they will never bring you the desired results! So when planning, keep in mind the obstacles you may face, and think of ways to eliminate them. Some things that may hold you back include budget constraints, lack of skill, or being understaffed. Think of ways around this as you plan your strategy.

Finally, think about the specific tactics you will use in these campaigns. Your marketing ideas might include advertising, viral marketing, sponsorship, branding, product sampling and public relations. Or, you may want to stick simply with direct mail or an email opt in program. Product packaging and promotional materials are two other ideas you might want to include. See, it just pays to be open minded.

Scott F. Geld is the President of Marketing Blaster, a Pay-Per-Click traffic source that continually beats the competition in ROI and Conversion Rations.