Advertising

Advertising In The Digital Age: Social Media Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

There’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t belong to some form of social media platform in order to build a community and drive traffic to your website – which is exactly the whole point behind social media platforms. For small business owners, who may not have the budget to employ the expertise of a digital marketing agency, it’s always a great idea to have a few key social media marketing tips up their sleeves; specifically for advertising in the digital age.

Remember, although the whole point of owning a few pages on various social media pages is to drive traffic back to your website, it still remains a social activity where individuals connect. Thus, in order to connect with your fans successfully whilst advertising your brand, it’s important to keep the following digital marketing tips for small businesses in mind.

Advertising In The Digital Age: Social Media Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

The Battle of the Marketing Methods: Traditional vs Digital

Each business strives to grow and develop because even stagnation is a sure sign of failure. In order to achieve its goal, a company needs to constantly work on enlarging its client base, which means it has to use all available promotional tools and channels to reach as many new clients and stay in touch with the existing ones. How the problem of choosing the right advertising strategy is dealt with has a great effect on the overall performance of every company. But the question is: traditional vs digital: which is better?

Some companies prefer traditional marketing methods because they have been successful in the past. That’s why we still see print ads, billboards or flyers distributed all over the world, and TV and radio commercials are still going strong. On the other hand, new advertising methods are taking the world by storm, reaching a much greater number of people in much less time for much less money. They are all Internet-related and include web pages, blogs, social media platforms and every other way of promoting a business online.

The Battle of the Marketing Methods: Traditional vs Digital

Taking a Page From Print Ads To Improve Your Website

Every few years, I re-read David Ogilvy’s, Ogilvy on Advertising. Each time I crack open the familiar binding, I find something to inspire me. Filled with practical advice that is as relevant now as it was when it was written almost 30 years ago, I recommend you picking it up for the first time, or rediscover it as I do.

As I recently re-read this classic, it struck me how his recipe for print advertising success sounds a lot like successful websites. I’m sure I’m not the first to make this connection, but I wanted to share with you these time-tested marketing techniques that sell your product or service, regardless of the medium.

Taking a Page From Print Ads To Improve Your Website

10 Ways To Improve Sales Through Effective Advertising

Closing sales is a crucial aspect of your business. Without it, you have no business. However, from a business perspective, the sales process actually starts with marketing.

Marketing can be defined as the business of generating good leads. However, savvy marketers do not rely on slick strategies, gimmicky tactics, or finding a perfect list broker to get a steady stream of targeted leads into a business funnel. Instead, they focus on things that have been proven to work for centuries: effective advertising.

Without marketing, there are no prospects, and without sales, there is no conversion of prospects into customers. So, think of good sales as a team sport where sales and marketing work together like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

With that in mind, here are 10 ways to generate more leads through advertising:

5 Reasons Why Tangible Advertising Is Still Effective

Many people believe they can market their companies via Internet only. While the Internet is a wonderful platform, tangible marketing efforts are still incredibly effective and necessary. Let’s discuss why tangible advertising is still so effective in today’s market.

1. It Reaches Everyone
Believe it or not, not everyone has constant access to the Internet. Whether it is for financial reasons, lack of knowledge or by choice, some people choose to be without the constant device in hand. However, most people do receive mail! Sending direct mail will ensure you reach even those who tend to stay offline.

Permission to Engage: Blurring the Line Between Marketing and Content

Which is more valuable to a company: eight customers who each visit once and make one purchase, or one customer who returns eight times and makes a purchase each time?

While both factions are worth courting, it’s the loyal customer who deserves the most attention. This person has shown faith in your business and will likely be open to receiving (and helping to spread) your marketing and content efforts. Entrepreneur and business guru Seth Godin put words to the idea of permission marketing, but it’s really just an age-old concept gaining new respect in a world where consumers have largely learned to tune out the constant chatter of advertising.

From sitcom TV to website sidebars to print ads, the traditional means of getting the word out are hurting. They’ve been largely replaced by social media, where much of the world’s knowledge is now shared and disseminated. However, having 10,000 likes on your Facebook page doesn’t necessarily generate more revenue than having 1,000, if the smaller page’s followers are more actively participating on the page.

Solve Media: Creating a Market Where There Was None

Today I read an article on Mashable about a company doing something truly innovative (it’s rarer than you’d think). The company, Solve Media, is replacing those annoying Captcha boxes with advertising.

But it’s not annoying advertising.

So instead of seeing this at the bottom of a form you’re filling out online:

 

You’d see something like this:

And I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather type in a brand slogan than erstwhile foregone. Half the time I get the Captcha text wrong and have to start over.

Learn from LinkLove: Marketing vs. Advertising

My Sparkplugging buddy Dawud Miracle wrote a really good post raising the question of whether there is a difference between marketing vs. advertising. It’s a good question. He notes that the word “advertising” sometimes seems like a dirty word, a…

Advertising That Works (or Rather, Doesn’t): Cultural Sensitivity

You may have seen this Intel ad recently. It leaves a big question mark hanging over my head. I have to assume that such a big corporation wouldn't deliberately make a racist comment in advertising that likely cost several hundred thousand dollars. But what else are we to make of the subservient black men bowing down to the self-satisfied white man?

How are you Aiming Your Marketing Message to Consumers?

Marketing. Public Relations. Advertising. Branding.

You’ve probably heard of all of these, but aren’t sure what the differences are. In truth, they overlap a lot. The lines are often blurred among them.

I couldn’t say it better than that, but I’ll go ahead and ruin it by trying. Let’s order them in terms of blatancy to the most subtle.

1. Advertising (bang your message over someone’s head)
2. Marketing (consumers are aware you’re sending a marketing message to get them to buy)
3. Public Relations (they don’t have to know you called the news station after rescuing that kitten from a tree)
4. Branding (word of mouth is a great example). Branding is usually seen as the most sophisticated because it involves associating the brand with a lifestyle or particular experience, therefore the advertising can be around the Brand rather than the product or service.

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