Advertising Techniques
Making the Most of Your Business

Which advertising techniques are you using to promote your business? Ever think of throwing in some customized marketing solutions and new profitable business ideas and see how those work? Well, that's not a bad idea.

Whether you are online or brick and mortar, advertising a must for the serious person. If don't do it, your competition will. And if you don't use the most profitable business ideas available they will find a way to use them.

Got Profitable Business Ideas?

So, if you are ready to get informed of what advertising techniques will work for you, you are at the right place. Depending on how much you want to invest on advertising, a number of effective advertising techniques and customized marketing solutions are available for you to reach your potential customers.

The most popular mediums for advertising are television, radio, print, and the internet. Let’s look into these mediums, the different advertising techniques you can use with these mediums, and their pros and cons.

The Internet

It’s the world’s biggest multi-media library, and the world is your audience. If you know how, you can even just do it yourself. There is also a wide range of ways to bring your business known through the internet.

Pros: You can have a world-wide reach but you can also focus it to a target audience. And you can do it
by yourself if you know how so it’s practically free.

Cons: You have more competition in placements.

Advertising Techniques Used on the Internet

• Search Engine Optimization
This advertising technique may be the most popular form of online marketing at the moment. Most people use search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to find information so if your website is well optimized, you can reach a greater audience, at any time. There are a lot of methods to get your website rank well for the keywords you associate your business with.

Some of these are submitting relevant content to websites that support content posting such as article sites, blogs, and have the content point to your site. Another method is link advertising where you put your website’s link to relevant websites. Search Engine Optimization web development is a tricky method though. If you do it in a way that search engines do not like, your website can get blocked from the search engine placements.

• Referral programs
This is when you offer incentives to your existing clients when they bring you more customers through your website.

• Affiliate Marketing
This is when you pay commission to another site if they direct a potential customer to your website and the customer makes a purchase. If you find the right affiliate marketing opportunity, this can be a great way to generate passive income.

• PPC Advertising
The most common of PPC programs is Google AdWords (sometimes confused with Google Adsense - which is another viable way to make money). Payment methods can be done through CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per impression) where you pay Google a certain amount for every 1000 visitors they direct to your site.

• Obtrusive Advertising
This is a type of advertising where the user is forced to view your ad. Usual method for this is the use of popups or pop-unders. Most people find it annoying, and it doesn’t always focus to your targeted niche. Some people refer to multi level marketing companies as obtrusive because it has been wrongly accused of always approaching people with a hard sell.

These methods offer lots of affordable online marketing opportunities. So if you have a business onine and want to increase online traffic to your site (and, why wouldn't you?), we encourage you to try them out.

Television

Television ads are effective because most households have at least one TV. It also affects the visual and auditory senses so the effect can be more lasting. The type of advertisements usually used on TV use persuasion through a number of advertising techniques.

Pros: You can reach a wide audience, in big numbers. It affects the auditory and visual senses.

Cons: It’s expensive.

Advertising Techniques Used on TV Ads

• The Bandwagon Approach.
This approach simply uses the concept of “If everyone else is using it, it must be good.” People by nature want to try something that everyone else is using and find out about the hype for themselves.

• The Pop Culture Approach.
This is usually used if the business’s primary niche is the young. It uses the concept of association to attract potential customers. One popular example is the approach used by Pepsi. Pepsi usually uses popular celebrities to promote their products.

• The Selected Few Approach.
This is used to target a very select niche, such as the rich and the powerful, or those that think they are different from the rest. In contrast to the bandwagon and pop culture approach, they exude the snob approach.

• The Testimonial Approach.
As they say, the most effective advertisement is the “word of mouth” advertisement. This uses that approach, only this time it reaches more people than the conventional “word of mouth”.

• The Sexy Approach.
Sex sells, and to use a sexually attractive model or scenario does the trick.

• The Fear Factor.
This type of advertisement plays on fear to persuade potential customers. The types of businesses that usually adopt this method are insurance companies.

Radio

If television advertisement is out of your budget, radio ads may be your weapon of choice because it’s cheaper. However, conventional radio stations don’t reach as many potential customers as TV does because most conventional radio stations are limited by their frequency’s reach. But this could be a good choice if your business is only available in your area anyway. Internet radio however, can reach a global scale.

Pros: It’s less expensive than TV ads.

Cons: Lesser audience reach than television, and only affects auditory senses.

Advertising Techniques Used on Radio Ads
Radio advertising techniques use the same objectives as television ads but since they are only heard, they play on more approaches that involve hearing such as a catchy jingle, or a catchy tag line.

Print
A lot of businesses invest on print ads because it’s readily available when the potential customer wants to view it. It doesn’t need a time slot, or wait for a program to go into commercial breaks before it can be shown. Also, once it is in the household, it can stay there for a very long time.

Pros: It’s less expensive as TV ads and it’s readily accessible.

Cons: Target audience may be limited depending on the print material you are advertising on.

Advertising Techniques Used on Print Ads

• Think sophistication.
Tone down the flashy images and all that jazz. Flashy images may be nice and may produce a positive result for your business’s image, but they don’t hit home. It’s the message that does magic.

• Maintain focus.
Keep your objective in mind, and create a short but powerful message to deliver that objective. Create a catchy and provocative tagline.

• KISS.
Keep it short and simple. In this fast paced world, people are always in a hurry. They usually just skim pages now and if you beat around the bush, you might not be able to get your message across.

• Get proof.
Ask a happy customer to testify for you. Because people like proof.

• Be reachable.
Make sure your potential clients know where to reach you. Don’t forget to include your business contact information or your website address or else your ad will be fruitless.