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11 Success Tips to Home Based Internet Business
Let's face it everyone wants to succeed with their home based internet business ? But what does it takes to really succeed in cyberspace ?
1. Your first ultimate start must include written goals and plans. Formulate a plan of weekly activity...
7 Top Home Business Time Wasters
What I call "Time Wasters" is any action interfering with running your home based business.
What Are The 7 Most Common Time Wasters?
Check Out The Following!
1. Email.
Email is without a doubt a very important factor in operating...
Fantasy versus Reality
Building wealth isn't something for the frightened, ignorant, and lost. You have to be emotionally strong, prepared, and standing in the right spot. So many of us fantasize about making more money and call it prayer. We then wonder why the...
What Every Small Business Owner Should Know About Seeing The Creative Side of Customer Complaints
Customer Service is a blessing and a curse; a blessing to the customer and a curse to you, the employee. At least so it seems. As the Chief Customer Service Officer (CCSO) for your business, you are faced with a never-ending barrage of...
Your Home Office - Stay Put or Move Out
Is it really your time to take that a leap and move from your home office to a commercial property?
To help you answer this question, let's take a step backwards for a moment and answer two other questions. Why do you want to move? Why is...
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Advertising On A Budget - Part 2: Thinking Small
This is the second article of a three-part series. I'm illustrating the marketing challenges of a small business, PrescottWeddings.com.
Our goal was to both build the PWC brand and drive traffic to the Web site. Advertising regularly was essential. Yet it was also essential to keep our costs down. So we leveraged our monthly newspaper advertising to stretch our marketing dollar as far as we could.
How did we do that? We "thought small."
We bought one inch by two column inch ads (a column inch in this particular publication is approximately 1.88 inches). The ads were one inch high and almost 4 inches long.
To reflect the small ad, the copy also had to be short and sweet. Like so:
www.PrescottWeddings.com. Everything you need to say "I do."
Just the name of the business and the slogan.
We put the name in large type and made the tagline much smaller.
Did it work?
The first day this ad ran, we garnered 350 hits on the Web site and several phone calls from business owners who wanted more information.
And that was just the beginning. Hits steadily grew during the campaign, and every time it ran we always noticed a jump.
Not bad for a little ad.
Conventional wisdom says bigger is better. And while it is true that big ads stand out (after all, they do take a big chunk of real estate on the page) it doesn't mean big is the only way to go. Small ads can pack a punch too.
Why did the PWC ad work? First of all, it got noticed because it stuck out (yes, small ads can stick out). It had an odd shape -- long and thin, not a square like so many other ads. The name was big -- bigger than many other fonts surrounding it. (But not so big that the ad lacked sufficient white space.)
But probably the biggest reason it worked was because the message was simple.
This is clearly a Web site about having a wedding in the Prescott area. Therefore if you're involved with weddings, whether as a business or on a more personal level, and you're also associated with Prescott, then this is a Web site clearly worth taking a peek at.
People instantly got the message. And they got it even if they only scanned the paper. It was quick and painless for them -- something all ads should strive to be.
What's also interesting is how this ad hit its target market. I've spoken to people (mostly men) who have no interest in getting married and have never seen the ad even though they read the paper. Conversely, businesses in the wedding industry and brides have said they see the ad all the time.
Now, you may have a business name that doesn't capture your business' products or services as well as PrescottWeddings.com (my business name for example). In this case, why not think of a catchy tag line you can use in those small ads to drive people to your Web site?
Web sites can be huge, wordy, information-stuffed selling tools. So use short, sweet one-message statement to get people to go look and learn more about your business rather than try to shove everything in an ad. Don't forget to include your business name and logo for branding purposes.
About the author:
Michele Pariza Wacek owns Creative Concepts and Copywriting, a writing, marketing and creativity agency. She offers two free e-newsletters that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.writingusa.comCopyright 2005 Michele Pariza Wacek.
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United States Small Business Administration |
An electronic gateway of procurement information for and about small businesses. Search engine for contracting officers, marketing tool for small firms, ... |
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SBA |
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Business & Small Business |
Online and print small business publication. Information to help start, grow or manage a small business. |
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Small Business and Self-Employed One-Stop Resource |
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BC Business Services offers assistance and resources for those running or starting a business in British Columbia and Vancouver. |
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Small Business Service | Home |
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Directory categorized by industry with company business card feature. |
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Facilitates the sharing and exchange of information among small business development centers, the small business administration and other business-oriented ... |
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