The importance of advertising is plainly understood by most businesses. A significant part of their budget is devoted to it. If finances are tight, many try to build business through word-of-mouth from satisfied customers but that can take a while.

This is the reason why many target their local community with high cost radio and television ads. The price of the ad is determined through the use of polls which estimate the number of people watching. However, these numbers can often be inflated due to channel surfing during breaks in a program. If it’s actually read, printed advertisements put a coupon or offer right in the prospect’s hand. Also, internet advertising is growing in popularity but some find it difficult to target the audience they are aiming for.

One novel plan to quickly and effectively inform a local population of a product or service is aerial advertising. A firm is hired to make a large banner with a concise message and then to trail this message behind an airplane flown over a beach, sporting event, concert, parade or any open sky gathering. The people hear the drone of the plane, look up, read the ad, and the message is delivered. Does this sound expensive? It is actually more cost effective than most of the methods of advertising mentioned above.

For much less cost than other traditional advertising methods, aerial advertisers claim that their method reaches more people in a more effective way. Here’s an example: One beach in Miami was advertised to and then, 30 minutes later, 2000 people were surveyed. The survey showed that 88% knew the ad had flown by, 79% recalled what the subject, and 67% could recall at least half of the exact message. Anyone would be hard pressed to say that printed ads, radio or TV could match that effectiveness at just five dollars per thousand people targeted. Those spending significant amounts of their budget on traditional advertising would do well to consider that they can reach as many people with less than half that budget using aerial advertising.

The noise of the plane overhead attracts the attention of the crowd and they look up. There, behind the plane, is a banner flapping in the wind and displaying a large, readable message, product, logo, or website. This naturally raises their curiosity and they want to know what it’s all about. As the banner passes overhead, they are able to read it several times. Just the uniqueness of the delivery causes many to remember the product because it stands out from everything else that is fighting for their attention.

Environmentalists might balk at the air pollution caused by the plane as it delivers the message. Yet, consider the amount of landfill that results from discarded printed matter, or visual pollution from the plethora of billboards blocking the landscape!

Those interested in a cost effective means of making their product or service known in a specific local area would do well to consider aerial advertising.

Posted: July 14th, 2008 under Advertising.
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This is exactly what I did in less than 1 week to create THREE (3) unique Reports that I needed to give away for Free with my Opt-in box. Now I know I’m using this method to create a unique Information Report, however the very same methodology can be used to create your very own digital book! I taught this method to my students and they went absolutely crazy over this strategy that several of them went out and implemented it right away! Below is my STEP BY STEP process. Remember you can use this for unique Reports or eBooks.

STEP 1: Decide On Topic and Name. Your first Step is to decide on the topic and name for eBook/Special Report. I needed 3 Special Reports. Here are the topics and titles: “Creating A Successful Consulting Business”, “Creating A Successful Coaching Business”, “Creating A Successful Seminar Business”.

Remember my purpose and intent here was to provide general information in the form of a unique Information Report that would entice someone to opt-in and give me their first name and email address for my unique Information Report. I’m using this for my blogs. Note that my Headings are pretty generic. That is just fine for right now and for the purpose of creation. I will come back and enhance these Headings to make them more persuasive later.

STEP 2: Secure Content Writer. You need someone to write these articles for you… don’t try to do everything yourself. And remember it doesn’t have to be perfect…. it just has to BE! Get yourself going by having someone help you. You can always come back and improve later, that’s the easy part. Here are some resources: www.forums.digitalpoint.com - this is where we get our writers, www.craigslist.org - simply search for services or post an ad, www.elance.com - this is a site a lot of top marketers use.

What should you be paying per article? Answer: $5.00. If it is more than this, keep looking. Also… if you are looking for a lot of articles, consider negotiating a package rate or for a long term relationship. The key here is not to mention that you need a ebook! Because then the price goes up to $1000 or higher! All you want is the information and then YOU will format it into your ebook or special report.

STEP 3: Create Your Article Titles. Okay, now you need content for your eBook or Special Report. The way to do this is to go to your article writer and give them the topic and a list of articles you want written. Remember these titles will change later to be your chapter titles… for now all the article writer needs to know is that they are writing articles.

The articles will be about 500 words in length. It doesn’t matter what order you put your request in, however the closer to your book outline you can get, the easier it is for the article writer to see the flow and make the information seem continuous. This is the flow you want. This isn’t set in stone and you can always change it later. As a matter of fact I rearranged the chapters to make them make even more sense and to put them into a more logical sequence for my audience.

STEP 4: Format The Content. Once you get your articles back from your article writer (average time is 24 hours to 4 days) you are ready to put them together as chapters into your eBook or Special Report and then format the content. You can implement a few strategies here to increase the content. 1) Request more articles and combine the content into chapters, 2) Add your expert opinion as content and supplement the information, 3) Add case studies to demonstrate the key elements of the content, and 4) Add graphics, charts, tables, testimonials. All of the recommendations should be implemented to create a value and content-rich product that is unique and exclusive to you.

Posted: July 14th, 2008 under Marketing.
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Many people find that working from home can be fun. It is not easy, though, to discover the type of income that can be achieved from home. When it is found, it sometimes is hard to control the projects. Here are a couple of suggestions which can help you manage your home based business and have it run without obstacles.

Be a slave driver. You heard right. You must become the very man or woman you wanted to escape from when they were your employer. Newly self-employed folks are usually making the mistake of lacking the direction and guidance they were used to when employed by somebody else.

Make yourself schedules and stick to them. Don’t let yourself get away with being lazy. One of the nicest things about working from home is being able to set your own hours, do things you want to do while working around them. The pitfall is that it is too easy to shove off assignments because you’d rather watch Oprah.

When you have a home based business you must set sensible working hours and stick to them. Of course, when Alice needs a ride to her piano lesson; when Jimmy is sick–you have the freedom of leaving your home office and taking care of them. But do not allow Alice and Jimmy distract you too often or your work will not be done. Remember: no work– no income.

Always be on the lookout. In most work at home situations you will need to keep your eyes peeled for the next assignment, the next great item to sell, or the next person to sell to, all depending on the types of work you have chosen.

It’s easy to get complacent when things are going good and expect that they always will. At those times work at home people often just go with the flow and stop searching new opportunities. That is a big mistake. If the work suddenly dries up, so does your income. If you’re working hard and have plenty of work, you certainly do not want to over burden yourself with more, but always keep an eye toward the horizon.

Always be on top of where available opportunities can be found. If you are into online sales and you are making money on eBay, never cease checking how others are working and making their fortune and put their methods into action for your own business.

The Internet is paved with money that could be yours, but starting your own home based business is for the determined and the courageous. If you have confidence in yourself, you can definitely make it. You will be self-employed, work your own hours from your home office and you will be able to generate a nice income.

Posted: July 14th, 2008 under Marketing.
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