3 Simple Steps to Getting Thousands in Free Advertising

Many entrepreneurs believe that they understand what public relations is, but very few do. Publicity and public relations can be used to boost your business by thousands of dollars a week or kill it; the trouble is using it to your advantage.

I’m going to cover a few of the basics for getting good publicity and why you need to do them. If you do, you can be assured that you will be increasing your business at a rapid speed. Publicity, if used correctly, can be many times more valuable than advertising, and best of all, it’s free.

1. Always be honest- when you are talking with a journalist, either through email or the phone, you must always be honest. Journalists have a sort of BS detector and can see what is truthful, what is hype and what is outright lies. If your new, they’ll probably excuse some hype for the first time but they will never forgive you if you outright lie to them.

2. Know what is news – if you are launching a new web page about your cats, that is not news. Honestly, no one cares. I really shouldn’t be saying this, but you would be amazed at the number of people who put out news releases on subjects that no one in their right mind would consider news. However, many entrepreneurs don’t realize when they are sitting on a publicity goldmine. For example, if a celebrity is a happy user of your product, if your company is putting out an interesting or unusual product or service or your company has come up with an extremely innovative product, then you probably have some news on your hands!

3. Know whom to target- when you are releasing a new hairdryer that increases efficiency by 40%, you can call the product sections of the news organizations near you. however, you would be ill advised to call an organization that has nothing to do with your products, “cat monthly”, for example. “pr spam” is a much-feared problem for journalists and pr practitioners alike. My rule is that you can send a release to a journalist you don’t know if you believe that it is very well targeted. I’m not like a few people who believe that you need their express permission; simply by being journalists and posting their information, they are inviting news. However, this being said, don’t spam them.

Try to keep these rules in mind the next time you are looking to get some major publicity to skyrocket your business. Keep to common sense and use old fashioned networking, and you too will be sitting on a publicity goldmine!

100 Excellent Words and 70 Action Getting Phrases for Ad Writing

100 Excellent Words

Absolutely.

Amazing.

Approved.

Attractive.

Authentic.

Bargain.

Beautiful.

Better.

Big.

Colorful.

Colossal.

Complete.

Confidential.

Crammed.

Delivered.

Direct.

Discount.

Easily.

Endorsed.

Enormous.

Excellent.

Exciting.

Exclusive.

Expert.

Famous.

Fascinating.

Fortune.

Full.

Genuine.

Gift.

Gigantic.

Greatest.

Guaranteed.

Helpful.

Highest.

Huge.

Immediately.

Improved.

Informative.

Instructive.

Interesting.

Largest.

Latest.

Lavishly.

Liberal.

Lifetime.

Limited.

Lowest.

Magic.

Mammoth.

Miracle.

Noted.

Odd.

Outstanding.

Personalized.

Popular.

Powerful.

Practical.

Professional.

Profitable.

Profusely.

Proven.

Quality.

Quickly.

Rare.

Reduced.

Refundable.

Remarkable.

Reliable.

Revealing.

Revolutionary.

Scarce.

Secrets.

Security.

Selected.

Sensational.

Simplified.

Sizable.

Special.

Startling.

Strange.

Strong.

Sturdy.

Successful.

Superior.

Surprise.

Terrific.

Tested.

Tremendous.

Unconditional.

Unique.

Unlimited.

Unparalleled.

Unsurpassed.

Unusual.

Useful.

Valuable.

Wealth.

Weird.

Wonderful.

70 Action getting phrases.

Act now! Send your name. All sent free to introduce. Amazing literature. Free. Ask for free folder. Bargain lists sent free. Be first to qualify. Booklet free. Catalog included free. Complete details free. Current list free. Dealers write for prices. Description sent free. Details free. Dime brings details. Everything supplied. Exciting details free. Extra for promptness. First lesson, 25 cents. Folder free. For literature write. Free booklet explains. Free plans tell how. Free selling kit. Free wholesale plan. Free with approvals. Full particulars free. Get facts that help. Get started today. Get your copy now. Get yours wholesale. Gifts with purchases. Illustrated lists free. Interesting details free. Investigate today. It’s free. Act Now. Literature free. Mail material to: Money making facts free. No obligation. Write! Offer limited. Send today. Only 10 cents to introduce. Order direct from: Order Now. Don’t delay. Particulars free. Postcard brings details. Request free literature. Revealing booklet free. Rush name for details. Sales kit furnished. Sample details free. Samples sent on trial. See before you buy. Send for free details. Send for it today. Send no money. Send postcard today. Send 15 cents for mailing. Send today. Send your want lists. Stamp brings details. Stamped envelope brings. Test lesson free. Unique sample offer. Valuable details free. Write for free booklet. Write us first! Yours for the asking. 37-cent stamp for details. $1 brings complete 32-page catalog free.

The key is to combine your words: EXAMPLE: “The Magic Mammoth Miracle”; “The Three ‘M’ Program”. This has already caught the attention and interest of your prospect. Now for example, say: The Money Making Facts Are Free. Simply fill out the form on my website or whatever action it is you want them to take. Fill in with a few details and you have an excellent Profit Pulling Ad. Of course you should be creative, but make sure to build your ads around these words and phrases. Make sure that your follow-up material is as interesting as the ad so you can get orders.

10 Ways to Advertise Your Business For Free!

At some point many small business owners are left with no or a small amount of capital to promote their business. But many entrepreneurs utilize these free or low budget yet effective tactics to promote their business online and offline.

1. Print out flyers or business cards and take them to your local stores, banks, beauty shops etc.

2. Word of mouth never fails, so tell your friends to tell their friends.

3. Make a cookie, candy or fruit basket and take it to your local store with your business cards.

4. Exchange links with other sites.

5. Post your brochures business cards at your local bulletin board.

6. At a restaurant when tipping include your card.

7. Send a press release to your local newspaper.

8. Submit your site to search engines and directories.

9. Give out free samples, promotional products, e-books etc.

10. Write articles for others to use on their website and newsletter include your web site URL and a brief description of your services/products.

10 Tips to Use Giveaways Effectively

Walk around any trade or consumer show and you will be able to collect a bag full of advertising specialties, or giveaway items all designed to promote. But look a little more closely. How many really do an effective job? How clearly do they get a message across? Is the message sufficiently visible? Is the giveaway useful or unique enough that you would want to keep and use it? All these questions, and more, need to be considered before jumping into the giveaway game.

Everyone enjoys receiving a gift, even if it is “just a little something.” Gift giving creates a favorable impression. It can build goodwill, be an incentive, communicate a message and create awareness.

When thinking about advertising specialties for your next show, consider the following ten questions:

1. What do you want to achieve by giving away a premium item?

Your giveaway items should be designed to increase your memorability, communicate, motivate, promote or increase recognition. It is important not only that the message have an impact, but also the premium itself.

2. How will you select your premium item?

There is a multitude of different items you could consider as a premium. However, which one will best suit your purpose? To select the right item, you need to decide your objective. Do you want it to enhance a theme; convey a specific message or educate your target audience? A clear purpose should help make your selection process easier. A promotional specialist can also help you make an effective selection. Remember that your company image is reflected in whatever you choose to give away.

3. Whom do you want to receive your premium?

Having a clear objective for your premium item will also help you decide who should receive it. You may consider having different gifts for different types of visitors. You might have different quality gifts for your key customers, prospects and general passers by.

4. How does your giveaway tie into your marketing theme?

Is there an item that naturally complements your marketing message? Have the message imprinted on the item and make sure that your company name, logo and phone number appear clearly. An important aspect of any gift is to remember who it was from long after the fact.

5. What is your budget?

The price range for premium items is enormous. Quality, quantity and special orders, all impact the price. Establish a budget as part of your exhibit marketing plan. Consider ordering the same item for several different shows. The greater the quantity of your order, the lower the individual unit price.

6. What must visitors do to qualify for a gift item?

There are several ways to use your premium effectively. For example, as a reward for visitors participating in a demonstration, presentation or contest; as a token of your appreciation when visitors have given you qualifying information about their specific needs; as a thank you for stopping at the booth. Avoid leaving items out for anyone to take. This diminishes value and has little or no memorability factor.

7. Will your giveaway directly help your future sales?

Consider handing out a discount coupon or a gift certificate that requires future contact with your company for redemption. Consider premiums that will help generate frequent visits to customers and prospects, such as calling you for free refills.

8. How does your premium item complement your exhibiting goals?

Premiums can be used to prequalify your prospects. One company uses playing cards. Prior to the show, they send “kings” to their key customers, “queens” to suppliers, “jacks” to new or hot prospects. They request that the cards are brought to the booth in exchange for a special gift. When the cards are presented, the booth staff already know certain information about the visitor. They can then act on their previous knowledge and use time with the visitor more productively.

9. How will you inform your target audience about you giveaway item?

A sufficiently novel or useful giveaway can actively help to draw prospects to your booth. So make sure your prospects know about it. Send a “tickler” invitation with details of the giveaway, or create a two-piece premium, sending one part out to key prospects prior to the show and telling them to collect the other half at your booth.

10. How will you measure the effectiveness of your premium?

Establish a tracking mechanism to measure the success of your giveaway. If it is a redemption item, code it so that you know it resulted from the show. Post-show follow-up could include a question about the premium – did visitors remember receiving it and how useful was the item. After the show, critique your giveaway with your exhibit team: Did it draw specific prospects to the booth? Was it eye-catching enough to persuade passers by to stop? Did your customers find it useful? Did it project the right corporate image?

There are plenty of exciting premiums for you to choose from so that you can avoid the usual pens, pencils and keychains. Make your premium work for you and it will be money well invested.

10 Tips For Writing A Profit Producing Ad

1. You can get ad copy ideas by studying similar product’s advertising material. Collect their sales letters, classified ads, web ads, e-mail ads, etc.

2. Know exactly what you want your ad copy to accomplish. It could be to qualify prospects, make sales, generate leads, attract web traffic, etc.

3. Make a complete list of your product’s benefits and features. Begin your ad with the most important benefit either in your headline or first sentence.

4. Make your ad benefits as specific as possible. Include exact numbers, percentages, times, colors, smells, sounds, descriptive adjectives, etc.

5. List all the ways your product is different from your competition’s. Include all the differences in your ad copy that are better than their product.

6. Use graphics, pictures and drawings of people actually using your product to solve their problem. Include a picture that also shows the results.

7. Make a list of your target audience. Write down what reasons would attract them to purchase your product. Include those reasons in your ad copy.

8. Include any proven facts in your ad copy. They could be customer surveys, scientific tests, product reviews, etc.

9. Tell your audience what kind of support they’ll get after they buy. It could be free consulting, tech support, free servicing, etc.

10. Ask people at the end of your copy why they decided not to buy. This will give you new ideas on how to produce a more profitable ad copy.

10 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Custom Invitations

I am always amazed when I hear about companies who spend tens of thousands of dollars organizing a make-it-or-break-it company event designed to celebrate a company milestone and/or impress prospective customers. Sometimes these events have big contracts or sales at stake! Yet, often planners will fall short on the most critical aspect of planning the event-the invitations! After all, before a client steps foot into your venue, or even confirms attendance, the invitation sets the tone and leaves the first and most important (and lasting!) impression!

Have a look at this compelling list of “10 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Custom Invitations”. The information in this article may very well be worth thousands of dollars to your company!

1) Double Exposure! ? Before, during, and after the event, your invitation represents your company with guaranteed staying power to the date of the event. It’s better than an ad! It’s an ad with a useful purpose that MUST be reviewed, responded to, and kept securely for weeks or months to the event date (and even after!)

2) The “U”-Factor (Ubiquitous Factor) ? Simply put, stunning invitations get noticed-everywhere. They get tacked up in communal areas (bulletin boards, lunch rooms, reception areas, etc) or passed around your guest’s office, management, other potential clients or partners. How do you get “stunning” invitations? Through a custom designer!

3) Stay Ahead of the Competition ? If your company isn’t sending out excellent invitations, rest assured your competition is! More and more companies are using custom invitations to gain that competitive edge and “unique” distinction in respective industries.

4) Image is Everything ? A flimsy self-printed Times New Roman font invitation card with perforated edges leaves just as “strong” an impression as an elegantly shaped shimmering layered silver pocket-fold emblazoned with your company logo. Which “strong” impression would you have your company make?

5) Create Buzz ? What? Excitement over a company or corporate event? It’s true. I recently created gorgeous custom invitations carefully packaged and wrapped in the company’s foil stamped logo. They were labour-intensive but definitely memorable invitations. The actual event was a debate between two respected audio engineers ? pretty dry by most standards. But the impact of the invitations alone made it one of the most talked about events in the industry!

6) Cutting Edge, Modern, & Savvy ? An invitation allows you to make a real statement about your company. Use this vehicle to reinforce your image or insert a more dramatic contemporary interpretation of your company image! It will get noticed!

7) Establish a Relationship with a Custom Invitation Designer ? Save time, money, and stress on your invitations! Develop a personal one-on-one relationship with the right invitation designer and you’ll never regret it. Your designer will be able to customize and anticipate your needs while avoiding or preventing potentially costly errors or miscommunications!

Good Career Move! ? We once had a client who was responsible for planning a significant corporate event. We helped him narrow down his choices to one custom invitation style and was truly impressive and original. Long after the event, he contacted us to thank us and explain that the custom invitations made such an impact that he believed they helped him gain notice within upper management circles which eventually lead to a promotion! We can’t guarantee that kind of success with all of our customers, but it does illustrate that? with the right invitations, anything can [and does] happen!

9) Professional, Knowledgeable, & Your Resource ? Don’t Sweat the Details! Outsourcing your invitations to a custom designer allows you to have better use of your time. Your Invitation Designer is a resource for formatting tips/guidelines, etiquette, invitation options, event-planning, and more! You’ll be confident you’re making the right choices and having the perfect sounding board for your ideas too!

10) Invitations are just the Beginning ? A custom Invitation Designer can help you make the right choices for all your other stationery requirements. Perhaps you need webcards, change-of-address cards, important Announcement cards etc. You can save a lot of money and hassle by making your Invitation Designer the one-stop-shop for stationery, accessories and even gifts and gift-related items.

Just because technology is changing rapidly, doesn’t mean you can forget about the pen and paper. Event stationery is getting a lot more creative and a lot more intensive. I’m constantly amazed by how many company staff people planning events miss out on this golden opportunity to showcase their event, company and product

10 Simple Techniques To Make Your Ad Get Powerful Attention

1. Make your ad’s keywords and phrases standout by enlarging the text. This technique works wonders with headlines and sub headlines.

2. Make your products list of benefits and features stand out by using a symbol in front of each of them. The symbol could be a dash, solid circle, star, etc.

3. Use sub headlines to break up your ad copy and to capture a skimmers eye. You could make them even more powerful by highlighting them with color.

4. Use attention grabbing adjectives to describe your product. For example sizzling, incredible, high power, ultramodern, killer, eye popping, etc.

5. Place attention grabbing pictures above and within your ad copy. A powerful technique is to use before and after pictures of people using your product.

6. Use a headline that catches the attention of your target audience. One of the most effective ways is to use a free offer as your headline.

7. Place colorful graphs, pie charts and other charts in your ad copy. Use charts that will grab a persons eye and also support your product claims.

8. Highlight buying incentives like free bonuses and money back guarantees. You could place them in boxes or in front of a different colored background.

9. Use short sentences or sentence fragments in the body of your ad copy. A short burst of words can catch a skimmers eye with one quick glance.

10. Highlight all the important keywords and phrases in your ad copy. You could use bolding, underlining and color to highlight the important words.

How to Write a Press Release

A press release is a story or announcement written for distribution to news publishers (newspapers, television, radio, websites, etc).

Although press releases can be written and distributed by anyone, they tend to be the domain of publicists. For example, when a large company launches a new product, their public relations officer would compose a press release with the relevant details. They would have a list of media contacts and send the press release to all of them in the hope that at least some would use the story and help promote their product.

A press release can be thought of as a news story with an agenda. Whilst the story itself should be genuinely newsworthy, it may be carefully crafted to promote a particular business, organisation or point of view.

This tutorial shows you how to write a press release and get it published. The examples tend to assume you are writing for a newspaper or other printed media, but the same principles apply to any news media

How to Write a News Story

Here’s something very few people realise: Writing news stories isn’t particularly difficult. It does take practice and not everyone will be an expert but if you follow the guidelines below you should be able to create effective news items without too much stress.

The Five “W”s and the “H”

This is the crux of all news – you need to know five things:

Who?   What?   Where?   When?   Why?   How?

Any good news story provides answers to each of these questions. You must drill these into your brain and they must become second nature.

For example, if you wish to cover a story about a local sports team entering a competition you will need to answer these questions:

• Who is the team? Who is the coach? Who are the prominent players? Who are the supporters?
• What sport do they play? What is the competition?
• Where is the competition? Where is the team normally based?
• When is the competition? How long have they been preparing? Are there any other important time factors?
• Why are they entering this particular competition? If it’s relevant, why does the team exist at all?
• How are they going to enter the competition? Do they need to fundraise? How much training and preparation is required? What will they need to do to win?

The Inverted Pyramid

This refers to the style of journalism which places the most important facts at the beginning and works “down” from there. Ideally, the first paragraph should contain enough information to give the reader a good overview of the entire story. The rest of the article explains and expands on the beginning.

A good approach is to assume that the story might be cut off at any point due to space limitations. Does the story work if the editor only decides to include the first two paragraphs? If not, re-arrange it so that it does.

The same principle can apply to any type of medium.

More Tips

• It’s About People
  News stories are all about how people are affected. In your sports story, you might spend some time focusing on one or more individuals, or on how the team morale is doing, or how the supporters are feeling.
• Have an Angle
  Most stories can be presented using a particular angle or “slant”. This is a standard technique and isn’t necessarily bad – it can help make the purpose of the story clear and give it focus. Examples of angles you could use for your sports story:
  “Team Tackles National Competition”
  “Big Ask for First-Year Coach”
  “Local Team in Need of Funds”
• Keep it Objective
  You are completely impartial. If there is more than one side to the story, cover them all. Don’t use “I” and “me” unless you are quoting someone. Speaking of quoting…
• Quote People
  For example: “We’re really excited about this competition,” says coach Bob Dobalina, “It’s the highest target we’ve ever set ourselves”.
• Don’t Get Flowery
  Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Don’t use lots of heavily descriptive language. When you’ve finished, go through the entire story and try to remove any words which aren’t completely necessary.

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