Three Proven Steps to Improve Your Home Business Advertising Response in Just 10 Days.
Author: Bob Markovsky
Three Proven Steps to Improve Your Home Business Advertising
Response in Just 10 Days.

Newspaper advertising is a tremendous source of new business
that for so many businesses doesnt ever reach its true
potential. These 3 steps will help you change that forever!

Youre about to find out the mistakes that your competitors
keep on making, and to start using techniques proven to grab
your prospects attention and draw out responses that turn
your ad into the 'customer producer' you always knew it
should be.

Small Business Realities

All business owners want to increase sales, generate more
customers, and make more money. Yet few take the necessary
actions to do so. Providing a quality product or service is
simply not enough.

Many business owners think they need to set an advertising
budget, send out a few sales letters, put a few coupons in
the local circular, run a newspaper ad, hand out flyers, and
do a bunch of other things 'trying to get their name out
there'.

The problem is... a small business that uses that approach
wastes a lot of potential. Spending money on this type of
exposure is known as advertising. The goal of advertising is
to establish a brand name, build an image, and achieve top
of the mind awareness. These are some fancy terms taught in
business school, but unfortunately they steer everyone in
the wrong direction.

You see, small businesses aren't supposed to advertise.
Advertising is all about repeating exposures and building an
image. Think about all of the many McDonalds commercials you
see on television in a week. That's 'high frequency'. Don't
they all seem to show a feeling of friendship, eating
happily with family ("we love to see you smile")? That's
image.

Do you think they intend to get you up out of your seat and
go to your local McDonalds right as you're watching the
commercial? Not really. OK, they hope you might, but thats
not what they intend. They are paying to have you see their
message so many times that when you are ready to buy their
product you will remember them and go there. Now,lets get
to work on your steps to advertising success.

Proven Step #1

So what method will work for your business? It's called
direct response marketing. Heres an example. Have you ever
bought anything after watching an infomercial? Even if you
havent, infomercials work, they make a lot of people a lot
of money. It might surprise you, infomercials are not
advertising - they don't try to build an image or get you to
remember a brand, the products aren't even sold in stores!!

What do they do?

** They take a receptive audience.

** They get them excitedly to pick up the phone and buy.
They create action!

This is why most newspaper ads dont deliver big results.
Most newspaper advertisers choose the commercial, but you
want the infomercial. Your one and only goal in newspaper
advertising is to create action.

In the usual types of Newspaper Directory ads you're dealing
with very targeted prospects. These are people looking up
your company type and ready to call you. That's the beauty
and the curse of Newspaper Directory ads. The beauty is
prospects can find you easily, the curse is that your
competitors are right there with you!!

So how do we get them to pick up the phone and dial your
number?

Use direct marketing...which is:

** Directly target a group of people who are in the market
for your product or service.

** Offer them what it is they want.

** Generate a response by forcing them to respond to your
offer.

Proven Step #2

Your competitors probably waste a lot of money because
they're charged for people who will never even consider
their offer. There is a definite and specific market for
your service and these are the only people that you should
aim your offer to.

For example, if you repair dental equipment you want to
market your service to dentists, oral surgeons, etc.. But
it's not generally that easy.

Consider a Home Cleaning Service in a suburb of Cleveland
that advertises in the Cleveland Plain Dealer due to the
tremendous readership. If 75% of the cleaning company's
clients and target prospects are 3 person families and
larger, with incomes of $100,000 per year, living in suburbs
A, B and C., they've wasted a big chunk of money. Heres
why.

They just spent a lot of money for an ad that will be seen
by college students, low-income families, and others that
would never consider using their services anyway. Their high
percentage prospects make up only a small readership of that
paper. Who knows what percentage of those people will see
the ad?

Maybe there's a magazine or community mailer that caters to
middle/upper class families in a county neighboring
Cleveland or in one of the many suburbs. Sure, maybe the
readership is nowhere near as large but the lower cost and
targeted readership will generate a much greater return on
the company's investment.

A mailing list of 3-person households and larger with
incomes above $100,000, who moved to such-n-such city or
county within the last year can be purchased. Direct
marketing targets the people most likely to respond to your
offer.

Proven Step #3

Most advertising has no offer. And so the prospect has no
incentive to respond right now. Direct response always tries
to get a response by offering something of value to your
prospect right now.

Using the home cleaning service in the example above, you
could offer a free hour of cleaning, 20% off the first job,
a free pack of sponges and a bottle of Simply Green or
anything of value that will cause a person to act.

Since the offer is subject to your terms, you set a date
when the offer expires, a number they have to call, a letter
that they must bring in, a form that they must fill out.

So, at the end of your promotion you know exactly how much
was spent reaching how many people. Also, you will know how
many people responded and how much business was generated.

Most of your competitors dont do this little analysis! They
repeat campaigns that cost more than they bring in. So they
are forced to set advertising budgets that limit the amount
of advertising they can run each year.

But, if every one of your promotions cost you $55 and
brought in $225 in business, why would you need a budget?
Wouldnt you just keep repeating the promotion over and
over?

Your goal should be to repeat and improve what works for
you. If you do, you will not need a budget and you will be
able to predict what kinds of repeat and new business each
promotion will generate.

Bob Markovsky
Millennium Services Group

http://www.Cleaning-Biz.com

About the Author

Bob Markovsky is the owner of Millennium Services Group, a publisher of online business start-up books.