Friday, August 12, 2011

Advertising Possibilities Are Endless For Small Business

Often, the biggest obstacle that most, if not all, small businesses have is a limited budget. Let’s face it. Having a small business makes it difficult for you to have the most glamorous marketing campaign such as that of the big firms and Fortune 500 companies.

And you know for a fact that advertising is truly expensive. If you don’t look out, you might just wake up one day with your funds depleted, and strapped with a marketing campaign that provides lackluster performance.

Knowing you have other things to allocate your funds for, you know that you have to consider all things first before you can shell out your hard earned dollars for your coveted marketing tool. Be it full color flyers, or even a large format poster, you can’t afford to be picky when you’re looking at a very small fund to stretch.

With the funds you’re operating on is just enough to get you a decent marketing campaign for your business, it’s no wonder that many business owners and marketers are turning to other alternative promotional vehicles to introduce their brands. In fact, most marketers and advertisers are looking at ways to get attractive and compelling marketing campaigns for the price they can afford of course.

But this is a common misconception of most business owners and advertisers about advertising that should be changed right away. Although a limited budget may mean limited access to the most expensive ads such as your full color flyer printing campaign or your large format poster printing project, it doesn’t mean that you should settle for a mediocre piece.

On the contrary, having a limited budget means you will be able to come up with a more creative ad campaign that will help you effectively introduce your business to your target market.

And it’s not all print ads actually. Marketing your business can be advantageous in a way because you’re able to hand out to your target clients your message in a nice piece of paper. But as always, you can also try some alternatives that can help you promote your business better.

You might want to try co-sponsoring a worthwhile activity, for example. It may be in promotions, events, trade shows, and exhibits located locally. This way, as a small business, you’ll be recognized as a supporter of your community endeavors. This is actually what most big companies do to market their name and brand. As a potential client looks at the new ads, they will be eager to see that you are a staunch supporter of the local community, and hence, a better choice between you and your competitors.

The key is not therefore be frustrated just because you happen to work on a very limited amount. Small businesses are often very imaginative, especially when it comes to stretching their money and making sure that every penny is put to good use. They may not have the money, but they do have excellent marketing tools that show professionalism and credibility.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Search Engines and The Small Business Website

If you're doing any type of business on the internet than search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! could play a large role in the success or failure of your business. Even though most internet user have experience using search engines, many don't know how the engines work.

For website owners it is important to understand how, at least at a high level, search engines work so they can take advantage of the website traffic that only search engines can deliver.

Search Engines are special sites on the Web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites. There are differences in the ways various Search Engines work, but they all perform three basic tasks:

- They search the Internet or select pieces of the Internet based on important words,
- They keep an index of the words they find, and where they find them, and
- They allow users to look for words or combinations of words found in that index.

Early Search Engines held an index of a few hundred thousand pages and documents, and received maybe one or two thousand inquiries each day. Today, a top Search Engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of millions of queries per day.

Before a Search Engine can tell you where a file or document is, it must be found. To find information on the hundreds of millions of Web pages that exist, a Search Engine employs special software robots, called spiders, to build lists of the words found on Web sites.

When a spider is building its lists, the process is called web crawling.

In order to build and maintain a useful list of words, a Search Engine's spiders have to look at a lot of pages. How does any spider start its travels over the Web? The usual starting points are lists of heavily used servers and very popular pages. The spider will begin with a popular site, indexing the words on its pages and following every link found within the site. In this way, the spidering system quickly begins to travel, spreading out across the most widely used portions of the Web.

To increase the likely-hood that the spiders find your website make sure you are listed on high ranked websites like Merchant Circle. You can create a free business page and blog that will not only increase your chances of being found but also be another place for potential visitors to find about about your website.

Once the spiders have completed the task of finding information on Web pages, the Search Engine must store the information in a way that makes it useful. There are two key components involved in making the gathered data accessible to users:

- The information stored with the data, and
- The method by which the information is indexed.

In the simplest case, a Search Engine could just store the word and the URL where it was found. In reality, this would make for an engine of limited use, since there would be no way of telling whether the word was used in an important or a trivial way on the page, whether the word was used once or many times or whether the page contained links to other pages containing the word. In other words, there would be no way of building the ranking list that tries to present the most useful pages at the top of the list of search results.

To make for more useful results, most Search Engines store more than just the word and URL. A Search Engine might store the number of times that the word appears on a page. The engine might assign a weight to each entry, with increasing values assigned to words as they appear near the top of the document, in sub-headings, in links, in the META tags or in the title of the page. Each commercial Search Engine has a different formula for assigning weight to the words in its index. This is one of the reasons that a search for the same word on different Search Engines will produce different lists, with the pages presented in different orders.

You can get a customized Page Critic Analysis Report from Webs 4 Small Business that tells you how YOUR webpages should be set up to make sure give the search engines what they are looking for when they review your page.

An index has a single purpose: it allows information to be found as quickly as possible. There are quite a few ways for an index to be built, but one of the most effective ways is to build a hash table. In hashing, a formula is applied to attach a numerical value to each word.

The formula is designed to evenly distribute the entries across a predetermined number of divisions. This numerical distribution is different from the distribution of words across the alphabet, and that is the key to a hash table's effectiveness.

When a person requests a search on a keyword or phrase, the Search Engine software searches the index for relevant information. The software then provides a report back to the searcher with the most relevant web pages listed first.

Not sure what keywords you should use? Picking the right, or wrong ones, can make or break your chances at online success. Consider getting a customized Key Word Report from Webs 4 Small Business that tells you which keywords you should and should not consider for your site. These keywords are specific to YOUR website not a generic list of keywords.

So, why are search engines important to business website owners? Simple. You need traffic and Search Engines have lots of it. And, their purpose is to drive traffic to sites that they think match their visitors' needs.

The way to get a portion of that traffic, is to optimize your website (you've likely heard of Search Engine Optimization or SEO). That way when a someone searches for a keyword that is relevant to your website, the search engines includes a link to your website in the search results. That puts traffic and potential visitors just a click away from you website.
Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com


Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Is Link Marketing Important To My Business?

Link marketing has become something of a wonder. Some will say that if you do it, you’ll end up hurt. Others will tell you that you have to follow specific steps to being successful. In any case, the bottom line is that anything positive that you can do to aid your website in getting more visitors should be something that you do, at least to a point. Today, there are hundreds of strategies about what will work in search engine ranking. Some people believe in optimization while others believe in quality content. When it comes to link marketing, there are several things that you should know.

First, realize that there are several types of link marketing to consider.

One way links: To be short, this is one of the best ways to use link marketing. If you use one way links, you are having other website owners list your website link on their page. That may sound strange and you may not realize why anyone would actually want to do that, but the truth is that you can do it. One way links help you to build traffic to your website. They are also highly regarded by the search engines because someone is saying that your website is high quality enough to direct others to it. To use them, visit article directories. Add in a few directories with your link attached and off you go.

Reciprocal links: This type of link is like a trade off. You will place your link on someone’s website and then you’ll need to place their link on yours. It’s a fair trade, so to speak. But, the difference here is how you do it. If you go about adding links to your website that do not have anything to do with your site, or add a ton of them all at once because you purchased them, your website may actually be lowered in the search engine ranks. This is because this is considered a way of cheating the search engines and therefore its not worth it. But, if you put them on correctly, from relevant websites in the proper way, they can help you to improve your website ranking.

The important thing to know about link marketing is that it should not be the only thing that you use to get your website ranking well. There are many things to consider that may actually be more important. For example, having quality content on your site, an easy flowing site and even one that will have your visitors coming back are better choices.

When it comes down to it, using link marketing in your website business is important. It should be a part of your strategy of building a well founded, high quality website. After all, you do want the search engines to rank you well enough to get visitors. Why not use other people’s rankings to help you to get a few of those visitors as well? In short, using link marketing is a tool you should consider for a successful website design that ranks well with the search engines.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com





Monday, August 8, 2011

How To Generate Traffic Using Only Free Methods

Starting up a company of course require a lot of things, to get straight to the point, you need a capital. To make money requires money as well. But of course, with the versatility the internet offers, there are many ways you could find that could help optimize the potential of your site or business in generating traffic.

While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, many sites don’t have the resources that others have to generate more traffic for your site. Well, you don’t have to spend a cent; all you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You also must have the drive and perseverance to do hard work and research to generate more traffic for your site.

How sweet it is to have more traffic for your site without spending a single cent? Now it’s a sure thing that many sites have articles that offer tips and guidelines in how to generate traffic using only free methods. Because it is possible, you don’t need to speed a single cent, it may take time, to say honestly, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. You get better chances by paying for your advertisements, but at least you get a fighting chance with some of these free methods I’m about to tell you.

Take advantage of online forums and online communities. The great thing about forums and online communities is that you can target a certain group that fits the certain demographic that you are looking for. You can discuss about lots of things about the niche that you represent or offer.  Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and you will be prepared. Look for ones that will allow you to leave a link. This will boost your SEO rankings as well.

With online communities and forums you can build a reputation for your company. Show them what you are made of and wow them with your range of expertise about the subject, with that you can build a reputation and build trust with the people in your expertise and knowledge.

You can also make use of newsletters. Provide people with a catalog of your products and interesting and entertaining articles. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who sign up for your newsletter, the more people there will be that will go to your site increasing your traffic.

Another great idea is trading links with other sites. You don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With exchanging links, the efforts both sites do will benefit both sites. Every traffic that goes to the site could potentially click on the link of your site and visit your site as well. This works well especially when both sites feature the same niche.

Write articles that could grab the attention of people that have interest in your product. Try writing articles that will provide tips and guides to other businesses and people.Writing articles that provide good service and knowledge to other people would provide the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs. 

Many sites offer free submission and posting of your articles.When people find interest in your articles they have a good chance of following the track by finding out where the article originated. Include a link or a brief description of your company with the article and there’s a great probability that they will go to your site.

Write good content for your site. Many search engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases your site uses and how they are used. It is not a requirement that a content should be done by a professional content writer.You could do your own but you have to make content for your site that is entertaining as well as informational. It should provide certain requirements as well as great quality.
Generally, internet users use search engines to find what they are looking for. Search engines in return use keyword searching in aiding their search results. With the right keywords, you could get high rankings in search engine results without the costs.

All of these methods and more will drive more traffic to your site for free. All it takes is a bit of effort and extended man hours. Learn all you can about the methods described here and you will soon have a site with a great traffic flow without the usual costs that come with it.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Saturday, August 6, 2011

The Quick And Easy Way To PPC Advertising

You should be able to find several useful facts about PPC Advertising in the following paragraphs. If there's at least one fact you didn't know before, imagine the difference it might make.

Engaging in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has its own benefits and drawbacks. But what exactly is PPC advertising and what it can do to your business?

Business nowadays is doing different kinds of austerity measures when it comes to advertising their products and services. This is because of high rates of placing ads on print and on television. But there is a fast growing approach that businessmen can utilize to bring their services closer to the people and that is through Internet Marketing.

One tool that is causing internet marketing popularity is PPC advertising. This is a technique used in search engine marketing that requires one to pay a fee every time someone clicks an ad on your website. Usually this placement is done through a bidding process. If you are a top bidder for your keywords/phrases, you are sure to be on the number one spot on all search engines. Just be sure of the effectiveness of your ad copy to get the most number of clicks you need for your business.

Here are the benefits of PPC advertising are:

1.You need not be a genius in computer and technology to be able to run this ad campaign.
2.Immediate results are seen after a few days.
3.No need to make a website conform to the SEO rules.(but it helps alot because its free)
4.Nothing to lose even if you do not top the pages of different search engines. You can still always choose PPC advertising.
5.You can make use any search engine available.
6.You can type in any keyword you like.


But how exactly PPC advertising can increase traffic, leads and sales?

Think about what you've read so far. Does it reinforce what you already know about PPC Advertising? Or was there something completely new? What about the remaining paragraphs?

PRE-QUALIFIED TRAFFIC. All visitors of your website are already considered as a qualified consumer or buyer of your product. PPC advertising leads your customers to you for a lesser cost.

INSTANT EXPOSURE, IMMEDIATE PROFITS. PPC search engines enable you to get your desired results fast. They will have your website live within just a few hours which means immediate increase in sale.

CONSISTENT TOP LISTINGS. This is to get your website on top of the sponsored search results for free. You just have to choose the keywords related to your site and business and place them within your web pages. After this, you are done.

PPC advertising enables advertisers to control their advertising campaigns. Advertisers have effectively targeted their audience and set their own price per click. PPC advertising networks provide the platform to identify the desired audience by geographic setting, topic and industry. These networks have a list of websites of the publishers where the ads will be placed.

Tools are provided by the networks to check how the pay per click limit is working for a certain advertiser. If its still competitive, would it be even listed among the paid search lists or does it generate sales? Of course, if the advertiser made the highest bid, the better chances the ad will be seen in the search engine. These networks too provide protection for the advertisers against click fraud. This advertising set-up allows advertisers to set a daily budget for his ads, thus, less spending for unnecessary clicks. Advertiser will never go over his budget.

In PPC advertising, what are important are the keywords and phrases. You have to select at least ten "very specific" keywords that would give you the best traffic in the search. Then, write the ad creatively but straightforward. Tell the truth about your product or service and do not lie. Good thing if your product or service will not disappoint those that are relying on your ad's promise - but what if it did otherwise? Important too is the clarity of the ad. Do not use very vague languages. Include important details like the price.

You should also remember to budget your bids. Do not go overbidding because you will only lose your money and do not go so low that your ads will never get the chance to show up. Check your profit against your spending. If you see no progress then most likely you have to drop your ad campaign.

More and more advertisers have been using PPC advertising and it will continue to grow faster than any online advertising techniques.

PPC advertising is sorta new in online marketing and it is going to continue in the years to come. For advertisers, this means increase revenues with fewer advertising expenses, savings, more sales, good return of investment (ROI) and effective ad campaigns in the days to come.

If you've picked some pointers about PPC Advertising that you can put into action, then by all means, do so. You won't really be able to gain any benefits from your new knowledge if you don't use it.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Friday, August 5, 2011

Advertising And Branding Today

Watch any given television long enough, and you’ll be greeted by advertisements. And in today’s ever-competitive market, the real story is behind the scenes, where companies face a constant battle to stay ahead of the competition. And with brand names offering hugely lucrative contracts for the right image, the art of advertising today is massively important.

The actual art of advertising and branding is a lot more sophisticated and in-depth than the consumers they target may realize. Long before an advertisement even reaches the screen, or print, it has been subject to pain-staking research, focus groups, marketing surveys, and many other methods of determining the current state of the target market. Without this information, releasing a product runs the risk of commercial suicide if the consumer isn’t ready. There’s no such thing as luck where advertising a brand, either established or new, is involved. It takes a lot of hard work, grueling hours in meetings and highly skilled teams of creative minds to finalize a concept.

Part of this process, and a way of determining whether a new brand and accompanying advertisement has succeeded or not, is actually one of the simplest. By providing a group of consumers with either an image, a tag line, or even just a combination of colors and sounds, and they recognize the brand behind the advertising, then the hard work has paid off.

This is where the advertising and branding of a product is so important, by firstly ensuring that consumers will recognize a given product or brand. The next important factor is actually persuading consumers to associate certain attributes with your product. These can range from reliability, pricing, value for money, etc. This is one of the most difficult, yet most intrinsically important sources of advertising and branding success. An instance of this is if you mentioned mouthwash – is there a brand that springs to mind immediately? How about favourite destinations to go on vacation – does one resort receive more recommendations than others? Even if that particular resort hasn’t been visited by everyone who mentioned it, just the fact the advertising of that resort makes it sound so enticing that they perceive it’s the destination they should go to, is a sure sign of successful brand advertising.

Yet if successfully advertising a brand is difficult enough to begin with, it can be even more so trying to reach out to new markets with the same product. The stronger the brand and the more successful the initial advertising campaign, the more difficult it becomes to find new avenues. Despite possibly having the number one product on the market, any new advertising still needs to go through the whole process again from scratch. After all, what worked for one product is not guaranteed to work for another.

And this is where the true power of advertising and branding becomes apparent, and is the strongest proof yet that it’s one of the most important in determining whether a company succeeds or fails.

If you need help branding yourself or your company, creating advertisements, and marketing collateral we can help.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

7 Surefire Ways To Increase Your Traffic

So, we all know what is at the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful company on the internet. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you think that you're not getting the traffic that you're supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider what you are doing. If you are contending in these very competitive niches, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday.

Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday.

1) Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.
(You can email us at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com to request a FREE $100 coupon for Adwords to get you started)

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you. Googles Adwords Keyword Tool is free to use and we definitely recommend it.)

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

5 Simple and Easy Ways to Advertise Online

Most people in business agree that advertising is everything! Regardless of whether you have a product, a service, a hobby website or just want to share pictures of your vacation, you have to advertise it to get traffic to your site, blog, or whatever the case maybe.

Not all traffic is equal. There are services that can help you drive tons and tons of traffic to your site like safelists and traffic exchanges and it won't do you any good at all because it's not targeted.

For example all of the many different 'surf for traffic' or 'traffic clicking' programs that are out there. If you have a website that is about your hobby model airplanes (like my grandpa,) then what good is this traffic really going to do for you? Who's uses these services?

Webmasters and marketers who want traffic on their own site. So they most likely won't spend any more time on your page than is required by the little timer these services use and then they will be gone again. Even if your site is about these traffic services (this is about the only time you will see any benefit from using such a tool) you will still have to spend a ton of time just surfing and clicking around to get a real benefit from these programs. Once marketers realized this they switched gears. They started promoting all the different programs to a lot of other marketers to get them in their down lines, so they could get some traffic as a bonus.

The Bottom-line is... You need targeted traffic. So here are some tips on how you can generate exactly the traffic you need and bring the visitors you want to your website without having to chase after them.

1. Content
What is your site about? Do you just have a page with a lot of links and not much else?

If this is the case, think about adding some content to your website that will be of value to any potential visitors. You can write articles or find articles at one of the many directories that you can reprint on your site.

2. Talk about your experiences in your subject matter.
You don't have to put up some kind of resume (although that can work too), but rather try writing about what you are doing, as it relates to your topic of choice. Let's look at the model airplanes again briefly, you could talk or write about the latest plane type you built, how the last time flying your plane went, what challenges you run into or perhaps even post some pictures of your plane or of you flying it.

3. Forums and bulletin boards.
You could add a forum or bulletin board to your website where your visitors can interact with each other. There are a lot of free services available out there that you can use to either remotely host a forum for you, or even software you can install on your website's server. To find some of these, just head over to your favorite search engine and you will definitely find plenty to choose from. (I love google!)

While you are visiting the search engine, why not run a search for any bulletin boards and forums that are already out there on your chosen topic? You could visit those and interact with the visitors there and since many allow you to post a signature or a profile, you could add a little line about your own site with a link (just check the rules of the forum first so
you don't violate any of them).

4. Start a blog.
Blogs are very popular and search engines love them because they provide constantly new and fresh content. Your blog would be a great place to talk about what you are up to that day. So if you spent some time today buying new parts for your plane you could write about where you found them, how much they cost you, why you chose those parts, anything really goes.

The really great part about this is that you can point links from your blog back to your website, so when the search engine stops by to grab and index your latest content, it will also stop by your website and you will start seeing very targeted traffic heading your way.

5. Write articles.
Writing articles isn't hard and can be a great source of fresh, new traffic to your website. There are a lot of ezines on any topic out there and there are also a lot of directories where you can share your article.

Basically, what you do is write an article and then add a small resource box that links back to your website (just like a signature) and then let other ezine publishers know that you are allowing them to print your article in their ezine. And many publishers go to the article directories to find new content for their newsletter and even their websites. And since there are
websites and ezine newsletters on any imaginable topic out there, you can't lose. Write an article every couple of days and post it in the directories (even one a week or every two weeks will start getting you traffic). Very soon you will find new traffic coming from search engines, newsletters and websites.

Best of all, these 5 simple tips will bring targeted traffic, meaning the visitors are coming to you because they are interested in what you wrote and they are absolutely free!

So there you have it. Whether you have a simple and basic Work at Home Business or a significant Internet Marketing enterprise you can benefit from these 5 easy and simple ways to advertise and drive traffic to your website at absolutely no cost.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Monday, August 1, 2011

3 Foolproof Ways To Outsmart Your Competition

Let's face it...competition is here to stay.  There will always be someone waiting in the wings to take your customers away from you and into their realm.  Yeah, you're always going to have to be on the lookout for new ways to outdo the competition, but there are 3 ways you can minimize the impact they have on your business.

1. Implement Unconventional Marketing Strategies
Standing out from the crowd is sometimes hard to do with so many businesses mimicking the marketing campaigns of their competitors.  Sure, we all want to be successful, and when we see others using a method and prospering there's an urge to jump on the band wagon and enjoy the same success.

Rather than joining the pack, look for ways to advertise that no one else is using. Internet marketing is a good example.  Most Internet marketers use ...you guessed it the Internet to market their products.  Why not get high impact postcards printed and use them to direct people to your Website?  Hey, no one else is doing it!

2. Discover Hidden Markets
Your competitors are missing out on something!  Dig around until you discover what it is, and get a corner on that market niche.  Once you've discovered your secret gold mine, revise your sales copy, and Website to address the specific market you've uncovered.

If you're a Multi Level Marketing representative you might want to consider the following niches.

"    Employees:  The freedom that comes with being your own boss is a dream that many employees hope for, but never experience.  Go ahead...let them know that dreams do come true...there's an opportunity to be their own boss waiting just for them.
"    Stay-at-home Moms:  Most stay at home. Moms are sacrificing finances for the well-being of their children. They would jump at the chance to raise their children and make a little money too.
"    Retirees:  What does the future hold for someone looking at retirement?  It could be that there is a lot of spark, and dreams still pulsing inside...and now...they'll have the time to invest their long time dreams!

3. Become the Expert
We all respect the opinions and insight of someone who really knows a subject inside and out.  Yeah, take the time to research, get to know all of the ins and outs of your product...then emphasize it in your marketing campaign. True knowledge can't be faked. Consumers will know who the expert is. 

You don't have to put all of your eggs in one basket to zero in on one product, but you can emphasize your expertise in one area. Remember that people often expect to pay more for expert advice! You may want to raise your price a little bit, get testimonials, and find another expert to endorse you. 

You don't have to let the competition get one over on you when you position yourself for success!

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com