Most advertising executives and their sales forces will have all sorts of statistics why radio is better than cable television advertising or why cable advertising is better than radio. And each set of statistics is rather convincing indeed.

Yet they contradict each other completely, but why? Well simple really you see the radio advertising sales people want you to put your advertising budget, all of it with them, while the Cable TV advertising executives are dead set on capturing your advertising dollar to their firm.

No doubt they are competing media and often the same company owns both and will either try to give you an advertising marketing mix or attempt to fill up whatever slots of whichever media needs to be filled up that week, month, season or year? Great and that makes sense for them, but what about your business.

You must make sure you get maximum bang for your buck and you cannot spend all your money on Cable Ads or Radio, I mean you have lots of other expenses too right? Sure, what about employees and rent on your location? If you spend all your money on advertising, you will be out of business or have no employees to help all these new clients who will be supposedly flooding in right?

The truth about these two forms of advertising is both are quite good depending on the type of business you operate, drive times and costs of radio slots and the peak political ad seasons for evening programming, which are often costly but those ads do pull. Perhaps your business sells hobby crafts to women who may be home during the soap opera time of day? Well cable is really cheap during the week on those times.

What if you business caters to security professionals, such as gun sales? Well after midnight radio gets rather cheap too. You must take a good hard look at your business and what is available and what will pull in your clientele, Consider all this in 2006.

An ad agency or advertising agency is a business or service dedicated to planning, handling and creating advertising for clients. These agencies are independent of clients and provide their skills and views to sell client’s services or products.

Advertising agencies can also manage branding strategies, marketing and sales promotions for its clients.

For an advertising agency, it is very important to realize that they can increase sales with their effort. Truly speaking, advertising agencies are minds working on the other side of the internet to increase sales. For a person working as an advertising agent, it is very important to know about the buyer’s psychology.

Those who are working in an advertising agency should know about the various thought processes that go in the mind of a reader or a viewer, a potential buyer. This will definitely help to build your business better.

There are ample of theories to explain the process that goes in the buyer’s mind when he/she goes to purchase anything.

The process is not the same for each buyer and it is sequential.

One of the popular features followed by ad agencies is AIDA. AIDA is a acronym stands for:

A – Attention

I – Interest

D – Desire

A – Action

The AIDA model states that advertising agency should know how to draw attention of a buyer to get the customer interested by exhibiting its advantages, benefits and features. Interest is followed by desire. It is advertising agency’s duty to create a desire in a buyer to buy a specific product.

All three steps of the AIDA policy will help you to stimulate the action towards the purchase of a product. AIDA theory guides and leads you to build a better advertising business. BIG B’s of advertising world have followed AIDA to generate good advertisement campaigns.

Another model called DAGMAR has now increasingly become more popular and comprehensive than AIDA. DAGMAR steps are more defined and easy to apply.

Term DAGMAR is an acronym for Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results. According to DAGMAR, a sale must carry a potential customer through four stages:

I. Awareness

II. Comprehension

III. Conviction

IV. Action

Suppose you are having a service or product and your customer knows nothing about the product. As your client is unaware of the product, the first step is to make him aware of your product by posting advertisement regarding your product on respective websites.

Comprehension is the second step of DAGMAR. Try to know the answers to these following questions.
a) What is your product about?
b) What are product’s potential features and benefits of product?
c) What will your customer get from your product? And how?

Answers to all these questions will help you to get a potential customer.

Next stage is conviction and this is very important. Convince your customer by telling him the benefits of your product. After convincing, your next step starts i.e. action, which is not controlled by you. You have to depend on the customer.

If you own a small business there is no doubt you have been approached by advertising salesmen and women peddling ads in their media outlets. And it is amazing to me how many tell us that we should not expect results right away? Why not, that is what we are paying you for you dummy. What in the World are you selling; you show me charts, graphs and supposedly empirical proof of why your medium is where I should spend my money then ask for the check and tell me not to expect results right away? Go die scum!

The truth is that if their venue is truly that great then in fact you should see results right away. Look before I get into an argument with Marketing Consultants who write books and sell seminars and maybe even make kick backs from advertising referrals or before I am condemned by advertising “good looking” sales folks, let me pull rank. I am the founder of a franchise company, which set up units in 23-states, 450 cities and 110 major markets. And we always got noticeable results from our marketing and advertising immediately.

Now this is not to say that the longer you stay in one medium the better it works, that is a known fact, but at what cost? If you do not see immediate noticeable results there had better be a darn good reason or you need to ditch it and do something that does work. I ought to know, as we had royalty reductions and co-op advertising budgets for our franchisees and we did not grow our business by flushing good money after bad down the toilet of no returns. Consider all this in 2006.

The internet has provided innumerable avenues for businesses to grow. Now thanks to concentrated sites like Craigslist, promoting a business is easier than ever and reaches more potential clients than ever before. This site, when correctly used, has the potential to help even the smallest businesses see their business grow exponentially, and it helps the larger business continue to compete with their big counterparts. But to effectively use Craigslist, marketing directors and business owners should consider two specific things: their target audience and their marketing strategy.

The Target Audience

Businesses should know who their clients are. They should have an idea in their mind of the ideal client, or in a word, their target audience. Then they should aim to reach that target audience by using the correct advertising category on Craigslist. Craigslist offers free postings to the majority of their clients except for those listing jobs in New York City, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area. Thus small business will find their best clients on Craigslist if they just pick the right advertising category.

Consider this: what if a moving company in Portland Oregon posted its advertisement for moving services for a county in Arizona. That just wouldn't make sense. Instead, the moving company should post their advertisement for the counties that they will serve. Thus if I am preparing to move and I check out Craigslist for possible movers, I can easily find this particular company that will serve my needs in my county.

Craigslist also has a plethora of benefits like a huge audience: they boast of over 4 billion hits a month. In the end, though, the number of views really doesn't matter if they're not finding your business in the right spot. So make sure to place your advertisement in the best possible category to reach your ideal customer.

Effective Marketing

A market engineer should use his skills for Craigslist much like he would in any other realm. Great marketing begins with a well written promotional copy, so spend the money and hire a freelance writer who can put together a solid promotion for your company. And then, as stated before, post it in the best possible place on Craigslist. The promotional copy should include information like how to reach your store, how to access your business website, and what specific services your business offers.

Ultimately, a person has all he needs for worldwide promotion the second that he logs onto Craigslist. This site has helped thousands of business not only get started but stay active in the business world, and with a well written promotional copy and correct advertising placement, you will see your business thrive with an investment on Craigslist today.

Starting a business costs money. From the paper clips to the computers, new business owners find themselves bogged down with bills and dozens of decisions. However, though they might cost business owners a pretty penny, well made business cards have the potential to make or break a business. They are what the customer will pull out of his purse, and outside of the business itself reflect how professional the business really is, so consider your options when looking at business cards.

Always look at having the business cards professionally made. Many computer programs boast of their ability to create business cards, but many times home computers and printers do not reflect the same high quality that a professional printer would present and customers can tell. They will know if you chose to go cheap or to put your money into your company's image with a great business card.

With this in mind, know that you don't have to drop half of your small item budget on business cards either. Cost efficient options exist without the sacrifice for high quality cards. Online business’ can offer competitive prices that many local print shops cannot compete with, and they produce the same quality as those expensive printing companies. Many times online companies can offer cheaper prices because of their cheaper overhead: they exist in the virtual world alone and do not have a building to maintain or employees to pay.

When you opt for an online print shop, keep in mind some of the differences that you will encounter than when you walk into your local printer's shop. First of all, you will typically not have a hard copy to examine. The printer will send you a digital copy, and you'll have to make your decision based on that. Most of the time, however, you will receive exactly what you view.

Additionally, you will have to stick with the digital realm when providing a logo to your printer. You will not be able to show him a hard copy but instead you must present a digital version of your logo. Make sure that you give the printer the best quality logo possible because he can only work with what you give him.

Many online print shops offer affordable low quantity requirements as well, usually asking the customer to order no fewer than 100 to 250 cards per order. Some do stretch up to 500 minimum per order, but avoid having any more than this printed at once. After all, your contact information like your e-mail address or cell phone number just might change before you can distribute all of those cards. So keep your first orders low.

In the UK, everyone has reached a consensus on the fact that advertising balloons work. It works so well that most of the biggest brands in the UK use equally big advertising balloons to market their brand and keep their presence at the top of mind of their consumers. Use an advertising balloon to make sure that your ad will not and cannot be ignored.

Grab the attention of consumers from the street as they walk or drive past as your advertising balloon floats by. Also, using an advertising balloon during an event, with your brand floating in the sky as a picturesque background makes a dramatic effect with equally dramatic results. Knowing that an advertising balloon will work wonders for your brand is only half the work. You should be able to figure out what you want your advertising balloon to look like.

What shape and colors should it have are things that you need to think about. You should also consider where you will be having your advertising balloon floating to catch the most attention and whether you want your advertising balloon lit or not are options that you will have to decide upon.

When you have gotten these details down pat, the last step before sailing your sales along with your advertising balloons is which advertising balloon supplier in the UK should you consider to make your investment on.

Classic Hot Air Balloons

Don't' let their company name fool you. The only thing classic about this company is the fact that they are the typical choice by big brands that use advertising balloons to market their brands, products and services. Contrary to their company name, this company makes use of innovative shapes other than the usual inverted teardrop hot air balloon shape. Don't worry though-if you want the classic styles, shapes and colors, they have those too.

What's good about Classic Hot Air Balloons though is that you can either rent or create your own advertising balloon. Go ahead and check them out www.ballooning.fsnet.co.uk and see the beer shaped advertising balloon that one of their clients contracted them to make.

Have you ever sat by the Television and saw a very funny commercial, which made you laugh and thought that was a really good commercial? Sure we all have, and then your business mind kicked in about 10-minutes later and you could not for the life of you remember which company it was that advertised the product - only the commercial itself.

Then you waited and saw it again and then 10-minutes later nothing, what the hell was the company running that advertisement. Then you saw it again and then made a conscientious effort to remember it. Oh it was Vonage, Ford, Taco Bell or some other large corporation.

Now then this brings us to a point of your advertising for your company? What is your goal; Are you Advertising your Company or Entertaining Viewers? Well any marketing executive would say you really want to do a little of both.

Indeed but there is a fine line and you must realize if you cannot afford to run hundreds of repetitive ads along the same themes then entertaining viewers is helping the ratings of the local cable television station and not so much your business establishment right?

Having been in the franchising business for many years and actually founding a franchise company I can say that our franchisees often had the best and most creative ads, but often they were not the ones, which pulled as much as the percentage shot ads. You see you need good advertising, clever, cute, cuddly and concise, but you must make sure they pull for you.

Businesspeople routinely hand out business cards to prospective customers, colleagues, and social acquaintances, both as a marketing technique and for an easy way to keep in touch.

Possibly because of the popularity of business cards, personal calling cards, which in decades past have gone out of fashion, are also making a comeback. Rather than scribble your name and phone number or email address on a scrap of paper, why not hand new acquaintances your personal calling card?

First, you need to decide on a style for your calling card. Designs range from the simply elegant to the boldly colorful; your choice should match your personality and your lifestyle. Second, you need to decide what information to include on your calling card. Traditionally cards include your name, address, and phone number; recently people have added their email address and sometimes their blog or other website address.

A caution: Be careful both in what information you include on your calling card and in the people you choose to share your card with. You don't necessarily want to share your street address with people you don't know, as you don't want certain people showing up at your doorstep unannounced or, in a worst-case situation, stalking you. You also need to be careful of identity theft: The more personal information you share with people, the more you open yourself up to someone misusing that information.

You may actually want to have a couple different calling cards, and hand out your information on an as-needed basis. For casual acquaintances who want to contact you, a card with your name and either phone number or email address is sufficient; for people you need to do business with or who need your full information for a legitimate purpose, you can include your street address and/or post office box as well as your phone number and email address. Another option is to simply have your name embossed on an attractive card and then write whatever information you want to share on the back of the card.

If you create a well-designed calling card and use a few simple precautions, you will find that the simple act of handing out your cards will help you make a memorable impression on new acquaintances and make it more likely that you will hear from them soon, which is your goal.

If you use print advertising as part of your marketing mix and your ads are cluttered they generally will not pull like clean and crisp advertising does with simple messages. As a young man I sold advertising for a very popular Aviation Magazine Called the Pacific Flyer and the Editor and Publisher Wayman Dunlop use to always tell me to keep my clients from cluttering their advertising.

Eventually I realized if I allowed my customers to clutter their ads too much they would not pull the proper results and there would be fewer repeat customers. He was right then and that same principle is very true today.

Do not clutter you ads. You see, today even more so, because people are busy and only scan the advertising, you only have a second to catch their eye and make them look and if it is too cluttered their eye moves on that the advertising dollar is lost.

So, often small business owners who advertise want to put as much as they can in their yellow page ads and in their newspaper or print advertising and often against better judgment from their advertising representative mostly due to ego the ad stays cluttered and is not effective.

If you pick up any trade journal in any industry you will see the same thing. Every month I read over 70 Trade Journals or rather page thru them and read parts. Due to habit I also look at all the ads and only rarely do you see the perfect, simple ad, which conveys the message and grabs the reader. You should consider all of this in 2006.