Taking a look at the calendar we can barely tell that holiday season is fast approaching. Every day turns out to be an exciting day for we can no longer wait for the time that we will be together with our family and extend our warm greetings to the people around us. And for our relatives distant from us we send them greeting cards and holiday postcards to greet them and let them know that they are remembered.

Given the value of postcards they are not only greeting cards that can be sent to express warm greetings to our families, friends and relatives they can also be used for business purposes.

Now what can holiday postcards do with your business?

1.Holiday postcards can serve as a valuable marketing tool of thanking clients and business associates. With the holiday season you can change the tone of your marketing by means of adding designs that portrays the marks of the holiday season. Perk up your cards and turn them out to be something unique and worth remembering.

2.Holiday postcards can contribute to develop and enhance your relationship among your business associates and clients. By simply distributing the cards during the holidays you are able to thank your clients. With this simple material distributed your clients can feel the importance of having them for your business.

3.The designs that you add to your postcard prints will serve to break through the noise and confusion while capturing top of the mind awareness.

4.Utilizing the holiday postcards for your business you are able to hit two birds in one stone. In which you are able to thank your clients and on the other hand still campaign and market your products and services.

5.Lastly, holiday postcards can bring great sales and sufficient profits. Gaining the confidence of your clients will yield to turn the heads of your recipients and turn them out to be potential clients. With this you can totally make an assurance that you gain and express your heartfelt thanks to your clients.

With the valuable contributions that holiday postcards can do with your business, it is just high time to print these greeting cards and distribute them to your clients.

Our creativity and artistry in designing the cards can help to come up with a compelling postcard prints. Given that they don’t only serve as a simple gift for our distant relatives, yet they can also be an effective tool for business.

The true value of the postcards is not only seen as a marketing material or a gift that we can share, yet it values on how we are able to remember our love ones and business partners in this holiday season.

Marketing is the secret ingredient why trade show exhibits become successful. Without an effective marketing strategy, a trade show exhibit would not be able to put on the market its products and services. It’s the marketing that leads your business to the gateway of success. In view of that, it is necessary to make sure that you are doing the right thing in marketing your trade show. Avoid the mistakes that some trade show exhibitors are experiencing. And one way to steer clear of these mistakes is to have a well-planned marketing strategy. Here are some things to consider on how your trade show exhibit will become a smash hit.

Why are you exhibiting?
The first thing that you have to consider when attending a trade show is the purpose. Ask yourself what is the reason why you are exhibiting. Establish your main objective why you’re attending the trade show. When you have settled on the objective, you can now focus on the marketing message of your trade show booth. The message of your booth should be matching to the objective of the trade show. Choose only one objective for your trade show exhibit and focus on that one. Your marketing efforts should only be concentrated on a single objective.

What show is suitable for you?
Do some basic research on the trade shows that are available. Choose the show that goes well with your objective. See to it that the show that you’ve chosen is composed of the right audience for your company products or services. Also consider if the show is cost effective for your business. Does it give good reason for your trade show expense? When it justifies your expenses and matches your objective, then definitely you must attend that show.

How much will you spend?
It is important to set the budget that your company is willing to expend for the trade show. When you have already set the budget, you should allocate the budget properly. Write down your expenditures for future assessment. Keep details of all your expenses.

How will you grab the attention of the attendees?
Make a booth that is organized and simple. The booth should have clear texts and simple graphics. A simple booth is certain to get your message across your target audience. Don’t make the booth too flashy for it may confuse the visitors.

What you should do to attract customers?
To attract the attendees to visit your booth, you need to give them an inducement. Aside from making the booth clear and simple, you also need some promotional materials to be handed to the visitors. Provide some giveaways to entice the attendees to go to see your booth and make a purchase of your products or services.

Advertising is a type of business which helps to draw the
attention of the public to goods or products, services and
propagate the business strategy through a variety of media.
One can say it is an overall promotional strategy including
not only the poduct, services but also deals with the
publicity, public response, personal sellings etc. Advertising
is a very powerful tool that can navigate the business to its
harbour provided that it should focus on what you want, where
to get and a strong dose of imagination and creativity and what
to do with it once you get it.

Advertising magnifies the visibility of its goods and services,
driving the intellectual traffic to the company's websites
acquiring every knowledge of the goods and business strategy.
While advertising it should be kept in mind that the advertising
objectives must be clear and the placement of the both the
online and offline advertisements is also very important.
Advertising on websites will be the best place. Explore for the
trade specific websites, top search engine for attracting more
audience. Design your message to appeal to the audience. It
should convey the advertising desire to be achieved. Be
creative and arrange all you superfine imagination to launch
your product which will deferentiate it from others and prudently
place in the proper site to draw the attention of a few but the
sea of public. Add more depth and meaning to your advertisement
with rich media and use animated messages. While launching
your products be careful while choosing advertising medium.

Advertising is one of the potent tool capable of igniting
spark among the audiences. Advertising also justifies its
presence or existence when used for the benefit of the public.
A well managed and effeciently executedadvertising campaing
can fuel the dimension of your business tremendously.

Business cards printing are an enormous printing service that produces compelling business greeting card prints. As a valuable tool, you can also use business card prints for the holiday season. You can market your products and at the same time express a warm greeting to your recipients.

The Holiday season is the time where most businesses take the opportunity to thank their clients for their never ending support and patronization of the products and services they have. Simply distributing a business card prints to their clients they can make their clients feel that they are also part of your business success.

Mainly in order to successfully achieve the desired need to have a business card prints and in order to be prepared of the holiday season you can seek for business cards printing jobs and services.

What are the capabilities that business cards printing services do for you?

1.They can help you conceptualize with good designs.

The business card printing service can help you conceptualize with good designs that will match with your marketing plan. Since you are about to come up with a holiday business card prints, your chosen printer can give you an idea what designs will be appropriate for your target market. The expert graphic designers that comprise the printing company you had chosen will help you come up with designs that will be best for your business.

2.They can provide you with high quality printing equipments and materials.

The equipments and machineries used are of high quality and made from the top notch printing technologies. These equipments, printing machineries and printing presses will efficiently work to produce quality prints.

3.They can provide custom printing services.

The custom printing service allows every customer to personalize their business card prints. Through custom printing of business cards you can choose for a design that will make your recipients feel the holiday spirit. The custom print you put to your cards will aid to warm their hearts and feel how thankful they are.

4.Provide accurate text contents about your companies detail

Since business cards are your business front liners they must contain an exact detail about location. The business cards you distribute must have detailed information regarding your companies’ name, address, telephone numbers and e-mail address. The details that you have for your business cards can help to lead your business back to you.

In today’s holiday season, use business card to simply express your warm greetings and thanks for your customers never ending support. Be prepared and armed to provide your clients with holiday business card prints.

Get Rich Quick Scams Revealed
Read this article before you consider paying for a "get rich quick" program.
From: Xoftspy Scan

Everybody would love to make lots of money quickly, working from home, and only doing a few hours of work per week. I've spent the past two years trying to find a great way of doing this. Only over the course of the past few months have I found any "get rich quick" programs worth buying. I've been trying to make money online for a long time. I had a few small websites, but they never made much more than a few hundred per month. It was easy money and didn't require much work on my part, but I knew there were people out there doing better than I was and I knew I could do as well as them.
Now, I've seen a lot of "get rich quick" programs. Most of these people make claims about earning $2000/day with Google or something similarly insane. Almost all of these people are complete liars. Even if they were making $2000/day with Google AdSense, it'd be because they had high- traffic websites with a lot of quality content. I'd know, because in one whole month, I never even made half of what they promised I'd make daily with their programs. Maybe you've already been scammed by one of these fraudsters. Anyway, I finally got sick of what was being offered.
I decided I'd look through the all of the "get rich quick" programs I could find and see if there were any that were actually legitimate. I found that there were owners selling their programs for well over $100, but the information in them could be found almost anywhere online for free. Additionally, they all contained out-of-date information, had no e-mail support, no money back guarantees, and broken links in the downloads section.
In conclusion, almost all of the programs I found were completely useless. The owners knew it, but they couldn't care less about their customers since they didn't offer refund policies! Amazingly, while looking through all of the programs, I actually did find a few legitimate programs. They were run by ordinary people like you and me, and they had found some great methods of making money from their home by doing very little work.
I spent some time working with those programs, and my income is now ten times what it used to be. These programs provided a large amount of great information on how to make extra money on your computer doing very little work. Numerous customers had provided great feedback and reviews for their products. Many of them have started to make money just days after buying!
Their programs have excellent prices, and the authors have a group of paid staff who are dedicating to helping you or providing assistance if you need any. I must say I was amazed! If you do decide to purchase any of the programs listed below, I recommend you join quickly. Most of the owners tell me they are getting an overwhelming number of sales and plan on raising prices in the near future, so order while prices are still low!
To Your Online Success,
Xoftspy Scan

Offline Advertising for Online Business

If you have an online business and you’re trying to get traffic to your site, you want to advertise. Many people think this means that you have to advertise on the web or via some electronic medium. But advertising is advertising whether it’s on the web, in an email, on a sign, on TV, at a trade show, or in a magazine.

Your choice of advertising – online or offline – should not be driven by which media it is on. Rather, where you advertise should be driven by what audience you seek. The media that can you get you closest to the audience you need at the best price, is the media you should use.

How can you tell the audience of a given media? Believe it or not, there’s numbers available for everything. A few examples include the following:

Magazine’s: Get a media kit for the publisher – they’ll generally offer extensive detail about their readership.

Online newsletters: Likewise. Get the demographics of their opt-in list.

Billboards: Drive-by traffic data is available from most billboard providers.

Rented lists: Demographics and characteristics including “selects” (filters that can be applied) are generally available.

Radio/TV: Viewership & “Reach” demographics are almost always available.

The point is that your choice of advertising needs to be driven by the numbers. To make an intelligent choice, get the numbers and examine them to see if they describe characteristics of your audience. Then do a test. Run a trial offer through the media and see what happens. If it’s good, do more of it. If not, try the next venue.

Digital signage is a relatively new form of advertising that allows companies to use electronic screens to broadcast information, commercials, or anything else of their choosing to large amounts of people. This kind of advertisement is spreading to different venues like wild fire. From malls to restaurants to airports to post offices, digital signage is sweeping the advertising market. But where did it all start? Digital signage was used in the 1970’s in stores with VCRs and televisions to attract customers but it was always on a closed circuit and everything was pre-recorded. It wasn’t until recent years that companies were able to display high quality content that was supported by a broadband internet connection.

Digital billboards and interactive screens are relatively new. People and companies are just starting to realize the potential digital signage has. This kind of advertising could revolutionize the consumer market in the span of a few years. We have all seen the huge screens in places like Times Square and Las Vegas, but now, they are everywhere, directing you in places that you may or may not want to go. Even five years ago, this kind of advertising would have been too expensive considering LCD and Plasma screens were either experimental technology or too costly to be worth the investment.

Now, thanks to the availability of high speed internet, a large digital signage network has emerged on and around the internet. Many companies are now linked together because they use this kind of signage. These networks are now developing new strategies along with better digital signage software in order to maximize effectiveness and, ultimately, profit. Now that LCD and Plasma screens have decreased in price, they are more affordable now and the investment for businesses is more reasonable. Right now, Microsoft, Cisco, and Google are all trying to chase the market because of the potential this market has to offer.

At the moment, Cisco has gotten a steady foot-hold on the digital signage market. They are the ones who have created the device which allows for images and videos from the internet to be directly imported into a large LCD or plasma screen. They have now eliminated the need for costly computers and a lot of the security risks of using digital signage in airports and retail stores.

Digital signage has come a long way from pre-recorded closed circuit advertising. It has become an advertising monster and could end up influencing people more than they want it to.

One thing that I’ve learned after 35 years in advertising is that no business wants to pay more than they have to for promotional expenses. It’s understandable considering all the various marketing options and the associated costs. A business has so many fixed overhead expenses from insurance to rent to employees that advertising is often left to the very end. The sad truth is that without proper promotion, the business can’t survive. I sold Yellow Page ads for 25 years and was invariably told that the ads were just too expensive. I used to ask, compared to what? It was then that I realized that I needed to educate my clients.

What I ended up doing was justifying the investment through the use of the ROI or the “return on investment” technique. In basic layman’s terms, it works like this. Suppose you have purchased a newspaper ad for $100. Say you’re a florist and profit $10 on average per order. So you now need 10 orders to offset the cost of the ad. That’s the simplified version and it can be applied to almost any other media: TV, radio, Yellow Pages, direct mail, and so forth. It requires that you know the exact costs and your own profits. If the marketing program takes place over several days, weeks or months, the plan is the same.

First, decide which media is most appropriate for your kind of product or service. Then figure your average profit. For instance, if you’re a plumber and the average job is $150, what is the profit after you have paid for the parts, truck and employee? Let’s assume it’s $50 left. So, if you are looking at a $500 per month Yellow Page ad, the first 10 jobs per month would break you even. But it’s a bit more complex than that. If that YP book reaches 100,000 people for $500, but another directory covers 500,000 people and the ad is $1500, which is the better deal? Sure, now you have to get 30 jobs to offset the charge, but you are seen by 400,000 more potential customers. Therefore, the ROI is far more optimist with so many more people seeing your ad.

As a result, the ROI is important when considering an overall budget of a media mix. Also look at other potential profit areas, The local home remodeler might consider spending more in a pricier, high-end magazine that reaches fewer home-owners, but those living in expensive homes. Why? Because his profit might be greater, per job. For example, his Yellow Page ad reaches everyone and he figures he makes $10,000 profit on an average home and therefore uses a 5 to 1 ROI for his YP program. So, he spends $50,000 on an annual YP ad distributed to 500,000 and needs 5 jobs to cover that YP cost. But, in the glossy magazine that goes to only 10,000 upper-level consumers, he might reap a $30,000 profit per job. He still spent $50,000 on a quarterly distribution for a year, but only needs 3 jobs or a 3 to 1 ROI. Have you got that? The type of media dictated the ROI based on a reconfigured profit margin. The media determines the average customer and the market.

Your radio, TV, magazine or YP rep can give you the demographic numbers and the reach for each media. They can show you the spending habits of the typical listener or reader, which will allow you to design an ad around the person you are trying to attract. Then the ROI should be used to establish the amount you are willing to invest in the short or long run. Each media can be used for different time frames. Some have fixed dates of delivery and longevity such as Yellow Pages, magazines and newspapers. Others, like direct mail, and TV can be purchased with relatively short notice, depending on availability.

What ever route you take, the ROI is the most important rule of thumb, followed closely by a tracking method to monitor your results. Without that, you have no way of knowing how well the ad worked and whether or not you covered your ROI. If you’re interested in learning more, I wrote a book on how I worked with my Yellow Page clients for 25 years on developing this type of strategy. Even if you use other media, it may be of interest to you as well. Visit poweradbook.com to learn more and remember that the advertising cost is something that is an investment in your business and not just an overhead expense. The ROI will become your ally in deciding where to allocate you funds and can ultimately save you a small fortune.

Since the health care industry is considered to be people-oriented, health care professionals should try to look very friendly and approachable. If you belong to this industry, you would understand the need for such behavior. Most of the people who need health assistance are in some degree of discomfort and would require you to be very understanding and supportive. Health care professionals should also try to communicate in a soothing voice and at the same time behave accordingly.

Aside from these, you must give importance to your accessibility especially in emergency situations. If you are a doctor, a business card would provide your patients information about how to reach you. Because of the importance of this information, you should consider getting a business card with an effective design. A business card design for people in the health care industry can only be effective if you seriously consider two things: content and presentation.

An effective business card design can accommodate all your information such as address, clinic or office hours, mobile phone number, office number and home number. All these information should be presented in a clear manner, with font style and font size that makes the business card readable. When it comes to presentation, you can put some personality in your business card by adding some personal touch. For example, if you are a pediatrician, you could put a small image of a baby or cartoon character. Obstetricians can place images of mothers and babies as well. There are so many creative ideas that would be perfect for your business card.

A patient who relies on your services would appreciate a business card that is made of durable cardboard material. You can have your business card custom-made at the nearest store which offers such services.

For more convenience, you can create your own design using your computer and even view samples over the internet. There are free downloadable software that could make it even easier for you. As soon as you have created a template for your business card, you can now take it to a printing shop. Some shops offer bigger discounts if you order in bulk. You should avail of such discounts since it would save you money and time as well. Or you could always arrange for a standing order so that everytime your supply runs low, you could call and have them print another butch of business cards.

The number of web designers have increased in the past years mainly because more and more people have discovered the benefits of doing business online. If you look around, you will notice that the most successful web designers in the business are those who are very creative and original. The different software available in the market could never duplicate natural talent and skills. Many web designers today have chosen to be self-employed. It could be quite difficult at the beginning. But as soon as they have established themselves, customers would be pouring in.

If you are considering establishing yourself as a freelancer, you should have both the talent and the equipment to be successful. Another important and basic tool you should get is a business card that reflects your positive qualities. Business cards are the most cost-effective tool you can utilize especially if you have no client base yet.

An effective business card design for web designers will be something that would make an impression with potential clients. If you want a design that accents your creativity, then you could have a colored business card that simply contain basic information such as your name and contact details. However, if you want the potential clients to focus on your skills and experience, you can put some additional information at the back of the business card. Information like the different software you are familiar with and also whether you are both proficient in using both PC and Mac applications. Different styles can range from classic to contemporary. If you can not decide, you can always mix and match.

As a web designer, you have the advantage of creating a business card design that is unique. You can always browse the internet for ideas and resources. There are plenty of downloadable software programs offered for free. With your creative skills and latest software, your business card would be very effective in advertising your services.

Just make sure you that the design does not distract form the most important elements in your business card – your name and contact details. Also choose a font size and style that is perfectly readable. Avoid using fonts that are cursive. If you must, make sure that it compliments your chosen color and style. Most importantly, try to use a material that is durable and doesn’t make the ink look blotchy or faded.

In the realm of the business world today, more and more businesses are seeking for substantial mileage of the product or service they are engaged into. And one of the great and effective ways that most people can think of, is advertising through something that is being circulated like the “magazine”. It serves as a means of transportation for many companies to be known.

Apart from the million readers of different magazine publications being circulated each year, it is clearly seen that magazine companies earn through the revenues received for pennies worth of readership. However, today, magazine companies are slowly shifting on generating more revenues through advertisements. To most magazine publishers, they believed that an important factor of a publication’s success nowadays is generated from advertisements. It then becomes the parameter on how much people believed on the magazines’ credibility.

There are two important things that an advertiser needs to consider before making a deal. First, the magazine must be in the right category. Secondly, the magazine has the right target readers.

Advertising comes in various media such as television, billboards, newspapers, and radios, etc. And because these advertising mediums offer different level of exposure, they also differ in prices. Television is one of the most influential and thus, the most expensive medium that can be used in promoting a product and/or services.

However, if the budget is small, advertising in magazine could be an ideal alternative to other costly advertising medium. Magazines are readily available and much cheaper than television. It also offers visual but still representation of your product and/or services; thus, magazine could also generate more audiences as well as numbers of prospective buyers.

According to Search Your Love (SYL) Business Community, “Magazine plays the role of an advice-giver because it turns the ad into a piece of advice, a recommendation, given by the magazine and, consequently, it is trusted by the readers.” The magazine, if properly used as an advertising tool could truly provide tremendous benefits.

The magazine advertising is glamorous and instills a strong sense of visual representation. It creates a specific image for the company, thus messing up with it is not a good cliché to start. Its cost is high and so its quality, otherwise it could not build trust and funds might be wasted.

For the longest time you’ve been trying to come up with a booklet to promote the products and services that your company offers. You finally completed everything. You were able to gather enough information and a lot of pictures to prop up your company even more.

You also want to inform your customers that you already added more products and services to better accommodate their every need. And you are certain that coming out with a booklet would be the best way to keep your most loyal customers and potential customers as well be updated with what is happening with your business.

Now the only thing you need to consider is where you’re going to have that booklet printed. You have to be assured of the quality of the booklet because you want to create a good impression for your company to persuade those who will be availing of your products and services.

With a lot of booklet printing companies to choose from, how would you be able to determine which one to entrust the future of your business with?

Here are some points to consider for choosing the right booklet printing company to handle that important printing job:

• Reputation. You may want to “research” a little bit about the printing company that you would be hiring. Word of mouth would also be reliable. If you were able to meet someone who have something nice to say about the company like about the quality of their printing job and reliability the better.

• Quality. Of course you should consider the quality of every printing job of the company. It isn’t worth it if it will save you money but you would be compromising the output. Look for a company that uses only state-of-the-art equipments because you would be assured then that any printing job would have less errors and fast.

• Price. This would be a very important consideration because you only have to allot a portion of your budget for this. The price should be able to match the quality of the product if it can be less. Look for a company that would give you special discounts for large volume printing.

• Accessibility. Is the printing company within you area? How would you be able to get in touch with them? Can you just ask for a quote from them to give you an idea of their rates? Most printing companies now have their own online quote system. Look for a company that has this to avoid going to their store just to get a quote or to get their rates.

• Efficiency. Is their team of designers efficient to help you achieve what you want in that booklet of yours? You may want to consider this and their customer service as well. Are they willing to help you out on any questions that you may have?

Entrusting the future of your business could be very risky and this is the reason why you would need to analyze first each and every company you considered so that you would not regret the decision you made.

Now is the time to launch that new product in the market together with the new face of your business. And what better way to do it than to give out brochures? Brochures are fun, colorful and eye-catching.

You may think that brochures would only take a small amount of time because of its size. But to come up with an excellent brochure that would really attract attention would definitely take a lot of time.

There are a few things you may want to consider to include on your brochure. One would be the pictures that you would be including in the brochure. You would need to decide which ones are worthy of getting a page. You should not put every image that you have on the brochure to leave some for personal viewing.

Choose only pictures that you are sure would definitely get your audience’s attention and would lure them to going to your store. As mentioned, do not put every representation of you have so visitors could still be surprised.

You may want to put in images of those products you have on sale or those with lowest prices. You may also include those new products that you want to introduce as well.

Always keep in mind that you have a limited space available. You cannot cram every image that you own to fit the brochure you are coming out with. This is why you have to choose them very carefully.

After you have finished with which pictures you would include in your brochure, you know have to choose the words you are going to use to promote the pictures. Using a lot of adjectives and describing the products in a fun way would be a definite eye-catcher. Don’t just stick to the usual descriptive word like cheap, modern and the likes. That is the use of your thesaurus. To provide you with other words you can use to describe things.

And then after you have gathered all the photos that you will use and were able to find words to use as well, now is the time to lay it out. You can now arrange it in such a way that you would like. You can also ask for help from the printing company that would help you with brochure printing. They would be able to tell you exactly which looks pleasing to the eye and which they know would be attracting attention.

The printing company you are to choose as well requires a lot of thinking because you have to choose the best candidate that you have for your brochure printing. You have to choose a printing company with a good reputation and very reliable. They have to have on-time delivery and can assure high quality on their jobs. The price should not be that much as well because you have to remember that you are still on a budget.

Brochures are surefire way of promoting your business to your customers. It uses only a single sheet that comes in different sizes and folds. The great thing with brochures is that you can carry as much as you want because it’s lightweight and easy to carry. You also have the option to mail it or hand it to your customers personally.

In the past, car wrapping was all the craze. But since the realization that larger vehicles like trucks, trains, and buses cover a bigger clientele, primarily because they are able to drive around much bigger and more visible advertisements, wrapping vinyl ad graphics around such media has become the trend.

What Benefits Do We Get From Truck Wrapping?

The basic philosophy behind effective outdoor advertising is this: the more the people who see it, the better it is for sales. Think of it this way: If you are just standing at the pavement waiting for the bus, what would catch your attention more -- the truck fully dressed up with colorful vinyl graphic ads, or the poster on the window of the shop across the street? Notice how the impact of the truck graphic easily trumps that of the poster?

Truck wraps multiplies the effects of simple car wrap to significant levels. In fact, a study by Product Acceptance Research Inc showed that when compared to static or non-moving advertisements, motion displays or mobile ads have the ability to boost revenue by 100%. And if your message is as large as a truck, it could boom to unthinkable peaks!

Win-Win Deal

The best thing about truck wrap is that it does not just benefit the advertiser. If you own a truck, you can profit by offering your vehicle as a mobile medium. And because vehicle wrapping industry prices are quoted based on the size of the surface to be worked on, you can expect to earn big. The marketer profits, you profit; nobody loses! Such is the beauty of the truck wrapping industry. And because it is a growing trend, it can only get better.

As a marketing consultant and owner of a marketing firm, a big mistake I see businesses make is they do not take into consideration the value of repeat sales when they review if their advertising is profitable.

When determining if your advertising is profitable, you need to look at advertising as a long-term investment, just like buying stocks, real estate, or mutual funds. When evaluating your advertising you need to take into consideration repeat sales from each new customer your advertising produces. Nearly all businesses earn the majority of their sales and profits on repeat sales, NOT first time sales. Understanding this concept is one of the secrets to building a successful business.

For example, let’s say you run a small quarter page ad in your local shopper coupon magazine. This small ad costs you $300. From that single ad you attract three new customers who each buy $50 worth of your merchandise. From that information you would think that you had a loss of $100 on that ad because you paid $300 for it but you only generated $150 in sales. But let’s look at the long-term effect of those three new customers.

Let’s say that each of those three new customers purchases an additional $250 of merchandise from you over the next 11-months. When you take that into consideration, your $300 ad has now generated $900 in sales. And, what if each of those three customers purchases an additional $300 of merchandise from you the following year? Now, your original $300 ad has generated $1,800 in sales over a 24-month period. To put that into perspective, if you bought $300 worth of mutual funds and in 2-years your $300 investment was worth $1,800, you would be jumping for joy! That is why you need to view the profitability of your advertising on a long-term scale, not on a short-term 1-2 month scale. Advertising is an investment to generate long-term customers and repeat sales. Your focus as a business owner must always be on generating faithful long-term customers, NOT one-time sales.

Let’s broaden the picture even more. Let’s say one of your three new customers loved your merchandise so much that she told two of her friends about you, and her two friends each becomes a long-term customer of your business. And, what if those two friends each buys a few hundred dollars worth of merchandise from you over the next couple of years? Do you now see the tremendous long-term value of that $300 ad you placed?

Now that you have a better understanding of advertising as an investment, it is vitally important that you track the source of every new customer (i.e., did they find you in the yellow pages, direct mail, radio, Internet, etc.). Whenever you talk to a new customer you must ask the customer, “How did you hear about us?” Then, you need to track the source of that customer in a spreadsheet or a CRM system and track how many sales that customer makes over time. This is the only way you can truly determine if an advertising strategy is working. Yes, this takes time but it is worth it. And, a good CRM software application can make this tracking very easy.

In summary, before you throw in the towel on your advertising strategies because they are not immediately generating a profit, you must first understand that value of a new customer over time. Stop looking at advertising as a short term expense and start viewing advertising as what it really is, a long-term investment to the success of your business.