Needless to say, if you decided to run an ad campaign in a radio or on TV, you probably know your reasons. Just make sure you know that the listenership is relevant to customers and that you don’t waste too much advertising space on people who will never buy your products.

For your, you probably want to pick radio stations and programs that are watched by customers. Our main advice here is that there is no point in going to a mass of people without any targeting. You could spend lots of money and not get anything out of it.

So let’s suppose you picked a program that is by 80% watched by customers. What do you do next?

Again, here it proves to talk to experts and people who will write a professional script for you, get a voiceover actor and record the ad in a professional studio. Whether going for radio or TV, probably the easiest way is to contact the advertising section of a particular station, and ask them for a rate card, as well as prices and air times.

Ideally, if you are placing a spot, you should try to get interviewed in a particular program so that you will not only be seen as an advertiser, but also as a real person who is involved in the program, which increases your credibility and chances that people will contact you.

As with all marketing tools, always make a clear call to action in the ad – you can either ask customers to give you a call, bring them to your website, or to your offices.

What is the image of your your company in public? Do you know which tools you can use free to get your name out there?

How can you work with media people in a way beneficial to both sides?

To succeed in public relations and marketing, here are a few things you need to master:

• Know how to use press releases to tell the your world about your news
• Understand what to do when you get interviewed for TV or radio
• See how you could get more business by organizing seminars and other events
• Find out whether sponsoring is the right thing to do
• Know what to do when things go wrong and your public image is endangered

When selling particular your service, it is a good idea to summarize it in a simple brochure – again, with some very specific content.

Below you can see a few ideas on what should a successful brochure contain:

Front Page

• Attention grabbing image that is attractive to customers
• Your logo
• Powerful Heading
• Message that addresses a customers’ problem or responds to one of their desires
• A genuine testimonial from one of your customers
• Your contact details

Inside Pages

You can use this space to describe individual products in more detail, introduce your company or solutions, however, always keep in mind all essentials of advertising success outlined above.

Don’t forget to tell customers exactly what to do next, and every single page must have your contact details on it.

On the last inside page, you can also have a simple contact form.

Back of the brochure

• Your logo
• Message that addresses a customers’ problem or responds to one of their desires (different from the one on the front page)
• Another genuine testimonial from one of your customers
• Your contact details

These ideas could also be adjusted and applied to flyers which are just a simpler version of brochures, usually targeted more specifically on one particular offer.

While applying this approach, you must make sure that your brochures are well aligned with the rest of your marketing strategy, and also that they stand out as unique and special.

There are tons of news every day, reaching us from papers, radio, TV and whatever else. However, sometimes your own company becomes a part of this news world, and you will probably want to make it look as good as possible.

A press release is basically an article informing the public about particular events. These should be based on running open days, introducing special offers or new services, and most importantly offering these to new customers.

To get the maximum impact, you should aim for publishing one press release at least every two months. So how to do it?

Free press or print advertising is where you have been contacted by a paper or magazine to either give a comment on your, seek your advice or simply report on you and your business.  These are known as editorials or press releases and can be created by yourself or the media.  If you have something that you feel is of public interest, you might submit a written piece to the paper in which they could possibly use your story and print without any cost to you.

It may also be a possibility that you get to advertise for free in the print media.  For instance your local magazine or newsletter may offer you a position to put in an ad for your business at no charge.

Then you can always send the printed articles as mailers to your prospects – and link them on your website.

Always remember – focus on the media which are read by customers, and then make sure you align your website content with the press release.

If you ever considered attending an exhibition on the “other” side, as an exhibitor, here are a few tips that could help:

• Pick an exhibition where customers go
• Check how many people will attend and how many of them are your potential customers
• Plan and book early – you might get a discount
• Create a marketing strategy – what do you want each visitor of your stand to do?
  • Give you their contact details
  • Enter a competition
  • Sign up your newsletter
  • Have a chat
  • Take a brochure
  • Arrange a meeting etc.
• If you can, pick a stand that is in the corner , so that you can attract people coming from 4 aisles
• Have a professional company design your stand – it pays
• Make sure the stand is well visible from the distance and remember that sometimes, less is more
• Have enough staff in the stand present for the whole exhibition and plan for breaks
• Train your staff what to do beforehand
• Reserve some time after the exhibition to contact all visitors who gave you their contact details – within 2 days after the exhibition finishes

During the exhibition, it is crucial that you don’t spend too much time talking to individual prospects – instead have a well planned process in place which will enable you to talk to as many people as possible – while giving each of them a valuable feedback – either get them sign up for your free newsletter, ask for their contact details so that you can arrange a face-to-face meeting afterwards, or offer them to send a free your Tips Guide.

Always follow up with all the contacts within two days after the exhibition. Otherwise, the money you spent could be wasted.

A very important point to keep in mind with any marketing is that you must test, test, and test again. A few hours spent ensuring that you are using correct messages can save months of useless promotion, and tons of marketing money.

An essential part of your testing is having a method in place that allows you to track your return on funds invested. Keep in mind that with any successful marketing strategy, it is vital to ensure that you know who your audience is and how to reach customers.

Here is the short explanation of what you should measure in marketing:

• Number of leads for the month – How many people contacted you?
• Value of leads for the month – How much sales can these leads generate, based on your sales conversion rate and average sales value
• Sales made for the month – How much sales did you get in a particular month?
• Number of new sales - How many sales came from new customers who had never bought from you before?
• Value of new sales - What was the value of these new sales?
• Number of outstanding opportunities – How many leads have not turned into sales yet and still look promising?
• Value of outstanding opportunities - What is the value of these outstanding leads?
• Referrals gained - How many referrals did you get in a particular month?
• Testimonials received - How many testimonials did you receive in a particular month?
• Number of sales calls per rep - How many sales calls did an average sales rep make?
• Number of sales calls made – What was the total number of sales calls made by all sales reps?
• Marketing expenditure for the month – How much did you spend on marketing in a particular month?
• Customer complaints – How many customer complaints did you receive in a particular month?

Once you have a few very powerful marketing messages that enable customers to see clearly the value in your products and when they hear what is in it for them, it will feel good to buy from you.

So think about the following when you put the headline on your next flyer:

1. How could you polish the message and is there a way you could improve any word of it?
2. Is there a way you could test individual marketing messages by asking customers how much they value the benefits you used in the messages?
3. Imagine you could transfer each of these messages into powerful testimonials from customers – what would be the best way to do this?

Probably the best way of tracking the effectiveness of your brochures would be to ask your customers where they heard about you and when they mention the brochures, you will know where they came from.

You will then have to make a note about where a particular customer heard about you, so that you can track back which ways of advertising brought in most sales.

Have you tried various forms of cost-effective marketing and do you know how to use them effectively so that you get the maximum results? Are your campaigns planned carefully, or do you just passively react to the special offers of ad sellers?

What if there was a way to measure what worked and what didn’t so that you could base your decisions on real facts?

So what do you need if you want to boost your advertising and direct mail?

• A list of activities pertinent to your and customers you are trying to reach
• A simple outline of how and when to do each marketing activity that will deliver the results you desire
• A methodology to measure all of your marketing activities so that you can easily see what brings you the best results

You can now start to implement your marketing plan and see the real results as they happen.

Does your current marketing strategy achieve your revenue objectives?

Do you know how to set the right goals to get ‘there’?

Without enquiries from customers that you can convert into sales you will fail – FACT. So do you know precisely where you are going to get your leads from?

Does your current marketing plan really outline your planned steps?
Is it a plan of action to follow to retain and grow your existing customer base?

If you’re not sure about the answers to these questions, think how you could go about these:

• Create a proper marketing strategy for your company
• Get a good handle on how you believe your business should perform in relation to leads and sales
• Know exactly what budget you should be spending and you will be able to plan your time effectively
• See how you can measure the effectiveness of all monies being spent on marketing and precisely on how they will impact your bottom line