The Art of Marketing and Advertising

You have your home based business now what? You've got your website, you've set everything up you need to set up with your business opportunity, now what you need is what every home based business owner needs and that's lots of customers. You have to advertise, right? How else are people going to know your business exists?

Marketing and advertising can be a challenge for the newbie as well as the seasoned internet marketer. Let's start by closely examining what the goal of advertising is. This article is specifically designed to get you thinking. It's highly interactive so you'll get the most out of this article by having a piece of paper and a pen handy to record your initial thoughts to the questions posed throughout the article.

1. What immediately comes to mind for you when you think of advertising and marketing your business? (Give this question your undivided attention & record your thoughts)

The sole purpose of advertising is to do what? It's to make sales or eventually lead to a sale... right? This may seem pretty obvious but you'd be surprised at some of the ads I see on the internet and in print. An advertisement either turns a profit or it doesn't. Treat every advertisement as if it were a hired sales person working for you 24/7.

2. Do you know who your target audience is? Who specifically are you going to advertise to? (Give this question your undivided attention & record your thoughts)

Your advertising should be directed toward your target audience to get them to take notice. If your going to advertise using google adwords for instance you'll have to carefully craft your ads as you won't have much room to write. The headline for a google adwords advertisement is 25 characters and blank spaces count as a character, so you'll have to be very specific in your choice of words.

On google adwords you'll get a headline (25 characters) and two description lines which allow for 35 characters per line. A display URL line which allows for 35 characters and a destination URL which allows for 1024 characters max. So as you can see you'll have to give your advertisements some thought and write them as honest and as clearly as you can.

Remember this tip: Write your ads for your readers!

Here is a sample google adwords add I pulled off the internet for illustrative purposes only. I've left the display url and destination url out of the add as it's not really that important for our discussion here. What were really interested in is the message that's being delivered to the reader of the add.

3. When you read the message below what message does it send to you. (Give this question your undivided attention & record your thoughts)

Headline: Proven Home Business
Description line 1: Don't fall for the scams
description line 2: Proven Home Business Directory

Let's look at the headline. This headline say's to me that this home business is proven. In other words it works.

The description line 1. This line says to me beware of the scams out there. Don't get taken to the cleaners by some yahoo simply out to get your money.

So the headline and line 1 essentially say this to me: This is a proven home business that works and that it's not a scam as the other businesses out there may be scams and you'll have to watch out for what the other guy is offering but you don't have to worry about that with this proven business.

Description line 2 wraps everything up by saying: Proven Home Business Directory.

This ad say's to me that I should click on this ad because it's a proven home business, it's not a scam out to take my money and what I'll find when I click on this add is a proven home business directory where I'll find not one but a bunch of or a collection of proven home businesses to choose from. It leads me to believe that if I'm looking for a proven home business that I'll find it by clicking on this advertisement.

Again record your thoughts and see what the ad above say's to you. If you were looking for a proven home business that was not a scam would this ad interest you enough that you would click on the ad. If one clicks on the ad then the ad has done it's job.

Keep this in mind when writing any advertisement. The advertisement is not for you! It's for a person searching for what you're offering. The ad above was written for the person seeking a legitimate home based business. Imagine you're a person searching for what you're offering. The more direct and to the point you are the better your ad will perform. So keep this in the fore front of your thoughts when you're writing your advertisements.

4. When writing your ads do you think its more beneficial to write in a sophisticated manner to portray to your readers that you're smart or in a plain ho hum everyday conversational manner. (Give this question your undivided attention & record your thoughts)

Statistics have shown that the majority of people will respond better to everyday plain conversational type tones and advertisements as it's what most people are the most comfortable with. No one likes to be talked down to and no one really cares how smart you are. Your readers don't even know you. All they know is the ad that they are reading. If your readers don't understand the words in your ad without breaking out websters newest addition, let me tell you your advertisement stands a real good chance of being a total failure.

Remember when writing ads it's not about you. It's all about your target audience, the readers of your ads.



Richard Ward is the owner of superselfmarketing.com and writes on a variety of subjects. Richard also maintains The Ultimate Internet Marketing Blog. http://plug-in-profitsite.blogspot.com/ and is a home based business owner and health & wellness coach. To learn more about starting your own home based business and earning multiple streams of income from the comfort of your home visit http://www.superselfmarketing.com