April 23, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Advertising signs can often be seen to bubble and degrade over time with the result that the sign looks unprofessional. The sign then does not convey the right marketing message and creates a poor impression. This is mostly due to the problem of outgassing or the release of gases from the materials. By understanding the surface of the sign and the type of vinyl film being used you can avoid these problems and have a long lasting sign that is visually appealing.
Outgassing is a common problem when creating advertising signs. A typical scenario could be if you have an acrylic sign that is blistering or bubbling – acrylic suppliers claiming their acrylic doesn’t outgas and sign vinyl suppliers say that it isn’t their fault, the acrylic outgassed. It is a natural affect of the production process of many surfaces including plastics, paints, vinyl coverings, leather and PVCs to name a few.
An easy explanation is that a form of outgassing can be seen in motor vehicles. A new car can be left in the sun and you will find an oily residue build up on the windows and windscreen. This is a result of the release of gases from the vinyl material in the car being deposited onto glass surfaces.
As with most advertising sign creation, knowing the materials you are going to use and preparing the surfaces correctly will help you avoid any outgassing issues and achieve a quality result.
The surface or substrate you will be using is the first to be analysed. If the surface is old, then there is a good chance that any outgassing has finished. Newer surfaces such as the panels of a new motor vehicle, a sign in a foyer, display systems including portable display stands then your choice of vinyl material becomes most important. You can avoid outgassing issues by choosing a vinyl film that is porous enough to allow the gases to pass through. The following list of products is from most to least porosity:
Cast Vinyl
Polymeric Vinyl
Monomeric VinylFor each of these you should not have too many issues, however, quite often in the printing process you need to layer vinyl over each other to get the desired effect. Obviously, this will decrease the ability to release gas from under the vinyl. Care should still be taken therefore when layering.
Polyester and polypropylene films are not porous. The classic example of using these products is a sign with a mirror chrome finish on a black acrylic material. Even if the best quality products are used, it cannot be guaranteed that outgassing will not occur. Another example is where a gold or silver window film is put on a window. Unless the window has been thoroughly cleaned and dried when the window gets hot, the water trapped under the vinyl material will become gas and you will have a bubbling affect.
Whenever a sign is being developed, preparation is the key:
Firstly know the characteristics of the surface you are using, particularly as it relates to outgassing. Even painted surfaces may cause issues, particularly if using water based paints. You will need to allow them to cure properly, best over 7 days or more before applying any vinyl.
Secondly choose the most appropriate sign vinyl film for that surface, application and the time you want the sign to last. Often the cost is a determining factor of the type of film used. Cast film is the most expensive, but is also the most porous and is likely to have a longer life expectancy than other films. Your choice of film can be guided by how long you require the sign to last. However, the reality is that material costs are relatively insignificant in making a sign. The major cost is in the labour to create the sign. For example, if a Calendared vinyl contributes 10% of the total cost of the sign, using Cast vinyl will contribute about 5% more. The benefit is however a longer lasting sign and one that is unlikely to give you any issues with outgassing
April 23, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
You have an apartment to rent but you’re limited when it comes to your advertising budget. Don’t worry, there are plenty of ways you can advertise apartment rentals for absolutely nothing. The first thing to consider is that there are many people out there who need an apartment. These people don’t care where the advertisement comes from. They only care that the place is affordable and it’s clean and presentable. Now you have to get that advertisement out there so someone will see it.
Craigslist.org
Craigslist is a great way to advertise an apartment. It’s completely free and you have the freedom to say whatever you want. However, when you advertise apartment rentals on craigslist, your ad is almost immediately buried under all the new ads coming in. You can set your ad apart by posting pictures and by reposting every few hours or so. Make sure your ad is different each time or else Craigslist will flag it as spam.
Free Classified Sites
There are plenty of free classified websites available, offering you the opportunity to add your apartment rental listing. You simply write your listing into the forms provided on the site and your apartment is advertised for your chosen areas.
Many free classified sites network with other sites, so your ad could potentially be shown to many more people than you expect.
Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites, like Facebook or Twitter, can be an excellent way to let people know you have an apartment for rent. You simply link your ad for your apartment rental onto your social networking site and your immediate circle of friends will be able to see it.
The benefit to this approach is that your friends also have circles of their own friends. If they know someone who is looking to rent an apartment, they’ll share your link with their own networks and the word will spread very quickly.
The Side of the Road
There’s nothing wrong with posting a sign on the side of the road, say at an intersection. Include the size of the apartment, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and the price. And don’t forget your phone number. You’d be surprised how effective this technique is at advertising apartment rentals. Do this and you’ll likely get several phone calls from interested renters.
Word of Mouth
Don’t forget word of mouth. Let everyone you know you’re trying to advertise apartment rentals. And then have them tell everyone they know. This word of mouth advertising is just as effective as posting an ad in the local newspaper, or maybe even better.
April 23, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
You can make some money selling ebooks that earn you $30 per sale. Many people do. But if you want to make any REAL money, if you want to retire young, thats better done by selling big ticket items – things that earn you from $500 – $2,000 per sale.
Now, I know what youre thinking. Expensive items are too hard to sell. Its better to sell inexpensive impulse purchase items. But thats not true. You just have to use the correct SYSTEM to sell Big Ticket items. But Ill get into that later. First I want to talk about the one HUGE advantage of selling Big Ticket items.
YOU CAN SPEND MUCH MORE ON ADVERTISING.
Free advertising is fine, but the more money you spend on advertising, the more qualified hits you will receive, and the more sales you will make. And with Big Tickets you can spend more money!
Google AdWords PPC works well to get qualified leads to your site. But it can be a little expensive. Lets say that youve gotten your PPC costs down to about $.75 per click (It used to be five cents a click, but not anymore!), and youre selling something that earns you $30 per sale. If you have an average conversion rate of 2%, which is pretty good, then you must purchase 50 clicks to get one sale. Fifty clicks will cost you $37.50. Thats $7.50 MORE than the profit you earn from the sale. OBVIOUSLY, THAT DOESNT WORK! If you work really diligently to raise your conversion rate to 5%, which is much higher than most people ever achieve, you will need twenty clicks to make one sale. Twenty clicks will cost you $15. Well, that works. Youve made a profit – but not much. Youve lost fully HALF of your profits to advertising expense. You might make a living, but you cant retire soon on that!
Now lets look at selling a Big Ticket item – something that sells for $2,000 and earns you $1,000 per sale. The same 2% conversion rate that we used above will still cost you $37.50 for one sale, but earns you $1,000. Does THAT WORK for you? I think so! Now, lets suppose you have a low conversion rate of only .5%. You would have to buy 200 clicks to make one sale, which costs $150. That still works. Now lets drop your conversion rate down to an abysmal .2%. You now need 500 clicks costing $375 to make ONE SALE and earn $1,000. It STILL works. What if you had to spend $375 to make one sale that earned you only $30? Fugetabodit!
I could keep going with the numerical examples, but I think you get the point. With Big Ticket items, you can spend hundreds of dollars MORE on advertising to get one sale if you have to, and then you STILL earn hundreds of dollars MORE for each sale that you make!
Its the same for ezine solo ads. If you spent $75 on one ezine solo ad and made 3 sales at $30 each, youve made $15 net. But 3 sales at $1,000 each will earn you $2,925 net! Which would you rather do? Let me think.
When Selling Big Ticket items, it makes financial sense to do many more types of more expensive paid advertising that JUST DIDNT MAKE SENSE when selling $30 ebooks! And Paid advertising is what brings in the MOST CONSISTANT LEADS.
HOW DO I SELL A BIG TICKET ITEM?
Expensive items, especially online, are NOT impulse items. People need time to think about making an expensive purchase. In fact, 80% will NOT buy within the first 60 days. So in order to sell an expensive item, you must stay in front of their face for at least 60 days. Heres the basic set-up.
You create a landing page/sales letter that explains your item in depth. Then, on the front end, you sell an inexpensive ($30?) introductory offer, or give away a free report, or anything you can do that will COMPEL them to give you their email address to add to your newsletter. Then you send them an email every several days that is filled with REAL additional CONTENT about whatever your topic is. You are now building a RELATIONSHIP with them, and it wont take long for them to start seeing you as an expert in your field. At that point, upselling them to your back-end $2,000 product (which earns you $1,000) is the next logical step. Many of them WILL buy from you if you take these steps, and have a little patience.
I tried for a long time to make money on the internet, and I usually barely broke even – until I finally understood the importance of selling expensive products. Now, the Big Ticket sales are rolling in, and so is the cash! Understanding this one concept – Sell Big
Ticket Items for Maximum Profit – changed my life forever!
After I learned about this, I sudden realized that I had been the product, if you will, of this very strategy. You see, I wanted to get into real estate investing. I found the site of one of the biggest real estate gurus online. He had five-day real estate seminars that cost $4,000. I REALLY wanted to go to his seminar, but there was NO WAY I could justify spending that kind of money! So instead, I bought his (up-front) $39 home study course.
The course was 6 tapes and a workbook. I devoured that course. I listened to the tapes eight or nine times in a row. Every time I was driving, I was listening to his tapes. I practically had them memorized. They were really excellent, but they only gave me about 80% of what I needed to get started buying houses nothing down.
But I was also on his email list, and I constantly got tips from him about real estate investing, which was priming me to purchase his back-end product – I just didnt realize it at the time. Finally, about six months later, because he had built a RELATIONSHIP with me through his emails, and I NOW SAW HIM AS THE EXPERT in real estate, I purchased my first seminar from him for $4,000. That began it for me. Over the next few years I spent approximately $80,000 on real estate seminars and training courses from him and other gurus! Was it worth the money I spent? Absolutely! The house Im living in now, the seller GAVE to me. In fact, he paid ME $15,000 at closing to take it
off his hands!
But I digress. The point is, this guru used the same tactics Im discussing here to get me to buy a $4,000 seminar that I NEVER would have purchased from his website alone if he hadnt established himself as an expert AND developed a RELATIONSHIP with me through his mailings.
There are thousands of affiliate programs on the internet, but most of them sell $30 items. If you dont have your own products, then you need to find an affiliate program that (1) sells Big Ticket items on the back-end and (2) has a completely automated email follow-up system that makes the back-end sale for you.
April 16, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Since beginning this column last fall, I’ve attempted to point to trends, analysis and reports that gauge the development of digital signage and identify the strengths and opportunities for this emerging medium.
I’m not alone on this mission. An excellent white paper from Profitable Channels makes a strong case for digital signage networks as an effective advertising medium with the ability to compensate for deficiencies in television advertising manifested in increasingly fragmented audiences, digital video recording and its accompanying commercial zapping, and the lack of certainty in measuring audience metrics.
The white paper presents highlights of a larger in-depth report entitled Adding Out-of-Home Digital Advertising Networks to the Marketing and Media Mix by Profitable Channels partner Stephen Diorio.
The white paper makes a strong case that marketers should take digital advertising seriously. It’s in the best interest of their companies, the white paper contends, to make sure their agency partners are considering digital advertising networks as part of the marketing/media mix. Additionally, it recommends marketers should be setting aside a portion of their marketing budgets for this emerging new medium.
According to the white paper, emerging digital advertising networks offer five advantages over traditional media offerings, including:
measurable sales impact
proximity to the sale
better ways to target media
greater relevance to the product being sold
tighter integration with local selling efforts
Many marketers have begun to recognize those benefits. The white paper points out that as of August 2006, 37 of the 50 largest supermarket chains are rolling out, piloting or planning for in-store digital signage networks and that more than 4,000 big-box retail stores display in-store video advertising. Further evidence supporting that marketers see the value of digital ad networks comes in the form of budget allocation.
Referencing research from Veronis Suhler Stevenson, Carat Media and others, the document asserts that by 2011 up to $40 billion of traditional media spending will be shifted into new media. Obviously, a large portion of this will be devoted to Internet advertising and other new media, but digital advertising networks stand to benefit as well.
This reallocation of media spending reflects a shift in consumer attention away from traditional newspaper and broadcast media to the Internet and new digital media, including cell phones, video games, podcasting, and out-of-home digital advertising networks, the white paper says.
It is important to note that the report lumps cinema into the overall digital media networks category without distinguishing between commercials and still ads projected on-screen by digital projectors and digital signage in and around motion picture theaters to promote films. Equally important to understand is that the former is likely to be significantly larger than the latter at this point. Regardless, the white paper identifies the overall strength of digital advertising networks, of which digital signage is an important part, and the likelihood that they will only continue to grow.
Perhaps best of all, the white paper identifies five separate research organizations that have found consumers like digital advertising networks. All show these networks have value to, acceptance by and positive response from consumers.
If you only have time to read one report this summer, spend it reading Adding Out-of-Home Digital Advertising Networks to the Marketing and Media Mix by Stephen Diorio.
April 15, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Many are turning to banner advertising as an effective way to get their message to a large group of people in a relatively short time. The banner message is first created. In seven feet tall letters, the banner could be 120 feet long or more. When that is in place, a plane with a hook on its tail flies low and snags the tow rope. As it is pulled through the sky, virtually everyone below will read the message.
Billboard ads are highway billboard messages pulled behind planes. The message either contains logos, words, or photographs. They are used to advertise a product, a service, a charity, or a special event. Individuals have used banners to recognize an achievement, to congratulate someone on an honor, or even to propose marriage.
Due to the nature of the United States’ political system, it seems someone is virtually always running for office somewhere, especially during the summer and fall of major election years. In recent years, some candidates have used aerial ads to spread their message, and for good reason. Banner or billboard ads as described above are an ideal way of promoting a candidate. Here are some reasons why this is true.
First, a banner or billboard ad can focus on just a particular constituency. Unlike printed ads that could be available to people far outside the voting district of the candidate, or TV ads that must be repeated to be sure people see them, banner ads fly over just the area of a city, county, or state of the candidate’s jurisdiction.
Second, the ads reach a large number of people in a short period of time. Yes, it is best to shake hands with each person in the district, but this is not always possible or practical. A billboard or banner flying over a city, sports event, political rally, or beach will put the name and slogan of the candidate before the people in a matter of minutes.
Third, billboards can display a picture of the candidate. Imagine a billboard of a candidate moving from a stationary stand and flying over every person in the district! The drone of the engine grabs people’s attention. The banner flying overhead demands to be read. Then, when it is time to vote, the citizens will recognize his name and, possibly, will vote for him.
Yes, personal contact is best. Nothing beats getting out, meeting the people, and finding out what is important to them. The banner or billboard going before or after the visit will only reinforce this is a candidate who wants their vote. All this culminates in more votes on election day.
Finally, a big advantage of banner ads is the cost. Banners are a one time expense but, if the candidate plans to run again, the banner can be stored and reused without additional production cost. This is a claim few other methods of advertising could make. Overall, it is one of the cheapest methods of getting a candidate’s name before the people. Many have used it and can attest to its effectiveness.