Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Advertising Message or Sales Conversion Problem?
Internet Marketing Equals More SalesSo now you are advertising your business, and are bringing in people but hardly any of them are becoming customers. What's the problem? Is it the advertising message, the targeted audience, or the sales conversion process?

Chuck McKay, an advertising and marketing consultant, who wrote a book titled "Fishing For Customers" and also writes in a blog by the same name Fishing For Customers, wrote an interesting article titled, The Flaw in the Advertising Plan.

The insightful article takes a look at the other end of the advertising and marketing spectrum; the sales conversion process as possibly being the problem in converting leads, visitors, and inquiries into paying customers.

The understanding of the linkage between sales, marketing, and advertising is fundamental in developing good advertising strategies for your business today. The chain linkage between S. M. A. shows that if any area is weak, the chain breaks, and sales are missed.

Learn how Professional Web Services can build a strong link for your business on the web today. Reach new customers and gain quality leads today. Contact us for a free marketing evaluation. Get it now!

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posted by Warholic at 7:24 AM

Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Getting Leads Almost Immediately
Marketing Service
There is an advertising solution for your business that can start generating leads and sales almost immediately. The solution is to use Pay-per-click, PPC advertising. This form of advertising can be highly selective, and you only have to pay for the budget that you set forth.

Online Advertising

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Search all have similar forms of online advertising programs that can be targeted to select groups of individuals based on various criteria.

The main criteria used is the keywords themselves. Essentially you start an account and bid what you are willing to pay for a click to a particular page of your website. A business can set up a daily or monthly advertising campaign budget of a not to exceed amount. The budget can be spread out over the entire month or more aggressively advertise, displaying ads more often until the budget is used for the month.

One of the keys to successfully running an online advertising campaign is making sure your business has the proper landing pages that will produce sales conversions. A business must optimize all aspects of the ad campaign, from the ad copy, the landing page design(s), the keywords used in the ad, the keywords used in the landing page, and the call to action items, all to maximize the best return on investment.

WinkGood advertising is a natural extension of marketing. Marketing and advertising go hand in hand. Doing one without taking into account the other is like eating a steak without a good baked potato. Edgar Watson Howe, an American novelist and a newspaper and magazine editor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries put it this way, "Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does."

Professional Web Services provides PPC campaign management, landing page designs, website optimization, and a professional marketing service. Start off on the right track, target your audience the right way, and maximize your ROI. Contact us for marketing and advertising help now.

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posted by Warholic at 10:45 PM

Important to Consider Ethics in Online Advertising

Ethics, honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness in advertisements are a factor to driving sales, maintaining customer trust, and building brand loyalty. What is represented about a company in an Internet ad can help a brand, or if you are not careful, it can just as easily hurt a company's brand image. Sure, there might be short term gains in using unethical advertising techniques which distort or are blatantly misleading, but in the long run not following good ad ethics, a customer will remember, and if you are not the only game in town you may find yourself in another ballpark. So, do the right thing and follow good ethics in advertising and marketing.

Marketing Advertising Sales

Professional Web Services

Our Professional Services Include:

  • Internet Marketing Services

  • Online Advertising Strategies

  • Online Brand Management

  • Creative Copywriting

  • Technical Writing / Optimization

  • SEO Services / Search Engine Optimization

  • Search Engine Submissions / Discussion

  • Graphic Layout Improvements

  • Redesign or Development of a New Site Design

  • Digital & Video Photography

  • Website Maintenance

  • Website Tracking Statistics & Analysis

  • Advertising Campaign Management

  • Ad Copy Writing And Updated Edits

  • Ad Conversion Metrics

  • Web Branding Solutions

  • Free Marketing Consultation

  • Professional Service

Browse our site, kick back, stretch out the legs, slip-on those reading glasses, open your mind, and start clicking the mouse. Grow your business, generate leads, convert them into paying customers, and improve sales with great advertising resources.

Contact us today: Professional Web Services, Inc., supplier of Internet marketing and Online advertising solutions for business to business and business to consumer companies today.

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posted by Warholic at 3:22 PM

Targeted Advertising is the Key to Success

Three Questions to Answer BEFORE You Spend One Cent on Advertising


I worked my way through college employed at a termite and pest control company. Pretty humble beginnings for an aspiring leader!

Internet Marketing ServicesIn California, where I lived, a home cannot be bought or sold without a clean bill of health from a termite and pest control company. As they look for these wood eating insects, termite inspectors also report any dry rot and structural flaws in the property.

Which is how I spent a month one summer in Redwood City.

Our company had inspected an imposing turn-of-the-century home that was being put on the real estate market for the very first time in its storied history. The home rested, not on a foundation, but on a dozen or so stacks of concrete block. We had been contracted to bring this building into the 20th century by putting a suitable foundation underneath it.

The crew I worked on jacked up the house with a house jack, cut the floor joists from the posts that rested on the concrete blocks, dug a trench around the circumference of the house, poured concrete, and lowered the house onto its new foundation. What an ordeal!

It is far easier and less time consuming, to put a foundation in first, and then build a house.

When it comes to advertising, most small businesses are like this old house. Instead of doing the groundwork necessary for success, they go out and build their building: advertising here, advertising there, with varying degrees of success. Thousands and thousands of dollars later, most small business owners have no idea if any of this expensive advertising had any impact at all.

Time spent on your foundation can solve this problem. Here are three questions to answer BEFORE you spend one cent on advertising:

1. Who is your target audience?

Who is the person most likely to use your products or services? This is a counterintuitive practice called narrowcasting. Instead of trying to reach everybody, narrowcasting aims at a very specific, identifiable group of people. Narrowcasting is essential for success in today's crowded marketplace. If you are everything to everyone, you are nothing to no one.

Take the time to know EXACTLY who you want to reach and learn everything about him or her.

One of my small business clients did this by tracking all the people who came into his store during a typical week. From that exercise he was able to determine the age range and gender of his primary target, professional women in their late 30's and early 40's. This group comprised almost two-thirds of everyone who came into his store. Surprisingly, he also learned who was NOT his primary target, young males 18-30, who comprised less that 5% of foot traffic on a given week.

Then he went one step further. This small business owner took 10-15 minutes with 25 of the women in his target and asked them a dozen questions. From their responses he was able to craft a profile of his target complete with likes, dislikes, buying motives, children's ages, daily habits and shaped his advertising by it.

2. What does your target audience read, listen to, or watch?

One of the questions you MUST ask your target audience is what media outlets they read, listen to, or watch. Without knowing this information, your advertising odds are no better that the lottery's.

The dirty little secret in advertising sales is that most buys are ego buys and have nothing to do with targeting. A business owner likes the radio station, or drinks beers after work with the ad rep, or wants to be a TV star in a funny commercial.

If you want to be a star, go to open mic night and the nearest comedy club. Don't gamble away your hard-earned dollars on speculative advertising. Again, find out EXACTLY what your target audience reads, listens to, or watches and place your advertising ONLY on those mediums.

Here too, though, you must be strategic. Don't do something one month in the newspaper and switch to the radio the next month and then try a direct mail coupon book. Dominate a medium that connects with your target.

If there is one secret to successful advertising, it is this: repetition.

This means having your advertising run and run and run on one medium so that it appears like you own that medium. When you are sick of seeing or hearing your ad, GREAT, your prospects are just now noticing it. Once you have dominated a medium in this way, add a new advertising medium only when you can dominate it as well.

3. What is your compelling benefit?

What do you say in your advertising now that you've defined your target and are ready to dominate a medium that speaks directly to them? Here, too, is where small businesses go awry.

Recognize any of these words?

- Quality service

- Lowest price

- Serving the state since 1982

These slogans, and hundreds like them, mean nothing because they don't say anything. A compelling benefit, however, grabs your prospects by the throat and demands their attention.

To craft your compelling benefit, you must first know your competitive advantage. What do you do better than anyone else in the business? Focus on that one thing and state it in a powerful, succinct way. Sure you do other things, and people will get to know that in time, but first you need a clear, simple focus to your messaging.

Now take your competitive advantage and state specifically how you will make a person's life different when they experience it. Will you make them money? Keep them safe? Bring greater health? Increase quality of life?

Here are two examples:

The Kingston Training Group specializes in teaching sales people how to set first appointments. Their six word slogan, all beginning with the letter M, is this: Make More Meetings, Make More Money. Note the competitive advantage, setting appointments, and the compelling benefit, increasing income, stated in a memorable way. Perfect!

The benefit statement I have for my business is this: A BETTER Business, A BETTER Life. I specialize in helping small business owners build their business in a systematic way that allows them to live the life they wanted when they started it in the first place. Again, stated in just six words.

This best part about this tool is that it is absolutely free because words are free. Work on your words. Make them simple, short, and powerful. Then build all your advertising around them.



Bill Zipp, President of Leadership Link, Inc., is a seasoned small business specialist. Bill has spent thousands of hours working with hundreds of business leaders, and his proven program, The Business Fitness™ System, provides a step-by-step plan for building a strong, self-sustaining small business. For a FREE Special Report, The 3 Biggest Killers of Small Businesses Today (And What YOU Can Do About Them!) visit www.LeadershipLink.net.



Target your target markets online directly with online advertising today. Get your business on the web, in front of your target markets now. Contact Professional Web Services for Online advertising campaign management. We can help you build a quality website foundation with landing pages that will sell your business. Start gaining new sales almost immediately.
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posted by Warholic at 6:41 AM

Monday, December 3, 2007
Search Engine Exposure
NBC Deal or No Deal
Picture Courtesy of NBC - Deal or No Deal
Visit Sales and Marketing Today.
Is Your Website Exposed Online In The Search Engines?

From the standpoint of Internet marketing and online advertising, having a website with good Internet exposure is one of the key factors on being discovered for your keywords. If your company is not a household or well known Internet brand, or you wish to improve company brand recognition online, then this search advertising subject is for your business.

Online advertising comes in many shapes and sizes. In fact, one size does not fit all. Depending on the industry and whether a business is primarily B2B, Business to business or B2C, Business to consumer, will have a determining affect on how the majority of your advertising dollars are spent.

Every business has some sort of advertising budget. Maybe it is only for an ad in the local Yellow pages. Other businesses may have direct mailings in the form of post cards, run weekly newspaper advertisements, place ads in printed trade journals and other technical or business published newsletters, or advertise on radio and television. And still others will spend a large chuck of their advertising budget on Online advertising. However, many of these companies would do well to assign some of their advertising budget and place it into the Internet marketing budget.

Internet marketing is about getting maximum online exposure for a website. This occurs on a number of fronts. One of the fronts is through SEO, Search Engine Optimization. SEO is actually a misnomer. It is more accurately stated to be WO, Website Optimization. This is the process of fine tuning the website and web pages for particular keywords and keyword phrases. Optimization is actually an ongoing process. Websites are not static creatures. In fact if your website is static, with never any updates to it, this could have some negative connotations in the search engine algorithms. Other websites that continue to upgrade and improve their keywords may have a greater exposure online with all things being equal. Of course, with over a hundred variables for the ranking of websites in the search engine algorithms the keywords are only one facet of Search Engine Optimization.

The online advertising model typically has meant some sort of PPC, Pay Per Click or PPM, Pay Per Thousand Impressions. An example of these is with Google AdWords. With Google AdWords an advertiser can have ads running and being displayed in the search results or content websites in as little as fifteen minutes. While this form of advertising can reap a wealth of new customers it does nothing for you in the way of natural or organic advertising in the search engine results.

When someone searches for a product or service on a search engine the displayed results are known as (natural or organic.) On the right side of the organic results are the advertisers keyword bid text ads. Sometimes there are several sponsored paid results at the top of the SERP - Search Engine Results Pages, clearly defined as "Sponsors."

To think of Online advertising only in one dimension, as either, yes we use Online advertising or no we don't, is not taking into account the bigger sales, marketing, and advertising picture.

Search Engine ExposureLet me give you an example. If you are reading this blog posting, and this very page; do you think it is a form of marketing or advertising? The ad could be an actual advertisement used for Google AdWords. "Are Global Eyes Of The World Seeing Your Business On The Web? Get Your Website Found Online - More Exposure In The Search Engines - www.pwebs.net" At what point does this page stop becoming a topic about Internet marketing and switch to Online advertising? Get the point?

Developing a website does take time. Someone needs to write the content. The content needs to be edited. Good illustrations and graphic images are required along with the content to really make the majority of websites viable. There certainly are exceptions to the rule with some websites having very little if any graphic images and others having a ton of graphic images with very little or no content. However, most of the time the Web brand is well known for each of these particular exceptions.

Likewise, developing a good Online advertising campaign does take time to write the ads or design graphic ads, create and edit the landing pages (place a person goes when they click the ad), (monitor, evaluate, and adjust the keywords), and fine tune the ads and their messages. The landing page design is one of the keys to having good conversion rates. When developing landing pages these can also be used as future pages of the website itself. Sales and marketing personnel could also use these created landing pages when they write to a customer in an email and wish to include more information links. Additionally, these same pages can be picked up by the search engine robots when they spider your website. Hence, there will be more content for your business on the Internet.

So, as the Internet continues to mature, and as the number of web pages published from all corners of the world increases with exponential proportions; it takes a concentrated effort to gain maximum Search Engine Exposure using both Internet marketing and Online advertising.

Professional Web Services provides Internet marketing services, Online advertising strategies, Ethical SEO - Search Engine Optimization, and Web branding solutions.

Contact Professional Web Services for a Free Internet Marketing Evaluation and have your company brand become a Bright Internet Star.

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posted by Warholic at 4:07 PM

Internet The Final Frontier
The Internet really is the final frontier.

Internet Final Frontier AdThe future of advertising has changed drastically with the addition of the Internet as a media outlet. This has had a profound affect on all other forms of advertising; from radio, television, newspapers, technical trade journals, direct marketing advertising, and even catalogs and sponsors.

Companies can have the power to make a difference in the world around them. Combining a dedication to hard work, excellence, and a never give up attitude for any company today; while taking advantage of the powerful Web 2.0 online tools can help propel a business in the 21st century.

The original concept for this blog was actually intended to be a B2B and B2C business journal of online ads related to Professional Web Services. However, that original concept has changed somewhat, and expanded to include other things of importance related to Internet marketing and online advertising. The differences between Internet Marketing, Online Advertising, and Web Branding are becoming blurred, and if you haven't noticed, a mixture of all three entities are intertwined with one another. Marketing a company on the Internet requires developing a good advertising eye online. Both marketing and advertising will ultimately affect the brand of a company on the Web. This will in turn affect the sales that a company generates and the bottom line.

For those companies that feel like there is no need to have an Internet presence, or feel that the Web is nothing more than a place to have social interaction, or blogs are nothing more than personal online journals, will be in for a rude awakening.

The time to start on your B2B or B2C Internet marketing, online advertising, and web branding is now. Don't wait till it's too late. Contact Professional Web Services for the business solution now!

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posted by Warholic at 5:48 AM

Saturday, December 1, 2007
Creative Online Advertising For Internet Marketing

Online advertising is the new media link for many companies to really embrace. Many companies are spending money in the various media outlets from: magazine, television, newspaper, newsletters, and broadcast radio and television while completely overlooking the Internet as another media outlet.

Consumer and business advertising on the Internet can be a useful medium for branding in the hearts and minds of customers. While many of the large sites employ graphic software design artists to dream up new Flash presentations, these creations do not always lend itself to marketing a company in a way that stirs up the emotions of a person visiting a B2C and B2B web site.

Quite often an overlooked area for advertisements is the ad copywriting. Sure, a picture tells a thousand words but a single phrase can stir up those deeper meanings and emotions that can have a profound effect on the person reading it. In fact, words and phrases can be as beautiful an eBusiness art form as any ad creation a graphic designer comes up with.

There are many factors involved with the e-business online world. It is important to understand how they all tie together and interact with one another. While, web marketing is broadly encompassing with the distribution of goods or services; online advertising is the window to the Internet marketing soul.

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posted by Warholic at 4:26 PM

About Me
Name: Warholic
Home: San Ramon, California, United States
About Me: Jim said: Never settle for mediocrity. Life is about change, new growth, and making a difference in the lives around us. No matter what direction life takes us in our new thinking, always striving to do it to the best of our abilities is key to success. Actions speak louder than words. B2B, B2C, and C2C Internet marketing services, ethical SEO, search engine optimization, online advertising strategies, professional web site customizations, website branding solutions with Professional Web Services, marketing business solutions.
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