Effective Advertising is about low cost lead generation.
Wrong. Bad leads are very expensive. Any lead that is not a good match for your business and results in a lost sale or even worse an unprofitable sale is expensive. Most advertising focuses on lead generation. A better measure of advertising performance is your advertising Return on Investment (ROI) which takes into account prospect conversion rates and margins.
Your ad has to be viewed 6 times before a customer will notice and buy from you.
This is one of the most tired and overused ad sales lines you are going to hear. I still hear ad sales executives say that your ad has to be seen or heard at least 6 times before it has an effect? OK, so if the roof of my house is in perfect condition, how many roofing ads will I need to see before I buy another roof?
The reality is that most people simply don’t need your service at the time your ad reaches them. The only way traditional push advertising can overcome this problem is to increase the reach and/or frequency of your ads.
Clever ads increase response rates.
Your clever ad gets noticed, but how does that translate to sales? Unless the person who notices your ad needs your service, who cares? You only have to look at some of the most popular ads, the ones that earn all of the industry awards for creativity. Then ask, did it sell more product? You will be surprised by the answer.
A website is a low-cost way to attract new customers.
For most businesses, this is simply not the case. Unless you promote your website regularly, potential customers will never find it. Authentic ratings and reviews will drive traffic to your site.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) will bring qualified customers to my website.
Many small businesses believe that creating a compelling web site will generate a constant stream of low cost leads. As most businesses know, publishing a website in itself generates few or no results. Your website is like any other marketing message, unless you promote it effectively, it will not reach potential customers at the time of their need.
As such , some clever people found ways of enhancing web sites to increase their visibility to big search engines like Google and Yahoo. Today, there are many businesses that practice the art of SEM and SEO. However, the search engine gurus of Google and Yahoo want to protect users from artificially manipulated results so they constantly change their algorithms to protect the relevance of search results.
So, search engine marketing techniques are constantly changing to keep up with changes made by search engines. What this means is that small business owners who choose to engage in SEM and SEO will constantly need to pay for it.
It is my personal belief that SEM/SEO is a strategy whose results will diminish over time as more companies engage in SEM/SEO. After all, how many people can stand at the front of any line? Think about it!
Keyword advertising is a cost effective marketing strategy.
Keyword advertising is clearly an effective strategy for reaching today's Internet savvy consumers. Without a doubt, a large and growing number of people simply find that it is faster and easier to type several keywords into their favorite search engine to find local service providers. Over 190 million consumers use a search engine to find local businesses.
Keyword advertising like all forms of advertising favors larger companies with deeper pockets. According to Booth of the Kelsey Group, “Local search advertising is dominated by chain operations that have the ad budgets and sophistication to optimize and target a huge number of keywords.” Small and medium businesses rarely have the time, knowledge or money to compete. Keyword ads get placed based on who pays the most for a given word or phrase and who has the highest click through. Often intermediate companies and online yellow pages buy the most common keywords because they can spread the cost across many customers. This practice often prices competitive keywords out of reach for smaller businesses.
The Internet levels the playing field for small businesses.
The number of small traditional businesses that are generating significant leads from their web site is still very small.
Building a Brand is an effective strategy for small businesses.
Some advertising / marketing types justify the poor short term performance of an advertising program by asking the small business owner to take a long term view and think about investing in the BRAND. I disagree.
Investing in building a brand is an effective strategy for selling clothing, automobiles and beverages. These are products that consumers find pleasure in thinking about buying. These products are also made by very large companies who can spend millions of dollars in adverting to help support and define their brand image. These types of ads can connect with consumers in the present and influence future purchases.
However, most consumers don't get much pleasure out of thinking about solving problems. Listening to ads talk about back pain, leaky plumbing and tooth pain typically falls on deaf ears until a person is faced with that problem. Until a person has a painful problem they typically tune out all advertising that speaks to pain/cost. When these problems do arise they often demand to be resolved immediately. This is why the printed yellow pages grew into a $14 billion dollar business. The yellow pages enabled consumers to find local businesses that solved specific problems when they needed them.
A more effective strategy for small businesses is to create a robust natural online reputation that will connect with 90 percent of the consumers using the Internet to find a local business like yours.
I can grow my business entirely on Word-of-mouth.
Word-of-mouth marketing is very powerful because of the credibility and trustworthiness of the person that is making the referral. The fact that it is free also makes it an attractive option. Although referrals produce your best customers, for most local businesses it just doesn't generate enough leads.
Trust FX is built from the power of word of mouth advertising but it is more scalable and produces a better measure of the total performance of a business.
All Word-of-Mouth Marketing is good.
Not true. Over the last several years a new class of Internet business has entered the market. Sites like Angieslist.com, Judysbook.com and Insiderpages.com in addition to blogs, aim to collect and publish consumer reviews on local businesses. They provide a great venue for individuals to post their views. Unfortunately, they work on an honor system and everyone’s actions are not honorable. This makes them very easy to abuse. Disgruntled employees and competitors can easily post negative information about your business that may not be true. This can have an adverse effect on potential customers who can easily find these reviews by using Google or Yahoo. Just a few negative postings will cause most consumers to look elsewhere. It is widely reported that greater than 50% of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses and to conduct some basic research.
The potential for abuse is so great that you can now find businesses that provide reputation monitoring for your company.
Summary
TrustFX provides a simple solution that enables any business to create a robust and credible online reputation quickly. Our patent pending service produces the most authentic and credible online reputations on the Internet. Because consumers can trust our process, they can trust the ratings in our member’s profiles. TrustFX is the only service that:
- Creates very robust ratings in a short time
- Enables every customer to rate your business
- Only allows your customers to rate your business
- Prevents rating manipulation
- Generates scores with high credibility
- Provides a tool that can generate qualified leads and increase your prospect conversion rates
Put TrustFX to the test for you business. It is FREE to use and produce measurable results.
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