Friday, March 27, 2009
Top 10 Proven Classified Ad Selling Tips To Guarantee A Successful Sale of your product
1.PREPARE: Determine the items around your home that you no longer need. Once you have collected these items, confirm that they are in working order and in good selling condition. If items have been in storage for a long period of time, you may need to clean them up to make them more attractive to potential buyers.
2.RESEARCH: After all items are collected, do your research. Determine the value of your items and decide whether it would be worth you time and effort to place a classified ad. Some things will do well on their own while others may do better in a garage sale setting. If certain items do not have enough value to justify placing an advertisement and you are not interested in hosting a garage sale, donate these items to a local charity for a nice tax deduction.
3.WHERE TO ADVERTISE: Once you have the items sorted out, you need to decide the best method of advertising. Most items will do best advertised in your daily newspaper since you will be able to reach a local audience. Online classifieds generally do not receive as many local buyers, but most are free so you may want to place an ad there as well just to cover all the bases. If you are selling a larger item such as a car, motorcycle, motor home, etc., you will also want to place prominent for sale signs on the items themselves. You can also utilize bulletin boards in your local community to post a free advertisement.
4.DRAFTING YOUR AD: What are the most attractive selling features of your items for sale? Decide which of these features you want to highlight in your advertisement. Look for classified ads for similar items to get an idea of how they are written. Check out the competition to see how your item is better or different than the items that will be running along side your ad.
5.WRITING YOUR AD: Create a catchy title to get your reader’s attention. This will spark an interest in your classified ad. Always include the brand name when applicable. Price should only be included in the title if it is an obvious selling point. Next, you need to write the body text of your ad and entice buyers even further with the details. Make your description clear and factual. Provide specific details in what it is that makes your item stand out from the others. Be honest in your representation and do not make your item appear better than it actually is. Always include the price in your ad. Take some time to view other classified ads for similar items in your newspaper. This will help you determine a fair asking price for your item. Keep in mind, just because you paid $1,500 for your dining room set, does not mean you will receive that much for it on resale. Be realistic in your expectations. Furthermore, if you will only be available during certain times of the day to discuss your item, make a note of this in your advertisement so buyers know the best time to reach you. If possible, include your email address.
6.INCLUDING PHOTOS: A picture is worth a thousand words. Some local newspapers provide you with the option to include photos with your classified ad. Be sure to include the photos! When buyers have the opportunity to see an article for sale they have a higher degree of interest and are more likely to buy when they follow up by telephone or email to ask questions or to get more information. If your newspaper does not offer photos or the photo option is too expensive, you can use an online classified photo hosting service. Visit http://www.seethisitem.com for information on how to include free digital photos with your newspaper classified ad.
7.COMMUNICATING WITH BUYERS: Do your best to be available when customers call for information regarding your item. Be polite and helpful and answer all questions to the best of your knowledge.
8.SCHEDULING APPOINTMENTS: If you receive numerous calls for your item, be sure to space out the appointments so that you will have enough time to spend with each buyer and your appointments will not overlap. Safety tip: Whenever possible, have someone home with you when a buyer is coming over to look at your item. You really can never be too careful when dealing with people you have never met before.
9.NEGOTIATION: Decide before you negotiate, the lowest amount you will be willing to accept for your item. This will assure a smoother negotiation process.
10.PAYMENT: Never accept a check for your item. You should only accept cash or money orders. If a buyer decides they want the item, but they do not have cash on them, always take a deposit to hold the item until they are able to come back. Be sure to set a deadline for them to return with the balance due. Even though you have a deposit, do not stop showing your item since the deal is not final until you have the cash in your hand. If someone else is also interested, tell them you just received an offer, but you will be happy to take down their name and number in case the deal falls through. This will give you more options should the original buyer back out of the sale.
That’s it! Keep these selling tips in mind and you will be on the road to a successful sale. Take your time, be thorough and most of all have fun! If you follow the steps outlined above, you will be turning your unused items into cash in no time.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
How to Stimulate Word of Mouth Advertising For Product Advertising
If the promotional items you give out end up in the attic or shoved in the back of a desk drawer, they are probably not doing what they are supposed to be doing. However, if items you passed out to the customers are being seen again and again, chances are, word-of-mouth advertising is stimulating your business.
With media (radio, televisions and newspaper), messages can come and go. But, the exposure promotional items can give equals longevity. While there is no real scientific way to measure how many impressions an item can receive in its lifetime, we know that it works and ultimately gets well over its money's worth. I used to work at a radio station that passed out license plates. We had a very fun logo- and still after ten years of being on the air, they are a sought out item. We began to limit the number that were handed out at live action broadcasts, and that drew people to event after event. Everywhere you drive in our area, you are sure to see a dozen or so cars with Froggy 101 license plates on the commute. This may draw people to flip on the station to see what's playing. With the amount of impressions they get, these 'mini-billboards' sure generate more word of mouth advertising than a real billboard would, for a fraction of the cost. When concerts came to town, we'd have the country singers autograph them, and then either give them away or auction them off for charity. Those, which were often bought by business owners, are on prominent display in bars and pubs around the area. This is just one small example of how word-of-mouth advertising can explode through a small item.
Bumper stickers and static stickers are something that constantly generate word-of-mouth as well. What college doesn't sell them? Parents and alumni can also have them too! Coffee and travel mugs, and even koozies (can coolers) can all create buzz about their namesake in offices, at people's homes or at the beach. While many people use their 'free t-shirts' to sleep in, many others will wear them to the gym or out jogging. This could create locker room talk about when and how they got the shirt. At a bar, you may help someone open a beer with a keychain from an insurance company- and guess what- they need insurance.
Word-of-mouth can also even help for short-term goals, such as at a seminar. You may be passing out a really cool item, which makes you the talk of the floor. Or, maybe everyone at the county fair wants to stop by the Heavenly Touch Massage Therapy stand for a stress ball.
Plain and simple, if you use the right kind of promotional items, people will use them- and others will see them being used. "Where's you get that?" could become a common question to the user, making them a walking, talking billboard for your own company. If a t-shirt cost you $3.89, but the person wears it to the gym once a week- think how far that little sum of money actually went!
Monday, March 23, 2009
Product Advertising
When we talk about product advertising, In most cases the goal of product advertising is to clearly promote a specific product to a targeted audience. If you are marketing private label rights digital products there are many ways that you can do this. You will first need to figure out what your advertising budget is. It doesn’t matter how much money you have to work with but it is important to know this up front before you start any marketing. So what are the ways that you can start marketing private label rights digital products?
There are free and paid marketing methods for your product advertisement campaign that you can choose from to use. It doesn’t matter which ones you use. You just want to remember that you need to use more than one marketing method. That way if one of them doesn’t work for you then you will have other methods that will.
Here are some free product marketing methods that you can use:
One: you need to write your own articles or hire someone to write them for you. Once you have your article then you will want to post it to your website, blog and distribute it to the different article directories. Search engines love articles that are full of helpful and unique content.
Two: you can use traffic exchanges to get the word out about your private label rights product.
Three: for your product advertisement campaign you can get involved in forums that have something to do with the topic of your product. You will want to be able to use a signature file that will be posted each time you answer someone’s question or ask one of your own. You don’t want to just advertise your product out right. You want to be a helpful participant in the forum and let your signature file do the advertising for you.
Four: you want to do a joint venture with other business owners asking them if they will send your product advertisement out to their list of subscribers for a part of the commissions. You will more than likely need to let the owner of the list have a free copy of your product before they will agree to do this. They will need to make sure that it is something that will be beneficial to their customers before they send it out.
Five: you can write a press release or hire someone to write it for you. Then you can distribute it to all of the different news places that accept them.
Here are some paid marketing methods that you can use:
One: you can use pay per click search engines such as Google Adwords. However, before you do this you will want to make sure that you learn everything you can about them and how they work. Otherwise you will end up spending a lot of money and not making any money. This is very important to do before you use this form of marketing.
Two: you can buy a solo ad with a list owner. That way your ad will go out all by itself without others there to distract the subscribers. The results that you see from this will depend on how big the list is.
No matter what method you use for marketing private label rights digital products you want to make sure that you know how each method works. This will mean that you have to educate yourself on the different methods that are available. This can take some time but it is well worth the effort. You need to remember that the free marketing methods will take more time before you see results. The paid methods will work faster to make you some money. However, they can get expensive if you don’t know how to do them right. Figure out which methods that you want to use and learn all you can about them before you start to market your product.