At the annual American Association of Advertising Agencies media conference last week, speakers stated that the industry must cater to consumers empowered by technology and multiple content choices. A joint study with Harris Interactive and the American Association of Advertising Agencies reported that roughly one-third of consumers say there is too much advertising interrupting programming.

So…in a nutshell, as business owners, what this means is that we need to find ways to interact with our consumers in ways that are convenient for them while not interrupting them from what they are trying to do. While it may sound like a contradiction, it is certainly achievable. For example, most web site owners and anyone engaging in internet marketing has already realized that despite grabbing visitors attention in a big way, pop-up or pop-under ads generally perform very poorly if at all. In fact, they can often have a negative impact on a visitor’s experience and remove all possibility of them becoming a client or customer of the company in question. On the other hand, many companies have had great success with simple text links within relevant copy on a web site. There are several reasons for the success of this type of advertising, such as:

• Relation to the content ? The visitor is reading a particular page of a web site because it is of some interest. Conversely, links to relevant content elsewhere are more likely to be of interest to that visitor than those that are not.
• Ease of use ? All a visitor has to do is click the link.
• Unobtrusiveness ? A simple text link is not a pop-up, banner or big honking flash ad that plays circus music, therefore will not annoy visitors.

To use this idea in your marketing, all that you have to do is present your message in the manner that your prospects want to receive it, make it simple to use and most of all don’t annoy them. Perhaps you don’t know how or when your prospects want to receive our message, what they consider simple, or what annoys them. There is a solution for that as well. Ask them.

We’ve probably all seen this happen hundreds of times even if we don’t remember it. A company comes out with a really great television commercial and before you know it, everyone is using the same style in their commercials. The same goes for brochures, web sites or any other part of a company’s public face.

On the surface it makes perfect sense. The commercial looked cool and delivered great results. Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately) it only works for the first and sometimes the second or third company. After this point no one remembers which company is which and the first few trendsetting companies have moved on to something new.

Perhaps a larger company can get away with this type of approach to their marketing, but most smaller companies would be buried trying to keep up. To successfully market your company with a smaller budget, you’ll need to be the trendsetter and keep your competitors on their toes.

In response to client requests, we have implemented an email newsletter that will offer marketing tips as well as showcase some the recent work we’ve done for our clients. Whether you have a small home business, a large company or something in between, you’ll get the resources you need to stand out from your competitors and increase your sales and profits!

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