Print Advertising Pros and Cons

targeted-advertising-chennai-indiaIf you’re a small business owner, and especially if you’re just starting out, you’ve most likely given some consideration to the best ways to advertise your business. Odds are good that print advertising is at or near the top of your list of potential advertising mediums.

There are pros and cons to any kind of advertising, and it’s beneficial to understand what these are before dipping into your hard-earned marketing budget. Following are some of the pros and cons of print advertising in newspapers and magazines.

Newspaper Advertising
Newspaper advertising has long been an effective way for small businesses to advertise their goods or services to the community around them. Consider both smaller neighborhood papers as well as larger city (or even national) newspapers. If your business is located in a small town, advertising in the local community paper makes sense; that way you can attract the locals who would most likely frequent your store. If your business or service is specific to a particular section of the newspaper, run your ad in that area of the paper. For example, if you run a sporting goods store, make sure your ad appears in the paper’s sports section.

get a websitePrint Advertising Pros and Cons
Advertising rates depend largely on readership numbers. Thus, a paper with a large circulation will have higher rates than one with fewer subscribers. But even though prices are based on the number of potential readers who will view your ad, this does not mean that rates are necessarily set in stone. You can often strike a better deal if you agree to run your ad for a set number of weeks or months. Moreover, doing so will give you consistent exposure, which is often what is needed in order to influence consumer purchase behavior.

Advantages to newspaper advertising include the following

  • Inexpensive to produce: A little research and know-how are often all that’s needed to create a targeted, successful ad.
  • Easy to switch out. If you have a regular ad in your local paper and want to change it to reflect a seasonal sale, a new coupon, or a new product, you can usually do so rather easily.
  • Different rates and sizes. Look at the various sizes of ads in the newspapers you are considering running ads in. Newspapers normally have several standard sizes. Some standard sizes include quarter-page, half-page and full-page. Ads also run horizontally or vertically. The bigger the ad, the more it will cost. Determine which size might work for your message.

Disadvantages to newspaper advertising include the following:

  • Limited readership. This is especially true nowadays when more and more people are eschewing print publications for online electronic versions.
  • Poor printed image quality. This can be a problem if you sell high-end clothing or your services as a portrait artist. In such instances, try to drive readers to your Web site — where you should have hi-resolution images — or play up discounted pricing.
  • No control over ad placement. Oftentimes newspapers won’t guarantee premium placement on any given page. That can be a problem if your competitor advertises in the same space.

advertisingMagazine Advertising
If you have more to spend on print advertising, consider placing ads in magazines. Whereas the goal of newspaper advertising is to communicate a specific offer, the goal of magazine ads is usually more about enhancing and sustaining brand image.

Magazine ads require you to consider your brand image and how you want to portray that image to your target audience. Advertising agencies specialize in creating such ads, but they aren’t cheap and most don’t accept one-off jobs. If you decide to design and write your ad yourself, pore through the periodicals in which you intend to advertise and scrutinize your competitors’ ads.

Advantages to magazine advertising include the following:

  • Access to a specific customer base. While anyone might subscribe to a local newspaper, only car enthusiasts subscribe to Car and Driver. Magazine ads allow you to better reach your target audience.
  • More bang for your buck. Readers don’t discard magazines as quickly as they do newspapers, so your ad will be relevant for a longer period of time.
  • Help brand your business. Magazine printing methods allow for higher resolution images and better color options, which allow you to build your brand image in a positive way. Just the fact that you are advertising in a magazine gives your company a certain professional cachet.

Disadvantages to magazine advertising include the following:

  • Ads can be expensive. Magazine advertising is usually pricier than newspaper advertising.
  • Tricky to schedule. Many magazines come out just once a month, or even every three months, and to meet their deadlines it’s often necessary to have ads completed six months before they’ll actually appear.


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TV Advertising Pros and Cons

Television Advertising Pros and Cons

According to a recent study by Ball State University on the media consumption habits of average Americans, despite the Internet’s steady rise in popularity over the last few years, television remains the dominant medium in most U.S. households. On average, the general population spends over four and a half hours a day in front of the tube, making TV watching one of the most common modern leisure activities. Is it any wonder then that television advertising is also the most powerful form of advertising?

Advertising on television allows you to show and tell a wide audience your business, product, or service. It allows you to actually demonstrate the benefits of ownership. You can show how your product or service works and how it’s packaged so prospective customers will know what to look for at the point of sale. In advertising, it often takes multiple touch points to effectively influence consumers’ purchasing behavior.

Television advertising has been a popular medium for large retailers ever since the TV first began to appear in living rooms. With the arrival of cable television came lowered production costs and the opportunity to reach smaller, more targeted markets, making it a viable option for small to medium-size businesses as well.

To create an effective television ad, it’s first necessary to have a good script that highlights a strong offer. Ads must also be effectively produced, and it’s for this reason that it’s often better to enlist the services of an advertising agency, which can help you create an entire campaign.

Some of the advantages to advertising your small business on television include the following:

  • TV reaches a much larger audience than local newspapers and radio stations, and it does so during a short period of time.
  • It reaches viewers when they’re the most attentive.
  • It allows you to convey your message with sight, sound, and motion, which can give your business, product, or service instant credibility.
  • It gives you an opportunity to be creative and attach a personality to your business, which can be particularly effective for small businesses that rely on repeat customers.

Some Disadvantages to TV Advertising

For all its advantages, advertising your business on TV does have some disadvantages. Barring late night spots on your local cable television network, no other advertising medium is as likely to eat up your budget as quickly as TV will. Producing the ad, which can include hiring script writers, actors, film editors, or an advertising agency, is only the first step. You must also pay for air time, and because studies have shown that TV ads are most effective with repetition, you’ll almost certainly want to run your piece a number of times. Because of this, most television stations structure their pricing to make it more attractive for you to purchase advertising in chunks.

Another disadvantage is how difficult it can be to make changes. Whereas with newspaper advertising, updating sale pricing or a special offer is often as simple as swapping out a coupon, with television advertising it means updating your script and reshooting the entire ad, which costs additional money.

It can also be difficult to effectively target your core audience with television advertising, although there are a few best practices that can help. For starters, consider who your audience is before structuring your ad and purchasing airtime. Is a large portion of your clientele Spanish speaking? If so, you’d do well to purchase airtime on a Spanish-language station such as Telemundo. And if you’re in the baby stroller business, you’re probably better off purchasing time slots during the day when stay-at-home moms are most likely to see your ad.


Keep Swine Flu Away..

Keep Swine Flu Away with Basic Precautions

1. Wash your hands frequently

Use the antibacterial soaps to cleanse your hands. Wash them often, at least 15 seconds and rinse with running water.

2. Get enough sleep & Keep hydrated

Try to get 8 hours of good sleep every night to keep your immune system in top flu-fighting shape. Drink 8 to10 glasses of water each day to flush toxins from your system and maintain good moisture and mucous production in your sinuses.

3. Boost your immune system

Keeping your body strong, nourished, and ready to fight infection is important in flu prevention. So stick with whole grains, colorful vegetables, and vitamin-rich fruits.

4. Keep informed

The government is taking necessary steps to prevent the pandemic and periodically release guidelines to keep the pandemic away. Please make sure to keep up to date on the information and act in a calm manner.

5. Avoid alcohol

Apart from being a mood depressant, alcohol is an immune suppressant that can actually decrease your resistance to viral infections like swine flu. So stay away from alcoholic drinks so that your immune system may be strong.

6. Be physically active

Moderate exercise can support the immune system by increasing circulation and oxygenating the body. For example brisk walking for 30-40 minutes 3-4 times a week will significantly perk up your immunity.

7. Keep away from sick people

Flu virus spreads when particles dispersed into the air through a cough or sneeze reach someone else’s nose. So if you have to be around someone who is sick, try to stay a few feet away from them and especially, avoid physical contact.

8. Know when to get help

Consult your doctor if you have a cough and fever and follow their instructions, including taking medicine as prescribed.

9. Avoid crowded areas

Try to avoid unnecessary trips outside. Moreover, avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.

Courtesy: Google Search, Bing, Yahoo Search…

Content Over Location > Advertisers Should Focus on!

Content Over Location

There’s a debate going on in the online advertising world. It’s getting tougher and tougher to grab the attention of viewers with so-called banner ads. Yet, some sites are charging more than ever for space.

Online Broadcasts vs. Television
James Kewageshig tipped me off to a piece from PC World that states advertisers are paying more for a slot online than on primetime.

“If a company wants to run ads alongside an episode of The Simpsons on Hulu or TV.com, it will cost the advertiser about $60 per thousand viewers, according to Bloomberg. On prime-time TV that same ad will cost somewhere between $20 and $40 per thousand viewers.”

Could it be that they don’t have to worry about fast-forward? Hulu claims their space is “clutter-free” — unlike many sites. So they’re banking on the viewer’s full attention. Plus, the ads are usually a lot shorter than the 30-second-minium television ads. As I viewer myself, the ads can still be annoying. But at least they’re not as frequently annoying as being interrupted every seven minutes during a 30-minute primetime show.

Websites vs. Magazines
So how does this all compare to print? A short FastCompany article that surmises that the reason print is dying is because of online ads being crud. Advertisers are still prepared to pay higher for ad placement in a well curated magazine than your website.

How about simply adding interactivity to your banner? According to spongecell.com, the addition of interactive doodads to banner ads increases click through up to 70%!

Their parting shot:

If Web advertising’s formats were half as clever as all the internet content out there, wouldn’t everyone be better off, and making a lot more money?

It’s All About Relevancy
True. The key is knowing your target and providing them with interesting, informative information. It’s our job to provide the exceptional experience, not the space we buy.

Stephen Murray takes this a step further:
There was a quote this morning in the newspaper that struck me. The author was discussing the Obama administrations recent efforts to overhaul how professionals are paid (Teachers, Doctors, Executives). Essentially, the goal is something that’s closer to a Pay-For-Performance model:

“In executive suites, he says, we rewarded reckless risk-taking and got the worst recession in half a century. In doctors’ offices and hospitals, we pay for more care instead of better care and get a wastefully expensive health-care system. In K-12 classrooms, we pay teachers, good and bad, for showing up instead of successful teaching and perpetuate schools that fail.”

Attempts at progress increase the risk of failure….

“The risks of unintended consequences are large, and there’s a chance we’ll get more of what can be measured — not what we truly want or need.”

These same goals and risks apply to our business as well. We must not fall into the trap of focusing on what can be measured easily. In our role, as Intelligent Marketers, the most important skill we possess is the ability to listen closely and be sure we’re answering the right question. We could all design misleading ads that had tremendously high click rates. But that doesn’t mean we’re doing our job of delivering an exceptional user experience.

How to Cut Marketing Costs without Affecting Business Growth

Cut Marketing Costs

As business owners and/or marketers, we’re all under pressure to cut costs. Unfortunately, many business owners get so intent on reducing costs, they lose sight of what it’s going to do to the business. It’s hard to grow – or even survive – if you don’t have any customers.

Reducing marketing costs without screwing up your ability to grow is easier than you might think.

Here are five ways to do that.

1. Eliminate waste

Over the years I’ve looked at hundreds of marketing programs, and I can tell you honestly that nearly all of them have some kind of hole that either drains money directly or allows leads to be lost.

Before you cut anything, take a good hard look at what you’re doing. Are there programs that aren’t delivering the results you anticipated? Fix them or get rid of them.

Is there anything that can’t be traced to increasing sales opportunities? Unless you have a pile of extra money, now is not the time to be spending money on marketing efforts that don’t generate more leads or develop the ones you have.

2. Make fewer mistakes

Another way to say this is: turn to people who know what they’re doing.

Marketing – which has never been exactly simple – has changed a lot in the past few years. Customers and prospects are in charge now, and they’re looking for you online. If you’re not on the internet, you’re not in the game.

While I admire business owners who try to figure marketing out for themselves, it wastes a lot of time and it leads to mistakes that could be avoided with some experience.

You may not need a proven marketing pro on staff, but if you don’t have one somewhere on your team you’re probably wasting money.

3. Nurture what you’ve got

Successful lead generation programs bring in people in different stages of the buying process. Some are ready to commit more to you than others are. Some are ready to talk to a sales person and some aren’t.

Think of any lead generation activity you’ve ever done: search marketing, email, advertising, telemarketing, networking, trade shows – it doesn’t matter. Were all of the people who responded ready to schedule a two-hour demo of your product? Of course not.

But that doesn’t make those people any less likely to buy from you in the future as long as you maintain a relationship with them.

If you’re one of those businesses that has a bunch of inactive prospects sitting in a database (or on your desk), you may be better off nurturing those people than paying to find new ones. And nurturing leads can be a lot less expensive than generating them in the first place.

4. Increase conversions – not just inbound leads or traffic

This point is similar to the one above it, but it’s important enough to look at from a different angle.

Let’s say you have 2000 visitors a month going to your website and 60% of them leave your homepage without going anywhere else. Which do you think would be cheaper, changing your website so that an additional 20% (400 visitors) stay on your site or doubling traffic to the site? The results are the same.

(Hint: if you picked the first option, you’re right).

Complex purchases – such as technology, high ticket goods, and on-going services – are made up of many different conversion points where the buyer decides whether or not to spend any more time with you. Each of those conversion points can be tweaked to pass more prospects through and provide a better return on your investment.

5. Consider outsourcing

To have a successful marketing program today requires skills in multiple disciplines – some of which didn’t even exist a decade or so ago. For example, you need:

Website strategy and development, search engine optimization, paid search marketing, prospect conversion optimization, lead nurturing and web marketing – just to name a few.

Staffing an in-house team with all of this expertise would cost more than most small to mid-sized businesses are willing or able to invest. Yet you can easily – and cost effectively – get this expertise from an outside firm or group of individuals.

It’s worth looking into.

 

About the Author: Susan Pascal Tatum, She helps software, information technology and BtoB firms achieve greater online marketing results. She is a popular author and speaker, regularly publishes internet marketing strategies and actionable tips. 

 

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“The Village” Promo Poster.

English Drama. Directed by: Amit Singh

English Drama. Directed by: Amit Singh

What is BEA?

Oracle and BEA

Oracle has acquired BEA Systems, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise application infrastructure solutions. The addition of BEA is expected to accelerate innovation by bringing together two companies with a common vision of a modern service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure and to further increase the value that Oracle delivers to its customers and partners. Together, Oracle and BEA provide a complementary best-in-class middleware portfolio that spans Java Application Servers, transaction processing monitors, SOA and business process management, user interaction and Web 2.0, identity management, business intelligence, enterprise content management and vertical-specific technologies.

Support for BEA Products

Effective February 2, 2009, support for BEA products is available through the Oracle Global Customer Support (GCS) systems and infrastructure and no longer through the BEA support mechanisms.

Taken from:  http://www.oracle.com/bea/support.html 

Shiva Shankar
Oracle Certified Professional (OCP)
Oracle Certified OCP Database Administrator
Principal Consultant 

The Great New WhiteHouse.gov

whitehouse.jpg

With the US presidential term officially flipping over at noon, it’s not terribly surprising that whitehouse.gov has already been redecorated. It’s the same high quality we’ve seen from the Obama team throughout the campaign and a large step up, in my humble opinion, from the already impressive change.gov.

The site is built very well under the hood as well, it’s all 508 compliant as required by law and they took the route of polished markup to get there. jQuery 1.2.6 was used for all the wiring, and they offer numerous RSS feeds (I’m still not over the novelty of governmental RSS but here we are).

P.S. Developer extra credit: it even *validates*

Repeat & Referral Business: Your Recession Marketing Lifeline

If this recession is prompting you to look for a lifeline, don’t lean too heavily on marketing tactics that require you to turn complete strangers into customers.

article-marketing-lifelineConsumers don’t engage in as much impulse buying or social shopping during a recession, and they are more likely to hesitate before a purchase decision because they tend to more cautiously examine the risks and rewards. That’s not good news if you’re trying to acquire new customers because people view the purchase of products and services from unfamiliar businesses as a larger risk than purchasing products from businesses they trust.

When you’re sending periodic emails to your own in-house list of customers, make sure your messages help to overcome purchase hesitation by demonstrating that you have a relationship of trust, and explaining why the benefits of an immediate purchase outweigh the benefits of holding on to the money. It’s a good idea to ask for a referral somewhere in your offers while you’re at it. Professional-looking emails also set you apart from your competition and make you look healthy and prosperous to your customers. Don’t let up just because your customers seem distracted.

If you don’t have an in-house email list yet – or if you’re just a little short on familiar faces – focus a healthy portion of your marketing strategy on building your email list. That way, you’ll gain a low-cost way to educate your audience so your business is familiar enough to overcome purchase hesitation no matter what’s going on in the economy.

Choosing the Right Advertising Medium for Your Small Business

Choosing the Right Advertising Medium

For a small business, every dollar is precious. Small businesses do not advertise for the sake of advertising. Instead, they want to get the most return for their investment. Learn the advantages and disadvantages of each advertising medium that you can use to provide your business the winning edge.

If you are ready to get the word out about your business, one of the steps that you need to do is to select the right media where you will advertise and promote your business.

For a small business, every dollar is precious. Small businesses do not advertise for the sake of advertising. Instead, they want to get the most return for their investment. Your advertising campaign should translate to greater sales, more profits and healthier bottom line.

While there are a number of venues where you can promote your business, you need to ask three important questions:

  1. Where are my target buyers?
  2. What is the best medium to reach them?
  3. Can I afford to launch an effective campaign using this medium?

An important step to developing your sales and marketing plan is to select the right media to send out your message. There are no hard-and-fast rules as to which media is better. The right media for one business may be wrong for another.

Based on an excellent small business reference book “How to Start and Operate a Successful Small Business: Winning the Entrepreneurial Game” by David E. Rye, as well as contributions from our staffers, below are the relative advantages and disadvantages of the advertising media most frequently used by small businesses:

Newspapers

Newspapers are one of the traditional mediums used by businesses, both big and small alike, to advertise their businesses.

Advantages

  • Allows you to reach a huge number of people in a given geographic area
  • You have the flexibility in deciding the ad size and placement within the newspaper
  • Your ad can be as large as necessary to communicate as much of a story as you care to tell
  • Exposure to your ad is not limited; readers can go back to your message again and again if so desired.
  • Free help in creating and producing ad copy is usually available
  • Quick turn-around helps your ad reflect the changing market conditions. The ad you decide to run today can be in your customers’ hands in one to two days.

Disadvantages

  • Ad space can be expensive
  • Your ad has to compete against the clutter of other advertisers, including the giants ads run by supermarkets and department stores as well as the ads of your competitors
  • Poor photo reproduction limits creativity
  • Newspapers are a price-oriented medium; most ads are for sales
  • Expect your ad to have a short shelf life, as newspapers are usually read once and then discarded.
  • You may be paying to send your message to a lot of people who will probably never be in the market to buy from you.
  • Newspapers are a highly visible medium, so your competitors can quickly react to your prices
  • With the increasing popularity of the Internet, newspapers face declining readership and market penetration. A growing number of readers now skip the print version of the newspaper (and hence the print ads) and instead read the online version of the publication.

Magazines

Magazines are a more focused, albeit more expensive, alternative to newspaper advertising. This medium allows you to reach highly targeted audiences.

Advantages

  • Allows for better targeting of audience, as you can choose magazine publications that cater to your specific audience or whose editorial content specializes in topics of interest to your audience.
  • High reader involvement means that more attention will be paid to your advertisement
  • Better quality paper permits better color reproduction and full-color ads
  • The smaller page (generally 8 ½ by 11 inches) permits even small ads to stand out

Disadvantages

  • Long lead times mean that you have to make plans weeks or months in advance
  • The slower lead time heightens the risk of your ad getting overtaken by events
  • There is limited flexibility in terms of ad placement and format.
  • Space and ad layout costs are higher

Yellow Pages

There are several forms of Yellow Pages that you can use to promote and advertise your business. Aside from the traditional Yellow Pages supplied by phone companies, you can also check out specialized directories targeted to specific markets (e.g. Hispanic Yellow Pages, Blacks, etc.); interactive or consumer search databases; Audiotex or talking yellow pages; Internet directories containing national, local and regional listings; and other services classified as Yellow Pages.

Advantages

  • Wide availability, as mostly everyone uses the Yellow Pages
  • Non-intrusive
  • Action-oriented, as the audience is actually looking for the ads
  • Ads are reasonably inexpensive
  • Responses are easily tracked and measured
  • Frequency

Disadvantages

  • Pages can look cluttered, and your ad can easily get lost in the clutter
  • Your ad is placed together with all your competitors
  • Limited creativity in the ads, given the need to follow a pre-determined format
  • Ads slow to reflect market changes

Radio

Advantages

  • Radio is a universal medium enjoyed by people at one time or another during the day, at home, at work, and even in the car.
  • The vast array of radio program formats offers to efficiently target your advertising dollars to narrowly defined segments of consumers most likely to respond to your offer.
  • Gives your business personality through the creation of campaigns using sounds and voices
  • Free creative help is often available
  • Rates can generally be negotiated
  • During the past ten years, radio rates have seen less inflation than those for other media

Disadvantages

  • Because radio listeners are spread over many stations, you may have to advertise simultaneously on several stations to reach your target audience
  • Listeners cannot go back to your ads to go over important points
  • Ads are an interruption in the entertainment. Because of this, a radio ad may require multiple exposure to break through the listener’s “tune-out” factor and ensure message retention
  • Radio is a background medium. Most listeners are doing something else while listening, which means that your ad has to work hard to get their attention

Television

Advantages

  • Television permits you to reach large numbers of people on a national or regional level in a short period of time
  • Independent stations and cable offer new opportunities to pinpoint local audiences
  • Television being an image-building and visual medium, it offers the ability to convey your message with sight, sound and motion

Disadvantages

  • Message is temporary, and may require multiple exposure for the ad to rise above the clutter
  • Ads on network affiliates are concentrated in local news broadcasts and station breaks
  • Preferred ad times are often sold out far in advance
  • Limited length of exposure, as most ads are only thirty seconds long or less, which limits the amount of information you can communicate
  • Relatively expensive in terms of creative, production and airtime costs

Direct Mail

Direct mail, often called direct marketing or direct response marketing, is a marketing technique in which the seller sends marketing messages directly to the buyer. Direct mail include catalogs or other product literature with ordering opportunities; sales letters; and sales letters with brochures.

Advantages

  • Your advertising message is targeted to those most likely to buy your product or service.
  • Marketing message can be personalized, thus helping increase positive response.
  • Your message can be as long as is necessary to fully tell your story.
  • Effectiveness of response to the campaign can be easily measured.
  • You have total control over the presentation of your advertising message.
  • Your ad campaign is hidden from your competitors until it’s too late for them to react
  • Active involvement – the act of opening the mail and reading it — can be elicited from the target market.

Disadvantages

  • Some people do not like receiving offers in their mail, and throw them immediately without even opening the mail.
  • Resources need to be allocated in the maintenance of lists, as the success of this kind of promotional campaign depends on the quality of your mailing list.
  • Long lead times are required for creative printing and mailing
  • Producing direct mail materials entail the expense of using various professionals – copywriter, artists, photographers, printers, etc.
  • Can be expensive, depending on your target market, quality of your list and size of the campaign.

Telemarketing

Telephone sales, or telemarketing, is an effective system for introducing a company to a prospect and setting up appointments.

Advantages

  • Provides a venue where you can easily interact with the prospect, answering any questions or concerns they may have about your product or service.
  • It’s easy to prospect and find the right person to talk to.
  • It’s cost-effective compared to direct sales.
  • Results are highly measurable.
  • You can get a lot of information across if your script is properly structured.
  • If outsourcing, set-up cost is minimal
  • Increased efficiency since you can reach many more prospects by phone than you can with in-person sales calls.
  • Great tool to improve relationship and maintain contact with existing customers, as well as to introduce new products to them
  • Makes it easy to expand sales territory as the phone allows you to call local, national and even global prospects.

Disadvantages

  • An increasing number of people have become averse to telemarketing.
  • More people are using technology to screen out unwanted callers, particularly telemarketers
  • Government is implementing tougher measures to curb unscrupulous telemarketers
  • Lots of businesses use telemarketing.
  • If hiring an outside firm to do telemarketing, there is lesser control in the process given that the people doing the calls are not your employees
  • May need to hire a professional to prepare a well-crafted and effective script
  • It can be extremely expensive, particularly if the telemarketing is outsourced to an outside firm
  • It is most appropriate for high-ticket retail items or professional services.

Specialty Advertising

This kind of advertising entails the use of imprinted, useful, or decorative products called advertising specialties, such as key chains, computer mouse, mugs, etc. These articles are distributed for free; recipients need not purchase or make a contribution to receive these items.

Advantages

  • Flexibility of use
  • High selectivity factor as these items can be distributed only to the target market.
  • If done well, target audience may decide to keep the items, hence promoting long retention and constant exposure
  • Availability of wide range of inexpensive items that can be purchased at a low price.
  • They can create instant awareness.
  • They can generate goodwill in receiver
  • The items can be used to supplement other promotional efforts and media (e.g. distributed during trade shows).

Disadvantages

  • Targeting your market is difficult.
  • This can be an inappropriate medium for some businesses.
  • It is difficult to find items that are appropriate for certain businesses
  • Longer lead time in developing the message and promotional product
  • Possibility of saturation in some items and audiences
  • Wrong choice of product or poor creative may cheapen the image of advertiser

Source: “How to Start and Operate a Successful Small Business: Winning the Entrepreneurial Game” by David. Kind Courtesy: Mr David (C) 2008.