Color What It Does To You What It Can Do For You

Writen by Mike Anthony Jones

What an amazing process! Light, reflected off different surfaces, passes through the eye's cornea and pupil, then forms an image on the retina at the back of the eye which the brain then translates and registers as a colored object. This in turn stimulates the optical nerve system.

Colors have varying wavelengths. Reds, oranges, yellows have long wavelengths. Green is neutral. Blues through to violets have short wavelengths. The long wavelengths stimulate and energize us, the short wavelengths calm and slow down.

Walk into a predominantly red room and you will experience an increase in pulse and heart rate. Walk into a blue room and you begin to feel calm and at peace as your heart and pulse rate slow down.

Conclusion: Color does things to you - either negatively or positively depending on the circumstances you are in.

In view of this, how important that we at least gain a rudimentary understanding of what colors do to us so we can employ them to work for us. When it comes to image building and business, color can make a huge difference.

If you run a web site dealing with serious business matters, you don't want a color scheme which evokes images of leisure and youth. On the other hand, if you are marketing entertainment or leisure products, you don't want a site which produces a heavy corporate image. The color scheme should COMPLEMENT not CONTRADICT your image.

So what is the first step in making color work for you?

First, decide on the image you want to project for yourself or your business. Do you want it to be: Conservative? Trendy? Futuristic? Modern? Stable? Natural? Healthy? Inviting? Surprising? Startling?

Once your image is decided seek out the colors that will enhance or project that 'feel'. Here is a brief overview of the main color characteristics. You will notice they can include a wide range of emotions depending on the strength of the color and the particular hue it comes in.

RED

Strong Emotions / Warmth / Love / Anger / Danger / Boldness / Excitement

ORANGE

Spicy / Cheerful / Sunny / Low Cost / Affordability / Cheap

YELLOW

Attention grabbing / Comfortable / Upbeat / Lively / New / Unusual / Cowardly

GREEN

Durability / Reliability / Environmental / Luxurious / Renewal / Optimism / Well-being

BLUE

Calming / Constancy / Loyalty / Reliability / Honor / Melancholy / Boring

PURPLE

Power / Royalty / Elegance / Artificial / Overwhelming

GRAY

Conservative / Traditional / Intelligent / Expensive / Serious / Dull / Uninteresting

BROWN

Relaxing / Confident / Casual / Natural / Reassuring / Earthy

BLACK

Sophistication / Elegance / Sex / Formality / Strength / Illegality / Depression / Morbid

WHITE

Cleanliness / Purity / Innocence / Quality / Simplicity / Classic / Sterility / Disposable

Big business has been harnessing the power of color for decades. Things have come a long way since Henry Ford's remark that customers could have his Model T automobile in any color they wished "as long as it was black"!

Colors are now strongly identified with products and companies with a resultant band of loyal customers and supporters. Why not take a few moments to examine your web site or business logo or color theme and see if you are using this powerful business tool to the full.

Mike Anthony Jones is a writer and webmaster with over 10 years experience. Get inspiration from these ready made color combinations on Mike's web site: www.bodyfaq.com/color-charts.html

3 Simple But Powerful Offline Advertising Strategies

Writen by Al Martinovic

There are several ways to advertise and get the word out about your business online and the best of them include f-ree search engines, pay per click search engines, writing articles, utilizing press releases, doing joint ventures/ad co-ops, and posting to message boards and forums related to your target market.

But one advertising method that's neglected by most online marketers is off-line advertising.

There are several low/no cost ways to advertise off-line and I want to share 3 of them with you.

1) Business Cards

If you are serious about your business you must have business cards. They are cheap and are a great way to attract potential prospects or customers. Simply hand them out to people who you feel may be interested in your business.

Also, whenever I visit a restaraunt, bar, or club, I'll leave my business cards in all of the bathroom stalls. (Just make sure nobody is in there of course... lol!)

And don't laugh at this! It really works. When I visit the bathroom an hour or two later, I'll find that all of my business cards are gone and I'll have a fresh new set of sales the very next day.

You can get f-ree professional looking business cards at VistaPrint.com, all you have to pay is shipping and handling:

http://www.vistaprint.com

2) Flyers

With today's technology, flyers are very easy to make. You can simply design a flyer online and just print it out and make copies. Then you can post them in area businesses where you feel your potential customers may hang out. (Just make sure you ask permission from the business owner.)

Or simply hand out your flyers to people you meet on the street. Many bars and clubs don't have a problem with posting flyers in their establishments either, especially if you are a patron.

And don't forget about supermarkets! Many have bulletin boards, at least here in New Jersey where I live, and you can post your flyer there. There are hundreds of people walking into supermarkets everyday and they are in a buying mentality. Take advantage of it and post your flyers often.

Here's a site that lets you create and print flyers or brochures online for f-ree:

http://www.mybrochuremaker.com/

3) Automobile Advertising

What... ? Yes you read that right! Your car is not only a driving vehicle but a great advertising vehicle as well. You can stick magnetic signs or plates on your car with your company name and/or domain name for all to see.

Your business can be exposed to hundreds, if not thousands of people everyday whether your car is parked, you are driving, or even when you are stuck in traffic. It's fairly inexpensive and a great way to "drive" home your message.

Here are a couple of sites to check out for this very sort of thing:

http://www.iditplates.net

http://www.magneticsigns.com

Those are just a few of the ways to advertise off-line. I'm sure you can come up with other clever ways as well.

You've got a brain... use it!

Al Martinovic runs a successful "niche" business at http://www.ineedsmokes.com and publishes a popular internet marketing newsletter at http://www.milleniummarketers.com

How To Protect Children From Advertising

Writen by Tyler Benson

According to the product life-cycle theory, almost any product passes five stages during its existence regardless the desire of manufactures and customers. These stages are birth, growth, maturity, decay and atrophy. To prevent the last two stages marketologists suggest improving the product in the early stages of its development.

The results of the expert statistics show that 90% of the world innovations are nothing more product developments. And only the remaining 10% mean launch of new products and technologies. The Japanese are considered to have achieved the remarkable results in constant product development. An outstanding expert Masaaki Imai has generated the concept of constant product development "Kaizen". Though there is a great number of products that have not gone through significant changes over many years and nevertheless they hold stable inviolable positions in the world market. First of all it holds true for food: cereals, vodka, wines, most of the confectionery, cigars, etc. However the milk we drink today is not the same as it was say, 50 years ago. In the second half of the twentieth century we saw the milk in Tetra Pak packages with improved consumer qualities allowing us to keep it for months.

Nowadays when the products of different competition trademarks are becoming more and more similar it is extremely difficult to attain real improvement of their functional features. That is why the changes are more likely to be in design than in functioning. Besides the experts from Brand Lab stress that at present consumers regard product design as important as its functions. Here we have a great deal of examples: any successful design change is considered to be an improvement or development, rebranding and so on. Probably the most illustrative example of design change is computer mouth. Unlike the computer itself, which is constantly being improved and mostly in its functions the mouth has not practically modified since its birth in 1980s. But its design has been transforming cardinally all the time. It greatly rouses the customers' interest in the product. Marketing managers are inclined to think that only marketing research can show the objective answer what particularly should be improved in the product.

A classic example of a successful survey - Kit Kat chocolate from Nestle. In 1990s this chocolate was positioned as the product for pleasure. It enjoyed good sales rates throughout the world. In 2000s in the west the consumers began to perceive the small bars of chocolate not as the product for pleasure, but as a means to appease hunger. Taking this fact into account Nestle launched Kit Kat in the form of a bar (and аt the same time began to produce Kit Kat of a standard size). It started a n advertising campaign with a slogan "Have a break. Have a Kit Kat". The sales rates of the chocolate again were moving upwards. So as we see from the above examples we must be aware of the fact that any product will become obsolete sooner or later.

Do not wait until it actually happens, and the sales rates dramatically are going down. Start your work on the product improvement when you are developing the product. Otherwise all the attempts to improve it later will turn into a waste of time, effort and money losses. Secondly, though it may in some way contradict the first postulate miracles do happen. That is why when the market is getting narrowed it does not mean that everything is lost and you have to let the product just die. Not so often but nevertheless there are cases when there are ways to improve this product, the market revives and even increases several times as much.

Tyler Benson is a senior writer of BestEssays.com - Custom Term Paper writing service. For more than five years, Tyler Benson has written the number of projects on History, History of Migration, Ancient and Asian History. He has 17 years of experience as the professor of several universities. Currently he is working on creating his writing guide for university students. It will cover all the details of the essay (e.g. choosing the correct process essay topic) and explaining the peculiarities of writing every type of essay (e.g. writing persuasive essay).

The Eight Ways Direct Response Radio Enhances Drtv Advertising Campaigns

Writen by Brett Astor

Considering or currently running a DRTV advertising campaign? Here's why you should read this paper.

Direct response television (DRTV) advertising can be very effective at driving profitable sales. However the high cost of creating and modifying the ads and the lead times associated with DRTV leave room for another more nimble medium to serve a significant purpose. Radio fills that void extremely well, and done right it can significantly enhance the profitability of any DRTV effort.

DRTV is the bread and butter of any huge success. Why? Because you can make the most money the fastest via TV. It's also the most expensive and risky channel – so one has to consider the risk/reward tradeoff. As you'll learn, radio plays the role of "risk minimizer" – that's why including radio in your marketing efforts is such a smart business move.

We routinely work with DRTV agencies to craft a strategy that allows radio to provide the most strategic value to a DRTV campaign. Below you'll find out why the most successful, most profitable DRTV campaigns also include radio advertising.

Before You Launch – How Radio Will Boost Profits

1. Radio will create a profit stream that can fund DRTV development efforts DRTV development and media testing is costly and requires a long timeline. In contrast, radio ad development and testing is inexpensive and quick. What costs $100,000 in TV costs $1000 in radio. What takes 3-6 months in TV takes 2-4 weeks in radio. With these advantages, you can build a radio campaign that delivers profits that can finance the TV development.

2. Radio will provide a source of testimonials Almost without exception, infomercials and DRTV spot ads are more effective if they contain real testimonials from real customers. Initiating a radio campaign prior to launching in DRTV provides a source of qualified, legitimate, authentic testimonials – and as every DRTV creative agency will tell you, those characteristics will make for very compelling stories that sell your product.

3. Learn about customers with real data, and gather insights inexpensively The radio ad development process will push your creative team to uncover the core customer insights that will drive the campaign, regardless of media channel. Therefore creative efforts in radio can be a valuable input into the TV ad development – not that they will transfer exactly, but the core elements of the psychology behind the appeal of the product will become clearer. This will greatly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the TV ad development.

4. Refine the "back-end" of your campaign There are many moving pieces to a successful direct response advertising campaign. The creative and the media are "front end". The "back end" is comprised of areas such as sales, customer service, fulfillment. It can also include manufacturing and merchant processing. Leveraging radio allows you to refine many of the back-end details that go into making a campaign successful without the pressure that comes with a large ad development budget and large media buys. Refine the sales scripting, the offer path, pricing, and upsells so your close rate and average revenue per order are strong. Establish and improve the "save the sale" efforts in your customer service area. And fix any product or packaging issues that would drive a high return rate and therefore impede a rapid TV roll-out.

Already Running a DRTV Campaign? Here's How Radio Will Boost Your Profits:

1. Acquire incremental new customers It is commonly known that Radio and TV audiences don't overlap very much. That means when you advertise with radio, you aren't cannibalizing your TV sales. You are reaching a whole new group of customers. Nearly all TV campaigns reach a point where their results begin to fall off. If you want to maximize the profit of your campaign, and build the strongest brand, you can't do it without radio.

2. Establish a strong competitive position in the market You've spent a lot of time and money building your DRTV campaign and you're finally reaping the profits from it. Your media spend has grown and you know you're one of the top advertisers. So does the competition. If you want to establish a strong position in the marketplace verses the competition, leaving radio out of the mix is a terrible mistake. Many new entrants will look for that weakness, establish a profitable radio campaign and fund their competitive entry into TV. The next thing you know, your entry into retail is threatened.

3. Minimize call abandonment through efficient call center scheduling This is particularly true for soft-offer campaigns which typically go to "smaller" call centers where staffing is a science based on the call forecast. Basic math says that radio will produce smaller call spikes. As a result, radio can "smooth out" the call volume and allow the call centers to effectively staff so they don't abandon the calls coming in off of TV.

4. Inexpensive means of ongoing creative testing Fresh creative appeals are the lifeblood of all successful advertising campaigns. Without them, you have a "flash in the pan" campaign. With them, you have a long-running success that becomes a brand. That's why ongoing testing is so important. Radio provides a low cost way to ensure ongoing testing of different appeals, offers, pricing, or packaging on a smaller scale before rolling out. And while radio campaigns can be set up as mass appeal like TV, but they also can be highly targeted. If you find that you have a certain common profile target customer that you are – or are not – capturing with TV, radio's ability to target can be of significant use. Developing that area will further enhance your profits.

Brett Astor, Vice President at Strategic Media, Inc., www.strategicmediainc.com, has over 10 years experience in direct response radio and radio advertising.

Why Arent You In The Yellow Pages

Writen by Jeffrey Hauser

The Yellow Pages has been around for over 100 years, making it one of the oldest and most used media in the world. Yet there are many businesses that choose not to advertise. So what's your excuse?

There's actually only three reasons:

1. You are too cheap.
2. You think your business won't benefit.
3. You actually never thought about it.

Let's examine each one. To begin with, have you ever had a Yellow Page representative give you all the rates, or did you just assume that they're too expensive? Maybe you figured that only a full page would do the trick and how could you ever afford that? But there are many sizes and colors and a variety of books that make sense. Of course, you have to have all the prices to make that decision, before you have your mind made up.

Next, you might think that nobody would ever look for a custom home builder, financial planner, or other expensive specialty in the lame old Yellow Pages. So why does Cadillac have a trademark or pool builders advertise? Do they know something you don't? Even Sears now has ads in many headings, so the retailers are getting wise as well.

The last excuse is probably the most common. Sure, you love those direct mailers you use where you have to offer a terrific discount to get any attention. And do you also love the typical one to two percent return on your investment, as well? I think it's time you reconsidered a Yellow Page ad. How about using a consultant to help you?

I was a YP rep and consultant for nearly 25 years and, prior to that, had my own advertising agency. I also have a degree in marketing. I've been designing Yellow Page ads for the past three decades. So I have expertise in YP creation and have advised almost 7000 companies on how to put together the most effective YP ads. If you have a display or in-column ad, regardless of size, color or position, I can tell you it most probably needs improvement in the headline, artwork, body text, placement, book, or heading. You must understand the ROI or return on investment and learn how to track the results as well.

So consider getting some expert advice before you place your next ad. There are many good and inexpensive places to turn, some available on the internet. Make sure the consultant is well qualified with at least 25 years experience. Otherwise, you'll be wasting your own time and money.

Jeffrey Hauser's latest book is, "Inside the Yellow Pages," which can be viewed at http://www.poweradbook.com He was a sales consultant for the Bell System Yellow Pages for nearly 25 years. He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Advertising and has a Master's Degree in teaching. He had his own advertising agency in Scottsdale, Arizona and ran a consulting and design firm, ABC Advertising. Currently, he is the Marketing Director for thenurseschoice.com, a Health Information and Doctor Referral site.