Here’s a riddle for you. What’s an advertising method that’s been around for a long time? It’s an old marketing method, but it’s not dead. In fact, it’s still going strong.

Yellow Pages

The yellow pages have been around since the 1800s and don’t count on them dying out. Everyone still gets the yellow pages every year and now they are online too.

When people need some local services, the first place they go is to the yellow pages. Now yellow pages aren’t cheap, know that. They just know how many people rely on the yellow pages to find local businesses. The majority of people.

Like all ads, you want to make yours eye catching. Make a catchy title and it should be in all bold letters to get people’s attention. Get the most bang for your buck.

Pictures of people also grab attention. Like for all the ads of doctors, lawyers, and plumbers, people first pay attention to the ads with a picture of a person. If you are placing the type of ad where you can put your picture or another picture of a person, then that will grab peoples attention ahead of all the other ads and they will be more likely to contact you first.

Sometimes you can add colors to your ad, but this is more expensive and probably won’t have much of an impact. Just stick to the regular black.

Remember the keys-

*Bold letters for the title. But don’t use all CAPS, because it’s harder to read and people don’t like READING ALL CAPS.

*Catchy title and phrase

*Stand out from boring ads

*Add a picture if you can

Like I said before, Yellow Pages aren’t cheap so if they didn’t work, people wouldn’t be buying them. People are buying them year after year after year because it works! It simply gets a lot of attention, otherwise people would just save their money. But many businesses can add a lot of business by all the exposure they get from yellow pages. Always ask about online yellow pages too, you want to make sure an online listing is included with an regular yellow pages ad.

There’s one more Old One to return in the marketing morse code, can you guess what it is?

Hey everyone, now it’s time for part 2 of my Return of the Old Ones-The Marketing Morse Code. Sounds like a bunch of old people are going to come back, but it’s the return of the tried and true marketing methods,with a twist.

Classified Ads

Classified ads have been used from the small time business owner to Big MNCs to advertise their services. Its one of the longest running advertising models in the world.But just because its been used so damn long,doesnt mean everyone is doing it rightly.

If you turn to a typical day’s Classified Ads section in the newspaper,take for instance the Real Estate section,you will see 97 percent of the advertisers using the same damn style in their ads.If its just words,they are almost too similar that you cant tell one offer apart from the other,and if its a display ad with the real estate agent in it,you see like an Ants Nest looking page with every real estate agent in the typical black suit and giving the fake smile.

Many will say,why i still am making a profit from the ad,so why change it.Well would you rather make the $1000 dollars you are making from the generic ad or would you like to make $10,000 from the same ad.Imagine,that ad is converting at 1%(meaning 1 out of every 100 who see the ad will call you),just by tweaking it a little and increasing the conversions by 1 %,just 1 %,it will double your profits..Wouldn’t you want that?

The thing is,classified ads work,but you gotta do it the right way. The people who are doing it all wrong are just wasting their ad money. Think of using a classified ad like Google adwords. You have to say something short and sweet to get people interested and wanting to know more. With Adwords you have just 3 little lines to capture someone’s interest.

To make a good classified ad that gets a lot of response, you have to get to the point without saying too much. Say something effective in just a few little lines. Make it stand out from all the boring ads.

Another way to make your classified ad stand out is to buy a display ad that makes it look like it’s been circled.

As you can see from the picture at the top, if someone is looking at the classifieds, the first thing that gets their attention is the ad that has a red circle around it. That’s a surefire way to make sure your ad gets read first.

Ever since the beginning of classified ads, it’s been a way to market stuff, get people’s attention and make money. It’s not going to die out because it’s a tried and true effective marketing method. If it didn’t work, you wouldn’t see so many classified ads.

You have to remember to get the most bang for your buck by writing a good ad. Not some long and boring ad. Not a dry ad. Not a confusing ad where people don’t know what on earth you are talking about. Write one like an ad that would get your attention. Look through classified ads for examples and see what ads get your attention, which ones stand out and which ones don’t. Look at all the bad ads and avoid making yours like that.

Remember:

1. Short and sweet

2. To the point

3. Make it stand out

You can always offer a free report or some kind of information that people can ask for. Write an ad that gets to the point and tells them what’s so awesome about the information you have. Make them want it.

There are older people who don’t like computers and don’t use email. They use the old fashioned way of calling or writing in for information and orders. You can make these people your customers. You just have to have a product they would be interested in and target classifieds they’re likely to read.

Like Google adwords can also test to see which ad is best. One time run one ad and then next time run another ad. You can see which one gets a better response and stick to that one.

Go out today and start playing with Classified Ads.You will love me for it.

Stay tuned for the next part of the marketing morse code. There’s another old one that’s coming back!

Hey peeps..Been awhile since I blogged..Life’s been a Roller Coaster ride for the last few weeks.For those close to me,you might have heard about the brutal rape and murder of a female relation of mine 2 weeks ago.

The perpertrators have been caught and I hope that the poor girl’s soul can rest easy now.Im sure shes in a better place and god bless her soul.

Anyways,I can now rest easy knowing that chapter of my life can now be closed and I shall try and move on(as best as I can).

A word out to those who have been asking.Yes,the above mentioned reason was why I couldn’t go to JV Alert even after getting the airplane tickets,booking the hotel and such and also why I have postponed my launch to the end of july.

Ok,the topic today im going to help you guys with is-“The Return of the Old Ones”.

No…Its not some hypobolic Death of Adwords/Adsense/Internet Marketing Report thing that has been done to death.This is the REAL thing.

I see many people give up easily when they get their Google Adwords account Slapped,their SEO not yeilding enough results to justify the costs,their Article Marketing being a complete waste of time and the new overplayed Web 2.0 marketing(read Facebook,Digg,Youtube) falling flat on its face.

Well,that’s because those stuff lose their effectiveness due to the saturatedness of their use.When one person knows Kungfu,hes feared.When everyone knows Kungfu,hes just a dime a dozen.

So what happens when new methods fail you?You go to the old tried and tested that people seem to have forsaken way too fast.

Anyone watched Transformers?

What about Terminator 3?

In both those movies,when technology came to a standstill,when they couldn’t use the phones or the internet what did te characters do?they went back to the old tried and tested..

Morse Code!!

So lets talk about the 3 branches of the Marketing Morse Code..

1)Magazines

Yes.Magazine Ads..

Sweet Jesus,don’t Magazine Ads cost a Bomb?

Nope..Not if you know what you’re doing.

Arent Search Engine traffic worth waaay more than magazines?

Nope..I would rather have paying customers of targetted magazines looking at my ads rather than freebie information seekers downloading stuff from their school’s internet access.

The number one rule to have magazine ads work for you is first choosing the appropriate magazine that targets the Demographic that you want.For example if you are selling a dating product for males 18-35 you would choose magazines such as FHM,Maxim,Men’s Health and Torque.

Secondly take note that in the real world,all business is Negotiation.How well you negotiate is how much you make from a deal,including advertisements.Dont take the ad rates from the magazines media kit at face value.

You have to put across to the magazine that you are a serious advertiser who knows what he ones,is in for the long haul,and you know how everything works.

Take for example Maxim magazine.I am currently in negotiation with them to advertise one of my products on their pages.The media kit rate they gave me was $5000 for a full page full color ad.

Through the use of Persuasive Negotiating,they are now offering me $3000 for the same ad, Exclusive rights (meaning only I can advertise for the said genre,so no knockoffs who can copy me and steal my thunder),and three writeups in a year on my product.

I reduced the rate by almost half(am intending to reduce further),got exclusivity(protect my investment),and get massive publicity by being interviewed by such a mainstream magazine.

Maxim has got a audited circulation of 40,000 readers.Assuming I sell my product at $50,I need 60 people out of the 40,000 to buy to break even.Thats 0.0015% to break even.

With the proper sales copy(Direct Response),I should be able to get a 1 Percent Buy rate,which is 400 people to buy,that would give me $20,000 for every $3000 I spend.

This is not mentioning,any backends,upsells,recurring billing that I can do(and I will do) to further enhance my profits which could realistically leave me with $40,000-$60,000 for every $3000 I spend.

Any takers?..to be continued…