Banner Stands: Your Key To Product Promotion Success

Successful advertising depends on getting details of your product or service in front of potential customers in any eye-catching way. And whether at exhibitions, festivals, road shows, press conferences, trade shows, fairs or in your own showroom, you need a way to present your goods to their best advantage. This is where the banner stand comes in. The banner stand is a modern tool designed to maximise the ease and effectiveness of promoting your products.

First, let's look at what banner stands are. In a sense they are miniature, highly sophisticated billboards. A banner stand is essentially a lightweight stand made of aluminium which serves as a frame for you advertising message. This message appears in the form of graphics printed in high resolution on graphic films which are laminated for durability. The best materials for graphic printing is sandtex-laminated polyester. This ensures vibrant colours that won’t fade.

Banner stands are available in a wide variety of styles including single and double sided banner styles, cassette rollers, telescopic, tension, rigid, motorised and spring. They can be retractable, roll up, or pull up. A variety of lighting options is also available.

Roller banner stands are especially convenient as the graphic panel winds into a tensioned cartridge in the base. Cartridge banner stands feature a swappable cartridge allowing the advertising graphics to be changed in an instant. This is great for when you need to tailor your message to suit local requirements. They are also perfect for when you need to promote a range of different products or if you attend many events and need to switch between products efficiently.

Motorised banner stands present long messages via a steadily rotating panel. These can communicate long texts effectively.

For outdoor exhibitions, special outdoor banner stands are available. For these you need to fill their bases with sand or water to ensure their stability.

One great thing about banner stands is their versatility. They can be positioned individually or tiled for extra impact. If you need a large display, you can arrange a group of stands to best suit your needs. Banner stands can work alone or be used together with other promotional methods such as a trade show display. You could for example set one up in the lobby or meeting hall at an exhibition. Or you could put one up at the end of an aisle to attract visitors to your booth. And they're convenient too. They simply retract into their base for easy and secure transportation. Assembly and disassembly is a snap.

If you need to get your product before as many eyes as possible with efficiency, versatility and at a low cost, look into using banner stands. Not only are they visually attractive but their portability and ease of setup makes your job so much easier. Their durability means that they can be used over and over again. And of course they're a great way to generate interest in your product or service.

Advertise to millions -#2- Classified ads, e-zine promotion, safe lists.

Introduction:

This is a series of articles about marketing and advertising. There are different ways you can reach an audience of millions of individuals all around the world. I show you on this series how to implement profitable strategies in your marketing career.

It has been said that “what matters is not what you sell but how you promote it.” So, the secret to success lays within your marketing techniques. That’s why it is very important for business owners to develop skills which allow them to increase the sales of their products.

One of the most important skills you must have is the ability to reach a lot of people quickly. To do this you need to realize how powerful media is an how it can drastically increase your revenues.


– Classified ads –

Free classified ads are another way you can advertise online at no cost to you. They represent on the Internet what a newspaper ad represents on the streets. You can post ads to thousands of web sites and reach millions of internet users.

The drawback of this strategy is that it is time consuming, but once you get used to it you will realize which are the easier ad sections to post to and the most effective ones. It may take some time though before you discover those that fit you well.
You can post your ads to the following websites:

http://classifieds.excite.com/

http://finditclassifieds.com

http://washingtonpost.com

Among others.

– E-zine promotion –

You can post an add to a vast amount of individuals by submitting it to many different e-zines at once. This is simple and free. Just go to http://www.subscribeme.net/ read the information they provide for you there and complete their form.

Your ad will be displayed in hundreds of e-zines all over the Internet. There is a combined amount of more than 1,000,000 subscribers at those web sites, so you will gain a lot of exposure from them.

I think it is better if you use an alternate e-mail address for this purpose. You can get a free email address from Yahoo. When I joined the list I received many messages every day.

This technique could bring you additional traffic. The only problem I see is that most other individuals also join the list to advertise to other people as you do. So, the goal of most subscribers is to sell products, not to buy them.

I think though it is a good way to diversify your trading strategies. You could give it a try and see if it works for you. Remember to use an alternate email address and read their terms and conditions first.


– Safe lists –

Safe lists are lists of e-mail addresses from people who have requested to receive messages and information about a specific topic. As you probably already know to deliver comments or advertisement via e-mail to others without their consent or authorization is called spamming and is illegal.

Also if you spam others do not expect to receive a reasonable response rate from them. What do I mean? I mean that you can send a message to millions of individuals, but if they are not interested in what you are selling and they didn’t requested that information from you, then you will probably make very few sales, plus you will receive a lot of complaints from hundreds of them.

Then what is the smart way to advertise using e-mail addresses? The answer is safe lists. Think about it. This people are looking for information related to the products or services you are selling. Many of them are even getting paid to read your messages. This technique is also called advertising to targeted opt-in mailing lists. You can create your own list of subscribers.

You can join Yahoo groups http://groups.yahoo.com/ or Google groups http://groups.google.com/ and start your own newsletter. The way you get subscribers is by posting valuable information there that your visitors would like to read. You can also join any of the companies bellow:

Bravenet
http://www.bravenet.com/

Topica
http://www.topica.com/

Zinester
http://www.zinester.com/

Your mailing list provider
http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/

Coollist
http://www.coollist.com/

Now, keep in mind that building your own list of subscribers takes time. Some people prefer to pay others for the privilege of advertising on their lists. For example, www.e-mailpaysu.com offer you the opportunity to advertise to their subscribers for a fee. This is just an example. There are many other companies like these on the Internet today and their prices vary.

As you can see, this techniques can increase your exposure and help you get more clients. You can read about other effective marketing techniques from my other articles on this series.




EasyWebRiches © 2006

Beer Promotion in the Wild World of the Internet

The Challenge for Breweries in Today’s Regulated Marketplace is immense. For the past decade the advertising of alcoholic products has been increasingly subject to both government regulation and self-regulatory bodies. In Canada, the CRTC’s August 1996 Code for Broadcast Advertising of Alcoholic Beverages severely restricted the way in which alcohol products are presented on both radio and television. It is not an exaggeration to say that any advertisement adhering to these regulations would be dull indeed, and almost obscure any attempt at promotion - you can’t enjoy yourself and drink beer at the same time! Print material such as entrepreneurial magazines and newspapers are less restricted, though regulated by provincial Liquor Boards. The same ethical limitations apply: do not link enjoyment with alcohol consumption; do not direct your ad to youth; do not over-promote; do not pass Go! Also, self-regulation within various media abounds.

In the United States a similar situation exists. The Federal Trade Commission and Congress are the key regulating authorities. In addition, individual media and media groups establish their own code of ethics, often refusing to publish or broadcast alcohol advertising.

The challenge? How do breweries and microbreweries ‘get the word out’ about their products within an advertising marketplace of such limited visibility where self-promotion is frowned upon?

When traditional methods are not a viable option we must identify and utilize those of the future. One way breweries can take advantage of modern advertising options is to share your product with the world on the Internet.
You may already have a company website. It’s fun, it positively promotes your product with enthusiasm as no TV ad is now permitted to do. Your T-shirts and ball caps have their own page. Potential customers are visiting your website on a regular basis, once they stumble across your site on a night of Internet surfing. However, is this kind of customer traffic really the most effective use of such a dynamic advertising tool? All that creative and technical effort and your audience consist of web junkies and the occasional salesperson trying to sell you something. The solution to this problem is targeted pixel marketing. Websites are being developed which help increase traffic on subject related web pages. For instance, pixel space for your beer label on the beer home page may be purchased for a reasonable cost. The label then links with your own webpage.

Beer festivals may be a long established custom, however the modern version is a true advertising event and increasingly popular, not only with the locals. Beer fans travel far to attend their favorite bash. To choose the festival which most suites your product, the Internet comes to the rescue once again. A number of websites list festivals. Check the bottom row of thebeerhomepage.com for the most popular beer festivals around the world.

Besides a shift in promotional methods, a fresh approach in attitude will go a long way in changing public perception of beer. Taking a leaf out the wine industry’s book may be the answer. Wine sales have risen since their advertisers started promoting wine “as a natural product, a healthy option, a sophisticated and educated choice, a compliment to food and equally popular with men and women. In fact, beer can also boast all these things, but its public perception is poor by comparison” says Peter Kendal of Molson Coors Brewers. He continues, “Beer is a wholesome, natural product, made from malted barley and hops. Moreover, moderate (and we stress moderate) beer drinking is just as healthy as moderate wine drinking”.

To conclude, these are only a few examples of the way a modern approach to advertising need not battle with established regulations. A positive, open mind and a willingness to switch gears should lead to a healthy return on your advertising dollars.