The Business Key

Archive for April, 2010

“How much should I spend on radio advertising?” “How do I know I am getting the best radio advertising rates?” “What radio stations should I advertise on?” “What are good and bad radio advertising prices?” “How many spots should I air on a radio station?”
Every day at Radio Lounge, we hear radio advertising questions such as these.
Honestly, there is so much confusion about radio advertising floating around – we can’t blame you for asking these questions. Why is advertising on the radio so mysterious? The answer is – radio advertising is not mysterious. It just helps to know how it works.
Effective radio advertising relies on two major components – the message (the radio commercial itself), and the media (that the radio spot airs on).
The Message
Let’s look first at the radio commercial itself. Before even thinking about which radio stations to air on, or how much to spend on radio advertising rates, you must think about what you are going to say in your radio ad. For this article, we are assuming that all call centers, fulfillments, websites, etc. lead generation, and sales closing processes have been put in place by you, the advertiser. Creating a radio commercial that helps drive traffic is extremely important to the advertising process.
The advertising industry is full of voice talents, radio personalities, DJ’s and others, all claiming to create radio commercials. Be careful here. When entering the arena of radio commercial production, look for a radio advertising agency that has experience and a track record of successful ad campaigns. Anyone can create a radio ad, but not everyone can create a radio ad that pulls traffic. Some radio stations provide free radio commercials if you advertise on their station. Most of these free commercials are never based on strategy and are just one of several dozen commercials that have to be created by an overworked radio production person in a five to fifteen minute window of time. Remember, you usually get what you pay for.
The most effective radio commercials are built on a solid, proven strategy. The copy is written using time tested formulas that maximize potential response. The talent is handpicked to best connect with the end user and the production is based upon clear, quality, and easy to absorb audio.
So…what does the radio commercial production process cost? The majority of radio commercials that work best usually fall into the $500 to $1000 price range. There are always exceptions to the rule (lots of revisions to copy or audio, additional voice talents, celebrity endorsements, etc.) but this figure generally covers development of a solid strategy, copy from experienced copywriters, performance by high caliber voice talents, and the highest quality production services.
The Media
For many with questions about radio advertising rates, and radio station prices, here is where the mystery begins. We will try to simplify the mystery of radio media buying as much as we can in this small amount of space.
A good radio advertising buy focuses on a few different things:
* Finding the best radio stations in a market that match your customer’s demographics (age, gender, income level, etc.) and psychographics (interests, beliefs, hobbies, personality traits, etc.).

Although the hardest part of getting started on the internet is finding the right business, every successful business owner starts with someone coming up with the right business idea at the right time. So you just have to be alert while finding one such business for you and the best home based business ideas to get success online. See that you select the opportunities on the internet that have reputation. After starting in the beginning, you can stick to what is working for your business owner. But it is a good idea to test your business by doing some research and trying new strategies on your own for taking your business to higher earning levels.

There are two categories in general: People who fail to make money on the internet and those who are successful. Most of the people fail because of the lack of planning and skills. Convenience is the primary reason why people are diverted towards surfing on the internet. Survey shows that the kind of the products that sell best on the internet are those that either increases knowledge or fulfill customer requirements.  Hence the success of your business will depend upon selection of the right product or service that will provide wanting benefits to the customers.

Come to think of it, there is no industry that does not involve customer service; reason why this course was created to help entrepreneurs and employees to understand customer service and its importance.

Customer service is a process whereby a representative of a company provides services or products to a customer in a satisfying manner.  Undergoing a course on customer service can drastically change the direction your business is going.  It increases customer satisfaction and in the long run yields customer loyalty.

Customer service can occur practically anywhere.  The following are just some of the examples:
Personal or face to face
Telephone
Order-taking
Complaint handling
Bills, payments, documents
Online and/or via email

This customer service course aims to give you a quick run-through on how to improve customer service skills.  First, one must understand that no amount of course on customer service can teach the following:
Attitude – having the right attitude is something innate, something that makes up the whole personality of the person.
Commitment – as an entrepreneur, you can’t force an employee to be committed to the job.  It must come from within.
Happiness – this trait depends on the person and when you are happy, everything else that’s good follows.  You have a positive disposition in life.

‘Work At Home’ and ‘Home Business’ have become the Buzz words of internet marketing. With 200,000-300,000 hits per month according to Yahoo’s keyword search tool “Overture,” there is little doubt that the ‘home based business’ is all the rage on the internet. With worldwide computer usage continuing to grow exponentially, 1.8 billion users projected by 2010 compared to 1.08 billion in 2005, according to Computer Industry Almanac, internet marketing has positioned itself to provide a home business opportunity for everyone. But with so many ‘Work At Home’ and ‘Home Business’ offers, the newbie must use ‘caveat emptor’ (buyer beware) when looking to start their own home based business.

What measures can the future home business entrepreneur take when traversing the abyss of home business opportunity? Let us look at some of the basic things a future ‘work at home’ or ‘home based business’ owner can do to avoid being scammed by the savvy internet marketing crowd.