Why Advertise?
Why Should Small Business Advertise?
Because you are better at what you do than you might even realize and the marketplace will reward you if you are willing to start communicating well. Many small business people fall into a kind of trapped thinking that tells them growth will come if they act like and look like big companies. Nope. The truth is that YOU are actually much better at this than you think, but you have probably never had comprehensive advertising help. Corporate CEOs would cry blood to see one tenth the feeling of your company's customers and employees. NeighborWave can help you speak directly to your customer in a way that the big companies never will.
The only behavior of big companies that you should copy is this one: Advertise. It's how they beat you. But you have some tremendous advantages and you can beat-em-back!! You can do it cheaply and with remarkable effectiveness by telling your story well in the right places to the right people. It's authentic, it's simple, it's true, and it works to raise your business up out of the advertising clutter and into the marketplace of meeting needs. That's where the money is--always, every day, it's never anywhere else: the money is always about meeting needs.
It is so important for you to advertise that there are famous authors who cite NOT advertising as a "dumb mistake"
"People also make dumb mistakes because they don’t think of the big picture or don’t take all the data into account. During hard times, a company can cut down on marketing, even though it needs marketing more than ever—but the loss associated with the expenditures takes over rational planning." Read the rest here.
Web Design
Design is not trivial, but it's not the only thing in your advertising. Many people use up all of their energy (or budget) working on the look-- and then they have nothing left for the functional work of their marketing: for making messages, for getting found by Google, for learning how to manage their own pages. Design skills (and dollars) are best suited for Image Advertising and Image Ads are not well suited for either the internet or small business. Customers have questions and they buy where they get answers. Images have a hard time answering specific questions.
For new websites, we use WordPress--and only WordPress. We've got about 93 reasons for this choice, but related to design, the big reason is this: why pay for design when you may not need it and you can get it free? There is a very large community of thousands of WordPress users and many people contribute exceptional design that is free, nearly free, or just plain amazing! NeighborWave helps you select from thousands of existing designs and then modifies it for correct functionality and your tastes. One of the things that we love about WordPress is that you can re-design your site later and when you're ready--the design gets changed with ONE CLICK. And all that happens while your site continues to answer specific questions.
Why WordPress? YOU get an edit button right on the website. Making changes to your own content is about as hard as using email. Also, because we can work on the design AFTER your content is up and working-- and that helps a lot of people get UNstuck. If you hire us to do your website it gets DONE-- it's good advertising -and- you can keep working on it. Yes, you can get the look that you want, but shouldn't that happen AFTER you know your site will bring you new business?
We'll show you how easy it is to create pages right now!
Client References
NeighborWave does not share customer information EVER. You bet we know that's different. Some of our most effective product is work that looks like the owner did it. We partner with you to create your advertising-- or we just make it for you: your choice. It's Authentic and Real, even if you need a little help from us to get it created and published. A link either from us or to us... erodes the authenticity of you and your story and you become just more advertising to ignore. You are not our trophy--you are a valued client. NeighborWave does not share customer information EVER.
Instead of using old work to let you know that you can work with us, we do something different:
We demonstrate our work for you for free. That's right, when we get a serious inquiry, we go to work evaluating your specific situation and then demonstrate how we'll meet your goals. It's pretty amazing value when you consider that most of our clients only spend a few hundred dollars.
Why No Customer Sites? We need to be absolutely clear about three things when you work with us: 1. You Own It. 2. Better Ethics. 3. We Earn Your Trust.
- You Own It. The results of our work for you belong solely to you. You are not a trophy for us to display-- you are the customer who deserves to receive the full undiluted value of our paid work. Unless you are in the advertising business, there's no benefit in a link from us. In fact, being associated with an advertising firm can reduce the effectiveness of your messages. Our services are such an amazing bargain that we sub-contract for "web designers." We must respect their business by not claiming that work as our own.
- Better Ethics. You will never receive a phone call or email from a stranger asking what it's like to work with us. We love that our customers recommend us, but word of mouth should involve your words-- and you telling the unsolicited truth. A link from a website is not word of mouth. Recommending us is your choice to make, not ours.
- Earning Trust. How can you trust us? First, we show you real work for free. Second, we publicly display our prices. Third, we will demonstrate live pages with you so that you can try out using the edit button, building your own photo gallery using your own images, and even changing the site design with a single click. All of this happens BEFORE you spend money with us. We have a simple practice of demonstrating that we will do what we say and do it when it's supposed to be done.
Most of our clients do come from word of mouth and we love and appreciate their enthusiasm. While much of our work uses the internet, we are much more interesting in being a neighborhood business that really does live in a lot of neighborhoods. Our business model is to function exactly like the local businesses that we serve--wherever possible you will work with a local person.
The Internet has created a lot of opportunity for hucksters, but the flip side of all the junk is that real people and real businesses can rise up out of that muck very quickly and attract new business by communicating honestly and directly. Authenticity and integrity require good ethics, and authority requires trust. The simple act of being the real deal sees great rewards in the internet space. The work that we do for clients increases the value of their advertising messages while decreasing the cost of presenting those messages. We translate principles into activities. If we didn’t operate with some pretty strict ethics– we’d just wind up making more junk. Not interested.
THAT WAS FAST!
I really appreciate how prompt and efficient you were and for all the information you've given me. Thanks again for everything.
Wanda
Naturopath Website Client
GREAT IDEAS!
...this is a great idea! I will try to do these articles in the next five days. I mailed your check Monday. Thanks so much.
Evelyn
Massage Therapist Website Client
EVERYTHING!
Thank you for EVERYTHING! Most of all your understanding.....
Virginia
therapist Website Client
You’ll Know It’s Yours!
Did you know that many advertising services only share the ownership of your materials with you? Even some pretty substantial companies retain some ownership rights-- even to material that you make. That's not true here. YOU own it. To us, this is some very simple ethics.
YOU Own the Results
The result of our work is your property, it is created solely for you. We retain no rights. You own the pages, everything on the pages and it is your hosting, not ours. Many small business marketing service want you to keep paying month after month-- and that's after they didn't help you make the content! How about instead you just pay for the work that gets done this month-- not pay for old work.
Everything that we make is yours. All of the writing and design work that you choose to use is owned wholly by you. Our prices are very low for a quality hand made product and that's a good value. A better value is that we always make sure that you have in your possession the right source materials to publish your advertising again in a different media.
Our Integrity Means Your Control
One of the many ways that we demonstrate our integrity is by always, in every regard, giving you control over our work for you. Part of our simple plan is to always have you in possession of all the names and passwords that we use while working for you. For example, the Google account we create for tracking is your account-- configured by us, but used by you. There is no part of our strategy that keeps your business tied to NeighborWave through any administrative, technical or contractual means. Zero recurring billings.
You’ll Know It Works!
Of course it works..
Included in our standard package is something that you might not expect: You get to monitor real world results immediately. From the beginning of your project, we correctly configure and show you how to use your own Google accounts and the Google tools to track the effectiveness of your internet advertising. We like our plans to begin with Internet Advertising because you can see your results quickly and easily and because it's so durable. But even more important to us is that we work towards this goal: YOU are in control of your advertising.
You Create (if and when you like)
All of the web sites we make include an edit button for you, it's as easy as email to keep your own pages fresh and useful. We make sure that you have all of the administration information in your hands as soon as it's created. FTP addresses, accounts, logins, passwords. NeighborWave staff think it's fair that your project begins with control- your control- we give you the tools to change your mind and even fire us on the first day. We're confident that you'll be satisfied with our services so we don't hide any information from you.
You stay in control
You'll see how your website is working now-- and you'll see the difference that Simple Advertising Management makes for your small business. NeighborWave has exactly ZERO strategy for tying your business to ours. We do our work and then put you directly in control. You pay for the work once and then see it working. It's one of our simple strategies to reduce your future advertising costs. No recurring billings, no expensive add ons. Just good results. Now. We're happy if you call us again, but you don't have to keep paying us.
Efficient Follow Up Advertising
The materials from a well-designed Internet Advertising Campaign are useful again as the information that you'll need for Print and Other Advertising. As you tune your messages using your web pages, your small business advertising team is gaining experience with you, your messages and your customers. That's great expertise and can feed your business for years to come.
And we never retain rights to the results of work that you've paid for!
The Advertising Basics
Prospective customers need information about you. Your Advertising Techniques need to carry that information to customers. NeighborWave will help you get the right information to prospects by creating great advertising messages and reducing the cost of production and placement.
Your prospects are increasingly ready to look not only for what you sell, but how you sell it. Customers want to know what experience comes with their buying dollars: are you helpful, are you cheap, what are you? It's a frequent and pointless exercise to attract clients that don't actually want anything from you. And when they walk away... understand this: you just paid money to make someone unhappy with you.
One of the people that invented modern advertising said very plainly that "90% of advertising never sold a damn thing." If you would like your company to be in the other 10%, then you need to work on your messages-- your content. Stop waving your arms and start answering questions. The so called "getting your name out there" plan is just arm waving.
First things first, what are The Simple Advertising Facts about you:
[can YOU answer the questions about you?]
- Where are you?
- What do they Get?
- How do they Buy from you?
- Will you Be Here tomorrow?
- Do you have truthful, helpful product knowledge?
How do you make advertising that answers the questions?
Start writing. If you can't write, hire a writer. If your advertising doesn't answer any questions, then it's just waving your arms plus pretty pictures. How is someone going to understand that? Writing isn't necessarily complicated, sometimes the answer is as simple as "Fast Delivery." Let it be 'too simple' and anyone can understand you and what you do.
Where do you put that advertising? Start Cheap!
Internet Advertising is cheap and you learn through the process of watching NeighborWave create your advertising content. We don't sell advice, but we do talk openly with you about the choices and you will learn about advertising you-- not some theoretical company from an advice column. The costs in a web site are almost all up front and that's easy to budget. Internet Advertising can also be teaching you how to track your results. Your small business website can serve you for years and it also gives you some room to make mistakes. The page you create for internet searchers today can be changed tomorrow by you for exactly zero cost. You are the publisher, editor, owner and customer of your own website. Don't worry that you hire people to do the work--You are the Publisher.
Stay Cost Effective.
Once you find messages that work, re-publish the same information in different locations. Cost effective advertising isn't wasteful. When you find themes that work in your internet advertising, use them again... in Print. Same pictures, Same words-- new way for clients to get answers to questions about their own wants and needs.
Small Business Advertising can be done cheaply and effectively using a very simple plan. In fact, it's almost required that you stick to simplicity throughout your advertising techniques. Start with answers- and then look for inexpensive ways to put those answers in front of the people who need what you do. If you decide that it's rocket science, then sooner rather than later you'll be spending big money to pay for big salaries. Why not consider just hiring some effective simple advertising help.
Legal
Unless otherwise indicated, this Web site and its contents are the property of NeighborWave.com and are protected, without limitation, pursuant to U.S. and foreign copyright and trademark laws.
Permission to link to this site is revocable at any time for any reason.
Free Stuff For Small Business Advertisers
By far, the most useful free product for a small business advertiser is Google Analytics. Here's what you get: real information about who visits your website. What did they type to find you, where they are, how many pages did they read.... there is a ton of stuff that can teach you what needs to be on your pages. Search results are free-- both to you and to the reader. If you can't see how and why people find your business on the internet... then why are you on the internet?
Sample Work
Leveraging Open Source Design To Reduce Cost
(by correctly using open source)
Here is what you need to know about these sites: each site was up and running with an edit button on the pages in under 15 minutes. All of them could still use some work and that is one of the things that we get paid for: making open source go to work as a small business website. If you're just sure that "the look" of your website will win you business... we've got an advertising idea for you.
These are sample designs using WordPress. For new websites, we use WordPress--and only WordPress. There is an entire community of thousands of WordPress users and many people contribute exceptional design that is free, nearly free, or just amazing!
Why WordPress? You can get the look that you want with an edit button right on the pages. But shouldn't that happen AFTER you know your site will bring you new business?
No, we didn't spend much time making this page- which is exactly the point: how we work is fast and effective-- and that keeps our focus on your messages and on how you interact with real customers.
How You Should Create Advertising Source Materials (Pictures)
There is a lot of information in your advertising. Sometimes HOW you make it has a great influence on where you can use it. You work with two types of information: words and pictures. An important step in reducing your advertising costs is creating your source materials using methods that let you recreate new ads using from your existing materials. I like to think of this as "data recycling" where you get to re-use the results of your previous work. But you have to work smart.Advertising copy is as simple to re-use as copy and paste, but computer graphics in advertising requires a little more planning.
Computer graphic files are created and stored in two general formats. 1. Bitmap Files come from Photoshop and similar programs- these are simple pictures and it's very important for you to understand that they have a specific size. 2. Vector Files come from Illustrator and other programs- and these work a little differently. Vector based images are actually the result of the math to create the lines and areas of the objects in your graphics. Vector based images do NOT have a specific size- and the result is that you can resize the image from a tiny icon on a computer screen all the way up to a 50 foot billboard.
What's the problem? What should you do? When you produce your advertising source materials you spend money. If you work smart, you won't have to spend that money again but you must retain those original works in a usable form. Always insist that you get the right source materials so that the materials can be resized for other kinds of publishing. Vector based files are best for you because they can size up with no loss of quality. Another source that is important is for you to have the original high resolution bitmap files. Your "picture" files might look fine on your website, but when you expand the same file for use in print-- it doesn't work because the quality degrades. With Image files you can make them smaller, but you can't make them larger.
Here are example images that are just zooms into our logo. The Vector image be used even at billboard size. The second image is bitmap.... you decide.
For your own advertising recycling plan, it's imperative that you keep copies of your high quality graphics. NeighborWave always produces using the right content with the appropriate tools.
We do have a simple Inkscape Tutorial to help make your own print ad.
Number One Free Marketing Program!
Something that you will have no trouble finding are people who would like to sell you a book or set of tapes or access to web pages about how to market your local business. These products are called software-- it is an information product that can be produced once and purchased many times. This is likely to be a very different business model than yours. NeighborWave is like you- we really do operate as a neighborhood based business. Just ask our printer, who also lives and works in our neighborhood. We believe in an economy of real intrinsic value-- a real product or service. You could say that we are the opposite of "perceived" value. We don't feel that competence is a separate product. Competence is included in working with professionals. You cannot buy anything here except our staff's time working for you. We like to think of this as: "our job."
NeighborWave offers no paid advice or software- instead, we do work for you and the advice is included at no charge. We are willing to actually do work for free to begin our conversation. Most of what you can read on our pages is about why we work the way we do in local advertising.
Most Marketing "Secrets" are about Selling Marketing Secrets!
The best work done by most marketing firms is their own product. The marketing that they know best is how to sell marketing "secrets." The value is "perceived" and varies widely. Some operate on the simple principle that if you charge enough money, the mere fact of high price will get the sale. It can be so difficult for a marketing company to perform actual work using their own theories that many don't even try-- they only sell advice.
NeighborWave is sharing some important new marketing information with our clients-- some of our ideas are quite unique and new. How do we know that? Our competitor's have griped to our face that they can't compete with what we offer. They don't deliver the range of features and they don't compete on price. We are confident you will really struggle to get what we do from anyone else. Our simple philosophy is that if we want to be valued in your marketplace we have to be valuable. That's why we begin our conversations with you by showing you some real work. Our Free Evaluations are much more than people expect- and our pitch is secondary to making the information valuable for you. Our work is about putting the right information in front of people making a purchase decision. Why wouldn't we want to show you our work- and isn't it just better that we show you work done specifically for you?
Why Software Doesn't Always Help
Have you ever created a list of things to do and then never really got started? Marketing and Advertising advice sellers work on this principle: you can buy activity and feel like you've done something. Nothing actually happened, but you feel like you've done something. They really aren't concerned that you don't get started because they have your cash. A few intrepid entrepreneurs do follow through and that is the feedback that you see on those sites. As long as you're parting with your real money-- shouldn't you just consider buying some effective marketing work?
Any Real Effort Gets Results
One of the most overlooked secrets of marketing is that almost ANY actual effort will produce some results. Our work is much more definite and you get to see results right away. We work from a pretty simple script. We like to begin with internet advertising so that we can create more than enough content to advertise your local business. NeighborWave applies every lesson that we've learned in our work for you. Next, we tune that advertising and show you directly that it is working with real customers. Later, you might call us to have us help with taking that same information and publishing in other kinds of media. It's efficient. It's easy for you to be in control of your advertising. NeighborWave is real work done by real people with a real value. Simple Advertising Help.
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We've found a lot of useful information in some of these software products and we promise we'll use the best advertising ideas when we work on your account. The links below are all taken from the first couple of pages of a Google Search for "local business marketing."
- Referral Flood. It's interesting that on this internet page he uses a very simple referral technique. It's the next best thing to an actual person speaking to someone about your business. He supplies comments from customers right next to his offer to sell. Yes, we help you do that.
- City Slick dot Net. This is a directory service-- a software product where you build their business with the value of what you do. Don't be surprised if they turn up above you in Google listings.
- GeoLocal. I gave them 5 minutes of my life and I have no idea what they sell.
- Duct Tape Marketing. I love that name! It's not immediately apparent, but they actually do work for you! And it's only $7500 per half day to talk to the owner.
- SiteSell Reseller. These guys have automated tools that help you create content that costs you $299 per year. They bill you again next year after you've done all the work.
- Wolf 21. Real work happens by these guys-- and if you spend $250,000 on yellow pages ads, they'll teach you how to optimize for search engines.
- eBook Seller Bobette Kyle. She gives lots of useful information and she saves the good stuff for her eBook. I really like her focus on planning.
- Seth Godin. Seth is a terrific writer with lots of novel ideas. If you've got some cash and want to just read-- buy his stuff. He's much less about How to do it than many, but he'll help you to understand and tell your truth.
None of the links above are compensated in any way (though it's tempting!)
Meanwhile... If you'd like to simply purchase some Small Business Advertising Help (you know.. that work stuff-- human activity!) give NeighborWave a ring.
When you work with us, you'll learn a lot if you'd like to learn all this marketing stuff. We highly recommend that you manage your advertising and we build our product so that you can do that from day one. We also see plenty of clients that want limited involvement and that's OK, too.
So, what do you think? Buy some advice-- or hire some advertising help?
Advertising Tools #1- Messages
The simple truth of advertising messages is that the simple truth works best. Advertising messages are primarily about the words and are called advertising copy. Good advertising Copy increases the effectiveness of your advertising. If you are ready to spend some money with a big agency, they'll help you hire an advertising copywriter. Yes, this is AFTER you pay for their advice. We work differently. We deliver the advice for free while we create the content.
How does a copywriter work? I don't mean to disappoint, but they do their work by talking to you. If you've worked with advertising people that didn't ask you for your story, then you worked with people who couldn't tell your story. Sadly, they didn't bother to hear it. For a local business, it's good to keep some perspective. If you live in a market with a few thousand potential customers, can you justify big money for advertising copy? Probably not. Your advertising needs to be effective in your own budget.
To give you a comparison, we'll write enough advertising copy to fill a nice website for you for only $400. What we attempt is to get you 90% of the value of extremely good copy, but for 1/10th the price. Because we write longer texts and not just headlines, we have a sneaky suspicion that our copy is actually better than the expensive stuff. We hear all the time that people pick out phrases from our writing to use as headlines or bulleted copy when they are producing fliers and print ads. This copy is usable again for other media and because we will be working on managing results, you get to see how it is really working-- or not working. NeighborWave is not an outsourced service-- most businesses that work with us get to work with a local writer. The way that we work with you is to submit a few varied sentences to you to see what kind of style and tone seems right to you. When you pick the tone and style, we work on your writing three times to make sure that we get it working well for you. Write once. Edit Twice. Simple.
Advertising Tools #2- Production Techniques
The methods that you choose for producing the content in your advertising can greatly affect the cost of future efforts. As an example, when you use a photograph on your website it is displayed using a resolution that is appropriate for a computer screen. The same image, when you send it to a printer will look like junk on a printed page. It's the wrong resolution.
We work right from the beginning to help you avoid these future cost traps. When you work with us, the materials that we gather and create can be used again in your next advertising effort. There are actually a lot of other examples, but-- we aren't interested in how other companies will disappoint you. NeighborWave works right the first time. We work the right way and make sure that you have the right materials for future work.
A little bit of planning, saving you money. Simple.
Advertising Tools #3- Publishing Techniques
I'm sure it's no surprise to you that NeighborWave prefers the internet as a first advertising publishing platform. If you've previously had a bad experience with internet advertising, sorry about that and you should really consider moving on. Too bad you couldn't hire us before. Probably the reason you were unhappy is that no one found your site. And that is exactly what we do. We deliver good solid advertising that gets found by internet searchers looking for your products-- looking for you!
For the 800th time, here's why the internet is Great advertising:
- It's cheap.
- It's perfectly targeted customers.
- You can easily change your messages.
- It's pretty obvious that it's the future.
- It can teach you for free how to manage your advertising dollars.
The typical bad experience has been paying for a website and then no one ever finds it. We work from a different perspective. The FIRST thing that we work on with your website content is getting it found by Google. After you see it working, it might be reasonable to spend some money and dress it up a bit so that customers can understand the value, the quality in your business. To keep things simple, we like keeping to ordinary ideas like first things first. Get found by Google. Simple Advertising.
Advertising Tools #4- Managing Results
If you read about the Toolkit #3, you know that we like internet advertising. It can deliver a lot of value for you cheaply. There are lots of benefits that you will see, but the best thing is this: It teaches you to manage your advertising. It doesn't matter if you write your own copy or have someone else do it-- you need to know that it works.
NeighborWave helps you learn to work directly with Google and the other search engines. In this regard, we simply act as a teaching consultant while we produce your advertising. You can see directly how differing messages attract and don't attract. You can learn about new opportunities in your market that you hadn't considered. Optionally, you get to cheaply and directly experiment with buying individual leads.
This part is a really gratifying milestone in your advertising project and comes towards the end of creating your advertising. The advertising process can be a little mystifying, but this step peels back all the layers and lets you see the results from your dollars. We love this part. And... it's simple.
Bad Advertising
Bad Advertising Kills Your Sales Efforts. It kills sales by attracting the wrong customers. Do you want to collect prospects that you need to refer to another business? When you attract prospects that you can't close because you don't have the products or don't accept credit cards or for any other reason, then you are creating negative branding for your business. You are literally paying to advertise against yourself. The resulting customer quote is this: "They didn't have anything for me." If word of mouth is golden then that gold will kill you.
What's a better way? Check out Informational Advertising.
Want to know how long Bad Advertising has been around?
Want to see How Good Advertising goes Bad?