Why isn’t my advertising working?

You may have dumped many thousands of dollars into various advertising programs only to come up with little or no results. You are not alone my friends.
I have fallen victim to the game of using print ads, Google ad words, Facebook paid ads and others.  It generated almost no additional traffic to my various websites.
What it did do was to empty my bank account!  Great promises were made.  Fantastic “examples” of results from other sites that had used the medium were presented.
The net result was they had more money and I had less!

Is this you?

As the old saying goes;  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  Are you still trying hard to get your business seen by doing the same things that used to work but no longer do? have you been spending money on Yellow Pages, Newspapers, radio spots, cable TV ads, flyers, vehicle lettering and the like?  Are you cash strapped but still need to advertise?  There are ways my friends, there are ways!

For the last few years I have been studying alternate forms of promotion for my businesses.  I’ve tried my hand at the arcane arts of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)   “Just when you have figured out the answers, they change the questions” would be a good statement here.  The 800 pound gorilla in this room is Google of course and millions of dollars have been spent trying to divine the the secrets of the algorithm that Google uses to rank pages and put your website at the top of the search results or down in the back of beyond with the rest of the chumps.
Many will claim to have the answer, few if any, actually do.  And even if they do stumble on the right tweaks now and then, Google unilaterally changes the game and you are back to square one.  That carefully crafted campaign that cost thousands to produce and implement just went in the crapper!  Pony up some more money and start over.

There is a Solution!

One solution that I have found to work and one that costs very little to implement depending on your skills is Social Media.  Yes, that’s right!  That Facebook page that your kids produced, the Twitter account that they never seem to stop using (called micro-blogging), blogs, user forums etc all get significant traffic.  My blogging contents very often show up in key word searches for my business area.  They put me on the first 2-3 pages in Google’s “organic” results consistently.  Organic search results are those that are NOT paid for like the ones you see at the top of the page.  Statistically, these organic results get more click-through traffic than the paid ads.

How can I take advantage of this?

You can do as I have done and spend countless hours learning the ropes, trying different tactics and just pounding on it until it generates some results on a hit or miss basis.
Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then.  Or, you can use a “Social Media Consult” to put together a program and monitor it for you.  Depending on your personal participation, it can be a lot less than you are spending now or have in the past.   Time is money and the more time the consultant has to put in, the more it will cost.  But in any case, it will likely be a lot less that a traditional advertising package will cost and those don’t even work.  Social Media does.  Most if not all of the platforms are free to use.  The cost comes from the social media manager or consultant crafting the program for you and keeping it up to date.  The more you are “hands-on”, the less it will cost you.  Just let the consultant design and set up the program for you and teach you how to use it and away you go.

Contact Dana at MasterofBuzz@gmail.com for more information.