• Word of Mouth – The primary factor behind up to 50% of buying decisions
• Blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors
• 6 in 10 Twitter or Facebook users are more likely to recommend a brand they follow
• Interesting content is a top 3 reason people follow brands on social media

Businesses spend upwards of $18 billion on promotional items. Do they all work? Of course not. Too many of them end up in the trash, or the kids’ toy bin. Make your promotional items count, with a dose of unconventional thinking.

Take your business cards, for example. They are really a type of promotional item, so consider more creative uses to really bring branding to the forefront. Think about some of the more bizarre business cards you’ve received. Perhaps the locksmith whose business card turns into a lock-pick, or the local greeting card manufacturer whose business card is seed-based and plantable.

Approaches like this not only put a promotional item in the hands of customers and potential customers, they’re also saying, “Hey, we’re creative, and we don’t want to waste your time.” If your budget is small, even going so far as to print your business card onto a magnet will likely put your name on a fridge or file cabinet, where it can get one hundred times the exposure as a conventional card that is simply filed, trashed or lost.

More Unconventional Approaches

If you’re still wondering what you can do with a business card, there are all sorts of creative ways to go. Depending on your business and potential customer base, consider the possibilities inherent in seasonal promotional items. If baseball season is just around the corner, consider a drink koozie or inflatable thunder stick.

If you want to hop on the environmental bandwagon, consider reusable grocery shopping totes, or biodegradable bags for garden use. Going environmental is not just a plus for you, but it reminds your customers that your business is ethical and forward-thinking. Another creative idea is the branded stress ball–perfect around tax time or the holidays when life gets a little tense. Or how about handing out a reusable water bottle–branded with your message–in the midst of a summer heat wave?

For techies, there’s the ever-popular small adhesive screen cleaner emblazoned with your logo. These are small enough to stick to tthe side or back of computer screen, so it’s always handy when computer screens start looking a little dusty.

Cater to Your Customer Base

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. You just have to be creative and know your brand and your audience. For example, your older customers might prefer classic promotional items like pens, calendars and coasters; whereas, your younger clientele might be drawn to t-shirts, travel coffee mugs, or branded USB drives. If your customers are mostly moms, consider promotional items that will make their lives a little easier. Want to reach athletes? Brand some wrist sweatbands or other useful technical clothing!

Creative Distribution Can Help

Once you’ve decided on the promotional item, why not think outside the box for distribution? One idea would be to take your promotional items to the web. On Twitter and Facebook, people love giveaways and contests, and it might be as simple as running a promo that says, “Our 100th follower on Twitter will receive a free coffee mug at the store!” Or having your Facebook fans compete to come up with a creative one-line slogan about your business for the chance to land a 2 GB USB drive (with your logo, of course).

Whatever you do, make sure you stay consistent with what your brand stands for. Don’t be so promotionally creative that your customers lose site of your product or service. So take your brand — and your customers — to a creative and quirky level and watch your business grow!

This guest post was written by Richard Larson, who is Brand Manager at the UK’s leading online supplier of promotional clothing and printed clothing, GoPromotional.com

How does online gaming stack up against online dating?

• It’s bigger! The #1 dating web site eHarmony has about 1 million users. The #1 gaming web site, World of Warcraft currently has over 12 million members!
• The average age of users on dating web sites is 48, while the average gamer age sits at 32.
• The average online dating user spends only 1.4 hours a month on their dating web site, while 34.6 hours are spent every month playing games online. 74.7% of World of Warcraft players are dating someone else who plays the game. Only 33% of dating site users are dating someone from that site.
• On Match.com, a man contacting 100 women can expect 1 reply back. 42% of women gamers find themselves attracted by another player.
• World of Warcraft Survey Results 14.9% of players are single, compared to 43% of Americans over 18 are single.

Created by: OnlineUniversity.net

In the world of affiliate marketing and online advertising, it’s best to specialize in one area and be great at what you do. That is the exact concept behind LeadsMarket, who’s main focus is to help affiliate marketers make money by promoting pay day loans offers. Lets take a deeper look into the world of pay day loans and how you can start making money as a LeadsMarket affiliate.

Why is Pay Day Loans a Good Offer to Promote?

As mentioned earlier, pay day loans is a growing business that isn’t going anywhere any time soon. People are always going to spend money and with the economy the way it is, people may need money more than ever, and pay day loans is one of the many methods for people to get their hands on it. Promoting pay day loans is just like any other service or affiliate offer out there. You just need to get the advertiser landing pages in front of the right people. LeadsMarket currently offered two different landing pages for their pay day loans offers. You can see them both below.

What is LeadsMarket and How Does it Work?

As you already know, there are plenty of affiliate networks out there on the market. However, many of them have hundreds or even thousands of offers, which means they are probably spread too thinly on what they specialize in. LeadsMarket specializes in the pay day loans market, so they are able to teach all of their affiliates how to promote and make money with pay day loans offers.

When you sign up as an affiliate with LeadsMarket, you will have full access to their affiliate area, along with all of your account details and affiliate urls and creatives. You can see a preview of what you can access in the screenshot below.

While there are many ad networks and affiliate solutions that you can run pay day loans through, LeadsMarket has an excellent team that is willing to work with you and help make you money along the way. Pay day loans offers have often been scrutinized for their “ethics” and even have been under regulation for their advertising methods, but this doesn’t mean it should be looked at any differently from other affiliate offers and ad campaigns. It can actually swing the monetization efforts and roi in your favor. If you take the time to research any financial and pay day loans related offers, you will find that the most successful marketers in this niche are heavily rewarded with high margins for their time, patience and efforts in mastering their niche and ad campaigns.

If you would like to learn more about pay day loans and how to make money promoting them online, be sure to join the LeadsMarket network and get in touch with Michael Parshin.

The local web is a growing ecosystem of online media channels collectively driving local awareness and sales. The infographic below takes a visual and statistical look at how local advertising is being done online.

• 73% of online search activity is related to local content
• 7 out of 10 consumers are more likely to use a local business if it has information available on a social media web site
• In June 2011 FourSquare reported hitting 10 million users
• 59% of all local-business searchers agree that ratings and reviews are important while searching for a business

Just as an example, let’s take graphic designers. Who would have thought that graphic designers in Switzerland would be making over $90,000 a year, while the United States average salary for a graphic designer is around $57,000… almost half!

Take a look at the full infographic below and you might just be surprised by the results.

Special thanks to Staff.com for the infographic.

According to a recent study by the census bureau: (Percentages show e-commerce sales as a percent of total sales)

• 48.1% Computer Hardware and Software
• 65.9% Clothing
• 61% Books and Magazines
• 65.5% Non-Merchandise Receipts
• 43.2% Other Merchandise

When it comes time to buy, women are often the decision makers and motivators. Recently women have gained ground in earning, spending, and influence on household spending.

• $7 trillion is contributed by women in the United States in consumer and business spending.
• 2/3 of consumer wealth in American will belong to women within the next decade.
• 91% of women say they think advertisers do not understand them.
• 85% of purchases and purchase influences are made by women.
• 50% of products typically marketed to men are produced by women.

One of the reasons you’re reading this blog right now is because you want the best marketing tips, and since mobile marketing is becoming very important every day, I’ll be sharing with you 7 things you should know about effective mobile marketing.

It is Uncompetitive

Marketers don’t believe in the power of mobile marketing; they believe it is too casual, and here’s your opportunity because mobile marketing really has potential.

You can easily dominate the mobile section of your niche with little to no effort, because very few people are trying to do it already.

It is Affordable

Followed by the fact that very few people really believe in how effective mobile marketing can be, it is very affordable.

Mobile advertising services are having a hard time getting as much people to embrace their services, so reducing their price is one technique they’re using to increase their reach.

Mobile advertising is cheap and within the reach of everyone, so all you need is the determination and plan to succeed at it.

It Has a Wide Reach

Everybody has a mobile phone; all 6 billion of them.

If you take a look at the stats, that’s like 90% of the entire world population, and a huge group of people you can tap into. Even if the number is divided into sub-niches, you can be rest assured of getting your message in front of the right people at the right time.

Mobile is everywhere, and this alone is huge potential for marketing. You no longer have to worry about not having enough audience to advertise to; it’s now all about having the budget and the right plan to do it.

It is Targeted

Mobile marketing also has one advantage over most other forms of advertising; it can easily be tailored to a particular audience.

If you’re running mobile PPC ads, you can tailor your ads to only be shown to a specific audience that typed certain keywords. You can run an ad on the mobile section of your favorite blog, and you can use various forms of mobile marketing to get your message to the right audience.

Most people won’t even allow you access to their mobile phones unless they trust and want to hear from you, so you can be sure of getting in front of the right audience if you’re following ethical mobile marketing practices.

It is Quantifiable

When it comes to marketing, knowing what your ROI is can be essential to success for your business. After all, there is no point about marketing using various means without knowing exactly what is working.

Every method of mobile marketing is quantifiable, and with the right tools you can track your methods and the results they deliver.

This isn’t possible with every form of marketing, but you can be rest assured that there is no problem as far as mobile marketing is concerned.

It is Always Available

Unlike advertising to the internet audience, mobile advertising is possible 24/7/12/365. Our mobile phones is the only thing we have with us every single moment of our lives, when we’re sleeping and when we’re awake; we even have it when we’re on vacations, and this only goes to show how powerful mobile marketing can be.

You can get your message across to mobile users via various means; through an SMS, via phone calls, or even by advertising on mobile platforms.

It’s About Targeting the Right Source

Another very important thing you should know about effective mobile marketing is that it is about targeting the right source.

For example, if you’re looking to grow your business via PPC ads, it would be more effective to go through a source like Google than via any other source.

Google currently owns a 24 percent market share, which is more than any other mobile advertising company at the moment. Apple also owns a 15 percent market share, but very few people would have imagined that Apple is that strong when it comes to mobile advertising.

The key to mobile advertising success is about targeting the right sources, so make sure you do your research before investing your advertising dollars into any platform.

Paul is a writer, blogger, and broadband expert that helps people get high speed internet.

In addition to all of the SEO factors that are built within the pyramid, social media/networks, link building and content creation also play a huge part in the process.