Promotional Article Writing
By Scott F. Geld
Your product is fantastic your service excellent and your customers
will make huge savings but no one is buying. It is a challenge
familiar to many a business owner. One sure-fire way to get your
business noticed online at minimal cost is to sit down and write about
it or commission someone else to write about it for you. Promotional
or advertorial articles have traditionally worked well to publicize
businesses offline in magazines, newspapers and circulars. Now, the
Internet offers a myriad of web-based opportunities in the form of
specialist news sites, portals, on-line newspapers, ezines and
newsletters all of which require a source of fresh & interesting
content. But where should you begin?
What do your customers read?
You should first consider the types of material your potential
customers will read and where they will view or download that material
from. Perhaps they subscribe to specific online trade circulars or
newsletters published by a site or magazine they subscribe to. Look to
cover all the options and where possible obtain subscription data so
you can determine if the target audience of a publication matches with
the audience for your product or service. You will have little success
if you target the wrong audience who have little interest in what you
are selling.
Making the content work for you
Developing the content for your article is obviously critical to your
success with this marketing method. It is also important to realize
that whilst some editors will accept promotional material, others will
not. You will therefore need to think carefully about how your article
is constructed. One way to approach this is to have a few different
versions of the piece to hand from one that overtly promotes your
product or service to one that does so more subtly. You can then
choose which version to submit to the editor based on their
preferences.
An effective publicity angle for those that do accept some form of
promotional advertising in an article is to present your product or
service as a solution to a problem. To increase your chances of
publication, look to base it on topical events. For instance, if you
are selling anti-spam software you can base it around a piece that
discusses the implications of the latest laws against spam. If you do
not have the time to pen such advertising, then an alternative is to
have someone interview you about a topic, and ask them to put the
material together for you.
Advertising your business through promotional online articles works
wonders for businesses all around the world. Make sure you dont miss
out on this global promotional opportunity.
Scott F. Geld is the Marketing Director of MarketingBlaster.com, a
company providing targeted traffic and leads:
http://www.MarketingBlaster.com