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Your EnterQuest Bulletin - Issue 194
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| Thought for the week: "In business, words are words; explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality." Harold S. Geneen |
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In this week's issue:
If
you have any questions about your business idea or target market, or need help tracking down a grant, subsidy or business support
in your local area, then send an e-mail with your query and location to the EnterQuest
information team and we'll do our best to help.
Send
your question to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.
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To
access over 800 factsheets, guides and small business reports, go
to www.scavenger.net. |
More tips for writing a winning small ad
Nobody can guarantee a winning advert, not even the greatest copywriters in the world.
We've made the point many times previously in EnterQuest that the only real way to know for sure if an ad is going to work is to test it first. However, there are a number of techniques you can use in your ad (and your sales letter) that will give it a better chance of being a winner.
In general, when advertising a product, you'll need to use as much space as possible - within your budget, of course. The old sales adage of 'the more you tell, the more you sell' also applies to advertising and to writing direct sales letters, whereby if you tell your prospects everything they need to know, your response rates and results will increase.
But for most new businesses, a campaign running with full page ads (or more) is going to be beyond the reach of their marketing budget.
However, it is possible to get great results from small ads, and there are several tactics you can use that will help you to increase response rates and stretch your marketing budget further.
Here are some tips to help you do this:
1) Write a half-page or full-page ad first, telling your full pitch and story. Then work backwards to condense your advert into its bare bones to convey the real crux of your message in just a few lines. This is a useful way to create your small ad.
2) Spend at least as much time on your headline as you do on the whole message. Your headline is the most important technical part of your advert - around 80-90% of an ad's success can be attributed to its headline.
3) Make your headline compelling. The headline's job is to make sure that your prospect reads the rest of the ad. A powerful headline should be benefit-driven, news-oriented, curiosity-driven, or how-to-oriented. Here are some examples of benefit-driven headlines that might be used in a small ad:
- "Now you can get a slimmer figure without dieting"
- "Amazing new formula cures arthritis pain"
- "How to get a flood of new prospects on a shoestring"
4) Make your headline as large as possible. This could be up to a third or even half the size of your whole ad.
5) Try to write your ad in a style that sounds more like news, or is written in an editorial (often referred to as 'advertorial') style. Studies have shown that consumers will read news articles seven times more frequently than they do adverts. Cloaking your ad in a newsy, editorial format will not only attract attention and interest - it will also banish incredulity and doubt, which are major roadblocks to consumer response.
6) Use bullet points or a short list of benefits in place of sentences. For example, instead of saying, "On request we will send you a free trial of our product" just say, "Free trial". In fact, ads that offer free trials, samples, special offers, reports, catalogues and info packs enjoy considerably higher responses.
7) Always include a call to action in your ad, and details of how to contact you by phone or e-mail in bold type or italics, or in a box. This is often placed at the bottom of the ad or closely following your headline, and should include trigger response phrases such as "Call now", "Come in today" and "Sign up right now", which will compel your prospect to take action. Always make your call to action explicit and clear, so your prospect has no doubt about exactly what they have to do.
As with all advertising campaigns, you should track your results and response rates, and keep the best-pulling ad as your 'control piece'.
Although none of these tips alone can guarantee a successful ad campaign, if they are used in combination, and with different elements of your ad tested regularly, your potential for creating that winning small ad will increase.
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For hundreds more practical tips and techniques to help you find new customers and increase sales on a shoestring budget, check out the UK Small Business Marketing Bible. |
Meeting your income tax deadlines in 2007
The HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April the following year. If you're self-employed or in a partnership, you'll need to submit your income tax self-assessment forms and make payments by certain dates to ensure that you avoid penalties for late submissions and interest on late payment.
31 January 2007
- Submit your tax return for the tax year that ended on 5 April 2006 by this date or you'll incur a £100 penalty.
- Pay the balance of tax and National Insurance (NI) due for the year ended 5 April 2006. You'll be charged an automatic 5% surcharge if you don't make this payment by 28 February 2007.
- Pay the first instalment of your tax for the current year.
31 July 2007
- You'll be charged a second penalty of £100 if you still haven't sent HMRC the tax return that was due on 31 January.
- You'll be charged a second automatic 5% surcharge if you haven't made the balancing payment that was due on 31 January.
- The second payment for your current year's tax is also due now.
30 September 2007
- Submit your self-assessment form by this date if you want HMRC to calculate your tax for you.
- If you're submitting a paper tax return by this date, HMRC will collect any outstanding amounts of less than £2,000 via your Pay As You Earn (PAYE) tax code (if you have one), which spreads the payments over a year. If you complete your tax return online, you have until 30 December 2007 to submit it.
For more information about your income tax self-assessment deadlines, as well as the deadlines that apply to other types of tax affecting businesses, check out our guide to meeting tax deadlines in 2007.
Each
week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business
ideas in the UK.
Here
is this week's idea:
Most searched-for brands
The following list displays the top ten most searched-for brands and household names in the UK, according to online competitive intelligence service Hitwise.
1) eBay
2) Bebo
3) Amazon
4) Argos
5) MySpace
6) BBC
7) easyJet
8) Autotrader
9) Tesco
10) Ryanair
Hitwise reckons Bebo - a social networking site that enables people to stay in touch with friends - will soon overtake eBay as the number one brand looked for in search engines. With YouTube and Wikipedia also reaching the top 20, Web 2.0 sites are making up a fair proportion of the most popular names in the UK.
Regularly improving your vocabulary is not just about learning a new word and its meaning. It will improve your general knowledge and make you feel and act smarter in all sorts of personal and business situations.
Do you know what the word 'censure' means?
a) to ban or remove parts of a work that are considered unsuitable
b) to strongly or formally criticise or disapprove
c) to approve or recommend
d) to restrict release within a particular time period
Answer at the end of the Bulletin.
The following topical business issues have been reported in the media over the past seven days. Did your radar pick them up?
1) With all the diet ads on TV, you can tell it's January - but which healthy food has shown massive growth of 523% over the past five years, according to market analyst Mintel?
a) Grapefruits
b) Nuts and seeds
c) Pro-biotic yoghurts
d) Smoothies
2) The UK's supermarkets have been criticised for selling alcohol at such low prices that other retailers can't compete, with a pint of beer now cheaper than what in one chain?
a) Chips
b) Water
c) Milk
d) Bread
3) What major change has come into effect for the UK's Top 40 chart, heralding new opportunities for independent record labels and unsigned artists?
a) All downloads now count towards the chart
b) The Top 40 has become the Top 100
c) The chart will now be calculated twice weekly instead of just on Sundays
d) Songs released abroad now count towards the UK chart
Answers at the end of the Bulletin.
Small businesses can get free anti-virus software
Small businesses are being offered free anti-virus software amid claims that some Internet surfers are downloading viruses and spyware via bogus security sites. The free AntiVirus Internet security software has been made available by PC Tools, which also offers a paid-for version of the protection. The firm, which has won a number of awards for its security software, is also developing a new program combining spyware protection with its anti-virus offering.
Festive sales were OK after all
Despite what several doom-mongers predicted about seasonal spending on the high street being poor, it turns out that retailers had quite a merry Christmas after all. The British Retail Consortium's (BRC) monthly Retail Sales Monitor showed a 2.5% increase in December sales, on a like-for-like basis with the previous year. Food sales remained strong, but clothing sales have finally picked up.
New Google blog search
A search engine specifically for the blogging community is one of the latest strings to Google's bow. Google Blog Search trawls the web for blogs relating to particular keywords, and has been designed to enable you to get really specific results to help you keep up with news and comments about issues relevant to your sector. It's also really easy to add your blog to the index and thereby get it into Google's radar, making it easier for other bloggers and potential customers to find you and your site.
Top consumer trends digest
This month's Trendwatching newsletter is offering a practical digest of its predictions for the top five consumer trends in 2007. The analysis covers lifestyle services trends, along with the Internet and Web 2.0 (as well as Web 3.0 and Web 4.0). Helpfully, it even lists the business opportunities emerging from some of the different types of trend.
Website to boost social networking
A new UK website is aiming to join the social networking revolution by bringing local businesses and communities together. Danny Bull started My Neighbourhoods because of his frustration at being unable to find a decent builder locally. The website, which is free to join and list business services on, allows people to get to know their locality, share information and expertise, buy and sell goods online, and search for local businesses by postcode, SourceWire reports.
This newly published manual is a collection of tried and tested techniques to encourage you to make the most of your creativity. It's packed with over 70 quick and easy exercises to help you tackle problems in new ways, guiding you through the process of brainstorming fresh ideas for a new project as well as breaking down stubborn issues into manageable chunks. The book claims to be particularly relevant for people engaged in creative disciplines like marketing, advertising and product design. Check out:
Just one word answer
The answer is b).
Censure means to strongly or formally criticise, rebuke or disapprove.
You may be censured by your bank manager if you exceed your agreed overdraft limit. |
How's your business radar answers
1) The answer is d) - smoothies have shown fivefold growth since 2001 and are likely to treble again by 2011, says new research by Mintel.
2) The answer is b) - at 54p per pint, beer is cheaper than the equivalent rate of 57p for a pint of bottled water in one supermarket chain, says the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group.
3) The answer is a) - all downloads now count towards the songs that make up the Top 40 chart, which music industry experts reckon could offer good opportunities for unsigned artists with a cult following online. |
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Good luck
The EnterQuest Team
This information is meant as a starting point only. Whilst all reasonable efforts have been made, the publisher makes no warranties that the information is accurate and up-to-date and will not be responsible for any errors or omissions in the information nor any consequences of any errors or omissions. Professional advice should be sought where appropriate. |
