If you advertise in a newspaper or magazine, you know that you've succeeded if a customer picks up the phone and calls with an order.
But what happens of it's 11pm on a Saturday night, and the customer has a couple of questions that need answering first? If you're working at home, and you're not doing anything else, you could handle the call yourself, or hope that the customer will call on Monday morning without having called your competitors or just forgotten.
Here are a couple of ways you can provide potential customer with a round-the-clock service, without having to personally give a round-the-clock service.
Firstly get a Web page, and publicise it's Web address in your advert. Make sure that you mention that the Web page features much more information than could be included in your advert, and an order form. If your potential customer has access to the Web, they will hopefully be able find out all the information from your Web page just a few seconds after seeing your advert.
If you can't face doing a Web page yourself, find someone to create one for you. A basic page, with about 1000 words of text, and a couple of pictures shouldn't cost more that about £100 per year.
If you want nothing to do with Web sites, think about a second answer-phone with a longer recorded message with more detailed information that customers could be seeking.
Or if you have an old computer, think about turning it into a sophisticated telephone answering service, where customers can press their telephone touch-tone buttons to select different information.
Does it work?
The following 10 word advert was placed in 6 issues of Nexus Magazine (total print run 100,000) for just £7.20 per issue, and contains several relevant keywords:
Catastrophism, electricity in astronomy, mythology, revised ancient history, Velikovsky.
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/
The Web address points to the site of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies. Had their name been included in the advert it would have taken up 40% of the space! And their Web site includes pages and pages of additional information. Where else can you reach 100,000 potential customers and offer them all access to all your printed material for under a tenner!
