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Buy More Beads at the Beadin' Path |
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Written by Jan Parker
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Wednesday, 20 June 2007 |
 One of the purposes of a blog is to provide new content for the website. Our wonderfully smart web person, Wally, says it helps to get you further up in the search engines. Search engines, it seems, like new content. I suppose it means a site is fresh and not just something that has been sitting out there with the same old stuff for 5 years. It’s also nice if it contains something that sends a message, either subliminal or right out there to buy more of our beads. I thought maybe I should put a not so subliminal message into my blogs like “Buy more beads at The Beadin’ Path.” So you will see this phrase though out this blog. Not that it’s hard to find beads to love on our website. It’s probably harder to stop finding beads you want to buy once you’ve “blown your wad.”
Heather and I have been trying to come up with an advertising budget for 2007 – this is our life right now, doing our 2007 budget when it’s already half way into the year. Advertising in the trade magazines like Bead and Button and Beadwork is quite expensive. They are quality magazines and we have always thought that it makes more sense to use our advertising dollars to advertise to a targeted market than to do television, newspaper or radio ads that reach the general public. It used to be easy to decide which magazines to advertise in. Now there has been an explosion of beading magazines! Do we put ads in them all; do we do smaller ads and spread out the budget  in more magazines or do just the top sellers and buy bigger ads? This is another one of the many times in business you wish you had a crystal ball! “Buy more beads at The Beadin’ Path.”
There are so many bead ads in the magazines now that another challenge is to get people to notice you. Often I find it isn’t the biggest ads that catch my eye but the one with something different. Everyone has Swarovski bicones, for example, but if an ad has a picture of a really fantastic handmade glass bead, even if the ad is only an inch across, it will command attention. For this reason, we are going to start featuring more of what we think makes us special as a bead company, our unique beads; the stuff that people love to paw through and come up with treasures. Heather and I like to “paw” so we assume others do as well. “Buy more beads at The Beadin’ Path.”
So, I’d love to get some input from you readers. Which bead magazines, if any do you read? Do you read the ads? Do you think web advertising like Google ad words or Yahoo is more effective in deciding where you buy your beads? What works with you? If it works with you, it probably works with other beaders as well. What is the most important thing in an ad to you, the prices, the beads, the features on the websites, like instructions or articles? Email me with your thoughts. Heather and I would LOVE to hear from you! You can be our crystal ball! “Buy more beads at The Beadin’ Path.” |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 19 July 2007 )
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