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 realise 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 don’t miss out on this global promotional opportunity.


Scott F. Geld is the Director of Marketing for MarketingBlaster.com, a company providing targeted traffic and leads: http://www.MarketingBlaster.com

This article was originally written: October, 2003


Copyright 2003, Scott F. Geld