[boxby]

Ebay reckon their click through rate is about 0.075%

[pvcprinting]

The Salon is a business I bought as a direct result of my pvc printing.
My wife now runs it offering Tanning & Beauty services

We ran the coupon last year purely to benchmark if it was worth the outlay of continually advertising in the local press

The coupon simple offered a free tanning voucher when cut out and handed in.........we only got i voucher back

As we are a small town, most of our business is repeat business and word of mouth...we are the best ran salon (out of 3) in town offering the hottest/fastest sunbeds along with the best service....its been our aim since opening

Any advertising is now done utilising our large front window and its prominant position in town by way of posters (A0) size

We no longer spen £1000 p/mth on advertising

[James]

Originally Posted by boxby

I raised this once before on UKBF, but I still don't get why people spend money on banner advertising and other forms which have click through/enquiry rates of 0.1%?

It builds branding, I'd advertise everywhere if I could afford it

Low conversions are fairly common as people are just seeing what you do unless there's an offer or similar being advertised on your banner - in which case you'd expect more conversions if it's a good one. Of course your site could have been bookmarked for future use.

James.

[An Oasis]

I find this a very flaky but interesting question. Flaky? Yes is it far too generalised a question to have a right or wrong answer to.
As someone who operates in niche markets the answer has to be no. Advertising done on a splurge basis is the biggest waste of spend ever.

However, if you analysis and understand the niche and are prepared to have a strategic approach to what you do then, yes it should. There is no doubt that just flinging money at a project is the worst way forward. I am amazed that large corporates spend the way they do, on branding (branding in the traditional sense is now dead), they are wasting millions. Whilst most people are either too stupid or too lazy to do the research, eventually they will wake up and realise that the large corporates do not actually make their products they just stick a label on them and charge an inflated price for doing so.

Before you can successfully advertise in any medium you have to know and understand that medium. That may mean that you have to try out many approaches until you know and understand how the medium works.

At the core, you have to understand what you potential clients want and this takes time, money and careful research. Until you can get into the minds of the client, you are wasting money on advertising.

[Gareth PC]

I think it's Harder to sell a service through advertising than it is to sell a product.

I also think that forum advertising has 2 sides: I don't think that regulars react to forum ads so well - like metioned they can just switch off. However with a Forum (especially as this one) you start to acumulate a wealth of information

for example:
someone one day thinks "does advertising work?" so they google it and in the results they find a post called "Does Advertising Work?" at a site called a1businessforums.co.uk - that person then hops on the site to read. They just want the info so they come - they read - they leave.

Good Forums (that are not just social forums but also information repositories) receive a lot of that kind of traffic, and that's the kind of folks that the advertising is better aimed at.