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Promote Your Business with Balloon Advertising

If you are the owner or manager of a business, you understand how hard it can be to find great new ways to attract customers. Sure, there are a lot of ways out there, but how many can your company afford? There is one way of advertising that will not hurt your company budget and is a very effective way to attract much needed attention. Balloon advertising is a wonderful way to advertise. There are a wide variety of companies out there that will sell you these balloons at a very good price. Some companies even rent the balloons to companies for temporary use. If you are looking for something unusual, you can even find companies that will custom make your balloons for you.

Balloon advertising increase sales.

These giant balloons are a great way to attract attention to a sale, special event, or just to the business in general. They come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and can be imprinted with whatever message it is that you would like to convey. When it comes to promoting your company, there are few ways that you can do so that will not cost you a fortune. This is one great way that companies have been utilizing more and more over the last few years. It seem to be very effective as well. Customers cannot seem to ignore a giant balloon, whereas they would most likely drive by a sign and never read it. Anyone with a business should try this practice at least once.

Giant advertising balloon with vertical banner

Advertising blimps work well also!

Advertising blimps increase sales.

Call 1-800-791-1445 for more information.

Balloon Advertising Promotes Your Business is a post from: Advertising Balloons

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The recession had a strong impact on how small business spend money on online marketing and advertising, and pretty much on everything else that has anything to do with online visibility. Many businesses resort to DIY tools in an attempt to save money. For some the strategy works (particularly for those with some skill), but many others fail lamentably. Micromanaging is never a lucrative solution: it’s time consuming, unrewarding, and it burns up resources that could be used effectively somewhere else. There are alternatives to DIY that don’t break the bank, and, in the end, have significant benefits. Crowdsourcing is one of them.

From design, to writing and funding, there are crowdsourcing solutions for every need. The benefits are obvious for small biz, although not so obvious for those service providers who compete for the job. Instead of spending time on outsourcing a creative agency to do the job, small businesses can now call for entries by submitting a creative brief to any of the crowdsourcing sites reviewed below. The advantages for small biz can be easily summarized:

• no fear of going “over budget” since the price is set up by the customer at the beginning of the contest
• no fear that the designer will get the money and then leave the job undone. The payment only follows if a winner is selected
• clients can provide feedback, request revisions and send messages to designers
• guaranteed satisfaction – the client doesn’t have to select a winner, if none of the designs don’t meet his/her expectations
• all rights which subsist in copyright, patent rights, trademark rights, designs and etc, are transferred to the customer
• if done right, crowdsourcing can also facilitate the incorporation of consumers tastes and preferences into the development of brands

Despite a number of detractors, crowdsourcing is a practice that is here to stay. Even world renowned brands use the resourceto motivate and engage consumers. An example is Pepsis 2007 Design Our Pepsi Can (http://www.designourpepsican.com/) promotion, which put the winning design on 500 million Pepsi cans, and also offered a $10,000 prize for the winner.

The competition got over 100.000 entries. For a company like Pepsi, the price paid for this promotion was extremely low. In addition to getting over 100.000 creative ideas (that can eventually inspire other designs), they also got massive media coverage.

The situation for small business is somewhat different, unless they decide to pay more for a design and announce the contest with a press release to call for customer feedback as well. Many businesses, however, prefer to run such contests behind closed doors, and all the following sites allow and encourage private contests:

99designs.com is a Webby Awards winner (based on popularity) and the site with the most numerous community of designers. Customers can submit design briefs calling for any type of design in the following categories: identity design (logo and stationery); web design (web page design, WordPress themes, Twitter backgrounds, banner ads); print design; graphic design (button designs and others); and finally, merchandise designs (like t-shirts, and clothing). The site is the most visually appealing, and extremely easy to use. A 100% money back warranty is also in place (including listing fees).

crowdSPRING is playing with the big dogs. Among their customers, you will find names like LG, SmugMug and others. The company received broad recognition, and a few awards like a Stevie Award in 2009, and the ITA CityLIGHTS Award for a newcomer business in 2009. There are over 65.000 users, a mix of designers and writers, that compete in the following categories graphic design (logo, stationery, illustration, clothing design, print design, and package graphics); web design (widget design, email template design, landing page design, banner ads, icon and button design, header design); industrial design (packaging design, product design); and writing projects (company naming, product name, tagline, web content). A money back guarantee in place as well.

DesignCrowd is less popular and has only something over 16.000 users ready to compete for a project. There are less contest categories than offered by 99designs and crowdSPRING: logo design, web design, business card design, stationery design, brochure design, flyer design, poster design, graphic design, t-shirt design and vector illustration. The money prizes awarded here are lower than expected, but in the end, it’s the choice of the customer how much he/she is willing to pay for a design. However, a low budget will not motivate more talented designers to participate, and this will be reflected in the quality of the design entries received. A Money back guarantee in place.

Prova – a Beta newcomer, a bit different from the above, although in essence it seems to offer the same services. The general idea is to let the small business owner submit a brief with design specs for anything they can think of. This includes gift certificates, invitations, announcements, key-chains, magnets, lawn signs, billboards and more. In addition, customers can also crowdsource here voiceover narration, audio books, radio advertisements, instructional videos, TV commercials, website videos and YouTube videos. Prova doesn’t look like much at the moment – apparently the site will be redesigned in steps, through contests, by its own community. Interestingly, Prova appears more social than the other sites, and promises to promote the designers that win the contests, and the companies that use their services. A Money back guarantee is expected.

GuerraCreativa – another beta, with less than 10000 designers ready for work. It focuses solely on design, but adds flash and 3D design to the offering. It’s an Argentinian-based startup, with wording that raises a few eyebrows, but the quality of the designs featured on the homepage is at lease more decent than the description of the service: “We provide you the battlefield and weaponry to conquer the creative world.” In the end, the wording is right on target, after all, “guerra” is Spanish for war. Money back guarantee as well.

To conclude, if you run a small business and you need creative work on a budget, you can launch a contest on any of these sites. Each has its own advantages: 99designs and crowdSPRING have large communities, DesignCrowd is very cheap, Prova allows you to promote your contest and to get feedback from your peers and customers, and GuerraCreativa is ideal for flash and 3D designs. No matter where you go, remember that, among the “cons” faced by the crowdsourcing sites, lack of originality (copied designs) ranks supreme. Always ask for feedback from third parties before choosing a winner. To encourage the more talented designers to participate add a few more dollars to the prize, and make the contest challenging and fun. The bottom line is, services like these can take the pinch out of recession woes, and potentially lead to far more creative collaborations.