Creative advertising can be the most fun and effective form of small business advertising.  This is where you can use your creativity to create not only fun and attractive advertising for your local business marketing strategy it can generate high quality prospects for your business.  The most powerful form of creative advertising is video, and I'm going to give you a few quick tips on how to create video for your web page, fast where all you will need is your computer.  This is a great way to start video marketing your business if you have a fear of being in front of camera or having your voice recorded and it could be your favorite video creation process.

First create a quick script or story for your video, think of what you want to say in your message to get people's attention, keep it and then have them want to become your customers.  All you need is between 30 to 60 seconds of story that is more than enough for capturing the attention of your target audience and to persuade them to be your customers.

Once you have a script or a story board ready find royalty free photos and images that are relevant to what your small business offers or to the message you want to portray in your video.  You can find royalty free images at Fotolia.com or iStockphoto.com.  Never just randomly take an image from the web or scan an image that you found unless it is an image that you took.  You could get sued, if that image is licenced, for royalties that you owe for using that image.

When you have your story and images you are ready to start to put it all together.  To do this you may use Power Poing for PC users or Keynote for Mac users.  Open your program of choice and start inserting the images and the text any way you like it.  You do not need to create any animation. Each slide should contain an image and text for your story line.  Play around with the font and do any   effects you want with the images but keep it simple.   When you have finished all your slides the way you envisioned it choose the 'Save As' function and save your slide presentation as jpeg files.  Be sure to also save the presentation so that you can use it as a template for your other videos.

Then open Windows Movie Maker for PC users or iMovie for Mac and import your slide show jpeg files. Then click and drag our images into the story board in the order you want.  Play with the video effects, slide transitions and titles and credits.  If you are using Windows Movie Maker or iMovie both are very easy and user friendly.   To make the video more professional and engaging ad a music clip or two switching musing in in mid movie keep your viewers attention.  Be sure to add royalty free music which your can purchase at my favorite place MusicBakery.com or just Google "royalty free music".  

Lastly be sure to always include a call to action.  Tell people exactly what you want them to do and how to do it at the end of your video.  Never assume they will know what they should do to become your customers.  When you finish your video all you have to do is to upload your video on to Youtube or other video sharing sites, copy and paste the embed code on to where you want the video to show on your website. 

Another option is to just outsource your creative advertising and video creation. This way you can have a professional copy for your video and do not have to worry about all the technical aspects of video creation.  That way you can just take care of your customers.

 Every successful business strategy has professional copywriting behind it.  However when it comes to local business marketing often times business owners think that just getting traffic and having a website where they offer their products is good enough.  Many businesses expect prospect to purchase products by seeing the value in the product and by the customer needs it.  Unfortunately people are more complex that and that's why having good Copywriting on any of your promotional material is one of the most important business strategy you can have.  People by emotionally and they rationalize it by having make sense, and that is the purpose of having great sales copy on your website or any promotional content as part of your local business marketing.

Here are 10 steps to creating good copy quickly and easily

1.  Do Your Market Research: I say this many times in my article so if you read any of them I hope you are getting the message.  This is the foundation for everything so if you have not done your market research get go do it.  Your goal is to discover what problems your  market has.  Don't worry its quick and painless and you can see how to do quick, simple market research watching my "Doing Your Market Research" video. 

Ask yourself these Question:

1. Who are you?
2. What do you sell?
3. Why are you in this business?
4. What do you do for your customers?

Imagine this is your "Elevator Chat" with a potential customer.

2.  Know your ideal customer, his/her needs: You can find out exactly who your customer is by doing market research.  Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer.  Ask yourself:

1. Who are you selling to?
2. What are his/her needs, where does it hurt…
3. What does he/she need to hear from you to feel good about buying your product or service?

Avoid hype and pitching.  Just really think about your customers and relate to their needs and pains.

3. Your Uniques Selling Proposition:    This is a way to set up interest and get your foot in the door. This is where a lot of local business owners get confused and go horribly wrong.  It is not about "what" you sell but about "what" you sell DOES for your customer. 

Also keep away from cleaver slogans. Being non-cleaver and giving specifics is what  works best.  In other words, keep off the BS. For example "I help small and local businesses brand and market their business on the Internet effectively  by creating measurable results and to get more leads, customers and make more money than using traditional marketing strategies."

4.  Your List of Features and Benefits: A list of the things that your product or service does and what benefits does it hold to your customer.  An example of feature is: downloadable e-book.  The benefit of this feature is: your customer can read it instantly, no need to wait for it.  Thse will be your bullet points for your sales letters, ads, or website content where you talk about your product/services.

5. Titles & Headlines: Your titles and headlines should be catchy, but true without hype.  Somethng that will peak the readers curiosity of and them want to know more.  Here's one example "How Build a Luxurious Deck Without Lifting a Finger" if you are carpenter.  Here you are targeting the busy professionals who want a luxurious deck but doesn't have the time or desire to do it themselves.  This type of hook headline could very well speak to that audience.  How about this one, "The Smiths Got $20,000 Over Asking On Their House By Doing This One Easy Step" for a real estate agent who has a track record of over asking sales.  This type of headline could very well speak and peak interest of a person looking to sell their house. One thing to note here is that every word in the headline must earn its place.  

6. Your Story and Voice:  This is an important part not only for professional copywriting but also as a business strategy.  This is where you expose your  credibility and create your voice.  This is also where you would identify with your customer and hint, without bragging, why you are the one that will help them.

7. Making a Huge Promise: This is where you make a big promise to your customers. The trick here is to have a good balance, right between hard cold reality and magic.  For example the cold hard reality that to get rich you need to work really hard to make the money you dream of and the magic promise is that you will get rich while you sleep because you wished it, in other words winning the lottery.

8. The Guarantee: 

9. Shaking Things Up: This is where you rattle the cage a little, by creating hand wringing urgency and scarcity . Offering limited time offers, limited number of products/seats available or while quantities last, products.  There is a reason these are so widely used… they  work.  People fear of being left out or not getting something someone else has.  This is where you reach out and grab people by their greed. This is were you would also sweeten the deal and offer money saving bonuses or extras to sweeten the deal and get their mouths really watering. 

10. The Close: Here is when you tell people how to order or contact you to get their sweet deal.  Tell them 

what to do and never assume that they know how to order or contact you. Spell everything out step by step, take their hand and guide them on how to become your customers.

Copy writing speaks to the psychology of why people buy they buy emotionally but they need to rationalize their purchase logically to others.  Well written copy  will do just that and make the customer unable to refuse any offer that you put in front of them especially if your previous product and offers were of great value to them.

Professional copywriting is what separates the successful business strategy from the unsuccessful.  It can be quick and easy if you understand your ideal customers and follow these 10 steps.  Write your draft quickly and then make at least 6 other edits to get the perfect copy.  Each word in the Sales letter, website copy, blog post or video should have a reason and earned its place in the copy.  

A fast and easy way of getting killer copy for a website, blog or a video is to hire professional copywriter.  You can do that by requesting a consultation with me by filling in your contact information on the form on the top right hand of this page.

If you read my posts earlier posts you know that I prefer Wordpress based websites. Not only are these sites easy to install, maintain, change the look and feel of these sites but its also very easy to add content key for website promotion in text, images, video and audio formats.  Yet this is what most GTA small business owner tend to overlook in their local marketing strategies.   

When it comes to website promotion the content on your websit/blog is vital.  Add new content at least  once per week, unless you are in a strongly competitive market, then should be created at least every day.  This might seem daunting but you can create content in just 10 minutes.  You do this by taking 10 minutes out of your day to read up and educate yourself on your niche market.  The next day sit down set a timer for 10 minutes and start writing what you have learned the day before.  Yes it will be bad, really bad but who cares no one but you will see it and you will come back the next day to edit it. You can also refer to my article on creating 

 content.

Successful website promotion is founded by your keyword research.  You need to know which search phrases for your local business market are used most when your customers are searching for services or products that your business offers in GTA.  Be smart about it look for keyword terms with the most searches and a moderate amount of competition. The weaker the competition the better is you choose to compete with the big dogs, with deep pockets, in your business niche you could spend a lot of your energy and get little to know results.  

Your content title should always contain your main keyword in the title and in the first paragraph and at least three more in the body of your content, place them strategically so that your content flows naturally.  you may also use other variation of your main keyword term this will make your content even more relevant to the search engines when their 

 spider through your website content.  

Always create valuable content when promoting a website and do not be 

 with your keywords.  Google will know what you are doing right away and will penalized your business site and even block it from its search engine. Create how to articles, tips and tricks, interesting things related to your niche market or just something you'd like to share  with your market that you feel they would enjoy.

it is also important to find your voice in your writing.  Do not try to imitate someone else's style, develop your own, you will find more followers and fans for your content that will connect with you and eventually become your customers or clients.  Since this content is for your website promotion so be sure to create compelling articles and, once in a while include some sales or offer copy at the end of your articles or videos to either ask people to contact you, opt into your contact list or let them know how to buy your products.  

At other times just ask people to interact with your website by asking question, for opinions to solicit more comments for your 

 post or video.  It never hurts to ask and if you never ask you will never get.  

I hope this article gave you a little idea about hot to promote a website with blog