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.