There are many companies in South Africa offering the marketplace marketing services. For my experience with these organizations is that they truly want you to spend way too much so they can get their 16% rebate from where you advertise. A few years ago I remember all too often cute girls with big boobs and low cut tops knocking on my door tried to sell me advertising. Being a man a fell for this once or twice till I woke up with the cost of my advertising going through the roof.

So what do I look for in a company that is offering marketing services?

• Does the agent sitting in front of me look and act professional?
• Does the agent remotely know what they’re talking about or are they trying to sell the hype?
• Does the publication or the service offered get in front of my target market?
• If it does what is the coverage and is it audited?
• Is there any other publication of service they can get to the same target market in a more cost effective manner?
• How long will this investment get a response?
• How does the company in question help me monitor the results of the marketing to make sure that I am getting a good return on my investment?
• Does the company have references that I can call to confirm the information that I have received?
• Last but not least if I like everything that I’ve heard can I afford it?

These questions have saved me a small fortune on marketing and has proved to be very effective in getting a better result and a better return on my investment. I no longer get bam boozled as I investigate where I am going invest my hard earned cash.

The buzzword today is converged marketing and this is utilizing traditional marketing techniques and online marketing techniques to achieve a great results. They are not many companies that I know they can do this as the skill is still in favor of traditional marketing.

Online marketing is to me is where companies should be investing a big portion of their marketing budget. This is because the trend is changed and more people are using the search engines to find what they’re looking for than your old traditional directories. There is countless amounts of information that you can get to verify whether or not you should invest in this form of media. You can see how many people search for you on a daily and monthly basis and what search phrase they used.

This to me is taken all guesswork out of the advertising and has empowered me to know what my return on investment will be. The key element here and where the catch is you have to be on the first page of the search results for the search phrases. To be on the first page of Google takes a lot of work and knowledge to get to there. It is not something that you do once off and expect to stay in that position. Every single day there is work to be done to ensure that your competitors do not over take you in the rankings. My advice to you for this marketing service is call on the professional search engine marketing company as you will get a better result by doing so.