I have been to several of the world-class theme parks in Southern California lately. If you would like to see some of the beloved animated movie and TV characters “live” these  parks are the place for you.

Of course Disneyland is the first park that comes to mind, with Dumbo, Mickey, Goofy and the others. If you’d like some good information about planning a trip to the Disneyland Resort, check out the SoCal Vacation Guru. Disney has no-doubt done the most effective job of bringing imaginary characters to life, much to the delight of us all.

Knott’s Berry Farm is not far from Disneyland, and you can continue your movie star hunt by visiting Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts clan. The Peanuts guys have been at Knott’s Berry Farm for quite awhile now and seem to feel at home there.

Hit Universal Studios Hollywood and you can find Spiderman, Betty Boop, the Flintstones, Woody Woodpecker and a squadron of other beloved Universal characters that have been at the heart of many television shows and famous movies. Here is a  site that offers what the locals know about visiting the characters who live at Universal Studios.

Lastly, we drive up north a ways and stop at Six Flags Magic Mountain. The Six Flags roller coasters seem to be the biggest draw to the park for most visitors. As soon as you get inside, you realize that the place is run by the Looney Tunes characters from the Warner Brothers cartoons.

Here and there around the park you will find some of your favorites, like Daffy, Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. The childrens’ area has attractions centered around these whacky celebrities, which is a nice break from the thrill rides that dominate the place. You won’t have to go too far to find a couple of the Looney Tunes folks here and there in the park.

Recently at one of my small marketing meetings that I hold on a monthly basis I was asked what I felt was one of the better ways to market online. There are many ways that you can market your website or your offline business on the internet. There are different types of free internet advertising that you can look into and see if there is a fit for your business. Also you can place ads on other websites that are complimentary to your site but not competitive. That way if someone is on a site looking for flooring and that person sees your ad for plumbing they might click through to your site. This can be set up through pay per click or banner advertising.

Other methods of marketing or advertising for free online can be through the article directories. These work great if you have a website and want to not just drive traffic to your site, but also want to add some backlinks to your site to increase your search engine rankings. I currently use this method a fair amount and get some pretty good results. Many people that view my articles on the article directory do end up coming back to my site. This is called conversion. Very similar to sending out 1000 postcards and getting 20 calls which leads to 8 sales. In this case the conversion rate would be .8% which is fairly low, but if you have high margins then this might make a lot of sense. In the online world you want good conversions from all of your advertising, whether the ad was free or paid for you want to see some sort of results.

Some classified ads take a long time to post an ad, while others you can post free ads quickly. I have found that if I have to go back everyday to delete my post then put in a new post that I am taking too much of my time for that method of advertising. I would prefer to pay for my ad and be done with that method except for the tracking and tweaking of that ad.

Other types of online marketing are buying business listings in a business directory. These work great for offline companies, as long as the directory is getting some form of exposure you will be found and get work from that listing. Unlike a yellow pages ad that will cost you up to $30,000 most directories are between $250 and $2000 per year. You get much better value from this than you would from the yellow pages ad.

There is much more methods to online marketing that you will want to research and test in your own business. Good Luck.