Marketing Strategies that Pay Tenfold
| Category: Marketing Strategy | Date: 2001-05-09 |
Linda Hunt- © copyright 2001
These are just some of my favorite marketing strategies. Theres so many other strategies of course, but these are the ones I picularly enjoy and have great success with. By using combinations of these strategies daily, I have been able to enjoy a very successful business. Theres loads of marketing strategies you can use, and by using combinations of them ALL on a regular basis you are bound for success. Use these marketing strategies to the maximum to gain the best results for your business.
Lets look at them in more detail:
1) Email Signature Lines:
This is a very simple marketing strategy to use. Just think about how many emails you send out within your business dealings every single day, if youre like me I send quite a few. This means my message is getting out to a lot of people. Email Signature Lines only have to be about 4 to 5 lines usually containing an email or URL. If you use different email accounts make sure you have your email signature lines on all of them. Be sure to change them as you have new programs to promote or messages you want to get across. Why not try this great idea - find a business person with a similar target audience who sends out about the same amount of emails a day as you and ask them to swap signature lines with you, nifty idea dont
you think!
2) Lead Generators:
This is a good way to start building your mailing list. Normally you offer a free product/service in return for some ones email address. Generally you place an advertisement offering a freebie and in order for the person to receive it, they have to respond to a mailto: address (this is when you can collect the email address of the person responding). They will receive an autoresponder that contains the freebie to download. It is very important to make sure that in your autoresponder you provide a link for the person to remove themselves from the mailing list. I have built very targeted mailing lists from this strategy and gained very valuable long term customers. Theres many ways to generate leads, try be creative.
3) Writing Articles:
An Excellent way to get your name out there. Ezine publishers are always looking for content for their ezines/newsletters and websites. Articles are not for advertising purposes, they provide information to people about your area of expertise, however at the end of your article be sure to always put a resource box. Resource boxes always contain the authors name and contact details and sometimes a very brief spiel about how to subscribe to their ezine/newsletter (if they publish one). There are many sites on the net to submit your articles to and many ezine publishers will ask for article submissions in their ezine/newsletter. Theres generally a standard format to use, for example 500 words, 65 characters wide and so on and so forth. Some publishers are happy to take articles with a 1000 words. Be sure to always follow the submission guidelines, you will have a much better chance of getting your article published. You can ask that you be notified before your article is published, this gives you an idea of how much your article/s are being used, which articles, and how many people your message is getting to.
4) Ad Swaps:
I have gained so many great business contacts by doing ad swaps. Ezine publishers will say in their ezine/newsletter whether they do ad swaps. Look for zines/newsletters that have the same target audience as you do, contact the publisher and ask if they will do an ad swap with you. Be mindful that you need to be swapping with publishers that have around the same subscriber numbers as you do. You cant really expect a publisher with a subscriber base of 5,000 and you have 500 subscribers to do an ad swap with you, generally speaking this wont happen. Normally the publisher will place you somewhere near the top of their ezine/newsletter or in a special ad swap section so your ad stands out from the general classified section. You can also negotiate to have it run for ex amount of editions. Its a great way to network with fellow colleagues.
5) Publish an Ezine/Newsletter:
Generally your ezine/newsletter will follow the same theme as your website, for instance, if you have an ebook site your ezine/newsletter theme would be about ebooks and everything related to this subject. If you have more than one website you may consider publishing an ezine/newsletter for each of site. Publishing an ezine/newsletter is a great way of attracting customers who are interested in your product/s or service/s. Some publications are purely informational they have no a dvertising at all (free or fee based), while others offer free and fee based ads to their subscribers, along with other incentives. Keeping your ezine/newsletter interactive is an individual thing, for example, running competitions, having a questions and answer section, tips and hints, free classifieds, and the list goes on. One thing is for sure, publishing an ezine/newsletter can be a very good avenue of income for your business, once you have a large subscriber base you can have a paid advertising section, you can also advertise your own products/services (including affiliate programs you may be involved with) have regular specials etc. The great thing about being a publisher is you can be as creative as you wish.
6) Forums/Message boards:
Becoming an active member of a forum or message board can generate some amazing traffic to your business, I generate most of my traffic from this strategy believe it or not! Again this is not a avenue for advertising (although some message boards do allow you to advertise). The majority of forums are communities of people interested in the same topics and issues, who get together and assist each other with questions they have. For example, most of the forums I participate in are business related and people are only too happy to help you out. I have learned so much about business using this strategy. Forums and message boards are usually monitored for blatant advertising or for folk who like to get on there and abuse others (believe me it happens). Personally I prefer the forums that are monitored. Your probably wondering why I generate traffic from this strategy when I have just said that you cant advertise, well its a bit the same as signature files. After you have posted your message you have the opportunity to put a link to your website or email address or sometimes both it all depends on the forum.
7) Writing e-books:
This is the most interesting way to market your product or service by far. It is one of the most powerful forms of marketing on the net today. Why? Because most people come onto the Internet to search for information and generally its free information they are looking for, so what better way to give that information to them than in the form of an ebook that they can get instantly. I dont care who you are but everyone has information within them that can produce an ebook (but thats another article within itself). So what happens to your ebook after it has been downloaded? Well, if that person likes it enough they are going to recommend it to others (especially if you have given them the right to freely distribute it to). In your ebook you would generally have links to your website, affiliate programs, products and services etc. Imagine if ezine publishers downloaded your ebook and offered it to their subscribers and customers as incentives, before you know it your ebook is all over the net, what do you think this will do for your traffic counter. What you have effectively achieved is called viral marketing, your ebook has spread like a virus. Once it starts it wont stop, for once a virus thats great news! A lot of ebook publishers will also allow you to customize their ebooks with your own website links etc. So if you dont feel comfortable writing an ebook just at the moment, dont despair, you dont really have to, just download an ebook you think your customers will like, customize it and promote it, fantastic strategy for sure!
8) Affiliate Program:
Again, like ebooks affiliate programs have a viral effect. Once you have your own product or service you can set up an affiliate program and have literally thousands of people selling your product/service all over the net. You then compensate your affiliates by paying them a commission, commissions vary depending on the price of the product/service you are promoting. Really good commissions can be as high as 50-60%. You generally provide banners, classified ads, sales letters etc., for your affiliates to use in their marketing efforts. This directs the prospective customers to your direct selling webpage where you close the sale. Some affiliate programs provide a webpage for their affiliates. It is always a good idea to provide regular training for your affiliates, this can be in the form of regular updates via email, an affiliate newsletter, mini courses via email, and, most importantly always make yourself available to your affiliates. This marketing strategy can produce a lot of money if done properly. There are some really good CGI scripts available to help you set up your own affiliate program.
9) Joint Ventures:
This marketing strategy has the potential to earn mega bucks! Once you have a product/service, you can propose a venture with other business owners that have the same target audience as you do.
What happens is you offer the proposal (there are ways of doing this and some great resources to show you how) to say, for example other ezine publishers (I always approach ezine publishers that do ad swaps, I have always found them to be open to joint ventures) and you offer them a percentage of the sale.
Say you had a product that was worth $39.95 and you said in your proposal you were willing to give them 50% of any sales they make, and any other bonuses you may want to give them, imagine what you could earn for basically no effort on your part. If they are an ezine publisher with a subscriber base of 5,000+,(some publishers have subscriber bases of 20,000+ and more) and they promoted your product to their customers, imagine what sort of income you could derive from this little venture, even if only half of the subscribers responded- Ill let you do the maths, exciting isnt it. You can always offer successful sales letter and classified ads that you have used yourself to promote the product/service, to the ezine publisher that takes you up on your proposal. But a lot of the time I find that it is better for them to do their own promotional stuff because they have the relationship with their subscribers, their subscribers trust them and are more likely to buy from their recommendation.
10) Pay Per Click Search Engines:
Pay per click search engines are exactly what the term suggests, that is, you pay for traffic! How much it costs you depends entirely on the seach term you bid for and the amount you bid. For example, if you were to search for the term "Internet marketing" on Go-To you would see at the bottom of each website found, the amount it cost the bidder for any given ranking. The last time I looked, the bid for a number 1 ranking on Go-To for the search term "Internet marketing" was around $4-10. That means every time someone clicks on that particular link it will cost the owner of the website $4-10! Obviously if you were to bid on a term like that you better have a good product and a website that does a very good job of selling it! If you dont have a million dollar advertizing budget, heres the best way to use the "pay per clicks"... Go bargain hunting! Go-To has a great tool you can use for free. Its called the "search suggestion tool" you just type in a search term eg; "Internet marketing" and it brings back a list of all the related searches that were made that month and how many times it was searched for as follows:
Count Search Term
192171 marketing
33313 internet marketing
22260 web marketing
15392 marketing plan
The real bargains are in the less popular search terms, for example, it will only cost you 2 cents per click for the search term "internet marketing guide" thats for a number 1 ranking with over 500 searches per month! Do you see how you can use the "search suggestion tool" to find hundreds, even thousands of search terms that you can bid on for pennies! There are other pay per click search engines besides Go-To but heres a little tip... some of them pay affiliates to use their engines, so you can be subject to abuse eg. affiliates will click on links over and over to increase their commissions without any regard for the one whos footing the bill, YOU! I dont think its a huge problem but be aware that it can happen!
Go-To is my pay per click engine of choice, they are professional, reliable and have by far the most traffic.
There you have it, a few marketing strategies you may want to try out! However the strategy I believe to be the most effective of all, is to create long term relationships with your customers. By this, I mean build your credibility, give the best customer support possible and over deliver with all that you do. I like to show them Im a real person that endeavours to be helpful and encouraging. By doing all these things you will in time gain peoples trust. I can not stress how important this is. Marketing should always be enjoyable, have fun doing it, dont get bogged down in all the hype out there. Believe me, patience, consistency, determination, organization and honesty will win the day every time and pay you tenfold!
The quote below says it all for me.
"Do something for somebody every day for which you do not get paid."..........
Albert Schweitzer
About the author
Linda Hunt is a team member at Home-Business-Ebooks.
Here you will find all the resources you need to Create,
Market & Sell Ebooks: http://www.home-business-ebooks.com
Find all your marketing strategies, advice, tips, products with resale rights and much more when you subscribe to
Home-Business-Ebooks Ezine monthly online publication:
http://www.home-business-ebooks.com/ezine_subscription.html
This article provided by the InfoZone Archives at: http://www.MakingProfit.com
linda@home-business-ebooks.com
http://www.home-business-ebooks.com
These are just some of my favorite marketing strategies. Theres so many other strategies of course, but these are the ones I picularly enjoy and have great success with. By using combinations of these strategies daily, I have been able to enjoy a very successful business. Theres loads of marketing strategies you can use, and by using combinations of them ALL on a regular basis you are bound for success. Use these marketing strategies to the maximum to gain the best results for your business.
Lets look at them in more detail:
1) Email Signature Lines:
This is a very simple marketing strategy to use. Just think about how many emails you send out within your business dealings every single day, if youre like me I send quite a few. This means my message is getting out to a lot of people. Email Signature Lines only have to be about 4 to 5 lines usually containing an email or URL. If you use different email accounts make sure you have your email signature lines on all of them. Be sure to change them as you have new programs to promote or messages you want to get across. Why not try this great idea - find a business person with a similar target audience who sends out about the same amount of emails a day as you and ask them to swap signature lines with you, nifty idea dont
you think!
2) Lead Generators:
This is a good way to start building your mailing list. Normally you offer a free product/service in return for some ones email address. Generally you place an advertisement offering a freebie and in order for the person to receive it, they have to respond to a mailto: address (this is when you can collect the email address of the person responding). They will receive an autoresponder that contains the freebie to download. It is very important to make sure that in your autoresponder you provide a link for the person to remove themselves from the mailing list. I have built very targeted mailing lists from this strategy and gained very valuable long term customers. Theres many ways to generate leads, try be creative.
3) Writing Articles:
An Excellent way to get your name out there. Ezine publishers are always looking for content for their ezines/newsletters and websites. Articles are not for advertising purposes, they provide information to people about your area of expertise, however at the end of your article be sure to always put a resource box. Resource boxes always contain the authors name and contact details and sometimes a very brief spiel about how to subscribe to their ezine/newsletter (if they publish one). There are many sites on the net to submit your articles to and many ezine publishers will ask for article submissions in their ezine/newsletter. Theres generally a standard format to use, for example 500 words, 65 characters wide and so on and so forth. Some publishers are happy to take articles with a 1000 words. Be sure to always follow the submission guidelines, you will have a much better chance of getting your article published. You can ask that you be notified before your article is published, this gives you an idea of how much your article/s are being used, which articles, and how many people your message is getting to.
4) Ad Swaps:
I have gained so many great business contacts by doing ad swaps. Ezine publishers will say in their ezine/newsletter whether they do ad swaps. Look for zines/newsletters that have the same target audience as you do, contact the publisher and ask if they will do an ad swap with you. Be mindful that you need to be swapping with publishers that have around the same subscriber numbers as you do. You cant really expect a publisher with a subscriber base of 5,000 and you have 500 subscribers to do an ad swap with you, generally speaking this wont happen. Normally the publisher will place you somewhere near the top of their ezine/newsletter or in a special ad swap section so your ad stands out from the general classified section. You can also negotiate to have it run for ex amount of editions. Its a great way to network with fellow colleagues.
5) Publish an Ezine/Newsletter:
Generally your ezine/newsletter will follow the same theme as your website, for instance, if you have an ebook site your ezine/newsletter theme would be about ebooks and everything related to this subject. If you have more than one website you may consider publishing an ezine/newsletter for each of site. Publishing an ezine/newsletter is a great way of attracting customers who are interested in your product/s or service/s. Some publications are purely informational they have no a dvertising at all (free or fee based), while others offer free and fee based ads to their subscribers, along with other incentives. Keeping your ezine/newsletter interactive is an individual thing, for example, running competitions, having a questions and answer section, tips and hints, free classifieds, and the list goes on. One thing is for sure, publishing an ezine/newsletter can be a very good avenue of income for your business, once you have a large subscriber base you can have a paid advertising section, you can also advertise your own products/services (including affiliate programs you may be involved with) have regular specials etc. The great thing about being a publisher is you can be as creative as you wish.
6) Forums/Message boards:
Becoming an active member of a forum or message board can generate some amazing traffic to your business, I generate most of my traffic from this strategy believe it or not! Again this is not a avenue for advertising (although some message boards do allow you to advertise). The majority of forums are communities of people interested in the same topics and issues, who get together and assist each other with questions they have. For example, most of the forums I participate in are business related and people are only too happy to help you out. I have learned so much about business using this strategy. Forums and message boards are usually monitored for blatant advertising or for folk who like to get on there and abuse others (believe me it happens). Personally I prefer the forums that are monitored. Your probably wondering why I generate traffic from this strategy when I have just said that you cant advertise, well its a bit the same as signature files. After you have posted your message you have the opportunity to put a link to your website or email address or sometimes both it all depends on the forum.
7) Writing e-books:
This is the most interesting way to market your product or service by far. It is one of the most powerful forms of marketing on the net today. Why? Because most people come onto the Internet to search for information and generally its free information they are looking for, so what better way to give that information to them than in the form of an ebook that they can get instantly. I dont care who you are but everyone has information within them that can produce an ebook (but thats another article within itself). So what happens to your ebook after it has been downloaded? Well, if that person likes it enough they are going to recommend it to others (especially if you have given them the right to freely distribute it to). In your ebook you would generally have links to your website, affiliate programs, products and services etc. Imagine if ezine publishers downloaded your ebook and offered it to their subscribers and customers as incentives, before you know it your ebook is all over the net, what do you think this will do for your traffic counter. What you have effectively achieved is called viral marketing, your ebook has spread like a virus. Once it starts it wont stop, for once a virus thats great news! A lot of ebook publishers will also allow you to customize their ebooks with your own website links etc. So if you dont feel comfortable writing an ebook just at the moment, dont despair, you dont really have to, just download an ebook you think your customers will like, customize it and promote it, fantastic strategy for sure!
8) Affiliate Program:
Again, like ebooks affiliate programs have a viral effect. Once you have your own product or service you can set up an affiliate program and have literally thousands of people selling your product/service all over the net. You then compensate your affiliates by paying them a commission, commissions vary depending on the price of the product/service you are promoting. Really good commissions can be as high as 50-60%. You generally provide banners, classified ads, sales letters etc., for your affiliates to use in their marketing efforts. This directs the prospective customers to your direct selling webpage where you close the sale. Some affiliate programs provide a webpage for their affiliates. It is always a good idea to provide regular training for your affiliates, this can be in the form of regular updates via email, an affiliate newsletter, mini courses via email, and, most importantly always make yourself available to your affiliates. This marketing strategy can produce a lot of money if done properly. There are some really good CGI scripts available to help you set up your own affiliate program.
9) Joint Ventures:
This marketing strategy has the potential to earn mega bucks! Once you have a product/service, you can propose a venture with other business owners that have the same target audience as you do.
What happens is you offer the proposal (there are ways of doing this and some great resources to show you how) to say, for example other ezine publishers (I always approach ezine publishers that do ad swaps, I have always found them to be open to joint ventures) and you offer them a percentage of the sale.
Say you had a product that was worth $39.95 and you said in your proposal you were willing to give them 50% of any sales they make, and any other bonuses you may want to give them, imagine what you could earn for basically no effort on your part. If they are an ezine publisher with a subscriber base of 5,000+,(some publishers have subscriber bases of 20,000+ and more) and they promoted your product to their customers, imagine what sort of income you could derive from this little venture, even if only half of the subscribers responded- Ill let you do the maths, exciting isnt it. You can always offer successful sales letter and classified ads that you have used yourself to promote the product/service, to the ezine publisher that takes you up on your proposal. But a lot of the time I find that it is better for them to do their own promotional stuff because they have the relationship with their subscribers, their subscribers trust them and are more likely to buy from their recommendation.
10) Pay Per Click Search Engines:
Pay per click search engines are exactly what the term suggests, that is, you pay for traffic! How much it costs you depends entirely on the seach term you bid for and the amount you bid. For example, if you were to search for the term "Internet marketing" on Go-To you would see at the bottom of each website found, the amount it cost the bidder for any given ranking. The last time I looked, the bid for a number 1 ranking on Go-To for the search term "Internet marketing" was around $4-10. That means every time someone clicks on that particular link it will cost the owner of the website $4-10! Obviously if you were to bid on a term like that you better have a good product and a website that does a very good job of selling it! If you dont have a million dollar advertizing budget, heres the best way to use the "pay per clicks"... Go bargain hunting! Go-To has a great tool you can use for free. Its called the "search suggestion tool" you just type in a search term eg; "Internet marketing" and it brings back a list of all the related searches that were made that month and how many times it was searched for as follows:
Count Search Term
192171 marketing
33313 internet marketing
22260 web marketing
15392 marketing plan
The real bargains are in the less popular search terms, for example, it will only cost you 2 cents per click for the search term "internet marketing guide" thats for a number 1 ranking with over 500 searches per month! Do you see how you can use the "search suggestion tool" to find hundreds, even thousands of search terms that you can bid on for pennies! There are other pay per click search engines besides Go-To but heres a little tip... some of them pay affiliates to use their engines, so you can be subject to abuse eg. affiliates will click on links over and over to increase their commissions without any regard for the one whos footing the bill, YOU! I dont think its a huge problem but be aware that it can happen!
Go-To is my pay per click engine of choice, they are professional, reliable and have by far the most traffic.
There you have it, a few marketing strategies you may want to try out! However the strategy I believe to be the most effective of all, is to create long term relationships with your customers. By this, I mean build your credibility, give the best customer support possible and over deliver with all that you do. I like to show them Im a real person that endeavours to be helpful and encouraging. By doing all these things you will in time gain peoples trust. I can not stress how important this is. Marketing should always be enjoyable, have fun doing it, dont get bogged down in all the hype out there. Believe me, patience, consistency, determination, organization and honesty will win the day every time and pay you tenfold!
The quote below says it all for me.
"Do something for somebody every day for which you do not get paid."..........
Albert Schweitzer
About the author
Linda Hunt is a team member at Home-Business-Ebooks.
Here you will find all the resources you need to Create,
Market & Sell Ebooks: http://www.home-business-ebooks.com
Find all your marketing strategies, advice, tips, products with resale rights and much more when you subscribe to
Home-Business-Ebooks Ezine monthly online publication:
http://www.home-business-ebooks.com/ezine_subscription.html
This article provided by the InfoZone Archives at: http://www.MakingProfit.com
linda@home-business-ebooks.com
http://www.home-business-ebooks.com
Copyright © 2005-2006 Powered by Custom PHP Programming