Resource of Marketing & Advertising

1. E-mail courses are generally quick and easy to create. Contents for your e-mail courses are everywhere old articles, interviews, information from doing research. You only need to know how to organize them and make the content easy to understand and follow.

2. You can append your sales letters at the end of your e-mail courses. People who take your e-mail courses can learn something valuable from you first, and when they’re done, they will be more receptive to your follow-up letters.

3. E-mail courses can help you attract visitors to your Web site. You can’t put everything in an e-mail course so you can actually place links within your e-mail course messages. These links can point to more information found on your site. You can promote your Web site’s URL in each message.

4. E-mail courses can help you gain more subscribers for your e-zine. Make people aware that subscribers of your e-zine are always the ones to get first dibs on your e-mail courses.

5. You can run your e-mail courses hands-free. You just need to create and arrange your e-mail messages in the order you want them to be delivered to your participants, then put them in a sequential autoresponder. Your e-mail courses then become your 24/7 promoter!

6. E-mail courses can help you get leads and you can promote your products or services to these people. And by making your e-mail courses 100% opt-in, the risk of being accused of sending unsolicited e-mails is significantly reduced.

7. People won’t ever need to download any special software before they can take your e-mail courses. All they need is an e-mail address. They can read your e-mail course lessons straight from their e-mail clients (Eudora, Pegasus, Outlook Express) or on the Web (Hotmail, Yahoo!Mail or any Web-based e-mail).

8. You can tailor your e-mail courses to promote specific products or services you are selling on your Web site. If your e-mail course consists of 10 lessons delivered in 10 e-mail messages, then people who take your e-mail course are exposed to your product or service 10 consecutive times. This definitely increases your chances of getting your product or service bought.

Building a dynamic small business is a constantly evolving, increasingly demanding role.

It is very easy to get so caught up in the day to day running of our business that we neglect to take the time to look from the outside in to see what we could do to improve our profitability! Well here are 5 Strategies that could boost your productivity overnight!

They are not rocket science and you may have even heard some of them before, but they are 5 proven principles that you can review today to help you stay on track regarding the real issues to grow your business from here.

So why don’t you take 15 minutes make yourself a coffee and recharge your batteries!

1. Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) in one sentence

What is at the heart of your business that makes it unique and attractive for your customers? Summarise your key selling points that make your product or service a ‘must have’ for your clients.

You probably went through this exercise when you first started your business but have you need to remind yourself regularly why you are doing what you are doing! Read More »

If you sell services one of the biggest challenges is identifying qualified prospects who want what you have to offer and are ready to buy. It is possible to waste time on cold calls and other marketing activities that turn up little in the way of sales. Wouldn’t you rather have a steady stream of hot leads, leads that not only include contact information but give you an idea of what the prospect needs, the problem they want solved?

You have a web site, and hundreds if not thousands of people visit your site each week. If your site is working well it should be providing you with a list of hundreds of people who want to be on your marketing list each week and dozens of qualified leads, people who want you to call them right away about your services.

Use the following five tactics to generate a list of qualified prospects. Read More »

Stand Out in Ways that Matter to Directory Users A Yellow Page directory presents a difficult challenge for advertisers. All the competitors are packed together, within the space of a few pages. Each ad within the directory category screams “Notice me!” so insistently, they blend into an muffled chorus. It’s not easy for one to stand out with a clear, distinctive voice like a soloist above the choir. That only happens when the business is clear about expressing its unique “song,” and understands what buyers most want to hear.

It isn’t surprising that most Yellow Page ads say pretty much the same thing. They were all prepared by the same directory employees. What do they know about marketing? About copywriting? About what’s unique and desirable about your enterprise?

The people making the ads “grind them out,” using the same templates and guidelines for every ad, in every category. Originality isn’t in their job description. Following the formulas for how an ad “should look” is a formula for being ignored.

These quick fixes cut away the bland sameness afflicting most ads. Disregard for now the related issues like the ad’s size and placement. Such factors just amplify (or diminish) an ad’s impact. A poor ad is still a poor ad, even if it’s very large. Coupled with fine-tuned copy (its own topic), these fixes will improve the impact of any size of ad, for any directory heading. Read More »

Where do I start if I want to be an online marketer? Tough question, huh?

There are lots of ways to begin your way on the bumpy journey. Just make sure you are aware that it WILL be a bumpy ride.

First things first: do a lot of research. Find out what kind of thing appeals to you most. It could be affilate programs, mlm`s or maybe you like the idea of selling other peoples products for a commission etc.

There are a ton of options, and 1000 times more hype. This is why it`s so important to do as much research as you can before starting out. Sure, you can go the long way round, which is how a lot of us start out, but that`s even more of a bumpy ride…hehehe

Ok, so lets say you`ve decided on where you want to start. You don`t have a product of your own, so you decide to sell other peoples information products, just as an example. Don`t make the mistake that so many people do, by trying to sell something you haven`t personally tested.

Put it this way: Who would YOU prefer to buy from? Someone who knows absolutely nothing about the product they`re selling? Or someone who has had firsthand experience with the product they`re selling? You know it`s person number 2, right? Read More »

It’s no secret that Search Engine marketing can drive significant amounts of very qualified traffic to a web site as 85% of Internet users utilize search engines to find/research for goods and services. The problem for many companies is the difficulty they face sifting through conflicting information and hyperbole! Here is my top five list of myths that need to be run to ground.

Search engine ranking leads are not as good as those which originate from other forms of traditional marketing this is absolute hogwash, the truth is many agencies don’t have a clue about s/e ranking, so they push their clients to ignore this form of advertising. They simply don’t want to recommend anything they don’t understand and/or utilize an interactive marketing vehicle that requires a blend of very specialized technology and processes.

We’ve in fact found just the opposite when we’ve analyzed s/e traffic versus other types of leads for our clients; i.e. search engine traffic can be much better, as it is comprised of individuals who are actively seeking info, not just people whose curiosity has been piqued by an eye-catching publication ad or press release. And, when we’ve analyzed the data by tracking leads via a landing page we’ve discovered that CPL (cost per lead) numbers can be much lower for s/e ranking than other more traditional marketing methods.

Big Picture Myth Two – Effective s/e marketing can be done in house – this is rarely the case, the sheer complexity and online competition (digital warfare!) for rankings makes this extremely difficult for most companies. Based upon our analysis over 73% of corporate accounts don’t understand the basic fundamentals; i.e. how to properly use keywords, meta tags and titles and worse, don’t submit their web sites to top tier Directories (Yahoo, LookSmart, OPD) and the hundreds of second tier directories.

Most companies delegate the s/e submissions to the webmaster or web site development staff and they just don’t have the time to understand the daunting complexities required to generate page 1-3 rankings or to stay abreast of the shifting submissions and ranking criteria standards, as modified monthly by top tier search engines. And, in many companies the s/e ranking is added to the over worked webmaster’s tasks purely as an afterthought – as opposed to being addressed formally by the marketing department, with dedicated personnel and a budget.

Big Picture Myth Three – off the shelf software that submits a site to thousands of web sites and presents snazzy reports can do it all. This is so inaccurate and nothing can be further from the truth – it takes a tremendous amount of labor and time to identify keyword sets (not just words), optimize the content for these keywords, submit the pages while obeying the rules of the road and then continually analyzing rankings and tweaking to maintain and drive rankings (web site visibility).

Software can certainly help to automate some facets of the process and be used for back end analysis – but you can’t expect any application to make the job easy, there is too much inherent complexity in the processes. And, competition for keyword sets is fierce as there are an estimated 5-10M registered domains (the numbers vary widely) with 60K new domains being registered every day.

Big Picture Myths Four and Five, Any page listing will help to drive traffic to a web site this is another misconception. If you are aren’t achieving page 1-3 rankings then your wasting a great deal of time and resources – most people never drill down below these pages. Another common mistake is trying to achieve s/e rankings for a specific URL or product if people know the name of a company or product they will find your web site easily, it’s a waste of resources to optimize for these specialized terms in 80% of most cases.

Instant Messaging is rapidly becoming accepted in the business community as a viable communications tool and process it’s faster than e-mail, free on the client side, even a novice user can easily grasp the interface in just a few minutes and it enables remote workers and business partners to “talk” and share files and information effortlessly using the in-place infrastructure of the internet. Its mushrooming in popularity too according to IDC, corporate and general business users will jump from 5.5M in 2001 to close to 200M by 2004.

What are some of the pitfalls and concerns you need to have when assessing and integrating Instant Messaging (”IM” another biz acronym) with your business processes? Be aware you are sending clear text messages over the public Internet so all IM technology is inherently insecure. Privacy issues can also be raised - these messages are typically archived via the IM servers of the company whose services you are using and can be made public at a later date. Anyone with a network scanner may have access to and be reading your messages and if your are downloading files, you need to ensure your anti-virus software is setup to scan these files when you open them. Read More »

So you`re new to the internet, and want to learn everything you can about internet marketing. Or at least the essential basics, and you want a place to go to find the answers to all of your questions?

I hate to tell you this, and I`m really sorry, but as far as I know, there IS no one-stop source to learning the essential marketing skills, apart from school maybe, but I will TRY to answer some questions you may have from my own experience:

Let`s see, I started out with absolutely NO computer knowledge at all. Went to chatrooms, talked with people, got me some contacts, then one day I got a junkmail full of hype (that I believed…hehehe) and promptly started joining affiliate programs. I joined this one, that one and the other one, all full of promises that I`d be mega-rich within a few months. Being a newbie, I swallowed it all. Hook, line and sinker. None of it ever panned out right though. Read More »

Offering free and exclusive content to ezine publishers and webmasters is one of the best ways you can increase exposure for your products and services. There are several effective methods you can use to employ this marketing tactic and subsequently boost your sales.

I personally suggest exploring the following two methods to increase your exposure:

1. Create exclusive content for websites and ezines. If you have worked to build a website or to promote a product, take your experience and package it into a coherent article that explains specific problems you have encountered and how you overcame them. If you can, design it as a pdf file; make it look professional.

Include a five-line personal bio at the bottom of your article with the URL to your website or product. If you put time into your article and give good advice, people will want to follow the link in your resource box back to your website. Read More »

Eventually every small business owner must consider what needs to be included in order to produce a successful advertisement or piece of marketing material.

You begin with a fancy graphic, your company logo, a slogan, and perhaps a special offer. However, more needs to be included in your sales copy to actually get your customers to buy. You need to include some your product’s features. But, more importantly, you have to list the benefits of your product or service.

Let’s begin with your product or service’s features. These can include the price, colour, options, or availability. Your customer will need to know some of these features to determine if what you have to offer is what they want to buy. Read More »