Company contact information

Do not just have your name in your signature line. Put your name, your credentials (are you the owner, president, marketing director?), your website url, your phone number and any physical address (if it is used a lot for your business - add it in)

Social Media Information

Do you want to connect with the people you converse with through email on other platforms? How about twitter or facebook? If you do, and you have a few profiles for them to connect with you on, why not set up a page on your company website listing them? This way, you can list the link in your email without having 10+ url’s pointing to different social media profiles.

To see an example of this, check out my “Be my friend” page on iamMikeSmith.com

Other ventures

Do you run other websites that are semi-related to the one that your emailing through? I know I do and that is why I have a link to my two blogs in the footer of my emails. Not only does it help show who I am in other realms, it also gives the people I’m talking to the ability to see that I have various amounts of knowledge on marketing, social media and design.

Contests & Exclusive Offers

Want to make the people you conversate with via email feel more important? Drop a line in your email signature that gives them 10-20% off their order, gives them exclusive bonuses that noone else gets or let them know about a contest you are running. It’s a great way to boost the effectiveness of your emails and will definitely show the people you’re writing to that generosity is defintiely on your side.

So lets make sure you’re utilizing those few lines of space to their fullest capabilities. You never know who might be looking.

• Being Remarkable: The Doctors Office Edition
• Monday Marketing Tip: People buy benefits, not features
• The art of the email: Long emails are better for business
• The one hit wonder: Why opening statements are so important

1. 50 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using
   This article has been a favorite of every reader and is the most popular article we’ve had to date. Definitely worth taking the time to download the free PDF version and printing it out
2. 15 More Guerrilla Marketing Examples
   Around August I really got into the Guerrilla Marketing spirit after reading the Guerrilla Marketing book by Jay Conrad Levinson and this is one of the articles I posted that showcased some great inexpensive guerrilla marketing tactics that will definitely help you bootstrap your way to success
3. Chasing Your Dreams: Dare to be Stupid
   If you’re looking for a bit of motivation to just get out there and try something you love, this is the post for you. It was therapeutic when I wrote it too
4. Say Yes: A simple tip that will help you close more deals
   This article holds a very simple key to unlocking more sales for your business. Do you not have 2-3 minutes to spare?
5. 5 tips to appear large on a small budget
   For the bootstrapper, this is vital information. Are you swimming in an ocean of big sharks but you feel the size of a gold fish? If so, check out these tips to appear larger and get in the mix.
6. 10 Awesome guerrilla marketing videos
   This goes back to my Guerrilla Marketing rush - simple yet effective campaigns that gain mass attention from your perspective client base.
7. Emotional Selling: What, why and how
   This article will show you how to pull at your target markets emotions and really win them over instead of giving them the feeling that they’re being forced to purchase from you
8. Quotable Business: Small business success tip
   This is a series I plan on developing further here in 2009. The quotable business series features great quotes from amazing people that you can turn into advice and inspiration for your business. Need a small business success tip? Check this article out.
9. Be Your Own Boss: Leaving the cubicle in five simple steps
   This is one well thought out plan on what you should be following if you’re thinking of making 2009 the year you jump from full time employment to full time freelance. Its a guide well worth reading and putting into practice.
10. Will Smiths two keys to life
    This is one of the few articles on this site that I feel may have been overlooked because it talks about “The Fresh Prince”. In all actuality though, Will Smith is a brilliant man and the video in this article that was taken from a kids choice awards show will definitely make you view him in a different light. Plus, it’s a great motivation for you as well

Now below are ten of my personal favorite articles and also well worth checking out. Feel free to comment and tell me which article(s) you like best if your favorite isn’t on the list.

1. Building an effective guerrilla marketing strategy
2. How to: ten steps to bootstrap your freelance career
3. Small Business Blogging: ten reasons why it’s essential to business growth
4. The one hit wonder: Why opening statements are so important
5. 10 things your small business can learn from cage fighting
6. Seven great ways your bootstrapping skills can benefit homeless war veterans
7. Bootstrapping Your Business part one
8. Word of mouth marketing: Thank your referrers
9. Better your business with customer feedback
10. Quotable Business: success vs value

Oh, and don’t forget to link me to an article from your site that you’ve written in 2008 that you believe will benefit me. I am always looking for motivation

• 50 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using
• 15 MORE Guerrilla Marketing Examples
• Seven great ways your bootstrapping skills can help homeless war veterans
• Chasing Your Dreams: Dare to be Stupid
• Win 1000 FREE Business Cards From UPrinting.com

The idea is simple:

1. You set up an appointment by calling into the doctors.
2. Each half hour slot has its own extension on the doctors number (ie: call in and push 830 for 8:30am)
3. The doctors office sets each inbox to only allow ONE message (the person who is able to get the appointment for that time).
4. If the inbox is full, the person needs to select a different extension
5. When the office opens in the morning, they check messages and have a schedule ready to go without the issue of overbooking.

Why is this remarkable?

Have you been to the doctors office in the past 40 years? Do you see how many people are in the lobby waiting? Much more than the time allotted allows, but somehow the doctors see everyone (even if it is for only a few minutes and you leave unsure if you’ve really been treated correctly because you can’t even remember what your doctor said, it was over so quick - yeah, I’ve been there too).

The idea is remarkable because no other doctors office ONLY books 1 appointment for each time slot and no other doctors offices make it THIS EASY for you to book your time. The person visiting the doctors office is happy for a few reasons:

1. There is no real wait - you’re in at the time you called in for and there is nobody else waiting at the same time
2. Calling in and knowing your appointment is scheduled that fast takes a lot of weight off your shoulders, especially if you’re already under the weather.
3. It shows your doctor cares about you because he’s spending the entire half hour ONLY with you.

How many doctors offices could follow something so simple and turn it into what is remarkable about their office and gain more customer satisfaction and word of mouth exposure? I know my doctors office could. It’s generic just like every other doctors office. Simple posters showcasing some dumb catchphrases about health, a magazine rack and a fish tank. Sound like yours? Yeah, I thought so.

• Utilize your email signature for added exposure
• Best Business Articles From Around The Web: Issue Number One
• Quotable Business: Small Business Success Tip
• Monday Marketing Tip: Underpromise and Overdeliver
• Monday Marketing Tip: People buy benefits, not features

I have recently been writing internet related marketing and social media marketing related articles over on my i am Mike Smith blog and wanted to share with you all a deal I’m giving all of my readers (and since you are all my readers here, that includes you as well).

Online business school is something very, very important. It is also the holy grail (in my opinion) for anyone looking into making money online. For anyone who purchases this course (more information at the following link) I am offering 1 hour of free consulting via E-Mail or Instant Messenger to help formulate a plan of action for you to maximize your chances of making some good money online and building a business for yourself.

Check out the article here and if you have any questions for me, drop me a comment or contact me through the contact page.

• 50 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using
• 15 MORE Guerrilla Marketing Examples
• Seven great ways your bootstrapping skills can help homeless war veterans
• Chasing Your Dreams: Dare to be Stupid
• Win 1000 FREE Business Cards From UPrinting.com

For those who don’t know about Gino’s high quality Business Cards Printing services, please visit here and read more about it. You are able to choose from a wide variety of stocks, including the eco-friendly cover stock (13pt. Cover Uncoated - Recycled) or the the 14 pt. family in Matte, AQ, or UV at any custom size we offer such as square cards, odd sizes like 3×3, 2×2

A fair word of warning though. Commenting with “I want to win” or something this quick will guarantee you are NOT chosen as the winner of this contest. I know the bootstrappers out there love a good deal and I know when one is in front of us, we capitalize on it. So write up a comment on this post and let us know why YOU should be the bootstrapper we choose to win the 1,000 business cards.

* shipping is free for anyone in the US and Canada

So what are you waiting for? Get your comments in!

• 50 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using
• 15 MORE Guerrilla Marketing Examples
• Seven great ways your bootstrapping skills can help homeless war veterans
• Chasing Your Dreams: Dare to be Stupid
• Win 1000 FREE Business Cards From UPrinting.com

For many Veterans, coming home after serving in the war is hard emotionally as well as physically and most of all, financially. For many of our brave soldiers, they cannot afford to pay rent and wind up homeless. According to USA Today in November of 2007, Veterans made up 1 in 4 homeless people roaming the streets of America. This number makes me sick. How can our country expect these men and women to risk their lives for us and then come home and not support them when they need us?

So, I put together 10 great ways our bootstrapping skills can help War Veterans in our local cities as well as around the entire country. Let me know if you can think of any more or how you’ve involved your business in any of these ten great bootstrapping skills to help our Soldiers.

1. Gain some media attention - We’re no strangers to doing things to attract attention to our businesses right? So put it to good use. Try making a nice guerrilla marketing campaign that helps get the awareness levels up about the soldiers who are homeless in this country. For some guerrilla marketing inspiration, check out these posts: here, here and here.
2. Donate a % of your profits - During certain months of the year business donate part of their profits to charities about breast cancer and other causes so why not pick a month and donate a percentage of your profits to a homeless veterans charity? With my Tennessee Web Design company I am donating 10% of all profits in November to the National Coalition for Homeless Veternas and I urge you to do something similar.
3. Rent out a hotel for the evening - Find a hotel around your area that has 20-30 rooms and invite homeless veterans in your area to stop by and get a nice shower and a place to sleep for the evening. Yes, it may not be the biggest thing in the world to do, but I am sure they will appreciate it.
4. Spare a few dollars - Every time I went to the dollar store by my home for about 2 months straight, a homeless veteran would be sitting outside asking for spare change. I would always give him money.
5. Spare some of your time - With the same guy above, I would talk to him and have a conversation with him. This few minutes of my life helped this man get through his day (yes, he told me that he was happy I talked to him). I was the only person to take time and talk to him while others either walked grimly by or dropped change in but never looked at him.
6. Open up some jobs in your company - Does your company have a few openings? Why not fill these spots with the War Veterans who need jobs? If they don’t understand a certain aspect of the job, train them. They’re good listeners and follow instructions very well
7. Donate some of your items - Do you run a computer store? why not donate some computers to a local homeless shelter or to a hospital for Veterans? What about those of you who run a clothing line? Why not donate some clothing to a charity for War Veterans? You could even give the homeless Veterans in your area some clothing right out of your car. What can your business donate to help homeless War Veterans?

So as you can see, there are many ways your business and bootstrapping skills can benefit the homeless War Veterans in this country, so get out there and do your part. I know I am.

• Chasing Your Dreams: Dare to be Stupid
• Be Your Own Boss: Leaving the cubicle in 5 simple steps
• Monday Marketing Tip: People buy benefits, not features
• How to: 10 steps to bootstrap your freelance career
• Small Business Blogging: 10 reasons why its essential to business growth

How many of us could sit back 10 years ago, see a company called “Google” and believe it would be the powerhouse it is today? Not many of us. But I bet the creators did. They invented a word and did something that no one else was doing and turned it into their own brand and are now as rich as rich can be All because they dared to be stupid. Or how about the guys who create Youtube? Or how about Seth Godin giving away so many great marketing ideas for free every day on his blog? You know, some people actually believe that giving away things is BAD for business. Yea, go figure.

Are you scared to chase your dreams?

When you think about your dream job, or the ‘perfect life’ do you get that same exciting burst of energy and excitement that I get when I am planning different things for my business? Yeah, I bet you do. That my friends, is called Passion. I’ve wrote about passion previously on this blog and when you get a free minute or two, I’d suggest checking it out. So you’ve come to the realization that you have that burning passion, but what do you do next?

If you’re like most small business owners, or aspiring small business owners, you’ve probably let a little bit of doubt sink into your head. Maybe you’ve thought the following thoughts before:

• I don’t have the skills needed
• Where am I going to find all of the money required to do this
• I just don’t know where to start

While these are all perfectly logical thoughts to have, you NEED to realize that they should not paralyze your dreams. I was reading “The 4-Hour Workweek” the other day and came across this line in the book and it fits perfect with our current topic: “Risks weren’t that scary once you took them”. (oh, and did I mention Timothy Ferris is another guy who gives away great marketing and business ideas on his blog for free too?)

So how do we actually “dare to be stupid”?

It’s a simple concept really. Daring to be stupid is essentially the exact way you lived your life when you were a child. You were care free, did things your way and really didn’t care about other peoples opinions. That is how you dare to be stupid in a nut-shell and should be printed out in large, bold text and placed in your office somewhere.

Guerrilla marketing can be looked at as daring to be stupid simply because these marketing strategies are being put to practice in ways that other people haven’t thought of before. As a bootstrapper, you need to realize that being stupid doesn’t always mean failing. Yes, you can make a stupid decision and fail, but without action, there is no reaction. So yes, without trying something ’stupid’ you can never fail; but you’ll never succeed either.

So find that inner child in you, dare to be stupid and jump with a leap of faith. It just might pay off more then you think.

• Monday Marketing Tip: People buy benefits, not features
• Seven great ways your bootstrapping skills can help homeless war veterans
• 10 Awesome Guerrilla Marketing Videos
• 15 MORE Guerrilla Marketing Examples
• Be Your Own Boss: Leaving the cubicle in 5 simple steps

What is emotional selling?

Can you remember playing in the snow with a snow suit that was too big with a group of your best friends, eating the white snow, avoiding the yellow snow at all costs and making snow men and forts? I can and I bet anyone reading this can also close your eyes and go back to a time when this was your daily routine. Now imagine if someone trying to sell you financial freedom was targeting this emotion with two kids standing side by side next to a snowman they built, or a group of kids playing in the snow with snow balls flying in the air with the tag line “Let us help you get back to a simpler time”. I bet you could relate to it right? Yeah, I thought so. THAT is emotional selling.

Why should you sell off peoples emotions?

In the paragraph above I painted a picture. Not the picture of people standing next to $200,000 cars or sitting on a boat or a guy standing with bikini models on each arm, but a simple picture of a time when you were playing in the snow. What of these two scenarios do you think would draw peoples emotions more? So many people want to show you the same thing, piles of money, big boats, fast cars and close-to-naked women. Don’t you think people are tired of this same type of targeting? Wouldn’t it not only strike their emotions and make them think about their past, but also catch them a bit off guard and be a pleasant surprise to their daily routine? I think so and so does Naomi from Itty Biz.

How can you sell off peoples emotions?

Well, if you’ve read the entire article above, you’ve got one idea down. If you go over to Naomi’s article you can read a couple more. If you keep reading, I’ll give you a few more ideas.

If you’re selling website designs or blog designs, how about targeting the emotions of the potential customer by painting a picture of them when they were in grade school drawing and writing fictional stories about monsters and other fairy tale creatures with pictures they drew by hand. After you get that in their mind, show them how they can turn those same things into a very marketable daily/weekly/monthly comic strip and blog.

What about if you’re selling womans clothing? Why would you show the same super model walking down the runway when you could play into a time when your target customer was six years old, getting into her mothers jewelry, standing in the hall way wearing a dress 100 times too big and high heel shoes that could fit 10 of her feet in them?

How about you?

Do you have an idea of a time in your own life that could relate to your business at all? How many other of your potential customers probably have that same memory? I bet you there are millions. After all, as bootstrappers and self-employed business owners, we are more than likely doing something right now that we somehow loved as a kid right?

I know I am. I run a Tennessee Web Design company and I can remember sitting in my room for hours drawing comics and cartoon characters. I’ve had that in my blood all my life and can relate 100 or more memories to it so I bet you and your customers can do the same. So get out there and sell those emotions!

• 50 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using
• 15 MORE Guerrilla Marketing Examples
• Seven great ways your bootstrapping skills can help homeless war veterans
• Chasing Your Dreams: Dare to be Stupid
• Win 1000 FREE Business Cards From UPrinting.com

In the below video it is discussed that by simply changing the way we ask a question, the conversion rates could triple. Please take a second to watch the video (its 2:10 long) and then follow with me as I break down what the gentlemen talks about in the video.

So by simply applying the “would you be willing to” phrase instead of the normal “if you can’t” phrase, the resturaunt owner took is no-shows from 30+ % to 10% overnight. As I watched this video I thought to myself “this guy has a point”. Especially since 9 times out of 10, the person would not mind saying “yes” when they are asked “would you be willing to call/email” and then once they realize that they might need to cancel or pull out of a deal, they now either have to call to honor their word, or go through with the deal. Sometimes, playing on someones emotions and pride can work to your advantage and this is definitely one case it does.

Now, I am not saying to play with someones mind, but lets face it, sales, marketing and advertisements are all about emotions and drawing specific emotions out of people in order to generate sales. So why should your end statement over the phone or through an email be any different.

Lets experiment together

Lets try this together for a week and see what type of results we can generate. I am going to track my leads/sales this week and see where I am at this point next week and will post a follow up article on my results. I can only assume that I will be pleased with the results. So, what do you say? would you be willing to try this experiment with me?

Update: Out of 24 emails with “would you” written in it, I’ve got 19 replies and 13 sales!

• 50 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using
• 15 MORE Guerrilla Marketing Examples
• Seven great ways your bootstrapping skills can help homeless war veterans
• Chasing Your Dreams: Dare to be Stupid
• Win 1000 FREE Business Cards From UPrinting.com

Bootstrapping is all about jumping in and getting things going, so when you bootstrap your business and hit these road blocks, it would be nice to have a set plan of action in mind on how to dodge bullets or jump over burning bridges. So, what do you do when trouble hits? Do you hide and curl up into a ball, or do you fight back? If you’ve got an interesting story on a time you hit a road block and got through it, please share it. It will help inspire all of us who are in the same boat you were once in.

Editors note: I have a brand new series coming up on The 17 Principles of Success according to Napoleon Hill. It’s going to be a must read and will definitely answer a lot of questions on what is needed to be successful in business.

• 50 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using
• 15 MORE Guerrilla Marketing Examples
• Seven great ways your bootstrapping skills can help homeless war veterans
• Chasing Your Dreams: Dare to be Stupid
• Win 1000 FREE Business Cards From UPrinting.com