You could have the most unique, highest quality product or service in the world and you’d still be broke if you don’t market it every single day! Websites are not magic wands and your place of business isn’t a magnet. You must have marketing pieces that are perpetually in play, attracting new prospects and new clients, creating a steady stream of revenue.
It is your marketing, not your product or service, that is the lifeblood of your business. Marketing is what gets your offer out in front of the public, persuades people to buy, educates prospects about your business, builds your brand, outrageously increases sales…well, short of babysitting your kids for you, there are few things marketing can’t do…actually, you could create a marketing campaign for the best babysitters in your local area, so there’s actually nothing that marketing can’t do.
Market your business every single day and you are guaranteed to achieve financial freedom.
Give People Everything They Want and You’ll Get Everything You Need
Countless companies fail because they maintain an egocentric perspective in the way they conduct their business. If you continue to execute your marketing and customer relations in a manner that fails to truly perceive the needs of your clients and prospects then you will fail to connect with them.
Before you begin any marketing campaign or project you must get in the mindset of your prospective clients, focusing in on their hot buttons. Zero in on your target audience’s most frequent problems, worries, fears, aspirations and dreams and you’ll break all of your previous sales records.
Incorporate a completely genuine desire to help others within your marketing and it will generate a natural energy that will pull people in for life.
Article Marketing for Permanent Presence
Since consistent, frequent marketing is key to the success of your business, you need to consider the relationship of how much you get in return for your efforts—this is especially true for those of you working with bootstrapped budgets. Ideally, you want to be able to put one unit of effort in and get several units of success in return. Those of you doing your marketing on a one-for-one basis are sure to be going bald from pulling your hair out in anxiety. Successful businesses are those that incorporate leverage in their marketing.
Article marketing provides one of the best ways to market your business every day without actually having to do something every day. That’s because once you publish an article online, it’s there to stay, creating a permanent presence online. Articles pull people in from the search engines through your keywords, provide value through useful information, and drive Web traffic back your site through backlinks that you plant in the article.
This permanence also makes article marketing one of the most cost effective means of marketing. One price, one unit of energy, infinite potential.
Plus, you can print your online articles and send them out in direct response mailers to your leads. (Always think of how you can get the most use out of a single piece for the best use of your budget.) Providing helpful information in your mailers adds a great deal of value and helps establish why your business is the clear choice. Plus, adding an information-based piece in any marketing you do helps soften your sales approach, making it much more attractive than a standalone promotion. Due to a daily bombardment of advertising, people are naturally skeptical about these standalone promotions. When you provide something for free that people can use to make their lives better they’re much likelier to let their guard down and actively consider your offer.
Articles on Legal Steroids
Add video to your articles and you’ll instantly multiply your sales potential. For example, YouTube is now considered the second largest search engine on the Internet; behind Google but ahead of Yahoo and Bing. Is your business missing out on all those potential customers?
In addition, we are naturally sensory driven, so the more senses you engage in your marketing the better your chances of success. Pair your copywriting efforts with video and you give your audience yet another reason to stay tuned and focus on your offer.
Adding videos to your articles also adds potency to your efforts because it allows you to position yourself as an expert. Why do expert opinions and celebrity endorsements still prevail as top marketing methods over all these years? People are more confident buying from an authority.
This opportunity is available to every type of business owner, but massage therapists, salon owners, and yoga teachers have an especially ideal opportunity to create informational videos for their clients and prospects. Create a series of instructive videos, get people interested, show people you truly want to help, and you will motivate them to buy from you.
Money Making Mindset
Above all, it is vital to your success that you remind yourself to have fun during your marketing. Approach your marketing like a drone, drudgingly shuffling through it because you’re viewing it as a mandatory duty, and your marketing message is sure to suffer. Enthusiasm is contagious and can be transferred to others to incite sales. But a complete lack of enthusiasm will leach much of your marketing’s potential as your audience will most certainly pick up on it. Instead, look at it as a fun adventure that promises infinite potential and you will surely unlock the power of attraction, sharing your confidence and enthusiasm with others, and converting record-breaking prospects to loyal customers.
As a lot of you know I run a small business marketing company – Scapes Consulting as well as writing for this blog. I have been focused on bringing internet marketing ideas to the local bricks and mortar type businesses that don’t normally know how to enter this strange new marketing world beyond just putting up a website.
I have noticed as business is picking up I have had less time to commit to producing new articles for all my Bootstrapping Friends. Well I decided that I will share the video’s that I have created for my local clients with you guys as well. A lot of the information in them is just as important for my readers that are here as well.
It also does not matter where in the world you are my company would be able to help you with any of the concepts that I talk about.
Today’s businesses suffer from one giant dilemma—they need to reach more customers in an increasingly competitive marketplace and they also have tight budgets that demand results. It doesn’t take much thinking to realize that this is a huge problem for many businesses. In an ideal world, you could just throw unlimited amounts of money into your marketing budget, yet this isn’t possible.
When money is abundant, businesses tend to make choices that aren’t as effective or pragmatic. In this way, a tight budget may be beneficial in helping you create a concise marketing plan that targets customers that will actually purchase your products or ask for your service rather than just be aware of them. Here are a few basic ideas for marketing campaigns for under $100 to help you get started in expanding your business.
To begin with, make use of marketing materials that don’t cost anything. The best way to do this is using Internet tools that help you create word of mouth about your business without having to spend. There are many websites that people use for social networking that your business can use such as Facebook, Blogger, and Twitter. These websites allow you to post information about your business—upcoming events, new products, change of service—for free and anyone connected to your business and anyone connected to them will hear about it. Use this as a soft campaign to generate awareness of your business to a huge customer base.
Another option is to set up an informational website associated with your business. Whatever you sell—cookies, janitorial service, or stiletto heels—you can create a website that helps people learn more about your realm of service and products without directly selling to them. This may seem contradictory, but many people research on the Web before purchasing products or services. If they happen to learn what makes a great cookie on your website, they’re more likely to buy from you when they’re ready. These sites are easy to set up (you already know everything) and they don’t take much to maintain since there’s no e-commerce applications, just simple text, pictures, and maybe video.
Work with companies that do targeted advertising online. Unless you’re selling a very general product, you probably do business with very interested people. In order for you to get customers who are serious buyers you need to go where they go. It’s expensive to post ads in magazines, but it is much less expensive to post ads with companies that will only charge you based on the number of times the ad is shown on a webpage that is topically related to your business. These companies greatly reduce your costs and you are only paying to advertise to people who are likely to buy.
Generally speaking, think of the modern marketing campaign this way—getting the word out to the public should be free and advertising to customers should be done directly based on their interests. The Web has revolutionized business in so many ways—there’s no reason it can’t save you money as well.
You’ve heard the constant buzz surrounding this hot topic. Everybody is talking about it, or is a part of it, businesses want to use it, but you are just stuck with the same pressing question—what the hell is social networking? Well first, calm down. If you don’t know what it is, you may feel like you’re missing out on something big that you should be a part of. Yes, it is big. Yes, you should be a part of it. But you don’t have to miss out.
This phenomena is simply using the Web to connect with people, many of whom you meet exclusively through the Web by having shared interests or through others you already know. Many websites that you’ve heard of are social networking site—Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and Twitter are probably the most popular. Each does something a little different, but basically each one allows people to share ideas and media with many people at once with little effort. Twitter, for example, allows you to send messages to everyone in your friends list, but only at 140 characters at a time. It’s a great way to let everyone know what you’re up to and for others to check up on you, but without a long phone call. Other sites like Blogger allow you to blog, put up posts of text as long as you want, so that you can expand upon ideas or comment on events and let anyone who’s interested join in on the conversation.
These activities may not seem like very much on the surface, but their power comes when many people are all communicating at once. You may only get 140 characters on Twitter, but you may get thirty messages a day. This makes you aware of what many people are doing very quickly. Furthermore, sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to give and get a look out what other people are interested in and are up to any given day; very quickly. Your friends get to see what others are writing about you, and through this, new connections are made. When millions of people are doing this together, ideas and conversations spread out quickly.
The true strength of these technologies is the ability for users to pass along messages to others instantaneously. It’s like a game of telephone, expect there are thousands of people spread out all over the world and there’s no lag time between messages. These technologies are nothing to scoff at. Many recent news events have been reported first by people posting content to social networking websites and passing the word to others through these networks. Because they are so quick and don’t require much work to use, they are a great way to spread the word about anything, including historic moments.
So now you want to get on it? Great! It’s free to use any of these services. You don’t have to use them regularly, but when you do, you may find yourself connecting with distant relatives, old friends, and people you never met before, who have the same interests. Through this you can learn a lot, hopefully make a few business connections, and maybe even a few new friends as well. Tweet!
So follow me on twitter: @heckman