Small business owners can easily get too involved in the day-to-day operations of their retail stores to spend any time brainstorming marketing ideas or promotional events. Some retailers worry that marketing is too expensive, others may find it too time consuming. Without announcing who you are and what you sell, how will anyone know?

Local Marketing Ideas

1. Place an ad in a local magazine or paper.
2. Write an article for a local magazine or paper.
3. Advertise on a billboard
4. Advertise on buses or taxis.
5. Have well designed business cards.
6. Always carry a business card with you.
7. Advertise in the local yellow pages.
8. Hang up flyers, posters or business cards at community halls, libraries, or other local businesses, with their permission of course.
9. Hand out trinkets: keychains, pens, magnets, etc. with your contact information on it.
10. Purchase advertising spots on local TV channels or in movie theaters.
11. Advertise on the back of ticket stubs.
12. Advertise on travel brochures and maps.
13. Volunteer to be interviewed on a local radio station.
14. Volunteer to speak at local events.
15. Teach a class.
16. Join a toast masters or other local speech group
17. Attend Chamber of Commerce and other local business meetings.
18. Ask those you know to help you find leads. Give them business cards or trinkets and ask them to hand them out if they run into someone interested in your product or service.
19. Sponsor a portion of a freeway or highway
20. Get shirts, hats and other fashionable accessories printed with your logo or business slogan on it. Wear them around town and give them to others.
21. Hold open panel business forums in your community, where community members can ask questions to your
22. Get involved with local charities.
23. Offer your product as the prize for a local contest.
24. Offer your product in school or non-profit fund raisers
25. Look local job requests and needs in newspapers and sites like Craigslist.
26. Place ads in the classifieds section or your local newspaper.
27. Volunteer to be on the board of local events.
28. Sponsor a team.
29. Sponsor a local event.
30. Host a BBQ.
31. Put business cards on cars, less pollution and people are more likely to keep them versus a flyer.
32. Advertise on local websites.

Direct Mail - Getting You Envelope Opened

If you use direct mail it's in your best interest to get as much of it opened and read as possible. You may have spent a small fortune on the copywriting and the expensively printed brochure, but if you don't ensure that as many packs are opened and read as possible, then both copy and brochure are wasted.

There are two main schools of thought on how to avoid being binned. The first is to use disguise, and the second to use persuasion.

Using disguise is mainly a business to business approach but it works for business to consumer mailings too. Business to business promotional mailings are marked out in that they don't appear to have been handled individually. This can be indicated by an envelope pre-printed with a postage mark, and use of a window or address labels to show an address.

Try one or more of the following to give the envelope a more individual look.

Use stamps. They have to have been put on by hand, so it must be individual. There's no more obvious an indicator than a pre-printed stamp impression. When a preprinted impression is used in conjunction with a window envelope it practically screams advertising so don't do it.

Hand write the address on the envelope. This is probably only viable for higher value items but will certainly get more attention this way. It doesn't have to be copperplate, it just needs to look as though it's been handled individually.

Use an unusual material for the envelope, say vellum or a textured paper. In tests conducted by a paper merchant, this alone increased responses significantly. The additional cost for the special paper was more than compensated for by the additional revenue generated by the mailing.

Again, do anything to make your mailing appear more individual and personal to the recipient. Probably the most important element is the use of stamps. This on it's own can be enough to get you under the recipient's radar.

Secondly, use persuasive tactics. This is completely the opposite from disguise and is used mainly for business to consumer, but again it works for business to business too. In this instance we mark it out specifically as commercial by using advertising images, copy and headlines on the outside of the envelope itself. In this instance it doesn't matter if you use a printed postal impression.

Unlike the previous method which uses curiosity to get your envelope opened, we need to give the recipient a good reason to open the envelope. This can take a variety of forms, but as a couple of examples you can state a benefit, "Increase sales by 15%", or alternatively provide an incentive, "Reply by the end of the month and get 2 for the price of 1".

Be very clear and very specific about what the contents are going to achieve and remember you are only trying to get the envelope opened and read. Avoid anything vague. Don't expect to appeal to everyone using this method. You don't have that much room on the envelope, and you can't be all things to all people.

Hopefully you will achieve a strong enough response in a small percentage of recipients that they open, and read the contents. Your persuasive copy will follow on logically from the envelope copy, and keep your prospect interested.

There is a lot of advise against this in business to business direct mail, and there is probably an element of truth in this. If you are mailing to an executive whose mail is screened then it's likely good advice. However there are plenty of owner/managers out there that still open their own mail, if the offer or benefit is clear enough and of interest, it will get opened. You may well consign your mailing piece to the bin for the 99.5% of your prospects by doing this, but it wasn't about them was it?

In summary it's pretty simple. Don't be run of the mill. Step away from the norm and make sure your envelope is overtly commercial with a clear benefit or incentive or alternatively make it look it personal. If you do this you are halfway to getting it read and that's more than half the battle.

_________________________

About The Author
Robert Wilkinson is the owner of http://www.arhiann.com/ a direct mail production company specilising in mailings for small and medium sized business.

How To Get Higher Converting MLM Leads For Less

If you are involved in an mlm or network marketing business then you probably have tried to find the best ways online as well as offline to get qualified people either to your website or to the companies website. There are many different ways to find qualified people who are actually looking right now at starting a home based business.

The thing that you first need to realize is that most people who are looking for a home based business are not actually realizing what it is they are looking for and for the most part are simply getting some answers.

These types of people are the non targeted leads that you will find being sold by countless mlm lead companies online. These types of mlm leads for one have a terrible conversion rate and also end up putting your excited mood into one that makes you start second guessing yourself and possibly the opportunity you are marketing. What is needs to not only help you build a successful mlm business as well as the right mindset to succeed is actual quality mlm leads from an actually mlm leads company with proven results.

If you were looking to compare mlm lead companies odds are you would start possibly with your sponsor or upline in the business you are currently marketing and this method is actually not the best method at all. What will end up happening is your upline simply trying to get a commission or a bonus off of you by sending them to one of the low converting mlm lead companies.

You may take the above statement as being rude or labeling all sponsors but in all honesty most people in mlm and network marketing companies are following the same pack of people barely making any real income. What you need to do is set yourself apart from the pack and become a leader in your company.

If your sponsor in your company and or business is trying his or her best to teach you the correct methods on building your business but has not actually seen any real success themselves then you need to find a new method in which to build your business. Mlm is mainly duplication of a proven method and if your sponsor is not seeing the large monthly income then that is something that I personally would not try and duplicate.

With all the many different ways to get mlm leads which can be done with pay per click accounts and even door to door methods there is one truly proven method that has the highest conversion ratio as long as it is done correctly.

You need to find a mlm lead company that not only has proven results but also offers you a residual income that will actually end up paying for your leads as your downline signs up under you for the leads also. There are only a small handful of mlm lead companies that are even worth comparing and sometimes they can be hard to sift through. Most mlm lead companies are selling leads that have been sold 1,000 times already and will not convert for nothing.

What you should do if you are actually looking to build a solid mlm business is to research and compare mlm lead companies. You need to look for a company that allows you to buy at minimum 72 hour fresh leads. Along with being extremely fresh you also need to find a mlm lead company that actually offers a monthly residual income plan. Having a matrix payout plan attached to a solid mlm lead company can actually end up paying out more then your mlm company is paying you.

Remember also when researching and checking the many mlm lead companies out there that you will most usually get what you pay for. Any company offering you 1,000 fresh leads a day for $20 is nothing but a scam style company and will end up giving you a very bad name in the mlm community. Find a company that has been proven successful and has mlm leads that are actually converting into real mlm sign ups and sales.

________________________

About The Author
Don Luttrull runs a MLM lead comparision site. MLM and Network Marketers vote on which mlm leads company has the best conversion ratios and those companies are then ranked. To see who they have voted for go here http://www.comparemlmleads.com.

Direct Mail - the Deadly Sin Of Not Testing

If there's one thing that makes direct mail a reliable method of drumming up new business, then that would have to be the ability to test if different version of a pack achieve a better return on investment. Having processed many mailings over the years, I can attest that clients rarely take full advantage of this feature. In fact, more often than not, clients don't test at all.

Not testing is commercial suicide. In today's competitive climate, if there is anything that can be done to reduce the cost of acquiring a customer, then it must be done. It's a no brainer. Research shows that in times of depression, those that continue to advertise are those that do well. It also shows that those that continue to advertise also make efforts to stretch their budget even further.

You decrease your direct mail costs by application of a little commonsense and by testing which produces the best response. We'll take the example of direct mail pack that comprises five parts in all.

The parts of the pack are as follows:

1) Envelope
2) Personalised letter
3) Brochure
4) Leaflet/Order form
5) Business reply Envelope

Looking at this you would think that this it, but we've forgotten the most important part of all:

6) The data

So, there's enough there now to get your message out.

Experience shows that the most important part of the mailing is the data, so we must test this part. A badly produced but well targeted letter will almost certainly produce a better return than a well written badly targeted letter.

You may have a particular target audience already decided, for example, lawyers. You will be able to get lists of lawyers from more than one source, that can be tested. Equally you'll have the option of mailing to a named individual, or to a job title, so you can test that too. So far that's at least four permutations provided you use 2 data suppliers. It would be 6 if you used 3 suppliers. If you hadn't narrowed your field to one sector, then the choice of tests to run could be massively increased, but it's not practical to take it to the extreme.

Targeting is everything, you must get that right, and you can only find that out if you test.

Looking at the envelope, you have a huge number of choice here too. You can send plain with a stamp, or printed with a message. You could make the material from an unusual paper, print in full colour, use different sizes. You could print different designs, use different taglines and the like.

Depending on how your envelope is made you may be able to run multiple designs for a minimal charge. The nature of some jobs is that they are printed 2 or 3 or up on a sheet, so you will be able to produce equal quantities of more than one design. Even if it's not free, chances are that it won't be hat expensive for a plate change.

For the letterhead, you can change the material. Studies by paper merchants have shown a 20% increase in response just by changing to a textured paper. The copy itself on the letter can be changed, offers can be changed. The number of options to test here is almost limitless.

Moving on to the leaflet, the same applies here as did for the letterhead. Copy, material, imagery; they're all fair game.

Last but not least we move on to the BRE. There's not a huge amount you could do here. White or manila envelopes perhaps? Maybe even a coloured BRE? if it isn't going to cost a lot, why not try it.

Using these methods over time you can increase the effectiveness of your mailings. Always test, even when you think you have the perfect pack, continue to run a test campaign against it, even if the difference between the two is really quite small. If you continue to do this, your costs to acquire a customer should fall and fall.

Overall, the point is that there an almost infinitely large and almost limitless opportunity for testing. Maybe it's this huge scope for testing that puts people off, but I don't think it is. I think it's just a lack of awareness of what you can do. You don't need to complicate things, you can just run two packs with one difference between them and see how it goes.

Whatever you do though, don't commit commercial suicide and fail to test.

_______________________

About The Author
Robert Wilkinson is the owner of http://www.arhiann.com , a print, design and direct mail business specialising in direct mail and envelope production for small and medium sized businesses.

Top Seven Ways to Write An Order-Pulling Sales Letter

Ready to put your Web pages up? Ready to sell a lot more products and services? If you're not getting the sales, you want you may want to think "makeover." Whether you're just starting or doing a web makeover, you need to Power Write your sales letters.

Before you call your Web master to design your web site, you want to be sure you have great sales copy for each product or service you want to sell.

What Doesn't Sell

big pictures

my mission

my bio

subscribe to my ezine

dark colors

a lot of script

page takes more than 10 seconds to load

In my first Web site, I made many mistakes. Sales for six products didn't go over $200 a month.

For the second Web site, each product, and service sales letter gave my visitors reasons to buy. Sales were $75 the first month, and in four months, they reached $2265. The next year they went to 3000 and each year after, over $4500.

Sales letters Sell! Here's 7 Sales Letter How-To's

1. Start the Letter with a Benefit-Driven Headline.

In a large Times Roman font, put up a question or benefit-driven headline that grabs your visitor by the collar. For example, "Want a quick and easy way to quadruple your Online Income in Four Months?

If you answered, "yes" to yourself, this headline succeeds, because you will keep reading. If you said, "No, I don't believe this, "but I'm curious where this is going," the headline still succeeds.

This headline should lead right into the benefits of your product or service.

2. Add the Top Five Benefits of your Product or Service in Bullet Form.

To define your top benefits start with a list of problems your client or customer wants solutions for. Your answer for your particular audiences problem is the benefit. Benefits sell.

Examples: Save time or money; Build Business, Create better relationships, Create more health, Develop your spirituality.

Too many professionals and business people assume features are what sell. Be sure to include both benefits and features in every sales letter. Example: Imagine 1000's of people reading your book next month by using the "Essential Nine Hot-Selling Points." (Benefit – book sales; feature—the Marketing how-tos)

3. Address your Potential Buyer's Resistances.

Remember to tell a background story of where your audience is NOW so they will emotionally connect with your solutions (the product or service). Let's say they want to write an eBook or print book to make themselves the "expert," make life-long passive income, or share their unique message.

Many people don't write a book because they doubt it will sell well enough for all the effort, it may not be significant enough, it will take too long, cost too much money, and they really aren't writers. One, by one, your sales letter addresses their concerns and shows these potential buyers why they need to write a book to brand their business or share their message. You show them how they can become an excellent author and make their books more salable, while building their practice and profits.

4. Sprinkle Testimonials Throughout your Sales Letter.

Potential buyers who visit your site or another one that sells your products are more pulled to buy when they think other people have already. If these people are happy with your product or service, they will be too.

Include testimonials from experts in your field, celebrities, man/woman on the street, and other people who have profited from your advice. Make the testimonials stand out with a different color background. A photo plus the blurb adds power.

5. Offer your potential customers three or four chances to buy.

They may have already decided to buy before coming to your sales letter, so offer a "Buy Now" button near the top of the sales letter. Offer more buying opportunities along the way after a list of benefits and features for your product or service.

6. End your Sales Letter with your 100% Money-Back Guarantee.

"This product comes with a 100% Money Back Guarantee. Read this book cover to cover, and if the strategies don't work for you within 60 days, we'll cheerfully refund your money, and you can keep the product too!"

7. Make your Sales Letter Credible.

Make sure your free bonus reports are not worth more than the price of your product. Would you believe this offer "order this $49 book now and receive 4 special bonus reports worth $395?"

Make sure you have written the best sales letter you can. Polish it with a professional editor.

Test it after a month. If you haven't increased sales, you may need to revise Web site sales letter.

Without a sales letter for your potential customers you leave them bored, non-inspired, and without enough information to make that decision to buy. Your precious visitors will leave your site, never to return.

Judy Cullins ©2005 All Rights Reserved.


_____________________
Judy Cullins, 20-year Book and Internet Marketing Coach works with small business people who want to make a difference in people's lives, build their credibility and clients, and make a consistent life-long income. Judy is author of 10 eBooks including Write your eBook or Other Short Book Fast, Ten Non-Techie Ways to Market Your Book Online, The Fast and Cheap Way to Explode Your Targeted Web Traffic, and Power Writing for Web Sites That Sell. She offers free help through her 2 monthly ezines, "The BookCoach Says...," "Business Tip of the Month," blog Q & A at www.bookcoaching.com and over 185 free articles.
Email her at Judy@bookcoaching.com or Cullinsbks@aol.com
Phone: 619/466-0622 -- Orders: 866/200-9743

The Most Profitable Internet Marketing Strategy Ever

So what's the most profitable internet marketing strategy you can apply to your business right now and start profiting from it for years to come?

It's having your own responsive mailing list.

Here's how it works:

You CAN start today by collecting the names and email addresses of people who's interested in what you're selling. And start selling it to them.

There is no doubt about it, owning a responsive mailing list is THE most profitable thing you can
do online. It's more profitable than ...

Writing eBooks or reports.

Getting thousands of visitors to your site.

Having the hottest sales copy on the Internet.

Having a "top 1%" Alexa rating.

Being the smartest person on the planet.

It's even more profitable that having an army of affiliates!

Or ANY other ONE thing that you can do online.

Having your own responsive mailing list means that you can make offers week after week for YEARS, and your list will faithfully buy what you recommend. Now THAT'S marketing power!
If that sounds good to you ... keep reading.

The only way to reliably have a mailing list that is HIGHLY responsive is to build it yourself.

The good news is that building a list of your own is actually VERY easy when you know how.

In fact, you probably have the seeds of a small list right now, even though you might not know it.

Let me be 100% clear. You do NOT need an advanced degree in marketing, need a big time "guru" reputation, have to spend thousands of dollars, or a huge mailing list.

All you need is to have something to say, and to learn HOW (and when) to say it in a way that gets subscribers to take action now!

To help you get started building your own profitable list here's a few marketing tips that you can apply today:

You can work together with other site owners. The idea here is that you get traffic that I'll never see, and I get traffic you'll never see. So, we make an agreement that allows us each to benefit from the other's traffic.

The most common form of this is what is called a "thank you page private co-registration".

That's a fancy way of saying that I'll show your subscription form on the thank you page of my website, and you'll show my subscription form on the thank you page of your site.

The thank you pages involved here can be found in a variety of places. Each one has the common denominator that they are viewed after a visitor takes action. This is good, because studies show that visitors who take one action are likely to take another action.

Here are some common thank you pages where you can place your subscription form:

After a sale is made. After someone subscribes to an ezine. After they download a free gift. After they complete a survey.

The possibilities are endless, and this is one of the most underused marketing methods around.

So if you can find a site that compliments your site, these arrangements can be a powerful list building method.


________________
Houa Yang
YES YOU CAN build a powerful mailing list! Having your own mailing list is THE most profitable thing you can do online. Don't put it off ... begin building your list today. It's easy! Just visit: http://www.email-marketing-strategy.com.

The Secret of Search Engine Optimization

How to do search engine optimization is one of the best kept secrets in the world. Even though you would think it is all out there in forums and other websites, when you try to figure it out, you will find you can’t find the forest for the trees.

Let me put it plain and simple. The secret of search engine optimization is not about keywords, or titles, or meta keyword tags, or meta descriptions, or heading tags, or keyword density, or alt attributes, or what ever other on-the-page factor you can find. Even links aren’t the secret.

The real secret of search engine optimization is Harmony!

Harmony between all the factors I just mentioned and many more other factors as well. And that is exactly why it is not easy to find a great SEO company for your website. Every SEO can talk about the importance of a title, or any of the other factors, but try finding one that talks about how it all works together.

Harmony is the real power of SEO and it needs to be supported by lots of hard work, especially focused on link building. But here too harmony comes into play.

Many SEO’s that I talk with about harmony tell me that of course I am right and that it is so obvious it isn’t worth mentioning. But the truth is that not that many people (SEO’s included) are able to bring real harmony to their pages and website.

Putting keywords in title, meta keywords, meta description and heading tags, that’s easy. But that’s just the most basic form of harmony in a web page. Just think of how keywords fit into text found in the title, description, heading tags and the copy. Should you just place the keywords in there somehow, or may it be better to be a bit more considerate when choosing what to write in all these places?

What about topical structure? Is your site completely structured according to a logical topical structure? There are so many indirect factors that are as powerful as link building. And it is hardly possible to put it into words as it is more an art than a science to get it right.

_______________
Peter Faber is the Implementation Director of http://www.i-brane.com/; a search engine optimization company located in Brazil with a focus on Brazil, the USA and Europe. He also has his own SEO Blog in http://www.seo-works.com/.

How Can People Find Your Site If They Don’t Know What To Search?

We all know it is difficult to promote commercial products, especially those commodity items. People selling commodity items are generally submitting their sites to search engines, such as Google and getting links from other sites to increase page ranks. But you will lose some potential customers who don’t know what or how to search.

When we look at how people are using Internet, there are basically two types of people who use Internet for shopping. The first type is they know what they want and try to find out where they can buy on the Internet. The second type is they want to buy something but don’t know
what to buy. Who are they? The best example is the people who shop for gift giving.

In general, when you buy something for yourself, you know what to buy, but don’t know price and place. So you go to Google to search shopping sites. For the people who shop for gift, they may not know what to buy to fit their friends’ styles, not to mention what they can search using search engine. Perhaps, the only word they can search is gift. Therefore, a gift giving sites can guide them to shop better gifts for their friends.

Don’t forget those people who visit the gift giving sites are willing to spend money. They are not just looking for product or background information. They are not doing web research. They have intention to buy something. This is what you want.

Moreover, gift giving site can sell a little bit more expensive, or call upscale items. People may buy cheap things for themselves, but they won’t buy cheap things for their friends. Otherwise, you won’t see people borrow money from banks or credit cards for gift giving.

As I said before, some visitors may not even know what is the correct keyword they should use to search. If you sell something that is unique or the product type is new, then how can you expect people can search your site using correct keyword?

For example, assuming you are selling “Car Reversing Aid”, a new and unique product. You would probably use Pay-Per-Click advertisement with keyword “Car Reversing Aid” to promote your product. Then take a look at how many searches for “Car Reversing Aid”. There are only 83 searches in a month. It is true that the cost of keyword “Car Reversing Aid” should be very cheap, but it is meaningless because nobody or only a few people have “Car Reversing

Aid” in their mind.

Gift Giving sites eliminate this problem by showing products in open areas that are easy for visitors to see. Categorize the gift ideas into different hobbies, events and type of people (Example: http://www.StyleAndMatch.com/snm2/giftlink.html ), which help gift shoppers to find out what they want.

Yes, there are a lot of gift giving idea sites on the Internet. But most of them are ecommerce sites that focus on selling their own products. There are couple sites really providing different kinds of gift giving ideas but those sites are relatively immature. There are a lot of areas that can be improved.

There are two types of sites that provide gift giving ideas based on people and events. The first type of gift giving site is they show product details and images on their web sites. Usually, these product images and details are submitted by vendors for Pay-Per-Click Advertisement. This approach may limit the number of products or product categories showing on the site.

The other type of gift giving site is they don’t show products details for gift ideas, but show lots of different ideas for specific events or type of people. However, they don’t tell or guide people where to buy. Even I can find some of them have links to other sites, but those are standard banners that point to other sites’ home pages. That is not convenient to customers.

Therefore, gift giving sites are not perfect today. There are a lot of areas that can be improved. You should use some creative marketing ideas on promoting gift giving site. Not only that, gift giving site is also extremely good for selling advertisement, as long as you have enough traffic to your site.


_________________
Wayne Liu is the founder of www.StyleAndMatch.com, a Gift Giving ideas site that provides thousands of gift ideas and information for different kinds of events and different kinds of people. He can be reached at liuwayne@earthlink.net .

Increase Your Profit Through Effective Entry and Exit Strategies

It is amazing that so much time goes into building great looking websites, promoting them, yet most webmasters pay little attention to how their visitors will actually use them. You could be throwing profits away, if you don't pay attention to entry and exit strategies - that is, looking at how your visitors enter, walk through and leave your site, and how you can steer their course to increase your profits.

Let's look at entry strategies first. Where can visitors enter your site? Check your wesbite statistics for more information (you are doing this anyway, aren't you?). Often, many visitors enter through a "side door" unintentionally left open. By this we mean they enter at a page, which was not designed to be an entry page, and they are left floundering around lost, not knowing where to go next, a bit like wandering into an office building through an open fire escape door!

This often happens because of search engine indexing, where a keyword rich page gets an unintended good ranking. Remember, any page can become an entry page (unless you use the Meta robots tag to avoid indexing), so ensure visitors who appear in the wrong place are efficiently & easily lead to the "front reception".

Once in, what do you want your customers to do? Read content and gain exposure to advertising? Read sales copy and make a purchase? Sign up for a newsletter/ezine? Often, it's a combination, so make sure it's not all screaming for their attention at once. A visitor who becomes overwhelmed, will soon dash out the door!

Lead them through, one thing at a time. I particularly cannot understand websites, which, as soon as you enter, request your email address, via a pop up box, and I suspect many others feel the same . I like to get a feel for a site first, experience their subject matter and see if their expertise fits with what I'm after, before I sign up for a newsletter, or other communication. So, lead them through, reassuring them that you can be of great assistance, becoming their friend, stating the advantages of keeping in touch , before gently requesting their details.

Now to exit strategies - I see many puzzled faces here! Like it or not, every visitor is destined to leave your site. They can do one of two things :

1) Stop surfing and go and do something else
2) Continue surfing and visit another website.

You can influence them in both instances. By channelling them to a partner site, via a banner or an affiliate link, you can profit. You must do it at a logical point identify the points where customers are likely to leave, and provide an "emergency exit" for them. Analyse your own "surfing" habits, and those of your friends and colleagues.

For instance, if I'm visiting a website which I find is not for me, I always subconsciously scroll down to the bottom of the page before I leave. I don't know why - perhaps it's because I don't want to feel I'm missing out on something they could be giving away $20 bills at the bottom you never know! One or two attention arousing links to affiliated sites could be placed tastefully there, tempting a "lost" customer to visit and perhaps earn you some commission through an affiliate scheme.

What about purchasers? Where do they leave? Most usually through an order confirmation page, where there's only a link "back to home". Well, let me point out that people usually purchase after they've gleaned all the information they can from your site to make their decision. They've decided what they want and purchased it .Why would they go back immediately? Give them a place to go links to affiliate sites of related interest. Make the links provocative; arouse their curiosity to click through. Text links are usually more effective than banners, particularly when they are in the form of an endorsement or personal recommendations.

In short, analyse where your visitors go and are likely to go. Ensure visitors entering through "side doors", get speedily directed to the reception foyer. Position strategically placed "emergency exits" which lead to partner sites. Join some affiliate schemes, do some joint venture deals, and get profiting from those "lost" customers that leave your site.

I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.


_____________________
David Bell http://www.wspromotion.com/ Advertising research and development center.

Standing Above The Crowd

In today’s highly competitive business environment it is critical to find ways to separate yourself from the other companies who sell the same – or similar – product and/or service. Here are several strategies that can help you accomplish this:

Help your clients achieve their goals. Virtually every business person has specific goals they are striving to achieve. These can include everything from increasing their market share and sales, to reducing operating expenses, to streamlining the business, to incorporating new business practices. Invest time learning the key objectives of each of your customers. Then determine how your products and services can help them achieve their targets. In some cases, you may not be able to help them but recommending someone who can assist them will be recognized and remembered. The more you can help them achieve their goals the more valued you will become.
Under-promise, over-deliver. As old as this expression is, it is still one of the best ways to stand out from the crowd. Far too many people make commitments to their customers and fail to follow through as promised. It’s easy to fall into this trap, particularly for service-oriented individuals. We have every intention of delivering on a promise but often, unexpected circumstances crop up that prevent of from doing so. While this is acceptable by most people – once in a while – frequent occurrences will drive your customers to your competition.

Be innovative. Most companies do business the same way until a crisis, emergency, or significant change in the marketplace forces them to adapt. The most successful organizations are creative and innovative. They constantly look for new ways to do business, gain more their market share, please their customers, and offer new products and services. The inherent challenge with this is that you will encounter resistance from many people both inside and outside of the company; I have experienced this first-hand in several companies I have worked for.

However, if you try to be innovative ONLY when it’s absolutely necessary, you will never get the head-start on your competition. Watch for trends in other industries as well as yours and think of how you can incorporate these into your business. Be a leader instead of a follower.

Surprise them. Look for ways to surprise your customers and do something completely unexpected for them. Make a charitable donation in their name. Invite them to a special event. Give them a bonus gift or service. Find out what networking events your clients might like to attend and send them a complimentary invitation. If they enjoy reading send an occasional book in their area of interest. Gift certificates to a show or play may be appreciated by some of your customers.

Two words of caution: i) Be careful that your “surprise” is not misinterpreted as a bribe to do business with you. There cannot be any strings or hidden conditions attached to this offering. ii) Make sure your client is allowed to accept a gift. Some organizations have a strict “no gift” policy and you must respect it.

Keep in touch. Very few people keep in touch on a regular basis with their customers. Yet, this is the best way to keep your name in their mind. An effective strategy – without appearing like a pest – is to send them useful information on a regular basis. You can send a newspaper clipping or a magazine article. You can also send them helpful and practical tips to improve their business; this can be set up quite easily electronically.

Send cards on special occasions but instead of the standard Christmas cards send some on lesser promoted days such as St. Patrick’s Day and Halloween, etc. You can also send postcards from exotic locations – just be careful not to write a tacky message. This past winter I traveled to St. Maarten in the Caribbean and found a beautiful postcard of a beach along the Caribbean Ocean. I sent this card to about four dozen clients and prospects with the message, “When the winter starts getting you down, take a three minute vacation by picturing yourself on this beach.”

Have a VIP day. You can organize a golf tournament – assuming of course your customers play the game. If you’re a retailer, you can invite your best customer to an invitation-only special sale.

Every year, a friend of mine organizes an evening filled with networking opportunities, guest speakers, great food and beverages and invites his clients, prospects, and friends to attend. Another friend of mine takes several of his clients on excursions to a local winery. He ensures they get a tour, a private tasting of premium wines, and a five-star dinner.

© 2005 Kelley Robertson, All rights reserved


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Kelley Robertson, President of the Robertson Training Group, works with businesses to help them increase their sales and motivate their employees. He is also the author of “Stop, Ask & Listen – Proven Sales Techniques to Turn Browsers into Buyers.” Receive a FREE copy of “100 Ways to Increase Your Sales” by subscribing to his free sales and motivational newsletter available at www.kelleyrobertson.com. Contact him at 905-633-7750 or Kelley@RobertsonTrainingGroup.com.

Become an opt-in marketing master

Opt-in e-mail marketing is a great way to truly target your market audience. It has one of the lowest costs compared to traditional direct marketing methods, since you eliminate the expense of printing, postage and so on. It can produce the highest form of response than any other form of internet advertising.

Since you can truly target your core audience the likely hood that your message will get across to the right audience with the smallest effort, this alone should be a motivating factor in starting an e-mail campaign.

Since e-mail marketing is so fast you can develop time sensitive offers very quickly. You certainly will build traffic to your sites as customers receive more e-mails from you, and since you can target them so precisely you will develop your niche market very quickly.

One of the strongest factors about opt-in marketing is that the information that you are sending is information that they requested to receive. Also your messages can easily be forwarded to anyone that the receiver thinks may be interested in the message, which means free marketing to your website and products.

Types of e-mail marketing list

opt-in: this is where a person registers and is asked to make selections on subjects that they are interested in receiving e-mails for. No confirmation e-mails are sent.
confirm opt-in: this is where a person registers and is asked to make selections on subjects that they are interested in receiving e-mails for. They will also receive an e-mail confirming their membership.

double opt-in: this is where a person registers and is asked to make selections on subjects that they are interested in receiving e-mails for. They will also receive an e-mail confirming their membership but they have to actually have to click on a link confirming that they want to join. If the link is not clicked on then the membership will not be granted. In my option this is your best option since the person basically has to confirm membership.

opt-out: this is where a member goes via a registration process and selections are already pre-selected. So the member has to actually opt-out from receiving e-mails on a particular subject or offer.

Marketing Methods

If you want to continue an existing relationship with your customers I would create a newsletter. This is a great way of reminding your customers of your website and services. it's also a great way to introduce new services and special offers. Make your offers time sensitive and you will see people taking advantage of your offer left and right.

If you want to target new customers you should take advantage of using an opt-in list. Do some research by doing a search on your favorite search engine such as www.laplounge.com you will find tons of companies just shop and compare before you commit to anyone company.

If you don't want to start a newsletter, try sponsoring one it's a great way to let your prospects know about you and your services. This is also a good option because you should sponsor newsletters that your target market might be reading.

Take advantage of all the free resources available to you on e-mail marketing, and you will continue to grow your business using one of the best marketing tools available.


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Wilson Davalos is the founder of www.laplounge.com "the best search on the net"
wilson@laplounge.com