4 Online Marketing Tips

1. Social Networking - Social networking is the rage right now and more and more people are using social networking sites to connect and build business relationships. There are many out there and they can be addictive and time-consuming. I suggest joining LinkedIn and Facebook and perhaps one more specific to your industry. Create an effective profile and start building relationships.

2. Blogging for Business - Again, more and more businesses are blogging. Yes, it can be time consuming. By scheduling a regular time to blog, you can increase traffic to your website and connect with your target market.

3. Ezines - Create an email newsletter and send it out regularly. Too often businesses are not consistent with this and lose subscribers. Commit to sending your newsletter out on a consistent schedule and you'll build credibility.

4. Articles - If you write an article for every newsletter you publish, you can then submit it to article directories and increase exposure for your business even more. This helps get more web site traffic and higher search engine rankings.

What other online marketing tips have you used?

Give It Away

Do you want more customers? Consider giving them something for free. HotMail did this and attracted more than ten million customers for its free email service. Now it is supported by advertising. By ending each free email from the sender with an offer for free email for the recipient, HotMail used the ultimate in word-of-mouth advertising.

Yes, there will be those who sign up for your freebie and then you'll never hear from them again. But many will be impressed by your quality, service and commitment and they will become lifelong customers.

Do you do business with companies that gave you something for free? Why not make a list of things you could give away for free and then give it a try. It could be as simple as creating a free report that you give prospects when they sign up for your newsletter.

What can you give away?

Marketing Your Book

More and more authors are looking for ways to market their books using the internet. There are several strategies that can be used: online press releases, blogs, virtual book tours. Many authors are utilizing the services of a virtual assistant to help them with their online marketing.

One more resource to add to your list as an author is Indie Seminars. This seminar was created to assist authors in moving forward with their business. Successful authors will speaking and presenting workshops at the seminar March 28, 2009 in the Greater Sacramento area. For Early Bird Specials, Register Before Midnight 31 December 2008.

Consistent, Persistent Effective Marketing

Have you tried blogging, article marketing, social networking, and other marketing techniques? Do you feel that none of them worked? Too often a small business owner tries a marketing technique, such as social networking, and thinks that one month of social networking will bring in all kinds of new clients. When that doesn't work, they try blogging for a few weeks. After little or no response, they then turn to article marketing, and the cycle repeats.

Rapidly moving from one marketing technique to another and hoping that each one will provide all sorts of new clients is not consistent, persistent effective marketing. To be effective in marketing your service or product, you must have a plan in place to use a variety of techniques and then be consistent and persistent in using them. Effective marketing takes time.

Each marketing technique you use should drive your target audience to your website. You need to be sure that your blog posts, articles, and social networking profiles all aim at your target audience and have links back to your website.

What happens when a prospect visits your website? Do they land on the home page, read a paragraph or two and leave? How can you turn them into a lead? Once a prospect finds your website you want them to give you information and permission to contact them again. A great way to do this is to have a newsletter sign up on your home page. Offer your prospect something of value in exchange for signing up. It could be some sort of free report or discount on a future purchase.

Now that your prospect has signed up for your newsletter and you have their email address, you need to have an effective, consistent follow-up plan. You can't expect to send one newsletter and get a paying client. Set up a system to stay in touch on a regular basis and offer valuable information to your prospects about you and your business.

It is important to use a variety of marketing techniques. It does take time to turn leads into clients. That's why it is important to be consistent and persistent in your follow-up and not to give up on one technique too soon.

Let me help you put together a consistent, effective plan to market your service business.

7 Key Marketing Skills

1. Build your permission-based contact list
2. Contact your list regularly
3. Have an engaging website with fresh content
4. Engage in marketing activities on a regular basis
5. Follow up with prospects
6. Turn prospects into clients
7. Get testimonials from satisfied clients

How can I help you get started?

Why Use Email Marketing?

I recently attended a workshop hosted by Constant Contact about the best practices of email marketing. With so many spammers, many wonder if they should use email marketing. Once you put into practice the 'best practices' of email marketing, it can be a very fast, easy, inexpensive and effective way to market. Some statistics about email (source: AOL Email Survey - July 2008) are:

46% of email users say they're "hooked" (addicted to email)
51% check email 4 or more times a day
69% of email users say they have multiple email accounts
62% check work email over a typical weekend
50% check email while on vacation

So people still turn to email to find valuable information. There are reasons to use email marketing? How can it be used most effectively? That's another discussion.