Small Business Marketing Strategies: 5 Ways to Step Up Your Game in this Recession

Any small business owner knows making money isn’t what it was 5 or 10 years ago; the economy is putting a hurting on entrepreneurs. After 2000 hit, new business owners had it easy. There was a glut of money and no real need to market in order to run a successful business. While the ante has been upped, you can still rake in the money with good marketing. A successful overall strategy is unique to each specific business, but here are 5 small business market strategies to get your wheels turning:

1. Email Marketing

While I discourage the tendency for business owners to think all the answers are online, email marketing is one of those small business marketing strategies on the web that everyone should be using. Marketing in these modern times, an age where people have learned to drown out commercial information overload, should focus on building a relationship with customers and prospects.

Email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to do this. Capture the emails of your clients and prospects so you can build a customer database. Then, launch an email campaign, build up brand recognition, and periodically remind people about what you offer.

There are plenty of ways to get emails using customer service forms, website email captures, promotions, receipts, customer appreciation cards, and many other tricks. Read the rest of this entry

I probably don’t have to sell you on the benefits of ebooks:

1.  There’s no inventory cost
2.  There’s no cost of production
3.  You can produce them relatively quickly

But can you REALLY turn ebooks into bank deposits?  And if so, how?

I realize that even if you’ve been lurking for several months or even years, you may not REALLY FEEL that you can turn ebooks into bank deposits in YOUR bank account.

Sure you believe it’s possible.

Sure you believe it happens for other people.

But you lack the reality or belief it can happen FOR YOU.

Let’s break this down so it’s real FOR YOU.

I have a friend who is a Video Jackey (VJ) in Denmark.  He has an interesting skill set, so we talk sometimes over Skype.

In the summer, he works in a factory for a low hourly wage. I explained to him recently that it’s almost nothing for him to get $350/month selling an ebook on his special area of know how.

Obviously, you can use multiples of the figures I’m giving here to arrive at the size of bank deposit YOU WANT.  I’m just drawing out an illustration.

And while $350 USD per month may not sound like a lot, hey, its a new car payment.  And very little of your own personal time is involved once it’s set up.

If he creates an ebook that sells for $35.00, all he has to sell is 10 a month.  If he’s lucky and gets ONE PERSON with a halfway decent list of 1,000 to 10,000 people to send an email to their list in a month, he would likely make many multiples of that figure. Read the rest of this entry

Now when you launch your pay per click campaigns there are some crucial boxes you should tick to stand a better chance of making it work for your internet business. If you don’t tick these boxes some of your competitors will certainly get the better of you!

Before we look at these “checklist” points let me provide you with a mini- recap on the basic pay per click mechanics.

Once you have signed up to Google AdWords and created your advert you will pay Google a fee for each click coming from search engine results. Depending on how much a person bids for a keyword over his competitor will determine how high up the advert will be positioned in the search engine sponsored results.

7 factors to help your Pay Per Click campaigns succeed:

Factor 1- Keyword Selection

Select your keywords very carefully and make sure they relate closely to the product or service you are selling. To do this, use Google’s free keyword tool and the other free keyword tools detailed on our website; these will help you generate many keyword ideas, show you how competitive the market is for each one and what you can expect to Pay Per Click. You can also select negative keywords (words that you do not wish to have Google show your ad for). E.g. the word ” Free”. This could save you money.

Factor 2- Know your target audience

Make sure you carry out some sound research as regards to “who your potential customers is.” What type of person does your product or service appeal to? Will they carry out a local search, national search or worldwide search to find you?

What you find out will determine what parameters you set in your AdWords campaign for geographical locations and different languages etc… Read the rest of this entry

Have you ever heard, “the money is in the list” Well when it comes to the internet and creating an online income stream for your business, a lead capture page is essential. It is no secret that the most successful Internet Marketers have used the power of the Internet to create a following. That following is their list.

It is not enough just to create a list, one must nurture their list. Give their followers something of value, something they want or need in order to keep them active on the list. One must continually stay in contact with their list and this is possible today with a good quality autoresponder.

Not just any autoresponder will do. This is how you communicate with your list. So I can’t stress enough the importance of doing your homework when picking an autoresponder and then learn how to use it.

Having your own list is a powerful way to build any business. When you think about it, all successful businesses have a customer list. It has been said that the most expensive sell is the first sell. Therefore any good business follows up with their customer to meet their needs, again and again. This is known as a relationship.

In the world of Internet Marketing the rule of thumb or average is for every 100 people on your list you can expect 100 dollars in return. Of course this is an approximation; it really depends on the value you are supplying to your customer. Like any business, better the value equals more sales.

In the world we live in today, with information technology at our figure tips, one’s ability to create a following could not be easier. With social network sites around every corner, free online classifieds, article directories, the list goes on and on who couldn’t or wouldn’t create a list? Read the rest of this entry

Every Monday morning I have a new ritual where I do a planning session for the week.

The idea is that only a few things really bring in the money.

1.  What will you do for a customer promotion?

If you have an email list, you need to do a promotion to it.

I like to send out new promos on Tuesday or Wednesday. But really, any day will work.

If you’re creating a new bonus, you need to plan that out. 

If you have a promotion from the prior week with a deadline, remove the deadline.

2.  What will you do for traffic?

In my case, right now I have seo going and promos with my affiliates.  I plan to add in a ppc banner campaign soon.

I’ve made the mistake in the past of NOT saying anything!  This is dumb.

One of your priorities has to be communicating to your affiliates.

3.  What’s broken that needs fixed?

For example, this past week, I found out that for various reasons we left off our email collection devices from our web pages.

This means not only do I have to fix that I have to create a system to detect if this breaks again in the future.

I’ll add that to our regular systems. Read the rest of this entry