Category: Small Business Marketing

It is hard to imagine the huge amount of direct marketing that we encounter in one day. As costumers, we are bombarded with endless amounts of mail, billboard signs, brochures, postcards and the list goes on and on. Commercial printing is one of the best ways to create that professional look to your business and direct marketing is the best way to spread your materials around.

Now, more than ever, your business needs to develop fresh and interesting marketing   ideas. Direct marketing through mail might work better than just spamming costumers’ email boxes. Still, people out there receive a lot of mail and you don’t want to end up in the recycling bin. Indeed, developing a marketing strategy isn’t an easy job. Your direct marketing plan should stick out, pull attention and give a little something extra that will convince your target audience to get up and act.

Many businesses assume that they can write their own campaigns. We all see TV, we all know the commercials by heart – so what can be so hard in writing one? This is a mistake a lot of people make. You remember a campaign because it was written by professionals. Hire a copywriter to write your content. And don’t count on your cousin who did a wonderful job with the baby shower invitations – hire a graphic designer to make your campaign look good.

1. Remember that the inside counts. But in direct marketing the audience will first see the outside and only then go on reading. Make the package look exciting. Put a real stamp on it. It feels more personal. Use color, lively text and remember to keep it short and snappy. If you offer a gift, a discount or any promotional content, make the offer notable and easy to understand. Always keep in mind though that “more is less” as too many free offers might look suspicious and too much color and catchphrases may seem overt the top.

Remember that direct marketing will work best if you supervise the process. Handing out enormous amounts of material will not do the trick. You should target your audience and compile a mailing list in advance. Try and target people that don’t use emails, or that are distrustful to the internet. These are people who are less exposed to new media and are probably much more interested in direct marketing. Maintain your mailing list, test it for responses and get rid of addresses that refuse your mail. Don’t focus on residential only. Market to vendors, corporations, even your PR contacts.

If you need some more information or guidance regarding your company’s direct marketing and commercial printing, or you’re looking for a marketing agency that will provide you a state-of-the-art manufacturing technology, unrevealed data expertise and innovative direct marketing solutions that maximize ROI, you should defiantly visit Wilen Direct online at www.wilengroup.com and get your direct marketing going.

Source by Mark Etinger

One of the chief complaints I receive from the attorneys that I meet and work with is that they just don’t have time for legal marketing. While billable hours, day-to-day emergencies and time outside the office all add up, there are definite ways to go about making time for legal marketing and business development. The key is to think of it as an ongoing habit, not something to “make time for.” Rather than seeing marketing and business development as a burden, think of it as an integral part of your day-to-day life. The interesting thing about creating this kind of habit is that once you find the right system for your individual lifestyle it should simply become second nature.

The benefits to making time are numerous. Aside from building relationships with potential clients and referral sources, taking advantage of marketing and business development opportunities can help increase your visibility AND credibility in the legal arena and beyond. Writing articles and participating in social media help you create and build a personal brand—something that every lawyer should have. True dedication and time commitment can even bring you recognition as an expert in your chosen practice area or within a specific industry.

Below are a few suggestions and lessons from attorneys I’ve worked with, as well as my own observations and experience. Choose the path that make sense for you or adapt the suggestions to work within your own day, but give it a chance. Do something! The rewards you will reap are far greater than a 5-minute time commitment.

Simple in theory but never easy in practice, without a true commitment you can never reap the rewards of a solid marketing habit. Filling your pipeline with work, receiving recognition as an expert and gaining credibility and visibility won’t happen all at once, but you can be sure they will happen. Just as with any other endeavor, it takes focus and time to see results.

Source by Paula Black

Viral marketing, one of the most effective and fastest promotional techniques, plays a vital role in increasing the revenue of any online business with minimum effort. The primary objective of this technique is to circulate your message and get people to know about you and your company on the Internet. Moreover, this is a cost-effective technique depending mainly on word of mouth promotion.

Utilize Effective Marketing Campaigns

Viral marketing campaigns play a major role in enhancing the visibility of your website in leading search engines. An effective viral marketing campaign uses both non-interactive media such as articles, videos or podcasts and interactive content like web-based games or alternate reality games (ARGs) to get the message out.

To be successful in online marketing, implement an effective viral marketing strategy for your business. The following techniques can help:

• Write compelling articles pertaining to your services or products and submit these to social networking and book marking sites, blogs, forums, articles, press releases, e-books and other online resources
• Give away valuable products or services
• Exploit common human behaviors and motivations
• Utilize existing communication networks to spread your message

Benefits of Viral Marketing

With viral marketing, you can:

• Increase your website’s visibility
• Drive a tremendous amount of targeted traffic
• Increase online leads and sales
• Promote new products or services
• Build your brand or name recognition
• Increase the response rates on marketing efforts
• Enhance your one way link popularity

Find an Efficient Internet Marketing Firm

Whatever may be the kind of website you have – big or small – utilize innovative viral marketing services to spread your business message on the Internet. Excellent service providers will develop a unique concept to advertise your business and secure further exposure for it.

Source by Robert Kruse

Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Optimization (SMO) is an important – perhaps even critical – Internet marketing strategy. Time and time again marketers are unsure of how to approach marketing in the social networks or even if they should at all. Almost daily I’m asked by Marketing Managers and CMOs about how to get into the networks and what the benefits are. I’m amazed that they are not sure if they should do this. At some point, one must seriously investigate and take the plunge. The benefits of marketing in this arena are far too numerous to sit on the sidelines. So today I just wanted to go through a few of the up front benefits we see all the time.

The approach and exact methods used in a campaign vary drastically based on your business size, vertical and whether B2B or B2C. However, two aspects remaining constant across any campaign are the goals of garnering relevant inbound hyperlinks to your target site as well as driving new and increased impressions on a brand. Let’s explore some of these and other important benefits of embracing Social Media Marketing campaigns:

What are the elements of brand marketing?

• Target market research: collecting information on prospect needs and preferences
• Features and benefits: identifying target prospects are interested in and which will move them to purchase
• Brand presentation: designing a web page that maximizes the impact and impression of your business.
• Brand experience: creating a Web site or other advertisement that makes the users meeting with your product or service memorable, fun or useful.

Traffic from the Social Network –

Traffic is great for major websites where the business model is based on siteSocial Media Traffic Bottleneck session numbers, pageviews advertising impressions and CPC models. Major media websites can benefit greatly from social media as leveraging social news sites can deliver thousands upon thousands of relatively targeted users to a site. Traffic can come directly from very targeted points of the social network for bursts and/or for long periods of time depending on the approach.

There is a lot of free traffic for you website to be had at social networking sites. The key thing is that you need to be helpful and have a good sense of humor to succeed. Apply the old concept of ‘givers gain’ by helping people – you can freely of your advice, or give a product away. Whatever, never be dishonest or overtly sell, otherwise you’ll be found out and blown out the water.

Brand Impressions –

Brand marketing is the art/science of making the right impression on prospects, Impressions are a result of traffic and more unique sessions on a website.. It’s the active process of discovering, developing and bringing the right image or identity of your company to the marketplace. Too often, clients are focused on the later stages of the brand identity development process, such as the presentation on a Web site or Various forms of social media can drive consistent brand impressions and exposure through very targeted communities.

Viral Word of Mouth –

In this area learn about techniques that can be used to build strong word-of-mouth or referral (or pass along) campaigns for finding new customers. Coverage includes the lastest twist on this topic called buzz marketing.

Traffic from the Links –

As a result of the links formed from your content going viral, a successful campaign will often continue to deliver targeted traffic from the links acquired. This traffic is pretty much set in stone for as long as the link remains live. Oftentimes the links are built in targeted industry sites and blogs and end up being archived and remaining live on the web indefinitely. Ongoing, direct referral traffic, from targeted sites

Tagging and Bookmarking –

Good content, when properly distributed in targeted social networks will in many cases be tagged by users who have accounts in those networks. Tags end up being revisited by friends of those users who originally tagged the content, but also will show up in social network site searches. The more users tagging your content the better over the long term. Interestingly enough, some social networks tagging information on user profiles shows up in major search engines searches (due to the tremendous link & trust authority that many of these sites have).

Community Popularity –

Building community around your brand by leveraging the various social media websites and employing the tools and API’s offered is important. If you are able set up, participate and add value for other members in a community, you’ve engaged in true social media work. This takes dedication to participate in a meaningful and creative way, however the return on attraction to your brand is unparalleled.

Reputation Management –

Social Networks have become a powerful tool for reputation management which is a crucial point in brand marketing. Being first to control a targeted URL or Pofile set-up on a major social network can be of endless benefit to your brand over the long term. With this action, marketers have better reach and control over brand dialogue.

With all of the above, it’s endlessly important to find as many ways as possible to track the success of your social media campaign. Tracking the success of your campaign comes in many forms and depends on your goals.

http://www.itoutsourceonline.com/seo_price_and_plans.html

Source by Jatin Sharma

The most common question when someone joins a Network Marketing opportunity is how do I market it correctly? There are a lot of different view points about marketing. There are traditional views and there are also newer insights. You have a choice of two very different paths that you can travel when it comes to marketing.

Both are effective, but I have discovered that for most people one of the ways is more effective than the other.

The first path is that you can use Avon marketing strategies offline. Also referred to as “old school” marketing techniques.

A few offline Avon marketing strategies include getting a hold of friends and family, organizing Avon house parties, handing out flies and post cards, generate a warm market list, acquire referrals, and so on.

The point is is that you have to get your name out in the world some how, some way.

Face to face marketing strategies have worked in the past for many people, but what has happened is that people generally get burnt out after a couple of months. They get burnt out because these strategies of marketing are stressful and a lot of people find that they just not work as well in this day of age.

You are the one that has to go hunt down all of these people to be in your Avon parties and organize everything week after week after week (if you are trying to earn a good income from Avon).

As time flies, you will realize that marketing to your friends and family is only good for so long. You might think that you know a lot of people, but to run an ongoing business with only the people that you know is virtually impossible. Especially if you are focusing on sponsoring any of your friends and family into the Avon business.

Strictly building your business from your warm market list (friends and family) will severely limit the profits of your Avon business.

Soon you will be relying solely on a few measly referrals.

As you can see the traditional way of advertising can still work to a certain extent, but why not be more productive and change things up. Lets flip things around into your favor?

Wouldn’t you like to have thousands of people wanting to get involved in your Avon business. Not only in buying products but to also work with you in selling Avon?

The other path is marketing Avon online.

Now instead of chasing down all of your friends and family about your Avon business, bugging and pleading them to buy from you, wouldn’t you like to have people chasing you wanting to get involved with you? This is very possible. You just have to be empowered with the right knowledge.

You ask how? The theory of attraction marketing.

A brief outline on how you would accomplish such a task is to create a website with valuable information to its viewers.

The type of information that you could provide to get people recruited under you is how you could help them market their Avon business.

These people that want to become a distributor will want to join a leader that will help them achieve what ever they are wanting to achieve in their Avon business.

That is you! You can do that because you can teach them all the concepts about marketing Avon!

Now obviously you do not know everything about marketing Avon right now, but you will know how to soon enough.

In order to promote and sell Avon products through your website, you would focus the topic of your writing about informing your website’s visitors with valuable information about the product. For example, you could write about what the product consists of, how it could help someone, and just give a full review on the product.

Now there is a lot more to the equation. Distributing your content all over the Internet is another strategy in itself.