MerchantPoint Sales Tips Blog

Ten Ways to Stretch Your Advertising Budget

Most business-to-business advertisers have smaller ad budgets than their counterparts in consumer marketing.  Here are 10 ways to get more out of your advertising dollars – without detracting from the quality and quantity of your ads and promotions. In some cases, these ideas can even enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

ONE Use your ads for more than just space advertising.  Ads are expensive to produce and expensive to run.  But there are ways of getting your advertising message in your prospect’s hands at a fraction of the cost of space advertising.

The least expensive is to order an ample supply of reprints and distribute them to customers and prospects every chance you get.  When you send literature in response to an inquiry, include a copy of the ad in the package.  This reminds a prospect of the reason he responded in the first place and reinforces the original message.

Distribute ads internally to other departments – engineering, production, sales, customer service, and R&D – to keep them up to date on your latest marketing and promotional efforts.  Make sure your salespeople receive an extra supply of reprints and are encouraged to include a reprint when they write to or visit their customers.

Turn the ad into a product data sheet by adding technical specifications and additional product information to the back of the ad reprint. This eliminates the expense of creating a new layout from scratch.  And it makes good advertising sense, because the reader gets double exposure to your advertising message.

Ad reprints can be used an inexpensive direct mail pieces.  You can mail the reprints along with a reply card and a sales letter.  Unlike the ad, which is “cast in concrete,” the letter is easily and inexpensively tailored to specific markets and customer groups.

If you’ve created a series of ads on the same product or product line, publish bound reprints of the ads as a product brochure.  This tactic increases prospect exposure to the series and is less expensive than producing a brand new brochure.

If your ads provide valuable information of a general nature, you can offer reprints as free educational material to companies in your industry. Or, if the ad presents a striking visual, you can offer reprints that are suitable for framing.

Reuse your ads again and again.  You will save money – and increase frequency – in the process.

TWO If something works, stick with it.  Too many industrial marketers scrap their old ads and create new ones because they’re bored with their current campaign.

That’s a waste.  You shouldn’t create new ads or promotions if your existing ones are still accurate and effective.  You should run your ads for as long as your customers read and react to them.

How long can ads continue to get results?  The Ludlow Corp. Ran an ad for its erosion-preventing Soil Saver mesh 41 times in the same journal.  After 11 years it pulled more inquiries per issue than when it was first published in 1966.

If a concept still has selling power but the ad contains dated information, update the existing ad – don’t throw it out and start from scratch.  This approach isn’t fun for the ad manager or the agency, but it does save money.

THREE Don’t over-present yourself.  A strange thing happens to industrial advertisers when they get a little extra money in the ad budget: they see fancy four-color brochures, gold embossed mailers, and fat annual reports produced by Fortune 500 firms.  Then they say, “This stuff sure looks great – why don’t we do some brochures like this?”

That’s a mistake.  The look, tone, and image of your promotions should be dictated by your product and your market – not by what other companies in other businesses put out.

Producing literature that’s too fancy for its purpose and its audience is a waste of money.  And it can even hurt sales – your prospects will look at your overdone literature and wonder whether you really understand your market and its needs.

FOUR Use “modular” product literature.  One common advertising problem is how to promote a single product to many small, diverse markets.  Each market has different needs and will buy the product for different reasons.  But on your budget, you can’t afford to create a separate brochure for each of these tiny market segments.

The solution is “modular literature.”  This means creating a basic brochure layout that has sections capable of being tailored to meet specific market needs.

After all, most sections of the brochure – technical specifications, service, company background, product operation, product features – will be the same regardless of the audience.  Only a few sections, such as benefits of the product to the user and typical applications, need to be tailored to specific readers.

In a modular layout, standard sections remain the same, but new copy can be typeset and stripped in for each market-specific section of the brochure.  This way, you can create many different market-specific pieces of literature on the same product using the same basic layout, mechanicals, artwork and plates.

Significant savings in time and money will result.

FIVE Use article reprints as supplementary literature.  Ad managers are constantly bombarded by requests for “incidental” pieces of product literature. 

Engineers want data sheets explaining some minor technical feature in great detail.  Reps selling to small, specialized markets, want special literature geared to their particular audience.  And each company salesperson wants support literature that fits his or her individual sales pitch.  But the ad budget can only handle the major pieces of product literature.  Not enough time or money exists to satisfy everybody’s requests for custom literature.

The solution is to use article reprints as supplementary sales literature.  Rather than spend a bundle producing highly technical or application-specific pieces, have your sales and technical staff write articles on these special topics.  Then, place the articles with the appropriate journals.

Article reprints can be used as inexpensive literature and carry more credibility than self-produced promotional pieces.  You don’t pay for typesetting or production of the article.  Best of all, the article is free advertising for you firm.

SIX Explore inexpensive alternatives for generating leads.  Many smaller firms judge ad effectiveness solely by the number of leads generated.  They are not concerned with building image or recognition; they simply count bingo-card inquiries.

If that describes your approach to advertising, perhaps you shouldn’t be advertising in the first place.  Not that lead-generating isn’t a legitimate use of space advertising.  But if leads are all you’re after, there are cheaper ways to get them.

New-product releases lead the list as the most economical method of generating leads.  Once, for less than $100, I wrote, printed, and distributed a new-product release to a hundred trade journals.  Within six moths, the release had been picked up by 35 magazines and generated 2,500 bingo-card inquiries.

Your second – best inquiry – generator is the direct-action postcard pack.  You can write and typeset your own postcard for less than $200. And running the card in a trade journal’s post-card pack generally costs from $800 to $1,200.  But that same $800 to $1,200 would probably buy only a sixth or a third of a page in the magazine.

I’ve seen a single postcard mailing pull nearly 500 inquiries, and you’d have a hard time doing that with the average one-third page ad.

SEVEN Don’t “overbook” outside creative talent.  Hire freelancers and consultants whose credentials – and fees – fit the job and the budget.

Top advertising photographers, for example, get $1,000 a day or more.  This may be worth the fee for a corporate ad running in Forbes or Business Week.  But it’s overkill for the employee newsletter or a publicity shot.  Many competent photographers can shoot a good black-and-white publicity photo for $200 or even less.

When you hire consultants, writers, artists, or photographers, you should look for someone whose level of expertise and cost fits the task at hand.

EIGHT Do it yourself.  Routine tasks, such as mailing publicity releases, duplicating slides, or retyping media schedules can be done cheaper in-house than outside.  Save the expensive agency or consultant for tasks that really require their expertise.

Even if you don’t have an in-house advertising department, consider hiring a full-time administrative assistant to handle the detail work involved in managing your company’s advertising.  This is a more economical solution than farming administrative work out to the agency or doing it yourself.

NINE Get the most of existing art, photography, and copy.  Photos, illustrations, layouts, and even copy created for one promotion can often be lifted and reused in other pieces to significantly reduce creative costs.  For example, copy created for a corporate image ad can be used as the introduction to the annual report.

Also, you can save rough layouts, thumbnail sketches, headlines, and concepts rejected for one project and use them in future ads, mailings, and promotions.

TEN Pay vendors on time.  You’ll save money by taking advantage of discounts and avoiding late charges when you pay vendor invoices on time.  And, you’ll gain goodwill that can result in better service and fairer prices on future projects.

ESSENTIAL PRODUCT TIPS

1. Is It Highly Demonstrable?
In other words, the product’s purpose, function and success must be easy to explain and demonstrate on TV. Complex concepts, multi-stage assembly or vague results don’t have a prayer! There’s also got to be a visual “wow” factor that will capture the viewer’s attention and make them not only keep watching, but compel them to purchase. For example, in the OxiClean commercials stains disappear right before your eyes and Mighty Mend It repairs a flag that could withstand hurricane-force winds.

2. Is It Unique or New?
Sometimes “everything old is new again,” but other times a product comes into the arena that’s completely unique. It’s not necessary for the product to be new and unique, but if it is, then it will increase the chances that it will make it to Direct Response TV production. A perfect example is the Swivel Sweeper. While oodles of floor-cleaning tools already exist, the Swivel Sweeper’s unique features and design made it an exciting revolution in floor cleaning. Sullivan Productions jumped on the product as soon as it was shown to them, and 14 million units later, they knew they’d made the right decision. On the less successful side, Sullivan Productions was once approached by someone who was certain they had invented wet toilet paper, but the producers took a quick pass. Apparently, this client chose to ignore the dozens of “moist wipe” brands on the market.

3. Does It Have a Patent?
This is not required, but your chances are much improved if you can ensure that competition from a similar product is not imminent. In any case, liability for patent infringements rest with the clients; the production company won’t get involved in patent searches.

4. Does It Solve A Common Problem?
What you should be looking for are simple, inexpensive solutions to problems that challenge or annoy millions, yes!, millions! Most often these are labor- or time-savers, but even better are the products that let the consumer tackle jobs effectively while saving money by doing it themselves. Everyone loves a product that boosts confidence — and avoids the expense of a professional — or helps avoid common boring, messy chores.

5. Does It Have Room for a 5x Markup?
When developing your product, keep in mind that it needs to be produced at a cost that allows for a “five times” markup while still resulting in an attractive offer price. This markup is required to cover the costs of media, distribution, fulfillment, etc. In the near future, this markup level may come down since so much Direct Response TV is now used to push retail rather than just direct TV and Web sales. Still, you need to stick with inexpensive, easily manufactured components. This requirement is not as daunting as it sounds, since mass production at overseas plants can help keep costs down.

6. Does It Have Mass Market Appeal?
This is not necessarily an imperative in the broadest sense, but if the product is seen as a potential winner among a wide range of ages, sexes, races or other demographics, the less likely you will be given the boot. One key to success in this area is to stay away from any easily avoidable exclusionary features, such as limiting gender appeal. When selling a product like the Natural Bra, for example, you’re only appealing to women and therefore your saleability is cut in half. And while there are millions of golf enthusiasts, golf products only appeal to golfers.

7. Does It Have Perceived High Value?
Pitchmen always want to make potential customers feel like they are getting a great value for their money. This is why a pitch typically includes a line like “a $60 value all for only $19.99!” How do you make this convincing? By succeeding at all the requirements above. It’s been proven time and again that consumers will almost automatically impart a higher value to products that “solve a common problem” with minimum effort, even if the products are obviously made from simple materials with a simple design. Clever solutions that offer surprising results almost always earn a high value rating.

8. Prevention DOES NOT Sell!
Maybe it’s because you can’t really “see” the results, but products that just offer prevention almost always fail in Direct Response TV commercials. For one thing, it’s almost impossible to come up with effective demonstrations, so it’s a daunting challenge to impart “perceived high value.” For example, someone had a product to test your air quality, but once you got the results back, there was no follow-up on what to do. Another client of Sullivan Productions came up with a product to prevent bathroom odors that required combining two packets of powder in the toilet before going “No. 2.” Although it went against the producers’ better judgment, they liked the client so they went ahead and made the commercial. It failed miserably.

Now that you’re a lot more savvy about what makes a successful product, you’ve just improved your chances of coming up with a great idea that takes off. Good Luck!

It was status and convenience in two breezy words: Charge it. But in these leaner times, shoppers are thinking twice before pulling out the plastic, even as analysts predict credit-card defaults could total more than $75 billion this year. On April 23, Barack Obama and his economic adviser Lawrence Summers met with credit-card executives to discuss how to control our addiction to plastic–and curb the controversial practices that encourage it.

Charge cards have been around since the 1920s, when service stations, department stores and hotel chains began offering them to automobile-loving consumers who didn’t want to trek back to their hometown bank to get cash. But it wasn’t until the postwar boom of the 1950s that credit cards really caught on. In 1950, Diners Club issued its first card–made of cardboard–for use in 27 restaurants in New York City. A year later, nearly 20,000 Americans carried it in their wallet. American Express, which had specialized in traveler’s checks, created its card in 1958; the same year, Bank of America mailed its first 60,000 BankAmericards (now Visas) to residents of Fresno, Calif.–a harbinger of the aggressive marketing tactics used today.

Computerization spurred a boom in the 1970s and ’80s, as did new methods of analyzing consumer data to unearth the most lucrative “revolvers,” those who often carry high balances but are unlikely to default. Critics say contracts today, with their ever shifting terms and complex legalese, have helped customers get into more debt than they bargained for. Though Congress shelved earlier proposals for a credit-card holders’ bill of rights, a new version was introduced in January, and this time, economic hardship coupled with populist outrage could translate into legislative change.

A brand is, quite simply, the most important and most visible asset that a company can own. We strongly believe that to be successful in today’s dynamic, turbocharged, and high-tech marketplace, businesses must be able to manage and promote a clear, consistent brand presence in a world of constant change. 

Corporate Identity, Branding, and Marketing Materials

The initial lack of customers and cash flow often causes new business owners to put off designing a logo and marketing materials professionally “until they get a few clients” or “until they get started.” Without professionally designed marketing materials, it will make getting those initial clients more difficult and may result in a business that will not succeed.

At Creative Vision Studio, we provide the creative results so you can focus on building new customers and profits.

Brand Identity

Brands are critical marketing assets, as important to your business as your product itself. Clear, consistent, moving brand messages encourage interest and improve recognition. We can help you enhance your branding efforts resulting in substantial benefits.

Business Plan

The business plan is the single most important tool in raising capital for an existing business or starting and funding a new venture. The importance of a business plan cannot be over emphasized. In the end, the old saying holds true, If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Logo DesignEvery business has one, that little graphic displayed on everything they produce. Although a logo may look just like a stylistic name, it can mean brand recognition to a company. A good logo helps a company have a clean, professional, polished look. The more clean, stylistic and original a logo is, the more chance there is that it will stand out from the competition.

Business Cards

The power of the business card is like a “billboard in the wallet” allowing you to advertise and connect with people every day. It allows you to join networking groups, chamber mixers, and more so you can gain new referrals and clients. Without a business card, you have an extra obstacle to overcome.

Newsletters, Postcards, and Advertisements

These materials serve as a marketing vehicle to keep in touch with your existing clients, and keep them coming back for more products and services.

Online Presence with a Website

Your internet presence can be one of the most valuable tools to your business success. Whether it’s function is to generate sales leads, improve customer service, or to simply serve as an on-line brochure, it should be a priority to every business.

Credit Card Processing via Internet

The fastest-growing segment of credit card use today is in “card-not-present” transactions in which a customer makes his or her purchase by mail order or telephone order (MOTO), by facsimile, or via the Internet instead of being physically present at the merchant’s location.

If you want to process credit cards for Internet, telephone, or mail order transactions, you’ll need a special merchant account specifically designed for that purpose. Because you never take physical possession of a credit card so that you can swipe it through a magnetic strip reader, both Visa and Mastercard use different criteria for evaluating risk and have different fee structures for card-not-present transactions.

Creative Vision Studio can help you easily establish such a merchant account and the entire process will take just minutes of your time and you’ll be up and running in a matter of days.

The following pages are setup in a specific order to help you put together the right combination of credit card processing software or terminal equipment, and the services that best meet your needs.

When you reach the end of this process, you’ll be ready to complete our online application, or to speak with an authorized Creative Vision Studio sales consultant.

Printing Tips

Brochures can be an effective tool in your marketing collateral arsenal.

With the abundance of available software tools that can facilitate brochure design, like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark Xpress, and Microsoft Publisher, many home business owners decide to create their own brochures. But there are a few key tips a home business owner should know that will help your brochures look professional when it comes time for printing. Here are the top 5 tips for creating a great brochure follow.

Tip 1: Know Your Print Size

Shawn told me that one of the most common errors made by those who create their own brochures, but one of the most challenging to correct, is an incorrect setup size for the brochure. He says that all too often, a print layout has to be returned to the customer because it wasn’t setup for the proper output size. Don’t use an 8.5 x 11 layout and submit it for printing on 8×10 paper. MacKinnon points out that when a print service has to stretch or shrink a brochure layout to fit the paper, the quality of the print resolution may be compromised.

Tip 2: Allow for Bleed

What is print bleed? Think of it as an insurance policy to make your final printed brochure look its best. Brochures are printed together in sheets, and then sliced into single units. The blade that cuts out each brochure is precise, but when cutting thousands of pieces, it can fluctuate slightly over the course of the order.

MacKinnon says, “By expanding your brochure design slightly beyond the established page borders, when we cut each page you’ll have solid ink coverage from edge to edge. This is imperative if you have a photo, color, or pattern that needs to be displayed to the extreme edge of your brochure layout.” Designing your brochure with an extra 1/8th inch of coverage beyond each edge is recommended.

Tip 3: Resolution is Key

Using high-resolution images in your layout is a critical step toward creating a professional looking final brochure. If you submit something for print that isn’t the proper resolution, your images will come out ‘soft’, blurry, or even pixilated.

The images you see on your computer monitor are only 72 dpi (dots-per-inch), which is fine for viewing on a monitor, but very inadequate for a professional-looking printed brochure. Your images should be at least 300 dpi to print clearly with full sharpness. There are a variety of stock image sites on the web where you can obtain inexpensive, high-resolution, royalty-free images to use in your brochure designs. Some stock image sites even offer free high-resolution pictures you can use for your brochure.

Tip 4: Select the Correct Paper for Your Broshure

Most print shops that print brochures offer either an 80lb or 100lb stock paper, with a variety of gloss / matte finishes. It’s really your choice in the end, but a 100lb stock is surprisingly more substantial than 80lb stock paper without a huge cost difference. Using a heavier paper may convince a potential customer that you are more professional than your competitors.

Adding varnish will add an appealing gloss to your brochure, but if you have a lot of ink coverage your brochure will appear glossy anyway. However, if you use too many dark colors in your brochure design, using a varnish will prevent fingerprint smudges on your brochure.

Tip 5: Be Original and be Creative

Carefully consider what you want to say with your brochure. What information are you trying to convey?

You can start by looking at your competitors to see what approach they’re taking in their advertising materials. Have they provided all of the necessary contact information? What makes other brochure designs leap out at you?

Remember, the fronts of your brochures are all people will see when scanning display racks, so make sure the front of your brochure is appealing and makes prospective customers want to pick it up!

MacKinnon goes on to advise, “Don’t get stuck using the fonts that shipped with your software. Everybody has those fonts, and you don’t want your brochure to look like everyone else’s.” Look around the web for a variety of free, interesting fonts you can use to make your brochure stand out from the crowd and look very professional at the same time.

A Brochure is Part of Your Business Identity

Creating a brochure is part of creating your business identity. A well-designed brochure that’s professionally printed can be worth a great deal more than its cost. Knowing what printers are looking for when it comes time to print your brochure will save you considerable time and aggravation.

8 Steps to Create Your Business Identity

Create a Business Identity and Hang Out Your Shingle

Creating a business identity is an essential task to open your doors for business, or “hang out your shingle”, if you prefer. Here’s an orderly and logical sequence of steps you can take to get your home business up and running by creating its identity.

Before You Establish Your Business Identity

These steps will help you get the doors of your home business open. However, before you reach this point, you need to have already:

• Brainstormed your business, have a clear idea of what you will be doing and who your customers are.
• Completed at least an informal or preliminary business plan or a well-thought-out business plan outline.
• Considered the benefits and disadvantages of the available legal forms your business entity could operate under and selected the form of business that is best for you – at least initially: sole proprietorship; partnership; limited liability corporation (LLC); C Corporation; or S Corporation. Most home business entrepreneurs start out as a sole proprietorship, but you need to know what the risks are before you do so.
• Checked any legal requirements or zoning restrictions against operating the home business you want to start in your homeowners’ association (if you belong to one), your city or town and your state.

Getting Your Business Identity Established

Once you’ve done your homework and you’re ready to get your home business started, here are 8 steps you can follow and use as a checklist to establish an identity for your home business:

Brainstorming Your Business Name and Tagline
Brainstorm Your Business Name and Tagline
Your business name and its tagline can create excitement and buzz for your home business and will be an important part of your later marketing efforts.

Establishing an Address and Phone Numbers for Your Home Business
Completing this step early means that your home address and phone number won’t become public record when you do register your business.

Checking into an Employer ID Number with the IRS
Even if you’re not required to have an EIN, getting one is often a good idea. For one thing, it makes it easier to open a bank account in your business name and it will help keep your social security number private.

Opening a Business Bank Account
Part of having a business identity is to keep your business finances separate from your personal finances. There’s just no better way to do that than to open a business checking account.

Creating Your Business Logo
A good logo goes a long way in establishing your business identity. Your logo should reflect what your business does. It should be unique, eye-catching and easy to identify.

Ordering Your Business Cards
Since a business card is often your first impression on a prospect, you don’t want to jeopardize getting new business because you didn’t bother to have your business cards professionally printed.

Creating and Ordering Your Business Stationery
You can buy stationery or create it yourself. Again, you can use tools like Microsoft Publisher for this purpose, and plenty of design templates are provided to make creating custom stationery easy.

Establishing an Online Presence for Your Business
Websites serve as a useful form of inexpensive advertising for most businesses. Even the most basic of websites can work well as your online brochure. You may also decide to set up a blog for your home business – either in conjunction with, or instead of, a home business website.

Once You Have a Business Identity

Once you’ve completed these basic business identity steps, you will have effectively “hung out your shingle” for starting your home business.

You’re bound to make adjustments from time to time – that’s all part of having your own home business. But a big hurdle will have been cleared and you can begin making and spending money under your business name. In essence, you are giving your home business a “life of its own”.

What is Internet Marketing and How Can Online Marketing Work for Me?

What is Internet Marketing?

Depending on whom you ask, the term Internet marketing can mean a variety of things. At one time, Internet marketing consisted mostly of having a website or placing banner ads on other websites. On the other end of the spectrum, there are loads of companies telling you that you can make a fortune overnight on the Internet and who try to sell you some form of “Internet marketing program”.

Today, Internet marketing, or online marketing, is evolving into a broader mix of components a company can use as a means of increasing sales – even if your business is done completely online, partly online, or completely offline. The decision to use Internet marketing as part of a company’s overall marketing strategy is strictly up to the company of course, but as a rule, Internet marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of nearly every company’s marketing mix. For some online businesses, it is the only form of marketing being practiced.

Internet Marketing Objectives

Essentially, Internet marketing is using the Internet to do one or more of the following:

• Communicate a company’s message about itself, its products, or its services online.
• Conduct research as to the nature (demographics, preferences, and needs) of existing and potential customers.
• Sell goods, services, or advertising space over the Internet.

Internet Marketing Components

Components of Internet marketing (or online marketing) may include:

Setting up a website, consisting of text, images and possibly audio and video elements used to convey the company’s message online, to inform existing and potential customers of the features and benefits of the company’s products and/or services. The website may or may not include the ability to capture leads from potential customers or directly sell a product or service online. Websites can be the Internet equivalents of offline brochures or mail order catalogs and they are a great way to establish your business identity.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is marketing a website online via search engines, either by improving the site’s natural (organic) ranking through search engine optimization (SEO), buying pay-per-click (PPC) ads or purchasing pay-for-inclusion (PFI) listings in website directories, which are similar to offline yellow page listings.

Email marketing, which is a method of distributing information about a product or service or for soliciting feedback from customers about a product or service through Email. Email addresses of customers and prospective customers may be collected or purchased. Various methods are used, such as the regular distribution of newsletters or mass mailing of offers related to the company’s product or services. Email marketing is essentially the online equivalent of direct mail marketing.

Banner advertising, which is the placement of ads on a website for a fee. The offline equivalent of this form of online marketing would be traditional ads in newspapers or magazines.

Online press releases, which involve placing a newsworthy story about a company, its website, its people, and/or its products/services with on online wire service.

Blog marketing, which is the act of posting comments, expressing opinions or making announcements in a discussion forum and can be accomplished either by hosting your own blog or by posting comments and/or URLs in other blogs related to your product or service online.

Article marketing, which involves writing articles related to your business and having them published online on syndicated article sites. These articles then have a tendency to spread around the Internet since the article services permit re-publication provided that all of the links in the article are maintained. Article marketing can result in a traffic boost for your website, and the distribution of syndicated articles can promote your brand to a wide audience.

Internet Marketing and Home Business

Of all of the components of Internet marketing, prospective customers and clients expect a business to have a website. In fact, not having one could raise a red flag to a prospect. Online usage has become so pervasive today, many prospects might easily choose to do business with a company that they can get up-to-date information on 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Even a business that only has very local customers, such as a single location restaurant or shoe store can benefit from having a website and engaging in online marketing. And, those businesses whose customers are not restricted to a geographical area might have a difficult time finding an alternate method of attracting customers that offers the reasonably low expense and worldwide reach of a Web presence.

Because of the “virtual” nature of most home businesses, websites, if not an absolute necessity, can certainly provide benefits to a home business operator. Since most home-based businesses don’t have a physical location, a website provides an inexpensive means for prospects to get to know what you do or what you sell and can even be a “storefront” for selling goods and services directly.

The Internet has greatly enabled home businesses to prosper because of the reasonably low cost to start and maintain a web presence. Therefore, Internet marketing should be part of your business plan and your marketing strategy.

Finding the Right Internet Marketing Mix

How much of your marketing strategy should be handled online, which Internet marketing elements you use, and the importance you should give to your website, depends on the nature of your business, your budget, and, to some extent, your personal traits. All of these considerations are part of strategic Internet marketing decisions that help develop Internet marketing strategies for a business.

Using Offline Elements with Internet Marketing Strategies

Unless you transact business only online, for example if you are an eBay reseller, you will probably want to include some traditional offline marketing elements in your overall marketing strategy in addition to the elements in your Internet strategy in your marketing mix. Even those who conduct business only online might consider placing traditional ads in newspapers or magazines to bring prospects to their website to transact business online. Perfect examples of including offline elements as part of Internet marketing strategies are Expedia, Travelocity and Monster.com. While they are online businesses, they invest heavily in traditional advertising, including radio and TV advertising, to draw traffic to their sites where the actual business is conducted.

Develop Internet Marketing Strategies You Like

If you have a personal distaste for “spam”, which most of us do, you may not want to include email marketing in your strategic Internet marketing plan. However, email marketing doesn’t have to mean just sending out unsolicited messages to every email address you can gather. If you include a visitor registration form on your website, for example, or if you exhibit at trade shows, you have the vehicles needed to collect email addresses of interested prospects. You might consider creating a newsletter and sending it to these prospects on a regular basis as part of your strategic Internet marketing plan. Or, you might just set up a schedule where you periodically send an email to your interested prospects to see how they’re doing, if you can be of assistance to them, or if their needs have changed since you last talked. So even if you don’t incorporate email marketing into your Internet marketing strategy, per se, you are still using email as a tool to promote your business.

Your Budget and Your Internet Marketing Strategy

Of course, your budget will also determine the components you use in any of the Internet marketing strategies you might develop. A website will require you to choose a domain name and register it and to purchase web hosting services for your website. Both items are deeply discounted, in fact I recently saw an offer for domain name registration for only $1.99 per year – provided you also purchase other services, like hosting, which is now also available for less than $10 per month.

Once that’s done, you’ll need a design and content for your website, which you’ll either need to provide yourself or pay to have a web content professional and/or web designer handle it for you.

Once your content and design are in place, you’ll want your site to be found, so you’ll want to learn about search engine optimization (SEO), which is an important part of strategic Internet marketing, whether you do it yourself of pay someone else to do it for you.

Ideally, if you pay to have web content written for you, that content should be optimized for search engines when it’s written. Likewise, you or your web designer should know something about SEO because how your site is designed can enhance or limit your site traffic, and in the vast majority of cases, SEO should be a significant part of your Internet marketing strategy. In both cases, you may pay a bit more, but you’ll save time in the long run.

Once your website is up and running, you’ll either need to maintain it yourself or outsource the duties to an independent Webmaster to do it for you.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC), like Google AdWords can be easy on your budget because you can specify how much you’re willing to pay when someone clicks your ad and how much you’re willing to pay per day. You can also specify whether you want to include your ad only on search pages or on other websites related to your keywords. You can set geographic and time of the day restrictions on when and where your ads run. Plus, PPC ads are fairly easy to activate and suspend whenever you need to do so, they’re easy to update and they provide near real time tracking benefits you won’t get with most other elements in your Internet marketing strategy. You can also use images and/or videos with PPC advertising, which may be more cost effective than placing banner ads on other websites.

On the other side of the coin, you can use pay per click ads to make money with your website, through programs like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher or Microsoft AdCenter.

Tracking the Results of Internet Marketing Strategies

Let’s face it: the average home business operator is not awash in cash. If you’re going to be spending money on strategic Internet marketing initiatives, you’ll need to track how effective they are. As you do so, you’ll discover which Internet marketing strategies work for your business and which do not. And, you can learn from the mistakes you make in your Internet advertising campaign to improve your skills and enhance your success. Knowing what’s worth spending money on and what isn’t is very helpful in developing Internet marketing strategies as your business matures.

Strategic Internet Marketing Needs to be Flexible

Keep in mind, in most cases, patience is a true virtue when it comes to tracking the success of a strategic Internet marketing campaign. Search engines aren’t likely to find you overnight and your strategies may not generate revenues right away.

Because you’ll have literally millions of competitors who are also engaging in strategic Internet marketing, it will behoove you to keep on your toes and be ready to make necessary adjustments in your Internet marketing strategies when appropriate. However, some knowledge, some capable assistance, and a well-managed strategic Internet marketing plan can increase your chances for success.

29 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Business Web Site

Building A Strong Business Web Site

In 1998, promoting your business web site was a very easy process. You placed 3 lines of code called “meta tags” on the top of your home page and submitted the page to free search engines or directories. Fast forward to the present.

Web site promotion has become a time consuming project and a new position in the web design industry, Search Engine Consultants, has been created. Use the list below to find ways that your business web site will be found by your ideal client, is user friendly and is visited often.

1. Build a strong, solid business foundation. Design a business plan, marketing plan, ideal client profile and 30-second elevator speech.

2. Be consistent and “brand” your company. Use the same colors, logo, motto, etc. everywhere on your business web site!

3. Make your business web site trustable.

4. Create policies that build trust: customer service, code of ethics and newsletter privacy policy.

5. Ask your web master to name each of your pages using a keyword you have supplied them with.

6. Offer added values on your business web site that make sense to your business and ideal client. This can include affiliate programs, books, and recommended links to web sites.

7. Add a “favorites or bookmark this site” script to some of your business web site pages.

8. Add a “Recommend This Site” on your site. If someone visits your business Web site and knows someone else who may appreciate it, this feature will e-mail the page’s link to a recipient.

9. If you have pages on your business web site that you update monthly (like an articles page or recommended links page) say so on the page.

10. Join a few Web rings. For additional information, visit WebRing.

11. Provide a subscription box, to your e-zine or business announcement list, on your most viewed business web site pages.

12. On large business web sites, create a “What’s New Page” or even better, ask your web designer to design a “Site Map” for your visitors.

Much of your business web site traffic will come from search engines. Here are some search engine submission tips to keep in mind.

13. Search engines look for certain things – titles, headings, meta tags – so it is crucial to make sure your site is “search engine friendly”. Visit the Search Engine Optimization and Submission page on this site for additional resources on search engines and search engine submission tips.

a. TITLE tags: Title tags should be 60 or so characters and include some keywords.

b. Header tags are numbered from 1 to 7: some search engines recognize Header tags. So make sure you use these tags for each of the titles on your page.

c. Keyword Meta tags: Add no more than 15 to 20 keywords to keep the search engines from flagging your site for keyword spamming. Prioritize your words. The best way to submit to search engines is to submit to each search engine individually.

d. Use keywords in the text area of each page. They are especially important at the beginning of sentences and higher up on the page.

e. To learn more about meta tags and choosing keywords, read “Effective Search Engine Optimization” (from About Small Business: Canada).

14. Search engines do not find your site unless you submit your site’s information to them. Below are four ways to submit your Web site to search engines:

a. It is recommended that you submit to search engines individually (this is also the way I do it and it works great, but is time consuming)!

b. Since some people prefer to use a free service to submit their sites to search engines, I recommend that they open a free e-mail address to use when you do “anything” for free on the World Wide Web. Two good search engine submission services are Submit It!, and Scrub The Web. You can pay for a program that will assist you to submit and critique your site such as WebPosition Gold.

c. Hire a Search Engine Optimization Expert to handle your search engine submissions.

15. Visit these search engine information sites: Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Guide.

But search engine submission is only one way to drive traffic to your business web site. Continue on to the next page to read other tips for web site promotion.

Making sure your business web site is search engine friendly is only one aspect of Web site promotion. Here are some other web site promotion tips:

16. Find easy and secure ways for your clients to pay you. A shopping cart and a secure way to accept checks and/or credit cards work very well.

17. Check your business web site’s links regularly to make sure they all work. Use a free link checker such as Xenu’s Link Sleuth.

18. Provide monthly chats or bulletin boards (forums) to build relationships and community.

19. Conduct periodic contests and announce the winners on your site.

20. Offer a free e-book or e-report on your site. Its size doesn’t matter if you’re providing it for free and it’s specifically for your ideal client. Provide permission for the e-book to be forwarded to others for their personal use.

21. Write articles, post them to your business Web site, and submit them to article banks.

22. Design some quizzes or surveys. Statistics show that visitors love quizzes and assessment tools.

23. Participate in online forums as an expert. You get to “quietly” promote your business in your three or four line signature.

24. Place your business web site address on all your printed literature — business cards, brochures, newsletters, letterhead, e-mail signature, ads – everything!!

25. Promote your web address in your signature for e-mails (change it regularly to highlight something new you’re promoting).

26. Teach classes or speak to groups about subjects relating to your products.

27. Network locally to bring people to your site.

28. “Permission Market” by gathering, in writing, the e-mail addresses of students, or an audience as part of your evaluation forms. Create index cards so that you can invite your friends, networking partners or associates to join your list. Keep any papers involved in this process for at least a year or two.

29. When your business web site is launched, updated, or you write a free e-book, send a Press Release to the media, your clients, and friends and associates, too.

9 Recession Proof Business Strategies

Afraid the recession is here to stay a bit longer? If so, you’re not alone. What follows are several strategies that companies use to maintain and even increase-their sales, while their competitors struggle to stay afloat. Apply these techniques to your own marketing and selling efforts during a recession, and you will survive–even prosper while others struggle to get by.

1.  Reactivate dormant accounts.  Contact a past client, one you are not actively working for now and get them to do business with you again. Call them, say hello, and see what’s going on. Don’t make this a hard sell call. You don’t have to ask for work directly, but when you end the conversation, you might say something like, “Well, it’s been good talking with you. Keep in touch, and if there’s anything I can ever help you with, don’t hesitate to give me a call.” This lets them know you are interested in working with them, without putting the pressure on them to give you an order right then and there. What kind of results will you get? On average, expect one assignment for every 10 calls you make.

2.  Reactivate old leads.  A study by Thomas Publishing Company reveals that most salespeople, regardless of the industry, give up too early; 80 percent of sales to businesses are made on the fifth sales call, but only 10 percent of salespeople call beyond three times! The best way to reactivate these old sales leads is to call them. Ask whether they got your material, whether they have an immediate or future need, and what the status of that need is. The best prospects, however, would probably be those who contacted you within the past six months. One or two out of 10 will come through with an order.

3.  Help existing clients create new assignments for you. Usually, my clients come to me with assignments. If they don‘t, and I want to generate additional revenue, I will call them. I suggest ideas they can use then, if they go ahead with the idea, they will ask me to implement it. Toss out a few quick ideas, things which may be obvious to you, but ones you didn’t spend a lot of time coming up with, but which would be valuable to your client. Your approach is “Here is an idea that can help you, Mr. Client (and by the way, I’d be happy to implement it for you).”

4.  Quote reasonable, affordable prices in bid situations.  If times are tough, the cost of services or products will become more of a factor than it normally is; customers and prospects will be unusually price-sensitive. How should you price your products or services during a slow period? Don’t instantly lower your prices to rock-bottom. You may never be able to raise them again. Also, don’t necessarily reduce your prices, especially if your rate card or fee schedule presents a range of fees. As a rule, during a recession you probably want to adjust your bids so they are 15 to 20 percent lower than what you would normally charge in a healthy economy.

5.  Use low-cost “add-ons” to generate additional revenue.  One way to generate some extra profitable business is to encourage clients to add on to–or expand–existing assignments or purchases.

6.  Postpone any planned fee increases.  A business downturn or soft economy is not the time to increase your fees even if you feel you deserve it and that a raise is long overdue. During such a period, defer any planned fee increase announcements until later, and instead keep your fees at their current levels. Don’t announce, however, that you are “holding the line” on prices due to the recession.

7.  Downgrade slightly your acceptable customer profile.  You have guidelines to determine which clients are desirable and which are not. During a downturn, you may want to be more flexible in this area. For instance, if you normally do business with Fortune 500 companies only, consider taking on assignments from smaller firms provided the pay is decent and their credit rating is good. This doesn’t mean you abandon your standards and work for anyone who calls you. Far from it. Simply readjust your acceptable criteria during this lull to accommodate a wider range of prospects and projects.

8.  Repackage your services to accommodate smaller clients and reduced budgets. When you’re busy, there’s a group of prospects you probably turn away without a second thought, companies that are too small (read: too under budgeted) to afford you. But when things are slow, it pays to look for ways to generate revenue from this overlooked segment. This is best done by repackaging your service or product to accommodate smaller clients and reduced budgets. For instance, the customer who cannot afford to pay you $5,000 to write his direct mail package can afford to pay you $400 to critique a package he writes himself. He can also afford to pay you $100 an hour for your consultation services or take your full day direct mail seminar for $200. Manufacturers and other product sellers can offer compact models, economy sizes, no frills versions, special discounts, payment plans, and smaller minimum orders. When big companies are not giving you big orders at big prices, sell these alternatives to the less affluent market segment to put extra dollars in your pocket.

9.  Plan an aggressive new business marketing campaign.  When things are slow, increase the percentage of your time spent on marketing and prospecting for new business. For instance, if you usually devote 10 percent of your time and energy to marketing and sales when things are fairly busy, increase this to 25 percent when things are slow. During a lull, make an extra effort to attract clients, follow up on leads, and close sales. In fact, to prevent a lull in business from ever happening in the first place, market consistently and aggressively all year long, every week not just when you need the business. Planning an ongoing marketing campaign ensures a steady stream of leads. Marketing done today begins a selling cycle that will result in new business when you need it six months from now.