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Successful Promotion is a State of Mind
Every good marketing plan should have a section on ongoing promotion and publicity, which outlines ways of reaching your target market. These tools can do many of the same things paid advertising is supposed to do, at a fraction of the cost. With an on-going publicity strategy, you can enhance your image and bring in new business. Your first step: examine your marketing plan. Does it outline a carefully selected target market and identify its needs? Does it list your products and services that will meet those needs? Your marketing plan should describe how you will make it easy for your potential customers to buy what you sell. And, it should describe how these people will learn that your business exists - i.e. your promotion. Next, take a look at your business itself. Do you know who you are? Are you using your image as a consistent marketing tool? In a world of intense competition, credibility and trust are crucial. This stands true for corporations, small businesses, and non-profit organizations. Establish a company message you believe in and repeat it over and over in your promotional materials. Fortunately, consistent promotion is a state of mind - once you start promoting your message, you'll find opportunities everywhere you turn. By reinforcing your image and repeating publicity, you'll begin to see dividends accrue for your organization. As your company's stories appear in the media, your clients and prospects will perceive you as more credible. You are positioning yourself as the expert. As you send out materials such as newsletters and ezines, you build a relationship with people over time. They feel like you are a friend, not a pushy salesperson. If you're not sure where to start or where to go next, a professional agency can help you refine your existing strategy and create marketing tools to meet your specific goals. Here are some marketing tools to consider: 1. Newsletter: A newsletter can establish you as an authority. It makes a great direct mail piece that will give you ongoing contact with your customers and prospects. A dynamic and interesting newsletter can mean new business. Formatting tips: Provide a lot of useful information in easy-to-read paragraphs. Use short words. Make sentences brief. Illustrate your ideas with cartoons, photos, and graphics. 2. Brochures: Brochures can convey extensive information about your business. The best brochures include graphic images - use photos, graphs, illustrations, and diagrams. But, make sure you also include written copy about your organization and the services that you offer. Offer your brochures to current customers to pass along. Hand them out at events and trade shows. 3. Press releases: Make sure your press releases are well written and news worthy. Your release should reinforce and build upon your business identity. If you are submitting it to a newspaper, include an appealing photograph. Tell a story about a client you have helped, or discuss new technology your company is implementing. 4. Special events: Events raise awareness of your business and they provide a service to the community. Try creating or sponsoring an event that will be of interest to your target audience. As people begin to associate your organization with the event, you derive publicity, goodwill, and new leads. Another option is for a business to partner with a non-profit organization as fund-raising co-sponsors. Try offering seminars and workshops that feature you as the expert. 5. Ezine: Publishing an ezine will help position your business as an expert in your field. In addition, you will be providing tips to your customers that will help them. It sets you apart from your competitors and instills confidence and trust in your readers, making it easier for them to do business with you. Wendy Maynard, your friendly marketing maven, is the owner of Kinesis. Kinesis specializes in marketing, graphic and website design, and business writing. Visit http://www.kinesisinc.com for more articles and free marketing wisdom. Want to harness the power of kinetic marketing? Sign up for Kinesis Quickies, a free bi-monthly marketing e-newsletter: http://www.news.kinesisinc.com
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RELATED ARTICLES
Promote Your Site through Niche Directories Maybe you are a Doctor or a lawyer. You've built an excellent web site that looks good, has the potential to make huge sales and is well optimised for the search engines. You have arranged a large number of reciprocal links, you have submitted to all the free directories you could find and submitted articles wherever you could. Now it's time to sit down, relax and wait for the traffic to come flooding in? NO. Hunting For Online Directories - The In depth Strategy Directory marketing can help boost your companies performance a great deal. Not only will you get qualified leads for your business, your web site will also increase it's traffic ranking a tremendous amount. Hit the Target with Bullseye Marketing Let's see here... as of today Google states it has indexed 8,058,044,651 Web pages! Not all are quality, not all are of interest - as a matter of fact many are just dead files located on a server out in Internet-land. With that in mind, and the fact that in my not so humble opinion the Web is saturated, how are you going to get found in this mess? Website Promotion - The Stakes Are Rising ? And So Is The Cost Over the past couple of months it has been quite noticeable that the amount of time and effort that is going into website promotion is rapidly rising and therefore so is the associated cost of keeping ahead of the competition. Increasing Link Popularity WITHOUT Exchanging Links Yes, it can be done. Here are 7 ways that a site can acheiveincreased link popularity without having to exchange links:Directory Submissions - Submit to the Open Directory and othersites like JoeAnt and Gimpsy. These are all human revieweddirectories, therefore search engines will consider that yoursite must be of pretty good quality to be listed in them. Submissionto these sites is free, but there can be quite a wait to getreviewed, since editors are unpaid volunteers. In addition toa link popularity boost, a listing in Open Directory will getyour site listed in the other Open Directory powered siteslike Google's web Directory, AOL's web directory and many others.Tips For Directory Submissions:Editor Check - Is there an editor for your desired category?If not, consider applying. For Open Directory, this cangive you the power to add your site much more quickly.Link Title - Don't try any tricks to get keywords in your titleif they are not in your company name. This will get your listingedited if the listing is approved or rejected outright. Thetitle must be your official website or company name.Description - Again, don't try to insert extra keywords here,it could backfire and your description will be edited or yourlisting rejected. The description should be short and concise.Just tell what your website offers and give some product or service examples if appropriate. Again, keep it short!Be patient! - It may take weeks or months to be reviewed. Ifyou've submitted before and are still not listed, try writinga polite note to the editor of the category to see if therewas a problem.Paid Submissions - Paid submissions to quality directoriesand portals is also a good idea. It is well known that alisting in the Yahoo directory area will give you a good Google PageRank boost. Listing in the Yahoo directory areais $299, so skip this option if your budget is limited.Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Submissions - Google lists theresults of many smaller pay-per-click search engines. Thiscan help link popularity if your site is listed in theseresults for your important keywords and phrases. There arehundreds of these smaller PPC engines that offer a freeadvertising credit just for signing up. Take a jaunt onover to PayPerClickSearchEngines.com for a good list of them.Submit listings under all your important keywords and phrasesand include keywords in your title.Affiliate Program - Having an affiliate program can boost youroverall sales by letting other sites do the advertising for you,but did you know that this can also help link popularity? Forsome affiliate program services like Commission Junction orLinkShare, they use a special link to track clicks and sales,so these may not be effective since they do not contain youractual domain name. The kind of affiliate program I am talkingabout is the type that uses your domain name in the tracking URLyou give affiliates to use. Something like:http://www.yourcompanyname.com/aff?64340As long as your affiliate program uses this type of link, thenyour site should see an increase in link popularity. Just makesure you offer a good incentive for affiliates so that they willadd your link to their site. Even better, you can approve onlyrelated sites or sites with a good Google PageRank or Alexatraffic ranking into your program!Specialized Submissions - What type of site do you have? What do yousell? Chances are there is a directory that specializes in justsites like yours. Have a casino or gambling site? There are manygambling portals and search engines. Submit to all of them.Have a site that sells antique fishing tackle? Yep, there aredirectories relating to fishing, but you can also submit to themany antique and collectible directories as well! Sell weddingdresses in New York? Submit to the many wedding and bridal directoriesand the New York search engines too. Whatever your niche, chances arethat there is a specialized directory or search engine for that area.Find them and submit! You'll benefit from the targeted traffic theysend but also increased link popularity.Create Your Own Directory - Set up your own specialized search engine,directory or portal catering to your target audience. Your site canbe a featured or showcase site on the main page and other pages!To attract users, add interactive content such as forums, have chats,offer contests, the possibilities are endless.Expired Domain Names - Maybe a site in your industry has gone out ofbusiness? You may be able to pick up their domain name and with itall their incoming links and traffic. Increase your link popularityby adding your link to the site prominently, then go ahead and re-direct the user to your site after a few seconds. Don't re-directquickly or you may not reap any link popularity benefits.That's it! 7 ways to increase your website's link popularity withoutmaintaining a links page and without sending your visitors to competitors!Kacey Donston - Submit-URL.net has been promoting online businesses since 1998.Offering search engine optimization, positioning services, pay perclick campaigns, ranking checks, resubmissions, evaluations and more.We offer comprehensive packages for home business owners, small businessesand corporate customers. http://www.submit-url.net How Can You Promote Your Online Business Offline? Many people miss out on some very valuable promotion opportunities by confining themselves to marketing their business online. If you run a business that is confined to one country or area then offline marketing is a must. Internet Advertising Solutions: 10 Things To Barter For, Before Buying Before you spend your hard earned money, why not first try to exchange the products and services you have for the products and services that you need? Fight For Online Visibility Would you like to prevent Internet users from visiting your website? You may feel that you're asked a silly question. But then think about why so many investors are silently watching how their web projects are doomed to invisibility from the outset despite nobody wants to conceal his or her own website from the public. Web Site Marketing Techniques Rated There are many ways to market your web site, both online and offline. Which ones are worth it? This article will rate several popular methods on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the absolute most effective, and 1 being worthless. If You Build It, They Will Come? Many of you will remember the line from the movie Field of Dreams, "If you build it, they will come." Many businesses apply this methodology to their business model. I can't tell you how many times I've come across this misnomer in dealing with hosting and web design customers. They figure, "I've got a website now. The customers will start to buy my stuff. I can wait for the orders to start coming in." A few months later they call to complain that it isn't working and it must be something wrong. When I ask them what they have done to get customers, a lot of times they don't know what to say because they never thought of that approach. If we pause to think about the build and wait approach for a moment, we will soon see the error in this idea. Unlike a physical location, where you have customers driving or walking by all the time, online businesses need some way to attract traffic and customers to their website. In this article we will discuss a few methods that can be employed to bring customers to your website. Top 10 Reasons Why I Reject Article Submissions Each week I receive dozens of article submissions to my websites from aspiring authors, website owners, and entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, I can only use a small fraction of the articles I receive because the writers are making one of the crucial mistakes listed below. How to Write Effective Web Copy Writing effective web copy begins with an understanding of what the goals of your web site are. Are you trying to get your visitors to purchase something or have them sign up for your newsletter? Remember you are trying to get someone you can't see and have never met take a step towards building a relationship with you or your company. 10 Ways To Extend The Reach Of Your Site Successful websites extend their reach far and wide! They build links, connections, partnerships, or use whatever means they can to extend the reach of their sites. By extending their reach, these websites create greater exposure, bringing in more targeted traffic, leads and sales. Free Traffic From Articles ? Plus A Big Hidden Bonus Writing articles for submission and distribution on the internet is one of the most effective ways of driving free traffic to your site, raising your profile and credibility with your potential customers and giving your website a boost in the search engine rankings. There really is no down side to this activity, some of the more obvious benefits are: Website Promotion ? Writing Articles Generates Traffic Four Different Ways Writing articles and submitting them to free content sites is a great way to promote your Website at no cost. This technique generates traffic for your Website in at least four different ways. What is Froogle? Keeping in touch with other sites like Amazon.com, Buy.com and Yahoo.com, Google created a new shopping search tool called "Froogle". It has been called one of the most innovative price conscious tools on the Internet. Using the same technologies of Google.com, Froogle employs direct data received from merchants and through web crawls alone. Depending on the successes of the beta testing phase will provide adequate information as to whether Google continues with Froogle. How to use Free Website Submission Services After you have built your website the next natural step is to start promoting it. You can start with submitting your site to the various search engines and directories. Website Promotion ? Need Inspiration to Write Articles? Check Your Stats! One of the best ways to promote a Website inexpensively is to write articles about your Website's topic and submit them to "free content" sites. These sites are easily found; just type "submit free content" into your favorite search engine. Each article you write will have a "resource box" that includes your name, a brief bio and a link to your own site. 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