Inexpensive Ways To Use Promotional Tools to Market Your Business – Part 3

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This is the third and final post on inexpensive marketing tools for your business. The previous two post discussed the use of published written tools such as article reprints, brochures and catalogs as marketing tools. This post discusses the use of other more common tools such as audio recordings such as voicemail, toll free calls, CDs, and DVDs,etc as tools.

Audio tools
These include a long list of tools such as phone recordings, voicemail, toll free numbers, etc that that can be used as marketing for your business. These tools allow you to automate a piece of marketing your allowing you to leverage your time for other business activities. It also identifies those with a need for your product or service and weeds out those not interested.

Audio tools is also less intimidating for potential customers. People are more likely to dial a number for information for initial information rather than talk to a live person. This is where the use toll free numbers are great tools as the customer can receive the information without paying for it. You can also consider using voicemail as an informational tool. Use it for existing customers to inform them of the latest product or service updates.

CDs and DVD
These tools are probably the most commonly used in the business. These can be used as informational tool for initial presentation and for following up with potential customers. They are great for engaging your audience more than any printed material. When using these tools, take the customer’s learning style into consideration. Does the customer prefer reading information verses watching it?

Tailor the tool to the event and customer. DVDs are great for party planning events as it keeps everyone engaged. CDs are great for those who spend a majority of their time in the car. The success of these tools is based on having them listen or watch the information. This can be accomplished by presenting the tool as a valuable solution to their immediate need. How can the information benefit them?

Video conferencing (Webinars)
Video conferencing is another great way to share information and educate others about your product or service. These tools target multiple senses (auditory and visual) making them effective teaching tools. They are effective because they can be interactive. There are a number of different video conferecing services. The most common are Webex and Gotomeeting.

As you can see, there are so many promotional tools available that you can use for marketing purposes. There are so many other available tools such as samples, bookmarks etc, that can also promote your business.

How have you used these tools in your business?

3 Inexpensive Ways To Use Promotional Tools to Market Your Business – Part 2

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In the previous post, I discussed a few inexpensive ideas of marketing your business using tools such as testimonials, research studies and article reprints. This post will continue with the same subject and discuss the use of other tools such as business cards, brochures and catalogs to market your business.

Business cards
Business cards when used correctly can be another way to market your business to your target market. To use this as a tool, you need to avoid using it like everyone else by including information such as your business name, logo and contact information.Your business cards can be another inexpensive way to inform others about the benefits of your products, service, and business. Turn your cards into a form of print advertising. The key is to get prospects to take a specific action instead of just providing boring contact information. Have you business card include an irresistible offer and provide a way for your prospect to get additional information by providing a link to a report, white page or internet landing page. If your products or services target different ideal clients, you want to make sure you have one card for each one with a message that targets each specific group. It should concentrate on one specific hot button for one specific ideal client.

Brochures
Brochures are another great tool to use because they contain comprehensive information about your company, product, and opportunity. These tools also provide information on the benefits and testimonials from others that happy customers. Brochures are great because they can be useful tools to address the most frequently asked questions about your products, service and business. There are also inexpensive marketing tools because most companies sell them in bulk and all you have to do is add your contact information.

These are also great tools to use with someone you just met or as a follow up tool to provide information on the benefits of your product or service.

Catalogs
Catalogs have been used for many years by many large traditional companies. This marketing tool continues to grow as statistics have shown an increase in people who shop using mail order catalogs. These tools are great because it exposes your prospects to the wide variety of products or services that your company offers. You can use these as drop off tools in waiting areas of places where your target market “hangs out.” You just want to remember to include you contact information on the catalogs so those interested have a way to contact you.

How have you used these tools in your business? What success have you had using these as marketing tools?

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Little Known Ways To Use Promotional Tools To Market Your Business – Part 1

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What stage are you in starting your business? Are you just getting started or have you been in business for a while and have exhausted your warm market and are looking for alternative ways of marketing your products or opportunity? In these next series of posts, I will share some low cost ideas of marketing your products and opportunity to potential customers and partners. This post will address the use of promotional tools such as testimonials, research studies and article reprints to grow your business.

As you develop your business plan, it is important to include the different tools and marketing resources that you will use to spread the word of the benefits of your product and opportunity to potential customers and partners. There are a number of different promotional tools that you can incorporate into your marketing strategy to build your business. Today, I will share some ideas on how you can use testimonials, research studies and article reprints as marketing tools.

Testimonials
Testimonials are customer’s reviews and feedback of a product or service that they have used and have had positive results. Positive feedback from others not only provides education about the benefits that product, but also provides third party validation for its use. How many times have you purchased a product based on word of mouth and positive reviews?

These tools are great because they also cost nothing to acquire. Most companies provide testimonials that you can use or you can build your own collection of testimonials by asking current customers about their experience with that product or service. Chose the best testimonials to include in your own marketing handouts. Use these testimonials as follow up tools to continue to educate on the benefits of the product or service and to connect and network people with similar experiences to share their stories and insights.

Research Studies
Depending on the product, the use research studies as tools builds buyer confidence and trusts. Providing links to abstracts and publications on studies performed by Universities and research facilities provides another form of validation. Automating the setup to notify you of new studies is pretty easy to do. To set up, select key words for your product. Use search tools such as Google alert and Pubmed (National Library of Medicine resource. For medicinal products) to search and notify you of new research related to your keywords. In addition, the National Institute of Health has a website called CRISP that publishes any new clinical trial on any medicinal or device products. Having these alerts set up will notify you via email of any studies published with your selected keywords.

Article Reprints
Articles about your product or industry also make great marketing pieces. These articles can be featured in journals, trade magazines, online resources etc. When including extracts of these articles in your marketing pieces, be sure to give proper credit to the article’s author and media source.
The search for new updated articles can also be updated using tools such as Google News Alert When properly setup, Google will automatically alert and email you when there are news articles containing keywords related to your topic or industry that show up online.

Regardless of which promotional tool you use, organize these resources by creating folders or files to collect and include in your marketing pieces. Use these marketing pieces as hand outs, online and as educational resources to build your business.

How have you used these tools to market your business?

Please provide your comments and feedback below.

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Is Social Media Marketing Right For Your Business?

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Social media is a hot trend that every business wants to have piece of the action. It is a great communication and networking tool that millions of consumers are using as a means to interact with others and meet others with similar interest. There was a recent question on a forum asking if others are using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to grow their businesses. I felt that the question should have asked if these social media tools are right for every business and if so, how are businesses using these tools strategically. In this post, I will address the pros and cons of social media and ideas on how to strategically use these tools to increase your marketing efforts.

There are many pros to using social media for marketing your business. The little investment to get started and the possibility of reaching a large number of people makes it very attractive. On the other hand, the cons of using social media as a marketing tool is that it requires a long term commitment. For the most part, results do not happen overnight. It also requires a significant amount of time to start and maintain a marketing campaign. It is also increasingly popular and so for that reason, it is so difficult to gain visibility among its hundreds of millions of users. If you do not have the time to consistently contribute or expect fast short term result, it probably is not the best tool for your marketing efforts.

To use social media strategically as a tool, it is important to address these key points.

1) What are your business objectives?
Begin with the end in mind. Before diving into the social media space, it is first important to have a good understanding of your business goals and objectives. What is your business looking to do? Are you looking to identify and attract new customers, to build your brand, to build relationships, or to increase your sales revenue? Having these goals and objectives upfront, sets you up for success as you can use the most appropriate tools to reach them.

2) Who is your target market?
Instead of spending your marketing dollars on everyone, you will be in a much better position to focus your social marketing efforts on those people that are most likely to buy your products or services. Who is your ideal customer? What are your customer’s demographics characteristics? Where do they live? What do they do online? Tools such as Quantcast and Alexa are useful in providing demographic information about your target market.

3) Where is your target market “hanging out”?
The right marketing message to the wrong crowd is as ineffective as the wrong message to the right crowd. You want to make sure that your messages are connecting with the right people in the right space. It doesn’t make sense to target baby boomers and send out messages in a social media space where they don’t participate. Flowtown is a resource that provides you with information on social media demographics and who is using which social media sites. Participate in their industries, affinity and interest groups.

4) How will you measure the effectiveness of your objectives?
Lastly, it is important to measure the effectiveness of your marketing methods based on your objectives. Are your objectives to increase traffic, conversion, sales, or other objectives for branding, relationships, search ranking etc. There are great tools that are specific for certain social media sites and other general tools such as google analytics.

To decide if social media is right for your business, decide if the pros outweigh the cons and approach your marketing methods in a strategic fashion.

What made you make the decide that social media was right for you?

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The Little Known Secrets To Accomplishing Your Goals.

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It’s just a few days before the beginning of a new year. There’s something clean and refreshing about the new year that allows us all to start anew and make plans on what we would like to accomplish for 2012. Goal setting seems like such a straightforward and easy task to do, yet very few people actually meet the goals that they set in various aspects of their lives. This past year, I spent time searching for the missing principles of goal setting in my life. In this post, I will share the principles and philosophies that I have learned about setting goals.

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