With the potential to reach millions of customers around the world, the Internet is a powerful business tool. The opportunities for promoting your business and products are abundant and don’t necessarily have to cost a lot of money.

If you can do three to five things every day to market your business, you should see significant results within just a few months. The following are low-cost and no-cost strategies to propel your business success. Not all these strategies are right for every business, so prioritize them to suit your needs.

Send A Newsletter or Ezine

This marketing strategy should be used by virtually every type of business. A newsletter creates ongoing communications with your customers and allows you to advertise new products, services, or events. Give readers a reason to read and keep your newsletter by including a special coupon, or useful article. You can even turn your newsletter into an additional revenue stream by selling advertising space to other businesses.

Sending newsletters through e-mail is virtually free. In most cases, the biggest investment will be in your time. If you don’t want to write all the content yourself, you can access free articles on a variety of topics from web sites like IdeaMarketers.com, www.ezinearticles.com, and www.amazines.com. You could also have your employees or even your customers contribute some of the content.

Tips for Newsletter Success

• Encourage new subscribers by making it easy to sign up from every page on your web site
• Figure out what your subscribers want to know and earn their loyalty by delivering valuable content.
• Be consistent with delivery. If you promise a weekly e-zine, send it out on the same day each week.
• Remember to include your business contact information, hours of operation, and web site URL in all your correspondence with customers.

Sending the newsletter via e-mail becomes challenging as your list grows larger. If you are using an e-mail program such as Microsoft Outlook, the system may choke when you attempt to send too many messages. Once your list exceeds 100 subscribers, you should consider investing in a newsletter management system. There are numerous providers to choose from and the fees range from $10 to $100+ per month depending on the number of subscribers you manage.

Press Kit

A press kit is a collection of information and facts that the media can access to learn about your company. In the past, press kits were traditionally delivered by postal mail in hard copy format, but the Internet has led to more and more companies making their press kits available online. When developing your kit, include enough details that the media not only could write a story based on your information, but would want to write about you because the copy is so compelling.

A press kit should provide the following information:

• Company history or overview, contact information, & your biography if you are the heart of the business
• Photos of you and your business (high quality)
• Testimonials from others including their contact information (make sure to get their permission first)
• One-page fact sheet about your business
• Frequently asked questions with answers (written as if conducted as an interview)

Totally Terrific Tips

Tips sheets can be a fantastic marketing tool. Assemble a list of helpful tips that are of interest to your target audience; you can either sell them or use them as bonus items. A financial adviser could assemble a tips sheet called “Twenty Ways to Save on Tax Planning.” A marketing company could give away “The 10 Most Common Internet Marketing Mistakes“

Offer your tips as a free bonus for buying a product or registering for your e-zine. I personally send out “10 Must-Have Features for Your Blog” free to reward newsletter subscribers. If your web site is set up with autoresponders, you can automate the entire delivery process. By offering something of real value, people will be more likely to hang on to your list and refer to it over and over again, thus providing a consistent reminder of your business.

Online Classified Ads

A fabulous venue for getting the word out about your business is Craigslist. There is no charge for listing your ad in a variety of categories, and Craigslist has a presence in most major cities. Ads are archived for two weeks, so be sure to resubmit regularly. Try different ads to see what works best. You can even offer a discount or special offer for people who mention the ad when ordering from you.

Maximize Your Signature

Your e-mail signature is an important billboard for your business and you can make it as long or as detailed as you want to. You can include your contact information, web site URL, and any other details that you want people to know about your company. You can also highlight a product or service or announce a sale. Consider modifying your signature periodically to keep the content fresh and interesting.

If you’re communicating with the public through e-mail, your signature is essential. You never know where your messages will be forwarded or whose eye you will catch. It’s best to avoid inserting images. Many e-mail systems will route your message straight to the trash can if it includes attachments.

Strategic Alliances

Your business networks can reach to Australia, England, Japan, and back if you want them to. Get in touch with business owners across the Internet and see how you can work together.

The key to successful alliances is to offer up something that is beneficial to both parties. You also want to make sure you are partnering with businesses that reach your target audience. In some cases, you may even want to partner with your competition. You know the old saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” When you stop viewing your competition as the enemy, you could uncover some great ways you can complement each other. Here are some ideas:

• Swap links to each other’s web sites or trade advertising space on web pages & Ezines.
• Publish each other’s articles in e-zines.
• Support each other with new product releases. Though your time lines may be different, make sure each is committed to helping with announcements when a new release date approaches.
• Offer affiliate programs to make it financially worthwhile for others to promote your products. See PayDotCom.com or PayLoadz.com for free affiliate accounts.
• Coproduce a new product or even a web site. Two small companies that work together can create one big company or even just a campaign.

If your business is small and you want to align with a more established business, you can still create an opportunity to work together. Make sure to personalize your initial contact with the business owner. Send a thoughtful e-mail or pick up the phone and call. Introduce yourself and give a genuine compliment about the business owner’s site or product. Suggest ways that you can help him. Then wait and let him offer up some ways to help you. If he has a mailing list of 10,000, and you only have 1,000, offer to run his ad for six months versus the one or three months that he runs yours.

Forums & Message Boards

A forum is a public meeting place for open discussion on various topics. They work really well as a marketing medium because they encourage participation of visitors. Establishing your own forum or message board can attract visitors to your site through keyword searches. Hosting an active forum on your web site can also encourage visitors to return frequently.

Keep in mind the amount of time involved in monitoring message boards as well as the possible legal implications. Angela Hoy, owner of writersweekly.com, operates active message boards for writers. One of her boards called “Whispers and Warnings” is a forum that allows writers to log complaints about publishers who didn’t pay on time or who do not have ethical business practices.

Hoy was forced to change the way that the message board operates after spending thousands on legal fees to deal with publishers who complained of slander. She also ended up working with law enforcement personnel, including the FBI, in a few circumstances. She provides a great public service, but there was a downside in attempting to allow free speech. The forum still operates, but Hoy personally manages the posts that are allowed and no longer permits the public to freely submit complaints. If you are concerned about the potential content you want to allow on your message board, be sure to seek the advice of a lawyer before you begin.

Get Active On Message Boards

Visiting online forums and message boards may seem like a time waster; however these venues create an opportunity for exposure. When you respond to a message on a popular forum, you can include a signature file with a brief description and a web site URL.

The trick here is to make intelligent posts that readers in your target audience will notice. Not only can this help you build name recognition for yourself and your business, but there is a high likelihood that readers will click-through to check out your web site. Literally thousands of online forums are available. Start by checking with the trade associations you belong to. Many magazines also have forums.

Host A Free Day

The comic books industry has an annual “Free Comic Book Day” that prompts comic collectors to flock to local comic stores. Select a day to give something away and advertise the heck out of it. Most will not only log on to claim their free prize, but could end up making a purchase from your site as a result.

Start An Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is a way to offer incentives to others to help sell your products by paying a commission for each sale. In most cases, you can offer a percentage or flat dollar amount for each sale generated by your affiliates. I would personally recommend ClickBank and PayDotCom. Affiliate sales can account for a large percentage of your revenues if marketed correctly.

If you offer affiliate sales, make it as easy as possible for your affiliates to be successful. Offer complete product descriptions and graphic images that they can use on their web sites. You may even consider offering training programs online or with a teleseminar to help your affiliates sell your products.

Get Testimonials

Whenever anyone says something nice about your business, use it to your advantage. Print testimonials on all marketing materials, in your business location, and on your web site. To obtain testimonials, just ask! Contact your best clients and ask them to write a paragraph about your business. Be sure to get permission to reprint from anyone who provides you with a testimonial. You can also send testimonials to sites that you admire. Most sites have a place where these are listed and will happily include a reciprocal link back to your site.

Hold A Contest

People love to get stuff for free and contests are a great way to attract new customers. This is also an excellent way to earn exposure for your information products since you can use them as prizes. Be sure to alert the media about your contest. Here are some contest ideas:

• Have customers submit funny business slogans.
• Hold a poetry contest with a theme related to your business.
• Have people submit their best solutions to problems related to your business. For example, if you own a garden center, people could submit their best gardening tips.
• Ask people to review your website, and what could be improved. This gives you valuable information about your website, and what your readers want. You can then offer the prize to the best review. Darren’s Post at Problogger recently is a perfect example of this.

Get creative with your contest ideas. I’ve seen web site owners host contests as a way of gathering testimonials, and others have given away consulting services as an award for the best story submission. Find something that creates a buzz so you can reel in new traffic and exposure for your products and services.

Preannounce New Products

It’s never too early to start building excitement around a new product offering. When your product is in the development phase, it is perfectly acceptable to begin mentioning it on your web site and in your e-zine several months before the product will be available. In fact, you can even set up a preorder system to solicit orders prior to the product release. If you do this, make sure you set a safe release date that you know you won’t miss.

So, there are a few ways in which you can promote your product or service online; there are literally infinite ways to market your website or business online. Whether it be utilizing Online Classified Ad’s, or setting up Strategic Alliance’s; These methods, if done correctly, can almost certainly make an impact on your business.

Leave me a comment telling us what online marketing methods you have used to get your business ‘out there’. Which methods worked really well, and which methods didn’t go so well? Id be interested in hearing your online marketing experiences!

Watch out for the next post in the series, “Offline Marketing Methods - An In-Depth Look” - Subscribe to my feed to get notified of my next post in this series.

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