Casual Articles - Internet and Businesses Online

Marketing Tips For Small Business - Advertising That Works, Part I
Have you ever seen an ad on television that was beautiful, slick, and stylish but didn’t fit the product? How about a magazine ad that, though gorgeously photographed, didn’t make it clear what was being sold? Or have you heard a catchy radio ad that neglected to give contact information? If you pay attention, you’ll notice these money-wasting advertisements in all types of media.If a corporation puts out a bad advertisement, the marketing department will have the resources and budget to make a mid-course correction (sometimes). Often the thousands of dollars

been done to death, and so I don’t think anyone really pays attention to the anymore.

If you are devious like me, you should try bookmarking one of these "oto" pages, and then try going back to it the next day. You can almost always reload he page, making nonsense of it being a one time anything!

Far better that you give away free gifts that have real value and do not always have a back-end sale tied in, at least some of the time.

This way, people will be far more willing to open your mail, and probably more receptive to your idea when you do try to sell them something (but, please, not with an "oto" page!).

Doing this will go a long way to achieving the second requirement highlighted above, getting your list to trust you.<

Small Business Marketing Solution - A Brand Check Up
Nearly every small business needs a Brand Check Up. Certainly most of your competitors do, but most won’t invest the time and effort. Here’s your chance to pull way ahead of them. Remember, successful small business marketing can be understood as a triangle containing three essential elements: Brand, Package, and People.Brand is your company’s identity. But as a small business owner your view of your company is just too intimate to be objective. You need to pull together the view of others both outside and inside your company.Below are 15 wo

If you are promoting and selling your own product on the internet, then there are two things that you must do, without which, it will be extremely unlikely that you will be successful, no matter how hard you work.

These two things are:

1. Create a mailing list, people who you can send information about your product to and
2. Create an develop need an affiliate program, which people can join, and subsequently promote your product to their list.

Let's deal with these two requirements in this order.

Firstly, the list.

The single biggest internet marketing clich?, in my opinion, is that the money is in the list.

Nonsense and tosh, in my opinion!

The money is NOT in the list - the money is in a responsive list.

You can have a list several thousand strong, but if none of those thousands of people are ever going to respond to the mails that you send them, or act on offers in your newsletter then you are, quite frankly, wasting your time.

How many product offers do you se where you are given the "sign up" inducement of a free gift of some form, where they ask for your principal or main e-mail address?

Being honest, how many times do you actually give your main address?

I would guess that, if you have been involved in online business for any length of time, the answer to the question is "not often". I know that I have a specific "sign up" mail address that I use that, whilst I do check it, it's certainly not checked every day.

So, you need a responsive list, people who actually want to open your mails, that realize you have something valuable to say and who will act on the offers that you make to them.

How do you do this?

In my experience, there are two requirements here, that effectively overlap one another to a large extent, almost becoming twin facets of the same requirement.

These are:

1. clearly provide recognizable value with the offers that you make and
2. get your list to trust you.

Providing value should be simple enough, you would think, but it is very easy to make mistakes, especially if you are going to give away something for nothing to your list.

Just because you are giving something away for nothing does not mean that you can give away junk that really has no value. Even if it is free, it must be something that your list member can use, that they can see has true value.

Likewise, something that I see with a huge percentage of the giveaways that land in my mailbox which I think is a big mistake is that they are only free because they are always selling something.

I have lost count of the number of times that a free offer arrives, asking you to sign up for this or that, after which you are taken to the ubiquitous "one time offer" page.

You know the kind of thing - "buy now at this hugely discounted price, you'll never see this page again" type of pitch. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this, it’s just that the "oto" page approach now been done to death, and so I don’t think anyone really pays attention to the anymore.

Far better that you give away free gifts that have real value and do not always have a back-end sale tied in, at least some of the time.

This way, people will be far more willing to open your mail, and probably more receptive to your idea when you do try to sell them something (but, please, not with an "oto" page!).

Doing this will go a long way to achieving the second requirement highlighted above, getting your list to trust you. No Vacancy for Customer Service
When I first started staying at the Neptune Motel, they had a decent continental breakfast with a good selection of donuts, bread for toast, muffins, fresh fruit and more. My favorite items where the orange juice and the little packets of Carnation Hot Chocolate that I would mix with my coffee.The motel rooms were nice and new, the towels fluffy. I even liked the hand lotion. It didn’t dry my hands like some alcohol based lotions and it didn’t make them feel greasy . . . they felt just right after rubbing on the lotion.In the three years or so that I’ve