A sign in not a marketing campaign
BL Ochman wrote a great post about “How Sign is not a marketing campaign“. Like I always say, If you can’t follow every penny you spent on marketing, you are not into marketing. Now I believe this is one of the Law that you’ll read in “Scientific Advertising” a book by Claude Hopkins.
If you go over to her blog, you’ll see what exactly she meant by that. Here’s I am quoting her.
“Marketing In my opinion, marketing is the result of everything a company says and does. It’s how they provide consumers with a consistent, personalized experience across the many available channels of communication.“
This quote exactly captures the essence of marketing. This is how your marketing should be. No matter if you are a freelancer or a small business owner.
Advertising 102 : How To Sell more from Your Classified Ads
Ok guys this is going to be advance class for writing classifieds for you..
If you are doing any kind of classified advertisement and you are not happy with it, then this article might help you build a great advertisement for you. Trust me It isn’t hard to do.
Most people don’t know how to write good ad copy as they follow whatever they see in their daily newspaper. You can use these tips to create your advertisements.
How to write Effective copy?
If you are trying to sell a house in 10 line classified, then you might be trying to get too much from your adds. First of all you need to be sure what kind of marketing you are going to do.
In these cases what you can do is to implement something called “2 Step Advertising. All you need to do is to “take action” where they can send you a $1 or 4 first class postage to get more information about your product. Now this kind of advertisement is very effective if you are low on budget. Later you can follow up with a big sales letter selling on the benefits of your product.
The best way to learn how to write good copy is by reading other marketer’s ad copies. Here’s a secret tip: If you see an advertisement, then try to find at least 3 things in the ads.
1. There should be a benefit oriented headline
2. There should be few more benefit oriented bullets.
3. There should be a call to action.
Another mistake that you can do is to advertise in bad market. What I mean is you should be putting yours ads in market that caters to your niche. Most business owners will overlook this fact. Sometimes the price might be a little bit on higher side but trust me the ROI will make sure of covering your costs.
You should also study the publication to understand how other marketers are marketing their products. If you want more information, then you can call up these companies and ask them what kind of results they are getting… and may be you can create a possibilities to some sort of joint venture
Once you locate a good publication and armed with a powerful ad copy. I highly suggest you to advertise for at least couple of times. You don’t’ need to buy lots of advertisements. The best thing about this kind of ads are that you’ll be able to track the results you’ll get from these ads. You’ll know without spending huge budget which of your ads are working
Again don’t stop with one publication. If you have a budget then try out another publications. Start small and then grow into big advertisements.
You should be tracking the kind of response you are getting from your ads. Many beginner marketers fail to realize this fact and do not track the results. All you need to do is add a small key. Something like a date, publication and offer. Lets say
NE2105. Which basically means “National Enquirer, 21 may and with no offer.
Simple isn’t it?
You can even change the name of your product to add these keys for tracking purposes. For example. In some publication, the product is called “Varun’s traffic cookbook. But in others it’ll be “Varun’s Poor mans guide to traffic”. This way you can track from where you got your leads. Again its all easy. Anyone can implement it.
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If you are interested in increasing response from your classified advertising, then you can get your ads critiqued by Varun. Read More about it Here.
Frugal marketing for entrepreneurs
Frugal Marketing for Entrepreneurs
How do you market when chips are low? You think smarter than other guys. Here are few ideas to get your brains in gear.
Referrals : This is what you call “Words of Mouth” Marketing. People talk about you and you get business. But How do you get people talking about you? Isn’t that pain to think about it?
Yesterday I was doing an extensive consultation with a client. His Jaw dropped when I explained Referral Strategy for his business. There was nothing new about it (at least not to me). This strategy was very simple. Contact Existing clients and give them reason (incentive) to talk about his services.
I had him create 3 different lists of his clients/ New clients and prospects. Now you have to approach all of them with a different message to provide him referral.
For example here’s what I do, when someone consults me, I give them 2 Free Critiques Coupon of their advertisements (that’s $700 worth). They can use their first critique without any obligation. But If they need a second one, They’d have to provide this free coupon to their friends/colleagues or business partner, Only then their 2nd coupon will be valid.
Now after consulting with me and critique, often business owners want to get that free critique as its not just sham, the critique is real deal. It’s helping me generate business.
Email Signature: This is so simple that even experts miss them. How many e-mail messages do you send everyday? You’re probable missing out on a simple, inexpensive marketing tool. Seize the opportunity to promote your business to a highly targeted market without spending a dime by utilizing your e-mail signature line.
If your email signature line only contains your name and contact information, you’re missing out on advertising to e-mail recipients that have opted for communications from you.
These people are key members of your unofficial marketing network. They are your prospects, clients, press contacts and colleagues and your signature line is the perfect, unobtrusive space for a unique promotional pitch.
Try these tactics to turn your “sign-offs” into sales:
? Highlight what your company offers.
? Offer an incentive for recipients taken a specified action.
? Use the associated web address for the incentive, if it’s also on your site.
? Give better visual positioning to the promotion rather than contact info.
? Play with eye-catching fonts and colors.
? Use less than 64 characters/line so that words don’t wrap to a new line.
? Write a “signature” for different categories of recipients.
? Change your signature copy frequently.
? Never miss a chance to get your product or company noticed.
White Paper Writing: This one is so underused and misunderstood technique, its unbelievable. Now Another thing you can do is create a white paper on some important topic in your niche.
You can always highlight the Obvious problems in your industry. You can always talk about changing trend in the industry. Again the Idea is to have a reason why people should ask for this document.
Now whenever a prospect calls, you can give this white paper away for free to educate them about your services and industry. This is good way to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
How much time it takes to write a White Paper? Well, not much actually. You don’t need to write a complete bible on the topic. All you need is good 4-6 pages of content and you are set. I can crank out 6 pages in about an hour. It’ll take couple of days, if you are really bad. 
So what I am saying is You can always market your business when chips are down. If you are not doing it, you are just playing games.
Ebook Writing : Can You Do it?
If you are looking to start working part time, then here’s your chance. Read on How you can do it while sitting at your home.
If you are a savvy writer with great English grammar skills, you should consider writing eBooks. It pays very well and you can do it in the comfort of your own home.It is very simple to write up an eBook.
All you need to do is have Microsoft word and the internet.
Here are few important points for you.
1. Research : Do some research first on the topic.Know everything you can know about it, read up on it and save some quotes in your favorites area. You may want to stop by the local library to pick up some books on the topic too. That will help you when writing up your eBook.
You have many places where you can look into existing content like public domain websites, albiris.org, forums in your niche market. You just have to open up google.com and start researching.
2. Layout or Outline : Next step is to create an outline for your book. You’ll decide what topics or sub topics you’ll add. Create a rough layout for starting, when you are finished with first draft, you can add or delete from your layouts.
3. Start Writing : Now all you need to do is write, write and write. That’s it. Don’t edit something you just wrote. Editing is not important right now. Just write. When you are finished, add few finishing touches (adding more sub topics etc) and then just take a rest
4. Editing : Now after a good rest, become the ruthless editor you can be… Edit out every single spelling, grammar mistake you can find. Also, give your ebook for some you know with good English to do some editing.
5. Selling it : Now You have two options, Either sell the ebook yourself or sell the exclusive rights to other marketers. You can sell rights to other marketers at marketing forums like warrior forum or sitepoint forums. There are tons of places where you can sell your product.
6. Need More Work : You can go and check out, guru.com, elance.com scriptlance.com for more ebook writing work. This is an auction site (like ebay) where people will tell you what they need and you bid on their projects.
Again, Like I said, if you want to work freelance, there is no worries to find more work for you. Just get going.
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