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PR Equals Free Publicity

There are 3 key areas of Public Relations you can use to boost your advertising results ten-fold over your paid advertising.

The key to public relations lie in:

  • Public relation or publicity
  • Merchandising
  • Promotions

With a solid plan in place that cover all these areas, you’ll have a great approach to use public relations in the best way possible.

Public relations include all that is the media. Don’t limit yourself. The attention of newspapers, television, radio, magazines, bloggers, etc. and more are all equally powerful. Online marketing is just as, if not more, important as conventional media.

Here are the steps to get noticed by the media:

  1. Put together a press release for your company. The press release should be relevant to your target market and address consumer interest, not just announce your business.
  2. Compact your press release to include one hook and one angle. Choose the most attention-getting to make sure the media person you are sending it to is interested in reading it.
  3. Put your press release in professional formatting. With press releases you need a dateline, the most important information at the top, facts, figures and wrap it up with contact details including who and how. Print the press release on your letterhead.
  4. Send your press release to all television and radio stations, local and metro newspapers, national newspapers, industry magazines, and any other form of media that reaches your target market. Don’t forgot to include relevant blogs, ezines, press release submission sites and to industry professionals.

More importantly than a perfect press release is to make sure you have addressed the needs of your target market in the products/services you offer and made that clear in the press release. If you are provided people a solution to a problem, a way to avoid a problem and an opportunity to enhance their life the media and public will be interested.

If you have a connection (or the ability to get a connection) with a celebrity, this can practically guarantee you’ll get attention. Make sure you are offered newsworthy information, and then follow up with media outlets to make sure they are publicizing that information.

“One of the most powerful techniques every business should use is free publicity. As the name implies, there is no cost, just the time and effort required to attract attention to your business.” Jay Abraham

Our FREE test drive can show you how to put together press releases that work! Check out how the pro’s do it and craft the perfect press releases for your business.

Learn how to generate all the leads your business can handle and increase your sales…
WITHOUT spending a dime on marketing or advertising.
www.smallbusiness-academy.com

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Learn From The Big Companies!

Let’s have  a look at how the kings of industry wine, dine and otherwise  butter up prospects.

Most of successful professionals use a series of information based ads that build emotion and a call-to-action. These are much more effective than a standard company branding advertisements. The same principles that go into putting together a high impact (and, often, high priced) ad campaign can be adapted to fit your needs with similar results.

Here are some ways to put together and execute a professional, effective ad campaign:

  1. Put together a short report that’ll you’ll automatically send to prospects when they contact you. This should include a short description of your business and what you specialize in. Don’t forget to include case studies, samples or other proof of your success.
  2. Develop value-oriented yellow page ads.
  3. Consider newsletters as a way of educating and informing customers about your industry and services offered.
  4. Offer a free seminar, webinar or other lecture to build awareness of your business, but make sure you make the information pertinent to your target market and find speakers who are respected and known in the industry.
  5. Buy an existing business, introduce better marketing and grow this new business faster than a “from scratch” business.
  6. Always test different versions of your ads to find the most effective ones.
  7. Use direct mail marketing to grow your business.
  8. Put together a database of previous customers and send them new information.
  9. Offer incentives such as frequent purchasing benefits, loyalty programs, referral programs or others.
  10. Approach large firms who may need your services and negotiate a deal to be their exclusive expert in your field.
  11. Offer a 24-hour information line with a regularly updated recorded message. Make this available to all past and future customers/clients.
  12. Donate time or materials to local charities to show support in your area.
  13. Offer public clinics for the general public to come along and discuss what they need that’s free and approachable.
  14. Organize seminars your customers/clients can pay to attend by putting together a high-perception value package.
  15. Approach local newspaper by offering to write a weekly column  about your area of expertise. Don’t ask for money, just a byline and bio.
  16. Develop a weekend or other destination seminar for customers/clients, not only does this give you an action-packed weekend with the most important people, it gives them a tax-deductible business adventure.
  17. Take a good seminar and turn it into written form as a home study, member site program, audio or video program.
  18. Approach large companies and offer to give seminars to their employees, investors or management.
  19. Be proactive with your marketing plan.
  20. Barter for your marketing. Offer products or services in lieu of payment.
  21. Be willing to bring in new clients, even if at an initial loss because it will likely pay off later.
  22. Regulate your marketing budget to maximize the potential income from them to hit the next year and try to push back advertising costs for the next year to offset your expenses.
  23. Make offers to target markets or target market businesses to pay them for referrals or shared databases.
  24. Offer loaner products to replace equipment that’s be repaired or refurbished.
  25. Give away something free to everyone who brings in a print version of your advertisement. This is a great way to see which ads are giving you the most bang for your buck.
  26. Continually consider what new products/services you can offer to current customers/clients.
  27. Develop a mail order division of your company.
  28. Offer a proposition to your competitors to trade customers/clients you were both unsuccessful in selling to.
  29. Use different marketing tactics as an excuse to attract new customers/clients with new offers and goodies.
  30. Offer a “you-choose-the-price” program. This is especially good for product you just can’t seem to sell.

So, there are 30 great ways to market to other professional and businesses. Some other great ways to get your name out there for little or no cost are:

  • Get involved you in your community-volunteer, donate to local events, etc.
  • Join your local Chamber of Commerce and attend the networking and other activities throughout the year.
  • Join a local, state or regional professional associates for further networking opportunities.
  • Become a board member of a local organization.

Advertising should never be your only method of marketing, there are a myriad of ways to get your name out there in a way that feels personal to potential customers/clients.

“Effective advertising…must be used to get your name out to the public. If your name is not familiar to people, they will not come to you.” Jay Abraham

If you’re not sure where you start with your marketing plan or how to reach out to your local community, competitors, customers/clients and others who could influence your business in a highly positive way, try our FREE test drive to experience the tools and resources we have to boost your business to the next level and beyond.

Learn how to generate all the leads your business can handle and increase your sales…
WITHOUT spending a dime on marketing or advertising.
www.smallbusiness-academy.com

Photo by Craig Whitehead on Unsplash

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How is Your Relationship With Your Vendors?

It’s extremely important to build good relationships with your vendors and those around. They bring in new customers/clients and increase awareness of your company branding.

The people you work directly with on your products or services are really the ones with the most to gain when you are successful. By taking the time to get to know them, you’ll find a lot of new opportunities you didn’t realize were even there.

To grow your business, you have to find ways to reward your vendors for helping grow your business and everyone wins. One of ways you can do this, is by offering performance-based incentives that are much larger than their normal charges.

Here’s the step-by-step process to putting together a partnership with a vendor:

  • Approach all the vendors you work with and offer an incentive based on performance.
  • Put a generous incentive plan together from their perspective, even take suggestions.
  • Develop a clear, concise and easy to track incentive plan. This will increase competition between vendors and therefore higher performance levels.
  • Encourage subsequent sales instead of focusing only on the initial sale. By doing this you can give away more of the profit from the initial sale to your vendors and make higher profits off the back end products. Encourage:
    • Future sales
    • Upsell better and more profitable products/services
    • Cross-sell to additional products
  • Create an incentive plan that’s irresistible to your vendors by offering generous, exclusive compensation.

Think of all the vendors you work with and the creative ways you can put together a plan that tempts them to be part of your business. Use their talents, capabilities and connections and you’ll both be winners.

Putting together an incentive plan doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Use our FREE test drive to come up with some great ideas and put your incentive plan together for maximum results.

Learn how to generate all the leads your business can handle and increase your sales…
WITHOUT spending a dime on marketing or advertising.
www.smallbusiness-academy.com

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Turn Prospects into Customers Overnight!

Today I’d like to talk about how to turn prospects or leads into customers and keep them on your list for future marketing too.

While, your marketing is doing its job, and your list is growing, you need to be working on turning those leads into customers. There are a few ways to this. To have them buy your product or service and create a sale.

To be able to do this you need to be:

  • Inviting
  • Informative
  • Enjoyable

The biggest fear of most new customers is “buyer’s remorse“. You want to avoid this at all costs and this should be lessen or decreased when you provide a quality product/service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made.

However, this “buyer’s remorse” isn’t always taken away by what you offer. There are two ways to deal with this and give your buyers a good feeling:

  • Offer to refund money-no questions asked
  • Offer a bonus they can keep, even if they return the product

These offers alone create a feeling that the customer can trust you more, just for offering these things.

There are number of other ways to turn a prospect/lead into a customer:

  • Offer a special price as an opportunity for you to test the market.
  • Offer a lower price with the reason of pushing inventory to pay a bill, for your kid’s’ braces, or another tangible reason. Customers love that this makes you feel so much more human.
  • Offer a referral incentive.
  • Offer a smaller, more inexpensive product first to build trust.
  • Offer package deals.
  • Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer.
  • Offer extra incentives-longer warranties, free bonuses if ordered by a set date.
  • Offer financing options, if possible.
  • Offer a bonus or discount if they pay in full.
  • Offer special packaging or delivery.
  • Offer “name your own price” incentives.
  • Offer comparative data or other comparison tools.
  • Offer a trade-up or upgrade to something they already have.
  • Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.

The options really are as limitless as you make it. You can use these or other ideas to find what works the best for your business, products/service and target market. Remember this…

“By making it inviting, easy, informative, non-threatening, educational, inspiring and fun to do business with you, you’ll loft your company above the competition.” Jay Abraham

Need help with figuring out the best strategy for converting prospects into customers? Our FREE test drive gives you exclusive access to the mountain of resources and tools, along with information from some of the greatest marketing minds on Earth.

Learn how to generate all the leads your business can handle and increase your sales…
WITHOUT spending a dime on marketing or advertising.
www.smallbusiness-academy.com

Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash

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Make your Message Pop!

There are 5 major components to good advertising or blog copy: (The order of these is essential to success)

  • Command Attention
  • Showcase Benefits of Products/Services
  • Prove the Benefits
  • Persuade People to Embrace the Benefits
  • Call to Action

People don’t like to be sold products or services. But they like it when a problem is going to be solved for them. Even when they didn’t realize they had a problem.

So, when you make a blog or advertisement, you need to think about the unique benefits your products/services offer and showcase that in a persuasive way. You need to emphasize results, not features.

Let’s take a minute to talk about each of these components:

  • Command Attention: This is usually accomplished with the headline. You need an attention-getter that makes people want to know more about your products/services. The best headlines give a vivid portrayal of the benefits or show how a problem can be avoided with your products/services. The headline is the advertisement for the advertisement.
  • Showcase Benefits: You have to showcase the benefits of your products and services and, more importantly, show how they will solve or prevent a problem. They need to know what’s in it for them. Include useful, factual and clear information to show precisely what the benefits are and how they are going to help the customer.
  • Offer Proof: This is where you prove what the advertisement is offering. You need to establish you have a method to deliver. Consider information that establishes credibility and past performance.
  • Persuade: You need to add compelling reasons for your potential customers to purchase your products/services. Use a hard sell approach and create scarcity. This will enact your potential customers to feel like they have to act now. Which leads into the last component.
  • Call to Action: You need to compel your potential customers to DO something. They need to check out your site, sign up for your newsletter, purchase your products, contact you about services…something. Offer a freebie-a booklet, sample, product, bonus, demo, consult, limited time price…the list goes on. There are lots of ways to get potential customers excited about ordering and help them feel like they are getting an amazing deal.

Good advertisements include all of these components and are not complete without any of them. You can sit down and think through any one of these components, then figure out how to best place them together for the most effectiveness. We can help you with this too.

Try our FREE test drive to learn how to put together great advertisements from some of the best in the business.

Learn how to generate all the leads your business can handle and increase your sales…
WITHOUT spending a dime on marketing or advertising.
www.smallbusiness-academy.com

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

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Direct Response or Bust!

Direct response marketing is a marketing that demands a direct response from your potential customers.

This type of marketing is used to answer questions, present your branding, products and the reason you do what you do. Customers love this, as they are offered the opportunity to response, whether that be in the way of signing up for a newsletter, posting a comment on your site or blog, or purchasing a product from you.

So, what does direct response marketing look like? Well, it comes in many forms, including:

  • Direct mail
  • Print ads
  • Radio and TV ads
  • Coupons or other incentives
  • Telemarketing

Some of the advantages of direct marketing are:

  • A great way to use free time during lulls in business.
  • Productive way to communicate and empower you to create more relationships.
  • Great way to up- and cross-sell to current customers.
  • Low cost way to rustle up new business.
  • Used as leverage to turn small sales into large sales.
  • Supplement your current marketing program.
  • Cost-effective way to reach target markets.
  • Offers measurable results.
  • Reach outside your local area for new business.
  • Increase the effectiveness of your sales force.

These are all great things that can come from just taking a few simple steps to putting together a direct response marketing plan and executing it.

“I honestly don’t think you’ll ever find a safer, lower-risk, higher-profit method of increasing your business or profession than direct-response marketing.” – Jay Abraham

Direct response marketing is one of the best ways to launch your business on a large scale and reach out to everyone in your target market whether they are in your local area or not. Our FREE test drive can help you put together a great direct response marketing plan and get you on your way to heightened success.

Learn how to generate all the leads your business can handle…
WITHOUT spending a cent on marketing or advertising.
www.smallbusiness-academy.com

Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash

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Learn Using Social Media for Better Results

Are you using Social Media? Did you know that Social Media is a great way to make your business grow? Do you like to learn more about it and be more successful with your business?

Social Media can easily be used to build relationships with your so-called leads and to grow your email list.  Leads are for example your future customers or clients, but also future team-members. The nice thing about using Social Media is, that it is completely free. You only need an account.

I use Social Media a lot. I have my Facebook page which is slowly getting more likes over time. I am a member of multiple Facebook groups to share my knowledge and interact. I use this website and have it linked to my Social Media accounts. I also started to use Instagram recently. Google+ and Twitter are my next step.

Another way how I use Facebook groups is for coaching. Once in a while I have a 30-day coaching event where I help a group of people to get back on track with their business and get going again.

As I said before you can use Social Media and find your leads for free. But if you like to speed things up a bit, you also have another option is, which is advertisement. Facebook has the Facebook Ads Manager to help you create ad’s and find your leads even faster.

But let’s start simple.

How to use social media  isn’t difficult to learn, but it will take some time to learn all the ropes. If you follow the steps of this blueprint I almost can guarantee you, that you will be successful. But that depends on you (and some other things). What I can guarantee you that you will receive soo much training, that not being successful is almost impossible.

Social Media Recruiter

 

A complete step-by-step blueprint ANYONE can use to recruit and explode their network marketing business with social media

Don’t forget to read all about the bonuses!!

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Being Extremely Productive…Or Not.

Do you have a problem like that? Being extremely productive?

Being extremely productive isn’t quiet a problem, successful people are extremely productive. They love to work, they love to be busy with  a lot of other things.

I am busy with a lot of things too, but productivity isn’t always one of them. I am slowly changing myself. Pushing myself to do the productive things instead of the un-productive things, but it can be hard sometimes. Changing bad habits isn’t something that will be done overnight.

Personally I think that these bad habit started a long time ago, when I had a job which didn’t really interested me, but I earned a lot with it. The days were long, commute of an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening wasn’t much fun either and at home their wasn’t much more left then taking care of the dogs, making my own diner and sleep.

I tried to change my career, but again choose a career which was nice to do and my income would be great, but it wasn’t my passion. Children, moving 3 times to a different country and giving up what I was doing before didn’t help either.

Now I found what I love to do. What gives me a good feeling inside. I had a lot to learn. It was a long road to go. I still have to change some things about myself to be able to do my work even better. But more important it gives me that good feeling which comes from inside. A feeling to be proud of myself when I helped someone to be successful with their life.

I think they call it PASSION.

If you like to know more, just contact me.

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Become an Extraordinary Entrepreneur

Become an extraordinary entrepreneur

Do you think that starting an home-business is easy? Do you think that when you work from home money will come in easily?

Unfortunately both aren’t true. The only part which is easy, is actually starting the business. After that, hard work will be a part of your everyday life, if you really want to be successful.

You also have to be persistent to keep going. And you have to invest. In yourself and in your business.  And it doesn’t matter what you are selling. If you sell your own products, if you sell products from an Direct Sales company, if you sell from an MLM company, if you are an affiliate.

“Fast money” doesn’t exist. Some people earn huge amounts of money right away, but only a very few people manage to do that. Earning enough money to stop with your day job will take time. I know that when you start an home business and you become an entrepreneur, you will be able to earn money and even more then average money.

But to get there you have to change from an average entrepreneur to an extraordinary entrepreneur. 

Most people are average. I am one of them. Why? Because I love the work I do, but I am also not driven to make it an everlasting activity. I like to do a lot of other things too. I am happy the way everything is going now. I help people with their businesses, and that gives me enough satisfaction, gives me a good feeling.

But what if I want more?

To only way to get more is by becoming extraordinary. And when I am ready to make that step, I know I will go for it.

Making that step isn’t easy.

  • You need the right mindset for it.
  • You constantly have to step out of your comfort zone.
  • You have to learn a lot more about Marketing.
  • You constantly have to make decisions what to do next.

Are you ready to become extraordinary??

Read more about it in this article “Seven steps to Become an Extraordinary Entrepreneur”. Then make the decision. 

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Rude

I am on Facebook a lot. I have my pages, but I am also a member of a lot of groups with potential leads. Potential leads are all the people who can use my help with bringing their business online, but also people who are looking for new opportunities and people who can just need a lot of help learning  the right way to promote their business.

Today one of these groups showed up on my newsfeed with a video somebody made to promote his business. I admit it was an terrible video, not very attractive (although their were a couple of people who were interested). But on the positive side he made a video.

Unfortunately the first comment was a guy who asked if the poster had bought some cheap course on how to do marketing.

The entire tone made me so angry, so instead of ignoring it I had to reply. I asked him if he was perfect.

His answers after that were again rude and ignorant. He bragged how good he was and that he was “a top professional” in his line of work, that he had earned loads of money and he left his link.

My last response was that a real professional and a good person lift people up and doesn’t bring them down. After that I complete blocked him. I don’t like bullies and certainly not bullies who think they are great. I know he responded again but I don’t wanted to spend one more minute on him.

So is this just a rant? No, I just wanted to show you that being a bully and being rude is a way to run your business, but it isn’t my way of doing business. That’s why I choose to be a part  of Elite Marketing Pro.

First of all they have a great community where everybody helps each other in good and in bad times. Nobody is bad-mouthing anybody and if someone does they are out right away. Everybody is positive and uplifting. Everybody is supporting each other.

And that made me choose for Elite Marketing Pro.

 

Also their training is great. Of course. I can’t deny that. When you buy one of their courses, you receive a lot of extra training and coaching. And yes, of course they will try to sell you an membership, they still are a business. But when you are not interested, you are not interested. No hard feeling.

I certainly can tell you it’s worth to try it out. You can start with an FREE online booth camp and learn a bit how to find good lead/team-members/customers online, and for a small amount you can buy their course Attraction Marketing Formula. Just use this link to try it out.

I never regretted it to become a part of Elite Marketing Pro. I found my place with them. I can only say, what will happen when you take a chance?