Search Results for “small business marketing strategy”.
Hopefully you will find what you are looking for below, if not, try to be more precise.
Wed 18
Jan
2006
1. Publish A Free Ezine For Selling Products
You could publish a free ezine or newsletter to promote your own or affiliate products, MLMs, etc. This is the most common format, and to work well requires quality — preferably original — content related to your business and products so that it stands out from the crowd.
2. Publish Free Ezine For Selling Advertising Space
You could publish a free ezine or newsletter to sell advertising spots and exclusive mailings to other businesses. Similar in format to the previous example, except that instead of using the ezine as a vehicle for promoting your own products, you use it to generate ad revenue. This approach is often favored by those new online and / or without their own product, using mainly contributed articles for content and combining the promotion of affiliate programs with ad sales.
3. Publish A Paid Subscription Ezine
You could charge a monthly or yearly subscription to your ezine or newsletter. Unless your annual subscription is fee is relatively little, you will probably make more money with a low monthly fee automatically charged to the subscriber’s credit card. Note that you need quality, highly targeted original to be successful selling ezine subscriptions like this.
4. Publish A Free Ezine As A Lead-In To One With More Value
You could publish a free ezine or newsletter as a “lite” version of paid subscription ezine that offers higher value content. You would simply provide a taste of each piece of content in your free ezine, with “full version” articles of greater depth that provide more details and specialized information, 100% original content, secrets of the trade, etc., available with a paid subscription.
Another variant on this model would be to charge a small subscription fee for an ad-free version of your publication. Some people don’t want to get advertisements in every issue and are willing to pay to get rid off them. Free subscribers would get ads and paid subscribers wouldn’t.
5. Publish A Free Ezine And Charge For The Archives
Yet another way to make money with an ezine is to charge a one time fee for lifetime access to your ezine archives. Obviously, for this to work you’ll need to have plenty of issues archived already, offering substantially original and/ or unique content. They also need to be searchable, which isn’t difficult these days using Google, or at the very least indexed by topic.
6. Publish A Free Ezine And Sell Reprint Rights
You could publish a free ezine or newsletter that has original content and promotes various related affiliate products. You could then package it up into a set with graphics and a sales page and sell it or charge people a subscription fee to reprint each issue and use it as their own ezine. They would just have to change the titles, contact info and affiliate link codes.
In a different twist, you could promote your own products in the ezine and give it away to your own affiliates as a promotional tool. Alternatively, you could still give away your ezine with free reprint rights, but require that certain links to your website or affiliate promotions are maintained for a semi-viral effect.
7. Publish A Free Ezine And Sell A Print Edition
You could publish a free ezine or newsletter and charge for a subscription for a print edition delivered every month. Put additional premium content in the print edition, similar to how you would do a subscription ezine. The added benefit of a doing a tangible print version is that you can charge more for it because the perceived value is higher, plus you can make a little extra on the shipping charges too.
© Azam Corry. “Do it Better. Do it Faster. Do it Right!”
To reprint use the following resource box with live links:
Tue 26
Jul
2005
I love the excitement of starting up a new home based business. I enjoy trying out new ideas and approaches with the new venture. I dream the big dreams and hope to obtain some of them (if not all of them). I am sure you have those same feelings as well. Organization is imperative when starting any business. Some say that a well funded business has the best chance to sustain losses until it’s profitable. However, if you are on a shoe string budget like me, money management is the key.
The place you need to start with your home business is with the pen and paper or word processing software and a PC. One thing I learned about starting businesses is there are so many variables involved it is not possible to “keep it simple†if you try to run the entire business without some type of plan. Not knowing or not being able to prioritize your needs with your business can result in bad money management and eventually failure.
Writing down what your business is about helps put your business into perspective and helps you define your immediate needs and hold off on spending on items you don’t need right away. Most recommend you write a business plan. You can buy software to write a plan and go through a set of questions to write one. You could always research how to write a business plan online.
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Whether you use software or not to write a business plan you could always ask yourself the basic questions. Getting to the basics means a lot to me. It provides a foundation to your ever evolving business plan.
If you are starting your own home business, try asking yourself these questions. They may help you in the same manner as they help me:
1. What is your business name?
2. Is your business registered as a “Doing Business As†(DBA) or Corporation? – This is very important for tax purposes and banking.
2. Explain what you business does in one short paragraph. – Describing your business in a few sentences helps define the main focus of your business.
3. What products does your business sell? – List any product your business is selling and any variations of its availability.
4. Who does your business sell to? – This will help you define your market (if any) Try to describe the personality of the market and why they would want to buy your product. It may provide a starting point for your business’s marketing strategy.
5. How do you want prospects and customers to contact you in regards to the product your business is selling? – You may decide that you don’t want prospects to call your home number and you may need a separate phone line or a toll free number. This is part of defining your daily operations and costs.
6. Does your business need a web site? – If the answer is “Yesâ€, then you will want to think about what type of site you want and how you are going to build it.
7. How is the business to receive money? – A very important question! Do you have a business checking account to receive checks? Does your business accept Credit Cards? Pay Pal?
8. How does your business make money? – You should know how you can make a profit on the product you sell. You should know all of your costs to run the business. This way you know how much product you need to sell each month.
9. How much money are you going to spend on marketing? – Marketing your business should be the priority and you should realize that you will need a budget to market your product. You cannot sell your product if your market does not know about it. Also, you may want to start out with a very small amount and try different methods until you learn how to market your product correctly.
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Asking yourself these basic questions may help you shed light on areas of your business that you may have not taken into account. After all, it can be overwhelming running a home based business. Asking basic but tough questions about your business can help you identify the immediate and long term focus of your business and most of all sustain your business until it reaches profitability.
About the Author
Topher John is a webmaster for http://www.mybenefitsavings.com and http://beinbusiness.net. He specializes in building internet small businesses. His interests are the healthcare industry, specifically how it relates to the family and physical fitness.
