Four Things You Must do For Small Business Success
By Jinger Jarrett
Posted Thursday, October 28, 2004
Learn the four most effective online marketing methods you can use to make your business a success.
Starting a business online can be one of the easiest things you can do. It doesn't take much money, and with all of the free software available, it is very easy to automate every aspect of your business.
Once you start to market, things can change very quickly. The Internet is like the Wild, Wild, West. There's no structure to the organization of the Net, and if you don't give your customers a way to find you, you won't make any money from your business.
Although you will find that there are as many "guru" opinions on how to market your business online, as there are gurus, there are four methods than can help you to increase your profits very quickly and mainly involve investing your time.
1. Write articles. You may think that you are not a writer, but if you are starting a small business, and you plan to do everything yourself, eventually you will have to do some writing.
Writing articles can be as simple as creating a list of items and then adding detail to each one.
You can also write step-by-step instructions on how to do things. This technique will work with just about any type of business because internet surfers are always looking for information on how to do something.
2. Create an optin list. The one thing that all of the "gurus" agree on is that you must have a list. Although you can purchase leads, if you currently don't have a list of your own, to get the most targeted traffic, you need to build a list of your own.
You can do this by adding a subscription box to your website. You can offer product updates, short articles or reviews, information on trends in your field, or any other valuable information you think your customers can use.
This is also the easiest way to promote your products because you have a captive audience for what you want to say.
3. Pay Per Click Search Engines. This is a relatively new trend, but it can provide you a way to get more targeted traffic to your business. Pay per clicks will provide you more targeted traffic than standard search engines and directories, and many will get you started for free.
4. Joint ventures. This is another method of traffic generation frequently recommended by "gurus".
A joint venture is where you find a newsletter publisher and have him/her promote your product in his/her ezine. The publisher get a percentage of the sales made from advertising your product.
It is similar to affiliate marketing, but there are other steps involved to creating a successful joint venture.
If you follow the steps above, implementing one step per week, in four weeks, you will have a complete marketing plan in four weeks.
The most important thing to remember in implementing a new marketing campaign is to track what you are doing. This way, you can abandon techniques that don't work as well as others.
Keep promoting, especially with these techniques, and you will show a profit.
_______________________________________________________
Jinger Jarrett is the author of the free ebook, "Ten Ways to Promote Your Business for Free. You can get your own copy when you subscribe to her newsletter, Small Business Success. (http://www.smallbusinesshowto.com/newsletter.html) _______________________________________________________
About the Author
Jinger Jarrett is a former news reporter and public relations specialist. She specializes in helping others start their own businesses using proven techniques for small business start up success.
