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There’s a store in the middle of our town that’s been, in quick succession: a soft furnishings retailer, a record and CD store, a lighting shop, a pet store, and yet another soft furnishings store. It’s currently a coffee shop.

I think the store’s finally settled into its niche. Each time I pass it people are lined up to buy coffee and cake, so all appears well.

Why didn’t the previous tenants make a success of the store? Probably because the easiest way to go broke is to sell something that no one wants. Not enough people in our area wanted to buy soft furnishings and pets.

That’s the first rule of marketing. Find out what people want to buy. If you’ve got something that people want to buy, marketing is a snap — you can be as lazy about marketing as you like, you’ll still be a success.

Is lazy marketing for you? Your success may take a little longer if you choose to go the totally lazy marketing route. Sometimes you don’t have a choice; you may have a fulltime job and want to start your own business. That’s the message of lazy marketing: it’s the scenic route to success. Enjoy the view.

Here are five lazy ways to market your business.

=> 1. Get a Web site

This is the ultimate lazy way. Put up a Web site, or get someone to do it for you. Then forget about it. You won’t hear much for around six months, but once you get listed on the search engines, you’ll start getting business.

You can help the process along, by promoting your site, and by updating it regularly, but once it’s up, and you’re listed on the search engines, you can be as lazy as you like.

=> 2. Make three phone calls a day

How long does it take to make three phone calls? You could probably make them in ten minutes.

Who will you call? Potential clients, suppliers, people who are in the same business you’re in — it doesn’t matter who you call. The idea is that you’re shaking the trees. Once you start communicating, you’ll move your business along.

In any one work week, that’s a total of 15 marketing-related calls. I don’t care who you are or what you do, but if you make 15 marketing-related calls a week for a few months you’re going to kick your business along.

To avoid getting trapped in voice-mail hell, you can use the ultra-lazy person’s alternative - email. However, do make your messages professional. That is, send an email message that’s just like a snail mail message, with all your contact details. Be polite and courteous, and include your full name, your business name, and your complete address, as well as your phone and fax number.

=> 3. Contact one client a day

Call, email or fax one client a day. You’re not touting for business, you’re just touching base. This person has done you the kindness of doing business with you in the past. Call and find how he or she is.

If you’re a writer, this means send out one letter, query or proposal a day, every week day to your previous clients: that is, editors who’ve bought from you in the past.

If you’re just starting out as a writer, then send one query a day to a market you’d like to sell to.

=> 4. Give something away

“Free” is an incentive. And it works. What can you give people to remind them that you’re still in business, and that you’re good at what you do?

Give away something that’s useful, whether it’s a pen, a T shirt, a bookmark — or an hour of your time to mentor a beginner.

Be creative with your freebies!

=> 5. Do what you enjoy

This is the ultimate lazy way to work, as well as to market. If you love what you do, it’s not work.

Make a list of marketing-related activities that are fun for you. Again, be creative about this. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying: “THIS is the way you market.” There are hundreds of marketing activities you could engage in. It’s your business, so find a way that’s fun.

For example, I love to write. So writing articles to promote my business is not a chore, it’s fun.

Maybe you like to interact with others. So why not start a business breakfast club in your area? Or an online club?

Once you’ve worked out what you love to do, you’ll be able to find marketing activities that relate directly to that, and you’ll have another great lazy way to market your business.

There you have it. Five lazy ways to market your business. Take the scenic route to success today!

Author of many books, including Making the Internet Work for Your Business,
copywriter and journalist Angela Booth also writes copy for businesses large and
small, and consults on search engine marketing. Angela has written copy for
companies in many industries, ranging from technology and real estate to the
jewellery trade. Her clients include major corporations like hp (Hewlett Packard),
WestPac Bank, and Acer Computer. For copywriting services and marketing
advice contact Angela at angelabooth.com

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Often there can seem to be very little difference between two marketing campaigns. However the difference between average marketing and profitable marketing is immense. Here are my 7 tips for ensuring success from your marketing campaign.

Promote to the right audience.

If your campaign is to succeed it must be aimed at the right people. That is people that are willing and able to respond. In other words they have a need/want for your product/service and the money and authority to buy it. You need to know exactly who you are after and make sure the promotional medium you use is correct. So if you’re selling something to Accountants then you need a list of Accountants to make your offer to. Makes sense right.

Minimize risk for the customer.

A potential customer will not buy from you if they believe the risk of doing so outweighs the return they will get. Or if they are unsure that you will deliver what you have promised. So ask yourself what can you do to let the customer know that the risk is firmly stacked on your side and they really have nothing to lose? Answer this question and do it to maximise results from your campaign.

Set up a follow-up system.

Rarely will you make a sale the first time you come into contact with a potential customer. Stats show you may need up to 7 contacts before they buy. So you must have a follow-up system in place for your campaign. Get their email address and permission to stay in touch and make sure you do. Follow-up with useful information for them and you will increase your sales.

Make an irresistible offer.
You want people to buy right? To make sure they do your offer has to be great, in fact it should be irresistible. As a guide it should sound almost too good to be true but not too good, people are sceptical. More than likely each customer you get will buy again from you in the future so make their first purchase a small step and stack the deal in their favour. For example ‘get your first bag of Jim’s Choice Coffee for just $1 (normally $8.50) if you buy today’.

Know the lifetime value of a customer.

Acquiring a customer can seem expensive but it’s not if you consider what a customer is worth over their lifetime with your business. Let’s say Jim’s Choice Coffee keeps a customer for 3 years and the customer buys one bag of coffee a month from him. That’s 36 months times $8.50 a bag - $306 over their lifetime with his business. See how it makes sense for him to offer a bag for $1 to start that $306 relationship.

Track your progress.

You have to know the numbers on your campaign. How many enquiries? How many sales? What was the value of each sale? Did you make a profit on the campaign? Will you make a profit over the lifetime of the customers? You need this information to know whether the campaign was successful. Also if it’s a long term campaign these figures can tell you if you need to make changes along the way.

Analyse and repeat or improve.

Once you have your figures you must analyse the campaign. If it’s profitable you should keep running it. If it’s not you need to find out why. Was it the offer? Was there too much risk for the customer? Was the advertising medium wrong? Didn’t you follow-up properly? What went wrong and how can you fix it to make the campaign work. Make changes and try again. Keep trying till you find the winning formula. Marketing is trial and error but making sure you analyse and learn as you go.

So what’s your next marketing campaign going to be? Apply these 7 tips and reap the rewards. Good luck.

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To make money on the internet you need an effective marketing plan.

So here is the best marketing tips that you must follow to make your website a powerful magnet for traffic and sales.

1) Banner Advertising

Although many marketers already know about the pay-per-click search engines, very few are purchasing guaranteed banner click-thru’s that are available on hundred’s of sites.

Look for sites that cater to your target market and look for, or ask for, their advertising rates. Slowly but surely most of the sites that sold banner impressions are starting to offer performance advertising in the form of pay-per-click.

2) Write articles

Writing Articles is an excellent way to promote your website and best of all you can get recognize as an internet business expert.

This is very easy to do, for people that don’t know how to write real good yet look at other articles to get good ideals (Don’t steal them). After you write a article insert a link to your site and there you go.

If you don’t know what to write. Just write what you know best. You must have some knowledge or experience in one domain. Don’t you ?

You can submit your article to ezine or article directory like : http://www.articlecity.com

3) Exchange links

Exchanging links is one of the best method for getting web site traffic and ranking higher with search engine When you start a site you should exchange many as possable links with sites that are RELATED to YOUR site. Search Engine’s robots are eager to find new links and fresh information.

4) Mailing List

Having a mailing list can bring wonders to a web site, not only will it help bring old visitors back , but they will send the newsletter to their friends (If they like it).This is like gold for you. The only real purpose for a consumer website is to capture leads and to sell products. By leads I mean e-mail addresses.

You want to build up a customer list and then you want to work it repeatedly. Send out a monthly e-zine that offers FREE valuable information and mentions similar products they may be interested in. They may see something that a friend of theirs will want to buy from you.

5. Search Engine Optimization

It is no secret that search engines are the number one traffic generating method for driving visitors to web sites. Search engines are very useful in helping people find the relevant information they seek on the Internet. The major search engines develop and maintain their own gigantic database of web sites that can be searched by a user typing in a keyword or keyword phrase in the search box.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of studying the search engines in an effort to determine how to get your web site to rank high on user searches. Depending on the statistical information reviewed, search engines account for over 80% of the visitor traffic to web sites.

6. Pay-Per-Click

It is good to get traffic but it is even better to get sales. Pay-per-click advertising is a great way to pull targeted traffic. Could anything be better? In many cases, pay-per-SALE advertising is a better choice. With pay-per-clicks, you may or may not make sales.

With a pay-per-click program, there’s very little or even NO risk. You only pay when you make sales. Affiliate programs and joint ventures are examples. Set up deals where you pay only for each sale.

7. Free online forum.

The forum can be on any topic that they are most interested in. One forum can be about “Online Business“. Another forum can be about ” Joint Ventures”. When people join those forums, make sure that they need to come to your site first and log in from there, if they want to log on and post on the forum.

8. Give Something For FREE

FREE Ebooks or Software is a good way to bring on visitor and to keep them at your site Visitors like to receive free offers. Entice your visitors with freebies and have them coming back for more.

9. Postcard

Simple low-cost postcards have become a valuable internet business tool for modern marketers. They can produce a wave of traffic to your web site or a flood of high-quality sales leads.

10. Market Statistic

You can use features on your website such as visitor polls, online surveys and your website statistics to find out what your customers like more and how they feel about certain aspects of your business to determine how you can improve your product and the way you do business.

11. FREE Advertising

There is alot of FREE Advertising on the Internet. There is Classified Ads. FREE For All Pages (FFA), Ezine, Article Submission and Newsgroup of course and many more.

12 . Blogging

Blogs are a relatively new and popular way to publish content on the Internet. They allow the blogger to publish content veryquickly AND get feedback from the people that read it. Because they are new and content is created regularly, search engines love indexing them - and if search engines love them, you should too.

13. Real Syndicated Content

RSS marketing is a tool used by many on the Internet to deliver articles, advertisements, emails, customer support responses, ezines to clients and potential clients. It is also a good way to rank higher on search engines and traffic from different websites with RSS.

14. Press Releases

A press release is a public relations announcement issued to the news media and other targeted publications for the purpose of letting the public know of company developments.

You should write on news about your business. Don’t make your release a sales letter. It will get banned.

Search engine adores press releases. They are food for them. A good press releases can bring thousand of free visitors to your website.

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