Use the burning bonfire approach to marketing your home business
Online businesses can be compared to a burning bonfire. If you stop adding fuel they burn out. Too many marketers promote a program, make a few bucks and then let the flames go out. Here are some tips to ensure your online business doesn’t fizzle out from lack of fuel.
Create a marketing calendar:
Use an automated software program that brings up a list of customers or prospective clients at set intervals. Just because they may not have responded to your first contact doesn’t mean the door has been closed to you.
It’s very easy to get sidetracked or even forget why a certain website was bookmarked, so send out a reminder mail. By using a calendar you can touch base with all your clients again and remind them you’re still around. Sometimes that’s all it takes to help people decide. They may not have responded to your first series, as they identified you with the so many “flash in the pan” marketers out there today. By touching base again you are showing them you’re serious and have “stickability”.
Every week have a set amount of time put aside to develop new advertising sources:
If you keep using the same sources week after week, chances are sooner or later your advertising will lose its effectiveness, as you’re just reaching the same group of people over and over again.
Rotate your ads and try different formats and keywords for the same products. Have different types of ads that will appeal to different personalities.
Here are some formats to try. Each will appeal to a different demographic or personality.
- The Big Bold Claim headline. Use power words like millionaire, expert, money making claims, search results, unlimited website traffic.
- Decision time. Start these types of ads with a question or a problem and provide the answer in the decision process. Examples are: ‘Click here to find out how’, ‘Fill in this form to get more information’, ‘Buy this product to achieve at least the same results but probably better …..’
- The humble, helpful marketer. A large percentage of people will be turned off by the first two approaches so offer some help in a humble way. ‘I’m not an expert but this method has brought in some surprising results’, ‘If you’d like some information that may assist you in your online…..’
- The Deal Breaker. Add some other products and a message telling them that if they pass up on
this offer they will miss out on all these other great free offers. Set a time limit, or a limited number,
e.g. ‘Buy today and get this free download plus 1000 targeted visitors.’
Once you have got your series of ads developed then start adding new sources to promote them.
Here, downloading the Alexa toolbar and using search results will come in handy. Search for new safelists , forums, classifieds, ezines and articles sites you haven’t used before. Make it a priority to start at the ones with the best Alexa ranking. People don’t visit sites that don’t work, so if you check the traffic and the ranking is good then you have more of a chance of that providing some success for your adverts.
If it’s a website you are promoting then keep adding relevant links. Any link that brings in viewers who were interested in your content is more likely to convert them to signups or sales. You should always be on the lookout for new relevant links no matter who your prospects are.
Start a Blog, add metatags similar to your website name and post and ping every relevant article you write to that Blog. Add every relevant link including Directory listings to your Blog. By pinging your Blog with every update you do and rss feeding it to Yahoo, you will get not only your site indexed quickly in relevant searches, but also your inward links.
Find ways of getting your viewers to recommend your site to others. Adding incentives will go a long way in helping you to achieve this.
Register your domain name for more than a year. This may be all it takes to help your pr and move you up in the search results.
Keep submitting fresh articles and resubmit old ones to new sites.
Don’t stop using what works, until it stops working.
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