A powerful way to position yourself as an expert as well as get in front of more potential clients, is to organize a regular meeting. This could be a networking meeting, a learning seminar, or just a fun get together of people with a similar interest.
The site Meetup.com will streamline this and even hook you up with people already looking for a group in your area.
Last post I talked to you about word of mouth marketing. If you haven’t read that article yet click here to read it first and come back to this one.
Mainly I was focused on how you can get referrals from your existing customers, but I also want to talk to you about one of the most profitable marketing strategies you can use. Creating strategic alliances with complementary businesses can literally make your business. One good strategic partner could provide 25-50% of your business.
What is a strategic partner? Sometimes it’s obvious… If you’re a mortgage person, you want to have partnerships with good real estate agents, a photographer wants to have partnerships with wedding planners, etc. You want to look around and see what other kinds of businesses share your same potential customers.
Once you identify potential alliances, you’ll need to ask an important question, “what can I do for them?” You are trying to make a sale, not just meet people. This is USP (Unique Selling Proposition) revisited. What’s unique about your business as far as how you can help a potential strategic partner.
I won’t go into great detail about the concepts of this kind of marketing. The idea here is to get you thinking about it. It’s probably one of the most under used marketing strategies.
You can use magnetic or vinyl signs on your car to promote your website. Having a website (if itâEUR(TM)s easy to remember) on the back of your car will allow people to memorize it while theyâEUR(TM)re waiting in traffic behind you. You could use a unique domain name just for this feature.
The main thing that you want to keep in mind is these people probably wonâEUR(TM)t write down your domain name, so it needs to be easy to remember. Sometimes sentences can work better for this case. JHLAutomotive.com may be fine for your main domain, but for a vehicle wrap you may want to use something like www.TheBestTuneUpForLess.com or something like that. Notice how I capitalize each letter to make it so the end user can read it as a sentence.
Many times itâEUR(TM)s relatively easy to get a local paper to write an article about your business. You can get instructions online for how to write a press release, or hire someone to do it for you (see links below). This is especially good when your business is unique, or youâEUR(TM)re just starting out.
Not only is a news article free advertising it also has the credibility of being a piece of news instead of an ad.
Press Release Template
http://www.free-press-release.com/how-to-press-release/press-release-template.html
Places to Post Press Releases
http://www.free-press-release.com/
http://www.prleap.com/
http://www.clickpress.com/releases/
Discussion forms are another great tool. You simply set up a signature, like you did with your email, and then search for forums in your industry. When you find one, you look for questions that people are asking where you know the answer.
Important, don’t post ads for your business. You need to add real value to the discussion. This should be easy if your passionate about your business.
Last time we talked about posting articles. That’s not the only thing you can do with the article directories. You can also find articles to use on your site. One of the main thing search engines look for is quality content that’s related to your website. An article section can really boost the amount of content on your site.
Again, the URL for the directory is:
http://www.arcanaweb.com/resources/article-directories.html
Also, you can just search in Google for “Ezine Content”
In this day and age, email is becoming the preferred form of communication. At the bottom of each email should be a link to your website. You would be surprised by the shear number of emails you send out on a week.
Not only is this a great way to promote your site, it also is a point of customer service. Many times when people get an email from you, they’ll want to get more information and that’s where your website comes in.
Put your website on everything. It should be on anything you print. All of you advertising should contain your url. You can get specialty items made with your url.
Your website is a powerful tool that can amplify everything else you do. You just need to make a conscious effort to include your url whenever possible.
Note: When you print your url use capitalization to make it easier to distinguish the individual words. For example justinswebdesign.com isn’t as easy to remember as JustinsWebDesign.com.
You’ve probably heard people talking about Craigslist. It’s an online classified system. Most people use it to buy/sell used merchandise.
You can use it to promote your website. It doesn’t cost anything to post an ad, and takes about 5 minutes. When you have a link in your post it will help you with your search engine placement.
Post today, you have nothing to lose but a couple minutes of time.
I would suggest posting every day for a while to test it out. Additionally, creating an account for posting makes life easier.