An Easy “Getting Started Guide” For Small Business Marketing

Posted on March 28, 2009
Filed Under Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Content Creation | Leave a Comment

Your small internet business is just that, a business. Treat it as such, not as a hobby. While you may not be able to work at it full-time to begin with, be prepared to spend some real time and effort making your new venture a success. And for any small online business to succeed, its needs to be marketed properly on the internet.

Simple Steps

The first step is to find your niche.  Find the one unique selling point and build your business around that. The more defined your niche, the more ably you’ll be able to market to your target audience.

Build Your Website

Once you’ve decided on your niche, target markets and products, it’s time to build your website.  While it may seem like an obvious step, make sure to spend the time producing quality content for your site.  All of your marketing efforts will be directed back to here, and a small business without an established brand name to fall back on will live or die on the quality of the website and its content. Make sure your website is also fully optimized for search engines.  It is imperative to the success of a small internet business to be easily found using search engines.

Build Your Presence

Next you must start to consider outside marketing to bring sales in to your small business.  As you probably don’t have any revenue coming in, you don’t have any money to spend on marketing. There are many low-to-no cost methods for small business internet marketing.   You can build an audience and customer base, which will then bring in the funds to go pay for more expensive marketing opportunities.

Use Of Directories

Directories are a fantastic way of building an audience and potential customer base as well as established non-reciprocal links that will improve your search engine ranking.  There many free directories, as well as some niche directories that, while they charge a fee, are worthwhile for the targeted audience they deliver.

Write Articles For Promotion

Article marketing is also a great way to market your small business; like directories, it also reaches out to new customers while establishing links.  Also have these articles available as white pages on your website; you can give them to your customers free of charge while collecting valuable email address to start to fill out your mailing list.

Improve Your Support And Communication

Perhaps the most valuable marketing tool for a small business on the internet is to treat your customers well.  Don’t underestimate the value a happy customer can be to the small internet business owner.  Word-of-mouth is one of the best forms of marketing, and one that is the hardest to get.  Keep your customers happy and go above and beyond for them, and they will tell people.  Hopefully, they will tell other people who are also in the market for your product.

Learn to establish your online presence effectively and start to make money online using the tools and training from Portal Feeder.

Learn To You Can Grow Your Business with Twitter

Posted on March 27, 2009
Filed Under Advertising | Leave a Comment

Everybody’s been talking about Twitter. You can’t get through a newscast these days without someone mentioning Twitter or Tweets. Barack Obama tweets. But what exactly is this new social marketing tool, and how can you use it to grow your business? Read on and learn some useful tips provide by Portal Feeder on how you can improve your online business using Twitter.

Twitter is like a blog on a microscopic scale; instead of writing whole posts and your mailing list being notified when a new post goes up, a tweet (what a Twitter post is called) can only be a maximum of 140 characters, and the people who are following you get your whole tweet at once, instead of having to go to your website.

What started out as — has now become huge. Companies like Apple, Intel, H&R Block and Zappos are all on Twitter. As mentioned above, so is the new President of the United States.

So how to you leverage this zeitgeist? You need to get up and running on Twitter, asap. And you need to build your list of followers. While that may sound like something out of a bad science fiction movie, its actually just building a list of people that want to receive your tweets, much like you built your mailing list for your blog.

1) Import Your Contacts

When you sign up for Twitter, make sure you import all of your contacts from Gmail, Hotmail, your address book and your mailing list.

2) Write Your Profile

Make sure that your profile is complete to make is easier for people to find you, and use the same keywords in your profile that you do on your website. Always include a link to your website (including the “http” to ensure that it’s clickable) – you’re trying to build your business, after all. You can also personalize the colors and the sidebar of your profile page.

3) Understand How Twitter Works

Twitter is not another marketing tool that you can out and out manipulate; it is a social marketing tool that will only be useful to you is you actually become part of the community. It is not a place to spam, and don’t actively promote yourself.

Build a standing in the community by replying to other tweets (retweeting), share cool stuff, and build trust, then direct your followers to a blog post, filled with useful information, and only then use that post to get followers to take action. Trying to take people out of Twitter right away and into a sales pitch will get you labeled as a scammer.

4) Build Your Audience

To build your audience above and beyond your initial contact list, you’ll need to look both inside and outside Twitter.

Outside of Twitter, you can put a link to “Follow me on Twitter” in your email signature, forum signature, website, blog posts, and any other way that you communicate with people (where appropriate, of course – I don’t think the IRS wants to follow you on Twitter.)

Inside of Twitter, it’s all about following people. You can find other users that you admire, and see who is following them; you can also see who is following your friends; use Twitter directories to find members who are likely to follow you; use the search feature to find profiles of people you want to follow – and follow all of them. They will, in turn, follow you.

5) But Watch How Much You’re Following

While you’re building your following, you still need to maintain a balance between people you follow and people that follow you. Follow too many, and you’ll be seen as a spammer; don’t follow enough, and you look elitist. You can do this by growing slowly; don’t add 500 new friends in one day. Add 50 at a time and give them time to start following you so the balance is maintained.

You can also use a tool like “Friend or Follow” to balance out your lists; it will tell you who is following you that you’re not following yet, and vice-versa. It will also let you keep track of those who follow you, so you follow them and then they stop following you. They’re most likely spammers; don’t use this tactic or you’ll get the same reputation.

6) Be Someone Worth Following

Be witty, and post useful information. If you’ve got a niche, make sure that you’re talking to them. If you have news, tweet it. You can also use the tools on Twitter to take your blog posts and automatically tweet them.

You can tell people what you do; always be upfront with people. You just have to avoid the obvious sell, people can see that coming from a mile away. You can promote your business and celebrate your victories (XXX is happy to get the YYY account!), but don’t try to sell anyone anything (Get all of your advertising solutions here!).

7) Follow Wisely

And, in this sense, ‘follow’ has a broader meaning. Look to the experts in your category who are also on Twitter, and learn from them. Find 10 to 20 users you admire that have more than 300 followers, and try to learn how they did it. Take their ideas and make them your own.

Portal Feeder is the most powerful set of tools, resources and support to get you started making money online in 30 days. Where you go from there is up to you.

Go to www.portalfeeder.com today to start your most successful year ever.

Marketing Tips - Subject Lines that Won’t Ban Your Mailing List

Posted on March 27, 2009
Filed Under Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Promotions | 1 Comment

Mailing lists are a great way to reach out to potential customers.  Such a great way, in fact, that most of us have become inundated with both junk and valid emails.  The average consumer is a lot more wary of emails than they used to be.  Your subject line is a one-shot opportunity to convince the consumer that not only are you a valid business, but that you have something that they need, and should open the email to find out more. In this day and age when people are more likely to trash an email than open it, the subject line is crucial to making sure your mailing list doesn’t get banned.

Make it relevant to your target

You obviously picked your mailing list with something in mind. An age group, socio-economic group, people who love Italian food, or, if you’re lucky, people who’ve requested more information from you.  Keep these people in mind when writing your subject line.  If you were them, what would make you open the email?  An email subject line that has nothing to do with your recipient, or seems to have been written without any forethought at all will buy you a trip straight to the garbage bin.

Don’t use excessive punctuation. (But use it where’s it’s necessary)

Using lots of exclamation points (!!!!) and question marks (???) are a sure-fire way to get you mailing list banned before it even reaches the consumer’s inbox. Search engines will often automatically interpret emails with this kind of punctuation in the subject line as spam.  There are words to be avoided as well, such as “exclusive”, “free”, “limited time”.  Combine those phrases with excessive punctuation and you’re pretty much guaranteed that your mailing list is going to get banned. On the other hand, make sure you use proper punctuation, spelling, and capitalization; it will go a long way towards making you look professional and legitimate.

Don’t send too many, or the same one over and over

We’ve all had it happen before; ten emails in one day from the same person.  This is annoying when it’s someone you know, much less a stranger who is trying to get you interested in their product.  Practice absolute discretion when using that send button.  Send emails out to your mailing list sparingly; and for the love of little puppies, make sure you don’t just send them the same emails over and over.  By putting thought and effort into each and every email you send to your mailing list, you increase your chances of getting them to open it and click through to your site.

Don’t try to sneak it past them

Writing a subject line that alludes to a previous connection to the recipient?  Trying to come across as an email from a friend?  Most people can spot these from a mile away, and will immediately send it to the trash and mark it as spam.  If you do manage to catch someone and they open it, once they start to read the email they will realize right away that it’s not what it seemed to be, and it will also go straight to the trash and get your mailing list banned.  So while you may get a certain open rate, it certainly won’t be quality prospects who have any intention of clicking through.  Deception is never a good way to reach out to a potential customer.

Treat your mailing list like the potential gold mine it is; with deference and respect.  By putting as much thought into the subject line as you do the rest of the email, you’ll establish a better connection with your prospective customers and avoid being banned.

If you are intereted to learn the best ways to handle an effective email campaign have a look at Portal Feeder and see what they have to offer.

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