Marketing


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This article & more at Topica Article Directory 5. Pay Later Offer your customers the choice of being billed later for their purchase. Bill them in a few weeks or a month. This will stop you from losing customers who can't afford to purchase your product or service at that time. 6. Little At A Time Offer your customers the option of paying you a little at a time for your product or service. You could divide up the purchase price into bi-weekly or monthly payments. You won't lose customers that may not be able to pay the full amount at that time. Survey Says Do you have a list of e-mail addresses of your customers or prospects? Do you have a list of e-zine subscribers? If you have their permission, send them an e-mail survey to conduct market research. See if customers are satisfied with your products or services, or see if they enjoyed their visit at your web site. You can learn things you didn't know about your business by surveying. Maybe your customers buy your main product just to get the free gifts. Your visitors may think it's to hard to navigate through your web site. You may find out that most of your customers make over $100,000 a year. By knowing this type of important information you can improve your web site, products/services, advertising, and marketing. 3 Popular Types Online Business Surveys Customer Satisfaction Surveys - what did you like or dislike about our product or service, what can we improve or add, how satisfied are you with our customer service, etc. Web Site Feedback Surveys - did you find it to easy navigate through our site, did you find the information you wanted, what did you like or dislike about the site, how did you find our site, etc. Demographic Surveys - what's your gender, age, income, occupation, marital status, etc. Sometimes people don't want to take the time to fill out a survey. To encourage them to fill out the survey offer them a freebie if they fill it out. Some ideas are free ebooks, free advertising, free reports, free internet services or a free e-zine. Hold a free online contest or sweepstakes and ask visitors to fill out a survey before they enter. If you don't yet have an e-mail address list you could post your survey on appropriate newsgroups, forums and e-mail discussion lists. You could also upload survey software to your web site or use a free survey service on the internet. To find such services just type in the keyword "survey" in your search engine of choice. How To Use Database Marketing To Skyrocket Your Online Profits Database Marketing is the gathering and storing of specific information about your prospects or customers. This information is usually stored in a database program on your computer. You would then use the information to market and advertise to them. It can save you time and money because you can target your promotional efforts to your best prospects or customers. The Types Of Information To Collect The information will vary depending on the product or service you're selling. If you're selling a product that costs $2 you wouldn't collect information about their yearly income. If you're selling web space you wouldn't collect information about what type of books they read. The basic information you need would be all their contact information, purchase history, and birthday. You will need to decide what other information would benefit your business. How To Collect This Information Online It's pretty easy to collect this information online but the hard part is getting people to give it you. The best way to collect this information is to give them something FREE in return. Ask them to fill out an e-mail survey before subscribing to your free e-zine. Tell everyone who visits your web site they will get a free e-book when they fill out your online questionnaire form. Ask them this information before they sign up for a free contest at your web site. Sometimes you have to give a little something to get a little information online. Beneficial Uses For Your Database Find out your customers purchasing habits. Use the information to improve the design of your web site. Use it to write all your advertising material more persuasively. Find out the things they like or dislike about your business. Use the information to target your best prospects. Find out how much money your prospects or customers make. Use it to improve your customer service. Find out what new products or services they need or want. Use it to test ideas before launching a total sales campaign. Find out how to your improve your existing products or services. Use it to build your customer loyalty. Find out which benefits or features they like most about your products or services. Use it to send electronic greeting cards on holidays or on your customer's birthdays. The list of beneficial uses are endless. Do you see the importance of collecting this information? The Internet makes the process of collecting this information quicker and cheaper than offline methods. Take advantage of database marketing and watch your online profits skyrocket. How To Use Outsourcing To Beat Your Competition Outsourcing is when you hire outside professionals or services to take on part of your business workload.You may want to outsource part of your work because you don't have the room, you need an expert, you have periodic busy periods, or you need more production to get orders out on time etc. You could outsource accounting, secretarial tasks , factory help, computer training, web design etc. Below are ways to use outsoursing to beat your competition. By outsourcing part of your workload you can save time and spend more time concentrating on beating your competition. -you won't have to take time training new employees -you won't have to do time consuming tasks like adding on new equipment -you won't have to learn a new software program or other equipment -you won't have to interview employee candidates -you won't have to fill out all the complicated employee paper work like tax forms, scheduling, retirement plans etc. By outsourcing part of your workload you can save money and spend more money on marketing or advertising to beat your competition. -you won't have to buy extra office and other equipment -you won't have to buy extra office or work space -you won't have spend money on employee costs like; taxes, medical, vacation time, holidays, workers comp., unemployment costs etc. (these may vary by which country you do business) There are many other ways outsourcing can help you beat your competition. Here are a few more: -the extra help can help you complete and deliver orders faster -you could expand your market share by becoming the middleman and offering your subcontractors services or products -you could end up getting orders from your subcontractors -it will allow your business to take on extra or large orders Multiply Your Links I feel the most effective way to get people to link to your web site is by offering web masters the option of giving away your free stuff. In exchange, they link to your web site. Why would other web masters want to do this? They may want give away a freebie to draw traffic to their web site. They also may not have the time, knowledge or skills to give away certain types of electronic freebies from their web site. Your links will just keep multiplying. When a web master offers your freebie to his or her visitors. Those visitors may decide to also give away your freebie. And so on and so on... The more people that link to your web site the more traffic you'll get. Below are four of the most popular types of freebies given away on the internet to increase traffic. Free Software Offer free software from your web site. The software could be freeware, shareware or demos. Free Online Services Offer a free online service from your web site. The online service could be an e-mail account, search engine submission or e-mail consulting, etc. Free Information Offer valuable free information from your web site. The information could be a report, article, e-book, online audio recording or e-mail course, etc. Free Affiliate Program Offer a free affiliate program from your web site. The affiliate program could be pay per sale, click through, two tiered, etc. Now, I know, there are many other ways to get links like trading or exchanging links with other web sites or joining a banner exchange. You can also do joint ventures or cross promoting. I feel these are not as effective as multiplying your links. I hope this article can help you increase traffic to your web site. Increase Your Target Markets Are your products or services geared towards only one target market? You can increase sales and profits by increasing your target markets. Below are some creative ways to increase your target markets by using your existing products and services you're selling right now. REDESIGN You can increase your target markets by redesigning your products and services. For example: you're selling a book called "Internet Marketing Tips For Accountants" You could rewrite part of your book and call it "Internet Marketing Tips For Lawyers". You've now increased your target markets by redesigning your book. ADD-ON You can increase your target markets by adding on other product or service with your main one. For example: if you're selling a football magazine you could add a free football when someone buys a subscription. You're now targeting people who want the football magazine and those that want to play football out in the yard. Sometimes they buy stuff just to get the freebies. TEAM-UP You can increase your target markets by doing a cross promotion with a similar non-competeing businesses. For example: your business sells tennis rackets and you find another business to cross promote with that sells tennis balls. You could combine your racket and their balls in one package. You are now targeting people that need tennis rackets and balls. 10 Ways Writing Articles Can Improve Your Business 1. Submit them to e-zines and web sites for publishing. Include your resource box at the end of the article to get free advertising. 2. Combine your articles into a free e-book. You can place your business ad in the e-book. Give it away to visitors and allow them to do the same to multiply your advertising. 3. Create an article directory on your web site. People will visit your web site to get the free information. 4. Submit your articles to print publications that pay for submissions. You can make extra income getting paid as a freelance writer.

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