The Keen Marketer

If you’re like me, you use your autoresponder to collect leads, send follow-up emails and do the occasional broadcast.

But the autoresponder is much more versatile and can be a great asset to your online marketing business.

autoresponder

Here are some new ways for you to use your autoresponder:

• as an email digest of everyone’s contact info

• to publish a price list of your products and services

• for free reports related to your business giving away something of value

• to collect your customers’ opinions through surveys

• to publish a FAQ compilation of questions

• to show testimonials of your products or service

• to use as a newsletter using old articles in back issues

• to show off your website piece by piece

All of the above should give you enough ideas for you to never run out of  ways tol increase your exposure while still giving extremely good content to your customers.

Working from home is hard for many people. One would think the opposite true, but that rarely is the case because there are all manner of distractions that clamor for your time, energy and focus.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget why you’re doing this business from home but the next few tips should help keep you on track:

• have your reason “why” staring at you in the face by literally spelling it out on paper and posting it where you can see it often

• you’re not there to play so get down to it and do all you can so you can play later

• because your family will be around you while you work, schedule your activities so that you can be with them and also work. For example, you know that your daughter arrives from school at 3:30pm and usually wants to chat and re-connect. Then take an hour or half an hour to do just that. Then go back to work.

• working from home doesn’t mean your friends and family should not respect the time you have set aside to do that work.  Make it clear if they should interrupt you or call.

• first things first. Handle mail right away, once in the morning and then later in the day close to closing time.

• get help if you find that you don’t have enough time to do all of the income generating activities.

Success can be reached if you stay focused and good working habits, especially if you are working from home, are essential.

You want people to come to your site and stay there, not just click away. Yet, you’ve been working really hard at just that but can’t seem to be achieving that goal very successfully.

Maybe these next 11 reasons have something to do with it.  See how many apply to you.

1. Are you giving your viewer something original that can’t be found readily anywhere else on the web?  It all starts here and if you wish for visitors to come back, giving unique value is key.
2. What about free software? I know that I like great software to make what I do simpler. Make a review and give the download links or offer something you have the rights to and give it away.
3. What about a contest? Everyone loves a contest, well nearly everyone. Just make sure that the prize is worth it for them to participate in it.
4. If your niche is specialized, you might want to provide a free web directory of sites on a specific topic. Targeted traffic will use your site to get their info “all in one place”.
5. Offering a free newsletter is always a good tactic. I belong to many free online newsletters and love the info selection I have coming in.
6. One thing quite overlooked by many, is having a professional looking website with your own domain name.  To say ” come visit me at  http://sites.google.com/site/mynetworkmarketingsite/home-1” leaves a lot to be desired.
7. When doing a sales page, don’t place your free bonus offers at the beginning. Hopefully your sales copy will keep them interested until they reach the end and will see that you are also giving stuff away if they buy from you.  Remember, that it’s always “what’s in it for me”.
8. Ever use a survey to find out what your target audience wants?  Couldn’t be easier with Survey Bob, a free tool full of unexpected features.
9. Track every thing you do and change it accordingly if it does not perform up to the standards you want. This means you  need to keep your copywriting skills sharp at all times.
10. A bird in the hand is worth more than 2 in the bush! Once you have your prospect reading your sales page, create urgency about how long your product will be available at a certain price before it goes up or is completely removed from accessibility.  If it’s too boring to evoke an emotion, then it’s much easier to forget all about it.
11. Offer your services as a coach, for free. Give them at least a good hour of your time filled with value and they will keep coming back for more.

Some of you may wonder if writing a press release is really worth the effort.

Do you want exposure?  Dramatically increase your sales? Enhance your image? Yes?

Then write a press release!

In most cases you can do this for absolutely nothing or very little cost.  The best part about press release marketing is that it is very easy to do and you reap the benefits from doing work once for along period of time.

There are two ways to get traffic from press releases.

The first way that you can get traffic from one press release is from natural search engine listings and getting natural traffic.  You achieve that by using certain keywords and the search engines will list that release on the search rankings, often within the top ten on certain keywords.

The second way is by getting traffic from the actual submissions services themselves.

Now a press release is basically an announcement or explanation of a product or service and is usually 2 or more paragraphs and can be up to 1 page and should contain a link to your site at the bottom.

But to write a good press release, here are 5 steps to follow that will deliver the results you want.

Before you read on, here is an example of a press release that contains all of the criteria explained below.

First of all, your release must interest a specific market. So you better know who your target audience is and have a title/headline that will be attention grabbing and should contain the primary keyword that you want Google and other engines to index it for.

Secondly, you need to create your summary which is usually 2 to 4 sentences in length.  A quick tip here, could be to use the headline of a capture page or you could write in journalistic style rather than marketing style.

Third, it’s time to write the body of your release which can be anywhere from 2 paragraphs to a page. You should be giving people enough information about your product or service without getting into too much detail, and the only way for them to find out more is to go to your site.

There is  no need to fatten with fancy words. Be brief and to the point and using bullet points can get your message across faster and easier.

Fourth, you have to tell your reader what to do next.  So at the end of the body, have a call to action which will send them to your capture page.

Fifth, it’s always a good idea to use a tracking link for your website address.  How else will you know how much traffic this release is generating for you and how many leads it has produced?

A press release service such as Free-Press-Release costs you nothing but it can add as many as 80 free leads in less than 24 hours.