Use your signature line

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Non SignatureUpdate your signature line in your business and personal email. This is another one that sounds so simple, but I get hundreds of emails every day and so many of them don’t include helpful information in the signature lines.  Think about how many emails you send every day.  Your signature line is a valuable piece of email real estate that most people simply overlook.  Yep, it’s simple.  It takes less than a minute to create, but it can promote new products, highlight new businesses and start conversations.

Your custom email signature should provide information and be interesting.  I steer clear of graphics as they can be a pain in most email programs. In some they come across as attachments and can’t be seen without opening the attachment, which most people never do so the signatures end being rather useless. I recommend that your email signature contain your name (duh), title and/or company name, phone number and 2-3 weblinks.

Include things that make you different.  If you’ve written a book, include that in your title.  If you have won awards, include that too.  Are a featured speaker, contributing writer, blogger, etc…make sure to get it in there.  As a guideline, try to keep your signature under 5 lines.  Make the font the same size as your email text.  Use color and bold to highlight things. And, please make sure that all URLs and active links.  Otherwise, what’s the point, right?

Launch an E-Zine

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newsAn e-Zine is a form of an email newsletter and can be very effective for ongoing communications PLUS it gives you a way of building our own prospect list.  Building an inhouse list of prospects is one of the more important things you can do to build your business.  It is an asset that has value like any other asset in your business.  Starting an e-zine or newsletter is pretty straightforward.  Any good email marketing platform will let you do this. Like I said, I recommend SendPepper for this type of thing, but other systems like Vertical Response, Awebber or InfusionSoft do similar things.

Once you decide that an e-zine is in your future,  you need to work out a schedule for your e-zine.  When will you publish and how often.  Weekly to monthly is pretty standard.  The main thing is to publish regularly.

Next, make sure to publish news and information related to your product or service that people want to or need to know.  A good e-zine will have between two and four articles of genuine interest to your audience, and will have one to two promotional articles for your products or business in a way that makes them visible but not so obnoxious that it drives your readers away. Sometimes you can find people who are willing to write articles in exchange for a listing of their business below the article – it is advertising for them and content for you.

There are several ways to write articles, but some of the more popular types of articles include “How To…” or “Top 10 Lists”…or you can interview someone and publish highlights of the interview.  You can also feature customer questions and provide answers to common questions.  It doesn’t have to be great literature.  It does have to be helpful and the shorter and more direct the better.  Use a combination of different articles types so that your e-zine is interesting and will have something to offer all of your readers.

Once you have your ezine written and regularly scheduled, you can begin building an “opt-in” list.  This is not only a good marketing practice, it is required by the CAN-SPAM Act.  Opt-In  means that someone asked you to communicate with them, or they have given you permission to communicate with them via email.  Double opt-in is used to refer to the process of verifying a subscription by sending a confirmation email that the subscriber has to click on to activate the subscription.  You also need to have an unsubscribe link in your e-zine and you need to include your company name and physical address on all e-zines and newsletters and other emails sent to your opt-in list. Create a registration form using your marketing platform and post it on your website, blog, anywhere you can.  Describe the e-zine and offer subscriptions.

The goal is to collect names of people interested in your stuff.  Then you can market to them in an ongoing way.  Use your e-zine to establish your credibility and to build a relatinoship with your prospective customer.

Join an Affiliate Program

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affiliateAffiliate programs are often perceived as complicated, confusing things that reek of pushy sales promotions.  Let’s first define what it is. According to Wikipedia Affiliate Marketing is primarily an Internet-based marketing practice where a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought to them by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site. What they really mean is that affiliates get a “referral” fee for each person they refer who buys the product or service.

The benefit of being an affiliate is that it gives you content to share with your customers.  Once of the biggest questions I get from people is “I don’t have enough content”…”I need more content”.  Well, affiliates provide content PLUS it can earn you some money, which is also quite nice.  Now, you’re not going to retire on affiliate incomes, but it can add up. If you want to offer customers a bonus gift, some helpful information or an e-book, you might as well refer them to an affiliate and get credit for it.

Now, personally, I only promote products or services that I use and that I find helpful and valuable.  For example, when clients ask me about purchasing domain names, I recommend GoDaddy.com – which I use for all my domains registrations and hosting as well.  I send them a link to GoDaddy that includes my affiliate code.  If they decide to use GoDaddy then I get a few bucks for the referral.  It doesn’t cost my client anything extra.  And GoDaddy has a new happy customer (my client) and I’m a happy affiliate because I earned commission and helped my client out at the same time.  It is a recommendation that I would make even without the affiliate program – but since they have one, it’s silly not to take advantage of it.

You want to select affiliate programs and products that are interesting to your target audience.  Another example, I am asked all the time “What is the best online shopping cart”.  I use and recommend 1ShoppingCart and provide the link the same way I do with GoDaddy.  For email marketing platforms, I recommend SendPepper.  For PR and publicity, I recommend PRLeads.  These are things that my clients ask about.  These are quality services that I use, so I am familiar and comfortable with them.

To get started you can visit one of three sites that explain what this is all about and how to go about setting it up.  Check out ClickBank, PayDotCom and Commission Junction.

Call People

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From 10 Ways to Build Your Business (without spending a penny)

1.  Call people

Just pick up the phone and call.
Just pick up the phone and call.

Some people may say “Laura…this is pretty basic”.  What about the miracle marketing tactics….huh?  Well, I hate to break it to you but there is no miracle.  To be honest, connecting with your existing customers, your existing client base is by far the single best way to build your business.  While this may sound simple, I’ll bet you a dollar that it has been more than a month since you’re talked to most of your previous clients or customers.  I’m talking about customers who you are not currently engaged with. If I’m wrong…send me an email and I’ll mail you a dollar.

Here’s the thing, you are not contacting these folks only to get repeat business from them.  Far from it!  You’re going to contact them for three reasons.  First, you’re doing market research – you want to learn more about your target customers.  What better way than to ask someone who has previously done business with you?  See how things are going since you last worked together.  How did the project turn out once it was implemented? What new things do they see on the horizon?  Ask questions and listen to what they tell you.

Second, ask for introductions to other people in the company, other companies, colleagues, etc. Again, you’re not looking to sell them anything – but you’re looking to expand your network and connect with new people who might have projects, of course, but they might also know of other people who have projects, or need your type of products or services. Be specific about the type of introductions you’re looking for.  Tell them the types of companies you’re interested in, the type of people you usually talk with, give them a place to start and most people are happy to introduce someone they trust and respect to someone else they trust and respect.

Finally, see if they need any help.  Again, I don’t mean you should try and sell them something. But ask if they need anything, have a question they can’t seem to answer, a problem that keeps cropping up.  Offer to help, do some research, send them some relevant articles (yours or someone else).  You need to do this on a regular basis.  Contact customers at least once a quarter if not once a month.  Email is fine but a well placed phone call is best, even if you have to leave a voice mail.  Script the voicemail out and make sure that you are specific in the reason you are calling and that you’ll call them back.

Then keep on calling…..

10 Ways to Build Your Business (without spending a penny)

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top10

Listen to the recording of my Teleseminar (recording available until April 14, 2010)

Playback Dial-in Number:    1-213-289-0503
Playback Access Code:    218888

You’re here to learn the 10 Ways to Build your Business without spending a penny….and so you will.  I’m going to give you specific things that you can start doing today to build your business and your brand without spending any money.  You will have to put in some time and effort, but it will definitely be worth it.  What is the purpose of the exercise?  To show you how to market your business without spending a fortune so you can you achieve your business goals – whatever they are.  In most cases it is either to attract more of the right kind of customers, or to generate more revenue.

Before we jump in, let me lay the foundation. After years of helping companies and entrepreneurs build their brands and their businesses, I have developed a methodology I call THINK.PLAN.ACT. You can use it at a high level to develop strategic marketing plans.  And you can also use it at a very tactical level.  For example, every morning I spend 30 minutes thinking, planning and acting.  I think about what I want to accomplish during my day.  I plan out my time, meetings, work time, driving, errands, whatever.  Then I take the last 20 minutes or so and complete a task – usually it’s something that I need to do so that other people on my staff can be productive.  Think. Plan. Act.

Successful marketing is all about balance.  If you spend too much time planning and not acting, then you don’t get results.  If you start acting but aren’t focused, then you don’t get results.  If you launch your website, but no one knows, then who cares.  If you start publishing articles, but the topics aren’t relevant to your target audience, then they aren’t going to care.   If you get interviewed for an industry publication, but it isn’t one of your target industries, it’s not going to help you build your business.  Most people jump right to the 10 Ways without thinking about what they want to accomplish, without a plan for how to get it done and without the skill needed to act on any of their ideas.  So bear with me…

When you THINK about your brand and your business…start with what you want to accomplish – your business objectives.  Then work to understand your customers and the problems they are trying to solve.  Next, take a look outside and see what the others guys are doing.  This isn’t rocket science.  It’s stuff you probably know you should be doing…but it doesn’t mean you always do it.

When you PLAN to build your business you identify what you’re going to do, when & where you’re going to do it.  These are the actual detailed tactics of your plan. Usually, when it comes to marketing, the biggest challenge most of us have isn’t a lack of ideas. In fact, I’m going to give you 10 ideas today that will lead you to come up with more ideas.  The biggest challenge is selecting the most effective things to do based on what your customers want, what you like to do and what will help you achieve your objectives.

Now, we have thought about what we want to accomplish and what our customers need, we’ve built a plan of detailing what we’re going to do and when we’re going to do it.  The next thing is to ACT on it.  The key to doing anything consistently is to make it a habit – you need to create a marketing habit.  For some people, they take the first hour of every day and work on networking.  For others, they spend 30 or 40 minutes blogging – writing in theirs and commenting on others.  I spend 15 minutes in the morning and in the afternoon on social media – chatting with my networks, catching up with the communities I’m apart of and engaging in conversations where I have an interest or can add value.  The point is to make it a daily habit.  Then you can consistently do it everyday – which is what it will take. To build your business you need to market it everyday.

Here is your list of “10 Ways to Build Your Business (without spending a penny)”. You can click on each one to get more details and links to relevant resources.

  1. Call your existing customers
  2. Join an Affiliate Marketing program
  3. Launch an E-zine
  4. Use your email signature line
  5. Give something away for free
  6. Use social media
  7. Start a blog
  8. Publish articles online
  9. Create a video
  10. Get free publicity