Smooth Move Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘online business’

Online marketers are always on the lookout for promotional channels that are novel and are yet to be saturated with the unfortunate stigma of marketing abuse. Different people are constantly trying to find new ways by which they could promote their online enterprises.

One of the newer, and most effective, marketing strategies are press releases. Press releases are informative and objective pieces which are supposed to be newsworthy, and are circulated in PR wires for pickup by various news groups and editors. Once a press release is picked up, it can be published in various channels all over the Internet, or even through print publications.

Immediately, the sharp marketing mind would be able to see the grand potentials of press releases as amazing tools that would help them spread the word about their business. Imagine the promising things that await if ever a press release is picked up or print or online publication. Such would be tantamount to instantaneous exposure for your business to entirely new audiences!

However, you cannot simply write a press release the same way you would an article, or a content piece, or a sales letter. To employ the same style with press releases would be to court disaster. Your press release won’t be accepted by newswires, hence, it won’t have the chance to get picked up.

So how exactly should you write a press release? Let’s take a look at the guidelines below.

* Pay attention to the 5 Ws. These are Who, What, When, Where and Why. These are the questions which your press release should focus on. If you’re going to write a press release for your dog grooming business, for example, you should be able to state who you are, what your business is about, when it will, or was, launched, where it can be found and why it was established. If you are going to launch, or just launched, a new product, you would have to state who the creator is, what the product is all about, when it was or will be launched, where it can be bought, and why it was introduced to the market.

* Be objective. Remember, a press release should be a newsworthy item. News is never subjective. Stay away from flowery words that merely tend to hype up what you want to discuss. Stick with the facts, and ONLY the facts. You are writing news, not a promotional piece.

* The ultimate aim is to promote your product, but be subtle about it. To do this, reorient your focus. Try to make your press release informative instead of persuasive. Remember, you’re not writing a sales copy. You’re writing something that would announce your business or your product.

* There are three parts to a press release: the headline, the summary, and the body. The headline is the title of your piece. The summary is a paragraph that would serve as an introduction to your press release, or a summary of its most salient contents. The body is where you objectively discuss the 5 Ws.

* Length is not a factor. Don’t ever think that if you write a longer press release, it would have a better chance of getting picked up. Often, the rule is, the more concise your press release, the better its chances are of success. A 1,000 word piece is considered a little too lengthy for a press release. 300 to 700 words are succinct enough for this purpose.
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An auto responder course is a group of articles or information set up to be sent out separately over a set period of time by e-mail. People just e-mail your auto responder to receive the free course and it is sent out automatically over time. You can find free follow-up auto responders to use by typing it into any search engine. Below are ten ways to use them to increase your traffic and sales.

1. Offer your course as a free bonus for purchasing one of your main products or services. People will buy your products quicker when you offer a bonus.

2. When you write and give away a free course you will become known as an expert. This’ll gain people’s trust and they will buy your main product quicker.

3. Allow others to add your free course to their own product packages. Their customers will see your ad when they purchase.

4. People love to get freebies. A free auto responder course is perfect. They will visit your web site to get the free valuable information.

5. Allow people to receive your course for free, if they give you the e-mail addresses of 3 to 5 friends or associates that would be interested.

6. Allow other people to give away your free course. This will increase the number of people that will see your ad in the course.

7. You could trade advertising space in your course for other forms of advertising. It could be banner ads, e-zine ads, web site ads, etc.

8. Gain new leads by having people sign up and give you their contact info before they can receive your auto responder course.

9. Give away the auto responder course as a free gift to your current customers as a way of letting them know you appreciate their business.

10. Give away the course to people that join your affiliate program. This will increase the number of people that sign-up.
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1. You could offer your visitors a discount on all the products you sell if they subscribe to your free e-zine.

2. You could offer your visitors a free ebook if they subscribe to your free e-zine.

3. You could offer your visitors a free subscription to your private web site if they subscribe to your free e-zine.

4. You could offer your visitors a free advertisement in your free e-zine if they subscribe.

5. You could offer your visitors a free tangible gift if they subscribe to your free e-zine.

6. You could offer a free automatic entry into your contest or sweepstakes if they subscribe to your free e-zine.

7. You could tell your visitors that you offer original content in your free e-zine.

8. You could tell your visitors to read a sample issue of your free e-zine on your web site.
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One of the keys to being a successful Internet Entrepreneur is choosing a niche. One of the challenges of the World Wide Web is its expansive reach and versatile nature. As the old joke goes, the best thing about the Web is that you can do virtually anything, the worst thing about the Web is that you can do virtually anything.

Pick a starting point that you’re interested in and stick with it until you are successful or you have established that you idea is not as profitable as you originally thought.

Okay, when you begin to market, where do you start? You know you don’t want to compete with some of the large companies on the Net. However there are great opportunities for small and nimble operators.

Analyze what you are selling or what you want to sell. It should be in an area that you know a lot about or want of learn about. It may have wide appeal, but think of those it appeals to most. For example, does your product appeal to musicians? That’s a pretty wide market. Narrow it down. Who is most likely to be interested, singers or instrumentalists? From there you might want or need to narrow it even further. For example, your product might appeal to musicians of a certain age, or musicians who favor a certain kind of music or even a particular singer. Read the rest of this entry »