Many business owners do not like the entire
marketing or online-marketing procedure. I think, that marketing and
online-marketing can be an energizing exercise to show my creativity and
I really enjoy it. This however does not safe me from falling into the
same pitfall or trap like millions of other small business or online
business owners: I am so busy with my clients (my profit-generating
days), that I often put my marketing efforts (my business development
days) back into the shelf.
In order to assist myself out of this situation
and to boost my marketing efforts I try to "get the most bang for
the buck". This means I end up doing the most important marketing
steps only with as little effort as possible. Like most of you, I just
donīt find the time to do otherwise. Here are 10 tools that I have
developed in order to support my marketing efforts and turbocharge my
marketing success:
1. Assessment Generator
I use this tool to create an interactive
assessment or survey in order to help your site visitor to learn
something about his or her life or business. As the name already
suggests, the Assessment Generator enables you to set up online
assessments that you can implement into your website in order to
increase traffic and attract more clients.
2. AudioAcrobat:
AudioAcrobat creates audio streaming for your
website without complicated programming skills. The AudioAcrobat is just
fast and simple to handle. With help of this webmaster toos you can
create audio testimonials or audio greetings to your website, or even
send out audio postcards or create audio teleclasses.
3. Ezine Director:
The Ezine Director is a newsletter tools which
does not only create and send out your newsletter. It also includes
tracking and reporting of the success of your newsletter. It is
absolutely interesting and advantagous if you can see and follow up how
many people have really opened your newsletter or what links or
advertisements they clicked on etc. The Ezine Director is free of charge
as long as you limit the number of emails sent to 249 a month. The full
version however, is available at a very low price and is more than worth
the money spent. Use the popular Ezine
Directory (not free, but very useful) to find best Ezines to publish
in for optimized success!
4. Free Audio Conferencing
FreeAudioConferencing.com offers the possiblity of
free audio converencing with colleagues, customers, associates or even
family members. Such an audio teleconference can bring up to 100 people
together using a teleconference telephone line. But the tool can do
more. Why not conducting classes or training courses using this free
service?
5. Google News Alerts:
Google News Alerts is a very quick way to find out
who is actually taling about you or your business online. Do you want to
know on which sites your content is ending up? Do you want to find out
what your competition is about to do? Want to follow up your own public
relations or the latest trends in your industry? You can feed Google
Alerts with an unlimited number of search terms, using your name or
company name, major product names, brand names, name of your competitors
or whatever you like. Google will then almost instantly deliver an email
notification to you, every time there are any new articles or newsflash
available covering the search terms chosen.
6. Kickstart Cart:
Kickstart Cart is another easy to use and fast to
setup tool. It offers you the ability to create your own affiliate
program, follow up with your customers using autoresponders, create
coupons for special or limited time offers, as well as enable your
online customers to immediately download electronic purchases like
software, ebooks or audio files. Klickstart Cart is not for free.
However, you can check out Klickstart Cart before you buy it. There is a
30-day trial before you have to decide whether you like to buy this tool
or not.
7. Press Release Distribution
Services:
A press release about a new development or other
news in your company can bring you lotīs of publicity and visitors at
no or almost no charge. There are quite some press release services
available that offer a great service free of charge, with the possiblity
to opt in for an upgrade with even improved service features at very low
prices whenever you are in need to. I have created a small list of the
services that I personally use at: http://www.onlinebizcoachingcompany.com/resources.htm
8. Article Submission Services:
Very similar to press releases you can write and
submit articles about your topic or services to free article
directories. Many webmasters regularly check out these article
directories in order to find new, fresh and free content for their
website. The deal is, that you can place a link to your website within
your article and it is not allowed to the enduser to remove it.
Therefore the other webmasters receive free content by using your
article on their website and you receive a one-way link back to your
website from them. It is a fair deal, benefiting both parties equaly.
Make use of these services and submit articles to them regularly, in
order to build up lots of incoming links to your site. This not only
helps to attract more visitors, but also helps to boost your Google
PageRank to something better than it may currently be.
9. Sales Letter Generator:
This is really a fantastic tool. The SalesLetter
Generator is a little similar to the Ezine Director mentioned above at
first glance, but with a different goal and some different features. And
it can do much, much more! The Sales Letter Generator creates quick one
page websites for special programs or products that you are offering. If
you have to or want to do this often or regularly, which is highly
recommended as it is a great marketing technique, you should make use of
this little program. The Sales Letter Generator is asking you some
questions about what you are going to offer on the page and after you
have gone through these questions it automatically generates a one page
HTML sales letter that you can post and upload to your website or
distribute as an sales email immediately! This very useful tools saves a
lot of time and energy. You do not even have to think about creating a
sales text on your own, the Sales Letter Generator does it for you!
10. Typepad:
Bolgging is a very fast and effective online
marketing instrument. But writing all the blog entries manually using
the blogs online interface can be very time consuming. I have tried out
several blogging software services accordingly, and Typepad is the one I
have finally been sticking to. It is both, quick and simple to use and
extremely powerful at the same time. You can set up as many blogs as you
desire and you can customize your blog settings in numerous ways and
options. You can use your blog as public use marketing interface. But it
is even possible to protect your blog or posts with passwords in case
you want to use it as a client-only or company-only communication
interface. If you want to set up your own blogs, Typepad certainly may
be the right tool to use.
Marketing can be a boring task. But you can also
make it an interesting, creative process that skyrockets your business.
Take a look at the tools mentioned above that may help to improve your
marketing dramatically and safe you lotīs of time while following up
your clients and the rest of your business plan.
