Archive for July, 2010
Writing a Great Press Release
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Successful press releases can really benefit your business. That’s a known fact. However, a lot of business owners don’t think about the long-term impact they can have.
If you get an instant influx of customers, many of them will remain customers for life. So press releases are not just about the immediate business they can give you. Instead, their main benefit is what they can do long term.
Unfortunately, not all press releases are created equal. A bad press release may not even get published.
Here are five ways to write a good release:
Make it interesting
It’s often been said that the worst thing you can be in business is to be boring. The same goes true for press releases. Make sure the subject of your press release is interesting. It has to have something that differentiates it from the rest of the press releases out there.
Editors get a lot of press releases. So if there is nothing about yours that makes it stand out, your chances of getting it accepted are zero.
Have an exciting headline
If you have a bad headline, the editors won’t give it the time of day. Make sure the most compelling part of your story is listed in the headline.
You want to start with your best foot forward. If your headline doesn’t grab the reader’s attention, the rest of your release won’t get read no matter how good it is.
Keep it short
Ideally, the release should be five hundred words or less. In other words, it should not be more than one page. Editors have a lot of stories to get though, and anything that is too long is likely to get thrown in the trash.
Keep your sentences brief as well. This breaks up the text and makes it more readable.
Avoid advertising
Remember, the editors don’t care about your business. They want a story that their readers are going to find interesting. If you just write a long ad for your business, your release isn’t going to get read.
Write about newsworthy events
You obviously can’t write about just anything. For instance, having a sale on paintbrushes might be important to your company, but it’s not going to be interesting enough to get readers.
Instead, write about things you know customers would care about. For instance, if you just took a poll of your clients on something, write about that.
Also, consider doing some sort of fundraising community event. It doesn’t even have to raise money. Anything that gets the community involved will be interesting to the press.
The bottom line is, press releases are one of the most underutilized strategies by businesses for getting customers. When you do them the right way, you will reap the benefits for a long time.
Marketing Mix: Understanding Business Promotion
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Promotion is one of the four parts of the “marketing mix” along with product, price and distribution. It is the communication between buyer and seller. You may think first of advertisement when you think of promotion, but promotion really is so much more than just running an ad. Try thinking of promotion as the “fun” part of marketing as it allows you to use your creativity. You will also want to polish your communication skills for any promotional activity.
The purpose of promotion is to stimulate potential purchasers towards the buying decision. The specific purpose of any promotional activity or campaign may be to influence, to build awareness, to provide information, to increase demand for a product, to reinforce the brand or to differentiate a product in the marketplace. Make sure you know your purpose before you make your promotion plans.
In general, thinking about promotion for your business should get you looking into each of these five categories: personal selling, advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, and publicity or public relations. Personal selling means being very comfortable in a sales conversation about your business. Advertising these days can be very inexpensive or as costly as you are willing to spend and should not be ignored. Direct marketing now can be anything from a postcard campaign to personal Facebook messages. The area of sales promotion often opens up creative channels such as coupons, contests, free samples, exhibitions and many more. Publicity or public relations is getting others to help spread your message whether this is done for free or for a fee. A great marketing plan for your business will have addressed each of these promotional areas in some way.
How To Create a Squeeze Page
Posted by: | CommentsIf you’re trying to build an opt-in list, and of course most internet marketing experts recommend that you do, then you’ll want to create a squeeze page. These single web pages are designed to work as landing pages whose sole task is to collect opt-in list subscribers. Squeeze pages are landing pages created to solicit opt-in email addresses from prospective subscribers. Let’s take a look at how to build one:
Step #1 Get your website ducks in a row. Do you have a domain name, hosting company and a method for creating a web page? A squeeze page is a web page so your first step is to find or open whatever programming software or system you’re using. If you already have a website then you’ll just add a page to that site. If you’re starting from scratch then your hosting company will likely have templates you can use or you can hire someone to create a web page for you. You can also create a web page with software like DreamWeaver or a WordPress template.
Step #2 Lay out your page. Your squeeze page will not want to have a multitude of graphics or flashy features. Everything on this page should be focused on getting your visitor to subscribe to your list, that’s it. You will have some formatting in the form of a headline, bullets, a call to action and a form. You may also want a color scheme, logo or image that helps brand your page to your business. However, before you publish this page, make sure everything on the page supports the task of motivating opt-ins.
Step #3 Write your headline. Your headline, like a book title, has to capture the attention of your visitor in a matter of seconds and motivate them to read further. Make a promise, offer them something valuable, always make sure you’re keeping your visitor’s needs in mind when creating your headline.
Step #4 List the benefits subscribing or signing up for your email list offers. Bullet points are the easiest to read and you can highlight keywords in bold print to draw the reader’s eye through the copy. Remember, benefits are not features. Benefits are about what signing up for your email list will do for your prospect. How will it benefit them?
Step #5 Write your call to action. Your call to action is essentially a statement that tells your visitors what you want them to do – sign up now!
Step #6 Create your subscription form. You can use a number of services to create this form, or if you know how to write code, you can do it yourself. You need to collect an email address and a name if you want to address future communications to this person directly. “Dear Amy” sounds much better and more personal than “Dear Reader.” Paste the code onto your squeeze page and you’re ready to publish.
Step #7 Follow-up. You may want to follow up with a confirmation to make sure the person intended to subscribe and a thank you for subscribing.
Once your squeeze page is up and running you have two remaining tasks: test and track it for success. You may find that a little change in the wording of your call to action for example may motivate more opt ins, or maybe your headline could use a little tweaking.
You’ll also want to market your squeeze page through various marketing methods like listservs, forums, general online marketing, PPC advertising and finally you’ll want to provide your subscribers with all of the wonderful content you promised them. Once you have the ball rolling and have built a notable opt-in list, you can then focus on using that list to boost profits.
How To Move Potential Clients Into Action
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There’s a general cycle to internet business, a series of phases. The first phase is generally to drive traffic, increase awareness and build your subscriber or opt-in list. The second phase is to motivate subscribers to become customers. This is generally accomplished by offering entry level products like low cost reports and ebooks. However, once you have customers, how do you continue to increase sales and motivate purchases? What’s the next step?
Motivating customers into action involves a few different strategies working cohesively together. The first is to continue to offer quality information. You want to continue to give them a reason to come back to your website. And you want them to think of you often, particularly when they have a need for your information, products or services. This is accomplished by continuing to reach them through your autoresponder, social networking, blog posts and other marketing strategies.
Continue building your community. The more people feel like they belong and they can relate to your brand and personality, the more they are likely to become repeat customers. And they’re more likely to recommend you to others. Social networking, blogging and social networking badges and buttons on your website are excellent ways to accomplish this.
Reward your customers for their loyalty. Loyalty programs help accomplish a few things. They make customers feel appreciated. They motivate purchases because loyalty programs and rewards often come with privileged promotions, special pricing and exclusive information. And they help build your community.
Build a marketing funnel. It makes sense to have a tiered level of products or services in your catalog. If your first entry point cost $5 you don’t want your next product to cost $500. There has to be a mid range too. And like wise, some people may be ready, after buying your first entry level product, to buy the whole cow as they say. So make sure you have larger priced items available too. Provide choices and a tiered level of products or services.
Tap into those all important buying triggers. Your customers will respond to:
* Emotion
* Scarcity
* Urgency
* Authority
* Credibility
* Liking
Embrace these buying triggers and use them in your communications and promotions.
Finally, make sure it’s easy to buy. Sometimes we don’t realize that there are artificial blocks to making a purchase. Maybe we ask for too much information during the checkout process, maybe the call to action isn’t clear. Eliminate any obstacles to making a purchase and make it extremely easy to buy from you.
Turning customers into repeat customers and motivating sales is an ongoing process. However, once you create good systems and procedures here, it can essentially be an automatic and repeatable process.
