By: Jim Newell
There’s an old saying that goes like this, “necessity is the mother of invention”, perhaps you’ve heard it. Let’s look at an example of it being used. Online marketing of products or information was in its infancy 10 years ago, and it had a huge disadvantage to overcome. How to attract, hold and sell to a market that you never met and your only tool was a computer screen. Take a look at online marketing today, how have they done? Actually very well, the tools that have evolved are very effective, they can be quite useful and cost effective for “brick& mortar” businesses as well.
- Website – Try to imagine an advertising platform that can be changed and/or updated any time you want. Your company website can be changed or added to any time you want and at very little or even no cost. Your website can be used to provide information to your existing customer base, as well as new customers. Things such as store hours, maps, specials or even an e-newsletter subscription form. Directing people to your website may even save some phone time.
- Blog – Is a blog the same thing as a website, well it could be, however the typical blog platform is really good as a content management and reader communication platform. If your customers have questions about your services or products they can post their questions online. Some Blog platforms are easy to update, which makes them ideal for a small website.
- eMail – email marketing is the main tool online marketers use to keep in contact with their customers. Why would a “brick & mortar” business want to use email marketing? Think direct mail at no cost! Think putting your message directly on your customers/prospects computer! The only costs associated with email marketing, if done on a smaller scale are possible costs to prepare your message. Your email lists can usually be managed with your basic email program. For larger scale email marketing campaigns there are services available that will do everything except gather the email address. If you are a “brick & mortar” business owner, you should be asking every customer you come in contact with for their email address. To stay in compliance with “anti-spam” legislation be sure to ask permission to email them and have them sign a form authorizing the same. Most people will give you their email address, if you assure them that you will not give it to anyone else, and if you tell them what you are going to send them and how often.
- Auto-responder – Automation of your email marketing messages or newsletters makes your campaign more consistent and much easier to manage. So what does an auto-responder do? It sends your pre entered messages to all of your customers on the schedule you set up. Imagine you send a monthly newsletter, you can write as many issues as you need, enter them into your auto-responder and they will be mailed automatically as scheduled. You can email a special message to all of your list members any time between scheduled messages, without upsetting your schedule. Auto-responder software can be had at no cost and can be installed on your computer, or for time savings you can use an auto-responder service, usually for a monthly charge.
Check this website for a example of an customer information site, http://www.SecureYourStuff.com, just copy and paste the url into your browser address bar.
