If you’re a service provider or a freelancer, it pays to have a solid portfolio. Your portfolio will show potential clients that you have the experience and skills to handle their project. However, one of the challenges to creating a quality
Author: Steve Tari
How to Become an Online Infopreneur
Information marketing has taken the internet by storm. As more and more people begin utilizing digital information, and reading and learning online, more opportunities open up for information marketers. If you have specialty information or have a passion for a topic, information marketing may be the perfect business model for you.
Website marketing strategies
How do you market your site locally? There are a number of good strategies for this. It’s no secret that the key to making money online is traffic plus conversions. You can’t be profitable without one or the other. Here are three tips to help you achieve both:
#1) Social media
Getting involved with local social networking groups is one of the best ways to become more profitable. Social media is getting a lot of hype today, and for good reason: it works.
Just make sure you are targeting people that are interested in your product and live in your area. This is why you probably want to join the larger sites, as they are the most likely to have people from your location.
What do you do once you are there?
Get involved in the community, and start answering questions. Social networking allows you to connect with others. Don’t just use the sites for link building purposes.
They offer a lot more potential than that. When you actively get involved in the community and start answering people’s questions, people will trust you more. Better yet, they will refer their friends to you as well.
Just make sure to provide good, free information. Don’t worry so much about whether they buy or not. When they come to realize that you genuinely care about helping them, they will be more inclined to trust you. As Zig Ziglar says, “you can get anything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.”
What do you get out of it?
Once you’ve built up enough trust, you can then send people to your blog. Here, you can include more information about your products.
However, don’t have every post be a blatant promotion. Again, make sure to include a lot of good free information. Then, every now and then you can promote your product.
#2) Direct mail
This is an excellent way to get local people to visit you site.
#3) Testimonials
Now that you know how to get traffic to your site, you then need a good converting site. One great tip is to put testimonials from local people in your area.
Most businesses don’t use nearly enough testimonials. This is a shame, because what your customers say about you carries a lot more weight than what you say.
The bottom line is, the key to getting more local business is having a good website, and driving traffic to that. Implement these three tips, and you will soon become more profitable.
Two Ways to Use Audio & Video
How do you use audio and video for local marketing? This can be very effective when done right. Here are two of the best outlets to use them:
Tips For Hosting Local Events
There are plenty of unconventional advertising methods that work. Many businesses fall into the trap of doing nothing but traditional advertising. However, thinking outside the box is often great for generating interest. Here are two tips that work:
Local SEO – 4 Ways to Boost Ranking
Ranking for area-specific terms can be a big boost to your business. Many people don’t think local SEO makes a big difference, but this isn’t the case.
Local Marketing 101
What is local marketing, and why do smaller businesses need to engage in it? This means targeting people in your area.
Obviously many businesses can go after people around the country. However, others can only do business with local customers.
Customer Recognition – 3 Tips to Success
How do you reach local customers? That’s a question a lot of businesses are interested in. Many people know how easy it is to reach those out of the area, but how do you target people where you live?
Boost Business Profits With Joint Ventures
Partnering and networking with other companies is critical if you want to increase your profits. Many online marketers regularly practice JV partnerships. However, many people don’t use them effectively for local business. Here are two ways to do it:
#1) Cross promotion
If somebody buys a product from you, offer them a discount at a related business. The other company would then do the same for you.
That way, you could each capitalize off each other’s business, and get new customers. This is a perfect example of a JV partnership that benefits both businesses involved.
You probably don’t want to do this with a direct competitor. However, if there is a complementary business to yours, this is a great way to boost both companies’ profits.
For instance, if you are selling skis, you might offer your customer a discount at a site that sells ski trips. They would do the same for their customers. This way, both businesses can potentially benefit from the same customer, and possibly have a client for life.
#2) Up sell
“The money is in the backend.” Just about every great marketer makes most of their money after the first sale. It’s much more difficult to continually find new customers than keep selling to somebody who’s already bought from you.
So after you sell something, you can offer the customer a more expensive product from another company. You would then get a chunk of that sale.
This is known as “affiliate marketing” in the online world, and it’s one of the best forms of backend marketing. This way, you don’t have to continually come up with new products yourself, you can just take advantage of what other companies are selling.
So how do you find joint venture partners?
One of the best strategies is to either go to local seminars, or join a networking group in the area.
The bottom line is, don’t believe those who say that you shouldn’t work with other companies. Many believe it will hurt their business if they refer customers to other companies. This isn’t the case.
Not only will you boost your profits, and your customers will come to trust you more if you recommend them to other great products. Just make sure you really believe in whatever product you refer them to. If you recommend them a product that won’t help them and just increase your profits, they will stop trusting you.
The bottom line is, your customers are not going to do business exclusively with you. Therefore, you might as well take advantage of their other purchases. If you aren’t using JV partnerships you are missing out on profits.
5 Ways to Boost Local Customers
How do you get more local customers to your business? There are plenty of ways to do this. Here are five of the best strategies: