“It’s not about what you know but who you know”
This statement is true when it comes to marketing. Competition nowadays is very stiff and as a businessman, one can no longer ensure the stableness of his business like the way it used to be. Different enterprises has been sprouting like mushrooms that in just a blink of an eye he will just wake up and realize that his business is already down to its foreclosure. Entrepreneurs cannot always rely on the loyalty of the customers either since if they are given a more attractive price, goods and services, then definitely, they won’t even hesitate to switch to its competitor.
Now this is where marketing enters the picture. The most important thing in business is retention and to always keeps the business in the spotlight. And establishing contacts always does the magic when marketing is the topic. It’s just a matter of getting the right information from the right person.
So how does one establish contacts anyway? There are several ways on how to produce wide arrays of connection to make product marketing much easier. Ever heard of the term “Mailing list?” Mailing list is a list of names and e-mail addresses. On the other hand, this list may also include home address of a person. From this list collected, forms a database which is very important if one is dealing with an online marketing sector.
At this moment, the question at hand is where to get that list of names and e-mail addresses? The basic way to build a mailing list is by securing names and address information from people who shows interest in a particular product. Some coffee shops, usually have fish bowls positioned in an area near the counter where customers can easily spot it and drop their business cards for free mailing lists if ever the coffee shop have an upcoming promos.
For online marketing, one should regard the mailing list as the most important facet in a business because without customers there would be no profit. Thus, they should be taken care of, both old and new.
There are various ways wherein one can get the information he wanted, for increase of contacts, through the internet. Many hate pop ups but promoters of particular services or products actually love pop ups that they even pay just to have them. But why break bones when you can have pop ups do all the workings? Plus the good news is that these allegedly annoying stuffs are only for free.
The website http://www.homemadebooklets.com offers a free account to let your promo and services appear through pop up windows in somebody else’s homepage. Well, that’s too much of an exposure and worth the two minutes you spent on just signing in.
So how does this work? When a pop up window appears in the middle of the net surfing, tendency is that the user will just ignore it and click the “x” button without even taking time to read its content. Others, who get irritated with the windows that continuously show up, will eventually decide to take time in reading what that window was trying to convey, and if the offer interests him, he’ll just simply check the box to get a free report or offer. Here’s the catch, once they did that, they will be automatically added to the auto responder series and he can be contacted automatically by the owner of the pop up without the latter even lifting a finger.
Aside from pop-ups, special offers by TIME.com and CNN.com is one good way of gathering e-mail addresses as a part of their mailing list. The objective is clear, visitor or even regular patrons of the site who wants to avail of the special offer “Get 6 issues of TIME for only $1.99” just needs to simply fill out the order form and give out information like names and e-mail addresses. This also goes with CNN’s free membership. The member benefits they are offering like breaking news e-mail alerts, sports news and score alerts, CNN/Money's portfolio tracker and a wide variety of e-mail newsletters plus the games and trivia is really an offer without even spending even a cent.All of these just for an e-mail address only and giving it out with a reputable company like TIME and CNN won’t hurt either.
They say that it is a lot harder to acquire new customers than to keep a current one, but wouldn’t it be nice to have the loyalty and trust of both? Keep in mind that business is all about marketing and networking. Take care of the current, look out for future and watch how the mailing list grows. Then, at the end of the day, one will realize that a marketing genius can really go far in business but a person with lots of links and contacts can go farthest.
Sources:
http://www.soaringprofits.com
http://www.asashop.org
http://www.entrepreneur.com
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