Five Tips For This Year's Christmas Card Marketing

Five Tips For This Year's Christmas Card Marketing

Perhaps you've thought of Christmas cards as too much
effort and bother to be a worthwhile part of your
marketing. If you send cards the same way so many other
businesses do then you are probably right!

One sales person told me he gave up sending cards because
he never seemed to get any response. Then he had his
customers phoning him wondering whether he had gone out of
business!

Want to know how to get a return on your marketing
investment with Christmas Cards this year?

These 5 tips for your marketing will help you out:

1.) Measure your results. Ideally put in some type of
response that you can measure, such as gifts they can come
and pick up, or something you will send them if they call
you. At worst measure the response by phoning a selection
of people to gauge how they reacted to the card and what
they did with it. However you do it, you must find a way to
measure your cards' impact.

2.) Get attention. Think about having your card stuck up on
a wall with 100 other Christmas cards. Would you card be
noticed, let alone singled out to be picked up and read?
Forget the fancy stuff. Stand across the other side of the
room and work out if your card really gets attention. No
matter how nice it is, if it fails this test them dump it
and find another one.

3.) Personalize the message. Sure you don't have to send a
different card to every person, but at least make sure you
include the person's own name in the message inside. If
you're doing it by hand it can be too much hassle to add a
personal message too, but there are web-to-print services
now that can make even this easy.

4.) No pushy selling. Christmas cards are a way of
improving the relationship with someone who you hope to do
business with over the long term. Certainly you can keep
the message business-like but if you really have a great
offer for them then send it to them in a separate mailing.

5.) Have your own face on the card. It's natural to be shy,
but this card is not for you it's for the person you are
sending it to. In some businesses they may have never met
you, or they will have forgotten you, but putting your face
to it makes it even more personal and adds to the
connection. You can use a photo of all your staff, and make
sure to include names so that people can tell their friends
exactly who is looking after them in your business. They
will give you great word of mouth referrals just from
showing other people the card.

Word of mouth referral marketing is one of the key methods
for any marketing strategy. It happens automatically, but
you can learn how to make it happen on demand at:
Word of Mouth Magic

What Would You Do For $20.00?

Powerful Lessons From A $20 Bill
by Catherine Franz

Just last week I was speaking to a group of 50 women and men. I opened by holding up a $20 and asking who would like this $20 bill. I also mentioned there were no strings attached. You would have thought that everyone would be raising their hand wanting the $20 bill.

That isn't what happened. Less than half the people raised their hand.

I gave the $20 bill away and stood in silence. It wasn't a long silence but silence when everyone expects to be hearing you talk is long whether its 10 seconds of several minutes. I was waiting until I saw a few audience members began fidgeting.

Then one women spoke up. 'Darn, I could have used that $20 for gas today.' You guessed it, she was one of the hesitant ones.

My topic was on marketing. The exercise demonstrated that even when we market from the truth with no strings attached and even though we totally think of the customer first, many people perceive, assume, that there is going to be a catch to the offer.

This is a powerful lesson when you are expressing your offer, whether its written or verbal, the majority of the people reading or hearing it are going to be thinking with an 'it's too good to be true' mentality.

This means that whenever you are preparing any type of marketing material you need to see your offer from this perspective.

The following day I again spoke to another group. This time the audience was all women. I opened again with another $20. Only this time when I mentioned that there were no strings attached, I said it more powerfully - meaning more vocal variety - repeated it as if it was written in bold print and stated there were absolutely no strings attached. The word 'absolutely' was set off with a mild hand slap.

Every hand raised.

The lessons learned?­

Whenever you make an offer you absolutely have to make sure you tell whomever you want to buy into whatever your offer is conveying what's involved on their part. I'm talking about what will they loose out on if they pass on this opportunity. It could be a tank of gas or even lunch with a friend. It doesn't always need to be something big and bold.

Another lesson learned was that in the first audience, the majority of the people raising their hands were women. This demonstrated that women are more likely to jump on an offer than a man. This also says to me that women are more willing to take a gamble than a man. Hmmm, that's fuel for thought the next time you make an offer, isn't it?

What else does this exercise tell you? How would you present your offers differently? Here's your assignment. Think on this for a few moments and look at one of your offers and then ask the questions that keep your audience's hands down and make sure you are addressing each one of them.

(c) Copyright 2005, Catherine Franz. All rights reserved.

About the Author:
Catherine Franz, writer, speaker, marketing master, specializes in infoproduct development. More at:
www.MarketingStrategiesToGo.com and
www.AbundanceCenter.com. Including articles and ezines.

Neglect Marketing A Business At Your Own Risk

Before we get to today's article I just wanted to point out a post on Steve Pavlina's Blog which describes some common mistakes made by newly self employed people. Have a look on this page: 10 Stupid Mistakes . . . Now back to our article for today.

Neglect Marketing A Business At Your Own Risk

Getting new clients and repeat business is definitely one of the very first things to do when starting off a new business. Most people have no problem acquiring the necessary skills to survive in the business they have chosen. When the clients are acquired, the business begins and the work continues until the money comes in. And the cycle continues till the business finds new clients or the clients themselves find new places to take care of their business needs.

However, many business people have made the mistake of neglecting this part of the business process. Very few, if at all, have ever concentrated on marketing a business.

Not many businessmen realize this, but marketing a business is probably one of the most important things they can do to grow their business. A lot of people see getting new clients as marketing a business. Nothing could be further from the truth. Getting new clients is one of the aspects of marketing a business.

But marketing a business involves a whole lot more than merely getting hold of clients. Branding is a part of marketing a business. Sales too are part of it. Why, even something as backend oriented as accounting and book keeping is also an integral part of marketing a business.

In fact, marketing a business is all about creating a brand for the business. And branding is serious business. Once a business, any business has a brand, it will begin to gather a reputation. And once it manages to gather a sufficiently large reputation, then clients will flock to it. So why waste time trying to get the clients to come to you when you can play all your cards right, concentrate on your core competency and the clients in turn come to you!

But before one presumes or assumes that marketing a business is easy work, one must realize that nothing again could be further from the truth. Not only is any marketing serious and a back breaking work; this is especially so in the case of any business.

Marketing a business is no easy task. It takes years of assiduous application, a whole lot of patience and constant, consistent and dedicated skill before one can even begin to build a reputation. And the troubles don't end when a reputation has been built. It needs to be sustained. Only then can anyone reap the benefits.

So the next time you entertain the thought of starting your own business, seriously draw up a plan for marketing a business. I assure you, you will need to think through this important process.

by Joshua Poyoh

Joshua Poyoh is the creator of http://www.business.resources-to.com where you can find out more independent information on Starting A Small Business Advice

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joshua_Poyoh

Essential Tips For Success In Your Internet Marketing Business

Before we get to today's article, I follow Yaro Starak's "Entrepreneur's Journey Blog" and there is a great posting today that I wanted to share with you. Just go on over to: How To Finally Start Your Online Business and give it a read. You will probably want to bookmark his site because there is always something good to find there.

Essential Tips For Success In Internet Marketing

If you are well informed and hardworking, you can earn good money online. The internet is very dynamic, and in order to succeed, you need to be well informed and up to date with the various techniques of marketing on the internet. Marketing on the internet has changed considerably over the past few years.

Nowadays, techniques for promoting products or services on the internet require an increasing selection of multimedia features and capabilities, much different and advanced from days past.

What are the techniques and you must consider incorporating into your internet marketing efforts in order to increase traffic to your website and boost your sales?

a) Publish e-Books.

This is a very popular approach for generating profits and revenue to publish and promote e-book on the topic related to your business. You can give these out for free with links to your website. On the other hand, the internet is now the major source of information. So you can write and publish e-books on any topic. You can sell these online and earn a lot of money.

b) Give and share expert tips and ideas.

Successful internet marketers share various tips and secrets their email lists, or online customers on a regular basis. Some internet marketers offer daily 'tips' which they send through an auto responder. These days, having a trusting and confident relationship with your clients and potential customers is very essential. This boosts your sales and increases your internet marketing business profits.

c) Educational activities.

One of the single most important ways to increase your personal knowledge and expertise with any given topic is to get involved somehow with teaching this topic to others. There are a number of ways to distribute this information or educational material out to your potential clients.

Direct mailings over a period of time, or many successful marketers set the individual segments up into an email marketing auto responder program that sends the messages out to a predetermined list of clients and customers over a prearranged rate. Distributing this information gives you the perfect opportunity to include small "snippets" of promotion for yourself or various products or services which you sale or promote.

d) Directories that facilitate link exchanges.

Although not everyone thinks of it, you must sponsor a directory website with open invitations for others to include links, banners and promotional advertisements back to their sites. Beyond including your banners, links, and advertisements sprinkled throughout the page; you gain the added benefit of having reciprocal links exchanged with others in the process.

Developing, marketing, and selling of materials utilizing internet marketing ideas and techniques can be fun and profitable. If you want to find new, creative, and innovative methods for growing your internet marketing business, you must apply some effort.

Given that the internet is very dynamic, you must always be well informed about the tools for promoting your internet marketing business. You must be flexible and keen to explore possibilities and new techniques for your internet marketing business. Have fun trying different promotional strategies for your internet marketing business to see what works best for you and your products.

These techniques can help you in your internet marketing efforts in order to increase traffic to your website.

by Khemal Dole

Khemal Dole owns and operates http://www.PaychecksDirect.com, a completely FREE service which helps many first-timers and even experts find their perfect Work At Home job. Visit http://www.paychecksdirect.com right now and see for yourself why so many are flocking to his site.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Khemal_Dole