Check the answering machine. Make sure the mail is divided, stamped and ready to be mailed. Authorize purchase agreements. Read up on recent legal changes. OK the ad running in the newspaper. Make the coffee. Scrub the toilet. Turn on the Open sign. Yes, running your own business means you are in charge of all departments, all divisions, all decisions and all duties. It doesn’t matter that you have the desk plate that says President, you get to clean the toilet too. But, when

So ... you sent out an introductory postcard to a mailing list that you have been developing for months. Then, three weeks later, you send out another postcard that you have changed up a bit from the original and you send it to the same mailing list. Three weeks after that, you send out a brochure to the same mailing list with a little more information about the subject in it than the first two postcards. And, four weeks after that, you send an oversized postcard announcing a

Business Reply Mail (BRM) is a service from the U.S. Postal Service in which a sender provides a prepaid postage envelope or card to the recipient. Business Reply Envelopes or postcards can help you get paid on time, of course, but they can also be used in a variety of ways. They are often used by companies and businesses for marketing purposes. The company sends a postcard or an envelope to prospects who then fill out the information and send it back in to the company at no

Writing and then publishing interesting and valuable news and information can get difficult at times. You have to be consistent and your content has to attract an audience. It has to be about the business, organization or people that you represent. Whether it is an email, a marketing piece or a blog, you need to be engaging, captivating and authentic. There are processes that you go through to reach those goals and the following is a list of the steps you take to reach the cu

Getting someone to open your email can seem like pulling teeth! It is the Subject Line that grabs their attention first, If it is intriguing, they will open the email. If it is dull, they will send it to trash. Almost half of all emails are opened based solely on the subject line. The rest of the emails are thrown away because the receiver thinks it is spam. Your Subject Line is a powerful tool in making or breaking an email campaign. You can get people to open emails by simp

Summer is a great time of year to send out postcards for direct mail campaigns. People love receiving them because they remind them of friends on vacation. But, you are sending them out to generate leads, so you have to concentrate on what kinds of postcards to send and their strategy. You have to plan the direct marketing campaign and figure out the goal. Is this about introducing yourself to the community or are you a well established business that wants to simply offer a t

There is a whole psychology to persuasion. And it starts when you were a child. Your mother getting you to eat vegetables or to making your bed was an art form that mother’s become very good at. Later, there is the persuasive technique of getting someone to date you or to convince your group of friends to attend a concert. And then, persuading your boss that you deserve that raise and the car dealer that the offer you made on the car is the best yet. People who do marketing f

Showcasing your business and its products and services is the main way that you get your customer interested enough to purchase. Promotional Videos are a perfect method to promote and showcase all that you have to offer. No longer is video marketing expensive or full of heavy equipment and thousands of hours of editing. There are many options that small businesses can take advantage of. More businesses are taking their television and radio budget and using it for video produc

Pay Per Click marketing is a form of internet marketing that advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked on. It is a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically. The “related ads” that you see on the search engine screen when you enter in a particular search are all pay per click ads, paid for by the companies who are advertising their goods and services. Putting an advertisement on a search engine is the most

Remember Cabbage Patch Kids, or Furbies or Tekno the Robotic Puppy? These were all extremely popular kids toys that sold out at Christmas time. It was panic in the aisles for parents worldwide. And the toy companies made millions! When something turns into a thing that everyone wants and suddenly there isn’t enough of that thing to go around, it turns into a course of action called Scarcity Marketing. Scarcity marketing is a type of marketing technique that is based on the pr