Steve Guttridge: aka Stay At Home Bum Marketer

by: Kim Medeiros

Does your business need a jolt? Try hot promotional items-espresso cups! Custom printed espresso cups will give your business the lift you are looking for. If business has been lagging, then these imprinted cups are just what you need to get it going again.

Every now and again, people like to step outside the norm of a regular cup of coffee and have a shot of espresso. Since espresso is such a strong coffee, you need a large mug to pour the coffee into and drink from. What is needed is a little cup-an espresso cup. These charming cups do just the trick when you need a shot of espresso. They are the perfect size for a shot of espresso. Not too much and not too little. Just right. If you feel tired, with just one cup of espresso you’ll feel awake and alert.

It’s because of this need and like of espresso that people have that businesses need to use promotional espresso cups as a way to advertise their business. If you give away these cups for free, people will gladly take them and use them for the many years that they last. They are one thing that can last for many years to come and they are one thing that people will put to good use. Just imagine. Every time your customers have guests over and they serve espresso, they will be using your espresso cups. The guests will see the cups that have your logo on them and probably inquire as to where your customer got them. This is called word-of-mouth advertising. This is the best form of advertising you can get because it will come with a recommendation from your customer. A recommendation is all you need to gain new customers. If they ever need a product or service from your company, you know that with your customers recommendation they will go to you. And, all of this stems from them have espresso with you promotional espresso cups!

When you consider other forms of advertisement, such as television and radio spots and newspaper ads, custom printed espresso cups is the logical and best choice. Television and radio spots are way too expensive and are only about 30 seconds long. Plus, most people change the channel during commercials. Newspaper ads are cheaper but they only last a day and most people wind up throwing them away without reading them. But, promotional espresso cups are long lasting. Figure they can last for over 10 years (probably more) and people will use them. Now that’s an advertising medium that you can really get your money’s worth.

As a business owner, you can’t lose with customized espresso cups. People love to drink espresso. It doesn’t matter what time of year it is or whether they feel hot or cold. The idea of the shot of espresso is to get that awake, alert feeling. And your promotional espresso cups will do just the trick in making the whole experience an authentic one.
About the Author

Kim is the author of Discountmugs.com. If you would like more information about Espresso Cups, please visit http://www.discountmugs.com and http://www.discountmugs.com/nc/style/6-1/ceramic-mugs/expresso-&-saucer/

Article Source -http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_4850.shtml

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by: Neil Ashe
The e-mail auto-responder is probably the greatest invention ever in Internet marketing, and quite possibly in the history of all marketing. There’s no more having to figure out how to keep contact with people through snail mail, phone calls or knocking on their doors. Now you’ve got the perfect way to follow up with prospects and customers, automatically, every day or two days or three days, or whenever you want.

You can sequence the whole thing, all of your information marketing correspondence, through an auto-responder. The computer takes care of it, so you don’t have to worry about it at all. It’s incredible what you can do. Just think of how you can:

● welcome new subscribers and direct them to your web site;
● send follow up messages, as many and as often as you want;
● introduce information products, answer questions and deliver downloads;
● track clicks through your own domain name; and
● deliver e-mail automatically when prospects are most likely to read, click and order.

Now you can get auto-responders quickly and easily to support your information marketing efforts. Just go to aweber.com, icontact.com, or getresponse.com and get your own up and running for just $10 or $20 a month. Some of the providers also offer templates, e-mail analytics, online surveys, and video e-mail capabilities to back-up their basic services.

You can get access to detailed reports that identify who opens your messages and who is clicking through to your links. Easy-to-read charts and graphics are offered in real time. Addresses that bounce messages are captured and purged automatically. Deliverability rates can reach 98% to 99%. There are tons of other technical benefits, too.

But what I like best is how auto-responders allow me to “visit” my prospects and customers as often as I like. I sit down and I say, “Okay, I can’t go to their house. I can’t have a conversation with them in person. But I can imagine how it would go, and I can build an e-mail sequence that will be like having that private conversation.”

The here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to write answers to their questions. I’m going to build trust. I’m going to give away my free-line content to them. I’m going to really do a great job at building a relationship.

And you know what else? At the end of everyone of those auto-response e-mails, and maybe even sometimes in the middle or the beginning, I’m going to say, “By the way, if you’re getting value from what I’ve been bring you, and you want to get in the fast lane, why don’t you come buy my information products over here and skip all the interim stuff. Get right to the advanced information products I’ve created for you.”

And that’s how I think about using e-mail auto-responders for information marketing. You might want to turn up the pressure and be a hard-sell person, or you might turn it down and make your auto-responses more soft-sell. In any event, this is best the way you can follow up with people. This is how you can use e-mail to build relationships. Auto-responders make it all possible.

About the Author:
Neil Asher (http://www.neilasher.com/freestuff.htm) has built five multi-million dollar companies from zero, including one he took to $8 million in sales in under two years. He has created and sold successful franchises in England, Italy, Ireland, Australia and South Africa. Visit his web site for access to 17 FREE videos, 6 FREE books and two hours of audio training, revealing “How To Make BIG Money Selling Information Products On The Internet…Even If You Don’t Have A Website And You’ve Never Sold Anything On The Internet Before.”

Article source – http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_4825.shtml

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Are you Tired of writing the same Ol’ closing line when writing a business letter? How many times can you write “best wishes” and “kindest regards”? So i was just about to fire off a quick email to someone i give high regards to in the industry, and i was thinking, this guy ranks higher than an industry standard kind regards or best wishes. So I headed to google and punched in a few phrases and came up with a list that i hope helps you out………It did me!

http://www.writeexpress.com/letterclosings.html

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by: Kerry Grinkmeyer
First you have to have a website, then before you go to step two it’s best if you have some understanding of how the Internet works.

Imagine a huge spider crawling through out the Internet; its job is to determine what each website is all about and which are the most important to the overall Internet. With over 300 billion websites the spider has to organize them in some manner. He decides to create categories; Financial, Medical, Shopping, etc. The spider looks for keywords, examines the site title, its description and its page content.

Once he gets his 300 million sites categorized he has to come up with a system for determining which of the sites in each category are the most important to the category and to the Internet overall. So he gives a site points for other sites linking back to it, more points for having other sites referring back to it in its content, and more points if the content on the original is updated on a regular basis thus keeping current on the subject matter of the category.

Those sites with current content, and most relevant back links are then ranked highest and appear highest in search. That’s a simple explanation of how Internet search works.

If you build a beautiful website to promote your business and it’s not appearing on the first page of search, it’s like building a beautiful billboard and keeping it in your basement.

To find out where your website is living, type your business and location in your search bar (Orthodontist Omaha), just like someone who needed your services would do. There are usually ten listings on each page; are you on the first page? Now ask yourself, when you’re searching how deep do you go? If you’re not on the first page 80% of the searchers will not find you.

If you’re an Orthodontist in Omaha there were 1290 searches last month that you could be just what the searcher was looking for; that’s over 15,000 information searchers a year. How important is it to your business to be on the first page? You could pay for one of those “Sponsored Ads” on the top and right hand side of the page, which would put you on the top.

Did you see that map on the top of the page with pinpoints showing where your competitions offices are located; are you in that picture?

Do you currently know how many visitors come to your website each day and how they found you and how long they stayed? If someone does come to your website is it easy for them to get information from you? You know, get on your newsletter mailing list, or sign up for your next seminar; or do you offer anything like that on your website? These are the questions you need to address if you want to turn your website into a marketing tool. If you decide that you do want to make your website a part of your marketing program you have several options.

You can hire a full time IT person to oversee your Search Engine Optimization, link building and implementation of conversion strategies or you can contract with a company to do the work for you.

Before you do either you need to consider your potential Return on Investment (ROI); what is a new client or patient worth to you a year? How many new clients would your website have to bring on to justify either expenditure?

It’s easy to find out how many searches there were last month for your profession in your city, the Internet industry claims to have a 2% to 5% conversion ratio. That is for every 100 site visitors 2 to 5 buy the service or product offered. Using the 2% conversion rate and the anticipated traffic, based on 5% of the searches in your city what can you spend to get new clients or patients?

A professional in the field of Search Engine Optimization can help you get your website to the top of the page. Today you’re probably going to find national companies, local listing agencies, and general information site competing for first page positions. It’s not hard to displace them on a local level. If you do find one of your competitors up there you’re behind in the fastest growing segment of business marketing. Check their Google Page Ranking if it’s 5 or above you’ve got a steep hill to climb, if it’s 2 or below you can challenge them in short order.

As you’re a professional in your field you need a professional if you want to add Internet Marketing as an effective tool to market your business. Building a website is step one, build traffic to your website is step two, converting that traffic into prospects is step three, and converting those prospects into client is step four.

About the Author:
Kerry founded BestofUS.com a web listing of the best of ten professions in the United States. He works with his listed professional to assist them in marketing their business over the Internet. You can apply to be listed on

http://www.BestofUS.com at http://www.bestofus.com/application.php. Once listed, you can contact Kerry for assistance in marketing your business on the Internet.
Article Source: http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_4861.shtml

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