Marketing Through Special Reports

Marketing Through Special Reports

Guest Blogger, Corrie Petersen

Have you ever seen an ad or post regarding a free special report? If you went to that site for the report, the marketing plan worked. Special reports are a great way to generate traffic to your site and interest in your business.

It doesn’t matter what type of business you run, special reports will help you grow. Think about your target market and what they like to do or need help with. This will help you come up with ideas for the reports. Reports can be of any length, but you don’t want them to be to long. A good size for a special report is two to seven pages.

Topics for special reports can be on just about anything. You can do the negative side or the positive side. You can do tips or suggestions as well. Some general topics that would work with most businesses would be how to spend more time with your family, how to have less stress in your life, how to organize your home, or how to organize your pictures in a photo album.

Of course you want these geared towards your business so you’ll want suggestions that will help them with something and this will help them to remember you each time they use it. You wouldn’t want to do a special report on washing a dog if your target market is a baby boomer and you offer skin care products to help them look younger. While you may think your market may have a need to wash a dog, they won’t remember your skin care business when they wash their dog.

Special reports are a great way to drive traffic to your site and increase your sales. Offering them directly on your site is a great way to get people to your site right away. Consider asking for their email address in exchange for the report. That will help you increase your list and you will be able to tell them more about what you offer and when you have more reports for them to download.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Virtual Assistant business. She enjoys helping others
reach their goals and dreams. Check out her website at www.virtualfreedom4you.com

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Marketing your Business through Blogs and Articles

Marketing your Business through Blogs and Articles

Guest Blogger, Corrie Petersen

Finding ways to put your business in front of your target market can be a challenge at times. One thing to remember is that you need to be consistent in what you do. Studies show you need to put yourself in front of your target market five to seven times before they will consider looking at what you offer.

There are several ways to keep your business in front of your target market on a regular basis. One way to do this is through blog posting. Running a blog is a great way to help your target market through tips, suggestions, and anything else that they may benefit from them.

One thing you need to do is add a subscription box to your blog and add an RSS feed to it. The subscription box will give your readers the ability to receive updates via their email. The RSS feed will help with blog submissions and you can use it with your social networking sites. Both of which are valuable tools for your business.

Another way you can keep your business in front of your target market regularly is to use article marketing. Article marketing is where you write articles and you submit them to article directories. Your articles need to be full of great content and you want them to be helpful to your readers.

You can use the articles as content on your blog or you can rewrite your blog posts and turn them into articles. Either way will work and will help you increase the content on the other.

Blog posting and Article marketing are two of the many ways that you can keep your business in front of your target market and increase your traffic. You should try to post on your blog three to four times a week and you should write and submit one to two articles a week. This will help you keep your target market aware of what you are doing and you will constantly be in front of them.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Virtual Assistant business. She enjoys helping others
reach their goals and dreams. Check out her website at www.virtualfreedom4you.com

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How you can Use Press Releases in Marketing Your Website

How you can Use Press Releases in Marketing Your Website

By Guest Blogger, Alice Seba

Your probably heard the term press release at one time or another but do you know what it means? A press release is an interesting story about your business that you send in to different media outlets like newspapers, magazines, television, radio and website. A story picked up by the media is more important than any advertising that has been paid for. Having the media do a piece about you and your business is comparable to a personal endorsement of your business and website.

How to format a press release

There are six basic components to a press release. They are listed below:

1. Release Instructions

“For Immediate Release”;
“For Release Before [date]” or
“For Release After [date]”

If your press release is time sensitive, use one of the latter two. For instance if you are speaking at an event, you should use the “For Release Before [date]” and don’t forget to include the final registration date. If you decide to use the “For Release Before [date]“, make sure you pay close attention to media deadlines. Send your release well ahead of time.

2. Headline

Use a headline that is attention grabbing. Make your headline descriptive and answers the question, “Why would it be interesting to people?” Do not use hype and promotional language. Keep in mind that this is a news story/.

3. Contact Information

Put all pertinent contact information here. Make it easy for the media to contact you. Include the following information: your phone number, address, company name, fax number, email and URL. If applicable, include the hours you are available at the listed phone number and add an after hours phone number too.

4. Summary

Write a sentence or two, which summarizes your press release before you get into the body of the release. Make it as interesting as you can. Remember, your goal is to make your recipient keep on reading.

5. Content

Write a benefits-oriented story. Think about your target audience as you are writing your story. Your target audience is partly the editor or reporter who will be reading the release. Finally, your target audience is the editor or reporter’s readers or audience. You need to come up with a story that will be of interest to them. The content is the meal of your press release.

Make sure that the first paragraph answers the following questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why & How?

To break the story and to add credibility, include quotations. The quotations can be from you about the topic. It is also very effective to use testimonials or commentary from your customers.

6. Signify the End of Your Release

Your press release should be ended by a few simple characters. Place ### at the end of your release.

Other General Formatting Tips

- Your press release should be newsworthy story and not an ad.

- Address your release directly to the appropriate reporter or editor. Each day the media receives a lot of press releases. If you address the release to a specific person, it is more likely to get attention than a general submission.

- Your release should be only about 1 page, 2 pages maximum

- Don’t forget to number your pages 1 of 2 and 2 of 2

- Use active verbs.

- Avoid hype. Do not use excessive adjectives.

- Adjust your release when sending to various medial outlets. If you are sending to the local newspaper, your content may be somewhat different than if you are sending it to a trade magazine.

- Use 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper when sending a release by postal mail.

- Copy and paste your release into the body of your email if you are sending your release via email. Do not send an attachment.

Where to Send your Press Release

It will take a bit of time but you will need to build a media list. You can start small and locally. Local and/or small media are most likely to be interested in your story. It’s also the best way to perfect your release writing skills. Besides, most of the larger media outlets browse the little guys to find stories to pick up.

Consider newspapers, trade journals, topic specific magazines, websites, radio shows, television show ~ those who might be interested in your particular topic.

Don’t forget to use specific contact information for your press release. If you address your release to a particular person, you will get a better chance of being considered compared to a general release sent to the media outlet.

Get More Press Release Help

If you’re ready to write your first press release and get it out to the media, sign up for the free press release course…and get started the right way. Click here to sign up.

How to Grow Your Business through Marketing

Grow your business through marketing

Guest Blogger, Corrie Petersen

As business owners we want to see continued growth every month. The only way this will happen is to continually market our businesses. We need to do this on a daily basis or growth won’t happen.

Marketing is something they many don’t understand or they don’t know how to do it. There are many ways you can do this both online and offline. Both of which are important for an online business.

Here are some offline suggestions for marketing your online business:

• Business cards

• Flyers

• Postcard mailings

• Face to face networking events

Online marketing is just as important…

Here are some suggestions for online marketing:

• Social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn)

• Forums

• Free teleseminars

• Youtube videos

• Newsletters

• Button and banner ads

As you can see there are numerous ways to put your business in front of others on a regular basis. When done the right way all of these suggestions can help you grow your business on a monthly basis.

Finding time to do these tasks will be difficult at first. You will need to build it into your routine and calendar it in to your day. Start out by scheduling 15 minutes a day during your weekday. Once you get familiar with what you are doing, you can increase that time to 20 or 30 minutes a day. At the point where you feel comfortable with your marketing strategies and you are making good progress you can change your time to an hour three days a week. This will help you get more accomplished because you will have more time and you will be able to take it down to fewer days a week.

Marketing is an important tool to growing your business to new and exciting levels. These are easy ways to grow and you will enjoy doing it. Get started right away so you can start seeing the increase in your business.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Virtual Assistant business. She enjoys helping others
reach their goals and dreams. Check out her website at www.virtualfreedom4you.com

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Does a Publicist Guarantee Publicity: Or Do I Need One?

Does a Publicist Guarantee Publicity:  Or Do I Need One?

By Guest Blogger, Alice Seba

It can be overwhelming just to think about the thought of starting a press release or publicity campaign. How is it possible to get Oprah’s attention or even get a mention in a national magazine?

The truth is, one does not have to work hard to get advantageous publicity for one’s business. It is safe to say – No, a publicist is not necessary to generate a worthy publicity for one’s business.

I, myself am not interested in being famous. Instead, I would rather create tons of low-key publicity that can help me build my business. On occasion, people request for interviews or I even get quoted in articles. These activities increase both my subscriber and customer lists at a steady rate but it doesn’t equate to me being famous. That’s alright because I do not desire to be famous.

People who position themselves as an expert in their market can receive a lot of worthy publicity. Sending out press releases does not automatically make one an expert. It is better to have an abundance of quality content in the internet and also visibility in search engines as well as networking with others who can refer media to you.

Don’t forget to consider that fame comes with a price. You can learn from other book authors who are out on a publicity tour. Find out from the author what difference it made in sales of their book. Authors need to invest a great amount of time. The sad part is that the time investment does not always bring back a great return.

What works well is a low-key approach. Why burn yourself out when you don’t have to!
Get More Press Release Help

If you’re ready to write your first press release and get it out to the media, sign up for the free press release course…and get started the right way. Click here to sign up.

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