If you run a business, own a brand, write a blog, provide a service, or sell a product, then you should have some kind of marketing strategy. With web development and technology making huge strides every day, there is no shortage of tools available for developing an effective plan for promoting your business. Among the commonly mentioned “Web 2.0″ marketing methods are blogs, social networks, Twitter, podcasts, and video, which all allow you to engage your audience, develop meaningful connections with clients and other like-minded people, and promote your business to people who actually want to learn about it. SlideShare is another (free) tool to slip into that marketing belt.

If you know how to use Powerpoint, then you already have what it takes to market on SlideShare. The site allows you to upload presentations from Powerpoint, OpenOffice, or a PDF file, and share it publicly on the web. As is typical with most social sites, you can connect with other people, comment on their presentations, and develop conversations and relationships with people who are interested in what you have to say. Easily share a tutorial, embed the slideshow into a blog post (like on the Influential Marketing Blog), show off your accomplishments (like Guy Kawasaki), share about your business (like Zappos), promote a property listing (like Realtor Teri Michon), or include links to it from your blog and online marketing material. There are a hundred other ways to use the service… what ideas do you have?

SlideShare presentations are placed into categories for easy visitor searching and can include hyperlinks back to your site, YouTube videos, and voice narration. This can be a very powerful companion for your existing marketing strategy; it’s easy, effective, and free.

It often surprises me how many business professionals do not stay in touch with their existing customer base.  When someone makes the decision to become your client, chances are very good that they are interested in your product and what you have to say about your business.  Are you keeping your clients updated?  Are you reminding them that you are “here” and “available”?  If not, they may forget and move elsewhere.  Here are a few ways to keep your clients reminded of “you” and your products or services.

Monthly Newsletters

Monthly email newsletters are a great way to keep your clients updated.  These newsletters can highlight product updates, discounts, relevant news and even tips.  Most will appreciate news and tips you offer them especially if it relates to them.  Perfect example are Real Estate Agents.  If you have a client base of past buyers or even buyers who are on the fence, most will appreciate monthly newsletters informing them of the local housing market, real estate news, home selling tips, current loan rates and even local events.  This will position you as the local real estate expert and increase their confidence in you and your services.  Creating Real Estate Newsletters is snap with the SimplyConnect Newsletter system.

Your Blog

Yep, a blog!  Inform your clients about your blog and let them know you often post valuable information on it.  Place an RSS feed and/or a subscribe option on the blog that will allow your clients to easily subscribe to it.  Feedburner offers a blog subscription option that will allow your readers to receive emails everytime you make a post to your blog. Remember to fill your blog with valuable, relevant content that will also attract visitors from the web via search engines. Here are some tips for writing effective titles for your blog posts.

Cards

This can get expensive if you do it often but once or twice a year is a nice touch.  We send out Holiday cards each year to all of our ClassifiedFlyerAds.com subscribed members.  Many of them send us cards too and many others will send us a thank you email for the card.  It’s a great way to show your clients that you appreciate them.

How do you keep in touch with your clients? Let us know!

Photo credit: littledan77

Online advertising for your brand has never been more important, and it is not as important today as it will be tomorrow. With reports continuing to show record revenue declines for newspapers and magazines, entire websites dedicated to the “death watch”, and fewer consumers than ever using print media as their main source for information, it is time to re-evaluate your advertising plan if print media is your only outlet. In addition, recent data shows that 3 out of every 4 adults use the internet, with 80% of them shopping online for products and services. It is now essential to have a plan for targeted online promotion.

Please don’t read that opening paragraph and start blindly buying ad spots across the internet, or start running pay-per-click campaigns without doing research. This type of action will most likely be a waste of your time and money. Instead, make an effort to research your target audience using online tools available, such as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool or the inbound marketing resources at HubSpot. Whatever time and effort it takes to do the research legwork will soon make up for itself many times over by providing valuable data for your target market, enabling you to effectively advertise your brand and business.

When you’re well informed and ready to start your online marketing campaign, there are many ways to make it a success. From blogging, to social networks, to targeted online ads via Google or ClassifiedFlyerAds, you can be confident in knowing that your online promotional efforts will yield higher quality results than print advertising has provided in a very long time. A closing note of caution; there are lots of ways to do online advertising and promotion the wrong way (i.e. spam, non-targeted, etc.) that will end up costing you your valuable time, money, and possibly even reputation. It is your duty and responsibility as a marketer or business owner to continually seek out knowledge and information that will make your online advertising a success.

Photo credit: Marshall Flickman

In today’s economy, almost every business is looking for areas where they can cut costs. What many don’t realize is by using technology and tools that are so readily available, you can cut some very common and significant costs. Here are a few common expenses that can be cut by using some basic technology that you probably already know about.

Business LAN Line

A business LAN line can run you upwards of $50, depending on all the added features you have associated with. If you have a small office environment and your business doesn’t perform any type of outbound telemarketing services, then you may be able to go without a LAN line. This is especially true if you have cell phones. Why pay the costs of both a cell phone and a LAN line? An alternative would be to sign up for an online 800 phone service such as RingCentral. Online 800-number services can cost under $20 per month and give you some pretty neat options. For example, RingCentral allows you to setup an 800 number with multiple extensions. You can then setup each extension to forward to another phone number (ie. your cell phones). Each extension can even have its own custom greeting and voicemail message. This makes it easy to provide multiple people in your office with their own extension they can give out to clients.

Printing and Mailing Invoices

This is one of my huge pet peeves. I can’t tell you how often I still get invoices through snail mail from companies I do business with. Why not just produce a PDF version of the invoice and email it? Or just email me a Word.doc copy of the invoice. Even that would be better than a printed copy coming through the mail. I recently received an invoice from a company that had a $1.50 balance due. Come on! Do the math. 42 cents for a stamp, plus the cost to print and buy the envelope, plus time involved in preparing and mailing it… the company just lost half of that $1.50. It would have been much easier to just email me the invoice.

Files

Are you still filing your documents and storing them in file cabinets? Eeek! A better way would be to scan your documents and save them to PDF. Then store those PDF’s in an organized folder structure on your computer. Or better yet, build a database to store your information in. Just make sure to have a backup system in place.

Image credit: Caitlinator

If you are a business professional on Twitter you need to get a branded Twitter background.  Why?  When you follow people one of the first things most will do is view your profile before they follow you back.  If you have a nice looking, branded Twitter background you will appear more trustworthy and people will more likely follow you back.  Plus if done correctly you can add more information about yourself on your background and show other social networks you belong to.  Following are a couple of resources you can use to easily brand your Twitter profile for free.

TwitBacks.com allows you to create FREE branded Twitter backgrounds  in minutes

For those of you who are familiar with PowerPoint read this blog post on how to Create Twitter Backgrounds using PowerPoint.  It’s easy and a downloadable template is provided.

If you would prefer to use more advanced image programs such as PhotoShop to create Twitter backgrounds, you can read Twitter backgrounds guidelines from http://www.croncast.com/blog/1320/Twitter-background-guidelines-template-size.php.