Category Archives: Starting Out

How Can I Get Advertisers And Sponsors For A Website?

eMarketing, Starting Out, ,

I have a fun website that is free for everyone to communicate within the community. I am in need of help on how can I get advertisers and sponsors to be on my website. This is my first time and I need to know what do I do first.

###

The key to getting advertisers/sponsors is answering the question, “Why should they pay money to be on your site?”. When you approach a potential advertiser, you’ll want to have such information as the following on hand:

  • How many people are registered?
  • How many are active?
  • How many unique visitors do you get
  • Do you have their email addresses? (i.e., can you contact them?)
  • How much profile information have you compiled (age, sex, location, income, etc.)

The advertiser is going to think, “How much is it worth to have my product/service in front of this group?”. You need to help them to figure out their ROI. They’ll also care about ad placement/size, click-through, viewing stats, competition, etc.

Before you accept an advertiser, you’ll also want to answer, “How much will it help/hurt my site to have this product/service advertised?”. The wrong ad will turn off your hard-won traffic.

How Can I Advertise A Job Fair?

Publicity, Services, Starting Out,

We are having a job fair in 2 weeks and I need to find a way to advertise it on a very limited budget.

###

If you have a million dollars, how would you advertise it? Would you get a front page ad in your local newspaper? Student newspaper? A sign at every bus stop? A billboard on every bus?

Who do you want to read the advertisement? Why would they want to come? What makes your job fair of value to them? These are key marketing strategy questions.

Once you have your answers, scale down the million-dollar budget. Where are your likely attendees likely to see your ad (or hear it)? What do THEY have in common – a form of transportation? A common market they shop at? A radio station? A governmental agency? Place the ads in places they are with the reason that this is a good use of time.

2 weeks isn’t a lot of time, but it is do-able. Work smart.

How Can I Give An Effective Presentation?

Starting Out

In my experience, the most important thing is to focus on what you want the attendees to walk away with. That drives the format and content of your presentation.

Don’t worry too much about peppy & interesting – make the presentation memorable because the attendees “get” what you’re saying. Everyone has a preferred learning method: auditory, visual, tactile, etc. Make sure that your examples use different methods to illustrate your points.

If there are presentations before/after yours, account for the potential lack of energy in the room.

Don’t fill the room with your words. Fill the room with stories that illustrate your key points. People remember stories. Find stories that are relevant, with details, and some surprises.

Tell people what you’re going to talk about. Talk about it. Tell them what you talked about.

To get group participation (especially from a tired/shy group), first ask a question that requires a hand-raise for a yes (“How many of you … “). Then ask for a yes/no answer from the group. Finally, ask an open-ended question.

Don’t use Powerpoint. If you do, use a huge font and a max of 3 bullet points per slide. You can always hand out summaries afterwards. You want people focused on you, not your slides/handouts.

How Much Should I Budget For Online Marketing?

eMarketing, Starting Out,

I’m not interested in knowing how much to allocate towards online marketing, but how much to allocate between online marketing activities? Banner ads vs keywords vs content development, etc. Is there anything about online marketing activities that would make this analysis any different that were I doing it for off line activities?

###

Online, you have a much easier time measuring ROI.

There’s no simple answer to your question – each business is different. My suggestion is to try everything and measure the results. Make sure that you’re also split testing your ads to find the best combination of text, color, text size, etc.

As for how much money – it’s based on how much a new customer is worth to you (think lifetime relationship, not just the initial purchase). Then balance that with the cost to “acquire” that customer.

How Can I Start A Cleaning Company?

Services, Starting Out

What are some tips for starting my own cleaning company? I’m writing a business plan for starting my own cleaning residential and office cleaning company.

###

The business plan is useful if you’re hoping to get investors. Otherwise, spend your time focused on your strategic plan. Specifically identify: who your audience is, what problem they have, how you solve it, why they should trust you, etc.

You’re looking to identify what makes you different from all the other cleaning companies out there. You need to specialize in something: “green” cleaning products? flexibility – can you do a quick cleanup on short notice? Do you have expertise in cleaning “tricky” surfaces (leather, fancy rugs, etc.)?

Once you’ve done this work, you have the start of an effective plan of action.

How Can I Market My New Massage Business?

Services, Starting Out,

I’m a massage therapist. I don’t have a business name — just my own name. Would a biz name help?

On a card, do I need to say more than “therapeutic massage”? I don’t really specialize. Mostly I’ll give the cards to people I meet, but a few I’ll leave with network friends (hairdresser etc).

Maybe “Convenient appointments at your home or office?”

Benefits: Less stress – better health?

Less stress = more productivity?

Here, massage is a word-of-mouth game in a super-saturated market. My position is: I’m not cheap, but I’m good. (Cheap) massage franchises are kicking private massage’s bottom.

Do you feel there is any benefit for adding something to the cards or having a collateral piece with health info — like office ergonomics or something?

###

You don’t need a collateral piece. People choose health-related professionals based on word of mouth and not ads in the paper (unless it’s an emergency).

As a general masseuse, it’s hard to stand out with all the other general masseuses. Do you specialize in spa-type (feel good) massage? Releasing pain from overuse? People in chronic pain (or just weekend warriors)?

A business name wouldn’t hurt, but I wouldn’t expect it to matter much, either. A tagline would be, at this point in your career, probably too generic (unless you start to specialize).

What you need is to generate more referrals from people who you “touch”.

The recent Guerrilla Marketing Weekly Intelligence (from Guerrilla Marketing Association) wrote: “The way to ask for referrals is with complete honesty. Just say that referrals can be very valuable to your business and that you need the person’s help. Tell them that as referrals can benefit your business, you know that your business can benefit the customer’s associates and acquaintances. Then, ask for names — just a few names to make it easy on your prospect. Giving you three, four or five names is not that big a deal.”

Should Our Company’s Message Focus On Our Solution?

Names + Taglines, Starting Out, , , ,

My CEO is pushing for a clear value proposition and I am working hard to help him understand that solution-focused value statements have to be unique for each customer. What solves Customer A’s problems won’t necessarily solve Customer B’s. There is no one value statement. That’s fine, but then what do we do in our advertising which is by its nature “mass communication”? What do we communicate?

###

Instead of solution-based, make the statements benefits-based, targeted for your audience. You won’t solve client A’s problems the same as client B’s, but the reason that client A and client B both chose you is because you understand their “pain”. Identify you audience’s problem and position yourself as having their solutions.

Use case studies to reinforce that you are to be trusted as well as helping them understand how you work in specifics.

Why Do Businesses Use Signs?

Publicity, Starting Out,

I want to run a sign writing business and need to know how useful is a sign for a business.

###

A sign is another form of marketing for a (brick and mortar) business. As a minimum, the sign should have the name of the business. Depending on its size/purpose, contact information, logo, and a tagline might be appropriate as well.

The sign’s color, size, shape, and contents should likewise reflect the business “brand”. All materials that a business uses for its marketing should have a similar “look” in order to create marketing synergy.

How Can I Make Money With An Idea For An Invention?

Products, Starting Out, ,

I have this idea for a great invention but I don’t know were to start, tips?

###

Right now, you have only an idea, which unfortunately isn’t worth anything.

If your invention is something tangible (a product), then before you spend any time trying to build it, first see if the idea has already been patented (Google Patents or USPTO Office). If it hasn’t been patented, then your next step is to build a prototype. Either do it yourself, hire someone, or convince someone to help you create it. If it doesn’t do what you want, keep iterating.

If you have an idea for a new graphic/logo/book (intellectual property), then create it and copyright it. That will protect the words/images.

If you have an idea for a new process (way of doing something), then you’ll need to first confirm that your process works. You won’t be able to patent it (you can patent the algorithm if it’s part of something tangible).

Once you have tested your idea, then you’ll want to decide what to do about it. Patents are useful if you have the money to protect them (in court) and/or you want to sell the idea to someone else. Otherwise, simply build it and realize that the more people that see it, the greater the likelihood someone may want to copy it. However, people will only copy it if it’s something that’s already making money or they can figure a way to get it to market easily.

Eventually, you may want to create non-disclosures, etc. For more information, I recommend the book: Patent It Yourself.

How Can I Generate Traffic To My Website?

eMarketing, Starting Out, , ,

I am looking for an online service/website that will generate quality traffic to my site so my sales will increase.

###

 

You actually have 2 questions: “How to increase traffic” and “How to increase sales”. The second question is actually more important. Just because you get more visitors doesn’t mean you’ll get more sales. You need to be selling the right thing to the right people at the right time. That means your site should clearly identify who your audience is, what problem you solve of theirs, and how you solve it.

Once you’ve crafted this compelling benefit statement, only then it makes sense to find sites that drive traffic to you. And what type of traffic? You only want to attract that matches your audience. If you’re selling a product for men, and you only get women visiting your site, while it’s possible some women will buy the product for a man in her life, you would get many more conversions if you started by getting men to visit your site.

 

See also: Marketing 101