Article Marketing Tips to Promote your Business

1. Participate in chat rooms related to your targeted audience. Watch what questions people are asking and ask others what information they're interested in.

2. Examine what information in being broadcast on tv, news and talk shows. That information is usually hot topics.

3. Hang out in similar message boards. People leave questions for information they're seeking. That is a strong indicator of subjects to write about.

4. Survey your web site visitors or current customers. Ask them what type of articles they would like to see published on your web site or in your e-zine.

5. Regularly check your site's guest books. People sometimes leave questions or comments that would help you generate high readership articles.

6. Check online bookstore's best sellers list. They're very good resources for finding winning topics and ideas to write about.

7. Use the time of year to come up with good topics. You could relate your content to the holiday, season, things that happen years ago during that time, etc.

8. Join some related e-mail discussion lists. Explore the question being asked and the subjects people are discussing.

9. Relate your article to a current fad that's going on in your specific industry. The topic is usually interesting to your target audience.

10. Make a file of visitor or customer questions you receive via e-mail or phone. Usually, others have the same questions, but never ask.

Joint Venture Deals

Contact other business owners and ask them if you can sell their products or services. The products or services should be related to your target audience. You could set up a deal to just market them and receive a percentage of the profits.

Affiliate Programs

Join another businesses affiliate program. You just sign-up at their web site and they give you a link that tracks all your sales. Every time someone orders or clicks through your link you receive a commission.

Wholesalers

You can buy products at a large discount through a wholesaler. Just order the products from your wholesaler of choice. When you receive the products mark-up the price to the amount you want to sell them for.

Reprint/Duplication Rights

Some businesses offer you the right to buy licenses to reprint or duplicate their products. You pay for the license and then you can reproduce the product and keep all the profits. The license stipulations may vary from business to business.

Drop Shippers

You can sign-up to a drop shipper program from another business or wholesaler. When someone orders the product, you keep a percentage of the sale and send the rest of the order to the drop shipper. The drop shipper will then ship the product to your customer.

1. Repackage your web site content in to different products to sell. You could create speeches, audio books, classes, and video tapes with your content.

2. Divide your content up and use it for promotional articles. You could submit them to other web sites or ezines for publicity. Just add your resource box.

3. Allow people to link to your web site's content. This is a fast way to get hundreds of people linking to your web site.

4. Add to your content and create an ebook to sell. You don't want to sell your free content, but if you add to it you can. It's an extra profit stream.

5. Compile it into a free ebook. You could submit it to free ebook directories. Use it as a bonus for when people subscribe to your e-zine.

6. Use your free content as a lead in product for your fee based content or private site. Just allow them the option of up grading to the paid version.

7. Place it on follow-up autoresponders from your web site. This is a great way to remind people to come back and revisit your web site.

8. Create a free bonus out of your content for your main product. When you add new content, remove the old content and create a bonus product with it.

9. Use the content to create a press release. This works well if you need extra information for your press release announcement.

10. Trade content with other web sites. It will give you the chance to get new content and promote your web site at the same time.

You can learn many things you didn't know about your business by getting valuable feedback from your customers.

Your customers may buy your main product just to get the free gifts. Your visitors may think it's to hard to navigate through your web site.

By knowing this type of important information you can improve your web site, products/services, advertising, and marketing.

Below are nine techniques you can use to get valuable feedback from your customers.

-Use surveys and questionnaires regularly to improve your business. Publish them on your web site, e-zine, print newsletter, direct mail material, include them with product shipments or inside product packages. Post them on appropriate online message boards, e-mail discussion lists and newsgroups on the internet.

-Create an online community for your customers. Include a chat room, message board, e-mail discussion list on your site for customers to participate in. You can regularly moderator these communities to see what your customers are saying about your business.

-Give away your products to a group of your customers. Ask them to use and review the product. Ask them to fill out an evaluation form and send it back. Some customers may fill them out, some may not, but the feedback you do get will be valuable.

-Offer your web site visitors an online product or service from your web site at no cost. It could be an ebook, search engine submission, consulting via e-mail, web design, etc. In return, ask them to fill out a short survey about your web site, products or services you're selling, customer service, or your web site.

-Create a customer focus group. Invite ten to twenty of your most loyal customers to meet regularly. They will give you ideas and input on how to improve your customer service. You could pay them, take them out to dinner or give them free products.

-Stay in contact with customers on a regular basis. Offer them a free e-zine subscription. Ask customers if they want to be updated by e-mail when you make changes to your Web site. After every sale, follow-up with the customer to see if they are satisfied with their purchase.

-Make it easy for your customers to contact you. Offer as many contact methods as possible. Allow customers to contact you by e-mail. Hyperlink your e-mail address so customers won't have to type it. Offer toll free numbers for phone and fax contacts. This will make it easy for your customers to voice their opinions.

-You could regularly contact customers on birthdays or holidays. Send thank you gifts to lifetime customers. E-mail them online greeting cards on holidays or birthdays. Call them personally to wish them a happy holiday. You could them follow-up with a survey or ask them if they're happy with your business.

-Invite your customers to company meetings, luncheons, workshops or seminars. Create special events for your customers like parties, barbecue's, dances etc. Make a point for yourself and your employees to interact with them at these event to get valuable feedback for your business.

You could use a couple or all of the techniques listed above to get valuable customer feedback. These aren't the only ways, be creative and come up with some of your own.

Join the truly Inspired Entrepreneurs who Subscribe to Daily Motivational Power Tips:
Free monthly ezine with inspirational quotes & self improvement articles for every day of the month!

New Free Work from Home eBook for you!

Work From Home Truths!


Before You Give Your Boss a Pink Slip, Consider Every Angle of Whether or Not You Have What It Takes to Be a Self-Employed, Work-at-Home Internet Marketing Entrepreneur

This Guide has all the steps you need to know to set up a successful home based business!

Just right mouse button click on the link above or the book cover and select 'save target/link as' to download this book to your computer to print out later:

Rate Me, Please!

Your Ratings Help Us Immensely

Do you think we earned a 5 Star rating from you for the work we have done on this Squidoo lens about Article Marketing?

Your ratings help us improve this lens, and get the word out to more people around the world about Article Marketing. Please 1-5 Star rate us at the top of the page, and sign our guestbook!

Thank you!

There are more in SEO/link building other than article marketing.

More techniques, some misleading, some ineffective, and some other are very simple to do but are effective ones.

Do you want to learn more to identify which SEO/link building techniques that are effective?

If you answer yes, you might enjoy this e-book. It is basically a beginner's guide to SEO to link building. No, it's not filled with definitions and terms, but with tested-and-true tips and advice on how to do SEO and link building wisely in order to drive traffic and rise rank of your website.

Learn more and get it NOW »

Or, you read SEO and Link Building free articles before hasting to grab the e-book...