Home Business Marketing

Cash flow.

It's what we all want and need more of, right?

Every small business owner, home business opportunity seeker -- and especially network marketing home based business -- needs cash. Cash to pay the bills. Cash to pay for products. Cash to pay for business cards. Cash for....you fill in your needs and wants.

So how are you going to get the cash into your bank account? The cash you need to build your business without spending a lot of money to "someday" make a lot of money?

Don't do what I did the first time (and second, truth be told). Don't max out your credit cards to build a home-based business. If you don't trust me yet about this, just listen to Suze Ormon!

Here is what you should do -- Start building your business by building a marketing system using free and inexpensive tools available to get the word out about you and your business.

How? Begin with these steps (just like I did):

1. Identify your target market. If you think you have more than one target market, pick one to start.

For example: You might choose to market to people just like you. Who are you? A mom with pre-school children who wants to stay home? A mid-life career woman who wants build a business of her own? Someone with products that are good for the environment? Someone with a passion for exercise? (What kind? Yoga or backpacking?)

2. Decide which product you are going to market to your target market.
Product or business? If you have more than one product or product line, which one?

For example: If you are the mom with a home business, are you going to market a product to other moms at home with young children? Or, are you going to market your business, looking for new people to join your team? If you are the exercise guru, are you going to market information products about exercise, exercise equipment or gym memberships?

3. Pick words and phrases that will help people find you.
Make a list of some of words and phrases. These should be words and phrases you imagine your target market would use to search for someone like you and your business and product. Go to Google and try it out.

For example: If you go to Google and look for "moms working from home" or "exercise equipment for skiers", do you get the results you expect? Are they the kind of results you want your target market to find when they are looking for you?

4. Choose your first domain name.
Choose a domain name just for this part of your marketing that will help you put yourself out there as a professional and begin to build your brand or image. Use an appropriate phrase from your list. You may have to try more than one, since some great names you will come up with may already be taken. Your domain name needs to clearly communicate your intentions to your target market.

For example: If you are a mom at home starting a business and you will be marketing nutritional products for kids, choose some appropriate like www.KidsVitamins.com and not something like www.MomsAtHomeWorking.com. If you are the exercise guru marketing bikes for old people trying to get into shape, choose something like www.BikesForSeniorFitness.com and not something like www.MakeMillionsSellingBikes.com.

If you can't decide, why not try using your own name? www.YourNameHere.com?

5. Capture people's contact information and start your list.
You need a web page where people are going to sign up for your list. (More about building a list in my next article.) You might feel like you need some technical help with this (and yes, you can find it for free or little cost), but first just imagine what you want to say on that page. Have you signed up for someone's list recently? To receive a newsletter or to get a free article sent to you with some tips on something of interest to you? How did you get to that page and why did you sign up?

For example: What will you say to moms at home, what value will you offer, that will entice them to sign up for your list? What's going to make them say, "Yes, that's like me. I want some of that kind of information. I'll give you my name and email address in return for what you are offering." What will be of value to your target market?

6. Get started putting you and your story out there to connect with all your potential new friends, partners and customers.
Get started at a social networking site like Squidoo just like I did. Don't wait until you feel ready to start. Just do it. Write a short article like this one. Or, even easier, just tell your story about who you are and why you are starting your business. Tell it like you would to a friend in an email about your new business.

For example: If you are a mom at home, "Hi, folks. I'm Mary Mom and I have 3 children under the age of six at home. I've decided to start my own business. ARE YOU CRAZY? I hear you yelling back at me. No, I'm not. I use to be/think/wonder how (be what?)...but now I (how have you changed?)...and I tried (what have you tried?)... And then I discovered X (your product, your business) and now I'm (what are you now?)..."

You are telling your story. No research necessary except the experience of being yourself. No previous writing experience or training necessary because what's needed is for you to be (you guessed it!) yourself.

If you are thinking "there has to be more to it than this" you are right - and also wrong. You do need to understand that you are building a marketing system here. The good news is-it isn't rocket science and it isn't expensive.

If you are in a hurry and you want that cash flow NOW, either slow down and wait for future articles - or make the same no cost start I did with the Renegade System at Renegade University - and see if you can catch up and fly past me! See you our there, making cash flow into your new business bank account.

The best start for a new home business is to start with a "tight" budget, keeping your out-of-pocket expenses for start-up low.

Paying too much right away for marketing is a common mistake for new home business owners. Don't let yourself fall into the trap of paying out top dollar for the development of a web site by a programmer or designer, printing brochures, placing ads in magazines or any of the other tempting ways to market your new business.

One way to begin marketing your business and bring in cash is to get started with an inexpensive blog and add "affiliate marketing" to your blog to "monetize".

What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing starts with you signing up to market a product offered by someone else. You register as an affiliate, get an affiliate ID, and use links, ads and banners provided to you. You promote someone else's product or service. You embed the link, ad, or banner in your blog, your emails to your list or your web pages. When someone is interested, clicks on the link and buys the product or service, you are paid a commission on the sale. This is all accomplished and tracked electronically.

The best products and services to promote will take your visitor to a squeeze page (What's this? See next section.) where they exchange their contact data for something they need or want and their contact information is stored for you to access and put them into your list. Then, you can market more products and services to them in the future (including your own products and/or services).

For example, at my blog, Simply Home Business, I promote an e-book by Ann Sieg, The Renegade Network Marketer, and a training program at Renegade University by Mike Klingler. These products and services are valuable to people who want to learn about the combination of Internet Marketing and Attraction Marketing for growing their network marketing businesses. I have embedded my affiliate links which click to a squeeze page for each of them. Anyone who clicks on those links and leaves their contact information is added to the "back office" for me to grab for my list. If people purchase Ann's e-book or register for Renegade University Pro, I get cash! I use this income stream to fund more marketing that is more expensive (for instance, Pay-Per-Click or PPC advertising or an ad in a national magazine or journal).

What does monetize mean? Affiliate marketing is just one way to monetize. In other words, when you monetize you are using the content you are developing and posting at your blog, web site, or other content sharing sites (e.g. Squidoo) to promote other products and services in such a way that you earn cash if someone finds it valuable enough to buy. Another way to monetize is to do what I'm doing right here at Squidoo. The ads that appear on this page can result in sales which result in cash for my business.

There are three things you have to do to use Attraction Marketing to build your new home business:

1. Create your stuff. Create a web of content for prospects to find when they are searching the web for the information, products and services they need or want. Your stuff = ads (Craig's List, Traffic Swarm), blog posts, posts at content-sharing sites (Hub Pages, Squidoo), social networking content (FaceBook, MySpace), e-zine articles (EzineArticles.com).

2. Get your prospects' permission to communicate with them. Create lead capture pages (squeeze pages) and use a subscription box at your blog and/or web site. People join your list because they want what you are offering (a newsletter, a course, an e-book, some tutorials, etc.). Remember, you can start out using other people's created content to attract prospects and ask for their contact information.

A very common way to begin this step is to start with an auto-responder like iContact and develop a series of emails which you schedule to begin going to your new list subscriber as soon as their name and email address are entered into your list.

For example, I have a set of web pages promoting a product line I market. On one of the pages, I have a sign up box which promises my prospects that in return for their name and email address, I will send them a short email course on how to make their home safer for children and pets. When they sign up, their data is sent to my list at iContact automatically. The email course goes out as scheduled-also automatically. I communicate my story, my values, my experiences with detoxifying my home to deal with allergies and asthma, information about the products, and some information about the company at the web site.

3. Give your prospects something of value and build a relationship with them. You will attract them to your offers by becoming someone they know, like and trust who gives value long before asking them to buy anything from you.

In the example above, I do that by sending a short course via pre-scheduled emails. I also point them to other content that contains information they may want and need through links to other web sites (e.g. the National Institutes of Health, Healthy Child Healthy World Organization) and other content I have created with the same themes and topics.

Practical/technical steps I took:

1. Found an auto-responder I like, iContact.


2. Created a list. I named my list KidSafe Sign Up.


3. Used iContact to create a sign up box I could embed in a web page.


4. Created a simple web page to put the box in (or even simpler, put the sign up list into your blog page).


5. Created and scheduled my 5 emails for the KidSafe course.


6. Started to find prospects who would go to the site and sign up by talking about it at Facebook and in one of my blogs and by writing a couple of e-zine articles and publishing them. A link to my little web site is part of my "bio" included at the end of each published article.

Are you starting to see what a "web of content" means? Can you see how people will be attracted to your content and your marketing message? And, do you see how you create a road and roadmap for people to move around the Web via your content?

Although pretty simple, it can be overwhelming at first, especially if you are unsure of your skills. I didn't start out knowing what to do and how to do it. I've heard about and experienced pieces of this puzzle for a few years. But, it wasn't until I came across Ann Sieg's Renegade Network Marketer and Mike Klingler's Renegade University that I began to put the whole picture together and develop a marketing system for my products and services that works!

Are you ready to take your first steps? I hope so because as soon as you take them, there will be people who need you to show them what you've learned to help them get started, too. I'd still be trying to figure it out and feeling frustrated if I hadn't taken some first steps with the help and the team I've found at Renegade. Go find your help and your team and take those first steps. And, of course, as I always say, start with the free and then add the affordable before you leap into something that will be a financial drain for your business. Learn to develop a positive cash flow as you learn your next steps. Learn AND earn.