Anyone whose ever started their own business (especially web-based ones) will tell you that capital and cash-flow is the hardest step to over come - from buying in bulk to payroll expenses, you have to try and save money wherever possible. Unfortuntely most people think that marketing is the first place to skimp, while I disagree with the concept I definitely understand how other, more direct aspects, of a company take priority.

So when left with a shoe-string budget to take handle all of your marketing efforts, its important to leverage the internet and other cheap to free channels.

Here’s a list of just a few examples:

Forums: Online forums are great to market your company, and establish your brand in a niche. The key is to provide other users with valuable information and reasons to learn more about your specific services. By setting your forum signature with forum-specific promotions and offers. It enables the users of that forum and others related to your industry to always have access to your website with background knowledge.

Craigslist.org: This is a twist on an old marketing basic- classifieds. Using craigslist.org, you can create an ad that will be displayed and shown to users in your area, but more importantly you can target viewers in all the major cities of your demographic. The important thing with classifieds is to have a great marketing message that grabs the viewers attention, since you will most likely be surrounded by the competition.

Social Networking: While being a fairly new player in the game, social networks can be pretty powerful if used correctly and in combination with your local networking efforts. Websites such as Myspace.com, Linkedin.com, and Facebook.com are some of the more popular ones that you probably already are a part of. Create a profile for your company in addition to your own. Then link to that profile (eg. add as a friend) and encourage your friends/family/clients to do the same - which will give you exposure to all of their friends and contacts.

Something that all of the above have in common are the ability to customize. Create a custom landing page / microsite with an exclusive offer to their viewers. For example: “ACME Forum members, get 15% off!”. The more personalized you can be towards your target audience and marketing channel the better your results will be.

Other shoe-string budget ideas:

• Local Business Networking
• Joining your local chamber of commerce
• Free product/service give aways
• Public Relations (Newspaper/magazine interviews and articles)
• Website Blogs

If you’ve been through a website (re)design in your life, you’ve probably stumpled upon ‘template’ websites and offers. Templates are basically website designs that have already been created and designed, a quick option that lets you see what you’re buying before you buy it. Below you’ll find the advantages and disadvantages to buying a template or going with a custom design.

The main benefits are pretty obvious:

• Preview the design before you make the purchase
• They are usually less expensive than a custom design
• Immediate download after purchase

On the other hand, the disadvantages are:

• What you see is what you get (Meaning you are left on your own for graphic/color/etc changes)
• Your competitors could wind up using the exact same design as you, making you non-unique
• You don’t get the hand-crafted look that custom templates tend to have. The website usually appears like a cookie-cutter website.

It often comes down to your industry, target audience and general preference as to what to do. Businesses in the creative industry or a brand-centered business should probably opt for a custom design. This might be websites for businesses that revolve around a single person (think: blogger, writer, interior designer) so that the website can be hand crafted to fit the person’s personality. If you have more of a corporate or brochure-type website, it may be in your best interest to not re-invent the wheel. This may be the case for businesses such as real-estate companies, handy man websites, etc.

The most popular website to purchase templates is MonsterTemplate, which has an enourmous selection in which you should be able to find a design that meets your taste. We also have a small selection of templates at Shop.SevenCube where we sell designs that are only sold to one person/company for those looking to save time and money, but remain unique.

Overview

The following post will help you convert more sales and generally have more successful email campaigns, I’ll be assuming you already know the basics such as email distribution methods and email sign up forms. If not, you can learn the broad strokes of email marketing here. Used correctly, email marketing can be an extremely useful addition to your marketing toolbox, although it often gets a bad rap from it’s spam counter-part, there are several things you need to know in order to use it in the most effective and image-enhancing way.

Key-points of Email Marketing

• The Mailing List
• The Message
• The Close / Landing Page

The Mailing List

Your mailing list is obviously a very vital aspect of an email marketing campaign and should be a key focus of yours. Always think about cultivating the best list, and how do you do this? It’s simple, make it a “no-brainer” for prospects/clients to sign up. This can be done via incentives such as discounts, or information/resources that impact your customers.

Once you’ve strategized your proposal for clients to sign up, make it simple for them to do so. Create a sign up form, that requires the minimum (name and email) information and is a one click process. Another important factor in cultivating your mailing lists is categories or segments, each time you create a new sign up form based on an incentive (we’ll use discount on bulk items as an example) create a new segment for “bulk purchasers”, I’ll explain how this comes in handy later on. 

Be sure to avoid spam-methods of creating your list, such as web crawling and purchasing bulk lists. These methods give your a company a bad image to those prospects, usually fail in converting sales, will begin bad rumors regarding your service, and may also be illegal depending on where you live. All you have to do is motivate your website viewers to sign up and make it easy for them to do so.

The Marketing Message

Once you have a mailing list to work with you will need to develop your marketing message. Your marketing message is basically the actual text or content you deliver to your mailing list, it’s what explains and offers your promotion or your sale or whatever it is you are trying to convey. It’s very important that you integrate your mailing list into planning your marketing message. For example, if you offered bulk discounts to those who signed up for your mailing list - base your marketing message on multiple products, multiple sales and make your sale/promotion being most beneficial to bulk purchasers. Use the segments/categories created when first developing your lists to base your marketing messages, the more specific you can be with your target, the better results you will have.

Let’s take a look at creating a marketing message for SevenCube, lets pretend that SevenCube has been placing email sign up forms on our email marketing pages, with the headline of “Solutions for new businesses”.

We use the following outline as a guide for our marketing messages:

1. Need or Problem - Describe their problem
   eg. “Not reaching enough people?”
2. Motivation - Why do they need to solve this problem?
   eg. “Increase sales, reach more viewers”
3. Solution - What will solve the problem? 
   eg. “Email marketing campaigns”
4. Incentive / Offer - Why solve it with you? 
   eg. “30% off for first time buyers”

Answering these four questions will usually give you enough to elaborate on and develop your marketing message. As long as you cover these topics in the message, it will convey a persuasive proposition - how you go about stylizing and wording it is up to you. One aspect that I’ll go over a little more in the following section is the “call to action”, it’s very important that you make it easy for your prospect to take advantage of the incentive or offer - this can be done with placing your phone number throughout the message or a direct click-able link that takes them to the landing/purchase page.

The Closing / Landing Page

Now that you’ve developed your list, created your marketing message and got their appetite going for your services - it’s time to close the deal. Throughout your marketing message should have been several click-able links or URLs in which the customer was directed to “learn more” or to “buy now”, by  them clicking on these links you already know that they are interested in the promotional offer / sale, which makes the close a lot easier - inexperienced people simply refer their prospects to their main page or a contact form, often losing their prospects interest or impulse purchase. Be sure to refer the prospect to a landing page that is specific to the offer made and to the segment which the message was sent to - there isn’t much more to the landing page other than the marketing message, it should simply elaborate on the marketing message and have an order form or a one click action to “sign the deal” or make the purchase.

As important as providing the prospect with a custom page to learn more details about the promotion, it is also vital in measuring a campaign’s success via hits to the landing page, conversions made from that specific order form and which links were clicked on the email.

So for your next email marketing campaign, be sure to use the above as a guideline in a more thorough, active and successful campaign.