5 Steps to Launching Your Affiliate Marketing Business

                               

BY BRIAN EDMONDSON

One of the fastest and easiest ways to make money online is by launching an affiliate marketing business (or adding affiliate marketing to your existing business).

Affiliate marketing allows you to make money online, even if you don’t have blog, website, or any products of your own. Following a few simple steps can get you up and running within hours and earning your first commissions right away. Affiliate marketing really is one of the fastest and easiest ways to make money online and should be a part of every online business owner's portfolio.

The formula for affiliate marketing remains relatively constant no matter what your market or niche. Your main task will always be traffic generation (i.e. driving prospects to the merchant’s website via your unique “affiliate” link). You can start by finding ways to drive free traffic and then adding paid advertising methods to your traffic mix.

Writing good advertising sales copy (copywriting) is the other important skill for internet marketers. The good news is that when it comes to affiliate marketing, many vendors will provide you with copy to use for your blog posts, websites ads, etc. They'll give you the emails to send, the banner ads to display, and even posts you can use on social media (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.).

That being said, what are these essential steps for affiliate marketing success? Here, we focus on five critical steps to launching your own profitable affiliate marketing business quickly and easily.

1. Choosing the Right Affiliate Network

The fit must be right between you and the merchant who is going to benefit from your promotional efforts, or it simply won’t work. The easiest way to begin with affiliate marketing is to select an affiliate network. Many affiliate networks exist, some which are tied to well-known companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple, while others specialize in specific types of products and services.

You may have heard of ClickBank, one of the oldest and most popular affiliate networks. A billion-dollar company, ClickBank specializes in digital products like e-books and software, as well as membership sites. If you are comfortable selling information and don’t want the management and administration hassles of “real” businesses, this may be a good starting point. Its commissions can be anywhere from 10% all the way to 75%.

Sometimes, individual entrepreneurs with great products are worth a look, although you should check them out first and do some research. Entrepreneurs or companies may run their own affiliate program and you can apply directly to them to promote their products and services. Finally, Amazon is always an option as you can be an affiliate for just about any type of physical product on their network.

2. Research and Select the Right Affiliate Products

A sound product strategy is a must for new affiliate marketers. Ideally, you should choose a niche that you can make money online with and has a lot of product vendors. This will give you a wide selection of products to offer your online community. However, limit yourself to two or three products at a time, so that you become the expert others turn to and trust when reaching for their wallet.

As you become comfortable with the affiliate marketing process, you can consider both specialized (e.g. fly fishing) and broad (e.g. weight loss) niches. Don’t forget to track your marketing metrics! They are usually provided by your merchant and/or affiliate network. This way you'll be able to know which products your audience are responding to and which ones aren't generating any profits for your business. This is especially important if you are investing into paid advertising to drive traffic and promote products as an affiliate...

you need to know which campaigns are profitable and which ones are losing money.

You'll want to continually monitor the marketplace for new products, review and test promoting those products to your audience to see which ones resonate and convert.

3. Consider Buying the Product Before Promoting It

As a new affiliate marketer, you are not obligated to purchase every product you want to promote.  However, it goes without saying that actually owning and using the products is huge for establishing credibility and trust. Intimate knowledge of the product can mean the difference between making the sale and having prospects move elsewhere.

Writing product reviews are an excellent way to enhance your credibility as an affiliate marketer. This is especially easy with information products like e-books which are relatively inexpensive. After establishing some steady income it may even be worth buying higher-end products, provided you get in touch with the product creator to work out a strategic marketing plan that takes you to the next level.

If you actually use the product and get results with it, then sharing a case study or your personal experience can be one of the most effective ways of selling that products to your audience.

As you build a more responsive list of email subscribers and buyers and your reputation, merchants may offer you “free” samples of e-books or other products.

Note: in many cases merchants will be happy to offer you a free copy / sample of the product even if you don't have an established business -- it never hurts to ask! If so, you'll want to include full disclosure that you were provided complimentary access to the product in addition to having a disclaimer disclosing your affiliate relationship.

4. Utilize Social Media Marketing to Get More Traffic

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and other social media marketing methods are great vehicles for “word of mouth” or viral marketing. Video marketing in particular is a great way to demonstrate your expertise via commentary, screenshots, and live demonstrations if necessary.

Right now doing videos on Facebook and Facebook Live are extremely effective as well as utilizing YouTube for a more longer term approach to video marketing.

While at first you may be focused on using social media as a free way to get traffic, keep in mind that there are powerful ways to use paid advertising on social media to reach your targeted audience and drive that traffic back to your site or your affiliate offers.

5. Consider Using Redirect / "Pretty" Links

Cloaking or using anchor links was a controversial issue in internet marketing circles, with some affiliate marketers swearing by it and others who feel it is unnecessary.

On one hand, long and ugly affiliate tracking links are a straight giveaway to people that you want to sell them a product (and people may be uncomfortable clicking on them). Therefore, making your link shorter and "nicer" looking will it give a more professional appearance. One of my favorite plugins for making links look "pretty" is the Pretty Links WordPress plugin.

This makes the link much shorter, more friendly, and easier to type in case they can't click the link for some reason and want to type it into their browser.

Original Article: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/launching-affiliate-marketing-business-2531501

Youtube Video - MAKE $100 EVERY 10 MINUTES WITH ONLY 10 CLICKS! (BEST WORK FROM HOME 2018)

How To Make Money Online : ZERO To £1000 Challenge

How to make money online when you have no money to start with! I have set myself a challenge to try and make £1000 starting from ZERO! These are the best ways to make money online fast. This video will show you how to make at least £100 per day online.

$991 IN 14 HOURS HERES WHAT I DID (Steps) - Shopify Dropshipping

How to Start a Profitable Online Business With Affiliate Marketing

How to Start a Profitable Online Business With Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time — essentially, since the beginning of e-commerce.

But this “old school” method of making money online is still going strong because of all the benefits it offers to small-scale, solo internet entrepreneurs. And it’s an especially powerful business model to those without much experience doing business online. Many successful online business owners make their first dollar online with affiliate marketing.

Here are just a few of the many reasons why affiliate marketing is such a popular online business model:

• Low-Cost: With affiliate marketing, you don’t need much — if any — startup capital.
• No Inventory: You don’t need to create products or rent or buy warehouse space to store them. There’s no need for you to invest in “stock” that may or may not sell, in other words.
• Zero Hassles: Perhaps best of all, you won’t process orders or ship products… or handle returns, phone calls, or anything on the customer service side.

Affiliate marketing is hassle-free — allowing you to focus on marketing, sales, and making money. It’s perfect for beginners. And, because the money-making potential only increases with the more experience you gain, expert-level internet entrepreneurs stay in this game too.

So how does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate Marketing 101

At a basic level, affiliate marketing is a pretty simple business model.

1. You promote another company’s products in your own marketing efforts, like social media, your website, your email list, your blog, or any other marketing channels you use.

1. When a customer clicks on a link to order a product, they are taken to your affiliate partner’s shopping cart to complete the transaction.
2. The link is assigned to you specifically and tracked so that you get credit for any customer you send to your affiliate partner.
3. If the prospect buys, you get a commission, usually between 5 percent to 25 percent, sometimes, even more, depending on the product. In the cases of very high commissions (some up to 100 percent), the company is often hoping to later upsell the customer on a higher-ticket item. So they’re using you to help generate leads, essentially.

Getting just a percentage of a sale may not seem like a good way to make money but when you start sending hundreds of customers each week or even sell just a few big ticket items, it quickly adds up to a tidy income. It’s especially sweet when you consider that your startup and operating costs are so low.

As with any online business, success and a steady, high income is possible with affiliate marketing. But it’s not going to happen overnight. It takes consistent work, especially when you’re getting started. But soon, you could have a viable money-making business.

A Recipe for Affiliate Marketing Success

One of the key elements to success with affiliate marketing is picking the right products to promote. They could be digital information products, memberships, physical products, online services… there are many industries that use this model. When promotiing to your target market, you may be promoting one or many of these different types of products as an affiliate.

Speaking of target markets, you want to focus in on those popular niches with proven track records for sales.

Why struggle when you can leverage the popularity of established products that customers love. The cool thing is you can also often run an affiliate marketing business in an industry that you have a personal interest in — you can combine passion with profits.

Here are some ways to do your necessary market research.

1. Keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter for trends. What niches or types of products are “hot”
2. What are the best-selling products on sites like Amazon.com and eBay?
3. What’s on the news… what are people talking about?

The more buzz a product or niche has… the better for you. A popular product means more sales.

Some popular niches right now include yoga, natural health, gluten-free, organic, supplements, financial and investment advice, dating, apps, online video games, and more.

Remember, while most inexperienced marketers shy away from markets that are popular and have a lot of competition, successful marketers know that these are the markets you want to focus on because that's where the money is.

Finding Affiliate Partners

There are many, many affiliate programs out there covering just about any product or service imaginable. But not all of them are created equal. You want to join a trusted program with a reputation for taking care of its partners — and paying them the right amount of their commissions on time.

Any time you find an affiliate network that you think has potential, do a quick search on Google or forums related to affiliate marketing to see what people have to say about them.

Here are some established affiliate partners with good reputations.

• Clickbank.com focuses on digital, downloadable information products.
• Rakuten.com (formerly Buy.com) is a major online retailer offering everything from electronics to groceries.
• Amazon.com — you’ve shopped here. You know the range of products it offers. Now become an affiliate with the Amazon Associates program.
• CJ Affiliate by Conversant works with some of the best-known brands in the world.

Marketing Your Affiliate Marketing Products

Social media is a great free way to get the word out about your business.

Everybody is on Facebook and Twitter these days. And they’re not just sharing funny cat videos. Often they are in the mood to buy, especially if an appealing offer comes across their feed.

Also free is search engine optimization. Sounds daunting, but SEO is at its heart a simple proposition. Basically, you add valuable content related to your niche to your website or blog consistently using “keywords” that someone searching for products like yours or information about your niche might use.

You post regularly, at least a few times a week. And over time search engines like Google find your content and reward you for providing valuable information by putting your website higher in the results. The higher you are in the results, page 1 in particular, the more traffic to your site.

Scan your email inbox right now. No doubt there are at least a few emails you get from merchants or other businesses with products you’re interested in. This is email marketing. And it’s a great tool for affiliate marketers. Essentially, on your website, a landing page, blog, or social media, you ask visitors to your site to provide their email address. Then you send them valuable content along with promotional offerings through email.

Email is a relationship-builder with your potential customers. You want to send them a balance of useful information related to your niche, perhaps an email newsletter, as well as marketing messages, like a sales email, asking them to buy a product on sale. The free information you’ve provided helps them come to know, like, and trust you… which makes it more likely they’ll buy a product.

Paid ads should be your last step in marketing your range of affiliate products. You want to make sure you’re in a money-making niche and have a roster of products proven to sell, as well as proven sales funnel that compels your prospects to buy. That way when you invest the money in a paid ad, which can cost hundreds and thousands of dollars, you’ll see a decent return on investment.

Another tip: start small with paid ads. Test your copy. And once you have an approach that works and you know your systems are in place, you can try rolling out a major paid campaign for your affiliate marketing business.

Next Steps for Starting an Affiliate Marketing Business

Now you have the overall structure for a successful affiliate marketing business, with a step-by-step guide for getting started.

It might seem overwhelming. But if you take it a day at a time, you can do it. Just do one task related to starting your business each day, whether you can dedicate 15 minutes or a few hours. Slowly but surely, you’ll be able to launch your business.

Original Article: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/affiliate-marketing-4161605

How To Make $500 Sending These 5 Emails [TEMPLATE INCLUDED]

Podcasting: Podcasting Used As a Business Marketing Tool by Media Publishing Giant Simon & Schuster

Podcasting has hit the marketing world big time with the recent launch of a new podcast by Simon & Schuster.


 I was recently involved in a consulting role with a podcasting project with publishing giant Simon and Schuster and their website www.simonsays.com. They are using this podcast RSS feed to interview world famous authors and have authors read excerpts from their books.


This is a brilliant marketing strategy for their website, authors, products and brand.

They are actually using the podcast to promote the products that they publish. This is a very innovative business marketing strategy.


They are publishing 30 minute podcast shows every week. This allows potential consumers to get exposure to their products. This will create increased interest in their products. This will in turn drive sales and increase the branding for their business. This professionally produced podcast series of shows will undoubtedly become a favorite of many consumers.

It is also noteworthy to mention that you do not need an iPod to listen to a podcast. You can simply listen to podcasts on your desktop computer.


You can subscribe to podcast feeds with Yahoo, iTunes, Mozilla Firefox, Google Desktop Search Toolbar 2.0, or any variety of desktop podcast RSS feed reader software tools.

The business benefits of a proper podcast marketing strategy can be quite immense.

 Podcasting is another business communication and marketing tool that allows businesses to communicate with their target market. Subscribers to the podcasts RSS feed will automatically receive new podcasts when they are published. Businesses that create podcasts can have a direct communication and marketing channel online.

Having a quality professional podcast that delivers value added exclusive content can increase your online visibility. Search engines such as Google will index podcasts feeds,


 Blog and podcast directories will list podcast feeds, and targeted traffic will subscribe to thos e podcast feeds. Let's also remember that a quality podcast has the opportunity to be listed in the iTunes podcast directory and found by over 40 million users.

Leveraging podcasting as a business promotion and marketing tool is going to be part of the business landscape online for years to come. When media giants such as CBS, Viacom, and countless other business giants such as IBM and Oracle are podcasting; you can bet money that this marketing media format is here to stay.

Your business should give serious consideration to creating a podcast marketing strategy with experienced professionals in this field.

This is a marketing and communication medium that your business will want to execute and leverage for maximum marketing and business benefit online.

You may want to read an informative white paper about this new business marketing technology. You can read this white paper at www.leveragedpromotion.com/products.html

Original Article: http://www.articlegeek.com/internet/podcasting_articles/podcasting_marketing_tool.htm

Make Money Online With No Website Using Pay Per Click

IM Report 360 outlines exactly how you can make money online today without a website by utilizing Pay Per Click with affiliate marketing

Affiliate Marketing: 8 Greatest Ways To Converting Your Traffic Into Your Greatest Profit

Do you have a website which pulls in large number of visitors everyday? You can actually benefit yourself with the traffic and earn a great, residual income if you give a little more effort. Here are some of the greatest ways you can convert those traffic into mountainous cash:

1. Sell a product/service
Of course, to earn money you need to sell a product or service to your visitors. It is the best way to profit from your own product. Usually, an e-book or software works the best - they can be downloaded right away, no shipping included, no handling to be done. You earn 100% of the profits without any investments to be taken before that.

Other than that, selling your own product allows you to set your own price.

2. Opt-In list
It is very crucial that you try to convert every visitor of yours to a subscriber of your mailing list. The most important asset that an Internet marketer has is his or her list of subscribers. They define whether you will go far in the online business venture.

With an opt-in list, there are tons and tons of ways you can profit greater in the future. You can make previous customers purchase again from you, making them your repeating customers - that is of course, if they are in your mailing list and you can urge them to buy again.

Building a closer relationship with your own subscriber will be the best thing you can do. By having your subscribers 'trust' you, you can endorse many other useful products to your subscribers and the chances that they will buy from you will be high - because they trust you.

3. Viral marketing
You can provide a free product or bonus to be listed on your site to be downloaded by your visitors. Usually it'll be an e-book where people can read from and learn useful information. In this bonus, you include give away rights and urge readers to give it away to anyone they want to. This way, you increase your own publicity and branding.

In the future, you will receive great benefits as when you are known, people will trust you more and this profits you. Between a product - let's say a tooth brush from a beggar and a doctor, who will you prefer to purchase from? Unless the beggar offers something special, it is hardly that you will purchase the tooth brush from him.

4. Pay-per-click
In this case, you don't pay for every click but earn instead. There are many advertising programs that give you a percentage of the bidding on a certain keyword. The famous ones are Google Adsense, Chitika, Yahoo Publisher Network and Kontera.

When people click on the ads shown from either of these advertising programs, you will earn a small portion of money. Nevertheless, if you have high traffic to your site - these programs alone can generate your residual income.

5. Offer an advertising space
Usually websites which brings in very high traffic will sell a small portion of space on their web page. You can charge a minimum of $300 for advertising someone's ad a single month on advertising fee if your web page is pulling more than 2000 visitors a day.

Other than that, you can also create exit pop-ups that advertise other websites as well. By doing this, you don't clutter your website with too many ads and you can earn a better reputation from your visitors.

6. Affiliate marketing
If you don't have your own product for sale, you can sell other's products instead and receive a commission on every sale. With affiliate marketing, you have an unlimited source of products to sell and you don't need to go through any problems after your sales.

No customer service, you don't need to issue any refunds, just let the owner do everything else for you after each sale. If you have a mailing list, you can endorse many other products and earn very great profits from your subscribers.

7. Pay-per-lead
Instead of earning money from every click your visitors clicked on, you are paid if you get your visitors to subscribe into other's mailing list. Nevertheless, it is not necessary that you just get visitors to become other's subscribers.

There are a lot of bigger companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi which holds survey every few months. By referring your visitors to them in order to complete a survey, you can also earn great profits from it.

Applied correctly, you can make a huge fortune on the Internet and build a steady online business - taking over the place of your day job. Take some time to put effort in either of these strategies, because it can make your day bright.

Original Article: http://www.articlegeek.com/internet/affiliate_articles/convert_traffic_greatest_profit.htm

How To Get ONE MILLION Instagram Followers In UNDER A Year

Podcast: Business Podcast Marketing Case Study Proves Results

Business Podcast Marketing Case Study Proves Results

By: Rodney Rumford

Business Podcast Marketing Case Study Shows How Podcasting Delivers Dramatic Results for Client. Podcasting has significant business marketing potential. If the business podcast strategy and online visibility plan is properly executed; podcasting has the potential to be a marketing tool that delivers great marketing results.

The professional business marketers over at marketingsherpa.com have just released a new case study titled "How to Use a Podcast to Promote a White Paper That Generates New Business Sales Leads". This case study is about how Bearing Point used podcasting to promote a white paper and saw sign up rates of over 30% versus a traditional 10%. This is a 200% increase over traditional marketing techniques.

Here is a short excerpt: "Dunay wasn't sure if the podcasts would be a hit or not, especially as his key prospects tend to be fairly conservative. So he didn't roll out trumpets and strobe lights for the launch.

Instead, the team posted the podcasts and announcements at several related sites including Podblaze.com, FreshPodcasts.com, and iTunes (all of which currently promote podcasts for free.) They also rolled out a press release and an email announcement to the house list. Their first podcast launched quietly July 29, 2005.

RESULTS
Joy and exultation! Hundreds of executives downloaded the podcasts. Dunay had hoped that 10% of podcast listeners would respond to the white paper download offer. Instead, 30% did..."

This is a great example of how marketing professionals should and could be using podcasting to help their business. This is the future of podcasting, Podcasting is going to become a marketing tool that communicates, educates and drives listeners to action. In this case the action was to download a white paper and effectively generate leads.

I have been trying to inform the business markets of this trend for the past 9 months. I discussed this very scenario in a Podcasting White Paper that was released a few months back. Read the full case study at MarketingSherpa.com

Experienced online marketing professionals that have expertise in the areas of podcast production, strategy, and visibility such as www.LeveragedPromotion.com can help your business achieve these same levels of results. Just creating a podcast in a vacuum of space is the wrong strategy. Make sure that you achieve maximum exposure for your podcasts so that they can deliver measurable marketing results.

Original Article: http://www.articlegeek.com/internet/podcasting_articles/podcasting_proves_results.htm

How To Get Likes And Fans On Facebook

How To Get Likes And Fans On Facebook By Saytue Saye

Man, I've read the ebook, "How To Get Likes and Fans on Facebook" by Saytue Saye and let me tell you, it is weird. Weird? Yes, In this article, I am going to tell you why this weird book caught my attention and how it can benefit any business.

Ok, if you have a hobby or interest, I am sure you like them on facebook. Trust me, there are like over 50 pages on Facebook that I like and I'm positive you have joined a fan page. Think about fan pages like "Clickbank Seller" or "WealthyAffiliate - Internet Marketing University", these pages are related to internet marketing, but the people that like it or fans of internet marketing and the brand.

So, why are Facebook fans important? Well, fans are important because anyone that is a fan is like a loyal customer. People that are fanatic of something will more than likely purchase something that it offers. When you are a business despretly trying to build your audiance and brand; if you're not using social networking, then you are in for a long and successful disppointment.

Facebook is like a automatic conversation. From ages 18 to 47 and over 200 million folk using it, you can not tell me that's not a marketing source.

See, the problem with most internet marketers and businesses that are not use to marketing is that they get this big idea of marketing the old fashion way. It's like they totally missed the boat. Well, they most definitely need to catch up, because the world is changing in directions that were though impossible.

Making money doen't have to be in a office aymore. Most people are making money from home, but they are missing the marketig aspects.

I know that getting fans and likes on Facebook might seem like a crazy way of marketing and making money, but think of it like this. With the number of folk using Facebook, it will 10 times easier for you to put your business out there without having to create a website to drive traffic to your business.

Do you understand?

Facebook fan pages are just mini websites of a company's information and automatic updates. Even though fan pages are easy to create, the problem is that businesses do not know how to build their fan base.

Just like everything else, a plan will work in this situaation, if you want to make your fans profitable. Do you know how to get fans and likes on Facebook?

I've read the ebook, "How To Get Likes and Fans on Facebook" by Saytue Saye and let me tell you, I have found it to be pretty interesting and valuable to learn Facebook marketing strategies.

Article Source: http://www.streetarticles.com/internet-marketing/how-to-get-likes-and-fans-on-facebook-by-saytue-saye

How to Make Money Online - 16 Methods to earn Passive Income and get paid

How To Make Money Online - A Beginner's Guide

 This video's goal is to show you a couple of very effective methods to make money online. There are literally thousands of methods, which is why I want to give you a brief overview of 4 of the most effective and most common methods that I know of. If you are wondering how to make money online, this short guide will give you a small glimpse into the world of online marketing!





 

7 Free Things to Do to Get More Customers with Online Marketing

Think you can't afford to promote your business the way you'd hoped to? Don't let money hold you back. Use these 7 cost-free online marketing strategies to attract customers.

You probably made big plans for your business this year. Did they include pumping up your business’s online marketing? Whether they did or they didn’t, don’t let “but it costs too much” be your excuse for not driving more customers and clients to your business.

1) Claim your business' Google My Business page

Here are 7 great ideas for improving your online business profile this year using very little time and absolutely no money. It doesn’t get much better than that.

What do you see when you type your business name in Google? Hopefully, your website will come up number 1 in Google and to the right of the search results you will see what is called the "info box" on your business. In that info box hopefully all of the information is completely correct and the words "Own this business?" does not appear. Why? Because "Own this business?" means that the business has never been claimed.

Here’s what to do if "Own this business?" appears. Click on the "Own this business?" link while you are logged in to a Google account (usually gmail) and begin the process of claiming your business. Claiming your business will give you the opportunity to keep the information updated and appear in Google Maps, Google Local and all other Google properties.

What to do if no info box appears for your business? Easy, just go to https://business.google.com while you are logged into your Google account and start the process of setting up your Google My Business page.

No matter how you claim or set up your Google My Business page, you will probably need to confirm your business via having a postcard sent to you, which you should receive in 5 - 10 days. Google already has some business information for your business, you may have the option to receve a telephone call to that number for confirmation.

The easiest, fastest and simplest way to receive free traffic from Google is to have a claimed and optimized Google My Business page.

2) Claim your review site accounts and ask for reviews

One of the ways that Google determines the quality and authority of a business is by the number of reviews on the internet for that business. This is especially important for businesses that serve a local market.

Your Google My Business page Is also a review site, so once you have that set up, the biggest review site is done. But when you search your company name, which I recommended in item 1, you probably noticed that other sites, usually review sites, are some of the next listings that will come up under your name. Make sure to claim your business listing for each, optimize them with good images and copy and then regularly ask for reviews will help you control the quality of reviews that people find about your business.

What are the most important ones to claim besides Google? Yelp, YP and, if you have a Facebook page, Facebook. There are also industry-based review sites, such as Houzz, Health Grades, Angie's list and others. 

3) Commit to email marketing

No other action you will take this year will mean more to the long term viability of your business. You can get a free account at MailChimp that allows you to send 12,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 subscribers. Imagine getting a sweet deal from your distributor on a popular product, sending an email to your list and selling your full order out in a day or two. You can do that and lots more with an email list.

How do you build your email list? Here are a few ideas:

• Put an email signup form on your website
• Ask new customers for their email address and permission to mail to them
• Put out a fishbowl for business cards for a monthly drawing and ask if you can put them on an email list
• Put a link to your email signup on your social media

Once you get that ball rolling, make it a monthly or biweekly to do to create a fun, informative email that makes using your product or service easier and more enjoyable.

4) Understand your customer's "pain point"

Why do your customers give you money? You solve a problem for them - whether it's allowing them to be fashionably dressed or saving them from a legal problem. Whatever your product or service, look at it as a “pain point" for a prospective customer that you solve. You are really in the solution business!

Take out a piece of paper and write down all of the different "pains" and problems that you solve. Now keep that paper handy (hang it on the wall if need be). Every time you need to write an ad, put together a new brochure, redesign business cards, come back to that list and be sure to include at least one, if not more, of these pains and how your business is the solution in every form of communication you make with prospective and current customers and clients.

5) Look at your website on a mobile device

Does it look good? Is it usable? Do the forms work? Does it take forever to load?

More than 60% of all search is currently being done on mobile devices. If your site doesn't work on mobile, well, it doesn't work. Making a website be responsive to the device that is using it is called "responsive design".

Granted fixing this problem isn't free, but recognizing that it's a problem that needs to be addressed is. 

6) Look for your top 5 competitors on social media

If you are trying to figure out what you should be doing with social media or you can’t quite figure out what might work for your company, the easy, fast and free way to get some ideas and clear direction is by looking at what your competitors are doing.

Go to their websites. Down near the bottom of their pages should be links to their social media. Once you click through, here are some questions to ask.

• What social media are they committing to publishing regularly on?
• How many likes, friends or followers do they have?
• How often are they posting?
• Are they getting people to post, comment or acknowledge their posts in some way?

Follow, like or connect your personal social media accounts with their business social media accounts. This will give you a lot of insight to how they are doing social media. It will be up to you to decide whether they are doing a good job or not and what you would need to do to do it better than they are.

7) Commit to educating yourself on online marketing

There is a lot to know about online marketing, but that is not an excuse for putting off educating yourself as to how to do it effectively. More than ever before, the internet is the first, last and pretty much only place where people go to find a business and the solutions they provide. Look for a solution that stays focused on getting your business the most results for the least amount of effort.

Article source: https://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/free-online-marketing.htm
Image source: Photospin.com