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NetFaqs in This Article
•Advertise In E-zines
• Write Articles For E-zines
• Start Your Own E-zine |
Get Set and Go
Use Email Newsletters
to Market Your
Small Business On The Internet.
How to buy ads, write articles,
and put
out your own e-mail newsletter.
...and
build relationships with customers for
ongoing sales at your site from TheWebsiteDistrict!
by Dr. Kevin Nunley
If you're promoting your
small business on the Internet, you aren't alone. The
latest surveys show that small businesses outnumber
larger firms on the Internet by a margin of four to
one. Corporations are advertising on the Net just like
they do with other media: contact an Internet ad agency,
buy banner ads, and watch results come in.
That works fine if you've
got thousands of dollars to spend each month on advertising.
But what if you're going it alone and your advertising
allowance has to come out of the grocery money?
E-zines are the answer. E-zines
(short for email magazines or newsletters) are quick
and cheap to produce and often go to huge numbers of
eager subscribers. Publishers don't have to pay for
postage or printing, and the savings are passed on to
advertisers in the form of extremely low ad rates.
For inexpensive Internet
advertising, it's very hard to beat classified ads in
e-zines. Here are just two examples to give you an idea.
DEMC will include your ad in an issue to 300,000 subscribes
for about $35 (http://www.demc.com). Your ad includes
a live link to your email and web site for some of the
best response available anywhere (contact Gary Christensen
at Garch3@worldmailer.com). Kevin Needham's A.I.M. Newsletter
goes to a rapidly expanding subscriber base of 40,000
and also gets excellent results at very low cost (see
Kevin's site at inetexchange.com).
There are literally thousands
of e-zines, some specifically targeting your best customers.
For a list of several hundred of the best, see the listing
with links at http://www.site-city.com/members/e-zine-master.
Maximizing Your E-zine Classified.
As is the case everywhere
on the Internet, your ad's first line is what makes
or breaks it. Use the first line to announce your most
important customer benefit. And don't forget the two
most powerful words in advertising: "you" and "free."
The sentence-- "You can get my FREE report"--always
gets big response.
Sometimes e-zine ads bring
disappointing results. If at first your ad doesn't succeed,
try and try again. There's an old saying in marketing
that the first ad never works. Advertising brings home
the bacon when you smartly repeat your ad week after
week. It takes time (sometimes as many as seven times)
before your ad gets the prospect's attention.
Go One Better--Write For
E-zines.
The beauty of email publishing
is that it works so quickly. I often write an article
in the morning, send it to an e-zine in the afternoon,
and see it published in a new issue by evening. Responses
flood in by midnight. On the Internet, there's no wThe
Website District.com-time while printing presses roll,
trucks make their way through town, or mail wThe Website
District.coms to be sorted.
If you need marketing results
fast, write an article for e-zines. Keep your article
short. One or two pages is fine. Tell readers how to
do something that will interest many of them. Keep sentences
short, informal, and talk directly to the reader. If
you don't feel comfortable with your writing skills,
have a local English teacher or journalism student look
over your article for you.
Also be sure to include four
to six lines at the end promoting yourself, your business,
your offer, and your contact information. Because you
won't get paid for your article, publishers don't mind
allowing you a personal plug at the end. The article
makes you look like an expert in your field. Your contact
info at the end urges thousands of impressed readers
to contact the expert.
Put Out Your Own E-zine.
A lot has been written lately
about the importance of networking to build your business.
When marketing expert Leslie Speidel polled hundreds
of successful entrepreneurs on what they attributed
their growth to, most replied "networking!"
Nothing helps you network
like your own email newsletter. Your ideas and expertise
along with product news and tips from customers go out
to everyone you know and do business with. It's also
OK to include some ads for yourself and associates.
Readers don't seem to mind ads if they're packaged along
with helpful articles.
People on the Internet are
usually in a hurry, so keep your e-zine short. One
or two articles coupled with two or three short ads
may be all your e-zine needs. Keep lines short
enough to fit into an email browser and put a hard return
at the end of each line (to keep them from breaking
up when emailed).
For starters, you can send
your e-zine out with your favorite email program (a
good free one is Eudora Lite--http://www.eudora.com).
Later, when your subscriber list grows, you may want
to upgrade to a majordomo provided, most likely, by
the same company that provides your web site space.
Get subscribers by placing
free ads on classified sites, ads in appropriate newsgroups,
and announcing your new e-zine to firms that specialize
in keeping track of various lists of subscribers. Start
with liszt.com and The List of Lists (Listserv@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU).
Send a description of your newsletter to gapach97@aol.com
for inclusion on the "Yoken" list. Be sure to
mention your new email newsletter in all your print
and broadcast advertising and add a place for
people to subscribe on your web site. Your subscriber
list can easily grow to include a few thousand within
a year. An audience that size will be a continuing
source of sales, contacts, and insights.
Consider how to incorporate
e-zines into your on-line marketing. Start with consistent
e-zine advertising, progress to writing articles (or
having them written for you), and on to putting out
your own newsletter. It's currently the best marketing
tool available for small businesses.
Kevin Nunley provides marketing
advice and copy writing for businesses and organizations.
He can be reached at www.DrNunley.com. Click
here to promote your business to thousands of Media!
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