Another Word For Email Marketing: Advertising!
You are a bright, energetic entrepreneur with a great product to sell - but you lack the capital to set up in a conventional office, and that just is not your style anyway. So what do you do? The most popular means of selling anything these days is the Internet. For one thing, your overhead is extremely low, which means your profit margin will be larger than a standard business operation run out of an office or warehouse. What is the key to this? Two words: Email marketing. As we noted in the title, email marketing is just advertising - and the cost can be extremely low. Many email marketing programs start out free (at least for the first 500 emails you generate) and will cost you less in the long run than hiring an advertising staff. Start with a terrific product. Let's say you have a talent for pottery, like my daughter. We wanted to market her wares but paying for studio space and renting a building for a pottery just is not in our budget, so we turned to email marketing. We have a small studio space in our garage, and a small kiln to fire her wares. She has worked very hard making enough pottery to begin an email marketing campaign. Our first approach is local, to friends, family and acquaintances. We gradually increased our exposure to setting up a website, also known as an online storefront. One of the key features of the website is an autoresponder. This allows us to generate an email thanking the individual for their interest in our pottery studio and provides information for future purchases. This is also one way we create a database of customer email addresses and track their purchases. We have designed back links in the website that allow us to be among the top 10 sites that come up in search engines - another way to increase visibility. One extremely important thing I have learned in this whole process of email marketing is to Start Small!! Don't be afraid to be David in a market that seems filled with Goliaths. Use email marketing as a tool to attract attention and bring business to your website. We plan to increase production rates in our pottery business, but starting small allows us the time we need to learn the ropes of the trade and design a line of pottery that we feel is sustainable. Using email marketing allows us the freedom to get the word out without the high costs usually associated with advertising. So get your feet wet - start an online business and see where it takes you. Use email marketing, be creative and enjoy the experience. |