Getting Started Advertising Your Business

When you first start a business you need to be as prepared as if you were starting a new job! You need to know the ins and outs of your new business. Before you can start advertising your business you need to know everything there is to know about your company should you be in direct sales. Have you tried out the products? Believe it or not there are people who will join a direct sales company and have never tried their products how are you going to convince people to purchase the products if you yourself have never tried them. A personal testimony is always better! The cost to join, is there a refund if someone signs up and does not want to continue on, do you lose money if some quits that you have brought on board, what are the advertising rules for this company both online and offline etc. The best way to do this is to talk to your upline, get in on any classes or phone presentations that your company may offer. Take notes go over the notes daily to refresh your mind on what your company offers not only to customers but to business builders. Do some research if you sell natural cosmetics or aromatherapy find articles that will support what your company sells, if you are a writer write about why natural cosmetics or aromatherapy etc etc is better for the person the negatives of having chemicals on someone's skin or in someone's home as in cleaning products etc (do not use your company products etc in the article use the resource at the bottom of the article to place your name, company name and other contact information) Make a note of what it costs for a website through the company. Join any yahoo groups or presentations your company may have to keep learning how to better promote your new business. Make a list of questions to ask your upline and be sure to check in with them when you have a problem. You need to be excited about your company! In order to be excited you need to learn everything there is to learn about your company. Discounts you can offer, the reason the product or service is so wonderful~you will need to think like a customer when you are writing out ads. What would you want to see in an ad? Who is your niche market? Who do you plan to target with your ads? What is your advertising budget in the beginning and how much out of your profit do you plan on re-investing back into advertising? What is the main topic in your marketing niche? How you can help them? ETC. This week I would like you to get a 3 ring notebook and some dividers, add sections for you to brainstorm your ads before you start advertising. Write down how much you have to spend a month in advertising, then make a section of sites that you see that are offering advertising. You will need to write down the page rank (google), how much it costs to advertise on this site, what type of advertising they offer. Are you going to be getting your advertising dollars worth? How many visitors are going to the site? What is the Alexa rating? You can find out any website Alexa rating by going to http://www.alexa.com and typing in a websites address. Keep this filed away for future reference! Do you know the owner have you met them through networking on groups? (More about networking next Monday July 25th) Once you have this all written down, I would like you to post a few free ads! Take a look at chapters 2 and 3 for free places to post your ads. There is over 200 links in the Step by Step Marketing Guide that you can post your ads for free, some require a link back others do not please be sure to read their rules before posting. Save the layout of the ads in a word folder on your computer for future reference, you will be able to tweak them later on as you start getting more comfortable with writing your own ads. It does take practice to write ads I know I still once in awhile have to go back and tweak my ads because they are too long, or they do not get to the point! When advertising on the internet people need something to catch their eyes! Be sure your subject line will catch their attention, the best way to do this WOULD THIS SUBJECT LINE CATCH YOUR EYE? When you first start out a business you will be very busy posting all over~! Especially since you will be on a limited advertising budget. I remember when Michaele McMillan and I started The Perfect Image website we both posted all over the place, free ad links, in forums (not ads but participated and tried to help others out but had our business information in our signature line) some days we were posting 4-6 hours a day! But in the end it was well worth it! We now can post a few times a week and pay for good advertising. Starting out is going to be hard, it is with any business! Don't forget to get business cards, flyers made (you can do this with a basic Printmaster program or have someone else make up your flyers for you) You are going to have to focus not only on online advertising but offline advertising as well. Those reps who do both are more successful then ones who only do one or the other. There are many sites that offer promotional items for businesses take a look around at what other home based businesses offer and see if your budget allows you to add a new promotional item a month, be different! Try to stand out! Offline advertising you can post flyers or leave match mint books all over the place like at libraries, daycares, think of where your target market is and place your advertising in those places.