Marketing 101

Marketing your business is essential to how successful you will be. There are so many ways to get your name out there so people will find you.

Below is a list of ways to use that may help you. One way I like is to use "Guerilla Marketing." Wikipedia defines it this way. "Guerrilla Marketing," was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his popular 1984 book Guerrilla Marketing, as an unconventional system of promotions on a very low budget, by relying on time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets. The term has since entered the popular vocabulary to also describe aggressive, unconventional marketing methods generically. Think in those terms.

I would bet you already have your thinking cap on. But if not then lets start our list of 12.

1. Fliers to stores, schools and organizations. Hand delivered. This will keep you busy but you could focus on a few places at a time.

2. Billboards, that could be expensive.

3. Newspapers, nope not cheap either.

4. Throwaway papers.. We call them penny savers here. I had a friend who spent a ton of dough on ads in those.. Never made his money back.

5. Mailers to stores, schools and organizations. I like number one better but here you get a bunch out at one time.. Have you seen postage rates lately. I think we call this junk mail.

6. Do you have a website. This works but are they coming to your website. Are you checking your stats. You could get a lot of hits but they be coming from Alaska for all you know. Unless you live in Alaska then that is a good thing. If you are doing business internationally then this works. But how are you getting them to look at your site. Is your website optimized for reaching who you want. Are you using the correct wording. What are you selling. Are they looking for animal tees shirts?

Here is what they find if your customer did a google search 958,000 sites. Where are you? Did you place the wording Animal tee shirts on your site or did you just say tee shirts for dogs? That had only 394,00 listed.

I just use  words on my site that are related to what I think people would be looking for if they wanted to find me. Like Transfer paper, applarel, Tee's  and Google has these little Google bots they send out and find what people are searching for those words. So if you have a web then think of words that you believe people will use to find you. Oh, and be careful with the word Tee shirts. here is what I got with yahoo,

1-10 of 31,800,000 for tee shirts. You could be one of those 31,800,000. But you don't want to be one of them you want to be one of the first pages. So you need to narrow it down. Think of some key words to add.

I will have one of our resident experts tell you more about it later. OK, back to the list.

7. Catalog.. very nice and great to give out.. also expensive to produce. but I am sure you have lots of money.

8.  One sheet.. Now we are talking.. easy to do. Pictures of your product on a 8 x 10 glossy. Lots of  info,  looks good and you can just hand them out.. Another size that I use is 4 x 6 glossy. You can gets lots of info on this size as well.. And you can use them as a business card. I take them to shows and just whip them out if I am talking to someone about what I do. 

9. Sign on your car.. Works for me. OK.. you say don't want to mess up the windows.. well there are magnetic signs. I have them. I also have signs on the back of my gas guzzling SUV.

True story.. I was in the drive up line at my local drug dealer.. don't get in a fizzy.. it was Starbucks.. my drug of choice.. Well I got my order and went about my business that day.. had to do a 100 mile round trip. When I came home my wife said an administrator for one of the local schools called because she saw my sign on the back of my car.. "I Need Tees.com" I called.. got the appointment and received a 700 piece order from It... The sign did it.. Cost me under $2.00 in vinyl. of course I have my own cutter.. But there are lot of people of the Tee forum that might help. .

10. Tee Shirts. what did he say? tee shirts? Yes you make them. Never be without one on. You are a billboard. You can have you logo on a polo. Just get your name out there. Send you kids to school with cool tee shirts on.. They are little billboards. teachers see them. Other parents see them..

11. Pass out a few tote bags to the schools. Get the cheap $1.50 bags and put the name of the school on them and give them as book bags.. They what? There having a fund raiser and would like to order 100 bags... It could happen.. but only if you try it.

Here is a little story that might help you realize what you are doing wrong.

A man set up a table on a busy street. He wanted to sell 2 apples he had. he put them on the table and sat in a chair and started to read a book. Hours passed and people passed. he noticed they looked a the apples. Finally he stopped one of the people that was passing him and said." Excuse me sir. Do you like my apples?" The man answered "yes. They look really good. Where did you buy them I would like to get me some." The man answered.. But I am selling them,. why don't you buy them from me?" "Oh" the other man said. "I thought they were your lunch. There was not a sign."

So if you don't tell them then how do you expect them to know.

12. Email campaign. Junk mail is junk mail. But lets say you put a nice one sheet informational sheet together and called an organization you could have a conversation like this. "Hi, Mr. Jones, My name is Lou Robin and I operate I need tees .com. I noticed your school uses a lot of tee shirts for your students and organizations and teams. I would like to send you an email showing some of my product. If after reviewing it I could make an appointment to talk to you I would be much appreciative.". There that wasn't so hard was it. Most of marketing is words, pictures and time. If you are not getting the business then you have the time to put the words and pictures together.

Getting back to our "Guerilla Marketing"

Levinson identifies the following principles as the foundation of guerrilla marketing:

In this new age of the internet we have also

seen the  use of Blogs, Myspace and  Facebook and many others.. 

If you have had success with those let us know.

If you have a plan that worked for you please share it

with our readers. Just email me your idea that worked and

I will place it here under success stories in marketing..

Successful Marketing Stories

(coming)

Can I answer any questions?