5 Overlooked Ways To Market Your Work at Home Business

August 2nd, 2007

I grant permission to publish this article, electronically or in print, as long as the bylines are included, with a live link, and the article is not changed in any way (grammatical corrections accepted).

5 overlooked ways to market your work at home business

Everyone is always looking for more ways to market their work at home business. You often here about PPC advertising, writing articles, link exchanges, and a few other business marketing techniques that everyone uses. However, there are many other ways to market your work at home business that a lot of people just don’t think of.

I have offered five good business marketing techniques below that are often overlooked. Of course, many people do use them but there’s not nearly as much competition in these techniques as there is with some of the others. Plus, these marketing techniques are all either free or very near it. Getting traffic to your site for free or very little cost is always a good thing in my opinion.

Here are five ways to market your work at home business that you may not have thought of before:

1) Enhanced Business Card – Get a business card with color, an eye catching background, and add your picture to it. Maybe you could also have a cool quote or a free offer on it, plus anything else you can think of to get peoples attention.

The point is you need to make it stand out among all the other business cards someone might see in a month. Make sure your website URL is on it in a highly noticable place. Then, leave it everywhere you can, and hand it out to everyone you meet.

2) Give away freebies - Underpromise and overdeliver! That is the best business marketing strategy ever thought up. Pretty much all the “big-dogs” use it in their marketing campaigns. You can too by giving away free stuff at your website, or in your newsletter, without telling anyone they will be receiving it.

Say someone visits your website from an ad you placed that didn’t mentioned anything about getting a free ebook. They will be absolutely delighted to find the extra free gift.This is a great way to get people to not only return to your site, but tell their friends about it too.

3) Sponsor Events - A great way to spread the word about your business is to sponsor events in your area. There are many games, events, charity drives, intramurals, little leagues, etc… That are just waiting for people like you to give a little bit of your money to help out.

You will usually get your business name on a T-shirt, a sign, a flyer, or something else related to the event. A lot of people will be seeing these events and YOUR business name. It’s a great way to drive local traffic to your online business website or offline business if you have one.

4) Blogs - Having your own business blog can be a great marketing tool. With a blog you can quickly and easily offer free business advice, information, fun stuff, resources, tips, or anything else you want.

If you have a very interesting and/or informative business blog people will keep returning for the great stuff that your blog offers. Update it every day or two with fresh info and you can build a strong following fairly quickly.

I have used this marketing technique successfully for the past few months. You can see one for yourself by visiting my “home biz tips” blog at
http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com/home-business-blog.html

5) Guestbooks - There are many people that have guest books on their websites that you can sign. Most of them allow you to put a link to your website when signing. This can be a good way to bring some traffic to your site and get a one-way inbound link that those search engines really love.

Make sure you don’t just post a random comment or spam the guestbook. You should actually check out the website and leave a useful message. This will keep your reputation intact and provide the webmaster with usable information. A win-win situation!

Alright, now you are armed with five more work at home business marketing techniques to bring traffic to your website and customers to your business. Get going on them now so you can increase your profits this week!

5 Magical Steps For Creating A Profitably Potent Affiliate Program!

August 1st, 2007

There are a few reasons why your affiliate program isn’t bringing in the traffic and profits you’ve always hoped for. And below, I’ve outlined 5 quick ways to change that so you can get more traffic and profits using the power of “super” affiliates.

1) Make Sure Your Sales Letter Converts — Nothing puts a damper on an affiliate program quicker than having affiliates sending you tons of traffic but not giving them anything in return.

If your sales letter really works hard to turn prospects into customers, then you’re going to make your affiliates (and yourself) very happy.

So, spend some time getting your sales letter converting well. Study how to write better copy, or hire a professional to write you a hard-selling letter.

2) Offer Affiliate Tools — This is so important. Most affiliates will promote your program if you give them the tools to do it.

Hire someone to design some strong banners. Create a weekly “affiliate tips” newsletter to share new ideas. Create sales letters and graphics affiliates can use that will work to get the word out on your product fast.

3) Start An Affiliate Contest — And give away prizes for top sellers and those most improved. Or, make an offer that an affiliate making 10 sales through their link gets your product free. It doesn’t cost much to run a contest of this type, and the return is great.

4) Define Your Perks And Tell Potential Affiliates Why They Should Promote Your Program — If your sales letter converts visitors like crazy, tell them. If you split profits down the middle and share 50% of each sale with the referring affiliate, let them know.

Tell them about contests you run and tools you offer to make it easy. Put your offer into focus for potential affiliates. If you have a high-priced product, you could say something like, “This sales letter converts 1 out of every 50 visits. And with the product going for $297, and you getting half of that for each sale, 100 visitors sent from your site can put an easy $297 in your pocket.”

5) Get The Word Out — Place a link on your sales page that sends those clicking to a full-page sales letter detailing all the benefits of offering your product to their visitors.

Promote your affiliate program instead of the product. There are hundreds of ezines in existence that cater to those promoting affiliate programs. Take out an ad and tell them why they want to be an affiliate for you.

Check out keywords online that target your audience and get in touch with the webmasters. Tell them about your programs benefits and give them the opportunity to sign up.

Affiliate programs, once in place, can bring you automatic, low cost traffic for years to come. Take the time to set yours up right, and reap the rewards for years to come.

5 Keys To A Successful Ezine

July 31st, 2007

There are 5 basic keys you need for your ezine to be successful and here they are though not necessarily in this order.

1- Hosting

You need good reliable hosting for your website. You don’t want to lose subscribers because your site is always down. Not only that… it’s unprofessional.

Why should someone listen to what you have to say in your ezine when you can’t even get the basics of having your website operational?

2- Autoresponders

You want to automate everything. An autoresponder will send a confirmation email when someone subscribes. It will handle removal requests and if it has a broadcast feature you can even send out your ezine through it.

You may need multiple autoresponders as you will find that there will be many things you want automated such as when you are offering a free report, or confirmation of an ad someone placed in your ezine… the list can go on and on.

3 - Tracking

You may want to track the ads you place when promoting your ezine to find out what ad(s) pull well for you and which don’t. You don’t want to be wasting your time on ads that don’t work. When you find an ad that pulls well… go all out on it.

4 - Products

As you start to grow your ezine and build a relationship with your subscribers you need to offer them products. After all… you are in this to make money.

You can create your own products around your list, get resale rights to an existing product to offer to your list or you can join an affiliate program.

Now, I admit… 1-4 can get pretty expensive especially if you are on a tight budget.

TIP #1: You can go here and get all of what I just mentioned in one package and it’s super cheap.

http://www.2marketers.com/pbp

5 - Leads

Every ezine no matter how big or small needs no or low cost ways of attracting more subscribers.

You can advertise your ezine by submitting to ezine directories, announcement lists, by writing articles, or doing joint ventures such as ad swaps just to name a few. The problem is… all of this can become time consuming.

TIP #2: There is a software that will automate your entire submission process to everything I just mentioned.

http://www.2marketers.com/ea

TIP #3: There is a site that will bring you new subscribers for only 5 minutes of work.

http://www.2marketers.com/pbl

There you have it. By no means is this a complete list but by getting the basics down and following the TIP’s I just mentioned, you are well on your way to a profitable ezine.

5 High-Impact Marketing Tips

July 30th, 2007

Here are 5 high-impact marketing tips you can use to boost your sales quickly. All are simple to implement and they involve little or no new expense.

1. Promote Only One Thing at a Time

Promote only 1 product or service each time you advertise. Many people have difficulty selecting one product when their decision forces them to delay or reject buying something else they also want. When prospects cannot make an easy choice they often make no decision at all …and you lose the sale.

Tip: Offer new customers a related product or service immediately after they buy from you. Many will accept your offer, producing an easy sale without jeopardizing the initial purchase.

2. Provide Multiple Ways for Customers to Buy

Providing choices of what to buy will reduce your sales. But providing choices of how to buy will increase your sales. Offer many different ways for customers to buy from you. The same method is not convenient for everybody. Prospective customers are more likely to act immediately when their favorite way of ordering is available.

3. Avoid Your Competitors

Look for some new niche markets you and your competitors overlooked. You may uncover a market you can dominate with little or no competition.

One quick and easy way to find profitable new markets is to sub-divide your current market into several narrowly defined niche markets. Then customize your advertising to the unique needs of prospects in each niche market.

Tip: You can narrow the appeal of an existing web site without losing its effectiveness with your main market. Just create customized web pages for each market segment you want to target. Then add a link to each of these specialized pages on your home page.

4. Use Alternative Marketing

Look for alternative media your competitors may be overlooking. For example, many internet marketers are beginning to use direct mail postcards to generate traffic to their web sites. It?s a low cost way to bypass the heavy competition online.

A brief captivating message on a postcard with an enticing offer sent to the right prospects will generate a flood of traffic to your website - or a large number of sales leads.

Tip: Postcards are also an excellent low-cost alternative to email. People get so much email today that even legitimate messages are getting deleted unread. But they get few if any postcards. Your message is guaranteed to get their attention when it’s delivered on a postcard.

5. Encourage Questions

You?re walking away from a lot of easy sales if you don?t encourage prospects to ask questions about your product or service.

Only interested prospects will take the time to ask questions. Many will buy …especially if you answer their question quickly and completely. You can even include a promotion for your product or service as part of your answer.

Make it easy for prospects to ask questions when they are at your web site or in other selling situations where there is no personal contact. For example, provide a phone number or an email address they can use to ask questions.

Tip: If you find yourself personally answering a lot of questions, add a Questions and Answers section to your web site or your sales brochure. Include the answers to the most frequently asked questions. It will reduce the number of questions you have to answer personally.

Each of these 5 marketing tips provides a simple way for you to boost your sales quickly …and for little or no new expense.

5 Effective Ways to Promote Your Website For Free Online

July 29th, 2007

1. Generate Targeted Traffic from Online Discussion Forums.

Online discussion forums provide an excellent way to promote your website without paying any money. Nowadays, you don’t even have to lurk around before you begin to post. Just browse the messages and you can start posting. There are basically three different ways to participate. You can ask questions, respond to requests for help or just post any useful information that fits with the general topic of that discussion forum. To promote your site in online discussion forums, all you have to do is enter your website address or ad in your signature line at the bottom of each message. Every time you post or respond to questions your ad will be displayed. If you post good content, people who read your threads will also check out your website. This is an excellent way to drive targeted traffic to your website at no cost to you. You can take this type of site promotion a step further by identifying the active members in each forum and contacting them for joint venture arrangements.

2. Write Articles or Free reports for other webmasters to publish.

Another effective way to promote your website is to write articles or free reports for ezine publishers and webmasters to use. If you write good content, your articles will be published and many readers who like your article will go on to visit your website. You can also write simple research based articles and allow others to publish these freely on their websites. The traffic from these free articles will come from your byline. The ‘byline’ is the short paragraph that goes at the bottom of each article and describes who the author is and what they do. The good thing about writing this type of content is that it establishes you as the expert and therefore increases the chances of people visiting your website and signing up for whatever you’re offering.

3. Do Joint Ventures with List owners and Webmasters.

If done correctly, joint venture marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote a product or service. A Joint venture can take many forms but it’s generally an agreement for some kind of partnership between one or more parties working together to their mutual benefit. It allows you to leverage highly targeted lists or traffic with no risk. Joint ventures are excellent for new product or service announcements because they allow you to reach a wide customer base very quickly.

4. Leverage the power of your email Signature.

One of the quickest and effective ways to start driving traffic to your website at no extra cost is to add your ad or website address to your email signature. This way, every time you send an email, you’ll be advertising your website. You can take this a step further by asking your friends and associates to put your website address in their email signature. Most people don’t use their email signature facility in their email program so you can easily get 10 or more people to agree to do this. If you and your 10 friends each send out 10 emails per day, that’s 110 exposures of your ad every day without any extra effort on your part.

5. Exchange Links with Other Webmasters.

This is another effective strategy for generating targeted traffic to your website for free. It involves contacting other webmasters for a possible link exchange partnership. All you have to do is locate websites that are related to yours but that are not in direct competition and contact the webmaster to swap links. There are various free ebooks and articles available online on this topic.

4 Ways In Which You Can Achieve Critical Mass

July 28th, 2007

Critical Mass Website Promotion is the elite goal rarely attained by website marketers in any industry. Reaching critical mass and getting targeted website traffic on autopilot (meaning you don’t have to promote your site for 6 months and the traffic NEVER declines) is the Holy Grail of internet marketing.

When you hit critical mass in your market, things change drastically for you and your business. Your marketing efforts go down in direct proportion to your customer support and sales going up. It sounds awesome. It IS awesome. But only a tiny fraction of websites on the net every achieve critical mass. Here’s a nutshell version of what it takes.

1. Work Hard

Internet marketing is no game to be manipulated by using software and quick fixes to a very large problem, which is long-term, steady traffic coming to your site.

There is no magic pill, silver bullet, or guru secret that will help you to achieve critical mass in your market. Hard work and intense study of the internet and how people surf, what they want, and how you get in front of them while they are surfing is the only answer.

The internet marketing game is for professionals and you MUST make yourself a professional marketer of your “shop” just as you would in the real world.

2. Understand Your Market

Understanding exactly who you are selling your products or services to is the crucial first step in achieving critical mass.

The worst thing you could ever do is put the hard work in and achieve critical mass in the wrong market for your products and services!

Know your market. Know your best, ideal customer inside and out. Get your links in front of them, ideally, everywhere they surf for related information to your site.

3. Be Vigilant

Over the years I have watched people listen to what I have to say about website promotion and then take one of two paths:

1) They work their tails off and do what I tell them, with great results and rewards for their efforts (more sales, more traffic, more branding and recognition).

2) They buy my book, take a half-hearted shot at the easiest things in the book, get bored, tired, or impatient, and then they go back to chasing down quick fixes.

I have watched people who had the answers they needed in their hands, and drop them for more glamorous-sounding, fast solutions. Which we all know don’t work.

I will say this again - THERE IS NO WAY TO TO QUICKLY OR INSTANTLY ACHIEVE CRITICAL MASS IN YOUR MARKET!

You must work like anyone in business who is in it to succeed works. If you do not know everything about your business and how to market it, your competition will eat you alive because they WILL know everything, I guarantee it.

Just like in the real world, the one who works harder, smarter, and is vigilant about his or her business is going to come out on top every time.

You owe it to yourself and your family to learn your craft and do it better than most people in your market if you want to succeed.

4. Achieve Critical Mass

In order to hit critical mass, you must be everywhere, or nearly everywhere your best customers surf.

This means linking back to your site from reciprocal links, articles, press releases, joint ventures, forum participation, and good search engine positioning for your best keywords.

In order to have literally thousands of links pointing to your site in high-profile areas where human beings actually go and read/surf, it takes pure time and effort.

You must submit your articles to the best free content directories. Over and over until you have published everywhere you can that is relevant to your market.

You must secure deals with high-profile sites in your market to swap QUALITY links. I am talking about links that people will click on, not just links that only search engines will see.

You must be everywhere that is a good place to be on the net in your market. This takes time. This takes hard work. This is what it takes to have a viable, long term website traffic solution for your business.

Reaching critical mass, or even sitting down and deciding a plan of action to pursue critical mass in your market, takes maturity and a final realization that you can have anything you want in the world if you want to work for it. The day you stop chasing quick fixes to drive spurts of unqualified, un-targeted traffic to your site is the first step in achieving your goals as a professional internet marketer.

4 Simple Secrets for NetMarketing Success

July 27th, 2007

Starting an internet based business when you have zero marketing experience is, to say the least, bewildering. I speak from personal experience as I started out with no specialized knowledge. I gradually weaved my way through what seemed like hundreds of sites selling just about everything and tried to resist buying every white elephant that was offered.

In the interim, I purchased my first package which turned out to be of little practical use. While I was doing that, I somehow went off in another direction and bought another “package deal”, hardly stopping to think that I did not have the requisite skill and knowledge to make this programme work either.

To cut a direct path through the dense forest, I’ll tell you now that I spent much more that I originally intended. Thankfully, I learnt a few lessons along the way.

1. Stay Focused

It is easy to become swamped and distracted trying to run several programmes at the same time, on zero experience. Leave diversification to the pros until you have garnered some experience and at least have some sales/profit (whichever you prefer) from your first venture. Needless to say, you will find yourself floundering around aimlessly, watching your money burn, having done no research before making a purchase. If you feel a burning urge to buy anyway, read the material again, do some research, sleep on it and then make a decision. Twenty-four hours delay won’t kill you and remember, one venture at a time.

2. Allow some “Opportunities” to pass you by

As God is my witness, I believe I became a member of at least fifty programmes that promised me anything from “massive profits” to “dramatic sales explosion, traffic, profit, great downlines”….you get the idea. Unless you have twenty-four dedicated hours to spend on your e-business each day, you cannot market all these web sites; and without the ability to create traffic to each site (and you get one for just about every programme you join), you are back where you started. …And, by the way, did I mention the sea of email from other members? That’s right, I didn’t get beyond the hype at the top of the sales page either. So then, limit yourself to a manageable number of traffic generation ventures. Better to pay for leads or hits even if on a tight budget than to try to do the impossible. Allow some opportunities to pass you by. If they are too good to be true, they are!

3. Free Information….A hidden gold mine

I have hundreds of pages of free information (yes, I have printed them out, this works for me) received when I bought something or subscribed to an ezine. I have two words of advice…Use them! They are valuable, even if you have to wade through tons of information for a few golden nuggets. If your business is to grow, you have to be learning constantly. If all else fails, you can always rebrand the books, give them away to your subscribers or make some money from them by reselling the information. I read somewhere that a great percentage of ebooks remain unread by those who receive them. What a shame! Do your best to use that information, it is there to help you get ahead.

4. Keep at it, Rome was not built in a day

If you (1) stay focused on one or two manageable ventures, (2) channel your marketing energies wisely (pay where you can and forget the freebies), (3) read the complimentary material you get and (4) develop some stick-to-itiveness, you will eventually begin to see rewards from your investment. You may never make millions, but you will at least derive a steady income from your efforts.

4 Questions to Answer Before Contacting a Book Agent

July 26th, 2007

Obtaining agency representation is your first step toward getting profitably published. Most publishers won’t even look at unsolicited manuscripts.

But, before approaching an agent to represent you, you should finalize the presentation of your book.

Agents don’t have time to waste dealing with publishing ‘wannabees’ who don’t have, and may never have, a concrete project to represent. To busy agents, dreams don’t make it.

If you approach an agent before you’re prepared, you may never be able to contact them again. They’ll consider you a ‘dreamer’ and disregard you emails and phone calls.

Elevator Speech

Before approaching an agent, prepare an ‘elevator speech’ describing your project in the less than thirty-seconds it takes for an average elevator ride. If you can’t, your project probably isn’t ready for prime time.

Your elevator speech must answer four major questions:

  • What is your book about?
  • Who is going to buy it?
  • How does it differ from existing books on the subject?
  • How are you going to promote it?

1. What is your book about?

Finalize your book’s title and contents before contacting an agent.

The title is crucial to your book’s success. It must attract the attention of acquisition editors, book reviewers, bookstore managers, web surfers and readers. The title is often your one – and only – chance to make a sale.

Finalize your book’s table of contents and prepare a brief description of the contents of each chapter. You should also know how long your book is going to be and the number of illustrations, graphics or worksheet

Prepare two – three, if you’re a first-time author – sample chapters and hire a professional editor to fine-tune them. It’s better to show three perfect chapters than a finished manuscript filled with spelling errors.

You don’t have to write your whole book before approaching agents. And your sample chapters don’t have to begin with the first chapter, nor do they have to be in sequence. But, they must represent your writing at its best.

2. Who’s going to buy your book?

Next, show that there is a reachable market for your book.

Strive for urgency. Describe the market intrigued by, or frustrated by, your book’s topic. What symptoms does your book help solve? How many people share the problem? What are the consequences of the problem your book addresses?

Quantify your book’s market in terms of buying power, willingness to buy books and ability to be reached through associations or publications.

3. How will your book be different?

Next, position your book relative to existing books on the topic. Existing books on the same topic are a plus, not a minus. They prove there is a market for books on the subject.

  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing books?
  • Why will readers choose your book over existing books?

This section offers you an opportunity to describe your background and how it contributes to your book.

4. How will you promote your book?

Promotion is your responsibility, not the publisher’s. Your ability to promote your book is as important as your ability to write your book.

Start by identifying book reviewers and editorial contacts who can help promote your book. List publications that might run an extract from your book. Research producers who book guests for radio and TV interviews.

Discuss your speaking experience and willingness to travel to support your book. Describe how you will promote your book on your web site.

List authorities in your field who have offered to write a foreword or provide you with cover testimonials.

Agents are busy. To the extent you can sell your book idea as a realistic possibility in thirty seconds and can support your answers with research and strong sample chapters, you are well on your way to success.

After you’ve been successfully published, you may be able to sell a book on just the basis of an email. But for now, you must be fully prepared.

4 Marketing Myths Threaten Your Sales

July 25th, 2007

These 4 marketing myths can cause you to lose sales if you base your marketing decisions on them. But the related marketing tips I included with each myth will boost your sales if you act on them instead.

Myth 1:

People Always Buy Where They Get the Cheapest Price

If this was true, only businesses that charge cheap prices would exist. Some people buy where they get the cheapest price. But most people are more interested in getting value for their money than in getting a bargain.

Tip: Look for some low-cost ways you can enhance the perceived value of your product or service. Then test raising your price. Don’t be surprised if both your sales and your profit margin go up.

Myth 2:

Offering Your Customers Many Options Will Boost Your Sales

Presenting your customers with options usually reduces your sales. Here’s why…

When confronted with several options, most customers have difficulty making a clear decision. They often react by procrastinating - and never making a decision. When this happens, you lose a sale you already had.

Tip: Try to limit your customer’s decision making to either “Yes. I’ll buy.” or “No. I won’t buy”. Don’t risk losing them by including “which one” decisions.

Myth 3:

Everybody Needs My Product/Service

That’s what YOU think. Most of them don’t think they need it …and most aren’t ready to spend their money for it.

The hazard of this myth is that it causes many marketers to believe they can succeed without doing much marketing or selling. They think their product or service is so special that it should automatically generate hordes of paying customers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen that way.

Building a successful business is hard work - most of it devoted to finding customers. Even if most people can use your product or service, you still need a marketing strategy to reach them and a persuasive sales message to close sales.

Tip: Look for narrowly defined niche markets where your product or service solves a unique need of the customers. Focus your marketing on them instead of trying to reach a broadly defined general market. You’ll generate more sales and enjoy a better return on your advertising expense.

Myth 4:

Keep Changing Your Advertising or Your Sales Will Decline

This sounds logical but it’s not true. Never abandon advertising that’s working. I know many businesses that have been using the same advertising for years and they’re still growing. Here’s why…

The goal of most advertising is to attract new customers. Once someone becomes a customer, they won’t respond to that advertising again. But you can use different (and cheaper) advertising to generate additional sales from them.

But there’s still a large population of non-customers who didn’t respond to your regular advertising. Most have not seen it yet …and those who have usually need to see it numerous times before they will respond.

Don’t abandon advertising that’s working - but keep trying to improve it. And regularly test new things to see how they work for you. If you never make any changes in your advertising, your sales will eventually decline.

Tip: You can automatically keep your advertising up to date by allocating 80 percent of your budget to proven promotions and 20 percent to testing new things. When something new works better than your proven promotions, move it to the 80 percent group and start testing something else in the 20 percent category.

Don’t believe these 4 marketing myths. They’re not true. Marketing based on them will cause you to lose sales. Instead, apply the related marketing tips I included after each myth to boost your sales.

4 Easy Ways to Boost Your Sales

July 24th, 2007

Here are 4 easy ways you can boost your sales for little or no new expense …and without making major changes in your selling process.

1. Focus on What Your Customers Really Want

Your customers really don’t want your products or services. They don’t even want what those products or services do for them. What they really want is to gain the specific feeling they get after buying and using your products or services.

Keep this in mind when you create web pages, sales letters and other selling presentations. Emphasize the feelings produced by using your product instead of talking about what your product is - or how it works.

Tip: Convert the benefits delivered by your product or service into vivid word pictures. Then put your prospect in the picture by dramatizing what it feels like to be enjoying those benefits.

Example, if you sell financial products, describe what it feels like to enjoy an affluent life style without debt.

2. Keep Communicating With Your Previous Non-Buyers

You’ve heard it before - but I’ll say it here again. Most prospective customers will not buy the first time they see or hear about your product or service. You’re losing a lot of sales if you do not persistently follow up with those prospects.

Your follow up procedure can be as simple as periodically contacting them with a new offer. Or it can be more complex like distributing a newsletter or providing updated product information.

Tip: You cannot follow up with prospects if you don’t know how to reach them. Set up a system for collecting the names and contact information of all prospects who do not buy from you.

Example, offer a special report, a list of sources or some other valuable information your prospects cannot get anywhere else. Deliver it only by email or postal mail so you can get their contact address.

3. Encourage Questions

Questions from prospects may be a nuisance. But answering them can be very profitable.

Prospective customers only take time to ask questions when they have a high level of interest in your product or service. Providing a satisfactory answer to a prospect’s question often leads directly to a sale.

Invite prospects to ask questions when in live selling situations. And make it easy for them to ask questions when they are not …such as at your web site. For example, list a phone number or email address where you or someone else can answer their questions.

Tip: Include a Questions and Answers page on your web site with answers to frequently asked questions. It will reduce the number of questions you have to answer individually.

4. Make Buying Easier

Every non-essential action in the buying process is an opportunity for the customer to reverse their decision …causing you to lose the sale.

Look for ways you can make your buying procedure easier and faster. For example, many marketers use a multi-step shopping cart to get online orders when a simple online order form would do the job with just 1 or 2 quick clicks.

Tip: Don’t ask for unnecessary information during the ordering process. Instead, send a personalized “thank you” message after the sale and include a brief request for the information.

These 4 selling tactics may not be new to you. But are you using all (or any) of them? If not, they can easily boost your sales …for little or no new expense - and without making major changes in your sales process.