New ways to market your small business online | November 2009 |
Small Business Owners Can and Should Use E-mail Marketing
If you are a small business owner or considering starting a small business e-mail marketing is an effective and affordable means for building your business. In this day and age most everyone in business has an e-mail account and you can use this fact to increase your sales. In very basic terms, e-mail or electronic mail marketing is using the internet and e-mail to promote your business.
There is a long list of reasons why a small business should use e-mailing marketing for their small business. E-mail marketing gives you a continuing way to stay in touch with your customers, it's inexpensive, and it can greatly increase your business sales.
If that's not enough to convince you that e-mail marketing is a great opportunity for your small business this form of marketing also gives you a list of customers you can market to repeatedly and helps to develop yourself as an expert in your area of business.
With well over 200 million people in North America using the internet it's easy to understand how your small business can benefit from using e-mail marketing. And statistics show this number is growing rapidly. The most common reason people use the internet is for e-mail why not take advantage of this fact and advertise your business to these millions.
By using e-mail marketing to its fullest potential you as a small business owner have a means of keeping in regular contact with customers; past, current, and future. That is a triple whammy for possible sales from one effort and the simple fact is the more people who see your business or product the more sales you will have.
Let's face it; most small business owners don't have a large advertising budget or a huge staff to support advertising campaigns. By using e-mail marketing you can promote your business with next to no staff involvement (or none if you do it yourself) and the expense can be for as little as nothing at all. E-mail marketing for a small business can be simple enough that the average person can manage it.
One of the greatest features of using e-mail marketing for the small business is the possibility to get your business name in the public eye and promote to possible customers who may otherwise never know they want or need your service until it's in front of them. Remember with e-mail marketing you have the opportunity to connect with millions of people and each one of them is a potential customer.
Probably the most difficult part of e-mail marketing for the small business owner is having something to offer potential customers. You will want/need information you can share that will be of some interest to those customers. You are a business owner and all you need to do is look into your business experience to find this information. This could be information on new product lines, new ways of doing business, or even something as simple as your own experience as a small business owner.
Another benefit of e-mail marketing is the simple truth that it is far more effective than traditional means of advertising. We've all been there, we get those brightly colored advertisements in the snail mail (traditional postal service) that someone has spent a pretty penny on having designed and produced. What do we do with them? The majority go in the trash without a second glance. With effective e-mail marketing the receiver of your e-mail message is going to read it if just to see what this is or what you have to offer.
If all of this isn't enough to convince you that e-mail marketing can be a great asset for your small how about this; you can also track the effectiveness of your e-mail marketing. You can't do that with most other forms of advertising unless you ask your customers how did you find us'. Chances are most are going to say I'm not sure'. With e-mail marketing you can track information such as who is reading your e-mails, if they visited your web site, even if they became a customer.
Obviously there are many advantages to using e-mail marketing. With e-mail marketing you don't have to be a huge corporation or spend an enormous amount of money advertising. Add to that the simple fact that any business no matter what your product or service can use e-mail marketing.
Don't limit your possibilities for promoting your business. Whether you own the local beauty shop or the home town brick company you can take advantage of e-mail marketing to build your business.
thank you for the encouraging words.
By willow on November 10, 2009
Email marketing when done correctly…not spamming can be quite useful to both the seller and customer. Try out the free 60 day trial offered by Constant Contact in partnership with FairsandFestivals.net. Go to http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp?pn=fairsandfestivals.
By Karen on November 10, 2009
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