Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Two words to help get the word out:  Facebook & Twitter.

 

You might want to try a 30-day free trial at Traffic Geyser. What you do is go in and create videos from powerpoint slides (or video) plus write articles about your business. Traffic Guyser sends to 50+ destinations and in doing this process, you will learn the name of all of the article marketing & video marketing sites they use!

You can withdraw after 29 days and you have paid nothing, but you have experienced gobs of publicity. Note: it does take time to create the videos/audio/and written article submissions!

Erica Nelson

www.EricaNelson.com

"Jobs for Busy Moms" List Owner

Author & Success coach

408-416-7090

Sounds like an interesting business you're in.

Here's some possibilities to consider:

1) Who is your ideal customer?

2) What do they buy before, during, and after they would buy your equipment?

3) Who else sells to this same customer profile?

4) Based on these could you joint venture with, have endorse to their clients, or set up a referral arrangement with any of these people or businesses?

5) This equipment sounds new and unique - can this be turned into a USP that is worked into all your marketing?

6) I recommend you write up the "story" of your product.  How you create it.  What has inspired you to pursue this dream, etc.  Then use this to work into publicity campaigns that would serve your target market.

Hope that spurs some ideas.

Good luck in your venture.

Mike

I agree with Mike_McRitchie and would add the following:

I've always said that marketing is measured in two way, time or money.  If you have money then you can pay people to do the marketing tasks for you.  If you don't have money then you will have to use your own time to get things done.  That being said let throw some ideas your way that might help you out.

It sounds like you are going business to consumer instead of business to business. So I'll assume that.

Let's assume that you have 100 dollars a month for marketing(not sure what your budget actually is.  Could be more or less but we'll assume 100).

You need to create a sales/refferal network.  In order to do this you will need to get on the horn with people that can promote you.  Off the top of my head Music store and places that sell dvds come to mind.  Or even video game stores.  Talk to them and see if you can setup a booth.  You'd be suprised to see what businesses are willing to do in this economy.

Use press releases!!  Smarter companies use the press all they can.  Write up some press releases to publications that reach your demographics.  Then followup and get a relationship with the media.

Use twitter/facebook/myspace to get the message out.  They're pretty powerful.

As far as your website goes....This is something that I should write am article about but I'll address it briefly here.   A website serves one purpose and one purpose only and that is to make you money(that applies to any marketing campaign).  If it is not making money then it becomes a liability(it costs money).  There are 3 ways a website could make money.  1) Direct Sales  2) Lead generation  3) Advertising.   If your website is not doing one of these three things then it becomes a liability.  it's sitting doing nothing costing you money.  So my question to you is this:  How is your website fulfilling the sales process?   I think that you may want to re-examine your strategy for your website.  If you want to PM me I can help you with that.  

Off the top of my head those things come to mind but if you would like to send me a PM we can discuss specifics.

Sound like a pretty cool product and I would love to talk to you about it more in depth. So please send me a message.

-------------------------



Utah SEO Firm
Psychographics

Justin,

Something you can do that costs absolutely zero dollars -- Set up "recommendation pages" on platforms such as Squidoo. The long-term benefit here is GOOGLE JUICE. Link these pages to your Facebook/Twitter/Blog/Site what have you. The pages are a snap to put up and you may be pleasantly suprised (and rewarded) with traffic, subscribers, inquiries and yes, even sales. Good luck to you.

 

-------------------------

Chuck Anthony
"You can always better your best."

Home Business Hints
Chuck Anthony on Twitter

For a price YOU specify, you can have a pro create a great advertisement for you. Visit http://www.prova.fm/advertising/ for more information.

-------------------------

Some great tips so far. I think a video in submitted to all the video sites along with an e-book on scribd and a presentation on slideshare would be helpful. Include these in your promotional activities.

-------------------------

iMarketing Ireland- My site for helping entrepreneurs make more sales online.

Kodakmak,

First let me tell you what you could change right off the bat on the website that shouldn't cost you anything.

WEBSITE CHANGES

1. On your services.html page, you list all the services and have an arrow. You explain to people that they must click on the arrow (which  you definitely need to tell them), but all the links go to a 404 error Go Daddy page. Create a larger graphic and space it out so people intuitively know that they need to click on the arrows (or bullet points, etc...) and fix the 404 error pages. I don't mean to be harsh at all, but I wouldn't pay someone money if they had 404 pages on their site.

2. On your about.html page you should have your phone number, and other contact information in a format so people can copy and paste so they can save it. I can't tell you how many sites I have closed simply because I couldn't paste the contact info and I found another site that does the exact same service but was easier to use.

3. Get rid of the underscore in your email address, and use something a little easier. Not everyone is tech savvy and they might not even know what the underscore is.

4. Get rid of that survey after the contact form. It's annoying, and people and people would just close that page anyway...You can get a good free form builder at http://wufoo.com/

MARKETING IDEAS

1. Have you talked to any other small businesses in your area (like computer repair shops, or other electronic stores) ? Is it possible to sell your service to them on a wholesale level and then they would do the marketing for you? They would try to upsell their customers and make a margin on the sale and therefore you could do what you do best - built media center PCs, and they could do what they do best - sell computer equipment. Even if they are not close to you, it shouldn't matter try to contact as many small businesses and tell them about the service that you provide. If all they have to do is sell stuff, and they don't have to worry about inventory, etc... then this would be extra revenue for them and you would obviously have to handle the support.

2. Create a few systems and try to sell them on eBay. Don't go overboard with the "enhancements" to your eBay listing though. Don't spend more then say $25 on the listing but see if this would be a good way for you to sell pre-built, non-custom media center PCs. Maybe you could even offer the ability to upgrade it to the buyer and that could be your big selling point on eBay.

3. If you can afford anything like Google AdWords, I suggest that you advertise a free upgrade for something. Like a better graphics card then normal, etc...Something to give the idea that you are giving a better deal then normal.

4. If you have clients that are happy, ask them to make a short you tube video of their PC and how they use it, and how happy they are. People love testimonials. If they see real people happy with the PCs you made you will gain reliability.

5. Also, are there lots of customers you used to have? Maybe their computers need to be upgraded. Have you contacted them? Maybe you could offer some discounted prices regarding the upgrades to gain business in hope that they would recommend one of their friends to you.

Hope this helps!

Good Luck.

-------------------------

Vinod Tonangi
Tonangi Design & Media
Web Design, Video Production & Advertising services

www.tonangi.com

My advise would be to try Pay Per Click, this will get you on relevant search results and you can keep within a budget. If you have any knowledge on web design and coding I would highly reccomend editing your exsiting design to lower the image count and make your site more content readable.

-------------------------

bikram yoga benefits