Whenever I buy something that says "batteries sold separately." I calmly dream that this will be the store redeeming my basic faith in a company’s ability to seize the most self-evident opportunity for customer service.

(I’m starting to think I am a hopeless idealist.)

1. If you are selling an item. TEST it before you let the customer walk out with it. Take out a pair of batteries. Put them in and make sure everything works.

It really doesn’t matter that the item is made by Widget Industries in Upper Mongolia. YOU sold it, and the customer will be angry with YOU when it doesn’t work.

2 . (This is where companies make fools of themselves) Turn off the object and put it back in the box before closing the sale. But LEAVE THE BATTERIES.

Yes, I said it! Save your key rings, forget about the complimentary Frisbee. Take the unusually smart step of actually making sure that the item will work when they get home without the customer needing to buy batteries.

In fact, if I come home with an object without batteries, but a complimentary branding Frisbee, I’m probably going to be even more fuming than if I didn’t get the Frisbee at all. At that second I am going to wonder what moron came up with that idea instead of just giving me a pair of bloody AA’s! Now I’m both angry that I have to go back out and get batteries, and convinced that your establishment is owned and operated by a cretin. Not the customer experience you should be shooting for.

Giving It Away Increase Sales

The amazing thing is that your sale of batteries has a great chance of increasing too. Why? Because if you don’t have a policy of testing each item, your sales clerks are going to forget to remind the customer they will need batteries x amount of times out of a hundred.

If clerks test everything as a policy, they won’t forget as often and that will improve sales of batteries as well. And here is the kicker, the customer probably has other things that need batteries, so even though you just gave them batteries for the item they purchased, they will often end up buying them for other items.

It All Goes In the Plus Column

If the item you are selling is $2.49 with a profit margin of 30 cents. This is admittedly not a great idea. But if you are holding a profit margin anywhere over $3 per item, you can’t really lose by doing this.

AA batteries are about 7 cents if you buy in bulk. You are paying more for those fancy brochures used to staple the receipt to in case the product doesn’t work. Now you will have to deal with less customer returns as well, which also saves you money and bad will. (See the math here?)

If you have a profit margin that is high, Say $70. You will have to convert 1 sale in every 250 to a returning customer or a referral for it to break even.

I guarantee you will be head and shoulders above the competition that are still standing there like misers, taking them back out of the gadget before asking you if you would like to buy batteries. To me, that is not just a missed opportunity of customer service. It’s downright counterproductive and borderline rude.

I can also promise you that the statement "I’m going to leave these in here, if you would like to buy extra batteries, this item takes Double A’s" will do more for your customer satisfaction than a Frisbee ever will.

Getting Your News Out There

The most time consuming part of press release marketing is to build a media list. This is why the companies that distribute press releases charge so much to do it. They have built extensive databases with every possible piece of information they might need. You are not paying for the service as much as you are for the use of their database.

Building your media list requires a lot of legwork on your part to find, classify, and target your contacts.

Start with the publications you already know. Your local media, the papers and magazines you already read, the channels you watch. Use the knowledge you already have to find your targets.

When you have completed the list of your known outlets, it’s time to broaden your horizons.
The internet is full of directories; it’s the perfect place to start to find media outlets that fit your idea of what you would like to spread yourself to.

Media Directories

US Newspapers - http://www.usnpl.com/
Yahoo Media Directory - http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/
News link - http://www.newslink.org/
Refdesk - http://www.refdesk.com/paper.html

Create a Database

As you identify the publications you want. Add them to a database of some sort. A basic Excel Spreadsheet or a simple Access Database works well for a job like this. Even your email address book can be used.

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You can download a Basic Spreadsheet here
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Target the Right Journalist

Once you have a publication, the most important step you can do to improve your chances is to target the right journalist. It’s far better to send a press release to a journalist that normally writes about your topic than to send it through the “catch all” emails and fax numbers.

Go to the publications website; see if they publish an online version. If you are lucky, this will also include the e-mail to the author of the article. This is the goldmine. You get the name of the author that has shown an interest in your topic area, and a direct channel to their inbox.

– Warning –

Try not to cause unnecessary work

If you intend to send the email to more than one writer at the same publication; Do NOT send separate emails. Send it to all of them in the CC Field. So that they can clearly see who else got it. You don’t want two people from the same publication working on the same story. That will happen once, and the next time they won’t touch it again since they wasted time before.

Fax

Some publications want you to fax them the release. If this is the case, find out what the fax is for the journalist you want to target. If that is not possible, Make sure that you attention it to the person you want. Faxes arrive by the truckload to a major publication. And if you don’t target someone, you risk getting lost in the shuffle of things.

Create a corporate list

Often overlooked, you can make a lot of progress if you build a list with companies you want to associate yourself with, potential advertisers, existing and prospect partners, Industry Leaders etc. It is never a bad idea to include these in your list.

Follow Up

Once you’ve sent your release. Try to follow up with those that you sent it to through a phone call, it does wonders to be picked up if you call them, and ask if they got it, if you can send them anything else. or answer any questions. Again, if you do a little of their work for them, they’ll reward you for it in the long run.

If you have a large list, Make sure that you follow up with the most important ones, as well as the ones that you already have a relationship with. Always nurture your press contacts, they are worth every ounce of effort.

Free Press Release Services

You should also consider news aggregate services like the free press release services, as well as posting your press release onto places like Digg, Reddit, Propeller etc.

Here are two free news release services that function as aggregates. and news people do read them. So you definately want to post your release here too since it does increase your chances with no cost and barely any effort.

Free-Press-Release – http://www.free-press-release.com/
Open PR - http://www.openpr.com/

Condition the Journalists

To maximize your chances, you need to condition the people that pick up your press release. If you follow the basic guidelines, you will give them max benefit for minimum work. This conditions them to look for you again when they need something to publish.

You want to become their "go-to" resource when they need something, you can only do that by providing the best possible release - with easy access followup and supporting information. Do that, and you’ll be rewarded.

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Press Release Marketing if done right, is one of the most powerful, low-cost marketing channels. Don’t miss out on the business you can generate from it.

Good Luck!

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Previous Articles on this topic

How to Create a Media Kit
How to Write a Press Release

Press Releases are extremely powerful marketing and branding tools. They are almost zero cost, and becoming a news item carries a credibility that paid advertising can never achieve.

But unless your press releases are actually picked up, they have very little effect, apart from being a useful resource for fleshing out your media kit like i mentioned in that article.

You need to write the press release in a way that will appeal to your target audience. The problem, is that your target audience now is the press, and they are not likely to succumb to sales pitches and hype.In fact, they are highly allergic to it.

It’s time to bring out the Journalist in you, and write news.

Mind your Format

A well written press release should follow a standard format, this is not the time to be creative. You will do better if you appeal to the familiar when a reporter picks up your release and looks at it. Don’t make them think and wonder about where you are.

Here is an example of a standard format that works well.

Breakdown

1. Top - Logo or company name

Don’t forget to be clear about who you are. This is a great way to be noticed on an overcrowded desk for instance.

2. Contact Information

Make sure that the person you put here is the best one for answering questions. And that they will be available. I’ve seen far too many CEO’s demanding that they be put as the contact on Press Releases only to miss being picked up because they didn’t have time to answer their phones.

3. Date It

Make sure you put the date on it. News are perishable, so the release date is almost as important as the actual news.

5. For Immediate Release

Theoretically, you could put a future release date here, I don’t suggest it though because it will get lost in the shuffle before you get to that date. Better to write the text in the press release so that it includes an eventual future date instead. Don’t make it complicated on anyone by asking them to read it now, and publish it next week. Not to mention that your news might get “leaked” before you want them to.

Headline

This is your moment to shine, don’t give them a bad headline. If you normally write for the Web, be extra careful. Web headlines don’t normally work well in traditional media.

A good headline is clear, conversational, and attention getting. Don’t give away the lead in, or the ending of an article if you can avoid it. There are plenty of good resources for writing headlines, but the best you can find is the people around you. Write five or ten versions, and ask people what they like best.

Avoid trying to be sensational if the story isn’t. That’s just going to annoy both the reporter, and probably the reader if it gets picked up as is.

Don’t try to plug yourself in the headline. It’s cheap, cheesy and never flies. No matter how much you think it would be great to have your company in the headline, just remember that it’s better to be picked up at all. And chances are that if you try to sell yourself with cheesy copy. You’ll never get that far.Your best bet is to go and read as many news paper headlines as you can find and learn that way.

Headlines are normally written in all caps in press releases.

Subheading

The Subheading is where you get a chance to sell the story, you should give a little more flesh here, but still keep it so that you don’t give away everything, Clarify the background but keep the real story for the body.

Example

Here is an example using a post i wrote a while back.

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Bad Headline and Subheading

AMAZING BLOG ADVOCATES FOUR DAY WORKWEEK

The Weakest link, a fresh new marketing blog has determined that companies should let their employees work longer days and get three day weekends to save on transportation costs.

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No reporter worth his salt will pick this up, its clearly a promotional stunt, it’s self-promoting and cheesy and it doesn’t work. Ever!

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Better Headline and Subheading

GAS PRICES WARRANT THREE DAY WEEKEND

Employers are forced to consider new scheduling solutions to offset rising travel costs

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This is better because it has a headline that states the topic, and still raises why questions, the subheading is better because it answers the question, but still leaves a lot to be said.

Lead In Paragraph

The lead in paragraph is the most important part of writing you do here. It has to be interesting, informative, and well written if you are to have any chance at all. I can only suggest reading a lot of articles to get the feel for how this is normally done.

The capturing Lead is the difference between journalistic writing and a school report. It is the baited hook that will grab the readers attention.

It should answer most if not all of the who, what, when, where, why, how. Answer no less than three of those. If you don’t get that part right, you are leaving too many holes in the story, and it becomes hard for a publication to pick up without a lot of extra work.

Body

The body of the press release covers all the supporting facts. This is where you can mention your company more specifically. But do not fall to the temptation to push a sales pitch in here. The reporter has no interest whatsoever in helping you make money. And even less to paint you out to be better than you are. So as soon as they smell that particular rat on your press release. It normally goes into the circular archive.

Give the reasons and rationality. Include the supporting evidence and round off with a quote or two. The quotes are very important, most news stories will have at least one if you read through a paper. Get them one right away and you just took that hassle of their table. less work for them, equals more chances of getting picked up.

The Closing Paragraph

The closing paragraph is a place where you can make conclusions. Remember that in News writing, it is perfectly acceptable to end a story with a question. One thing i’ve noticed is that a pondorous statement works really well. A thought as to what this might be, or a prediction as to what may come because of this. A great place to learn this is to listen to the evening news. They almost always close with a cliffhanger of that kind.

Boilerplate

This is an old term meaning text that gets reused over and over. You can simply use the same text about your company in ever press release. Remember to write it in third person, and avoid the standard buzz words. Amazing, Unique, Pioneering, etc. Reporters are bad targets for hype.

Suffice to say - Never BS a BS artist.

Call to action

After the three hashes ### (which marks the end of the press release.) Insert a short paragraph with contact information and a call to action, you can invite them to schedule interviews, Get copies of research for verification etc. make this running text, give them a quick easy way to get what they need to publish it.

This is by far the best way to better your chances. A reporter on a time-crunch will look at a press release and consider what needs to be done before it can hit the press. If you have made those steps easy for them. Your press release will have a greater chance of making it.

Keep it Short

I’ve written and released well over 1000 press releases. And i have never seen one that was more than two pages get picked up. Single page releases get published almost five times as often as two page ones.

Long stories are written by reporters, they work on those for a long time. Press releases published “as is” are almost always fillers. So if you make it too long, there will be nowhere to fit it. If they want a long story on your company, they will do the work to flesh out the release you wrote on one page themselves.

Some thoughts to remember

- Read big reporters in big papers. These guys can write stories, its what they do. Unless you are a star reporter for the NY Times or Washington Post, don’t miss the opportunity to study those who are.

- Write from the journalists perspective - Third person only (unless you are quoting of course.)

- Put the sales pitch away - Reporters aren’t stupid, and they’ll be happy to give you the number to their advertising salesmen if that’s what you want printed.

- Is this interesting? important? most of all, is it newsworthy? Double check everything with the “So What” question. If it isn’t interesting enough to pass that simple point, don’t put it in there.

- Lose the ego, If you are too busy to answer the phone, you are not the person that should be listed as the contact person. You are dealing with people on tight deadlines. Don’t make them wait for information. It’s better to have the receptionist listed, - and get published- than to have your own name in the trashcan.

The Marketers Trick

- Add a little extra white space between paragraphs.

A long time ago, i worked in a news room. And i saw that the stories that got filed close to deadline often had handwritten notes in between paragraphs and in the margin.

It’s simple really when you think about it. When you are running out of time, you will grab what you can finish quickly. Not something where you have to go on an archaeological expedition for your notes. Work with them here and give them something to write on. You’ll see that it works to your advantage.

Good Luck with your writing. In the next article I’ll show you how to distribute your press releases.

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Read the rest of the Blogpreneur Series

So you want to go Viral?

Are you sure you haven’t?

When one person spreads your blog or site to another without your direct involvement, you just went viral. When enough people do it at once, you have an epidemic.

What about those 294 hits from Stumble that got you 3 links to your blog? That is the true viral effect of good blogging; the steady spread of good quality posts that will bring a growing flow of readers, which will bring more hits, more readers, more links. The never ending and creeping exponential growth that builds on itself perpetually. This is true viral marketing.

As soon as you realize what viral marketing really is, you’ll realize that what you probably  associated with it, is merely the sensational viral infection. The Ebola level of viral.

Although the Ebola effect is going to be great for your ego the day it hits, it’s going to hit, and disappear. And the traffic you get is probably not going to be based on what you are really about, but more on one single article. If you can’t keep that level, they won’t be coming back for long. The problem here is that the Ebola level isn’t what the smart blogger wants. A blogger wants something that hits, sticks, and keeps spreading.

You Don’t Want to be Ebola, You Want to Be Herpes

Ebola is sensational, it’s a once off event that is hard - if not impossible - to maintain. And since so many are misinterpreting the true value of the “lesser infection” they are all shooting for the sensationalism. Link Bait headlines that are a stretch at best to fit into the article. Fabricating entire stories the list of tricks is long. And it works sometimes, but even when it does, it doesn’t translate to what you want.

You want to target the right people. 100 targeted visitors are better than 1000 random ones any day. Why? because if they are targeted, chances are that you have something they want to see more of. You will get return visits, and referrals, links and comments. As you get those, you’ll get more readers, more people that can spread you to others. That’s viral marketing!

Ebola levels of Viral Marketing are most commonly achieved by creating something amazing that isn’t necessarily well targeted. It’s often funny, shocking, and widely appealing. Which is why it takes off like it does. People like the advertising, but couldn’t care less about the product. Which means that for you to do it again, you have to repeat the feat that didn’t bring you the right people to begin with.

If you shoot for the lower levels, constantly repeating small successes, you will eventually see your spread increasing. When this happens, your chances of hitting those epidemic levels increase every time you post a good article. It goes back to the one percent rule. It’s always better to slowly progress than to have spikes of traffic that quickly disappear.

Instant Gratification - Or Long Term Success?

If you are looking for an ego boost, then it’s great. If you are looking to grown over the long term. It’s better to aim for solid, repeatable quality. When you can bring one person back over and over, you will eventually get passed on to someone else. Repeat readers like RSS Subscribers are your best bet for achieving this.

A company that got it right never had Diggs front page to rely on, for them it was a matter of getting their name out there one person at a time. Every time that person used their service, it spread a little further. No real fireworks, no goofy guy’s home movie to sell them over YouTube.

You might have heard of Hotmail once or twice yourself. They did it by adding their link to the bottom of every email sent from one of their accounts. One at a time, they spread the word.

If you constantly shoot for the Epidemics, you’ll constantly be disappointed. If you aim for a silent spreading infection that perpetuates with every post you make. You are going to see some amazing results.

(Yes, the title of this post is Viral in itself - I’ll let you know how it went)

If you are intending to market your business to - or through - media channels, your best friend will be a well designed Media kit.

Media kits (also called Press Kits) help interested parties to find key information about you, your company and your products right when they need it. The easier this information is to obtain, and use, the better your chances are of getting it picked up.
Getting free publicity is never a bad thing.

A Media Kit is Useful For:

1. Spreading the word
Press kits act as a marketing tool to reporters of all kinds. Whether the person is producing materials for a blog or a major newspaper, a well designed press kit will get their attention. If you create a press kit that can get a reporters attention, you will be rewarded with increased exposure. Then it’s up to you to convert that exposure to whatever goal you are pursuing.

2. Attracting Advertisers
A press kit will give a potential advertiser access to the information they are looking for to make a decision. Having the right information in there tells them that you are the sign post they are looking for. Transparency, sells advertising. Don’t skimp on facts and figures.

3. Projecting Authority
Press kits are bragging posts. You can add things here that my may not want to publish in your own publication. How many are referencing you, what is being said about you. Things that might go against the normal rules of modesty can and SHOULD be in a press kit. Projecting authority is the key to bridging into new areas. If you write great blog posts, you might get asked to comment on a TV show. But you have to be able to show why you are the person they want.

Appeal to their Laziness

Remember, you are dealing with people looking for something. If they are looking for something to publish, chances are that they are on a deadline. Make it complete, interesting and do as much of their work for them as you can. You’ll see your press kit appear in places you never thought of. The stressed writer will gladly take well written text from press kits and republish it instead of missing a deadline.

People are inherently lazy; write text in third person that can be reused unaltered. if it gets republished, the sentence "We are a company who builds…" will have to be rewritten. Writing in third person appeals to the laziness inherent in most people. (And to the stressed journalist even more.)

What to Include

A press kit is comprised of three basic elements. (Static, Images, Dynamic)

1. Static Information
Facts about the company, things that don’t change or at least stays relatively fixed. This is where you can put all your background information.

Answer the standard battery of questions:
Whom - What - When - Where - Why - How

Write this information in easy to read, friendly, third person voice. DON’T make it read like a vision statement. A mission or vision statement is almost only republished when someone is writing about mission or visions statements.

The Press Release Trick

The static section should include Press-Releases. You should make a press release or two every month. A steady flow of press releases shows activity, which makes you newsworthy on its own. If you have tree releases spanning the last 18 months, you are not looking very active. Appeal to a publisher by telling them you are a business that is worth taking notice of.

You are also telling them that they better move before someone else gets the all important scoop on the next one. News people HATE being scooped, which works to your advantage.

Awards, recognitions, and references

Show them that you are the authority. Any accolade you have received should be noted and if possible shown in the static section. This is a lemming syndrome. If others think you are noteworthy, the person reading your press kit will think so too. If it’s an ego boost to you, put in in there.

2. Images
Remember that images are often a requirement, Logos, as well as pictures of relevant people and events.

Cover the Bases
Remember the lazy aspect. Don’t make them work to publish your image.

Include several versions of logos, banners and images. It is better for you to have several sizes than have your logo cut and butchered or even worse, skipped, because it doesn’t fit. If they can pick one that fits their available space, you don’t risk losing information because they re-sized your full width banner to a thumbnail.

Several formats

Have Black and White images ready. Some images just don’t look good when converted to B/W so it’s better to have done your own work there as well.

Print quality - Which normally is 300 dpi (dots per inch)
Try to include at least two of the following formats: TIFF, GIF, EPS (PDF is becoming more acceptable to most).

Web quality - which normally is 72 dpi
Try to include both JPEG and GIF

List images with a thumbnail and a clear description, and list the file formats available under as download links.

3. Dynamic Information
This is information that appeals to advertisers looking for a website or blog to publish their ads on. Show them everything they want in a simple easy for follow format. And keep it up to date. If possible use things like widgets to show your data in real time.

Hits and visits
How many hits you get on your site per day/week/month. How many customers frequent your location. You can also be even more specific, and tell them Weekday vs. Weekend, Data, I’ve seen that this can swing a publisher that has a specific target audience.

Subscribers
If you have an RSS feed or a mailing list, tell them how many you are reaching. Easiest way to do this is to have a feed widget published that shows your current number of subscriptions. Do not publish that widget however if your readers are low (some say 50, i’d say 100.) It turns away future subscribers to see low RSS Counts. But more on that in another post.

Demographics
Demographics are a huge selling point to advertisers. Get as much info as possible. You can gather information in several ways. A quick sidebar poll for instance is easy to create and a powerful way to get this information. Having it ready for your potential advertiser will increase your sales dramatically.

Display demographic information in charts and numbers. The Visual is a great selling tool.

Previous Advertiser Click through rates
If you’ve had ads before, tell them how many hits they generated.. If you can justify the price you are asking, you’ll get less apprehension from future buyers.

Be specific if you can. Tell them the difference between separate sizes and positions etc

Tell them the Price
If you are selling advertising space, don’t make it a mystery to find out how much. Let them know what you offer, what locations, sizes and prices of each opportunity.

Here is a pricing policy tip, Give them several levels with the second to last made unattractive by the top level.
- Text ad in RSS feed - $79/month
- 120 by 120 Thumbnails in sidebar - $199/month
- Banner $ 299/month
- RSS Feed and Banner $300 per month.

This trick actually increases the sales of the top level. The third option will get no sales, but it makes the top offer look attractive. If you get rid of the "package" top level, less people will buy the $299 banner than would the $300 package. opting for one of the lower levels instead . Always have the "duh" price in there. It might seem silly, but it has proven very effective.

Actual Factual

Don’t subject a publisher to hype. If you make a claim, make it a truthful one. They will not be very pleased with you if they publish something that turns out to be false. These people are spreading your name and increasing your notoriety, don’t make them regret it.

If you sell advertising space based on inflated numbers, you are guilty of false advertising yourself. You sell advertising more if you already have advertising there. So losing advertisers because they didn’t get what they expected will slow down your future sales as well when your ad slots are sitting empty.

Give them everything they need

If you are looking to get noticed, try to have everything that a publisher might want in one easy to access location. This includes the text, images, facts and figures etc. Make this accessible in one single file. A .zip or .rar file is online publishing standard. Again, appeal to their laziness. Give them what they want prepackaged, and ready to go.

They will want a quick fact sheet of information that includes:
- Name of Company and or Publication
- Contact information
- Exact URL
- Submission Deadlines
- Payment and Ordering information

Tell Them the Copyrights

Give clear instructions what they can publish, what they can change. And what they have to either keep as is, or request permission before changing. This is a common concern for someone looking to republish information, and if they can’t get it quick enough. They might skip you for someone that has it clearly listed.

Make it Easy to Find

Don’t hide your press kit in a link under "about" or "contact", give it its own link prominently displayed.
PRESS - PRESS KIT - MEDIA KIT work very well as link names. Whatever you choose, Just make sure that people don’t have to look around to find it. Although many hide it in the footer, if you want to sell ads, your better off putting it in the header.

Don’t Lose Out

A well designed media kit resolves the major problem of time. If it is available when needed, you don’t have to worry about missing an opportunity because you couldn’t take a call or answer an email in time.

Most bloggers will agree that rather than signing up for the ad networks, actually doing the work yourself, contacting the advertisers and selling your real estate is more powerful as a money earner. It’s obvious; no one else is taking a percentage of the price. The downside is that now you have to figure out how to get these advertisers.

So how do you attract someone when you are just starting out?

You need to build your blog to a certain extent in order for it to be attractive, if you have 12 visitors a month, No one is going to want to pay much for space. So the trick would be to boost your numbers first. Advertisers are paying for exposure. You’ll have to figure out how to get those numbers before you will be interesting to most.

Always consider having a media kit on your site for advertisers to look at. It increases the conversion rate for every attempt you’ll make on selling a slot. Media Kits are complete information packages about you, your blog, its demographics, and its current statistical data.

You should always have a page set up for advertisers to look at regardless of whether you have a media kit or not. The page should contain the sales and payment information for instance. I suggest putting a price chart on there as well. Let them know from the start what they are buying and for how much.

But there is more that you can do than just having a media kit, tricks that you can apply that are powerful, simple, and most of all effective.

Start by setting yourself up right. Make some space for your ads, Find the placements you want to sell and create the areas for it. You really need to have something before you can sell it. Find out the most common Banner sizes; pick the ones you think will fit well with your current layout. Don’t just slap oversized ads on your blog, it looks unprofessional and it will cost you sales.

Now, you can consider the “your ad here” blank ad space linked to your information page. But I would not recommend that in case you don’t have other ads up already. It looks unattractive to an advertiser to be the only one buying the spot. If no one else is, why should they? Never have just that space on your blog, it tells people that no one wants to advertise there.
Instead of the blank space, use The “You’re Losing Business” trick

Find a company that advertises on blogs like yours, and simply copy the ad to your spot. If you choose wisely, they normally won’t mind the extra exposure, and you’ll appear to have advertisers.
Pick wisely, because you are going to use the ad to sell it to other people in the same industry. Showing them that their competitor is getting exposure and that they can either “buy them out” or get a spot next to it.

As soon as you have sold some other spaces, you can contact the company you gave free publicity to, and show them the data. How many hits you generated etc., and ask them if they are willing to continue the exposure. Don’t forget to tell them what competitors of theirs you are branding at this time.

Advertise yourself or your Friends

If you feel uncomfortable with that, just create ads for other sites that you or friends own. Anything is really better than nothing. Again, no one wants to be the first. It’s always better to appear to be popular in a popularity game.

A third option, and perhaps the most ethical is to contact the companies that you feel make a good target for your advertising, and offer them a free trial. Once that trial is about to run out. Contact them and try to sell them on continuing based on the numbers you have already produced.

Either way you want to do it, remember that before you have substantial numbers. You won’t be getting much income. Once that happens, advertising sales can be one of the most rewarding ways to build a steady income.

How to Price

Determining how much you should charge for ad space is the hard part. A very simple way to determine this is to Use AdSense “channels” to help you out.

If you want to sell a 125×125 spot. Put an AdSense button there assigned to a specific channel and see what it generates. Then I would suggest a decent starting point would be to add 25% to that income for a fixed ad. In other words, if your AdSense earned you $1 dollar in a given day, then sell it for $1.25, and do a little simple math.
Week = $1.25 x 7 = $8.75 - sell it for $9 per week.

Start reasonably low, Its better to undersell your opposition and make a little less, than getting nothing. Instead of worrying about if you could be making more, remember that before your first sale, you were making nothing. Take your time, build you business with good planning, one step at a time. You’ll be better off in the long run.

Digger wrote very good article on how to calculate your prices once you get your feet wet. Where you’ll also learn a lot about how to calculate long term discounts. A strongly suggested read.
Check it out here. A Calculator For Properly Pricing Your BlogAds And Sponsorships

A little planning. Some basic preparation, and good old fashioned hard work can turn a blog into a money maker. How much? That is really up to you and your determination.

Some ways are easier than others; some will earn you more money than others. But in the long run, it’s all about building a solid brand and a good base of readers before you will see much return.

1. Advertising Networks
Advertising networks such as AdSense, Adready, etc. is the most common way of monetizing.
It’s Important to realize that most ad networks don’t work very well until you have search engine traffic. People who arrive from other sources don’t click as much as you’d think. However, a few cents can always be made on page impressions alone. Never a bad idea, but not the goldmine its painted out to be.

It’s easy to sign up, it’s easy to implement, and in most cases, it’s problem free. It is however not a great way to make a lot of money unless you have serious amounts of good search engine traffic.

2. Direct Selling Ads
You can sell Ad-Space to companies direct. This is not that hard to do, but it does require you to do a little more work on your own. You also need to monitor the ads, adding and removing as contracts expire. Your price and revenue will depend on both your traffic, and your negotiating skills.

3. E-Books
If you have quality material to sell, then you can write an e-book and sell it through your website. You can also upload e-books for sale to Amazon. The E-book is the most common gateway to serious diversified monetization. It is also a powerful traffic builder if used right.

4. Print Books
If you are a blogger, you might have it in your to write a full book for print.
Print on demand, Google, Amazon and other services have great ways to market print books alongside your own blog. A book has the additional benefit of being a perpetual money earner. Once it’s out there, you can reap the benefits for a very long time.

5. Merchandise
You have a blog? Maybe there is a market for some t-shirts, posters, Coffee Mugs or other ideas. Cafepress has made it very easy to make merchandize with zero cost. You can of course do it the traditional way too. Which gives you better profit per item, but has the problem of finding a manufacturer of your products, stock and shipping.

If you are already producing something, you can of course add a web shop to the blog. But that’s really not about blogging. That’s more a traditional e-business approach.

6. Affiliate Marketing
Some businesses will make you their sales person. Either by just advertising, or by actually doing the sales work for them and earning a commission (see point 7.) This is one of the most popular ways of monetizing, but it has also become a bit of a scourge of the blogging world. Be careful since this can damage your brand.

7. Build your own Amazon (or other) shop
Amazon allows you to advertize a specific product. You can choose the exact ad you want to show. This can allow you to make a product review, and advertise the sale through Amazon. Doing this tastefully can actually be a very good way to earn a living, I’ve seen some very sophisticated applications of this approach.

8. Member Services
Provide a subscription based part of the website that gives access to VIP information, services etc. If you are trying this one, make sure that the value given is worth the investment. Or you will get plenty of bad reviews written about you and your service.

9. Consulting / Coaching
If you are a specialist, or have a business where you can give advice, you can leverage that by giving either online advice or channeling customers to your real world business. This works especially well for Consultants and Personal Coaches, but designers, programmers, and other computer oriented blogs can make good money this way too.

10. Paid Posts
There are plenty of companies out there that will pay you to make a post on your blog. You’ll need some traffic and basic notoriety before this becomes an option. Be careful! You might lose credibility if you do not disclose that you are making a paid post. There are enough bloggers out there that get the same offers as you do. Your readers will know what’s real and whats been paid for sooner or later.

11. Links
Another common offer is to get paid for links from your page. This only becomes viable once you have a decent pagerank, and since this is frowned upon by Google, you might get that pagerank taken away. Not something I’d advice on doing.

12. Sell it
Blogs are being sold all the time, once you have designed your blog and brought it up to speed, there might be a market to sell it. However, building a blog and traffic etc just to sell it rarely is a very effective way to spend your time. If you are a great blogger, that has all the tricks of Traffic building down. Then you might be the person to have this as a goal. Otherwise, time/value is just not there.

Blogging for a living is not as easy as many advertisers out there might want you to believe. But it is possible for those with drive, determination and a firm grasp on the difference between leveraging, and selling their brand name down the tube.

Good Luck!

The New Marketing Channels

Read the previous Entries:

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

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So the market has changed, there is no denying that fact any longer. Now the question is how do we adapt and break in to this new marketplace? Since the traditional avenues of direct marketing, commercials, advertising etc. are drying up, we need to find the openings that have been created instead.

These new openings revolve around word of mouth, this is the new hard currency of marketing and the reason so many traditional dinosaur marketers have problems adapting. Word of mouth is hard to measure, largely uncontrollable, and almost impossible to buy without running the risk of being exposed as a "cheater." Hence, it is every traditional marketers and CEO’s nightmare. What can’t be exactly measured, reported and controlled with a spreadsheet tends to be ignored. This is fine; those who adapt will just have more business when the rest keel over.

Advertising Is Dead, Long Live Advertising

The basic rules of advertising have not really changed. AIDAS (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, Satisfaction,) still holds true. The major change that social media has added, is Confirmation . Instead of having a single place in the chain, confirmation is now the center of the customer’s decision making process. Although the confirmation part is integral, it can be skipped. It can also occur between each step of the chain, multiple times if necessary. This is why the hard sell doesn’t work anymore either. The customer is demanding the right to abort any decision process to return to the confirmation part. More often than not, a hard sell approach will trigger this apprehension and drive the customer to verify with their network.

To avoid hype, people are looking to their networks to find someone who knows and is willing to talk. These experts can be anyone with the forum and will to voice their opinion. These networks are multilayered, a friend might not know the answer, but knows a blog that discusses the topic. This is considered more reliable than the corporate website.

The initial reach and market penetration is not happening through traditional mass advertising, but through targeted lifestyle and spokesperson advertising. In order to reach the new target audience, the powerful marketers of tomorrow will be on an increasing level people with some notoriety in a specific field. Being famous is no longer enough to create interest - context is.

The use of celebrities has become synonymous with major brand advertising, and as such, it carries little or no reference trustworthiness. Whereas smaller artists, athletes, bloggers, and other micro-celebrities are beginning to carry more weight because they are often seen as independent and with a higher degree of integrity and honesty.

What is important to notice is that the impact value of celebrities is diminishing, whereas the group specific role-model is increasing. Group specific in this case means anyone can represent you, as long as they are contextual. You can notice this in that celebrity endorsements have declined compared to just a couple of years ago.

No One Cares What Tiger Woods Drinks

The consumer is looking for contextual endorsements; a golf club is a great promotion for Tiger, IF he plays it himself. Or he can explain why this is a great club for an amateur and use his expertise to project believability. But he can’t sell Pepsi or any other drink very well anymore. Especially if he isn’t seen drinking it on the course. We see it more and more, celebrity advertising for non contextual products is dropping fast.

Also noteworthy here is that the reason for the non-celebrity advertising being more prevalent is not the ineffectiveness of the celebrity as such, but the ineffectiveness of TV advertising as a whole. There is simply a need to cut the production cost of TV and print campaigns to balance the reduced conversion rates that they are seeing.

This is where the micro-celebrity comes in. People are looking to the smaller more focused person, one that by default places a lot on the line with his or her word. These are the real marketers of the future.

A blogger promoting a product can have a higher impact value than a Tiger Woods promotion. Unless it is something that Mr. Woods uses on the course and thereby places his own reputation and success on the line with. Since very few people believe that Tiger actually drives a Buick, his endorsement of the vehicles they produce has been reduced, we have seen most car manufacturers move away from the celebrity endorsement to market to what the customer needs are, which currently is price and mileage. Mr. Woods’ contract with Buick expires in ‘09; I for one would be surprised if it was extended past that point.

Blessed are the Geeks

Traditionally, a marketing campaign would find their target market, and then find the middle segment -the large part of the curve - that consisted of normal users. Early adapters and latecomers were ignored as this market was the small portion of the fringe. And it was thought that early adopters would simply respond faster to traditional advertising.

As I discussed in Part 1, the middle of the road are no longer interested in hearing about your product. They have become exceptionally good at ignoring marketing messages. To get traction now, you need the people with the highest propensity to look for, and be excited by, new items.

All of a sudden, we have arrived at the evolution. Now, previously ignored market segments of earliest adopters, The Geeks , are ruling the earth. By reaching them, catering to their specific needs and wants, - which in most cases is extensive and factual information - you will create the necessary buzz around your product or service. And only through them will you be able to properly penetrate the social media networks to get enough spread. These geeks are key players in certain areas, and often have large followings of people who listen to what they say.

The early adopter is a decision maker based on two primary criteria. They want remarkable products, and they need plenty of information. In order to reach them, this information has to be available for them to become excited. What is important to recognize is that the early adopter will sell a new product before they have seen it. Your advertising can’t just sell on spin anymore; it has to sell on fact. Your word of mouth reach through these networks is the spin.

Watch Out For the Fake Geek

Although the Geeks have already passed along the social media craze well into the mid range of "normal targetable consumers." They are also the ones that pioneer the new social media sites. When a social media site becomes packed with dinosaur marketers spamming everybody, the geeks leave. When they do leave they take with them much of the credibility of that particular channel to the next evolution in social media,

To the dinosaur marketer, the obvious solution is to create a "fake geek." jumping on new forums to spread your message, but this doesn’t work well either. The "real geeks" will search and destroy any such effort, only when the onslaught is too big will they give up protecting their realm and move on to the next one. You can never maintain spam and early adopters in the same network for long. You can stay there and spam with once the early adopters have left, but your conversion rates will drop instantly when this is the norm.

A Shilling Backlash

The "shill" - a person that is paid to act like an unaffiliated customer endorsing a product, is perhaps the worst idea possible to work within this realm. It is considered one of the worst types of dishonest spam, and people are becoming VERY good at spotting this. As soon as a shill is suspected, the community will immediately paint the company out to be dishonest and underhanded. A real, honest endorsement from a customer is gold, to get caught manufacturing these is equal to suicide in most cases.

When approaching the marketplace as it looks today, honesty and disclosure have become watchwords. The customer is too smart to accept anything less than ethical marketing. They will force ethics by actively de-railing and exposing any attempts they spot to circumvent the rules of the new social networks. In the new marketplace you need to be both remarkable, and forthcoming, or you will fail on reaching the target audience.

Going Viral - Not What it Looks Like

The magic word today is Viral. The holy grail of social marketing is to find that one pearl that will spread itself like wildfire. And many companies are making a decent profit on promising viral marketing. This is an area to watch, and watch carefully. In many ways, it does not convert like you would expect. If used to spread a message that isn’t true, or leaves the customer feeling cheated, you will hear about it.

Viral marketing requires that the advertising itself is noteworthy, not the product. This creates a disconnect between what advertising is accomplishing, and what marketing should be doing. Viral marketing is so powerful that it can be intoxicating in itself. But the effect of a great viral campaign to promote a so-so product is disappointing in many ways. You’ll get noticed, which can be great for the ego, but if you’re not living up to the expectations. It won’t be good for business.

You could theoretically create something like "Poo-Perfume - He’ll never forget your scent ", and through a funny video ad blast the viral campaign wide open. You have the two parts of a successful viral campaign, the outlandish product and a funny advertisement that would be noteworthy by itself. But apart from gag stores, no one would buy your particular scent. These viral campaigns are excellent for brand building and to keep your name in front of a potential customer. However, the product has to deliver quality that matches the hype, or you are selling Poo-Perfume to everyone that thinks they bought Chanel.

The viral campaign is great for Branding, and to keep an already recognized name in front of customers. It may however not provide many sales. In order for the viral campaign to function, it has to provide an interest that can be converted into action, and that can only be done if the rest of the solutions are in place. Many of the viral campaigns you see out there miss this goal by a mile. The ad is watched millions and millions of times on YouTube, but conversion are average at best.

Since the viral spread is so powerful, if your product or service fails to meet expectations when the customers flock to find you, your negative effect can kill you as quickly as the viral boosted you to begin with. Remember that the social networks are as powerful in bringing bad products down as they are blasting a great idea into orbit.

It’s Your Call - Evolve, Or Perish

You can and must prepare to handle the new expectations of the marketplace. Social media has changed the behavior of your customer. The technical evolution of cell phones with IM, Email, Twitter and everything else connected into one persons pocket has left zero room for error. Every customer has to be treated like The editor of the New York Times, because quite frankly, their reach can be just as big.

Passing On a Sale Is Long Term Profit

Your name, brand, and business are on the line every time you try. Since you don’t know how many readers follow this particular customer. Your only bet is to apply good old fashioned business sense. It’s better to talk a customer out of a sale that isn’t what they want than to have him or her talk 400 people out of making a purchase later.

Quality Is Your Only Hope

Without it you will be left without remedy when someone is displeased. Your best bet is to fix a problem as they occur. If your business model is based on sub standard products, you can’t do this. The amount of complaints will take the profit right out of any venture. And the lack of remedy will be noticed, discussed and taken apart in public forums that you have no real control over. If you lack a direct relationship between your promise, and your delivery you won’t last long.

You can’t adopt old techniques to new media.

The key trait of any dinosaur is to attempt to fit old into new. Remember that the new media networks were created so that traditional marketing can be avoided. The only way to get old style messages into new media is to change the delivery method, which means you are trying to mass advertise without admitting that you are. We know by now that bring sneaky, underhanded, or dishonest is not the way to build relationships.

With Their Permission

Your customer is not willing to be accosted by marketing and hard sales anymore. Ask permission, don’t do it in a clandestine way either. Tell them what you want, and accept that the ones that are interested enough to give you permission to contact them are your best targeted audience to begin with. Anything less than a customer’s express permission is spam. Just because it is legal does not make it welcome.

When They Want It

Google is the key to many businesses success, being on page one there means that anyone that finds you. Should have been looking for what you have. This is why it’s a bad idea for you to have non-contextual search words on your webpage. It brings visitors that are looking for something else. Since they aren’t interested in what you have to tell them, you are wasting their time. Not a good place to start a relationship.

Customers Relations Spread

Your relationships with your customers will spread - Negative and positive experiences alike. Focus on the customer experience, and forget about the short term profit margin. You don’t like to be nickel and dimed, neither does your customer. The difference between the dinosaur age and today, is that your customer through social media and technology has a way of sharing this experience with everyone they know before they have reached their car.

The Market Is Not Yours to Take - But It Is Yours To Lose

You can’t blast your message out there until you reach enough people. There aren’t enough people interested to make it worth your effort. You can’t buy, get, or cheat your way successfully for long in the modern market. The customer is in control, and you are along for the ride.

They will not trust what you say, what your advertisements say, or what celebrities on TV say about you. They trust their networks, and their own experience. When you have their trust, you become part of that network, and they sell you to the rest of the world. Break that trust, and you just fired your best salesman.

Dinosaurs May Be a Dying Breed, But a Live One Can Still Kill You

Pay close attention to any idea that carries the traits of a Dinosaur Marketer. Anytime it sounds like they are about to break the cardinal rules of maintaining a good customer relationship as I’ve expressed here, they are liable to bring you into extinction with them.

You can’t really blame them; this evolution has shook up much of what was true in the past. Change is painful, hard and for some almost impossible when their entire world is built around providing a service that is no longer cost effective. Just be prepared to protect yourself and your company, because a dinosaur marketer isn’t willing or capable of doing it for you.

You can still read The Blogpreneur 1

So you are still convinced that you want to try your hand at the business of blogging for money? Good for you, determination and drive are the most important aspects of any business venture. You’ll need plenty of both to be a successful blogpreneur.

Now, remember what was said In Part 1. This IS a business, and you should treat it as such. Like any other business the better prepared you are before getting into it, the sooner you will see the results. Although learning on the job is a popular way to go with blogging, there are very few bloggers who can’t write a post called “what I wish I knew before I started blogging.”
This list is a combination of things I wish I had known and common problems I’ve observed.

1. Patience
It takes time, and you won’t see much return early on. It is however possible to succeed with hard work and staying power. If you don’t love the idea of working on this for months - maybe even years - before you start showing any real income. Do yourself a favor and spend the time doing other things. You’ll be less frustrated and just by walking down the street you have a better chance of picking up cents than a bad blog will.

2. Set Yourself Up For Success From The Beginning
Don’t try the “let’s see what happens” approach, remember this is a business, and businesses do better with good planning and preparation. Research everything, make a plan and research it again.

Frustration and disillusion are the two major killers of the blogpreneur. Be your own worst critic before you start and you’ll do a lot better once you get going. By doing your legwork early, you’ll produce a better blog and see less setbacks. Trust me, you’ll see enough of them as it is.

3. Get Self Hosted
Get your domain name, it’s not expensive, get your design worked out, do all the legwork before you get half way and have to make changes, redirecting your blog etc. It’s worth the $6 a month to get self hosted right away. If only to avoid future problems.

Although you can be successful on hosted blogs like Blogger etc., most professional bloggers choose the freedom of self hosting. You have much better control over anything from your layout to your content. I also think that you also have better control over your statistics than most free services offer. And good stats are key to understanding what your customers are doing.

4. Read Your Competition
The more you read, the better you will get at understanding why the big ones are constantly hitting it big. It’s not just their size, it’s the fact that they have tapped into what people want to read. Read their posts and read the comments that are left there. The number of comments are a decent indicator of the overall popularity of a post. So pay close attention to the posts with many comments.
Make sure that you don’t ignore the lessons they are teaching with every post they put out there. The giants are where they are because they know this game better than you do.

Never steal posts; it’s just bad business to get a bad name in the blogging world. It will make success a whole lot harder in the long run. That being said, when you read others posts that you like or maybe disagree with. Posting your own thoughts and linking back to their post is perfectly acceptable. Again, treat this like a real business. Approach it with integrity; it might not be as easy as cheating and stealing. But it’s the only way to last long enough to actually make a profit.

The more you read, the easier you will have to find topics you want to write about as well. Think of it this way. Whenever you see a photo from a famous author’s home, you will see books, lots and lots of books. And I bet you that the RSS readers of most A-list bloggers looks like the library of congress.

5. Make Blogging Friends
There are lots of blogging networks out there. BlogCatalog is a good example. Start by joining one or more of these communities, participate in the discussions. You will be able to pick up a ton of great advice before you have to learn through your own mistakes.

Treating blogging as a business means that you need to network. Set time aside everyday to participate in some kind of forum or other area. You will save time, frustration and money listening to the ones that have been doing this for a while.

6. Write For Your Readers, Not For The Money
Sure, you want to make money, but the second you forget that you have to get and keep readers, you will lose them and your potential earnings with them. Great writing on interesting topics brings people. And people are what is going to bring you money.

You will see the phrase “content is king” enough times to want to choke the person that coined it with their underwear. It’s a cliché, but like every cliché it became one because it’s true. If your writing isn’t great, chances are that you won’t get very far.

7. Forget About The 3 Million Dollar First Month
Forget about the 20 dollar first month too.
You probably won’t make money in the beginning, at least not to any great extent. The reason why so many quit early on is because they are writing their hearts out and getting close to nothing in return. Few readers, no money, little recognition are the trademarks of a new blog. Add to that the mistake of thinking that in 9 articles will be able to retire, and the disillusion is complete. (The reason for all those abandoned blogs I mentioned)

Blogging is hard and harsh. Unless you are prepared to stick with it, you have absolutely no chance of getting anywhere. Check out any of the great sites. And you will see that they have hundreds of articles. A basic reason they are here now is that they made it past the initial hump when things weren’t going so well.

8. Don’t Promote Something You Don’t Have
When you are new, write and write some more, tweak your layout, get it looking right. Each time someone visits a brand new, mostly empty blog, you may be losing a potential future reader because they don’t find anything worth coming back for. Get a good 10 - 15 posts online before you even consider hardcore promotion.

Use this early time to have friends look it over, tell you what they think, give you feedback on your writing and everything else. This is your product development. The sooner you get it right, the better off you’ll be.

9. Promote Others Before You Promote Yourself
While you are still new, use the time wisely to build good relationship and networks on the social media sites. Reddit , Technorati , Stumble , Digg , etc. Building a strong network of people who can help you drive traffic later will get you much better results than starting too soon. And doing it yourself is not very effective.

By actively participating in these networks without excessive self promoting, you will build a strong base for when you need the leverage.

10. Learn Basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
There are a ton of books, blogs and sites out there, and your competition is reading them. You should too. Learn enough to understand what works, and what is absolutely essential. The best earning websites are often the ones with page one listings on Google. There are no two ways around this. You won’t need to be the best SEO guru in the world right off the bat. But stay on top of this as well. The rules of this marketplace changes every time Google rewrites their algorithm, and you’ll have to adapt with it.

Also, those that arrive from a search engine are more likely to click ads than those that arrive from other sources. Since they are already searching for something, and the ads on your page are likely to be as relevant as your own page.

And for goodness sake, avoid that black hat temptation like the plague. A lot of your work will be for nothing if you get banned. It might be tempting to take that shortcut to the Google first page, but it will bite you in the rear eventually.

11. Patience
Yes I said that before, but it seems to be in such short supply among new bloggers I thought I’d mention it twice.

12. Write 20 Timeless Posts Before You Even Think About Launching
Writers block is something that happens to everyone, and can kill a new blog very quickly. If you have a set of posts that you can drop on the days that you have gotten completely stuck, you will be able to maintain your blog. Also remember that you will get sick, stuck in an emergency or have something else go wrong that will stop your writing. Having a backup is never a bad idea.

This is also a great way to ensure that you have enough to say about your topic to actually have a blog on it. If you can’t come up with 20 posts when it’s fresh, you’ll probably have trouble coming up with it later too. Making them timeless means that you can use one whenever you need it, any other blog post is to be treated like perishable goods.

When you do use one, try to write a replacement for it so that you never run out of posts.

13. Think of the next step (Yes I know this is a list of 12, but 11 doesn’t really count)

Always think one step further, what is the next level of your blog. Is it a book? Webcast? Vlog? The options are out there to keep innovating yourself. Keeping up with trends lets you stay on - if not ahead - of the curve and keep your blog fresh and inviting. Also thinking to the next step of what you can offer your readers is the best way to make sure you are leveraging the earning potential. Just go slow and produce quality, remember that value in your offer is everything to maintaining a good relationship.

Remember, as a business, the blog is like any other, you need to meet your customers’ expectations in order to get return business.

Blogging as a business is probably one of the lowest cost enterprises you can attempt, but with that comes the hoards of others who have the same idea. You have to be able to both stand up over the crowd as well as outlast most of them before your investment will give you a lasting and significant return.

The Blogpreneur-3 will focus on the monetizing itself. Ads, products and services you can use to earn an income. Don’t forget to subscribe to get the remainder of this series.

Attracting the Customer You Want

First of all, there really isn’t a wrong customer. Any customer that buys your product or service with the right intention and can afford to pay for it is bound to be a good customer. However, your image might be turning away the customers you really want in order to grow past your current level.

Maybe your current market is dwindling? Maybe you are getting people without the disposable income to be either upgraded to other products over time, or that can’t afford to buy as often as you would like. Maybe you are just trying to attract a type of customer that will increase the prestige of your brand. Whatever the reason is, Re-Branding yourself is not going to be a quick fix, to attract a new kind of customer, you have to consider what it is that you have been doing in the past that hasn’t attracted them to begin with.

Step by Step

Re-Branding from one target to another is hard to do if you try to take it all on in one step. When making major changes, you risk alienating your current bread and butter long before you manage to get any traction in your new market segment. The best way to re-brand is to stage your image changes so that you slowly move towards your desired target, not assuming that you can just change everything at once.

You are fighting a battle on several fronts when you re-brand. Your current customers are not communicating to your new target, word of mouth marketing is in other words not really present to help you. If your desired target is distinctly separate from the old one, the gap will be too big to step in one go. You need to stage a brand image transfer through the segments that bridge the two. Trying to make a massive target change immediately will alienate your current bread and butter before you have achieved traction in your new segment.

First you have to identify the patterns of your current customer group and the pattern of the wanted group. Then determine the overlapping segments that link the two together, in order to maintain your profitability in the segment change you have to step through the changes, attracting the intermediate segments as you move along the chain. Overstep these intermediate boundaries at your own peril. Chances are you’ll need a very big wallet to see you through the aftermath of failing in two segments at once.

A simple example of this would be to change segments to one with a higher income. If your current customer has an average household income of $40K and you are interested in the $100k+ market, you need to find the 60 and 80k markets first. They will help you gradually make the transition to be able to handle the segment you really want.

This will also help you adjust and cater to the changing expectations of the new segments, which makes your control and modifications smaller and more manageable. If you allow your staged efforts to help predict the next step, chances of success increase dramatically.

Product Control and Development

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your product is ready to receive your new segment as is. Most likely, there is a disconnect between the image you think you are projecting and the perception the customer has. This disconnect has to be addressed from the bottom up, taking care of the real problems before you can keep the segment you want to attract.

Re-Branding requires that you approach the new segment with care, listening intensively to their feedback and making corrections as soon as you discover the problems they are reporting. These corrections will be the base of return business, and return business is what can build you in your new segment.

Product Control here requires you to have research functions in place to measure the response from the segments as you move through them. Customer satisfaction surveys are great, but if you don’t know who answered them, you don’t know if you are hitting a new segment right or not. Focus groups, interviews etc. are much more accurate and can deliver the metrics you want.

If you don’t capture the feedback early, you end up growing into a segment you don’t understand, and you will see the same problem as originally - not catering to the expectations of your desired segment.

Advertising too Soon

The most common mistake here is to just rely on Advertising to attract the segment you want. If you are not attracting the right segment, your marketing channels could be part of the issue, but the problem would be better addressed in seeing why your desired segment isn’t biting instead of assuming that they just don’t know about you.

Advertising means making a promise, that promise will be successful when it matches a specific segments expectation. If you are not prepared to deliver to those expectations, you will probably hurt your positioning in this segment before long. Before you advertise on a broad scale, you need to know that the issues keeping your desired segment away in the past have been addressed. Otherwise you will cause an immediate backlash when they have their original pre-conceived notions affirmed.

Again, you will hurt your efforts to re-brand if you assume that the segment you want is just obtuse and uninformed. Chances are that they are choosing another solution because of some more profound disconnect between your product, and their expectations.

They are waiting for you

Your desired segment is out there, and just like any other market, it is waiting for someone to deliver what they want. As long as you are prepared to listen, adjust, and deliver on your promises. There is no market segment that is out of your reach. But get there one step at a time, with deliberate care to be what you claim to be and with a keen ear on the customers pulse.

Never assume that the customer was wrong in not choosing you to begin with, their business was and always will be yours to lose. You can reach them when you become what they want you to be.