ppanwar,
First let me say congratulations for admitting you need marketing help. Many people can’t seem to do that and there begins and ends their success in marketing.
Marketing is not a line item on a budget or something that should be outsourced or handed over to an agency.
We tell our friends that the
SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT thing that they should know about marketing is that they need to be the Master of their own marketing.
No one is more passionate about your business, your customers your industry then you are. No one can possibly know more about your customers, business and prospects then you do.
So, why hand off the most important job in your business to someone else?
You have to be the Master of your own marketing and you need to make it your TOP priority. Not anything else. It should be what you spend most of your day doing and finding other people to do the task work. With out marketing you are out of business.
We always say, “If growth is the goal, marketing is your only option.”
With that being said, let’s talk about your situation a bit.
Email is a highly effective marketing tool. But doing email marketing effectively is difficult. “Bigpund” is right on the money with the comments about email marketing and its relationship to spam. Any time you buy an opt-in list you are going to spam people.
We don’t recommend that. Giving away information and giving value first (OrangeAdvice: Read Jeffery Gitomer’s book
The little red book of selling ) is a important way to build a valuable list of interested prospects.
Your info can be presented as an ebook, email series, mp3 recording, etc. etc. Tell people the value of the information you have as it relates to your business and let them request it. Tell them that you will be delivering other information just like it in the future and that you will not sell, rent or give their personal contact info to anyone.
Google adwords and overture are great tools to get visitors to your site. Google can be tricky and if you have no experience with it I would suggest you invest $69 bucks or so in Perry Marshall’s Google Tool Kit. It contains valuable information about setting up a successful Google Campaign. You can use these same strategies on Overture as well.
Perry’s methods really help to create a more trackable and effective overall campaign strategy.
Obviously optimization is really preferred because it free. But without knowing that kind of web coding it can be tough to do.
Word of mouth is awesome! But the key to that is building into your communication viral elements that help and make your message spread. Being unique and scendsational helps accomplish this goal. (OrangeAdvice: email me for a copy of my e-book “The 7 B’s in Scendsational” for more on this topic.)
Joint ventures are great!! One of the best methods of growing a list. Partnering with others who are in cross over industries that share the same target is highly effective. What we call endorsed email marketing allows you to get in front of new prospects with an instant level of credibility. BEWARE: make sure that the person you are partnering with has a solid relationship with their list members – otherwise you will be perceived as a pest – not a welcome guest.
Press releases are good – You can send them online too. Try PRweb.com I know they have both a free and paid listing service. Both work effectively.
Creating free info content and articles for use in other people’s newsletters and websites is a good way to get free publicity. Add the viral element and end your info and articles with a blurb about how and where to get more of the same valuable content and more info about your service – direct them to your site.
Be careful with banner advertising… Banner ads, unless pay per click and placed in highly targeted traffic areas are black holes of marketing money.
Make sure you think about this before you spend any marketing money…
First, think very narrow, highly defined target. Who are this people – very specifically? Don’t be afraid to alienate some large groups of people.
Then consider what do these people really want. How can my offering really help them. What about my offer is really compelling to this group. What is my offer. Is it irritable to them? Make sure that it is.
Then and only after steps one and two… can you think about where to put that message. Media is the last step… most people get it wrong and buy some radio or something and then try to make it work… I promise it won’t.
My final advice, as we tell all our friends.
Read our book…
“The Ten Tall Tales of Traditional Marketing That Cost You Tons” It is free on our website –
www.scend.net
Read 
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