What if you had the power to increase your marketing reach by thousands for a fraction of the cost of traditional direct mail? How about the ability to position yourself as an expert in your field simply by writing an article? Here’s what publishing an ezine can do for you in a matter of weeks. An ezine is just a fancy way of saying ezine and is one of the best marketing tools available to business owners today.
There are a dozen reasons why an ezine can help you build your business and make a profit, here are my top five:
1. An ezine helps position you as an expert in your field.
An ezine is a great medium to communicate with your customers and prospects. Through articles, you establish yourself as an expert on the topics you write about and by providing great and informative content, you can build a loyal base of readers who are all potential customers. You build credibility, expertise, and trust with each article by showing your readers what you know, how much you know about that topic, and giving them insights about you as an individual.
By showcasing your knowledge and experience, you will not only attract more clients, but you will also attract the attention of other media outlets, resulting in your articles being published in other ezines, directories, newspapers and magazines and generally increasing your reach beyond your current list of customers. If your content is good, people will want to read more from you and figure out how to subscribe to your list to get it.
2. An ezine gives you a very effective way to promote your business and keep in touch with your current and potential customers.
Staying in touch with your customers is one of the most important techniques to retain them. You need to remind them that you are still around and still have a valuable product and/or service to offer. An ezine gives you another way to communicate with very little effort. It’s non-intrusive and contains valuable resources with great articles and recommendations that your customers will start to look forward to. It’s a great way to keep them informed of what you’ve been up to and what your plans are to move the business forward. Do anything to stay ahead of your competition and your customers at all times.
3. An ezine gives you a method to grow your list of readers and customers to market and sell your products over and over again.
The most effective way to build your business is through relationship building and recurring income. One of the greatest assets a business has is its list of customers and prospects. People buy from people they like and trust. They will not only buy from you once, if you are providing real value to your product and/or service, they will buy from you again and again. They will become your best cheerleaders and salespeople by promoting you and your business to everyone they know, forwarding your articles, and giving you the opportunity to start the list building process for your new audience. The great thing about an ezine is that you can stop marketing one to one and start marketing to hundreds, thousands, or even millions at a time. Law of averages, if you increase your reach in terms of numbers, you will likely increase your conversion to sales.
4. An ezine allows you to grow your business outside of your market and allows you to get the word out about your product.
The World Wide Web has had a tremendous impact on the way business is conducted today. It has provided opportunities for the little one to play in the same ocean as the big fish. The Internet has provided limitless opportunities to expand your reach and evolve your business beyond your local radius and beyond your four walls.
A reader of my ezine provided me with the opportunity to expand my ice cream shop into a mobile cart business located in town. Another reader sent my ezine to a friend who had an Internet gift service business. This person contacted me and together we created a website where customers could order ice cream cakes for kids in college, business partners, or family members.
An ezine is the catalyst for growth. Once you connect with your readers, the connection keeps growing and your list keeps growing and your reach will go far beyond your wildest dreams.
5. An ezine is cheap and easy to publish.
Chances are, you’re using traditional marketing methods to get the word out about your business, including direct mail campaigns. Maybe you’re sending postcards, newsletters, or product announcements and go through the process of designing your piece, creating and verifying your addresses, creating labels, stuffing envelopes, and taking it to the post office for delivery.
After saying and doing your campaign, you have spent a lot of money on design and postage and there is no way to verify the receipt. In some markets this is a very effective marketing technique, but with the advent of email marketing, there is a less expensive way to achieve the same goal and verify receipt. Email marketing allows you to consolidate your marketing for a fraction of the cost of traditional direct mail methods and get the word out faster. Plus, with the sophisticated systems out there that are geared toward newbies but built to capture data, you’ll have a complete understanding of your delivery rates and can even easily measure and track who opened your email, who forwarded your email, and who purchased from you. Email.
©Kellie D’Andrea & Associates