JJ Market

Have you ever considered submitting articles to get your marketing message out and/or drive traffic to your websites…?

Here are some ideas and tips that can get you started:

Use article distribution services to get your articles in ezines. Some services will specifically distribute your articles to ezine owners who desperately need good content, but do not want to create it themselves. If your article gets selected for even a few of these ezines, you will receive a considerable traffic spike.

Always include quantifiable benefits when writing an ezine article - and actually tell the truth. For instance, if you say “make $1000 in 10 days” people will actually be interested in that and believe it is possible at the same time. Distorting or massively exaggerating the benefits wont help at all; it will make the article look like a scamand an attempt to mislead more than anything else.

Your prospects will appreciate your honesty and through time will come to trust your judgement and recommendations

Become a special report provider for ezine owners. Offer to give them monthly reports that contain exclusive or limited-distribution content. Each of these reports could contain a detailed description of some technique - along with some type of link to upsell them on a product of yours that makes the process easier.

Use psychological triggers when writing an ezine article. At the very least try to make the title and text flow. Make it catchy! A headline that uses words like “proven” “shocking” “powerful” “secrets” will always get more attention than one that simply states the title in drab unemotional wording.

Most importantly set out to inform the reader as much as is possible in 400-600 words. “How to” articles are always popular because they serve the reader making them feel that they have actually learned something and are better off for reading your text.

The whole point of the article is to encourage the reader to seek more information in your resource box where you will promote your business.

If your article looks like one long sales pitch with no informative qualities at all you will have lost your prospect, who will simply stop reading and click away, with no chance of gaining a subscriber or customer.

In closing…

Article distribution is one of the most powerful ways to market effectively online. All the top “gurus” are using this tactic in their arsenal of strategies and it maybe time you came on board too.

Copyright 2006 Mal Keenan

Mal Keenan is editor and publisher of Home Business Tips Newsletter. Click below for all the details:
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For more info on the day to day running of my Home Business and current Internet Marketing tips check out:
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Getting Started

Often, especially if you are just getting started, you will find that pre-packaged promotional materials are a big time-and-money saver, and you can learn a lot by starting with them. After all, they were designed by professionals in the church marketing field.

On the other hand, such materials are often too generic, and do not specifically address your own church’s strengths, ministry message, or calling.

Another option is to employ the services of church marketing professionals or an agency to create customized and tailored promotional materials especially for you to use.

This can “quick-start” your efforts, and save you much time, and many dollars, in “trial-and-error” experimenting, but it usually will involve substantial front-end cost.

In the end however, it is how well that you actually meet needs and wants that will attract and retain people, not how “slick” your promotional materials are. Again, knowing your community and your target audience will better enable you to identify effective and appropriate methods of reaching them.

Step 4 - Following Up

There are two sides to the following-up stage. One is to follow-up with and evaluate the effectiveness of your various marketing and communication efforts, and the other is to follow up with the people that your efforts actually attract.

As we touched on earlier in this report, your efforts will be a colossal waste of time (and money) if they are not producing the results that you want - which is, getting your message out to the people, and getting them to actively respond.

And just what is your intended message? Ultimately, it may be to fulfill your role in the Great Commission, and to “make disciples of all nations”, or it may be simply to attract more people to become worshippers and members of your own local church, and thus to increase the amount of resources available for your church to conduct it’s ministry mission.

Are your media messages primarily positive “feel-good” inspirational messages? Or are your efforts intended to get people into the church, attending your worship services, and actively participating in your ministries and missions?

If they are the latter, just how effective has the particular channel or media been in inspiring worshippers to attend? Which method or message has been more effective? Time to evaluate, assess, and adjust your planning.

Find out how people found out about you. Ask them what specifically inspired them to begin attending, or participating in your church. What messages have they seen or heard out there in the various media? Do they use your website? Do they read your newsletters?

Assimilation

The other aspect of evangelism and church ministry marketing that is most often ignored, is doing something with the people once we’ve gotten them in the door.

Is your church a warm, welcoming, and friendly place? Is it really? Most churches think they are, but from the first-time visitor’s perspective, they are very often a closed, inward-looking group of insiders.

What programs and mechanisms do you have in place for getting the first-time visitor involved and included in the various activities of your church? Do they have a reason to return, week after week?

Is your church a place that they are likely to want to bring their friends or other family members? Before you say “yes”, think about this carefully, and be honest with yourself. You may need to face some unpleasant truths.

In religious circles, this process of involving new members is known as “assimilation”, now a popular buzzword for turning first-time visitors into active and continuing participants, and hopefully members.

You need a well-thought-out program and plan of follow-up and assimilation, just as much as you need one for marketing and evangelism.

The fastest-growing churches, and those most likely to survive and thrive, are those who know how to follow-up well with both new attenders, and also with current members, worshippers, and participants.

Recommended Church Development and Ministry Marketing Resources (all are available online through Amazon.com):

Double Your Church Attendance - Bob Hinds

ABC’s of Natural Church Development - Christian Schwartz

Market Research Made Easy - Margaret Doman

Focus Group Research Handbook - Holly Edmund

The Purpose-Driven Church - Rick Warren

Permission Evangelism: When to Talk, When to Walk - Michael L. Simpson

The New Marketing Paradigm: Integrated Marketing Communications - Don E. Schultz

Christopher B. Nelson-Jeffers is CEO of Breckshire Communications, which offers a free Church Growth Newsletter and articles to churches interested in church ministry development. He may be contacted at http://Double-Your-Church-Attendance.com

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The eBay experts I have read are all in agreement as to what it takes to build a successful business on eBay -which is that you must find a profitable market niche.

For those of you who are not familiar with niche marketing, here’s an easy way to think about it: Women age 18-34 are a market. However, it’s a difficult market to crack because it’s huge and its members are very diverse. And it would be very, very expensive to advertise to it.

So, what a smart marketer would do is look for a market niche, or slice of this market, that’s smaller and easier to define.

For example, one possible slice would be woman age 18-34 who spend a lot of time with their hands in water. You could then define your market niche as “women age 18-34 with dry, chapped hands.” This gives you a smaller, market that would be easier to target, and your advertising message practically writes itself.

So, how do you find a profitable market niche on eBay?

You need first to pick a market, for example, “dog lovers.” However, like women age 18-34, that’s a pretty big and diverse market. So, the next step is to define a potential niche within that market. For example, one niche might be dog lovers with small dogs (10 lbs. or less). Another could be dog lovers who own a specific breed such as Beagles. You could narrow things down even further by defining your niche as dog lovers who own Beagles and want to protect them in cold weather.

Here’s another example. Start with the market male golfers. Next, narrow it down to, say, left-handed male golfers. Finally, to get even “nichier,” how about left-handed male golfers who are having trouble putting?

Next, comes the profitability part

How do you determine whether your market niche would be profitable? The answer is simple. You test, test, test.

Find products that you think should appeal to your market niche, put them up on eBay and see what happens. eBay is a great research tool because it costs so little to list items. You can list different items to see which attract the most attention. Or you can list the same items but with different sales messages (descriptions) to see which message does best. You can even test pricing by listing the same items at different “buy it now prices” or by starting the auctions at different levels.

It may take time and effort but, yes, you, too, can become a successful niche marketer on eBay.

Here’s something that takes no effort. It’s called HD Radio and its a new technology that enables AM and FM radio stations to broadcast their programs digitally, a tremendous technological leap from today’s familiar analog broadcasts. These digital broadcasts provide listeners with radically improved audio quality, more radio channels through multicasting, and new data services. To learn more about this amazing new technology, just go my Web site, http://www.hd-radio-home.com, to get all the buzz. Douglas Hanna is a retired marketing executive and the author of numerous articles on HD radio and family finances.

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