Marketing Toolbox

Appreciation Marketing

Today's marketing is appreciation based and building relationships with prospects and clients is of the utmost importance. A great tool for staying in touch, remembering birthdays and anniversaries as well as sending targeted direct mail campaigns is Send Out Cards. http://www.sendoutcards.com/39477

Article Marketing

A great way to boost your website in the search engines and get traffic to your website is through articles. There are many article directories out there but our favorite is http://www.ezinearticles.com You will be able to post articles and create resource boxes that help you reach your target market with relevant infomation about your company and the products and services you offer.

For help getting started with Article Marketing, check out the Article Marketing Guy himself, Jeff Herring. We have learned so much from him and the hits just keep on coming. You can learn more about his services at
http://fromthedeskofjeffherring.com/

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

There are many tools on the market that will help you build a database so that you can stay in touch with your clients. They range in price and potential. Our favorite tool is Infusionsoft. To learn more visit, http://www.infusionsoft.com

Social Networking

Every business owner now realizes the importance of securing their presence in the social media world. The main sites to be sure you are a part of are Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Endless webinars and teleseminars will give you direction on how to build your profile and fan pages so promote your business virtually.

Our favorite social media guru is Mari Smith. She gives tips and tutorials as well as tools that you can purchase to guide you through the process of positioning your company on social networking sites.

Video, Audio and Podcasts

Your website and email messages will be enhanced by using audio and video to connect with your prospects and clients.

As with the other tools, there are many services that cater to the small business owner allowing them to have access to media free or very inexpensively.

One tool we've found also includes the ability to make podcasts as well and all for less than $20/month.

Check out http://donna78.audioacrobat.com/

Email Marketing

Tools for email marketing are everywhere and most are relatively inexpensive and will track your click through and open rates which will help you keep your finger on the pulsebeat of your campaigns and promotions.

Make sure that you have an autoreponder feature, templates for sending email campaigns at the holidays and the ability to create e-newsletters in plain text and html.