Marketing

How To Market Your Book Online

Whether you are a writer or a seller of books if you want to make a profit, you can still go online and do it. However, you need to be smart, prepared, and do a lot of research about the market that exists for books.

It is good to get a lot of feedback from different sources so that you know exactly what is acceptable or is currently a favorite among folks. There are bestseller lists that can be referred to, as to what kind of topics to choose from. Remember, what you may want to write on may not necessarily be what people want to read. So check these bestseller lists, and then decide on your topic. Haste makes waste, so be focused and unleash your talent only after you are convinced about the sale of your book.

There are many ways to find out the online interest in a subject, besides going to websites like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Read feedback columns and discussion corners, to find out the views and opinions that people hold. By putting your book online does not mean that your book will sell, but it broadens your horizon of getting an apt audience. Identify a catchy book title as most items found on Google and on the Internet are found faster through keywords. A good title is very important.

If you have the finances, then get yourself a publisher who will work out the sales pitch and also the advertising techniques, in a very professional and prompt manner. At least that saves you the trouble of breaking your head (especially after the trouble you took writing it, you need the peace). Hire services that could be of assistance to the sale of your book and that will not affect it in a negative manner. If you have decided to sell books within a special category or general category, then combine two editions, and offer a 30% discount. This becomes feasible and would attract potential customers. Most people who can save a buck or two, look for good buying options. Make it possible for them to decide and buy your book / books without hesitation. It is when they hesitate, that your sales are affected.

Also, make the first few chapters available on your website, for people to read and refer to. This creates in them an interest to read further, and makes them want to have that book at any cost. These are tricks to enable you to sell more of your books online. Have a strategy, plan it well, garner all the help you need, and you will make it big!

Victor Epand is an expert consultant about books. When shopping for books, we recommend you shop only at the best bookstores for used books, autographed books, and vedic books.

Broadcast Your Message with Self Promotional Products

Who needs self promotional products? Anyone that is selling or promoting anything.

What most self-promoters need is a way to keep their name and contact info in front of their prospects or “suspects”; in short they need a message that keeps on messaging.

We all have received promotions in the mail, by visiting salesfolk or at trade shows. At most trade shows, some businesses even give out custom bags so attendees have a place to put all their promo stuff; a promo bag to hold all those promo handouts.

Why do businesses bother with promotional materials? The simple reason is they work by spreading messages, themes and images and keeping those messages in front of those that have been targeted.

Let’s say you are a plumber that gives out magnetic business cards so folks can stick them on their refrigerators. Most plumbers have their business name and contact info on their trucks.

A self promotional plumber may also have his magnetic business cards stuck on his truck with a sign “Please Take One”.

Sure it’s a silly idea and you may laugh. But plumbers that use this strategy report they usually replace all their magnetic cards every day.

Magnetic cards are cheaper than mass media, almost as cheap as some standard business cards, and have a lot more ’staying’ power.

And it makes sense if you have ever needed a plumber.

The key is to look at your sales process and sales cycle and determine where promotional products can be leveraged to deliver your message. Most promotional product campaigns fail because they fail to focus first and foremost on the desired results.

Before purchasing your promotional products determine how and to whom you will deliver them. This will help you narrow down your choices for appropriate products.

“And don’t forget to track your results so you can improve” adds Wilcox.

Not only is there an endless array of self promotional products but also a seemingly endless way to “package” or merchandise your self promotional messages.

Take promotional caps. There are caps of all colors and styles. Some can have custom logos embroidered with a 3-D effect and even messages printed on the edge of the bill.

Given the right strategy many people could be wearing your self promotional caps. Strategy is why it is important to think through your desired results first.

Self promoters are strategic, not reactive. For instance, farmers in the Salinas Valley give their farmworkers company logo caps at the end of the growing season.

The idea isn’t that the farmworkers will return to Mexico for the winter and wear their caps everywhere spreading the company message; the cap logo is simply a promotional reminder of the farm’s name and where to go for work at the start of spring season.

Self promotional products can take many forms. There are pens, HiLiters, letter openers, staplers, badge holders and dog tags. There are memo pads, PDA holders, calculators, clocks, radios, mugs, coasters and water bottles.

You can try backpacks, tote bags, coolers, velour pouches, tape measures, knives and flash lights. And key chains, pill cases, first aid kits, luggage tags, combs, fans and pedometers.

And candles, shampoo, hand lotion, hand sanitizers, lip balm, sunscreen and bug repellant. And golf tees, balls, towels and totes. And more.

It is helpful to remember that not all promotional items need to be useful like calendars or pens. You can also try fun items like stress balls, yo-yos and piggy banks. My favorite are those clear balls that flash when bounced. Next to food and chocolate.

Food and candy are always popular. How about gum, mints, gourmet food, cookies, coffee, hot chocolate, ice tea and bottled water. Customers, prospects and suspects love to eat and drink! But then again, don’t we all?

And what if your promotional targets are chocolate lovers like many of us? You can try chocolate wrapped in foil, coins, sports balls, squares, gift sets, bars, truffles or custom molds.

And of course the more traditional magnetic business cards, notepads, calendars and even custom business cards. That’s a lot to think about so where to begin?

Start with your sales and promotional cycle and see where your customer and prospect “touchpoints” or points of contact are. Your message’s desired result may be a phone call, an appointment or an e-mail inquiry.

Use your self-promotional products to leverage or “convert” to the next step toward your desired promotional results.

With focus and attention to results, self promotional products can add power and zip into your promotional campaigns.

Jack Deal owns JD Deal Local Search Marketing, Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley, California 831-457-8806. Related articles, ideas, strategies, tactics and tips can be found at and .

Promotional Custom T-Shirts: How to Create a Buzz

Custom T-shirts can be useful for promoting people, ideas, or events. A shirt can not only display any of these things; it can also get people talking about them. It only takes a little time to figure out the best way to use the shirts to create a buzz.

You may want to promote just about anything. If you are in a band, you may want to get people out to hear you the next time you play. You could use custom T-shirts to bring people into the club. If you are supporting a local politician, you can use a shirt to get their name into the public eye.

Your school or local children’s sports team may be headed for a championship in another city. By selling custom T-shirts, you can make people aware of the event. The more people that know, the more people might come to cheer on your team. Even a store grand opening is an event that can be promoted with custom T-shirts.

The key to a good response is to make the custom T-shirts unique and desirable. By naming and dating the event, they become a collector’s item. Get them in colors that are appropriate to the subject. Put unusual images and snappy sayings on them. Leave a little to the imagination. Then people will take notice of the topics of the custom T-shirts and ask questions.

There are several ways you can distribute your custom T-shirts. One way is to get them out to places that people will be walking and mingling. This gives people a chance to talk up the shirt to each other. Outdoor markets or street fairs are good places to go with your merchandise.

You can also make your shirts more sought after if you limit how many people get them. You could give them out in only a few venues. Perhaps you could give away a few on a radio show. The ninth caller gets a shirt if they answer a trivia question about your candidate or band, for instance. You can make the questions easy, yet it brings up the subject for everyone and gets the custom T-shirts out to a select few.

Marketers have long known that colleges are places ripe for new ideas. If your environmental campaign needs a boost, get your custom T-shirts onto a college campus and people will soon be hearing about it. Your political candidate will be discussed. Your band will have a larger audience.

The idea is to get people interested in your people or ideas. Once you have them on the hook, it is up to you to keep them. Your band will have to play well, your candidate will have to have good ideas, and your environmental campaign will have to make a difference in the world. If you are up to the task, you can use custom T-shirts to bring the people to you.

Ron Subs works with Sonic Shack as a public relations consultant, more information about Ray Subs can be found at http://www.sonicshack.com

Is It Time You Started Some Business Marketing?

The process of increasing sales via a definite strategic plan is known as marketing. Marketing is of two types, Business marketing and consumer marketing. The basic difference between the two types can be summarized as follows:

In business marketing, the commodities are sold to an organization i.e. one business dealer sells his products to another business dealer. In business marketing, industries are buyers. Whereas in consumer marketing, the business dealer sells his products to the end users i.e. the buyer in consumer marketing is only a single person/family

Business marketing is also known as industrial marketing. The promotion in business marketing is more direct and usually does not involve media advertisements. The promotion is usually made through business newspapers, magazines etc.
Also, direct mails to the concerned buyer organizations are sent by the sellers.

Business to business marketing (B2B) was always behind business to consumer marketing (B2C). But, in the recent years, B2B marketing has been growing by leaps and bounds. The credit of this can be given to three revolutions:

1. Technological Revolution: With advancement of technology, the business organizations have come closer. Thus technological revolution gas a big hand in the growth of business marketing. Again Business marketing aims at more technological growth. In this way B2B marketing and technology have grown together by linking with each other.

2. Revolution in Entrepreneurship: More and more people started trying their hands in business marketing. This gave rise to tremendous increase in competition. Following Darwin’s theory that ‘only the fittest survive’, these competitors became more and more perfection demanding. They became aggressive and innovative in their business ways. Thus, due to the massive revolution in entrepreneurship, the over all bar of business marketing was raised.

3. There was a revolution in the market also. The demand increased and so as to satisfy them in the quickest and the best possible way, there was a change in the entire nature of business marketing.

4. The Internet: The Internet is the largest reason for the growth of business marketing. Big companies and industries got together with each other and made joint ventures to form aggressive power forces due to the Internet. They realized that instead of competing with each other, they would gain more profit by working together in co-ordination.

The Business Marketing Association (BMA) is one of the largest associations representing the B2B dealers.

Just like the usual marketing strategies, the B2B marketing also follows certain strategies. The 4Ps pf price, place, product and promotion are followed in B2B marketing. The promotion is usually not very aggressive as the dealer does not have to reach the consumer end mass. The branding of their products is the dearest to them. Their main aim is to increase their shareholder value in the market. Development of the business and making a firm position is also one of the strategies for consistent and steady business.

Thus Business marketing is a trade amongst businessmen and has a good potential.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.bigstrategies.co.uk where you can find great small business marketing

How to Drive Free Traffic to Your Website – Part Two

The first step you must take is rework your article into a video. You want to rework your article into a video. This is can get a little complicated. If you are not proficient in using the computer or do not want to learn please hire this stuff out – it will save you loads of time.

What you will need to start out with is some recording equipment maybe a microphone and audio recording software like sound forge built by Sony. With this, you can record yourself reading your article. You can also hire a voice talent to do this work typically a professional voice talent gets paid at least $100 per hour.

When you have your audio created and are ready to go, it is time to start creating the video. We use Microsoft power point or a picture editing software’s to create a template slides to use in our video and we use video editing programs like Sony Vegas movie studio to put the audio and template slides all together.

You want to create at least 3 to 5 slides with key bullet points in your article. If more slides are needed, then you can make more (3 to 5 should be enough). When you create your slide make sure to save them as a picture file like “jpeg” so that you can import them into the video software. Once you have all of these items you will need to import the media into the video editing software and start building your video.

Once you’re finished editing your video you will need to create the different video files. You need to make sure to create 3 different file formats. This will help you get more visibility on sites that use different video formats (mpeg1, mpeg2, rm).

Now you’re ready to start submitting your videos to video submission websites. To do this, you will need to submit your video to different video submission websites. Just like the article submission, and PR (Press Release) submission websites you will need to create accounts at all the different video submission websites. Then you log into the site and upload your video. This will take a little bit of time because videos take some time to upload. You will then need to create a description for your video so that the video submission sites know what content you have uploaded to them.

The results you get from video submissions are fantastic. Videos have become the staple for the internet today. The Big 3 (Google, Yahoo, MSN) are trying to turn the internet into the next television, so videos get ranked very high.

Here is a list of video sites you can start submitting to:

AtomFilms
Blip
BoFunk
Eyespot
YouTube

Next: Turn your audio into a Pod Cast.

Since you already have your audio file created (you used it in the video presentation), you need to pod cast it. Pod casting is one of the quickest ways to start your own radio station. With iTunes having over 200 million users, there should be no reason why you would not want to start pod casting today. When you use iTunes 4.9 or later, Apple has taken pod casting mainstream by building everything you need to find, subscribe to, manage, and listen to pod casts right in iTunes.

You can publish your podcast to iTunes (as long as it’s free of copyrighted material and overtly explicit content) and reach a potential audience of millions. There are video tutorials at apple to help you get through this task.

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