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5 Powerful Ways to Stretch Your Marketing Dollars
 You want to attract more customers and sell more to the ones you have. But a one-shot radio ad, a glitzy four-color brochure or that flashy website your designer talked you into? Well, that can do serious damage to your marketing budget.
Besides, if you spend the money, will it lead to more sales?
The answer is "not necessarily." An expensive ad doesn't always translate to increased sales. Because with one-shot marketing, you can't afford to touch your customer enough times-experts say the magic number is seven-to generate a sale.
Sometimes we hear from a client or subscriber, "I tried placing an ad once and it didn't work, so marketing is a waste of money."
But the fact is that marketing is a process, not an event. Using multiple marketing channels always produces better results.
Okay, here is where I show you five powerful ways to market consistently with very little money:
1. Get your own domain name and use it. Sure GMail and Hotmail are free, but you'll look more professional with your own name. Besides, who wants to give all that publicity to another business when you could be promoting your own? Find someone to help you set up your e-mail address under your domain name. Or check the customer support site of your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to learn how to do it yourself. Having your own domain name is not all that expensive and the payoff is huge.
2. Promote your business with an e-mail signature line. This is one of the simplest, yet most overlooked, ways to advertise-with every e-mail you send. Just find "signatures" in your email program's preferences and compose your own. At Cat's Eye Marketing, our e-mail signatures include lines for: name, title and business; our tagline; complete address (now required by law); URLs (website addresses); an offer/call to action; and our email address as a hyperlink. Tip: Keep each line 65 characters of fewer to avoid "wraparound" lines.
3. Leverage your business card. Consider printing on both sides, so your card is a mini-brochure. (Leave space for people to make notes on the other side and don't go glossy. It makes it difficult to write on.) We use America's Printer, where you can get 1,000 high-quality cards, full color on both sides, for just $49, plus shipping.
4. Consider using a blog format for your website. When a single page will do, you can create it for free with a service like Wordpress or Squidoo. (Why not do both? Linking them together will help you rank better on search engines like Google.) And the beauty is that you can easily update them yourself.
5. Try article marketing. I've found this to be a cheap (translate: free) way to become an expert in your field. Recently I wrote an article for an online article directory and, just days later, I came up #1 on page one on Google when using the keywords related to my topic. (Most let you provide author bios and links back to your website, which greatly increases your visibility.) A few to try: ezinearticles.com, smallbusinessbriefs.com (I've submitted to both of these) and about.com (haven't tried this one yet).
Use any or all of these low-cost ideas to promote your business more consistently and improve the results of your marketing. For more low-budget, high-impact ideas, have Bob come to your organization or group's next meeting with his "Big Marketing Ideas: Low Budget" presentation. Best of all, to fit your budget, he'll do it for free. Email him now to schedule.
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