Greetings!
It's depressing (or recessioning) to hear all the economic news lately, but there's always a ray of sunshine behind those clouds. So here's your opportunity. While everyone's scaling back, do the opposite -- it's your chance to get noticed while it's cheaper to do business. Remember to negotiate and use the low cost marketing methods we always talk about. If you missed any of our past newsletters, we now have an archive.
Get out there and market!
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Local Company Top Pot Makes It Big
Here's a story of how a great product and persistence pays off. If you didn't catch this one in the PI, read it now |
Time-Saving Communication Tools
 If your January flew by as fast as mine, you're probably wondering how you're going to get things done in the months to come. Now is the perfect time to take advantage of Web 2.0 tools for keeping in touch with your prospects, customers and contacts.
Email Marketing: If you're still using Outlook for customer emails, try one of these tools
Customer Relationship Management: It's difficult to keep everyone and everything you have to do organized. Try one of these options:
HeapCRM and Salesforce
Both let you schedule activities according to your own sales cycle (a screenshot of Heap is shown above). Heap starts at $9/month. Salesforce lets you do more, but has a steeper learning curve. It's also more expensive, but you can get the less-featured, Personal edition for free.
Highrise
This tool from 37Signals is more free-form, allowing you to add comments to your contacts -- a lot better than all those sticky notes. Plus, it uses a tagging system (like Digg and others) to help you group similar items. If you go beyond the free version, you can create project pages for managing related contacts, files and notes. While you're there, check out Basecamp for project management. |
Upcoming 2008 Workshops & Events
2/26: Boost Your Search Engine Ranking: Go Organic
2/27 Marketing 101
2/29 Build Your Website. No Muss, No Fuss
3/8: Web Marketing Tips & Tools
3/11: Get 'em Off the Homepage: Top 10 Essentials
3/25: Sell Your Service Using the Web: 5-Tiered Plan
3/28: Drive Traffic to Your Site. Part 1: Linking
Get full descriptions, prices and where to sign up
Grow Your Business
Sponsor one of our workshops.
Opportunities start as low as $50. Learn more |
