I’m going to begin this post off with a basic marketing principle I recently read that every small business owner needs to master…

People buy when they are ready to buy, not when you are ready to sell.

Think about that statement for a minute. No matter how great your product or service is, no matter how good of a salesperson you might be, some people are just not ready to buy what your selling even if they’ve purchased it before. Whatever their reason is, a large portion of your target market isn’t interested in buying from you right now.

That doesn’t mean, however, that they won’t buy eventually.

Timing is everything and you never know when a customer or prospect is going to be ready to buy.

If you’re not following up with your customers on a regular basis, someone else has a very good chance of landing their business and that someone else will be your competitor who more than likely just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

As a small business owner, you don’t want to leave new or repeat business up to chance unless you enjoy being poor, or losing business to your competitor.

You should be continually providing your customers and prospects with opportunities to do business with you and build a relationship with you.

Not the Yellow Pages. No mailing postcards or letters.

Think cheaper and more effective. Think Internet marketing.

So how do you do that you ask?

Email Marketing

I’ll get back to email marketing shortly. But first I want to bring up some staggering statistics from online research company Arthur Anderson to verify where I’m going with this.

-140 million American’s use email regularily
-86% have given their email address to a retailer
-According to the National Restaurant Association, $45.65 is returned for every dollar spent in email marketing
-Over 1 billion people were online in 2001 according to an Arthur Anderson survey. That was 7 years ago!

This is huuuge! The internet has since exploded and is now to big to ignore. As a small business owner in mid-Michigan you’d be shooting yourself in the foot by being oblivious to the marketing possibilities of the internet.

How do you think Barack Obama won the Presidential election? He won it without question by using the Internet in his marketing strategies.

The Yellow Pages Aren’t What They Used to be

No more wasting your hard earned money on expensive Yellow Page ads or over-priced print advertising. There is no way you can track your marketing efforts through these mediums to know if your money is well spent or not.

But with internet email marketing you can! The internet is the small business owners best friend.

Here’s just some of the benefits of marketing to your customers or prospects via email:

-you can send personalized communications
-launch & track campaigns
-grow customer loyality
-increase your brand awareness and build sale$
-connect with more guests
-generate more visits
-deliver offers, announce events
-make more money
-unlimited emails & list size
-no investment in software or new technology (we can handle everything for you A - Z)

These are just a few of the benefits of following up and using email marketing with your customers, even if you don’t have a website already.

Email marketing is a very affordable set-up and monthly maintenance. It can all be automated so the small business owner can concentrate on more important matters like running their business.

By not using the internet in this day and age your leaving money on the table. You don’t have to learn or know all the web technology to make your business more profitable. That’s what I do, that’s my job.

By not maximizing your presence online it could have devestating consequences. It might very well mean the difference between a small market & an enormous market for your business.

You could get away with it even a few years ago. Not these days if you want your business to be successful.

That was then, this is now and it’s a reality. The internet isn’t going anywhere but up.

Right now 70% of the U.S. population regularily use the internet and the average adult spends up to 3 hours a day more on the internet than they do watching tv.

A recent study mentions that consumers now log on the Internet and “Google” search for local products and services FIRST before they even look for a phone book or the newspaper. So, that means if your small business is not online your losing out on possible sales.

If you’re a small business owner in Mid Michigan, you know how tough business is right now. You need every edge you can get to your advantage and doing your marketing online is a step in the right direction to being on “the cutting edge”.

The Internet isn’t going anywhere but up and in the next couple of years you’ll see a huge increase in popularity in mobile marketing, text marketing to consumers with PDA’s and cellphones. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

If you want to pick the low hanging fruit so-to-speak, you need to follow-up frequently with your customers by communicating with them online through email marketing campaigns. It’s a cost effective way to market your business that you can track even if you don’t have a website.

*************************Subliminal Message*************************
TOP VOLUME Marketing (TVM) will set up, organize, maintain your database and run your email marketing campaigns very affordably. You don’t need to purchase any new software or learn any new technology, we’ll do everyting for you A to Z and you don’t even need to have a website if you don’t want to, but it’s good if you do. If you need a website I’ll design you a website that will make you money instead of costing you money. Contact TVM for more information.
*************************Subliminal Message*************************