The perfect promotional tool

Ok, this is so cool!! I went to a conference for work a couple of months ago and one of the things that they did was give us a Promotional USB Drive with the company logo on it and it was already preloaded with all of the spreadsheets and templates that we were going to need for the conference and for use in the office. I thought that was a fabulous idea and I have used my new USB drive on a regular basis ever since I received it.

I recently found a company that deals specifically in promotional USB drives or promotional jump drives. FlashDealer.com has found its niche in the market place by offering businesses affordable promo flash drive options. They offer more than just corporate and company logos printed on a USB flash drive – they offer complete outside of the box customizations. Their motto is “You dream it we can build it”. Anything you can imagine – no matter how unusual – can be built and shipped out to your business for marketing purposes. I came up with some pretty cool ideas, a suitcase design for a hotel, a space shuttle design for NASA, or a telephone for someone that you are having a hard time getting in touch with. The telephone is great because if it has your company information on it, it couldn't say any clearer that you want them to call you. When I was doing marketing, I needed something like that for one of our larger clients. I think it would have been the perfect incentive to get him to return my calls. What do you think? What can you come up with?

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Marketing Solutions for the Not So Savvy

I am not a born sales person, nor will I ever be one. However, I have been pretty successful in hotel sales because I rely on my personality and business reputation to overshadow my lack of sales experience. However, if you are doing sales for a business that relies on lots of cold calls you might need a little help. There are companies that can actually help you with everything from lead generation to sales training. Blueberry Marketing Solutions is one of those companies and they focus on helping you to present your products or services in order to win customers, increase revenue and grow.

They provide the following services:

* Appointment Making
* Lead Generation
* Database Cleaning
* Customer Maximisation
* Sales Training
* Market Research

As a person who is looking to start my own company, I can see that much of this would be very helpful. First of all the lead generation could really help me save time on research and the appointment making could take care of that initial crucial contact with potential clients. With their guide to telemarketing , they can help you effectively reach your targeted customer in an effort to increase sales and revenues much quicker.

As a Special Offer, Blueberry Marketing Solutions Ltd is offering you a free sales and marketing review. All you have to do is let them know that you heard about them at SunEGrl Loves To Shop.

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Check me out on Facebook

Ok, so if you haven't been on Facebook lately you really don't know what you are missing. I have created a page for myself as well as a page for SunEGrl Loves To Shop and a separate page for the hotel. Social networking really is a great way to find new and innovative marketing ideas. Plus, the games are lots of fun. I'm totally addicted to a game called Sorority Life. So, if you are on facebook be sure to become a fan of SunEGrl Loves To Shop Blog.

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VistaPrint Has More FREE Stuff

Today I will be placing a big order at VistaPrint because they have a ton of free stuff. You can save anywhere from 30%-100% on everything from business cards and rubber stamps to brochures and car magnets. This is the next step in my getting my new business off the ground. Also, if you are thinking about personalized Holiday Cards, VistaPrint has that as well. Hurry, these great deals end on October 31st.





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Marketing my new business venture

The other day I told you about a new business venture that I was considering in anticipation that my hotel may be in the middle of a sale. I am also considering this business venture because I have been so short of money lately and have completely depleted what savings I had. I have a few brochures that I had printed a couple of years ago that just need to be modified a little and then I will be mailing some out and then doing onsite sales calls with some of the local hotels. Another thing that I am working on is a website where I can list all of the options available to hoteliers as well as recruiting home based workers. One of the things that I think would be really helpful would be to have some sort of PowerPoint or video that can be placed on the website to explain in detail the services that will be offered.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be building my website as well as preparing to launch my business on October 1st. If I decide to do some sort of video this will take some time, but I think it might be worth it. Richter Studios is a Chicago Video Production company that specializes in this type of video production to be used in presentations, websites, and promotional videos. Not only can they shoot the video but if I come up with a video they can add their special post productions touch to make the video really great. They provide editors and animators that can help your website include 2D graphics, 3D animations, text treatments, logo animations, stylized effects and animation wizardry. While this is currently not something that I can afford, I would like to have this kind of presentation added to my website once I have been established for a little while.

My marketing budget right now is quite small, primarily consisting of a company website, new business cards, postage, gas and the time needed to do in person sales calls. Unfortunately, with my current position I will be unable to complete sales calls during the day so I think my best bet will be mailing my brochure and then following up with a phone call.

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Vista Print Has Free Everything

Wow, this is the best sale that I have seen. Not only can you get Free business cards and business card holders, but you can also get Free invitations and announcements, rubber stamps, business card magnets, postcards, t-shirts, return address labels, and websites. Wow, what a list that is. I have used Vista Print to promote my business for probably the last 4 or 5 years. Not only do I love the Free Business cards, but I love it when they have a Special Sale. With this huge sale, the only that you have to pay for is shipping.

With Vista Print, you simply choose your items, pick out your design template or upload your own and then get to work creating your own customized marketing materials. The last time they did a sale this big, I bought 2 boxes of business cards, post it notes, return address labels, and a t-shirt and it was all about $20.00.

Have you ever designed your own t-shirt with your Blog or Website Logo or Tag Line? Now that they are free, you should really give it a go. They are so easy to do and they are really nice. I wore mine to a business expo and I got lots of compliments on it.

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How Do You Market Your Blog?

Do you or have you used pay per click marketing?

I don't currently use this type of marketing but I will say that I did try this last year. I tried with a couple of my websites but unfortunately it was not very successful for me. I know there are many companies out there that provide this type of marketing and one of those companies is Network Solutions.

What is Pay Per Click Marketing?
Pay per click advertising, also known as paid search advertising, is quick way to drive targeted traffic to your Web site. When people search for a product or service on search engines, related ads appear on the search results page. You can bid on search keywords which then automatically display your Web site URL when someone searches using the keyword. This means that customers looking for products and services related to your business will see your ad when they search.

How can it help you promote your site?
PerformanceClicks by Network Solutions has two pay per click marketing plans that will drive traffic to your Web site from ads placed on the major search engines. The Guaranteed plan offers a fixed number of guaranteed clicks per month based on the number of clicks you purchase. The Maximized plan brings you the most optimized, relevant clicks for a fixed amount of money you budget for each month that is focused on converting traffic to leads and sales. The Maximized plan is similar to google adword because you bid how much you would like to spend for the advertising.

With PerformanceClicks Marketing you can expect to see increased traffic to increase the potential for leads and sales. You will also see more targeted leads, i.e., customers who are looking for the products and services you sell.

You can expect to see results in 5-10 days from the day your ads go live on the search engines.

What do you think? Are you going to try pay per click marketing?

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Promote Your Business Through Community Events

There are many different ways that you can promote your business without spending a lot of money on marketing. One way that I have found to be very successful is to promote my business through community events such as festivals, womens expos, and charity events. Most community events allow vendors to set up a table with brochures, flyers, business cards and display products. There is usually a small fee involved but considering the fact that the events are usually heavily promoted through Print, TV and Online Media there is usually a good number of people that show up. These are potential customers or downlines for you. No matter what kind of business you have, event marketing can be a good option as long as the price to participate is reasonable. Most of the events that I have participated in range from $40.00-$150.00. This month, I am participating in two festivals where I will spend the day sitting in a beautiful park passing out flyers and business cards. I will have a couple of my best selling items from Diamond Creek Candles and Jerky Direct and will offer a prize of a free candle with the hopes of getting email addresses for future marketing. Even if I don't get any new customers or members of my downline, I still win because I have hundreds of people who have my business card with many of my websites on it. Chances are at least some of those people will be curious enough to look at one or more of the websites and click on ads ultimately making me money.

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Networking Groups

Are any of you in a Networking Group either online or in your community? Have you seen the benefits of this type of group?

I am in a Networking Group in my community and it consists of around 40 Business Professionals from all different fields. Basically, the rules of the group are this: 1 person from each category may join the group and we agree that if someone needs one of the products or services offered, that we will try to use one of the group members. I joined our local networking group back in October, and joined under the Hotel Category as I am representing the hotel that I manage. The networking group is great because if someone in the group has a need for hotel rooms for business or family they call me and they are sure to get a great rate. Until recently, I had only used members of the group a handful of times but last month when our hotel was inspected we were told that we had to purchase new mattresses to meet the new Standards. So, my immediate thought was that I would contact the guy in the group who sells mattresses. I contacted him as well as several other people locally and finally got what I thought were some great bids. We purchased 82 Queen and 51 King Simmons BeautyRest Mattresses. Well, let me tell you the group works. Dan was able to get me a deal that obviously had very little markup. I convinced my owner that we should purchase the mattresses through him even though the price was higher than some of the other mattresses we got quotes on(quality was better). Anyway, to make a long story short I purchased $44,000 worth of mattresses and as a Thank You Dan gave me a free mattress for my new house. Now, when I placed the order I had no idea that he would do anything like that but he called me last week after the mattresses were delivered and said that he had a free mattress for me because he was so appreciative of the order. In addition, to getting the mattresses for the hotel I used several of the members for other things as well. I had my house professionally cleaned by the cleaning company in the group, I am getting my moving done for 1/2 what I would have paid with anyone else and there are several other services that I am looking into. This type of group WORKS, even if it is an online group. We all have a need for things on a regular basis, and I don't know about you but I don't like buying from people that I don't know anything about. Whether you are a Mary Kay consultant, a Pampered Chef consultant or a consultant with any of the many work at home opportunities, you may want to consider joining the Work At Home networking group. I put this group together and I think we can really have some fun with it and hopefully make some great new contacts. If all else fails, it is FREE ADVERTISING for your business.

If you decide that you want to join, please put what category you would like to be in your comments. Let me know what you think about Networking Groups, if you've ever used them... Thoughts...Concerns...

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Advertising Efforts

Recently I was lucky enough to discover Entrecard and Project Wonderful.

Entrecard is basically a networking site that allows you to "drop" business cards on other bloggers. Since finding Entrecard, I have been able to increase my traffic by placing targeted advertising on other blog sites. To date, I have received 597 clicks to my site and it has not cost me a dime. By dropping cards and having cards dropped on me, the cost to advertise my site has increased to 133 credits per day. I have heard some criticism over how the credits are calculated, but I think that it kind of makes sense. If you are a blogger who is not as established as someone such as John Chow or Jeremy Shoemaker, you have to do a little more work to increase ranking. The established bloggers already get tons of traffic, so just by being a member of Entrecard they get tons of cards dropped on them daily which automatically increases their rank. The criticism that I have noticed is that some of the newer bloggers have somehow surpassed some of the more popular bloggers. In my opinion, it all kind of makes sense because the established bloggers are getting drops based on reputation and the newer bloggers are getting drops because they are actively working the site. I think that it just helps to level the playing field a little. Just yesterday, I was lucky enough to get approved to sell advertising packages on Entrecard. Be sure to log in and check out the great advertising packages offered in the Entrecard Shop.

Project Wonderful is an ad network that allows you to bid on ads that are displayed on targeted websites. You can either advertise on blogs or websites that you choose or set up a campaign based on keywords and let Project Wonderful do the work for you. My average advertising cost per day has been running around .40 to .56 and I am receiving an average of 20 clicks per day. I have now decided that I am going to set up a campaign and try additional advertising based on my keyword specifics. Yesterday, I was finally approved to sell ad boxes and while I started my initial minimum bid at only .02 cents, the ads sold quickly and I'm sure they will increase over time.

As you can see, both of these sites are great for delivering targeted traffic for little to no cost. I am so happy to have found them.