1. Business Cards
Business cards are often one of the most underutilized tools in one’s marketing.
Use the front and back of your business card to gain full benefit. Depending on your market you can put some very valuable information on the back such as a sports schedule, emergency numbers, or special dates people want to remember. Keep some in your wallet, your automobile, on your desk, and some at home. Be sure to carry them with you wherever you go and be willing to hand them out as opportunity presents itself.

Creatively distribute your card. When you eat out you can leave one with the tip.
If you borrow a library book, use one as a book mark. Hand them to clerks in stores who may know other people who could use your product or service.

When someone gives you their business card be sure to enter their information in your database. Send them a short note or email within 48 hours of meeting them to keep your name fresh in their mind.

2. Send a picture
A great way to keep your name fresh in a customer’s mind is to send them a picture of when they purchased a product or service from you. Put a picture of a buyer’s auto purchase in a beautiful calendar. Likely, the proud owner of the vehicle will display the calendar for the next 365 days.

For specialty gift shops, when a customer makes a substantial purchase, have a picture taken with the shop owner. Frame the picture and send it to the customer.
Chances are very good the picture will be displayed proudly for friends and family to see. A dentist who specializes in smile makeovers can easily arrange to have a professional makeup artist and photographer capture the patient’s beautiful new smile. No doubt the patient will be more than happy to show others their new look.

3. Associations
Associations particular to your market are a great resource for marketing. There are associations specific to virtually any industry, job type or business. A quick web search will likely show you how much is available.A major opportunity within many organizations is the chance to network. Additionally, to make presentations. Along with presentations come publications.
Often, when you do a presentation, you will get a mention in the association newsletter, their Ezine and/or on their website.

In many cases, when an organization has a newsletter or Ezine, they welcome the presenter writing a press announcement for them. It saves them time and often assures you have a better chance of the information making it into the publication. They may also welcome you writing an article for their publication or website.
This lends itself to pre-presentation visibility. Additionally, you will position yourself as an expert and increase credibility.

Most organizations have the following opportunities that can help you to gain visibility and do some very effective marketing:

-Newsletters
-Internet listings
-Links to you website
-Discounted advertising rates
-Networking opportunities
-Business referral services
-Special recognition events
-Education seminars
-Business and membership directories

In many cases you will need to be a member of the association to take advantage of the multiple marketing opportunities. In other cases membership is not necessary.

4. Committee Involvement
Committee involvement is a great way to give back to the association or community while building visibility for you and your business. In some cases, you may even want to get involved in a committee where you have little experience or knowledge. This will give you an opportunity to stretch yourself and meet and network with individuals you may not have otherwise had the chance to meet.

5. Contests and drawings
Contests are a favorite for many businesses such as restaurants or those that have high foot traffic. Contests are a great way to build your database quickly.
You are generating very hot leads when you have a contest with people who have already frequented your place of business. The key though is to do back -end marketing. Far too many businesses hold contests, get lots of names and do nothing with them. In this case, it is a complete waste of time to hold a contest.
You can advertise a contest to gain new foot traffic in your place of business.
Trade show booths are a great place to hold a contest. Pre-show marketing helps to generate traffic at your booth. Invite people to stop by booth # _____ (whatever your booth is) to enter to win. Creative contests can also generate free publicity.

6. Cross-promoting
Join with other companies who have products or services that compliment yours and promote each other. Let’s say you have a massage business. You could partner with a candle company to sell their candles to your massage clients. They can give out coupons for your massage business. Or the candle company can partner with a gift basket company. Cross-promoting is only limited by your imagination.

This can considerably cut down the cost of business promotion and allow each business to use promotion techniques that might be too expensive to implement alone.

7. Bonuses
Secure special offers from various businesses who want to share a similar market as you. When a customer buys a minimum amount they receive a bonus packet with the various offers from the other vendors. This is a win/win all the way around. The other vendors gain visibility, you have something extra to offer you customers and the customers get incredible value for their purchase.

Be aware of who you cross-promote and joint venture with. You want someone who will be equally committed to a campaign.

If you are, then Internet marketing is not a new thing for you. In fact, tens to hundreds of stories have been published and relayed through different tongues about the success of Internet marketers. Starting from scratch, they have built an Internet marketing empire, attracting majority of Internet marketing and generating millions of dollars in revenues. Moreover, they are enjoying the freedom of doing what they want to do with their business without someone telling them to do so. The combined power of freedom and business opportunity made Internet marketing one of the most sought-after industries nowadays.

There are hundreds to thousands of products that are now available over the Internet, and you can make your offerings unique, making a business opportunity that will work well. However, despite your clever mind’s brightest ideas, you must realize one thing-and that is, you need to put a lot of hard work, research, and effective marketing strategies to make your Internet marketing business opportunity successful not just within a few years but in the long run as well. Remember that the occurrence of individuals starting in their online-based business that make hundred thousands of dollars in just a few months is rare. Despite of the determination forged by starting Internet marketers, their business commonly lasts within a short time.

One of your objectives as an Internet marketer is to be the “exception to the rule”. As a self-starter, you need to invest on several important factors, one of which is establishing business goals, particularly long term ones. You may wish to treat your Internet marketing business as a hobby and earn several good paychecks from it. Applying effective marketing strategies will play an important role in the success of your online-based business. This must be included in establishing your long-term goals. Here are some of the strategies that you can use in building an Internet marketing empire all by yourself.

• Despite of an excellent business opportunity in mind, you need to test the market to see if the opportunity will work to your advantage. You can conduct your own research to find the existing opportunities for you and how you will market it. If you are still uncertain about the business opportunity in your mind, you can find several business analysts to help you select the investment that is worth of your money. Once you have found the niche that is unique in nature yet will turn out to be a profitable investment, you may now consider the next step.

• Establishing an effective promotional plan will help you choose marketing devices in order to achieve profitable results for your Internet marketing business. Make use of effective marketing plans and make sure that you master the required skills to make them more effective. You may wish to establish first an advertising budget. Determining first how much you can spend will help you maximize your capital for your resources.

• Once you have established your marketing plan, it is now time that you select existing yet proven marketing strategies that will work efficiently with your adopted system. Here are some of the strategies for you to choose from.

o Starting your own ezine- this is one of the powerful marketing strategy on the Internet. You will create your own list of subscribers and send them newsletters on a regular basis. This is a powerful way of expanding your clientele base for your Internet marketing business.

o Articles- writing high quality article content and submitting it to article directories have the potential of driving targeted traffic to your site. It is effective and at the same time free to use.

o PPC or pay-per-click advertising- this is the fastest way of getting targeted traffic to your business website. To further maximize its benefits, you must learn the importance and methods of determining highly searched and highly paid keywords.

o SEO or search engine optimization- optimizing your web pages will help your website achieve high search engine rankings. This is one of the most inexpensive yet effective methods of getting targeted traffic to your website.

Keep in mind that Internet marketing is the “pot of gold” you are looking for, yet needs to be applied with effective strategies that will help you grab that pot of gold and enjoy its benefits in the long term.