Ways To Make Money - Old School Roots Come In Handy

For most individuals seeking ways to make money, promoting the unique and valuable aspects of the products or services offered by your business is the natural focus of a blog article or post. Basing one's promotional effort around the useful advantages you offer should not only attract readers to your blog or web page, but should also encourage sales. At least one would think that this would be the case.

 

Unfortunately, although many smaller business enterprises do provide significant value in their product and service offering, many operators will miss some basic elements when promoting their services and products online. Their errors will most likely reside within the body or content of blog articles. Without a basic framework to guide the composition effort, enterprise owners may be throwing away a great deal of time and effort.

 

To help develop a fundamental promotional message, take a trip down memory lane back to Marketing 101 and recall that at least in the ancient business world. There are four central controllable marketing elements:

 

a) Product; b) Price; c) Promotion (active advertising and Public Relations) and; d) Place (where purchaser would acquire the product or service).

 

These "four P's" were taught on day one back in most business schools, but they still offer good guidance for constructing your marketing message, especially as that message applies to blogs and articles. Recalling also that article placement is a key ingredient in your SEO or internet strategy, a careful examination of these elements can yield significant material for topics and future posts. By re-connecting with these basic marketing elements, you can refine your articles and blog posts to reach your potential customers with a highly focused message for each piece you write.

 

Part of the value in examining the marketing message is to refine the areas where new ideas might be found or where previously unseen opportunities might exist. When looking through each of the four areas, dig beneath the surface to understand all advantages you provide to the market in each of these areas. Then outline a series of blog posts or articles that highlight each advantage. This strategy will focus your message on the advantages you provide your customers. Doing this can help attracting new customers as well.

 

a. Product

 

Most enterprises focus their marketing message in this area. Product features and service advantages are unique to each business. However, each manager should understand from current customers, exactly what the most valuable part of the product or service might be. Asking customers for this information frequently turns up valuable information.

 

In previous experience, a website owner that had noticed a great increase in traffic simply presumed that his product information caused more and more viewers to hit the site. In reviewing these viewers behavior though, it turned out that hitting the website to look for location telephone numbers was easier than going to a phone book. In this instance, some ancillary information - the location telephone numbers - turned out to be the single greatest value to the site. Had this business owner not asked his customers why they were using his site, he would have kept working to generate additional product features instead of working to make his locations more accessible by telephone.

 

b. Price

 

Price is always an important element in any purchasing process. The purchase decision though, must be understood in proper context. If an enterprise provides durable goods, the message should focus on reducing the overall cost of ownership as it relates to the initial purchase cost. Your product may be cheaper to purchase initially, but if it doesn't last as long as your competitors' the cost of ownership declines over time. This leaves the provider at risk for losing clients to providers delivering a better overall cost of ownership.

 

Cost areas should be examined along with other expenses or cost areas like shipping, prep costs and finance charges. Total 'Cost of Acquisition' then includes every fee and expense that the customer must pay to receive full value for the product or service.

 

Another area of interest for buyers is "Cost of Ownership." Products that require no upkeep or maintenance might justify increased purchase pricing if the customer can validate that cost savings will offset the purchase price over the longer term.

 

c. Promotion

 

It is commonly believed that a business web presence or website should be use purely for promotional purposes. Of course internet marketing and promotion attracts new clients, many operators simply use the website to distribute information regarding product and service features. This is important, but one should miss some of the other benefits that customers and clients find valuable.

 

Connecting with potential and current clients is another way to view the "Promotion" function. Delivering useful information to customers establishes your organization as a reliable and valuable partner.

 

d. Place

 

Acquiring the goods and services is actually a geographic question. Do you deliver your product, in which case the point of acquisition is the customer location, or does your customer need to visit your distribution point? Any advantage or convenience that you can offer potential customers makes good copy for a blog post or web article.

 

Sometimes we have to go back to our roots in order to rediscover ways to make money.

 

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