For Advanta, the sponsoring company, they get a database of users who are actively trying to start their own projects and who are obviously in the market for credit, as well.   It’s ideas like this that I consider Win/Win, where even a credit card company can come out smelling like roses.  Contests are perfect ways to get people to interact with your company in a positive way.

If you have an idea, put it to the test.  You never know, other people may think it’s just as great as you do.  How would you get your idea started if you had $10,000 to commit to it?

I know what I’d do.  Check out my web incubator idea and give me a thumbs up if you like it.

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Typically, your information product should be aimed at novices or those new to your website.  The reason for this is that by offering those new to your company a valuable piece of information, you are opening the door to building a long-term relationship with these prospects.  The idea isn’t to sell them something and move on to finding new prospects to sell something to.  The idea should be to build a rapport with each new person that comes in contact with your company by first giving them something of value.

If your information product fills a need and provides an adequate (and hopefully better) solution to the problem you are addressing, your prospects will not only give you their e-mail address in return, they will also read future e-mails from you and be pre-sold on any product or service you are offering.  Can you see the value of giving away something for free in return for long-term attention from those searching for the solutions you provide?

In order to take best advantage of this relationship, you must first put the time into figuring out exactly who you are trying to target.  For instance, if you have a company that sells faucets and vanities, you may decide to go after the portion of your market that buys from you during do-it-yourself bathroom remodels.  To reach this market, your information product could be something like “Cut 15% Off Your Water Bill With These 10 Remodeling Tips” or “How To Double Your Bathroom Space Without Breaking The Bank”.  By supplying this information, you are teaching your prospects something of value and at the same time, positioning your products and services as the tools for maximizing the value of the information you have given them.

In time, you may decide to create multiple information products, which is a great idea, but make sure each is targeted to a different segment of your overall market.  For example, in the previous instance, you may decide to create an information product that targets resellers/retailers or one that targets remodeling companies.  People buy from you for different reasons.  It is your job to know as many of those reasons as possible (or hire a marketing firm to figure it out for you) so that you can craft different messages for each group.  Once you understand the differences between the different segments that make up your market, you can craft a powerful information product that should be the beginning of long, mutually beneficial relationship.

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Depending on the information product you choose to create, the links you intentionally place within and the amount of promotion you give your information product, your returns can be staggering.  Think about it.  Even if it takes you a week or two to craft a great product, it is created cheaply, stored for less and delivered for even less, for as long as your content stays relevant.  And don’t forget that updating your information is fast, cheap and easy, as well.

Delivery of products and services are easily one of the most expensive aspects for any business.  Even marketing requires a delivery fee, whether it’s postage or the hiring of others to spread your word.  Information products are the exception to this rule.  In fact, delivery is so cheap, you may want to think about hiring a professional to craft your information product.  This marketing tool is going to be in your repertoire for years to come (if successful) and has virtually no costs after production of the prototype.  Maybe you pay $500-$1000 to have a 200 page e-book written for your site. It would only require 10,000 free downloads to bring your cost to a nickel or dime per download, and that’s not counting those that acquire your information product freely.

Provided your information product adequately performs the duties you crafted it to do and placed affiliate and landing page links in pertinent positions throughout your content, your money will be well spent.  And for each successful conversion you have through your information product, there is a high likelihood of two others coming along to download it, as well.  10,000 may seem like a high number (and it will be if you limit yourself), but valuable free downloads can reach far greater numbers.  If you aren’t worried about capturing e-mail addresses, think about alternative distribution avenues like torrent sites, e-book libraries and article directories.  You’ll be surprised how many people want what you know.

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E-mail courses are a series of e-mails you create as an opt-in mechanism that teaches your prospects about a specific topic or group of topics. They can either be given away for free, as a one-time fee or even as a subscription service that you update each month or week. You can even be more creative and package your information into custom subscription packages for your clients. Once you have them written, you set them up in your autoresponder so that they are delivered over specific intervals to those that subscribe.

So what are some ideas you can use for an e-mail course of your own?

• How To Market Your Small Business In 5 Easy Steps
• The Top 5 Divorce Tips And How They’ll Save You Thousands Of $
• How To Turn Your Catered Event Into A Favorite Event
• Why Computer Maintenance Is One Of The Most Important Things You’ll Ever Do
• Interior Decoration Ideas To Increase The Attractiveness Of ___________ Furniture

With no specific business in mind, I came up with those off the top of my head. With a specific business in mind, it’s probably even easier to find a good topic that will pique your prospects’ interest, entice them into trading their e-mail address for a chance to read your e-mail course and even persuade them to fill their shopping cart with your goods.

Remember to write your e-mail course in pieces so that it builds upon the original promise over time. To be successful, each e-mail you send needs to be worthy of its own message and provide useful information to those interested in the answers the course looks to provide. Keep a specific sales goal in mind as you write and make sure each part of the course ultimately asks the prospect to look further into a specific product or service you offer.

Each e-mail should also supply an answer to the specific question you raise within the message. If not, you run the risk of offending your hard-earned, new-found prospects. You also run the risk that they spread the word that your content is a waste of time. Creating any information product is contingent upon being valuable, and when you are looking for a prospect’s attention several times with your e-mail course, you better make sure each piece can stand on its own.

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• Create situations where your products or services provide the solution
• Shed new light on a new area of your business
• Provide a tutorial for improving how your clients use your products or services
• Establish yourself as an expert on a specific topic in your niche
• Create interactive elements to get your prospects more involved and make your e-book more memorable

Written properly, your e-book should support all your other marketing goals, ultimately leading new prospects through your door on a more regular basis and letting them get to know your company, product or service on a more intimate level. By doing so, you will enjoy one or more of the following benefits:

• Increased trust in your brand
• Expanded reach for your message
• Establishment of credibility within a specific area of your niche
• A product you can sell over and over again with little or no cost to yourself
• A marketing tool you can refer others to easily with no cost to yourself
• A publishing credit that can lead to future publishing opportunities
• Affiliate marketing opportunities
• A reputation for providing quality information, leading to increased sales of future products

Depending on your business, there are 1000’s of ideas you can come up with to write about and 1000’s more of how to market and maximize the publicity of your e-book. Don’t think as you usually do. What do you know best, or what is that you think you may know better than others? What topics do you talk about in conversations that intrigues people? Start with those types of ideas, and go from there.

Before you begin writing your e-book, plan it out. Create different topics you can use for chapters and format your e-book so that it is easily read on a computer screen. Keep in mind at all times that your book will be read while sitting at a computer and that unneeded information should be minimized or eliminated altogether. Also keep in mind that the information you know is valuable and that there are people out there that want to know what you know about your specific area of expertise. Give it to them.

Whether you charge for your e-book or not, by providing the best possible content, your e-book will become your first successful publication as an author. In time, you will write better e-books in less time and maybe even create the opportunity of starting your very own e-business out of the content you create, but first things first. Create your own e-book!

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Newsletters

Here at Prevail PR, we believe in newsletters so much, we are attempting to start a side business out of creating one of our own. We will continue to provide our Prevail Newsletter free of charge to everyone that registers with this site, but we are now taking things a step further because of the intrinsic value of creating and disseminating a newsletter in your specific community. Of course, if you are an Internet business, this may not make sense. If this is the case, there are still many reasons to create a newsletter to offer visitors to your site. Some of these are:

• Build up your e-mail opt-in list for many future sales
• Keep your clients informed about new products, services and sales
• Remind clients about referral and affiliate programs you may have
• Keep your brand on your client’s radar
• Advertise joint venture partnerships
• Get feedback from your clients
• Test new offerings with your clients before they hit the marketplace

Like e-books, there are million reasons to create a newsletter and very few not to. Being successful at any number of the reasons above can result in some major benefits like:

• Having a pre-sold audience to whom you can market any future products or services
• Saving on advertising and other marketing costs
• Increase your client base through referrals, affiliates and word-of-mouth
• Find new joint venture and affiliate partners
• Improve your products from feedback from current clients
• Increase your brand’s reach as your newsletter becomes more well known
• Increase revenue through newsletter advertising

Having created some newsletters for past clients, I can tell you personally how profitable they can actually be. To take advantage of the great opportunity newsletters provide, we have begun creation of our very own local newsletter to compliment the one we offer here at Prevail. The idea behind the newsletter is to gather the information pertinent to local business owners where I live (San Luis Obispo, CA), establish a platform for locals to speak about the issues concerning them, create interactive games and contests to get readers to participate (and hopefully retain ads longer) and offer local advertisers a new advertising venue that will act as a case study in proving to our future clients how well newsletters work.

The newsletter will have a first run print of 1000 copies and will be supported by its online edition at Here And Now News. As part of our local sales promotion, we are giving away advertising space on both print and online editions for three months, after which we will be establishing rates for different types of advertising. You can see from how things are set up that our marketing materials are reinforcing and promoting the launch of the newsletter, which will provide more value for new clients, prove to current and future clients the potential for newsletters, reinforce the Prevail PR brand as an innovative company that supports its local community and add to the examples of how interactive advertising is superior to that of regular television or radio ads.

If you are interested in starting your own online or local newsletter for your new or small business, please let us know if we can help.

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In an effort to meet the needs of this market, I planned a two-week local promotion that will end up costing $12.42 but should bring in a fair amount of new local clients. The $12.42 was spent on printing up 500 double-sided flyers that I’m passing out at our Chamber of Commerce and to pre-selected businesses in our downtown area. This area has been losing many small businesses thanks to an earthquake a few years back requiring the need for all buildings to be retrofitted. Add to that, rent has tripled for some and competing against the onslaught of big box stores has gotten even harder.

This is where we come in. I’ve talked to several owners about subscription marketing services that fit within their budget and most of them have expressed their interest in signing up. So to get the word out, I created this flyer (pdf) and pre-selected 50 businesses that I’m going to go to personally to hand them out to.

I’ve already had some great feedback on the flyer, mainly because they were written with 4 specific goals in mind:

1. Establish Prevail PR As The Best (Or Only) Marketing Option For Local Small Businesses
2. Get New Prospects To Sign Up
3. Get Those That Sign Up To Tell Their Friends, Thereby Earning 20% Off Their Next Purchase For Each Referral, Up To 100% Off
4. Announce Coming “Here And Now News” Newsletter

Because the flyer is actually worth $197 to those that sign up first, the flyer should perform most of the prospecting work by attracting those that are most interested in marketing services. The fact it’s worth so much should also build some buzz around our service and get our name out to the business core of our community.

Once new prospects sign up, the word-of-mouth element will kick in by enticing new prospects to refer others because the quicker they do, the more they will save — up to an entire year. At this point, all we have to do is our job and we should have a flood of new clients to serve. Once we have earned the trust of these new clients, our local newsletter will gain credibility, as well. The reasons for starting this newsletter are:

• To create a publication that engages the reader, thus becoming a breathing testimonial of the style of advertising we advocate here at Prevail PR
• To gather, analyze and supply valuable information to the community about the issues facing their downtown area
• To create an advertising platform for local businesses that better reaches their prospects while increasing our revenue stream
• To continue establishing the Prevail PR brand as one of innovation, loyalty and passion for helping small businesses succeed
  
• To show that online and offline newsletters are valid marketing tools
• To be a testing ground for upcoming marketing tactics we plan on using in the future

Looks to be an exciting week here. I’ll be sure to get some posts in for the Information Product Series, as well as keep you all up to date on what’s going on with this extremely affordable marketing promotion.

Enjoy your days off, and thanks for spending some of it here.

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How are you able to sell or give away an unlimited amount of these products? Once you create a solid information product, there is only one file to worry about. That file is uploaded to your website or autoresponder service and can be downloaded by as many people as you can possibly make aware of it (don’t forget to market!). The best part is that for each and every sale you make, it costs you absolutely nothing. It’s all profit. Every penny.

Despite the boatloads of profit you could make from your information product, giving it away free may be an even better strategy. How can that be? By giving a solid information product with a high perceived value to your prospects for free, it builds trust and credibility and earns you more of their attention. What price can be put on these benefits? I guess it all depends on whether or not you plan on sticking around awhile or whether or not you want your entire business to revolve around information products, but creating long-term relationships with your prospects and clients is the end game for me as a business owner.

Even if I were to stop running Prevail PR some day, I believe I would be able to bring our clients along with me wherever I do go because I have earned their respect and trust. If I were to start a new venture tomorrow, I’m positive the majority of our clients and prospects would support me. And that hopefully translates into anything I do the rest of my life.

To me, that’s the true long-term value of a prospect and client, and vice versa. I know that whatever I do in life, I have to uphold the standards I have created for myself thus far. One way to build this type of relationship is to give your prospects something of value that represents you for free. And nothing performs this action better than a solid information product your prospects can refer to for years.

Deciding on what to write your information product about is only the first step. Setting a price and marketing it correctly are just as important. Don’t let the “loss” of profits deter you from offering your product for free. Think about how your information product helps your prospects and whether or not it will help lead them further into your company. If it won’t, maybe selling it will be the better option. But if it does, and it helps start a longer relationship with them, don’t hesitate to give it away for free. It’s only free for now. If your products and services do what you say and you offer better service and benefits than your competitors, they will have a hard time saying no to your future offerings.

A good example is how the rock band Radiohead decided to let their fans decide on how much to pay for their newest album, which was released only online as a digital file.  Although most of them chose to download the album for free, Radiohead still won for several reasons.  First, they have a giant database of valid e-mails with which they can base any future marketing campaigns around.  Secondly, by bypassing traditional packaging restrictions, they saved an enormous amount of money by not supplying cd’s, cases, liner notes and store displays.  Lastly, they built more trust and created more publicity for their band by being different.  If they are willing to let you choose how much to pay them, think they stand by their music?

Think about how you can give your prospects that power and go for it.

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In order to get prospects to opt-in to your newsletter, you first need to do two things.  The first is to offer quality content on your blog or website.  If your content is not unique or in some other way valuable to your readers, there is no need to take the time to opt-in.  If your website content solves the problems your prospects face, they can reasonably assume your newsletter will offer even more insight.

The other thing you need to do is create a great newsletter.  This doesn’t mean you need to spend an arm and a leg on designing it.  Instead, gather the information each edition that will further assist your readers in their quest to answer a specific question.  Be sure to create a strong headline for each edition to get your readers to open your newsletter once it lands in their inbox. Our newsletter, for example, aims to answer as many questions about the month’s topic as possible and is usually named something like “All The Small Business Blogging Tips And Tools You’ll Ever Need”.  We are also actively creating a local newsletter called the “Here And Now Newsletter” that I will share with everyone once the first 1000-copy issue goes out very soon.

Now that you have an idea of what you want to write about and how often, there are some other things you might want to include in your newsletter.

What else should I include in my newsletter?

• Table of Contents
• Industry news
• Upcoming events in your industry or for your specific company
• Answers to commonly asked questions
• Interactive games, trivia or other means to interact with your readers
• Graphics
• Statistics
• Sales pitch
• Call to action

Just because your newsletter is packed full of great information for your readers doesn’t mean it can’t help you sell your products or services, too.  Indeed, supplying your readers with a compelling offer and asking them to perform some sort of action should be one of your main goals.  Trade your free, quality information for a moment of your prospects’ time, offer them something that can further help them fix a problem the newsletter addresses and persuade them to do something about it.  The better you get at creating a powerful call to action, the more valuable your regularly updated newsletter will become in your marketing arsenal.

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AWeber is the most reliable and cost effective means of capturing your prospects e-mail addresses, send unlimited autoresponders and create and send newsletters. Their service includes dozens of templates you can use free of charge, as well as all the technical support you could ever ask for. These jobs are often a big headache, but for packages between $15 and $20 a month, AWeber will take care of all the hassle for you.

In addition to great prices and the highest reputation in the business, AWeber also backs its offers with a 30-day guarantee. Having been in the autoresponder and mass e-mail delivery service for nearly a decade, they really know their product and how to satisfy their clients.

You may not have put much thought into autoresponders, but once you have an information product to offer your prospects, you are going to need to find a reliable service. AWeber automatically delivers the information your prospects request within seconds and adds their e-mail addresses to your database saving you even more time. You can also create personalized follow up letters that can be sent out on regular intervals so you can continue to build a relationship with your prospects.

All in all, AWeber is a standard among those who count on their quality information products bringing them more and more qualified new prospects. If your product is highly valuable, the process in which it is delivered needs to be, too. Don’t put time and effort into creating a great information product and then let it get lost in delivery or at the point of sale. You can try to use your hosting company’s autoresponder services, but they are typically very limited. There aren’t many choices in life that leave you with no headaches, but choosing AWeber as your autoresponder and newsletter service is one of them.

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