Forgotten Marketing Tool

Contrary to traditional advertising thinking within the small-business world, there are actually many opportunities out there that exist that do not break the bank. And one of those options is press-releases. This is probably one of the most underused tools among small-businesses, primarily because they are not well understood.

Press-releases, if used properly can be a powerful tool to boost the presence of your business in your target market. With most press-releases you can target an audience locally or globally. With the ubiquity of the internet, you are able to target with precision on who you want to hear about your new business or product. It is most effective, however, to target your audience with specificity as your press-release will get more attention from the media, whereas if you cast a wider net and attempt to capture all markets and regions, the likelihood is that visibility will decline.

There are several reasons for utilizing press-releases and this may include the announcement of a new office, new product or service, an event involving your business, new employee or better yet any business awards that your company has been recognized with for the year. Ensure that the press-release is one that will capture the eye of the media as they have a slew of releases that stack on their desks to review and it is essential that you keep your message dynamic and exciting.

Here are a few websites that provide you with a portal for Free press-releases. Take advantage of these and put a plan together for your company to integrate press-releases in 2010 as a component of your marketing plan.

• PR.com
• i-newswire.com
• Free-press-release.com
• PRlog.com
  

Email Marketing Opportunities

Email marketing, certainly something within my background of medical devices and diagnostics that has not been employed. But in looking at it as an opportunity for other industries that are not as highly regulated as the medical arena, the following statistics are intriguing and certainly should support some thought into developing a strategy in evolving your efforts in possible employing an email marketing campaign.

Marketing Tip #1: Business cards

Chances are that you have a stack of business cards that you have collected in the past, either from a networking function or a meeting. Do you remember what you have done with any of them? This stack of business cards is a gold-mine for your business...how you say? Out of these cards may be new clients, strategic partners, new vendors or maybe a new employee.

Start out by making a few categories that you can put each card into--strategic partner, prospective client, vendor, etc. There will probably be a few others that you can include but begin to place the cards that belong to each category. In each category, pick the top five candidates that you have the greatest chance in achieving your objective. In the strategic partnership, these five may be contacts that can help you expand your service or product offering. The vendor category may be contacts that can help you optimize your cost. An so on and so forth...

This will afford the ability to identify some "low-hanging" opportunities that you may have not previous been aware until you took a look at your contacts.

Visit our Tools section to peruse through some of the tools that we can offer to your business.

Apogee Marketing Partners Launches

After a lot of late nights, we have now completed the website for Apogee Marketing Partners. Once the dust settles...oh wait...we can't wait until the dust settles! We have to get working now...this is where the true work begins. And I will post some key learnings here about the journey of designing the site and optimizing it to be found on the vast world wide web.

In the meantime, let me speak about the memberships and services that Apogee Marketing Partners offers on our site. The concept is simple...as it stands in our economy, small-business and non-profits have very small, if not, non-existent budgets for marketing. Therefore, their ability to plan for growth is very limited. Our goal is to provide our marketing expertise available to companies with limited resources and budget. Obtaining access to experience like this is not readily available at an affordable price.

Visit our website to learn more about Apogee Marketing's memberships. We are confident that there is a membership that will fit your budget.

Apogee Marketing Website Overview

My first attempt at utilizing iShowU. Not quite the best quality as I imported into iMovie, but I will get better at doing this I am sure. Enjoy the overview of our website.