This Static Spot is open for sponsor

Click Here to Sponsor MCT Eric Post in Full Page

Afrikaans Afrikaans Albanian Albanian Amharic Amharic Arabic Arabic Armenian Armenian Azerbaijani Azerbaijani Basque Basque Belarusian Belarusian Bengali Bengali Bosnian Bosnian Bulgarian Bulgarian Catalan Catalan Cebuano Cebuano Chichewa Chichewa Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional) Corsican Corsican Croatian Croatian Czech Czech Danish Danish Dutch Dutch English English Esperanto Esperanto Estonian Estonian Filipino Filipino Finnish Finnish French French Frisian Frisian Galician Galician Georgian Georgian German German Greek Greek Gujarati Gujarati Haitian Creole Haitian Creole Hausa Hausa Hawaiian Hawaiian Hebrew Hebrew Hindi Hindi Hmong Hmong Hungarian Hungarian Icelandic Icelandic Igbo Igbo Indonesian Indonesian Irish Irish Italian Italian Japanese Japanese Javanese Javanese Kannada Kannada Kazakh Kazakh Khmer Khmer Korean Korean Kurdish (Kurmanji) Kurdish (Kurmanji) Kyrgyz Kyrgyz Lao Lao Latin Latin Latvian Latvian Lithuanian Lithuanian Luxembourgish Luxembourgish Macedonian Macedonian Malagasy Malagasy Malay Malay Malayalam Malayalam Maltese Maltese Maori Maori Marathi Marathi Mongolian Mongolian Myanmar (Burmese) Myanmar (Burmese) Nepali Nepali Norwegian Norwegian Pashto Pashto Persian Persian Polish Polish Portuguese Portuguese Punjabi Punjabi Romanian Romanian Russian Russian Samoan Samoan Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic Serbian Serbian Sesotho Sesotho Shona Shona Sindhi Sindhi Sinhala Sinhala Slovak Slovak Slovenian Slovenian Somali Somali Spanish Spanish Sundanese Sundanese Swahili Swahili Swedish Swedish Tajik Tajik Tamil Tamil Telugu Telugu Thai Thai Turkish Turkish Ukrainian Ukrainian Urdu Urdu Uzbek Uzbek Vietnamese Vietnamese Welsh Welsh Xhosa Xhosa Yiddish Yiddish Yoruba Yoruba Zulu Zulu

 

 

Article Navigation

Back To Main Page

 

Click Here for more articles
Google
How Nearly Going Broke Taught Me The Value Of Niche Marketing
by: André Anthony
If you want to learn how effective Niche Marketing can be, I suggest you "don't" take the route I did.

Back in 1983 I started a company offering general Electronics Subcontract Assembly services to just about anyone who made Electronic products.

By 1985 my company was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and I was perilously close to losing my home because of a large overdraft pledged against it.

Why did this happen?

Well Electronics Subcontract Assembly is a huge, highly competitive market place with lots of heavy hitters. Being a little naive at the time, I thought that my little three man company could carve out a big enough slice from such a huge market to make a very comfortable living - I was dead wrong.

We did get work, but only the jobs the big boys didn't want. The work was labour intensive and even with our tiny overhead we couldn't make enough profit to sustain the business adequately. We could never get the big, lucrative contracts because we weren't considered big enough to handle them.

By December '84 I was desperate. Sales for the previous four months had been abysmal and cashflow almost non-existent. My Bank Manager was on my back demanding that I reduce the business overdraft or he would call it in. My suppliers were baying at my door to be paid. As if that wasn't bad enough, during the first week of 1985 my biggest customer suspended production for six months on a games gizmo we were making for him.

Things were so bad I was seriously considering bankruptcy to get out from under this financial nightmare. Fortunately I'm a bit pig headed about giving in too easily so despite all the problems I hung on, and I'm glad I did because fortune suddenly smiled on me.

What happened?

A couple of weeks into 1985 a business acquaintance came to see us with a sample cable and asked if we could make 5 up for him. The cable was for an IBM PC. At the time I knew nothing about making cables and even less about PCs, but I had his sample to work from so I took the job.

When our now customer came to collect his finished order, he mentioned that there were a few other Dealers in the PC market who would probably be interested in having us supply them with these cables - he even gave us a mailing list.

I was more than a little sceptical, I have to admit, but I had nothing to lose so I went for it. I wrote a short, snappy sales letter, scraped together the money, mailed out to the 100+ dealers on the list and crossed my fingers.

48 hours later we had our first order for 10 cables, within 7 days we had 11 more orders for 10 cables each.

That one small mailing brought us an amazing 12% initial response - and it just kept going from there with week after week of repeat orders.

Pretty soon after that, my wife Maxine joined the business and set up a telephone sales desk and customer service system. By that time we were averaging about £1000 a week and that was from just the one cable type.

At that point I dumped the subcontract work and focussed on the cable business.

Once Maxine took over the sales function she immediately followed up with the companies who hadn't responded to our initial mailing. That brought in another 26 new customers. Within six months we were supplying most of the major Dealers and Distributors in the then burgeoning PC market and our cable sales had quadrupled.

Inside a year in this niche business we were selling thousands of computer cables of all descriptions, including highly lucrative custom formats, and we were being asked to provide advice on how to design cables for specific applications - we had arrived - we were now the acknowledged experts - customer loyalty rocketed and by 1988 our turnover reached £400,000+ with gross profits of 50% or more.

Now I'm the first to admit that luck played a hand in turning my company's fortunes around, but the experience taught me my most valuable lesson in business - you have to focus on a specific, under-served market niche if you want to be really successful in business.

I have applied this premise to four other businesses since then and, with one exception, all have been successful.

My advice? Find yourself a small, focused market niche (the Internet is full of them) where you can carve a reputation for yourself and become an expert in the field - like I did.

Copyright © 2005, André Anthony Niche Market Know-How

About the author:

André Anthony owns and operates Niche Market Know-How a resource for beginning Niche Marketers. Visit http://www.nichemarketknowhow.comtoday to find strategies, tips, tools, products and resources for effective niche product creation and marketing. Get his Niche Market Know-how Mini Course here: http://www.nichemarketknowhow.com/course.htm


Circulated by Article Emporium

 


©2005 - All Rights Reserved

This Static Spot is open for sponsor

Mailing List Information

Read Articles:


 Marketing Options For Cleaning Companies – Part Two

 Boost Your Traffic and Profits with Content

 20 Ways to Explode your Blog‘s Profitability and Traffic

 Kick-Starting E-mail Profits Growth From One Single Shot!

 Five Myths of Internet Marketing for Independent Professi...

 Does Post Card Advertising Really Work?

 Is There A Short Circuit In Your Networking?

 How to Boost Your Website Traffic and Profits with Content!

 Make Your Mailing a Home Run, Not a Strike Out!

 3 Simple ways to harness concept of the Free Offer for in...

 Tool Talk: All About Internet Marketing Tools

 10 Choice Ways To Give Your Subscriptions A Boost

 Branding, control and results - Submit Articles in Your O...

 How To Profit From 2 Tier Affiliate Programs And Build A ...

 10 Common Direct Mail Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

 Niche Marketing : The Power Of Articles

 There’s More to Marketing ROI (return on investment) than...

 Are your Articles Creating an Avalanche of Traffic?

 Marketing: Are You Scaring Customers Away?

 How Nearly Going Broke Taught Me The Value Of Niche Marke...

 What Is Education Based Marketing

 Do Guaranteed Signups Work for MLM Internet Business Oppo...

 How are you promoting your website?

 Marketing Hat for Graphic Designers or Wannabe’s

 How To Put The Profit-Producing Power of Couponing To Wor...

 Business Marketing Strategy

 How To Market A Seminar

 100,000 Subscribers In 30 Days?

More Article Pages 1 - 2

 

 E-Z GRO Opt-In Mailing List Techniques
 by: Shon Christopher

An opt-in mailing list can be your most solid internet marketing tool. Think of it as a foot in the door – or better yet, a standing invitation to drop by anytime. Research has shown that it takes an average of seven contacts with a prospect to make your first sale.

It’s hard to count on someone returning to your web site seven times – but if you get them there once, and convince them to join your opt-in mailing list, you have a standing invitation to contact them with your offers, at your convenience.

The trick, of course, is turning your web site visitors into opt-in list subscribers. Opt-in list building is easier than you think. There are a number of tried and true methods of list building that you can use – but don’t be afraid to think outside the box to sign up folks who drop by your web site for a short visit.

Start with a good reason for people to join your opt-in list.

People don’t join opt-in lists out of the goodness of their hearts – they opt in because you’re offering them something of value. What have you got to offer?

• Get a 10% discount on all purchases over $25 – exclusive to members of our mailing list!

• Find out about our newest products through our opt-in mailing list!

• We’ll keep you up to date on the latest developments in [insert your field here].

• Special discount prices and offers exclusively for members of our mailing list.

Get the picture? You’re not saying, “Hey, can I keep bugging you to try to sell you stuff?” You’re offering a service – “I’ll let you know when I’ve got good stuff you want to buy.”

Post the invitation to join your opt-in list prominently on your web site. Simple list building truth number one is that people can’t join your opt-in list if they don’t know about it. Put an invitation to join your email list on every single page of your site – and make the invitation enticing.

Practice opt-in list building everywhere.

Include a short invitation to join your opt-in email list as part of your email signature so that it goes out every time you email someone. If you do a presentation or event, personally invite participants or booth visitors to join your opt in email list.

Bribe people to sign up with a free gift.

Bribery is a tried-and-true fast list building technique and website promotion tool. Selling weight loss products? Put together an e-book of weight loss facts about nutrition and offer it as an incentive to sign up for your opt in list. Be creative, and watch your list grow like a weed.

Offer incentives for referrals.


©2005 - All Rights Reserved

JV Blogs Visit free hit counter