Where are you now… and where do you want to be? What do you want to achieve in the next year? What are your goals for 2009?

Write them down somewhere specific where you’ll see them everyday. I know it might sound silly, but it works because it gets you thinking about how you’re going to achieve them and what it’s going to take to make it work.

Besides, goal setting is something that’s used by top performers all over the place. Top athletes create them. Million dollar CEO’s create them. And soccer moms create them too because they work and help to get more done and ultimately make you more successful.

Here’s the 3 steps to setting goals:

1. Define your goals.
2. Set mini subgoals.
3. Create an action plan on how you’re going to achieve them.

Always set performance type goals that are measurable and realistic to achieve. Don’t make them too easy, but you also don’t want them to be nearly impossible to achieve.

If you’re new to goal setting, you can use the SMART mnemonic to get help get you started. SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Because internet marketing is still a relatively new technology that’s constantly changing, I don’t like to plan too long term. In this business, you can’t. But you can set goals for what you want to accomplish in the next month. In the next 3 months, 6 months or even 12 months.

You might want to quit your job.

You might want to create your own product.

You might want to earn some extra income for a vacation.

You might want to become a recognized expert in your niche.

You might want to form a mastermind group.

You might want to find a JV partner for a new project

What do you want to do in 2009?

Here are a few of my goals for the New Year:

• To do $100,000 or more in online sales in February.
• To outsource more, work smarter and be able to take an extra day off each week by the end of the year.
• To add a minimum of an extra 25,000 opt-in subscribers to my list this year.
• To rewrite and republish my Street Smart Internet Marketing book as a hardcover (textbook style).
• To set up my business in such a way that I can spend 75% of my time working on the things that I enjoy doing most.

Goals are important, but what’s more important is how you’re going to achieve them. What’s it going to take to make them happen? What do you need to do to achieve them? Write that down as well and then work on setting it in motion.

Goal setting just doesn’t need to be limited to your business life, but can be done for your personal life as well. Maybe you want to pay off your mortgage or get married to a special someone or spend more time with your kids. How are you going to make that happen this year?

If you’re not a believer yet, goal setting and achieving is also an incredible motivational tool and in this business when many people are working from home, often by themselves, it’ll help keep you motivated, focused and on track. People who are laser focused and stay on track are often much more successful than those that aren’t.

So what are your goals for 2009?

Feel free to share some of them below- maybe you’ll inspire someone else and help to change their life.

I just took my Traffic Tips Report from www.TrafficTipsReport.com and put it up for free at: www.LemonadeHere.com

If you have a website, blog, Squidoo lens, Hub page or ever plan on putting one up, make sure you grab a copy before I pull it off the market at the end of the month.

Here’s the link: www.LemonadeHere.com

There’s also a special bonus in there that will allow you to start profiting from it almost instantly!

By the way, I’m working on a complete redesign of this blog / website which I hope to have ready soon- that’s why it hasn’t been updated in a while

Here’s the gist of it: Work on your business, not in it. That’s it.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say that you’re a painter by profession. If you’re working in your business, that means you’re going out everyday and painting whatever it is that you paint and when you return home, you’re working on things like book keeping and equipment cleaning That hardly leaves any time for marketing, hiring, firing, training and in general, getting more business to earn more profits.

But, if you’re a painter and working on your business, that means that you’re taking some of the time you could spend painting, to work on drumming up new business or increasing the profit margin from the business you’re already receiving, thereby, increasing your overall profits.

Then, once you have full-time round the clock business, you hire and train someone to paint for you and work on getting more business. Rinse and repeat.

Though I can’t remember the exact study, at a seminar some time ago, the speaker quoted a study that found if you take just 2-3 hours a week, and work on your business, not in it, your sales will effectively double. From my experience, that’s 100% reality.

Even though we’ve been talking about painting, the same holds true to internet marketing.

If you spend all your time on tasks like bookkeeping, customer service, article and content writing, web design, copyrighting and so on, how much time is left for marketing and selling?

Not enough!

That’s why the rich will always get richer.

The concept is so simple. They can afford to hire people to do things for them that most people would need to do for themselves.

Think about it. If you had a full time housekeeper, nanny, cook, gardener, driver, pilot, personal assistant etc. how much more could you get done in a day? A lot!

In your online business, you need to outsource, outsource, outsource. You can’t do everything yourself!

I don’t write my own copy, do my own web design, programming, accounting, paperwork, article writing, search engine submission, article submission, editing or anything else that I can sufficiently outsource to someone else.

When it comes to my business, there are only 3 things I do each day; they are:

1. Managing my outsourcing- 1 hr

2. Responding to emails and coaching clients- 2 hrs

3. Marketing, improving on and growing my business, products and services- 2+ hrs

Now, not everyone will want to outsource everything right away. If you’re just starting out, you’ll want to do most of it yourself, but as you and your business grow, you’ll want to start outsourcing some of the everyday tasks that keep your business going.

The more you outsource, the more that you can accomplish and the more successful you’ll be.

Figure out what your time’s worth, and hire someone to do everything that’s not worth your time, or who can do it better than you.

Producing a blog is one of the quickest, cheapest and easiest ways to put your business’s products and services out there before a highly targeted consumer audience. As well, blogging is one of the most cost effective forms of Internet marketing and advertisement available. Below are five specific reasons why every online business should have a blog.

1. Publishing and maintaining a blog puts you (and keeps you) in touch with your customers. Think of your blog as an ongoing, casual and open conversation with your customers (and prospects). You are able to keep your customers informed as to the ongoings of your business and they, in turn, are able to leave feedback about your products and services. With a business blog, it is no longer just a relationship of seller to buyer, but rather a community, or at least sense thereof, begins to form around your products and/or services.

2. Publishing a blog encourages consumer participation and feedback (related to point 1 above). By stimulating discussion about your products and services (both the good and the bad) you are able to take action by responding to your customer directly, in the process reaching thousands of other potential customers.

This will serve you twofold. Firstly, by encouraging feedback, you get your customer’s likes and dislikes with regard to your products/services. This gives you the vantage point of seeing ‘what’s wrong’ (as well as what’s right) with your products/services so that you can fix any issues that need fixing and improve any processes that need improving. This shows customers that you stand behind your products and services and that you care about their experience as a consumer.

Secondly, it provides a venue from which potential customers can observe your interaction with present customers and thus inspires their confidence in you as well.

3. Having a blog for your business will also give you a certain measure of control over the discussion, complaints and questions about your products and services. Since you encourage feedback on your blog, most likely these will be funneled into your business blog rather than taking on lives of their own on other personal or consumer group blogs. This is a form of preemptive damage control.

4. Blogs also allow you the opportunity to demonstrate yourself as an expert in your particular field. If you want customers to trust you and to trust your business, you’ll have to earn it. One of the easiest ways to earn customer trust is by walking the walk that you talk- but you still have to get the ‘talk’ down first.

Write, and write voluminously on topics related to your products and services such that you establish yourself as an authoritative source in your particular field. Invite questions and feedback. Provide answers and solutions. In this regard, your blog functions in the role of perfect sales page by demonstrating the customer’s problem and then presenting your particular solution to the problem.

5. One of the most important reasons why every online business should have a blog is that blogs rank very highly in the search engine results. In this regard, a blog is a great way to optimize your website for better standing in the search engines.

Blogs rank so highly and this for several reasons. One is that blogs provide content – fresh content that tends to be updated on a regular basis. Second, blogs provide a platform for links, i.e., links back to your website, products, services, etc. which, as high quality and relevant links, raise your website’s overall standing with the search engines. Blogs are very useful tools for search engine optimization indeed. In fact, it is often the case that a business’s blog ranks more highly in the search engine results than does the business’s website!

If you have an online business, then you definitely need to publish a blog, if you haven’t already of course. If you don’t, then you are missing out on the many benefits of blogging. Get a blog started and watch a community form around your products and services, inspire customer trust and confidence, take control over the discussion related to your business, show off your expertise, and optimize your website’s ranking in the search engines. There are no real negatives to blogging – the only real negative is not having one!

The main advantage of ezines as advertising vehicles is that they are delivered to a very targeted group of readers. Usually, the quality of the subscribers will be higher in ezines that focus on single, very narrow topics such as crocheting or knitting. Ezine ads generally fall into one of three categories:

1 – Classified Ads

Classified ads are among the cheapest newsletter ads and are usually found at the bottom of newsletters. Sometimes free classified ads are given away as an incentive to subscribe to the newsletter or ezine. They are also the least effective due to their poor placement and limited copy. The best results with classified ads are obtained in the largest newsletters, since response rates are usually fairly poor.

2 – Sponsor Ads

These ads are priced higher than classified ads and are usually found at the top of the ezine or in the middle (within the content). They allow for more words and are more effective than classified ads, but are also usually more expensive. Sponsor ads are generally more effective than classified ads simply because their placement is better and they can contain more content. Some ezines only have one sponsor ad per issue and some have a handful depending on the publisher’s preferences.

3 – Solo Ads

Solo ads are by far the most effective ezine ad type. Solo ads fill up an entire email with only your advertisement. That means that the content is sent on your behalf to the subscribers. No other content is included, so you get the reader’s full attention and your ad gets the biggest exposure. Since a solo ad is usually seen as an endorsement from the ezine publisher, your message will enjoy a great deal of credibility. Solo ads are more expensive than sponsor ads, but are also many times more effective. Needless to say, reserve them for your products with the highest profit margins.

Another way to run solo ads is to partner in a joint venture. This way instead of paying a fixed fee to run your ad, you reach an agreement with the ezine publisher to split the profits 50/50 (or any other mutually agreed percentage split). The benefit of doing it this way is that you only pay for what you sell. If you don’t sell, you don’t pay; and if you sell well, you and the list owner both come away quite happy.

Before you spend money on ezine ads, it is a good idea to do some research: ask publishers what their typical click-through rate is and make sure their ezine is highly targeted to your primary target market. The conversion rate will depend on what’s on the website you send them to, but the more highly targeted your ad and the publication it’s in, the higher you can expect your conversion rate to be.

If you’re aiming towards a sponsorship ad, it’s also a good idea to check to see if the ezine publisher has a policy of never running ads for two similar products in the same issue. Your ad will be much more effective if it’s the only one of its kind in that particular issue. Also ask the publisher if they have ever had an ad placed in their publication for a similar product or service to the one you are offering. And find out what the success rate was like.

Since ezines are published on different schedules (some weekly, some monthly or bi-monthly) the impact of your exposure is affected. More people likely read a monthly newsletter more thoroughly than a weekly newsletter and will be more impacted and exposed to your ad. For solo ads, there is a proportional relationship between the time period in which different mailings are sent and the overall response rate to the ad.

Another way to advertise in ezines is to write an article and allow the publishers to use it for free with your resource box. That way you also gain credibility and build trust, and any leads you generate will be more qualified than those arising from an advertisement. Articles may also be placed on websites for back issues of the ezine and can have a shelf life of a few years or more.

With any type of ad, always be sure to track it with your own ad tracking software, so you can follow your visitors through to the sale. If you’re running ads in subsequent ezines, don’t forget to test a different variable in each issue. If you don’t have an ad tracker, http://www.1StartCart.com has a good one.

Ezine advertising is a great way to deliver highly targeted traffic to your website. If you pick the right ezines and the right type of ads, you will experience an above average click-through rate for the product you sell, and with a good sales page, an above average conversion rate as well.

Here’s how it works: After making an initial investment, you receive the marketing materials and/or products necessary to sell start selling. In many cases, the products are nutritional or healthcare related including vitamins and weight loss supplements. Every time you sell something you get a commission, as does the person who recruited or referred you. In addition to selling the product, you need to refer or recruit others to the program, and then you’ll earn money from what is sold by people you’ve recruited into the program. In fact, multilevel marketing probably puts more emphasis on the recruiting part than the selling part. The more people you bring into the program, the more money you’re likely to earn through their commissions.

If you’ve done any looking into home based businesses and even if you haven’t, you’ve probably read articles and seen news programs warning you to stay away from multilevel marketing programs. While it’s true that many of the multilevel marketing opportunities aren’t really what the promise to be, not every multilevel marketing opportunity is a scam. What the news programs and articles warn you against is not really multilevel marketing, but a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes focus only on recruiting distributors, not selling a substantive product to make money.

The new participants pay a fee to participate and hope to profit by recruiting others into the system. No products ever really get sold as they’re just a front for the pyramid scheme, so as to appear as a legitimate MLM business. Most areas have laws banning pyramid schemes that pay commissions for recruitment, not sales of products. However, most MLM companies still typically structure their payment plan so that recruiting is more profitable than selling. With the right company, multilevel marketing is a legitimate, moral way to make money.

The thing about MLM is that is almost always requires you to make an initial investment, and often even a more substantial investment for additional training or marketing materials. The most successful companies usually have the most advanced educational programs which cover everything from marketing and sales, to leadership and money management.

The failure rate with multilevel marketing is very high. The main reason being that most people give up after a month or two because they haven’t made the fortune they thought they would. It usually takes longer than that for the sales and commissions to start to roll in at a significant rate. When joining an MLM program, you need to first make the decision as to whether it is worth it to work hard for possibly a long period of time without much of anything to show for it.

Some MLM companies have opportunity meetings or training seminars. The hidden agenda is usually to get you hyped up and purchase an advanced training package, or additional materials. Don’t ever sign a contract at one of these high pressure events. Insist on taking your time to think over any decisions. Talk it over with your spouse or a knowledgeable friend or peer first to be sure you’re making the right decision.

One last consideration before you decide to get into MLM is that many people see it as a scam. Because of this, you might have trouble recruiting others to join you in the program, and thus making a financially rewarding go of it. If you are interested in investing in a multilevel marketing program, you’d be well advised to research the company and product thoroughly. Do some research on the net first and check with the Better Business Bureau. There are a lot of scams out there, and if you’re not careful, you could become part of one of them.

If you’re going to be spending money to advertise, it only makes sense that the copy in your ads is better than good, it needs to be great. Let me share a secret with you: It doesn’t cost you any more to run an ad with great copy, than it does to run an ad with adequate copy. Not to mention the fact that you can multiply your results by 2, 5 or 10 times. Great copy attracts customers like a magnet.

Clients and prospects respond to tangible evidence that indicates the quality of your product or service. When you mail a brochure, hand out presentation materials or refer someone to your web site, your copy acts as a sales person delivering a message and influencing perceptions about your business, product or service.

The benefits you offer the consumer influence what the key messages in your copy are. The way you string your words together is often most effective when you clearly define the benefits you offer (as it relates to your target audience), and use motivators to elicit a response from your readers.

The 4 essential skills of writing good copy are:

1. Determine who your target audience is and speak directly to them
2. Create a Killer Headline
3. Convey your key messages to your audience
4. Paint a picture using power words that inspire action
5. Ask for the call to action (usually the sale)

Determining Your Target Market

Your target market is simply the people who are most likely to buy your products. Before you write any copy you must figure out who they are, so you can speak directly to them in a way in which they can understand and relate to.

You’ll likely define your target audience based on:

• Gender
• Age
• Income
• Marital status
• Level of education
• Hobbies
• What they read
• Where they shop
• What keeps them awake at night and so on.

Once you determine who exactly your target is, you must speak to them in a way that they understand. For example if your target audience is single men in their twenties or thirties who are computer programmers, you would want to use industry jargon that they will understand and are familiar with, then write in a way which they can relate to. Alternatively if your market is made up of retired couples, you would want to use that knowledge to convey your key messages.

Always direct your message to the right audience: those who want what you have to offer, will listen to your pitch and ultimately take action. The key is understanding your target audience like the back of your hand.

Create a Killer Headline

A powerful ad is one of the most important aspects of your success. The secret to a successful ad is your headline. You only have a split second to grab your targets attention. Your potential customer will most likely scan the ads and only read one if it catches their attention. Write your ads with passion, excitement, and benefits.

We all know the importance of a powerful headline. However, writing a great headline isn’t as easy as it sounds. An effective headline will literally force your potential customers to learn more. It will instantly ignite a certain emotion and intrigue them to read on. In order to write an effective headline, you must learn how to use specific words to achieve a specific reaction. This is definitely something that you’ll want to try, change test and track until you get desirable or better than desirable results.

Convey Key Messages to Your Audience

In order to write killer copy, you must have a crystal clear vision of what you offer is. What it is that makes you different from your competition? What’s in it for your customer? What benefits do they receive if they do business with you.

Features are nice, but if they don’t benefit the customer then they’re not really of much use. A feature is a characteristic of your product or service. A benefit is what that feature does for a customer. Benefits will outsell features ten to one. Some examples of features and the benefits they offer are listed in the chart below.

Feature vs. Benefit

Airbags >> Feeling of safety and security
Massage >> Stress relief and relaxation
Self Cleaning Oven >> Saves time, effort and is less hassle

Your job as a copywriter is to quickly explain what the features are, and how they would benefit the customer. This is your key message.

One feature can have lots of benefits, and one benefit can have lots of features to the same customer. One person may buy a mini-van because they need room to tote their kids; another person might buy the same mini-van because they like the comfortable ride and space. Someone else may buy a car that is very safe for their family, because it has a 5 star crash test rating, 6 air bags, and crumple zones. Remember, benefits are always in the eye of the beholder, which is why it is important to know who you are speaking to.

Before you start rattling off the benefits and features of your product or service, you should uncover the prospects wants, needs and interests. This way you can custom tailor the features and benefits as they relate to the prospect. The extra space for kids in a minivan is not of much use to a prospect with no kids. Talking about how your product or service may benefit the prospect also demonstrates that you care about what the prospect wants. Only bring up features that actually benefit your customer.

Some benefits are not necessarily obvious to your prospects. Remember, your prospects have a life outside of the conversation they’re having with you. Talking with them about benefits helps them see value in the way you want them to.

Many people learn to tell the feature first, and then describe the benefit second. It is often more effective to do it the other way around. This lawnmower is easy to use because it is self-propelled and mulches the grass so you do not need to dispose of the grass clippings.

Sometimes however, the benefit is best when it is implied, especially when you’re talking about benefits the customer’s image or ego. Many car ads do this and imply the benefit of enhanced ego or image. Coming out any saying, “Drive this car and your friends will think you make a lot of money” doesn’t work very well, but implying it does.

Sometimes companies talk about that are features that are not really features at all because they don’t really provide any inherent benefit to the customer. Having been in business for “X” number of years is not really a strong selling feature, nor is having “X” number of clients, or doing “X” dollars in sales last year. In fact, such features actually seem like you are boasting.

Though we can describe benefits in many different ways, they all fit into five main categories:

1. Convenience – saves time or effort
2. To saves or increase money/wealth
3. Provides peace of mind
4. Appeals to image or ego
5. Fun or enjoyment

Paint a Picture

This involves utilizing both the knowledge of who your target audience is, and the benefits that your product or service has to offer them. Describe how your offer can fit into their life and ultimately make it more enjoyable, make them more money and so on.

Using the minivan example from above, you can relate to the frustration of fitting a family of four or five in a car for a weekend camping trip. If the minivan you’re selling has safety features explain the benefits they offer, and why it might be safer then their current vehicle. If it comes with an optional DVD player and embedded headrest screens, paint the picture of their kids sitting in the back seat peacefully for a three hour trip watching their favourite movie. Any parent with young kids can easily relate to how nice it would be to be able to take a trip and not have kids fighting, and whining.

Ask For the Sale

This is perhaps the most important, and most overlooked part of writing sales copy. If you don’t ask for the sale, or ask for the call to action how can you expect to get it? A call to action might be filling out a survey, opting in for a mailing list, requesting more information or any number of other things. Just ask for it, it a way that will get results. Also create an urgency to act now.
This is something you’ll probably want to test, along with what the specific call to action is.

Above all, remember proper research is key and keep testing your copy against the results it produces. Do this and you’ll end up with a winner every time.

These telecom giants reason that since they provide the lines (copper, fiber optic or cable) that supply internet connections to consumers, they should profit from the data that flows through them. Here’s how it would work: Websites that pay a fee would be allocated the most bandwidth and thus load quickly, whereas websites that can’t afford to pay the toll, or simply won’t pay the toll, get whatever bandwidth is left over (i.e. the slow lane).

As internet marketers, it antes up the question: Would you pay? If you’re a larger company with deep pockets, and can afford to, you’d once again gain a competitive advantage over smaller online business owners that can’t afford to pay.

For the online consumer this means higher priced goods as website owners won’t silently bear the extra costs.

I just hope that a two-tiered internet never becomes reality, if it ever does, hundreds of thousands of at home online business owners will suddenly find themselves looking for a J.O.B.

Google’s search engine originally worked according to a simple principle: web pages were ranked according to the number of links they received from other sites, with each link weighted to reflect a site’s popularity. That principle is still part of the equation, but Google’s software has become much more complicated over the years taking into account more than 100 factors in its algorithm.

According to Wikipedia, “a search for ‘miserable failure’ or ‘failure’ on September 29, 2006 brought up the official George W. Bush biography number one on Google, Yahoo! and MSN and number two on Ask.com.

On January 25th, 2007 Google announced on its official Google Webmaster Central blog that they now have “an algorithm that minimizes the impact of many Googlebombs.” The algorithm change had an immediate effect, dropping the well-known ‘miserable failure’ link to the White House off the front page. Instead, the page contained mainly pages which discuss the miserable failure bomb.

What does this mean for online marketers? Probably not much to most- but to some of the “big guys” it means that Google now has a means to manipulate search results by hand, something which in the past they had no ability to do. It also means that if you work hard to get in the top Google results for a certain keyword or keyword phrase, that you could potentially be removed because someone decides you shouldn’t be there.

In my opinion, it’s just another step Google’s taking towards becoming the Ultimate Super Power.

In a short, meaningful, specific sentence, a USP describes your primary distinguishing feature to your target market and lets them know what’s in it for them if they do business with you. According to Rosser Reeves, the author of “Reality in Advertising” who coined the USP, the three requirements for a USP are:

1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the customer: “buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.”
2. The proposition itself must be unique – something that competitors do not, or will not, offer.
3. The proposition must be strong enough to pull new customers to the product.

Some of most well know USP examples are:

Domino’s Pizza – “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less.”

FedEx – “Your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight”

M&M’s – “The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand”

Wonder Bread – “It helps build strong bones 12 ways”

But what if such a proprietary advantage does not exist? What if your product is basically the same as your competition’s, with no special distinguishing? Check this out: Once M&M established their USP: “M&Ms melt in your mouth, not in your hand” – what could the competition do? Run an ad that said, “We also melt in your mouth, not in your hand?” It reminds me of an example from the book Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins that has gone on to become a classic story used to describe USPs. It goes something like this:

“Schlitz Beer had hired Hopkins to increase their falling market share. At the time the beer companies were frantically buying bigger and bigger advertising space to promote the word PURE. Everyone said their beer was pure, but no one bothered to explain to the public what ‘pure meant’ this meant:

The first thing Hopkins did was take a tour of the Schlitz Brewery. He was shown plate-glass rooms filled with filtered air where beer was dripped over pipes to cool without any impurities. He was shown huge expensive filters that were each cleaned twice daily to ensure the products purity. He notices that each bottle was sterilized four separate times before being filled with beer. He was even shown 4,000 foot deep artesian wells dug to provide the cleanest, purest water available, even though the factory was right on the shore of Lake Michigan (which at the time was not polluted and could still provide clean water).

After his tour Hopkins exclaimed, “Why don’t you tell people these things?” The company responded that every beer manufacturer does it the same way. To that Hopkins replied, “But others have never told this story” And Hopkins went on to create an advertising campaign that explained to people exactly what makes Schlitz beer pure. It was highlighted with the tagline “Schlitz beer bottles ‘Washed with live steam’. He told the same story any brewer could have, but he gave meaning to purity. That is what took Schlitz from 5th place to tie for 1st place in market share.”

Creating a USP for Your Business

When developing the USP for your business it can be helpful to try thinking in the customer’s point of view: why should they buy from you, not why you should sell to them. Your USP should state what the most important benefit is to the customer in the target market you are trying to reach. Trying to appeal to everyone will not give you an effective USP. Focus on the clients that are your greatest income makers and direct the USP to them. You want to attract the ideal client, not just any client.

Here are some questions that a USP should answer:

• What problem are you the answer to?
• What quality makes you different, better or more desirable than the competition?
• What opportunity can you present to potential customers that others can or do not?
• Why should people buy from you?

When answering some of these questions, it is not enough to say “Our service is better,” or “Our product is better quality.” These statements are not compelling reasons to choose your business over any other business. Also be sure to focus on a uniqueness that is actually meaningful to your customers. Building your USP around a feature is relatively unimportant to potential customers, and will not move them to try your product or service.

You can start by crafting a statement that defines what makes your product or service unique and special. You might want to start with a long statement of two or three paragraphs, and then work from there. If you are already have an existing business, ask clients what they value most about the way you do business? And also ask yourself: “In what ways do I benefit my customers?”

Continue editing your statement until it is short, snappy, to the point and describes your uniqueness in a way your customers care about. Once you get your USP finalized, start sharing it with your target market, and let them know what you can do for them. Plaster your USP in your marketing materials, at networking events, on your business cards, on your website and any other time you are given the opportunity.

Just remember, a USP is free, easy to duplicate and communicate, and above all, tells your prospects what’s in it for them if they do business with you. Be sure to take the time to properly develop a USP that will work for you, your business and your target market.

The easiest way to passively get more traffic is to plaster your website on everything you have including but not limited to:

• Business cards
• Letterhead
• Envelopes
• Business receipts
• Invoices
• Sales letters
• Company brochures
• Flyers
• Fax coversheets
• Pens
• Pencils
• Mouse pads
• A yellow pages ad/listing
• On your voice mail message
• Ads in newspapers and magazines
• Bumper stickers
• And anything else you can think of

Some other oldies but goodies include:

Classified Ads both in well-circulated newspapers, magazines and other sources can be an easy and cheap way to drive traffic to your site. There are still people who read their daily newspaper at home in their easy chairs every night. Advertising in newspapers can reach those customers. They are also a great way to test headlines.

Bulk mailers / flyers People check and read their mail everyday, and there are no spam laws connected to snail mail. You can use a local venue that’ll mail your ad along with 20-30 other ads to a localized neighborhood, like www.moneymailer.com. Target flyers can also work very well with the right targeted mailing list.

Trade Shows / Seminars These are where a whole bunch of business minded individuals all meet to share their businesses and socialize. They’re also a great to make contacts that can really boost your business and garnish mutually beneficial lifelong relationships.And of course there’s radio, TV, infomercials, billboards, full page newspaper/magazine ads, hot air balloons etc. but these are usually beyond the means and budget or most online marketers.

These are just a few ideas. Bottom line, promoting offline is as important as promoting online. Finding the balance is important in any business.

Since the average person has five senses: sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste, all of these senses play an important role in absorbing information.

In any kind of marketing, it makes sense to try and appeal to as many senses as you can. For example, an ad in a magazine has with a picture of a perfume or cologne, often has a sample of what it smells like. By allowing the reader to use two senses instead of one, it makes them twice as likely to remember that perfume or cologne. In this case they also get a sample, so in a sense (pun intended) they can try before they buy.

This is reverb marketing. Since Internet marketing is primarily about seeing and hearing, internet marketers are using this concept online to emphasize their messages. By combining the right blend of blend of sight and sound, on your website, or in your ads, you’ll see your response rates climb dramatically.

A website selling a kitchen gizmo of some kind might have a video of it in action on their site, and to make it most effective they can add a soundtrack and a voice-over. This would be a simple yet effective use of reverb marketing.

What will work best for your site? That exactly I cannot tell you. What I can tell you though, is by adding audio or video to your site with a strong call to action, you can significantly increase your newsletter sign-ups, product sales and/or leads.

As is the nature of internet marketing, and marketing in general, l you’ll need to do some testing to find what works best. Though, you shouldn’t find it too difficult to find the right balance of sense stimulation.