Last week’s post gave some specific tips on how to maximize your small business potential through strategic marketing. Once you have established yourself as a player in the field, you can create revenue streams that go beyond simply increasing your customer base. Here are 3 ways to engage clients while optimizing the money making potential of your blog or web-based business that you may be overlooking.
1. Sponsorship
Have you thought about having an event or promotional campaign to get your business out in front of your potential customers? This is a perfect opportunity to secure corporate sponsors. Typically, a sponsor would be a larger corporation with the fiscal ability to either finance a portion of your event/campaign or donate some products or service to enhance it. Start by identifying suitable sponsors, which would be a company with a complimentary business or an invested interested in getting in front of your customer base to market themselves. Then create a sponsorship package that outlines what you want from them (either dollar amount or goods donated), and what they will get in return (prime visibility in front of x number of people in your demographic, listing as a top sponsor on all printed materials, a table to set up a display of their services, etc.). Lastly, develop a well thought out action plan – the only thing left to do once you have figured out what you want to do, is to do it!
2. Affiliate Marketing
Consider an affiliate marketing program. Affiliate marketing is the process of either promoting other people’s products or services on your blog, or getting affiliates to promoting your products. Web owners receive a referral fee or commission when a customer has clicked the affiliate link and performs a specified desired action, like signing up to receive newsletters or making a purchase on the advertiser’s site. Advertisers invest in affiliate programs for lead generation, and, of course, sales. If you have a popular site, you can earn income by hosting links for other businesses, or you can use this practice to grow your business by marketing yourself on other sites. Do some research and contact companies that would potentially benefit from this reciprocal relationship to get started.
3. Premium or Paid Content
If applicable, you want your blog or business website to be a place people can come for interesting content – not just a landing page for what you’re trying to sell them. Engaging content will keep people coming back for more. However, you can reserve some premium content for those who are willing to pay for it. Take the time and do the work to establish yourself as an expert or a thought leader in your field. Then post some how-to tutorials, videos and informative pieces specific to your niche that customers will either need to pay a membership or download fee to access. Make sure your premium content is quality material, or you run the risk of creating a less than stellar reputation for yourself in the market.
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