When you make an advertising claim, don’t think about it in terms of coming out of your mouth; instead, think of it in terms of it entering your prospect’s ears.
When you do this, you will realize how ridiculous, non-compelling, boring and flat-out stupid much of the advertising you see and hear sounds.
What we’re trying to accomplish here is simple; we are going to discuss a common sense evaluation you can use to judge whether or not your ads, ads you’re spending GOOD money on, are any good.
Small business owners can easily get too involved in the day-to-day operations of their retail stores to spend any time brainstorming marketing ideas or promotional events. Some retailers worry that marketing is too expensive, others may find it too time consuming. Without announcing who you are and what you sell, how will anyone know? Here are 50 marketing ideas for retailers…
http://retail.about.com/od/marketingsalespromotion/a/marketing_ideas.htm
http://smallbizbee.com/index/2009/03/30/over-90-field-tested-guerrilla-marketing-tactics/
Looking for some easy ways to get your business noticed? Try one of these quick, fairly easy, and sometimes free guerilla marketing tactics.
This presentation is literally chock full of ideas on who to market your business, and what’s nice many come with real world examples and case studies.
Best viewed with full screen
When you run your own business – be it web or otherwise – it is a general rule that you need two things to accomplish any particular task, money and time. A lot of one means you need less of the other.
If you had a lot of cash, you can just pay someone to do the work, whereas if you’re broke with all the time in the world, well…then you get creative.
In the case of publicity and traffic generation, a lot of money means you can advertise, sponsor and pretty much bribe your way to celebrity (or infamy). If on the other hand like most startups you are short on money or just plain stingy then you’ll need to take a different tack, for this situation you’ll need a bit of Guerilla Marketing.
http://thenetsetter.com/blog/marketing/guerilla-marketing-for-startups/
Online isn’t just powerful because it’s more engaging (which it is). Online is powerful because it allows you to really measure conversions and ROI. And you can apply those numbers to bring your conversions and ROI up further. Few offline channels can match that online capability–which makes online far more than a uniquely powerful engagement provider. It makes online a better medium for building conversions and returns. And focusing on returns, I think, is a far more powerful value proposition than just engagement.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=51972
Anita, a midwife friend of mine, and I have been going around our city of just over 100,000 people distributing flyers for her birth center and homebirth practice and Midwifery Today’s Eugene conference programs. We take our flyers with pins and tape and tack them on bulletin boards in health food stores, community services agencies, the public library and many other places.
This has been a terrific outreach for both of us. We’ve learned a lot about our community’s resources while carrying out marketing efforts. It has been so fruitful and fun that I recommend that midwives and doulas do a similar outreach in their communities. One of the best parts is that while we’re driving around we are talking, ranting and otherwise solving all of the problems in birth today. The other delight is the amazing people we’ve met who are part of our community.
This article is a blueprint for a grassroots movement—a program of birth activism that can be set up in any community to stimulate better birth practices, political activism, and media savvy for the birth community. Two successful birth networks—one in Nashville, Tennessee, and the other in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—were started by the writers of this article. The program we developed can augment collaborative marketing efforts for birth professionals and create pockets of activism to promote birth change and the midwifery model of care.
It has become crystal clear to me in the last few days that birth professionals should, as one of their New Year Resolutions, market their profession and businesses more clearly, more often and more aggressively.
One of the biggest reasons why women are so afraid of childbirth is that they have been told for several decades that birth is a horrible event, one that is far beyond their capabilities. To reach their goal of a health baby, they NEED induction, they NEED medication and they NEED assistance from maternity care professionals. Ignore the fact that women have been having babies for centuries. Ignore the fact that, especially in the US, in spite of the fact that medical intervention percentages have skyrocketed, there has been NO reduction in the maternal mortality and mobidity or infant mortality and morbidity.
http://childbirthtoday.blogspot.com/2008/12/marketing-101-for-2009.html
This may seem like a boring topic unrelated to natural childbirth. However, if you are setting up a website to advertise your birth or midwifery business, this is an important thing to understand. Here is an interesting website that deals with different marketing techniques.
I ran across an interesting blog entry called “Natural Childbirth Advocacy and Social Media.”
There are several interesting links to sites with other internet marketing information. You should check them out if you are interested in finding more people who advocate natural childbirth.
