innovative

There are more promotional products out there than you can shake a stick at so how do you choose the one thats right for you?

The key is to find a product that, whilst leaving a lasting impression, fits harmoniously with your company’s profile - should you go for quirky and fun or conservative and practical. Many companies find the plethora of products available daunting to say the least and turn to standard promotional fare to save time.

This can be a big mistake. These items say alot about your business and the way you present yourself and are as important as any other form of advertising. The goal should be to find the best product available for the budget allowed - always bearing in mind that there are costs involved with distributing these products to consumers. In addition, try to choose products that are useful and liable to be seen often by your target audience.

Most important of all, though, is to distribute a product that gets the targeted consumer’s attention, holds their attention and gets them working for you without even knowing it. In short - use a product that is worthy of being shown to others.

One of the most innovative promotional products falling into that category is the Flagpen and is a shining example of what can be acheived with a little lateral thinking.

The quirky ballpoint pen cunningly hides a full-colour, double-sided promotional information sheet within the barrel. The sheet is 180mm by 70mm, onto which an incredible amount of information can be printed - combining the two sides together you have almost the equivalent of a full-colour 1/3 page magazine advert coiled up inside the barrel of a pen!

The beauty of items like the Flagpen lies in the self-promotion of the product itself - it works for you!

When a potential client sees a print advert, they alone see it. When they receive an innovative promotional product, they show it to others because it is such a quirky, fascinating product. These items get kept for weeks, months, years and shown or seen by any number of people - almost all of which would not otherwise have been privy to your message.

For the same cost as a single print advertisment or flyer, you could hand out items like the Flagpen and reach a much larger audience. Each time the pen is used, your information is at their fingertips - whether a special offer, calendar, map, price list, timetable, fixture lists or any other information.

Of course its one thing to grab their attention but it’s up to you to make the most of it. The message needs to be clear, concise and, above all, liable to impress the consumer enough to do business with you. Advertising and promotion is nothing without a return on the investment and a quirky, practical and interesting promotional product is consistently proven to reach a far wider audience than any print advertisement.

More information on the amazing Flagpens can be found at www.flagpens.com

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With so many optin email lists out there, your really need to come up with a hook to attractive subscribers. It needs to have something special or different. It could be something you offer inside every newsletter issue, like interviews with experts. Or the hook could be a unique incentive that website vistors can take advantage of immediately when they sign up.

Here are 3 ideas you can use for your own sites, or use as inspiration to get you thinking a little outside of the box:

– Build an Optin Email List by Creating a Private Members Only Site or Section –

Create a private web site and have people sign up to get free, immediate access. For example, you could say, “Subscribe
to our free e-zine and get free access to our private membership web site!” You can choose to have them receive a username and password every time they want to login, or you can just provide a link to the site in your welcome email.

Your private members only site can be as big or as small as you want. Some of the things you can include inside are: reports, software, articles, ebooks, etc. Inside the site, you can advertise your affiliate programs, as well. And you can follow-up to let them know about updates, new products they might be interested in, the latest news in your industry, etc.

– Build an Optin Email List By Giving Subscribers a Free, Tangible Gift –

Instead of offering a free ebook (or a whole package of them) like most everybody else, promise to give your visitors something they can hold in their hands if they give you their contact information.

For example, you could say “Subscribe today and get our new report mailed to you via First Class.” You could print out your report on standard 8 x 11 sheets of paper, fold it up, put it inside an envelope, and mail it off.

Or you can offer a tips booklet and mail it to new subscribers. Or you can create your own CD full of information targeted toward your market and mail that. Or if you have a wholesale supply of a product of interest to your subscribers, then you can send one to each new subscriber. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

Follow-up possibilities include: articles (your own or written by others), tips you pick up, news in your niche, reviews of products or other interested, related websites, etc.

– Build an Optin Email List Through a Contest or Sweepstakes –

Hold a free contest or sweepstakes at your website where they must give their contact information, including their email address, to enter. Make the prize something that your niche market will be interested in. Otherwise, they’ll never want to enter.

If you already have an ezine up and running, you could offer free automatic entry for new subscribers. For example, you could say, “Subscribe to our free newsletter and get automatic entry into our contest.” You’ll also want to retroactively include current subscribers.

You can announce the winner(s) at the end, as well as send any new contest announcements or product announcements. Or you can make this an ongoing contest, where you give away the same thing to one (or more) lucky people every month. That way you’ll entice many subscribers to stay on your list.

You can find niche products to give away through wholesalers or dropshippers. Or you can create it yourself. One of my favorite ways to do this is create a CD-Rom with a guide or report (or sometimes several) that my niche market will find interesting.

Once again, you can follow-up with tips, articles, news, new product announcements, or just an announcement of each monthly winner(s).

Hopefully, now I’ve inspired you to take some action or encouraged ideas of your own with these tips. Any idea, the more popular it gets, requires you to think outside the box every now and then in order to be effective. Building an optin email list is no different. And with newsletters and ezines saturating the Internet day by day, you need to offer something a little different to make them want to sign up to yours. Or you’ll just end up getting left behind.

Kori Puckett provides more self-help and success oriented articles, which can be found at http://www.KoriPuckett.com. Find out the secrets of success of a mastermind group, and pick the brains of real people just like you who’ve discovered how to get everything they want. Visit: http://business.koripuckett.com

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Finding innovative and unique ways to distribute your information about your product or service is key to success on the Internet. Here are five ways to help you increase your success.

1. Directory Linking

Create separate directories for each topic on your web site. No more than 25 — the major search engines will bounce you out, or black list you, if more than 25 on any one page. A few years back the search engines didn’t make this distinction, however, now they do.

Always request that your web site be listed on other people’s web site. All they can do is say no. However, they might say yes. Design an template e-mail for this request. You can do so in a “signature” as well in Outlook.

Have a few different sizes of directly linking paragraphs available for quick submits.

2. Bonus Advertising or Exchange

Do you have a product or service that doesn’t sell well?

Let others add it to their offers as a bonus. Offer it as a freebie for someone else’s product or service.

Create a template e-mail that others can use to cut and paste into their e-mail or broadcast system to send out to their subscribers. Goal — make it as easy as possible on the receiver to propel the information to their lists.

3. Trade Autoresponder Space With Other Businesses

Find others who send out information with autoresponders. Exchange ad space. You will want to keep the product or service exchange to noncompetitive or complimentary to your product.

You can agree to exchange top or bottom or middle space.

Let’s say you send out articles via autoresponders. Add their ad in between the article.

If you are an affiliate, add a sales pitch and link into the various articles. Keep the number down to one or two ads per article. That is if you want people to keep requesting more articles.

4. Voice Mail Tip Line (This is my favorite!)

Start a free quick tip line. Offer a daily, weekly, or monthly tip on your services or products through your telephone voice mail system.

Some people change their message daily as to their availability. If daily, create enough for five days a week for three months. That is a total of 60 quick tips. After the three months, start the segment all over again.

Add an ad for an upcoming event or the next place you are speaking.

Quick tips are best though. People will leave more messages and you will not feel guilty about letting the phone call go to voice mail.

5. Content Swap

Exchange articles or other content with other web sites. Who are your gatekeepers for your business? Find their web sites, exchange articles.

You could trade articles, top ten lists, etc. Both parties could include a resource box at the end of the content.

If you know of their service or product personally, write a two-liner testimonial.

Catherine Franz is a Marketing & Writing Coach, niches, product development, Internet marketing, nonfiction writing and training. Additional Articles: http://www.abundancecenter.com blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

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