If you have owned your business for a long time or for a short time, you have probably tried every single trick and tactic in the book as far as marketing goes. Frankly, I believe there is a right way and an easy way and a wrong way and a hard way. I don’t know about you, but I would rather NOT do tings the wrong way or the hard way. Not saying that marketing is simple because it’s not. But if you can figure out certain techniques to use for your specific industry, you could be making a killing right now.

Are you making a killing or are you struggling? If you are struggling then you probably have tried something like email marketing! I know this is an old school technique, but for most of us, email marketing does not work. Not only doesn’t it work, but it’s a lot OF work to do. The most strenuous aspect about email marketing is that most of the time you have to “trick” your customers. Tricking your could-be customers and leads is NOT good. In fact, a lot of people try this only to realize that not everyone wants to be marketed!

If you try something like personalized direct mail, this is actually a proven way to catch people’s attention, get them interested in what you are saying – and it doesn’t involve being called a spammer. I’ve had this happen on lots of occasions with legit customers and leads. They don’t order from you in awhile, forget who you are, you email them through a program and all the sudden you are a spammer! Also, email marketing as far as personalization go, takes a lot of time to do. It’s especially hard if you aren’t good with html codes and all of that stuff.

Don’t get me wrong there are programs out there you can use that do make it easier, but it still takes a ton of time away from something else you could be doing! Whereas with businesses that offer direct mail services, variable data printing, cross sell marketing, personalized printing and one to one printing they do ALL the work for you. All you have to do is give them what you want the letter or piece of mail to say, add in a few custom touches like logos, letterheads, slogans or business name, change fonts, and colors and your done. Actually this way is a lot more fun.

You can create a beautiful piece of mail that is actually going to create pizazz, capture people’s attention, and something that will make them WANT to contact you, without actually doing the whole thing yourself! You could just as well buy your own professional grade printer and paper, and do all this work yourself, but why?!? You would have to spend a lot of money each month on ink and paper, and professional grade printers are NOT inexpensive. On top of that, it goes back to time. Don’t waste the time you have! Use it wisely with things you really NEED to work on! Very useful, very efficient and it works!

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http://www.WilenDirect.com , a leader in commercial printing, personalized direct mail, variable data printing and one to one printing.

Blogging has become such a craze that every Tom, Dick and Harry is trying a hand at it. Many of these Toms are fools spamming internet sites, but these are the fools who have mastered the art of exploiting the benefits of blogging. Blogging no longer is just associated with the term personal. The transition of blogging from personal to corporate world has been amazing. Now-a-days even personal blogging websites have provided many ways to create income online. Corporate and business world is exploiting blogging to drive traffic of viewers to their websites who could become their potential customers for the products and services they provide. The search engine optimizers consider blogging to be a very effective strategy for their search engine ranking optimization. Gizmodo, a small blog launched to create awareness about gadgets and gizmos some time back, generates such high traffic to its website that you can’t even imagine. Anyone can do it. All you need to learn is how to generate traffic from the blogs you create. Originals Live, Copy-Cats Doom

You read a topic from somewhere. You copy and paste it with some modifications in grammar and styling in your blog. Do not even hope for traffic on such blogs. Readers are smart now-a-days. Consider the above example quoted about Gizmodo. There are hundreds of blogs and pages talking about gadgets and gizmos. Not every blog site achieved what Gizmodo achieved. The only thing that distinguished it was originality.

Some may argue that duplicate content can be marketed by applying blog marketing techniques which we will discuss. But there is a difference between generating traffic and sustaining the same traffic permanently with your blog. Think over it!

There are some great sites which provide you free access to promote the Blog posts. Psd.tutsplus.com, design-newz.com, noupe.com, net.tutsplus.com and devsnippets.com are some of the popular promotional sites. Your posts will enjoy great exposure to traffic here. Divert this traffic to your website by embedding the blog on the website itself.

Follow the blogs sharing the same field of interest. Comments can garner huge traffic. Enter discussions in comments and forum section. Post your point of view and encourage in a subtle way other comments and forum section people, to get on to your blog and read your views.

Blogging platforms like Hub pages, squidoo lenses, type-pad etc have millions of visitors, everyday. Post your product or service blogs on these platforms with outgoing links to your websites. Lot of traffic can be diverted to your services or products through such blogs.

Time your articles well. Always keep a track of hot keywords that are associated with your products or services. Post blogs using these keywords and relate them to your needs. Such blogs can spread rapidly and a lot of traffic can be generated on them by relating to hot topics. Technorati needs a Ping

Technorati is the undisputed king for searching blogs. Millions of blogs seem to be registered with it. Get on with the necessary widgets and register with them. Technorati will ping your posts to all the hungry blog reading traffic.

Get your blogs to be visible on social networking sites. Embed videos and slide shares in them. Social networking websites have a strong constant traffic flow and a really good blog can garner traffic instantly in huge numbers. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are among the top social networking sites available for your blogs to enchant traffic.

Blogs need marketing and originality to garner traffic. Both parameters can’t out do each other. Try these few steps and generate amazing traffic flow through your blogs.

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James Trent is a business coach and mentor that assists serious entrepreneurs in building a profitable online business with multiple incomes streams. James and his team have assisted hundreds of people in generating huge profits in their first year. For more information and to contact James, visit http://www.thesevenfigurepro.com