Please do, Kyle - I want to know too!

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Irina
Cotton Tights for Kids

I can show the difference the best between the two by an example I use quite often.

The passive marketer is one who will give out a business card at a function or when he or she meets a prospect. He or she then waits for the phone call or e-mail from that person.

The active marketer is one who will not only hand out his/her card to the prospect, but will also ask for a business card in return from this prospect. Then when you get home, the active marketer will enter this information into a contact management database program and will immediately send out a personalized e-mail or thank you note saying how nice it was to meet the prospect and wishing them well as well as starting to build the relationship up with the prospect at hand.

In the passive example, the passive marketer has to wait for reults and is really out of touch with the prospect. The best they can do is hope their ad or their card attracts enough to get the prospect to call.

In active style marketing, you are in control at all times. You take control of getting the clients and letting them know who you are. Instead of them coming to you all the time, you are going to them.

I hope this helps a bit to distinguish between the two styles I was referring to above.

Kyle

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Kyle Peron[b]
Graphic Designer / Illustrator
(Logo and design for small businesses)
Magician and Illusionist
E-mail: Magic4u02@aol.com

One suggestion I would have would be to spend time each week doing link exchanges. However, the key is to really only take your time doing this with companies that are at least in a similar industry as yours. Would stick to consumer oriented and food/beverage if at all possible. Simple exchanging links with another site totally off topic is probably eventually not going to do any good even if it used to work in the past. SE's are getting much pickier and looking for content similarities. For Google relevancy matters and Page Rank can get a boost with a smart linking campaign. Just realize that if you use the google toolbar they only update it once every few months -- so some of the sites you exchange with might have a low PR but if the site looks good and they seem to be aggressively looking to grow go ahead and do the exchange even if you're offering up a better PR. Good luck!


Mark
http://www.italiancharmbraceletsforme.com

How about visiting/advertising on gift basket web sites. They are always looking for new, high quality products.

Cheers,

Jason
Three Free Months Of Hosting

You could also set aside some of your marketing budget for gift certificates. Give them to charities for their fund raisers. It will be marketing for you, plus a tax break. It will also bring you new customers, who will hopefully be repeat customers. Best of all, it really doesn't cost you anything up front. If they are never redeemed, you haven't lost anything either. I would recommend setting an expiration date on them as well.

The other thing is to start a link exchange program with related business, but not direct competitors. Not only will you gain additional web traffic, but it will help raise your organic ranking on the search engines. Right now our web site gets about 15% of its monthly traffic from link partners-----several thousand sessions a month.

Visit the most comprehensive Las Vegas Real Estate, Las Vegas Golf Homes, Boulder City NV Real Estate and Henderson Real Estate website online. Or look at pictures of my Parrot

I am new to the forum and I am not sure where to start. I just opened my first online business. I registered with as many search engines as possible, but due to the fact that I have limited funds I am having a very hard time getting the word out about my site. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Here are 10 FREE steps to getting started on internet marketing:

1. The search engines are a major bonus to get more traffic. Build your pages to be search engine friendly (clear content, strong theme, keyword density,...) from the start
2. Submit to the major search engines
3. List your site on all associated business or related online directories - I have a list of 300 or so assorted directories - email me and and I will give you the link
4. Actively pursue links with similar, complementary sites
5. Write and submit articles to article distribution sites - rember to include a link back to your site in the article
6. Publish a regular ezine or newsletter on your site. Make sure the newsletter contains links back to your site.
7. Submit your ezine in online ezine directories.
8. Seek complementary sites and contact the webmaster to negotiate a joint venture promotion (could be of each other's products and services, or simply to promote each others web sites)
9. Submit a story about your site to the online PR companies (e.g. www.prweb.com )
10. Exchange ads with another ezine producer

All of these are very 'doable'. But they do need a planned, systematic approach. Never confuse simple with easy. You need to put in the work.

One thing that is amazingly effective and I've missed from my list - find and actively participate in as many online forums related to your product as possible. Don't try to sell. Ask questions. Answer other peoples questions. If you add value you will soon find people approaching you.

Good luck

Just a touch on Active marketing. I've found that this works very well. I don't rely on word of mouth. If people are referred that's great. I invested in a small portable DVD player with a 5 minute demonstration of my product. I basically go to their site give them a DVD and a player, tell them I will be back in a couple of days after they get a chance to review it (and get my DVD player back).. that way they get to watch something while they are on a break, or eating lunch or something.. Then it forces me to come back and talk to them about it.. I thought it was clever, and so far it has produced results.

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Chris Horne
Enterprise Data Management Solutions
http://www.edmscorp.com