Work at Home Moms Articles – WAHM Articles

The Wordless Wednesday post I shared yesterday was for Google Adwords. This is a tool you can use to grow your business through advertising. If you missed the image, click here to view it.

Advertising your business is one of the best ways you can grow your business. Yes, it is possible to use word of mouth and grow, but it’s much more difficult. With the internet and Google, advertising your business is much easier and it’s not as expensive as you may think.

If you’ve ever used Google to do an internet search, you’ve seen the paid ads other businesses place. These are the ads at the top of your screen when the search results come up. They’re gray in color and are usually the first three options that come up. These ads will always appear at the top and while they will change based on the businesses that use these keywords, the ads themselves may be different each time.

You’ll need a Google account to set up the Adwords and you pay a certain amount of money for each click. The amount you pay is based on the popularity of the keyword. For example, the keyword phrase Work at Home Mom is going to be more expensive than the keyphrase Work at Home Parents. The only way to find out what the cost per click will be is to set up an account and start putting the words in. The good thing about it is you have control over the daily, weekly, and monthly amounts you spend, so you won’t go over your spending limit.

Google is one of the top search engines and it’s the best place to advertise your business. When you use Google Adwords for your business, you’ll have the ability to easily put your business in front of your market when they need you the most. If you’re ready to start your New Year off with an increase in your business, Google Adwords is an option to consider.

Well, summer is over because the kids are back to school and that means if your business was dormant in the last month or so it’s time to kick start it back into high gear with these four marketing strategies.

If summer was slow for you and your business, I hope you did many fun and memorable things with your family. I also hope you took the opportunity to reorganize and refocus on your marketing strategies because you’ll need it to make up for any lost income.

This year has just flown by and we’re in the last quarter of the year. It’s almost the best time because you can base your marketing strategies on the upcoming holidays. You can create themes around it. If you have a candle business, highlight your products around Halloween with fall scents or colours. If you have a writing business, try using play on words. Let’s stick to the Halloween theme. If you’re looking to add one or two private writing clients, get creative and write an ad around your “ghost” writing services. See how that can work?

Another way to boost your business is to find product reviewers. There are serious bloggers who would gladly do this for you. It will come with a cost (sending a full size product), but if you want a lot of exposure, it’ll be worth it. When you work with product reviewers and build a good relationship, the result is sure to be a positive one.

Another effective marketing strategy is talking about your business in a casual, non intrusive way. Word-of-mouth is a traditional way to let others know about your business. You can do this anywhere.

You have a slight advantage if you have kids because you’ll have easier contact with parents, teachers, coaches, and other school staff members. If your business is web design, you can volunteer your service to redesign or update the school’s website or you can offer your VA services for creating a weekly newsletter. Use it to your advantage to help with the school’s fundraising programs by donating a product or service.

Whenever you’re out and about, with or without your kids, there are plenty of opportunities to talk about your business. Just be sure you have business cards to give.

If you’re looking to test out some paid advertising space and you don’t have a big budget, look for advertising sales. Check out Twitter and Facebook for announcements, look in your subscribed newsletters and see what discounts are offered.

These four marketing strategies are simple and it’s a starting point to give your business the boost it needs from the slow summer months.

I have advertising space on sale right through to September 31, 2012. You can save 25% off on all Single Advertising Options.

Sophia McIntyre is an Internet Marketer, Article Marketer, Ghostwriter, and founder of WorkAtHomeSpace.com, a free resource focusing on work at home companies and jobs, home businesses and other work at home related topics.

Those who are in a Direct Sales business tend to really work their butts off when it comes to advertising their home business. For those of us in this line of work…we have to work “much” harder than those in big corporation to get the word out about our business.

With that said, we don’t have the advertising budgets that the big guys have so we need to get creative with our advertising campaigns. Today I thought I would share a few “creative” ways I have successfully marketed my business over the years and all of these ideas are super affordable.

T-Shirts: I went to VistaPrint.com and had a dozen T-shirts printed up with my business information on them. I got a variety of sizes and did it when Vista Print was having a deal on them. I then handed these shirts out to friends & family members and had them wear them while running errands in our community. Cost was less than $8.00 a shirt and it’s an advertising campaign that keeps on giving since the shirts can be worn many, many, many times!

Cook Books: Since I was selling products for a kitchen company I would actively seek out print ads in charity cook books in our community. The PTA, local Animal Rescue Groups, Health Groups, Scouting Groups, School Groups, etc. have cook books printed on a yearly basis and then sell them to raise funds. For around $25.00 you can get a 1/2 page print ad with your business info printed in the back of their fundraising cook books.

High School Year Books: Every year I would spend $50 to $75 to have my business ad printed in the back of our local high school year books! These ads are a ‘worthy’ and ‘affordable’ investment and your ad will be seen for many years by hundreds of people.

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In the direct sales business, many sales consultants brand their company. Branding your business gets attention, recognition, and eventually more customers. You can brand your company by getting on the Internet and getting its name, purpose and products out to millions of users online.

* Start a company Facebook page. Invite people who are potential customers. Don’t invite just to achieve high numbers; you want people who are interested in your page and your products.

* Start a business Twitter account with a picture or a logo.

* Get a Foursquare page and use it.

* Create an Aboutme.com page and fill it with information about your company.

* Advertise and send e-mails, but don’t spam. You don’t want your company
branded as a spammer!

Once you’ve branded your company, you are not finished. To truly reap all the benefits the Internet has to offer, you also need to brand yourself. If you have branded your business, you may have already begun the personal branding process. Hopefully, you have put some personal information on your company website pages. Attaching your business to a real person – YOU – helps to create relationships. Even in this fast-paced digital age, relationships are still a part of business success.

How to Brand Yourself

* Get a Facebook page. Having a personal Facebook page in addition to a business one, will increase your search ranking and your online visibility.

* Sign up for a Linkedin account and stay active on it. Join a few discussions groups and start a few of your own.

* Start as many social media accounts as you can properly maintain. If you start one, you need to maintain it. A profile that is never updated is not worth anything.

* Start a blog. This is one of the best ways to brand yourself. Write about topics relevant in your field on a regular basis. Once your blog contains some relevant material, you can post your blog link on various forums or websites. Having and maintaining a blog is one of the best ways to brand yourself as an expert in your field.

As a direct sales consultant, you should not only brand your company, you should brand yourself. You will become recognized as an expert in the direct sales business and people will eventually remember your name. Once they connect your name, your company, and your products, you are on your way to success! Take advantage of the power of the internet and get yourself branded!

When contemplating marketing your home business, the new year is always an important time with reflections and motivation. It’s a great time to celebrate the accomplishments you made in the prior year, but it’s also a good time to think about your plans for the new year ahead.

Maybe you need to completely change your tactics and make some serious changes. Perhaps something has not been working for you and you need fresh techniques. Or what you’ve been doing IS working and you need to find the time to do it more efficiently. Time can be a challenging factor.

Whatever tools you are using, the following 3 tips below are crucial for any home business

1. Social networking – The number one tool you should be using when it comes to marketing. Twitter and Facebook are valuable tools and are easy to use for any type of work at home venture. Keep in mind if your time online is short, (especially if you have little ones at home), you need to make the most of it and the easiest way to do that is to schedule your tweets. Also going over your posts for both networks mentioned above the night before is always a good idea.

2. Offline Marketing – It’s just as important as online marketing so it’s a good idea to do both regardless of the way you go about bringing in more clientele. One of the easiest, least expensive, and best ways to market offline is to use business cards. Create a card that represents you well and tells a brief description of what you offer and then hand them out to potential customers whenever possible. Also, keep in mind word of mouth is the ultimate, number one way of promoting offline. Tell your friends, and they will tell their friends and so on.

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There are so many ways to promote your business. Some of them are online and some of them are offline. Both will work, if you use them in the proper way. It doesn’t matter what type of business you run, both online and offline marketing techniques are a must.

Some people that build their business strictly online don’t think they have a need to marketing their business offline, but that’s not the case. You’ll likely find customers or clients in your own backyard, so there is no reason you shouldn’t look for them.

When you think of online marketing there are several ways to do this. You can use article marketing, blog posts, text ads, banner or button ads, and many other forms. These work well for almost any business. Some will take a lot of work on your part while others will be easy to do and won’t require any time or energy on your part.

Offline marketing requires more work on your part. With the exception of radio and television ads, all of the work will come from you in one way or another, so you’ll need to be prepared for the time you’ll need to invest in these methods.

This week’s article discusses two offline methods everyone should consider. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to grow and reach your goals during the holiday season or any other time of year, these methods will work and should be used regularly.

Christmas is fast approaching. One way to increase your income during the holiday season is to offer specials on certain products or services. You may think you’ll lose money by offering this specials, but that won’t happen because people will make purchases or increase what they’d purchase due to your special.

The only way you’ll have success with your specials is to promote them. There are a number of ways to promote the products or services you have on special. You’ll want to promote your specials daily so you’re sure to reach out to your market. Here are a few suggestions for promoting your specials.

1. Social Networking
2. Article marketing
3. Blog posts
4. Button or banner advertising
5. Text ads
6. Vendor fairs

Each one of these suggestions will work if you use them properly and you place them in front of your market. It’s also important to make sure you promote them regularly. A one time post is not going to work. You need to do market your products or services on a regular basis or you won’t see the success you strive to achieve.

I would like to help you with your special offers. On Friday, December 9th the blog post on WAHM-Articles.com will contain a list of all the specials our readers and followers are offering for the holiday season. Below is a list of what I’ll need in order for your listing to appear in the post.

1. Name
2. Business Name
3. Special
4. Link to the special
5. Price for the special
6. Deadline

You can list as many specials as you want, so please send as many as you would like. Please send this information to me no later than 5 pm MST on Thursday, December 8th. I look forward to helping you with your special offers.

Do you have time to market your WAHM business? Many work-at-home-moms market their businesses regularly when they start out and are desperate for that first paying customer. But when they get busy with clients, their marketing often falls to the wayside… until they realize they don’t have any work lined up for the next month. Then they swing back the other direction and heavily focus on marketing again.

When your marketing follows this pattern, you can waste a lot of time wondering which marketing technique to try next, and figuring out how to make it work. Instead of continually growing, your business will jump ahead in short spurts.

If you take the time to create a marketing plan, your business will always be growing because you’ll always know what to do next. You won’t get “stuck” when you have a plan to keep moving – even during busy times.

Begin to create your marketing plan by deciding what types of marketing are good for your business. What has worked well for you in the past? Is there anything new you want to add to your marketing mix?

Next, plan your marketing. Instead of focusing on the final goal – for example, an exciting publicity campaign for your new website – break the entire process down into steps. This way, you can see the big picture, but will only focus on one step at a time.

For instance, if you would like to promote your business by writing articles, you might break your marketing into these steps:

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Today’s technology allows us to connect with and form relationships with people all over the world right from our home or office. A webinar is a great way to do this because of all the tools and technology available to us. A webinar is just like a seminar only it is done online via your computer. Webinar is short for web-based seminar and they can be very instrumental in building your business.

Webinars can help your business by allowing you to train your recruits and/or sales team. They can also be useful in building relationships and generating sales leads.

Producing a successful webinar does take some work and you need to know what you are getting into. There are several styles of webinars including a single speaker, guest speakers, interviews, panel discussions and also interaction from the audience.

A successful webinar must be efficiently planned out. You need to determine what tools you will be using, what style you will be producing, arranging schedules, deciding whether you will be charging for your webinar, etc.

If you plan on having people from all over the world attend pick out a time that is most convenient for all time zones. If you are having guest speakers, confer with them on their schedules. Mid-week and midday seem to be the best times to schedule a webinar.

Deciding what tools and or visuals you will be using in your webinar. Visuals such as flash presentations, charts, graphs, slides, etc., are always effective in helping people focus on what you are saying and keeping their attention. Because you are not there, face-to-face with your audience, you should have other visuals available for them. Also, have a photo of yourself available so people can visualize you while you are talking.

Compare webinar software so you can get the features you will need. I’ve heard good things about (although I have not yet tried them) Microsoft Live Meeting, GoToMeeting, and Adobe Connect.

Do not turn your webinar into a sleep inducing lecture. Encouraging audience participation is a good idea as it gets people more interested and excited about what you are teaching them or explaining to them. Use a chat function to take questions and comments from your audience and/or trainees. You can also think of some activities to engage your audience. Get your participants to share via discussions, polls, feedback, questions, storytelling and more.

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It’s that time of year again to kick it up a few notches and really showcase and promote your business. The holidays are a wonderful time to start thinking out of the box and become creative.

There are so many options when it comes to offline advertising. It can be low-cost and within your budget. You have your regular distribution of business cards, flyers, magnets, and free promotional items to give away. How about something a little bit out of the ordinary? How about something to let others show you mean business? No pun intended.

Here are four creative, low cost offline holiday advertising ideas. Take some of these ideas as is or add a little twist to make them your own.

1. Door prizes for office parties. Give your spouse a heads up about offering a coupon and or a small gift basket for their company’s office party or for anyone else’s for that matter. To spread the word, make up a detailed flyer with either pull tabs or business cards attached. Walk the walk and promote yourself through word of mouth. If it’s in your budget offer a small token for the person who you’re doing business with. This just makes it extra special.

2. Personalized return address labels. You can print them out yourself, order them at Vistaprint.com or have a rubber stamp made. You have your name, address and city, so how about add to it a short, witty, but catchy tagline or slogan with your web address? These can be used year round unless you plan on having holiday graphics.

3. Gift tags. These can be ordered too, but you can make them extra special by creating them yourself because you can make them any size. Add a tagline, a personal note or double the gift tag as a savings/discount card for your products/services. Add your website’s URL and a promotional code if needed to make purchases online. This would be convenient for anyone, but especially for out-of-town friends and associates.

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