Wishing you a very Merry Christmas to you and your family! I wanted to share this free report on traffic to help you in the New Year. I hope you enjoy it.  Over and out until after Boxing Day…. and if you see me around on twitter feel free to nudge me and tell me to stop working. I’ve officially been dubbed by Ed that I’m a slave driver. 🙂  So…with that said, I plan to relax at least for a couple of days.

Have a Blessed Christmas!

I hope today finds you well. 🙂 We’re looking forward to Christmas ourselves, this time last year we were sitting in the hospital so there is tons to be thankful for!

I just wanted to pop by and let you know that I’m putting together a new report and I’d love to showcase your business inside.

I’m creating a “get traffic” guide because we all need more traffic to our sites, that’s a given. 🙂

So I thought we could pool our tips together into one nice package and get as many people as we can involved.

Don’t feel you have to be a traffic expert to get involved, I just want to hear what you did this year to increase traffic to your site and I’ll feature your tip inside the report, along with your Name and website address.

This will be a nice viral way for you to also develop awareness to your business, brand, and traffic back to your site.. just from this report. 🙂

I’d like to offer it as a Christmas gift to all readers at SBB so I’m looking forward to working with you.

Just send your tips to vera(@)smallbusinessbranding.com.  I can’t wait!

Vera Raposo
(Currently enjoying an old Christmas Movie)

PS. This is for everyone, not just “business type” sites. Sometimes the best ideas come from people in the non-business world.

Did you realize that Christmas is almost here… just walk to your local mall and everything is a buzz.  Recently my husband and I had to make a trip to the mall to get some items the kids needed for school, I was surprised to see Walmart open for 24 hours already! I thought they were only doing that the last week before Christmas, but as you can guess they probably make a ton more money when they open that much. Obviously, or they wouldn`t do it. Thinking about all of this, I put together an article for you on product promotion strategies you can use online to get your business a buzz, also open 24 hours because it`ll be on the internet. 🙂

When it comes to promoting a product there are definitely tools and tactics that work best. Much of the success of these tools will depend on when in the promotion cycle they’re implemented, the type of product and of course your target audience. Assuming you’re marketing to an opt-in list, here are a few suggestions for perfect product promotion strategies.

Make sure you’re not over promoting in your email communications

Email communications, like ezines and newsletters, are meant to be informative first and promotional second. That doesn’t mean you can’t promote in them, but it’s important to keep it to a minimum. A general rule of thumb, and this is by no means a hard and fast rule, is to make sure at least 80% of your content is valuable and informative.

How to articles, reviews, case studies and so on are great ways to provide value to your opt-in list. The other 20% can be promotional content. This can be an advertisement, links within your content, banner advertisements, promotional message at the bottom of your content and so on. Test and track to find the best mix and strategy for your audience.

Make sure your content is valuable and beneficial

One excellent strategy to provide 100% valuable content to your audience without any hard sell is to provide a review of the product you’re promoting. Reviews, particularly if they’re written in an unbiased tone, give your reader insight to a product. A well-written review will summarize the product’s purpose, highlight the strong points, perhaps tell a story about your experience with the product and then list a drawback or two.

The drawbacks can be written to sound benign or like strengths – much like you would do in an interview when the interviewer asks for you to tell them about your weaknesses. You turn your weaknesses into strengths. Then a quick sentence or two summary and of course a link to the product and voila, you have a great review (and promotional material for your product).

Make sure you’re not promoting all of the time

While your opt-in list expects and accepts that you will be promoting your business products and services, they don’t want to be inundated with promotions all the time. Time your promotional content right so that it coincides with launches, special promotions and even the holidays.

Your subscribers have come to expect the best from you, and product promotions are going to be held up to the same high standards. Treat them with respect, continually offer value and time your promotions well, and you’ll be on the road to more profits and a growing subscriber list.