Publishing a free newsletter is an effective and inexpensive marketing strategy with several business benefits. Here are some of those benefits:
1. Increases sales
Prospects only become paying clients when they know, like, and trust your business. Publishing a free newsletter is a way of making your readers get more acquainted with your business. As a result, this will increase sales. Youll find that when you convert your readers into paying clients, theyll repeatedly buy more of your services as they get to know you more, like you more and trust you more.
2. Positions you as an expert in your field
Experts can charge more for their services, and they often get more media exposure. By providing helpful tips to your readers, a newsletter is another vehicle for demonstrating your expertise, and showcasing your knowledge and skills. This will enhance your credibility in the marketplace and therefore attract more clients.
3. Its cost-effective
Publishing and distributing an electronic newsletter is inexpensive because it is delivered by email, and theres zero cost on printing and postage. Of course you can choose to publish in hard copy format, but that will defeat the cost-effective advantage of an electronic format. With the magic of technology today, you dont have to own a web site to be able to publish an electronic newsletter and distribute it via email. There are several companies that provide templates you can use to publish and distribute your newsletter. All you need is an email address to send it from and a subscription method.
Also, as it takes five to eight contacts for a prospect to say yes to buying from you, a newsletter is a cheap and easy way to warm up your prospects.
4. Nurtures relationships with clients and prospects
As long as youre in front of your clients and prospects on a regular basis, youll be at the top of their mind when theyre ready to buy the kind of service you offer. Unless you do this, theyll forget you. Publishing a newsletter is an effective way to stay in front of them without being a pest! As they read each newsletter issue, your subscribers will get to know, like and trust you more (thats if youre not bombarding them with just promotions). Youll be viewed as a valuable resource, rather than an aggressive salesman. As a result, youll convert more prospects into clients, and turn more one-time clients into repeat buyers of your service.
5. Spreads the word about your business
Some of your subscribers might not be clients, but they may be groups that have influence and credibility with your target market e.g. the media, staff at trade associations, training companies and so on. Such groups are called the centers of influence of your industry. Keeping in touch with them via your newsletter can lead to paid speaking engagements, referrals, tons of media exposure and profitable joint ventures.
6. Helps you build an in-house mailing list
Many businesses spend thousands of dollars on list rental for direct mail campaigns. Offering a newsletter is one of the cheapest ways to get peoples contact information, allowing you to market to them over and over again. This also means youll have qualified prospects on your database the more qualified your prospects are, the higher the chances of a sale.
Tips For Smooth Sailing:
Dont publish a newsletter that is filled with promotions and nothing else, or that goes on and on about your business schedule or staff party or recent media exposure. Your readers dont care about these things. They only care about whats-in-it-for-me so make sure at least 80% of your content focuses on helpful tips for your readers.
While you should focus your content primarily on information that is of use and interest to your subscribers, you should always include a subtle promotion for your services. Your readers wouldnt mind this, as long as youre providing valuable content. About 10-20% of your content should tell the reader how your services can solve their problem i.e. the problem youve just addressed in the newsletter article.
Your newsletter shouldnt have so many pages. Were in an era of busy schedules and your readers probably subscribe to other publications. If yours takes more than 15-20 minutes to read and digest, you run the risk of having your readers delete it without reading or they may unsubscribe.
Include a subscription box on your web site so that visitors can sign up to receive the free newsletter. Make sure the box is easy to find. If you dont own a web site then you can spread the word about your free newsletter by printing a blurb about it on your invoices, receipts, brochures, and other marketing materials.
To build momentum fast, publish your newsletter at least once a month. In some industries, it is better to publish twice a month or weekly.
Be consistent with your publishing schedule. If youve decided to publish once a month then do so consistently, otherwise a here and there schedule will undermine perceived reliability
As with any marketing strategy, test and track to determine what works best. Variables to test include how often you publish, the length of your newsletter, the writing style, electronic vs. hard copy format etc.
Copyright 2005 by Habiba Abubakar and Emprez. All rights reserved.
Note: You are welcome to republish this article as long as you do so in its entirety and the about the author bit at the end is included fully and unaltered.
Habiba Abubakar, a.k.a. The Profit Diva, specializes in helping small business owners who are struggling to increase their client base and are tired of earning mediocre profits. Her FREE business-building newsletter covers proven, low-cost, and immediately usable marketing strategies. Sign up for your FREE copy at
If you read my first article titled BUILDING A BUSINESS WITHOUT ADVERTISING YOUR PRODUCT, then you should have at least some idea of the type on online community your visitors would be interested in. If you have not read it, reading it will give you a better understanding of this article.
In this article, I will tell you some ways to get the word out about your online community. This is by no means a complete list. There are too many ways to grab peoples attention to list them all here. There have been many books written on this subject.
If you search the web, you will find an unlimited amount of articles for free. Dont get suckered into paying for something until you have done all the research you can about what you are paying for. There are millions of scams out there, but theres also some good books that you can buy.
E-MAIL SIGNATUREOne of the more simpler ways of getting the word out, and one that is too often forgotten about is a signature in your email program. Just write up a 1 or 2 sentence description along with the web address. Also, make sure that your email program is setup to send your signature with every e-mail. This can be considered a type of viral marketing. If you send out jokes or other interesting things to your friends and they forward that email to their friends and they forward it to their friend and so on and so on, it spreads your message far and wide.
MESSAGE BOARDSAnother place that you can use a signature line is on a message board. Most message boards dont allow advertising, but usually they let you put in a signature line. When you enter your signature its seen every time you post a message or a reply to a message. Try to find message boards where those who post will have the same interests as those of your online community. The best approach to message boards is to try to find a message board where you can help people. By answering questions and helping people with problems they have, you can start to be seen as an expert on this topic. If you really do know what youre talking about, people will begin to trust you. People like to buy from someone they can trust. If you just show up to a message board, put out this big, bragging advertisement for your signature and post nothing but junk, the moderators of the board are most likely going to ask you to leave.
SEARCH ENGINESThe first search engine you should list your site at, is the one you use the most. They should have a way to add your site to their listings from their home page. After you have added your site, go to the other popular search engines, or do a search for search engines, and list with as many as you can. With some search engines, it can take many weeks to get listed, and thats if you get listed at all! There are way too many search engines on the web to list with them all. If you use this method, you should set a limit on how many you do a day. There are websites that are dedicated to submitting your site to many search engines for you. Some are free, while others cost money. Software, shareware and freeware can be obtained to do the same thing from your desktop. As always, before spending any money, DO THE RESEARCH!! Make sure you know what you are paying for and buy from a reputable source. You should set up a special folder in you inbox to put all of your confirmation emails. This will help you keep track of which ones youve already submitted to. Also, these emails will usually contain your login ID and sometimes your password, both of which you will need to access your account.
SAFELISTSSafelists are very debatable. Some people like them, some people dont. The problem with safelists are that they fill everybodys email box up with advertising from all of the members of the safelist. This makes it very hard to get your ad read by anyone. But if you can find a way to get their attention in the subject line, they may actually open your email. Just dont make false claims or your credibility will be shot. If they do open your email, tell them about your online community. Tell them all the benefits of becoming a member of your community. DO NOT try to sell them anything in your email. Right now, your main objective is to get visitors to your site. So get the word out about you and your community. Before you sign up for even one safelist, make sure you open a new email account, just for safelists. If you get a big account like Yahoo! Mail you might can go for a while before you have to clear out your inbox, but if you get a smaller account, you will have to check it every couple of days. If you dont it will become full and your emails will bounce. If your safelists emails bounce, they will suspend your account until you clear out your email account.
This is only four ways to start spreading the word about you and your community. There are many others. Some are free while others vary in price. I will discuss other ways in future articles.
John Layton has been publishing websites since 1998. His latest website, The Rebel Computer Guy ( ), has many resources and learning tools for the online business newbie.You may use this article for your own e-zine, newsletter, website, or whatever purpose you need. All I require is that you use the entire article, including the resource box giving me the credit. I would appreciate, but do not require, an email letting me know that you are using it and where I can find it.The Rebel Computer Guy website has lots of information about working on the Internet. Topics include; Guide To Working On The Web, Learn How To Write HTML, Ebooks and Reports, Classified Ads, Articles, and lots of Tips. Theres also a Links section and a Whats New section. Perfect for beginners.For more articles visit my articles page at