Find the hidden money with a newsletter, Part III

Earlier in the week we talked about all the great reason you should be doing a newsletter. To see where we’ve been, check out the blog below. Today, we’ll cover the $10 Million question that I know is on your mind, and that’s content!

There are essentially two different kinds of content you can use. Content that is relevant to your business, niche or clients. And content that is non-relevant.

You’ll want to strike a good balance between the two. It needs to have enough “on topic” material that your clients will enjoy reading it, and so that you can position yourself as the expert in your area of expertise. If you’ve been in your industry for more than two weeks, you probably know it very well, and in most cases better than your competitors,so the relevant content should be fairly easy. Pick a topic in your business and niche and start writing. You’ll be shocked at how much flow out on the page when you start.

But as I said, you need to strike a good balance between relevant and non-relevant content. So
what do you write about there?

Here’s just a shortly list I’ve put together of topics I’ve discussed in my newsletter, and a couple that I haven’t used yet, but will!

• Family
• Customers
• Celebrity (there’s a reason National Enquirer has the largest circulation in the world!)
• Pets
• Human Interest Stories
• Your staff
• Travel
• Humor/Entertainment
• Recent developments/current event

If you’re still stuck and can’t get over the hump, there are a couple of businesses that write and mail your newsletter for you. All you need to do is send the list!

The best one I’ve seen (and used myself in the past) is Jim Palmer. Jim is known internationally as The Newsletter Guru and is the president of No Hassle Newsletters.

For information on his Done-4-you newsletter system, (key word: System) in which he writes, produces and mails your monthly newsletter FOR YOU, just click on this link.

Find the hidden money with a newsletter, Part II

Last week we started a new segment on finding the hidden money in your business, and we started talking about monthly newsletters. To see where we’ve been check out this post. Today we’re going to cover 3 more advantages of using your newsletter, and why it should be seen as an income producing asset, and NOT an expense.

Once you start doing your newsletter and get good at it, it’s actually very enjoyable to do. I can speak directly from experience on this. I knew for about a year that I needed to do a monthly newsletter, but I kept putting it off. Layout, content, printing, it was too much of a hassle. Finally, last October I just decided to do it.

Yeah, it was hard at first, deciding what articles to put where, the layout, images etc. But after about 3 months I got pretty darn good at it. And truth be told, its one of the most enjoyable things I do each month and actually gives me a nice little break from the day to day grind we all feel.

Since you’re on this email list, you should also be receiving me monthly print newsletter, if you’re not, email me your mailing address and I’ll get you on the October list.

Here’s another great tip, I recently did this over the summer and had great success with it.

You can test offers to roll out into solo campaigns or mailings. I will often throw an offer into the newsletter as a “Highlighted Item” or “New Item.” If it does well, I roll it out as a solo campaign.

For you members of the 3D Mail Insider’s Circle, that’s exactly what I did. I put it in the newsletter, it got a good enough response, so I rolled it out as a solo direct mail piece. There’s lots of campaigns that I thought would be big winners, and I tested it in my newsletter and decided to move on to the next thing.

Finally, the #1 reason to have a monthly newsletter: It reminds your customers to come back. Most of your clients don’t return because of price, or bad service or anything like that. They simply forget about you. A newsletter is the best way to make sure that doesn’t happen.

OK, I know I promised you content ideas, but this tip ran a little longer than I thought it would. Stay tuned for later in the week and we’ll discuss content ideas… I promise!

Marketing Tip Readers Only Special

By far the biggest reason I hear that businesses don’t use newsletters is either:

1. I don’t have time
   or
2. I don’t know what to write about.

We’ll, I have good news. My friend Jim Palmer is known internationally as The Newsletter Guru and is the president of No Hassle Newsletters.

Jim's ‘Done-for-You’ no hassle newsletters will fill your pipeline with more repeat and referral business, with no cold calls, no pressure, and no rejection

For information on his Done-4-you newsletter system, (key word: System) in which he writes, produces and mails your monthly newsletter FOR YOU, just click on this link.

Find the hidden money with a newsletter

On Tuesday we started a new segment on finding the hidden money in your business. I said it all started with the right list. See that article here on my blog. Today we’ll talk about a marketing idea that will help uncover more hidden money; it’s something lots of people know they should do, but rare do it… That’s right, a monthly newsletter!

We’ll start off today with some of the advantage of using newsletter marketing, then in a future email,we’ll talk about the content you should use.

The first thing you got to get out of your head is that a newsletter is an expense. It’s been my own personal experience, and those of the many business owners and entrepreneurs I speak with, that they’re not an expense, but actually a profit generator!

Newsletter have a high readership level, and they’re not perceived as “salesy” and most people read them with their “guard down” (however, you can and should
have direct offers in your newsletter, but we’ll talk about that later). In fact, when done properly, your clients will actually look forward to getting and reading them.

Here’s another biggie, your competition probably isn’t using a newsletter, and this gives you a huge competitive advantage. When it comes time to order again, who are they going to call, the person whose newsletter is sitting on the coffee table, or “the other guy.” Easy answer.

Another reason to use them is they can actually work as a form of branding that actually works and pays for itself! If you’ve read this tip much (or my newsletter,hint, hint) you know I’m anti-Madison Avenue, golden arches and swooshes marketing. However, with a newsletter you can brand you the person (its much easier to brand a person than an entire business/industry) by becoming a celebrity and guru in your niche.

That’s a wrap on this post. Stay tuned for next week and we’ll discuss 3 more advantages for using a newsletter and start addressing the topic you all dread…
CONTENT! See you then!

Marketing Tip Readers Only Special

By far the biggest reason I hear that businesses don’t use newsletters is either:

1. I don’t have time
   
   or
   
   
2. I don’t know what to write about.

We’ll, I have good news. My friend Jim Palmer is known internationally as The Newsletter Guru and is the president of No Hassle Newsletters. Jim's ‘Done-for-You’ no hassle newsletters will fill your pipeline with more repeat and referral business, with no cold calls, no pressure, and no rejection

For information on his Done-4-you newsletter system, (key word: System) in which he writes, produces and mails your monthly newsletter FOR YOU, just click on this link.