Effective Small Business Public Relations (PR) and Traditional Marketing Methods

No doubt Public Relations (PR) still has a huge role to play in modern small business marketing even though it has been around for quite a while. Marketers still have confidence in it to get their marketing messages out here. This is in addition to the fact that consumers trust earned media more than brands, social media posts, or even influencers. If PR is handled by trained professionals, it manages to help build consumer trust fairly quickly. Below are the commonest methods these professionals use to get the best results.

Tested Public Relations (PR) Marketing Methods

What gets the best results is what marketers need in their marketing strategy. If you want to score your business with some positive earned media coverage, get cracking with:
 
PR Stunts

If you are a marketer, and you have no publicity budget restrictions, you can always pull off a PR stunt. It is one great way to organize a spectacular fun fare that attracts a lot of people from the local communities. If the event is well staged and massively attended, it helps to build brand awareness by generating free press.

Press Releases

Well timed press releases are also great marketing methods. The essence of press releases is to get a good story/message out through an appropriate medium to get wide readership. You can get messages out from your social media handles or by giving a good story to a journalist who can quickly and easily turn it into a career-building piece of content for both of you. You can always get good press releases if you focus on pitching only the most important stories that will attract good readership. If you do this consistently, you can build a lasting and mutually beneficial relationship with your readers and even news outlets.

Community and Industry Events

It is fantastic PR marketing if you can get your business involved in events in your local community. Same goes for your niche industry. You can consider sponsoring local a derby involving Soccer or basketball or baseball games. Sponsoring other sports meets particularly for children and young adults is also a great idea. Contributing employees’ hours to volunteer work in sanitation and cleaning, health and fitness walk in your community are great PR for your business. These volunteer service and sponsorship events do not only make your community a better place to live in, they also help to build your brand and expose your business to new customers.

Tested Traditional Marketing Methods

Traditional marketing may sound old school when compared to digital marketing, but it is still a very effective marketing strategy particularly in certain industries and geographical locations. Marketers do get appreciable returns in traditional marketing even though it is quite difficult to really track the ROI accurately. That is not to say it is ineffective though.

Below are marketers’ favorite traditional marketing methods that can be of use to you in your small business marketing.

Direct Mail

If you are a smart marketer, you can use direct mail to stand out even in this digital age. You can mail brochures, promos, how-to messages and other forms of messages through direct mail to consumers in their homes. If your messages are great and well timed, you can be lucky to break through the clutter and catch the attention of the consumers.

Billboard Ads

Yeah, everyone still finds billboards on the highways as they drive along. The attention catching giant constructions work to catch the attention of everyone passing by. Billboards may be quite expensive to erect over a wide area but you can cut your budget and concentrate on the ones you can afford only in a selected local community, making sure you have the right permits though. For effectiveness, you need to be very strategic in erecting billboards. It is hugely impactful if you erect a billboard at the main entrance to your business premises particularly if you are into factory work or manufacturing.

Telemarketing

Telemarketing can be a very effective marketing strategy if done right. Getting the correct telephone numbers and knowing when to make that all important call is crucial if you don’t want to suffer excessive rejections. If not done right, telemarking can make you to waste time and money making annoying calls and even to unlikely buyers. If done right, it can be quite effective to turn many prospective buyers into customers.

SMS Marketing

SMS marketing can be quite effective to get new customers. Unlike telemarketing, SMS marketing does not rudely intrude into the privacy of prospective buyers. Recipients can always open their SMS messages at their own convenience. This is why SMS messages have open rates as high as 98%.

Radio and TV Ads

Radio and TV are still effective marketing channels for ads. For most marketers, the problem is not that of effectiveness but excessive costs to advertise on Radio and TV. Many homesteads do afford to have Radios and TVs and people habitually rely on them for their main sources of information. Depending on the products you are marketing and your target market, Radio and TV can easily and quickly get your message out if you can afford the cost. You can however cut down on costs and still get good results if you purchase ads on other audio platforms, such as podcasts or Spotify.

Newspaper Ads

Newspaper ads are an effective marketing strategy particularly in a society with high literacy rate. That is where you have the type of audience that regularly picks up a physical newspaper. Inside newspapers, an insert, digital ad, or classified ad are great ways to send out a marketing message that gets results. However, you must always endeavor to choose your outlets carefully, negotiate rates, and spend time creating engaging content if you want the best results. Settling for mediocre visual design or lackluster copy won’t get you impressive results in newspaper advertising.

How Affiliate Marketing Helps to Boost Conversation Rates

By exploring some delicate ways to fuse some tried-and-tested sales strategies alongside some proven modern marketing methods, affiliate marketing can indeed help companies grow conversion rates exponentially. It is all about online promotional efforts effectively using affiliates to push your brand online. These affiliates are made up largely of bloggers, social media influencers and publishers whose main marketing function is to promote products/services for a merchant in exchange for a commission paid them by the merchant. Traditionally in affiliate marketing, affiliates get paid based on specific actions completed by consumers such as link clicks or subscriptions. That is why affiliates promote vigorously to get more of such direct actions from their promotional efforts. The more direct actions they generate, the more the commissions they earn. Conversion rates get boosted by way of boosted direct actions from the promotional efforts of affiliates. That is how affiliate referral programs using well-known promotional tactics with increased vigor gets to have a direct boost on conversion rates. 

In affiliate marketing, one of the biggest reasons why revenue grows for merchants is because of a spike in conversion rates. If affiliates increase their promotional efforts to get enhanced commissions, their efforts help to boost conversion rates as well for the business of the brand they are promoting. This works well when affiliate’s posts help to turn blog readers to customers thereby helping to boost the affiliate’s business as well as the business of the merchant. Direct actions from affiliates resulting in attracting readers to theirs websites do result in making such readers to make a purchase, sign up for a mailing list or perform some other desired action. These sequential actions inevitably count towards a boost in conversion rates for the business of merchants. That is if the affiliate marketing works well and desirably. Do you know how affiliate marketing works well to get expected results? What it does is to simply help to connect your product/service with its intended consumers through a channel they trust. Such trusted channels are usually bloggers, publishers and influencers with large following built largely on trust. The more of these followers/readers they manage to lure to a brand, the more commissions they earn and in turn the more they help boost conversion rates for the business whose brand they are promoting.


 

How to Get New PSAs Commit to SFI Business

Your first duty as a sponsor is to let all your new PSAs know that SFI is a business, a real business which every affiliate joins in order to earn income. Let them know that SFI works for all affiliates when they earn income from the actions they take in the business daily. These actions can be classified broadly as follows:

 
1. You earn income from selling your own products/services.
2. You earn income from commissions from helping to sell other affiliates’ products.
3. You earn income from earning VersaPoints for your sales/actions activities.
4. You earn residual income as commissions from the activities of all your affiliates (PSAs and CSAs).
5. You earn income on VersaPoints “matching” from the activities of your affiliates up to 12 generations downline.
6. You earn residual income as commissions from the sales made by the E-Commerce Associates, ECAs you introduced into the business.
7. All these commissions are aggregated and paid to you monthly.

To be sure that they earn these incomes, these here below are things they must be committed to and routinely do in order to earn big in the business.

- Log in daily and earn as many VersaPoints, VP as you can.
- Do your daily, weekly and monthly activities routinely to earn VP.
- Advertise/promote your Gateways to recruit PSAs.
- Use all other effective marketing methods to recruit PSAs.
- Promote/advertise TripleClicks products/services to make sales.
- Take advantage of all the marketing tools/methods SFI provides freely to make sales and recruit PSAs.
- Earn enough VP monthly to become Executive Affiliate, EA and maintain a minimum of that rank monthly.
- Read widely in SFI and take all income-boosting lessons as part of the tools provided for the business.
- Join the forums and share your ideas and worries with fellow affiliates.
- Take advantage of the tips SFI gives daily.
- Belong to a2a and share ideas and tips with fellow affiliates.
- Participate in PriceBenders auctions.
- Have fun and learn the business from Trivia/Zebra games provided.

 

If you manage to get all your new PSAs to understand thoroughly the foregoing, it is possible to get them fully committed to the business.

Best Marketing Methods for Beginners in SFI Business

To my mind, what really should constitute the best marketing methods for beginners are methods which give the best results, are easy to use, cheap or even free to use. For that reason, it is pretty difficult to settle for just one marketing method as the best. It is always advisable to use many methods singly or in combinations. That is what gives the best results which can immensely benefit beginners. For best results, the marketing message can be packaged in form of: 

 
-Text ads.
- Banner ads.
- Blogs.
- Articles marketing.
- Brochures.
- Bulletins.
- Newspaper ads.
- Flyers, etc, etc.

Then the message can be put out in any of the following common and popular methods:

1. Internet marketing (e-mail, Websites, Blogs, etc.)
2. Print media (periodical/magazine ads, card decks, etc.)
3. Direct mail.
4. "Warm marketing" (friends, family, co-workers, etc.)
5. "Power Retailing" (extensive retailing beyond warm market)
6. One-on-one local recruiting.
7. Opportunity meetings (group presentations).
8. Telemarketing (phone prospecting and sales).
9. Radio/Television.
10. Social media.
11. Dropping Business cards.
12. Dropping Gift cards /Flyers.

These methods could be very good for beginners because:

a) Many of the methods are cheap or even free.
b) They are easy to use by beginners.
c) They are very effective.
d) They can be used any and everywhere.
e) They are cost-effective.
f) They are readily available and easy to access.
g) They give very good results. 


 
What is really important is that beginners should never forget to use their Gateways correctly in all their ads. That is the only way the credits of the ads will go to them. If not well used, all ads no matter how well-designed will not yield the desired results.

Best Marketing Methods Suitable for New PSAs

As a good Sponsor or Team Leader, you should always recommend to your new PSAs all the marketing methods you have been using and you know are effective in SFI business. Let them know that the marketing methods you are recommending are the ones you can vouch for from your own experience. That gives some measure of credibility which can easily sway your new PSAs to take your advice. 

 
Arising from the above and in my own experience, I at all times recommend to my new PSAs to endeavor to use SFI marketing tools as provided free for all affiliates in the following link:

https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/MarketingCenter?form=MarketingMethods

On this link, SFI is magnanimous enough to have made available about 94 marketing methods free for all affiliates to use as they deem fit. Some of these methods come by way of:

- Promoting the affiliate’s Gateway.
- Promoting TripleClicks URL.
- Promoting the URL of individual products.
- Text ads campaigns.
- Banner ads campaigns.
- Promoting products for sale in Social Media.
- Email blasts campaigns.
- SFI, TC Gift Cards.
- SFI TC X-Cards.
- And many others. 


 
Your new affiliates should be well advised to use these methods as they have proven over time to be very effective in SFI business. When the PSAs become experienced in the business, they can then be at liberty to modify some of these methods for their own exclusive use. They can also combine some of these methods for use to give maximum effects to their marketing efforts.

I hope this information helps? Best of luck in your marketing efforts!!!

Best Free Methods for Attracting and Sponsoring New Affiliates

In SFI business, many marketing methods are cheap but not completely free. Many could be so cheap as to look free. Cheap and affordable ok but certainly not free. Since your question is specifically asking for best FREE methods for attracting and sponsoring affiliates, the following readily come to mind.

-Display your Gateway(s) in your personal website or any FREE classified ads website.

-Join a free blog and display your SFI Gateway(s)

-Drive your car around with TripleClicks Decal prominently and visibly displayed on it.

-Put SFI advert in the signature feature of your e-mails.

-Promote your Gateway(s) to your Affiliated Groups in Social Media sites like facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and others.

-Bookmark for libraries but do not forget to talk to your librarian first.

-Leave your business cards in restrooms at restaurants or on cork boards around grocery stores.

-Participate in talk shows and talk about your business.

-Volunteer to teach your business at vocational courses.

-Volunteer to talk about your business in Service/Business Clubs meetings.

-Leave your business cards in restaurants with your tips.

-Write articles for Articles Directories and leave a hyperlink to your Gateway(s) in the Resource Box.

-Conveniently “forget’ your business cards in taxis/buses/trains.

-Set up a free giveaway box in any store that will give you permission.

-When you are out and about mixing with people, try to be different and get noticed. That way, you can “pitch” your business effortlessly one-on-one.

These are about the best FREE methods for attracting and sponsoring new affiliates I can think of right now.