Now is the time to start planning your promotional calendar for 2012.

Use these “Holidays” as special sales promotions in the upcoming year.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

January

New Years Day
College Football
New Year’s Resolutions
Martin Luther King
Super Bowl
Back to School – 2nd Semester
Bank Holiday (UK)

February

Ground Hog Day
Mardi Gras
President’s Day
Valentine’s Day
Daytona 500
February Sweeps for Television
Black History Month

March

St. Patrick’s Day
Passover
Easter
First Day of Spring
March Madness
Academy Awards
Spring Break with the Family!
End Q1

April

Baseball Opening Day
Good Friday
April Fool’s Day
Tax Day
Earth Day
Master’s (Golf)
Prom

May

Cinco de Mayo
Mother’s Day
Graduation
Victoria Day (Canada)
Memorial Day
Spring Bank Holiday (UK)
Kentucky Derby
Season Finales for Television
Teacher Appreciation Week
National Small Business Week

June

Father’s Day
NBA Playoffs
NHL Playoffs
Flag Day
Graduation / School’s Out
First Day of Summer
Time to Take a Vacation!
U.S. Open (Golf)
Wimbledon (Tennis)
End Q2

July

Independence Day
Canada Day
Summer Fun

August

Back to School
Tax-Free Sales Events
End of Summer
College Football

September

Labor Day
NFL Opens
First Day of Fall
End Q3

October

Columbus Day
World Series
Thanksgiving Day (Canada)
Red Ribbon Week
National Boss Day
National Book Month
Halloween

November

Election Day
Veteran’s Day
Thanksgiving Day
Black Friday (Busiest Shopping Day)
November Sweeps for Television
NBA
NHL
Global Entrepreneurship Week

December

First Day of Winter
Christmas
Boxing Day
Happy Holidays
College Football
New Year Resolutions
New Years Eve
End Q4
End of Year

If you need any help getting more ideas together, let me know!

As a small business owner, if you do not take advantage of the Internet, then you are missing a huge opportunity to promoting your products and services. Using online local Internet marketing tactics can transform your small business marketing into BIG business marketing.

Nearly 50% of businesses have taken that first essential step to getting online: building a web site. That’s great but, unfortunately, just having that small piece of real estate on the web isn’t enough. It’s a start, so let’s build on that by reviewing some basic things to do with the web site first. The appearance and the content of your web site should be simple and valuable. Whoever visits your site should find it attractive and should be able to clearly understand your company’s benefits. Try having enough information on the site to answer the most frequent questions that your prospective customer might have. Even more, have information on the site that explains what they SHOULD know, but don’t know to ask about. Again, just putting up a site on the Internet isn’t going to be enough to bring more business, but make sure it is done right.

The key to using your web site to drive more traffic to your business, with phone calls, online purchases, or in-store visits, is capture the attention of people searching for your goods and services online. The number of people using search engines, such as Google, to find local businesses like yours is skyrocketing. Recent studies show that many more people are searching the web for local products and services than picking up the “handy” yellow page book. Google and its rivals have figured that out and they are investing heavily to designing their search engines to cater to that audience. Therefore, you need to do THREE THINGS right now to benefit from that trend.

1) First, construct your web site to conform with what the search engines want to show their users. Specifically, find out what the online searchers are typing into the search box and write your web site’s content to accommodate. That is often referred to in the Internet marketing community as on-page search engine optimization (or SEO).

2) Second, promote your web site in as many places as possible (online and offline). “As many places as possible” includes, but is not limited to, these activities: finding web pages online where a link to your web site can be placed; adding your business information to online local directories; adding your business information to social media sites; creating content in the form of articles, videos, images, reports, etc. and posting it on a variety of online content sharing web sites; and others! With a little creativity, you will find that there are more opportunities to reference your business and link back to your web site than you’ll ever be able to do.

3) Third, manage your reputation online. If you do nothing else, you should be monitoring what people online are saying about you, your business, your competitors, your suppliers, and even your customers (if you’re B2B). Many tools exist to monitor these conversations.

If you want to attract more customers, then take advantage of the Internet by making it easy for people to find your business when they are looking for it. Nowadays, people are using the Internet as their primary source for researching local businesses. If you understand that and implement these three steps, you will be in a great position to attract that audience. If not, your competitors will.

If you are a small business owner that understands the value of the Internet as described in this article, then you’re ready to take action.

Click this link to find out more about affordable local online marketing.

Article Source: ezinearticles.com/

One such “extra piece” is the use of videos. Not everyone likes to read so if you give your visual visitors something to look at, such as How To videos or a tour of your store, they’re more likely to stay around and see what you’re about.

An essential item for a website’s success is testimonials.  If you have happy customers, put their letters or emails on your site. Potential clients like to know that others have gone before them and are happy with what you provide. The testimonials can also be videos if you have people who prefer to do it that way.

Another very important element, besides the written words (also known as content), is the use of graphics. I’m talking about eye-pleasing photos, charts, and clip art pictures that draw focus, make the web page interesting, and break up what would be considered a lot of text.

This next one is simple, yet so many websites overlook it – contact information. There is nothing more frustrating than looking all over a website and not finding a way to contact the site owner.

On every page of the website there should be an address, phone number, and email address.  This is crucial to good customer service, and it makes a site look more legitimate and less suspicious.

But it’s not enough just to have any old website. You need a website that will draw traffic, aka visitors, who are surfing the web. These are visitors you wouldn’t otherwise have and they can make a huge difference in the success or failure of your online presence.

So how do you get these visitors who are surfing the web?

By your choice of words…
* in your content
* in your content titles
* in your graphics titles
* behind the scenes of your site
* in your links to other pages of your site

Some words are better than others because they are searched for again and again by TONS of people. Some words, called longtail keywords, are searched for a lot yet have little competition from other sites (not as many sites use these keywords). If you use these favorable longtail keyword phrases it may mean you can land on page 1 in Google for the phrase.

The result of being on page 1 of the Google search engine is huge! Just think what it means if people find your website on the first page of their search – a marked influx of traffic and a big new market of people to market to.

Emailing your past customers and potential clients is a very important tool you can use to bring in more people to your physical business. Your emails can also keep your company name front and center so people don’t forget about you and what you offer.

But with the number of emails people get these days and knowing they don’t read half of what lands in their in-bins, it becomes more important than ever for your emails to stand out.

That doesn’t mean using spammy subject lines or misleading titles to lure people in. It means using subject lines that have certain trigger words in them. This is crucial because if they don’t even open your email, there’s zero chance they’ll act on what’s inside.

The emails need to be formatted in such a way as to make them easier and quicker to read. There are simple things you can do to make the layout of your emails more inviting to read.

Did you know there are certain words you should not use in your emails or it will cause them to land in your subscribers’ spam folders? It’s pretty easy to avoid these words if you know what they are.

Your emails must have a purpose. Before you send one, make sure it has a call to action. This can be anything such as purchasing during your sale, contacting you for more info, visiting your website to do xyz, or coming in to your store in person for the abc event.

Writing emails is not that hard but crafting them so they stand out and get opened because the subscriber likes your emails is something else.

For small business, advertising is the key to drawing in customers. There are several different ways to go about it. Using only one form of advertising is not always effective. Using multiple types of advertising venues reaches a broader audience, and therefore, more potential customers.

Demographics

Knowing some demographics about clientele is helpful in discovering what types of advertising will reach the. There are several ways to find out preference and background on present customers.

Conduct surveys with cards at cashiers counter or send them out with the mail on delivery orders. There are several online programs that can calculate demographics of those visiting a business’ website. These statistics can be used to streamline marketing and advertising strategies.

A business can cater marketing strategies towards its clients. If most of them are married adults without children, for example, a buy-one-get- one free coupon online might be successful. A local radio spot might also be efficient. Radio stations know their demographics, so, statistics can be mated to certain stations and commercial air times.

Format

Where and how a customer conducts business is key to reaching them in marketing strategies. If they rarely go online, the best pay-per-click advertising campaign is not going to reach them. If they never read the newspaper, classified ads will not help. Using both methods of advertising, however, will reach both clientele.

Methods

The type of online advertising used affects how a potential customer discovers a business, especially a small local one. If a business does not have a website it will be difficult for people to find them online. These businesses must use advertising online though social media websites or piggyback off of other websites such as the local Chamber of Commerce or a review site. Small businesses that are offline may also need to cater to an audience that is offline. Strategies might include flyer distribution, newspaper advertising, radio and television campaigns, direct mail and outdoor billboards.

Cost

The least expensive advertising with the greatest return on investment is always the best strategy. Some forms of local advertising cost very little. For example, writing a company blog is one way to advertise online at a cost of paying a professional or doing it in-house. Running coupons and flyers costs little and the method of distribution could also be low. However, if no one pays attention the cost won’t matter. If spending $3,000 on advertising online or through a radio campaign brings in $6,000 in customer sales, it is probably worth the investment.

About the Author

Author writes about a variety of topics. If you would like to learn more about local advertising, visit http://www.local-advertising.com/.

Most of the companies, irrespective of their size, have started to include videos about the company’s service offerings and product offerings as part of their marketing efforts. Companies put these videos in their intranet portal first and get the feedback from their own employees. After this step, the companies tweak the videos, based on the feedback received, either by themselves or with the help of a video production company. After incorporating the changes, they publish this corporate offering video to their internet portal.
There are actually many reasons for organizations to use corporate video presentations. Of all the reasons, two reasons top the list. One among them is the ability of these corporate video presentations to produce reproducible training sessions for the employees in the organization interested in learning a new technology.
Sometimes the organization will also make it mandatory for all its employees to complete a particular course by referring to the video presentations. In such instances, these video training sessions are loaded in the intranet portal of the company for the employees to refer. The employees can use it any number of times and complete the course. Also the training sessions taken by an expert related to a particular technology can also be recorded and then uploaded in to the company’s intranet portal.
One of the major advantages of having a video training session is that the audience is not dependent on a particular person to come and deliver the lecture. One can go to the intranet portal and then launch the video training session as and when they want to take.
Another major reason for the companies to go for corporate videos is the emergence of video as a media that helps to increase the sales of the company products and service offerings. Studies on certain eCommerce portals have come out with some interesting findings on the positive impact of the video information regarding the product. When the customer sees the various features of the product through video presentations, the studies indicate that there is a greater chance for the customers to get impressed with the product and place the order through the company’s eCommerce portal.
In addition to being used to market the product in a better manner, they also help the eCommerce portal to be ranked highly by the various video search engine portals such as YouTube and Vimeo. Search engines place the links of all these eCommerce portals which Video demonstrations, in the first page of the search engine result.

About the Author

Daniel Blinman is writing on behalf of Skylark Media Group, who offer video production Bristol and corporate video Bristol

1. Get permission from your customers:
Getting permission from your recipients is crucial for the success of an email marketing campaign. This is not just because you may end up with CAN-SPAM penalties but also because people don’t like getting emails from unknown people. What would you do if you get a newsletter from an unknown person or company? There is a good chance that you may end up in spam box or trash.

Getting permission is necessary because if somebody opt in for an email about a product it is because he has plans to buy it, may not be now but in future whereas a random person may not be even interested in that product. By emailing the opted in person you are encouraging him to buy your product which will end up in sales whereas in the latter case the person is not even interested in it, so mailing him will only waste your time and resources.

2. Give valuable information:
Your email need not be focused only on sales. It is annoying to always receive sales emails. Why not give them some useful information about your product or service? It will keep them interested in your emails. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t send sales letters but don’t do that every time. If you can establish a good relation with the customer not just as a sales person but also as someone they can trust when choosing a product or service they will come back to you for buying more.

3. Make your email design simple:
There is nothing more annoying than an unreadable email. Use a simple email template for your newsletters. Minimize the use of videos and graphics as nowadays they are most likely to get stuck in email filters. Send them plane, well arranged text messages with necessary links to your landing pages. You can add your videos and graphics in your landing pages t interact with your readers.

4. Use important links more than once:
If you have an important link in your news letter which leads to the sales page or such an important page don’t hesitate to use it more than once depending on the length of the message. By doing so the chances that a reader click on the link and visit your page increases. Make sure that you add it atleast to the top and bottom of your message.

5. Use a Good email messaging tool:
Using email marketing softwares like mailchimp can help managing your campaigns efficiently. A good email marketing tool will help you to schedule your emails, auto-respond to customers’ messages etc. While you can run an email marketing campaign manually it is a lot easier to use email marketing software as it will save a lot of your time.

The best thing about using these tools is that it will help you to run your campaigns smoothly. They will save your time running the campaign so you can create more newsletters and messages for your customers and thus keep in contact with them constantly. This will keep them aware of your products and services and will help in generating more sales.

About the Author

Planning an email marketing campaign? You need to buy email lists of your prospects. Now you can buy business email lists at affordable prices from UnitedDatabase.Net

Social media marketing is just about the highest ROI activities that a small business can undertake. Here are Top 10 Web 2 . 0 Strategies for Small Enterprise Marketing.

1. Become an expert.

People want to buy through the business with the industry expert or celebrity. You can use web 2 . 0 to become this specialist / celebrity. You know that the customers are here, so you can very easily insert yourself in plus begin answering queries to get the trust of the consumer.
Join groups related in your business on the social websites sites and answer inquiries and just generally be involved. Make sure that people know that you will be a business owner, and sooner rather than later, you will become the check out person.

2. Social media marketing stops working the fourth wall.

You can use the social networking space to connect with your audience human to man. People love individual consideration from businesses, and there is no better place for connecting with a human voice than on social media marketing sites.
One of the best uses in the medium is the ability to create criticisms public and express your side. So when someone criticizes your online business in public, discuss it in court and let everyone see the method that you solve the problem.

3. Schedule social media internet marketing time.

Fortune magazine tells us that this Fortune 100 companies can all be spending at the very least a quarter of their budget on social media by the year 2012. Follow their lead and commit time to the present high ROI activity.

4. Find your consumer.

Before simply blindly joining a web 2 . 0 site, the best marketing strategy is to learn exactly where your shoppers are. Look for groups where by your customer base by now congregates.

5. Plan the marketing strategy ahead.

Delegate and put someone in charge of social marketing from the beginning. Outline the plan and stick to it.

6. Listen, listen, listen.

Social media is not the place to be an internet promotion consultant for yourself, or hard sell a person’s product. Simply listen to your current customer. Make them feel as being a friend, not a wallet that has a number.

7. Be social.

Don’t just hammer away in “small company marketing mode” all time. Feel free to converse about other things and make yourself known as a real person.

8. Respond in a monthly manner.

Your presence will become felt if you respond in regular basis to queries.

9. Offer exclusivity.

Give the people who interact along with you the most special offers.

10. Bring value.

As your own internet promotion consultant, you must find ways of bring value to the conversation together with your customers.

About the Author

John Curran is some sort of social media marketing consultant, SEO Expert, online marketing consultant, and author who regularly contributes articles and e-books designed to help local business owners and entrepreneurs with online marketing. You can access 20 free videos that’ll answer all the top questions you might have about getting found online, using social media, or using mobile marketing by visitinghttp://www.ViralMarketingMagnet.com.

Everybody loves a bargain, and that is why discount coupons are so popular. Indeed, just the perception that some product or service is a bargain can drive sales. Think of grocery stores that offer buy one, get one free coupons as an example. If roasts are $5.50 a pound, but there is a BOGO offer, the net price is really $2.75 per pound. Now, if that is roughly equivalent to the sale price that they sometimes offer, it really isn’t that great of a value. However, I would hazard a guess that the BOGO coupon sells more of those chuck roasts because the bargain perception is there.

Discount coupons for many types of services and products can be offered. They can be an integral part of a marketing campaign, and lend that bargain perception that drives traffic and sales to a business. Certainly they cannot build customer loyalty, but they are wonderful for generating awareness of a business, helping a business to be more competitive against large or chain stores, and extending market reach of a small business. Once they come through the door, it is the merchant’s job to WOW them and keep them coming back.

Local search marketing sites offer community building networks, local support structures, and the go green initiative all wrapped up in one neat package. These sites give businesses the opportunity to increase sales while helping to improve the community and maximize their advertising dollars. The sites allow each business to advertise and they will do significant internet marketing on behalf of the community as a whole and the integral pieces of it by promoting the business to thousands of individual buyers and other businesses who are interested in local marketing.

Businesses can design a discount coupons program that gets attention from the community. Another plus in our tech savvy world is that discount coupons can be printed or delivered by text message to potential buyers right on their cell phones. Coupons can be great tools to find out what local buyer’s hot buttons are. Create a few different offers and see which is the most popular, and then leverage that knowledge for the next campaign.

Because local community sites are visited for news and events, they are frequented more often than an individual business’s site would be. Take advantage of that by offering a great discount coupon to get new customers in the door, and then dazzle them with your service or product to keep them coming back for life!

Denise Gabbard is a professional writer with a keen interest in online marketing of all types, including discount coupons programs that can extend your local reach around the world.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Denise_Gabbard