Tag: marketing

    What’s Included in an Online Marketing Plan?

    When developing your online marketing plan, you have to take into account all your goals for it. You need to understand who your audience is, how to make them aware of you, and what their buying process is, so that you can create the best online marketing plan for them.

    Here’s what an online marketing plan will consist of.

    Website Management and Updates

    From the start, create a website that takes into consideration all the rules of SEO. Do this from the first page created, to every page that links in, and every article, blog post or image that you include. Everything should be something that you know will advance your marketing goals.

    SEO: On- and Off-Page

    Learn everything you can about SEO, because getting organic traffic that you don’t directly pay for via pay per click or other types of advertisements is worth even more than paid traffic. Why? Audience members who seek you out, rather than the other way around, will be more likely to convert to paying customers. They’re going to be much more likely to buy than someone who reads and responds to an advertisement.

    Link Building On and Off Your Website

    Link building helps search engines, but it also helps your audience find your information in a more organized fashion. Consider your link-building strategy and create a plan of action going forward that will provide links from outside your website to your content, plus links within your website to more of your content.

    Locally Optimize

    One way to ensure that people find you, especially if you have a locally focused business, is to ensure that you use keywords that help local people find and discover you. For example, if you’re a local dentist you want to use the name of your location as well as the name of your business within meta descriptions, headers, titles and tags.

    Press Releases

    Many people dismiss press releases as offline marketing, but today with PRWeb.com you can send out press releases online, too. This will provide information for your audience in numerous ways. You can put the press release on your website, as well as send it out to those who might want to pick up the story.

    Email Marketing

    No online marketing plan is complete without email marketing. Email marketing is the lifeblood of your online marketing plan, and will infuse your online marketing program. With email marketing you have a way to capture leads, turn them into customers, and more.

    Blogging

    Everything starts with your website or blog. All the content you create, all the products you promote, and all the services you provide, live on your blog or website. Even if you have a store front, the website or blog is the central hub of your online existence.

    Social Media

    Using social media to promote your content and information to your audience is a fabulous way to get the word out. Plus, it’s a great way to engage and build trust with your targeted audience. You can have conversations, share interesting things you read, share the information that others share with you, and more.

    Pay Per Click

    Using Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads and more, you can conduct pay-per-click campaigns that get great results and are a good addition to the other types of market that you do online.

    Reputation Management

    Use articles, eReports, white papers, posts, messages and more to boost and manage your online reputation. This is a useful aspect of online marketing that should not be ignored.

    You can make an online marketing plan in a page or two, or you can create a page for each aspect with a step-by-step to-do list of what you will do to ensure that each part of your plan is realized. The worst thing you can do is proceed without a plan.

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    Why You Need a Marketing Plan for Your Business

    A marketing plan is actually part of a business plan. It informs you how you’ll get the word out about your business to your audience. You don’t have to write a huge book about the marketing plan, but you do need to write out something to help you with marketing. Don’t move forward without a plan because it’s like shooting in the dark. With a plan you can actually plan for success instead of hope for success.

    * Helps You Complete Market Research – It’s imperative that you learn about the market you’re doing business in. You need to know about all aspects of the business, the competition, and your audience.

    * Helps You Determine Competition – Who your competition is, is just as important as what types of products or services they promote. It’s obviously not going to be just exactly like yours, so learning all you can about them helps you differentiate yourself and your products from theirs.

    * Helps Plan Marketing Strategies – One of the most important parts of the marketing plan is your strategies that you will use to get the word out about your business. Will you use a website, blogs, content marketing, brochures, online ads, offline ads, or something else entirely? What type of results do you believe you’ll get for each of these?

    * Helps You Create a Budget – When you learn more about your market and what it takes to get a customer, you can make a budget that is realistic to help you get more customers and make more money.

    * Helps You Make Goals – Without knowing a lot of information about your demographic, product, service and budget, it will be hard to make goals. But while creating the marketing plan you’ll determine this information, and it will help tremendously.

    * Helps You Evaluate the Plan and Results – One part of a marketing plan that is continuous, even after it’s put down in black and white, is the fact that periodically you need to evaluate where you are. What type of results are you getting, and are they what you expected? Can you change anything to make it better?

    * Helps You Determine Your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats – When you create a marketing plan, you are also doing research that helps you conduct what is called a SWOT analysis. This will help you get a 360 view of your business and the things that can affect your business, for good or bad.

    * Helps You Make Smarter Decisions – All of this information combined will help you make a lot smarter decisions about your business. The decisions you make will save you money and make you money.

    The marketing plan is one of the most important parts of your overall plan for your business. It helps you determine how you’ll get the word out about your offerings so that you can make more money and have a more successful business.

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    Strengthen Your Local Presence

    Marketing locally is something that most online businesses should do. Even if your audience is world-wide, you can make a big impact by taking advantage of strengthening your local presence. Having a local presence will help those who are local to you find you easier, plus, it can help increase your expertise quotient. Here’s how to strengthen your local presence.

    * SEO – Search engine optimization consists of a lot of different techniques to get more people to come to your website. The words on your page (keywords), as well as the words and links you earn off your page, are all important.

    * Blogging – The more you can blog about your business on your website and off your website, the more likely you are to get local visitors. You just need to ensure that you use local keywords and a profile that mentions your location.

    * PPC – Use pay-per-click ads that mention location, or target people in your location using the demographic settings that most PPC platforms allow you to do. This is a great way to improve your local presence. Facebook has an especially awesome targeting tool.

    * Social Media – Use social media to tell more people about your business, focusing on local people first, and then allowing it to expand out to other locations. Ensure that you mention your location on all social media sites.

    * Go Mobile – Have all your visitors sign up to receive text messages from you, then separate them into different locations where you can invite them to a special local-only sale. You’ll usually know who they are from their area code.

    * Claim Your Business – Google Business, Yahoo Small Business, Yelp and other local business directories all have listings. Your business might already be listed, so be sure to claim and verify your business listings.

    * Get Listed – Find local directories, including your local Chamber of Commerce directory, and ensure that your website is listed. You might have to pay for some of these, so choose wisely and pick the most frequented and professional websites to spend your money.

    * Fill Out All Profiles – This is very important; you need to fill out all your profile accurately and completely on every place that asks for a profile. Use your location to help you show up more in local searches for the best results.

    Getting known locally is an important way to get more local visitors to your website, which will translate into more local business. Even if you want to do business internationally, there is nothing wrong with being known locally as it can open a lot of doors for you in terms of public speaking, coaching and teaching – in addition to making more sales.

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    Methods of Conducting Market Research

    In order to conduct market research, you need to know a few different methods of research. Today, conducting market research is easier due to the relatively inexpensive technology you can take advantage of, some of which will be discussed below. The important thing is to learn about these methods, and commit to conducting market research on a regular basis.

    The times that are important to do market research are before creating and launching a new product, to analyze how your current marketing is working, and more.

    1. Surveys – Software like SurveyMonkey.com, and Zoho.com allow you to conduct web, email and mobile based surveys so that they can be taken by anyone, from anywhere, using any device. Surveys are good to use on your audience as well as to help find your audience.

    2. Online Communities and Forums – Finding industry-specific web communities and online message boards (forums) are a great way to observe a specific type of audience to find out answers to the questions you have.

    3. Social Media Analytics – Using social media analytics to find trends in the actions of your followers is a great way to conduct research. Want to figure out which kind of social media post gets more engagement? Use the analytics that comes with your software.

    4. Interviews – Due to high speed internet and webcams, you can use software like Skype and Google Hangouts to conduct and record online interviews. You can also conduct old-fashioned “paper” interviews via email.

    5. Crowdsourcing – This is a relatively new phenomenon; you can actually crowdsource any problem you have to find multiple solutions. You can even crowdsource as part of research to find whether or not there is a market for your product.

    6. Focus Groups – This is a group of potential target audience members who will sit and discuss the product and services or the ideas about the products and services.

    7. Behavioral Observation – A lot of times people will say one thing and do another. It’s important that you test this potential behavior by using the results of your survey to send a test to ensure survey honesty and integrity.

    8. Trial Sales – Once you’ve conducted some market research and you’ve found positive potential in a product, do some trial sales to see how it goes. Try different sales pages and different methods of selling to find out what works best.

    Using these methods of conducting market research will ensure successful research results. Don’t just conduct research once. You should be doing ongoing research and testing as long as you are in business. Businesses that understand the importance of research are very successful because they have some sort of idea about what will happen once they push out their products and services.

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    Real-Time Search Strategies

    When you decide to implement a real-time marketing strategy, it’s important to understand how search plays into your efforts. Not only will you need to conduct searches to find out what is happening within your community, but your customers will conduct searches as well. As you conduct real-time marketing, you will want your audience to find the information and content that you push out.

    * Boost Your Facebook Posts – When you are using real-time marketing strategies, it’s important that you spend money to advance your real-time strategy. Since it is real time you don’t have the luxury of waiting for the information to gain momentum. Instead, spend the money to promote the post.

    * Pay for Ads on Google – Promote your real-time answers, products and services with Google so that the most audience members will see the information as quickly as possible. Using paid Google Ads and buying the right keywords, or displaying ads that will display where your audience goes, will make it that much more likely your efforts are noticed.

    * Use Popular Hashtags – When an event occurs, a hashtag is often developed. If you can relate your post to the hashtag, you’re more likely to get seen by those who are following that particular news when they search for information based on that hashtag.

    * Plan in Advance – This might seem contrary to the idea of real-time marketing but the truth is you can make an outline of actions to take in advance. Additionally you can plan in advance which products that you might push out based on various information that comes to light during the real-time marketing push.

    * Develop Guidelines – It’s important that guidelines are created based on knowledge of your products, services and audience so that nothing is pushed out that contradicts these values due to the real-time effort.

    * Monitor Customer Sentiment – One way to use search is to monitor real-time customer sentiment. Use social media like Twitter to search for keywords that relate to your products, service, industry or company to help.

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    – When you have sent out a real-time marketing message on social media, why not add the same information to an email newsletter blast, a blog post, or other areas so that you show up more in search.

    Real-time marketing is an important way to get to know your audience better, help them to get to know your business better, and to ensure that your values match. The more effort you spend on real-time marketing, the better all your online marketing collateral will work for you. Your website, blog, social media, groups, and communities will reflect the effort that you put into real-time marketing.

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    How Real-Time Marketing Boosts Your Business

    One of the most fascinating and useful features of online marketing and the technology that goes with it, is the ability to market to individuals “on the fly” with real-time marketing messages. Imaging being able to send messages to each individual customer that’s relevant to their needs and interests right then.

    The idea is exciting, and one that you can be sure will add money to your bank account if you learn how to do it. One way to engage in real-time marketing is to use social media to listen to what is important right now to you target audience. Are they watching a specific show? Are they involved in a specific sport or news item of the week or day? If so, you can then guide your marketing efforts toward their interests.

    * Listen – Set up alerts on Google Alerts, Twitter and other social media to find out when your brand, your competition’s brand, or items related to your brand are mentioned. You can devise marketing based on these mentions to offer the right products and services that your audience wants right now.

    * Understand Your Industry – No matter what you are involved in, there is an entire industry surrounding what it is that you do. You should be monitoring the news in your industry to find out what the trends are now and in the future. You can devise marketing materials based on these trends and get ahead of the buzz with the right marketing materials that appear fresh and timely.

    * Understand Your Audience – Just like with any type of marketing it’s imperative that you understand your audience. They are the key to what types of products and services you’ll offer, as well as how you’ll frame the marketing that you do to attract the buyers for your products and services.

    * Prepare – It seems strange that you can prepare for “real-time” marketing, but you can. Get the technology in place such as remarketing programs, events that you know are happening such as the super bowl, or major college playoffs, or other events that you know are important to your audience. Be prepared to monitor the buzz and react to it. If you have a calendar of events and holidays that your audience may be interested in, you can be ready.

    * Get the Technology – Figure out what technology you need in place to participate in real-time marketing. Remarketing technology, email marketing technology, pop-up ads, social media apps, and more all can work together to help you engage in real-time marketing on the fly. If you’re ready, with just a few clicks you can change an old pop-up or pop-under into something that mentions the happenings of the day.

    * Create the Material – Get ready the tools of the trade to take advantage of events. Use email campaigns, blogging, events, tweeting, eBooks, PR, white papers, banner ads, apps, Google AdWords, social media listening, search engine optimization and more to be ready for the events in which you can capitalize on the current happenings to your audience which will help you boost sales.

    * Renewed Customer Service – One often overlooked way to practice real-time marketing is within customer service. Whether it’s answering a question on Facebook, Twitter, or within your ticketing service, you have a huge opportunity to engage users in a profitable way when it comes to customer service and real-time marketing. You can empower customer service (or yourself if it’s just you) to offer specialized deals to individuals as the issue arises. You can also use these examples for content ideas to help answer questions in advance to newer customers.

    * Content Ideas – Using social media to catch what the buzz is about your business is a great example of real-time marketing at work. You see the questions and what the audience is talking about on message boards and social media updates, and then use them to add to your FAQ or to create a special offer that your audience cannot resist. All of these efforts add to your bottom line and make your company that much more in demand.

    When you look at these examples it’s likely you already do some real-time marketing without realizing it. But, if you do more real-time marketing you’ll increase lead acquisition, get higher conversions, and ultimately make more sales and earn more money because you are on the cutting edge of truly understanding your audience at a whole new level.

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    How to Market Your Business Website Online and Offline

    So, you finally have a business website… but you don’t know what to do with it. When you build a website, you have very powerful marketing collateral that you can use to get more business than you ever thought possible. It doesn’t matter if you have a bricks-and-mortar business or a completely online business – these marketing methods work wonders. Here’s how to market your business website, both online and offline.

    * Blogging Content – The more relevant content in the form of blogs you can put on your website, dripping out a little at a time, the more traffic you’ll get to your website. You don’t want the content to go up all at once; you want it to go a little at a time so that the search engines grab it, and so that you get a steady trickle of traffic every day.

    * Social Media Networks – When you write a blog post or add any content to your site, let people know on all your social media networks about the new content. Try to make each update to social media slightly unique so that it doesn’t look like just the same thing all the time. Each network has its own unique appearance and personality. Just match your blurbs with each network.

    * Your Business Card – Believe it or not, you can get a lot of business with the good old-fashioned business card. Put your URL on it, and hand it out to people you meet. You never know if someone you meet today will call you months or even a year down the line because they need what you’re offering.

    * QR Codes – These are those funny square things that you can use your smartphone to take a picture of and grab the information. A QR code can take your customer or contact to a newsletter sign-up page or just your webpage. It’s up to you.

    * Pay Per Click – All search engines, plus most social media networks, allow you to do some form of pay-per-click marketing. Right now, the easiest and best one to use is Facebook. You can design an advertisement and target it in the minutest way possible to get the most convertible clicks.

    * TV Advertisements – Yes, you can market your website using TV spots. Depending on what you promote on your website, especially if it’s a highly desirable that appeals to mass quantities of people, local advertisements can do wonders for your business. Contact your local news affiliates for more information about how to run a TV spot.

    * SEO – Search engine optimization should be your first go-to marketing method for your website. SEO involves ensuring that you have the right content on your site, using the right keywords and in the right order for the best results. SEO also happens off your website and is called off-page SEO. This means that you find ways to produce material that provides a link back to your website.

    * Sponsorships – Locally and internationally there are always sponsorship opportunities available where you can help put on an event, support a charity, or combine resources with other businesses offering complementary items to your audience. The end result is more traffic to your website.

    Marketing your business website is an important part of having a business. If you want people to find out about your business, the website is essential. And telling people about the website and making it easy to find using SEO techniques is the only way they’ll know it exists.

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    Marketing Your Business Offline Works Too

    Many people who own small businesses, especially home businesses, don’t realize that you can still market your business offline and not just online. There are many ways to market your business offline that are very effective.

    * Try Unconventional Marketing Techniques – There are lots of neat ways you can get attention from sidewalk chalk, sticky notes left in random places, accidentally leaving branded premiums around, and even donating merchandise to others with your name on it. All of these ways will help get the name of your business noticed.

    * Remember the Business Card – Many people forget about business cards today, but they are super important because they offer you an easy way to give your information to anyone you meet. You could be at the grocery, doctor, or other event and meet someone who wants to know more about your business. The business card is the perfect way to do that.

    * Take Pictures and Videos – This method crosses from offline to online, but it’s something that you should definitely do. Take pictures of events, of a random moment in the day and more, to share online. These same images can be used in other venues too, for brochures and more.

    * Donate Prizes for Contests – Many charity organizations have events where they need prizes for contests. Find out where they are and when they are, and make your business a go-to business for these types of events.

    * Speak at Local Events – A really awesome way to get the word out about your business offline is to get on some speakers’ lists. You can always find a way to speak about something motivational and relate it back to your business in some way.

    * Use Direct Mail – Once you get a customer list, you can use direct mail to send marketing information to them. It’s so unusual these days for an online company to do it that it will get some extra attention from your customer.

    * Cold Calling – Another method that is known to work for various types of businesses is cold calling. You purchase a list of potential leads and then simply get on the phone and start calling them. This requires a lot of patience and the ability to call as many people as possible.

    * Volunteer – The more you can volunteer in your local area, the more people will get to know you as someone they can count on. If you sell something that people need, whether a service or a product, those who get to know your name will seek you out based on your volunteering activity.

    * Commercials – You can purchase local commercials rather inexpensively if you go to your local channels. You may be surprised at how inexpensive and effective a commercial spot can be, either on TV or the radio.

    These traditional means of marketing your business offline are very effective and important ways to take your business to the next level. You can get a name for yourself locally as well as internationally – no matter what type of business you have.

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    Marketing Your Business on a Shoestring Budget

    If you’re just starting out, or you are finding that you’re short on funds, you may need to find ways to market your business on a shoestring budget. Just because it’s inexpensive doesn’t mean it’s not effective, though. In fact, some of the most effective forms of marketing are the least expensive.

    Use the Good Old Business Card

    You can get inexpensive business cards online from websites like Vistaprint.com, PrintsMadeEasy.com or make them on your own printer with your computer. Do not use the free versions of business cards, but if you find a coupon or get a discount code you can get cards inexpensively. Now, use them.

    When you go to any event, be sure to leave your business card. When you have any reason to hand out your phone number to anyone, for any reason, even if it’s not totally related to business, give them your business card. You never know when someone will need the services you offer, or when your friends and family will meet up with someone who needs your services. Hand your cards out freely.

    Build a Website with a Blog

    It’s very important to watch your budget, but don’t be cheap. Using self-hosted WordPress makes having a website with a blog that looks professional really easy. You can get free themes off WordPress.org, buy a domain for about 15 dollars, and host your website for as low as 5 dollars a month. Every penny of that cost is worth it.

    If you’re technological deficient and can’t afford to hire someone, consider using a website builder that offers a blog function. You want the blog to be on your website and not separate from your website like a Blogger or WordPress.com blog. However you choose to do this, the next step is to write regular informative, keyword-rich blog posts that you promote via social media.

    Use Social Media to Promote Everything

    Set up branded social media accounts for your business. But, you don’t have to be on all social media networks. Instead use the knowledge that you have about your audience to choose which social media networks that you should be present on. Make good profiles that represent your brand in a cohesive way.

    When you write a blog post, send it to social media. When you take a picture of something, or have a question about something you’re creating, mention it on social media. Use social media to engage your audience in creative ways. You can use social media to get email list signups, promote events, and more – all free.

    Find a Joint Venture Partner for a Project

    A JV partnership is not a real business partnership. It’s a joining of forces or collaboration between complementary business owners who share an audience but are not in direct competition. Finding a project to work on like this can essentially help you both double your audience.

    Make the JV partnership a time-limited project that has a definite beginning and ending to start. Determine all the rules and how money will be handled up front and put it all in a contract. Define each aspect of the work that each of you will be responsible for completing. Be clear and stick to the plan and you’ll both come out successful.

    Write a Book

    If you’re an expert on anything, you can write a book about the topic. You can publish it easily on Kindle, or promote it as a PDF document right from your website. You can sell it, or give it away for free. It’s up to you. But, a book can push you forward in the eyes of your audience as a true expert and become a calling card.

    Get on the Speaking Circuit

    Using your book as a foundation, put the word out that you’re ready to give talks locally and for the cost of a ticket, room and board, go to other speaking events. Sometimes, you can even get paid for speaking once you’re established and in demand. So, not only can speaking become a good marketing opportunity, but it can also become a new revenue stream.

    Create Buzz

    When you really have no money, a great way to get the word out is to create a lot of buzz. You can do this in a number of ways. Create a viral video, write a controversial blog post, or have a contest with videos that get voted on by the video creator’s friends, family and audience. It’s a great way to get people talking and to get free advertising. Offer a relevant and amazing prize package and it’ll also create buzz.

    Build Relationships through Networking

    Choose networking events wisely. You want to network with people who can become clients, or who can send you clients. Since your budget is limited, try to find online or local networking events that you can attend. There are many mastermind groups online that have a fee for joining, but are awesome ways to find clients once you spend the time building relationships and developing trust.

    Incentivize Referrals

    A really great way to increase your customer base is to convince your customers to refer you to others. Most of the time satisfied customers will tell others about you, but in some cases they may not because they want to keep you to themselves. This is especially true with service-based businesses. So, a great way to overcome this issue is to give your customers a reason to tell others about you such as a discount coupon, or additional freebies for each paying customer they send your way.

    If you sell products, consider starting an affiliate program as a way to get more people to tell others about your products and make more sales without it costing you anything more than a percentage of sales.

    Using these marketing ideas when you have little to no money will take mostly time, especially if you need to learn how to use the technology. However, putting to work even a couple of these ideas will push your business forward.

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    Online Marketing Tips for Home Business Owners

    As a home business owner you need to continuously market your business. There is a saying for all businesses and it is “always be marketing.” This is a very important thing to remember, because it’s true. Even if you think you have enough clients or customers, you may not a month from now, and the marketing you do today will pay off tomorrow. Here are some online marketing tips to keep the marketing going.

    * Know Your Goals – You need to start by knowing your goals. Each type of marketing that you do will be designed for a different goal.

    * Evaluate Where You Are – Determine where you are now in terms of your content and all aspects of your marketing. Punch up the things that need to be punched up and pull back on the things that need to be pulled back on.

    * Use Appropriate Tags – Meta tags, header tags, and alt tags are all still important when it comes to getting attention for your website from search engines. Check everything to ensure that all your tags are set.

    * Learn to Understand Your Analytics – Whether it’s Google Analytics or social network analytics, it’s important to familiarize yourself with them so that you can use them to improve your marketing efforts. No matter how small of a business you have, understanding the metrics can help you tremendously.

    * Join the Chamber of Commerce – That might seem like weird advice for online marketing, but usually you can end up on their online list which can give you a credible link back to your website.

    * Get to Know Your Competition – Always get to know who your competition is and what they’re doing. You don’t want to copy them, but you can get ideas from them on what type of marketing works. Plus, you can look at their offerings and figure out how you can make them better.

    * Improve Your Website – Once you build your website and it works, you’ll be super happy and feel done. But, when it comes to websites, you have to keep updating them continuously. Improve your SEO, improve the layout, and keep improving the content.

    * Post Videos Online – A great way to move offline activity into online activity is to post videos online. Post them on YouTube, Facebook, and your blog. People love watching short videos from one to three minutes long.

    * Post Images Online – Still images are a big hit online too. Post a few pictures of the “day in the life” of your work and you’ll be more relatable to your peers and to your customers as well. It’s a good way to tie in different events to your products and services.

    * Blog Regularly – The more you can blog, the better, but it’s important that you have something to say too. Don’t just put up something for the sake of putting up anything. Be sure to create a blog post that has a reason for being and a goal in mind.

    * Read about Your Niche – The more you can read about your industry and niche, the more you’ll have to add to it. You can learn about your industry from magazines, books, blogs, and other types of publications.

    Keep marketing in all the normal ways such as online social networks, blogging, and social networking. Try adding in a new way of marketing each month to find out which type of marketing works best for you.

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