Publicity – 5 Easy Ways to Create Buzz for Your Business

As a Guerrilla Marketing Coach, I’m always looking for low-cost ways for my clients to get the word out about their business. There are dozens and dozens of ways to create buzz that will get the attention of those you want to reach. Consider trying out some of these easy, no-cost ways of generating publicity for you and your business.1. Donate your Products or ServicesEach year, many private and charitable organizations host events to attract contributions to support their cause. To raise money, they typically auction off products and services donated to them by local business owners. Making a donation is a wonderful way to contribute to something you care about, while at the same time, highlighting you and your business.2. Volunteer to SpeakContact your local chamber of commerce and other community clubs, like the Rotary or Optimists, to volunteer as a speaker. These organizations, and others like them, are always looking for speakers for their breakfast, lunch, and dinner meetings. Create a short, one- or two-page proposal, which includes five to seven speech titles along with a short summary of each and their approximate length. Include a professional biography to complete the package. If you’re asked to be a speaker, your name and company will be advertised in the organization’s newsletter and possibly through press or other news releases throughout the community. It’s great free publicity.3. Offer a Complimentary Consultation or Product Sample.It’s said that the best publicity is that which comes by way of referral or word-of-mouth. If people enjoy what you offer, they’ll tell others about you. People like to do business with people they know, like and trust. One way to begin cultivating that sentiment is by offering complimentary consultations or product samples. Don’t give away the whole store, but give people a taste of what it’s like to do business with you. While not everyone will jump at the opportunity, it’s one of the most effective and fastest ways to create buzz around your business.4. Market Through Voice MailUse your telephone voice mail to advertise your business. Mention upcoming seminars or workshops, how to access your latest free reports, or the upcoming release of your latest book. Keep the message short, friendly, high energy and compelling. This is a great way to publicize your business – for free. Make sure to refresh your message frequently so it reflects your latest and greatest business news.5. Teach a ClassOffer to teach a class, free or fee, through your local community education program. If your class is accepted, it will be published in the course catalog, usually along with a short biography. This course catalog is then distributed throughout your community, which can translate into free publicity to tens of thousands of households. Not only are you gaining credibility by offering a course, but also you’re generating a great deal of visibility – and all at no cost to you!

Mistakes by New Internet Marketers – The Top 4

It is easy to find yourself a little overwhelmed when you begin your internet marketing career. There is so much to learn, and so many things to do. Above all else, there are some basic mistakes you need to watch out for. If you can learn to avoid these mistakes, you will succeed online. Here are the top 4 reasons internet marketers fail.Internet Marketing Mistake #4: AFRAID YOU DON’T KNOW ENOUGH YETThe number 4 mistake of new internet marketers is BEING AFRAID YOU DON’T KNOW ENOUGH YET. Many new online marketers don’t ever get started because they think they need to know everything before they start. They buy every course and every eBook they can get their hands on. They study and read and study and read, but that is all they ever do. You will never know everything there is to know about internet marketing. Learning is an ongoing process. You will learn more by doing than you ever will learn from a course or a book. Just start and the knowledge will come.Internet Marketing Mistake #3: TRYING TO BE PERFECTThe number 3 mistake of new internet marketers is TRYING TO BE PERFECT. It is common for new marketers to try to be perfect. Just a few more tweaks of the site and then it will be perfect. Just a few more, just this little adjustment, you can go on and on. Nothing you do will ever be absolutely perfect. If you wait until you think your product is perfect or you wait until your website is perfect you will always be waiting.Nothing is perfect, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. Does it do the job it is supposed to do? Does it look like it will sell a product? Then that’s good enough to start with. Trying to be perfect is really another way of procrastinating. Get it going. You can improve the product or the website or anything else as you go along. Nothing happens until you finally decide to move ahead.Internet Marketing Mistake #2: BEING AFRAID OF FAILUREThe number 2 mistake of new internet marketers is BEING AFRAID OF FAILURE. This may be the mistake that holds more new online marketers back more than any other mistake. They are afraid if they market their product it will be a failure, so they never market it. How can you know something will be a failure before you try? If you don’t try it’s guaranteed you will fail.New internet marketers, heck even great internet marketers fail a lot. But there is no such thing as failure. All failure means is the next time you need to make some changes. It was failure that ultimately taught every marketer how to really market. Failure allowed them to find out what didn’t work so the next time they could do different things that would work.Internet Marketing Mistake #1: FAILURE TO TAKE ACTIONAnd the number one reason that new internet marketers don’t succeed is FAILURE TO TAKE ACTION. Most internet marketers just never get started. To succeed in marketing you need to take action. It almost doesn’t matter what action as long as you actually start something and follow through on it.If you don’t put your product on a website, you won’t sell it no matter how much you have learned. If you don’t find some product to sell, you won’t succeed no matter how much you know about product creation or affiliate marketing. The point is if you do nothing, you will gain nothing. Take action!If you are aware of the Top 4 mistakes that most new internet marketers make, then you are already ahead of the curve. Don’t fall into those traps.Get started, don’t try and be perfect, don’t worry about how much you don’t know and don’t be afraid of failure. If you can do those things avoiding the top 4 mistakes, you will be on your way to online success.

National Health Care

More than 45 million Americans go without health care. At 14% of the gross domestic product, national health care spending is at an all time high. Health care issues and prescription drug costs continue to gain increasing attention during election campaigns, and many Americans are calling for the need to provide national health coverage as a universal service to all residents.The government already provides healthcare to 28% of Americans. Medicaid programs cover medical treatments for people who are of low income and limited resources. Medicare provides healthcare coverage to U.S. citizens over the age of 65, and to certain people under the age of 65 with specific disabilities. While neither of these systems are perfect, advocates call for the expansion of similar national health care products to service all U.S. citizens. Although 61% of Americans have private health insurance, usually through a group employer, proponents of national health care coverage believe that only government reforms and mandates can control rising healthcare costs and make coverage available to all citizens.Among physicians who support a national medical care system, a single-payer system is seen as the only solution capable of providing coverage to the uninsured or underinsured, while also controlling the skyrocketing health costs due to drug pricing, malpractice suits, and long-term care. Under a single-payer system, the government would finance healthcare, but delivery of services to the consumer would be managed by private parties. How to integrate this in a cost-efficient manner, without breaking our current system, continues to be a source of much debate.The call for a universal health care system began under the Theodore Roosevelt administration, and was a major issue and topic of debate during the Clinton administration. During this time, First Lady Hillary Clinton was appointed by President Bill Clinton to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, making national health care her primary concern. The system reforms she proposed were too complex for many Americans to understand and they were defeated in Congress. In 2003, President George W. Bush signed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. This was done to overhaul and expand a system which had become antiquated.Despite this, many experts believe Medicare will run out of money as the baby-boomer generation requires greater, more intensive healthcare, and suggest national health insurance as the only solution. Many proponents of national health care point to the face that the United States, which is vastly rich in its resources, should be capable of providing the same type of national medical coverage that is universally offered in other modern, industrialized nations. National healthcare systems have been in practice for some time in many European nations. Those systems don’t provide the same independence of choice that individuals in the U.S. demand.