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Marketing Support Systems
for Startups and Entrepreneurs
This article reviews new internet-based solutions to promoting and managing legitimate support for products and services.
This is a wiki, so please add reviews and links to other services that you find helpful.
As a starter, please look through the Instant Wealth Systems article to see the basic types of sales and marketing systems that are supported by the tools and resources listed here.
* Matt Bacak. Matt helped me a lot in a workshop by outlining the integrated business model that included products + prospect list + customery feedback. His staff are competent and always return my emails and phone calls. A good guy with outstanding training programs for marketing system development. I even sent my son to one of his workshops because I wanted more high-tech competence in our family and I felt unable to learn so much new stuff quickly enough.
* PayDotCom. An internet marketing support system that provides integration with Paypal and ClickBank, allows you to sell both digital and physical products via direct pay or via subscriptions, handle subscriptions and autoresponder needs as well. Created by Mike Filsaime, this is a fantastic way to quickly get your communications listed and managed in a well-designed internet sales system. Internet marketing support systems are the easiest way to get rapid visibility in the marketplace, supporting or even supplanting traditional marketing systems.
Mike also produced the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript, which, at $97, is a useful tool for visualizing expanding networks of marketing contacts. Mike is on my list in both articles because he provides a lot of very useful information in his newsletters, and does not continually try to persuade me to spend more money for his service.
Dan Kennedy says to marketeers, "Be a trusted guest, not an unwanted pest."
* David Tang of SRTSoft provides an internet marketing support system for posting links, articles, and video onto the internet at hundreds of sites. This service is a marketing tool, and it generates great distribution and visibility of your products and services. David treated me very honestly: I paid him to post articles for me, and he refunded all of my money because he thought that article submission engines would not accept my post request, and he helped me rewrite my plan (for free) before he would allow me to pay again.
* Instant Audio. Adding audio to webpages and recordings can be easy.
* Internet Domaining. Internet domains can be bought and sold, or they can bought and "parked." Parking means that a domain page is full of advertisements or Pay-Per-Click links, and the domain owner receives money every time one of the links listed on their page is clicked.
One of the leading tools I have found helpful to buy, sell and organize my domain collection is that of Domainer's Edge by Matt Smith. I park domains at one of two places: Sedo or iMonetize. How much does parking pay? Some of my clicks give $2.00 per click, and others give only a few cents.
When a domain is parked, the parking host (Sedo or iMonetize) keep the links updated to make sure that your domain is earning the top amount of ad revenue possible. Although, the amount earned, in my experience, is much less than that claimed by those selling such services.
What is the advantage for marketing support? I have several internet domains that I plan to use in the future. While I am waiting, I can do one of two things with them: First, I can park them so that someone else puts advertisements on them and pay me for the visitors to the domains who click on the ads; Second, I can have them forward all visitors to one of my other domains that is active, or I can forward them to the websites of friends or business partner affiliates. If a domain name becomes very active and generating a lot of advertising income, I could also sell that domain to an investor.
* Public Communications. I speak a lot to groups and have been helped in my content and in my communication skill through several books and newsletters. One of the most recent additions has been the communications coaching by James Malinchak. James has a large number of audio samples, teleseminars, and articles on how to communicate well. I like his style of training me to both delivery quality content to my audiences, and also to make sure that audiences have available other resources that I can provide. If I really care about helping my audience, then I need to master the delivery and also make available personal coaching and supply of other useful resources before and during and after my formal presentation. I recommend James' Public Speaking BootCamp for an intensive training event for promoting your own communications projects.
Tom Antion. Another coaching and training system full of outstanding books, videos, and BootCamps. Tom has been training speakers and marketeers for many years, and his marketing support services are very practical.
* Yanik Silver is one of the most prolific of copywriter training authors. I have studied his copywriting materials, but have not (yet) mastered them. I find it easier to hire someone to write good copy for me. But, maybe this should be my next significant learning project: learning to master copywriting. Look at his Copywriting Workshop, since that seems to be the fastest way to get your skills updated in writing good articles, headlines, websites, etc.
* Arielle Ford publishes an excellent newsletter on communications.
* Sage International provides consulting, coaching, and advice on how to optimize liability protection for business owners. I've been struggling with this for two years and have yet to find a better source for help. Their advice is good, and simple.
* Online selling of audio/video/print products. I do not enjoy building websites and having to master a lot of technical details to have an effective online store where I can give away or sell products. In addition to the PayDotCom service mentioned above, I have also started looking at FreeIQ, a free marketing support service where I can post my communication profile, upload free files to share with others, and even sell products online. I can share audio and video and digital print files for free. The best part is that FreeIQ has their own autoresponder service that handles communications for me. These links on FreIQ go to my own homepage on FreeIQ, and from there you can jump to any of their other marketing support services.
* Janet Switzer. Janet was the "behind-the-scenes" publicist and marketing genius behind many well-known authors. She wrote a book last year about her adventures, How Experts Build Empires. The book was an encouragement to me and gave me the big overview of how marketing systems work, or could work.
I have tested other marketing support systems and plan to update the web posting of this document as I work through their enrollment and project offerings: http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/civilsociety-marketing-support-systems/.
Related Topics in this internet series of articles include:
a. Instant Wealth Systems on how to find quality internet marketing systems that give you training and support
b. Real Estate Systems for training and support in real estate property and paper.
BIO: Jon Gresham, with a Ph.D. in International Program Development, is a popular college and event speaker on preparing for careers and life in the multicultural world of tomorrow. For more articles, see http://civilsociety.seedwiki.com
