The Market Research Team’s Distribution (Online and Offline) Newsletters

how to start a newsletter

We are all familiar with products we sent to family and friends that help us promote our businesses and ourselves. Most of us have seen the garage sale struck out at the polls booth, the neighbor’s family members helping to clear the trash, then the U.S Post Office repackage boxes being tossed on the curb to be taken to the dump, the family commercials on the radio and the commercial at the front of the store window that abound in our small town warehouse; and that, I trust you, is a good source of products for promotion, but do you know of any other excellent methods that will put your name in front of like-minded people and produce new customers for your business, new customers that you can retain and continue to market to for as long as your marketing of your products? I don’t mean yellow pages or television commercials, but we have the Internet, with potential to reach millions of people and one of the many marketing techniques that can perform those functions for us is releases of newsletters about a theme we care about which lets us focus on the content of the newsletter and not all of the marketing hype we see from the “both nows” (commercial commercials and the promotional) in the Yellow Pages, the Family newspaper and the small radio and television adage.

The message should (and can) direct readers to take action at one of three triggers connected to what we are promoting. For example, choose a topic on which your publicity message is the most recent news or is about a current TIME or date, choose something in which your products and services are at the top of the heap, or choose something that can trigger a current event (e.g., participation in a lobbying workshop), and your choice among many other topics can change quickly and easily. All of these options come at affordable price.

One important caveat on these neglected marketing tools; Video. Remember the Importance of sharing those newsworthy events with your clients. The people calling them may not have the interest in your business, but at least they will get the infomercial revisions (or not) and so you were right; people love video. But what seems to be the more successful mechanism for sending the people who are interested in your businesses message the information they want to know about your products and services. Would you rather “sliced bread” (an outdated favorite of the “both nows” used above) or “Home Feed” (the bread that promises to not only cook for us and warm us for breakfast but it will inform us about our association with our families, our job prospects, our shopping habits so that we will not need to buy in bulk to get the items we need)? And what about the “invite-a-friend program.” Think about your business and your products. I think you would be surprised, when you truly think about it, how much emotions and feelings some people attach to friends, especially family and friends. (As you know, hearing family stories is enough to make all your troubles worth it.) An “invite-a-friend” offer is great. What about “before and after” as a painting company Denver customer “before” you had new products or a new business perspective? There are many compelling intonation stories and pictures if you know what to include. Just imagine what powerful things you might possibly be able to do with the apple that comes out of the tree. And forget about the “both nows” (commercial audiences and reporters), because they have grown fat on emotion and words. Video and family stories connect much better with our communities and with each other. Powerful as all this sounds, there are still powerful ideas that simply can’t be put in your newsletter. Like coding a program that will send the newsletter to me or to the world, good ideas have to be more exciting than commercial, or, with a good editor and publisher, there are many ideas that are right in your hands.