Business Alone

Chances are very good you will rely heavily upon email communications in your new solo business if you use the Internet to conduct your operations.

And contrary to what some folks will tell you, there is no excuse for not understanding what email type you should employ.

Email contact without prior permission, in most instances, is considered SPAM by the majority of today's email experts. It's SPAM (unsolicited and usually unwanted contact) because you are invading someone's personal space and right to privacy.

The ways an auto responder can be employed to automate your business tasks are many. Here are just a few of the typical business uses of an auto responder:

- if an email address is no longer valid, a message can be sent from the mail server that the email is now "undeliverable,"

- if the business changes its email address or URL, a new forwarding address can be sent to those that send mail to the old address,

- if you go on vacation or are otherwise unavailable for a time, your auto responder can alert customers to your absence and when you'll return,

One of the things that small business owners often forget is the fact that customers come to a small business often for the experience, not just for the products or services that are offered.

Yet many small businesses don't capitalize on that fact. Instead, they try to act like large sterile non-personal corporations. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about.

I was recently in Park City, Utah with my wife and family. We had made the one hour drive from home specifically to walk Main Street. For those of you unfamiliar with the place . . .

One of the foundations of any successful marketing program is repeated and systematic contact of the prospect.

One initial encounter is rarely sufficient to brand your company in the mind of the customer.

We all are bombarded with literally thousands of marketing messages every day no matter what we do or where we go.

Radio, television, the Internet, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and other venues attempt to grab our attention long enough to flash a message to our brains that the advertiser hopes will "stick" sooner or later.

Most of us learn to subconsciously "tune out" or tone down this constant barrage of advertising. That means there are natural challenges awaiting every business that tries to communicate with their prospects.

If you have targeted your customers properly, there will be few better or more productive business lead generating tools than to publish a "Tip of the Day" related to the education of your audience in your chosen niche.

Why? Simply because people want to be educated.

They come to the Internet for information in their niche. You can provide what they will consider to be very valuable bits of information learning and assistance.