Fundraising With Food

Fundraising with food has been a long time favorite for sports team fundraising. It is effective, provides something most people like and are willing to pay for, and the variety is vast. Whatever type of food fundraiser you choose for your team, there are three things you must do to get the most out of your efforts.

Food Fundraisers: Go For Mass Appeal
First, choose a popular product that will appeal to the greatest number of potential customers. Your choice should be appropriate to your target audience, be priced fairly, include a good profit margin, and be seasonally viable. For example, don't sell sweets while the Girl Scouts annual cookie fundraiser is in progress!

Once you choose a product or group of products, use publicity to get the word out. Use school publications, posters, and all the usual suspects.

Take it to the next level by issuing a press release on local radio and newspapers. Most local publications offer this as a free service for non-profit organizations. This will spread your reach beyond the team, their families, neighbors, and friends.

Prepare and Execute!
Secondly, design your plan for execution. Everyone, including your team should know your group goal, your stretch goal, and their individual goal. Create a sales script for the team. Rehearse it at practice in a role playing way.

Would you rather make a purchase from an unprepared athlete who mumbles at his shoes, or from one that is prepared with what to say and looks their potential customer in the eye while conveying the appropriate message?

That message should briefly tell what product they are offering, who they are raising money for, and how the money will be used. (New uniforms, equipment, trip to the play-offs, etc.)

Offer Sales Incentives
Offer incentives for top sellers. Rewards should be quality prizes, not junk. Many fundraising suppliers include prize incentives for top sales attainment. If there is an additional charge for incentives, or if the incentives offered are not appropriate for your team, ask local businesses to donate prizes.

Have a recognition party announcing the top sellers. Everyone likes to be recognized for a job well done in the presence of their peers. If you tally your numbers daily, the top selling player has to run five less laps than the rest of the team.

Go Where The Money Is
As part of your execution plan, consider boosting your reach by selling your products from a table at a shopping center. These are customers that you may not reach otherwise, and can more than double your sales.

Approach the management of a shopping center for permission first. Then organize your volunteers in teams to cover the sales tables in shifts.

Advertise clearly at each sales table. In large print on posters, tell who is selling, what they are selling, and how the money will be used. Use not only multiple locations, but multiple tables at each location.

Give Extra Options
Third and finally, provide several ways the community can help your cause. Offering a variety of products helps ensure there is something that will appeal to everyone.

Or offer an overlay fundraising item. Not every customer will want the food products you have chosen to sell.

Offer a fundraising discount card in addition to your primary offering. Whether it is a two for one discount pizza card, or a fast food discount card, these can add substantial profit to your bottom line.

By offering your primary product and an overlay item, you could double the likelihood that a purchase will be made.

Don't forget the most obvious overlay: a donation.

If a customer does not want to make a purchase, always ask if they would prefer to make a donation to help your cause.

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10 Ways To Profit Online Marketing

When you think about Online Marketing, what do you think of first? Which aspects of Online Marketing are important, which are essential, and which ones can you take or leave? You be the judge.

1. Sell more back end products to your existing customer base. You already created rapport, trust and proved your credibility to them.

2. Make it a practice to up sell to new and existing customers. After they decide to buy one product, offer them another product.

3. Cross promote your products and services with other businesses that aren't competition. You will reach a wider audience at less cost.

4. Create joint venture deals with other businesses. You can expand your product line and target other profitable markets at a lower cost.

5. Start an affiliate program for your business. You will be able to spend less profits on risk advertising and spend more money on guaranteed sales. I trust that what you've read so far has been informative. The following section should go a long way toward clearing up any uncertainty that may remain.

6. Trade advertising with other businesses to save revenue. You could trade e-zine ads, banners ads, links, print ads, etc.

7. Out source part of your workload. This can save on employee costs, equipment costs, taxation costs, expansion costs, etc.

8. Add low cost bonuses to your offer that have a high perceived value. It could be ebooks, members only sites, consulting, e-reports, etc.

9. Use viral marketing to promote your business on the internet. Give away free stuff with your ad copy include on it so others can give it away.

10. Follow up with all your prospects. You can use a free e-zine, a follow-up autoresponder, an update or reminder list, etc.

The day will come when you can use something you read about here to have a beneficial impact. Then you'll be glad you took the time to learn more about Online Marketing. http://www.internet-marketing-ez.com/

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Learning to Think Like a Customer: Selling Tips for Success

One of the most common mistakes marketers make is advertising and marketing based on personal opinions and perceptions. Unsuccessful ones tend to think this way, not only about the product being sold, but also regarding how potential customers will act and react to our advertising approach. This then begs the obvious question (which isn't so obvious)-why do customers buy in the first place. What is their motivation, purpose in buying? What do they need the product/service for? What needs are they satisfying in buying the products in the first place? Seems like simple and basic questions, right? Not really, when you dig deeper under the surface. The better we understand and appropriately respond to these questions, the more sales, revenue and success we will have.

Fact number one: potential customers buy for personal reasons (theirs), not ours. They could care less about our company, glitzy website, or how long the list of product features so skillfully displayed. They only care about the oldest motivation in the book – WII-FM (what's in it for ME!). They want the benefit, the impact, the improvement, the comfort, or the security it will deliver, period.

Most small (and large for that matter) business marketing fails to address these crucial customer needs directly. All too often the focus is mistakenly on the greatness of the product or service, and not on what is important (to the customer that is). Marketers are often their own worst enemy. Frequently, they are not communicating on the buyer's level of motivation. They are too busy figuring out how to "sell" the product than finding out the reasons the customer "buys" in the first place.

The problem comes down to the marketing strategy that is employed. Are you pushing the product or are you pulling the customer through the marketing process?

The distinction becomes very important and critical to success. Since buyers only care about their needs and take action for their personal reasons, why should they pay attention to why you think your product is so great?

When you push products, you are essentially telling the customer that they should buy from you because of your reasons. With this egocentric approach you often run into a stone wall of objections and delays. Pushing the product forces them out of their comfort zone and places unnecessary pressure on their decision making process. A relentless assault of closing techniques pushes them away from a purchase decision on "their terms".

Pulling a potential customer through the purchase process is much more effective. When you pull you are leading them to the purchase like leading a horse to water. You gently guide them through your features and benefits and come to a decision on their terms. If they resist you have not educated them enough with information to motivate them or you haven't addressed their objections sufficiently.

The potential customer will only make a decision when they are comfortably satisfied your offer has met all of their purchase criteria. As a seller, you must pull them through the process and always let them stay within the limits of their comfort zone. It's by staying within these boundaries that trust is established and a long term relationship is built with the customer.

Also remember that the purchasing process is completely rooted in the perceptions of the buyer. They have ultimate control over the process, not you. Your job as a marketer is to develop all your communications to make them comfortable and lead them to the best outcome...purchasing your product or service.

Always be aware of which method you are using - push or pull - and adopt it to the potential customer's personal reasons for purchasing and you will enjoy continuous success.

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Are You a Multilingual Marketer?

Are you marketing in just one language? If so, you are missing out on 64.8% of your marketing potential. This is because 64.8% of the world is surfing the internet in a language other than English. By becoming a multilingual marketer, you immediately open up a stream of new markets. Google alone crawls web pages in 35 different languages.

One of the best ways to attract worldwide traffic is to translate your site and register it with both English and foreign-language search engines and directories. Not to mention, the competition in foreign search engines is much less competitive than the search engines of the United States.

Foreign language markets online are currently growing at a much faster rate than English speaking markets. You have the opportunity to tap into this market while it is in an exponential growth phase.

Below is a complete plan to getting your web site translated and into the foreign search engines and directories.

First, you must make a list of all of your keywords in English. These are the phrases that people use to find you in the search engines. You can extract these keywords by going to your web site's statistics program.

To optimize your web site for foreign search engines, you must identify equivalent and related terms in that language. Many of the English keywords may have multiple translations in another language. For example, if you are optimizing your web page around the keyword "socks". You will most likely end up with twice as many search terms in French because there are two common words for socks in the French language: "bas" and "chaussettes".

After you create a list of targeted keywords, you will need to find out which of these search terms are worth pursuing. You can do this by doing some research with Overture and Miva. Both of these pay-per-click search engines offer search suggestion tools in a variety of languages.

Finally, you will need to group the search terms together into similar terms and assign each group to a specific page on your web site.

Step two is to place these translated keywords on your site. There are two ways of doing this.

You can translate each page into a specific language. Once you have all of these pages translated, you will then need to link them all together from your home page. Each of these pages will need to be optimized for your targeted keywords. You do this the same way that you would for an English site. Place your keywords in the title tag, meta keywords tag, and the meta description tag. You'll also want to plug these translated phrases into the body of the text and headlines of your pages, especially the first 200 words.

However, the best way to translate your site is by creating a completely new site for each translation.

Doing this offers a variety of benefit, one of these being the ability to register a country-specific domain for each of your web site translations.

For example, if you currently own www.companyname.com and you are translating into French, it would be appropriate to use www.companyname.fr. This country-specific domain lets the search engines know that you are a French web site.

By setting up a new web site for each language, you will also be entitled to additional directory listings in the country specific Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ, and other high–profile web site directories in that language

Creating multiple sites is also beneficial for your linking campaign. People will be more likely to link to you if your web site is entirely in their language. Because link popularity is such a crucial ranking factor, creating separate web sites would be best for your business.

Step three in our multilingual strategy is to submit your newly translated site to the foreign search engines. Many of the major search engines have regional versions of their web site so that they appeal to visitors in various countries of the world. They include AOL Search, Alta Vista, Excite, FAST Search, Go/Infoseek, Google, HotBot, Lycos, MSN Search, Northern Light, Open Directory, Snap, WebCrawler, and Yahoo.

You can find a complete list of the top foreign language search engines at http://www.allsearchengines.com/foreign.html

Another opportunity that has been opened up by multilingual markets is that of pay-per click search engines.

Using pay-per-click search engines is one of the fastest ways to start funneling targeted traffic to your website. While most of the pay-per-click engines in the United States have been flooded with competition, many of the foreign pay-per-click search engines have untapped opportunities.

English language search terms can often be five-times the cost of Spanish language bids. For example, the keyword phrase "internet marketing" cost $2.09 for the number one position in the English version of Overture. However, if you place an ad in the Spanish version, it would only cost you 50 cents for the very same position.

Keep in mind that when you translate your web site into a different language, you must be able to offer customer support in that language. If you are not fluent in the language yourself, this will be something you need to outsource.

Many web surfers located in countries other than the United States and Canada do not trust web sites as much as Americans and Canadians do. This is largely because the internet was first introduced in English.

Because of this, visitors from other countries will want your online business to have a personal touch. You can do this by providing local contact information and an address in the footer of each of your pages. Your visitors need to know that you are a real person that can be trusted.

If you decide to translate your web site, do not take this task lightly. There are many considerations that must be taken into account. It is important to steer clear from automated tools to translate your site. Instead, use local translators who fully understand how business works in their country and make sure you have local sales staff to support each of your customers.

Your online presence is just as important as that of an offline business. You need a customer support staff that will be available to your customers at all times. You are not just translating your business, you are establishing an online business in that language and a local presence in the country you are targeting.

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10 Resourceful Things You Can Do With A Product That Doesn't Sell

1. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to the product. You could make money selling other people the rights to reproduce and sell the product. People are always looking for new products to sell.

2. Giveaway the product for free from your web site. Just because it won't sell doesn't mean people won't visit your web site to get it for free. They may see another product you sell and buy that one.

3. Try auctioning off the product at an online auction. You may make part of your investment back. If you're lucky, you may even make a profit because people sometimes get into bidding wars and will bid a higher price than the product is worth.

4. Use the product as a free bonus for another product you sell. This will increase the perceived value of the product you're selling. People will feel they're receiving more for less.

5. Contact businesses with the same target market and see if they would be interested in using your product as a free bonus for their product. You could place your ad on the product and get free advertising.

6. Sell your product to businesses at wholesale cost as a promotional product. Businesses are always looking for products they can giveaway to their customers with their advertising on the product. You could make part of your investment back.

7. Barter your product to other businesses for things you need for your own business. You could trade for their products or services. This will save you money and help make up for your profit loss.

8. You could create an online contest so people could win your product. This will attract traffic to your web site. You also could get free advertising by listing it on online contest directories.

9. If you decide to giveaway the product for free, allow other people to giveaway the product for free. Place your web site ad on the product. This will spread your advertising and attract even more people to your site.

10. Ask businesses with the same target audience if they would be interested in combining your product with their product. You could then sell them together as a package deal and split the profits. You may have better results selling your product this way.

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5 Proven Methods To Gain and Retain Customers for Your Online Business

Here is the basic rule of every business: you have to sell things to earn money. Salesmanship, or the art of closing a sales, therefore, is of ultimate importance for any business venture. After all, we can't expect any earnings if we don't make any sales.

Winning customers is essential for the success of your enterprise. And this is absolutely true for online businesses too. In fact, winning customers online has its pros and cons. The good news is that the entire world is your market, and you could potentially reach more people through the World Wide Web. The disadvantage? The Internet offers a more impersonal channel in our dealings with people, making it more difficult to gain their trust and favor.

So what can you to do then? Fear not, dear friend. As with everything else in life, you should try to accentuate the positives to compensate for the negatives. Here are 5 methods by which you could gain a good number of customers, and keep them for a long and profitable business for you and your family.

1. Always deliver quality goods or services.

There is no better vehicle for our business message than our products themselves. Consistently offering things that are more than worth our customers' time and money will brand us as enterprises that are committed to quality products and services. This would only serve us well in future dealings with the same clients. Additionally, this would make our clients as advertising vehicles for our business as well, as they would spread the word about the excellence of our service to people belonging to their network.

2. Always try to over-deliver.

People love receiving more than what they paid for. If you consistently give them some extras, their minds would be conditioned to trust your business for future transactions.

3. Provide bonuses.
In addition to the product you're selling, add some more goods that would perk up the package. Do this in a manner that you will make your customers aware of the value of the bonuses if they were otherwise purchased. This would definitely increase the worth of your product, and such would make it more favorable for a successful sale. Additionally, your bonuses would foster good will with your clients, and this could go a long, long way for future orders.

4. Build relationships.

The importance of building good relationships with your customers cannot be undermined. As we've discussed earlier, the Internet is a rather informal venue for personal dealings. So try to humanize your approach so that your customers can relate to you as someone who is more than just a business provider, but also as a friend.

5. Make use of a mailing list.

A mailing list is an Internet marketers number one weapon. By capturing the contact details of people who may not have been interested with their current offer, they will be able to condition the same people for future sales. And this could serve their businesses well for quite a long time, as one successful sale can beget another and another after that. So invest on an excellent autoresponder service and prepare those follow-up messages well. Take good care of your subscriber base, and they will take good care of your business in return.

Winning customers is more than just luck. It entails a lot of strategizing and good planning. Retaining customers involve the same level of commitment as well. In the highly competitive world of online marketing, trust plays an integral role in achieving our goals. Try your best to win your customers' trust. Take care of it. And for sure, this trust would fuel good business for you for many years to come.

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