Image by: James Cridland
By George Lamb

With an ocean of different businesses, advertisements, and entrepreneurs utilizing the web to promote their products, distinguishing yourself from the crowd is often times extremely daunting. There are millions of internet users, yes, but a vast majority of those users are either ignoring your advertisements or are finding them extremely annoying. The key thing to keep in mind when seeking to garner attention is to not be obtrusive, but to be unique.

Yes flooding different sites with advertisements can draw in a few customers here or there, but what makes them spend their hard earned cash is the demonstration of a quality product. But unfortunately it can be tough to attract customers even if you do have the greatest product on earth, as they actually need to have a reason to speculate buying in the first place.

And to help you attract and keep the attention of these speculators, here are a few ways in which you can turn them into potential customers.

#1) Give Work Samples

Giving work samples to those who show interest in your marketing campaign will provide them with a decisive template as to whether or not they want to purchase your item. Free samples, its the oldest trick in the book. Why do you think at the end of every isle of every grocery store there’s a sample clerk happily dishing out their product to unsuspecting passerby?

It’s because its the most intimate form of interaction you can have with a potential customer. By offering something for free, with no obligations, you will give them an incentive to invest at least a fraction of their lives toward your product.

Another bonus with this is you can often times con customers into providing their personal information, which you can later in turn sneak in an email or two, promoting any special offers or advancements your product has to offer. The latter is a cheap trick and may bug the hell out of people. The more they come into contact with your brand–through email, text message, ect.–the better chance you have of your product falling in their collective memory.

That can lead to word of mouth promotion, a spontaneous purchase or perhaps even a dedicated customer.

“In the Beginning, I was willing to just go out and beg for the business,” a very successful woman–owner of a graphic design firm in Laurel, Maryland–by the name of Anne Collins once said. “Sometimes I would offer a small job for free just to show the potential client the quality of my work and to get them used to working with me.” Apparently giving work sampled payed off for her, as Collins Creative Services Inc., now possesses the U.S. Army as one of its clients.

#2) Chat Online

What more direct way is there to interact with potential customers than to chat with them directly? Well, besides face to face talking. That is something I’m sure a majority of the civilians walking down the street wouldn’t want to have a part of.  Chatting online with newsgroups that cater to your audience is one of the best methods for both gathering up to date trends and intelligence concerning your niche market and putting the name of your business out there for the masses to see.

Shel Horowitz, the author of several marketing books, had long ago indulged himself in this method. “I didn’t start participating in online discussion groups to generate business, but as a way to find information for myself on various subjects,” he said. “But it turned out to be the single best marketing tool I used; it costs only my time. One list alone has gotten me around 60 clients in the past five years.” Sounds pretty effective, right? If he can do it, then I’m sure you can too…

#3) Host a Seminar 

Got enough confidence in your product to stand in front of a podium and gesticulate your way to enticing a group of people into buying your products? Well, hosting a seminar sounds like it might be the essential task for you to fulfill. While it’s relatively cheap and easy to set up, it can be quite nerve wrecking for most people to talk in front of a live audience.

If this nervous wreck just happens to be you, then you should even more so utilize this method, as it may do the trick with enhancing your level of expertise and ridding you of your fear of public speaking. Free weekly seminars may not in itself fill your bank accounts with 0’s, but the publicity you will get will certainly compensate.

Building a successful marketing campaign is one of the toughest and most time consuming components to building a successful internet brand. Would you just happen to be one of the few workhorses who made such a thing happen? If so, share the trials and tribulations you faced below. Please and Thank you!