Are you responsible for building market advertising for your company? Do you build marketing
platforms on a freelance basis? Is your business in need of marketing, but you’re too small to hire
a marketing executive? Check out this list of web based ideas to get your company’s name in front
of potential customers.
1. ConferenceHound
If you have responsibility for booking conferences for your organization, of if you want to make
a presentation, rent a booth, or sell your wares at a conference, ConferenceHound, a web based
conference indexer can help you find conferences that meet your needs. Users can search by an
assortment of topics – date, keyword, industry, venue, city, or sponsoring company. After opening
an account on the ConferenceHound web site, users can complete searches, ask for
recommendations by topic, research which conferences or events their colleagues or family will
be attending. Conference Hound members can share their findings and plans with others to aid in
coordinating a family or corporate event.
www.conferencehound.com
2. Lanyrd
Don’t let those CE requirements sneak up on you. Keep up with conferences in your specialty and in
your locale with Lanyrd, a web based service that will track conferences for you. Lanyrd interfaces
with your account on Twitter and exports information about you and your friends and what upcoming
events and conferences you will attend. Lanyrd will also sort conferences by locations and topics.
The idea is to keep people informed about educational opportunities.
When you find a conference or event you’d like to attend, click on the attendance button. Not ready
to commit? Click on track to stay informed. You can also list conferences your company or you as a
freelancer are sponsoring or where you’ll be speaking. Let Lanyrd know about an important conference
or event that will be coming soon to a nearby location, and they’ll add it to their list. You can write and
submit a brief article about a specific session or speaker for an event and post it on Lanyrd. Free.
www.lanyrd.com
3. WhiteyBoard
What a smart and portable idea for small businesses, team meetings, a kid’s room (it’s kid safe),
presentations – the list of ways to use the WhiteyBoard are endless. A great, cost-effective
advertising tool, WhiteyBoard can easily be stuck on a wall, a flipchart, a door – again the list of
ideas is endless. Standard white boards, especially the industrial sized ones are expensive. If
you’ve tried white board paint, you know it has its own problems.
WhiteyBoards are perfect for businesses with their foot barely in the door, freelancers, teachers,
speakers, parents, coaches, restaurants — again an endless list will find this washable and
durable board a product to marvel. Currently it comes in three sizes which start at $10.00.
www.whiteyboard.com/index.php
4. DoubleClick Adplanner
Whether you need to publish on websites or advertise, DoubleClick Adplanner by Google should
meet your needs. The web based service offers a huge data base with demographics on audience
viewing from over forty (40) countries. Data can be sorted by niche and relevant information about
them to include the number of times pages are viewed, valuable info to have at your fingertips if
you’re building a marketing plan. Publishers can use this info to decide which markets to link to,
affiliate with, or invite to advertise on their sites. DoubleClick Adplanner lists the 1,000 top websites.
www.google.com/adplanner
5. PlusPanda
This web based service helps you plan and create an easy to maintain web testimonial page for your
web site. PlusPanda gives you layout templates with theme settings to get you started, or you can
customize your testimonial page, which can include websites, company facts and figures, images,
and a rating system of stars. Your page can be edited with CSS access. Testimonials can also be collected
on a form via a public link. PlusPanda provides you with a unique code to install your testimonial page to
your website. The testimonials are published to your site using a javascript widget code also generated
by PlusPanda and is automatically updated. Also available is a customized guestbook page or standard
comment page.
www.pluspanda.com
6. hovClick
You might want to rethink your dislike of pop-up ads. They are still the most successful marketing
tool on the internet, and a great way to for network marketers to get advertising into their website
networks. Marketing experts say that if your pop-ups are placed in a discreet manner, they will
vastly multiply your opt-ins, new customers, and followers. hovClick is considered the Range Rover
of pop-up marketing. Their unblockable pop-ups or hover-ads are created with dynamic HTML. To
design a hover-ad for your site, you must register with hovClick. With the source code they provide,
you can start uploading information for your pop-up almost immediately. If you don’t feel particularly
creative, try one of their templates and edit to your specifications or hovClick will custom design a pop
-up ad for $150. You choose the page parameters like height, width, and delay time. Instructions to
complete your project and get it working for you are easy to
follow.
Additional features include using the same keywords in the ad that attracted viewers to your website.
This will entice them to subscribe to your newsletter, look at your new products, and read what you
post in your articles. A basic package is free with the advantage of creating as many hover-ads as you
want. The free ads carry the byline “Powered by hovClick.com.” To lose the byline, a paid account is
$30. The Band Package and $25 will create hover-ads from your digital flyers.
www.hovclick.com
7. MapprMe
If you want to go a step further and let people send your business address to their smartphones, you’ll
need to start using a service called MpprMe. Google Maps makes it easy to get an embeddable map for
your business and use it on your blog or website, but MpprMe puts your company’s name in the mobile
world.
MpprMe is a free, user friendly web service. Simply type in the location of your office and copy the
generated embeddable code. The map view presented by MpprMe lets site visitors send the location
to their iOS device, Android phone, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.
www.mppr.me
8. Pointofmail
Designed for businesses which use email as their primary marketing tool, Pointofmail provides tracking
and analysis of email data. Sending emails doesn’t help you update your marketing plan if you have no
idea who opened your email, checked out referenced links, or viewed your attachments. Pointofmail,
a web based service, not only gives you that information but bonuses: Did the email recipient forward
your email; Did they open it more than once, etc.? This data is important in formulate new email marketing
plans and revise current ones to generate more business. Email marketing is an easy way to send
promotions, new products or services, and update your customers on business improvements.
Pointofmail offers a number of extras:
- secure email service ensuring that vital emails are read
- destruction app that self-deletes the message after accession
- SMS and email notification
- toolbar browser
- electronic signatures
- simplified account initiation
- lower prices than most email tracking systems
- detailed statistical reports
www.pointofmail.com
9. TwitHawk
As the name of this web based service implies, TwitHawk is all about using Twitter to market your
business to their users. Keywords and specified locations are used to target your social networking,
marketing campaign. Once you register and tell TwitHawk your keywords and how often you want
the searches done, the system locates tweets that meet your specifications.
A nice feature is the option to send your ad automatically to the identified Twitter users, or you can
review and edit the list and revise your ad for a defined target audience: for example, if you want to
sell your designer swimsuits to females in Miami, and you forgot to add “living on the beach” in your
original request, you can change it. You might narrow your search to “traveling to Miami.” The fees
are tallied on cost-per-click. TwitHawk offers the option to interface with Google Analytics.
www.twithawk.com
10. PaywithaTweet
Collective gossip has reached the modern age through social networking. A barter system of sorts,
PaywithaTweet, is a creative and cost effective way for freelancers and others in solo practice or
small businesses to promote their services and products. An easy to use website, PaywithaTweet
has you register and tell them about the service or product you want to market through Twitter.
They provide you with a message and a URL to tweet about on your Twitter account, and you get
paid for this advertising by downloading free products or services. Another tweeter gets the same
deal to promote your business.
Free. www.paywithatweet.com
11. CoTweet
A Twitter app for businesses, CoTweet allows multiple people to use an account (up to six different
Twitter accounts can be added) on Twitter, making managing multiple accounts easier. Supervisors
can easily assign different people to tweet for the company, receive email notification when tweets
arrive, monitor tweets and keywords, archive tweets, and track trends. CoTweet interfaces with bit.
ly to gather data and tracking.
Free. www.cotweet.com
12. Gist
A new kid on the block, Gist, is in beta testing with what looks like good results. An innovative approach
to managing social networking that is long overdue. The user registers with Gist and gives them email
and social (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) account information. Gist creates a dashboard to house the
information from site and gives the user feedback on their contacts such as their importance to the user,
their web presence, articles written about them, their social networking tools, etc. Other features include
integration with Outlook email and control of Salesforce contacts.
www.gist.com