Are you Forgetting about Marketing?

By: Biana Babinsky

In the past issues we have discussed how passive income streams can help you make full time salary, without having to work full time. However, for your passive income streams strategy to be successful, you need one element to make that happen. This element is marketing.

Your passive income streams are products that your customers buy. These are teleseminars, ebooks, manuals, lessons, web site memberships and many others. In addition to having great products, however, you also need to get buyers to purchase them. Without buyers you will not have streams of income - you will have products, but no revenue.

This is why it is extremely important to keep working on creating your products, while having a working marketing plan for promoting them. Here are just a few marketing ideas that I have shared with my clients. Use them to turn your products into passive income streams:

- Do market research before creating a new product. All of us have had product ideas that we loved. However, you don't need to love you product - your customers do. If they don't love them, or need it, no one is going to buy them. Save yourself time - do some informal (or formal!) market research before starting a new product. Your research will show whether your product will be the next or whether it is time to move on to the next idea.

MarketingSalad.com, for example, was a response to many of my clients and potential clients who wanted to participate in online business coaching, but at much lower rates than I charge for one on one training.

- Have a marketing plan in place before the product is ready. Even if your market research shows that your clients need the new product, think how you will promote beyond your clients. Start marketing before the product is ready; this will create the needed buzz to sell more products.

- Keep marketing the product after it is done. Many times a business owner launches a new ebook, sends out a press release, posts about it in the newsletter, and moves on to the next product. Once you have a product, you have put your time into it; now you need to leverage the time spent and promote the product as much as you can. Your clients need to hear about a product 7 times on average, before making a purchase, so keep up your marketing to bring in more sales.

- Learn about more online marketing techniques. Don't use just one online marketing technique to promote your products. Using new and different techniques will help you reach many more potential customers, some of whom will purchase your products.

Without marketing your products are just going to be sitting idle on your web site. Add marketing to turn the products into actual income streams for yourself and your business.