Tips Marketing – The Secret Sauce

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Paulette Ensign

Got an idea for a great product or service? Is your creative mind taking you all over the map with ways to expand the idea, to different formats, different languages, different audiences?

Short of discovering the secret to the fountain of youth, the secret to successfully marketing your tips and whatever other products and services surface from your knowledge comes down to this:

Simplicity
Enthusiasm

One of my favorite television programs of all time is Shark Tank. Inventors and business owners present their ideas to a panel of investors for funding and mentoring. Some ideas are obvious winners and prompt a bidding frenzy. Some other ideas seem completely illogical, yet get the support of one or more of the Sharks because the business owner keeps the idea simple and is highly enthusiastic in his or her presentation of the idea.

Of course the sharks include other considerations in their decisions, like the level of universal appeal across cultures, age groups, different applications, and more. And is the business owner open to input or stuck in their own point of view.

A recent business owner presented an idea so enthusiastically and couldn’t have been any more simple. He wanted his idea to be the next Pet Rock (are you old enough to remember that one?). The sharks were all over it and the idea is taking off like crazy. It served as a great reminder that success can look so many different ways.

Next time you notice you are taking yourself oh so seriously and making things oh so complicated, take a step back. Can you simplify it? Can you be genuinely enthusiastic about it? You may have a winner on your hands with your tips!

“Turn your tips into products and your tips products into moneymakers.™”

Your trusty guide,

Paulette Ensign

http://www.TipsBooklets.com - main site
http://www.TipsProducts.com - blog
http://www.CollectionOfExperts.com - co-authoring

What Do You REALLY Want YOUR Tips to Accomplish?

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Paulette Ensign

You’ve seen it and so have I — “Top 10 Tips For …” or “7 Great Ways to…”

Do you have a strategy for creating and circulating your tips? Or are you doing that because you see so many other people doing it? You figure there must be something to jumping on the bandwagon, though you’re not exactly sure what it is. And if you keep throwing enough of these tips against the wall, surely something good must come of it.

If you’re in business, the standard reason is publicity, to market your expertise, to let people know you exist and that you’re the go-to person for what they need. Nothing wrong with that! After all, if people don’t know you’re there, you won’t be “there” for very long!

The piece that many people overlook or have yet to discover is that those same tips can be a direct source of income while they are also marketing you. In fact, that’s what the blog at www.tipsproducts.com is all about — leveraging your tips into products to sell and/or to strategically give away.

This week I spoke with two different business owners who would find it completely appropriate to have a tip from their expertise put onto a tie. Yes, a tie — that garment that goes around the neck. A unique item, to be sure. In one case it could be sold to their client who is a large financial services company, to be distributed to their account executives as a way to promote a particular idea about investing. The other business owner is an image consultant for men. The same is true that the business owner can sell a large quantity to a supplier of men’s accessories, for instance, to foster a particular concept for men.

The same tips that are on those ties can be licensed to the company who buys the ties, to use on their website or in other ways that would benefit their business.

These are examples of the thousands of ways YOUR tips can serve double duty for your business, both as a way to market you and to generate direct revenue.

Go see what else strikes your fancy and works best for putting your tips onto products that simultaneously market you and bring you new income at http://tinyurl.com/tipsproducts You can get ties and thousands of other products here, and easily get your tips onto them. And you can do this one unit at a time.

Your trusty guide,

Paulette Ensign
“Turn your tips into products and your tips products into moneymakers.”

http://www.TipsBooklets.com - main site
http://www.TipsProducts.com - blog
http://www.CollectionOfExperts.com - co-authoring

Fun Moneymaking Products from Your Tips

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Paulette Ensign

You know all those tips you put into your booklet or are thinking about putting into a booklet someday to expand your tips business? Depending on your topic, there are endless ways to instantly expand your product line and bottom line, with very little (if any) cash out of your pocket. A few somber and serious topics don’t lend themselves to what I’m about to share with you. Most topics work just fine though.

For years I’ve been teaching booklet authors to actively get into tips marketing by licensing their content to companies and associations for all kinds of uses in a range of formats, for both online and offline products and applications. That is still always an option, and more so now than ever because of social media and online marketing. However, there’s more you can do, from a different direction, right now.

‘Ever noticed you’ve had that flash of a thought about how perfect one of your tips would be on a t-shirt or coffee mug or note cards or an iPad case (!) or calendars or tote bags or an apron or stickers or a zillion other things. It makes it a fun way to offer more to your buyers from information you’ve already put together, from the brain power you’ve already generated. It opens the door to go back to companies and individuals who already bought from you, without your going deep into product development both time-wise and money-wise, not to mention creativity-wise.

Plus you weren’t sure how to go about doing this at all, much less how to do this so you can easily and quickly create a SINGLE sample of your tip on a product? Well, I discovered a place that will do just that for you. Or they’ll sell you thousands of units if you want, or anything in between.

You can order as few as ONE unit of a product, with a 30-day guarantee of 100% money-back or replacement, and they ship within 24 hours of getting your order to wherever you want. That means you don’t have to maintain any inventory and you don’t have to get involved in fulfillment. How fabulous is that?! All you do is place the order any time of day or night on their site and invoice your client whatever you’ve decided (and they’ve agreed!) to charge them.

While the advertising specialty industry (READ: any item that has your customized name/logo/photo/copy on it) has been alive and thriving for decades, they typically can’t accommodate single-item customized products at reasonable prices and terms like this. And that’s totally understandable. This resource does. They are set up to do that.

Many folks use such items for promotional purposes for their company, adding to the expense side of your bookkeeping. You’ve gotten things (freebies to you that cost the company to buy and ship) in the mail and at trade shows just as I have.

There is no reason you can’t add this to the REVENUE side of your business bookkeeping by expanding your product line with sales from single samples you show people at your speaking engagements, from photos on your website, and through product sheets you develop to pre-sell these things.

Go take a look through this link right now. http://tinyurl.com/tipsproducts

Your imagination is the only thing to stop you from expanding your thinking and your bottom line!

Your trusty guide,

Paulette Ensign