Your Questions About Business Online San Diego

Jere answers:

What kind of services are you looking for?
I am registered with the chambert of commerce here in tx as a personal business secretary, here at home I have my own office/
personal computer/fax/copier, but if you are looking for somebody
close by, go to chamber of commerce or go online and put personal
business secretary/services.

Jere answers:

Since your business is local wrt the range in which you can get customers – your marketing and advertising need to be local as well. Never count on just one marketing idea to get the word out – you need a whole strategy – think more, more, more.

Consider the kind of people and families who get on location family or couple photos. My experience is most of the time they are upscale. I lived in San Diego for ten years. So, it makes sense to market in the upscale communities like Del Mar, La Jolla, Carlsbad, Rancho Santa Fe and others.

If you want to get in with an upscale crowd you have to hang out where they hang out.

Here’s one good idea: Do some research either online or through the newspaper or at the library and find out what kind of charity events are coming up in the next few months. This is a perfect time of year to do it – because the holidays are coming up and that’s when these events take place. Many events will either sell raffle tickets for prizes or have a silent auction.

Offer a basic level photography package as a prize or silent auction item, but make sure that means you get one free ticket to the event. Or, at the very least, they give you a deeply discounted ticket for the event itself.

When the event is advertised your business name will show up as someone who donated a prize. There will be a table or tables with all the prizes/auction items. Get dressed up, go to the event and network like crazy with these people. Hand out business cards – and get ’em from others.

And consider promotional onsite photos for businesses too – like a picture of a CEO and staff standing outside their place of business. Do a good job on that shot and later his wife will be calling you to do their family portrait on the beach or against the backdrop of the old Spanish architecture at Balboa Park or something.

Hope this is helpful to you.

All the best,

Denise Michaels
Author, “Testosterone-free Marketing”
Get the book at: http://www.tfmbook.com
Visit me online at: http://www.mentoringwithdenise.com

Jere answers:

I use a small company for my internet marketing. They do a great job and drive a lot of business to me. ( www.internetmarketingofsandiego.com ). However, they type of business you would use is up to the type of your business. I have a local business, and this business specializes in local business marketing (I don’t need to have people in New York seeing my website as much as I need people in San Diego to view it).

If you have a more national or global business, then you would need to use some type of internet marketing, email marketing, sms marketing, search engine marketing company that would be able to get you widespread marketing. You can always do it yourself (see seomoz.org) but it is very time consuming and meticulous to get it to work right). I only pay about $200/mo and receive about $18,000 in business using a focused marketing company.

Jere answers:

You will need a webhost that supports php for osCommerce. I would recommend that you move away from Frontpage as it’s a product that no longer is supported by Microsoft. Instead, you can build a free professional website with Microsoft Office Live Small Business – http://starturl.com/officelive . It comes with a free online design tool that lets you create web pages without coding. Currently, MS is offering a free domain name (i.e. Yournonprofit.com) for the first year. To add ecommerce capability, you can add paypal buttons/shopping cart yourself or you can add the Store Manager add-on to your office live site.

Jere answers:

Today online shopping store is good business to open.