Creating and operating profitable solo work-from-anywhere digital businesses

We are continuing our discussion of some marketing tactics that fall under the strategy called "piggyback marketing."

With this method, you take the opportunity to "piggyback" your marketing message along with other products, sales messages, a service, or a billing.

Your marketing "piggybacks" with something else that is going to be delivered anyway and will be thought of as a "bonus" or gift by the prospect.

A very powerful way, in fact maybe the best way, to implement piggyback marketing is with "endorsement offers".

The key ingredient with this strategy is to get the sending individual, company, or firm to make the offer for you.

In essence, you will be piggybacking on both the distribution of the message, but also on the fact that the mailing list owner is recommending your product to his customers.

This is a very valuable and powerful benefit to you since the business doing the mailing is already a trusted company in the eyes of the customer.

They have placed themselves on the mailing list or customer list of this business for whatever reason and now you're going to benefit from the standing relationship by having the owner tell his customer that he should respond to your offer.

The best way to design this campaign is to capitalize on a problem that the customers in this niche commonly share.  Design or promote your product as a logical and effective solution to that problem.

Using our previous example of a web-based logo service partnering with a Chamber of Commerce, here is what you might do to implement this idea:

Include in the Chamber mailing a personal letter from the Chamber's Executive Director to the business owner (the Chamber member and now your prospective customer.)

In the letter, the common problem is discussed and the director gives his members the "heads up" that he's found a great solution to the problem in one of the Chamber's own member businesses.

The director then mentions your business solution and that he has asked you to give all the other peer businesses a great deal on the solution product.

You, the advertiser, should write the letter to contain the great sales copy that you want.  You are in the best position to describe the problem and tell how your product solves the problem.

Remember to concentrate on product benefits as opposed to product features and specifications.

Send the digital draft form of the letter to the Chamber to cut and paste onto their letterhead and to carry the endorsing signature of the director.

In other words, you want the letter to look like it came directly from the desk of the director over his signature even though you, the advertiser actually drafted the letter.

Once again, as with other piggyback strategies, be sure to target the audience, include a promotional deadline or other reason to contact you sooner than later, and make sure you have a strategy to collect prospect names and email addresses for follow-up.

Personal endorsement by a trusted leader is a very powerful marketing strategy.  It is also a great way to implement the piggybacking technique for a small business.

In most cases, you will have to pay for this type of marketing; but again, there are significant cost savings and other outstanding benefits to piggybacking with an already trusted source.

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