Reuse, Repurpose, Reduce: The Secret to Making More Money with Less Effort

by Stacy Karacostas

Did you know there's an easy way to double or triple your output of new products and marketing materials with WAY less effort?

Most small business owners I meet are either killing themselves trying to constantly put together new marketing materials for products and services they already sell. Or they're so overwhelmed by the idea of having to come up with anything new to say they don't do hardly any marketing at all. They certainly aren't regularly launching new products and services.

But you should be doing all of the above. And it doesn't have to be that hard.

The secret is to follow something very similar to the recycler's creed of reduce, reuse, recycle. Only I'm not talking about being a green business (though that's important too).

I'm talking about creating more with less by using my Reuse, Repurpose, and Reduce philosophy. Let me explain.

#1 Reuse
A while back I put on a one-day copywriting workshop. To promote it, I created a long-form sales letter for my Website, a few postcard mailers, and a flier complete with registration section. Then I started doing live seminars and teleseminars on the topic.

At one of my live events, someone commented with surprise that the copy on my flier was almost the same as the copy on the Website (minus about 8 pages of content!).

Well of course it was. Both the Website and the flier were promoting the same event. I didn't need to write all new promo text if what I already had made sense and resonated with my ideal prospect.

In fact, if I had written all new text it might have been confusing to prospects. Because if they'd read the flier, then gone to the Webpage and found completely different info, they might have thought they were in the wrong place.

You can and should reuse key parts of your copy so your message is consistent. People often have to see your same message as many as 8 times before they even notice it-and another 8 times before they decide to take action. The last thing you want to do is change it all the time.

So write your longest promo piece first. And in your initial rough drafts at least, be sure to include every detail, point or argument you can think of. Then use this as the basis for all your other marketing materials.

You might tweak parts and pieces a little to be more effective in a new format, or test a different headline. But the core message can, and should, stay the same.

#2 Repurpose
Finding ways to turn one thing into many is one of my specialties. And it's something every small business owner should be doing because it's the next best thing to cloning yourself. All it requires is a little forethought and preparation.

Here are a few examples:

Next time you do a speaking engagement capture your talk on a digital recorder (I use the Olympus DS2). Then turn the recording into an audio product you can give away or sell on your Website.

Have transcripts created from the audio and you've got another product you can sell.

Take articles you write for your newsletter and submit them to online article databases to drive traffic to your site. Or post them to your Website or blog.

Then pull together a bunch of articles, transcripts or blog posts you've written on one topic, add a table of contents and a little formatting, and Voila! You've got another free report or e-book to give away or sell.

The list goes on.

#3 Reduce
If you're a busy small business owner (is there any other kind?), you don't have the time or energy to constantly implement new things. You probably also don't have a lot of extra time to spending learning your way around new technology. So you have to get as much done as possible without doing a ton of extra work.

The key to making this happen is outsourcing everything possible. No matter the size of your business, if you're doing anything online I can't recommend hiring an experienced Virtual Assistant (VA) highly enough!

They can help you create products, do online marketing and pr, manage your social networking, build and post to a blot, and generally run the online side of your business (among other things).

When you have articles ready for online submission, need an e-book formatted, or have an audio you'd like to sell, your job is done. Because you can send your materials to your VA and let them do the time consuming grunt work.

Use these three "R" rules in your own business every day, and you'll amazing how much more you can accomplish in way less time!

Copyright 2008 SuccessStream/Stacy Karacostas. All Rights Reserved.

Practical Marketing Expert Stacy Karacostas specializes in taking the stress, struggle and confusion out of growing your small business. She's the author of "Putting Your Business on the Road to Success", "The Small Business Website Bible" and more than 200 articles on marketing, copywriting, sales and success. For more information, visit Success-Stream.com.

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