There is no denying that direct marketing is an extremely useful tool, especially for small businesses.

It brings an unrivaled opportunity to contact a target group directly – and potentially building better relationships with your consumer group.

All-in-all, I’d say it’s a very effective marketing tool but as with most marketing techniques, direct marketing has its pros and its cons – which we have highlighted below.

The Advantages of Direct Marketing

As a business, direct marketing could prove very fruitful, but how exactly can it benefit a business? Well, if it used effectively using best practice techniques you could find that direct marketing could;

• Generate High-Quality Sales Leads & Exciting New Business Opportunities
• It Will Increase Sales From New Customers & Existing Customers
• Build Strong Relationships With Customers
• Increase Customer Loyalty
• Re-Establish Relationships With Former Customers

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When you think about public relations, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

Is it a written press release, or maybe a public announcement? Do you think about stunning visual imagery?

Chances are it’s not the latter.

There is a lot of emphasis on written communication in PR. Press releases are obvious, as are the speeches behind most public forms of address (product launches and apologies).

Not enough thought is given to visual content, at least that’s according to Sally Falkow .

The eye of the beholder

People are mostly visual creatures. We’re attracted to things that grab our eye. And, let’s be honest, we’d rather look at a picture than read a chunk of text.

As the net becomes ever more crowded with companies vying for public attention, desperately trying to make themselves stand out in flood of marketing-speak, PR companies need to grab any opportunity they can to give them an edge.

Clever use of visuals could be it.

Falkow says that Forbes reckoned 2012 would be the year of visual content. We’ve seen, however, that most “year of …” predictions don’t pan out, at least not immediately. It usually takes one or two years for the world to catch on to what should be a rapidly rising trend. But, when they do, it usually rises rapidly.
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If you’re a blog owner who’s regularly putting up fresh content and has been doing it for some time, you probably have a base of regular readers that visit your site all the time and even comment frequently.

If that’s the case then it makes sense to think about how to turning some of your site’s readers into email subscribers. That way you can get your best content right to their inboxes on a regular basis.

Luckily, the steps to converting a casual reader to a loyal subscriber are not too hard to implement,  and if your blog’s niche happens to be product,  sales or business,  oriented then it makes sense to start introducing product offers to your audience and to start monetizing your content on a regular basis.

Now, as you are reading this post it is safe to assume you already have a blog, that you are posting regular content and readers visiting it. That being the case, let’s look at how to turn your blog content into a lead generating monthly email newsletter.
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For anyone who is unfamiliar with SEO and just what ‘penguin’ might be referring to, the title of this article may look somewhat absurd.

For those of us in the know though, it makes perfect sense – we know that for marketers who were not following Google’s guidelines to the letter (and let’s face it few did) penguin and the panda were algorithm updates to be fearful of.

So what was Google Penguin anyway?

Essentially penguin and panda were changes to Google’s algorithm which altered the way that Google chose which sites to rank highly and which to demote.

This in theory was done in order to improve the effectiveness of Google search results to bring up articles that visitors would find relevant and interesting.  The problem was that it had a knock-on effect for web site owners,  meaning that many businesses saw their sites plummet in the rankings and consequently their traffic dropped drastically as a result.
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