To help get your creative juices flowing, here are 14 tips you should consider:

1. Ask visitors to subscribe to your e-zine. It's a good idea to also give them a freebie when they subscribe.

2. Have them sign-up to get access to download a free ebook. The subject of ebook should be related to your target audience.

3. Give your visitors a free membership inside your member's only web site. Have them sign-up to receive a user name and password.

4. Hold a free contest or sweepstakes at your web site. Ask them to give you their contact information to enter.

5. Offer your visitors free consulting via e-mail. Have them fill out a web form to e-mail you with their questions.

6. Hold an interactive poll on your web site. Ask your visitors to e-mail you their vote or opinion.

7. Ask your visitors to sign-up for a chance to get a web site award. Have them e-mail you their contact and web site information.

STOP! Advertising will kill your business.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Ok, I will make one clarifying statement. If you’ve had exposure or experience in using direct response advertising methods and you know something about copywriting, then by all means forge ahead.

If not, proceed at your own risk.

I will tell you a story to illustrate my point. When I first got into business, my marketing degree gave me erroneous idea that I had a clue about promoting my business.

After losing about $100,000 in first year on expenses, bad decisions, and bad expensive advertising ($10,000 on one mailing alone with zero response, ouch!) I realized I didn’t know what I was doing.

Funny how a dwindling bank account and mounting debt snaps you back into reality.

So, I decided to dive head first in learning proper promotion skills, I went to seminars, read books (expensive books), joined marketing associations, took classes, experimented with ad copy for myself and others.

In all, I probably invested another 100k in my marketing education. My copywriting skills improved and I realized writing for business promotion was not nearly as hard as I envisioned, but you need to know what you are doing or else it gets expensive….Believe me!

At one critical point in business, we needed cash to come in by end of month….a lot of it….fast! We had about a week. The clock was ticking.

I put together a quick direct response letter and sent it to our customer base. Roughly $8,000 came in next day from letter. It wasn’t a tremendous amount, but we were able to pay payroll and meet basic expenses.

It was a cyclical business, so luckily things were a little better next month and we were able to squeak by and weather storm.

Looking back, that little direct mail piece probably saved a business that still exists today. In fact, it’s thriving generating over a million dollars a year in revenue for owner. No, I don’t own it any longer (I sold it in 1998).

The point is, learning direct response marketing skills is kinda like printing your own money when you need it. No, it doesn’t always work, but it beats alternative which is putting your faith and hard earned money copying worn out marketing methods that never worked in first place.

Some of you might have had similar experiences. If so, let me know. I’d like to hear story.

I am very much interested in helping small business owners develop their overall programs, but biggest problem I see is in marketing communications.

For those of you who are reading this and saying to yourself, “Yeah, I have a few marketing challenges of my own.” I’d like to hear about them.

Simply contact me with your number one marketing issue and I will try to shed some light on solving it. If you have already created a marketing piece or campaign and you want a critique on it, please email or fax it to me I would be happy to take a look at it.