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With the wide spread dislike of telemarketers, many home-based and small business owners are hesitant about using their own phone for advertising. However, there is another powerful marketing tool they tend to overlook, their fax machine.

Everyday, flyers, newsletters, advertisements, and business cards are constantly being pushed onto customers who have become resistant to the whole concept, so how do you get them to take notice of your product or service among thousands?

Here's how . . . cut through the sludge of the common marketing methods and use your fax machine to climb to the top and land, literally, right into the hands of paying customers.

Getting Started.

Before you embark on a frenzied fax marketing plan, you need to know that fax broadcasting is legal as long as you follow these three important rules.

1. Do you have an established business relationship?
This means that you were given a business's fax number voluntarily such as through your website, you were given a business card, or received a letter or email with a fax number. If a business relinquished their fax number to you, then they are giving you permission to use their fax number for further business communications.

2. Is the fax number publicly advertised?
If a business has published their fax number in a directory, in an advertisement, or on a website on the Internet, then they have agreed to make that number available for public use. If a business advertises their fax number in print or on the Internet, then you can send them unsolicited faxes.

3. Are you providing a cost free way for recipients to request removal?
Just like email, you need to give businesses a way to opt out of receiving your faxes, and it has to be free. You may want to provide a toll free fax or phone number for those who want to contact you to be removed. Setting up an email address specifically for removals may be another idea.

As long as you follow the above rules you will avoid legal issues arising from unsolicited faxing. If you're still unsure or want to play it safe, do your own research on broadcast fax laws.

Start Faxing.
It's time you learned how to market your business using only a fax machine, even if you don't have one.

With today's technology, you don't even have to own a fax machine to use this method of advertising. Instead you can sign up with an online faxing company such as efax.com. You will be assigned a fax number and all your faxes will then be sent and received through email. The businesses you want to fax to don't have to have an account through efax.com for you to use it. The information you send them will be received through their "real" fax machine like a regular fax.

Once you have access to faxing capabilities, you will then need to make a list of all the businesses in your area, or beyond, who have a need for your product or service. *Remember, businesses who have their fax numbers listed in phone books or on their websites are giving you permission to use it, and you are allowed to legally send them unsolicited faxes.

Ask yourself these questions when considering a potential customer:

- How can my product/service benefit them?
- Why should they buy from me?
- Are they likely to buy from me?

Now that you have your list of businesses complete with fax numbers, it's time to decide what to send them.

- Sale flyer announcing your specials.
- A list of services/products you offer.
- Grand opening flyer.
- Business event you are hosting.
- Reveal a new product/service.
- Letter introducing you and your business.

When you know what you want to send, make it as professional as possible. Your fax will be representing your business, so you don't want it littered with errors.

Faxing do's and don'ts:

Do's

- Do include your business name, website, email address, and phone numbers.

- Do include information to businesses on how they can be taken off your fax list. You don't want to be harassing businesses, so if they do not want to receive faxes from you, have them send you an email, call you, or simply return your fax.

- Do make it short and sweet. Get right to the point in your fax, business owners are not going to be interested in reading pages and pages of information.

- Do use automatic response words, such as Now, You, Attention, At Last, New, First, Exclusive, etc. You can learn more about writing to sell through the Internet or by obtaining the ebook, make your words sell by Ken Evoy, M.D. and Joe Robson.

Don'ts

- Don't go overboard on images. This can cause your reader to be overwhelmed.

- Don't use a cover letter unless you know it will cause the reader to read the rest
of your fax. If they read the cover letter and realize it's an ad, they may just press the stop button on their machine to stop it from coming in, or throw all the pages into the trash without reading them.

- Don't send more then one fax a month. If you start faxing businesses every time you have something you want them to see, they may get angry at the constant interruptions to their work and phone line, not to mention the use of paper and ink to receive your faxes. This could boil down to lost sales and a bad reputation.

- Don't use fancy fonts. You want your fax to be readable, so use an Arial, Times New Roman, or Courier New font and make sure it is large enough so that people won't have to squint to read it. The easier you make it for the reader, the better chance you have of them reading the entire thing.

Tips for getting sales through faxing:

- Make your entire fax, one page. Use spacing, and layout your page so that it can be skimmed, yet understood.

- Create an exclusive fax list by offering businesses that signup free samples, special deals and discounts. By signing up for free, they are giving you permission to send them faxes, receive mailings, email, and whatever else you want to send.

If you decide to have an exclusive list, make sure that whatever you offer is worthwhile to the members. Go a step further and send out welcome packets to your members. Include a thank-you letter, samples, a coupon or additional discount, a pen or magnet with your business information on it, and include a stack of business cards for them to hand out to fellow business owners or friends. Tip: Write a discount on the back of your business cards, and tell them how they can signup for your free exclusive membership.

- Offer special incentives to the businesses that receive your faxes. Such as buy one, get one free. With those kinds of deals, other businesses are bound to hear about them and request to be added to your fax list.

- Include a discount coupon on the bottom of your fax and instruct them to send in the flyer or bring it in to claim their discount. This is also a great way to track how many sales you received through the fax.

The majority of businesses today own a fax machine, so if you're not taking advantage of this method you could be losing sales. If you do it right, you can gain an edge on your competition by getting to your customers instantly through faxing.

Happy faxing!