Here’s a simple, powerful tactic for growing your business, that most online marketers understand and use every day, and yet which very few small businesses have even heard of…

1) Write a book/report/whitepaper/etc.

2) Give it away for free!

Let me explain with an example.

On the 1st of Feb a free PDF copy of my new book will be automatically e-mailed to everyone who is subscribed to my blog.

Giving away a full book priced at £19.97 ($39.69) is no small thing, and you can imagine I’ve had a lot of extra people sign up to my blog as a result. The response and feedback has been staggering.

The great thing is that other than changing the message on my sign up form at the top right of this page, and priming an e-mail to automatically go out to my subscribers on 1st Feb, it didn’t take much effort. (Well OK, 3 years on-and-off to write the book, but that’s another story which I’ll relate soon.)

If you’re not currently e-mail marketing it doesn’t take much to sign up and add the form to your web site. Then within a few minutes after that you could already start building your database of prospects and active sales leads. (I use and recommend AWeber, aff.)

So here’s one of the main reasons I’m simply giving away my book…

One of the key principles I cover in the book is ‘front versus back-end marketing’. I explain how to separate those two activities, and the dramatic impact it has on sales and revenues.

If you’ve not heard of those expressions, you’re really in for a treat when you read the book!

Just briefly — front end marketing is any activity you perform to attract NEW customers or clients through the front door of your business.

Back end marketing is any communication aimed towards your existing list of customers and clients — people who already know your brand and have a relationship with you. The most successful companies in the world have very strong relationships with their customers.

The least successful companies have almost no relationship with their existing customers and clients — they forget about them, and focus (to their detriment and painfully slow, incremental growth) on always trying to find new customers… a very expensive way of doing business.

But the back end is where ALL the money is.

Forming a deep relationship with your existing customers and clients is of paramount important if you want to grow a business quickly and with strong foundations.

And on the Internet there are NO excuses.

Back end marketing is “click-send” easy. And front end marketing is also a cinch when you know how. I go into all that in the book.

In my experience, very few small businesses apply these simple (when you know how) principles online (or even offline for that matter). The day they start, a whole new world opens up.

There’s a lot more in the book, but I wanted to share this with you today, even if you’re not subscribed to my blog and don’t get my book for free the day after tomorrow.

-Ed.