Year: 2022

Do You Use Special Days As Email Marketing Ideas?

If you are searching for email marketing ideas then why don’t you consider taking a rather obscure path and do something that your email list members will probably find amusing, entertaining and helpful, especially if you can weave the subject matter into the message that you are giving.
This idea centres on the use of a "Day". You may ask what on earth this is all about. Once you see for yourself the number of "Days" there presently are you will no doubt start to realize that there is great potential marketing opportunities waiting to be exploited. You just need to research and decide on which "Day" you could use to begin with.
So what is meant by the term "Day"? There seems to be an ever growing list of a day being dedicated to something or other. Now, some of the causes are very plausible and some are just weird. The never ending list goes from Peanut Butter Lovers’ Day, Plant A Flower Day, Old Stuff Day, National Frozen Food Day to Ear Muff Day and covers almost every conceivable interest you can think of.
You are probably thinking if there is a specific day that has been created for an interest you have and whether you can use such a topic as the basis of an email or series of emails. The lesson here is to undertake some research to identify whether there is a "Day" for your particular niche. If so you can then take advantage of it and perhaps run a promotion on the lead up to it and make a very special offer just for those twenty four hours. The marketing opportunities are endless so you should start by writing down ideas and see what you can come up with.
If your niche does not have a "Day" then why not either ride on the coat tails of another "Day" that would appeal or amuse your niche and could be worked into your email marketing? The key is to create an email headline that raises intrigue and virtually compels the reader to open hit, where you then weave into your marketing message the story behind the "Day" which can include the special offer you have created just for this occasion.
Though what if you find that there is no official day that has been created for the niche you are marketing to? There is nothing to stop you inventing a day especially for your email marketing purposes. You can create your very own special day when there are special offers, discounts and free stuff, even a competition. The only limits are your imagination and energy!
This idea of riding on the coat tails of a specific "Day" and weave it into your email marketing is one that most information marketers do not take full advantage of. Normally such topical marketing is centred on the main holidays of the year. For those that do take this idea, the result will be emails that are not only …

Using Email To Market Your Product Sucessfully

Have you ever thought about getting into email marketing yet you aren’t sure where you want to start? If so, this article has some great ideas to help you begin. Continue on for some great tips and tricks that will help you successfully implement email marketing strategies.

Only send messages to those you know and those who have signed up. People who you have not built a relationship with will look at your unwanted email intrusion as spam. They will wonder if they know you and whether or not they care about what you’re offering. This most likely will lead them to throw your email in the trash, which in turn just wasted your efforts.

Always get permission before adding someone to your email list. You will lose customers and possible even your website host if you engage in spam.

Limit your message to one clear one per email. With a deluge of information in your email, you can create an overwhelmed or bored reader, very easily. Create the specific message using brevity and conciseness. Your clients will be happy to not have too much information.

Don’t over use words like “Buy now!” Stay away from harsh sales techniques such as bombarding them with the need to immediately “Buy Now!” This approach appears like spam and you will lose your customers this way. Trust me, all of them know you are trying to sell a product or service; however, you will realize greater success if you first build a relationship with them and then promote both yourself and what you are offering, professionally. They will appreciate your efforts and be more likely to purchase from you.

Before you send out emails, make sure to proofread them. Correct any emails or newsletter problems you may have. Test your email layout by sending it to yourself first; that is a sure way to be certain everything is displayed perfectly. Don’t forget to test any hyperlinks in your email, too. Make sure those links work properly.

The more you allow your customers to customize their experiences, the better your campaign will be. Let subscribers choose how many messages they want to receive, how often they want to receive them, and how much information they wish to disclose. They will feel more comfortable if they feel they have more control.

Make sure that you have an unsubscribe link that is easily visible within your emails. Don’t fail to include one or bury it so that it is not readily apparent. Your customers must be made to feel that they are choosing to subscribe, and not that your emails are being forced upon them.

Teach yourself what not to do by scoping out some spam. Get a free email address, post your new email address in various places on the Internet, and it won’t be long before your inbox is jammed with spam. Take a look at those emails and learn what you don’t want yours to look like. If you see any similarities, adjust …

5 Things Every New Home Business Owner Online Should Know

If you’re just starting out online as a home based business owner and Internet marketer undoubtedly you’ve discovered just how much information is available telling you what to do, how to do it and when to do it. Unfortunately, you may get several different opinions from so called experts who are commenting on the same topic.
In order to help you wade through the plethora of data and differing points of view on the web here are 5 things every beginner should know before embarking on their Internet marketing career:
1. Find something you enjoy doing and something you know about. Don’t settle for the first program someone is promoting just because they’re guaranteeing success. Discover a topic you’re passionate about and you’ll greatly increase your chances of success.
People who love their jobs and who can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning to go to work are the people who will put in the time and effort necessary for any new business start-up to thrive and do well.
2. When you find the system or the Internet marketing program you enjoy take action immediately. For various reasons people fail to move forward with their business idea when they’ve found it. This happens even when the how to do it strategy is laid out for them in a step-by-step fashion.
Whether it’s a fear of failure, a fear of success or some other phobia you must recognize it and confront it and then take the action necessary to become the success you’ve envisioned.
3. Now that you’ve found your passion and you’re doing what you need to do to make it work you now need to be consistent and keep doing it. First time Internet marketers often make the mistake of trying a new home business idea for a few weeks or a few months and if they’re not seeing the results they expect they desert their strategy and start looking for something else.
Once you decide on a plan stay with it for the long term and give it a chance to become profitable before you abandon it. People make the mistake of jumping from one idea to another without really giving them a chance to achieve their goals. When you find something you enjoy doing stick with it and stop looking for the newest big money maker online.
4. When you’re just starting out on the web try to surround yourself with successful Internet marketers and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Visit the top forums and chat rooms related to your topic and try to strike up relationships with some of the top marketers on the Internet.
As with any enterprise, whether it’s offline or online, networking is a vital component of your success. These people have achieved what you’re striving for and any information or advice they can offer may help get you there quicker.
5. Just because you’re new to this field don’t be afraid to offer help to anyone who’s …

3 Marketing Techniques That Can Propel Your Business

Marketing is a game that very few understand, and the small business owners who do understand make it a point to keep their “business success” to themselves. Luckily, their “secrets” are simple, ordinary tasks that even a baby can do. So what are some of these “ordinary tasks” that these business owners are doing? Well I’m glad you asked.
In today’s lesson, I’m going to show you some ways to market your business and how take immediate control over your niche starting right away. These are techniques that have been proven to work for me, and a lot of other businesses that I follow. Here’s technique number 1.
1) Use Google Places
Have you ever heard of “Google Places”? It’s a section on Google where business owners can add their local business to, in return for targeted traffic on autopilot. I’m confident that many of your competitors are using this strategy for themselves, while you still wonder in the dark about how to market your business.
Google Places is very easy to use. You will want to upload your listing, along with pictures and videos of your place of business. This will help to attract prospects to you since you’re kind of giving them an overall “tour” of your business. Never just fill out the essentials – add pictures and videos so that your prospects can get a better look at your company, and so that they can call you if they have any questions. Here’s another marketing technique that successful business owners do.
2) Join business related forums
This is a great way to gain friends and to hear advice for your business from other business owners around the country. So let’s say you’re a chiropractor who lives in Los Angeles. You could go online and find a chiropractor forum where you can post and leave messages to other forum members. This is a great way to stay on top of the marketplace, and learn what works versus what doesn’t. Here’s the last marketing technique for you:
3) Offer something for free
If you want your prospects to take action now, then offer something for free. Your free gift should be something that isn’t available anywhere else, and that can truly improve the lives of your target market. To promote your free offer, make it the topic of each ad that you run.
In your ad, tell your prospects that they will receive a free gift from you in return for their contact information. Once you get their information, send out the free gift along with a pitch for your products and services. After your first month of contacting your lead, continue to contact them once a month with another free gift, and a pitch for your products and services.
This simple strategy of offering something for free can really blow the lids off your sales and profits. If you don’t believe me, simply put these strategies to work in your business today. You’ll be more than happy that …

Article Marketing – 5 Strategies For Maximum Traffic Results!

Article Marketing – 5 Strategies For Maximum Traffic Results!

In the past, article marketing has been used for two things, links and traffic. Distributing articles can get you lots of links pointing in to your web pages, all with great keyword rich anchor text. Lots of links improve your search engine rankings and bring you visitors.

In the past, you could get away with just distributing your articles to lots of article sites, and in doing so your sites would rank well, but now, these directory style links carry a lot less ranking juice. However they do carry some and it is therefore still worth your time to distribute articles for indexing and rankings.

Lots of people start article marketing campaigns, but soon get frustrated that all the effort and time they spend writing is not rewarded with floods of traffic or ranking boosts. So what can be done to ensure the time you put into writing your articles is actually time well spent? Here are 5 tips for boosting your article marketing results.

1. Article Research

How many times do you just sit and write an article off the top of your head and submit it without considering what keywords your targeting, or look to see which articles are proving most popular with readers in your niche? Often I’d guess! If you want a ton of people to see your article, get ideas from articles that are already proving popular in the leading article sites.

2. Article Titles

Always consider your article title very carefully. Going back to the first tip, look to see what titles are proving popular and write similar ones. Secondly try and target your main keyword phrase at the start of the title, and if you can squeeze a second one in after it.

3. Bio Boxes

Make sure you give the reader a compelling reason to click on the link in your bio box. Offer more ‘secrets’ or something for ‘free’.

4. Mass Distribution

If you are going to the time and effort of writing your own articles, make sure you get the most from them by using a distribution service to automate the process of submitting them to all the leading directories and ezines.

5. Blog Networks

Why stop at article directories? Join a blog network and post your article to member blogs, you can quickly get lots of one way targeted links from member blogs that will definitely boost your search engine rankings!

The greater your distribution, the more links you will get from your articles.…

The Publishing Model For Marketing

The Publishing Model For Marketing

Publishers use the editorial model. Simply put, publishers are constantly acquiring and thinking about content. The story is their lifeblood. What about your company? Have you struggled recently to get out your latest e-mail blast, scrambled to pull together the material for the webinar you’re hosting in three weeks?

Publishers produce a product every month, every two weeks, often every day. Think of your hometown newspaper, for example. Publishers think of more than just events – they have a continuous process in place to keep important information flowing.

How can you get your message out using the publishing model? You can use a message map – a guide for our structured and targeted communications.

First, you capture the attention of your prospect with relevant and appetizing information.

Second, after you have their attention, you educate them.

Third, you engage them by fulfilling their needs.

And that’s the most important part – fulfilling their needs with the solutions offered by your products and services. You give customers what they really want and, in the process, you’ve educated and enlightened them.

Good messages must be delivered with speed to your customer. Businesses don’t have the luxury of waiting three months to create and deliver content. In today’s speedy world, your message needs to stand out and be sent as soon as it’s needed. Marketing automation, a sales tool that tracks data and allows your marketers to hold meaningful “conversations” with your customers, can help you manage that process.

What if you don’t get your message right in the first place? Publishers don’t worry about that. As they learn more information, the story evolves. You can do the same with your own marketing efforts. Your story may evolve to the point that it’s published in a foreign language – after all you do want to reach a global market.

Publishers also work with templates to solve communication challenges. If your website is fed by a content management system, you’re already doing this. The website becomes the template for the information that’s fed into the management system. In that way, businesses are able to produce and change their messages in a dynamic and often proactive way.

The publishing model may seem radical to businesses that hand out product brochures, contact potential customers through phone banks or send out an occasional e-mail.

But think about how technology has changed our lives and where we’re headed. The world is hungry for instant information and if your business can provide relevant and targeted content, it will be miles ahead of competitors who are still knocking on doors.…

Why Know Your Customers?

Why Know Your Customers?

Knowing your customers and their preferences is the easiest way to customer retention.

Why know your customers? Initially, the seller-purchaser relationship was tilted in favor of the seller. This was because competition was less and purchasers had fewer choices. However, the last two decades have seen a consistent power shift. With technological advancement and easy availability of information, the buyer now has an upper hand. If your business doesn’t provide what’s required, a competitor is just around the corner to grab the opportunity.

Customers today have become more demanding and expect innovative solutions. Merely meeting customer needs is not enough. The goal is to exceed their expectations so that they return to do more business with you. Studies have shown that about 80% of a company’s business comes from its existing customers. In such scenario, customer retention assumes increased importance. In order to retain customers and ensure that they do not move on to your competitors, it is essential to understand the customer and customize your product/service offering to suit their interests and needs.

How to get to know your customers better? Businesses today don’t function like the corner shops anymore where there’s face-to-face interaction with the customer everyday. Today, customers may be interacting with the business without the business even knowing about it. A visit by the customer sto the business’s website is an example of one such interaction. The key is to capture such interactions, understand the customers and predict their future behavior based on these interactions and use that to anticipate customer needs before they arise. This way the business will be adopting a customer-centric approach to its offering. Knowing the customers will also help your business to make smart decisions that enhance customer experience. Every decision being made can be looked at from the customer’s point of view. However, for this ideal customer-centric approach to become a reality, it is also essential that the commitment towards customer focus is top-down. Only when the CEO and the Board is committed to customer relations will the other employees believe in the concept. Until your business adopts a proactive approach to customer satisfaction, this would not be easy.

What are the benefits of knowing your customers? Knowing your customers better can help you boost is because once you know what could be of potential interest to the customers, you can cross-sell or up-sell relevant product/service offerings. Also, you can save considerably on costs incurred in acquiring/retaining a customer, since your marketing efforts would now be more focused and yield better results. Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty are some other benefits that will arise.

What are the core requirements in this process? To know your customers and be able to understand them, your business needs to adopt an integrated approach to the whole process. All the functions should be well co-ordinated, especially, marketing and sales. Your marketing strategies should be highly customized, running primarily on customer activities that arise as a part of client interaction. The …

Demand Generation Services To Focus on Buyer Requirements

Demand Generation Services To Focus on Buyer Requirements

B2B demand generation services should be primarily built around three key components which can be used to develop effective marketing strategy that completely focuses on the buyer. These three ingredients – lead management, marketing automation and content marketing should be integrated and optimized to design efficient demand generation programs that do not merely generate leads but also help in leads conversions.

Lead management framework as an essential constituent of demand generation services

Comprehensive lead management is required to build an effective demand generation plan. The lead management framework defines how the lead will be taken through the different stages of sales cycle from the point of entry into an organization, through marketing nurturing, to hand-off from marketing to sales, through further sales nurturing and finally to close. Lead management is a significant part of the process that defines the important parameters for lead scoring, routing and nurturing. This is critical to finding success with marketing automation and to ensuring that the customers get the information they require to make their own evaluations at various legs of the buying cycle and so that they can move their process forward. Lead management is therefore critical to content marketing and that help devise and deliver buyer centric demand generation services.

Demand generation services focusing on marketing automation

Supported by an efficient lead management process, marketing automation becomes the vehicle for moving the sales process ahead. Marketing automation takes constant signals from lead scores – driven both by buyer demographics and by behavioral cues – as well as segmentation and routing logic, to ensure that the leads are moved forward through the lead management process. And this is an intelligent sorting that is done very rapidly – triggering actions that are beneficial in generating demand.Marketing automation is not just about diminishing manual tasks and enhancing operational efficiency.Rather there is a strategic intention behind using this engine which is to manage buyer-centric, mass one-to-one marketing on a scale basis.

Content marketing is at the heart of demand generation services

Today majority of the buyers do research on their own ahead of speaking with a sales representative. And with easy availability of information that can be accessed with the help of the preferred search engine it has become more important than ever to provide useful content that buyers can use to make their decision fast. The success of these services depends largely on identification of the content buyers need at various buying stages and choosing the right media and channels to convey this content. Basically, content marketing is all about churning out good-quality, pertinent and valuable information to prospects and customers to drive profitable buyer actions. In fact it is not just about providing information but also about using customers’ behavioral cues ( pages accessed and documents downloaded) to find out where a customer is in his/her buying cycle.

Conclusion

Intertwining these three important elements can help tender demand generation services that are focused on buyer needs. Demand …

Benefits of Marketing Automation Software

Benefits of Marketing Automation Software

When you use internet marketing, you have to expect that it will be competitive. As a result, you need to use any tools that will give you an edge over the competition. One of the tools that you can use is marketing automation software. Marketing automation software is often seen as the tool of last resort. But it should not be overlooked that this kind of tool will not only help your company become more effective, but also more profitable.

One of the greatest benefits to using software is that it can help your organization become more effective simply because you naturally become more productive. No longer will you or other employees need to spend time on tedious tasks like sending out mass emails to customers on your mailing list. Neither will you need to spend time doling out marketing and sales leads. Instead, these tasks are performed automatically by the software.

Another benefit to using automating software is that it allows your sales staff to communicate with customers and potential new clients while at the same time tracking leads and how well the sales staff are performing. Client relationship management software, which is an aspect of marketing automation software, helps automate marketing campaigns. As a result, client communication can be better tracked and its effectiveness quickly evaluated.

Marketing automation software also streamlines emails to existing and potential new clients. As a result, you can send out regular emails that inform them of new products or benefits of your products that they might not have thought about. The more information you provide to your clients and potential new clients, the more you improve the likelihood of increased sales. Marketing automation software allows you the ability to schedule email campaigns to bring in new sales.

Software for marketing automation also allows you to improve your business organization. Since the software is a tool that combines several work tasks all in one bundle, you can gain better control over your marketing efforts. Instead of manually scheduling marketing campaigns, you can do this automatically and all business communications with clients are sent out as routine tasks. The marketing campaign goals can be easily built into the marketing campaign, giving you measures to evaluate how effective the campaign is and to generate new sales for your company.

You can also use this software to generate personalized email campaigns that address where potential new clients fall in the sales process. This builds relationships and leads to increased sales. Eventually, if all other aspects of the business is maintained efficiently, success is imminent.

The software allows you to measure the effectiveness of each marketing email campaign and evaluate it for any needed changes for the next marketing campaign. Marketing automation software will help you achieve much higher rates of productivity as a , it will be easier to track and graph any visible changes in the results for reporting purposes.

If you have an internet website and conduct internet marketing campaigns, …

Internet Marketing – Don’t Get Overwhelmed, Get Focused!

Being new to the field of internet marketing, I can easily relate with those of you who are feeling totally overwhelmed! When you first begin, you hear about what might as well be a million different ways in which you can market your product or business on the internet. If you are taking on this endeavor with no previous experience as I did, it can all seem a bit foreign.
As you weed your way through the jungle of information it seems as though your chances of conquering it all are just about impossible, but have faith! If you spend time on each form of marketing, one by one, you will achieve at least two things. You will feel more confident in your abilities to market and you will figure out which forms of marketing you prefer. Now don’t get me wrong just because you prefer one type, doesn’t mean you can do that alone and have success. Internet marketing requires a combination of at least several techniques to drive enough traffic to your websites to make them profitable. Here are a few tips for beginners!
It will be easy for you to look at all of the various forms of marketing and wonder how you will ever figure them all out. My advice to you, pick one! Pick the first one that draws your attention and study it. You don’t have to become a master at it quite yet, but you need to put the time in. Study the form of marketing you have chosen until you gain a good working understanding of it.
Then, get your foot in the door, if it’s article marketing; submit an article, video marketing the same, etc., etc. It is important to remember though, that many forms of internet marketing will not work if you only practice them occasionally. Article marketing, for instance requires an absolute minimum of one article per week if you expect it to attract any traffic. Social networking requires attention more than two or three times per week. It is based on connecting with friends and potential customers through casual communication. If you are not around to communicate, it’s not going to work!
My second piece of advice is: prioritize! While you may love ‘twittering’ your day away, or writing articles to your little heart’s content, what good are they going to do if you don’t have down the basics? What I’m talking about is a squeeze page (also called splash pages) and a webpage. If you expect your internet business to be successful, you need to provide people with a place to go to learn more about you and the product or service you are providing. Splash pages, in my opinion are the lifeblood of your business. They provide a place for internet traffic to become leads for you. Splash pages should be short, sweet, simple and to the point. They are cheap to have made (under $100) and can do the job until you can afford or …

Internet Marketing Is Always Evolving

Internet Marketing Is Always Evolving

The online world is constantly changing and evolving, thanks to the advance of technology and the development of various online services, tools and software. Take, for example websites. They are now more interactive than ever, providing users with rich multimedia content that is tailored to their needs. This is in contrast to 15 years ago, where websites were usually static HTML pages that simply contained text, links and images. Web presence has also increased and many businesses in the Boston area have hired the services of a Boston Website Development company to build a site for them.

Search engines have existed in some form ever since the internet has come around. Those who have been online for a while might remember names such as Lycos, Excite and Alta Vista. These names have faded into obscurity, with the majority of search traffic coming from Google, Bing (formerly MSN search) and Yahoo. Not only have the players changed in the search engine arena, but also the way that websites are ranked. Previously, as there wasn’t that many websites around, search engine algorithms were relatively simple. However, with millions of new sites being created, they have increased in complexity, often making it difficult to rank a site well if there are plenty of other websites that are based on the same keywords. A SEO company can help you make sense of search engines and give you valuable advice and services on how to get your website more visible on them, so that it will appear closer to the top of search results for your desired keywords.

The use of the internet as a marketing tool has also gone up. The reasons are simple: with more users, comes greater exposure, which is valuable for anyone who would like to sell something. There are now plenty of online marketing experts, like a Boston Online Marketing Company that provide services to businesses and individuals who want to market something through the internet.

The internet is changing, but where is it going? The current trends seem to point towards an increase of social media sites and applications, where users connect with others to share things that are important to them. Also, the internet is rapidly becoming integrated with other devices as well. You can see this in web enabled smart phones, as well as new televisions that have the ability to connect to the internet to watch movies and videos. If you are using the internet to sell something, then it is important that you stay up to date on new developments in the online world. It doesn’t mean that you have to be a geek who researches new technologies every day, just keep yourself up to date on what is happening online. That way, you will be the first one to take advantages of new developments which could be very profitable for you.…

Are You Just a One Night Stand?

In this Article:

Content Marketing with Staying Power

Keeping your Online Marketing Efforts Connected

How to Control the Online Relationship

Ok, I get it. The thrill of the chase can be fun. It’s adventurous. It makes you feel alive, and gets those juices flowing. However, if the traffic to your blog is just a string of one night blog stands, then any amount of effort your putting in to creating great content, optimizing it with on-page and off-page SEO, and doing all that content marketing is really just a waste of time.

exhausting. Because “one and done” in the online marketing world usually means that they are done with you, your online business, and your blog after one visit if you don’t have the goods. You can’t put a notch in your lipstick case just because a person visits you. The reality is that most people don’t buy anything from you until they have had at least 6 marketing touch points.

Sorry to sound like a boring old married couple, but wouldn’t it be great if you knew that every week you could depend on many of the same prospects coming back for a visit. It’s an ongoing relationship. And even though it can have all those hum-drum, boring traps that every long-term relationship is exposed to, you can still spice things up (and you should), keep it interesting, and keep them coming back and wanting more.

Make no mistake, “boring” can actually become brand recognition and a familiarity and comfort in knowing that you, your business, and your website are a reliable place to visit for great content. That, my friends, is what a content marketing strategy is all about!

So the question becomes “how” to keep your visitors coming back for more week after week?

Simple Online Marketing Ways to Add Staying Power to Your Website

1) Create Amazing Content:

First, the obvious answer is to give them something of value. Sure, you can razzle dazzle them with a little flash to draw attention, but unless you have something of real value underneath all that flash, they will move on.

After all, you have to remember that people are distracted and their time is becoming more valuable each and every day. As an online business you must respect that time and give them the best stuff. If they can go to one spot to get the full package, then they won’t have to jump from site to site to site to find everything they need.

That’s why authority sites are such an amazing online business model.

2) Easily Link your Anchor Text to Other Pages

On page SEO can be set on steroids by using bold text, italics and links. These formatting tools help those search engine crawlers identify what your webpage is all about.

And, those formatting tools also help your readers (who are more often “skimmers”) hone in on words and phrases that are of interest to them at that moment.

Think of it this way. …

5 Top Small Business Networking Tips!

5 Top Small Business Networking Tips!

Here are 5 tips to ensure that networking becomes an important part in promoting your small business.

1. What is networking?

For any small business networking should be an essential part of your business. My 14 years as a practising solicitor provided me with a network which has been especially invaluable since forming Samson Consulting. Essentially networking is getting out of your office and mixing with people from your same sector, potential referral sources, and any other occasions where you meet new contacts. It should not be confined to thinking that networking only relates to business networking groups although these can be an excellent source.

2. Reasons You Should Network!

There are many reasons that you should network, not just to generate new business. Here are some of the reasons to network:

o Share ideas (see what is working for other people in different business sectors – can you apply this to your business?)

o Get out of your office (running a small business from home or in an office with a few other staff can be lonely. You need to get out of your office to think about your business in a different way. Your best ideas will rarely happen when you are chained to your desk.

o Practise your sales skills on non core targets (before you present to potential clients).

o To win new business (last but often seen as the most important reason).

3. Networking targets? You can only find out if something works by measuring it. What is your networking target? Do you want to meet three new business owners to share ideas or mastermind with or do you want 3 new leads per month? You have to have a goal to score (Sir Alan Sugar) so you must know what you are trying to achieve with your networking.

4. What To Say Or Not To Say?

Networking is essentially a sales and marketing tool. Two of the most important rules of sales are:

o Prospect (i.e. get out there and meet people); and

o Listen.

These are simple rules, yet if they are employed for networking events they will guarantee results.

5. Long Term Gain. We have all been to networking events where we are approached by someone who interrupts our conversation, jumps in with his or her business card, shouts about how brilliant they are and then throws themselves at the next unsuspecting group of people. This is one way to guarantee you will not succeed with your networking approach. The only way you will ever really prosper through networking is to build long term relationships and show a genuine interest in the people you talk to. In the last two years I have brokered deals putting several contacts on my network in touch with each other leading to a benefit for everyone involved. One of these contacts I first made over 8 years ago.

Far too many small business owners run around talking about how great …

Internet Marketing Tips for Small-Scale Enterprises

Small businesses are at a disadvantage when competing with huge corporations or medium-sized companies that have accumulated enough experience and clients. For one, these minor players are wanting in exposure and have small budgets for advertising and promotions compared to their competitors which are loaded with millions of marketing and advertising financial resources. The major problem that these insignificant entrepreneurs have to contend with is the enormous cost of traditional advertising techniques. With limited resources, it becomes imperative for them to discover innovative ways to promote their merchandise to prospective buyers.
Internet marketing companies offer expertise and professional assistance to start-up businesses, those struggling to keep their ventures from collapsing and small ventures that are gradually progressing amidst the tough competition and volatile market situation.
Although there are differences in concepts and principles of online marketing, the bottom line is that this strategy is relatively more affordable with practically the same results and even better prospects. In this type of marketing, the internet is utilized as the main means of advertising and selling commodities and services to potential customers. It usually starts with the creation of a business website and generate the most number of visitors with the objective of converting them into loyal clients.
An internet marketing service provider will surely suggest to small business owners a handful of tips that can otherwise prove beneficial to their internet marketing campaign. These are:
1. Lay down the ultimate goals of your website which starts with attracting more visitors and coming up with parameters to evaluate the success of these objectives.
2. Review the content of the website thoroughly and find out what the website has to say. Ask yourself the following questions: Is the content original and beneficial? Will visitors get something valuable by going to your website? Is the content something that corresponds to the business aspirations, mission and vision?
3. Make it a point to take advantage of local art directories that are given out for free. It will surely benefit your business if this will be listed in said directories to give your undertaking a big lift.
4. Always study the competition by taking time out to visit websites of your competitors. Engage in searches for keywords or keyword phrases that are relevant to your business. This will allow you to obtain fresh ideas and concepts which are pertinent to your online marketing initiatives.
5. Pay attention to keywords since these are crucial not only to the website but the enterprise as well. The keywords should be something that people would associate with your website.
6. Blogging is important since it is one way of spreading useful information about your brand and the products that you carry.
7. Post or publish videos that will help in promoting the business that you have just put up or give out pointers that relate to the items you sell. This is something that consumers would love to watch.…

Easy Twitter Marketing Tips You Can Easily Accomplish

Looking for Twitter marketing tips does not have to be hard. If you stop and think about it for just a minute, I am sure that you can think of a couple. Taking the time to respond to messages is one such example. This is common courtesy, but it can make a big difference to the follower. You want to keep the followers you have, though you always want to sign up more as well.
As you can imagine, sending out a response is pretty easy to do. It’s taking the time to do it that actually matters. Some other Twitter marketing tips suggest that you send out tweets on a schedule for your business. Not all your tweets should be set up this way, but using it for business is a great idea. It is also suggested that you send out different types as well. You do not want all of them to be the same boring link over and over. You should mix it up a little more than that, though it can all be related. For example, send out a short quote from one of your blogs. This gives people a little taste without overwhelming them and they can always click through to read more.
Easy Twitter marketing tips would remind you that engaging your followers is the easiest way to keep them. Sending out scheduled tweets like motivational quotes and little tips can make a huge difference. Yes you are going to want to put your link on them, but those little motivational quotes and tips will get sent on a lot faster than just your link would have. This gives you more exposure and more potential for traffic to your sites. These little tips and quotes usually get retweeted very often and most often faster than other tweets, even by people that don’t know you.
The last of the easy Twitter marketing tips I want to tell you about is to make sure that you have a “follow me” icon set up on all of your sites. That way anyone that liked your little quote or tip and clicked on it can sign up to follow you once you get there. Many people will also put a counter on the sites and set up the icon next to the counter. Make sure that wherever you put it that it is easy to see. You do not want to hide it.…

4 Things to Consider When Hiring a Water Damage Restoration Company

Before hiring a water damage restoration company, you should consider several things. These include the following: Immediate removal of water, Drying, Antimicrobials, and Cost. A quality company will consist of these elements in its water damage restoration services. Read on for some of these considerations. Then, make an informed decision based on your budget. If you want to save money on water damage restoration, choose an affordable price company.

Immediate water removal

As soon as a flood or other disaster happens, immediate water removal is essential. Water can cause a large amount of damage in a short period. Luckily, a water damage restoration company can get the job done quickly and efficiently. Calling a water damage restoration service early can help save you time, money, and unnecessary damages. Here’s how to do it. Read on to learn more about water removal and restoration.

Drying

The first step in water damage restoration is drying out the affected area. This process can be noisy and hot, and you should report any loss of power to the damage restoration company. A restoration crew will periodically evaluate the drying progress to keep the affected area dry. This process can take several days. Start the drying process right away if you are working on the carpet yourself. Depending on the severity of the damage, you may have to spend more time on the rug than anticipated.

Antimicrobials

The chemical must be applied according to manufacturer guidelines when using antimicrobials for water damage restoration. Incorrect application may result in injury or ineffectiveness. Water damage restoration professionals should avoid using aerosols and other forms of spray. Both methods are ineffective and dangerous. If you find sewage on a porous surface, an antimicrobial will not work. The sewage must be removed entirely before applying antimicrobials. Water damage specialists must inform you of the potential hazards and rules when using antimicrobials.

Cost

When you’ve experienced flooding or other water damage, you may be wondering: How much does water damage restoration cost? The cost depends on several factors, including the type of water damage, the amount of mold, and other conditions. A professional water damage restoration contractor can give you a good idea of what your specific situation will cost. For example, suppose you’ve experienced flooding due to an appliance. In that case, the cost will be much lower, as the restoration company will only be responsible for drying the affected areas and setting up equipment to prevent mold growth.

Restoring property to pre-loss condition

After water damage, property owners will likely require some reconstruction work to restore their property to a pre-loss condition. These repairs may range from minor repairs to rebuilding entire rooms. To make the process easier for both parties, hiring one company to complete the initial damage mitigation and the subsequent reconstruction is best. The benefits of hiring one company include cost efficiency and convenience. Here are some tips for selecting the right company for the job.

Insurance coverage

The first step in getting insurance coverage …

Creative Ways to Engage Employees and Boost Performance

Creative Ways to Engage Employees and Boost Performance

Every time you hire a new employee, you spend money on the hiring process and lose productivity during training. The most financially sound businesses are those that have low turnover and make infrequent new hires. In order to be this company, you must retain employees, which means keeping them happy and encouraged. Engage employees in a variety of ways to keep them involved in the company and boost their work performances.

Keep Work Fun

A company’s employees are part of a team, but with cubicles keeping them pinned up all day and departments segregated in different areas of the building, it may be difficult to feel that team spirit. Help employees see the bigger picture by getting them together frequently with company activities, like monthly or weekly games or scavenger hunts. Encourage participation by giving prizes to winning groups.

Ask for Advice

To make employees feel like part of the team, prove they are part of the team. The execs may know the ins and outs of the business, but employees often come up with solutions that those locked away in their offices may not see. When changes need to be made to company operations, go to employees for their thoughts. Keep an open-suggestion policy where any new idea is considered. When employees have a say in the running of their own departments, they’ll be looking for ways to improve the process every day, upping employee engagement.

Rewards

Nothing makes employees go above and beyond like rewarding them for that effort. Make the workplace one of recognition by handing out award certificates on an annual, or even monthly, basis. Rewards don’t have to be for common categories, like attendance and sales volume. Think high school yearbook, and consider awards for “best hair” or “best potluck dish.” Do it until every employee has awards peppering their workspaces.

A Word on Bonuses

When you do give out official performance-related rewards, keep them in line with your employee’s purpose. Remember, employees come to work each day to make a living, so rewards that acknowledge that have the most impact. If the company has the funds, immediate rewards like cash bonuses or trips have the most impact on employee engagement. If a company is growing, stock options may be more budget-friendly, and still offer financial incentive. No matter what business you’re in, you must engage employees to keep the workplace from becoming a place of tedium and dread. Create a workplace to which employees don’t mind coming, foster relationships within the company to create loyalty, and reward employees for their hard work to keep them on the team and working for the good of the company for years to come.…

Article Marketing Tips for List Building

Being an online marketer and advertiser, you most likely understand the value of building a huge customer base and your sales will be dependent on the number of people patronizing your website. The only way to ensure yourself of consistency in sales in your online business is to convince more people to subscribe to what you are saying, convince more people to sign up on your website and create a long consumer base and in this front, article writing can help you in more ways than one.
The very first thing that you need to do (and this is the eternal rule in online advertising) is make sure that you maintain very interesting and ever changing content in your articles to make sure that you have a continuing influx of interested readers because the moment that you are able to capture a specific group of people, they will become addicted to what you have to say especially if your first articles are interestingly presented with wit and humor combination. The first thing that they will do is talk about you and wait in awe and anticipation on the next episodes of your articles, using word of mouth to advertise your website. Know what your target audience wants and what they usually search for and hinge your articles on the keywords that they regularly use.
Aside from getting the pulse of the people you are trying to target, you have to write more and more articles, as many as you can because just like any selling game, the more attempts you make, the more appointments you keep, the more people you sell to, the bigger your sales output would be even if you do not make an actual sale on the first point of contact that you make. Selling is always a numbers game and the more your attempts are, the more sales you will be able to close.
More articles mean wider exposure so if you have extra money, hire people to write more articles for you, in that way you are increasing your article submission by more than double which means your exposure is also increased exponentially and you know what happens when more people look at your website or read your articles. That way, you would not spend all your hours just writing and submitting articles but in the process make sure that you are hiring those with good article writing track records and those who can produce more in a short period of time.
At the same time, ensure that the articles that you are submitting are of top caliber and very informative so that you can convince more people to read on and eventually buy what you have to sell.…

Goal Setting Tips For The Internet Marketer

The purpose of this article is to not only assist the veteran marketer, but also the newbie or procrastinator. Hopefully this will get you off your proverbial “butt”. Many folks out there have bought the next “get rich quick online” system more than once. The sad truth is, many of these programs help, but few take the student to fruition. Most consumers of internet marketing programs start with great aspirations and quit with the first “glitch” in their system. If you are like most, you have probably stopped at the first challenge and looked for the next program for online riches.
First off, most programs seem to rely on an “inherent marketing or computer knowledge” by the consumer of their product. It is probably not intentional, but I believe many of the gurus forgot what it is like starting out.
Regardless what program or system you follow, these are some helpful tips for getting your business off the ground:
1. Break out the calendar! Use a cheap yearly calendar that you can hang on the wall in front of your computer.
2. There are certain steps that must be taken for every online business (domain, hosting, autoresponder,etc.). Scan through the program and find or make a list of tasks that must be accomplished. Write each on the calendar for the date you would like that step completed. I have found if you use dates that you know you have some free-time, the odds of completing that task rise significantly.
3. Don’t fall behind! When you write a goal date for a certain task, get it done. Don’t underestimate the time you will need, but at the same time, don’t sell yourself short.
4. Stay engaged! Read and participate in the online community. If you are dead tired and shot at the end of the day, at least read something online before going to bed. It is amazing how a day away from your business, turns to two days, which turns to weeks, or years!
5. Choose a mentor. A mentor should be someone who ” has been there, done that”. He or she should ideally be a person with a similar technology background and is truly invested in your success. Someone who takes you by the hand and shows you how to do it. To be successful long-term, you need to understand and learn how to replicate the steps.
6. This is the most important step! Obviously if you are looking into an internet or stay at home business, you are not satisfied with you current situation. Everyday you go to bed without any positive movement towards your goals, you are cheating not only yourself, but also your family.
You deserve more, and I am here to tell you that everything is possible with goals!
I hope you enjoyed my article.
Sincerely, Greg Roberts…

Marketing Automation – Fixing Your Follow-Up Failure With Technology

Marketing Automation – Fixing Your Follow-Up Failure With Technology

People buy when they’re ready to buy – not before. 67% of the prospective buyers that tell you no today will be ready to buy in the next year. ~ Gartner Research. So how will you be ready when they are? By following up, that’s how. Sadly many businesses do a poor job of marketing follow up, and in this article you’ll learn the startling facts of just how bad it is, but more importantly you’ll discover just how easy it is to fix your follow up failure and double your sales. 

Why companies don’t follow up:

They forget

They focus ONLY on hot leads

They let unconverted leads languish

They think prospects will call back

They don’t want to be pushy

AND they don’t realize the potential impact follow-up can have on their profits!

While 67% of prospects will be ready to buy within 12 months, 80% will buy within 2 years. Will you still be there when they’re ready to buy?

5 Common follow-up mistakes:

No follow-up at all

Weak follow-up

Irrelevant follow-up

Jumping to a sales pitch

No centralized database

How many touches does it take to close a sale?

2% close on the 1st touch

3% on the 2nd

4% on the 3rd

10% on the 4th touch

81% close on (or after) the 5th touch!!!

When do most companies stop following up?

48% quit on the 1st touch

24% on the 2nd

12% on the 3rd

6% on the 4th

10% quit on the 5th touch

Imagine what would happen if you simply followed up with even 20% more of your leads. Can you see what this would mean to your profits. Remember, there is no additional costs in lead generation, this is merely “harvesting” more of the profits by using follow-up marketing.

Here’s a typical follow-up sequence for new prospects:

Send the info they requested immediately. (email)

Send a letter with more valuable info. (letter)

Call to see if you can answer any questions. (call)

Send a value-added email with tips/education. (email) 

Send a promo offer to stimulate action. (email) 

Follow-up with a limited time promo. (postcard)

Call with a final reminder for promo. (voice broadcast)

Offer subscription to future marketing offers and other value added content. (email)

Of course you can get as creative as you want with your sequences, but the above example should get you started.

Fix Your Follow-Up Failure Plan

Get organized – tag customers and prospects. Segment your data.

Integrate your shopping cart and e-commerce into a follow-up system

Add upsells to the follow-up process

automate process to save human interaction and avoid errors.

Offer free report or other high incentive optin piece

Add an automated affiliate referral program

Fixing Your Follow-Up Failure 

Converts more leads into sales

Gets repeat sales from customers

Grows your business without growing your staff

If you want to learn more about fixing your follow up, I’d encourage you to watch the full video presentation …

Using Social Media to Connect With Customers – Meet Them on Their Turf

Using Social Media to Connect With Customers – Meet Them on Their Turf

It’s not all fun and games when it comes to social media. The intention of social media, initially, was to bring people together in a social environment, allowing friends and family to associate online in a way that gives everyone the opportunity to communicate. However, this type of environment can do a lot more than just let friends chat with each other. It is also a great vehicle for businesses to connect with people on their own ground. Much like taking a business promotion to the general public, using social media to connect with customers is a great way to bring your business to a place where people feel comfortable.

Your business can have a Facebook page or a Twitter page where you can connect with customers on a friendlier and less professional basis. Using social media to connect with customers also gives you a forum to discuss the latest happenings, offer exclusive deals, and let people get to know your business on a personal level instead of always being professional about your operations. People like to know that they’re understood and appreciated, and social media is a great way for your business to show them just that.

It wasn’t long ago that people started noticing the website addresses on the bottom of every TV commercial, at the end of radio ads, and in other business advertisements and marketing campaigns. Today, it’s not uncommon to see a business promoting their Facebook page or their Twitter account, where anyone can become a fan or follow their business activities. A lot of companies even offer special incentives to people who visit their social media websites. This is a way to drive traffic and get people’s attention, and for now it is working.

If your business is looking for a better way to communicate with customers, It is a great alternative to traditional business marketing and communication. It allows you to get on their level, become a real person to them, and show them how great your business is without them feeling like they are even dealing with a business at all. All the benefits of this have made it a great tool for businesses that are looking to create a better relationship with customers. As time goes on and more people depend on this social outlets, businesses will continue to reap the rewards of using this to connect with customers.…

Why It’s Important To Stay On Top Of The Marketplace In Business

How are you going about marketing your products and services? Are you copycatting your competitors’ ads, or are you creating them yourself? Have you played customer to see what your competitors are doing to sell more of their products to you? If not, then you will want to start doing those things today.
To make more money in your business, you have to stay on top of marketplace. This way you won’t be surprised by the sweeping changes that occur in your industry. To stay on top of the marketplace, you will want to subscribe to some of your trade journals magazines, and you will also want to subscribe to a marketing magazine. A good one is the “Direct Marketing Association” (DMA).
This way you’ll be on top of the marketplace in 2 ways. The first way is by seeing what the latest issues are in your niche, and the second way is to stay on top of the marketing arena so that you can know what has changed in the world over marketing your products and services.
In today’s article, we’re going to take a look at how you can make more money in your business – despite being hit hard by another change in the marketplace. Here’s the first tip:
– Beware of any “Panda” updates
In the world of internet marketing, there was a recent event that took a BIG toll on website owners. Businesses who thought they could market in only one way found themselves out of business immediately. So what do I mean by “panda” update. Well, here’s what it is:
The Panda update was a shot at content farms. By content farms, I’m talking about article directories, blogs, and any kind of content arena that has people submitting more and more of their content to their website. But the panda update changed all of that.
Some sites took a 30% hit in traffic, and some websites were affected even more. The panda update was performed by Google, and it’s something that still has a lot of business owners shaking in their shoes.
Are there any “Panda” updates in your offline business? Are there any situations in the way that you market your business that could cause your business to take a hit also in sales and profits? Well this is something that you want to think about.
If you want to stay afloat even with major traffic hits like the Panda, then you should do whatever you can to bounce back from it. In the internet world, it’s getting harder and harder to promote yourself without risking any duplicated content tags on your articles. So submitting your content to just one site will help you to do just that.
This is why you can’t just rely on one form of marketing your business – because at any time, it might just take a hit that could affect you and your company.
Do what you can to stay on top of any changes in the …

Using SEO And Video Marketing When Marketing Your Products Online

Some people have come up with all kinds of different ways to get traffic to a website. Some people use formulas, theorems, flow charts, and just raw knowledge to get traffic to their website. Personally, I don’t think getting traffic is an art or science… instead, I think it’s just something that can be easily done if you put your mind to it.
So if you’re brand new to internet marketing and don’t know how to get more traffic to your website, then I think you will stand to benefit from today’s lesson. I would like to show you some easy ways to get traffic to your website for free, and you don’t even have to spend a lot of time doing these strategies either. Here’s the first strategy that you can use to get traffic to your website today:
1) SEO
SEO stands for “search engine optimization”, but I just like to call it search engine marketing. No matter what you call it, it can be a great way to get a lot of traffic to your website. Now some people have SEO down to a science, and know how to rank high for a particular keyword term in a matter of days. And because of it, they get instant traffic to their website because of it.
The 3 biggest search engines on the internet are Google, Yahoo, and Bing – and all of these strategies can deliver for you a ton of traffic on a daily basis. You will definitely want to try and rank high for obscure keyword terms so that you can capitalize on all of this traffic that you could be getting.
Here’s another great way to get traffic to your website:
2) YouTube
YouTube is the number 3 ranked website on the internet today in terms of traffic. They get millions of hits each and everyday to their website from people looking to hear music, and from people looking for information that they can use for a particular reason. You will want to be right there with the information that they are looking for.
You can definitely get a lot of traffic from YouTube. It’s an easy way to promote your business, and it’s very user friendly. You will want to make sure that your website URL is listed at the bottom of your videos, and also is displayed first in the description of your video – so that it can turn into a clickable link.
You can use a camcorder, webcam, or even a sell phone to create your videos. But if you want the most quality, use a camcorder. It may sound expensive, but it’s a great way to produce the high quality videos that you are looking for. If I had to guess, I would say that you can get a good camcorder for around $100… which isn’t too bad.
YouTube and search engine optimization are 2 great traffic strategies that you can use to make more money in your online …

Are You Making The Right Use Of Marketing Automation Solution?

Are You Making The Right Use Of Marketing Automation Solution?

Marketing automation solution is often looked upon as the panacea to all the sales and marketing woes. To most of the marketers it is like a ‘set it and forget it’ kind of solution that can move the leads swiftly through the sales cycle with no extra effort required. But unfortunately what they don’t realize is that using the solution alone will not suffice. In fact most of the organizations fail to realize the full value of the investment made in marketing technology. The truth is that if you are going to depend solely on an automated tool to nurture your contacts and leads, you are in for some big trouble.

Using barely marketing automation solution to grow contacts list

One major disadvantage of using only an automated solution for the purpose of adding new contacts to your database is that you will run out of people you can direct your marketing efforts to in a while. Generally, email marketing lists keep losing its relevance to some degree with every passing year, retaining on average 75% of the members after each year due to overturn at companies. With people swapping jobs and companies undergoing management changes, the current email addresses no longer remain valid after sometime. As a result you end up having a pretty deflated email marketing list that you cannot rely on to generate leads.

Merging marketing automation solution usage with sales efforts

Marketing automation in itself is not bad. But you need to concentrate on filling the top of your sales funnel by luring and adding net new contacts to your database while optimizing marketing automation efforts simultaneously. Practicing inbound marketing is the best way to achieve your target. You can create interesting and search engine friendly content that addresses your prospects’ needs and queries and use social media to promote that content and extend your reach. Convert the visitors into prospects or leads using proper call-to-action and land pages. They will make up for the 25% of members that you lose to list expiration each year.

Using marketing automation solution in all its complexity

Even if you are focused on growing your email marketing list alongside the automated solution usage, unfortunately, most organization fail to make optimum use of marketing automation solution; barely leveraging the complex features like lead intelligence, contacts’ behavioral traits, etc that can be utilized to plan and craft segmented and personalized marketing campaigns. Rather, they go with a one-size-fits-all approach that results in a series of spam mails that lack targeting. And this is mainly due to dearth of integration between their marketing channels.

Conclusion

Marketing automation solution is a crucial element for every organization to grow market share. If the marketing automation solution, marketing database and marketing analytics tools are properly integrated you can easily segment your communication in the best possible way to address your contacts’ needs and interests. So what you need to do is include technology marketing into …

Affiliate Marketing Tips – Marketing Motivation

Everyone is in business for a different reason, and my motivation is the love of my work. I absolutely love researching new products and testing out different markets, but that wasn’t true when I was starting out. I was motivated by money, which is not enough motivation for most people to truly reach success. I know what your thinking, “Yeah Right, money will keep me motivated”. Sure, money will keep you motivated for a while, but when you decide to make affiliate marketing a long term career, you better make sure you are keeping yourself properly motivated. Let’s look at a few things that keep me motivated throughout my everyday business routine.
1.) I start by creating a plan about products that spark my interest and are still profitable. There are many affiliate companies on the internet, so if you don’t like the products that the one your currently using offers try a different company.
2.) Keep a positive outlook and figure out what your market needs and wants. Many internet marketers fail, because they don’t want to take the time to understand what their market wants and needs. You cannot just throw up a sales page that was half thought out and think that you are going to make sales. There is a lot of trial and error involved in selling products on the internet, so don’t be surprised if your first attempt fails. Maybe you are falling short on your research and marketing efforts somehow.
3.) Admit to yourself when you are wrong or if your products is failing. There are many different types of people in this world, and everyone single one of them has a different product choice. More time’s than not you shouldn’t be saying that the product is terrible, but my marketing skills are failing.
Affiliate Marketing is a tough ball game, but if you keep the proper mindset and stay motivated, the sky is the limit. Keep your head up and your marketing game tight, I will be looking for you in the winners circle.…

Article Marketing Automation Review

Article Marketing Automation Review

Article Marketing Automation (AMA) is probably the best tool when it comes to getting a bunch of valuable links to your site and boosting your rankings. After years of experience on the internet and possibly testing all the different kinds of links building I came to the conclusion that nothing comes close to what this system has to offer.

So what it comes down to is the fact that Article Marketing Automation does indeed work and it is certainly the best link building tool available on the internet if you use it correctly.

So what is AMA?Well it is a blog network consisting of over 10 000 blogs where you can submit your article, choose your category and your article will then be distributed to the other blogs in the network. These 10 000 blogs are also targeted to your niche as you can choose the categories where your article should be posted.

You can also get other people to submit their content on your site. All you do is enter your blog’s details, choose your category and then you will get content on a daily basis, which you can approve or reject.

But what makes AMA unique?The anchor text is placed in the content and not in a resource box below the article. So that means that you will get a much better click through rate on your articles.

You can send your articles to all the sites in the network. In the old days you would send one article to hundreds of article directories and hope for a lot of back links to your site. But the problem with this is, because of the duplicate content, most of them will fall under Google’s supplemental index so that means only one or two links will actually count. But when you do it via article marketing automation then every link will count as a valuable link as you will get your article published on a site that is relevant to the theme of your site.

The articles are also distributed over time so it looks much more natural to the search engines.

Now for the resultsIn only four months of using the AMA system I’ve seen much more traffic coming into my sites and I already have first page rankings for almost every niche that I enter. And all this has been achieved by using AMA and some other techniques where I basically just build more value to the links that’s coming in from the AMA system. With one of the niches I entered I had 3 results on Google US for my main keyword and that’s only one of the keywords. So this proves that this system works!

So should you sign up for article marketing automation? Most definitely yes! If you don’t then you are probably missing out on the most effective link building tool on the internet.…

Free and Affordable Ways to Market Yourself Or Your Business

Free and Affordable Ways to Market Yourself Or Your Business

In these tough economic times, many people and businesses know they need to market to get visibility that leads to sales, but have little or no extra capital to do so. However, there are many ways one can market themselves or their business with little or no money. Here are some proven effective marketing strategies for people and businesses with little or no money to spend.

1. Create a website: A website will allow you do tell the world about yourself and what you do. There are many services that allow you to build your own website with easy to follow instructions. Therefore you don’t have to worry about the cost of hiring a website developer to build your site. The most important thing is you want to get as many people to know about you and what you do as possible. Having a website will allow you to share yourself and what you do with others, getting the word out.

2. Develop Strategic Relationships: In building strategic relationships, you create referrals, and referrals mean business. You can join and attend organizations, clubs and associations that share your interest. For example: if you are a realtor you can join the Financial Planners Association, where there are so many professionals that come into contact with people that need to sell or buy real estate. You can create relationships, where you agree to refer clients that need financial advice in exchange for referrals of people that need to sell or buy real estate.

3. Create a unique style or logo: You want to allow people to easily identify you as being different and unique from the competition. Every successful business has a logo, from Microsoft with its four colored window representing its famous operation system windows. You want to create a logo that represents what you do in an image.

4. Write Articles or Newsletters: Write articles or newsletters relating to what it is you do. For example, if you are a wedding planner, you can write an article: How to have a superb wedding on a limited budget. You can add your contact information, your website address and the services you offer generating potential leads.

5. Become a Speaker: Many non-profits, universities, organizations, associations and other entities are always looking for people that can offer knowledge and expertise in many different areas to their members. For example, is you provide senior care, you can contact your local senior citizens center and arrange to discuss what to look for in choosing a senior care provider.

6. Get Social with Online Social Networks: There are many free social networks that allow you to connect with others who share your interest and together you can achieve your goals. You can create a profile or business page for free. For example is you are a florist you can connect with wedding planners which could lead to potential sales, or if you are a drummer looking …

How to Become a Really Smart Marketer

How to Become a Really Smart Marketer

Have you ever heard anyone say, “We’re so lucky, we never have to do any marketing and the business keeps coming in”?

We did, and 3 months ago, they told us they had had their worst year ever. The number of businesses who rely on customers picking up the phone themselves or just relying on word of mouth is astounding. If you think like that, not only are you leaving fortunes on the table but you are putting yourself in a very vulnerable position.

The trouble is that when someone says “You need to do some marketing,” some people imagine that suddenly an enormous amount of their profit is going to disappear overnight. They start thinking:

“Who exactly am I going to market to?”

“What am I going to say?”

“Who will do it for me?”

We imagine all the horrors associated with hiring a marketing agency that is then going to eat up our budget with fancy artwork and branding ideas. If you insist on hiring an agency, then so be it, but please make sure that they talk to you in terms of ROI (return on investment). If they can’t guarantee their work, then you should be asking them why not. Too many times we see advertisements which essentially have the message “Look at me! I have a business; phone me if you like.” That may seem harsh, but you just look through any business to business magazine for examples of the worst offenders.

So what is Smart Marketing?

It’s marketing where you OFFER something to your customers rather than simply announcing your existence.

It’s also marketing where you start with your existing customers.

It’s also marketing that does not involve a huge amount of expense.

You will have already heard me say that we leave a great deal of hidden money with our customers by not following up with them enough.

Try this with your existing customers:

Send them a sales letter with an offer to buy something from you that is extra to what they would normally buy. It might be a new product or service or an exceptional offer on your usual product or service for a limited time frame.

The letter should have the following:

1 – An attention-grabbing headline which gets them to read on

2 – The offer and the reason why the offer exists in the form of a story

3 – A deadline by which they need to respond

4 – Instructions on what they need to do next

This is direct response marketing that is inexpensive, measurable, and sent to people who already like buying from you.…

The Business Marketing Know-How

The Business Marketing Know-How

As with anything that deals with business, having a successful marketing plan is a very challenging task. It requires careful planning, deliberate application, and evaluation of the entire process. Although some may prove to be lucky and succeed during the first trial, most often, effective business marketing requires experience and training.

Perhaps one of the most effective marketing techniques is increasing the exposure of the business. Most people rely on the World Wide Web as a resource in looking for what options there are in the market. In that regard, here are a few ideas to consider before making a marketing plan.

– Online listings. Like yellow pages, making your website visible over the internet is a great way of kicking off your marketing plan. Most people these days opt to check online for businesses that cater to their services. Taking your business online, whether big or small, can provide good exposure for potential customers to see. There are now free online services offering a safe way of giving your contact information. In fact, there are some which allows businesses to transact online.

– Establishment Structure. The structure of the business establishment greatly affects how customers view the company. Seeing how the owner cares for the looks and appearance of the structure will give the customers an idea on whether the owner is focused and detail-oriented. Here are some of the ideas that can enhance the impression of customers:

– The architecture and design of the establishment is based according to the market it is trying to attract. Like for example, if you are trying to entice a group of teens, seeing a sign for shop front with various bright colors can actually invite them over. However, if the target market is children and the front of the shop shows off a serious vibe, then even parents will not be happy to see their children in such a serious place.

– Furniture in the establishment plays a big role in making the customers comfortable. Keep in mind that if you intend to put up a potentially crowded shop, then you might want to add in more ventilation or air conditioning. Aside from that, chairs never fail to add more convenience and comfort for the customers. Remember that people do not want to line up for long. Adding furniture or organizing other activities that could keep them busy will make their time worthwhile as they wait.

Putting up a business is never easy. On the other hand, being a customer is just as difficult. The bumps on the road during transactions are inevitable and could often lead to misunderstanding and confusion. While business marketing is the core in attracting customers, it is important that tycoons know their limits. Getting loyal clients is one of the main goals in meeting the success of the establishment. This does not involve giving out false and misleading infomercials. Rather, it is all about the services and the products the business is …

5 Effective Internet Marketing Tips for Your Online Business

Do you want your online business to gain more attention from your target market? Use these five effective internet marketing tips listed below and your website will get the exact results you’re looking for!
Build Web 2.0 Websites
Sign up with several Web 2.0 websites and start creating your own blogs. If you’re given the chance to pick your own subdomain name, see to it that you include your keywords so you can quickly attract the audience you want. You should also write unique blog posts that are relevant to your niche and insert some links that point back to your main site. Some of the best Web 2.0 websites on the internet today are Squidoo, WordPress and HubPages.
Select the Right Keywords to Target
Choosing which keywords to focus on is very important in internet marketing. You have to be specific as much as possible-find out what words your customers actually type when they search the web, and pick the ones that bring the most results. If you’re having trouble determining this, you can use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to help you. This great tool will show you which keywords are successful and have less competition in your particular niche market.
Write & Submit Original Articles
Create original and informative articles, ideally around 350-500 words, and submit them to popular article directories like EzineArticles. Don’t forget to use specific keywords and put a link back to your website on the resource box!
Make & Submit Creative Videos
You can also make short videos to promote your website. The video can be an advertisement for your online business, or a simply an informative video that provides tips for your target audience. Again, be sure you include your web URL on the description area.
Use Social Bookmarking & Pinging Services
Lastly, make use of social bookmarking websites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit to announce to the internet community that you’ve posted new articles, videos, posts and other contents on your website or blog. You could also ping the latest web contents you’ve made. Pinging services function similarly to social bookmarking, but the process is much quicker and easier. One of the most effective pinging resources you can use is Ping-O-Matic. To achieve the full effect and attract more traffic, you should always social bookmark and ping every content you’ve just published on the internet.…

Using Podcasts And Joint Ventures To Make Money In Your Business

Marketing on the internet is something that a lot of newbies don’t know how to do. They become clueless about how to get their message spread across the internet, and they have no idea of how to get traffic. But luckily in today’s lesson, I’m going to show you some simple and easy ways that you can start getting more website traffic in a short period of time.
Getting website traffic is one of those subjects where it’s easy to get confused. One day you may hear about a traffic strategy that is the best, then another day you will hear somebody say they have the latest and greatest new traffic method, and then you will see some people promote a software tool that can get you incredible amounts of traffic and sales overnight. Personally, I don’t listen to any of this mess.
The best thing you can do for yourself when it comes to getting traffic is to make out a list of strategies to do, and implement them each and everyday. This way you’ll diversify your traffic, and will be getting people visiting your website from all corners of the earth. You should focus on traffic, and then provide a product or service to these people that will help you to monetize your website.
I want to share with you some of my favorite traffic strategies that you can put into use in your business today. In fact, here’s the first strategy that I have for you:
1) Podcasts
Podcasting is one of those strategies like video marketing. You can even start your own podcast blog with a free tool called “Feedburner”. But podcasts are nothing but MP3 audio files that delivers information on a particular topic. You will want to submit your podcasts to all of the major podcast directories online – especially iTunes.
iTunes is the largest and most familiar podcast directory. All of the celebrities submit their podcasts there. In your podcast, you will want to state your website information at the beginning of the podcast, and also at the end. In between the promotion time, you will want to deliver some excellent information that will make people want to come back for more.
But podcasts aren’t the only free traffic strategy that you can use. Here’s another one:
2) Joint ventures
A joint venture is an alliance of 2 companies who come together to help each other make money. Joint ventures are typically profitable, but if you have an affiliate program, you will want to offer a higher commission to your joint venture partner. It’s the least that you can do if they’re giving you access to their list or their product.
Joint ventures happen all the time online, and there are even special websites designed for people who are looking to strike up a JV deal. You should find these special websites and join them… you never know who will be a match for your product, service, or list.
These 2 traffic strategies …

Using Attraction Marketing to Succeed in Your MLM Business

Using Attraction Marketing to Succeed in Your MLM Business

You can now become a success at MLM business if you use the right attraction marketing strategy. The conventional methods of growing your MLM network are no longer relevant to these times of technological advancement. With attraction marketing your MLM business can be strategized to be a complete success.

All MLM businesses work the same way, they have to create a network. This is the core strategy to the business. They promote the features and promises that the products will help them earn in thousands. However not all attraction marketing strategies for MLM businesses are the same. If you want to taste success, you will have to however break away from the pack of normal strategies and adapt to newer techniques and methods.

With attraction marketing you can now focus on your niche market to obtain leads that will join in your MLM business network. This method does away with the traditional methods of the business man trying to get in people into his network.

Let’s look at a few strategies that will help you find success in MLM business.

1. In order for your business to succeed you need to think out of the box. Many companies are always trying to sell a product first before the lead can even join the network. No individual would like to shell out money before getting into unknown territory. With attraction marketing you will learn how to attract qualified leads system that will help promote your business.

2. Most company strategies involve selling of a product. However with attraction marketing you will learn how to cash in those leads that refuse to join the programming since it involves buying. It is estimated that 94-97% of individuals will not take up the opportunity if they have to buy something to become a part of a network. With attraction marketing strategies for your MLM business you will learn how to convert those leads into customers who will work for you.

3. Another great attraction marketing strategy involves how you could get thousands of leads everyday. Most MLM businesses suffer or are stagnant because they do not find enough leads to expand their business. With a regular database of leads supplied with the right marketing strategy you can be assured that your business will grow continuously. You can then convert these leads into successful customers who will in turn work for you by generating leads for themselves.

4. With the right marketing methods a businessman will be able to run a business on autopilot. However the first three steps will first have to be successful for the entire business to run on itís on.

There are several strategies that a businessman can adopt. There are several marketing gurus as well who claim to cover gaps that attraction marketing has. However he will have to choose the plan that works best for his type of business so that it yields him results. MLM marketing is one type …

Top Article Marketing Tips To Boost Your Profits

One of the major questions that is asked when someone decides to start with article marketing is, how can you make a profit with articles? Well, the answer is simple. You post an article to a directory with a link back to a website that you own and put some sort of monetization on that site. Then, when a visitor comes from the article you wrote they purchase a product or click on an ad and you get paid. The best ways to get more visitors and make more money is with these top article marketing tips.
1. Write Useful Content
Too many article marketers have stopped actually writing. They just put out whatever garbage they can or have someone that doesn’t even speak very good English write articles for them. They are trying to turn it into a numbers game and figure the more articles they put out the more visitors they will get. However, when you write useful content that the reader will actually like you have a better chance of converting them into a buyer and not just a one-time buyer, but a lifetime buyer from you. This is how you really make good money with article marketing.
2. Write A Compelling Resource Box
The best article marketing tips all have to do with the resource box because this is where your link to your website is going to be. The article marketing tips also will tell you that a call to action is necessary in the resource box. This is when you tell someone to do something. Basically this has been tested over and over and 90% of the time if you tell someone to do something they will simply do it. This can be as simple as “click here” or “go here”. These are all call to action phrases that work great in a resource box.
3. Use More Than One Directory
There are some that make a living just submitting to one article directory, but the best article marketing tips will tell you that you should at least submit to a handful of different directories. There are about 5 to 10 that have a good pull with top search engines and give you the best chances of getting your article on the top for the keyword phrase you have decided to target. Take advantage of this and pick a handful of the top directories to submit to.…

Marketing Automation Software

Marketing Automation Software

Today it has been seen that the business world is very competitive and there are many different companies that are looking for the various ways through which they can make marketing campaign more effective. Therefore companies try to avoid investing in the marketing strategies that might not produce effective and satisfactory results. So, most of the companies now are trying to find methods that could help them in managing and tracking of the marketing campaigns so that they can have greater understanding of the customer profitability and profiles.

Marketing automation is considered as the uses of software that can perform automate marketing processes like CDI or customer data integration, customer segmentation, and campaign management. The marketing automation generally makes processes that otherwise need to be performed manually. Moreover the processes are performed in more efficient manner. Today, it is regarded as an integral component of the CRM or customer relationship management. Marketing automation generally involves the utilization of the specially designed software.

This software can be seen as an effective strategy that can be used for keeping the track of the all the campaign strategies that are working and that have failed to acquire the desired results. Advertising automation can make it easier to use crusade results in increasing improved campaigns designed for the future.

Marketing automation software helps all the businesses to automate all their important marketing processes. These kind of software help all the businesses to accomplish varied tasks like defining, tracking and scheduling of the campaign goals and also helps in the creation and implementation of marketing campaigns. Besides this, marketing automation software helps businesses in the area of market segmentation and makes it easy to identify target markets. It also helps in collection of important market information to generate response. This information about response is then fed back in the system.

Choice of a marketing automation by a company is not very important because all of them share a common denominator. Common denominator is basically regarded as the use of some technology so that better communication with all the customers can be ensured and there could be more effective and targeted marketing campaign.

There are many different kinds of the software that makes the task of managing campaigns possible and very easy by encompassing different marketing methods. Such software can be put to use with printing, radio, Internet, email, and television marketing campaigns. However, it has been seen that the capability of the marketing automation software generally depends on the type of software.

Marketing automation software comprises of a particular program or some group of applications. It is treated as a combination of the varied tools that can be used to carry out analysis as well as profiling. These tools include everything like web measurement and personalization of the campaign strategies. Besides this, these tools can also be used to improve the communications with all customers and to obtain a valuable insight into marketing strategy of company.

It is not just a software, …

Article Marketing Automation – Get Traffic, Rise Above the Competition

Article Marketing Automation – Get Traffic, Rise Above the Competition

Do you have an online business? Are you having trouble getting people to find your site? The problem lies in your marketing strategy.

With online business the single most important thing to do is to market your website well. You want your site to be the first choice when searching in search engines. Although this requires perseverance, many very effective techniques have been developed to attain this goal.

Article marketing is one technique developed to market your site and gain exposure. This technique requires you to write an article about a keyword that is related to your website. Although this is an effective step, it also requires a steady submission of articles to a large number of article directories in order to drive continuous traffic. But this is extremely effective for driving traffic to your site over a long period of time.

The easiest and most effect way to do article marketing is to automate it. Article marketing automation is the answer. Instead of submitting articles manually to each article directory, you can automate this entire process. There are hundreds of programs that allow you to submit articles automatically. Some are free and some are paid but all of them will help you market your business.

Article marketing automation makes article submission extremely easy. This works by submitting articles to a hundred of article directories at once. The submitted articles will then give you a boost of traffic to your site.

Although the manual article marketing strategies are still in use, people are gradually finding new alternative methods to boost their internet traffic. The people on the cutting edge of the newest techniques typically have the biggest advantage.

With automated article marketing software you can write an article and with the push of a button you can easily submit your article to thousands of potential customers reading the numerous article directories. Not only does it make the process faster but it also makes it more time efficient and effective.

Within two hours you can easily submit articles to a hundred of sites. Then as often as you want you can post different articles to a hundred of different sites with different keywords. All of these keywords will let people find you and find your business or offer.

With different articles and different keywords you can make sure that you are one of the top searches among millions of people on the internet. When you do article marketing automation you just don’t just gain traffic. You make your business viable in the long run and you soar above the competition and everyone else who doesn’t implement the latest strategies.…

What Is Not Lead Nurturing?

What Is Not Lead Nurturing?

Many marketers around the world have two common question in mind, What is lead nurturing? and how one can define it? Many specialist have tried to define the term in their own way. Here, I will share with you a definition shared by Jon Miller, VP of marketing at Marketo: “Lead nurturing is the process of building a relationship by conducting an informative dialog that helps qualified prospects who are not yet sales-ready, regardless of budget, authority, or timing – and of ensuring a clean hand-off to sales at the right time”.

It is very easy to mix the objective and believe in everything that comes under the spectrum of lead nurturing or marketing automation technology or software. Their is more to it if you understand the definition, It is possible to acquire a really great lead nurturing application and still miss the point of creating a conversation and touching base with leads through content in a close loop till they are sales ready. Thus, it is very important to understand what is not lead nurturing.

The important factor is to able to differentiate between creating a periodic email marketing campaign and setting up a lead nurturing program. Next, every email should not be an outright attempt to sell or make an offer. Selling is done for the leads which are nurtured and ready to be sold. In nurturing stages, leads are absorbing information and content which can help them to solve their problem and know when they are ready to buy.

Auto responder email programs have gained immense popularity as lead nurturing tools but it works well when used properly. In the same way newsletter programs can be sent using the same technology. So make sure when you are planning your program, stand back and check whether it fits the goal of your program.…

How Email Marketing Can Generate Quality Leads

How Email Marketing Can Generate Quality Leads

In some quarters, emailing marketing has a less than optimal reputation. Some see it simply as the refuge of ‘spammers’, a low-rent way for businesses to try and grab the attention of their customers, while generally succeeding only in irritating them. It doesn’t have to be like that. Over the last couple of years email has evolved and progressed through the use of in-depth analytical tools that allow for highly targeted and relevant campaigns. Good quality email campaigns can offer a great ROI and is an excellent opportunity work on customer and B2B lead generation.

Email marketing can easily be outsourced to specialist marketing firms. They will generally be able to offer a full email package designed to help your business win customers in a targeted way. Rather than untargeted campaigns that drive away as many customers as they gain, modern marketing aims to reach the right people and generate real leads. Rather than simply driving traffic to a website, quality email campaigns concentrate on customer and B2B lead generation. They generally do this by tracking and analysing behaviour.

After a marketing email has been sent, a lead generation tool can be used to work out which of the website hits that result from it are likely to be real leads. It can see when people have logged on to the site, how long they spent there, and whether and when they return. A customer who logs on repeatedly and frequently is, naturally, far more likely to be a good lead than one on who logs on once. This kind of information then needs to be used effectively. It could be sent to sales staff, who can then make calls to follow up the leads. It could also be used to trigger an automatic email, creating a kind of targeted email marketing ‘virtuous circle’.

Effective email marketing that is combined with automatic customer and B2B lead generation in this way is intelligent marketing that can build business for the future. As with any kind of marketing campaign, it needs to be well handled in order to work, and the automated side of it is only part of the story. Without good sales people in place to back it up, it will not produce the kind of returns your business needs. However, with commitment and a holistic approach, using automatic lead generation can transform a very ordinary email marketing campaign into a huge success.…

Avoiding Marketing Automation That Breaks the Rules

Avoiding Marketing Automation That Breaks the Rules

Did you ever find articles on website marketing with advice that prescribed marketing automation methods for success? Did they seem too good and even too wild to be true? Marketing automation the way these popular articles speak of it, is the use of a piece of software that is designed to automatically post on blogs, create accounts with social networking and other sites, extract e-mails, and in general, to do a lot of legwork for you to push your website up in the popularity ratings in a way it doesn’t deserve. There are lots of these marketing automation software packages out there with names like Extract Master and Extreme Cash Robot that are marketed as great ways by which to quickly promote your website. There’s just one problem with all of this – Google and all of the other major search engines use sophisticated methods to try to judge whether a site uses these illegal marketing automation methods. And they will quickly ban a website when they find evidence. While not all marketing automation is this way, you need to know which ones to avoid, to keep your website safe from any risk of being banned. Let’s look at some examples of unsavory marketing automation to help you stay in the clear.

Your number one implementation of marketing automation software to avoid would be of the e-mail extractor variety. There are many reasons why software of this kind will not really help you at all. To begin with, most websites that require you to sign up and register, have all kinds of hoops they will have the software jump through. Even if the software succeeds at first, it’s only a matter of time before it’s caught and your website is taken off of search engine indexes. In the end, you’ll be left with a bunch of e-mail addresses you generated that will not be of any use.

As for software that is claimed to be able to create accounts on blogs, social networks and forums and to the able to post on them, those are just untruthful claims. Any of these places has tests in place to help tell the real sign-ups apart from the automated ones. The easiest way they have of doing this is with a Captcha image – where they put up an image of a number or a word and ask whoever is signing up, to type in what they see. Marketing automation software is never going to be able to get past this one. And even if these packages do get past all the safeguards that have been in place, you probably won’t get very far posting as much as you need to, to get any mileage out of these activities. These places have rules for how much you are allowed to post.

So there you go – there is a right way and wrong way to automate your marketing. Build ethical link farms, and in general, try …

Building Better Customer Relations With Personalization

Building Better Customer Relations With Personalization

Personalization is the number one strategic action your business can take.

Why Personalize?

Marketing today has evolved into something much more than creating advertising collaterals and sending them to everyone in the company database. Marketers can no longer survive with a blindfolded approach to prospecting. This is because the prospect profiles have changed radically. In today’s internet age, prospects are more informed than ever before. They also have a lot of choice when it comes to selecting the right vendor. In order to strike a chord with the prospects in such environment, the marketing team has to focus on establishing a personal, one to one relationship with the prospect. Only building this relationship and cementing it over a period of time will enable the business to gain an edge over competition. In this scenario, Personalization becomes an indispensable tool.

Personalization-The Concept

Personalization involves understanding customers, anticipating their needs and positioning the business’s solutions in a manner so as to add value to the customers. The spectrum of personalization is very wide. At the lowest end lies something as simple as sending out e-mails that address the recipients by their names and further up lie custom landing pages and the ability of the business to anticipate and offer products/services tailored to suit the individual customer needs.

Cases for Personalization

A study conducted by the Aberdeen Group states 87% of retailers believe that personalization will bring about significant changes to their business. 41% of the retailers mentioned that personalization helped their business attain higher levels of customer satisfaction. The study also listed Personalization as the number one strategic action that a business needs to take. The US Banker magazine carried an article in which the chief marketing and innovation officer for AXA Equitable mentioned that the return on investment with respect to dollars spent on personalization was almost 5 times.

Key Ingredients

Personalization requires three key ingredients to be in place. One-Collection of prospect information, Two-Availability of this information in real time, Three-Ability to act upon this information so as to add value to the prospect/customer. Once a business has these three key aspects in place, the only thing left to do is to find a platform that will enable a seamless integration of all these three to enhance customer experience.

Want to create personalized marketing materials such as database-driven flyers, postcards, newsletters, proposals, and other print-quality documents? Try MindMatrix’s inVision-a leading marketing automation software that can bridge the gap between marketing and sales. Whether it is through E-mails, Print, HTML templates, Flash or PowerPoint presentations, MindMatrix offers solutions to suit all your marketing needs.…

Getting Some Advertising Ideas Out of the Idea Cafe

Networking is one of the most important things that you do for your business. It helps keep your head on straight and being able to talk with other business owners about what they are doing to increase employee retention or build on their current business structure can really help you through the tough times can provide you with the information that you need to help further your business venture and improve your business marketing.
There are usually groups in the community that you can join. They generally have meetings and get together to discuss business. For many business owners this is hard to do because they work so much they can’t get away often. There is now an excellent place online that you can tap into without leaving the office or even from home.
This new idea, The Idea Cafe, is such an invaluable resource, and such a simple way to get info on things that are really important. It is so good that it was noticed by the Wall Street Journal. You will be able to ask questions about anything at all business related. And you will then get answers from people that have experience far greater than yours.
They can help you choose the best promotional merchandise to use for your business and then give you some ideas about how you can market with them. There are tons of different things that you might want to ask about. How you can best move your business to a new location and still retain customers is one. You might want to learn what others have done when getting a space at a trade show too.
The Idea Cafe offers a resource that is invaluable to small business owners around the world. It is a gathering place that provides information and allows for a free exchange of ideas to help you succeed in your current business venture. You can chat with others in your area of interest or any business owner to get answers to the questions you have about different aspects of running your business and making it as successful as possible. Business networking has never been simpler than with the Idea Cafe, a place that allows you access to those business owners who have the answers you need.…

How Marketing Automation Software Can Help You Solve Your Demand Generation Challenges?

How Marketing Automation Software Can Help You Solve Your Demand Generation Challenges?

A well-built Marketing Automation Software can help you get better results from its demand generation efforts by enhancing the various steps in the demand generation process. It streamlines the process and provides marketing with valuable prospect/customer data, which can be used to increase the overall effectiveness of the business’s demand generation strategy. Following are the advantages of automating the demand generation process –

Complete customer view – An ideal marketing automation software provides the business with a holistic view of its prospects. Once the marketing team has a 360A� view of its prospects, it can modify its demand generation campaigns to complement prospect behavior.

Personalized marketing & sales tactics – Research has proven time and again that personalized marketing bears better results than generic, mass-produced efforts. Prospects/customers tend to favor brands that personalize products and solutions to suit their needs. Personalization enhances value from the customer perspective.

Content syndication – As prospects/customers interact with the business on various platforms, there’s a need for the business to utilize these numerous channels to drive home its message. Marketing Automation Software with built-in content syndication mechanism enables a business to consistently deliver the same message across all communication channels.

Staying in touch with prospects – Research indicates that only about 15% of leads are immediately willing to buy. While about 20% are disqualified initially, the remaining 65% are mildly interested in the product/service, but not ready to invest in it right away. The business must stay in touch with such prospects and keep the leads warm, so that when it’s time to make the buying decision, the prospect remembers the brand. By choosing the right marketing automation software a business can communicate with its prospects through various channels including e-mails, web pages, social networking sites, blogs, and information-sharing portals.

Multiple output support – Prospects now have a multitude of ways to reach out to vendors. These include the web, social media and other information sharing sites. Facebook has around 400 million users, while Twitter has around 75 million and LinkedIn is catching up with over 65 million users. That means millions of prospects. Marketing Automation Software allows the business to communicate with its prospects across all these platforms.

Brand management – Managing your brand and keeping marketing materials updated is never going to be a problem once you use a marketing automation software. For example, SpeedWheels, a company manufacturing high-end bicycles. SpeedWheels has presentations and flyers made for each new model. Let’s assume that the price of Model II changes. If a pricing change were made in the presentations, the same would be automatically reflected in the flyers as well.

Understanding prospect/customer behavior – Marketing Automation Software provides business with a 360-degree view of the following question can be answered by deploying the right automation system –

Did the prospects visit the company site?

Which links did they click on? Did they open an e-mail?

How many e-mails did marketing send …

Marketing Automation, How It Works and How to Use It Properly

Marketing Automation, How It Works and How to Use It Properly

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is a way to collect information, trigger events based on that information and produce workflows to engage the human touch. It has revolutionized the way B2B companies and large purchase B2C companies structure their marketing programs. The online marketing world has made it possible collect large amounts of data about your customer’s interactions, which in return is making it difficult to manage all of this data.

Customer Interaction

An online presence no longer consists of building a website and calling it a day. In order to stay competitive you now have to get a share of your market’s web traffic. Then you need your website to act more like an amusement park then a bridge, meaning you want them to hang out for a while. Not only do you want them to hang out, you want them to be engaged and ultimately converting. In the B2B world, most sales don’t happen in an online shopping cart. They visit your site multiple times reading expert advice, downloading white papers and watching videos before they decide to engage with you. With marketing automation you can track what your customers are doing from their first click to a sale.

Automate Your Process

While your customers are hanging out at your site wouldn’t it be nice to know when a visitor checks out your pricing page? With marketing automation you have the ability to identify who’s been to your pricing page and to ping someone on your sales team. You now have a warm lead and the ability to make certain that the sales team follows up on it. Automating these processes eliminates human error and guarantees that a hard earned lead is being followed up on. You can set up triggers to notify sales, engage managers, escalate untouched leads, nurture them once they go stale, and ultimately anything that can help the sales process.

Beat the Competition

Marketing automation tools have become very powerful and can give you a competitive advantage during this adaption phase. Even companies that have adapted to this tool have not quite harnessed the full power of it. Getting your company on board now can leave your competition in the dust. Make sure you do your research and build a solid program to implement a marketing automation solution to its full capacity.

Marketing Automation Tools

Currently, there are many leading tools for automation. Find a tool that integrates well with your CRM. If you are planning to adopt an automated marketing tool for your company it is recommended that you hire a consultant.…

8 Habits That Bring Financial Independence in MLM

Does the prospect of being financially independent mean something to you? If you answered yes, welcome to network marketing. It is your surest route to earning extra income from home to help with family budget, while gradually scaling your way towards the attainment of your grandest financial dreams. But you must be prepared to learn and implement the techniques that would make that happen. Especially you should learn and master different sales and marketing techniques.
It’s amazing how many people believe that salesmen are born. Don’t believe any of that, unless you’ll also accept that a person is born a doctor or lawyer, or accountant. Yes, a few idiosyncratic traits may quicken our mastery of some of these professions. But none of them can be practiced solely on the basis of what a person is born with. To succeed in these and any other profession, you need to be trained not only in the basic techniques of the profession, but also on how to apply these techniques to produce results.
In MLM, sales is of the utmost importance. It is a profession, too. Yes, in any trade, including sales, you’ll occasionally use some of your inborn abilities, but a lot of what will spell your success will come through education and training. And that is also saying that a failure to acquire these other traits have led so many network marketers down the path of failure.
So what are these habits that combine with sales to bring you financial freedom in MLM?
Be Positive In Your Attitude: success in any business is 90% attitude and 10% all other factors. Imagine the effect on your business if 90% of what powers it is destructive? We all need to discipline ourselves to develop constructive thinking habits. Expect the best for your MLM business. Don’t think you can’t make it.
Don’t think that being a salesperson reduces your status in any way. It’s all an attitude. Just think of what will happen to the economy of this country if no salesperson takes any order for just 24 hours! So sales make the wheel of the economy to turn. Be glad you’re a part of it!
Have a Goal: little is ever accomplished without definite goals. So what is it you want to accomplish with your business? Is it to make enough money so you can send your children to a good college? To buy your dream car or house? To move to a choice neighborhood? Whatever your goal, the important thing is that it must be so dear to you that you’ll be willing to do anything to achieve it. It also helps if your goals are realistic and time-bound.
Be Disciplined: when working for a boss, some of us rise up early, get ready and get to office on time. But when presented with an opportunity to be their own boss, some throw away those fine habits. At 11 am they are still in their bathrobe, or taking one more cup of …

CRM – The Secret Language

CRM – The Secret Language

A golden rule of writing is that you are never supposed to write about your family members. Well, I’m going to break that rule, ever so subtly, to make a very important point about the width and depth of communication that CRM software can provide a business organization.

I remember something extraordinary about my relationship with my husband, from the very onset of it. I remember that we didn’t have to talk a lot because we simply understood each other so well. It was sort of secret language in many ways. We could be listening to a friend at a party and make eye contact and convey an emotion, position or sometimes what seemed like an entire conversation through a facial expression or body language that no one else could have even picked up on. Over the years, as our relationship has grown, that secret language (greater understanding with few words) has only strengthened. I think secret languages are pretty common among people that are close. Parents and children have a secret language. Many siblings have a secret language. Best friends of many years sometimes have a secret language. As you read this, you probably have someone that comes to mind that you share a secret language with.

So, how do we emulate that level of understanding and communication outside of a one-on-one relationship? How do we make that natural depth of communication applicable in our business lives? How do we magnify the depth of communication that usually exists between two people (a sales manager and a buyer, as a business example) into a company-wide relationship that is between two companies? How do we create a level of understanding that goes beyond words and goes to anticipating and fulfilling the needs of the other party without being told?

That secret language is really an awareness of needs. When a true connection is made either socially or professionally it is because both parties feel the other one understands them. Suppose you communicated with your customers with the same awareness as someone near and dear, and were able to capture their needs in a way that would differentiate you from your competition? Suppose you could revisit this captured information and used it to anticipate and fulfill the needs of the customer? Suppose not only you could access that information, but your customer service department, or other support staff had access to that same information and were also anticipating the customers needs and working to fulfill them without being told? Suppose the next steps of fulfilling those needs were automated and happened without any more of your time or energy?

That’s a lot to imagine, but in reality it’s much more tangible than a secret language. All of these things are possible through Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. If you had these abilities would it change the dynamic of your relationship with your customers? Would it change the way your customer views you and your company? Would it …

Hate Cold Calling For Your Network Marketing Business? – Check This Out!

Hate Cold Calling For Your Network Marketing Business? – Check This Out!

So you’ve talked to your friends, family, neighbours and even co-workers about your network marketing or MLM business; and you’re finally turning to cold-calling because you’ve run out of prospects. I agree with you that cold calling can be painful, but not if you try the following strategy.

In order to succeed at cold calling to grow your Network Marketing or MLM business you need to get your prospects chasing you and coming to you and wanting more. I know that this sounds crazy, but here’s just ONE method that I’ve personally used in the past and that has had a great impact on my network marketing business.

For starters, you need to find people who are looking for an opportunity because that simply makes your life easier. Second, you need to set the frame that you are the leader and you’re choosing them and not the other way around. They should be glad that they are joining your network marketing business.

Start by looking at employment sites like and . If you have the money to register as an employer than go ahead, but chances are that it’s going to be too expensive. What these sites do is that they will let you look at resumes but they will take the names of the prospects out; THAT OK. Look for candidates in your area and start cold calling.

For this approach to succeed, you need to set the frame. You’re looking to expand your team and you need people who are determined, coachable and have a will to succeed. Let them know that you might take them and that you might not, which is true because the fact is that you don’t want anyone on your network marketing team.

Ask them about their dreams and goals and if you like them, tell them that they will need to do a face to face interview in order for you to accept them in your network marketing team.

Give it a shot and let me know.…

Article Marketing Automation Made Easy

Article Marketing Automation Made Easy

Article Marketing Automation – The Time-Oppressed Entrepreneurs Response

Article Advertising Automation might be the response to all those that don’t possess the time and energy into creating a post marketing campaign operate. Write-up marketing could maybe be incredibly successful as a number of Internet entrepreneurs have witnessed first hand on the other hand it can become a lengthy drawn out process that may drive many struggling to arrive across the time needed to get your group off the ground.

It could be considering that you have received an additional occupation which you simply are nonetheless operating but trying to get sufficient revenue to enable you to depart. It could quite possibly be primarily provided that you’d like to invest your time along with your family members or out fishing, reading through a ebook, taking a hike or something else you’d instead do than get the job done.

One

For those who are trying to get a complete lot of labor accomplished inside a modest window of time, there’s Post Advertising Automation.

1 of quite possibly the most irritating and time consuming components of undertaking post advertising is putting your post in enough places to obtain the utmost quantity of exposure. Write-up advertising is easy and low-cost to complete but is extremely time consuming trying to get revealed in all of the locations you’d like to become.

That is specifically where Post Advertising Automation comes in and aids you. Post Advertising Automation is usually a network of impartial online sites and blogs which have agreed to distribute article content for other Article Advertising Automation network members.

The outstanding factor about that is with the massive measurement on the growing network (at more than 2,000 members) you will be acquiring an added and more bigger number of online sites and blogs might be supplying you with a significantly bigger amount of hyperlinks for your sites.

Post Advertising Automation is not only perhaps the most time successful and price successful way of post advertising around, it’s developing naturally. It is able to getting you ranked to the hugely first web page within nearly three weeks (and they offer coaching to accomplish this). It’ll not only distribute your articles extensively, it’ll supply you relevant content for your own web web sites and blogs.

How Article Marketing Automation functions is proper right after you have either written an article or had 1 written for you, you submit it to the Article Marketing Automation that’s it. It is nothing complicated, just that straightforward. What happens next is your post will likely be distributed to relevant web web sites giving you exposure, hyperlinks, and constructing your authority and traffic.

Article Marketing Automation comes with training on how most beneficial to make use of the network and get the most out of your efforts. They will show you how you may see dramatic will increase in your ranking over the next two and 3 months. They want you to be productive. They need …

2 Marketing Strategies For Boosting Your Revenue Today

Offline marketing doesn’t have to be hard. The easiest way to simplify your marketing efforts is to find a marketing strategy that is bringing you in the most response, and focus on that one marketing strategy online. This will turn you into an expert on this marketing strategy immediately.
And this is important. Because if you want to make more money in your business, it’s more important to be a “marketer” of your business, rather than an “expert” of your niche. Without a lot of prospects and customers coming into your doors, you’ll find it extremely hard to profit immensely in your business.
Inside of this article, I want to share with you some of my favorite marketing strategies that you can start using in your business today. I currently use all of these strategies, and they all have been proven to work for me also. Let’s go and take a look at marketing strategy number 1:
1) Operate in a niche
It’s tough to sell and get responses from a broad group of people who could possibly belong to an entirely different niche that you’re selling to. If you want to get the biggest bang for your buck, then it’s important that you operate in a niche market. So what exactly is “niche marketing”? Well I’m glad you asked.
Niche marketing is all about carving out a segment of a large marketplace, and focusing your efforts on these people alone. For example, there are a lot of products on the market today about how to become a better fisherman. Now you could operate in this money, but it would probably take you a long time to turn a profit selling to these people.
The easiest way to start making money selling to fisherman is to carve out a sub niche out of these groups of people. So instead of selling broadly to fisherman, focus on selling to “fly fisherman.” Or instead of selling broadly to fisherman, focus on selling to “bass fisherman.” This one change alone can help you to boost your sales and profits almost immediately.
Here’s another tip for marketing in your small business.
2) Don’t over think
The best that you can do for yourself is to get out there and start getting your feet wet. This small step will prepare you for what’s ahead in your business’s long-lasting success. By “throwing yourself into the wolves,” you’ll learn quickly and will discover 1 or 2 marketing strategies that really work the best for you. And once you find these 1 or 2 strategies, put them to work for yourself so that you can see more sales and profits coming your way today.
But whatever you do, don’t over think. Keep your mind focused on the end result (sales), and get out there and start promoting your products and services. You’ll be more than happy that you did.
Hopefully you will use these 2 marketing tactics to have the most success in your business as possible. I …

7 Tips to Grow Your Home Staging Business!

Partner up. While many of us choose to go into business for ourselves, by ourselves, partnering up has huge benefits for your staging business. You may being thinking “but then I’ll be splitting the income with someone else!” When you work with another stager, you are adding someone to brainstorm with, an extra pair of hands on the big jobs, and the ability to create even more income by doubling your marketing efforts. Many clients see a staging team as more successful, and more able to respond to their needs. Whether you choose to formally partner up, or create specific joint ventures to snag larger accounts, a partner could be just thing to jump-start your staging business right now.
Expand your services. You’ve done your training, you may have a strong portfolio already, but you’d like to ramp up your business and increase your income. As more stagers come into the market every day, a savvy stager looks for ways to attract new clients, and build the business. With a stager’s training and experience you can easily approach stores in your area to offer display services. Many small stores would love to have a display consultant come to the store once a month or more to give the store a fresh look. Watch for new offices, and office relocations, in your area for opportunities to provide set-up services. Networking with commercial real estate professionals can give you an inside line on these opportunities. There are many other ways to expand your services.
Postcard marketing. There are numerous, and inexpensive, postcard printers that can provide you with a memorable marketing tool. I have had great success in using those postcards as a calling card, and marketing leave-behind at real estate offices, and other target market hot-spots. While mailing postcards can get pricey, these glossy cards are much more effective than a simple business card (and can be passed along to home sellers by the real estate agents.)
Volunteer your services. If you aren’t already doing this, now is a great time to start. Find compatible organizations that could use your services. Your assistance may not be in the form of traditional staging, but perhaps helping to spruce up and organize a tired office, assist with decor and set-up in a project for Habitat for Humanity or similar organization. In addition to the reward of helping others, volunteering your services gives you visibility and can lead to unexpected connections. Career days in local schools, or job shadows, are also a great way to give back to your community while increasing your presence.
Set up a Facebook Fan Page for your business. If you already have a personal Facebook page, you’re halfway there. Setting up a Fan Page on Facebook is relatively easy. It’s important to set up a Fan Page as soon as possible so that you can direct clients and vendors to the Fan Page, not your personal profile page. There are many tutorials on the internet with information on setting …

2 Marketing Strategies For The ClickBank Affiliate

If you’re not familiar with the word “ClickBank”, then you’re missing out on a great opportunity to improve your sales and profits. ClickBank is an affiliate marketplace that allows people to start selling online immediately – and for free. Because of this, many people flock to ClickBank to get their hands on a product that could potentially earn them a lot of money.
As a ClickBank affiliate, you should know that getting ClickBank sales isn’t an easy task. There are so many niches, and depending on the niche that you’re in, it can either be a matter of getting lots of sales quickly, or getting sales months down the line as you work your leads through your email autoresponder.
If you’re an affiliate and you need more sales, then today’s lesson is just for you. You should know that there are a lot of ways to get more sales from the ClickBank product that you’re promoting. There are many techniques out there, and I want to share with you some of my favorite ways to get more sales from the ClickBank products that I sell.
Here’s strategy number 1:
1) Generate leads
It’s going to be a tough sale if you lead someone directly to your sales letter page. If you want to have success, you will want to lead your prospect to your squeeze page, generate a lead, and then follow up on them until they buy. This is like the universal standard of selling anything successfully on the internet.
The more leads you generate, the more sales you will receive. Plus, the longer you email your prospect down the line, the more likely they are to buy your products also – even if it’s 5 months down the line. You have to be persistent with your marketing efforts if you want to see sales coming in from your email marketing efforts.
Here’s another strategy for increase your ClickBank affiliate sales:
2) Send them to a “pre-sell” page
A “pre-sell” page is simply a webpage that is design to teach you about the pros and cons of a particular ClickBank product. Typically they are like product reviews – with the review ending with you favoring and approving the ClickBank product at hand. a lot of people do this right, and a lot of people do this wrong.
Sometimes you will have to compare the product to other products out there on the marketplace, and show them a comparison about how much easier it is to choose the product that you recommend, because it beats the other products incredibly. This can be a great strategy if you know how to do it right.
These 2 strategies for earning more money with ClickBank as an affiliate are things that you will want to take to heart and start using right away. You can totally turn your business around this way, and you can start seeing more sales and profits coming in sooner rather than later.
Good luck with using these tips …

Ideas to Grow Your Business During Your Start Up

Ideas to Grow Your Business During Your Start Up

The creativity stage of business is the most exciting stage because this is the time where you realize your passion and develop your business concept. The main focus of this stage is client acquisition and delivering your products and services. Typically in this phase finances are limited and most business owners are operating under a shoestring budget so the number one thing you should be focusing on is making the cash register ring.

In business, sales are the lifeblood of every organization and as business owners, you need to find ways to generate leads; convert those leads into sales and deliver exceptional service so the customers continue to come back. This should be your number one focus.

Unfortunately, too many business owners spend too much time trying to establish their brand and outward identity before they develop any sales and marketing systems that generate results. Your goal in this stage is to develop sales and marketing programs that anyone in your organization can execute or can be put on autopilot. Here are some ideas:

Low Cost of No Cost Marketing Methods – there are a number of different marketing tactics that you can use that cost you little or no money. Try a few different options to test what brings in the best results and remember to be consistent and use those tactics more than once.

Hand out Gift Certificates to Business Associates – There are many other businesses that market to your ideal buyer. Perhaps it is your accountant, your lawyer, a neighboring retailer or your local community leaders. Print out gift certificates and allow these business associates to offer their customers a free consultation, a free gift or an added bonus from you. This allows you to have access to their customers, allow potential customers to test you out and builds good will with the business associates. A win – win – win situation for everyone.

Use the Media – One of the least expensive ways to market your business is to grab the attention of the media so learn about public relations marketing and how to get instant coverage so everyone knows about you and your business.

Allow people to sample your products and/or services – Since people will be unfamiliar with you allow them to test our your products and services by giving it away for free. This can be in the form of a sample, a free consultation, a free workbook or sample chapters of your new book. The goal is to give them a taste so they will become loyal customers.

Create Refer a Friend Program’ Encourage people to recommend your business and refer your services to their networks. Create a formalized program that motivates them to refer you and make it a point to make those associates feel like VIPs. Some examples are a buy 1 get 1 free program, a special discount on ongoing services or a small gift.

Offer a return customer …

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