To make money online, you have to be consistent. Along with being consistent, you have to remain confident that your online marketing efforts will work out for you in the long term. You should know that most of your internet income will come from backend sales from your current customers.
The bulk of your income WON’T come from front end sales, and your initial customers. Now as hard as you probably work with trying to get more new sales from your initial customers, you should know that this isn’t where you should be spending most of your time on.
If you can come to understand that your money will be made on the backend, you will start to get the big picture, and you will see how your online business income will increase each year. So instead of listening to the gurus about how you should start off with affiliate marketing and start your own “instant business” there… know that you really don’t have a business, because you don’t get the customer name on each sale that you produce.
I want to share with you some tips that will keep you grounded with your online marketing efforts. These tips are incredibly easy to understand and use, and you should know that they are very important to the overall success of your business today. Here’s the first tip that you should know:
1) You won’t get rich fast
I know you’ve probably bought products that claim you can earn $10,000 by the end of the month – even if it’s the 30th day. You should know that you won’t get rich quick. There is no such thing, and as a beginner, it’s in your best interest to use only proven marketing techniques and strategies that will take your business to the next level.
If you have money to spend on advertising, make sure your advertising campaign is profitable. This is very important. The last thing you want to do is to start up an advertising campaign and you don’t even know what the average lifetime value of a customer is in your business. If you want to have business success, learn the ropes and take things slow. Here’s another tip:
2) Get help from someone
If you need help marketing your online business, find a mentor. There are many forums and websites on the internet where you can get advice for free. In fact this is a great idea especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. With a mentor, you get someone who has been around the block, and knows how to make your business grow simply and easily.
You can get help from a mentor and learn the ropes in the shortest amount of time possible. This is something that you definitely will want to look into. A mentor will definitely help you out.
These 2 tips for having success with internet marketing are things that you will want to do if you want to have success with your …
The Secret to Marketing Wealth Happiness
The Secret to Marketing Wealth Happiness
Happiness is found in simple, momentary spaces of time. It can be as simple as observing a robin pluck a worm from the dew covered ground or as exquisite as the first bite of a strawberry covered piece of cheesecake. Happiness is what we all seek no matter what our pursuit. A relationship, a business deal, an academic achievement, we all seek after these things because we view them as intermediaries of our happiness. What if we slowed down long enough to ponder whether in fact these things would truly bring us what we were seeking. Oftentimes they don’t. I am not saying we don’t need these things for some measure of our sustenance-both physical and emotional but oftentimes we end up severely disappointed and even less happy than when we first sought out these things.
I think it important that before one pursues these things one evaluates what happiness truly is. All too often happiness is found inside and all around us. A melodic song heard on the radio or while sampling songs on iTunes. The smell of a bright Spring day. The rustling of leaves on a brisk Fall day. The question becomes what is the practical manifestation of this type of perspective on happiness? What day-to-day experiences will we have with this outlook? How will it change our habits and our fortunes? Will we become rich if we simply have this outlook all of a sudden? Maybe so maybe not. This begs the greater question, what does it mean to be rich? Is rich having ten million dollars in the bank but perpetually worrying over we will be able to keep it? Is rich having great relationships that both financially and psychologically sustain us? I don’t claim to have the answer but am on a journey to find out for myself.
In the meantime I use a system for making money that gives me the time to ponder such deep thoughts while making money and getting to do the things that I enjoy. Using the proximity partner marketing system and a few key prospecting tools that combine the best of online marketing and offline marketing techniques, I can get as many free leads and as much business as I want. Most people would love the luxury of time to ponder the deep thoughts of life but because they are “time poor” cannot. In this age of automated marketing tools, there is no reason why this has to be.
No matter what type of business you are in: consulting, network marketing, real estate or financial consulting, you need leads to sustain your business. Some simple strategic steps will allow you to figure out the best marketing system or combination of systems for your particular business. Important questions to answer as you begin your strategic plan are:
How many leads does it take to convert into a sale?
How long does it take to convert a lead into a sale?
Are my price …
3 Things You Don’t Want To Do When Doing Affiliate Marketing
Are you a fan of affiliate marketing? If not then you should be. Affiliate marketing is the lazy man’s dream. Wake up with sales in the inbox, no customer service, nice monthly cash flow, high sales prices, residual income, and etc. All of these things are real in the affiliate marketing business but you should know that reaching this goal is harder than it seems.
Affiliate marketing is extremely easy to get into, which is why a lot of people fail. They think just because it’s easy to get into, it must be just as easy to make money. This is the wrong way to think about things. If you’re currently into affiliate marketing and aren’t seeing the sales and profits that you desire, then more than likely you’re making some of the mistakes that I have listed in this article.
In this article, you will learn the top mistakes that newbies make when starting out online. It would be in your best interest to not commit these mistakes and to avoid them at all costs. Here’s the first mistake that newbies make.
1) Picking a losing product
I don’t mean to bad talk anyone’s product but you shouldn’t promote something that isn’t proven to sell. You want to pick hot products that are proven to sell time and time again. If you’re in a marketplace such as , they have tracking statistics that let you know how well a certain product is selling. Use this information to your advantage to find winning products that sell repeatedly. Here’s the next mistake beginners make.
2) Picking a product become of commission
You should never pick a product just because it offers a large commission. Is it proven to sell? Does it have testimonials on the sales page? Does it offer a money back guarantee? All of these questions are things that you have to ask before you get started promoting products.
You should never pick a product just because it offers a large commission. If you’re just starting out, it’s probably in your best interest to stick to a product that sells at a low product price and that offers around a 50% commission rate. You want to start out with a product like this so that you can get immediate sales and see that the process is indeed working for you. Here’s another mistake that beginners make.
3) Not having a website
You need your own website if you want to be successful. No matter what the gurus have told you, you need to have your own website. How are you going to do all of the things that the gurus recommend if you don’t have your own website?
With a website, you can start your own email newsletter, do product reviews, start a blog, and even have your own voice. All of these things are available to you when you do affiliate marketing, so keep this in mind before you start marketing your products.
Take these tips and use …
Article Marketing and Blog Networks
Article Marketing and Blog Networks
Many internet marketers try their hand at article marketing. Most simply to distribute their articles to the main article directories, but why stop there? If you submit your articles to private blog networks, the results in terms of search engine rankings can be impressive.
What I do is utilise the combined ranking power of bother article directory listings and blog network posts. To begin with, I submit my newly written articles to the main directories, and then once they are live on those sites, I go ahead and post them to the network of blogs I am a member of. Dependant on the popularity of my chosen niche, my articles are posted to as many 250 or more member blogs, all of which are relevant to the niche! The links from these blogs consistently push my pages up to the top of the search engines. As a result, my web pages consistently reach page one of the main search engines for even some competitive keyword phrases.
The other beauty of the blog network that I am a member of is that it comes with built in article spinning functionality. This means that unique versions of my articles are published to the member blogs giving me opportunity to rank for several keyword phrases from the one base article! And because the links point to my web pages from unique content on relevant individual blogs, they carry more ranking juice.
If you want a source of automated one way linking from genuine web sites, you really should consider using a blog network. There are several networks to select from. The one I use is the largest I know of on the web, with over 15,000 member blogs available to post to. Because of the number of blogs, it is more difficult for the search engines to pick up a linking pattern. Combining traditional article marketing with posting to a blog network has brought me lots of top rankings and traffic in the last twelve months, more than I could have dreamt of before.
If you have multiple web sites or blogs that you’d like to have better rankings for, you really should take a look at the blog networks that are around and give one a go. Writing articles and using them to get you traffic and rankings is a proven strategy that works over and over again. It might not be the sexiest strategy around, but it is proven to deliver results with consistency!…
What Will Make You Successful As An Affiliate Marketer
What is it that will make you money as an affiliate marketer?
Somebody whom I cannot recall for the life of me coined the phrase, “An Irresistible Offer”.
Yep, that is one thing. You will make money online if you can make your potential customers an irresistible offer. Something they want so badly, they cannot wait to buy it.
The emphasis here is on the word, “want”. People seldom buy something they need, that is unless it is an absolute necessity.
People buy what they want, and especially so if they can rationalize their buying decision afterwards with special benefits or features.
So you have to position your product as an irresistible offer when you pre-sell it.
Here is an example
“Natural nutritional supplement XYZ capsules not only has all the minerals and vitamins you body need on a daily basis, but as you are probably aware, your body only retains about 20% of the supplement. XYZ however has a timed release component that helps your body to retain approximately 80% of the supplements.
We know it is a little expensive but where you will have to take three to four times the amount of normal over the counter supplements, you will now have to take only one dosage of XYZ. That alone will lead to about a 50% saving on the cost.
And, to add to that you will now only ingest a third of the additives needed to manufacture capsules. Just imagine in terms of your health, what that will save you.”
That is only a thumb sucked example of course but that is what unheard of benefits and features that makes for an irresistible offer, is made of.
You want that sucker because it is the best and you can rationalize the reason why you’re buying it.
That is the stuff that makes for a buying decision.
Oh yes, and before I forget one more very important point. You and I buy into end results. So the more end results you can illustrate as benefits the better.
Building credibility
This is the most important thing if you want long term affiliate marketing success and of course if you want to build a long lasting, scalable business.
If this all sounds boring to you, then fine, stop reading but if you are serious about business you will take this to heart.
So what do I mean by credibility?
You have to build credibility by only picking offers that will give real benefits and value to your customers.
As soon as you try to offload shady but expensive offers that will benefit your pocket more than it does your customers you can kiss your long term business goodbye.
That is where the credo of giving more than you get comes into play.
It will build loyalty into your customer base and you will retain most of your customers for longer. You will also be able to sell more, more often than your shady counterparts, and this makes for good …
Automating Your Email-Marketing Campaigns
Automating Your Email-Marketing Campaigns
Often, new email marketers want to save cash, and thus opt for managing their email marketing campaigns by hand without the use of software. Now, although in the beginning this is possible, what inevitably happens is that their list grows. First to 100, then 300, then 1000 and before they have time to realize the mess they’ve gotten themselves in to, they’re unable to keep up with standard list management. In order to keep this from happening, it is important to automate many of the repetitive email marketing tasks from the very beginning with good email campaign software.
Email Marketing Software
Ultimately, what new marketers should really do is invest in email campaign software that helps automate the more repetitive tasks. Things like managing un-subscriptions, performance analysis, email design and email scheduling are just a few of the benefits of good email marketing software. Generally, prices range from $10/month all the way to a couple thousand if your list is very big, but chances are that you will be in the $10/month range for quite a while as you begin to grow your list. There are multiple software programs available and a simple Google search will bring up a handful of good ones, but ultimately the point of email marketing software is to help you focus on two things, and they are performance testing and writing great content.
Performance Testing
One of the most important tasks of any email marketer is performance testing. This involves segmenting your list and then simply trying various calls to action, designs, button placement and so-on. After making a few changes and sending a fresh newsletter, record the results and then make changes again. Over time you will notice that a certain combination of text, calls to action and layout consistently perform the best. This is one way professional email marketers get such good results, it’s because they test! Now, it’s not very easy to test your emails on your own, especially as your email list grows, but great email marketing software will help automate this aspect by literally tracking exactly which subscribers open and respond to your emails. This, in my opinion, is one of the greatest benefits of email marketing software.
Content
The other important benefit of email marketing software is that it lets you focus on content. Now, there are many different theories on what makes great content for an email marketing newsletter, but generally, it’s important to consider your audience first. I notice that many new email marketers focus their newsletters too much on their own business, which of course is important to you but boring for most everyone else. Because of this, it’s important to consider your audience and make your material unique and interesting. Simply including a poll, a few links to beneficial “how-to” articles or even interviewing someone in the field and providing a download to the audio file in the email will do wonders for your conversion rates and subscriber retention. Remember, nobody …
Discover How To Automate Your Marketing For Ultimate Leverage And Freedom
Discover How To Automate Your Marketing For Ultimate Leverage And Freedom
If you own a business you have probably contemplated how to automate your marketing for ultimate leverage and freedom. Many people go into business to do something they love to do. But then reality comes along.
In order to continue doing what they love and make enough money to stay open, they need to make money. Making money requires customers. Gaining customers requires sales and marketing. These become full-time jobs and soon there is not enough time left to do what they love doing. But they cannot just close down in many instances. Money has been invested and must be recovered. And so these owners feel trapped.
Perhaps this has happened to you and you are looking for a way out of this trap. Maybe you have not yet experienced this and are looking to avoid this situation. If so, then automating your marketing may be just what you are looking for.
This process takes most, if not all, of the work out of finding potential customers. Through various methods, both online and offline, people find out about the goods and services you offer. They respond, putting their name into an automated system. They are then given information in stages by the system until they are screened out or until they buy.
You, as the owner of the business, supply the information for the system. After all, who knows the business better than you do? This information is then organized and inserted into the proper sequence.
With diligent study, you can learn these steps and do them by yourself. But, if you are like many people, and you would rather not go through this effort, you can outsource. Many companies exist that focus solely on setting up such marketing processes.
Once the system is fully implemented, it attracts prospective buyers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It never sleeps, nor goes on vacation. All for a price far less than you would pay one worker to help a few hours a day. Once it is up and running, you can almost forget about it. The system will need updated information from time to time, like if you add new products or services.
However, once the system is functioning, you no longer need to go find customers yourself. The automated process does it for you. You are then free to concentrate on doing what you went in business to do.
So, if you are tired of chasing after business, then you may be ready for this step. You may wish to learn more about how to automate your marketing for ultimate leverage and freedom. Make sure that you do your homework to find the best solution for your circumstances.…
Smart Marketing Strategies For Small Business – Part 5 – How to Develop Your Marketing Message
Smart Marketing Strategies For Small Business – Part 5 – How to Develop Your Marketing Message
Smart marketing strategies are simply not an option for the small business owner. Today’s economic conditions are generating fierce competition for the same dollars spent on products and services. There is a trend toward social media marketing and many small business owners are not prepared. The challenges are many, and there has never been a better time to get down to business and discover how to be the smartest marketer in your field. It will payoff in spades, as they say!
In previous articles, we discussed understanding your major goals, understanding your target market, and understanding your customer. We even talked about determining your niche correctly and narrowly. Now, let’s talk about your actual marketing message.
It’s Called an “Elevator Speech”
I went to a marketing conference in Las Vegas earlier this year and we got together in small groups for about an hour to figure out our “elevator speech.” It was time well spent, and it wasn’t as easy as you might think. The idea is to be prepared to answer the question, “What do you do?” if you get into an elevator with someone and they ask the question, and you just have enough time to go up or down a few floors and answer the question. In other words, it has to be short and snappy, and get the point across. I’ve actually developed two of these “elevator speeches” – one is very short – about 10 seconds long, and the other is about twice as long – no more than 30 seconds.
When you work on this, do it with someone who knows what you do, and will be honest with you. Also, pick the brightest and most creative person you can to partner with you on this. You want someone who’s good with words. Have a notebook handy and write it down. You’ll end up scratching out a few of them, but keep at it and soon you’ll have it down. Then memorize it and test it on some people. You may even want to revise it after some use and testing.
Note: You’ll want to refine this short marketing message into your bio on Twitter.
Your Complete Marketing Message
This is the information that you will include in all your marketing materials – business cards, flyers, post cards, Facebook Business Pages. Remember, this marketing message needs to accomplish two things: 1) It will tell what you do, and 2) It will give information to persuade people to become your customer or client.
Here are some thoughts about what to include in your complete marketing message:
Define your prospect’s problem
Give proof that this problem is urgent enough it should be solved immediately
Tell why you have the perfect answer to the problem
Give benefits your clients will receive
Provide testimonials
Explain pricing and payment options
Always include an unconditional guarantee (decide on a time line – 30, 60, …
4 Steps For Building a Small Business
4 Steps For Building a Small Business
Setting up a productive and successful small business is very difficult endeavor. It’s actually dependent on numerous external variables, such as competitors, timing and demand from customers, that you’ve got hardly any control over at first. If every one of these external variables are to your advantage, developing a good business strategy may lead to having a profitable small business. Listed below are 5 steps to take into account when you are setting up your small business from the ground-up:
1. Decide on your small business. What exactly are you selling?
Tricky question, for sure. For instance, Nike is within the sportswear business, but the fact is any time you purchase a set of Nike sneakers along with a t-shirt in the shopping mall you are purchasing much more than sportswear – you are purchasing a perception, a sensation. You’re purchasing the Nike brand. Don’t forget, there is much more to a product than, well, the product. Your brand name is the thing that sets your product apart from your competition.
2. Choose your market. Who will be your targeted customer?
This step is not hard as the first, although it is just as important. Who will be your customer? What do you know about that particular person? Knowing your customer is usually a way to success. What exactly are they are doing? The place do they really hang around? Precisely what do they watch on tv? These are just some of the questions which you must be able to answer regarding your customer. Figuring out the answers to these questions can answer a great deal of your concerns in terms of creating an advertising and marketing approach. This power to comprehend your consumer’s need could only be a consequence of knowing them just like your neighbors.
3. Develop your advertising and marketing approach. How would you speak with these persons?
It is a final comprehension of your brand and your customer. As said before in number 2, comprehension of your customer can answer a great deal of questions with regards to your advertising and marketing approach: Where must you advertise? What’s the style of your respective brand? What sort of pricing is affordable for this market? So that you can interact with your customer, a.k.a. sell your merchandise directly to them, you must understand exactly where your ads are going to be seen, how to talk to them, and exactly how much they should be able to spend, among the other things. Seriously, this step ought to have been combined with previous simply because who your market is determines your advertising and marketing approach completely.
4. Find similar circumstances. Seek the advice of people who have done it.
There are numerous training books published by experts who have previously began their very own small business and also have succeeded in them.
Keep in mind, setting up a profitable small business isn’t just about the money. Nearly as important is your brand as …
4 Simple Steps For Growing a Profitable Email List Online
If you’re marketing online there is no reason at all not to have an email list. You don’t need your own product to sell to grow and profit from your own list. All you need is an autoresponder system and a way for people to optin to your list from your web site.
In fact, building a list before having your own product can be pretty cool as you instantly have a list of targeted prospects for your offer once you finish your product and it’s ready to go to market.
In the meantime, you can make money online by sending out quality offers to your list as an affiliate.
Money Making Key – having a list of people interested in your topic, that trust you and see you as an expert in the field (or someone who can point them in the right direction) will allow you to grow a profitable, successful, long-term business online.
1. Bribe ‘Em!
You have to get them on your list, right? This isn’t 1998 when email was new and all you had to do was offer a free email newsletter. People are overwhelmed nowadays with email they don’t want.
So you need to offer something for free, that is QUALITY information, in the form of a short report, autoresponder series, audio or video, based on the topic that they are interested in learning more about.
If you give them quality information, they will be more likely to trust you and buy from you when you do recommend something that costs money.
2. Make ‘Em Pay First! – List size doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t make you money. One way to grow a quality list is to make them pay first! Offer something of high quality at a low price of $5 or $10.
You’ll get a lot less people to optin. The major upside is that everyone that gets on your list has already proven they are willing buyers and that’s ultimately what you want.
3. Make it Easy for ‘Em! – Don’t hide your optin box! If you run a blog or content site place an optin form in your side navbar AND at the beginning or end (or both) of every article or blog post!
4. Test Test Test! – You gotta constantly test your offer. Keep trying new ways to get people on your list to improve your conversion rate.
The more visitors you can convert to subscribers the more money you can make from your list (you should be testing your offers once they are on your list as well).…
The Power of Multimedia Vignettes
The Power of Multimedia Vignettes
So, how do you harness the power of your organization and put it in the hands of your salespeople? How do you cut through all the internet clutter, the barrage of messages and information, so your business stands out from your competition? The answer comes from using the internet in a different way from everyone else.
Enter the world of multimedia vignettes – small nuggets of knowledge – points of view – insights – presented to your customers in dynamic and efficient ways. Knowledge driven by PowerPoint builds, e-mails, audio or even video footage taken from a device as simple as a Flip camera.
Imagine being able to take your latest survey data and translate the raw information into a high-quality vignette, including screen shots and a voice-over, that your sales force would be happy to use. Imagine being able to send this vignette out, like breaking news, a couple of hours after receiving your data.
Vignettes can be the crucial difference in demand generation. A recent survey of one company’s sales people showed a 71% improvement in response rate when an e-mail was sent with a link to a vignette. Potential customers watched the vignettes instead of just ignoring an e-mail or sales call. The customer responded to the sales person because of the value generated by the message vignette. So a short, tight, simple vignette with the promise of an exciting interaction can dramatically enhance the response to your sales program.
The vignette allows your sales staff to cut through the clutter, bringing power to their approach for all aspects of the sale, including call preparation, appointment setting and post-meeting follow up.
Affordability is one of the many benefits of the vignette. Costly, time-consuming production methods are a thing of the past. And quality doesn’t have to suffer because the vignette is less expensive than the old multimedia production methods. You only have to look at YouTube to experience the kind of slick, eye-catching messages that people around the globe produce quickly and inexpensively.
The vignette is perfect for simplifying a complex idea or making an abstract idea easier to understand. When you factor in convenience and the power of information technology, the stellar importance of the vignette comes shining through.
In today’s world, outstanding, relevant messages must be delivered rapidly to your customer. Businesses don’t have the luxury of waiting three months to create and deliver content. The multimedia vignette gives your message ultimate flexibility and on-demand precision. Marketing automation, a sales tool that tracks data and allows your marketers to hold meaningful “conversations” with your customers, can help you manage your entire sales process, including vignette creation.…
B2B Marketing – White Papers and Marketing Automation
B2B Marketing – White Papers and Marketing Automation
Online marketing offers B2B marketers the opportunity to reach millions of potential clients around the globe, but the early phases of your online efforts can feel a bit lonely.
Working online will often make you feel like you’re standing in the middle of an empty field yelling about your amazing service. Everything you say is both true and potentially compelling, but no one is around to hear, and more importantly, act on what you’re saying.
B2B marketers often feel this way upon the completion of a great new white paper. They’ve developed clear and helpful content and their deliverable is expertly designed, and the executives are excited about the potential results.
So what now? Obviously, online is the only realistic distribution method for white papers and other thought leadership pieces, but simply offering the paper on your website fails to leverage the capabilities of online marketing.
The value of marketing automation
In the online space, user attention spans are incredibly short. Even if someone goes through the trouble of providing the necessary information to download your content, it’s probable that you’ll never hear from them again. Marketing automation, however, allows your company to maintain top-of-mind awareness among these lukewarm leads while allowing your sales organization to focus on following-up only on the hot leads.
So, for example, let’s say you require a bit of contain information in exchange for your new paper or report. When the contact downloads the paper, their information is sent to the marketing automation platform. The best systems will then score the lead based on the data the entered. If the lead’s profile is rated highly, the lead’s info is passed to sales; anyone who falls below the preset benchmark is sent into a nurturing, or drip, campaign.
The nurturing campaign then sends the lead information from your company weekly or a few times a month. This content usually consists of other white papers, case studies, reports, and other helpful and interesting information. Ideally, your content both helps them do their job better while positioning your company as a thought leader in your space.
This scenario is a very high-level view of how white papers and marketing automation work together. Without a strong white paper distribution strategy, however, your b2b marketing plan will fail to leverage the invsetment you’ve already made in creating your white paper.…
Cleaning Business Dilemma – Subcontractors Or Employees?
Cleaning Business Dilemma – Subcontractors Or Employees?
As a small business owner of a cleaning company, one of the challenges you faces on how to run a cleaning business is the cost-effectiveness of your decisions. Since the house cleaning business is a business that involves the selling of services rather than products, it is quite difficult to decide as to whether you should hire employees or simply work with subcontractors.
Employees
Having employees and personnel in your company does have its own benefits too. For one, you can have some people that you can rely on, especially on how to run a cleaning business – during the times when you are not around. Plus, these are people whom you have trained, thus can do the job as you expect it to be done. The only thing about having employees is that aside from paying them their salaries, which by the way, must not be below the minimum wage set by the government, you also have to provide them with their other employee benefits such as sick leave, vacation leave with pay, and other allowances. In other words, aside from their salaries, you are obliged to provide them with their employee compensations as required
by the government.
However, if you are a good employer, most of your employees will definitely stay with you and you will have skilled and experienced staff in your company, which is a plus point on your cleaning business’ marketing. So basically, it’s a give and take situation – you pay them, provide them their compensations, and in return, you get reliable, skilled, and experienced staff that can make your company.
Subcontractors
Subcontractors are independent contractors that you hire only for a certain job. They are not employed by you. So you simply pay them their fee, and that’s about it. However, having subcontractors means having the same company to work for you, but the people they send are not the same. The only focus is to get the job that you hired them for, done. If you are just starting out, you can hire subcontractors to help you accommodate your cleaning jobs. However, when you are fully operational with a steady pool of clients, you might be better off with employees – it is financially more practical too.
On the other hand, hiring subcontractors to accommodate the extra services that you offer is also a good idea, since these services are not asked for often. Plus, your subcontractors can also be one of your cleaning business’ marketing tools – they can tell their other clients about you too.
It’s your house cleaning business and you call the shots. Just see what is practical and cost-effective for you and go for it.…
Using Television Advertising To Your Advantage
If you want to see your business survive, you need a powerful marketing strategy. Anything that you can do to effectively promote your products and services are a good step in the right direction. Now notice that I said “promote your products and services” as opposed to “promote your business”. There’s a distinct difference between the 2, and I want to share with you some of these differences.
When you promote your business, you’re relying on a form of brand advertising. With brand advertising, you’re wasting thousands of dollars trying to convince the public that you’re a major corporation. But you should know that it’s not about convince people that you’re a big company. What it all boils down to is whether or not you can compel your prospects to become a new customer.
When you promote your products and services, you take an entirely different approach to marketing your business. Instead of focusing on your brand and what you stand for, you’re going at the precise problem that your prospects are having. This is known as “target marketing”, and it’s something that you will want to learn how to do if you want to have success in your business.
With target marketing, you’re taking a direct path towards selling to an individual prospect. What this means is that you’ll spend less money marketing, and spend more time on those prospects who are ready and willing to do business with you. Target marketing is something that I recommend, and it’s something that you should start doing today.
Now that we’ve covered “target marketing”, let’s take a look at a technique that is sure to put you in the “profitable” category. Here’s the technique:
– Television advertising
If you are going to do television advertising, then you should really start to learn about direct marketing. You see you can’t make your entire TV ad all about building your brand. You have only about 30 seconds to make your pitch, and to get people to order from you right away.
TV advertising on a national scale can become quite expensive, so it’s best if you stick to local area advertising only. For some franchise businesses, they don’t have to worry about TV advertising because headquarters run these ads for them automatically. But since you’re a “little guy”, you will more than likely want to stick with direct response advertising.
In your TV ad, make sure your website and phone number are obviously displayed. You don’t have that much time to get your message across. You have to imagine your visitor with the remote in their hand, ready to click to another channel. It’s your job to make these visitors stay on your TV ad, so that you can convince them on taking action on your free offer of some sort.
And by the way, when running television ads, attempt to generate a lead. This way you’ll build yourself up a nice list of people that you can market to over and over …
Affiliate Marketing Tips – Is Video Right For Your Product?
There are many ways to promote an affiliate product. One of those ways is through the use of video. But is video right for your product? How can you tell? This article is going to take a brief look at this subject to see if we can come up with a viable answer.
If you’ve been following the fads that have come and gone on the Internet, you know that one of the big new things is video. Everybody and their grandmother is uploading videos to YouTube to hawk one thing or another. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that video is bad. It’s not. It’s great. I use it myself for a number of products. However, there are certain things that lend themselves more to video than others.
Essentially, you want to use video for products that are more visually and/or sound oriented. For example. Let’s say I am promoting a book on songwriting and I want to show people what I’ve learned from the book in order to convince them to buy it. Wouldn’t I have more success if I made a video of me actually using the information to write a song right in front of the viewer’s eyes? Imagine actually playing the song right on the video itself. Think this won’t greatly help sell the product? Trust me, it will.
Now, another great use of video is with the testimonial. Lots of people are very skeptical about buying things off the Internet. The dot com bust of the 90s saw to that. So, making a video of you talking about a product does a couple of things. For starters, it allows the viewer to see that you’re an actual person. You’re no longer a faceless name on the Internet. This helps build trust. For another, they can then see how sincere you are by the way you speak (providing you are sincere). One of my videos endorsing Nitro Marketing Blueprint has been one of my most successful because people can really see how excited I am about the product. You can’t fake that kind of enthusiasm.
Video can probably work very well for most affiliate products. The only way to really tell is to test it out. Create one, watch it and see if you believe what you just saw. Be objective. If you feel the video will help the sales process, go with it. If not, it’s probably best to can the idea. Ultimately, it’s a judgment that you’ll get better at making as time goes by.
To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim…
Article Marketing Automation – Effective Marketing Over the Net
Article Marketing Automation – Effective Marketing Over the Net
Perhaps the most tedious and time consuming phase of doing an article marketing is putting your article in adequate sites to have the highest percentage of publicity. Writing articles for marketing consume a lot of time when you reach the point where you are striving to get published in as many sites as possible but it is less expensive and simple to do.
This kind of marketing automation through writing articles can help you at this point. It is a group of sovereign websites and weblogs that are establish to issue articles for other members of Article Marketing Automation group.
The huge advantage of this is with the big size of the ever increasing group you will be having a bigger number of websites and weblogs that will have links back to your sites.
Automation in writing articles intended for marketing saves you time and money and because a lot of marketers are attracted to it and that is why it is getting bigger everyday. It is able to get you on page number one of any search engine in just about 20 days. Aside from issuing your articles extensively, you can also get related content for your personal websites and weblogs.
Following the process is without fuss. You write an article or have somebody write it for you and then you forward it to the Article Marketing Automation group and you are done. It is that easy. After that, your article will be issued and circulated to related websites handing you publicity, links, and traffic.
There is also a training offered by Article Marketing Automation on how to use the group and maximize the publicity that you get. They will teach you how to have a higher rank over the span of 2 to 3 months. They want you to flourish because the existence of this group depends on the success of its members. The more triumph you come upon, so as the other members of the group.
Article marketing is no doubt one of the most popular means of marketing on the internet today. It is a possible way to get yourself that freedom to do whatever you want to do other than work. And Article Marketing Automation will be your tool in achieving a successful article marketing campaign in less time and money spent.…
Marketing Automation of Your Articles For Business
Marketing Automation of Your Articles For Business
If you are marketing products or services, you need to let others know what you are doing. Marketing Automation of articles builds your business.
Writing relevant informative articles related to your products and services is essential to building your business reputation and credibility. Creating a successful business means using great tactics to gain exposure. You need to let others know what you are doing through article creation and use tools for Marketing Automation of your business on line. The informative pieces you create about your business go a long way to branding you as credible and reputable.
It is very important to produce content of importance in relation to your business and also you need to have quality products and services. Quality important information in your article content is a bonus to your business to maintain customer interest. If the content is strong in relation to what they are looking for, your business can flourish. Potential customers won’t even look at your product or service unless they feel they can trust you.
Every business needs quality software applications for production and distribution of articles and website creation. Good use of these can make Marketing Automation a routine that can be accomplished where limited time and budget are required. Hiring or outsourcing website creation and content on a continuing basis to develop and grow a business can be very expensive. This especially will not work in the micro niche businesses that produce a small monthly return, but with Marketing Automation, acquisition of quality software applications can help a person with limited time and resources produce multiple micro niche businesses which can reach 7 figures annually.
In summary write the hot reports. Chock it full of information your target market enjoys. Find and acquire the quality software you will need to create your websites, get your website business and articles to page one in search engines. Without some form of Marketing Automation software, you will be hanging out for weeks trying to get one small micro niche business up and earning money.
There is more free information on acquiring free software applications and purchasing needed Marketing Automation Software here.…
2 Tools To Build Your Email List With
If you have an opt-in email list, then you have taken the right step towards making your business successful. If you want to stay in business online, you will have to keep a close look at what it takes for you to remain competitive in your niche, and also what it takes to make your email subscribers happy.
There are a lot of list building strategies out there that a lot of online marketers don’t know about. This is particularly true when it comes to newbies. But list building is something that you will want to do if you want to have a booming and thriving online business. And in today’s lesson, this is exactly what I will focus on.
I want to share with you a few ways that you can build up your email list so that you can market to them over and over again. These techniques are simple and easy to use, and I think that you can benefit from knowing what they are. In fact, here’s the first list building technique that you can use in your business:
1) Use Twitter
You can use Twitter to get a lot of leads into your email marketing funnel. With Twitter, you can get leads for free, and you can get a lot of people visiting your website just off of this one technique alone. This is something that is incredibly easy to do, and you will want to add it to your marketing arsenal today if you haven’t already.
There are a lot of sites out there that you can use to totally improve your Twitter marketing strategy. 3 great sites that I know of are: Twellow, Twibes, and Social Oomph. All of these of 3 these sites can get you the leads you need to have success with your internet marketing campaign.
Twitter is an excellent way to gather new leads, and the best part about it is that it’s free. As your Twitter follower count grows, more and more people will comment on your posts and your page, and you can easily interact with your followers. This is also a great way to build a relationship with your list. Here’s another tip for building your email list:
2) Use Facebook
Facebook is the number 2 ranked website on the internet in terms of website traffic, so you can definitely benefit from using this website to boost your email list count simply and easily. Many people are using Facebook to do their marketing with, because they think it’s a great way to get to know their Facebook fans, and to lead them back to their website where they can buy something.
Facebook is a great website if you want to get more new opt-in email subscribers. Soon people will “like” you on Facebook. Then they will sample your information. Then they will click back to your website. And then they will opt-in to your email newsletter, or even buy something from you. This is absolutely a …
Network Marketing Tips: 5 Ways to Stay Motivated
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why it’s recommended daily.” Zig Ziglar
In the network marketing industry, you will become subjected to a great deal of negative experiences which will truly test your desire and commitment. From your wife complaining that you still have boxes of products left over from the last company you dealt with, to your neighbours closing the window blinds when they see you.
Network marketing is a tough business. How you approach and deal with the negative attitude of others is what will define your success. One of the best ways to deal with these issues is to find a way to motivate yourself on a daily basis.
Here are 5 ways you could motivate yourself in your network marketing business.
Praise yourself on small, individual efforts. Whether it’s signing up a new customer, handing out a business card to a prospect or scheduling a 1 on 1 meeting. Be happy with this progress and tell yourself that it’s important to your overall business success.
Read or listen to the success stories of others to find out what obstacles they had to overcome. It does not matter if these people are with your company, another network marketing business or involved in a different industry altogether. The steps they took to reach the top can transcend any business.
Get your daily dose of motivational quotes. You can find many on-line, as several prominent web sites offer weekly email notifications offering motivational quotes. Rediscover the reason “why” you entered the network marketing industry. This reason should be important enough to get you past the negative aspect of the business. Have your “why” written down and read it daily.
Find yourself a mentor. The best scenario would be if you could find someone who is in the same company as you, but, that it is not absolutely critical. It is important however, that the mentor be involved in the network marketing industry. whenever you are feeling down, give that person a call and discuss ways to re motivate yourself.
Motivation is one of the key attributes you can possess in any business, but most importantly in network marketing. Make sure that you are staying motivated on a daily basis.
If you enjoyed reading this article, please feel free to share it with others.
Wishing you great success.…
Set Your Marketing Business Apart With Video
Set Your Marketing Business Apart With Video
Marketing firms are responsible for helping businesses get the exposure they need for their business to thrive and grow. Therefore, anyone interested in setting up their own marketing business needs to be outgoing, have lots of contacts, and have skills for evaluating business marketing needs. And since there are many marketing firms out there, you have to be able to set yourself apart from the crowd. One way to do that is with expert video marketing on the web.
Promoting your marketing firm on a local basis still requires making contacts in person. Make it part of your everyday business plan to contact people you know to let them know what you are doing, because networking is the key to success. And even if you specialize in video marketing online, you’ll need offline tools like business cards and brochures for your business.
Because web video has become such an amazingly important force in internet marketing, it is a great place to specialize these days. Believe it or not, video accounts for around 60% of all web traffic, so you can see how solid video marketing can have a huge impact on your potential clients or even your own website.
YouTube consistently ranks in the top five most visited websites in the United States with over 2 billion views a day, and right now getting video to the top of local search results is fairly easy, making video marketing software and video distribution software critical to your success in local business marketing. In other words, now is a great time to position yourself as a leader in local video marketing.
Being able to shoot, edit, and distribute videos to multiple video sharing sites and social media sites is a real plus for local businesses. But you may have to make a case for web video as a promotional tool for small local businesses, who may not see the web as being that relevant to them. Understanding local business needs and offering them more value for their marketing dollar is what will build your client base.
Video is a terrific tool for showing off the benefits that local businesses offer. For example, while your local lawn mower dealer wants to sell mowers, your video productions should show the benefits of owning those mowers in the form of a lush, green lawn in front of a beautiful house. Everybody knows what a mower looks like, but they may need to be reminded of the benefits of owning a certain mower.
To become a success with a video marketing business, you’ll also have to be well-versed in the art and science of search engine optimization, or SEO. This is a matter of building or modifying websites and their content (including video) so that they rank as highly as possible in search engine searches for relevant keywords. With the big search engines now honing their local search features, this is another great place to get in ahead of …
Thought Leadership Interview – Jill Konrath on Closing the Gap Between Marketing and Sales
Thought Leadership Interview – Jill Konrath on Closing the Gap Between Marketing and Sales
Jill Konrath wrote the first section of The Quintessential Marketing Automation Guidebook where she wrote a letter from Sales telling Marketing exactly what was needed to help drive revenue. If only companies were that brave. Her letter stirred up reactions from our readers, so I caught up with Jill to ask her to share a few more insights about how to bring marketing and sales closer together.
CD: What does marketing need to do to get salespeople to use the content they provide?
JK: Write good content. Most of what marketing produces today sucks. It’s self-serving tripe that highlights the company’s fabulous products, unique methodologies and state-of-the-art technologies. When sellers use this type of content, it trivializes them with customers. They’re seen as product-pushing peddlers who add little value to the sales process.
Educate the sales force. After an eternity of only getting crap from marketing, salespeople don’t have a clue how to use good content. They need to know how to follow up effectively on leads with content during the sales process.
Make it simple. Salespeople don’t have a lot of time. If it’s scattered across the website, it won’t be used. If it’s not intuitive, it won’t be used. Make it as much a no-brainer as possible.
CD: In SNAP Selling, you talk about the prospect’s three decisions. What are they and how do they related to content?
JK: Basically prospects make three primary decisions when it comes to dealing with salespeople. Their 1st Decision is to “allow access” to them. Sellers may only want a small amount of their time, but today’s crazy-busy buyers are stingy with it. At this stage, salespeople could use content related to the value other firms have used from using the company’s offering. This supports their reason for getting together and increases their chances of setting up a meeting.
The prospect’s 2nd Decision is to “initiate change” – which is something they are loathe to do with everything else on their calendar. Sellers desperately need good content to help prospects determine if making a change would provide significant value for their organization. This could include case studies, white papers, podcasts, articles, analyst reports and more.
Finally, the prospect’s 3rd Decision is to “select resources.” At this phase, sellers need content that differentiates them from other vendors and supports the company’s strengths. Please notice that I didn’t say brochures. They provide little value except at the very end of the sales process. In my opinion, fancy four-color glossies are a relic of the past – even though salespeople may still be clamoring for them. There are enough sales dinosaurs out there who haven’t yet realized that brochures create significant collateral damage and destroy more opportunities than they gain.
CD: In SNAP Selling, you present a Buyers’ Matrix. How would you suggest using this matrix as a tool to create a more productive relationship between marketing and sales?
JK: Every …
Attraction Marketing: Does It Work or Not?
Attraction marketing refers to a set of marketing strategies that enables you to draw people towards your site, and it’s a concept that relies more on your trustworthiness than on the services or products you’re providing. If you’ve already set up a good name and image for yourself, attraction marketing can be a very efficient tool. But, it only works if you can send across the right message.
Such marketing strategies have to be developed step by step, in time. They require a network marketer to pay attention to his /her clients and prospects and particularly on websites where he/she has the opportunity to meet people that share the same interests. Attraction marketing is all about connecting people with matching interests and needs. The relationships are built on shared interests and not on the desire to make a sale or advertise a product.
This marketing technique will give each network marketer better results than other strategies, because once a connection is set up, a client will keep on returning to the seller since he sees him as a friend and he can blindly trust on him. These are long-lasting relationships that have the tendency to develop better results. It might not be easy to initiate a first connection, because trust building is time-consuming, but, once this is accomplished, there really is no limit on what you can do.
Any network marketer can benefit from this method, because, this industry especially needs constant contact and co-operation for it to grow into a successful business. If a company gets established like where you care for each other and trust strongly to each other, it’s going to be a good sign for you since you would be able cooperate better and strive to accomplish the common goals. This is highly beneficial for a network marketer, as it makes communication and disclosure easier in any interaction with potential clients or buyers.
Attraction marketing is a powerful tool in any kind of business, but, more so when it comes to network marketing. Gaining trust among your group of prospects and friends is a long and demanding process. You can search for prospects on social websites or around your home. The key is to make them feel like they’re your friends and not your clients. Thus, ongoing communication and sharing is very important. You’re not trying to make a sale; all you are doing is providing them with a solution for their problem.
The concept is pretty much the same – you’ll end up selling them your products, but, the difference is that you’re offering them something that they actually need. A regular network marketer usually does not care whether the product that he is selling going to help his client or not. This is the difference between attraction marketing and basic marketing techniques, which are directed towards general public.
As always, offer solutions to their wants, needs, and desires first. This positions you as an expert in the eyes of your prospects.…
Marketing Automation Software Builds and Improves Business
Marketing Automation Software Builds and Improves Business
There are many advantages to companies by the use of Marketing Automation Software. It will help to reduce the activities which are complex and also reduce the complexity of low costs. It has two tasks whose provide help to this software to doing this. The two tasks are:
Segmentation of customer database: This is the first task which helps to sub-sectioning of your customer database into unique fields which all are based on consumer; we will do this type of job by use of this task that is Customer segmentation. There are many multiple segments if the marketers will focus on that this thing will increase the efficiency of marketers. Using Marketing Automation Software, if there is properly segmentation of database held it will help to improve purchasing rates and then the each segment has test message which is different from each other within your database that increases existing base revenue.
Campaign Management: This is the second task. By using this task we can execute automation. By this campaign management, Marketers can design campaigns of content by all the help of system that contents are delivered to your scenario. The automation of campaign is same as people do an investment account. There is better way to add small amounts of money continuously. There are marketing messages and content all are focused on a single theme which would be e-mail marketing campaign. There are many software tools whose focus on email marketing, also there are very advanced applications whose focus on blogging, social media. Marketers can create their contents once by the use these new tools, the sharing of the contents on many digitals channels by the help of tools.
Software builds business: When the use of software tools is proper and by intelligence, marketing automation software will build business, provides profit in business. There is distribution of contents to attract new customers by the use of this software tool, and tool increases the value of your existing customers. These software tools are of low cost and very user friendly.…
Tips For Reactivating Past Customers And Selling To New Ones
Getting more new customers for your business is something that is hard to do. You have to know how much you can afford to spend on an ad because of something called the “average lifetime value”. You will also need to know what your cost per lead is, and what your cost per sale is.
If you don’t know the figures for the examples that I’ve stated above, then your business is on hanging on a thin piece of ropes. Take a look at all of your customers and see how many of them have bought from you more than one time. It’s these people that you will want to start with when it comes to bringing them back into your business.
You will also want to send letters to customers who have bought once, but haven’t purchased anything recently. With these people, you will want to send them a reactivation letter to get them out of their dormant state, and get them back into your business.
Where could you start with a reactivation letter? Well one way to get inspiration is in something called a “swipe file”. Your swipe file is a collection of winning ads and sales letters that you can modify and use in your business. There are a ton of swipe files on the internet for a low cost, so I suggest you begin your search here.
If you’re wondering what you could say when doing your reactivation letter, here are a few tips.
1) Tell them that you miss them
Let your customers know that it has been months (or even years) that you last heard from them, and tell them that you would like to hear from you again. Give them your email address so that they can contact you in a low sales presence atmosphere. Ask them if they are doing ok, and that you would like to see them come to your business again. This is a great way to start.
I once saw a guy write a reactivation letter where his entire premise was to make these people laugh. His letter was so clever that I almost called the number too! Lol… in all seriousness though, writing a reactivation letter doesn’t have to be hard to do. Here’s another quick tip for improving your sales and profits.
2) Contact your customers
Your one-time customers aren’t the only people that you should be mailing to. You should also send a letter to your recurring customers every month, just to keep them in the loop, and to get them to buy more of your products. This is where 80% of all your sales and profits will come from. So ignoring these group of people isn’t something that you will want to do.
Both of these tips for contacting your customers to make more sales are very simple to put into action. These are strategies that I use myself, so you can lay rest assured that they will work for your business also.
Good …
Having A Tweet Tooth
Many people initially thought the world had gone bonkers when Twitter was introduced, with some folks clearly thinking that they would rather have their toenails pulled out, one by painful one, than to join in the ‘Me Me MEEE!’ behavior of Twitter.
Frankly, it is kind of true that Twitter is one of the most narcissistic tools in the world but here is the deal – it is also through Twitter that we find old friends and make new ones. It is through Twitter that businesses make conversations with their customers and it is also where they get connected to people who had problems with their services and products (and make good of the complaint).
Through Twitter, we know precisely where reporters and journalists are whenever they head out on dangerous missions in war-torn countries. It is also where we keep in touch with our favorite celebrities and find humor in the way they sometimes ‘Twight’ unashamedly online. We also used to Twitter to find survivors of natural disasters and connect friends and family members when they were in trouble.
All in all, there are pros and cons to using Twitter. Just in case you don’t know, you can go private with the Direct Message tool. You don’t REALLY have to tell the world EVERYTHING.
Despite all the initial chagrin shown by some less-than-ready-to-tweet people of yesterday, Presidents now Tweets, beat that. So, in short, I think it is about time people got on with is the new world that we are living in and instead of groaning about it, get in. Use the pros and try your best not to get swept up by the cons. Business executives (especially those in the branding, advertising, PR and marketing division of a company) should be thankful for Twitter, really.
More so if you are small company. The internet will only become bigger, not smaller and for small to medium-sized business to avoid being left out of the loop, you need to get into the habit of reaching out to your consumer and potential target market with Twitter. Twitter has become more than a girly-want to-be-famous kind of game.
With the Mention feature on Twitter, large companies and brand names know who, why and what their customers are saying. If the chance presents itself, staff can initiate an atonement exercise by placating and calming the frustrated customer down. If the big guys are doing it, it has got to mean something.
If these large brand names, public figures and celebrities are doing it, I am quite sure Twitter (regardless of whether it evolves or not, in the future) is here to stay.…
Avoid These 5 Twitter Mistakes
Avoid These 5 Twitter Mistakes
I admit it. I’m a Twitter gal and I absolutely love what Twitter can do for small business owners. It produces massive visibility, it’s a top-notch lead generation tool and a powerful networking platform.
Unfortunately, Twitter continues to mystify many small business owners who aren’t quite sure what all the fuss is about.
The good news is that Twitter doesn’t have many rules. It’s by in large all about using common sense, being polite and exercising good judgment. But, that being said, here are five ways to ensure that your Twitter experience is a tragic disaster:
1. Toot your own horn too much.
Obviously, you are passionate about your small business and want to let the world know about its strengths and virtues. However, Twitter is not an advertising platform. It’s a social community. When you constantly shout sales pitch to your followers, they’re going to instantly unfollow you. Instead, try to immerse yourself in the Twitter community and join the conversation.
2. Use the default Twitter profile.
If you’re using Twitter as a marketing tool for your small business, then you need to avoid the default Twitter profile. That cute, little default cloud background is certainly not doing your small business any favors. Take a few minutes and put together a customized Twitter profile and brand your small business by utilizing all of that valuable advertising space. (No excuses, you can even do this for free at )
3. Tweet once a week.
Your followers have hundreds, if not thousands of Tweets flowing through their Twitter stream on a daily basis. If you think that your weekly Tweet is going to get noticed, you need to reset your thinking. Twitter works best when your followers see your Tweets flow through their stream again and again. Repeated exposure is the only way to get noticed on Twitter.
4. Don’t interact with your followers.
There are all sorts of nifty Twitter automation tools that can help manage your time on Twitter. And I’m a big believer in sending out a few automated Tweets. But, if you want Twitter to work, you actually need to personally log into your account and send out Tweets. Answer questions, retweet your followers, make conversation. Your followers want to see a real person in front of your small business. They’re not looking for a bunch of automated, impersonal Tweets.
5. Give up too soon.
This is one of the most common problems of Twitter. In fact, Twitter has one of the highest “drop-out” rates of any social networking platform. And, it’s a shame. Small business owners everywhere, start on Twitter only to drop out a week later. Twitter isn’t an instant fix for your business. It’s a relationship tool and relationships take time to develop. So, give Twitter the time that it deserves and it will reward you.
Whether you’re a Twitter newbie or a seasoned Twitter professional put these five tips into play and make your Twitter experience one that …
Tips For Designers to Survive the Current Market
Tips For Designers to Survive the Current Market
If you follow the news, you’ll hear that the market is up, the market is down, some design businesses are struggling, some are doing okay. Experts can’t seem to agree, but a lot of designers are worried.
Here is the truth: The current market is more challenging for designers because fear has caused people to spend less or take a longer time making decisions about more expensive purchases. Some see that as bad news. I see it as an exciting challenge to think more creatively, learn new skills, and come out way ahead as the economy gets stronger. Many will throw in the towel. The ones who come through will enjoy incredible – and much easier – success (with a lot less competition).
So what are the things you can do to survive and thrive in the current market?
* Create more online exposure
Despite a slower economy, online retail shopping continues to show growth. But even if you don’t sell products online, you need to have a strong online presence. While local homeowners are searching on the web for products to purchase for their homes (and many more of them are doing this), you want them to come across your information. Post to your blog at least twice a week. Create a profile on sites like , , and . Just a few minutes a day on these sites will drive more traffic to your business.
* Sell updates rather than investments
When people are being more careful with their spending, they are more concerned with VALUE. This doesn’t mean that homeowners are not spending on their homes. In fact, recent research is showing that many homeowners want to “reward” themselves with small purchases to spruce up the look of their homes. They may still be hesitant to invest in an entire room remodel, but they are very eager to update a room with accessories, new tassels, paint, or colorful throw pillows.
Focus on those “update” items, and you’ll find that many more people are willing and excited to do business with you.
* Create multiple streams of income
As designers, most of us have ONE source of income: working with clients. Yes, we do many things for them and sell various products, but THEY are our only way to make money. When clients are spending less on home design, our business suffers.
But it doesn’t have to be that way!
Designers who have added other streams of design income are not feeling the crisis. Let’s face it. If you have income coming in from various sources, you are less likely to suffer when one or two of them is slow. Look into writing, teaching, membership programs, or doing teleseminars.
You are so creative when it comes to designing. Now use that creativity with your business. You can enjoy wild success!…
Viral Marketing Tips – 6 Ideas to Build a Successful Viral Marketing Campaign
Before you start a viral marketing campaign, here are 6 ideas for you to consider:
1. Buy yourself the branding rights to a viral ebook. If you can produce a good, readable, direct ebook, you can distribute it to your visitors who might then, in turn, pass it on. Your eBook will spread your material throughout the internet.
2. Establish your own forum or message board. As many websites don’t have their own bulletin board or forum, allow them to make use of yours, but make sure that you have a big, eye-catching banner ad right across the top of your board.
3. Not everybody has the talent or the time to produce their own templates and graphics for use on their websites and people are often unable to commit much money for purchasing them. If you could, create a series of templates, graphics, fonts, etc — all with an ad and a link back to your site. As long as you ensure the copyright notice is intact and not violated, this is a great way of getting your ad distributed with only a little initial effort.
4. Produce your own ebook. During the production, invite others to include their own ads in exchange for them distributing the book to visitors to their site or their subscribers.
5. It is really helpful to write as many articles about your product or service as you can. And always have a resource box and information about article reprinting options at the foot of each one. Try to get your article circulated to as many places as possible, such as newsletters, directories, forums, and blogs.
6. Search through the pages on the Internet and locate some items that will enable you to buy a license to freely distribute them. Some items allow you what are known as “branding rights” where you can then add your own product’s name, the name of your web site and additional contact information upon distribution.…
Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation
There are instances when people may view marketing automation as a disadvantage rather than an advantage in society. This is because people may be scared of the consequences such as marketing automation being the cause of the loss of their jobs. However, notwithstanding the unemployment problems of many, this automated system is still best implemented. This is because the internet-based business environment calls for more complex techniques in order to go with the flow of its increasingly competitive landscape.
Marketing automation provides a solution to the intricate needs of an increasingly competitive online-based business environment. It makes work both more efficient and effective. For instance, through automation one can have a program that would relay the right outbound message to respond to a lead’s online and inbound responses.
Automation does not actually mean that all the marketing activities would simply be handled by the programs of the computer. In fact an automated system should go hand in hand with the creative insights of the marketing personnel. To increase one’s rank in the search lists, the ideas to promote the site coming from the marketer are still needed to ensure online success.
Online buyers over the years have become more discerning in their buying habits. They go through many websites and utilize social media as well to look for the right products for them. What a marketer could do is to insert marketing automation into the process. For instance if the prospective buyer calls up to inquire about the product, automated answers on frequently asked questions can be prepared. The process may not seem too personalized, but still it has a touch of being professional in the approach as the answers are screened and put together for a professional sounding output.
Marketing automation is actually more than just having an answering machine. This is because automation allows the consideration of the prospect’s response so that the software can in fact offer reconsideration when a buyer declines. Part of automation could also be the ability to show rich content such as visuals for special offers which could help persuade prospects to buy the product. Thus, one should not see the machine for marketing automation as a status symbol that one has “arrived” in the internet business world or as a hindrance to creating more jobs. Instead, it should be seen as a truly helpful tool towards a more efficient and effective business. It is thus best to start mapping out the process of marketing automation for your business. It could do wonders for your productivity as you align yourself with the benefits of technology.…
Getting Started In The Resell Rights Business
Are you into selling resell rights products? If so, then you should know that this is a great way to boost your sales and profits, and to earn more money per sale as opposed to if you were marketing an affiliate product. You will with affiliate programs, you have to share around 50% to 60% of the sales with the merchant that you made the sale from.
But with resell rights products, you get to keep 100% of the profits. Plus, you gain a customer out of the deal also. And as we all know, 80% of your total business profits will come from sales from recurring customers. With affiliate marketing, you don’t get access to the customer name… it all goes to the merchant, which (in my opinion), is a flaw in affiliate programs.
Now while this may sound great, it isn’t the end of the story. The biggest thing that you will have to worry about is getting traffic to your resell rights sales letter page. And you will want to make sure that this traffic is highly targeted, and good for making sales with your internet marketing efforts.
To get started with selling resell rights products, you will need a website, and an autoresponder. To get a website, it’s very easy. Simply head on over to Hostgator, Go Daddy, or even Yahoo Webhosting. All 3 are reliable web hosting services that you can use to get your very own website with.
After you have gotten your website, you will want to pick a merchant account provider. This is very easy to do. All you have to do is head on over to PayPal, ClickBank, or 2checkout, and sign up for an account so that you can start selling on your website right away. There are more merchant account services out there, but these are the ones that are very good, and very easy to work with.
Now despite all of this, as I’ve stated earlier, you will want to find ways to get traffic back to your website. You need a plan for selling to prospects, and getting these prospects to buy from you. This is very easy to do, and you will need a good marketing strategy if you want it to come to life for you.
Selling resell rights products can be a good thing for your business. People sell resell rights products all the time and they are earning a nice living from it simply and easily. But for most people, they are met with failure, and choose to exit out of the online business world altogether.
But you don’t have to let this be your fate. You can go out there and start marketing your products very successfully, and earn the kind of money that you are looking for in your business. It’s very easy to do, and I know that you can have success with selling resell rights products. Many people are doing it, and you can do it too.
Good luck …
Online Marketing Tips – How to Succeed Online
Marketing your business online is one of the best things that you can do these days, considering that many people are now looking for products and buying things online as well. If you want to take advantage of this, read on to learn some online marketing tips that will help boost your sales and make more profits online.
Here are some online marketing tips that you might find useful if you want to succeed online in boosting your profits as well as making money with your website.
– Make a website design that is friendly to online readers as well as the search engines. In the online world, you have to make sure that your website design is friendly to users. Make sure you use colors and design that are pleasing to the eyes and make sure also that your website is easy to navigate.
– Choose a profitable niche fit for your business. If you want to make money with your website, choose a niche that you are an expert about. However, it is important that you also have to weigh things out in choosing your niche. Even if it is your interest or your passion if it is not something that many people would want to look up online, then you may find it hard to make money on your website. Choose a profitable niche if you want to be successful right from the start.
– Learn how to research proper keywords. Keywords are important elements of any online campaign, as this will bring potential customers to your website, that is if you launch a good campaign and you identified good keywords for your business. In choosing your keywords, you can use free tools online and make sure you know how to beat competition as well as. You can research their search volume online and make sure that you choose keywords that are in demand but with lesser competition.
– Master search engine optimization. SEO or search engine optimization is one of the basic things that you need to learn to be able to succeed in internet marketing. In fact, one of the main online marketing tips that you have to learn are SEO techniques, strategies as well as tactics that will help you outsmart your competitors and make it to the top spot of the search engine results page where your business will be given exposure to your target market.
– Learn the many ways to advertise and promote businesses online. Indeed, a big part of marketing your products or services online is to advertise and promote your business online. Among the popular ways to promote your business online are pay per click marketing, banner advertising, press releases, promoting it in social networking sites, affiliate marketing, article marketing, promoting it through videos and many other techniques that allow you to provide exposure to your business.
Although advertising online is relatively cheap, bear in mind that with a poor online marketing campaign, it can also cost you a …
Creative Marketing and Promotion Strategies to Increase Sales

Sales promotion is the process Creative Marketing of providing information, influencing, and reminding the target market of services or products so that they can be accepted and bought by the market. Promotion is one of the marketing strategies. As part of the marketing strategy, the sales promotion strategy has three characteristics, namely communicative which aims to provide information and attract consumers’ attention, incentives that aim to influence customers with certain values ​​and privileges, and invite purchases to occur during or after the promotion is carried out.
Creative marketing is one of the promotional strategies that can be done to sell products. Creative marketing is a step to promote products to consumers with digital-based steps and spread on the internet. Some of the steps for doing creative marketing are through the following five steps. Listen!
Creative Marketing of Create a Brand Website
Marketing products this time is no longer only through direct sales through stores or physical booths and only reaches the areas visited. In this digital era, marketing products makes the reach of consumers who can see the products you sell wider. Through the internet, you can market the products you sell through blogs or websites that contain details of the products you sell.
Through a website or blog too, you can have a shop without having to create a physical store that takes a large capital to rent a place and think about strategic sales locations. Free blogs or cheap website domains have been widely spread on the internet so you can take advantage of this to promote products with a wider reach.
Creative Marketing Using Social Media
Social media has become a promotional strategy that brands need to have because nowadays social media has a huge influence on people shopping. The use of social media as a promotional and sales medium can convey messages or products to consumers more quickly, easily, and efficiently.
Creative Marketing Create a Vlog
Currently, visuals have attracted the attention of many people. Therefore, the presence of vlogs as an audio-visual medium is a medium that is increasingly accepted and favored by many people who are potential buyers. Vlogs are videos uploaded to the internet, especially YouTube. Through vlogs, you can show more details of the items being sold.
Take Advantage of Free Ads
The internet this time has provided many platforms to be used as free product advertising media. The use of free advertising on the internet is also more efficient and reaches a wider range of consumers. By taking advantage of this free advertising feature, the cost for product promotion will be smaller and more efficient.
Take Advantage of Car Ads
Car advertising or car advertising is a product marketing media that moves and reaches more potential consumers. Take advantage of car advertisements on the streets of the capital city or the center of the crowd so that more and more potential customers will know about your product.…
2 Ways To Boost Your Direct Mail Marketing Efforts
If you’re like most of my friends when it comes to direct mail marketing, you probably have a few simple techniques to boost the overall response of your marketing efforts. I’ve been doing direct mail for the past 5 years, and I tell you that there are all sorts of things that you can do to boost your response and make more money.
These techniques don’t require a lot of thinking. The one thing that it will require is relevance to your offer. So if give you a tip, make sure that it blends in well with your whole sales letter. Are you ready to learn what these direct mail strategies are? Well goo for you! Here’s the first marketing tip that you can use to have success in your offline business.
1) Post it note
A post it note is the small, square-like adhesive that you can stick on your wall or refrigerator. And believe it or not, you can also attach one of these post it notes onto your sales letter. When doing this, it’s important that you do it right. The key is to make it sound like someone that they know.
For example, if your name is Lindsey, and I was to send a direct mail campaign out to you, my post it note would say something like this:
“Hey Lindsey! Check this out I think you will like it! – J”
See how small and subtle this is? And pay attention to how I ended the note. I ended it with the letter “J”. Who is “J”? Well, “J” is more than likely someone that they know. Now really think about it. Who doesn’t know someone named “J”? When your prospect see’s this post it note, they will think that it’s from something that they know, and because of it, you will more than likely improve the response rates of your direct mail campaign. Here’s another great strategy to use:
2) A one-dollar bill
How can you use a one-dollar bill in your marketing campaign? Well it’s simply really. Using a real one-dollar bill in your direct mail piece just might actually boost your response more than a post it note would. Why would you want to use a $1 bill? Because it’s a great attention getter.
In your sales letter, mention the attached one-dollar bill early on in the letter. You could start it off with something like this:
“I bet you’re wondering why I sent you a $1 bill. Well, I have done this for 2 reasons. For one…”
Then just state the reasons as to why you’re using a $1 bill, and how it connects with your offer.
These 2 things can definitely improve your sales and profits – you just have to go out there and start doing it today. These simple strategies are all that you need to know to have the most success with your direct mail campaign. Don’t believe me? Well give it a try and see how …
List Building Tips – Your Free Report Stinks
Well, this is one article that I know is going to get a lot of people all riled up. So be it. If you’re one of those Internet marketers who gives away free reports in order to get people onto your list, I’m writing this to tell you that your free report stinks. You heard stinks. Want to know why it stinks? Well, keep reading and you’re going to get an earful.
Okay, where do I start? Well, why don’t I start with the biggest offender of the stinky free report? You didn’t even bother to write it. You heard me. You got some garbage material from who knows where and stuck your name on it. That’s not writing a free report. That’s just plain criminal. How about coming out with an original idea and giving THAT away? Yeah, there’s a novel concept for you.
Want to know why else your free report stinks? It stinks because it’s 7 lousy pages long. Heck, in some areas, that’s not even an article. How about putting at least a little effort into it? I’m not saying it has to be the length of War and Peace, but how about a good 15 to 20 pages? Certainly you can get up enough energy to give your subscribers THAT much.
Here’s another reason why your free report stinks. It’s nothing but a glorified sales letter. You know what I mean. Somebody opens up the report and they’re greeted with a whole lot of “Did you know that…” and so on and so on. And then finally, after you’ve asked all these questions about what the prospect knows and doesn’t know, you end the report with something lame like, “Well, if you want to find out the answers to these questions, go to…” and then you give them a URL. How about actually answering some of the questions in the report itself?
Add to all of the above the fact that the report is terribly formatted, has spelling and grammar mistakes, has no design whatsoever, and you can understand why people get your free report, chuck it in the trash and opt out of your list. That’s a look at your opt out rate. There’s a reason why it’s so bad.
So please, if you’re going to create a free report, please put a little effort into it.
Your subscribers will appreciate it.
To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim…
Why Do Most People Fail at Online Business?
Why Do Most People Fail at Online Business?
The sad reality is that most businesses linger on at a hobby level for a few months or years before petering out. Relatively few make it to a level of success that provides a full time income.
I’ve watched, consulted for and worked with many people in the online business world, starting back in 1991 when I sold my first piece of software via the old bulletin board system, an early precursor to the internet. Today I’m a full time online entrepreneur.
Here are some of the most common themes I see in failing online businesses:
1. Too much focus on the product or service – New business people spend a lot of time thinking about and developing their product or service, while they spend relatively little time thinking about what their market niche, business model is or how to market their product. Yet niches, business models and promotions are more important to success than the product.
2. Lack of persistence – A large number of people get started, create a web site and then quickly lose interest when their new site does not instantly generate thousands of dollars each month. The hard truth is that it takes time to build an audience, and patience to build a solid foundation for your business. Its not one large thing that suddenly propels a site to success, but often dozens or hundreds of small actions you take over months or years that add up to create a significant profit.
3. No concept of online marketing – In the crowded internet of today, it is hard to get someone’s attention among several billion web pages, much less keep someone’s attention for more than about 15 seconds. Online marketing, copy writing and building an audience is not the same as it is traditional media. I’ve watched clients agonize over fonts and images, but spend zero time on search engine optimization, copy writing, audience building, email list management and other critical online skills.
4. Inability to manage growth – When success does come to an internet business it often comes in large waves. However, the first Tsunami of traffic and orders will frequently wipe out the business and its owner in the process. The success they worked so hard to create becomes a noose around their neck as they are unprepared to hire people or buy equipment and insist on continuing to do everything themselves. A good friend of mine has been stuck in a cycle like this for over a year. Rather than restructuring his business to outsource as much work as possible, he continues to dig a deeper hole for himself.
So if you want to build a solid foundation for your new online business, carefully consider your market niche, your business model, how long you’re willing to stay the course, your online marketing plan and how you will manage growth when it does come. With the right systems in place, many of these issues …
5 Tips to Develop an Effective Marketing Plan
5 Tips to Develop an Effective Marketing Plan
Developing a marketing plan for your business requires time and effort. It is not something that can be done without concentration and proper preparation. Few business owners truly understand what they need to do in order to develop a marketing plan that will work. This is to be expected as few business owners have been educated in marketing. Add this to the fact that the world of marketing seems to change on a daily basis and the task seems rather overwhelming.
Yet, there are a few simple steps that can help business owners develop effective plans that will work consistently over time. Taking the time to complete these steps can be the deciding factor between success and failure.
First, business owners need to set aside time dedicated solely to the task of marketing their business. Much like a budget, this plan will need to be attended to and monitored. Having set hours to work on marketing allows business owners the opportunity to work regularly on their marketing. Set aside five to ten hours a week for marketing and put it on the calendar. It is best to work in chunks of time such as two or three hours rather than scheduling an hour a day.
Second, business owners need to define their goals. Without goals there is no way to determine if marketing efforts are successful or not.
Third, decide on a budget. How much money is available to dedicate to marketing efforts will be a large factor in determining what can and cannot be done. Don’t worry if there are little to no funds available to support marketing efforts. The internet has created an environment where it is possible to advertise business products and services for free.
Fourth, business owners will research marketing activities that are specific to your industry and fit within the allocated budget. Developing an idea sheet along with approximate costs for each activity during the research process is a great way to keep track of your discoveries.
Fifth, develop a weekly marketing plan. The marketing plan should include marketing activities to be done as well as time to track the results of all marketing efforts. Tracking the results of your marketing efforts is critical to understanding which activities are successfully promoting your business and which ones are not working.…
Big Data Marketing Offers Critical Insight-But a Distributed Marketing Technology Is Key to Success
Big Data Marketing Offers Critical Insight-But a Distributed Marketing Technology Is Key to Success
Marketing technology firms continue to offer credible evidence that the analytical insight gained through Big Data will be a huge factor for organizations in the near future.
Why? Consider this statistic: the amount of data an enterprise collects is expected to grow 650% over the next five years. It’s statistics like this that make it impossible to ignore what “Big Data Marketing” can bring to the bottom line for a business. It’s the key to long-term sales growth.
The growing technological and analytical capability of managing and using this unprecedented amount of enterprise data will continue to explode to all new levels in the coming years. Big Data, as the term is coined, will shift businesses from managing and observing “data transactions” to also managing and observing “data interactions.”
What does this mean? It means that businesses will be able to assess the needed data points that are crucial in understanding when a consumer will buy, and why. This extraordinary shift in technology continues to evolve at fast rates due to rapid advancements in processing power, data storage, and tracking analytics, integrated with newer, robust distribution and communication channels.
In order for companies to truly embrace Big Data and wrap their arms around what this concept can do for their sales teams, a multi-channel distributed marketing platform is needed so that all branding collateral, content, and marketing efforts can be centralized for the organization. More importantly, because of the substantial progression of communication and distribution channels, a distributed marketing technology helps optimize content distribution across varying forms of media including email, mobile, microsites, and social media. Organizations that do not implement this type of technology will struggle to collect the data points that are necessary to achieve profitable success and will be at competitive disadvantage in the near future.
These facts are hard to dispute. The industry is already witnessing a 40% annual increase in marketing technology spends, and leading analysts are also projecting that by the end of 2017 the CMO will spend more on technology than the CIO.
Big Data is still considered a buzz word. It still is not full defined, nor accepted by all marketers or industry professionals. However, the evidence continues to be reported that Big Data isn’t going anywhere. I recently read an article about some additional studies that were released this summer by Lattice Engines on this very topic. Their survey stated that 89% of executives believe sales reps miss opportunities because they cannot keep up with the information about customers and prospects, and also noted that 90% expect there would be great benefits to sales if insight was automated and delivered through one system.
This leads me back to my belief that the formula for success for marketers in the future is going to be quite simple: Bigger, Richer Data Sets + Real Time Analytics + Personalized Multi-Channel Marketing = a Higher ROI.…
Tips For Driving Traffic to Your Website
Tips For Driving Traffic to Your Website
When it comes to giving your business an online presence, you want to get as many potential customers to look at your website as possible. This means you have to consistently update your content, advertise and backlink as much as possible. You have to make your site seem essential to those who are interested in your business. Let them know that you are at the top of your game in the industry, and if they want to know the latest news and product information, they have to check with your service and with no one else. This all sounds like a great idea, but in practice, driving up your web traffic is actually a tricky business. In this article, you will learn some tips for driving traffic to your website.
First, links are the answer. Make sure that you are linked in as many relevant places as possible. When we talk about link quality, for example, it’s all about making sure that you are reaching the right audience. If you sell garden supplies, which kind of websites do you think you should link on? The answer, of course, is to link on online magazines that specialize in gardening issues. This way, readers of the gardening magazine will see the links for your site again and again and will know that you are a big name in the business.
Next, make sure that you are networking online. You can use Facebook, for example, to spread the name of your website by word of mouth. You can start a profile and a group of which fans can become a member. This is a great way to get people looking for your website so they can see what’s new, which products are for sale, and which kinds of sales you are offering. This is a great way to make your website seem essential to those in the know.
Finally, driving traffic to your website is all about making your website seem important. Perhaps it really is important. You need to let people know this. Spread your message, but make sure the right people are seeing your message. You need to reach out and get customers interested in your web page because of what you have to offer. Your business will grow and your website will take on a life of its own. The future of your business is on the Internet. Learn how to use this valuable tool.…
Benefits of Article Marketing Automation Tools
Benefits of Article Marketing Automation Tools
Today, more and more people are resorting to the internet in order to have financial stability and be remedied from the recent economic turmoil. While the internet is an effective avenue for entrepreneurs and business owners to get money quickly and easily, there is one problem: how can you make sure that your online business is doing well without being tied to your chair and your computer?
Perhaps one of the greatest online inventions these days is the amazing automation tools that online marketers and online business owners can use so that they are able to monitor their businesses while they sleep or when they are on a vacation. And because article marketing is one of the most effective, it is but right for online marketers and business owners to have at least one reliable article automation tool that will help them manage their content.
Article marketing is the process of writing content to promote a certain product or service and then publish the articles to online article directories and hope that your articles come first in the search engine results. Almost all online marketers today are using article marketing to promote their business because it is totally free, easy to learn, and guaranteed to deliver the results you desire.
However, there could be a slight problem with article marketing: writing and submitting articles on a regular basis can be tedious and time consuming especially when the volume of articles you need to write for your products or services continue to rise. Article marketing can be easy during the first few steps of building your business – when you have more time than money to spend – but as your business grows, the demands grow as well.
Should you come to that point where you do not have as much time as before to do the article marketing endeavors yourself, there are some things that you can do. If you have the budget for it, you can consider enlisting a help of a content provider company or get an article marketing automation tool to help you with the load.
When you hire a content provider company, all you have to do is provide them with the topics and the other details of the project and they will write the optimized articles for you. Automated article software programs on the other hand will take care of the distribution of the articles for you.
Going for article marketing automation tools such as these can be a real time saver for you and for your business, instead of spending time writing articles you can now ask someone to do the work for you while you focus on watching over your business. On top of that, article automation tools will also provide backlinks for your website in the process.…
Finding Clients In The New Economy
Smart business owners know consistently finding clients is crucial to their success. After all, without a steady stream of new and repeat customers, there’s nobody to serve, no money to be made, and no reason to keep the doors open. How do you find clients who are ready to buy, even though the economy has changed?
Finding clients takes effort and creativity- especially in a tight market. The good news is, though, that regardless of the economy, people still need the solutions you offer and expert advice to eliminate the challenges they face. All you need are a few simple tips on how to go about finding clients when the market is tight.
Step One to Finding Clients
Hang on to the clients you have! No marketing strategy is as cost effective or as efficient as keeping the clients you have already established a working relationship with in the past. Meet your deadlines, go above and beyond what’s expected and do it all with excellent customer service as your goal. This will help you hang on to every single client you have.
Step Two to Finding Clients
Don’t be afraid to go back to former clients and check in with them. Even if the working relationship ended under not so great circumstances, it can still be revived in certain situations. If you dropped the ball with a client that you previously had a good working relationship with, get in touch, own your mistakes and ask for another shot. You have nothing to lose — and you never know, you might be pleasantly surprised.
Step Three to Finding Clients
Ask for referrals. Go through your current and past client lists and contact the clients who have been especially happy with your work. Ask them if they can refer you to friends and colleagues of theirs. When you receive the referrals, make sure you dedicate your self to those new clients in the same way as if you were working for your original connection. This referral base could turn into a plethora of new clients if you work it with integrity and commitment.
Step Four to Finding Clients
Participating in social media is a terrific way to find new clients. Work up a special or a sale of your services and offer a limited time (or limited number) of specials via Twitter or Facebook. Watch the numbers closely, though. It’s easy for this type of deal to take off like a rocket and give you more work than you can comfortably handle in no time flat. Know your limits!
Step Five to Finding Clients
Check out the job boards. If you’ve never used a job board like or , now may be the time to give it a shot. Setup a membership at one of these two boards or both. Each offers a free membership, but you are much better off spending the money on a paid membership. It will show prospects that you take the process seriously and it will provide …
Using Blogs For Small Business Seo
Using Blogs For Small Business Seo
Blogs are probably one of the easiest, cheapest and most effective marketing tools out there for small businesses today. They have so many benefits, especially in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO).
Google, and the other search engines love fresh content; same as humans, we don’t want to read out of date content, and neither do the search engines (not that they actually ‘read’ the content, but they don’t want to present old content to searchers). Because of this, Google will prioritise fresh content over old content in their results. So imagine you have recently created a blog post all about the benefits of your product – such as your particular brand of easy clean paint brushes. When someone searches for ‘easy to clean paint brushes’ in Google, there’s a good chance that your blog post on your super easy to clean paint brushes will show up high in the search results. Your result is likely to be higher than some of your competitors who just have a product page featuring their brushes, that they’ve not updated in six or more months. In terms of search engine optimisation, you must remember that search engines don’t rank websites, they rank pages – and they love brand spanking new pages! Having a site with regularly updated content and regular new pages also means that overall your site gets more ‘trust’ from the search engines. So some of the benefit from the new content will roll over to other pages as well, even if they haven’t been updated in a while.
Another benefit of adding fresh content to your site on a regular basis is that the search engine bots will crawl your site on a more regular basis – meaning that any crucial updates you’ve made to your site/content will be refreshed in the search engine results a lot quicker. Have you ever wondered what the ‘cached’ link means when you look at search results in Google? Clicking on this will show you the last time Google crawled that web page – so you can see exactly what Google is seeing. If you have updated your website with some new product pages, Google will not know about it until the next time it comes to crawl your site. So if you hardly ever update your site, Google will be in the habbit of only crawling your site on a monthly (or so) basis. This means that none of your new product pages will appear in the search engines results during this month – not until Google crawls your site again. However, if you constantly add new content to your site, Google will get into the habit of crawling your site a lot more often – the ideal crawl amount is daily, but realistically, weekly will do. Having your site crawled on a regular basis, means your brand new product pages will show up in the search engine results a lot quicker.
So we’ve established that the …
Great Affiliate Marketing Tips To Generate More Sales
This means that you will have to think of some brand new techniques to sell the products. The following article contains just a handful of the most proven affiliate marketing strategies.
Maximize business profits by signing up with affiliate marketing companies. Affiliate programs have been shown to generate much more site traffic than passive methods such as banner advertisements. Each prospective affiliate program should be carefully assessed based upon its popularity, ease of use, and compensation plan.
You can make good money through affiliate marketing, but that is only the case if you know what you’re doing. Having a high search ranking is an important aspect of running a website or blog. Completing this will allow you to have better affiliate links which leads to more money.
A few quality tips from a reliable book on affiliate marketing is much more valuable than information that is available from a multitude of sources. While you are establishing your business, you must be willing to work without compensation. Be aware that reading too many books could be considered a stalling tactic. Get the tips you need, stop reading and put them to use.
If you run a specialty goods store, such as a sports store, your customers are coming there with the idea of purchasing sports products. Your affiliate links will not be useful unless they are specific to your overall site content. It is more likely that you will get clicks on links that are related to the information contained no your site.
Only put your stamp of approval on products you believe in. The products you promote are a reflection of your website and yourself. Customers and clients will build their trust for you in accordance with the products you promote. Selecting good products and pricing them fairly is among the best ways to retain your customers.
Use a reputable tracking service that provides accurate reports of what you are owed. Affiliates have been known to incorrectly track sales, which can cause a loss of profits for you. If you have a good tracking system in place, you will be spared both the frustration and heartache that comes from losing out on money you should have received. While there may be some costs involved, you will find that it is well worth it.
If you rely on one or more affiliate partners for your revenue stream, communicate with them as often as possible. By increasing communication, you will do better in business and increase profits. Your most profitable affiliate marketing partners are pearls beyond price, and you should be willing to take extraordinary measures to cultivate and care for them.
Those affiliates in California who were suspended in 2011 can re-install their links now. There was a law that made California get rid of California affiliates but it has since been changed. If this change applies to you, sign up again.
These techniques are used because they’re an effective method of bringing in customers. Use it for your position and …
Want To Become Limitless in Your Business?
I was watching the movie Limitless on video the other evening. If you haven’t seen the movie, it involves a writer who has complete writers block and his book is due, his girlfriends leaving him and he’s going down fast.
He by chance, runs into an old girlfriends brother who offers him a “solution” to all his issues.
A simple pill makes him limitless. Suddenly he’s focused and can suddenly recall everything he’s ever read or seen. He can learn languages in days and accomplish whatever he desires. He becomes charismatic and unstoppable.
The only issue, he has to continue to take the pills. Plus…
A loan shark knows he has the pills, a big time stock broker knows he’s “cheating” with his picks and basically wants to bring him down and some people suspect something suddenly isn’t right with him. Won’t ruin the movie for you if haven’t seen it, but basically…
He’s just too good and knows too much.
You may be wondering that’s great but what does that have to do with my business Eric?
Great question and the answer Roll Please…
There may be no “magic pill” for your business, but just knowing even a little more than others and acting on that knowledge, can be the dramatic difference between you and your competitors being king.
It’s amazing how much we really do know currently but didn’t or don’t do anything with that knowledge.
How about the old “if I only would of took action on my idea” because someone else actually went out there and made your idea a reality first and is getting rich. Let me ask you since were on the subject…
What could you implement and take action on today that you know about, but been waiting for “another time” or the “right time”? There’s a great proverb that go’s…
“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
What one thing can you take action on and do today that your competitors aren’t doing?
Is there a way that you can not only show it, but also communicate it to your customers or prospective customers?
Once you implement one thing, then move on to the next and then the next and so on. This way you will always be breaking the limits in your field or niche.
Maybe it’s something obvious…Maybe it’s if you look…I ‘s there.…
Great Second Job Ideas
When searching for another job many people often want something which pays fairly decent it is not too strenuous. Other standards of the second job are often that it’s part-time with flexible hrs. Flexible hrs usually mean from 6pm-10pm Monday through Friday along with a couple of hrs around the weekend. A number of you might be prepared to work overnight for any couple of hrs. The fundamental purpose of another job would be to generate enough earnings to take care of your current lifestyle.
The shameful part is the fact that lots of people require a second job simply to maintain. Which means that either their first job just isn’t performing. Or they feel the need for extra money to purchase a new vehicle or perform some holiday shopping. Regardless of what your purpose in obtaining another job is you must do it now or soon or else you wouldn’t be searching Google for second job ideas.
Many people who are searching for another job are restricted to working at places like Walmart, McDonalds or perhaps your local supermarket chain. Incidents where get tele-marketing jobs simply because they hire fast because of our prime turn-over rate. They are jobs that you could only do for such a long time prior to being completely burned out. And when you are burned out usually everything and everybody who is around you suffers since your mood has had a turn for that worse.
What’s promising…
There’s one other way. It’s known as Multilevel Marketing. BEWARE!!! Multilevel Marketing isn’t for individuals people that aren’t motivated. It isn’t for individuals who begin to see the glass half empty. It isn’t for individuals which are easily swayed through the opinion of others. It isn’t for individuals that need to make fast, fast money without investing in real work. It isn’t for individuals that simply don’t have confidence in themselves.
Who will it be for? It’s for anyone that may think outdoors this area. It’s for individuals people which are self-motivated. It’s for individual’s people that will set goals and remain going to achieve them. It’s for individual’s people that know you will find different ways to construct earnings than employed by some company the only people who make real cash would be the people at the very top.
If you feel you poses the abilities to become network internet marketer I quickly counsel you to do your homework on Multilevel Marketing. When I only say investigate, obtain the opinion from individuals people which have been effective. Don’t get advice out of your cousin that became a member of Amway in 1997 and didn’t follow-through now he thinks all Multilevel Marketing possibilities are ripoffs.…
5 Common Mistakes Marketers Do When Engaging in Article Marketing
If you are beginning to use article marketing for your business there are some common mistakes marketers do when engaging in article marketing and you are going to want to avoid them when you begin your article marketing journey. Here are a few to look out for.
Not Informative Content
A common mistake most article marketers do is they think they can write about anything and that is not true. You want to write content that informs. People look at these article directories for information to help them. If your article can not inform and educate then the article will not do well at all nor will some article directories accept the articles you have written.
Not Quality Content
Another quite common mistakes/pitfalls marketers do when engaging in article marketing is not writing quality content. The actual true secret to article marketing is good writing plain and simple. So when you begin writing whether you want to write the articles yourself or hire someone to write for you, you need to write quality content. You do not want to make your article too technical, arrogant, fluffy, or long winded. Nor do you want to be cryptic. You are not writing for yourself anymore. You want to make sure your articles are concise, straight forward and to the point. You do not want to waste your reader’s precious time with anything extra. Your goal is to inform the reader. A lot of writers forget that.
Over Promoted Under Promoted
Sometimes marketers can over promote in their articles and some under promote because they do not want to appear they are over promoting. Remember you want to have quality content that is to inform your reader not to go on about what is going on at your website today. You do though want to insert links to your website. The best place to do this is in the resource box. Yet you can strategically insert them into the body of your article if you want to have them in the article body. Be sure to check with the article directory you are going to submit your articled for some allow hyperlinks to be incorporated in your article.
Not Using Keywords Right
The common pitfalls marketers do when engaging article marketing is failure to use keywords right. Using key words in your article is also an important aspect to getting traffic to your article then eventually to your website. Keywords can help get you a higher search engine results if you learn about them and use them wisely throughout your article.
Not Spell Checking
You’d be surprised how many may forget to use their spell checker and really give their articles grammar and spelling look over. This is a sadly a common mistake found in article writing so know if you’re beginning to use article marketing for your business to make sure you take the extra time to spell check your work once and twice. Maybe even invest in grammar spell checking software.…
Social Media Automation Tools to Increase Your Marketing ROI
Social Media Automation Tools to Increase Your Marketing ROI
Want to stop wasting time on social media and get better results from your social media marketing efforts? Then this list of social media automation tools is for you. One or more of these tools could help you to save time while increasing your marketing ROI:
Facebook to Twitter: This is a tool for Facebook which can be used with any profile or page. Just click the Facebook to Twitter link while you’re logged in and you can link your pages to Twitter and share your content instantly.
Gist: Gist is a handy tool which can keep track of all of your social networking, social media and email contacts with one easy to use web based interface; it’s also available for Outlook and Gmail, so you never have to lose an opportunity to connect with the people you need to keep in touch with.
Hoot Suite: If your business uses Twitter, this is one automation tool you’ll want. HootSuite allows you to write tweets and schedule them to post later and keep an eye on keywords as well as providing a lot of other useful functions. It can also be integrated with other apps, making it an especially helpful tool to have.
: This tool can update your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networking and social media pages all at once, or any combination you like. It’s free and works on mobile devices as well.
RSS: Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an easy way to aggregate the content you need in one place, saving you the time of going from one site to another or wading through content you don’t need. It works with Google Reader and other RSS feed readers and can also be used with Google Alerts for user specified keywords so you can keep an eye on what people are saying about your business.
Selective Tweets: This is an application for Facebook which allows you to decide which updates you want to share with your Twitter followers rather than sharing all of them. You don’t want everything on your Facebook page out there for the whole world and this tool gives you total control over what to share and what to keep to a smaller audience.
SocialOomph: This service lets you schedule your social media communications and post it automatically. There are both free and commercial versions available; only the commercial version handles Facebook page and profile posting and scheduling.
Tweet Old Posts: Sometimes you come up with blog posts which have information which is useful whether you publish it now or years from now. This plugin for lets you repost old content which is still relevant to your readers.
TweetBleep: This service lets you monitor any keywords you like on Twitter for $20 per month; the results are sent to you by email.
TwitterFeed: This cloud based service lets you share your blog content as you post it to Twitter, Facebook and other social media and …
Internet Marketing Automation – Is There a Way to Cut Time, Save Money & Increase Productivity?
Internet Marketing Automation – Is There a Way to Cut Time, Save Money & Increase Productivity?
Does internet marketing automation really exist or is it just a pipe dream? Can you really cut the time spent on daily tedious tasks such as checking email, answering support tickets, submitting to article directories and social media sites? Is there a way to automate the tasks that take forever to do yet are so important you just can’t afford to skip?
Simply put, can you save time and increase your productivity using some level of internet marketing automation?
The successful Internet Marketer knows that in order to continue to prosper at what they do, they need to incorporate as much internet marketing automation as they possibly can to avoid spending hours upon hours on their computer doing all the things that are required in order to succeed in this very competitive environment.
Real internet marketing automation would help in performing tasks such as:
Checking email
Writing content
Checking stats online
Managing websites
Managing PPC campaigns
Building websites or web pages
Handling customer service
Logging into a website or member area
Social networking
Creating backup files or folders
Other online business-related activities
I’m sure the average Internet Marketer, when they first imagined their lifestyle, had no idea that they would be cooped up in some place in their home spending hour after hour on their computer performing mind numbing work but for most that is the reality, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Although some fortunate internet marketers can outsource their day to day tasks, others can’t afford to do that. Do they have options? Now they do but they may not be aware of new cutting edge tools available that can literally cut their work by more than half the time they are currently spending.
Thanks to some very talented individuals we now have ground breaking technology in internet marketing automation that can automate an unlimited number of tasks, including very tedious things like writing content, checking website stats, building websites just to mention a few. This special software can perform on demand and has the ability to adapt to whatever the Internet Marketer needs to perform.…
Disruptive Innovation and Small Business Growth Strategies
Disruptive Innovation and Small Business Growth Strategies
Harvard professor Clayton Christensen coined the term disruptive innovation to describe “a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market’, eventually displacing established competitors.” An example of disruptive innovation is the cell phone (disruptor) displacing fixed line telephony.
There’s never been a better time to be a disruptive innovator. If you have a good idea, the barriers to market entry are shrinking. Business innovations like crowdsourcing and outsourcing provide cheap access to technology development, marketing resources and administrative support. You don’t need massive resources to invest in hiring employees to perform these business functions for you – you can design business graphics, develop an iPhone app or outsource your IT function using the new business models.
At the same time, large corporations have never been more vulnerable. A new survey by Right Management, the consulting arm of staffing group Manpower, finds that a whopping 84% of employees are planning on searching for a new job in 2012. That’s not surprising, considering how big business has laid off employees, reduced salaries and eliminated perks over the past 4 years. Do you think that this 84% is focused on providing innovation and exceptional customer service to their employer’s customers? I would posit that they are not and that their customers are ripe for the picking by a nimble competitor, particularly a disruptive innovator.
Small businesses that focus on providing groundbreaking solutions to customer problems are in a good position to take business away from corporate monoliths, particularly at the smaller end of the market. While large enterprise customer-facing employees are focused on internal politics and avoiding the next round of layoffs, small business owners can focus on providing excellent service and solving customer problems efficiently and affordably.
A good example of a disruptive innovator is Hubspot, a provider of marketing automation software located in Cambridge, MA. Formed in 2006 by MIT graduate Darmesh Shah and venture capitalist Brian Halligan, Hubspot started their business by providing an end-to-end internet marketing software solution to small businesses, a market that was not served prior to their entry. Five years later, Hubspot has grown to be ranked #33 on the Inc. 500 list (#2 for software providers.) As is typical of disruptive innovators, Hubspot is moving upmarket into the enterprise market.
Small businesses that use inbound marketing technology like Hubspot’s can get found by buyers and earn the right to have a conversation with them. When prospects see that you have the capabilities, determination and drive to solve their problems, you will win your share of business.
So take heart my friends – become a disruptive innovator!…
Article Marketing Automation in the World of Web 2.0
Article Marketing Automation in the World of Web 2.0
Every day millions of people all over the world go online to research and purchase products and services. As a business owner, taking advantage of the actions these potential customers are already taking is a smart move. Reach thousands of customers who are already searching for you with article distribution in the world of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is simply the next new generation of online activities and applications. It can provide great marketing opportunities through communication, collaboration and interactive networking because it’s all about people. Social networking sites connect people daily regardless of their locations or routines.
Web based communities make sharing information simpler than ever. Web 2.0 goes hand in hand with article distribution as a way to interact with customers and teach them instead of providing passive images and advertisements.
Article Marketing Automation
Combining article distribution with the tools available in Web 2.0 can make increasing sales on your website easier than ever. Creating and distributing original content online allows you to share your knowledge with a targeted base of potential customers. By providing the answers they are seeking, you gain their trust and build faith in your credibility.
One of the newest tools for online marketers is article marketing automation. Through your chosen publication service, you can utilize this Web 2.0 tool to provide information and interact with customers on an ongoing basis. With article marketing automation, you are allowed to submit as many articles as you wish at one time for publication at one or more predetermined future dates.
Article marketing automation can be especially beneficial for startups and businesses that experience times of high and low traffic. You can create as many articles as possible during your startup phase before your website goes live. Take advantage of the slow times when you have more time to write.
You submit your content today and schedule it to publish any time. Before you know it you’re running a successful article marketing campaign without even thinking about it on a day to day basis. This lets you spend more time on the daily needs of your business and customers.
Social Networking
Share links through social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter once you’ve published a few articles. These sites allow you to set up a page where consumers can become followers or fans of your business. Whether they’re just interested in your area or have made a previous purchase, you are making a valuable connection with your customer base.
You can share information about products or services as well as links to articles you’ve written. Keep your customers informed with new and exciting information about the industry, or your thoughts on current events and the world of business.
In this new world of Web 2.0 and marketing online, you have the opportunity as a business owner to be uniquely connected to your customers. By sharing parts of your business and life with people, you build bridges with …
Why Maps Are Important to Small Business
Why Maps Are Important to Small Business
Introduction: Your customers are using maps on their home computers and on their mobile phones. Internet mapping and the social internet have converged and this creates a huge opportunity for small business. Have you checked to see if Google has mapped your business? It probably has. These days, when someone is deciding whether or not to become your customer, where they are in relation to where you are is more likely to influence their decision than ever before. Two big opportunities stem from this – Search and Social. Each uses maps in a different way, and the way that will work best for you will depend on the type of business you have.
Using Google maps for Search: These days, someone driving through a town would search for a cafe using Google Maps on their smart phone. Smartphones can show them a Google map of where they are and all the cafes near them. Of all the cafes on the screen, those that haven’t completed their Google Place page are unlikely to appear first. Most people click on one of the first few search results, so being at the top of the list is important if you want your business to be found.
Using Facebook Places for Social: Another way customers can find you is through their Facebook friends. When a customer can check-in to a cafe using Facebook Places they automatically share their location with all of their Facebook friends. If their friends are close by, they might meet up!
Your customers are using internet maps to search for you, so you need to be sure that you can be found where they are looking. Businesses that traditionally would have been found using the Yellow Pages now need to have a Google Maps presence. Hospitality businesses need to be active on the social internet as well as being on Google Maps.…