Category: General Article

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

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?

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.…

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

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.…

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

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 …

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.…

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

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!…