How much did you pay for your company’s website? No need to answer. I just want you to think about it.
Is that website a real profit center for you? For most businesses, their website is not much more than a convenient, online business card that has interactive maps and all their phone numbers.
How about getting a return on that investment?
In a nutshell, here’s what you need to do. You need to make the content on your website dynamic and not static.
How often do you change the content on your website? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? For most businesses, it’s not even yearly. Yet fresh content is how you get new visitors, and new visitors are one of the ways you get new customers and clients.
In these emails I send you, you’ll see a lot of tips and even hacks for doing this, for easily getting new content posted to your website.
Let me suggest that you start implementing some of these tips. If you don’t have time, reach out to me. I do this stuff professionally!
Read through my past messages and find one thing you can start doing this week. Once you do it the first time, decide on a reasonable schedule for doing this. Don’t expect immediate results, especially if you’ve never done this sort of marketing before. Glaciers are huge, right? Yet it takes thousands and thousands of years to create one. Don’t worry! Getting more business from your website won’t take nearly that long!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
You’re constantly reading about how must businesses fail in their first five years. Not sure what the statistic is, but it’s pretty grim. Common knowledge is that most business fail because of lack of capital. Personally, I don’t believe that at all! Being a marketer, I believe that most businesses fail because they don’t do the basics when it comes to marketing.
Here’s a free program for you, which you can implement right now to sell more and gain more clients/customers.
I call it my Refer A Friend program. I’m sure you’ve seen this, and I of course, didn’t invent it. But, it’s shocking how many businesses don’t do this.
It goes something like this. If you refer a new client/customer, you either get something extra or you get a certain percentage off your own order.
Setting this up isn’t hard, either, since it’s a one time deal for a new customer.
If you don’t really know how to work this in your own business, contact me. I can help you outline what to do!
1. Think about what it is you want to use as a reward.
2. Also, consider how you’ll track this. You might do it manually for a while, just to prove it’s worth doing.
3. If I were you, I’d market the daylights out of this! Press releases, videos, blog posts, ads, more!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
Here’s a great way to easily increase your visibility and establish yourself as a bona fide expert in your business, even if you’re not really one at all!
And, it’s completely legitimate.
If you’ve been in business for any length of time, then I’m sure you know of people who are looked at as experts in that business. Instead of competing with them, how about cooperating with them?
Help them help you!
Once a month reach out to a new expert and ask to interview them. You can use GoToMeeting, Skype, or Zoom for this, among other platforms. Send them a list of questions you’re going to ask them, and then for about thirty minutes to an hour, interview them.
Interviewing is actually not that difficult to do. You ask questions, then you be quiet while the other person explains. Experts love the attention, and they love to teach. Let them do the work for you. You be the beneficiary of their work.
This is kind of like the scrawny kid in school being all big and tough just because he or she is hanging out with the school bully. (But in a positive way! )
In all my emails, I’ve given you scores of ways to take content and use it. You can take this interview and put it on YouTube. You should link to that from social media. Of course, it goes on your blog. And, it gets emailed out to your growing list.
Pretty soon, people will be reaching out to you, seeking your advice as an expert!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
For business owners and managers, LinkedIn is a gold mine…if you know how to work it. Now, there’s a lot to know, and I’m not covering all of that in this one email. But, I did want to show you a quick little “hack”, which will yield incredible results, if you’re consistent with it.
I call it The LinkedIn Group Hack.
You may or may not know this, but LinkedIn has groups just like Facebook. And, you can join up to 50 groups at a time. There are tens of thousands of groups. There are groups for virtually any business niche.
You need to find those groups and become a member. Then you need to start posting in those groups so that you can establish yourself as and authority in your business.
It gets better than just posting, though. LinkedIn has made some changes recently, which have taken away many of it’s better features for free users, and changed all of this even for paid users.
If you want to get connected with people in a given, targeted niche, like a geographic niche or a specific business niche, you can no longer use LinkedIn’s advanced search feature. The only real way to do this is by joining groups and then reaching out to the members of those groups and connecting with them.
A complete discussion of LinkedIn marketing is way beyond the scope of this email, but if you’ll do that one thing, join groups and start connecting with people in those groups, you’ll find that your networks grows automatically among the types of people you need to be connected with.
Again, if you need more information about this, reach out to me.
You implement this by doing it.
1. Review your profile to make sure it’s up to date.
2. Join relevant groups.
3. Connect with other members of those groups.
4. Enjoy the rewards of your growing network!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
If you’ve been reading my emails and tips, then you know that I’m all about intelligent use of the Internet to grow your business. One of your top priorities should be to grow your email list. Another top priority should be to increase your reach on social media.
Here’s a quick way to do this, which is almost effortless once you set it up.
We call it Gated Content.
You see this all the time in news outlets. You’ll see a link to an article, and when you get there you can only read the first paragraph or so. Once you get that read, you’ll have to click a button to continue. Sometimes, it’s just a button that needs clicking. Other times, however, you’ll even have to submit your email to continue. Yet other times, you’ll have to share on your choice of social media outlets in order to continue.
Personally, I like the sharing strategy best. It’s a lot to ask for an email just to read an article. But, it’s really not that much to ask someone to share a link to their Twitter of Facebook accounts. When your reader shares, their friends and followers see the link. Some of them will then click that link and come to your website. Some of those folks will end up being customers and clients.
Best of all, once you set this up, it runs on its own!
Determine what type of platform you use for your website, WordPress, Joomla, or is it just straight HTML (rare these days). Get with your web developer and ask them how to implement this strategy. It will take a little garden variety software to do. Nothing big, and probably either free or not expensive, either. The most important part is to get going!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
If you blog, then this is for you. (If you don’t blog for your business, why not? Oh…you don’t have enough time. Common problem. I can solve that for you, by the way. Reach out to me!)
Even professional writers and bloggers run out of ideas for content. Here’s a great solution for this. You can implement this once a week, if you blog daily, or once a month, if you blog less frequently.
How about a Top Posts Digest? This would be a collection of, let’s say, the 5 most popular blog posts for this month, or this week, or whatever time frame you’re looking at. If you’re using a platform like WordPress, there are plugins you can use to track your most visited blog posts. Just rank these and choose the top five or so. Then all you do is you copy those into a bigger post.
You can do much more with this, though.
How about mailing this to your growing list once a period? Or turning it into an ebook? Or turning this into a video series? Or, heck do all the above!
Repurposing content is an art. A lot of business owners don’t really leverage the Internet, because they don’t have time, or see it as cost prohibative. It’s not, when done right.
Need help with this? Let me know!
Start by keeping track of your most popular posts. Next, create your first digest and mail it out to your list. Ask for feedback from your subscribers. That will tell you if you’re on the right track!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
How many people per month visit your business’s website? (If you don’t know, ask me about this. Tracking this is what I do!)
Now, how many of them revisit. How many of those end up on your email list. How many call you for a quote, or buy products through you?
If yours is like most businesses, you’ve probably got a lot of work to do here. One simple thing you can do is offer your visitors a free resource. You can use an ebook, if that makes sense. Also a free video. Make sure what you offer isn’t just a veiled sales pitch. Make sure it has real value!
You collect emails doing this using what we call a squeeze page. That’s a page where you submit your name and email and you get the ebook sent to you in exchange.
Another great way of doing this is to offer the ebook or resource without the opt-in. (Without asking for the email.) Why? You’ll get a lot more people downloading your ebook if they don’t have to give you their email address. What you do is offer them a second, more in depth, free resource in exchange for their email address either inside the first free resource or on the download page for the first free resource.
This is easy to do, and you’ll deepen the relationship between you and your visitors. Some of them will, in turn, turn into paying customers!
Think of a topic that your customers/clients would need to know. If you sell cars, for instance, offer an ebook or video about how to get financing for your new car or how to determine how much of a car payment you can afford given your income.
Next, have someone write the ebook or create the video for you. You could probably do this, but you’re busy running a business, right? Don’t let this opportunity slide just because you’re busy. It’s too important.
Get your web guy or gal to put a prominent link to this new resource on your website.
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
You’ve got a smart phone, right? Who doesn’t? Let me ask you a quick question. How often do you search for something, a restaurant, a new place to get your hair done, new tires for your car, and you use your smart phone instead of sitting down at your computer? If you’re like most folks nowadays, it’s at least half the time!
So, right now, there are people trying to visit your website for your business using their phones. Here’s an important question for you…how well does your website show up on a phone?
Go ahead and take your phone out right now and look at your business website. I’ll wait a couple of minutes for you. Let me know when you get back!
Oh…you’re back!
So, how did it look? You’re going to have to take your business owner hat off and your potential customer/client hat on. A phone screen is much smaller than a computer or laptop. Also, the dimensions are different. Computer screens are horizontal, while phones are vertical. So, the layout for your website for a computer won’t work that great for a phone. Information will get lost and people will go elsewhere.
It gets worse! Google will actually NOT rank your site as well for searches done on a mobile device as they will sites that have a mobile version. So, you’re losing out even more!
Bottom line, you need to fix this! And, I can help you fix it. Reach out to me today!
1. Search your own site on a phone and if you have one, a tablet. See what it looks like. Search your competitors’ sites. Do they have websites that change their look when searched for on a device other than a computer. That’s called responsiveness.
2. If you have a problem, find a designer who can create a mobile friendly site for you. Or better yet, ask me!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
Advertisers know that stories sell. So, you need to be using stories in your marketing, right? Right! Humans are attuned to stories. We share them, remember them, and they become part of our belief system. We’re strongly motivated by stories.
The question is this, though. What kind of stories should you be using in your marketing?
Here’s the basic format for a story that works for marketing businesses.
Customer X has a problem. Customer X finds a potential solution. That, by the way, is one of the products you sell. Customer X buys the solution, uses it, and it solves or at least addresses the problem.
Sharing this pattern in story format will go a long way to helping your potential customers realize that you have products that will solve their needs. If you need help brainstorming for ideas here, let me know. Or if you need help writing. I can get all this done for you in a timely manner.
Much like any type of case study, you start with a customer and their problem. You then move through the buying of the product/service, and figure out exactly how that helped the customer. Actually interviewing customers and quoting them in your marketing story will be huge!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
Often in business, our only interactions with customers are when we’re trying to sell them something or fulfilling what we sold them, or fixing a problem. We all know the importance of excellent customer communications during the sales process. But, if you want to own your customers for life, you need to take this whole thing a step further.
Back in the day, before the internet, a lot of selling was relationship based, especially business to business selling. Sure, today, a lot of it is still relationship based, but this doesn’t just have to work for your local business banker. All business owners need to get to know their customers and clients. Okay, if you run a retail business, then you have hundreds if not thousands of clients and you can’t get to know them all, but getting to know a few key customers better is an excellent idea.
I want you to consider this, but I also want you to consider how you can leverage each customer interaction. Here’s what I mean. What if once a month, you invited one of your best customers/clients to do a recorded video chat with you. Thirty minutes or less. So, you do the video chat and record it. You just have a friendly conversation with the customer about business related issues. (Make sure you don’t try to sell them anything. ) Next, you take that video chat and use it in all your marketing campaigns. People buy from people and businesses, they know, like, and trust. Can you imagine how this simple 30 minute per month exercise would explode the know, like, and trust, factor with your potential buyers and current buyers?
You’re going to need a way to talk, to see each other, and to record your session. GoToMeeting, Zoom, and also Skype are excellent platforms for this. Pick one. Play around with it. Get comfortable. Next, make a list of potential people you’d feel good about approaching for this. Hit the ground running with this idea. It’s going to be a game changer!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!