May, 2007

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Archive for May, 2007

What’s In a Name? How much does it affect your marketing success?

By Charlie Cook | May 27, 2007

How important are your product names to the success of your marketing?

Back in March after a ski trip, my son returned to college leaving his ski boots in our poolroom, that wasn’t the problem, the problem was they were highly odoriferous if you know what I mean. Other than dipping them in Clorox I wasn’t sure how to kill the smell.

With a short web search and I found the perfect product. It was marketed under the name, “Stinky Feet”, which got my attention and I whipped out my credit card and bought it. Amazingly enough the stuff worked, at least after a few applications.

How important is the name of your product or service to the success of your small business marketing?

Product names like Stinky Feet or Mold Away or Eliminating Obstacles to Sales or Creating Web Sites That Sell let your prospects know what they’re for or do immediately. That’s a good thing if you want the sale.

Want to get the attention of your prospects and attract buyers with your marketing? Does the name of your product or services contain a description of the problem or the solution?

If they do, they’re much easier to sell.

Know of other great product names or ideas? Submit them here by leaving a comment.

– Charlie
For Marketing Ideas That Work

What’s the Best Definition of Marketing for Most Businesses?

By Charlie Cook | May 17, 2007

Recently the American Marketing Association proposed a new definition of marketing, which reads:

“Marketing is the activity, conducted by organizations and individuals, that operates through a set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging market offerings that have value for customers, clients, marketers, and society at large.”

Is this the best definition of marketing?

Does it even make sense to you?

I’d say its a perfect example of what’s wrong with most marketing. It’s too cumbersome and hard to understand, and doesn’t communicate the message clearly. Here’s an alternative, my definition of marketing. Tell me what you think.

“Marketing is helping your prospects get the information they need so they can get the products or services they want and so they buy from you.”

– Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing That Works

The #1 Email Marketing Sales Killer

By Charlie Cook | May 16, 2007

What’s the one problem that can kill your email marketing efforts? No matter how clever your emails, or how big your mailing list is you can see your sales die if this happens to you.

What’s the number one email marketing problem that few people talk about?

Over the last two months I’ve continued to email to my growing list of over 30,000 opt-in subscribers weekly and seen my sales volume decrease each week. At first I thought maybe it was a seasonal issue, people were taking advantage of the spring weather and not spending as much time shopping for advice online. But the continued decline in sales just didn’t make sense in comparison to the 5-10% monthly growth I’d seen the previous year.

What was going on? Why weren’t my email marketing efforts working as well as they had been?

When I looked further into the problem, I noticed that not only were sales down but the number of people who were opening the emails with my weekly marketing tip was down. Previously 20% of the people I mailed to opened my weekly email. Recently this had dropped to less than 10%.

Now that made sense. Fewer people opening and reading my emails equaled fewer sales. But why were fewer and fewer people opening my top marketing ideas and tips?

I had an idea. Was it that my emails weren’t getting through? My email broadcast service assured me that 92-98% of my emails were getting through, though now I seriously question their data.

Then two weeks ago, it got even worse! I noticed that I wasn’t receiving new order notices from my email broadcast and shopping cart system even though people were still buying.

It turned out that my email broadcast service had gotten their email servers listed as the sources of spam and blocked by the AOLs, GMails, AT&Ts and other services which provide email to consumers. How did this happen? I wasn’t sending email that was spam.

One bad apple does it. What had happened was that despite my efforts to be squeaky clean with my email marketing, one or two of my email broadcast services customers were flagrantly violating all the guidelines and using the service to send unwanted email. The result.

My email broadcast service had it’s servers blacklisted – which meant everyone of its thousands of customers emails were blocked. (Not the first time this had happened either.) Within a couple of days they had booted up new servers and were sending email broadcasts again but – I decided it was time to make a switch.

Why did I decide to change to a new email broadcast service?

First, the day, my email provider service got blacklisted, I received an email from a friendly competitor of mine who also runs a popular small business marketing site. Obviously he wasn’t using the same blacklisted broadcast service I was. He was using one I’d considered a while back. He was using > https://www.marketingforsuccess.com/email.html

Secondly, when I wrote my friend I asked him about his experience with his email broadcast service and most importantly what his open rate was, i.e. what percent of people he mailed to opened his emails. He wrote back to say his open rate was 35%, which is good and was more than three times what mine had declined to.

Last week I began to make the switch. This week I ran a simple test.

I sent the same email to different sets of subscribers via my previous service and the one I’d decided to try out. The result. My open rate was 50+% via the new service versus 9% at the old.

Obviously it wasn’t the emails that were the problem but the service sending them.

Want to know who I signed up with? Use this link >> https://www.marketingforsuccess.com/email.html

Should you change to a different email broadcast service?

Send your emails in html format so you can determine the open rate. A couple of days after you send out your next email check to see how many people opened it. If it’s less than 20+%, chances are you have a problem. The solution is to signup with an email marketing service that strictly prohibits the sending of unwanted emails and whose email servers aren’t listed as sources of spam.

Here’s the top quality service for serious online marketers who want to use email marketing to grow their business >>
https://www.marketingforsuccess.com/email.html

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to increase sales, but to make it work you need to make sure people get your emails.

– Charlie

What’s More Important Than List Building In Marketing?

By Charlie Cook | May 14, 2007

Do a search on popular web site marketing topics and “List Building” comes up as one of the most popular. If you don’t have a large in-house qualified list to mail to then, you should.

A few tactics to use are a free giveaway to motivate people to fill in a simple form on your site and give you their contact information. The best ways to get people to your site to fill in the form is top search engine placement, articles, links from other sites and Google Ads. But just building your list is only the start to making your online marketing work…

The key to online marketing success isn’t just having a big list of qualified prospects, it’s using it correctly to convert prospects to clients. Here are a couple of key things to remember.

Unless your prospects receive and open the emails you send them you’re wasting your time. Many email broadcast services happily charge you to send your mailings, but only a few actually deliver.

That’s right. You could have list of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of prospects but when most email broadcast services send your emails, only a very small percentage receive them much less open them. More important than a great subject line to get them to open your email, or great copy to get them to read it is how many people actually receive your email.

Want to know if your email campaigns are working?

Send your email in html and then check the open rates. If only a couple of percent of people are reading it you’ve got a problem. With a top quality email broadcast service 20-30% of your audience should at least open your emails.

What’s more important than building your list?

The number of people who actually get your email and open it.

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing – Time Tested and Proven Ideas

What’s Your Favorite Web Site Marketing Tool?

By Charlie Cook | May 7, 2007

I’m always on the lookout for new web tools to add to the extensive list at Marketing For Success, ones that can help small business owners attract leads, track traffic, convert prospects to buyers and manage their web sites.

You can review the tools already on the site at Web Site Marketing and at Advanced Web Site Marketing

Use the comment option below to submit the latest and greatest web tools you’ve recently discovered, ones that could help small business marketers improve their web sites.

– Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing That’s Time Tested and Profit Proven

Are Your Small Business and Online Goals The Right Ones?

By Charlie Cook | May 1, 2007

“Last year I made $170,000 with my Internet business, working on it part time. I want to make more this year and U have a ton of ideas for products and services, but I every time I think about working on them I lose interest. What can I do to regain my focus and make more online?”
– Chris

Chris is one of my clients, and when I asked him what his personal goals were, he hesitated and the admitted he didn’t really know. He knew he wanted to make more money so he could confidently quit his day job, but didn’t have a clear vision of where his business was headed.

Without a doubt Chris has been reasonably successful but he’s only tapping part of his potential as an entrepreneur, and he knows it. With his ideas and talents, he could be making $750,000 or more, but he’s stuck. What does he need to do be outrageously successful?

No matter how brilliant you are, no matter how successful you’ve been, without a vision of what you want to do with your business and without defined goals to achieve that vision, I can guarantee you’ll wander.

If you’re not making money or not making as much as you’d like to be, the solution could be as simple as clarifying your vision and rethinking your goals.

Say you really wanted to go on a vacation but had no idea when, where or with whom. Chances are that you’d end up just taking a few days off and staying home or hitting the local golf course for a few rounds. Okay, but not great.

Now, imagine you wanted to take the ultimate vacation with a friend or your spouse. You’d make a list of places you want to go, what you’d like to do and see, and the level of luxury you’d like to enjoy. You’d create a vision of your trip.

Then you’d start to make plans, setting dates and making reservations. Of course, this trip would cost much more than a few rounds of golf, so you’d start figuring out how you could make enough money to afford it.

My wife and I have been talking about taking a trip to Bhutan for years. But it’s a vague wish rather than a clear vision; we’ve never figured out when we’d go or what we’d do. At this rate, we’ll never get there.

Having a vision of what you want to do with your business is the starting point. If you just want to make more money, there are hundreds of ways to do it. You have to know where to focus.

Are you thinking of adding a few more clients, or are you planning to be the top investment advisor (or whatever) in your state? Do you market online?

Are you wondering how to add an additional revenue stream, or are you could be planning to develop five new niche info products, each making you over $250,000 a year? Do you see your business becoming the dominant player in your industry or in your town? What do want your role to be?

Want to know the fastest way to grow your business? Set your goals and then discover how to reach them.

Several years ago I set myself the goal of making my business not only more profitable, but portable, so I could run it from any place that had broadband Internet access. This past December my wife asked me how many days of skiing I wanted to do that winter. I actually hadn’t pinned down a number until that point, but I told her that getting in 30 days on the slopes would be awesome.

When the snow finally started finally falling in late January, my business was set up so I could work from our condo in Vermont. I’m happy to say I reached my goal of 30 days of skiing, and continued to grow my business.

What is your vision of success?

What do you want to accomplish this year? In three years? In five years?

What are your top three goals for this month?

Like my client Chris, articulating a vision for your business will focus your thinking. Then it will be easier to set specific goals and make plans to achieve them. Keep track of your progress, regularly update your vision and your goals, and you, too, can become outrageously successful.

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Gets Results