All too often I hear horror stories from people pouring money into Google Adwords and other Pay-per-click advertising who aren’t getting more than a trickle of results. What’s the secret to converting this investment into huge sales? With a great web marketing strategy.
Find out in this week’s website marketing article >>
Charlie
Small Business Web Marketing Ideas That Get Results
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Can you start or grow a business without spending a fortune on advertising? Are there any low cost marketing strategies that really work?
Whether you’re launching a business on a shoestring budget or you want to grow your business without spending more than you need to, this should be a question you’ve asked yourself at least once. The answer is yes, there is a low cost marketing strategy that really works, and I used it to make my first million online.
In the late ’90s I created a web site that reviewed and ranked the scores of emerging search engines. It took me two weeks of solid work to build the site. Then once a week I wrote a review of a new search engine and added the best of these to the growing directory of available search engines.
Each time I posted a review on my site and shared with the media, I was positioning myself as the expert on the emerging field of search engines.
The result was that within a few months, I got requests for interviews from Success Magazine, National Public Radio and a host of other publications. Traffic to my site soared. Within a year of launching my site I accepted an offer to sell it and my expertise to one of the largest information technology sites on the web for approximately 500 times my initial costs.
How can you too use your web site to position yourself for success? Get the details >>
The marketing strategy is to position yourself as the go-to expert in your field. It costs next to nothing and is the key to your success. My marketing articles are regularly picked up by hundreds of publications and distributed worldwide, generating sales at no cost and giving me more publicity than I could ever buy with advertising.
Why does expert positioning work?
If you are looking for ideas to grow your business, or cut your taxes, or for legal advice, whom are you going to turn to? Your neighbor, someone listed in the yellow pages, or to the person who regularly share ideas and knows what they are talking about?
Imagine two accountants, Sarah and Bob. Both are the best in the business and have exactly the same training, experience, knowledge and charge the same. The only difference is that each month Sarah sends you an idea about how to manage your finances or cut your taxes.
When it comes time to picking an accountant, whom are you going to hire? The one whose name you remember and whose opinions you’ve come to trust. You’re going to hire Sarah, who has positioned herself as the expert. While Bob may have the same knowledge and expertise, you aren’t certain of that and, in fact, have forgotten who he is.
Expert positioning works to help your prospects get to know you, remember you and see you as the person to go to when they have a question and a need. Do this and they’ll be much more likely to buy from you than from your competitors.
Ready to discover how to use expert positioning to grow your business? Use this link to get the details >>
Who can use expert positioning to grow their business?
Positioning yourself as the expert can help you no matter what you sell. You don’t have to have an advanced academic degree to use expert positioning to grow your business. You do need to be an expert in an area relevant to your business.
Here’s how one taxi driver used expert positioning to triple his sales.
A couple of weeks ago, my family flew down to sunny Nassau in the Bahamas for my nephew’s wedding. At the airport we climbed into a cab for the thirty-minute ride to our hotel. As soon as we were under way, the cab driver started sharing information about the island’s history, places to see, the best restaurants, when and where to view the local Junkanoo festival that was happening that night, etc.
By the time we reached the hotel, our taxi driver had positioned himself as the go-to expert on Nassau. I’m sure every other Bahamian taxi driver knew the same information, but by sharing it with us our driver had won our confidence and gained a competitive advantage over the other drivers. As we paid him for the ride, we asked him for his card so we could hire him for additional trips and for the return ride to the airport.
Want to put your business in one of the top positions in your industry?
Position yourself as an expert. Discover how with this link >>
Charlie
Small Business Marketing Strategies That Gets Results
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At the end of the year some people indulge in making New Year’s resolutions. They promise themselves they’re going to stop digging into the cookies or ice cream before bed, go to the gym more often, get more sleep, close more sales and a whole lot of other stuff.
Have you ever done this? One year later did you keep your resolutions or are you still stuck in the same ruts, wishing you were in better shape, still working too hard and not making as much as you’d like?
Maybe you’re the exception, but hardly anyone I know actually keeps their New Year’s resolutions and the rest don’t make them. Why is this?
Because when you talk about accomplishing something in the future, whether it’s losing weight or closing more sales, it stays in the future in your mind. There is always tomorrow and, as everyone knows, tomorrow never comes.
Want to know a better way to set goals you’ll actually reach in 2008? Use these marketing ideas to ensure your success.
Instead of writing your goals in the future, write them in the past tense, as if you’d already accomplished them. For example:
– “I built my list of qualified prospects to over 5,000.”
– “I increased sales per client by 50%.”
– “I reduced my per lead costs by $50.”
– “I automated my business so I can finally work only 4 days a week.”
See the difference? When you list your goals as accomplishments, you trick your mind into believing you’re already there. Instead of anticipating all the effort required and all the obstacles between you and your goals, visualize yourself already where you want to be. It gives you the mindset you need for success.
What’s the first step to success in 2008?
List the personal and business goals you’ll have reached by this time next year. Be specific. Instead of “I want to make more money” or “I want to work less”, write down goals like, “I increased my take home pay last year by $200,000.” Or “I outsourced all my administrative functions of my business and took 6 weeks of vacation to travel with my wife.”
Do this right now, before you read any further. Make a list of your accomplishments for this coming year. The act of writing them down and sharing them tricks your brain into making a commitment to reach them.
It’s the difference between thinking you’d like to take your spouse on a trip to Hawaii, and actually telling her you’ll be taking her there next December. Once you’ve told your spouse or children you’re taking a vacation together, you’ve made a commitment to them and yourself. The same is true of your business goals.
Now you need an action plan to meet your goals. Start by answering the following questions.
1 – What do you need to do to reach each of your goals?
A faster way of generating leads? >>
A system for growing your business? >>
A web site that converts visitors to buyers? >>
2 – What knowledge and skills are required?
Do you need to discover how to attract more clients, close more sales or finally turn your website into a profit center? Use this link >>
3 – What kind of advice do you need?
Do you need someone to help you organize your marketing and show you how to focus your efforts? Use this link >>
4 – What administrative tasks will you need help with?
Customer support and service, fulfillment, bookkeeping, web maintenance?
If you want 2008 to be more successful than 2007, think differently and plan differently. You may need fresh marketing ideas and different skills; to find new partners or associates, a better ways to organize your business and even a mentor.
Instead of making resolutions for the New Year, implement these marketing ideas and define what you’ll have achieved twelve months from now, and by that time you’ll have reached your goals. A simple strategy, but it works by creating a mindset of success that will last all year long.
Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Work
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Whether 2007 was a good, bad or indifferent year for your business, you’d like to make 2008 even better. What’s it going to take?
I was about to call it quits for the day when the phone rang. It was Donald Monroe calling from Sterling, Virginia. He told me that he wanted to learn everything he can about marketing his business. When I asked Donald which of my small business marketing manuals he was interested in, he answered, “all of them.” Why was he so eager to improve his marketing? Was his business in the dumps?
Read this week’s small business marketing article to find out >>
Happy Holidays,
– Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Get… Results
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What’s that ringing sound you hear at this time of year? It’s the sound of store registers ringing up the sales generated by Santa Claus.
Just because he’s old, overweight, long haired and unshaven and dresses funny, don’t overlook his marketing success. Santa is a marketing expert and you can become one, too, if you follow his marketing strategies.
Find out more in this weeks marketing strategy article >>
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Have you noticed a chill in the air this December, in the weather and in your sales?
Use this small business marketing strategy to turn things around.
According to my Toronto based bookkeeper, this winter is forecast to be one of the coldest and snowiest of the last 15 years. That cold Canadian air seems to be spreading.
Here in New England, the bears are hibernating and so are many consumers. The financial sections of the paper have been forecasting lower levels of consumer spending all month, and debating whether or not we’re in a recession.
Has this affected your business? What should you do?
Marketing your business in an environment where your target market is spending less doesn’t make life any easier, but there is still plenty of money to be made. You can’t afford to hibernate, though, and just wait out the cold season.
One of my clients brokers construction loans. Over a year ago, when loans were still flying out the door, Ron decided to phase out his loan brokerage and specialize further in a market he knows well. He built a web site that generates leads for construction loans to firms all across the U.S.
By this past fall, when housing starts dropped precipitously, Ron had his new web site up and running. Even though the overall volume of construction loans was down, he now has a national reach instead of a local one, and has plenty of business – and income coming in.
How can you weather a bear market or a recession? Use this link to find out >>
Whatever else you do, don’t let pessimism get the best of you. There is opportunity in every market environment, but you’ll need a plan to take advantage of it. Here are two simple ideas you can use.
Market To A Larger Audience
One of the easiest ways to keep growing your business, even in a time of reduced spending, is to do what Ron did and market to a wider audience. If 20% fewer people in your target market are buying, but you’re marketing to twice as many people, your income could still go up by more than 50%.
A no-cost or low-cost way to do this is by join venture partnerships. Find a business that markets to your target market and get them to promote your products or services in return for your doing the same for them. Or work out a profit-sharing deal. [is this correct?]
Increase Your Conversion Rates
Do you wish you could generate more leads, close more sales and sell more to each client? What are you doing about it?
Let’s take a look at the four generic steps of website marketing:
1. Use a Google Ad to bring people to your web site
2. Generate a lead
3. Make a sale
4. Get clients to buy again.
What are your conversion rates for each of these steps?
Most web sites get dismal results from this process. If you own a typical website, only a fraction of a percent of site visitors contact you and an even smaller fraction buy from you.
Want to increase your online conversion rates and sales? Use this link >>
Increasing your conversion rates is a step-by-step process. I advised one client to make the changes below and she saw more than a tenfold increase in sales.
a. Rewrite the copy of your homepage to focus on the problem you solve for prospects.
b. Offer a freebie that your prospects can’t resist to get them to contact you.
c. Measure the conversion rate of each page on your site. Tune up each of the high-traffic pages so they convert visitors to leads and sales.
d. Set up a system of autoresponders to prompt your prospects to take the next step in your marketing sequence.
If your web site generated ten times as many leads, and your followup process converted twice as many of those leads into sales, how much more could you make, even in an economic slowdown?
Don’t let the talk of bear markets send you crawling into a cave or you’ll lose the interest of all your potential clients. Instead, implement a marketing strategy to grow your business all year long.
Interested in growing your business? Use this link >>
Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Make You Money
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Could you double your sales in the next two or three months? Use the marketing strategy below.
In November I doubled my sales from what they were just two months ago in September and I saw them increase by over 300% from what they were a year ago.
I’ve helped some of my clients do even better. One client quadrupled sales in two years; one increased sales by a factor of 20 over a period of four years.
Yes, I’m blowing my own horn a little, but I want you to understand that it really is possible to double or triple your sales in a relatively short amount of time.
Before you read another word, ask yourself:
– How much more income could you bring in if you doubled or tripled your sales?
– Do you have this number written down or noted somewhere on your computer?
Can you actually do it? Can you realistically double your sales? The answer to this question should be a resounding “Yes!”
What’s the secret to making these kind of outrageous gains? Do you need to put in even more hours of work? Do you need to double your marketing budget?
The answer to both of these questions is “No!” It’s not a matter of working harder or spending huge sums. The answer lies in understanding the 80/20 rule and knowing how to work with it.
In 1906 Vilfredo Pareto, a French-Italian sociologist, economist and philosopher, noted that in Italy 80% of the wealth, the real estate, was owned by 20% of the people. The same observation applies in marketing. On average, 80% of sales revenue comes from 20% of marketing activities.
Which key marketing strategies can generate 80% of your sales? Find the answer here >>
How can you use the 80/20 rule? Here are 3 options to choose from.
A. You could stop doing the 80% of marketing activities that aren’t working. Think how much money and time you’d save and how much higher your profit margins would be. Instead of spending two days a week marketing you could do it all in 4 hours and use your time to develop new products – or take the day off and play golf or go skiing, like I do.
B. Instead of spending only 20% of your marketing efforts on what works you could spend 100% of your marketing time and money on the marketing strategies and tasks that generate leads, sales and repeat sales.
The result? You’d generate five times as many sales and five times the profits. What would you do with all that income?
C. You could continue doing what you’re doing now, spending 80% of your time on marketing that isn’t working. Don’t you want to better than this?
In summary;
– 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your clients.
– 80% of your income will come from 20% of your marketing activity.
Understand this and you can make a lot more money.
You can bring in two to four times as much revenue by dumping the clients who take up 80% of your time. Concentrate your marketing to attract more of the ideal clients who bring long-term profitability. Clients I’ve worked with, from SEO firms to therapists, have done this and seen immediate and long lasting increases in income.
Ready to discover which 20% of marketing activities can generate 80% of your sales? Get the answers here >>
Sue owns a growing web development firm and wants to increase sales from $300,000 a year to $450,000. Her primary market is small businesses in New England. Where did she invest her marketing dollars?
She booked a trip to Las Vegas for herself and 2 of her staff to man a booth at an Internet trade show where she’s pitching to industry insiders, not her target market. Cost? $10,000 in expenses, not including the time invested.
The above example may be extreme, but have you ever sent out a mailing or email broadcast, bought ad space, or maintained a website that didn’t get the results you wanted? Most small business owners stay small because they make this marketing mistake over and over.
You’re bound to fail if you spend your time and your marketing dollars on the wrong things – or use your marketing tools in the wrong way – over and over. No matter how hard you work, you’ll be frustrated.
The key to multiplying your sales is knowing where and how to market your business. For example, each week I invest several hours in joint venture marketing efforts and in keeping in regular contact with my prospects and clients.
My efforts are focused on building my list of interested, qualified prospects and on staying in touch with prospects and clients by writing at least one newsletter a week. Why these two activities? Because that’s how I make 90% of my sales. I concentrate all my time spent on marketing on the activities that bring in the most sales.
Want to easily double or quadruple your sales? You can do it by applying the 80/20 rule. Use this link to find out how >>
Put the 80/20 rule to use; work smart, work less and make more and you, too, can live the life you want.
Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Make You Money
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What’s the secret to getting your marketing into shape? Do you want to attract more leads each week and grow your sales every month? Get your marketing in shape to achieve your goals.
Find out how in this week’s web marketing article >>
Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Gets Results
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Don’t you wish you could leverage the holidays to generate a surge
of sales, no matter what you sell?
You can, using these marketing ideas!
The Friday after Thanksgiving, “Black Friday”, is the day many
retailers count on to pull them out of the red and turn a profit
for the entire year. Here in Connecticut, shoppers line up before
daylight to be the first to get into stores at the local malls. By
noon, I-95 slows to a crawl with all the shoppers on the highway.
It’s the beginning of the retail holiday spending spree.
Are you benefiting from the spending spree, or do your profits
suffer at this time of year?
Many business owners and marketers will tell you that their sales
slump in December. Yes, many people are distracted and busy with
holiday shopping and other holiday activities. If you aren’t in
retail, the question is, how can you turn the holiday season into a
sales opportunity, not an obstacle?
During the holiday season your prospects are in a mindset to spend
money, and are more than willing to spend money on themselves.
They’ve got their credit cards out and are ripe for you to market
to them.
What’s the secret to tapping into this holiday spending spree? Use
this link to find the answer >>
Retail holiday sales are a success because they rely on a handful
of tried and true marketing concepts. Use these simple marketing ideas to
create a tsunami of year-end profits:
1. Wish Lists
Many people make wish lists of presents to give and get during the
holidays. Why not ask prospects to create a wish list for
themselves and their business. Ask them what they want and need to
be more successful next year. Then sell them the solution.
2. Urgency
Once people have decided they want something, whether it’s a
present for a loved one or a new car or a better computer or new
marketing collateral, the quickest way to get them to buy is to
tell them might not be able to get it unless they act now.
When people head out to shop after Thanksgiving, they’re taking
advantage of short term sales, feeling the pressure of the limited
shopping days until Christmas, and they know that the stores may
run out of the items they want if they don’t act right away.
Creating urgency is one of the most effective ways to increase
sales, no matter what or when you market. Even if you’re selling
HVAC maintenance contracts or snowplowing services, marketing
limited availability or limited-time offers is a big motivator.
3. Special Offers
Typically, you may associate Christmas sales with toys, TVs and
personal items. You’re right, that’s where much of the spending is.
But there are no rules that say you can’t have a holiday sale on
your products or services, whether you provide computer systems or
accounting services.
Whether it’s a discount on price or a special bonus, when you give
your prospects something extra it increases their perception of the
value of your offer. Add in a sense of urgency, and you’ll have an
irresistible offer.
Are more clients and profits on your wish list? Use this link to
get them >>
In past years have you given up on the weeks between Christmas and
New Years and assumed you’d be lucky to ring in a few sales? If you
did, you’re missing out on some of the biggest selling days of the
year. The holiday shopping season generates about 20% of all retail
sales for the entire year.
With the right marketing strategies, December can be your best
month ever. And if it hasn’t occurred to you yet, you can use these
same strategies to generate a holiday rush of sales, all year long.
Ready to bring a flood of sales all year long? Use this link to
find out how >>
Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Make You Money
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What difference can the right marketing message make to your sales? Are you interested in getting more prospects to your website and prompting them to contact you? How much more could you be making if you had three times as many people contact you about your products and services?
Find the answers in this week’s web marketing article >>
– Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Make Sense
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