Celebrities, politicians and athletes and even CEO’s are doing it. Did I mention – I’m doing it too.
What are we all doing?
We’re are using Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, YouTube and other social media tools to build our audience, stay in touch and grow our businesses.
How about you? Have you been struggling in this economy to increase sales? Read More »
For many people, the key benefit of social media is letting friends and family know, at this very moment, what they are doing. This immediacy presents a challenge to small business owners, who find that they must balance this need for immediacy with their messages with the needs of running their own businesses on a day to day basis. How do small businesses manage to create timely messages regularly?
The simplest way to do this is to use social media to talk about what is happening at your store today, tomorrow, and in the week to come. Lisa Hartwick, owner of Hartwick’s Kitchen Store, plans a lot of in-store events and uses social media to both promote the events and do a ‘recap’ of the events after they happen. Read More »
Are you a small business owner who runs PPC campaigns? Have you spent hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars, and not known if any of your ads have brought in a single sale?
The challenge is maximizing your PPC spend and understanding if your PPC campaigns are truly profitable. I started this thought process about five years ago when I started asking businesses if their PPC advertising was profitable. The most common answer that I was received was that their PPC campaigns (typically Google Adwords) were generating targeted leads and sales but they were not sure if the ads were actually showing a profit. Read More »
It was a dark night, as most are. On the 12th of January, my Internet connection on the phone said to meet him at the Apollo Diner, a greezy spoon in the Vietnamese section of the Italian neighborhood in the French quarter. “Sit at the table closest to the bathroom in the back.” he said flatly. I could only suspect… he had a bladder problem.
I followed his instructions taking the table closest to the unkempt brown stained mahogany doors marked “His” “Her’s” and “Unsure,” of which I was a bit unsure about myself. Which is unusual, as I am unusually sure about myself; most of the time, to be sure. But this time, I wasn’t so sure. Read More »
Some of you may have heard the term “Sales 2.0” and wondered what is meant by the term. Chances are that many of you reading this blog post have been moving in the direction of a Sales 2.0 model without being aware of it. You just know that what you used to do is not working as well as it did before, and you are trying new things.
The short definition of Sales 2.0 is that you separate the Prospecting/Lead Generation function and the Selling Function into two distinct business roles. In other words, the Sales reps don’t make the cold calls and do the prospecting, another group does that role; the Sales reps are only responsible for completing the sale. Read More »
I read two different newspaper stories the other day. One suggested that, if you are a manager, you’re probably working longer and harder than ever before. The other suggested that only a small percentage of us do a job that we really love.
Which makes me think that, as suggested by Henry David Thoreau, there are a lot of people out there – including managers who manage others – who are “leading lives of quiet desperation” and will “go to their graves with their song still in them”. Read More »
I wasn’t planning on having knee surgery. And yet there I was, one week ago today, following the anesthesiologist’s instructions to “count backwards from 100 by seven” as he put me under. (I believe I got as far as 93.)
My original injury took place during the Gulf War. Not to say that I was actually in the Gulf War, it’s just that my injury – the result of a misstep while playing basketball – also occurred in 1990. And although I’ve continued to both run and play basketball since then, I’ve been living with a “trick knee” these past 18 years.
The “trick” itself is not as much fun as it sounds, and while it only occurs about once a year, it does so with predictable results: Read More »
Are you tired of hearing all the buzz about social media and still wondering how to put it to use to attract more clients and grow your business?
The concept is simple – social media is the digital version of the conversation that used to happen around the watering hole, water cooler, local pub or at church socials – the conversations that now happen mostly online.
The problem is that unlike face-to-face conversation, where you get immediate feedback, in the digital social media world, it can be hard to know whether anyone is listening, much less whether you’re sharing the content your prospects and clients want to read and respond to. Read More »
You must make up your mind in 60 seconds.
No time to think. No time to change your mind. Answer Yes, or No.
What are you going to do?
Has anybody ever given you a choice where you had to make a decision almost instantly?
How did that make you feel? Read More »
1. Weave the word, “You” throughout your copy. And if you can get your prospect’s name into the ad or sales letter, you can see conversion rates explode overnight.
2. Avoid using too many multi-syllabic words. $50 dollar words don’t bring in the orders. Use simple, easy to understand words that are loaded with emotional dynamite.
3. Insert metaphors throughout your copy to arouse emotion. Here are a few examples of metaphors: “Burns cash”, “Crack this nut”, “Take the bull by the horns.” Read More »
