Marketing Plan

How To Automate Your Online Business

Charlie Cook

Wish you could take a vacation from your business and keep making money? If you run your own business like I do you’ve probably asked yourself this question many times.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a business where the cash kept coming in whether or not you were at work?

I’m taking a few days off this week and won’t be online to answer people’s emails or process orders — but I certainly don’t want my business to stop making money. I’ll be heading up to Vermont to spend a few days at our condo.

I’ll be spending time with my wife hiking, biking and enjoying the fall foliage. Now, I love my work, but while I’m away, I want to enjoy myself and not think about business. The condo has a phone but we don’t have internet access because my business runs itself while I’m gone.

small business marketing

So, how do I keep making money while I’m on vacation enjoying the fall foliage?

Even while I’m on vacation, I want to continue to:
• Grow the number of qualified prospects,
• Convert more prospects into paying clients,
• Process orders and fill up my bank account so I can continue to afford condos in Vermont and my passion for skiing.

There are two key ingredients I use to keep my business growing even when I’m on vacation. The first is knowing what to do, the second is having a way to do it.

Over the last nine years I’ve developed a web marketing strategy that has been highly successful for me and for my clients. This is the strategy I used to grow my first million dollar site, which I sold six years ago.

I wrote ‘Creating Web Sites that Sell’ to show you exactly how to use this exact same web site marketing strategy to build your online business. In it you’ll find everything you need to know in it, from how to market your site to the search engines to how to convert visitors to buyers.

Use this link to discover how to get your Clickthrough marketing in gear so you make money 24/7 with your web site >>

Having a web site marketing strategy that works is the first ingredient to wining at business. The second is having an easy efficient way to implement your marketing plan.

One of the biggest challenges is staying in touch with prospects and converting them to clients. Each week four to five hundred people sign up for my free marketing guide and I want to make sure they download it. Then I want to go to work converting them from prospects to buyers.

When they are ready to place an order, I want to process it immediately so they get what they want and I can accept their payment.

If I had to respond to each inquiry and process each order manually, I’d need to hire dozens of assistants and have to manage them. Neither of which I have any interest in doing.

So how do I manage the business while I’m gone?

I use an email broadcast system and shopping cart system that handles all of the above tasks automatically. I write emails and schedule their delivery, or input the sequence of emails I want a new subscriber to get and it is sent automatically.

For example I wrote this email and article last Thursday. Then I scheduled it in the system to go out Monday at midnight.

One of the keys to successful web site marketing is having the systems in place to stay in touch with your prospects and clients and keep the sales pouring in. If you’re ready to automate your online business, whether you need to use simple email broadcast services or want to set up a full fledged online store, I recommend the following service. Get the details >>


What’s The One Basic Thing Most Small Businesses Are Missing?

Charlie Cook

Do you ever get distracted at work and neglect your marketing?

As a small business owner or marketing executive, you have a lot on your plate. Sometimes the daily fire-fighting can drive you crazy and get in the way of doing the essential marketing you need to attract new clients. What’s the solution, the one thing that can help you keep clients and profits flowing in?

In business, it’s having a marketing plan and sticking to it, that makes the difference.

Last week, my own plans almost got sidetracked. My wife and I had scheduled a week’s vacation before a nephew’s wedding in Denver. For years, we’ve wanted to hike and explore Utah’s “color country”, Zion and Bryce National Parks and the Grand Staircase Monument. The wedding gave us the perfect excuse to finally make the trip happen.

We were looking forward to the trip when our vacation plan was nearly thrown off by a tsunami of work and family matters. By the end of the week, my wife and I were wondering if taking 10 days off was such a good idea after all.

We tried to shorten the trip by a couple of days to catch up with missed days of work. But try as we might to rearrange our plans, the airlines wouldn’t cooperate. We were looking at higher fares and fees that just didn’t seem worth it. We stuck to the plan.

And we’re glad we did. We flew out of New York last Thursday and have spent the last 4 days hiking, relaxing and enjoying the incredible scenery of southern Utah for the first time.

Whether you’re planning a vacation or trying to grow your business, it pays to have a plan and follow it despite distractions.

Do you need a marketing plan? Do you need help sticking to it?

It’s rare that a business will take off on its own and grow by itself. Most need marketing to bring in prospects and turn them into buyers. Get the details >>

Is your marketing working as well as it could be?

Ask yourself the following questions:

– How many leads did you generate last week?

– How many leads did my ad generate relative to the cost and number of people who saw it?

– How many leads did my sales letter generate relative to the number of letters I sent out?

Then ask yourself:

– Given the number of leads generated, how many did I convert into sales?

– What was the dollar volume of sales generated from each lead?

It’s not a matter of time.

If your marketing materials aren’t pulling in clients within a few days, they’re not going to do much better after a few months.

Is it time to revise your marketing? Create a plan that you can live with, one that grows your business. If you’ve used the same plan for years and it’s not generating enough new business, then it’s time for a change. It’s time to use a marketing strategy that puts you on top. Discover a proven and reliable system for attracting clients and increasing your sales >>

Want to discover the fastest way to jump start your sales? With this simple strategy you can generate more leads and sales in one month than you did in the last twelve. Start generating more leads and sales>>

Is your web site generating a ton of leads and sales? It could be. You can use your web site to bring in dozens, if not hundreds, of leads each week with these proven web marketing techniques. Get results with your web site marketing efforts >>

Want a simple and reliable way to attract all the clients you can handle? Stop letting your marketing hold you back. Use this marketing system to get as many clients as you need. Double your business >>

Not born an expert marketer? Not a problem. Just use this step-by-step marketing system to pull in more business than you ever imagined. Discover how easy it is to successfully market your business >>

Want to know the secret to networking that will get you more work? The first thing to do is stop using the same networking approach as everyone else and start using a strategy that generates results. See your business network and your bank account grow >>

Don’t let your expertise and your services be buried in obscurity. Discover the easiest and least costly way to market yourself. Get known, get hired and be more successful >>


Small Business Marketing Plans

Charlie Cook


The 5 Fundamental Principles of Small Business Marketing

Charlie Cook

In marketing as in science there are basic principles that govern the movement of bodies in space, or prospects and clients. Just as people instinctively know the law of gravity, they are aware of the fundamental principles of small business marketing. Unlike the law of gravity which is hard to deny, many small business owners often neglect to apply core marketing principles to attract clients.

Even if you’ve never been hit on the head by an apple, you wouldn’t argue that objects fall down instead of up. Of course Isaac Newton’s true genius in describing the law of gravity was in realizing that the same force that attracts apples to the earth is responsible for keeping objects in orbit around other planets and moons.

Does your marketing plan help you generate hundreds of prospects a week and help you convert them to paying clients? Are you getting the results you want from your marketing?

Discover the marketing strategies and tactics that can help you grow you online and offline business >>

Use the following marketing principles to pull in prospects the same way gravity pulls planets into orbit around the sun. (Imagine yourself as the sun, the driving force of the solar system.)

1. START WITH YOUR CLIENTS
Client goals and concerns are the reason you are in business. Clients buy your products and services to meet their needs. You know this, but are you applying it to your marketing?

Many service providers marketing materials are little more than a laundry list of services. To attract prospects and clients, start with client problems as the catalyst for writing your marketing “meme” and materials. If you are a massage therapist you may provide “hot stone” or “deep tissue” massage but to get your prospects’ attention you’ll need to talk about relieving back pain or eliminating muscle spasms.

2. TARGET YOUR MARKET
There are a finite number of people who want and are willing to buy any given product and service. Marketing to people who don’t want what you provide is a waste of time and money. You know this, but are you targeting your marketing to those people who are most likely to buy your
services and products?

Learn (if you don’t already know) who buys your products and services and why. Develop a picture of your ideal buyer, their demographics, concerns and motivates. Use this information to identify marketing tactics that will attract them to you.

3. DEMONSTRATE VALUE
Before a prospect becomes a client and a client becomes a repeat client, they need to be convinced of the value of your products and services. They need to feel confident that your products and services will do what they are supposed to do. You know this, but is your marketing built around demonstrating the value you provide?

Many independent professionals sell information and ideas. If you are a web designer, you could provide a tutorial on how to plan a web site. If you provide tangible services, you need to show people examples of your work and provide testimonials from former clients.

4. GROW YOUR NETWORK
Lead generation is the lifeblood of any small business. The more qualified prospects contact, the more clients you’ll have. Even if you don’t want a thousand clients, if you have lots of prospects you can have the option of having just a few high paying clients. You knew this too, but do you have a small business marketing strategy which helps you grow the number of qualified prospects you market to each month?

One of your marketing goals should be to improve your lead generation and motivate qualified prospects to give you their contact information so you can market to them. If you sell information, publishing articles with a free teaser at the end is one way to do this. If you sell products or tangible services, a raffle can attract prospects.

Want to generate more leads and increase sales?

Disover how to use your web site to improve your lead generation and profits with this link >>

5.BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
People like to buy from others they know and trust. And attracting new clients takes ten times as much effort as selling to a repeat client. You know this too, but do you have a marketing strategy which helps prospects get to know and trust you?

You can assume that your prospects receive more information everyday than they can remember. Even if they need and want what you have to offer, there is a good chance they will forget an occasional radio ad or an
annual newsletter. To grow your business, find ways to regularly stay in touch, educate them, and explain the ways you can help solve their problems.

You already know the law of gravity and these five core marketing principles. Become a true genius like Isaac Newton, and apply them to pull prospects and clients into your orbit and grow your business.

Ready to start growing your business? Discover how to grow your online and offline business >>