Most online businesses provides great service to generate satisfaction among their customers. As each and every customer receives satisfaction from the products or the services they get, there is a great chance that they will become a repeat customer and are hungry for more of your great information. Better yet, they will most likely recommend you to other people that could generate more business for you and your site.

As more traffic is driven to your site, you can entice many of them to subscribe to your mailing list or opt-in list. An Opt-in list is a list where website visitors agree to be sent promotional materials such as newsletters, catalogs and such that could keep them updated about your site or the niche of your site and in return for them sharing their email with you, you offer them something great that you have developed.   Many successful online marketers give-away their best, or at least a taste of their best work as a reward to opt-in to their list.

When using e-mail as the media of your marketing and advertisements, you eliminate the need for high costs. Email is very low cost marketing and sometimes it can even be free!  With an opt-in subscribers list, you are more confident that what you are sending out is received, viewed and read by the subscribers and not simply being deleted. They have signed up for service and have consented in receiving it.

This means that there are constant reminders to your subscribers about all your products, new products and services as well as any promotions and special deals you are having. There is also the chance that they can be forwarded to other potential customers as they tell their friends and families about you and your site.

Of course, there will be many subscribers who may unsubscribe if they feel that they are not getting what they want or expected. So be sure that they are satisfied with you the information you share with them and keep them excited to receive your newsletters and catalogs.  Try some of these tips to help you build a list of eager and hungry subscribers.

• Make your promotional materials interesting and fun.  Use a little creativity but don’t over-do it. Build around what your product or service is about. For example; if you are selling motorcycle parts, put some pictures of what is new in the cycle parts world.

• Do your research of what people are looking for, this way you stay one step ahead of them all the time and you will be their go-to person for all things new. They will be eager to receive what you are sending them because they know you always have fresh and new things to share with them.

• Write good content that can is informational but light at the same time. If your subscribers enjoy your articles, they will go to your site by clicking the links that you will be putting on your newsletter to read some more. You can provide articles that can connect to many people. Be diverse in your articles. Put something humorous, then put something informational, then put something that has both.

• Do you procrastinate because you don’t like writing? No problem, there are many professional and experienced article writers that  can do the job for you for minimal fees. They know what they are doing and can provide great content for your newsletters.  The money that you pay for your articles will be well-worth it by the many sign-ups and the potential profit from the sales that you will get.

• Create and send an E-book to your customers about anything that is related to your business or site. Use your knowledge and expertise in the field you have chosen to help other people who are similarly interested. Offer this e-book for free. You can write about anything informational and helpful to your subscribers. For example; you can do manuals and guides in so many things. This e-book could be used as a reference for many people.  Another great idea is to make a Kindle book, with so many iPads, tablets and Kindles out there now.

• Share this e-book with everyone, even other sites; just make sure that they don’t change the links in the e-book that will lead people to your site. If you want, you can even get someone to write it for you just like your articles. Your investment once again will be covered by the great marketing this will generate.

• Add e-coupons in your newsletters for special discounts on an upcoming product or service.  Put a control number in your e-coupon so that they can only be used once. When people get discounts that can be found in your newsletters, they will be hungry to receive your newsletter each month/week to see what you are offering.

If your subscribers can get benefits from your newsletters, they will be very eager and waiting to receive them.  Just be careful not to flood your mailing list with emails so that you don’t annoy your subscribers.

You’ve got your brilliant idea for a start up, you’ve got a product that you’re certain people will be falling over each other to buy, and now you just have to get out there and sell the thing. So, you just need to find yourself some of those “customers” you’ve read so much about. How do you do that then?

Working out your target audience is one of the toughest marketing jobs there is. If you know who you’re selling to, it’s fairly straight forward to work out how to market to them, but actually finding that market is a challenge. Fortunately, we’re here to get you started.

Make It A Niche Market, No, A Really Niche Market

If you ask your average start-up who they want to sell their products to, the first answer that will pop into their heads is probably “Everyone”. This… isn’t much help. You can’t please all the people all the time. Instead, try and please one person all the time. Or at least, one very narrow demographic all the time. The more specific your target audience is, the easier it will be to aim your marketing at them.

Find a narrow group of people, and work out what they need and how your product meets that need. Everything else you do to market your company is an extension of this.

Work Out Why Anyone Would Buy Your Product

This is called an Initial Value Hypothesis. Decide what it is that’s special about your product and why customers in your narrowly selected target market would want to buy from you rather than any of your competitors. A common mistake many start-ups make is to stick religiously to their business plans. Don’t- none of your customers care about your business plan. All that matters is you work out what people want, and how you can sell it to them.

Put Your Ideas To The Test

Established companies are learning more and more about their customers every day. The big companies use everything from loyalty cards to iPhone apps to work out how their customers behave and what they prefer. Sometimes this gets to the point where it’s actively creepy, such as recently when Target’s marketing department figured out a teenage girl was pregnant before her dad did.

Now, as a start-up, you don’t really have access to all that Orwellian machinery, so you’re going to have to test out your ideas in much smaller arenas. Some of the ways to do this include surveys and polls.

A particularly useful one is to arrange a one on one meeting with someone in your target market, and simply talk to them. The trick to making this work is not to lead your interviewee. Ask them about problems in the area of your product. Ask what they would be looking for in a product to solve that problem. The results might surprise you.

Offering free samples to see how people respond to them

Equally, a good option is to collaborate with other businesses in your industry. It’s easy to get paranoid and insular with your “industry secrets” but sharing knowledge can actually help everyone involved.

Draw a Portrait of Your Perfect Customer

By now you should be fairly well along in your market research. You’ll have found a narrow demographic you want to sell to, worked out why they would want to buy your product, and talked to members of that demographic to get a better idea of how they think and what they’re looking for in a product. At this point you can start thinking about customer relationship management, or CRM, by creating a custom profile of your target customer, using all the information you have gathered..

Apply What You’ve Learned

Now it’s time to put what you’ve learned into action. Has what you’ve learned changed your business plan? Is there anything that needs to change about the way you present your products, how you sell them, or even the products themselves?

If you’ve gone through this whole process and not discovered anything that needs changing, then it’s possible you’ve not been doing it properly.

Barry Magennis is an SEO executive working with Haymarket Business Media. In his spare time, he writes about numerous subjects, including jobs in media. 

Using traditional offline marketing techniques to market your online blog seems like it could be a daunting task, rife with frustration and needless papers and phone calls. However, by doing all of your marketing online, you leave out a huge number of potential readers. If you are blogging for fun or for money, the point is you want people to read what you write. Without readers, all of your work and fantastic writing is for nothing.

You don’t have to worry; though…integrating tried-and-true offline marketing methods with more modern techniques is not as hard as it sounds. There are 3 easy ways you can get started advertising your blog offline. Each of them is unique and helpful on its own, and they work well together. All of them are low-cost, and have proven effective time and time again.

Business Cards

One of the best ways to get the word out about your blog is with the use of good, old fashioned business cards. Keeping these handy in your wallet, glove box, and jacket pockets (don’t wash them!) will enable you to network everywhere you go. They are relatively inexpensive to print – you could even do them yourself, if you really wanted to save money. Here are 3 tips to help you with your amazing business cards:

•  Don’t print too many. Your contact information, address, job title, or logo may change. It is recommended that you print no more than 1000 cards at a time for the heavy distributor; 500 should be sufficient for the average at-home self-promoter.

• Don’t be too flashy. The goal of a business card is for people to be able to contact you at a later date. Unless you can do it tastefully, try to avoid a multitude of sparkles, glitter, graphics, and logos. Utilize the free space on both sides of the card. Remember: people will contact you and have a better chance of visiting your blog if your business cards are neat, clean, and easy to read.

• Do treat them like candy. Give them to everyone you know. Post them on community bulletin boards. Check out local businesses and schools; a lot of them have cork boards available for community and business-related information.

Fliers

Fliers can be an invaluable resource when you are thinking about reviving your blog with some updated offline marketing techniques. With virtually any option available in size, color, cost, and quantity, using and creating fliers is easier than ever. A number of popular office services companies are available to help you design a flier, or you can hire a graphic designer. Just like with business cards, you can post them everywhere. Be sure to do a little research with your city or county to make sure you are only posting fliers in appropriate areas.

Conventions and Lectures

Depending on your prime reading target, there may be conventions or lectures held in your area – or even outside of your immediate area if you are willing to travel relevant to your blog topic. Purchasing space – or getting it free – at a convention is a great way to draw potential readers to your blog. If you choose the right place, you are guaranteed to have patrons that are already interested in what you have to say. They did come to the convention, after all.

Regardless of the method you choose, remembering the many options available to you via offline marketing will be helpful in increasing your overall reader base. When you blog, you want people to read your blog. Taking advantage of some offline techniques will help to ensure people find you…even when they are away from the internet.

Jen Silva is a writer for Choosewhat.com. ChooseWhat is a company that provides product reviews and test data for business services and products such as business cards and PBX services. Their goal is to help small companies make informed buying decisions on business solutions that help their business.

Enjoy this guest post from Mike Seddon

It’s a fact that many businesses are loosing money through a leaky web purchase process. Most of these businesses choose to ignore the problem and will prefer to look at increasing traffic as the way to grow sales.

The analogy I like to give is to imagine you had a bucket with holes in it that you needed to fill with water. What would you do first? Fix the holes or just try to fill the bucket with water faster than it is leaking? Believe me; many businesses go for the faster filling leaky bucket solution!

What I want to do is show you five ways you can fix those holes and just by doing that you will boost your sales because you’ll close all the sales that were originally escaping you. In other words, you make more money from the buying traffic your website is already getting.

Step 1 – Stop Hiding that Buy Button!

You’ll be amazed how many businesses seem to hide the buy button. They make it blend in with the colour theme of their website or they put it below the fold (ie: you have to scroll down the website to find it).

Just making your buy buttons stand out and putting them in a prominent place will boost sales. Trust me. Try it.

Step 2 – Don’t ask for stuff you don’t need

Why is it that some websites ask for my inside leg measurements when all I’m trying to buy is an ebook! Why do they need that information?

Okay so I am exaggerating but you know what I mean. We’ve all been to sites where we have to fill out screens of questions before we can just get our credit card out and buy the darn thing.

So take a good long look at your payment screens and make sure you are only asking for information that you need to make the sale. Keep it short. Keep it brief and get the money!

Step 3 – Reinforce the Benefits

When most website owners install their shopping cart software they tend to only concentrate on setting up the pages so that they can collect the data they need to process the sale. They miss an opportunity here to help ensure the sale. If they were to add benefits of the products onto their payment screens they would find that less people abandon the shopping cart. Seeing benefits of your purchase as you go through the sales screens reinforces your desire to own the product and keeps you in the process.

Step 4 – Use Testimonials

This is the same approach I just outlined with benefits. Make sure your sales screens have testimonials. It helps reassure your purchaser that they are making the right decision in buying from you.

Step 5 – Guarantees

Do you offer a guarantee with your product? If you do make sure you repeat them on the purchase screens, especially the one that asks for the credit card details! What’s the point of having a guarantee if you don’t shout about it and use it to make sure you close as many sales as possible?

If you don’t have a guarantee then shame on you! Offer one.

The better your guarantee, the more chance you will have to make the sale. So make sure you offer a compelling guarantee. You may worry about the cost of honoring your guarantee but let me assure you that the increase in sales will more than cover any slight increase in costs due to covering a guarantee.

So there you have five easy ways you can quickly fix the holes in your purchase process and boost your sales as a result.

Once you’ve done those then you’ll be ready to increase the traffic to your website safe in the knowledge that you will maximize the sales from that extra traffic. You’ll find lots of free advice on increasing your web traffic using website promotion at the KKSmarts website.

I was out in my flower garden earlier and noticed that the weeds have really started to grow bigger and bigger, especially since we just had a rain.  As I was pulling a few weeds I began to think about how I needed to prune my marketing garden too.

How about you?  Are you afraid to unfriend, unfollow, disconnect or remove people from your online marketing lists?  That’s a really scary thought isn’t it?  But as we know in our flower gardens, when we began to prune the weeds out, the beautiful flowers began to grow bigger and more brilliant and our gardens really stand out.

Here are some ideas for “Pruning your Marketing Garden”

• Cut the Chatter in your Twitter account.  Do you have a lot of  followers, but yet nobody is talking to you?  Perhaps you need to look at de-cluttering the noise on your account by removing some of the people you follow and focus on following those thought leaders in your industry or your target market that you can really engage in a meaningful conversation with.  Here’s a great tool to stop following those people that either don’t follow you or haven’t been active for a while.  Twitter Karma
  
• Laser Focus your Facebook Page. If you have a Fan Page (and you should!) are the fans who have “Liked” your page people that are really interested in your information?  Or are they simply there because you or someone in your online community invited them.  Do they ask questions and comment on your posts and links?  Or is your Fan Page like a ghost town?  It might be time to really focus on the people that are active on your page and develop an “invitation only” Page that they can get the inside scoop and have more opportunities to connect with you and your business.
• Ask them to Leave! Oh My Gosh!  That would be marketing suicide, right?  To ask the people that you have begged, bribed and bought (hopefully not this one) to be on your list, to now get off!  I live in the South and we have a saying, “You’re preaching to the choir.”  Which can relate to your marketing list.  See who opens your emails.  Who clicks your links.  Who responds to your offers.  And if the majority of your list is not doing those things, they are probably not going to be a good customer/client for you.  Your list should be like the choir.  The folks that are always behind you, sharing your online information and supporting your programs.  So in your next newsletter, just add a small note and give them a way out.  Let them know that you are trying to really focus on giving the best information to the people who really want it and if your newsletter isn’t for them, here’s the link to “unsubscribe.”  That’s not being mean, it’s just giving them a way out.  Maybe they didn’t want to hurt your feelings by getting off your list.  You are just helping them out.

I’ve heard other online marketing experts say that when someone unsubscribes to your list, it’s a good thing.  You want your information to get to the people who need it most.  That’s why you are in business, to provide the “best” of whatever you do for your perfect client or customer.

How do you feel about pruning your marketing garden? Are you ready to have the beautiful, bountiful garden you have dreamed of?

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Are you a brick and mortar or mom and pop business that needs more traffic in your door? Do you have a website but need an easy way to get found online? The answer is Google Places.

Google has so many great tools, most of which are free, that you can use to help your customers and clients find you and your expertise online. Now days, if you don’t have some type of web presence, people will think you are not a reputable business and opt for someone else to give their business to. But with the many tools available to small entrepreneurial businesses there’s really no reason not to be found online.

Google Places allows you to upload your business information including photos, videos, menus, special events or services, reviews, or information about hours and parking costs. To get started you need a Google account, so if you don’t have one, it’s very easy to set up. Next you must have a physical location/address for your business and verify that your country is available to be listed. Google only allows certain countries to be listed in Places at this time. Also, you should only set up one listing even if you have multiple locations. In the description of your business explain the different services and locations your business offers.

Here is a short video about Google Places

And a couple others tools to get your business found online are -

• Establish a Facebook Fan Page
• Develop a profile for your company and the key staff on LinkedIn
• Build a blog and give a “voice” to your business
• Set up a YouTube Channel and show people through video why they need to do business with you

It’s just a smart business strategy to be listed on Google Places as well as social media. Check out how this dentist increased his traffic with Google Places – Google Places Brings a Smile to a Dental Practice

See how easy it is to get found online?

Please share this with your online friends by clicking the links below.

Lead capture pages or often known as splash pages and squeeze pages are one page websites designed with one purpose in mind. The focus of a squeeze page is to collect the name and email address of your visitors who may be interested in gathering more information from you on your selected niche topic. In order to entice your visitors to sign up to your email list and have the possibility to gain more sales in the future, you need to offer them something free that will benefit them or that’s they can’t get anywhere else.  Many people use ebooks or software that can be easily downloaded, and others offer an ecourse to teach a specific subject that will show how to make money or solve a problem.

These three steps will help you get your lead capture page set up and ready to build your list of email subscribers.

1. Develop the Lead Capture Page – There are several ways you can set up your page. Many networking marketing businesses use lead pages as an introduction to their business. They will have their header on the top, some pictures, introduction, bullet points, highlights and anything else they feel will help get people interested and encourage them to sign up to learn more and eventually join them in their business efforts.

If you are running a niche business, you could simply have a photo of the freebie that you are offering, list the benefits of the product, and then an autoresponder box where the visitor can fill in their name and email address for their free gift. If it is an ecourse or newsletter you are offering, you will want to tell your subscribers what you plan to teach them that will help them.

If you do not have any technical know-how, this doesn’t mean you can’t still build professional lead capture pages. There are some free services online like the Instant Squeeze Page Generator* that is a simple, fill in the blanks program. Each page is set up for you to either just click to choose the option you would like, or you can type your own information in the provided box. Once you have completed all eight steps, you are given a link to your finished page. You can then decide to leave it hosted on their website with a link back to them at the bottom of your page, or you can copy the code into an html editor, save it as an html page and upload it to host on your own server (this option may be for those with a little tech know-how, just not proficient with actual coding).

2. Give them the Good Stuff – When you get things set up, you may want to end up joining what is known as a giveaway event. This is where several marketers get together to offer freebies and build their list as a joint venture. If you do not have a free gift to offer, the Instant Squeeze Page Generator* membership will give you one as well.

Here is a quick screen shot of some of the layouts and possible formats you can choose for designing your lead capture pages.

Options for available gifts to choose:

If you don’t like the layout of something that you have chosen, you can simply click the back button to the step you want to change and select others until you get the look and feel you want.

3. Launch your New Page – After you have completed your lead capture pages, the next step to building your list is to let people know it is out there. You can add the link in signatures on forums, in groups, on your emails, and more. You can use free classifieds, article marketing or any other free or paid method of advertising that you find works.

Now get out there and start creating your own lead capture pages and build up your list which will help make you more money and grow your business!

As always, if you have any questions or need more clarification on anything you read, just post a comment and I will respond to you. I would love to see some of your completed lead capture pages for those of you wanting to share when you are done.

*affiliate link

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Thanks to my guest blogger today, Sue Painter – The Confident Marketer.  Sue has wonderful insights for growing your online business.  Enjoy!

I’ve just finished three days with Fabienne Fredrickson, where I’ve had the chance to talk with many entrepreneurs and solo professionals and hear about their businesses. One of things that hits me hard is that so many people told me they have either a very small database of potential clients (prospects) or, despite years in business, have no list at all. This is a major issue for entrepreneurs, one that will quickly hamper their success and make it a lot tougher to make much money. After hearing this so many times both at this workshop and over the past few years, I’ve wondered why this is such a common problem. I’ve wondered if entrepreneurs don’t realize why their list is truly the heart of their business.

If you have a business but no database (commonly called a list) of prospects, you are in heavy water. You have not created a program to pull customers toward what you have to offer, you don’t know who has been interested in your products or services up until now (because you have failed to gather their contact information into a database) and, worst of all, you have no way at all to reach out and touch those prospects over and over again, keeping them in your marketing system. Instead of having a golden egg that makes you money, you have a badly cracked egg.

• Prospects need and want to hear from you over and over again. Research shows that most people will not buy from you on the first contact (we’re talking contact by e-mail or Internet here). It takes an average of 6 to 9 contacts. Why is this? People want to feel like they know and trust you before they open up their wallets. You are probably just the same way. And, over the Internet, it’s harder to build that know and trust factor because you are not standing right there in person, face to face. (By the way, this is one reason that video works well in Internet marketing, but that’s a whole other blog post!)
• If you don’t have a system that automatically gathers up the first name and e-mail address of people who hit your website, you never even know who might have been interested in buying from you. You’ve paid to put up a website, but it isn’t supporting an automated marketing system. This is a sad thing! Don’t you want a good portion of your marketing to be automated? It sure does save time and money! And it helps you to pay for that website’s design and hosting, too.
• Every business prospers only to the extent that it keeps new customers coming in the door. Even businesses that are running at capacity and can’t currently take more customers still must be marketing, because customers come and go. Constantly building your list of prospects and keeping in touch with them so that they will remember you when they do need what you are offering is critical.

Sue Painter is the President and founder of The Confident Marketer.  She works with bright, driven individuals who have a burning desire to create financially successful work that aligns with their inner vision.   Sue is passionate about helping solopreneurs create work that is satisfying and financially successful.

Sue has identified niche markets and successfully led individuals and organizations to profitably meet those markets for over twenty years.  She is a former contributing writer for Massage Magazine, where she specialized in practice building, marketing, and business articles.  The previous Business Editor of Tradebank International’s monthly member newsletter, she has published dozens of articles focused on marketing, networking, and customer service.

Sue is a certified Book Yourself Solid coach, an expert author for ezinearticles.com, and an expert for both Solo-E.com and SelfGrowth.com.  She is a member of Ali Brown’s Millionaire Protege Mastermind Group and serves as one of Ali’s Platinum Mastermind Leaders.   Natural Awakenings Magazine recently honored Sue as one of the top ten “Women of Wellness” in her city.

It used to be, before the telephone, before cellphones, before the Internet, sending notes was the norm – we sent them out to invite people to events, thank them for gifts, send out our condolences and even just to say hello. Even when doing business, everyone from shopkeepers to oil barons sent out cards to begin relationship and seal deals. These days, with all the technology available to us, it’s almost accepted to send out a text message that says “Nice 2 meet U. C u soon.”

Sending out cards and notes may seem archaic, but they seem to be coming back in vogue, perhaps because people hardly get that personal touch anymore (think about it – compared to a decade ago, how many birthday or Christmas cards do you get a year?) Cards can also be used for business – and will definitely put on a lasting impression to your clients.

Have no idea how to begin? Here are some tips to get you started:

Have an updated contact list – having a list will make it easier for you to organize your campaign, but make sure your information is complete and updated. It would be pretty embarrassing if you were to send the wrong card to the wrong person or not have it reach your important client.

Select your message carefully – if you’re sending out holiday cards, read the message carefully to make sure you won’t offend anyone (assuming you’re sending out a lot of cards.) You wouldn’t want to risk sending out something which can make you look bad, when your intention was the opposite.

Use titles – You may be on first-name basis with your clients, but using their titles on the front of the cards shows respect and gives importance to their achievements, so make sure you include that “Dr.”, “Mr.,” “Esq.” etc. with their names.

Spell Check! –  OMG, this is a biggie! Make sure you read each and every line and make sure every word is spelled correctly, lest you make some embarrassing faux pas.

Send them on time – get your holiday cards out early, especially for businesses. They may be leaving work early to take time off. For thank you cards, try to send them no more than a week after, or they may forget what you are thanking them for!

Remember, building relationships is the core of any business and key to its success. Taking the time out to do simple tasks can cement your reputation with the right people. Don’t always have the time to do everything yourself? Get a little help and still have that personal touch with Send Out Cards and it only takes a few minutes to choose, write and send your card. Click on the link today to find out more.

Click Here – Send Out Cards if you are looking for any of the above!

Whether you have an Internet-based or a brick and mortar business, we all want more traffic or customers coming through our doors, right?   There is an online tool that can make a major impact on your marketing effort to bring those customers in.  It’s called Google Local Business.  It’s quick, easy and best of all – Free!

Here is a short video that explains everything about Google Local Business.

Isn’t that great?  Get your business set up on Google Local Business now and get ahead of your competitors!

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