San Antonio Marketing Wins

5 Trends that Will Shape Small Business in 2011 : Marketing

These seem to be pretty reasonable and accurate. Still, if you are implementing what is talked about here, you will be ahead of much of the pack.

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5 Trends that Will Shape Small Business in 2011

Sep 30, 2010 -

Last year I wrote a piece where I predicted trends for 2010 – you can read them here – and I must say that I was pretty much spot on with most. The thing about predictions and small business – and I think I’ve developed a bit of knack for this odd duck – is that no matter what trends are reported in the media, small business will always adopt it much slower and in ways that are counter to much of the hype.

Small business owners don’t care what’s cool. They care about what seems practical and what seems obvious – and that’s not always what gets the buzz.

Here are my predictions along those lines for 2011. Some of these might seem pretty obvious, but again, not in the way small business will adopt them.

Social simply is

This year we will simply stop talking about social media as though it were some new, sexy, foreign cousin of marketing. It’s just a fact of marketing life and will get integrated into strategy and tactics alike in ways that produce ROI. (I hope all the social media consultants heed this.)

It will become standard operating procedure to include social media activity into a prospect of client’s CRM record and use social networks as the primary way to acquire introductions and make warm sales calls.

Mobile finally lands

Seems like we’ve been talking about mobile marketing for as long as I can remember. So, why hasn’t it become a part of the small business mix yet? I think it finally will this year, but not in the way it was always portrayed.

 Mobile’s promise always seemed to be tied to mobile ads, text messaging and proximity pushes, but consumers don’t want these in their life any more than they want spam, so mobile’s promise has evolved. 

Mobile for the small business will be about mobile payments, search related apps, and location based offers and not about SMS.

Small business doesn’t care about Foursquare or Gowalla, but they do care about the behavior these services are instilling.

O2O becomes strategy

Last year I talked about fusion of online and offline and, as social simply becomes a part of the fabric, so has the logical integration of instant media with traditional media, social networks with chamber mixers. Online and offline, traditional media and new media, will stop competing and start working together.

 For 2011 a new kind of strategy will emerge for the small business and that is one of using the online space to drive people to the offline space. The in person experience is the ultimate competitive advantage of the small business and how they beat the online and big box competition.

Get them in the store, get them to a meeting, get them to an event, get them in a community, get them on using an app.

Online 2 offline will be a strategic marketing approach employed by the most successful local businesses where conversion will be measured in hugs and handshakes. 

Networked referral automation

Once again, returning to last year’s prediction, I suggested that search would become social and it has. Search engines now tell you who in your social network likes those shoes or wrote about that topic you just queried.

The evolution of this behavior will be the total automation of social surfing. Surfers will be able to view who in their network knows also knows the real estate agent they are considering hiring and who on Facebook also went to high school with the attorney that was referred to them.

Using an individual’s social graph match with that of your own will become standard business behavior.

Apps over Web

The good news is that you can find anything on the Web these days. The bad news is you can find anything on the Web these days.

Information seekers will grow tired of the unpoliced nature of the Web and will increasingly turn to trusted sources of content and willing pay to have that content contained, packaged and delivered in application form to the device of their choice.

Marketers need to consider this behavior when they develop their content strategies and take a look at the community of content approach vs. the free information approach.

Trusted networks will become even more important.

John Jantsch is a marketing coach, award winning social media publisher and author of two best selling books, Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine.

 

 

Checklist: How to Start a Business Blog

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Here are some major tips on writing your blog for business by Rebecca Churt for Hubspot.

Excellent content leaves the reader with something new that they didn’t have before. People like to get something from blogs they read. You don’t have to be Shakespeare to have a good blog.

The fact is that web sites with a blog received 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages than those that didn’t have a blog. Businesses in particular can capitalize on this because businesses that blog experience 126% higher lead growth than non-blogging businesses. Can you really afford to miss this opportunity?

1. CONTENT

Remarkable Content – A mix of content is good. What’s remarkable? Anything relevant and useful, interesting, thought-provoking, controversial, and entertaining. Try things like current news, opinion, and media rich content. Note: this is not your place to talk all about your services or products.

Keep content topical, informative, and non promotional
Check your grammar and spelling
Organize your content
Title

Sub-heading

Content with bold words or language indicating importance

Give your readers something to chew on – A blog post should be 400-600 words on average
Search Engine Optimization Basics - As you create remarkable content you will want to optimize that content for search engines as well as users. Make it as clear as possible. This should include updating the following - Page title, Meta description, and internal page links.

Attention Grabbing Headlines – Not to pile on the pressure but your Headline/Title/Subject line is important. In most cases it is also your post URL so make it count. If you can include your keywords. Generally things like top 5 lists, trends, and news focused articles do really well, but add variety and measure what readers like best.

Target Audience – Who are you writing for? Focus on the "who" of your blog. You need to think about the type of person, on average, who you want to attract to your blog.

Bloggers – Who is writing? Will you be the one writing articles? Or are you just a champion/facilitator/coordinator and others will be doing the writing.

Schedule – How often will you publish? – Plan or schedule how frequently your content will be published. Every day or every week or anything in between. Do what is realistic for you. The most important thing is consistency.

2. READER ENGAGEMENT

Call-to-Actions – Your blog should be a lead generating machine. Offers for call-to-actions can include: newsletter sign-up, eBook download or webinar registration. Great blog call-to-actions are action oriented, positive, clear, and direct.

Published Author Name – Give people credit for the content they write and also show your readers who is involved. It is more friendly to know whose work you are reading that have it be a mystery.

Comments – Be sure to moderate your comments for spam. No one wants to read “great post…I will bookmark this” over and over again. At the same time, don’t eliminate good conversations even if they are potentially controversial.

Lists – People like to read posts with a nice, simple presentation of information. The most popular kind are list of: recommendations, popular posts or articles by tags.

Search – Give people the opportunity to find content easily and quickly. People are used to having answers at their finger tips. Chances are that if you don’t provide that information people will wander elsewhere.

3. INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Images – You want to think of images as supporting assets. They are the supporting characters in a feature film. Now, you shouldn’t litter your post with pictures but at least one is good to start. Graphs, diagrams and even screenshots can come in handy as useful blog images.

Video – This is pretty much the same as with images. A good interactive video can help your blog go viral. You don’t have to do your own mini-series but maybe you came across a video that is relevant and supports the point of your content, go ahead and insert it and share it with your readers.

Polls and Surveys – Done right, polls and surveys can give you some good data. They may even be somewhat entertaining. But don’t show a poll about “where you should go on vacation” when your blog is not even remotely related to the subject.

4. SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS

Email – People like options. So give them the option to subscribe to your blog via email. You’ll be surprised that many people will still prefer this over RSS.

RSS – This is a standard feature for blogs. You can take it one step further and make it even easier by just taken the RSS image icon and hyperlinking it to your RSS URL. Within a click you will have subscribers to your blog.

Social Media – This seems like it should be common sense by now, but many bloggers still seem to miss out on this one. Give people the option to share your content. Again, simplicity is the key here. Have the icons display alongside your blog posts. Think about your industry - Is it more technical? If so then include Reddit and Digg. Are you in HR? Then be sure to use LinkedIn etc.

Follow Me Option – Having people share your content is only half of the equation. You also want to build a following on your networks, whether it be your own Ning network or Twitter. Let people know where they can connect with you.

5. MEASUREMENT

Javascript - You should be using some kind of tool for the purpose of tracking traffic, which means you will have to copy and paste some kind of javascript code into your website for that tool to track that information. Don't forget it.

Analytics – Look at page views, links, comments and where content was shared. The same way you want to know how your website is succeeding, you'll also want to know what's working on your blog. And if you've followed the steps above you should also be generating leads from your buiness blog.

BONUS TIP - Things you don’t need

Advertising – Unless you are generating tons of traffic this is a waste.

Splash screens – Pop up screens are incredibly annoying and distracting. Try to keep them at minimum or only shown once, not repeatedly.

Free Checklist

For people who like to have a paper checklist, check out the document below. View this document on Slideshare and click download at the top of the document to get a copy of this checklist for your business.
Rebecca Churt is a member of the Inbound Marketing Consultant team at HubSpot. She also blogs at www.rchurt.com.

Social Media Marketing Best Practices - Online Marketing Blog

Social media and business blogging is about the reader/client/interested party, not about you or the business. The interaction and engagement through all the forms of new media is what businesses, both large and small, used to called customer service, market research, client relationship building, and all the other foundational things that go into good business. We now have new tools and a new playing field.


Adam Singer, Paul Isakson, Brad Smith @ IMS Minneapolis

Social Media  advice is cheap and for the most part, you get what you pay for.  Best practices social media marketing based on experience, well, that’s another thing entirely.

The Social Media Best Practices session at IMS Minneapolis earlier this week gave attendees access to first hand insights from the likes of: Brad Smith from Best Buy, Adam Singer from TopRank Online Marketing, Paul Isakson from Thinkers & Makers (formerly of Space150) and Bryan Person, founder of Social Media Breakfast.

Brad Smith, Director, Interactive Marketing & Emerging Media from Best Buy opened things up talking about a “new marketing reality”. Customers are out there, but they’re bombarded with messages. Customers are not listening to us (marketers & advertisers) anymore. Social media is all about communicating.  Customers are listening to each other instead and tuning out marketing messages.

Each company’s journey in social media is different. If your social media consultant starts the meeting with suggestions about starting a Twitter account, leave the room. Treat social media like any other major undertaking with planning, understanding the marketplace, goals and objectives.

Tenents that support Best Buy Social Media Marketing:

  • Deliver
  • Blow you away
  • Never leave you hanging
  • Make a difference
  • Make sure you know all we know

Brad makes the distinction of social media tools and the behaviors we seek to engage and influence. “I don’t use facebook, I participate. It’s a two way thing.  You’re not half way into social media. When you’re in you’re in.”

Best Buy’s Social Media Marketing Mission:

To connect customers and employees with the Best Buy brand and each other through the right tools platforms and collaboration delivered when, where and how they want.

The focus is on the customer, not the company. “It’s not about what Best Buy wants customers to do, it’s about giving people the tools to connect with each other and employees whenever and however they want.”

Best Buy Social Media Guidelines:

  • (Essentially don’t be stupid)
  • Listen
  • Be findable, think distributed
  • It’s about people
  • Enable creation
  • Make it social
  • Listen some more
  • Be authentic
  • Be transparent
  • Keep it simple
  • Make a commitment

Best Buy and Twitter – @Twelpforce
The thing that makes it work is that they didn’t start with a “Twitter strategy”. It was born of a customer need. Best Buy simply leveraged an asset they knew they had with a customer need. Customers needed advice and there are 150,000 Best Buy employees world wide that are already being helpful. Twitter proved to be an effective platform for that. 2,500 employees are signed up to work as part of @Twelpforce.

Best Buy is also active with Community Forum, Best Buy IdeaX, a Facebook Fan page and other channels.

When Best Buy started their social journey with Facebook, Brad says they were overzealous and promoted commercial messages to the community. The community responded, “not to do that”. Customers want access to the brand, advice, tips exclusive access that others don’t get.

Best Buy Learnings From Their Social Media Experience:

  • Listen first, talk second
  • Its OK to fail
  • The same social mores apply online as offline
  • Customers don’t care about channels
  • We have to be ready ro respond
  • Customers will tell us and everyone else where our organization is broken. And expect a fix
  • People are forgiving

Overall Best Buy is treating their social media experience as a journey and have learned the importance of listening instead of pushing.  It’s an impressive example, not only of a very large brand finding value in a humble and transparent, customer focused social media effort, but one of true Minnesota ingenuity when it comes to new technology and marketplace innovation.

I did miss some of the bulleted items above because the presentation went by very quickly. If access to the PowerPoint presentations is made available, I’ll link to it from this post.

I’ll be adding observations on the presentations from Adam Singer and Paul Isakson separately.

 

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Online Marketing Tools: A Comparison

 
 
Entrepreneur magazine analyzes 4 online marketing tools designed to strengthen your relationship with customers.
 
What are your top strategies for keeping in front of customers in 2010? Chances are, as an entrepreneur, you're looking to connect with your customers faster and more easily. You want to strengthen relationships with customers to help drive and increase your revenue. You can accomplish that with an online marketing tool. The key is to find the best tool for you and your businesA lot of online tools claim to make you a better, faster marketer. Many also promise to help you easily connect with your customers. So, how do you choose? The trick is to pick online marketing tools that not only help you reach your customers, but also are really easy for you to use.

Here are the criteria I use to assess marketing tools for entrepreneurs:

  • Ease-of-use: Is the tool easy to use and implement?
  • Relationship builder: Can you build a database with the tool and--at the same time--reach, strengthen and build relationships with customers more quickly?
  • Quick online campaign-tracking capabilities: Can you analyze what you've sent to customers and quickly find out if your customers are clicking through your e-mail campaigns?
  • Professional e-mail marketing templates: Are there professional campaign templates that allow for e-mail and direct-mail capabilities, enabling you and your business to look marketing savvy?
  • Cost-effective: Are costs affordable, averaging less than $30 per month?

Here are four potential tools that could be the key to your customer relationships:

Vertical Response
Ease-of-use: Designed for the smaller business, this tool takes little technology know-how to get up and running. When I was ready to launch my first campaign, it literally took me less than an hour to upload into my chosen template, select my list from the database, send myself a test e-mail blast and push the launch button. It's that simple. Vertical Response passes the "easy to use" test with flying colors.

Relationship builder: Vertical Response allows you to organize "lists," but you are responsible for inputting the lists and keeping them updated. You can upload existing contacts from a database you already have in Excel or another program. What is good about Vertical Response is that it tells you if you've entered an e-mail twice or if a contact's e-mail address isn't active.

Quick online campaign-tracking capabilities: After you launch your campaign, you'll be able to see a detailed report of how well your campaign did in terms of click-throughs and "opens." You'll know if any e-mails bounced or if anyone unsubscribed. The reports tell you which lists are performing well, and Vertical Response can compare response rates to other e-mails you've sent in the past. Vertical Response also sends a reminder e-mail in case you forget about the reporting function.

Professional e-mail marketing templates: The templates are professional, clean-looking, easy to use and time-savers. The newsletter template includes suggestions, such as how many words your header should be so people will read it. An editor is built into the newsletter template, so you don't have to be one.

Need a postcard fast? There's a template. Need to e-blast a newsletter to your customers monthly? There's a template. Customizing my own newsletter template took far more time than I had expected, so I recommend using the company's templates to save time.

Cost-effective: Vertical Response has a pre-paid credit set-up, so you can order credits before launching your campaign. As you buy more credits, your cost per e-mail goes down. You get the first 250 credits free when you sign up for the tool. So on average, for a few thousand credits, your cost per e-mail is about .013 cents or about $13 per thousand.

Bonus: There's always someone knowledgeable and helpful to talk to and walk you through your campaign if you need help. Vertical Response also will let you know if you've uploaded something incorrectly.

WeMeUs
Ease of use: WeMeUs was founded by a woman CEO who wanted to help professionals organize, manage, and retain the contacts and relationships they acquire and build throughout their careers. Think of this tool as a relationship builder, contact management, e-mail blast and campaign tool all in one. It's truly a personal CRM tool, not a social network. So, all your data is private and each user sees only her own contacts.

The first step in using this tool is to upload your contacts into the WeMeUs database to begin the process of "tagging" or categorizing your existing contacts. Uploading your contacts is easy with the tool, but it is up to the user to tag contacts appropriately and to keep them organized. The site includes tutorials and FAQ documents that get you up and running very quickly.

Relationship builder: What makes this tool unique is that it works the way most women think about developing business relationships. Suppose you meet someone at a networking luncheon and you both enjoy soccer and belong to the local chamber of commerce. You can note this in your WeMeUs database through the "tagging" feature and then pull up your contact by the way you've been introduced. Using the "tags" feature makes it fast and easy to find people. Premium services include an e-mail assistant for fast and personalized e-mail communications, updates and follow-up.

You can use WeMeUs to activate your LinkedIn connections. You can keep notes and a log of all your contacts and schedule follow-up reminders. You also can send e-mail to one or all of your LinkedIn contacts.

Quick online tracking capabilities: The online tracking capabilities of this tool are unique, providing you with a 360-degree view of your e-mail marketing activity. All kinds of handy features help you connect with your existing contacts, such as reminders to get back in touch. New features in development include the ability to see how many of your contacts are opening your e-mails.

Professional e-mail marketing templates: WeMeUs focuses on personalized, one-to-one communications rather than the glossy, colorful marketing templates you find in Vertical Response or Constant Contact. The templates provided are personalized so you can drop in your company logo or artwork and focus on the content of your message. You won't find a ton of colorful templates to choose from, but if you have one of your own, you can cut and paste into WeMeUs. You'll find step-by-step instructions under "Information, Tips and Help" on the WeMeUs wiki.

Customizing messages to each customer: You can easily customize a message to a specific group of customers and send it out in an e-blast. The tool will automatically pull the first name of your customer so the message looks personalized. You can also customize your message on the fly, so if you want to add a little note about something you have in common, you can do so with ease. You can also customize your e-mail letters with logos and artwork, but you will need the original artwork file, such as an .eps or .tif, to do this.

Cost-effective: For $10 to $15 per month you get the premium service membership and the unique ability to tap into your existing contacts and centralize them. There are also special offers. Recently, WeMeUs offered members a migration of all their contacts into the WeMeUs tool to get them started quicker. There's also a free trial offer.

Bonus: You get easy access to your contacts from anywhere. Regardless of where you keep your contacts, WeMeUs can find them across multiple address books such as e-mail, webmail, business and social networks.

An iPhone application is scheduled to be released later this year.

MailChimp
Ease of use: The monkey looks a little juvenile on the homepage of this e-mail marketing tool website, but don't let the name and logo fool you. This company is becoming the preferred e-mail marketing tool.

MailChimp has a user-friendly, simple website. Numerous demo videos help you get started. You also can sign up for online training, and if you can't make the webinar time, you can watch a recorded session.

Relationship Builder: You can build a "master list" in the MailChimp tool and look up your contacts, similar to Vertical Response. Your database will remain intact there. Some great features are built into this tool. For example, the "auto responder" feature is excellent if you're planning an event and want to send several reminders. You pick a template, tell the tool where and when to send the message, and the "auto responder" does it for you. You can also segment your lists by interest group and add special features into your signup forms to get the information you need about new customers. MailChimp offers colorful free signup forms you can embed into your website or blog.

Quick online tracking capabilities: There's no monkey business when it comes to tracking and CRM. MailChimp has list management, tracking and ROI reports, plus CRM integration with tools like Twitter, Sales Force, High-rise, Batch book and WordPress. You can also track how many e-mails were opened, bounced or unopened.

MailChimp is a trailblazer when it comes to working with social media to help you and your campaigns. Wondering how many people tweeted about your marketing campaign? MailChimp's new integration feature allows you to track tweets and retweets. You can also share your campaign with others on Facebook and Twitter. But what's really snazzy is that MailChimp has linked its tool to Google analytics, so you can check ROI, conversion rate, average value per visitor and the revenue created from your campaign. This is an incredibly impressive feature.

Professional e-mail marketing templates: MailChimp has great e-mail campaign templates. They're top-notch in terms of looking professional, clean and simple. It's fairly easy to upload your own design, as well. An image library within the MailChimp tool allows you to store images and photos for upcoming campaigns and launches. It's easy to use and handy to have.

Cost-effective: What's great about MailChimp is that the tool is completely free for lists below 500 subscribers. Then the pricing goes up to $30 a month for 2,501 to 5,000 subscribers, with unlimited sending.

Bonus: MailChimp has a direct link to Eventbrite, which is an online event management and registration tool. Many companies use EventBrite to promote webinars, teleseminars, workshops--basically any event that requires online registration. MailChimp also has multilanguage support, currently 34 languages.

SalesForce.com
Ease of use: SalesForce is the founding father of small-business online customer relationship management. It's also the pioneer in tracking those relationships. Some people think salesforce.com is too big to help entrepreneurs these days, but that isn't the case. It's a great solution for businesses that need the benefits of an application that will grow and scale with them.

When you go to the salesforce.com site, it's easy to find the section for entrepreneurs and small businesses. In this section, you'll find virtual tours and clear direction on how to get started with a free trial. The beauty behind the product is that you can log in from anywhere and update your customer data and database on the fly. If you want to add fields and create new processes, you can do this easily. If you have existing databases from other accounts, such as gmail, Outlook or ACT! you can easily upload your files. Also, with automatic upgrades, you'll always have the latest version of the product, and any customization you've developed along the way will remain intact. This saves the headache of worrying about new versions and updated features.

Relationship builder: The Contact Manager seems ideal for small businesses with one to five employees. You can store contacts, track your customers and run activity reports, and it integrates with e-mail. You don't get all the full CRM capabilities in this version, but the Contact Manager lets you efficiently track and record relationships and interactions with any vendor or supplier. It will also track e-mails, documents and more. When you move up to the Group version, you start to track sales opportunities and get real-time dashboard reporting.

Quick online campaign tracking capabilities: The real value is in the professional version of the small-business product. Here you can run sales reports and get real-time custom dashboard reporting and campaign-management features. You also have unlimited users, so if you start to scale your business quickly, you can benefit from all the campaign and sales force automation features.

Professional e-mail marketing templates: The small-business versions of the product do not come with professional e-mail marketing templates for marketing campaigns. However, salesforce.com has an App exchange library with the ability to download any template-builder tool you like. For example, Vertical Response is an App Exchange partner, so you can pull a template right from Vertical Response for your e-mail campaign activities and integrate a favorite template right into your salesforce.com application.

The nice thing about this library is that there are reviews for each tool and customer favorites listed so you can see what many companies find most useful in terms of the tools.

Cost-effective: Pricing is based on users. For $5 per user per month you get the basic contact management system. For up to five users, you can move up to the group version for about $25 per month, which includes Google Adwords tracking and the unique ability to track website leads. If you have 20 employees or more and need unlimited usage per user, the professional version is $65 per user per month. The handy thing is that at any time you can easily upgrade to the next version.

Salesforce is on the cutting edge of dashboard reporting for organizations that need to forecast and track their marketing campaigns. As your business grows and your need for reporting capabilities increases, you'll have these types of features readily available.

Bonus: If security is a concern, rest assured that your content is located in dedicated spaces at top-tier data centers. Your content gets backed up on a regular basis and, in addition, is covered with real-time data replication between production data center and disaster recovery center. Salesforce uses security monitoring to manage threats and guarantees secure log-in sessions by identifying and re-identifying each transaction with a special log-in.

You've Picked Your Online Marketing Tool. Now What?
Once you've picked an online marketing tool, make the most of it. Keep current on what your tool can do for you. New feature upgrades, pricing structures and e-mail templates are introduced frequently.

Once you begin your outreach to customers using your tool, remember these five keys:

  1. Communicate with customers often. Pick something simple you will do consistently like a marketing newsletter blast or a weekly tips announcement, and stick with that plan. If you're consistent, your message will begin to stick in the minds of your customers.
  2. Utilize the marketing templates in your online tool. Many online tools have great wizard templates for e-mail campaigns and newsletters. This saves a ton of time.
  3. Make sure your leads are current and your notes updated. Clean up your database as often as you can.
  4. Leverage the benefits of your online tool. There may be hidden benefits you haven't tried yet, such an application tie-in to your iPhone or a new module that improves the way you track your customer leads and marketing activity. Technology changes weekly and new innovations happen daily on these types of online products. Keep up-to-date by checking in often with your online marketing tool's website.
  5. Make sure the pricing structure works for you. If your online tool doesn't scale for you as the price increases, examine other online options and make sure you pick a membership structure that will continue to grow with you as you gain new customers.
By Sherry Prescott-Willis  
 

Innovation Wins Again

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San Antonio is now part of this innovative way to deliver promotions to generate greater traffic for local businesses. A win, win, win. Great deals and the business gets a bunch of new customers

Groupon launched in Chicago in November 2008 as a way for businesses to advertise their services to shoppers in designated markets. Groupon negotiates deals with top restaurants and stores in a particular market. Subscribers, in turn, receive free daily e-mails alerting them to the deals. However, the catch is that these deals are only available if a minimum number of people agree to buy the item or service.

Groupon officials say this encourages subscribers to share the promotion with their friends and family through social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter. In this business model, the responsibility of finding new customers is shifted from the merchants to the buyers, and shoppers, in turn, are rewarded through discounts.

“Groupon brings buyers and sellers together in a fun and collaborative way,” says Groupon founder Andrew Mason. “We offer the consumer a great deal they can’t get anywhere else and deliver the sales directly to the merchant.”

If you are in SA, try it out!
http://www.groupon.com/r/uu913302

Mind Map for a Social Media Campaign

Here is a mind map I made to give you an overview of the possibilities and challenges of a social media campaign. Most small business owners, myself included, have zero to some interest in learning how to do this stuff. Quickly though, the idea of outsourcing comes to mind. Just like all the other elements needed for your business that fall outside of your area of expertise, this campaign is best left up to pros and trained support staff. I still recommend at least having Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts to feel the interaction possible and inevitable in the coming social media wave.

Click here to download:
Web mind map.pdf (279 KB)

Make Money Online Using TLC Techniques

Make Money Online Using TLC TechniquesTender loving care may seem like a funny term to give to a business, but it will actually spell the difference between a business success and a business failure. And the TLC system is not just all about love. It also stands for the things that will help you make a big list for your Internet marketing business.

TLC is mainly the three most important factors to mast money making online through Internet marketing. Know these, apply these and you will be well on your way to becoming an Internet marketing guru yourself.

T = TRAFFIC

Traffic generation is one of your best online allies. If you develop the knack for bringing visitors to your website, you will be able to market effectively. You must make your site viewed often by many people so that it will reach your target market and constantly regain exposure from them. You will stand a better chance at selling your products if you have good traffic.

Managing your traffic will also help you know your status in your business and what actions you must take to maintain and improve it. Traffic building is very difficult to self-study. Often, you will need a mentor to steer you in the right direction of building and managing site traffic. There are various ways of building traffic which can either be free or paid.

L = LEADS

Your leads are those visitors who like what they saw so much that they are willing to subscribe to you on a daily basis. Building your newsletter or email list that will keep your customers loyal and visiting your website is very important. You must have these leads to sell to if you really want your product to click. You may actually find your money working for you already, if you have painstakingly taken the time to build your list with both quality and quantity.

C = CONVERT LIST OF LEADS INTO BUYERS

Your prospects will cease to bring you income unless you get them to buy from you. This is a product of a relationship that you will have to give a lot of time and energy for. People will not buy from you unless they already trust you and have you established as as reliable person who can deliver his promises and go beyond the typical sales pitch.

Among many other things, you must go beyond the purely profit-oriented mindset and go for a win-win situation where your buyers will be able to benefit with high quality service while you get well compensated for it.

 

This comes from a Ning account of Joel Christopher, "The Master List Builder". he is a resident of San Antonio and you might run into him at a local networking event.

San Antonio Wins with New Media Magnetic Marketing

As a San Antonio business owner, sales professional or entrepreneur yourself, can you answer yes to any of the following questions? 


If you’re like most of us, you encounter at least one – maybe more -- of the challenges below – and maybe on a regular basis !

  • Have you grown your business to a certain level then hit this plateau you just can’t seem to get past?

  • Do you struggle with being so heavily involved in the daily operations of your businessyou just don't even have the time … or the skills … to penetrate the market with these ideas you've been noodling around in your head for years?

  • Do you have difficulty getting through gatekeepers, reaching decision-makers ? Wouldn't it be better to be viewed as not just another salesperson?

  • Do you sometimes feel like an advertising victim, swayed by promises of different media sales people, uncertain what to do?

  • Have you ever questioned how much of a return you’re really getting on the marketing dollars you spend … and if you’re getting any???

Maybe you’re just sick and tired of …

  • Getting lousy results from your hard-earned marketing and advertising dollars?

  • Feeling like you're being taken advantage of by expensive advertising agencies or the local media sales people?

  • Not having any alternatives to market your goods and services.

  • Blending in with your competitors?

Are you sure of that if more people just knew about you, they’d become great customers for life?

What if you discovered the secrets of …

  • creating a competition-free zone for yourself … successfully selling at prices higher than your competitors?

  • stabilizing new customer flow?
    prospecting even in tough or uncertain economies (while others suffer)?

  • positioning and attracting to replace prospecting … with expert and trusted advisor positioning in any field?

  • Having a predictable marketing program that you could measure -- dollar for dollar – the results it’s getting.

Hi, my name is Jim Gillette. I have owned a number of businesses with and without partners, on the retail and wholesale levels and in manufacturing. My approach to marketing was the typical big business way. My businesses though, seemed to hit a plateau and I couldn't get them up and over that hump until I was introduced to a new way of sales and marketing. It was a dramatically different approach than what is being taught -- but was extremely effective . I discovered secrets that some business owners like myself had been using for years to take control of their marketing -- and in turn -- their entire business.

This site is about Web 2.0, Social Media, Internet Marketing, and the entire field of Direct Response Marketing for San Antonio businesses.  It is for SA business owners and entrepreneurs that want to use their advertising budget for more than just Yellow Pages, Newspaper and Magazine Ads.  It is for those ready to capitalize on the new waves of opportunity in new media breakthroughs.