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By Adam Urbanski in Featured

Some people think that building a following on social networking sites eliminates the need for building their own email list. I say they are fools!

With the massive amount of information we are bombarded with, getting and keeping the “email attention” of potential and current clients, is something every business owner should be very concerned about.

In fact, when you see or hear case studies of people who go from zero to tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits in only weeks, you can be sure those people have invested time and effort to build their own list first!

Having your own responsive email list has many benefits no social media or social networking site can replace.

Consider these 5:

  1. YOU ARE IN CONTROL! With your own list you control who you communicate with, how often you contact them, and what format you send your content in.
  2. GENERATE IMMEDIATE SALES! With your own RESPONSIVE list you can generate immediate demand when you develop new products and services.
  3. ATTRACT MORE AND BETTER CLIENTS! Having your own list gives you an opportunity to create a low-risk point of entry for new potential customers. And your messages educate them about your services and allow you to invite them to work with you when YOU want to!
  4. GET MORE REFERRALS AUTOMATICALLY! When you send out good information your subscribers will naturally forward it to some of their friends – creating more visibility for you in a very natural way (and without you ever having to ask for it!)
  5. INCREASE YOUR PROFITS. Turn subscribers into buyers and one time customers into life-long clients – largely on autopilot when you understand how to properly communicate with your fans!

And building a list is actually quite easy. Making sure it is targeted, and that it remains responsive, that’s a little more difficult, but something everyone can easily learn.

Here is a simple five step process to get you started:

1. Plan Ahead! Consider how building and using your own database of fans will fit into your overall marketing activities.

At the very least give some thought to things like the subscriber and broadcast management tools you will be using, the type of content you will be sharing, the format and frequency of your messages.

2. Create Subscriber Attraction Tools. It’s not enough to just say “subscribe to my newsletter.” You must give people a compelling reason WHY they should give you their contact information and pay attention to you.

3. Build a Subscriber Catcher. Every business should have at least one website devoted entirely to generating new subscriber opt-ins. And every page of all your websites should have an invitation to become a subscriber.

4. Generate Visibility and Traffic for Your Offer. Even your best “bait” and most effective opt-in page will be useless if no one can see them. You must attract TARGETED traffic.

Start with people you already have as your customers and prospects. Use social networking connections, free press releases, article submissions, special interest discussion groups, and commenting on industry blogs as a starting base.

And remember that quality subscribers are potential customers so don’t be afraid to invest a little to acquire them. Paid advertising methods like ezine ads or PPC (Pay Per Click) are good ways to start.

5. Deliver Value and Build Relationship. Never forget you are constantly competing for your subscribers attention, so send out information they consider relative and valuable.

Remember that you don’t communicate with the “list” but with one person at a time. And – this is a secret key to long term email marketing success – realize that people have more than enough information. What they really want is connection and guidance!


The author, Adam Urbanski, teaches service professionals and business owners how to develop better marketing plan and strategies to increase sales and profits. His website offers more marketing how-to articles and free tips to create a winning marketing action plan at http://www.themarketingmentors.com

By Donna Gunter in Featured

twitterTwitter, as a popular social networking platform, is a viral marketing strategy all on its own, especially if your followers like your tweets and retweet them to their followers. However, I’ve recently noticed another trend in Twitter usage that increases its viral marketing capabilities through the use of hashtags.

What’s a hashtag, anyway? Also called the pound sign, the hashtag (#) is added to a tweet as a way of creating trackable categories, groups, or topics that others can use to search for info using the Twitter Search feature. One of the most common uses of the hashtag is to tweet what’s happening at an event or conference. The event organizer will request all attendees use a specific hashtag, i.e. #yourevent, when tweeting about the event to your followers. So, then, someone who isn’t present at the event but wants to follow what’s happening there can simply search for #yourevent and see what’s going on and what participants are saying and sharing about the event.

By Donna Gunter in Featured

Every day, my inbox is filled with emails promoting yet another new marketing strategy or promising results that will cure all of my marketing ills. Most of the strategies are flash-in-the-pan — here today and gone tomorrow because the next new strategy has been discovered. A few newer strategies have proven to have staying power over time, like social networking, which took a long time to grow on me. I’ve learned the hard way not to be an early adopter of new marketing strategies — I tend to sit back and watch the fallout to see if something is worth my time and energy.

As I reflect back on my early years in business, I often felt like a dog chasing my tail. I used to run and run quickly in one direction chasing one marketing idea, and then reverse course, chasing my tail in another direction when hearing about the next “greatest thing.” What resulted from my helter-skelter marketing? Not much. I was going in too many directions at once and trying to keep too many balls in the air to create a truly successful marketing plan that really helped promote my business.

Here’s the marketing secret I wished I’d learned early on: Adopt the marketing strategy that best fits with your gifts, talents, and interests, or in other words: Do what you’re good at. Yep, it’s that simple. I knew that this was good advice for pursuing a career or starting a business, but I never realized how well it applied to marketing my company.

Roughly 4 years into my business it suddenly dawned on me that I had always been a good writer. Supervisors, teachers, friends, and colleagues had often complimented me on my writing, but I dismissed the praise because I found writing to be a taxing chore that gave me a massive headache. It wasn’t until I learned how to write for myself in my own voice, rather than structuring my writing to meet the criteria of others, that I truly began to enjoy putting pen to paper (or, words on a screen, if you will).

This love for writing made me a natural for my now-favorite marketing strategy, article marketing. Why do I love it? Because it’s easy for me — sometimes scarily easy. However, I discovered that having a skill for a strategy isn’t enough to be successful. Even at this point my marketing continued to be hit-or-miss. There was still something missing from the mix.

After hearing a great talk by a coaching colleague about how he structured his time, I finally realized what was the key compoent missing from my marketing strategy — and the missing component was the same for the bulk of the other entrepreneurs sitting in the room with me. The #1 marketing mistake made by the majority of online business owners is: Lack of consistency. Once you determine where your talent lies and how you can integrate that into a workable marketing plan, then you need to commit to implementing that plan consistently over time.

Could it possibly be that simple? In a nutshell, yes. I committed to publishing my ezine every Thursday morning. I committed to writing one new article each week for the ezine. I committed to syndicating one new article each week through my article submission service. I committed to repurposing my ezine content to my blog. I committed to making 1-2 new posts on my blog each week. This is only the tip of the iceburg describing what I do for marketing, but consistency was the catalyst that propelled me to a successful online marketing strategy that I’ve been implementing now for 5 years.

My results? I no longer chase after clients — they find me online. 100% of my business comes from my web site, internet marketing, or word-of-mouth referrals — I do no in-person networking at all any longer. My web site screens out those clients who aren’t a good fit and invites those who are. I enjoy running a thriving business from my home office with only a 5-second commute. I create a work schedule that works best for me and my husband, which gives me the flexibility to leave my office early if I want and catch a matinee with him without having to submit a vacation request form to my supervisor. I am happy and healthy and no longer have recurring bouts of colitis and depression from working in a miserable situation. I make more money now than I ever made by working for someone else.

Take inventory of your skills and abilities, and see how you can easily integrate those into a marketing strategy that will be easy for you to implement. Once you decide on your strategy, commit to implementing it consistently over time, and enjoy your results!


Online Business Coach and Internet Marketing Strategist Donna Gunter helps baby boomers create profitable online businesses that they love. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by claiming your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at ==> TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com

Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com

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By Adam Urbanski in Featured

The single biggest, non-renewable asset you have is your time. There are only three things you can do with it: waste it, sell it, or invest it. As an entrepreneur or a service professional, what you do with your time acutely impacts how much money you can make.

If this year you want to make clients come to you, earn a six-figure or beyond income, become the expert in your chosen field, positively impact lives of many people, gain fame and earn respect of your peers — you have to invest your time into creating marketing assets!

Just like the wealthy invest in assets that continuously appreciate and generate more money — like real estate, the savvy entrepreneurs invest in creating marketing assets that grow your business with no additional expense. What are those assets? Here is just a short list:

  • Content
  • Info products
  • Referral partners
  • Ezine subscribers list
  • Customers list
  • Incoming links to your website
  • Testimonials
  • Education

So if you want to become the ‘top dog’ in your industry, you’ve got to start doing what the ‘big dogs’ do.

To begin investing your time into creating high leverage marketing assets, use this short checklist:

DON’T design expensive logos. While establishing your uniqueness is important, people will not do business with you because you spent money on a cute graphic!

DO survey your ideal clients. Learning and understanding their needs allow you to offer them solutions they want — and that makes you incredibly attractive to them.

DON’T place ads that feature little more but your logo, phone number and address. Stop kidding yourself thinking you are the next IBM or Coca-Cola and that merely mentioning your name will get people pounding on your door!

DO create content that addresses the most pressing needs your prospects and clients are desperately trying to solve! Write articles, create special reports, publish an e-zine or e-book (or regular book), and record audio/video products. If you advertise — advertise those products not your services.

DO take time to learn and leverage free publicity. Research media contacts, take time to understand what type of information appeals to them, and become good at presenting your information in the format they like best.

DON’T attend every networking meeting you can find. Your time is much too valuable to try to attract business in one-on-one fashion. Contrary to the popular belief — networking isn’t cheap!

If you sum up the cost of your time, the price you pay to eat all that rubber chicken, and the energy to follow-up with people who will likely never do business with you — it’s a very expensive (and ineffective) way to find only a handful of qualified prospects!

DO develop informative presentations. Find large gatherings of your ideal prospects and become good at getting yourself invited as a speaker.

DON’T fiddle around adjusting the shades of colors on your website!

DO look for online communities that already attract your ideal clients and find a way to make them link to you. Ask them to post your articles. Make your site content rich so they will want to list it as a resource. Or sell an info product and invite them to become an affiliate.

DON’T beg for referrals!

DO create ways your current clients can easily ‘give you away’ (like an article or an audio CD)

DO build relationships with referral partners. Create ways in which they can introduce you to hundreds or even thousands of prospects at once!

DON’T try to figure everything out on your own — that’s a very expensive way to learn marketing and build your business.

DO invest in knowledge products and access to experts. An hour or two with a knowledgeable advisor can save you thousands of dollars in time and money wasted on wrong strategies and improperly implemented tactics.

Providing people with easily accessible information about solutions will position you as a valuable resource and an expert. These tools will not only attract all the new business you want, but they will allow you to charge the money you deserve and create the lifestyle you desire.

So stop wasting time eating all that rubber chicken and chasing people who will likely never do business with you nor refer a single client. Instead, start creating high-leverage marketing tools that over time will generate an avalanche of new business!


2009 Marketing Mentors. All Rights Reserved. The author, Adam Urbanski, teaches service professionals and business owners how to develop better marketing strategies to increase sales and profits. His website offers more how-to articles and free tips to create a winning marketing action plan at http://www.themarketingmentors.com

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