Article Categories

• Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• Article Marketing
• Blogs & Podcasts
• Branding
• Business
• Cloud Technology
• Ecommerce
• Email Marketing
• Facebook
• Google
• Keywords
• LinkedIn
• Linking Strategies
• List Building
• Local Search
• Marketing
• Miscellaneous
• Mobile Applications
• Page Rank
• Pay Per Click
• RSS
• Sales Copy
• SE Optimization
• SE Positioning
• SE Submission
• SE Tactics
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Security
• Social Media Marketing
• Social Networking
• SPAM
• SPN Featured Articles
• Technology
• Video Marketing
• Virtual Office/Telecommuting
• Web 2.0
• Web Design
• Web Development
• Webmasters
• Website Promotion
• Website Traffic
• WordPress
• Writing

SiteProNews Blogs

• Editor's Corner
• Darren Dunner
• Jerry Bader
• John Sylvester
• Kalena Jordan
• Mel Strocen
• Titus Hoskins

How to Get to Know Your Customers – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Workbooks in Featured

In the current difficult economic climate it is more important than ever, as well as more difficult than ever to both attract new customers and retain your existing one. With so many businesses offering deals and bargains to attract business during the recession it can be difficult to keep up without sacrificing all your profit. The best way to maximize your sales today is to make sure that you know your customers – what matters to them most when they are making a purchase, how they decide what they need and which marketing approaches are most successful with them. By getting to know your customers you can more easily develop a rapport and instil in them a sense of loyalty – making your company their first thought when they decide to make a purchase. So, what are the best ways to get to know your customers?

Social Media
It seems like everyone has a Facebook and a Twitter today. More and more companies are making use of social media to connect with customers, and it is a sound business decision. By becoming involved with your customers on social media you become involved in their daily lives, and gain access to a wealth of information about their likes, dislikes, location and other valuable data.

Customer Relationship Management Software
Customer Relationship Management software allows you to gather information about your customers through integrated market research and updates from points of contact such as sales personnel and customer service staff. However, it does much more than that – it allows you to analyze the data that you have accumulated, automatically flagging point of interest and opportunities for growth. The software can anticipate your customers’ needs and flag your attention to potential opportunities to make sales.

Post-Sale Feedback
It is always a good idea to reconnect with your customers after you have made a sale – it helps to build a rapport and can make the customer feel valued and important, promoting repeat sales in the future. It can also be an excellent way to get feedback on how well your company served the customer’s needs and any room for improvement that may be available. It can be especially valuable if something has gone wrong in the sales process or the customer has a complaint.

Focus Groups
Focus groups can be ideal for the testing of new products or potential strategies. They allow you to hear real-time feedback from customers about the idea and follow up with any particular questions that suggest themselves from your customers’ responses. Many companies have used focus groups to road-test successful products. They can now be carried out on line as well as in person by making use of video technologies like Skype.

Surveys
The old fashioned survey still has a place in today’s market research. The rise of the internet has made it much easier to administer and target your surveys. You can use paid survey sites or offer your Twitter followers the chance to win a prize if they answer the survey. This has the added benefit of reducing your costs.

---

This is an article by Workbooks, leading supplier of web-based CRM software.

Continuing the Sales Conversation After The Pitch

By Jason Hier in Featured

Once you have made the sales presentation, there is always the dilemma of how to stay in contact and keep the lines of communication open, whilst still trying to add value to the wholes process. Collaborative selling is certainly a process which can be mutually beneficial to both parties concerned. The potential benefits of reducing risks, getting great quality and service, making sure the correct solutions or products are delivered at a price that is fair and equitable, with no misunderstanding is clearly in everyone’s interest. To achieve this there needs to be an easy and sociable way to communicate but within the context of a business environment. With the increase in availability of collaboration tools this article looks at how collaborative selling can be delivered, along with the potential benefits to be gained.

There are countless books, videos, seminars, gurus, and webinars to name but a few, on how we can improve our Selling capability. There are many aspects to the whole Sales process itself, which is why there are so many avenues of information on the subject. In today’s world, people have become more able to say “No”. Although in the UK, we still find it hard to say NO, (unless the salesperson is really pushy, rude and not very pleasant) only then, we might say No! This word, although only two letters is one of the most powerful words and probably the word that most people do not want to hear – as it is a word of rejection, it is negative, you haven’t got the answer you wanted. Because of this, people who are selling (and we are all selling something at some time) find it difficult to decide once they have made their “Sales” pitch, how do you follow up without being too eager, or too pushy.

Alternatively if you wait too long will they think that you do not care, not interested or lazy, until you get yourself into such a state of indecision, you do nothing – which is even worse!

Technology innovation will continue to impact and change our culture, behaviors, and the way that we will communicate with one another. One of the outcomes is that this continual innovation of technology has provided a buffering or a “cyber wall” between people, both in business and socially. Socially people are texting, while in business they use email. Technology has become a virtual wall for people to hide behind. Is this a good? Time will tell – but we need to be able to have the confidence to communicate in a way that is positive, active and adds value whether in business and or socially.

In the UK, “selling” as a job, has not always had a good standing as a profession. Yet whatever business you are in, without Sales, nothing happens until the Sale is made! No orders, no money coming in, no money to pay salaries and we all know what that means!

Our lives both in business and privately will be changed dramatically by social media. In business this is happening at an alarming rate and it’s not just Business to Consumer, it’s Business to Business as well. Business Social Media communication is not a fashion trend, it is a fundamental shift in how we all communicate, both socially and in importantly, within business.

As I have said before, this “Business Social Networking” is a way to “humanize your business” in terms of its sales and marketing, customer service and support, when using technology. It is clear to me when there are various tools out there like Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn and You Tube, the ability for Businesses and Customers to consume information, write about it, vote on it, send it on to other people, who in turn do the same in a viral way is quite amazing – and it is virtually FREE to do – the only real cost being your time. One of the earlier disadvantages (that’s if is/was really a disadvantage) is how do you accurately measure the ROI? Well if you search on YouTube for “Social Media ROI socialnomics”, you can see from the video people and corporations are managing to measure and get their ROI in very positive way.

Most of you will be receiving Tweets, email messages, Videos, webinars, and podcasts to name a few, which if you select carefully is hopefully interesting, informative and adds value to what you want. This is social media and I include business social media when I say this, but interestingly it seeks you out, the customer, allowing you to engage and start collaborating real time. Taking this to a more specific business situation, I just recently created a presentation using a product called sharpcloud. One tool that is very visual and collaborative and has been on the market for sometime. The recent addition of being able to create a presentation within your sharpcloud Story (Marketing Content, Sales Presentation, Strategy, Technology Roadmap and the like) allows you to deliver a social but thoughtful and helpful introduction to your Story. When people first go to your online Story, you are able to guide them through Views of your Story, in a way that makes sense, whilst also allowing the viewer to pause the presentation, so that they can explore your story, write a comment, vote on an Item and continue the presentation by pressing the Play button again. This becomes a journey of discovery for the viewer, which becomes more interesting, interactive as well as an enjoyable “business social” experience

So “Death by PowerPoint” is no longer an issue. Being able to make your “sales presentation” via tools like sharpcloud, in the linear way that you would do so with PowerPoint is a familiar experience for most viewers.

However, one of the main benefits is when the potential customer or client asks that question, say about costs, that you do not have in that PowerPoint deck, then it’s a missed opportunity. Well in sharpcloud, you can quickly click to a view that visually shows the information to answer the question. You could also link to media content such as videos, other presentations, documents, sales brochures, testimonials, etc within the story that is either part of sharpcloud or hosted on You Tube, or some other content platform. Once you have answered the question, you can carry on with the presentation.

So now that we are able to make a “Sales” presentation and not worry about what slides to include or create, or have ready for a “just in case” question, lets come back to how we can continue this Sales process. As with other social technologies the key element is the ability to collaborate.

The ability for you and your customers to remain connected and be able to communicate and collaborate in a business social way, is a major advantage when compared to the more traditional approaches. I am not saying we forget about these approaches, but when combined with a collaborative selling approach, over time this will have a major positive effect on you, your client, your brand and your business and organizations future success. It is highly likely that your competitors are not even thinking about this let alone doing it!

The fact you can mutually learn and provide feedback back to one another, (sales/presenter & client/audience) and be able to bring this knowledge and information back into your respective company and organization not only improves the sales engagement, but facilitates in reducing the sales cycle time. A major benefit for the marketing group is being able to gain insight directly from clients with regards to the relevancy of the marketing content that they have generated and what they need to focus on in the future. Collaborative Selling is mutually beneficial to all parties involved in the process by being able to remove/reduce the risk and deliver clarity and certainty with regards to products and or services.

This “Collaborative Selling” will help to influence outcomes in a positive way, by creating a “real time umbilical cord” relating to decision making, personal experience, costs, as well as fostering and nurturing both the sales person and customers relationship, into a trusting and collaborative one.

One last point, which is relevant to all of us is costs.

Using business social networking to deliver Collaborative Selling is a relatively low cost proposition, with free social media marketing channels, coupled with commercial products such as sharpcloud, cannot be over looked when comparing to the traditional corporate ways of Sales and Marketing. By getting traction with your market, developing relationships and increasing your brand awareness on a global scale using collaborative technologies, means businesses and organizations have to give serious thought and consideration of how they stay engaged and keep the conversation alive with their clients and customers, during a highly competitive sales process.

Eventually we will all have to do it, small or large otherwise those who do, will win!

---

Jason Hier is an expert in using sharpcloud to help businesses deliver highly effective sales presentations in a very visual and collaborative way. By being able to keep the conversation alive after the initial sales presentation positions both supplier & customer into a unique position to collaborate & innovate – developing the optimal solution. Get a FREE 1/2 day consultation today www.roelto.com/freeconsultation.php

Is Google’s New Email Filtering For You?

By Jerry Bader in Featured

So Google wants to decide for you what emails are important and what emails aren’t. See MediaPost’s ‘Around the Net’ at http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=134756.

From what I’ve read one of the key filtering factors will be addresses or people it recognizes. It seems the Web has spawned this notion that the only people you should communicate with are people and businesses you already know. Linkedin and many other social networking sites follow the same principle only allowing you to connect to people you already know; or to those that you can get introduced to by existing contacts.

Sure spam is a problem, we all know that, but an obsession with spam that is not destructive can be easily dealt with by hitting the delete button or by using spam filters properly. Yes we all get lots of emails that we have to go through every day, but the idea that you should only deal with the people you deal with seems to me counterproductive and frankly, downright foolish.

We are all in business and we all want to grow and expand our businesses by not only selling our current customers more, but by selling new customers. Can a business survive in the long-term without new customers? Of course it can’t.

Anyone who has studied psychology, and when you get right down to it, sales and marketing are all about psychology, knows that ignorance, as in lack of knowledge, leads to poor decisions.
Everyone makes mistakes, the difference between successful business executives and failures, is the ability to learn from mistakes; the problem according to the Dunning-Kruger effect is not knowing what you don’t know creates an ‘illusory superiority’ – in short keeping yourself ignorant makes you feel that you know more than you actually do, and that’s what leads to poor decision-making.

I for one don’t want Google or Linkedin or anybody else for that matter pre-filtering what I should see, hear, read, listen to, or whom I should communicate with. We owe it to our selves and our businesses to think for ourselves, listen to as much as we can, and use our brains to decide if the information is valid or not.

Clients pay us to create Web videos that generate leads, emails, and phone calls that help build working relationships, sales, and long-term customer loyalty. If you don’t answer your phone or read your emails you may have just missed closing your next big client, and that’s not good business.

Thanks Google, but I’ll pass.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

What’s Wrong With Web Advertising

By Jerry Bader in Featured

Two interesting articles crossed my desk this morning, articles that everyone interested in getting the most out of their marketing should read. The first was published in Media Post’s Media Creativity written by Ari Rosenberg, called “The Problem With Online Ad Creative No One Wants To Hear.” Rosenberg states “The Web is overwhelmingly experienced in silence…” a problem we’ve been talking about for years. I would add that the problem is not just a silent Web, it’s a Web where audio is miss used and abused by advertisers who don’t understand how to use sound design and music to motivate audience action. You can read the article at http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=132001&lfe=1.

The second item that should appeal to all those who pray to the god of media measurement; Abe Sauer writes “Media Too Quick To Label Old Spice Man a Failure.” Read the article in brandchannel at http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2010/07/23/Media-Quick-To-Label-OLd-Spice-A-Failure.aspx. In a nutshell the article uses the now famous Old Spice campaign to explain what we all know but just can’t accept and that is, there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

So think twice the next time your video producer tells you he’s going to just slap on some royalty free music instead of creating a signature soundscape, or when you make a marketing campaign decision based on statistics and analytics that you really don’t fully understand.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Give Up or Keep Going; The Decision That Defines You

By Robert Imbriale in Featured

It was 1995 and I was struggling to get my business off the ground. I was excited, spinning my wheels, yet getting nowhere fast. Money was coming in, but more of it was going out than was coming in.

Before very long, I found myself questioning whether or not to close my business and give up on my lifelong dreams.

When you arrive at a point like this, there are two choices you can make. First, you can choose to throw in the towel and walk away. Many people take this route and in later years begin to regret their decision.

The other option is to keep going and find new ways to get through the rough times. While you may wonder if there’s a third choice of doing nothing, that’s really not making a choice at all and it’s almost the same as giving up because if you do nothing, you’ll soon have nothing.

So there really is only one choice and that’s to keep going.

At some point in every lifetime, there are going to be rough and uncertain times. Later in life, you’ll look back and realize that whatever it was that you decided to do during those times has literally defined who you are in some profound way.

For those people that decide to give up, they often end up feeling deep regret and tend to fade into the fabric of society rarely ever making anything much of their lives.

If you are to become a true leader, you are probably the type to keep pushing through, no matter how tough things get. In our society today, there is a real lack of true leaders. We have a lot of people who talk a big game, but few who do what’s needed to step up and lead.

When things were really tough going for me, I made the decision to stick with it. Although everybody around me at the time was encouraging me to do the “safe” thing and go find a job, I stayed the course, never lost sight of my dream, and soon began to see things changing for the better.

Today, people think I’m lucky or that I had a few good breaks that made all the difference, when the reality could not be farther from the truth.

What I had then, you have now.

What I did then, you can do now.

The only thing that will ever stop you is you.

When you truly understand this very important point, things will change in your life for the better. The biggest obstacle to your success is you. The biggest challenge you’ll ever face in life is getting past your own limiting beliefs.

Every successful person, every leader, gets and uses advice from other people in order to get where they want to go. People who rise to the level of becoming a leader know that limiting beliefs can keep them back and so they get help in order to break through to the next level.

As human beings, we get far too close to our own beliefs and they become so much a part of who we are that we can’t even see them, let alone change them. What’s needed is a person who can see us from a fresh perspective, a person who is not involved in what I like to call our “internal politics.”

Whether it’s the President of a nation, of a company, or even a solo entrepreneur, those who rise to great levels of success all surround themselves with people they rely on to help them see the way forward.

Some call them advisers, others call them mentors, and still others refer to them as coaches. Whatever title you use to refer to these people, it’s important to realize that they are the people behind the leaders.

These people are often trained to see beyond what is, and instead put their attention on what could be. They also have a keen awareness for helping you bring your limiting beliefs to the surface so that you can address them in ways that are productive.

For many people, having a coach is the difference between mediocrity and domination of their careers.

Early on in my career, I was lucky enough to realize how important having outside help was and I sought out people who could help me get past the barriers that I was simply unable to break trough myself.

I’ve had at least one, and at times as many as 6 coaches working with me at any given time.

The results I’ve seen in my own life have been amazing thanks to the people I’ve chosen to work with along the way. With their help, I’ve shaved decades of trial and error away, improved my relationships, and have earned much, much more money in a shorter period of time that I would have had I not had a coach.

Oh, did I mention that I also became a well-known thought-leader in the marketing world and continue to called upon for my guidance and opinions by other industry leaders. None of this would have been possible had I not discovered the power of having a coach every step of the way.

I have been coaching business leaders from around to see beyond the obvious, to see what they are truly capable of, and to get past the beliefs that would have otherwise held them back.

I’m part of a growing legion of professional coaches who work to hasten the rise to success of businesses, enterprises, and individuals. Since 1995, when coaching really started to gain traction, coaching has become recognized as the “must-have” resource for people and organizations looking for rapid growth.

While coaching is not designed to replace traditional psychotherapy, it is a powerful tool that can take you to new levels of success in very short periods of time.

The issues best suited for coaching involve business strategy, personal development, and empowerment.

Leading coaches make little distinction between ‘personal’ and business issues because they realize how tightly related the two can be and instead choose to work on both, often simultaneously.

In my work as a coach, I’ve yet to run into a single person who could not benefit from coaching. The rewards of working with a great coach are immeasurable because once an issue is resolved, it’s resolved for life. That means that the benefits of the work you do with a coach are in place for the rest of your life.

Think of it as an investment with an unlimited ROI because once you learn a lesson from your coach, that lesson is yours for the rest of your life to use as often as you choose.

It is important to pick your coach wisely. Be sure the person, or people, you choose can not just see the vision you hold for your future, but can get on board with it as well. Your coach should have one single agenda: yours.

They should speak your language and see the best in you in every situation. And they should have a proven track record of success working with people who are similar to you or have a track record working with businesses that are similar to yours.

Finally, your coach should have current and past clients who have become raving fans of their work.

While these kinds of coaches are not always easy to find, it’s worth the extra effort to locate them because the results they will bring to your life will have a definite and powerful impact not just on you as a person, but on everybody you interact with as well.

When you find a coach that can meet these criteria, hang onto them! Do all you can to make sure they remain part of your inner circle for as long as they continue to bring measurable value to the table.

When you’re faced with a major decision, don’t make that decision on your own, get advice, get a coach who can help you see things from a new perspective because the decisions you make today will have a profound and lasting impact on your tomorrow.

---

Robert Imbriale is known as a “Master Coach” for his extensive work with business owners, and entrepreneurs. He is the author of the book, Motivational Marketing (Wiley, 2007), and is the founder of Ultimate Wealth, Inc. Learn more about Robert’s coaching services, seminars, and see free training videos on his web site at www.RobertImbriale.com

Find the Web Contrarian In You

By Jerry Bader in Featured

In the beginning there were websites, and marketers looked upon them and said, they were good. Websites begot search engine optimization and the number crunchers looked upon it and said it was very good. Search engine optimization begot social media and everyone looked upon it and said, this is hot. MySpace begot Facebook that begot Linkedin that begot Twitter and everyone said, “I got a headache,” to which all I can say is remember Tulip Mania.

The Tulip Mania

In 1637 speculation in tulip bulb futures hit its peak. Contracts for tulip bulbs were selling for more than ten times the annual income of a skilled worker. And of course this was followed by a disastrous collapse foreshadowing what was to come some 292 years later.

In 1841 Charles Mackay wrote “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” that outlined how following the crowd can lead to unfortunate results. Such patterns of mass-behavior continue today without letup, and with dire consequences as can be seen in the recent economic meltdown.

Despite this continual repetition of behavior some have learned to use The Theory of Contrary Thinking as a marketing communication principle that avoids the lemming-like behavior of most people, and more to the point most businesses. By the way, lemmings do not commit suicide by running off the Bow River Bridge despite the 1958 nature film by Uncle Walt.

Just because everyone does it, says it, or promotes it, doesn’t make it right or effective. There is nothing wrong with participating in many of these social networking vehicles, but they are only one vehicle and should not be used to the exclusion and investment in other forms of marketing communication.

If you want your business to standout from your competitors in an overcrowded marketplace, namely the Web, then you have to think differently. No one becomes a market leader by being a follower. Finding the contrarian in you is not easy for most business people trained in technical skills, accounting, and strict bottom-line decision-making. But business is more art than science and unless you adopt a more creative approach to how you communicate to your audience you will be caught in the next version of tulip mania.

The Importance Of Creating Resistance In Your Copy

By Bill Platt in Featured

“Creating Resistance in Your Copy” is an idea that is alien to most online marketers. After all, online marketers want to believe that everyone should buy their products and services, because the more people buying what is being sold, the more money the marketer will inevitably earn.

Alien Marketing Concept

This concept is so alien that most Internet marketers who see this article will react as if they are “deer in the headlights”. If you are looking at this article with a blank stare – completely bewildered about my suggestion – then you are likely one of many, who are reacting the same way.

Improved Website Sales Conversion Is The Best Answer

By Bret Plummer in Featured

When I first started learning how to make money online, I read that “content is king.” Well, I am here to tell you that “content is not king.” It is an illusion (a mirage) that traps many online business owners in the quick sand of failure.

“Content for the sake of content” is pointless.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. Content is a good thing, so long as it will help deliver a potential customer to your sales page or the sales page of your advertisers. Any content that does not deliver a potential customer to a sales page is content that has not lived up to its true purpose, plain and simple.

Balancing SEO Against The Needs of Your Article’s Audience

By Hunter Waterhouse in Featured

Article marketing continues to be a proven method for generating traffic to our websites and developing good search placement, even after all of these years. I have been reading articles online since 1995, and I continue to read a few dozen articles per week on subjects that are dear to my heart.

Some Claim That Article Marketing Does Not Work

Now and again, I will read a thread in a forum somewhere where somebody claims that article marketing does not work.

Multiply Your Marketing Like a Virus

By Michel Fortin in Featured

In today’s Internet, conversations are cropping up all over the place. People are talking. They are talking about products. They are talking about businesses. And they are certainly talking about their experiences.

When you look at how blogs, forums and social networking sites have exploded in the last few years, you can see how powerful word-of-mouth is. But the question is, is it all really important? Can it really help your business?

Yes.

And I’m not talking about traffic. And you don’t need to be controversial, either. I’m talking creating systems to leverage, manage and profit from the “buzz.”

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

Home Newsletter Archives SEO Forums Webmaster Tools Webmaster Resources Link to SPN Top SEO Tools Website Templates SPN Partners Contact Us Privacy Advertise

ExactSeek SiteProNews MetaWebSearch SPN Videos EzineHub ISEDN DropJack NewWebDirectory.com SEO-News SEO-News Forums Blog Search FreeWebSubmission SmartWebGadgets