Archive for October, 2011

Twitter – Weekly Updates for 2011-10-28

Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 8:15 pm  
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Banner Retargeting

Thursday, October 27th, 2011 at 1:02 pm  
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The internet has made advertising incredibly sophisticated and targeted. Advertisers can reach buyers in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. It seems like almost every day we have new and powerful ways to reach customers. And you don’t need a massive budget to do it.

Banner ad retargeting is a prime example. If you’re serious about using the web as a sales channel, banner retargeting may just be for you. If you don’t know about it, you should.

Here’s how it works: You sign on to run ads. Your website receives a visitor. An ad network cookie is set up on the user’s browser. While they visit other websites in that ad network, what do they see? Banner ads relating to you! Banner ad retargeting can be used with both organic SEO traffic, and paid PPC advertising.

It’s amazing! Your message follows them and continues to impact them across the web.

Banner ad retargeting allows you to continue to touch qualified prospects, long after they’ve been to your site. And if this retargeting gets results, and you continue it, you’ll have another way to reach people who’ve already become customers. Marketing is about much more than acquiring new customers!

Genius: be where they don’t expect you!

But there’s another aspect of banner retargeting that’s a stroke of genius. It allows you to get buyers’ attention as never before. Your ads will follow visitors to all the sites in that ad network. That includes websites completely unlike what your business sells. If you sell computer products and they visit a similar site, your ad may get lost in the clutter of related products.

After all, human beings have all developed sophisticated filters to match the sophistication of advertisers.

But what if they see your ad on an entertainment site while searching for something completely unrelated? Your ad will make more of an impression, that’s what. What a way to stand out from the pack of your competitors!

Keep in mind that you’ll need a significant number of visitors to your site for this tactic to be useful. If you don’t have decent site traffic, you’ll need to build that first, either through SEO, PPC marketing, social media advertising or other direct marketing methods. If you don’t, the retargeting pool will be too small to be effective.

In the final analysis, banner retargeting is one of those web marketing concepts whose time is now. Be ready for it or fall behind!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, if you have, it would be great if you could +1 and share it. Thanks! :-)

Twitter – Weekly Updates for 2011-10-21

Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 8:15 pm  
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Special (Happiness) Delivery!

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 9:29 am  
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Have you read Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness – www.deliveringhappiness.com? If building an outstanding business is important to you, then you really should. It’s a New York Times Number One Bestseller and a brilliant concept for the 21st century. Tony captures what so many businesses of all sizes are missing.

And he knows what he’s talking about too. As CEO of the online store, Zappos.com, he helped grow the company from almost no sales to over $1 billion in gross sales annually. Then he sold the company to Amazon in a deal valued at $1.2 billion.

How did he do it? With a true culture of customer service and valuing employees.

Delivering Happiness applies concepts from happiness to business. What Tony has found in his search for happiness is that making customers and employees happy is what’s really best for business. But too many take happiness for granted or don’t even consider it. Too bad for them. It can make your bottom line!

The key is to combine profits, passion and purpose. People are happy when they have perceived progress, perceived control, connectedness (which Tony says is the number and depth of relationships) and are part of something bigger than themselves.

Zappos was committed to the very best customer service and experience. They did it by developing a greater connection with each and every customer. Zappos also made company culture their top priority—above big marketing and advertising budgets. They let their extremely happy customers do the marketing. And their ecstatic employees boldly carried the brand.

Think about this potential for your business, especially when you factor in social media!

The bottom line, he says, is to find a way to make yourself, your employees and your customers happy—and still make money.

Delivering Happiness shows what a radically different corporate culture can accomplish. But it begins with some radical concepts:

• Pay new employees $2000 to quit. That way you’ll know if they’re really committed to the business concept.
• Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company, not just a department. This idea isn’t new. But what’s radical is actually enforcing it, instead of just talking about it.
• Company culture as the #1 priority. Again, lots of businesses talk about the importance of culture. Few live it.
• Seek to change the world. Help give people something to believe in, and making that part of your brand. Wow! Think of the power!

Exceptional service that makes your customers your mouthpieces is powerful stuff. And you CAN do it! Today, more than ever, customers have incredible potential to carry your message to a broad, diverse and lucrative audience! It’s all about creating a WOW.

How can YOU build a culture that delivers happiness to the people who matter?

If you’ve enjoyed this post I’d appreciate it if you would hit the +1 button below, share it via Facebook and Twitter or leave a comment below! When was the last time you received a WOW moment? Who delivered it? It would be great to hear from you on this subject!

What’s the point of YOUR website?

Monday, October 17th, 2011 at 9:13 am  
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Seriously… what is is meant to do?

Your website has to have a purpose. It has to have a goal.

Your website can be informative. It can be visually creative. It can be designed by the absolute best designers in the world but when it comes down to it, your website must do at least one of three things.

1. Sell – Think e-commerce sites. If you’re in a business with products that can be sold online, your site must be focused on this with great precision.

2. Capture leads – For prospects and customers. You must be able to communicate with customers whenever appropriate and reach out to prospects at all points in the sales funnel. Miss this and miss out big time! The vast majority of my websites are focused on this goal – we set out to give people lots of reasons to give us their contact information which we can then follow up on. It works really really well for us and many other businesses.

3. Get them to call or email you – Long gone are the days of websites as online ‘brochures’ that just say what you do. I’ll say that again: long gone are the days of websites as online ‘brochures’ that just say what you do. If that’s what your website does, you’re not a bit behind. You’re generations behind everyone else!

You’re losing out to businesses that understand how to sell and how to capture leads online. You’re losing out to competitors who know how to get customers to take action. Wake up. Quickly. Because things have really changed.

Ask Yourself…

Think of it like this. When you make purchases, online or in a shop, do you buy from places that make it easy for you to spend your money? Or do you buy from ones that put up barriers, that make you wait in long lines, or ones with ecommerce systems that don’t work properly or are otherwise inefficient? It’s a no brainer. You buy from retailers and e-tailers that make it easy right? Your website MUST operate by the same principles.

Here’s another question. Are you more likely to buy from businesses that contact you with special offers and reasons to buy from them again and again? Or ones who sell to you and forget about you? Duh! Well, your customers feel the same way. You have to capture leads so you can continue to communicate with customers. This will dramatically impact the amount of repeat business you get!

For those who aren’t in an ecommerce business, getting buyers to call you is essential. You need them to know about your services and schedule an appointment or make a sale, but your site has to give them a reason to do this. It has to make them pick up the phone and call today, or send you an email.

Check out the sales site for our thebestof franchise www.getthebestof.co.uk. Take a look at how many different ways there are for people to get in touch with us and give us their contact information. See what I mean?

Your websites HAVE to align with at least one of these three objectives. If they don’t, lots of customers will be buying elsewhere.

If you’ve enjoyed this post I’d be grateful if you’d +1 it and share it on Facebook or Twitter – you’ll find the buttons below!

Twitter – Weekly Updates for 2011-10-14

Friday, October 14th, 2011 at 8:15 pm  
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We’re ALL Marketeers Now!

Thursday, October 13th, 2011 at 10:27 am  
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Marketing sceptics. There are lots of them out there. I encounter them all of the time, almost everywhere I go. Despite the direct and undeniable correlation between marketing and sales, many remain suspicious of marketing. Some of these people are a lost cause. That’s too bad for them. But YOU can learn from them and profit from their limited perspective.

Take a lesson from these sceptics and adopt a very different mantra that’s a requirement for business success today: We’re ALL Marketeers!

Nothing happens in business until someone buys something – and the reason they buy is because of the marketing. Period.

The sooner you start thinking of yourself as a marketeer of what you do – and not as a doer of what you do – the sooner your profits will soar.

That thinking has to manifest itself in how you think, feel and act – but when it does your sales will sky rocket.

I believe it is impossible for anyone to build a sustainably successful business without them becoming a marketeer of what they do – and there’s ample evidence to support my premise.

Making this transition is especially important if marketing is not your usual space, or if it’s not what you’re good at. Then the change becomes critical.

Short and sweet. But that’s how it is. And deep down you know I’m right! :-)

Do you make a sale every time you send an email?

Monday, October 10th, 2011 at 10:49 am  
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Every time I send emails I make sales. Every time. As a business owner, you have to recognize the tremendous opportunity of email to communicate consistently and cheaply with your customers. If you do it the right way, that is.

Email marketing is easy. It’s too easy, because many businesses dabble in it, or do it incorrectly, and ditch it. Wrong! No type of marketing will ever be effective if you’re just throwing information (sales pitches, no less!) at people, hoping something will stick. It’s not about you.

As far as the customer is concerned, it’s all about them. Always.

It’s essential that you remember this when you’re sending email. But most businesses miss the point. They’re not sending emails with any consistency, and if they do, they’re focused on “SELLING!”

Yesterday’s rules were about reaching buyers and selling buyers. Not today. Today you need to engage them to make sales.

Engagement

How do you engage customers instead of imposing yourself upon them? That’s easy. Ask them questions. Initiate conversations through social media, your blog and email marketing. And participate in their conversations. If you’re engaging through Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn, then you know what customers are talking about. Be part of it!

Use email marketing as an opportunity to give them offers and incentives. Include promotions in your emails that encourage customers to refer their colleagues and friends. This expands your influence, engages customers and creates profits for you. Remind them to like you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter to take advantage of foursquare and other opportunities.

Email can bring together many of your vehicles of customer engagement.

Of course, email marketing is far from a new idea. Most of us complain about the unwanted volume we receive. But if you’re communicating something people care about, you’re on the right track. You’re already standing out from lots of other businesses trying to be heard.

The other requirement is creativity. From the subject line, to the imagery, to the incentive, to the point of the email, you have to be creative and compelling. You have to be different—really different! This doesn’t mean you need to spend lots of money on this creative. You just need to think about it and be creative.

The Hotmail example

Take a hint from Hotmail. The email service provider had over 12 million users when Microsoft acquired them. Did they wait for people to find out about them? Of course not! Hotmail included a small signature at the bottom of all outgoing emails, inviting recipients to sign-up. Brilliant viral email marketing!

Sending emails can create amazing results for your business too. How can you develop your own Hotmail story?

Twitter – Weekly Updates for 2011-10-07

Friday, October 7th, 2011 at 8:15 pm  
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Why Most People in your Sector are Wrong about EVERYTHING!

Monday, October 3rd, 2011 at 9:56 am  
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What do you need to do to get to the top of the class?

Take any group of people – especially in business – and they’ll split down into the following:

- 1% are super successful and wealthy
- 4% are doing very well – they’re rich
- 15% are on their way there – doing OK
- 60% are getting by
- 20% are struggling

The 20/60/20 rule is stimulating stuff. Pay attention to it and you’ll see why most people are wrong about everything. And why you shouldn’t do things the way they do.

The rule states that about 20% of people simply won’t do, or at least will greatly resist, doing what it takes to be successful. Most people—60%–are in limbo, not sure what actions to take or when to take them. It’s the other 20% who will lead the charge.

Which camp are you in? Are you doing what it takes to accomplish your goals in a climate defined by change? Are you in the top 20%, or do you cling to old ways and old ideas? Do you get stuck in what feels comfortable and hold your business back?

The 80% are wrong about everything. They’re not keeping up. They’re struggling and they’re falling behind.

Remember this when you’re trying to mimic what others are doing. Remember that 80% of them are standing still or moving backwards. This includes businesses that have been successful but have stopped being able to adapt. They were right once, but now they’re wrong and they’re failing. Follow these guys and you’ll end up where they are.

You have to do what it takes!
Everything is different. You have to be willing to take advantage of every opportunity if you’re going to not only thrive, but even survive. Look at the potential of increasingly-sophisticated strategies like CRM, Google Analytics and Google Places. If you’re not fully using these tools, you’re not in the top 20%!

Consider the potential of using traditional tools like the phone [link] and vehicle branding [link] in powerful new ways. Are you willing to explore the potential of these? If you want to be in the top 20%, you will.

Many business owners simply aren’t doing what it takes! They’re willing to make excuses [link] for why activities won’t work, but they’re not willing to consider why and how they can have awesome potential. They’re not willing to take the business of marketing seriously and expand their business.

Sure, they may dabble in a few activities here and there, but they aren’t committed to implementing smart strategies. Guess what? Their efforts will yield few results and they’ll give up.

Leadership application
You can certainly apply the 20/60/20 principle to leadership in recognizing the potential of outstanding employees, versus ones who will fight to keep with the status quo. How can you help motivate the middle 60% to move with change and give you their best? If you’re to build an innovative and brilliant company, you’ll need innovative and brilliant people!

Remember the 20/60/20 rule to shatter boundaries and create success!