• Home
• About
• Support
• Articles
• Services
• Home Study
• SIGN IN
• Resources

• Categories:
• BLOG
• Free - Quick - Easy
• Growth
• Lead Generation
• Management
• Marketing
• Salesmanship
• Web Skills

The Missing Element of Growth: Strategy

I just read a good article suggesting that the way to have a successful website is by buying (taking over) an existing website that has a lot of traffic.

Here are some of its key ideas that I agree with:

Looking at many online small business owners, always so busy with current operational issues, I have noticed that they are often missing the bigger picture. The majority are lacking any strategy on how to successfully grow their online presence/visibility.

Cost. We all know that small business budgets are limited, however investing in buying a website can reward you and your business greatly. Not only are you gaining an extra base of potential costumers, but you’re adding an important asset to your business, which will increase in value over time.

You can read the entire article at Small Business Growth Strategy

I suspect that buying a website is more useful for a company that wants to do business on the web instead of growing their local business. However the author makes some great points:

First, all success starts with a clear focused purpose - A STRATEGY. The ready, fire, aim approach works in the movies but in real life ends up costing a businessperson a lot of money. That’s the main idea of providing a clear strategy in the article I wrote called Profit by Using the Internet.

.


.

.

.

.

.

If you can purchase a website that works with the strategy of

• Improving
• Growing
• Expanding

your business great. However whatever action you take make sure that it fits into the goals and purpose of the business. Have a clear strategy with the metrics to measure success and failure. Don’t use cost alone. The soft benefits of reputation, credibility, and customer service improvement are difficult to measure but those are the very things that develop customer loyality and sustain a business in hard times.

Buying a website is a good tactic, but is a tactic, not a strategy. It is a powerful weapon in your growth arsenal but like traffic building, search engine optimization (SEO), Google Adwords, and alll tactics it is not the place to start.

Having a clear goals, a time line, and a budget are the places to start.

Perhaps just as important is to keep in mind that those goals and plans need to integrate into the overall business strategy - with one supporting the other. Otherwise your customers will be confused, you’ll spend money needlessly and you won’t get the powerful results possible by leveraging both offline and online mediums.

Relationship Marketing

If you’re a successful business owner, you already know that the success of your business depends on the relationships built with customers. This is twice as true when doing business online.

Yet there are millions of websites out there that do nothing to cultivate customer relationships. Time after time, this is what you’ll find:

• Ego - All about the company: We have this, we did that, we said, we, we, we… The truth is that nobody cares. If a visitor doesn’t see something that’ they value they’ll be reaching for the back button.
• Brochure - A replica of the company brochure, with product and service information, photos, driving directions, and contact information. Just like millions of other websites.
• Buy Me! – There’s no shortage of websites selling products and services. The problem is most of them don’t offer anything else - no useful information, no free trial, no coupons, nothing. Just an opportunity to separate the visitor from their cash.

Just as in real-life, online relationships take time to develop. The constant barrage of sales pitches and hype has made many web surfers hold on tightly to their wallets. Until they get to know the person behind the website, you are tarred with the same brush as every other greedy marketer trying to pick their pocket.

So how do you begin to develop customer relationships? Two words: relationship marketing. But what is “Relationship Marketing”?

As an independent professional, a freelancer or a small business owner one of the most challenging tasks is marketing. Michael Gerber’s book “the e-Myth” points out that most individuals know their trade or profession well. They know what their customers value and what to offer them. However they just don’t know how to locate people (prospects) and convince them to use their services or products (become customers).

One of the most powerful techniques in marketing is to step into the shoes of your ideal client and brainstorm how they would find your business. This helps to refine the exact target market looking for your product or service. It also helps figure out what would be the best marketing methods and the messages to communicate your message to them.

Relationship marketing is about having a dialog with your customers over a period of time. It can also include gathering customer information and analyzing their behavior. You may not have the financial resources of Best Buy or WalMart, but as a local business owner you can do something they can’t - have real person-to-person relationship with your customers.

You do that by providing value to your customers, usually good information and value packed offers. Remember, people don’t go online looking for something to buy. They’re usually seeking information. So your strategy should be to use the information your customers need to build and maintain relationships with them.

There are 2 critical components to making this strategy work: a value-packed website and the consistent use of email to stay in touch.

To continue this article click on the page links below…

Pages: 1 2

Remarkable find: SocialMarker does the work for you

Every now and then you find a gem on the internet, a tool or website that makes your life so much easier that you don’t know how you lived without it. Recently I found such a treasure in SocialMarker. What makes this site so remarkable is that it is not only FREE but easy to use and a huge huge time saver.

.

Growth requires new business. New business requires people seeing our offer - prospects - traffic in the online world. Everysite wants more traffic, including the websites of a local business.

To build traffic you need to network in at least 3 ways:

• Article Directories
• Website Directories
• Social Newtworks

Social Networks are increasing becoming the most important element for driving traffic (organic, that is unpaid traffic) on the web. Propeller, Digg, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Technorati, Del.icio.us, to mention only a few are becoming critical success factors for websites.

What is it?

Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting a website. But going through all of those social bookmarking sites is very time-consuming and downloading all toolbars is madness! That’s where SocialMarker.com comes in, the free service designed to reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website.

How Do You Use It?

All you need to do is simply drag this button to your bookmarks toolbar, in order to create a submission bookmarklet. When you are on a website that you want to socially mark, simply select the text and click the SocialMarker button to pre-populate the submission form with the selected information.

Why SocialMarker?

It can help you spread a link on 47 of the best social bookmarking sites in under 15 minutes!

• It helps you get a lot of backlinks.
• It helps you increase your traffic.
• Your link gets indexed by Google in a matter of minutes.
• Best of all, it’s free!

Of course the problem is who has time to enter information and link to all of these sites? No-one - or at least no-one who has to work for a living. Social Marker has taken the work out of the process. Here are the steps:

1. Sign up and get an account at the socai networking

2. Find interesting information and highlight what you want posted on the networking sites

3. Hit the link or bookmark that takes you back to SocialMarker

4. The information is automatically populated and the site takes you through each social network you’ve checked off to post the links.

.

One of the great features of the site is that if you’re not registered with one of the social networks it allows registering without leaving the process of posting the information or loosing your place. Once you’ve registered and told your computer to keep you logged in then the entire process is automatic. Unbelievably fast, easy, and effective. Just take a look at the popular social networks SocialMarker works with:

.
If you’re reading this and you want to build traffic - which I hope is everyone - check out SocialMarker. It’s free, quick, and easy. My signature theme - free quick, and easy. Cheers…Russ

Frank say’s “Selling Sucks!” Do You Agree?

Frankly, I don’t agree with this speaker. Perhaps the way he sell stinks, along with the high pressure tactics and hard closers out there, but I love selling. Nothing happens without something getting sold - an old chestnut but still true. My customer’s appreciate me ’selling’ them because they know I’m working hard in their best interest.

That said Frank makes a few great points. Technology, especially using the strategies used by “Growing Your Local Business Using the Internet” , brings prospects to you. Modern strategies, such as email, eNewsletters, and great information packed websites, warm prospects up, eliminates cold calling (dialing for dollars), and many of the worn out approaches of traditional selling.

Listen to Frank’s video and let me know what you think.

Online Shopping Is Growing Every Day

This is the ideal time for business owners, in almost every industry imaginable, to jump on the bandwagon and join the Internet revolution. Providing an online shopping option can greatly increase the customer base of a business - especially local businesses.

When a business owner makes the informed decision to offer products or services online, he is really ‘going global’ with little effort and minimal costs. Even the smallest business with e-commerce abilities has discovered how easy it is to market their product to those a world away.

Online shopping is growing by leaps and bounds. This isn’t surprising consideration the millions of people who regularly use the Internet.

Consumers are more comfortable with online shopping than ever before. This is due, in part, to the advances that have been made with online security over the past several years. Even those individuals who would have never divulged their credit card information in the past are now shopping from home because they feel safe doing so. Why? It’s convenient, it saves gas, it’s less stressful, and shopping online offers a much greater selection of merchandise than what they will find locally.

There will always be consumers who remain adamant about the fact that they will never make an online purchase. However, neighborhood businesses can still benefit from providing e-commerce options, as those same consumers freely admit to using the Internet for extensive price comparisons before actually making a final purchase.

The news gets better. With additional payment options becoming more readily available, even the individuals who currently feel e-commerce is not safe just might end up jumping the fence.

These options include: Bill Me Later (this payment provider sends out a paper bill, and consumers can send payment via check or money order), PayPal, Google Checkout, Verified By Visa and MasterCard Secure Code options.

Cyber Source Corporation, one of the leading electronic payment providers, reported that their 2007 fourth-quarter revenue totaled $45.4 million dollars. That reflects an astounding increase of 117% compared to the same period of the previous year.

Forrester Research predicts that annual e-commerce sales will top $258 billion dollars, this year alone. They estimate the numbers for 2010 will exceed $316 billion dollars in online sales.

Again, there is no better time than the present for business owners to set up shop in cyberspace. With continual improvements, online sales will only continue to increase. Millions of shoppers agree: e-commerce really is the most convenient, hassle free, enjoyable way to shop!

How to Profit on the Internet

I just finished a good article on how to profit using the web. Many people think of the web as an eCommerce solution. Often when a local business decides to go on the web they think in terms of what they can sell or how to make money on the Internet. However the starting place is how to expand your existing business. Then move into selling on the web and expanding a business. This article outlines the process and tactics for successfully taking an off-line business to the internet - and how an unprofitable on-line business can start making money. You can read the article on-line or download the pdf. Cheers…

Profit with the Internet

There are three interlocking strategies for growing a business using the Internet: improving a business, growing a business, and expanding a business. Done sequentially they build upon one another and increase revenues immediately. 70% of all buyers buy from the web. 36% of all customers use the web to find local businesses. Understanding the specific strategies to profitably use the Internet will help capture that business and become the backbone of a companies marketing program. To read the complete article click below:

Have you been ripped off Infomarketers?

I’ve read several hundred eBooks now, taken dozens of InfoCourses and well, frankly I feel ripped off. It’s not only the money but the time. Why is it so hard to get good information? Especially when you’ve paid for it?

Recently I listened to a course by Dan Kennedy, the Grand Puba of Marketing and Sales information products, where he said “The pitch page will never be as good as the product itself. How could it?”

Over promise and under deliver. That seems to be the motto of these internet sellers. What off-line business could operate that way? How many customers could we keep if every time they bought something they felt cheated? I suspect not many.

Their formula is simple – an openly taught by them – tell people the problem and even what the solution is – just don’t tell them how to fix it. For that you’ve got to pay the big dollars. Well unfortunately, even the big buck course are pretty light on the “How To” of getting anything accomplished.

For example the subject of how to use the internet. There are tons of websites and courses on this subject. They talk about all the money that is being made and give endless examples and techniques about Internet Marketing. I’ve taken these courses: how to drive traffic, how to optimize your website for search engines and on and on. However I’ve discovered a huge problem.

The problem is that making all of these things work – actually executing and implementing – is harder than they say. Plus they don’t tell you HOW! I know, they’ll argue with that statement and I’ll probably get flamed in comments and email. But its true. How many eBooks have you read that were worthless? How many free offers to you get that actually have any meat in them? Few I suspect. Its gotten to the point I don’t even open these emails anymore – I just ignore all of their nonsense.

I’ve discovered that there are three levels of knowledge needed to really have a working solution:

• Understanding of the Problem
• What to do to Solve the Problem
• How to Solve the Problem

How often involves tools and the practive of skills learned in the ‘Understanding’ and the ‘What.’ For example to build a house I first have to learn a lot about building, architecture, legal and structural rules, etc. I then have to learn what a house builder does. I have to learn what tools and resources it takes. I have to learn about all of the skills and techniques that will be used when I’m ready to dig the foundation or put up the walls. Before a single nail gets pounded I have to know these fundamentals.

However none of that will do me any good unless I learn the ‘how to.’ What are the steps to putting in a foundation? Actually doing something is always harder and more time consuming than learning about it. Perhaps that is why for hundreds of years people apprenticed under other ‘Masters’ in their trade.

When it comes to Business and the Internet these same principles hold true. I know the understand email for example (the ‘why’ part of the problem). I also understand the ‘what’ of email: get a good email system or an autoresponder. What is lacking is the ‘how to.’ Sure we all know some of the how to: we type letters on a page and hit the send button, we already know programs like Outlook and Yahoo Mail. But…

Do we know how to do it right? And what about using an autoresponder or setting up our websites to accept email addresses so that we can write people? Those are the critical ‘how to’ details left out. If you don’t know how to use something you won’t use it. The same is true if you don’t know how to do something - it just won’t get done.

Ever ask an employee that you thought knew how to do something and then wonder why it didn’t get done. Often its because they really didn’t know how to do it and were simply too embarrassed to let you know. I’ve had this happen countless times (so much for my learning from my mistakes huh). I would ask my service guy for example to look into a problem and a week later find out that they hadn’t even called the customer. When I dug into it I found out that my computer guy didn’t really understand networking (strange I know) and avoided any kind of situation involving networks. But until I asked he was going to pretend he knew and just not fix anything.

The Backend of the Internet: how to get autoresponders working, how to get orders fulfilled, shopping carts, and the various bits and pieces of using the Web for Business can be overwhelming and complex. Unfortuanlity most of the courses don’t get into these nuts and bolts of the HOW.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting on these subjects because I believe the BACKEND is the most important part of taking the Web Step in a Business. We’ve got customer service, product ordering and all of the other business processes nailed down for our off-line businesses. If we can’t figure this stuff out for the internet we’ll be like my hapless computer guy forever not doing.

See you then…Russ

Directory Submission Software to Drive Traffic

As the search engines are evolving each and every day, it’s getting harder
and harder to get top search engine rankings.

The search engines now, highly favor, websites that have a large number of
quality, one way links pointing to them. Because of this, it’s absolutely critical
that we consistently try to get other websites to link to us, WITHOUT us linking
back to them.

Yes, reciprocal linking is becoming less and less valuable. Submitting your
website to website directories is an excellent way to get, quality, 1 way links
pointing to your websites. You see, many of the website directories online have
a high amount of page rank and have been online for several years.

These are 2 of the most important criteria for determining what a good link
is, vs what a bad link is. These two criteria are:

• The age of the website linking to you
• The Page Rank of the website linking to you

With that said, many of these directories have both a high Page Rank AND are
old websites, giving them more authority and power in the search engines.

Not only that, but there are literally thousands of website directories on
the internet that are absolutely free for you to submit your website to! While
it does take time to find these directories and then manually fill out all of
the required criteria to submit your website, it is an excellent way to help
increase your search engine rankings.

There are some good website directory submission software products on the market.
The best of which is a product called Directory Submitter created by Brad Callen.
Esentially you simply enter your website details into the software program 1
time, and then click on any of the 1600+ website directories in the software
and it wil automatically fill in all of the submission criteria for you. Click
the submit button and then your site has been instantly added to the website
directory.

So, not only does it save you time in finding all of these directories, BUT
it saves you an incredible amount of time filling out each and every website’s
submission criteria. To learn more about Directory Submitter, visit the link
below:

Directory Submitter

Losing Money on Your Website - Most are…

Recently Mark Asper, President of Internet Strategies, a business and Web think tank, was interviewed on the mistakes many businesses make when using the web to promote their business. He said that most businesses have a gap between what they spend and what they make on the web, that web investments are upside down and do not have an positive ROI. In other words they loose money on the web. He was including both Local Businesses and e-Commerce companies in saying that the reasons for this money draining investments are:

• No clear Internet Strategy
• No integration of the Web activities with the rest of the business
• The thinking that their business can’t ‘sell’ on the web
• Not understanding the Web
• Too much outsourcing

These reasons can be summed up simply by saying that most websites don’t have the clear purpose of driving business into their doors and integrating the web into the money making processes of their business. This situation is because for the most part people don’t know what the WEB is best used for or how to do it even when you clearly know what you want to, that is make money by increasing business to your store, consulting practice, or local business.

The problem is compounded by outsourcing people who have the knowledge, you know web designers, graphic artists, programmers, but are more concerned with ‘non-business’ issues instead of your revenue goals. What you often end up with are beautiful websites full of graphics, blinking banners, perhaps even videos and audio clips. Many of these businesses offer a lot of good information as well on-line, from their product catalogs, to elaborate “About Us” pages with company history, officers, locations, etc.

These websites might be good for the ego (which isn’t always a bad thing) but they don’t put money in your pocket. Websites like this might be great for consumers who want to learn about your products and services so that they can prepare for a purchase, translate that into shop you and your pricing around. However unless you’re a library providing free content isn’t helpful, at least for your bottom-line.

E-mailings Boost Boston Dry Cleaner’s Business

This is a great article, proving that you can grow your business using the Internet. If a Dry Cleaner can do it (without a website) anyone can do it.

May 1, 2005 12:00 PM , BY BRIAN QUINTON

One of the pleasures of owning a local business is the feeling that it’s an integral part of customers’ lives, as important to their daily routine as the newspaper and the mail. If properly nurtured, these people can develop a relationship with the business that no competitor can disrupt, creating an important base for future growth.

Bob Devaney knows this — he operates three “Dry Cleaning by Dorothy” stores in the South Boston suburbs. The stores convey a “family” feel in many ways, including employing several of the Devaney clan as managers. But he says weekly e-mailings to the 3,000 customers on his house list also have become part of the family tradition at Dorothy’s.

“Dry cleaning is largely a convenience business; you patronize a store because it’s on your way to somewhere,” Devaney says. “I’m interested in making my customers feel more like they’re family. Just the fact that I’m always visible, sending them something each week — that helps make me their dry cleaner.”

Like most small businessmen, Devaney says he found he never had enough time to devote to promoting his services properly. “I was running around like a headless chicken, fixing machines and talking to customers,” he says. “I always was sitting down to design my coupon ad campaigns at the last minute, and paying a lot of money to do so.”

So in 2001 Devaney put sign-up sheets on his store counters and offered $5 in free dry cleaning to customers who submitted their e-mail addresses. Four years later, Dorothy’s house list grows by 25 to 30 names a week, using the sign-up sheets and other acquisition efforts.
Small businesses usually don’t have a lot of ad dollars to spend, and many feel they don’t have the time or know-how to run an e-mail campaign on their own. But Devaney thinks they should at least investigate the available online options. “I’ve been marketing for 25 years, and e-mail is by far the best thing we’ve ever done,” he says. “I can contact up to 5,000 addresses for $50 a month. I can envision some day not doing any other promotion.”