Small Business Marketing

Q: Adam from Manchester, U.K., sent in this note:

“I am having a hard time figuring out how to deal with a high percentage of people who come to my web site, signup for my e-zine but never confirm their email address. Sometimes this is as high as 60% of total subscribers. Since I am using the recommended double opt-in process, I don’t know what I can do to have most of my subscribers confirm their address.”

A: Actually, Adam is not alone in this. I have received messages from several subscribers that are experiencing the same problem.

Let’s first examine why this is happening. When I visited Adam’s web site, and subscribed to his e-newsletter I noticed that after clicking the submit button, I was taken to a generic web page, provided by his Email Service Provider (ESP). The page simply said “Thank you for subscribing.”

Please read the rest of this article on my email marketing consulting blog, or leave a comment or ask a question here.

Although email marketing is still the most effective way to promote your business, there are other ways of generating leads or getting more business from existing clients.

What if you could combine the strengths of an online, automated system, which works very much like an Email Publishing System with the

• deliverability of snail mail, and
• benefits of sending your prospects and customers a tangible item?

Would you be interested in trying this almost perfect business-generating system?

Couple of years ago I started using Send Out Cards, an online on-demand printing and delivery system that works very much like sending personalized email, only it prints,personalizes and mails real postcards and greeting cards in any quantity. Want to add a gift card? No problem! Cookies? Candy? Yes, and yes, it’s so easy.

You can use this system to send automated, but personalized postcards and greeting cards. Thousands of great stock designs are available, but best of all, you can easily create your own designs as simply as uploading a digital photo and adding a voice bubble or a caption.

Using Send Out Cards is a great way to get repeat business from existing clients. Additionally, you can use this system is to split-test different cards on a small sample, to see which one to use in bulk, if you’re planning to ultimately send a large-scale mailing (1,000 or more cards).

On top of it all, if you’re looking for a source of additional income, SendOutCards offers a very lucrative business opportunity as well. Contact me if you’re interested in testing it out – I can set you up with a gift account so you can try the system and send yourself a few cards on me.

Did you know that 70% of all sales now start as research on the Internet – are your ideal clients finding you?

Invest 3 hours and I guarantee I will teach you how to:

	Attract Contacts (Generate Leads) creating a powerful online presence what makes a good web site: basics of design, layout and content search engines: basics of SEO or how to build a Google-friendly site web site is not enough – what else you need online attracting visitors (contacts) with relevant and useful content blogging article writing participating in online forums, etc. online networking (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter) entice visitors to sign up to receive more information about you and your services or products with discount coupons special reports or whitepapers on your topic of expertise regularly published email newsletters how to integrate all your online efforts
	Build Relationships (or, How to Get Prospects to Know, Like and Trust You) follow up with automated and semi-automated messages, delivering your expertise via email create communities, followers and friends engage with your audience in a meaningful conversation once they know, like and trust you they’ll be ready for the final step
	Close Deals (or, How to Convert “Friends” to “Raving Fans”) use gentle email marketing tactics to introduce your services or products to your contacts close deals on line or off line – depending on your business model finally reach your business goals in 2009 – regardless of the state of the economy

Please visit the Contacts to Clients page to learn more and to register.

In times of recession, most small business owners tend to do the wrong thing: trying to save money by cutting back on their marketing spending. I hope you’re not one of them, and that you know that we must promote our businesses all the time, even when times are great, but even more so in tough times.

Well, I can say I’ve never been busier, and I’d like to share some of the secrets of how I got myself booked solid for the next several months!

Join me for a 3-hour training seminar in Oakville and learn how to

► Build an Email List
► Create Effective Email Campaigns
► Get More Clients

Did you know that Email Marketing has the highest ROI over all other marketing channels?

In my seminar I will teach you:

How to Build an Email List of Contacts and Subscribers

• How to use your web site or blog as a lead generator
• What you need to sign up visitors to your email list
• Secrets to generating traffic to your web site, or other online presence
• How to entice visitors to sign up to receive more information from you

How to Easily Create Effective Email Newsletters and eFlyers

• Follow up with automated and semi-automated messages
• Learn about auto-responders, e-newsletters and email flyers
• Find out about the technology needed to deliver email marketing messages
• Learn how to prepare email campaigns yourself

How to Make More Money with Email

• You don’t need an e-commerce site to make money with email
• How to take credit cards, e-cheques and money transfers online
• Find out the hidden potential in your business – any business
• Learn how to create products or services to sell online
• Finally reach your business goals in 2009 – regardless of the state of the economy

What Do You Get?

• 3 hours of coaching, tips, strategies you can use immediately
• You will create your 1st email newsletter – bring your laptop!
• Ask any questions you might have in Q&A sessions throughout the seminar

Bonuses:

• bonus CD audio+PDF presentation of my Email Marketing Tips and Strategies for Solopreneurs a value of $27 on its own
• Chance to win 50 Tips on Growing your Business Online 2 hours+ videos and eBook package valued at $47
• Free online Email Publishing Account – use it as long as you want to grow and manage your list
• Enjoy complimentary refreshments: hot coffee, tea and muffins!

For more information and to register now visit: iBizAcademy.com/Oakville-Apr-2/

Want proof?

See what other small business owners have said about my training courses!

I must admit I was a reluctant blogger. I knew if I started a blog I would have to publish on it regularly, and being already busy with publishing my award-winning ezine and working with clients, I thought I’d never be able to keep up.

Good thing I found the time!

Now I not only love it, but I recommend it to all my business contacts and especially my clients. As an Email Marketing Coach I love email marketing, which still delivers a great rate of return on investment, but I’m the first to say: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! If you’re a solo professional, or small business owner, you must publish an email newsletter, have an auto-responder, write on your blog, have a Facebook profile, do live business networking, etc.

Here are just three reasons why I love blogging:

1. It allows me to reach a much wider audience than by just publishing an email newsletter. Blogs have built-in features that basically “push” my content to search engines and blog directories. This would be hard, if not impossible, to accomplish by a “web 1.0″ web site. My blog site now allows me to reach out to my audience in 3 different ways: using RSS, RSS feed delivered by email, and via ezine subscription. This enables my audience to get my articles the way they prefer.

2. Deciding to build my new web site using WordPress, enabled me to create what I call a blog site: a combination of a static, web 1.0 web site, with the power and versatility of the Web 2.0 blog. My blog site is now search engine optimized, and every time I hit “Publish”, soon after, Google, Yahoo! and dozens of other services get “pinged” and my content gets indexed immediately.

3. Having a blog has also enabled me to attract the right type of prospects. Before starting a blog, my whole web presence was a 1-page “squeeze page.” It served its purpose well — it created a lot of subscribers to my e-newsletter — but after a while I realized that I wanted to attract a different type of prospect, one who’d like to get to know me a little bit before considering hiring me. A visitor to my blog site can now read my articles which build my credibility, so I don’t have to “sell” my self, my content does it for me.

Finally, blogging makes it really easy and fun to connect with other great professionals in the wider blogosphere.

Here are five people I’d like to see write a quick blog post on this topic:

Charmaine Idzerda
Sandy McMullen
Dr. Kiya L. Immergluck
Grace Yvonne Attard
Cheryl Scoffield

I invite YOU, the reader, too, to share here by commenting or on your own blog! Please send me the link if you post on your own blog. BTW, this whole thing started on TypePad.com – get the “official” guidelines.

Thank you Patsi Krakoff, for inspiring me to write this entry.

Blogging for your business is not an option anymore, but does it work better that Email Marketing?

How do you make the these two marketing strategies work together to create a powerful tool to boost your small business or professional practice?

On Wednesday, February 11, I will be asking ask Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff, the dynamic duo also know as the BlogSquad, some tough questions:

• Is blogging an option for any kind of business?
• How to use blogging to strategically market a business?
• How to choose which blogging platform to use?
• What are some of the pitfalls and how to avoid them?
• I have a web site – why do I need a blog, too?
• I already have a web site – how do I connect my blog to it?
• I have an email newsletter – how do I use my blog to generate more subscribers?
• What is RSS, FeedBurner, FeedBlitz – and do I need to be a tech geek to create and maintain a blog?
• How do I blog without having a blog of my own?

These are a few of the questions Patsi, Denise and I will answer for you.

This is a FREE tele-seminar, LIVE on Wednesday, February 11, starting at 3pm EST

There will be no pitching or selling on the call, just pure content.

Seating is limited, so register for your chance to jump start your blogging efforts in 2009, or if you’re already blogging, to find out how to make the most of business blogging to promote your business.

If you can’t make the live event, a downloadable MP3 recording of the call will be available, so register now:

http://www.ibizacademy.com/blogsquad/

See you on the call!

Boris Mahovac – Email Marketing Coach

The word “blog” itself comes from “web log”, so “blog” for short. Ever since Google acquired Blogger in 2003, this medium has been on the rise. Today even companies such as General Motors run blogs. Here are five reasons why you should have a blog for your small business or professional practice:

• Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing about your experiences on a particular topic, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts to provide useful information. This will establish you as an expert; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs.
• Search engines love blogs. Because blog pages change very frequently, are content-rich, and easy to index, search engines just love to gobble them up. For example, if you noticed that your web site search engine rankings are slipping, this is most likely because the contents of your web site hasn’t changed in a long while. Search engines love fresh, new content, and by its nature, blogs are the epitome of freshness. To make the most of this, host your blog on your own domain, and use WordPress, or a similar blog system to run it.
• Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get a presence on the web is through blogging. If you can type and click a mouse, you can blog. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, describe new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. No knowledge of HTML is necessary, but will certainly come in handy to get some of the more advanced features set up.
• Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturates our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, untainted by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience.
• Blogging costs nothing. You don’t need to have any software, buy web hosting, register a domain, like you do for your web site. Any opportunity get something for free is definitely a bonus, especially to businesses that are starting up. You can start blogging for free at WordPress.com, although, to get the most benefit from your blog I recommend hosting your own WordPress-based blog.

Do you have a blog? A few days ago I started playing with WordPress for my blog. For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out which technology would be best, and have settled on WordPress for two main reasons:

1. It allows me to create “static” pages, so I can have a site that looks like a regular web site, with menus such as “About,” “Products,” “Services,” and so on, and at the same time have a blog going.
   and,
2. Second, I prefer to install the WP software on my own server, rather than use the hosted version of WP (i.e. WordPress.com) or other software, such as Blogger or TypePad, because it’s better for Search Engine Optimization. All the pages are sitting on my server/domain and are being indexed here, not at some blog hosting company.

Once word of advice, from my own experience: If you’re looking to save a few bucks and opt for a free blog, I wouldn’t recommend Blogger. Although it’s a good platform and all that, and being owned by Google can’t hurt these days, what I don’t like about it is the feature they have at the top of each blog, which is a link to “Next blog”: a few times I tried clicking it I ended up on blogs that I wouldn’t want my kids to see, if you know what I mean.

If you have a web site, consider re-doing it using WordPress, then you can enjoy the best of both worlds – and Google and other search engines will just love it so much more!

Some years ago personal development guru Mark Victor Hansen said “Your net-work determines your net-worth.” You’ve probably also heard the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” and that’s actually better said “it’s who knows you.”

In the previous issue of Contacts2Clients, I mentioned some online networking sites and how to use them to build your business. It sparked a number of inquires from subscribers of this newsletter, but also from clients and colleagues.

Although I created my LinkedIn profile years ago, I’ve never actually used it until recently. Within about a month my network is now over 1.5 million strong – yes, that’s six figures, baby. And all that from only 60 or so connections.

Mind you, the point is not to have a large number of contacts, but to participate. Be active. If you just put up a profile, but never participate, it’s like having a blog to which you never post.

Some people say you should be active on 25 different networks. I don’t think that’s realistic, unless you delegate the work to a virtual assistant, but you should pick at least 3 that you will visit fairly regularly and make an effort to participate.

Finally, once you have your products or services you’d like others to promote, and you have a system in place to track visitors, sales and affiliate commissions, you’re now ready to start promoting your affiliate program.

A good place to start is a list of your own clients or customers. If your clients promote your stuff, their credibility is going to be very high, since they’ve purchased from you, so they can talk from first-hand experience. You may even consider running a closed-door affiliate program by only allowing your clients/customers to be a part of it. A good example of such closed programs is Audio Acrobat (for recording and hosting audio and video online) and SendOutCards (to send automated postcards and greeting cards – the real ones, with a stamp and all).

Obviously, you’ll want to have your affiliate program featured on your web site and in your ezine for example.

In case you’re looking for products & services related to email marketing, you may want to join my own affiliate program, it pays up to 50% commission on products and 10% on services.

Promoting your affiliate program is like building a list: you can use the same tactics and strategies. Try visiting and contributing to online forums and blogs where your potential affiliate partners hang out. Write articles. Run a pay-per-click campaign. Contact people of influence you think may be interested in promoting your stuff. To get on their good books, buy their product or attend their seminars, then contact them by phone or send them an evaluation copy of your product by post.

Once you’ve recruited a bunch of interested affiliates, who have access to lists of thousands of people you may find that you don’t need to promote your affiliate program that much anymore as your affiliate partners may be just the ticket for your business’ success!