Web Promotoin – Creating Special Reports

There are a lot of effective web promotion strategies for small business advertising but one of the most powerful and most overlooked  is creating special reports, which are then offered on your website free in exchange for your leads e-mails. This is an great way to build your business e-mail list.  I myself am guilty of not overlooking this strategy, mainly out of my own laziness to commit the time in writing one.  The people who do opt into you mailing list in exchange for their contact e-mails are very highly targeted prospects who raised their hand and said "I want to know more."

Another reason for creating special reports is that the report itself is marketing tool that brands you and your business as the leader in the niche and that markets your business products and services in the report itself.  You do this by including links to where they can find out and purchase your products or a call to action to contact you and become your customers.  If your special report offers a lot of value to your business leads chances are high they will take action and become a paying customer.

Alright, you may be asking yourself: "How do I find out what my niche market wants to know?" "What if I don't know the answers to their questions?"

Here's the answer to finding what your niche market wants to know and how to find the answers… you do your Market Research!

Yes there is that Market Research again if you read my previous post most likely you heard me mention market research once or twice before.  That's because it is the foundation to all that you will ever know or need to know to create a killer marketing campaign for your online or 

offline

 business.  If you don't want to do it yourself my team can do it for you just click on Market Research

The easiest way to create a special report is to find about 20 frequently questions asked by your niche market. You then write the answers and informative solutions to these question or problems.  The goal is to educate your prospect, by answering their questions and offering solutions to their problems. Be sure to also strategically include what your products could do for them when it comes to their problems.

Your report should not be more then 10 to 15 pages in length.  It should be completely branded to your company and products and include a resource section perhaps with links to some free resources as well as your paid services or products.

If you don't feel like you have the time to sit down research and write a report, after all you are a busy entrepreneur you can always get hare my professional writers create your special report and add it to your web promotion strategies.

Promotional Marketing – E-mail Follow-up Sequences

A major part of promotion marketing for small business advertising is having autoresponder integrated into your system with e-mail follow-up sequences to send to your list of interested prospects.  The timing in contacting your lead is critical if you want them to become the consumers of your services or products.  

The first hour is crucial in following up with your new lead contact since you're chances of converting new business lead to become a paying customer are 32 times greater then waiting 24hrs.  the conversion rates drop drastically after 24hrs.  However many business owner may not have the time to follow up with a lead so quickly.  That is why it is crucial to have an autoresponder with email follow-up sequences as part of promotional marketing for your business.  People tend to forget and get distracted by other things they have to do or are doing and may even forget that they ever contacted your business for information. That is why having an e-mail follow-up that goes out to your new lead instantly when they opt into your e-mail list is so critical.

This is also know as sales funnel development in the online marketing world.

Another point for having good, converting e-mail follow-up is to connect with them on a more personal level.  Yes your e-mail follow-up should have offers of your business services but it should do it in a way that the lead does not feel like they are being sold.  The same principal comes into writing e-mail follow-up sequences as to sales letters and your content.  Be sure to have your own voice, so that people will connect with you and not think that you are just another money hungry business.  

Your e-mail messages should give out value and your offer should just highlight how your leads can take that value and use it in their lives or to solve their current problem.

Have an interesting e-mail subject for your e-mails is also essential.  These are not to be confused with hype, often hype will be automatically identified as spam by people.  Your e-mail subject should be eye catching but in a way that makes the reader think…"now what is this guy walking about, I want to know more" 

A great way to have eye catching subject lines and catchy e-mails is to personalize your e-mails to your leads.  If you use an autoresponder most likely this is easily automated by including simple code into your heading and e-mail body.  This way your lead feels like you wrote the e-mail just for them even though you may have sent a mass e-mail to 1000 people on your list.  They will be more likely to open the e-mail and read it… I know I do, even though I know the game.

Having a solid sales funnel for your small business advertising efforts is a must have if you are a small business who wants to use the power Internet marketing to get more customers for your business.  Do not overlook this because of your own feelings about e-mail or that you fear of people thinking its spam.  It's not to the people who opted into your list and if you do not e-mail marketing you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.

Twitter Advertising – How To Fing Your Local Milton Market

When you think of twitter advertising for a small local business you may wonder how to find your local market on this powerful social media platform.  It can seem hard at first but many local business owners may not be aware of useful tools that they can use to both find their local market on twitter, help them manage their twitter account and post and interact with their local market twitter audience

Lets concentrate first on how t to find your local market.  You can find your target market using a free service called Twellow.com

 and Wefollow.com.  These are both directories of people where you can search by occupational designation as well as location. Twellow.com is the Twitter Yellowpages you can find twitter users in your local area by going to theTwellow.com/twellowhood to select the exact location of your desired twitter users. That means if you are a local Milton business you can find twitter users in Milton and be as selective as you would like.

Wefellow is very similar where you can narrow your search to a specific niche.  Lets say you are a pet store you can run a search for dog lovers or animal lovers to find your market.  The possibilities are endless.  You can also search by city just like in Twellow just by typing in your desired city into the Wefellow search.

To help me schedule my post, so that I don't have to be constantly on twitter I love using a tool called Social Oomph.There are two versions of Social Oomph, the Free version and the Professional version.  This service allows you to get updates on tweets for your niche keywords, schedule twitter updates, auto follow people who follow you, send automatic welcome messages and integrates many other social network updates into the system.

The professional version allows you to schedule unlimited updates to twitter as well as you Facebook account, Facebook Fan Page Google Buzz, Ping, your RSS and schedule your blog post publishing. Social Oomph Pro is $29.99/month and well worth the price if you really want to leverage twitter for your small business advertising, have time to run your business and still have a social and family life.

Another option is to hire a social media manager to do maintain your Twitter account, updates and to interact with your twitter followers on your behalf.  This is a bit more costly than doing it all yourself but it does save you a lot of time and cuts down on the time it will take you to learn all the rules of Twitter advertising and how to use all the tools.

Advertising Online – Capture Form Integration

When it comes to small business advertising online you need a website however what many small and local businesses neglect to do is to have capture form integration on their website.  The purpose of a capture form is to build your business mailing list of highly targeted people to market to any future promotions you may have. This is what is known as e-mail marketing, but you only send e-mails to people who want to know about your products and services.  But just having a capture form is not enough as the most important concepts behind capture form integration is the location of your form on your business website as well as how you persuade people to opt into your e-mail list.visit the website can easily contact you with questions or where you can offer a coupon or a money saving offer for people to use in your business and to market your business. 

I know there are a lot of small businesses websites  with capture forms but these are not placed at the optimal placement on the website.  Most businesses put their capture forms under the Contact Us Tab, usually below the fold of the website after their business address and phone number.  

Why is this not an ideal placement for capture forms when it comes to advertising online for your business?

Lets face it most people do not have the patience or the time to search for your contact form. If the capture form is not always in plain sight and always available no matter what page on your website they are on, then most likely your visitors will not sign up to your list and you will lose a potential customer for whom you spend time and money on to get to your website.

A capture form should always be visible to your visitors no matter where they are on your website.  They should not have to search for it!

You never know when your visitor will want to connect with you or what on your website will trigger them to opt in to your  list. You have to give your It might be when they are on your home page, rates page or even when they are reading your 

blog

 posts.  You worked hard to get them to your website so you better make sure you make it easy for them to connect with you.

Another important part of advertising online is to have a hard to resist offer your capture form to your website visitors to opt in to your mailing list.  This can be as simple as giving away some free information, a free consultation, a free quote or even a money saving coupon towards your services.  Remember whatever your offer is it should be worded so that it benefits your visitor and not you.  For example of a coupon "Get your Coupon to save $50 on all store stock  lawn furniture"

Capture form integration goes hand in hand with advertising online because it builds a mailing list of people interested in your products who wanted to give you their information and receive your offers, these are people that even if they do not buy from you right away they may buy from you in the future and when they get an e-mail offer from you they cannot resist. 

Business Marketing – Autoresponder Integration

When it comes to small business marketing, it is a good idea to create a list of past and current customers that you can remarket to your customers, new products and services.  

Any customer who has bought your services or products before is more likely to buy from you again.  In today’s fast-paced world, you can use technology called autoresponders to quickly send your customers information about new promotions or products you may be having.  All you do is create one e-mail send it once and it will go out to all of the people on your business e-mail list. 

You can also use auto responders to collect contact information of people who have not become your customers so that you can convert them with any special offers you may have.  You can capture leads for your business by offering something free, an information packed report, a coupon for a discount for your services or products. 

You must also take into consideration how often you will contact your list with your e-mail offers.  The trick is to e-mail often enough to have them remember you and not to often so that they are sick of hearing from you.  Avoid e-mailing your list every day or week so that you avoid exhausting your e-mail list.

It is also important to create well-written autoresponder messages. A good e-mail message is made up of a compelling and interesting title and well written sales copy or informative content.  The title must persuade your list to open you e-mail; do not use titles like “Awesome Deals” or anything similar.  This smells of spam and you list will delete the message without opening it. The offers need to tell a story and be interesting enough so that your readers are glued to your message and read down to your offer and your call to action to buy. 

I recommend using Aweber or GetResponse for your autoresponder services.  These are reputable and whitelisted autoresponders with a greater chance for your messages to get into inboxes as opposed to the spam boxes.  These also have a feature called double opt in, where a person needs to confirm that they want to be on your list by clicking on a confirm link.  This protects you from people marking as spam and your e-mail blacklisted by someone who didn’t remember opting into your list.

Aweber and GetResponse also allow people to opt out of your list if they no longer want to receive you e-mails by providing an “unsubscribe” link at the end of each of your messages.  This also protects you from being marked as spam since people that do not want to receive your e-mail can simply get unsubscribed, they won’t get annoyed by you e-mail and report you as spam in their anger.  Also with these auto responders if someone does complain they will be automatically removed from your list so that they will not longer receive your e-mails.  This is more protection for you.

 

Autoresponder integration is a must have business marketing strategy that is often overlooked by many local business owners since they do not want to send people unwanted messages and be accused of spam.  However, following these few tips you won’t be accused of spamming and even have people look forward your e-mails.  If you don’t know how to write compelling messages to your list, you can outsource this to professional writers who will create sales copy that will convert your list into paying customers.

Does Google Instant change the SEO game? [Awesome Article]

Here is another great article by Jonathan Leger this time on the new Google Instant and how some people are claiming its the death of SEO.  Really great stuff a must read!

Google unveiled a nifty new way to search their index yesterday. It's called "Google Instant" and it automatically populates the page with the search results as you type. So, for instance, when I type "life" the search results for "lifetime" are instantly shown. When I then type a space and an "i" ("life i") those results are replaced with the results for "life insurance" and so on. There's no need to hit the "enter" key.

I read an article in PC World that made the postulation that "SEO could rely on letter rankings rather than word rankings in the near future." I've even read wild theories that Google Instant "will kill SEO" because no two users see the same suggestions as they type.

So does Google Instant change the SEO game? I say no, at least not in its current form.

Do you need to optimize for letters instead of words now?

More on Google Instant & Death of SEO

Google Advertising – A Good Tool To Find Prospects For GTA Businesses

When I was first starting out in my business I wanted to start marketing  I turned to Google advertising since Google is one of the most trafficked search engines. I thought it would be a good tool to find prospects for my business and it is.  However, I did not know how many different ways there are to use Google for advertising your local GTA business and drive traffic not only to your website but to get calls and visits to your business location, if you have one.

There are three main ways to advertising on Google, Google Adwords, Google Places and Google organic search results. 

Google Adwords is a great way to get traffic to your site in a matter of minutes.  This is pay per click advertising where you pay Google a set amount, which is called a click cost whenever someone clicks on your Adwords ad.  Your cost per click is dependant on the 

max

 bid you are willing to pay as well as how relevant your website is to the search terms you are bidding on.  

A word of caution, do not go blindly into this type of advertising.  Be sure to create a content rich relevant website.  Also I'm going to say this again …Do Your Market Research!  you need to know what terms your prospects are searching so that you do not bid on the wrong keywords.  If you do not know what to do be sure to read Definitive Guide To Google Adwords by Perry Marshal.  This is the 

foundational

 book to get you started on the right track with Goodle Adwords.  It will help you not get nasty Google Slap which will cost you lots of dough and perhaps get your account suspended.  

If you do not want to learn you can always outsource your Google Adwords to a professional to maintain your account. You also have to take in to consideration that there will also be a lot of testing required before you find out the optimal Adwords campaigns and keywords of your Goodle Adwords. In other words expect to spend more money in the beginning to learn what gets clicks and what doesn't which keywords get you clicks but cost you money and what gets clicks and makes you money. When you find the right keywords and ads for you your costs for advertising could go down in time.

Google Places is the simple and easiest form of Google advertising.  All you are required to do here is to input the correct information for your business.  Be as detailed as you can and fill in as much information, videos and pictures as you can into Google Places.  I highly recommend that you make this information keyword rich, yet another idea to do market and keyword research.  Also it is a good idea to invest into the new tags that Google is offering.  Its a marginal cost of $25/month but Google maps is a free source of very high quality prospects.  If someone is looking for a particular business in the GTA and they are more likely to look at the maps to see who is around the region. Google Places is a must for any small business. This is a very good tool to finding high quality prospects with high conversion rate to becoming your customers.  

Google Organic Search Results is the most time consuming advertising extremely effective in getting customers, growing your business brand and becoming the "go-to" person for your business niche.  This is a long term strategy for your business it also the longest to achieve and most coveted forms of Google advertising.  Your goal here is to be on the top 5 first page search results and many businesses invest a lot of resources to SEO their business websites.  The key to getting on the Google top 5 is to have keyword rich valuable content and to have a strong social media network who will see your content, share it with others hopefully creating a viral effect that will bump you to the top 5 results in Google for your search terms.  Depending on your competition you can expect it to take you between 6 months to a year to get on the top 5 rank for Google organics for your search terms.  However I've had results for local businesses where this took just a few weeks, but it truly depends on the amount of competition and how strong your competition is.  You may have guest it market research is a must for this powerful Google advertising strategy.  

Marketing Planning Local Milton Businesses – 7 Steps To Optimized Web Presence

When it comes to marketing planning for your local business in today's fast paced business world creating an optimized web presence is a must if you want to stay ahead of your competition.  As more and more of your customers are turning to the Internet to find local businesses and services that they need having a strong web presence is a necessity for any local business.  It is also a more cost effective investment for your marketing dollars than any of the traditional methods like Yellow Pages, newspaper ads, radio and TV commercial.  What's more you can easily track and measure your results from your online marketing efforts so that you can shift your small business advertising dollars away from what's not working and put it towards marketing that is working.

Your small business marketing planing to grow your web presence can be broken down to 7 steps.

1. Market Research:  This is a fundamental  part of any marketing planing, Market research will reveal the core keywords your market is searching,help you choose your optimal domain name, reveal what issues or problems your target market is having that your product can solve.  It also will show you who your competition is, how they market and any weak points they have in their marketing sales funnel. You may also find similar niche businesses with which you can go into joint ventures or promotional partnerships with.

2. SEO Friendly Websites:  Creating an SEO friendly website means having a website full of keyword rich content that is relevant to your local business.  You will discover the best keywords and content ideas from your market research.  Another part of an SEO friendly websites is having continually undated website content.  This is easily achieved by having a blog

 based website as opposed to the traditional static websites, My favorite is WordPress as its very user friendly, you don't need web design knowledge to create a nice looking website for your business and it is very easy to add new content to your website.  With a blog based website you can also install software, called plug-ins, to help you in creating a more SEO friendly website easily and without much work for you.

3. Onpage SEO:  Onpage search engine optimization (SEO) refers to how relevant your whole website is to the search terms your local niche market is using to find your business.  This includes having keyword rich domain name, Keyword rich  website title, meta tag description, website description, and tags.  This also includes using your core keywords for your blog categories, well as pages and your posts should be full of relevant and useful content with keywords rich titles and keywords strategically placed into all you web content.

The following 4 steps are part of off page SEO.

4. Local Directory Listings: These are the Google Places business listings, Bing and Yahoo maps and other online directories like 411 and GPS directories.  This will give you greater exposure on the Internet as many of your potential customers will use one or more of these local business directories to find your business. Local directory listings will also help you create more  high quality linking for your small business website helping you in your off page SEO efforts and ranking higher on Google, Yahoo, and Bing..

5. Creating Social Media Presence: This is an integral part of off page SEO.  Social medial marketing is not only great for your SEO efforts but it helps you to position yourself as the expert in your local business niche.  It will help you showcase your expertise in your business field and help you develop a referral type business as the people who follow you will most likely recommend you to their friends who may need your business services.  Your first step will be to create social media profiles in popular networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and may other social networking sites.  I will also recommend that you create a Facebook Page your your business, this way you can keep your personal Facebook page just for your personal needs and show case your business  using Facebook Pages, which is the purpose of these.

6. Posterous:  I chose to separate this one because this network is an online social blog that integrates all your other social networks into one.  It allows you to post your content via e-mail to Posterous which will post to all your social networks and blogs, creating very relevant links to your website.  Concentrate on integrating all the networks Posterous offers as this will create a stronger online presence and help to brand you as a leader in your local business market.  This service offers you to post content via e-mail and from your smart phone.  If you are not yet using Posterous get to it, it is a free service and its very powerful.

7. Content Syndication: Helps you to create high priority links based on popular social bookmarking sites and content voting sites.  Goolgle holds these links in high esteem as these are actual real people deciding on the relevancy of your content and on the quality of your content.  Since Google is all about user experience it ranks content and websites highly when its actual users tell Google that they like the content.  This is an extremely powerful method to rise in page rank for your local business website as well as get on to the top five of Google search results.  I use a network called Synnd, it is a paid network of people who help each other in syndicating content in giving your content higher chances of hitting viral status.

If you feel overwhelmed by all that you read do not fret.  You can always hire me to consult with you for free on your Marketing Planning.  Together we'll develop a marketing strategy that works for your business and have it all done for you so you can concentrate on serving your customers and growing your business.

Internet Marketing Strategies For GTA Milton Businesses- Targeting Local Directories

One of the most important, yet over looked, Internet marketing strategies for local business marketing is targeting local Directories listings.  Often many businesses, especially the older businesses overlook this strategy and miss out on acquiring new customers and clients actively searching for their services.

In all there are about 80 local directories that every business should be listed in.  Some of these include 411 directories, search engine map directories like, google, yahoo and Bing as well as GPS directors.  In today's world of technology of wireless Internet, smart phones and GPS If you are not using these directories, which your market is actively using to find local businesses, you could be missing out on a lot more customers than you may imagine.

Yellow pages, Can Pages, Gold Book, news paper ads, flayers are becoming less for effective as the your customer base is shifting from the baby boomer generation more and more in to the Y and X generations.  These new customers are more technology savvy and mainly use technologies like GPS and Smart phones and Internet search to find local services in their area.  These are the customers between the 27-45 years of age they do not have the time to go to a yellow pages or Can Pages, for Canada and sift through the pages and the staggering number of advertisements for each market niche. Then call the service providers to see which is best for their needs.The new generation of customers want to find a solution to their problem fast and easy, they are too busy with work, family and social lives to waist time sifting through phone books or news papers to find your local businesses, they just don't have the patience.

Another reason for targeting local directories as part of a good Internet marketing strategy is that as opposed to the old and tired marketing strategies like newspaper ads is that in the cost is generally very low and your powerful listing will usually be live within a day of confirming your listing.  Where any print ads in news papers or phone books are dependant on the often the circulation is updated. If you only use one Internet marketing strategy for your local business advertising local directories should be it.  They are too powerful to be overlooked since that is where your potential clients are going to find your business when they need it fast.

This is especially true if you are located in a continually growing community like Milton Ontario, for example.  Where your customers are migrating to a new area and they are more than likely to use the Internet to find local services as opposed to a phone book.  Even though submitting your local business can be time consuming it should be on the top of your list of marketing strategies.  The good news is that you can easily and inexpensively outsource this Internet marketing strategy by hiring a reputable company do your Local Directory Listings.

Creative Advertising – Create Video For Your Webpage … Fast!

Creative advertising can be the most fun and effective form of small business advertising.  This is where you can use your creativity to create not only fun and attractive advertising for your local business marketing strategy it can generate high quality prospects for your business.  The most powerful form of creative advertising is video, and I'm going to give you a few quick tips on how to create video for your web page, fast where all you will need is your computer.  This is a great way to start video marketing your business if you have a fear of being in front of camera or having your voice recorded and it could be your favorite video creation process.

First create a quick script or story for your video, think of what you want to say in your message to get people's attention, keep it and then have them want to become your customers.  All you need is between 30 to 60 seconds of story that is more than enough for capturing the attention of your target audience and to persuade them to be your customers.

Once you have a script or a story board ready find royalty free photos and images that are relevant to what your small business offers or to the message you want to portray in your video.  You can find royalty free images at Fotolia.com or iStockphoto.com.  Never just randomly take an image from the web or scan an image that you found unless it is an image that you took.  You could get sued, if that image is licenced, for royalties that you owe for using that image.

When you have your story and images you are ready to start to put it all together.  To do this you may use Power Poing for PC users or Keynote for Mac users.  Open your program of choice and start inserting the images and the text any way you like it.  You do not need to create any animation. Each slide should contain an image and text for your story line.  Play around with the font and do any   effects you want with the images but keep it simple.   When you have finished all your slides the way you envisioned it choose the 'Save As' function and save your slide presentation as jpeg files.  Be sure to also save the presentation so that you can use it as a template for your other videos.

Then open Windows Movie Maker for PC users or iMovie for Mac and import your slide show jpeg files. Then click and drag our images into the story board in the order you want.  Play with the video effects, slide transitions and titles and credits.  If you are using Windows Movie Maker or iMovie both are very easy and user friendly.   To make the video more professional and engaging ad a music clip or two switching musing in in mid movie keep your viewers attention.  Be sure to add royalty free music which your can purchase at my favorite place MusicBakery.com or just Google "royalty free music".  

Lastly be sure to always include a call to action.  Tell people exactly what you want them to do and how to do it at the end of your video.  Never assume they will know what they should do to become your customers.  When you finish your video all you have to do is to upload your video on to Youtube or other video sharing sites, copy and paste the embed code on to where you want the video to show on your website. 

Another option is to just outsource your creative advertising and video creation. This way you can have a professional copy for your video and do not have to worry about all the technical aspects of video creation.  That way you can just take care of your customers.