Free Teleseminar – Become the Go-To Business in Your Industry

It’s no secret that personal connections, work-of-mouth marketing, and referrals are the cheapest, most effective ways to build a business. This isn’t just about tweeting, although social media plays a part. Instead it’s about building a comprehensive marketing and customer service plan that keeps your business first and foremost in your clients’ and prospective customers’ mind.

I’ll be hosting a free teleclass on Become the Go-To Business in Your Industry on August 23, 2010 at 9 pm eastern.  In this TeleClass you’ll learn:

- Why connection marketing is replacing old-school marketing tactics.

- What connection marketing is and how it is the most effective form of marketing.

- Free and low-cost online and off-line connection marketing strategies that build loyalty and referrals.

- How to create a connection marketing plan that works for your business.

The teleseminar is FREE. To learn more or register visit GlobalTeleclass.com

Remind Your Customers

Copyright © Stone Evans, The Home Biz Guy

If you don’t remind your customers that you are still in business they may forget. Repeat customers are the lifeblood of any business. Below are three effective strategies you can use to remind your customers that you are still in business and get them to buy over and over again.

1. Ask your customers to subscribe to your free publication. It could be a print newsletter, e-zine, newspaper, journal etc. You could send out the publication weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, etc. The articles in the publication should be informative and helpful to your readers. You can increase repeat purchases by including advertisements of new products and services that you offer.

2. Ask customers to sign-up to an e-mail update that tells them when you have made changes to your web site. Whenever you update your web site send them an e-mail to remind them to visit again. If you’re using this strategy it’s important to update your web site often. Add new content that would be of interest to your customers. You could also add free stuff to your web site like software, online utilities, ebooks etc.

3. Follow-up with your customers. You could follow-up by e-mail, direct mail or by telephone. It’s always important to get their permission to follow-up ahead of time. You could contact them and ask them if they were happy with their purchase. Send them online or offline greeting cards on holidays and birthdays. You could also follow-up with a free gift letting them know you appreciate their business. You can get repeat business from them if you include another product offer or back end product with each follow-up.

In conclusion, any of the three strategies above will increase the number of repeat purchases from your current customers. You can increase their effectiveness by combining all of them into your marketing campaign.

About the Author:

Stone Evans, The Home Biz Guy has helped thousands of people in over 200 countries around the world start and run a successful home business. Discover 3 easy steps to start your own home business and subscribe to The Home Biz Guy’s Free Home Business Secrets Mini-Course at: http://www.PlugInProfitSite.com/main-23595

Effective Email Marketing Doesn’t Have To Be Complicated

There are very real concerns about list building and promoting to the people on your mailing list. And all the conflicting information out there doesn’t help matters when you’re trying to do the right thing.

Whether you’re new to list building or have been at it for awhile, it’s completely normal to hesitate about sending offers and even feel a little guilty about doing it.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1) If you have not yet made the attempt to promote your business to your subscribers, don’t act hastily by inundating them with an onslaught of email promotions. Start out slow and test the waters first. An initial email letting them know you will be sending them valuable offers will open the lines of communication and lessen the shock value of promotions appearing in their inboxes.

2) A subscriber who is not interested in receiving your offers will have the opportunity to let you know, and most will not hesitate to be very forth coming. Just as they had the chance to “opt-in” to your mailings, they will now have the chance to “opt-out” of your promotions.

This will help you weed out subscribers who aren’t customer material. The good news is that most people will appreciate and be receptive to your offers given.

3) Once your list knows what to expect, you can begin the actual task of promoting. That doesn’t mean you can send them multiple offers on a daily basis until they exile your address to the world of SPAM. However, it does mean that you will have to stay on top of contacting your list and make a point of doing so frequently enough to stay current and fresh in their minds without filling their inboxes with clutter.

4) It’s important to maintain a balance between content-driven emails and those containing promotions. Selling to your list requires a delicate balance. Mix it up without mixing messages. In other words, alternate between information and promotions but don’t blend the two.

You do not want to take the risk of your message getting lost. You want to remain to be a voice your subscribers can trust without becoming too sales-driven and you also want to make sure your offers are clear without getting lost in your content.

I know that selling to your list can be intimidating because I used to feel that way too, but you have to remember that you’re running a business and emailing your list is not charity work.

If you have not yet made the attempt to promote your business to your subscribers, or you feel in the wrong when you do, it’s time to overcome your fear of selling to your list so you can make more money. Head over to Email Marketing Sweetie and learn how to grow your list, reduce your workload, and boost your income.

About Melissa Ingold : Melissa Ingold is the CEO of Internet Marketing Sweetie, and she is a full-time entrepreneur with over 8 years of experience working online. She has built a successful online business through information product marketing, affiliate marketing & management, membership sites, and content marketing. Read More About Melissa

The Secret to Making Money with Affiliate Programs

Work-at-home statistics in general tend to be dismal. Success in affiliate and related type marketing isn’t much different. Most people make very little money if anything at all. But what the stats fail to mention is how often failure isn’t in the method, but in the execution. Many people get roped into the idea that once they set up a website or blog, and submit it to a search engine, the money should be coming in. It doesn’t work like that. Launching the site and submitting to search engines is just the first few steps. The “work” in affiliate marketing isn’t building the site, its marketing it. You can have the best monetization resources, but if no one is visiting the site, you won’t make money.  So here are some quick tips and resources to make sure you have the traffic needed to earn income from a monetized site.

1. Provide unique quality content that fits the mission or topic of the site.
2. Optimize the site for search engines (SEO). Even just basic SEO techniques will improve your ranking in the search engines and therefore increase traffic.
3. Create a marketing plan. You can’t rely on search engines to drive traffic to your site. Getting yourself known around the Internet increases your website exposure and well as your search engine ranking.
4. Build a list. To increase the chance of making a sale, provide a list or newsletter. This will give you the chance to make offers to a visitor in the future. Be sure your emails aren’t only offers or readers will unsubscribe. Instead focus on informative articles or tips with an ad or two. To encourage visitors to subscribe, offer them a free report or other incentive.
5. Monitor your results. Study your traffic using Google Analytics, the web stats tools that come with your hosting service, or a statistic plug-in for WordPress (if that’s what you’re using). Use the information to determine what sites are sending people to yours. What keywords are being used to search and find your site in the search engines? What pages are the most popular? You also want to track affiliate results. Which programs are getting the most clicks? Why is that? Is it placement? Program? Type of ad (text vs. banner)?  Many of the programs will allow to create a special tracking code so can know which ads are working where.

Read a full version of this report for free here: Monetize Your Website or Blog

Simple Steps to Monetize Your Website or Blog – Free Teleseminar

No product? No service? No problem! There are thousands of resources online willing to pay you to help them promote their products and services. Join Leslie Truex as she shares simple steps to add great affiliate products and services to your blog or website.

You’ll learn:
- How to choose the best programs for your site.
- How to maximize the income potential of your affiliate links.
- How to avoid bad affiliate partners.
- And more

This free teleseminar will be held May 11, 2010 at 9 pm. All you need is a phone line to access the call.

To learn more and register, visit Simple Steps to Monetize Your Website at Global Teleclass.

WAHS Podcast #90 Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green with Shel Horowitz

This week I talk to Shel Horowitz about running a green business and his new book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

If you’d like to download any episode you’ll notice a new “Download MP3″ below the player. You can get the podcasts through iTunes as well.
Listen here:

You can also subscribe through iTunes.

Resources Mentioned On the Show

Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green

Get the Most Bang for Your Marketing Buck

Besides providing a quality product or service, marketing is the most important thing you can do to build your business. If customers and clients can’t find you, they can’t buy from you. But there’s more to marketing than running a few ads and sharing some business cards. It requires an understanding of your products or services and your customers, a plan, and evaluation. Here’s how to get the most bang out of your marketing buck.

1)      Understand the benefits of your products or services. Often business owners focus on the features of their products or services. But customers don’t buy features, they buy benefits. They don’t want a safe, herbal (feature) diet pill, they want to lose weight and be sexy (benefit).  That doesn’t mean the feature won’t appeal to buyers. What it means is that customers buy solutions so you want to focus your marketing on how your product or service meets their needs.

2)      Find your customers. Even big companies that advertise on TV know that they need to place their promotional materials where their target market will see it. That’s why you don’t see beer commercials during Oprah or feminine hygiene ads on the Spike Channel.  It may seem sexists as there are men or beer drinkers who watch Oprah and women who watch the Spike channel, but overall, these resources cater to a specific market. The beer makers know they’re going to have greater results running their ads during football games than during Oprah. You want to use the same strategy. What magazines does your market read? What TV channels do they watch? What websites do they visit? What places to they go? Place your marketing materials in specific sub-groups or niches where you know your target market will see it.

3)      Use several, but not all marketing tactics. Many business start-ups focus on running an ad to bring in customers, but an ad alone will not do all the work in bringing in customers, and in fact it may not be the most effective marketing method for your business. Focusing again on where your market can be found, develop materials to reach them. That can include ads, articles, and coupons in magazines or on websites. It could mean offering coupons or your business cards during special events or networking groups. Decide what methods to use, and create a marketing plan to regularly place your promotional materials in front of your target market.

4)      Evaluate the results. The biggest waste of marketing money and time is using tactics that aren’t working. Tracking can be a tedious job, but is necessary to know what promotional items are working and where. One ad may be brining most of your clients while the same ad somewhere else may be doing nothing. Don’t waste your time on marketing that isn’t pulling its weight. Instead tweak the ad to make it work better in the spot its running or find another media resource similar to the one that is working.  Good marketing campaigns are all about testing, evaluating, tweaking or changing, and testing some more to maximize your results.

Marketing is an integral part of any business, but only if done correctly. Before you run your next ad, check that it offers a solution to your potential customers and that it will run where they will see it. Create a multi-tactic marketing plan that offers diverse promotional materials and then test and evaluate to see which work the best. Once you maximize your marketing bucks, save money while getting better results, which means a profitable bottom line.

How to Promote Any Affiliate Program In 5 Easy Steps

By Jimmy D. Brown of “Affiliatenaire”

…………………….

Using ezine articles is a great way to promote your favor affiliate program.  What I’d like to do in this article is provide you with a simple system for effectively writing
an ezine article that strategically promotes your offer.

There are five steps…

1. CHOOSE THE OFFER YOU WISH TO PROMOTE

This one is kind of a no-brainer. It all begins with deciding what you want to promote. What offer would you like to send traffic to.

HINT:  You can promote your affiliate link directly, but what works better is to promote a list at YOUR site which you then use to promote your affiliate link over and over
again after the visitor becomes a subscribers.

2. DETERMINE YOUR “USEFUL, BUT INCOMPLETE” APPROACH.

I love to use what I have coined as the “useful, but incomplete” approach when using freebies of any kind. (Ezine articles, free eBooks, reports, eCourses, etc.)

What I mean by that is simply this: You provide your reader with “useful” information (something they find of value and are able to actually apply) but make certain that it is “incomplete” in that they can better use the information by making a purchase.

That’s “useful, but incomplete.” And it works like a charm.

The idea is to use your content to build up to your desired response. You provide the reader with content, and then you make an offer that allows them to fully utilize the
content, gain extra insight from the content or maximize the content in some additional way.

Let me give you an example -

If I wanted to promote an autoresponder service in an ezine article, how could I do it?  I’d write an article that explains how to benefit from using autoresponders. My article would exlain different uses of autoresponders and how the reader could profit from implementing the ideas.

** I.E.  7 Ways To Create Revenue Streams With Autoresponders

Naturally, they will need an autoresponder service in order to use the information, right?  And I just happen to know of a great service they can use.  More on that later.

OK, so that’s an example of how to promote a SERVICE offer with your ezine article. What about a software product or an eBook?

Want some examples?

Good, because I’ve got two…

TO PROMOTE A SOFTWARE PRODUCT.  Let’s suppose you want to promote a software program that creates “ecovers”.  How can you do it?

– Write an article outlining how important presentation of your offer is, and how creating a cover graphic can increase response rates by up to 1300%

– Write a step-by-step tutorial article for “do-it-yourselfers”, explaining how to design your own graphics from scratch.  Then promote the software as a super-simplified way of doing it.

TO PROMOTE AN EBOOK.  Let’s suppose you want to promote an ebook that teaches advanced list-building strategies.   How can you do it?

– Write an article that covers the “basics” of building lists, and then promote the eBook as the “advanced” tactics.

– Write an article on how to profit from a list, and then promote the eBook as the “how to build the list.”

See how easy this is?

That’s how it works. Determine what your “useful, but incomplete” approach will be, and then…

3. TURN YOUR APPROACH INTO A TIPS OR TUTORIAL ARTICLE.

Let’s use my example again. I decided that I would describe various uses of autoresponders and how the reader can actually profit from them. What kind of tips list or tutorial could I create?

* How to Generate More Subscribers, Sales and Profits With Automated Follow-Up Messages”

* 7 Powerful And Profitable Ways To Use Autoresponders To Skyrocket Your Sales and Subscribers!

* Want to Increase Your Online Profits And Leads? Here are 7 Ways to Do It…

I actually went with the middle title. I wrote my list of the 7 ideas that I wanted to share. And I had the makings of a perfect article to promote an offer.

That’s all you need to do. Determine your end result. Decide how to get there with your “useful, but incomplete” approach. And then develop a list, or even a step-by-step tutorial for your article that leads the reader along.

With each new “idea” or “way” or “tip” or “step” or “strategy” that you share, you can further direct the reader towards realizing their need of your upcoming offer, and lay the foundation for them to accept the offer.

4. EXPAND ON EACH POINT TO BUILD YOUR CONTENT.

Here’s more of the easy part. Just “fill-in-the-blanks” to complete your article. Write 1-2 short paragraphs for each of your points. Make them good. Provide quality content. The offer you will soon make will see poor results if your information isn’t useful.

Remember, you are trying to presell the reader on the idea that they are going to need your offer. If you don’t provide them with quality information that they WANT to begin using immediately, then why will they want to buy what you are promoting?

Light a fire in them. Motivate them. Challenge them. Give them such nuggets of gold that they want to keep mining until they hit the mother lode!

5. PUT ON THE FINISHING TOUCHES WITH THE “FIVE PILLARS”

There are five things that you should always do to finish up your ezine article. Don’t skip any of them. They are all critical…

* POLISH. Re-read your article. Does it provide information that really is “useful” to the reader? And yet leaves them wanting even more? That’s what you want. Polish it. Put on the wax and make it shine. It has a very specific purpose — make certain it has the means to achieve it.

* PROMOTE. Use your resource box to promote your offer. This is why we’ve written the article, right? Remember step one? It’s time to put it into play. Give the reader what they (hopefully) are wanting…a way to maximize the information you gave them.

* PROOF. Don’t do this yourself. Have a trusted friend, relative or co-worker check your article for grammatical and typographical errors. The last thing you want to do is present a poor image after sharing some high quality information.

* PUBLISH. Zip your new article out to your favorite list of publishers. Submit it to the announcement lists and the ezine directories. Don’t forget to publish it yourself in your own newsletter!

* PROFIT. If you’ve covered all the bases that I’ve mentioned, then profits are almost certain to start coming in when your ezine article is published. You deserve it. Be proud of your accomplishments.

And then start it all over again!

That’s how you promote your favorite affiliate program in 5 easy steps using ezine articles.

Obviously, there are many  other ways to promote your affiliate program, as well as a considerable more “details” in the strategy we’ve looked at today.  If you’d like 52 great ways to promote your affiliate link AND complete step-by-step details for each of them, be sure to read the important details below…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jimmy D. Brown is the author of “Affiliatenaire”, teaching you how to create big-time affiliate commission checks in only 1-3 hours each week.  Discover how you can get cash in the bank without a website, experience or even an idea! Visit Affiliatenaire for more information

How to Get Paying Customers

Getting Listed in Search Engines 101

Getting listed in search engines has evolved into a science. The gurus recommend all sorts of tricks and gimmicks to optimize your website (SEO). But some of these tricks can work against you.

Search engines are an important part of your Internet marketing strategy, however you can’t rely on search engines alone to drive traffic to your site. In fact, one of the ways search engines rank sites are how well they market using other methods. So search engines should be one of several marketing tactics you use to help people find your site.

Here are some tips to get you ranked in the search engines.

Step One: Make the Site Ready for Search Engine Spiders

Meta Tags

The first step to search engine ranking is use of your meta tags. Meta tags are information about your site that is hidden behind the scenes (viewable in the HTML view of your site) that lets the engines know what your site is about. At the very least you should have meta tags for the title, description and keywords of all your pages. These tags are placed in the <head></head> section in the code of your site:

Sample Header Code

<meta http-equiv=”Description” content=”Alchemy Copywriting offers results oriented, persuasive copy for internet, non-profit organizations and small business.”>
<meta http-equiv=”keywords” content=”copywriting, copywriter, direct sales, fundraising, sales copy, sales letters, advertising, promotion”>
<title>Alchemy Copy – Internet, Non-Profit and Small Business Copywriting</title>

When using the meta tags, you want to include your site’s name as well as keywords. But don’t over do it. And be honest. Include only the keywords and descriptions that are relevant to the page. For example, I wouldn’t include “work at home job” on a page that is about “home business”.

Text Copy on the Page

Include a heading to lead into the information on the page. Ideally it needs to include a keyword and be placed in heading tags (i.e. <H1></H1>)

Your text copy on the page should also include keywords and variations of keywords. Search engines don’t like pages that are stuffed to the brim with keywords. It likes real pages that offer real content. So your page should provide meaning full content that use variations of keywords. For example, if you were writing about “customer service” and using it as one of your keywords, you might substitute “customer relations” in some places.

Step Two: Submitting to Search Engines

Search Engine Submission

Whether or not you submit your site to search engines, they’ll eventually find you if you provide frequent relevant content and use your keywords. But you might as well help them out by letting them know you exist.

Below are some top search engines and directories at which you can register your website. Once you are at the home page, click on “Add URL” or “Add Your Site” which can frequently be found at the bottom of the site’s homepage. Be sure to have your name, site URL and keywords developed before you apply to add your site to the search engines and directories. You should probably submit your site individually at the top search engines. 

• Google (many directories and engines pull from Google including Netscape and AOL)
• DMOZ Open Directory (AOL, Google, Netscape, Yahoo and others use Open Directory)
• MSN (many directories and engines pull from MSN including HotBot and Live Search)
• Yahoo

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are XML files that list your site’s pages that are ready to be crawled by search engines. If you use a content management platform such as WordPress, you can add plug-ins to create your sitemap and ping the search engines when they’re ready to be crawled.

If you’re not using a program that offers sitemap functions, here’s a free online sitemap generator from XML Sitemaps to create your sitemap file. It has some instructions on what to do with it when its done as well.

If you’re creating your own sitemap, you can submit the pages directly:

• Google http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=
• Yahoo http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=SitemapWriter&url=  and http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=
• Ask.com http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=
• Bing http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=

Step Three: Getting Ranked

Meta tags and sitemaps will get your site crawled, but not necessarily ranked on the first page of search engines. For each of your keywords your site is competing with thousands if not millions of other pages. So the search engines use other criteria to determine who gets the top spots. Below are the criteria and how to improve your chances of a good ranking.

Content – Your site content should fit the keywords provided, but also search engines like sites that have new content on a regular basis. That is why you find so many results from blogs and new/info sites that have new information posted several times a week or day. The important thing to remember is that quality of the content not the number of times a keyword is used is important.

Backlinks – Search engines also judge the quality of your site by how many other sites deem your information worthy of a link to your site. There are several ways to create backlinks to your site. The easiest ways include writing articles and submitting them to article directories, posting comments on other people’s sites/blogs, and negotiating link exchanges with other sites.

Search Engine Optimization Tools

A great tool to help with search engine optimization including evaluating your site for ranking as well as ways to improve SEO, check out WebCeo.

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