Local Business Marketing Success

Generating qualified leads is the key to growing your business. Easier said than done these days considering there are fewer buyers in the market with less money to spend. And with some companies “giving away the farm” just to generate cash flow, you have to spend even more time with prospects talking about the value of your products and services.

As small business owners, we spend a lot of our energy generating leads through various forms of promotion and advertising such as radio, TV, newspaper, trade shows, etc. Many companies are actually quite good at it. Where we seem to fall down though is following up on a timely and consistent basis. Just take a look at some of these startling statistics;

- 48 % of sales people never follow up with a prospect
- 25% of sales people make a 2nd contact and stop
- 12% of sales people only make 3 contacts and stop
- Only 10% of sales people make more than 3 contacts

What this essentially means is that if you consistently follow up with your prospects more than 3 times, you are doing better than 90% of your competitors. That fact by itself should help you close more deals!

Why don’t we follow up like we know we should? Because “life” gets in the way. The day to day running of our business seems to occupy most of our time leaving little time for the follow up we know we could and should be doing better.

So what’s the answer? Systemizing, automating and combining as much of the online and offline lead generation and follow up marketing process as possible. The overall objective of this strategy is to make it as “hands off” as possible to free up your time to close the deals that such a system can generate. Does such an automated system exist? Yes it does and here is exactly what you need to do…

Step 1 – Create a powerful lead generation method capable of dominating page one of Google. My strategy of choice is Video Marketing. I have gotten many of my clients on page one of Google for their selected geo-targeted keyword in less than 12 hours. You can see examples of lead generation videos by go here:  lead generation video marketing  - These videos are used to capture attention and drive traffic to a specific landing page.

Step 2 – Drive all that traffic to a keyword rich, highly optimized lead capture “landing page”. This landing page can either be on your current website or be created specifically for and in conjunction with the video marketing strategy described above. The purpose of this landing page is capture contact information from your prospects.

The way you entice prospects to give you their contact information is by providing something they want and need…either information that can help them make an informed buying decision or ways they can get the best deal on their upcoming purchase. This information can be in the form of a free report, free video, MP3 or something else of value that the prospect would want in exchange for giving you their contact information.

Step 3 – Create a second video. Once the prospect gets to your landing page, you want to create another short video explaining how this information can help the prospect and how easy it is to get it. Your landing page and short video must contain a call-to-action such as “enter your contact information to get your free video” Generally speaking, the more information you ask for, the fewer opt-ins you will receive, but the more qualified they will be.

The key to combining off-line follow up is getting the prospect’s name and address. The way that I do that is by offering to send them a valuable CD in the mail. This has a high perceived value. You can see an example of this type of landing page below or go to http://www.LeadGenLandingPage.com to see it live!

Step 4 – Set up an online and offline follow up marketing system- The tricky part is to set up an internal system to automatically send the contact information gathered from your landing page to an e-mail autoresponder like A-Weber or Constant Contact AND to your offlineSendOutCards account. This is something I do for my clients.

Here’s how it works. The name and e-mail address you get from your landing page gets sent to your autoresponder account. This system will automatically follow up with your prospects via e-mail as long as you want…every 3 days, 8 days or whatever you have pre-programmed your autoresponder to do ahead of time. This takes care of your online follow up.

The name and address information from the landing page is also sent to your SendOutCards account where you have already set up a prospect campaign that will send out specific greeting cards that you have hand-selected ahead of time. These cards can be thanks you cards, birthday days, follow up cards and can even include gift cards from such popular retailers like Starbucks. This takes care of your offline follow up.

Remember all of this is now being done on auto-pilot. All you need to do is set all this up once and let the system capture the leads and then automatically follow up – it truly is a “set it and forget it” strategy. Now obviously you can’t close a big ticket sale with a greeting card or e-mail, so at some point you will need to contact the prospect by phone is they have not already contacted you.

Setting up an automated and systemized lead capture and follow-up program like this will free up a lot of you time to market your business, close more sales or even take a day off once in a while!

David Carleton is a Local Business Marketing Expert who specializes in showing small business owners how to spend less and get more from their marketing and advertising using low cost strategies in local business marketing, lead generation and conversion, Internet marketing and social media. To get your free 60 minute video – “How to Get On Page One of Google in Less 30 Days” visit http://www.LocaBusinessMarketingSuccess.com

SEO refers to search engine optimization. It is a process to increase the organic search rankings of a website. There are millions of searches being done online. People search for almost every imaginable thing from how to care for their pets to how to make money from home etc.

While searching, people enter some words or phrases in the search box. These are known as keywords or key phrases. A website owner’s aim is to have high rankings for a lot of important keywords related to the site’s niche.

The advantage of high rankings is that you can get thousands of free visitors to your website without spending a dime on advertising. And this traffic will keep coming to your website automatically as long as your site is still ranking high on the search engines.

What’s more – your site will be getting visitors even while you are sleeping, eating or enjoying time with your family.

In order to enjoy all these benefits, you need to optimize your website in a certain way so that it stands a good chance of ranking highly in the search engines. Each search engine is different and gives priority to different factors.

It may be almost impossible to optimize our website keeping all the search engines in mind. Thankfully you don’t have to do so. If you focus on just the top 3-5 search engines, it should be sufficient for us to get thousands of free targeted visitors.

Start Your SEO Efforts from Here:

Let’s discuss 3 important areas you have to focus on first in order to optimize your website for higher rankings.

1. Pay Attention to Title: Each webpage has a title – What you place between the title tags is very important from SEO point of view. You should place your most important keywords which you are targeting in the title. The keywords should be placed in the title is such a manner that it should make sense to humans also.

Your webpage titles should appeal to search engines as well as human visitors. If your title is just a bunch of keywords without much sense or appeal, then people will may not click to visit your site even if you have a high ranking in the search engine.

2. Pay Attention to Header Tags - Header tags are like subtitles of your page. Again header tags are important from human as well as SEO point of view. Header tags should also contain your important keywords so that the search engines understand what your page is about. These header tags are also important for human visitors to your website. If someone is just scanning your article, he/she can read through the subtitles to decide whether the article is of their interest and deserves to be read further or not.

3. Pay Attention to Content - Your information should be of good quality and useful to the reader. They should serve some purpose. Your content should contain your important keywords written in a natural manner so that it makes complete sense to human readers also. If you write high quality content and spread your important keywords throughout the content then stand a good chance of impressing the search engines as well as human visitors.

These are the 3 most important parts of your webpage you should pay attention to if you want to gain high search rankings. The benefits of top rankings are immense. So start paying more attention to your article titles, subtitles as well as the actual content.

If you do so then you can reap the benefits in terms of good search rankings as well as high conversions from website visitors. There are many other factors that need your attention in order to improve site rankings, but all efforts should start from here. You should first and foremost try and optimize your content then worry about other factors.

To Your Continued Success,

Dave

An analysis of website traffic will prove to be very valuable to you if you understand how to read and react to them.

But before you start your analysis, you first have to understand how to interpret the data being presented.

Many web hosting companies can give you with basic web traffic information that you have to understand and make use of. But then, the data you are getting from your host company can appear too hard to handle if you do not understand how to apply it to your particular business and website.

These statistics are probably the most precise assessment of how your website is thriving. Thinking that your website is performing well just by looking at your traffic is the most common misconception any website owner can make.

What you need to understand is how your visitors are doing once they visited your site. This is how you can accurately distinguish if your site is effective or not.

Differentiate hits from quality website traffic

Hits. This is basically the number of requests taken in by the server. If you think that a hit is equals to the number of graphics per page, then you are thinking wrong.

These hits are not really effective tools in analyzing website traffic.

Your interpretation would be more accurate once you see the number of visitors that are coming in your website. On the same note. Your analysis will be more precise once you have achieved a great number of website traffic.

But once you are not getting large numbers of website visitors, the more your analysis will be misinterpreted.

The purpose of website traffic analysis.

The main purpose of the statistics is to work out how well or how badly your site is working for your visitors. An ideal ways of trying of knowing is to find out the time your visitor spends on your site.

If they stayed for a only a short period of time, assume that there is a problem there somewhere. Now your goal is to find out what that problem is. You have to know why your visitors did not stay long to check out your site. What made them left hastily?

Keywords.

This is one thing to be considered. Maybe the keywords that you have used in the search engines are getting you not the targeted visitors that you wanted. Or it may be what is in your site. Maybe what the visitors have seen have turned them off so fast they choose to leave. This could be the graphics, fonts or any other visible aspects that you have used in your site.

Keywords are important aspects in bringing quality visitors to your site who are prepared to get or buy what you have to offer. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor’s needs and motivations.

Try to get to the bottom of this problem. When you have pinpointed what it is, work out a solution so that the same problem will not be encountered again. You can test your new findings and see if they have resulted well. Are your visitors staying for some time now?

This is where website traffic analysis will help you the most. Sometimes, you get to believe that you have a page that is doing well. But then, you noticed that your visitors do not find it so.

You can try and make changes to that page. Take the links, for example. Make them more visible and more catching so your visitors have more tendency to click on that. You could also make an improvement on your page. Remove clutters. Visitors do not want to feel claustrophobic. Make your page accessible for them.

When you notice that your visitors are staying more on the page that you do not give much focus about, you may consider checking that page out and moving all your major products and services on that specific page.

To your continued success,

Dave

Author: Gen Wright

There are many different aspects to search engine marketing which are crucial for you to understand. Using search engines like Google for optimizing keywords can be tricky, which is why it is so important that you take the time to consider which kind of hosting you are going to get as well as other things that will factor into just how successful you are internet marketing.

When you are creating content to put on your website for search engine optimization, it is important that you make the content as relevant as possible. You will of course be plugging in certain keywords which these search engines will then recognize upon seeing them. This is what will drive a majority of traffic to your websites, thereby earning you money.

Having an intelligent and well laid out plan is critical if you are going to survive in this type of marketing world. There are many people who attempt to make SEO marketing work for them, but they simply cannot. One reason for this is that they do not have the kind of patience and commitment which is required to be successful. You must first realize that this isn’t a get rich quick plan or scheme. It is something which requires hard work and lots of self-motivation. If you do not possess these things, then search engine marketing is probably not for you.

What you will also require is web hosting that is user-friendly and easy to go about managing. You will always want to be able to count on the web hosting services that you have. You will need to make sure that you have selected the proper business to help you run your websites, because trust and reliability are two key issues in all of this. SEO marketing requires that you take a firm approach and not deviate from it unless it is warranted. Although you may not see the results that you are hoping for immediately, eventually all of your hard work will pay off.

Keeping all of the content on your websites updated on a regular basis is especially important, because you will want anyone who visits it to be impressed. Since sometimes your goal will be to simply get search engines to recognize the keywords, your content will not always have to be top quality, however it is still strongly recommended that you take the time yourself or hire someone to generate good content for you.

Doing keyword research is a whole separate issue that you will need to address as well. It is extremely important that you know how to go about doing this, because it will ultimately determine just how successful you are with SEO marketing. Make sure to do careful research and choose the right keywords that will drive the most traffic and earn you the most profit.

About the Author: Always write useful content for your webpage and include relavent keyword phrase in the content. You also require a search engine friendly web hosting plan, we have them verified in our topwebhostingreviews.org, the top web hosting review site.

While you are running ads through one or more pay per click programs, it is important to not underestimate the effectiveness of the content of your own site. In fact, paying close attention to your own web content will help your web site to show up higher on search engines. The magic way this happens has to do with search engine optimization.

Here is how the process works, and why it is so important to make the best use of this value method of publicizing your web site.

When people think of search engine optimization, the first thing they think about is keywords scattered through the content that is found on the site. Keywords help people who are interested in what you have to offer find your site.

Generally, persons entering one of those important keywords into one of the several search engines will be directed to sites that are directly of interest. A judicious use of keywords on your part will help improve the chances that you will appear in those listings.

Along with keywords that are in the text of your web content, you also want to register your web site with each of the various search engines. As part of that registration, you can include all sorts of keywords that will add your site to a search command.

You can use terms that have a direct relationship to the content and purpose of your site, as well as keywords that have some indirect relationship to your content. For example, if your web site has to do with pet supplies, a direct keyword would be “pet.” An indirect keyword might be something like house, bed, or snacks.

Registration on all the search engines does not cost anything, if you choose to take the time to do the work yourself. However, there are services that will create a profile for you and register your web site on a huge number of sites on your behalf.

Many of these services do an excellent job, but be prepared to pay for what you get. Most of these registration services offer different size packages, with each package including a select number of search engines.

While some of the packages will include the more popular search engines, it is always a good idea to verify which of the engines are included. This will help you to determine if the price tag is worth it.

If you choose to go with a registration service for the search engine optimization, make sure you provide them with an exhaustive list of keywords. Once the task is done, you cannot go back and update the list at will.

Don’t rush into this project. Instead, take a few days and add more keywords to the list as you think of them. After several days, you will probably have a list of keywords that is broad enough to make a real impact.

One other benefit of using a registration service is that some of them will guarantee that your site will make it to the top of the search engine results. Be prepared to pay extra for this option.

However, it may be worth the extra cost if there is a lot of competition in your line of work. You can gauge the effectiveness of the venture by the number of hits you receive, plus the resulting value of the sales you make.

Of course, you can also handle the registration site on your own. This will involve going to each search engine individually and setting up the search engine criteria. A good rule of thumb is to come up with your list of keywords and key phrases before you jump into the task.

Have the list in an electronic format, so you can cut and paste them into the registration form. This will save you a lot of time with the data entry, and allow you to move much more quickly in completing each registration.

Another tip is to begin with the well known search engines first. Generally, it takes somewhere between twenty-four to forty-eight hours to deploy information about a web site into the search engine files.

By taking care of major search engines first, such as Yahoo, Google, AOL, and MSN, you will have an Internet presence very quickly. Once these are taken care of, you can move on to some of the smaller search engines.

Don’t dismiss the smaller search engines as part of your search engine project. While the major engines will cover just about all the Internet, you never know when one of the minor engines will yield some results. Since it costs nothing to register with the engine–all which is required is a bit of your time. And after all, one sale is more than a make up for your investment.

Most search engines provide information about registration that will provide you with some tips on how to create the registration profile. In some cases, the process is very quick, provided you have all the details and keywords handy.

Try one or two of the search engines first, just to get a feel for how much time and effort is involved. Then, you will be able to decide if registration is something that you want to do on your own, or farm out to a service.

Click here to learn more about our “done for you” search engine optimization for your local business

To your continued success,

Dave

During times of economic downturns, high unemployment and widespread layoffs, many people decide it is time to have more control over their own destiny and therefore go into business for themselves.  While each person’s background, knowledge and specific business they decide to go into will be different, two things remains essential to be successful.  The first is having a Unique Selling Proposition or USP and the second is communicating your USP as quickly and effectively as possible.

What is a USP?

What’s a USP?  It’s what makes a prospect buy from you versus your competitor.  Whether you are selling products or services, you have to show the potential buyer that you are faster, cheaper or better.  Starting a business and not being able to differentiate your business from an established competitor is a recipe for disaster.

First let’s start off with what a USP is not.  A tagline is not a USP.  A tagline is usually a one sentence line that many businesses use in their advertising.  A USP goes much deeper and requires much more thought.  A USP essentially says – why should I buy from you?  Too many business people use the same old tired lines like “satisfaction guaranteed” or “we have 1000 widgets in stock”.  If everyone is saying it, then you saying it makes you a “me too” competitor, not a better one.

When creating your USP, it has to answer the “I Hope So” and “So What” test.  Let’s look at the examples above – “Satisfaction Guaranteed” – I should hope so.  If you are not going to guarantee what you sell, then you shouldn’t be selling it.  “We have 1000 widgets in stock” – so what?  Having 1000 in stock means nothing if they are not the widgets I want or need.

So how do you decide on a USP?  Start off by list as many things as possible that a potential customer would want when looking for your product or service.  Now take a look at what your competitors offer.  The difference could be your USP.  So if a prospect wants 15 things and all your competitors only offer 9, then your point of differentiation are the remaining 6.  Now you just need to summarize those differences into a succinct message.

Time to Tell the World You’re Open for Business
Now that you’ve decided on your USP, how do you let the world know you’re in business and are different than everyone else?  There are obviously hundreds of ways, but for this blog I am going to concentrate on only one.  Video marketing.  Why?  Because it is quick, very effective and very inexpensive.  And during the start up phase of any business, what you want is the highest return on investment ( ROI) in the shortest amount of time.

Why is video marketing so powerful?  According to some studies, people remember only 10% of what they read and 50% of what they hear and see.  Additional research shows people are 3-4 times more likely to respond to video than the written word.

As if that information weren’t enough, according to a users view study done by Kelsey Group, after viewing an online video: 55% of consumers visited the web site, 30% went to the store and 24% made a purchase.  Can your other marketing efforts boast those type of results?  Most can’t and don’t!

And here’s the icing on the cake…I’ve seen video listings show up on the first page of Google in as little as an hour.  That is truly amazing!

There are many ways to make inexpensive videos including screen capture software like Camtasia or even the popular Flip video camera that comes with its own software built in and lets you easily upload to YouTube.

Once you’ve made your video don’t upload just to YouTube.  Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and other Web 2.0 websites are also great places where your video can and should be seen. 

To learn more about how video marketing, go to http://www.VideoMarketingASAP.com

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 By Warren Barnes

If you’ve got an interest in marketing your business using offline methods, then you’ll want to read this article in its entirety as I’m going to provide you with 5 key tips for marketing your locally operated business offline.

Over the past decade, many business – large and small have begun using the Internet to market their wares. And for good reason. The reach of the Internet is staggering. No longer are local brick and mortar businesses locked into doing business in only their immediate areas. It’s easy to do business around the world now. On top of the additional reach, significant savings can also be realized when marketing a business online. For as little as $7 up front and $4 a month, you can have a web site promoting your business around the world 7 days a week.

However, while many have moved the vast majority of their marketing online, a good number are starting to return to marketing their business via offline methods. Many simply feel more comfortable with the traditional methods of doing business while others simply haven’t gotten the bang for the buck they were looking for online.

As with online marketing, offline marketing requires that a business owner do some research before spending their marketing dollars. After all, what good is particular marketing strategy if it’s not appropriate for your business, timely and above all, cost efficient?

I’ve got five tips for you that will help you in marketing your local business online. I’ve used all of these and have had a great deal of success with them. But, as I said, make sure a tip you want to pursue is right for your particular business before moving ahead.

1. Cross Promotion

Work with another local business the compliments your business. For example, if you operate a local furniture store, work a deal out with a local TV shop in which you’ll buy x number of TVs at cost and give them out to your customers if they buy a particular living room set or buy a certain amount of furniture. Why would the TV shop want to give you the TVs at cost? For the exposure he’ll get with all the advertising you are going to be doing to promote the deal. You’ll say the TVs are coming from so and sos TV shop. Partnerships can be big win wins for both parties.

2. Advertise Through Another Business

If you operate a retail shop, check with your local grocery store chains. Many have a program where they sell advertising space on the back of the cash register tapes. This can be a very cost effective way of getting your name and offer in front of thousands of people each week.

3. Local Signage

After checking local ordinances, you may want to consider putting up signs on lamp posts and direction signs. You may also want to consider using the small real estate signs. They are great because they are easy to put into the ground and are normally pretty inexpensive, so if they get stolen after several days, you’ll still get the value out of them. But as I said, be sure to check local ordinances before doing this and check with property owners before putting signs on their property. Perhaps give property owners free or discounted product as a thank you for allowing you to use their land.

4. Advertise On Cable

Have you ever seen local ads on sporting events or TV shows that are on cable? Ever wondered how those local businesses could afford to advertise on those programs? It’s because local cable companies provide time for local ads to be run throughout the day ad significantly less cost than the big time networks. Their will likely be production costs involved, but you can’t beat the value for the dollar of advertising on local cable.

5. Newsletters

Consumers love to know what’s happening at their local businesses. What deals or new products are coming soon, what the business has been doing in the local community, how your customers can help you help the community and so on. Let them know if your business has adopted a local highway. Let them know if you or one of your employees is on a community board or non profit. You may even want to work with other business owners and put a combined newsletter together. The more you can keep you business in the minds of your customers, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

If you haven’t tried any of these tips before, give one or two of them a shot. I think you’ll find when you put any of these five strategies to work, you’ll see a significant increase in traffic and in sales in your locally run business. Making sure that your customers know who you are, what your business does, and what you are doing for the community can reap huge rewards. Many businesses find in addition to helping build business, these five tips can be very enjoyable to carry out as well.

Warren has been writing articles and producing how to courses online since 2005. He specializes in online business issues and currently operates a number of websites in a number of different niches. You can check out his latest website here: Wireless IP Phone featuring Phillips Phones.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Warren_Barnes

This short Video will give you a quick overview of Google Analytics for an e-commerce site.

Just click on the play button

You hired a website expert, attended a bunch of strategy meetings, looked at charts, graphs, forecasts, colors photos etc., on how to make your website look great.

And you know what it does! The color schemes, the text, the content, the photos – they all look great. You’ve even gotten compliments from friends, family and industry experts. Not only that, you are getting tons of traffic to the site.

Here’s the problem though. Unless you have a systematic way of capturing the names and e-mail addresses of your visitors, you’re website it not working hard enough.

Let’s face it, you can’t market to someone that you don’t know. Right now, you website is a one way street – information out only. What you need is information coming in. What information? The names and contact information of prospective buyers.

Just having a “Contact Us” button or page is not enough. That approach is too passive and takes too much work on the part of your website visitor.

9 Ways To Persuade Your Web Site Visitors To Give You Their Email Address

1. Ask visitors to subscribe to your e-zine. It’s a good idea to also give them a freebie when they subscribe. This is a great “call to action” Here’s a good example of how a good local business marketing website gets new subscribers.

2. Have them sign-up to get access to download a free ebook. This is an easy small business marketing strategy. The subject of the ebook should be related to your target audience.

3. Give your visitors a free membership inside your “member’s only” website. Have them sign-up to receive a user name and password.

4. Hold a free contest or sweepstakes. To enter they need to give you their contact information. To increase sign ups, I would just ask for a first name and e-mail address.

5. Offer your visitors free consulting via e-mail. Have them fill out a web form to e-mail you with their questions. You could offer an in-home consultation on “How to Select the Right XYZ Product or Service for You and Your Family”.

6. Have visitors fill out a survey on your website. Give them a free gift as an incentive to complete the form.

7. Offer a free online service from your site. Have visitors fill out their contact information to sign-up to the free service. This could be something as easy as a free oil change reminder or even a -email birthday card with a savings coupon attached.

8. Ask visitors to sign your guest book. Tell them they will get a free gift in return. The “freebie” could be a special report titled, “7 Questions You Must Ask Before You Buy Your Next XYZ”.

9. Give people who visit your website a free course sent via e-mail. Just ask them to fill out their contact information to receive the free course.

When you capture contact information, you increase your odds of capturing more sales.

To Your Continued Success,

Dave