Having invested over $10 million in independent research, Paul Ashby is ideally suited to present the case for the widespread use of interactive marketing communication. The research investment has proved conclusively that one exposure to an interactive “event” is far more effective in all key measurements, than traditional advertising. Paul made this investment because his company, Effective. Accountable. Communication is predicated on being totally accountable to its Clients.
Discover more on http://interactivetelevisionorinteractivetv.blogspot.com
The Seven Deadly Sins of Advertising.
November 22, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Sin No. 1
And in many ways this is the biggest sin of them all!
The total lack of genuine accountability and effectiveness. More and more evidence is emerging that there is ample justification for questioning a major advertising pretension that it does, indeed, work at all!
The repetitious cry and certain belief that “creativity” is the answer to all marketing problems – it isn’t and frankly never really has been.
It’s a given that all human knowledge is provisional but it is also incremental, the sum of what we know to day is far greater than thirty years ago – with, possibly, the sole exception of marketing/advertising. Nothing new has been added to the armory of advertising…no debate is taking place as to where to go next! Perhaps that is because there is no place else to go!
However to day it is still an article of faith among advertising people that advertising will not change because “it works”!
Facing the painful truth is the first essential step in devising a sensible strategy for the perpetuation of advertising. And the painful truth is “Advertising no longer works”!
Sin No 2.
Is it because that, for financial reasons, you do not want to address the problem of clutter…because it is a huge and growing problem which contributes to the declining effectiveness of all advertising.
The poor old customer, or in advertising speak, Consumer, does not want to take delivery of even more messages, after all they do not appear to be taking much notice of the messages that exist already!
The advertising world has dehumanized and depersonalized the process of communication and very little evidence of consideration of the consumer exists.
Sin No.3
You just don’t listen, whenever some well meaning person dares to question the “Advertising Works” article of faith, down comes a torrent of abuse, and the fact is it can only be a torrent of abuse because you do not have a solid fact to support your spurious claims. Listen to your Clients:
As one large Client recently explained: “In to day’s marketing landscape, building a brand is about a whole lot more than advertising. An advertising agency alone cannot deliver everything we need – even though agencies may claim to deliver this, it’s a myth”.
Or even listen to people closer to home:
Derek Morris, Chairman and chief executive of ZenithOptimedia attended “Media 360 Conference” in Wales. In a long letter in MediaWeek, he said, among other things, “But what are the lessons to bring home from South Wales? What should we actually do? And there, in the final session, reality caught up when the Client told us to “Change before you are dead”.
Sin No.4
If you don’t want to listen then for Heavens sake forget the glorious past.
Your current model of advertising was developed in the Sixties when product choice was much more limited and people were easier to stereotype into categories like income, sex and class. It was much easier for advertisers to target people and bombard them with sales messages.
Today’s marketplace is different and all the old certainties are gone. To be effective in your communications it is sound advice to start with the premise that you know nothing about the people that you believe your product is aimed at.
You all have become too parochial, too introspective, too convinced by your on hyperbole.
Sin No.5
Stop this insane rush onto Web 2.0 it is not a medium intended for mass advertising, and, as has been recently established, “Users became more or less desensitized to the Advertising”
That was recently said of advertising on social networking sites.
Clients are experiencing fast diminishing returns on their social networking ad investments.
Clients are expressing disillusionment.
Web marketers, ranging from Google at the apex of the ad triangle to the mass of small companies are showering social-networking sites with ad dollars without getting their hoped-for returns.
The question is not “Has the advertising model broken”? The question now is “What are we going to replace it with”?
The complacency of the IPA is overwhelming, they appear not to be doing anything to answer the increasingly strident complaints.
Complaints such as, clutter, and here the irony is that advertising agencies appear to think that placing more advertisements is the way to solve clutter!
Complaints such as lack of accountability, to day, and after fifty years of extensive advertising, there are no reliable figures available on audience measurements.
And most certainly there are no effective studies as to the effectiveness of advertising…on sales…. As a return on ROI…and much more.
To day it is more important that a close investigation as to the suitability of advertising on Web 2.0 be undertaken instead of rushing onto the Net and ignoring all the signs. These are that it is a highly unsuitable medium for advertising.
After all it is “The Wild West” where anything goes!
Sin No.6
Your inability to move very rapidly into the post-advertising mindset is caused by you being unable to recognize Sins 1 through 5 above.
Astonishingly, a sizable percentage of marketers and marketing-service leaders seem mired in the advertising mind-set.
The Cannes Lions Festival still celebrates ads-a position, one suspects, roughly equivalent to the Cannes Film Festival honoring silents. The One Show held two concurrent programmes this year-one for conventional ads, another for on line. (One wonders who in this mix felt like a second-class citizen).
In a transparent world, the power of an “ad campaign” to change minds is strictly limited, and getting more so every day. It’s way past time for the industry’s leaders to get naked and reinvent advertising…it they can!
Sin No.7
Your complete and utter lack of understanding of the word “communication” together with a lack of appreciation as to what can, and does, stifle effective communication.
All advertising is a form of learning whereby the advertiser is asking people to change their behavior after learning the benefits of the products or services on offer. However, we all tend to filter out information, which we do not want to hear. This clearly alters the effectiveness of conventional advertising in quite a dramatic way.
The final purchase decision is invariably a compromise and this leads to a certain amount of anxiety; the worry that perhaps the decision was not the best or the right one. In order to minimise this anxiety the purchaser seeks to reinforce their choice and begins to take more notice of their chosen product’s marketing communications.
Due to a lack of understanding of the communication process we have created a media society during the past 40 or 50 years, where the whole process has been de-humanized.
There is now an extraordinary reduction in interaction because conventional advertising and marketing have become a one-way practice whereby information is disseminated in a passive form.
So what are you going to do about this?
Seven Common SEO Mistakes
November 17, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Most of your quality traffic comes from search engines, therefore when building a website it is important to know the hints, tips and tricks that will give you better placement in the search engines. Mistakes can actually hurt your site in the search engines without you even realizing it. I have come across a number of websites in which beginners not yet familiar with search engine optimization make the same common mistakes.
Are you making these seven common mistakes too?
1. Irrelevant keywords: Many webmasters use irrelevant Keywords. Be sure to choose the right keywords that relate to your company. Be specific. Think about the words that web surfers will be typing to find your website. Inventory overture keyword selector Tool is one of the best-known services for helping you choose the right keywords. Use Inventory overture keyword selector Tool to find what people are actually typing in to the search engines.
2. No back links: Back links are extremely important to your website’s rankings, therefore this should be one of your main priorities. The easiest way to get back links is to ask for them. Visit sites related to your website and request a link exchange.
3. Bad web design: Design mistakes can hurt your website. A mistake that I found many new webmasters making is they are not building their website to ensure that it appears correctly at different screen resolutions. Your website will be the first impression and remember that first impressions are everything. Can you afford to loose visitors because your website isn’t viewing correctly on their monitor? I for one use a screen resolution of 800 x 600. If you design your site to be viewable only by a screen resolution of 1024 x 768, I have an annoying horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the page and I have to scroll horizontally, just to see the entire content of your page. That right there is a turn off. There are many other web design mistakes, but we’ll cover that in another article.
4. Overuse of images and flash animations/ having too many graphics on your page: While graphics and flash may be pleasing to the eyes, too many graphics won’t help you get a better ranking. In fact Google and other search engines cannot read the content of an image. Flash only pages have no text; therefore there is nothing for the search engines to read.
5. Not utilizing your Title Tag: Title Tags are really important for search engines. A common mistake that I see many new webmasters making is that they leave the title tag empty or use irrelevant words.
Your title tag is the first thing a search engine’s spider sees on your page. You shouldn’t put only your company name in the title tag, but ad keywords about your company. Use Inventory overture keyword selector Tool to find related keywords.
6. No alt attribute in tags: As I stated above, search engines cannot spider images. Therefore the alt image tag helps the search engines understand the subject of the image. Be sure to include the alt attribute with every image.
7. Bad anchor ext: Whatever you do, don’t use “click here” or other non-descriptive link text. I’m guilty of this one myself. Proper anchor text can help your ranking. Your anchor text should describe the page that you’re linking to. For example if you’re linking to this article, your anchor text might read, “Seven Common SEO Mistakes by Rose DesRochers” instead of “Click Here to read this article.” Anchor text is extremely important to your ranking.
These are just a few of the most common mistakes that you should avoid making. These SEO mistakes may be the main reason why your site is failing to rank well in the search engines.
Be sure to optimize your website for both search engines and people. Search engine optimization is hard work and an ongoing process. Invest a little time and learn the proper techniques and not only will your traffic come, but you’ll increase your page rank.
Does your site contain any of these mistakes? For more tips, tricks and hints to help you get the full potential of your site join http://www.invision-graphics.com. Our SEO experts are ready to help you get the best out of your website.
Rose DesRochers is the assistant administrator of Invision Graphics Webmaster forum http://www.invision-graphics.com the ultimate webmaster resource center offering you free downloads, webmaster resource links, top sites, a free link directory, and a friendly support forum. Rose DesRochers is also the founder of one of Writer’s Digest 101 best websites for writers – Today’s Woman Writing Community http://www.todays-woman.net
Seven secrets to getting traffic to your affiliate website
November 15, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Seven secrets to getting traffic to your affiliate website
Can you create traffic for your website? The answer which may surprise some people is no.
Unless you are a billionaire or work for a large corporation that has the money to advertise their website at the Super Bowl, you can’t create substantial traffic for your website.
Consider Internet traffic as a large number of flowing rivers or streams. Some are big, for example searches on celebrities or news. Some are small: Mongolian Pottery designs from when the Mongolians ruled China could be a good example!
As an affiliate marketer your task is to find rivers and streams that are relevant to your chosen topic and to start directing some of the flow towards your website. How do you do this? From our experience and discussions with other affiliate marketers, we provide seven methods for how to do this (they have worked for us and some very successful affiliate marketers, and they will work for you):
Secret 1: Unique content. This is no big surprise. What is surprising is that so many marketers reproduce other peoples work and think it will bring success. Start by research highly searched topics and put your own spin on them. Google and the other search engines like this uniqueness, as do readers and future prospects.
Secret 2: Write articles. Writing articles is a great way to get exposure for yourself and your website. More importantly, it establishes yourself as an expert in a particular field or fields. In other words, your name or pen name becomes a name that people trust. Again write relevant and good quality articles that address peoples questions. In the bio box at the bottom, place a link to your website or affiliate website. There are hundreds of article sites on the website which you can submit to. www.ezinearticles.com is one of the most well known.
Secret 3: Submit articles to ezine: Ezines are one of the most powerful ways to generate revenue on the Internet. Do a search on Google for Ezine directories, and then search on these directories for relevant ezines in your field. Contact the ezine owner and ask if you can add an article to their ezine, along with a brief bio at the bottom advertising your website or affiliates website.
Secret 4: Groups and Forums: There are literally thousands of groups and forums on the Internet. Do a search on Google Groups or Yahoo Groups and find groups relevant to your field. You can either briefly advertise your website, or write a short article and include a reference to your website or affiliate website at the bottom.
Secret 5: Adwords: When done the right way, Adwords can be used make money through affiliate marketing. The trick is to be very specific and very targeted in your key word selection. Once you do this, test, test and test again.
Secret 6: U Tube: U Tube for many people is outside of their comfort zone, however if you get over the initial shock of being in a video on the Internet, you will find it can be a great way to generate traffic, as well as to support your status as a recognised expert in a particular field (of course do the research to make sure you are an expert!). The best way is to give a brief presentation or interview in your area of expertise and then advertise your site or affiliate site throughout or at the end.
Secret 7: Blogging: Blogging is a fantastic way to build up readership. Check our blogger or wordpress and you will be able to set up a blog within minutes. At the end of each article you write, include a reference to your affiliate marketers site. The key for successful blogging is to make the content relevant to the products you are selling.
As you start to build traffic, especially in the early days, it is easier and better to focus on quantity rather than quality (the only area this doesn’t apply to is Adwords where specific is necessary otherwise you will waste a lot of money).
Once you have the quantity you can work on ways to improve the quality of the traffic, and start improving the conversion ration of visitors to buyers.
If you follow the above seven secrets you will be well on the way to generating a lot of traffic for your website.
Cheers
Rusty O’Connor
Rusty O’Connor is an affiliate marketer with seven years experience. His areas of expertise include: ezines, adwords, articles and SEO. He is married with three young children and currently lives as an expat in the Middle East.
Want to know more about affiliate marketing please visit http://101affiliatemarketingideas.blogspot.com
Seven Rules For Starting a Business in 2009
November 8, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Every year the number of people starting up their own businesses increases.
The three main demographics for start-ups are
* Baby Boomers past their sell buy date in big corporates but with skills their erstwhile employers still need
* Moms (or Dads) who’d rather spend time home with the kids and still work
* Tech Grads who’d rather “compute” than “commute”
This is all part of a general direction toward “hollow” corporations where senior execs and accountants outsource everything they can. They can reduce fixed costs, overhead, and be more agile in resourcing projects.
There’s some good news for the Solopreneurs as well. Avoiding the daily commute, getting off the corporate tread mill, keeping more of what they make, taking a vacation or a day on the golf course once in a while.
But going solo isn’t totally a bed of roses. Most of the support structures we rely on when working in a corporation are suddenly missing.
* In the past we looked after Strategy, or Tactics, or Execution, or Administration. Now we have to worry about all of these, and it’s our nut we lose when it goes wrong.
* Few of us are properly trained as pure managers – keeping all those plates spinning isn’t as easy when one guy has to do everything, all at the same time. Things don’t get handled by organizational structures any more. In small businesses everybody does a bit of everything.
* IT support suddenly isn’t there – all that complicated stuff we took for granted now takes up our customer time (or more often our “me” time.
* We’re suddenly not part of the “networks” we used to rely on – we’re outsiders.
* We don’t have others bringing in the revenue – whether we like it or not, or are good at it or not, we end up “selling”.
We can make our lives easier if we can change our thinking – from corporate executive, part of a team, going along to get along, to being connected to the rest of the world.
The world is full of people like us, with the same interests, challenges and needs for support.
There are thousands of new businesses providing services to the Solopreneurs, adding value and reducing costs.
The Internet is moving at the speed of light. If we have an insoluble problem today, we’ll wait a bit, somebody will solve it for us, on the Internet.
If we can harness what’s happening on the Internet, and exploit it to our business advantage, we’ll replace the corporate structure benefits we miss and expand our networks and opportunities in the process.
Here’s a set of basics anybody going solo might want to consider:
1. Ditch the Desktop.
* There’s nothing more limiting than all that desktop, office productivity software. It’s expensive, complicated, but worst of all, it stops us being “connected”. Only be being permanently connected can be take full advantage of what’s happening out there.
2. Look for Services – not Solutions.
* Solopreneurs don’t need accounting systems or order processing, or even typical project management and CRM tools. They do need services to help them with these needs, but they’re all available on the Internet for free, or close to it.
3. Look for Value Add
* Every service should add value to the basic requirement. For example we all need billing software. If we choose a billing service that hooks up to merchant processing and or PayPal we don’t need to keep accounts receivables records. If we choose a planning or management system we should find one with “best practice built in”. We can forget the training course, and just use the software.
4. Forget the Marketing Site – get a Blog.
* Nobody’s interested in words we pay a copywriter for. They want to know what we think. Blogs are free, hosted, configurable and allow us to create our own persona. With a blog we don’t need sales pitches and presentations – we invite people to visit our blog where they get our best stuff, every time.
5. Get “Connected” with Social Media.
* Set up profiles with Linked In, Facebook, Community and special interest sites. Join in forums and contribute. Ask questions and answer other people’s. Replace the corporate network with your own, international, group of like minded souls.
* Get into Twitter – microblogging is the fastest way to find out about anything.
6. Get into “Video”.
* If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million – even if it’s just a video of our slide presentation.
7. Publish what you know about in blogs and articles.
* This is your credibility, and it’s permanent so worth doing well.
Some of the services the start-up might want to consider are the ones we use every day in our business. Here’s the list:
* Front Office Box for managing relationships, plans and schedules (it’s ours so we would)
* Google Aps for Email, Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations and web sites (we do our accounting in the spreadsheets)
* Wordpress and Blogger for blogs
* Twitter for microblogging
* You Tube and Screencast for video
* Jing for screen capture and video
* Skype for phones
* Cashboard for billing
* PayPal for merchant services
* Ning for our own user group forum
Steve Reeves, CEO of Front Office Box, accountant turned salesman, entrepreneur consultant, young enough to want to change the world, and old enough to know better. Visit Front Office Box for Steve’s blog and some Plan, Act Review software
Seven Benefits of Building Niche Blogs
November 6, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
In this article, I will describe 7 benefits of building niche blogs. A “niche” refers to a targeted market with profit potential that is not saturated with competitors. The whole idea is to realize the benefits of building niche blogs and then find the niche markets out there and start building.
Benefit #1
Niche Blogs are essentially niche websites that are alive!
That’s because your blog will grow as you continue to publish posts or pages regularly to your blog. In contrast, many niche websites are seldom modified or updated after they are created.
Benefit #2
Blogs are designed to publish and update contents easily once you have them set up, configured and running.
Once you get the hang of it, it’s a matter of getting into that habit of writing blog posts and pages and publishing them regularly.
Benefit #3
They are either FREE or cost very little to set up.
You can create your blogs easily by visiting blogger.com or wordpress.org and taking time to study and learn the “how-to”. That’s because your blog will grow as you continue to publish posts or pages regularly to your blog. In contrast, many niche websites are seldom modified or updated after they are created.
Benefit #4
You can make money with your niche blogs in many ways, such as:
- Publishing third-party ads in your blogs (eg. Google Adsense pubishing)
- Recommending affiliate products and services in your blogs (eg. Amazon)
Benefit #5
Unlike websites, blogs are interactive. Visitors, or blog readers, are usually allowed to post comments for a blog post (or article) to the blog owner.
This ‘dialog’ helps to build rapport and relationship between the blog owner and his visitors or members.
Benefit #6
Since blogs are usually updated regularly via blog posts and pages, blogs will rank higher in search engines as compared to websites. In contrast, you have to do a lot of tweaking to a niche website through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques.
Search engines will visit your blogs more regularly as you blog more regularly. Unlike websites, blogs are interactive. Visitors, or blog readers, are usually allowed to post comments for a blog post (or article) to the blog owner. This ‘dialog’ helps to build rapport and relationship between the blog owner and his visitors or members.
Thus, you can also place links of your other websites to get them indexed quickly by the search engines. You can syndicate the contents of your blog by allowing other website publishers to publish your feed (or channel) on their sites. This helps to bring more traffic to your blogs as the visitors of these sites subscribe to your feed via web-based or desktop newsreaders.
Benefit #7
A blog’s syndication function is its most powerful benefit!
You can syndicate the contents of your blog by allowing other website publishers to publish your feed (or channel) on their sites. This helps to bring more traffic to your blogs as the visitors of these sites subscribe to your feed via web-based or desktop newsreaders.
So, with the above benefits, doesn’t it make a lot of sense to start building niche blogs as quickly as possible?
Did you find this article useful? For more useful tips & hints, Points to ponder and keep in mind, techniques & insights pertaining to Google Ad sense, Do please browse for more information at our website :-
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Seven On-Page SEO Tips That Work For Your Website
November 2, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Search engine optimization is an emerging technology that keeps websites search engine friendly and ranking well. An optimized website will help generate more traffic and attract more potential clients. On-page optimization is one of the most essential elements to the SEO process and cannot be ignored at any level of your website. If your web designer or developer is ignoring on-page optimization techniques, then they are not working with your best interests in mind. Here are seven On-Page SEO tips that will work for your website.
Proper meta tags will help the search engines understand your website. Meta titles help people search for your individual pages by name, and meta descriptions will help people find your website by topic. Use your keywords to make meta tags accurate and descriptive.
Add new content to your website on a regular basis. We recommend adding an article or blog post a day in order to gain higher rankings. Search engines prefer larger sites over smaller ones, so new content for them to feed on is much appreciated. </p>
Target keywords which accurately describe your business/service/product/brand. Use these keywords throughout your headlines, subheadings and body copy with a proper keyword density of 2.5%. If you ‘keyword-stuff’ your content, chances are the copy will drive people off your site.
Avoid unnecessary javascript and flash. Search engines have difficulty with flash websites and will not acknowledge or accredit any of its content toward ranking. This would be referred to as a ‘waste of space’ to the spiders who are crawling you.
Build backlinks from quality, relevant websites. If you are a dermatologist, you may want to link to the products and brand sites that you are selling. You wouldn’t want to link to a company who sells hair gel, or were just sued by PETA for testing on animals.
Submit your website to the most relevant categories of various directories. Ensuring that your website is categorized correctly will only help your rankings.
Avoid Blackhat SEO techniques. Everyone has been tempted to cheat at least once in their lives, but hopefully you got that out of your system in grade school. Google does not take kindly to cheaters. You will be caught and risk being banned from the Internet. Yeah, it’s like that.
If you implement these SEO techniques well, your site’s ranking will improve on Google, Yahoo, Bing and any other search engine. This will also help your traffic increase and draw more of your target audience to consider your business and brand for their next investment.
Volacci.® Your Profit. Our Passion.
Ethan Luke. search engine optimization – Volacci is a Drupal SEO company providing marketing services to your Drupal website ranging from Search Engine Optimization, PPC Management, and SEM consultation.
Online Marketing Plan to Promote Your Coaching Business – Seven Simple Blog Traffic Strategies
November 2, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
If you’re a new coach or a seasoned coach new to promoting your coaching business online, here are seven simple strategies that are free and anyone can do them without any techno-difficulty. The key to the efficiency of these strategies is that the MUST be done regularly!
If you’re reading this and saying “do this already!” then skip the to bottom and ready why you’re not getting the response you think you could be.
1. Twitter Traffic – Tweet Blog posts & Articles
I have found that a wonderful source of traffic to my blog is from my Twitter followers. (I love you!) When ever I post to my blog (or if I publish and article) I send out a Tweet with the title and a shortened link. I can watch my traffic numbers & subscribers climb whenever I post and Tweet.
BONUS – Tweet your Facebook
This one is really simple. I use an application on Facebook that automatically imports my Tweets. Every time I Tweet about a blog post or an article it not only shows up on Twitter but it also shows up on my Facebook account.
2. Participate in forums & discussion groups
Just the reading and observing provides a wealth of market research. An added benefit is with regular participation and answering questions of your ideal prospect over time you establish yourself as an expert on the topics on which you share information. You will be pleasantly surprised at the members that will follow you because they like your communication within the group. That leads me to my next traffic building recommendation…
3. Email & forum signature
I would not recommend that you do any direct selling or promoting of your coaching business in your response to a question or comment by your ideal prospect within the discussion group or forum, however, you are usually given the opportunity to use a signature.
If you’re not already using a signature with every email that you send out you’re missing the opportunity to share with your connections not only who you are and what you do. Along with your name consider adding your business name with a link to your website. Adding a slogan or a quote that emphasizes your coaching message can be provocative and create curiosity for your reader to click thru to your website or blog.
4. Commenting on high profile blogs also read by your ideal prospect
In the beginning I underestimated the influence of commenting on other high profile blogs in your market. Everything about the comment is important including the content of the comment. Most people will tell you that commenting on other peoples blogs is great for creating backlinks – yes that is a powerful aspect of commenting. But also consider what I call “face value”. Face Value is the value presented to all those other faces looking at your comment. Other visitors that are engaged in the conversation about a particular post will subscribe to the comment feed. Everything from your name, the link back to your blog and your comment that adds value to the overall conversation is seen and read by many eyes. If you’re commenting on a blog where your ideal client also reads and comments you have the opportunity to share value and attract prospects to your website.
5. Articles
Think of every article as a sample of your coaching message. Each article that you publish with words and phrases that your customers use to describe their need, or the solution they’re looking for will increase your potential of being found by your ideal client.
For example, let’s just say that you write one article and publish in a high traffic article directory and you get 50 views in a month with 5 people clicking through from the link in your resource box. You have increased your traffic by 5 people in one month with 1 article.
Now consider publishing an average of one article per day. In one month you would have 31 articles with the potential of 50 or more views and if the same average number of click thru would give you 155 new visitors. The best thing about publishing articles is that they continue to draw traffic as long as they remain in the article directory – every day – all year. The number of view and visits to your website continue to increase.
6. Autoresponders
Really important to begin building an email list, more important is to stay in communication with the live hearts and minds on your list. Develop a relationship with the people that sign up to read more of your coaching message. Your email follow up, yes, even in an autoresponder is critical for the blossoming of your future business. Nurture your message in the hearts of your subscribers. Don’t miss an opportunity to touch their lives with the value of your message. Remember the three keys to grow your business – Connect, engage and make the offer. The emails sent to your subscribers need to do all three to bring your readers the most value and grow your business. The key to more traffic with your autoresponders is to use this tool to remind your prospects and customers to return to your website or blog to find value. Don’t just assume that your visitors will find there way back to your site – bring them back – invite them back.
7. Internet Radio
Start your own weekly Internet radio show. A weekly show will give you the ability to attract and engage an audience that are interested in your coaching message. Even better is to make it a live call in show where your guests can ask questions and make comments.
My absolute best source of exposure and business is my Internet radio show. The Get More Business Show is my platform where I express the value of the strategies that I offer in my coaching practice. I bring in guest experts that help me offer more in depth content on specific topics. Each weekly show is an education in some facet of growing your coaching business.
If you’re doing the above and not pleased with your traffic or conversion check the following:
1. Do you have a clear presentation of the solution you offer a specific market?
2. Is there a logical flow from each of the above tools that leads directly to the action you want the visitor to take?
3. Have you cultivated a following of IDEAL prospects, or are you just adding to your social media numbers?
4. Can you visitor easily find your email sign up?
5. Does your “information widget”, that is your information give-away something that your visitors recognize as valuable enough to exchange their private information for your gift?
There could be other reasons but these are just a few to get you started with trouble shooting.
I’d love to hear about what you’re doing to attract your ideal prospect and client.
Get a Jump on Your Competition and claim your free 6-week e-course that lays out a simple, yet powerful action plan to harness the power of Internet Marketing to build a lucrative coaching business, and create passive streams of income at Building Your Coaching Business.
Seven Tips for Renewing Your Business
November 2, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
For many of us small business owners, these past four years have been very hard. I have clients who were doing well nine years ago with a moderate amount of marketing, who over the past four years have seen those same marketing activities bring in fewer and fewer results. Many small business owners are currently faced with either going out of business or having to start again.
For me, I’m always up for a challenge! I’m always on the “see what else you can do” side of things. I feel a great deal of hope because of this past election and I think with renewed effort, and perhaps a few updated marketing strategies, we all can start rebuilding an economy where cash flows more freely.
If you find yourself with debts up to your ears and few reserves in your savings account but STILL adore what you do for a living and want to continue being self employed, here are seven suggestions for turning your situation around.
1. Now is a great time to reconnect with all the people you know through your business: this means your past, current and potential clients; your business colleagues; people you have met through networking; and perhaps even people you want meet and know. Send them a note that lets them know your doors are still open, that you feel hope for the future, and wish them the best in the coming time of reconstruction. The important thing is to communicate a sense of optimism and to offer a sincere wish that their business does well this coming year. Do it now, before the rush of business holiday cards gets started. Slip in a note about any current offerings for your business. If you have money, send a card. If you don’t, send an e-mail.
2. From the list of people to whom you sent your note, select a list of people you are now going to call personally. This is a second touch. When you call, use your basic networking skills. Ask: How are you doing? What’s new in your business? Have your target clients changed at all? What would you like me to tell someone I meet who might be a good potential client for you? In addition to keeping you in mind for referrals, is there anything else I can do to help you with your business? Put the other person first and communicate your interest. Then tell them about you and your business. Be sure to ask for what you want. “Do you know anyone who might need my product or service right now?”
3. Give yourself a block of time to reassess your marketing strategies. Keeping in mind that most marketing strategies are more like cultivating a garden than going out and shooting something for dinner, look for some new strategies you can get up and running quickly. Remember, the most effective strategies are those that get you DIRECTLY in front of your target clients or people who can refer them to you. Thus inviting a group of your target clients to come meet with you will be more effective than advertising.
4. This one is a biggie: Make yourself the focal point for a brand-new co-marketing group. Invite 5 to 7 other business owners, who have the same target clients as you do but provide non-competing products or services, to meet with you once a month. You can actually do this by free teleconference which saves everyone time and gas money. Have everyone teach the others about his or her business. Then brainstorm ways in which you can market together to the same clients.
5. If you have been holding back on using any of the up-and-coming marketing strategies, like using LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or writing articles on the internet to build your business, now is the time to take a crash course from someone who knows how to do these things and get started.
6. In fact, if you have never hired a business consultant or coach before now, and you have any money at all to invest in yourself as a business owner, now is the time to do it! Getting some professional advice, training, and help can short-cut the amount of time it will take you to turn your business around.
7. Finally, you must find some way to stay positive, motivated, intelligent, clear thinking, generous, and alive! These are qualities we all need right now and those small business owners who can bring them to their business life will become a magnet for clients and referral partners. If you are keeping a good face on when you are in public but feel a dread or fear in private, now is the time to learn how to change the way you think and feel. Really! Learning how to “Change your own mind” is tremendously useful skill, essential in helping you turn any situation around.
I wish you the VERY BEST of luck. May we all begin right now to co-create a better economy and a better world!
Dhyan Atkinson is a business skills trainer, coach, and consultant. She specializes in working with small business owners who love their work but are having trouble finding clients… including those who dread doing marketing and sales! Visit her website at www.SatisfactionByDesign.com and her blog at www.Marketing4Introverts.wordpress.com .
Seven Tips for Effective Blogging
October 28, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Tip #1: Write about what you know
Visitors to your blog are only interested in your blog if your blog has interesting content. Do you stay intrigued in a website if the content is boring? And what better way to make content more exciting than to add content about a topic you know? If you know a lot about motorcycles, start a block about it. Topics can include changing the carburetor or redoing the chrome on the headlights. If the topic is something you know, you’re writing will flow more naturally and hence read more naturally to visitors.
Tip #2 – Stay on topic
Using the motorcycles, your blog should not stray from motorcycle related issues. Do not start talking about the latest real estate news or golf carts. Talk strictly about motorcycle topics. Google AdSense parses the keywords in your blog and uses those keywords to place ads on your blog that are relevant to the content.
Tip #3: Quantity over quality?
This may seem counterintuitive. You want visitors to be interested in your site because the content is great. So quality is important, right? But, in order to get visitors, the quantity of content should be large meaning more keywords detected by search engines, which translates to higher spots in search results, right? Well, yes, they are both right. The ideal situation is a lot of high quality content.
Tip #4: Recycle
No news is good news. No news really means anything new to post on your blog. You do not necessarily need to keep posting new content. That is the perfect circumstance, but there is also a lot of information available on almost every topic ever written on the Internet. Taking that content, rewording it and posting it on your blog is recycling.
Tip #5: Post on a regular schedule.
Our posts have a schedule written on them, usually an “updated every week” bulletin. And guess what? We stick to it. There may not always be new content for such a posting schedule, so you can use the recycling idea. While a weekly schedule is hard to keep (everyone has a family), for more detail visit www.atoz-about-rss.com when you stick to a schedule, visitors can really on updated blog content, and they will return more frequently to your blog, increasing the likelihood of an AdSense click.
Tip #6: Be clear and simple
If talking about motorcycles, using motorcycle jargon is okay. Make your content understandable. Use easy to understand words, for more detail visit www.your-own-blog.com and make the format user friendly. You are talking to a large and varied audience, and it should not require an advanced engineering degree from MIT to read a blog.
Tip #7: Keywords, keywords, keywords
Google parses through the blog’s content to not only find relevant ads to put on the blog but also to rank the blog in its search results. Google will see the density of those keywords and associate your blog with motorcycle repair sites and include the blog with other motorcycle repair sites or blog when returning search results. This will drive traffic to your blog.
kpsharma
Most Important Seven Tips for Effective Blogging
October 28, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Tip 1: Write about what you know
Visitors to your blog are only interested in your blog if your blog has interesting content. Do you stay intrigued in a website if the content is boring. And what better way to make content more exciting than to add content about a topic you know. If you know a lot about motorcycles start a block about it. Topics can include changing the carburetor or redoing the chrome on the headlights. If the topic is something you know youre writing will flow more naturally and hence read more naturally to visitors.
Tip 2 – Stay on topic
Using the motorcycles, your blog should not stray from motorcycle related issues. Do not start talking about the latest real estate news or golf carts. Talk strictly about motorcycle topics. Google AdSense parses the keywords in your blog and uses those keywords to place ads on your blog that are relevant to the content.
Tip #3: Quantity over quality.
This may seem counterintuitive. You want visitors to be interested in your site because the content is great. So quality is important right. But in order to get visitors, the quantity of content should be large meaning more keywords detected by search engines which translates to higher spots in search results right. Well yes they are both right. The ideal situation is a lot of high quality content.
Tip 4: Recycle
No news is good news. No news really means anything new to post on your blog. You do not necessarily need to keep posting new content. That is the perfect circumstance but there is also a lot of information available on almost every topic ever written on the Internet. Taking that content rewording it and posting it on your blog is recycling.
Tip 5: Post on a regular schedule.
Our posts have a schedule written on them usually an updated every week bulletin. And guess what. We stick to it. There may not always be new content for such a posting schedule so you can use the recycling idea. While a weekly schedule is hard to keep everyone has a family for more detail visit www.atoz-about-rss.com when you stick to a schedule visitors can really on updated blog content and they will return more frequently to your blog, increasing the likelihood of an AdSense click.
Tip 6: Be clear and simple
If talking about motorcycles using motorcycle jargon is okay. Make your content understandable. Use easy to understand words for more detail visit www.your-own-blog.com and make the format user friendly. You are talking to a large and varied audience and it should not require an advanced engineering degree from MIT to read a blog.
Tip 7: Keywords keywords keywords
Google parses through the blogs content to not only find relevant ads to put on the blog but also to rank the blog in its search results. Google will see the density of those keywords and associate your blog with motorcycle repair sites and include the blog with other motorcycle repair sites or blog when returning search results. This will drive traffic to your blog.
Google parses through the blog content to not only find relevant ads to put on the blog but also to rank the blog in its search results. Google will see the density of those keywords and associate your blog with motorcycle repair sites and include the blog with other motorcycle repair sites or blog when returning search results. This will drive traffic to your blog.
For more information www.blog-and-ping.com www.profit-pulling-toolbars.com
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