What is Small Business Email Marketing?

Posted by admin | Direct Marketing Solution, Small Business Email Marketing | Thursday 12 February 2009 7:16 pm

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There are many keys to success for a small business and one of the most important is how cost effectively you acquire new customers and clients. The better you are at attracting new business for less money than your competitors the more profitable you are likely to be - assuming that the cost of getting those new customers is less than the revenues they create.

Another key to the profitability of each new customer is how long they remain customers, how much of what you sell they purchase, and how inexpensively you are able to handle their customer service requests.

The Internet in general and small business email marketing specifically make it possible for you to minimize the costs of acquisition and service for both new business and existing customers alike. Your advertising, promotion, marketing, and customer service dollars can be leveraged like never before.

First, let’s define what email marketing is. Simply stated it is sending marketing communications via email to individuals who request it. For example you put a special email address in your Yellow Pages ad or on your web site - one that references a particular product or promotion.

Once someone asks to be included - agrees that it’s OK to contact the via email, you may wish to use several email marketing channels such as ezines to customers, prospects or vendors; email product or seasonal promotions and so forth. In other words email marketing is the direct marketing solution for the 21st century - the electronic equivalent of sending a printed newsletter or sales brochure except, now it’s online.

All product purchases take place via a “buying cycle” from the moment a prospect first hears about it until the sale is consummated. Different industries and different products have longer or shorter buying cycles. Small business Internet marketing gives you the opportunity to pre-sell your products because the cost of communication is so low and inexpensive systems can easily be set up that push people along from one minor point to the next until they are ready to buy.

Whether the individuals are existing customers or new prospects email marketing allows you to pre-sell them, making them more likely to buy your product or use your service by giving them something/information of value before asking them to make the ultimate buying decision. Providing useful information to your prospects helps them make a more informed buying decision - resulting in greater product satisfaction and a more profitable transaction for you and your customer.

Small business email marketing is also a valuable method for communication between a your company, your business contacts and others - not just for pure marketing/sales reasons. When used effectively, it is an extremely efficient and affordable solution for keeping existing and potential customers & clients in the loop regarding up coming events, product offerings, sales, special promotions and much more. The most effective email marketing is targeted as specifically as possible to those individuals most likely to find the message’s content valuable, well-timed and relevant to them.

Also, because of its low cost email marketing is the perfect tool for increasing exposure of your products or services. Because most people check their email continually - if you have a valuable relationship with the people on your list, a higher response rate from your target audience over direct mail will be the likely result, all the while saving you time and money.

The use of email marketing as a direct marketing solution for small business continues to grow growing rapidly due to it affordability and effectiveness.

Small business email marketing? Try it, you’ll like it!

Important Note!
Realize Your Personal, Professional, and Business Potential
With A Little Help From Your Friends.

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How to Choose a Pay-Per-Click Firm That Turns Clicks into Clients

Posted by admin | Direct Marketing Solution | Friday 5 June 2009 12:52 pm

by Paul Rakovich

There are two paths that you can take when it comes to managing your pay-per-click advertising campaign online.  You can learn it yourself and make Google’s stock rise higher while you figure out the learning curve, then spend a lot of time keeping it running smoothly. Or, you can hire a professional pay-per-click firm to handle it for you.

I did both.

See, I know the position you’re in right now. I’ve been there.  I’ve hired and fired 2 pay-per-click management companies. I was forced to learn on my own and spend tens of thousands of dollars.

My Experiences with Outsourcing My Pay-Per-Click Needs

The first pay-per-click management company that I hired kept raising my budget and jacking up my costs-per-click.  Yet, I wasn’t getting any conversions!

So I decided to fire that PPC firm and manage my own pay-per-click campaigns. I studied under the top gurus like Perry Marshall. I bought all the ebooks and coaching programs. And, I spent more than $10,000.00 figuring everything out on my own until I grew a no name business into $50k per month in sales all from pay-per-click advertising.

But, I worked day and night on my pay-per-click campaigns. I spent a ton of time, money and effort on it. I couldn’t handle it anymore so I hired another pay-per-click firm to take over the accounts again.  They did a nice job and are still around today, but I saw some holes in their approach.

Now, I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. I want to help you choose a pay-per-click management company that’s actually going to help you turn clicks into clients.

Here are 7 Questions You Need to Ask Before You Hire a Pay-Per-Click Management Company:

1. This is going to piss people off:  How many accounts does an account manager handle? Just because you have a “dedicated” account manager doesn’t mean he/she isn’t dedicated to 50 other accounts.  This is not uncommon in some of the larger pay-per-click firms out there.  If they work 40 hours per week that’s less than 1 hour/week they are spending on your account, provided they do nothing but work on accounts every minute of the day.

2. Can I peek in and have access to my Google & Yahoo accounts? There’s a new breed of PPC management that keeps everything secret.  They are basically buying a click for $1.00 then charging you an undisclosed markup on the click.  That’s why their setup & management fees are low.  They’re making money on marking up your clicks.

3. What constitutes an improvement? You need to put in your order with the pay-per-click firm just like you would order a steak medium rare with a side of truffle fries to a waiter. Don’t be afraid to ask for help and don’t be afraid to speak up. For example: I want to increase sales while keeping my cost-per-sale under $50.

4. Do you track phone calls? If you are doing any part of the business offline then your pay-per-click management company should offer a way to track where your calls are coming from. Tracking calls back to specific keywords helps eliminate waste and will reveal high response terms you’ll want to dominate.

5. What are your prices? Now, don’t be cheap. There is no such thing as a Mercedes Benz for Honda prices.  I’ll admit some people don’t need the Mercedes, but if you are spending $2,000/month or more, chances are you at least need a certified, pre-owned BMW.

6. What is your experience? I’m all for giving the new guy a try. I was the new guy at one point.  Nothing, I repeat nothing can replace experience.  Experience comes from long hours of hard work.  There are no magic formulas.  Good solid basics and some creativity will always win in the end.

7. Will you involve me in the project? No one knows your business as well as you.  Get specific on how often you’ll meet to review the results and plan next steps. A good pay-per-click firm will welcome your input.  It is invaluable.

Now, it’s up to you. But, if you fail to ask the above questions, then you’re risking hiring and firing new pay-per-click management companies when things go south or spending tens of thousands of dollars learning how to do it yourself like I did. Learn from my pay-per-click outsourcing experiences.

Pay-Per-Click Expert Paul Rakovich grew a no-named business selling Tony Robbins CDs to doing $50,000.00 per month in sales with PPC advertising. Today, he manages PPC campaigns for plastic surgeons, dermatologists, clothing companies, dentists, lawyers, Internet marketers, a famous copywriter and more! Now get his FREE 5 PPC Fixes That Could Save You Thousands at http://www.clicksandclients.com & learn how to turn your clicks into paying clients.

Important Note!
Realize Your Personal, Professional, and Business Potential
With A Little Help From Your Friends.

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The Three Worst Marketing Mistakes You Can Make

Posted by admin | Business to Business Email Marketing, Direct Marketing Solution | Thursday 4 June 2009 2:47 am

Marketing is what we do that puts us in a position to make a sale. Good marketing makes selling easier. Bad marketing may make selling impossible.

We market to strangers so some of them will raise their hand with at least potential interest in what we have on offer.

We market to our clients and customers in order to move them up to the next level of products or services.

Most of us put a lot of time, money, and effort into marketing. For must of us it is the key activity we use to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.

But when we don’t deliver on the promises we make in our marketing we unleash the deadly 3/33 viruses on ourselves.

The 3/33 virus will destroy the marketing we have done in the past and it will make it very difficult to successfully market - at least to some prospects - in the future. And for the most part the 3/33 virus is a do-it-to-yourself process.

The 3/33 virus is word of mouth marketing on steroids - in reverse. Here’s how it works.

When you fulfill a promise, deliver excellent service, come in under budget, and save your customer more money than you said you would - they might tell 3 people. And that usually is because you asked them for referrals.

But if you screw up, don’t do what you said you would do, or fail to deliver in any way - in your customer’s mind - they will tell at least 33 people. This can be disaster.

You know I am speaking the truth. Remember the last time you got poor service in a restaurant and how many people you went out of your way to tell about it?

Here are three ways to guarantee that all the marketing you’ve done will backfire on you.

1. Don’t Do What You Said You’d Do
In 2006 I met the author of a marketing book at the Search Engine Strategies event in New York City. I had been receiving his email newsletter and had heard a few things about the book. A table where he could autograph books had been set up for him at the Search Engine Strategies meeting. When there was no one around I approached him and found him to be a very insightful person, someone whose book would probably be of value to our readers.

He offered to send me a review copy and I thanked him. After the event I emailed him a note with my mailing address. I never received the book. I received several emails to the address I had given him, but they were solicitations sent to everyone he’d come across at the search engine event.

I don’t know if he never intended to follow up with his promise, or if he turner it over to someone else, or what. The bottom line is that I will never have anything positive to say about him, his organization, or his book. That can’t be what this marketer had in mind when he went to the time, trouble, and energy to come to New York.

2. Disappear With Your Customer’s Money
The Internet makes it possible to hire people you will never see to do something you can not do and really have no way of knowing it will work until it’s too late, and pay them via your PayPal account before they’d even begun to do the work.

I have done this several times without incident. Recently however I hired someone, on the strength of another person’s recommendation, who kept my money and disappeared. He had promised to do the work within 48 hours of receiving my payment. But instead I heard nothing from him for six weeks, at which point he contacted me to see if there was some way to make up for his failure to follow through.

I was astounded, but since I’d already paid him I asked him to do something that was worth less than half of what he’d already been paid. Hey, we all deserve a second chance. What happened? Nothing, I never heard from him again.

It’s hard to say if I would have ever needed his services in the future anyway - so it was just a tedious time consuming event for me, getting someone else to do the job and so forth. But what did it do to the relationship I had had with the person who recommended him?

This was someone I trusted. Now I have to think twice about anything he has to sell me. And I am not going to tell my friends to do business with him in the future. Why would I take the chance he will recommend something or someone whose lack of performance comes back to bite me?

3. Embarrass Your Boss
Everybody’s got to serve somebody was a line in one of Bob Dylan’s songs. So no matter who you are or the position you have in your outfit - you do have a boss, maybe many of them.

Prior to events where I am registered as part of the media horde, I receive a stream of emails from companies that are making presentations or have exhibits there. A week before the 2007 Search Engine Strategies meeting in New York I received an interview request from the PR firm representing an organization I wanted to learn more about.

Actually I received three emails from them, each with open time slots, so I could chose one of the remaining times for the interview.

This is the way it’s always done. By the time I get to the site I have several one on one interviews set up with people whose message, I think, will be of value to our readers. So I emailed my choice of day and time, from one of the remaining time slots.

In this case however, the PR person never go back to me. How was that possible, that was his job?

I was curious about the lack of follow up, from a PR person no less, so I printed out the email I’d sent and took it along with me to the meeting.

On the second day of the search engine conference I scoured the exhibit halls and eventually found the person I had wanted to interview. I still wanted to talk with him if we could work out the time.

You can imagine his response to my story and the copy of my email when I presented it to him.

You can also guess the fate of the PR firm who had mishandled their account. It seems I was not the only person affected by this - one of whom was an industry leader the boss really wanted to meet.

So, who’s your boss? Whose opinions are important to you? Who do you serve? Are you doing everything you can and more to make sure you aren’t disappointing or embarrassing them?

How can you be sure to avoid the three worst marketing mistakes?

Only make promises you can keep, and keep the ones you make.

It’s as simple as that.

Important Note!
Realize Your Personal, Professional, and Business Potential
With A Little Help From Your Friends.

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Helpful Tips for Internet Conference Calls

Posted by admin | Direct Marketing Solution | Tuesday 12 May 2009 1:20 pm

Most Internet conference calls that we’ve seen are limited to 150 or so participants.  If you need or want to reach more people, you can schedule several conferences.  Just don’t schedule them too closely together, as the time may run longer than you expect.

Some, especially those using Internet conference call services for small business email marketing purposes, will have 2-3 calls set up during the same day/evening to accommodate more people as well as folks around the globe.

The people who attend one of these calls are invited to a special follow up call a little later. This is a two step prospecting approach that really works - especially when there is some minimal charge for the second call. Even if it is $1.00 the result is a very high probability that a sale will be made to the folks who attend the follow up call.

The entire article is here!

Important Note!
Realize Your Personal, Professional, and Business Potential
With A Little Help From Your Friends.

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Articles Marketing and Small Business Email Marketing The Perfect Marketing Combination

Posted by admin | Business to Business Email Marketing, Direct Marketing Solution, Small Business Email Marketing | Thursday 26 March 2009 3:12 pm

… Did I mention that this is a small business marketing strategy that costs next to nothing, other than your time researching and writing the articles themselves? You can easily set up an autoresponder system powered by a shopping cart program and distribute these articles in the form of an email newsletter.

This is not your conventional newsletter that requires you to go to the printer and distribute a three or four page synopsis of what’s going on in your company or community.  It is an electronic version of that old-fashioned, and in its time, most effective marketing and customer retention tool.

In order to set up your 21st century email newsletter, you need a small business marketing strategy that allows you to gather e-mail addresses.  Let’s say that you start out with one of your customer’s e-mail addresses.  You send them a copy of your electronic newsletter.  (Always ask for permission first)

If the newsletter includes some bit of advice that their friends would find interesting, encourage them to send it along to them.  Research indicates that most people have at least six friends that they contact regularly.

Read “How to Create an Effective Articles Marketing Strategy”

Important Note!
Realize Your Personal, Professional, and Business Potential
With A Little Help From Your Friends.

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A Detailed Guide to Small Business Email Marketing

Posted by admin | Business to Business Email Marketing, Small Business Email Marketing | Wednesday 11 March 2009 7:04 pm

Let me ask you a question - what do you think is the best direct marketing solution for your small business?
Is it direct mail?
Is it telemarketing?
Is it door to door marketing?
Is it email marketing?

Which one is it? If your answer was email marketing, pat yourself on the back. It is the right answer. If your answer was something else, you have got it wrong. Let me tell you why.

If you run a small business, your ultimate goal should be simple - to get a lot of new customers and clients, to retain existing customers, and to improve your business considerably. You should find the most effective way to do it and broaden the scope of your business slowly but surely.

The most effective way to get new clients and customers to your small business, like I already mentioned above, is email marketing. Why is small business email marketing considered the best way of direct marketing? Let us take a look.

The Internet has become an incredibly powerful medium and every day more of your potential and existing customers are using it to a greater and greater degree. At any given point of time, hundreds of millions of people access the Internet for various reasons - some of them are only 30 miles from you but who would never ever have known of your existence without the Internet.

If you have a strong online presence, the scope of your business will be increased beyond your wildest imagination - if all you do is connect with the people just outside where you are and just a little farther than they traditionally look for the products and services you offer.

When this wider audience you are now attracting - using bot online and traditional advertising and promotion - your number one objective is to capture then while they are there. They will never be back. You have one shot!

A business owner told me recently that his company’s web site gets 1,000 unique (for the first time) visitors a month. He does nothing other than offer a few articles and free tools - and gets 3% of them to opt in to his list.

If he had an actual strategy in place - because the visitors are 100% organic, there because the search engines sent them based on their inquiry, he could have as much as 15% growth in his database of prospects each month.

With the help of a 21st Century direct marketing solution, you can reach an unbelievably large number of people very easily. Let us now take a look at some of the most important things you should keep in mind about email marketing.

1. The newsletter you send out should be really attractive. It should contain the right mixture of images and content. But make sure you don’t overdo the images. If you do, it will take a lot of time for the pages to get loaded.

2. Small business email marketing should always be done on an opt-in basis. You send emails only to people who have opted to receive emails from you. Never ever send promotional emails to people without their explicit permission. This will create a very bad image for your business.

3. The sales copy is the most important thing about a newsletter. The copy should be interesting, intriguing, and compelling. After reading the copy, the reader should definitely take some action - call you, email you back, or check out your web site.

4. One of the most important reasons why email marketing is considered the best direct marketing solution for small businesses is that it is very simple, yet very effective. When you send out a newsletter to people, you usually include a link to your web site. Now, after reading the newsletter, if someone wants to know more about you and your business, all he needs to do is click on the link. It will take him to your web site and he can get a lot of information. In other words, it requires an extremely small effort from the customer - just a click of the mouse will do. So, response rates are usually high.

5. Sending emails to people is a nice way to remind them about the latest news from your side. You can also send promotional offers, discount coupons, service credits, and other such things to entice customers.

As you can see, running a small business email marketing campaign is really easy once you understand the process completely.

So, get started today and get the best results.

Important Note!
Realize Your Personal, Professional, and Business Potential
With A Little Help From Your Friends.

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Internet Marketing Explained

Posted by admin | Direct Marketing Solution | Wednesday 11 March 2009 12:57 am

One of the great things about small business Internet marketing is that the return on investment is extremely high. Let’s say you spend a $1000 on an Internet marketing package. A good expert will be able to generate a lot of organic traffic to your site and convert it into sales as well.

Just imagine - if your web site gets thousands of visitors every day, you will be able to make a killer income even if a very small percentage of those visitors buy your product or service. The revenue generated will be a lot more than the investment you made.

the rest of the story…

http://internetmarketingexplained.biz/2009/03/internet-marketing-explained-in-the-simplest-manner-possible/

Important Note!
Realize Your Personal, Professional, and Business Potential
With A Little Help From Your Friends.

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Three Killer Secrets For Small Business Email Marketing

Posted by admin | Direct Marketing Solution, Small Business Email Marketing | Monday 9 February 2009 6:18 pm

Small business email marketing can be a powerful and effective tool when you understand and apply these three awesome tactics for writing laser-focused response generating emails for your small business.

Don’t worry that you’re not a “great writer”- it simply isn’t necessary when it comes to effective email promotions. Great small business email marketing is 95% formula, and only about 5% creativity, and anybody can handle the 5%. In fact, if you do have a talent for writing, you might just find it a hindrance, especially if you would rather write “pretty” emails, instead of effective ones.

Customers really don’t care how good your prose is. They are concerned with one thing, and one thing only- what’s in it for them. With that in mind, the top three reasons someone will open, read, and respond to your small business email marketing messages are…

  1. They have a relationship with you. If the receiver knows you and can easily identify you as the sender of the message, most likely they will open and read it.
  1. Your offer is relevant to them right now. If they want your product or service at the time your e-mail arrives, they will probably open and read it.
  1. Your message offers them a good price on a product or service they want. Price sells when it comes to e-mail, and a compelling offer, discount, or special gets messages opened, especially if it’s found in the subject line.

If you can tie all three of these motivations together, your email promotions will blow the doors off your competition, and your writing skill has nothing to do with it. All you need to do is follow the simple, easily reproducible formula I’m going to give you.Don’t try to re-invent the wheel with your email promotions. Just focus on answering the three questions your customer is already asking when she opens your product or service focused email message:

  1. Who sent this to me?
  2. What’s in it for me?
  3. What do I need to do?

Since you know your customer will be asking these questions before you ever send your e-mail, you can now plan your messages by asking and answering them yourself first, and then filling in with the details of your offer. Beginning with the end in mind allows you to write powerful, response generating email copy almost effortlessly.For lots more in-depth information on small business email marketing visit http://www.power-email-marketing.com

Ben Fesxbe is a small business consultant and marketing professional specializing in email and internet marketing for off-line businesses. His website offers a FREE course on how to use email to market your small business. This text must remain intact for all re-publishing purposes, including all live text links. © 2007 by Ben Fesxbe.

Important Note!
Realize Your Personal, Professional, and Business Potential
With A Little Help From Your Friends.