Small Biz Marketing

Are You Still Selling The Old School Way? Then You’re Chasing Away The Majority Of Your Clients

I received an email from a guy I knew years ago. I hadn’t seen him about five years. But since I recognized his name, I thought I’d see what he was up to.

In his email, he stated he had started up a new business and was making contact with all his old lists to get the word out. Would I like to join some of his groups?

Okay. So I clicked and started following some of the paths. And sure enough, it was just as I suspected.

40+ year olds have a problem. They are old school. They grew up in a time of old school marketing where you sell, sell, sell everything you do. And many haven’t learned the lessons of that type of selling in today’s world.

If you sell all the time, you’ll alienate yourself very, very quickly.

People don’t “sell” in the old way anymore. In fact, if you do, you’ll discover pretty quickly that you’ll hit a wall and won’t quite understand why.

Think about how most people live in a 24 hour period of time.

They get up and check email and Facebook. They get ready, send the kids to school, and grab their tablets for a few minutes of work. Check social accounts. Check email. Then it’s off to a meeting at the local coffee house.

You’re there a little early, so you settle down and create a blog post. Send it off. Pin it to Pinterest. Send it through your Google+ status update. Then answer a text or two. Connect with a few friends and acquaintances, and recommend a few new resources you’ve found to your followers. And conduct your meeting.

Call into the office, surf to find new information, and handle some client work. Attend a networking meeting, then it’s off to a soccer game with the kids.

Cook dinner, and check email in between. Watch your favorite reality show, finish up with a little business, login to Facebook one last time, and it’s off to bed.

See? Nowhere in there did I mention “sit through a sales presentation”.

In some cases you will still meet with people and discuss sales. But for the most part, you find everything you need by following people and hearing their recommendations. When you need something, you reach out to your social community and ask. They will lead you down the path to your best choice.

Yet I se 40+-somethings make that mistake all the time. They automatically think sales instead of relationships. They instantly assume they have to sell you instead of build a relationship with you. Even when you know them from your past.

In today’s world, a sale is created in three ways.

1. Building trust.

2. Establishing a relationship

3. Proving your expertise

And more and more, you do that with content. Content is what drives the business world of the future. And if you don’t get that, you’ll get lost in the “old world”.

It’s coming quicker than you think. Are you ready for the new world?

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Blogs can benefit any website but don’t worry if you can’t do all the writing yourself … you can hire a ghost blogger for that!

Is Traditional Marketing The Best Way?

August is winding down, and my daughter is now officially back in her Junior year of high school. We’ve had a lot of long and interesting conversations over the summer as she begins to lay down the path for her future.

On one hand I would love to have her do the traditional way – high school, great college for four years, and find a job. Yet in reality, I know most kids that opt for that lifestyle will find anything but success. It’s just not in the cards any more because we’ve changed as a society over the past decade.

And what is facing today’s high school and college students is also facing adults too.

If you plan on working at a company for years, doing one job until you retire, and then planning on a nice retirement for the rest of your life – well, you really are in for a surprise.

So like many people, you decide to start a side business, and hope it turns into something more. Something that will help you build a comfortable income now and well into the future.

Yet if you read anything on marketing, its very old school and very traditional. Five years ago, Facebook didn’t exist, and social media meant something entirely different than it does today.

If you receive an email, a postcard, or even a newspaper at home today, chances are you barely give it a second glance when it comes to finding people to do business with. Why rely on a business telling you how great they are, when you can find “friends” online that will gladly recommend someone they’ve had an excellent record with?

So how do you market a new business? How do you find relevant information that will help you build a business for the future?

It’s really not as hard as it sounds. [Read more…]

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Blogs can benefit any website but don’t worry if you can’t do all the writing yourself … you can hire a ghost blogger for that!

Are You Making These SEO Mistakes?

Depending on when you jump in to the online world, you could be learning old “tricks” that will actually do you more harm then good.

I get spam almost daily from SEO companies offering me top placement in Google.

And we met with a past client the other day who had his son doing some work for his site. His son took dozens of keywords, put them at the bottom of his site, and made the text color the same as the background color to “hide” the keywords, giving him more keywords for better search rankings. Guess what – Google knows that trick and you can easily be banned from Google’s rankings by doing that type of work.

The benefits of SEO are clear – do a good job with it and you’ll be high in the search engine rankings in all the places your clients are looking. But how do you know what’s good – and what’s bad?

Tip #1 – Never trick the search engines

If it seems a little tricky and a little sneaky, it is. While it may seem like the Internet is still fairly new, in reality its been around long enough to weed out the good and the bad. Google likes quality. It rewards sites that provide quality content, in a quality way. That’s why they are constantly rewriting their algorithms to bring in only quality work. If you do something to try and “trick” your way into better placement, you’ll lose. The only way to the top is hard work, consistency, and quality content. [Read more…]

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Blogs can benefit any website but don’t worry if you can’t do all the writing yourself … you can hire a ghost blogger for that!

The Secret To Small Business Marketing

It really isn’t a secret when you’re business is doing well. Everywhere you go, people can feel your success. Maybe it’s your energy. Maybe it’s the way you present yourself. In any case, when people sense success, they tend to ask how you got there.

So is there a magic formula to success? Is there some secret that a successful business has that they could simply pass along to everyone else?

Actually, the answer is yes.

1. Do a little research. In today’s world, you can’t hide your road to success. So spend a little time looking around, and discover how a successful company is marketing their business. Are they online? How do they advertise (i.e. magazines, newspapers, radio, direct mail)? What message are they sharing?

2. Talk with the company owner. Every industry has its own internal structure. Look for organizations, tradeshows and associations within your industry. Attend the major events and make sure you get the latest publications. Study up on the industry leaders and find out what they are doing.

3. Find mentors and vendors that can help you emulate the success. If you know an industry leader is getting 50 percent of his business through the Internet, find someone to help you create a dynamic web presence. Discover how to use social networking more effectively. And begin studying up on online marketing techniques.

Then don’t stop. The reason why the majority of small business marketing methods fail is because the business owner doesn’t give them enough time to work. Commit to a handful of ideas, and see them through to success.

Don't forget to download your FREE Blogging Planner today.

Blogs can benefit any website but don’t worry if you can’t do all the writing yourself … you can hire a ghost blogger for that!

How Email Looks In 2010 And In 2020

If I say the word “email” what comes to mind?

Studies show that as of today, 90 percent of all email sent is SPAM related. Scary. Yet can you imagine not having an email address? When you meet someone, isn’t your email address almost as important as a phone number?

Email still works today. But what about tomorrow? the future of email

Colleges are shutting down their email programs because students never check email. When professors or administration would send out notices to students, most of their email goes unanswered. Why? Because students use social media and smart technology way more than adults do. Why bother with something that predominately has things you have no desire to receive, read, or use?

What should you use instead? Go with the masses. Which means Facebook.

Facebook is the second largest search engine, has well over 300 million active users, and has more time spent on average by a user than any other site. When someone receives a notice in their Facebook account, via wall, “email” or through groups, they read and take notice.

How about other technology?

Let’s talk Kindle and Nook and iPad – they allow you to instantly receive new subscriptions to the information you truly want. It’s easy to set up a Kindle subscription to your blog posts (take a look at mine for my photography niche), or create an app for the iPad very easily.

Have a podcast, either video or audio, in which you promote your business by handing out tips? ITunes allows you to have instant access to podcasts – and people will gladly use iTunes to sort and house the information they truly use.

If you send RSS through your blog, you can instantly feed into an RSS reader on whatever the tool of choice is – mobile device, Smart phone, iPad, or whatever comes up in the future.

Does that mean email is dead today? No. But be aware that it’s changing. You need to build your list today in a variety of ways. As one goes away, implement another. Always give choices to your customers, and realize they are at all levels of the spectrum. One may truly love your on Kindle – the other barely understands email. Your goal isn’t to force a client into a particular method; its to allow them to receive information in the manner they prefer.

Don't forget to download your FREE Blogging Planner today.

Blogs can benefit any website but don’t worry if you can’t do all the writing yourself … you can hire a ghost blogger for that!