Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Media outlets are in the news business. And as you can tell from the close resemblance between the words "news" and "new," the mission of the media is to bring you interesting and timely reports on what's new. If you're an entrepreneur or organizational marketer and you feed your news about what's new to the media at the appropriate time, you're helping both them and yourself. You give them news to share, and you receive credibility and exposure to potential customers.
Ah, but what is the appropriate time? Media deadlines are the most important element in proper timing. Follow these guidelines to make the publicity process work in your favor.
In one group are radio, television, newspapers and web sites, which have short-range deadlines, and in another group are magazines, which have considerably longer-range deadlines. For the short-range deadline media, one week is generally enough lead time for those media outlets to pick up your story. For magazines, the lead time depends on the publication schedule: Monthly magazines need to receive your press releases or pitches 3-6 months ahead of time, while those published every other month need even longer lead time. Weekly magazines need 3-6 weeks advance notice, whenever possible.
When announcing events or looking for coverage for them (as opposed to, say, announcing a new product or providing perspective on a trend), you often need to add a few weeks to the lead time, because daily media often have a weekly rather than daily publication schedule for their calendar listings. That is, upcoming events get published in a batch once a week on Thursday or Friday rather than every day.
The biggest timing complications arise with a product launch, because magazines need to receive your publicity materials 2-3 months before the newspapers, radio, TV and websites in order for them to feature new stuff around the same time. If you rely simply on press release distribution for publicity, either magazine coverage will lag way behind the other media or the newspaper etc. coverage will be premature.
Solve that dilemma by sending publicity materials directly to the magazines at least three months before you want the coverage to appear, then wait until the week before you want the coverage to hit up the newspapers, radio, TV and websites, either by contacting them directly as well or by doing a general press release distribution. That's right - do publicity in two batches.
Using the guidelines above, plan your timing carefully so you don't have publicity appearing before your product is ready for purchase or after it's too late for customers to plan to attend your events.
Bonus Tip: Improve your timing even more by looking up or requesting a publication's "editorial calendar." This is an issue-by-issue rundown of planned topics - for instance, the March 16 issue will cover network security, the March 23 issue software upgrades and so on. If you dovetail your publicity with a particular publication's editorial calendar, you're practically a shoo-in!
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
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I will seek to answer those questions here, as well as to provide a Day Planner to enable the new online entrepreneur to navigate the maze of building a successful online business. When I find great advice by other writers, I will include that information as well. --- Clinton Douglas IV, Founder of Vasrue.com |
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Selling Expired Domain Names - Simple Ways to Monetize Your Domain Trading Business
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Selling expired domain names forms an important aspect of domain trading, and a domain trader who excels in this activity can accumulate internet riches within a short time. A domain trader who is also a seasoned web master will have an edge over an inexperienced trader. An expired domain name that displays a considerable amount of traffic tend to have a lot of commercial value and it may sell for a very high price. There are a few numbers of domain-trading entrepreneurs, who are earning thousands of dollars every year. With little bit of basic knowledge and trading skills, even you can buy and sell domains to make a handsome amount of profits.
Here is some basic information and details that will help you conduct your domain trading business:
Step# 1: The first right step in domain trading business is finding a good and relevant keyword attached with the domain. Ensure that you are choosing a keyword not used frequently by people. A good keyword analyzer will help you evaluate and assess the commercial viability of a particular keyword. You can find a number of free keyword search tools in the market. But, they may not offer the best of features required to conduct a research. As far as possible, buy a good keyword tool that offers additional utilities to make your research better and complete. Paid keyword trackers also offer you additional details on a selected keyword like density, search probability and keyword demand placed by people. A carefully chosen keyword will assist you choosing the most suitable expired domain name.
Step# 2: Monetizing an expired domain name means adding value and empowering it to earn more money for your efforts. Monetization is an economic activity of entailing an expired domain with an opportunity to earn meaningful income. Hence, you may wish to buy a web hosting package and design a good web site. You may ask why you need a web hosting package and a dedicated web site. You can use the designed web site to drive traffic from that site to the purchased expired domain. Your overall focus should be to ensure enough traffic to the domain.
Step# 3: Selecting a good themed web site works wonder for your site visitors. You can even design a web site with a page or two to attract your visitors. If you wish you can add and incorporate relevant content to your web site.
Step# 4: You will also need to help and assistance of other service providers to monetize the expired domain name. Possible ways of monetizing your expired domain are enrolling your web portal with a good affiliate program or other commercial programs like Adsense. These lucrative programs provide you an opportunity to earn income by the way of click-through commission.
Step# 5: Traffic building is perhaps the best known monetization technique. If you are confident, you can even buy traffic from a commercial seller; ensure that you are buying a good pack of organic and generic traffic and not incentive ones. A good traffic pack will enable you to increase the overall traffic to your site by other portals. To enhance the viability of your traffic, you can register and upload the domain with major search engines and online directories. The ultimate secret to your expired domain trading business is to build links over a period, so that the domain becomes commercially ready to reap a rich harvest.
Finally, when you feel that your expired domain is ready for auction with a rich deposit of traffic, you can initiate the process by subscribing to major auction sites. If the expired domain based site is good, you can expect to sell it for a premium price.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Selling expired domain names forms an important aspect of domain trading, and a domain trader who excels in this activity can accumulate internet riches within a short time. A domain trader who is also a seasoned web master will have an edge over an inexperienced trader. An expired domain name that displays a considerable amount of traffic tend to have a lot of commercial value and it may sell for a very high price. There are a few numbers of domain-trading entrepreneurs, who are earning thousands of dollars every year. With little bit of basic knowledge and trading skills, even you can buy and sell domains to make a handsome amount of profits.
Here is some basic information and details that will help you conduct your domain trading business:
Step# 1: The first right step in domain trading business is finding a good and relevant keyword attached with the domain. Ensure that you are choosing a keyword not used frequently by people. A good keyword analyzer will help you evaluate and assess the commercial viability of a particular keyword. You can find a number of free keyword search tools in the market. But, they may not offer the best of features required to conduct a research. As far as possible, buy a good keyword tool that offers additional utilities to make your research better and complete. Paid keyword trackers also offer you additional details on a selected keyword like density, search probability and keyword demand placed by people. A carefully chosen keyword will assist you choosing the most suitable expired domain name.
Step# 2: Monetizing an expired domain name means adding value and empowering it to earn more money for your efforts. Monetization is an economic activity of entailing an expired domain with an opportunity to earn meaningful income. Hence, you may wish to buy a web hosting package and design a good web site. You may ask why you need a web hosting package and a dedicated web site. You can use the designed web site to drive traffic from that site to the purchased expired domain. Your overall focus should be to ensure enough traffic to the domain.
Step# 3: Selecting a good themed web site works wonder for your site visitors. You can even design a web site with a page or two to attract your visitors. If you wish you can add and incorporate relevant content to your web site.
Step# 4: You will also need to help and assistance of other service providers to monetize the expired domain name. Possible ways of monetizing your expired domain are enrolling your web portal with a good affiliate program or other commercial programs like Adsense. These lucrative programs provide you an opportunity to earn income by the way of click-through commission.
Step# 5: Traffic building is perhaps the best known monetization technique. If you are confident, you can even buy traffic from a commercial seller; ensure that you are buying a good pack of organic and generic traffic and not incentive ones. A good traffic pack will enable you to increase the overall traffic to your site by other portals. To enhance the viability of your traffic, you can register and upload the domain with major search engines and online directories. The ultimate secret to your expired domain trading business is to build links over a period, so that the domain becomes commercially ready to reap a rich harvest.
Finally, when you feel that your expired domain is ready for auction with a rich deposit of traffic, you can initiate the process by subscribing to major auction sites. If the expired domain based site is good, you can expect to sell it for a premium price.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
5 Ideas to Help Sell Out Your Events
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Jim Romanik
Unless attendance at an event is mandatory, getting people to register comes down to sales. You, as the event planner need to convince the event participants that attending your event is the best use of their time and money. Even if your event is free and intended to be fun such as a Christmas party, you still need to show people that attending your event is better than anything else that they could be doing.
For some events, the promotional material (mailers, emails, etc.) will list the benefits and do a good job of communicating the value of an event to prospective attendees. This will help get people to the registration form, but the sale isn't closed until they click the submit button.
Here are five tips to keep in mind for your promotional material and your registration forms to help you get the sale.
Clearly state the benefits of attending.
Clearly stating how people will benefit by attending your event is one of the best ways to encourage people to register. Make your benefit statements descriptive and put them in terms that prospective event participants can relate to. Here are two examples:
"When you leave this event, you will have ten new strategies for motivating your staff that will result in less turnover."
"In this workshop, you will learn the real differences between software A and B, so you can make the right decision for your business and avoid a buying mistake that will cost you time and money."
Use a good title
Most event titles are similar to "2006 Annual Convention". This tells you what it is, but doesn't really catch your attention. Try adding a benefit or other interest grabbing words to the title such as the one below.
2006 Annual Convention - See the new industry technology that will keep you competitive.
Clearly state what the price includes
Everyone perceives price differently. Some may say it's too high, while other people will pay it and not complain. Itemizing what your event includes will help to show people who think it's too high the value of what they will receive. Outline items such as speaking events and the number of instructional hours, to meals and conference materials.
Talk about the food
Everyone likes a good dinner and most conventions have several meal functions and usually a final banquet.
Rather than listing the meals as "Monday Lunch" or "Dinner and Awards Banquet" create some anticipation around the event by giving more details such as the dinner options, what is for dessert, how fresh the ingredients will be, how many awards the chef has won, etc.
Use testimonials
Testimonials from previous events can be a powerful motivator. Make sure the testimonials you use are descriptive and demonstrate how the person benefited by attending the event.
About the Author:
Jim Romanik - founder of ePly Online Event Registration Software (http://www.eply.com)
We are online registration experts and treat your reputation as our own to build registration forms that help your events succeed and make people wonder how you did it.
Download our Free Guide - "What Every Event Planner Should Know About Online Event Registration" at: http://www.eply.com/lp/articles.html
Copyright © 2009 Jim Romanik
Unless attendance at an event is mandatory, getting people to register comes down to sales. You, as the event planner need to convince the event participants that attending your event is the best use of their time and money. Even if your event is free and intended to be fun such as a Christmas party, you still need to show people that attending your event is better than anything else that they could be doing.
For some events, the promotional material (mailers, emails, etc.) will list the benefits and do a good job of communicating the value of an event to prospective attendees. This will help get people to the registration form, but the sale isn't closed until they click the submit button.
Here are five tips to keep in mind for your promotional material and your registration forms to help you get the sale.
Clearly state the benefits of attending.
Clearly stating how people will benefit by attending your event is one of the best ways to encourage people to register. Make your benefit statements descriptive and put them in terms that prospective event participants can relate to. Here are two examples:
"When you leave this event, you will have ten new strategies for motivating your staff that will result in less turnover."
"In this workshop, you will learn the real differences between software A and B, so you can make the right decision for your business and avoid a buying mistake that will cost you time and money."
Use a good title
Most event titles are similar to "2006 Annual Convention". This tells you what it is, but doesn't really catch your attention. Try adding a benefit or other interest grabbing words to the title such as the one below.
2006 Annual Convention - See the new industry technology that will keep you competitive.
Clearly state what the price includes
Everyone perceives price differently. Some may say it's too high, while other people will pay it and not complain. Itemizing what your event includes will help to show people who think it's too high the value of what they will receive. Outline items such as speaking events and the number of instructional hours, to meals and conference materials.
Talk about the food
Everyone likes a good dinner and most conventions have several meal functions and usually a final banquet.
Rather than listing the meals as "Monday Lunch" or "Dinner and Awards Banquet" create some anticipation around the event by giving more details such as the dinner options, what is for dessert, how fresh the ingredients will be, how many awards the chef has won, etc.
Use testimonials
Testimonials from previous events can be a powerful motivator. Make sure the testimonials you use are descriptive and demonstrate how the person benefited by attending the event.
About the Author:
Jim Romanik - founder of ePly Online Event Registration Software (http://www.eply.com)
We are online registration experts and treat your reputation as our own to build registration forms that help your events succeed and make people wonder how you did it.
Download our Free Guide - "What Every Event Planner Should Know About Online Event Registration" at: http://www.eply.com/lp/articles.html
Friday, March 27, 2009
How I Choose Which Products To Promote
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Willie Crawford
Once it became known that my subscriber database was approaching 800,000 (across numerous niches - some fairly obscure), I started getting dozens of joint venture proposals every day. These "JV proposals" are generally just requests to become an affiliate for their product, or to help with an impending product launch.
Most of the proposals I get are in the internet marketing niche, while less than 1/4th of my database is in that niche. If a product isn't a perfect match for a niche, I don't consider offering it to that niche. Experience has taught me that offering inappropriate products is one of the quickest ways to lose your list!
I thought that it might be useful to share some of how I decide which products to promote and why those criteria matter. This should prove useful to both product owners looking for joint venture partners, and to those also trying to decide which products they will promote.
Here are some of the questions that I consciously ask myself:
1) What does it do, and is this something that my subscribers both need and already want? If they want it but I don't feel that they need it, then offering it to them may cause an ethical dilemma. I don't compromise my ethics! If they don't want it, and aren't already looking for it, then making sales can also be an uphill climb.
If it's too difficult to explain what it does, then the sales process will have to be protracted. If it's just "the next shiny thing," then telling my subscribers about it is probably more of a distraction than a service.
2) Does it really work if my customers will just use it? A skilled copywriter can make burnt toast soaked in hemlock sound appealing! What value does the product actually add to the stream of life?
3) Do I know the product owner and feel that they are reputable and someone I want to trust with customers whom I care about and nurture? I work very hard at building a relationship with my customers and trying to actually help those willing to be helped. I won't do anything to un-do years of hard work.
4) Has the product owner ever promoted one of my products and how much effort did they put into it. Many people have been trained to point out that they are a subscriber or customer in a joint venture proposal. My question then becomes did you become a subscriber, or buy my $5 product, just so that you could stick that in your joint venture proposal. Did you register as an affiliate, and then promote no harder than making one blog post... which barely generated 10 clicks?
5) Are they a member of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle, my membership site, where they are both exposed to the culture of my online operations, and I get to interact with them... and get a feel for them and their business accumen and standards?
This my mastermind where we discuss many complex issues related to marketing, and running an online business. If you are a member, then you will have been exposed to many important concepts necessary for success, and that puts you ahead of many of your competitors.
6) Does this compete directly with one of my own products or projects, or one of my clients' products or projects? As a business owner, it's generally foolish to sell a direct competitor's product instead of my own... though not always. I also feel an obligation to promote my clients products before promoting those of someone that I don't have a relationship with.
7) Is it appropriately priced for the value that it delivers? After testing/using/studying the product, do I honestly feel that it's worth the price being charged? Will it deliver many time that much value to my customers who actually use the product?
8) How good is their customer service? How do they provide customer service? Will my customers who have problems be able to easily reach someone? Do they have a helpdesk so that there is an easy way around email deliverability issues? Do they have an easy to find phone number and mailing address? Is it clear WHO owns the business?
9) When is it being released, and how will the release or launch be handled? Is there sufficient lead time to sequence it into my calendar without interferring with one of my own or one of my clients' projects? Will the tools that I prefer to use have time to work, or am I forced to only mail for a 2-3 day period after which the product is no long available? How much hype will surround the launch, and what long-term impact will this have on my customers?
10) Will there be long-term demand for this product, or will the market forget that it even exists in a week? Can I use tools that will deliver a steady stream of orders over the long-term, or is this a product that there might be alot of short-term demand for but that customers will likely set aside in favor of "the next shiny object" next week?
11) One year from now, will my customers be happy that I introduced them to this product? Is this something that is easy enough to use, and that they can easily sequence into their business processes/systems in a way that they will still be benefitting from the product a year from now?
12) Would I buy the product if I fit the profile of "the ideal customer?" Knowing the product as well as I do, after thoroughly studying it, would I buy it if I didn't already own it, IF I were the target customer that it was designed for?
13) If I did a previous promotion for them, did the product owner pay commissions promptly? Running my own business, where I pay numerous professionals for their expertise in a timely fashion, I prefer spending funds recently paid to me over tapping into capital that I've already invested/employed in other places.
Late payments combined with a lack of communication WILL result in my refusing to ever do future promotions for a given company or individual. If they mistreat a business partner then they will likely mistreat my customers.
14) Am I really satisfied with all of the answers I gave myself to all of the questions above. Am I being totally honest with MYSELF, and am I... by promoting this product, living up to the standards that I set for myself?
If I can answer yes, to all of the above questions, then I will consider promoting a product. If not, then I should politely decline promoting that product, pointing out why if asked.
About the Author:
Willie Crawford is one of the world's leading Internet marketing authorities, and an in-demand joint venture broker. Most of his mentoring is done in a group setting on the member-only discussion forum at: http://TheInternetMarkeingInnerCircle.com Join that discussion to experience phenomenal business growth!
Copyright © 2009 Willie Crawford
Once it became known that my subscriber database was approaching 800,000 (across numerous niches - some fairly obscure), I started getting dozens of joint venture proposals every day. These "JV proposals" are generally just requests to become an affiliate for their product, or to help with an impending product launch.
Most of the proposals I get are in the internet marketing niche, while less than 1/4th of my database is in that niche. If a product isn't a perfect match for a niche, I don't consider offering it to that niche. Experience has taught me that offering inappropriate products is one of the quickest ways to lose your list!
I thought that it might be useful to share some of how I decide which products to promote and why those criteria matter. This should prove useful to both product owners looking for joint venture partners, and to those also trying to decide which products they will promote.
Here are some of the questions that I consciously ask myself:
1) What does it do, and is this something that my subscribers both need and already want? If they want it but I don't feel that they need it, then offering it to them may cause an ethical dilemma. I don't compromise my ethics! If they don't want it, and aren't already looking for it, then making sales can also be an uphill climb.
If it's too difficult to explain what it does, then the sales process will have to be protracted. If it's just "the next shiny thing," then telling my subscribers about it is probably more of a distraction than a service.
2) Does it really work if my customers will just use it? A skilled copywriter can make burnt toast soaked in hemlock sound appealing! What value does the product actually add to the stream of life?
3) Do I know the product owner and feel that they are reputable and someone I want to trust with customers whom I care about and nurture? I work very hard at building a relationship with my customers and trying to actually help those willing to be helped. I won't do anything to un-do years of hard work.
4) Has the product owner ever promoted one of my products and how much effort did they put into it. Many people have been trained to point out that they are a subscriber or customer in a joint venture proposal. My question then becomes did you become a subscriber, or buy my $5 product, just so that you could stick that in your joint venture proposal. Did you register as an affiliate, and then promote no harder than making one blog post... which barely generated 10 clicks?
5) Are they a member of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle, my membership site, where they are both exposed to the culture of my online operations, and I get to interact with them... and get a feel for them and their business accumen and standards?
This my mastermind where we discuss many complex issues related to marketing, and running an online business. If you are a member, then you will have been exposed to many important concepts necessary for success, and that puts you ahead of many of your competitors.
6) Does this compete directly with one of my own products or projects, or one of my clients' products or projects? As a business owner, it's generally foolish to sell a direct competitor's product instead of my own... though not always. I also feel an obligation to promote my clients products before promoting those of someone that I don't have a relationship with.
7) Is it appropriately priced for the value that it delivers? After testing/using/studying the product, do I honestly feel that it's worth the price being charged? Will it deliver many time that much value to my customers who actually use the product?
8) How good is their customer service? How do they provide customer service? Will my customers who have problems be able to easily reach someone? Do they have a helpdesk so that there is an easy way around email deliverability issues? Do they have an easy to find phone number and mailing address? Is it clear WHO owns the business?
9) When is it being released, and how will the release or launch be handled? Is there sufficient lead time to sequence it into my calendar without interferring with one of my own or one of my clients' projects? Will the tools that I prefer to use have time to work, or am I forced to only mail for a 2-3 day period after which the product is no long available? How much hype will surround the launch, and what long-term impact will this have on my customers?
10) Will there be long-term demand for this product, or will the market forget that it even exists in a week? Can I use tools that will deliver a steady stream of orders over the long-term, or is this a product that there might be alot of short-term demand for but that customers will likely set aside in favor of "the next shiny object" next week?
11) One year from now, will my customers be happy that I introduced them to this product? Is this something that is easy enough to use, and that they can easily sequence into their business processes/systems in a way that they will still be benefitting from the product a year from now?
12) Would I buy the product if I fit the profile of "the ideal customer?" Knowing the product as well as I do, after thoroughly studying it, would I buy it if I didn't already own it, IF I were the target customer that it was designed for?
13) If I did a previous promotion for them, did the product owner pay commissions promptly? Running my own business, where I pay numerous professionals for their expertise in a timely fashion, I prefer spending funds recently paid to me over tapping into capital that I've already invested/employed in other places.
Late payments combined with a lack of communication WILL result in my refusing to ever do future promotions for a given company or individual. If they mistreat a business partner then they will likely mistreat my customers.
14) Am I really satisfied with all of the answers I gave myself to all of the questions above. Am I being totally honest with MYSELF, and am I... by promoting this product, living up to the standards that I set for myself?
If I can answer yes, to all of the above questions, then I will consider promoting a product. If not, then I should politely decline promoting that product, pointing out why if asked.
About the Author:
Willie Crawford is one of the world's leading Internet marketing authorities, and an in-demand joint venture broker. Most of his mentoring is done in a group setting on the member-only discussion forum at: http://TheInternetMarkeingInnerCircle.com Join that discussion to experience phenomenal business growth!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Should You Use Publicity to Defend Your Reputation? Publicity Dilemma 1
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Suppose you inadvertently get involved in a project that receives public criticism. Maybe the founder of a charity for which you were a spokesperson embezzled the money. Or an anthology to which you contributed turned up at the scene of a crime. Should you issue a press release disassociating yourself from such dishonorable events?
In most cases, no.
Surprised? Keeping quiet when you feel your reputation is becoming tarnished certainly goes against the natural impulse to defend yourself. Ask yourself two all-important questions before you rush to act, however: First, were you directly named and attacked in reference to this event? And second, are you certain that nearly everyone you do business with already knows about the incident? If the answer to both questions is yes, then go ahead and defend yourself vigorously with a press release, a statement on your web site, an email to your subscriber list and every other form of messaging you can think of.
If your answer to both questions is not yes, then hold back. You might very likely be making things worse by responding.
Think of it this way: Someone you previously thought well of suddenly shows up proclaiming "I am not a crook!" or "I did nothing wrong!" If you had not heard of the incident that prompted this protest, or if you'd run across it but hadn't paid attention, you couldn't help becoming curious now. And one of three things can happen next. You learn the story and decide that the person protesting non-involvement did have some responsibility for the events. Or you don't look into the story but go on remembering that the person was accused of something terrible. Or you listen to the person's defense and decide they are indeed 100% blameless.
Two out of three of those outcomes - and maybe even the third as well - are worse than the original situation, where you were unaware of the incident. Ask someone wrongly accused of a crime sometime whether or not their acquittal totally washed away the taint of being charged and tried.
The same reasoning applies to defending your honor in the letters to the editor column of the newspaper. Too often an angry defense puts you in a worse light than the original article. Why? First, some people who did not see the offending article will read the letter, thus increasing awareness of the very news item you were trying to squelch. And second, people who write such letters in anger or indignation do not usually come off well to an uninvolved reader. Do you want people in your community to be thinking of you as a thin-skinned hothead? Third, understand that you are probably over-reacting. The material that upset you probably didn't come across as negatively to others as it did to you.
This goes for someone saying negative things about you online, also. I'll never forget receiving an email from a best-selling author who was upset about a critical review of one of his books that I posted on Amazon.com. He tried to convince me that I was wrong. I pitied the guy for wasting energy on me. A mix of negative and positive reviews is actually a good thing for an author - more convincing than just praise, praise, praise. Prospective book buyers can read the varying opinions and decide who they agree with. And ditto for opinions expressed on blogs or in discussion forums.
So don't be so quick to charge to your defense when someone says or implies something bad about you. If you truly feel your reputation is at stake, find a communication professional to review the situation and your reply with you before you send off a response. More often than not, you're best off keeping your indignation and self-vindication to yourself.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Suppose you inadvertently get involved in a project that receives public criticism. Maybe the founder of a charity for which you were a spokesperson embezzled the money. Or an anthology to which you contributed turned up at the scene of a crime. Should you issue a press release disassociating yourself from such dishonorable events?
In most cases, no.
Surprised? Keeping quiet when you feel your reputation is becoming tarnished certainly goes against the natural impulse to defend yourself. Ask yourself two all-important questions before you rush to act, however: First, were you directly named and attacked in reference to this event? And second, are you certain that nearly everyone you do business with already knows about the incident? If the answer to both questions is yes, then go ahead and defend yourself vigorously with a press release, a statement on your web site, an email to your subscriber list and every other form of messaging you can think of.
If your answer to both questions is not yes, then hold back. You might very likely be making things worse by responding.
Think of it this way: Someone you previously thought well of suddenly shows up proclaiming "I am not a crook!" or "I did nothing wrong!" If you had not heard of the incident that prompted this protest, or if you'd run across it but hadn't paid attention, you couldn't help becoming curious now. And one of three things can happen next. You learn the story and decide that the person protesting non-involvement did have some responsibility for the events. Or you don't look into the story but go on remembering that the person was accused of something terrible. Or you listen to the person's defense and decide they are indeed 100% blameless.
Two out of three of those outcomes - and maybe even the third as well - are worse than the original situation, where you were unaware of the incident. Ask someone wrongly accused of a crime sometime whether or not their acquittal totally washed away the taint of being charged and tried.
The same reasoning applies to defending your honor in the letters to the editor column of the newspaper. Too often an angry defense puts you in a worse light than the original article. Why? First, some people who did not see the offending article will read the letter, thus increasing awareness of the very news item you were trying to squelch. And second, people who write such letters in anger or indignation do not usually come off well to an uninvolved reader. Do you want people in your community to be thinking of you as a thin-skinned hothead? Third, understand that you are probably over-reacting. The material that upset you probably didn't come across as negatively to others as it did to you.
This goes for someone saying negative things about you online, also. I'll never forget receiving an email from a best-selling author who was upset about a critical review of one of his books that I posted on Amazon.com. He tried to convince me that I was wrong. I pitied the guy for wasting energy on me. A mix of negative and positive reviews is actually a good thing for an author - more convincing than just praise, praise, praise. Prospective book buyers can read the varying opinions and decide who they agree with. And ditto for opinions expressed on blogs or in discussion forums.
So don't be so quick to charge to your defense when someone says or implies something bad about you. If you truly feel your reputation is at stake, find a communication professional to review the situation and your reply with you before you send off a response. More often than not, you're best off keeping your indignation and self-vindication to yourself.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Do We Need to Buy Ads to Get Media Coverage? Publicity Dilemma 4
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
A well-known product development expert claims that few magazines feature new products these days, and of those that do, almost all of them print articles only about companies that advertise in the magazine. The game is "pay to play," he says, so if you write and distribute a release about a new product without buying ads in the magazines that reach your target market, you are wasting your time.
Is that true?
As a publicity expert and a former freelance writer for national magazines, I'm a bit more tuned in to magazines than the average person, and from my vantage point, this claim seems wildly mistaken.
Here's what I find in a consumer magazine that happens to be on my kitchen counter today - Everyday with Rachael Ray. This magazine covers cooking and entertaining tips, tied into a popular TV show on the Food Network. In the front of the magazine, Everyday contains a section called "Yum" that highlights new products from Orville Redenbacher, Target, Bed and Bath, Hammacher Schlemmer, and products or services from smaller companies Ilium Software, ThinkGeek and Banpresto. Not a single one of those companies has an advertisement in that issue.
Taking the same kind of look at a business magazine, Fast Company, I find in the "what's new" section near the front (which is where most publications cover new stuff), articles on new offerings from Panjiva, David Rockwell, Philips and StemSave. Again, not one of these companies has an advertisement in that issue of the magazine.
I agree that sometimes, in some magazines and papers, advertisers do get favored treatment in the non-ad pages, either in advertorial columns that are not clearly labeled as such, or through implications by sales representatives or editors that they'll be covered if they advertise. But this happens almost exclusively with smaller publications. The larger and more prestigious the publication, the less this happens. That's because it's a time-honored principle of journalistic ethics that advertising and editorial copy must be functionally separate.
By and large, then, you do not have to buy advertising to get media coverage for a new product. Follow the tips below and maximize your chances for publicity.
New Product Publicity Tips
1. Focus your release or product pitch on the benefits buyers get from the product. What can they do, have or avoid because of it? Whenever pitching, don't forget to mention the price and where people can buy the item.
2. Take advantage of three prime opportunities to promote your product: First, whenever it's brand new; second, for the Christmas holiday season; and third, for special sections related to other holidays like Mother's Day, Father's Day, or graduation season, or to a traditional time of year for promoting certain items, like cruises in January, wedding guides in February or March or back-to-school items in late August. For the Christmas holiday season, get the scoop on who's looking for which kinds of items at GiftListMedia.com.
3. Make photos available. Some press release distribution services now allow you to send a photo or even a short video along with a release for no extra charge. And if you go to the trouble of sending a product sample to publications, include photos too or indicate on your accompanying cover letter how they can get high-resolution photos from you instead of having to take them themselves.
4. Do you have a do-good angle? If you donate a portion of profits to a charity, or have something like organic or LEED certification, mention it in your publicity materials. Some publications and some product roundups focus on environmentally safe or child-safe or charity-friendly products only.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
A well-known product development expert claims that few magazines feature new products these days, and of those that do, almost all of them print articles only about companies that advertise in the magazine. The game is "pay to play," he says, so if you write and distribute a release about a new product without buying ads in the magazines that reach your target market, you are wasting your time.
Is that true?
As a publicity expert and a former freelance writer for national magazines, I'm a bit more tuned in to magazines than the average person, and from my vantage point, this claim seems wildly mistaken.
Here's what I find in a consumer magazine that happens to be on my kitchen counter today - Everyday with Rachael Ray. This magazine covers cooking and entertaining tips, tied into a popular TV show on the Food Network. In the front of the magazine, Everyday contains a section called "Yum" that highlights new products from Orville Redenbacher, Target, Bed and Bath, Hammacher Schlemmer, and products or services from smaller companies Ilium Software, ThinkGeek and Banpresto. Not a single one of those companies has an advertisement in that issue.
Taking the same kind of look at a business magazine, Fast Company, I find in the "what's new" section near the front (which is where most publications cover new stuff), articles on new offerings from Panjiva, David Rockwell, Philips and StemSave. Again, not one of these companies has an advertisement in that issue of the magazine.
I agree that sometimes, in some magazines and papers, advertisers do get favored treatment in the non-ad pages, either in advertorial columns that are not clearly labeled as such, or through implications by sales representatives or editors that they'll be covered if they advertise. But this happens almost exclusively with smaller publications. The larger and more prestigious the publication, the less this happens. That's because it's a time-honored principle of journalistic ethics that advertising and editorial copy must be functionally separate.
By and large, then, you do not have to buy advertising to get media coverage for a new product. Follow the tips below and maximize your chances for publicity.
New Product Publicity Tips
1. Focus your release or product pitch on the benefits buyers get from the product. What can they do, have or avoid because of it? Whenever pitching, don't forget to mention the price and where people can buy the item.
2. Take advantage of three prime opportunities to promote your product: First, whenever it's brand new; second, for the Christmas holiday season; and third, for special sections related to other holidays like Mother's Day, Father's Day, or graduation season, or to a traditional time of year for promoting certain items, like cruises in January, wedding guides in February or March or back-to-school items in late August. For the Christmas holiday season, get the scoop on who's looking for which kinds of items at GiftListMedia.com.
3. Make photos available. Some press release distribution services now allow you to send a photo or even a short video along with a release for no extra charge. And if you go to the trouble of sending a product sample to publications, include photos too or indicate on your accompanying cover letter how they can get high-resolution photos from you instead of having to take them themselves.
4. Do you have a do-good angle? If you donate a portion of profits to a charity, or have something like organic or LEED certification, mention it in your publicity materials. Some publications and some product roundups focus on environmentally safe or child-safe or charity-friendly products only.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
We're Trying to Do Good But Got No Response: Publicity Dilemma 3
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
"We have a worthy cause, but our press releases about it aren't getting picked up anywhere," says one of my subscribers. "What else can we do to get media coverage?"
When a plain old press release doesn't attract media interest in your cause, it's time to inject the outreach for your do-good project with one or more of the following ingredients.
Five Irresistible Publicity Elements for Non-profits
1. A photogenic scene. Your news item transforms from dull to dazzling when you think up a way to inject children, puppies, chocolate, dance, puppets, balloons or angry protesters into the mix. Color, action, comedy and cuteness all help attract cameras and pensters alike. Stay away from clichés like shovels at a groundbreaking or oversized checks being handed from a sponsor to a charity.
2. A challenge. Suspense or drama is the second ingredient that helps attract the media. This might take the form of a contest (who will win?), an attempt to break a record (such as the world's biggest potluck dinner), a surprising comeback attempt (septuagenarians for Saturn High) or a fundraising wilderness trek (combating snakes, swamps and no sense of direction). And yes, publicity stunts still work.
3. A heartwarming story. Crown your "poster child" - a person, family, animal or place that embodies a feel-good story, about a triumph over adversity, a homecoming, opposites coming together, enemies reconciling, unlikely devotion or an amazing talent. Instead of issuing a dry, factual recital about your cause, entice the media with an emotional tale. Whatever tugs at the heartstrings has an excellent chance of capturing media attention, too.
4. A holiday tie-in. Holidays include not just Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's but also Mother's Day, Veteran's Day, Martin Luther King Day, Passover, Earth Day and Labor Day. Many times a year, media people have to fill up pages or airtime with holiday-related stories that they would rather not come across as exactly the same as the previous year's or as their competitor's holiday-related stories. Create a connection between your cause and a holiday or season of the year, and you are helping the media do their job. And did you know you can create your own holiday? Simply choose a day of the year, come up with a name for the day, write up a blurb about your idea and submit it to Chase's Calendar of Events, a standard reference book found in most libraries. That always seems to give your holiday an official status that makes the media want to share it with the public.
5. Star power. In my community, any Hollywood great showing up shoots to the top of the news. For instance, the news that actress Kathleen Turner was going to headline a fundraiser for a local movie house that specializes in presenting independent films got front-page treatment, and will indubitably do so again when the event occurs. (Turner's daughter attends a local college.) Can you pull strings to get the governor or an Olympic record holder to appear? Or maybe you can rustle up a dead celebrity in the form of an autograph or painted portrait going on the block at your charity auction.
The more you understand about what the media are constantly on the lookout for, the more easily you are invited into the media spotlight. With a little imagination and initiative, it's a manageable challenge.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
"We have a worthy cause, but our press releases about it aren't getting picked up anywhere," says one of my subscribers. "What else can we do to get media coverage?"
When a plain old press release doesn't attract media interest in your cause, it's time to inject the outreach for your do-good project with one or more of the following ingredients.
Five Irresistible Publicity Elements for Non-profits
1. A photogenic scene. Your news item transforms from dull to dazzling when you think up a way to inject children, puppies, chocolate, dance, puppets, balloons or angry protesters into the mix. Color, action, comedy and cuteness all help attract cameras and pensters alike. Stay away from clichés like shovels at a groundbreaking or oversized checks being handed from a sponsor to a charity.
2. A challenge. Suspense or drama is the second ingredient that helps attract the media. This might take the form of a contest (who will win?), an attempt to break a record (such as the world's biggest potluck dinner), a surprising comeback attempt (septuagenarians for Saturn High) or a fundraising wilderness trek (combating snakes, swamps and no sense of direction). And yes, publicity stunts still work.
3. A heartwarming story. Crown your "poster child" - a person, family, animal or place that embodies a feel-good story, about a triumph over adversity, a homecoming, opposites coming together, enemies reconciling, unlikely devotion or an amazing talent. Instead of issuing a dry, factual recital about your cause, entice the media with an emotional tale. Whatever tugs at the heartstrings has an excellent chance of capturing media attention, too.
4. A holiday tie-in. Holidays include not just Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's but also Mother's Day, Veteran's Day, Martin Luther King Day, Passover, Earth Day and Labor Day. Many times a year, media people have to fill up pages or airtime with holiday-related stories that they would rather not come across as exactly the same as the previous year's or as their competitor's holiday-related stories. Create a connection between your cause and a holiday or season of the year, and you are helping the media do their job. And did you know you can create your own holiday? Simply choose a day of the year, come up with a name for the day, write up a blurb about your idea and submit it to Chase's Calendar of Events, a standard reference book found in most libraries. That always seems to give your holiday an official status that makes the media want to share it with the public.
5. Star power. In my community, any Hollywood great showing up shoots to the top of the news. For instance, the news that actress Kathleen Turner was going to headline a fundraiser for a local movie house that specializes in presenting independent films got front-page treatment, and will indubitably do so again when the event occurs. (Turner's daughter attends a local college.) Can you pull strings to get the governor or an Olympic record holder to appear? Or maybe you can rustle up a dead celebrity in the form of an autograph or painted portrait going on the block at your charity auction.
The more you understand about what the media are constantly on the lookout for, the more easily you are invited into the media spotlight. With a little imagination and initiative, it's a manageable challenge.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
How to Fine Tune Your Domain Trading Business to Earn More Money
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Most of us buy a good expired domain at a hefty asking price and add that domain to our ever growing inventory of domains. But, we also forget to work on them immediately to make them commercially viable and profit making. Failure to turn your collection of expired domains into commercial entities will lead to a certain financial disaster. Smart expired domain entrepreneurs make it a point to subject their expired domains to all sorts of monetizing treatments, so that they can recover their investment within the shortest possible time. Once you purchase your domain and register it with a registrar, you may wish to start working on it immediately.
The most common method to monetize your domain is to follow these simple steps:
a) Create a min site of a page or two and add relevant content to the pages. Once this site is up and running, you can subscribe the portal to a lucrative program like Adsense. Adsense is a famous web site monetization program.
b) Another intelligent thing to here is to attract web site visitors to clock on some sponsored advertising banner in the form of an Adsense box.
Tips: Ensure that you are using latest and advanced SEO techniques while inserting content.
Note: You may also need to check the accumulated traffic in your site. If you perceive that the traffic generated is disappointing, then you may need to change the content to make it more suitable for the advertising.
Caution: Whatever you do, just ensure that you are recovering the cost of maintaining your expired domains like annual registration charges.
When you host an Adsence campaign, you have to make sure that the expired domains make enough money. You may wish to set a definite goal for each of your expired domains. As a starter, you can set a goal of around $10 everyday for each of your expired domains. Now, you will need to work towards making your goals a big success.
Here is a simple income generation scenario:
Let us say that you have 10 expired domain based Adsense web sites. Your main goal is to earn about $10 per site every month. If you compute the monthly income, the anticipated value is 10 x $10 = $100 per month or $1200 per month.
Building traffic to your Adsense web sites:
Targeted content composed with relevant keywords is known to bring more number of visitors. The content that you insert must ensure the following two objectives:
1) What people are looking for right now
2) What are the most suitable keywords that an advertisers is likely to pay
Advertisers also look for those keywords that are in stiff competition among themselves; these keywords will get instant attention, as they are more likely to generate increased income. Keyword selection demand considerable amount of work and the most sensitive details include:
Top bid price suggested by competitors
Traffic generated during a given period of time
Average traffic generated during the time
Perceived advertiser's competition suggested.
Profitable keyword selection seems to be the ultimate success mantra to your expired domain trading business. Research efforts focused towards finding the best possible expired domains should be your top priority.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Most of us buy a good expired domain at a hefty asking price and add that domain to our ever growing inventory of domains. But, we also forget to work on them immediately to make them commercially viable and profit making. Failure to turn your collection of expired domains into commercial entities will lead to a certain financial disaster. Smart expired domain entrepreneurs make it a point to subject their expired domains to all sorts of monetizing treatments, so that they can recover their investment within the shortest possible time. Once you purchase your domain and register it with a registrar, you may wish to start working on it immediately.
The most common method to monetize your domain is to follow these simple steps:
a) Create a min site of a page or two and add relevant content to the pages. Once this site is up and running, you can subscribe the portal to a lucrative program like Adsense. Adsense is a famous web site monetization program.
b) Another intelligent thing to here is to attract web site visitors to clock on some sponsored advertising banner in the form of an Adsense box.
Tips: Ensure that you are using latest and advanced SEO techniques while inserting content.
Note: You may also need to check the accumulated traffic in your site. If you perceive that the traffic generated is disappointing, then you may need to change the content to make it more suitable for the advertising.
Caution: Whatever you do, just ensure that you are recovering the cost of maintaining your expired domains like annual registration charges.
When you host an Adsence campaign, you have to make sure that the expired domains make enough money. You may wish to set a definite goal for each of your expired domains. As a starter, you can set a goal of around $10 everyday for each of your expired domains. Now, you will need to work towards making your goals a big success.
Here is a simple income generation scenario:
Let us say that you have 10 expired domain based Adsense web sites. Your main goal is to earn about $10 per site every month. If you compute the monthly income, the anticipated value is 10 x $10 = $100 per month or $1200 per month.
Building traffic to your Adsense web sites:
Targeted content composed with relevant keywords is known to bring more number of visitors. The content that you insert must ensure the following two objectives:
1) What people are looking for right now
2) What are the most suitable keywords that an advertisers is likely to pay
Advertisers also look for those keywords that are in stiff competition among themselves; these keywords will get instant attention, as they are more likely to generate increased income. Keyword selection demand considerable amount of work and the most sensitive details include:
Profitable keyword selection seems to be the ultimate success mantra to your expired domain trading business. Research efforts focused towards finding the best possible expired domains should be your top priority.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
How To Write A 300 Page Book In Four Months
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Mark Silver
There's a lot of hoopla about becoming an author of your very own business book. The promise of fame and fortune is very alluring.
Yet your book remains perpetually 'about to be' written. Or, you've sequested yourself for weeks or months to write your book, only to come out with something you feel luke-warm about.
Meanwhile your business has ground to a halt.
Hmmm.... might there be a better way to get a book written?
Immersion is needed.
The purpose of a novel is to entertain. The author takes you out of your reality into a world they've constructed or described. To do that, many fiction authors do go on retreat, or sequester themselves in some way in order to immerse themselves in their created world.
The purpose of your business' book is... why do you want to write a book, really? Besides the fame and fortune ;), I mean...
Why you need to write your book.
You need it for many of the same reasons you need a website. It allows people to enter into the world of your solution, without betting the farm.
Never mind if they're too shy to make your workshop, or not ready to hire you for whatever it is you do. They can, and will, get your book.
And, once they read your book, if it's good, they'll come back for more.
But what about the 'if it's good' piece? How do you write a good book?
The secret: You're not writing a book.
Stop thinking of your project as a 'book.' What you're really doing is writing a workbook. Or an instruction manual. A how-to guide.
Your business solves a problem of some sort. Your product or service helps them solve this problem. Your 'book' should tell them how to do it.
Your book gives your readers and customers what they need in order to solve the problem on their own. It gives them an accurate description of the problem. It gives them the process of how to face and solve the problem. It gives the philosophical foundation, if necessary.
How I wrote a 300 page book in four months.
Here's the secret: it actually took four years. I gave my very first workshops. Then, participants asked if I could 'write up these exercises' for them. So I did.
Those exercises evolved into handouts. Which evolved into multiple handouts. Which evolved into workbooks.
Then I taught several different workshops, and with each one I went through the process of handouts to workbooks. Then I beefed up each of the workbooks a bit, in response to folks who weren't clear about what I had written.
After a few years it dawned on me: hmmm, I have about 150 pages in five different workbooks. Over about four months, with the support of my wife and my master mind group, I went through those workbooks so they could stand alone, and added an introduction and a conclusion.
The result: 300 pages and tens of thousands of dollars in sales, because the book is solid, and actually applies to real life. I didn't dream it up on retreat, far from the people who would be using it.
Are you getting the drift here? Your book should be written while immersed in your business, with your customers, with the problems they face, and the questions they ask you.
There must be more to it than that, eh? Well, yes, a few things. Keep reading:
Keys to Writing Your Book
It can be short, to begin with.
I wrote a 300 page book, but, in retrospect, it could've been shorter. If the first thing you write is a 20 page workbook, and it's useful and works for your customers, then go with it!
You can keep expanding it later as you need to.
You don't need a publisher.
For your business, forget about a publisher. Even if a publisher picked you up, what would happen? They would leave you the responsibility of doing 95% of the marketing anyway.
This is a bigger subject to be addressed, but believe me when I say that you can be very successful without a publisher, going the self-published route. Check out:
http://www.lulu.com
or
http://www.cafepress.com
It's not your book, it's your FIRST book.
You might be tempted to never finish your book, because you keep learning and growing, and thinking of things to add in.
Use your heart, and look at it from your reader's perspective. Where is a natural stopping point? Then, you can save the rest of your material for your second book. And your third. Believe me, once your finish your first book, it's addictive, and you'll start writing others.
Getting a book written doesn't need to be a mysterious or artificial process. Let your work with your customers organically pull it out of you, then polish it off. Then write your next one. The best to you and your business, Mark Silver
About the Author:
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line. He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the globe succeed in business without losing their hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online: http://www.heartofbusiness.com
Copyright © 2009 Mark Silver
There's a lot of hoopla about becoming an author of your very own business book. The promise of fame and fortune is very alluring.
Yet your book remains perpetually 'about to be' written. Or, you've sequested yourself for weeks or months to write your book, only to come out with something you feel luke-warm about.
Meanwhile your business has ground to a halt.
Hmmm.... might there be a better way to get a book written?
Immersion is needed.
The purpose of a novel is to entertain. The author takes you out of your reality into a world they've constructed or described. To do that, many fiction authors do go on retreat, or sequester themselves in some way in order to immerse themselves in their created world.
The purpose of your business' book is... why do you want to write a book, really? Besides the fame and fortune ;), I mean...
Why you need to write your book.
You need it for many of the same reasons you need a website. It allows people to enter into the world of your solution, without betting the farm.
Never mind if they're too shy to make your workshop, or not ready to hire you for whatever it is you do. They can, and will, get your book.
And, once they read your book, if it's good, they'll come back for more.
But what about the 'if it's good' piece? How do you write a good book?
The secret: You're not writing a book.
Stop thinking of your project as a 'book.' What you're really doing is writing a workbook. Or an instruction manual. A how-to guide.
Your business solves a problem of some sort. Your product or service helps them solve this problem. Your 'book' should tell them how to do it.
Your book gives your readers and customers what they need in order to solve the problem on their own. It gives them an accurate description of the problem. It gives them the process of how to face and solve the problem. It gives the philosophical foundation, if necessary.
How I wrote a 300 page book in four months.
Here's the secret: it actually took four years. I gave my very first workshops. Then, participants asked if I could 'write up these exercises' for them. So I did.
Those exercises evolved into handouts. Which evolved into multiple handouts. Which evolved into workbooks.
Then I taught several different workshops, and with each one I went through the process of handouts to workbooks. Then I beefed up each of the workbooks a bit, in response to folks who weren't clear about what I had written.
After a few years it dawned on me: hmmm, I have about 150 pages in five different workbooks. Over about four months, with the support of my wife and my master mind group, I went through those workbooks so they could stand alone, and added an introduction and a conclusion.
The result: 300 pages and tens of thousands of dollars in sales, because the book is solid, and actually applies to real life. I didn't dream it up on retreat, far from the people who would be using it.
Are you getting the drift here? Your book should be written while immersed in your business, with your customers, with the problems they face, and the questions they ask you.
There must be more to it than that, eh? Well, yes, a few things. Keep reading:
Keys to Writing Your Book
I wrote a 300 page book, but, in retrospect, it could've been shorter. If the first thing you write is a 20 page workbook, and it's useful and works for your customers, then go with it!
You can keep expanding it later as you need to.
For your business, forget about a publisher. Even if a publisher picked you up, what would happen? They would leave you the responsibility of doing 95% of the marketing anyway.
This is a bigger subject to be addressed, but believe me when I say that you can be very successful without a publisher, going the self-published route. Check out:
http://www.lulu.com
or
http://www.cafepress.com
You might be tempted to never finish your book, because you keep learning and growing, and thinking of things to add in.
Use your heart, and look at it from your reader's perspective. Where is a natural stopping point? Then, you can save the rest of your material for your second book. And your third. Believe me, once your finish your first book, it's addictive, and you'll start writing others.
Getting a book written doesn't need to be a mysterious or artificial process. Let your work with your customers organically pull it out of you, then polish it off. Then write your next one. The best to you and your business, Mark Silver
About the Author:
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line. He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the globe succeed in business without losing their hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online: http://www.heartofbusiness.com
Sunday, March 22, 2009
How To Recruit Team Members For Your Network Marketing Opportunity
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Michelle Penfold
The skills to build a strong sales team are some of the most important elements for success in network marketing. Many people make the mistake of not supporting their team members when they recruit them. This can never bring success to your enterprise.
How To Recruit Team Members For Your Network Marketing Opportunity
Empathize with your prospect: in order to be successful you will need to build a good relationship with your prospect. Answer all questions and always be professional and friendly. Be sure that your prospects and team members can always get in touch with you. You can use different methods of communication like; phone numbers and online messengers. Before your prospects join your opportunity they need to trust you and know that you will work with them.
Do not try to "hard sell" your network marketing opportunity: do not sound desperate for your prospect to join your opportunity. This will make your recruit unsure of joining as they can easily detect nervousness and desperation in your voice if you phone them.
Screen your prospects: You need to be sure that your prospect really wants to start a network marketing business. The last thing you need is tire kickers, the serious prospects will want to spend some time and money to grow their business.
Destroy the myth of spillover: never make this an incentive for people to join your opportunity.
Work closely with your sales team: your team needs training. Initially you will need a system that is simple to do. Train 3 team members to use the system. Encourage them to train 3 of their recruits. As your system gets duplicated your team will grow in strength and will continue until the entire matrix is filled.
Ensure that you fully support your team members: it is vital for the success of your network marketing business to work closely with your team members. Bear in mind that many of them are complete "Newbies." They need a lot of help and encouragement to avoid frustration and disappointment.
Network marketing is all about building and developing a strong team. The better your team the more they will be able to grow the business. A newsletter is one of the best ways to keep your sales team together. You can give your team information about new products, latest marketing trends, and other useful tips. Contests are fun and are great incentives to your team members to excel at recruiting and selling products. Multiple marketing methods will help you to build your team.
About the Author:
Michelle Penfold is a Network Marketer. She specializes in Health and Wellness products. Please visit her at: http://www.network-marketingopportunity.com
Copyright © 2009 Michelle Penfold
The skills to build a strong sales team are some of the most important elements for success in network marketing. Many people make the mistake of not supporting their team members when they recruit them. This can never bring success to your enterprise.
How To Recruit Team Members For Your Network Marketing Opportunity
Network marketing is all about building and developing a strong team. The better your team the more they will be able to grow the business. A newsletter is one of the best ways to keep your sales team together. You can give your team information about new products, latest marketing trends, and other useful tips. Contests are fun and are great incentives to your team members to excel at recruiting and selling products. Multiple marketing methods will help you to build your team.
About the Author:
Michelle Penfold is a Network Marketer. She specializes in Health and Wellness products. Please visit her at: http://www.network-marketingopportunity.com
Why Is The Wellness Industry So Popular?
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Michelle Penfold
There is a lot of money to be made in the wellness industry. The field is large but there are many niche markets within it. The health supplement industry is one of the most popular niches. Health supplement juices and products abound.
What is the reason that people are so interested in this niche?
Health supplement products: they are some of the most popular products in the whole wellness industry.
Convenient and fast: there are a number of different health products. Juice and capsules are 2 of the most well liked forms of product. Customers take these products twice or once per day. People find this very convenient.
More health awareness: the public is getting more health conscious, resulting in a rapid growth of the wellness industry. There is a growing concern to stay fit and healthy. With more public awareness about nutrition, health supplements have become a necessary part of diet.
An abundance of research: A lot of research has been done with wellness products especially health supplements. This research proves to the public that these products really work. This means that they will trust these products more and be wiling to try them out.
Hungry market: there are many people from all walks of life that are concerned about their health. This fact has led to huge growth in the wellness industry. Because of this fitness and health supplements are easy to sell. This marketing is booming due to the increasing number of people wanting to know more about improving their health and lifestyle.
Network marketing is a highly efficient way of selling products. This marketing method has contributed to the rapid growth of the health industry as people become more familiar with products and are encouraged to buy them. Companies have found this method of product distribution to be fast and cost effective. New entrepreneurs have flocked to network marketing as an exciting start up business.
Books by Paul Zane Pilzer have increased the popularity of the wellness industry still further. He is a celebrated for his expert market analysis and as an economist. He also recommends network marketing and has backed this up with informative books.
There is a general consensus in the business world that the wellness industry is the up and coming market of today. This is the time to carve your niche in this market. Forecasters predict that by 2010 the wellness industry will be worth around 1 trillion dollars.
About the Author:
Michelle Penfold is a Network Marketer. She specializes in Health and Wellness products. Please visit her at: http://www.network-marketingopportunity.com
Copyright © 2009 Michelle Penfold
There is a lot of money to be made in the wellness industry. The field is large but there are many niche markets within it. The health supplement industry is one of the most popular niches. Health supplement juices and products abound.
What is the reason that people are so interested in this niche?
Health supplement products: they are some of the most popular products in the whole wellness industry.
Network marketing is a highly efficient way of selling products. This marketing method has contributed to the rapid growth of the health industry as people become more familiar with products and are encouraged to buy them. Companies have found this method of product distribution to be fast and cost effective. New entrepreneurs have flocked to network marketing as an exciting start up business.
Books by Paul Zane Pilzer have increased the popularity of the wellness industry still further. He is a celebrated for his expert market analysis and as an economist. He also recommends network marketing and has backed this up with informative books.
There is a general consensus in the business world that the wellness industry is the up and coming market of today. This is the time to carve your niche in this market. Forecasters predict that by 2010 the wellness industry will be worth around 1 trillion dollars.
About the Author:
Michelle Penfold is a Network Marketer. She specializes in Health and Wellness products. Please visit her at: http://www.network-marketingopportunity.com
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Useful Tips To Expired Domain Fresher
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
New domain entrepreneurs starting out on expired domain business activities tend to commit a number blinders and mistakes. Unbridled enthusiasm and excessive zeal to make money tends to make an inexperienced expired domain trader extremely careless and callous. New expired domain name traders also tend to spend a lot of money in buying useless or average domain names, even when they are still learning the tricks of trade. With careless purchases and faulty decisions, they may get discouraged with the business itself and later disassociate from the business itself. Accumulated yearly renewal fees on a number of inferior expired domains will ultimately result in a big loss!
To prevent avoidable losses and to make your expired domain business a successful venture, here are some practical tips and suggestions:
a) All business ventures need a minimum amount of capital and expired domain trading business is no different. As a starter, you will need to assess and evaluate financial ability to spend money on expired domains. To start with, you will need to create a budget that is sufficient enough for the first six months.
b) To be the best domain trader in the world, you must educate yourself with the nitty-gritty's of expired domain trading business. There is so much to learn and understand as a new player. Ensure that you read a lot of books, articles and blog postings to stay ahead in the business. Register yourself and spend some time on well known internet forums and blog sites to read and know about the most recent trends of the industry.
c) The next important thing to consider with this business is to detect and identify the most efficient and complete expired domain name that can sell for a better marketable price. Choosing a good expired domain name is actually a difficult exercise and people find this exercise the most challenging one.
d) An extremely successful expired domain trader possesses an impeccable ability to differentiate between domain names that are "brandable" and those that are "keyword rich". Though it is quite difficult to find a brandable domain name, you can still lay your hand on potential one.
e) Commercial keyword rich expired domains are the most preferred ones compared to other non-keyword rich domains. As a newbie, you will need to dedicate your time and energy towards searching for a domain with a potential to earn money. Whatever you do, just ensure that your expired domain business earns enough money for your efforts.
f) As a starter in this business, you must also develop that killer instinct to know what other people are doing right now, what they are searching, how they do it and the kind of keywords that they show an interest. You may also wish to learn how to use an effective and useful keyword tracker tool to arrive at the best possible keywords.
Once you empower yourself with the insider techniques and secrets of expired domain business, you can surge ahead to grab the best possible expired domains with an ability to earn you a hefty sum of profit.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
New domain entrepreneurs starting out on expired domain business activities tend to commit a number blinders and mistakes. Unbridled enthusiasm and excessive zeal to make money tends to make an inexperienced expired domain trader extremely careless and callous. New expired domain name traders also tend to spend a lot of money in buying useless or average domain names, even when they are still learning the tricks of trade. With careless purchases and faulty decisions, they may get discouraged with the business itself and later disassociate from the business itself. Accumulated yearly renewal fees on a number of inferior expired domains will ultimately result in a big loss!
To prevent avoidable losses and to make your expired domain business a successful venture, here are some practical tips and suggestions:
a) All business ventures need a minimum amount of capital and expired domain trading business is no different. As a starter, you will need to assess and evaluate financial ability to spend money on expired domains. To start with, you will need to create a budget that is sufficient enough for the first six months.
b) To be the best domain trader in the world, you must educate yourself with the nitty-gritty's of expired domain trading business. There is so much to learn and understand as a new player. Ensure that you read a lot of books, articles and blog postings to stay ahead in the business. Register yourself and spend some time on well known internet forums and blog sites to read and know about the most recent trends of the industry.
c) The next important thing to consider with this business is to detect and identify the most efficient and complete expired domain name that can sell for a better marketable price. Choosing a good expired domain name is actually a difficult exercise and people find this exercise the most challenging one.
d) An extremely successful expired domain trader possesses an impeccable ability to differentiate between domain names that are "brandable" and those that are "keyword rich". Though it is quite difficult to find a brandable domain name, you can still lay your hand on potential one.
e) Commercial keyword rich expired domains are the most preferred ones compared to other non-keyword rich domains. As a newbie, you will need to dedicate your time and energy towards searching for a domain with a potential to earn money. Whatever you do, just ensure that your expired domain business earns enough money for your efforts.
f) As a starter in this business, you must also develop that killer instinct to know what other people are doing right now, what they are searching, how they do it and the kind of keywords that they show an interest. You may also wish to learn how to use an effective and useful keyword tracker tool to arrive at the best possible keywords.
Once you empower yourself with the insider techniques and secrets of expired domain business, you can surge ahead to grab the best possible expired domains with an ability to earn you a hefty sum of profit.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Tips To Choose Best Expired Domains And Make Profit By Selling Them
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Researching, detecting and later choosing good expired domains are a sure way to create an ongoing online source of income. Zeroing on good and commercially viable domains expired can accrue you handsome gains in the longer run. Searching though an extensive expired domain list needs some amount of patience and dedication as well! Good research skills, expired domain name knowledge and a willingness to succeed in the business are the most essential ingredients. However, you may need to have a small amount of capital to start off with this wonderful business. The ultimate secret to succeed in this business is to buy expired domain names that display a character of definite winner.
Once you learn and understand the ways and methods of choosing and selecting an expired domain name, you can surge ahead to register your favorite domains. Here are some simple and effective tips to buy lucrative expired domain names that can earn you handsome profits:
#1: If possible, check the number of back links and traffic of the expired domain name. In its previous avatar, an expired domain might have had a very good repository of traffic and inbound links. Laying hands on such domains will help you get better ranking for your sensitive keywords.
Tip: Go to Google search engine and conduct a simple search by typing link:domainname.com, where you can type the actual domain name in place of domainname.com. In Yahoo search engine, type linkdomain:domainname.com to have a look at the links and traffic. Yahoo Site Explorer is another place, where you can conduct your research. A listing in the Yahoo site directory is an added bonus because of its immense value. A listing in this directory costs you around @299 every year and it will help you in saving a considerable amount of money.
#2: The quality of back links and traffic: Links are not always equal and they tend to vary from search engine to engine. Generic type of sites and branded sites tend to display high quality of links.
#3: DMOZ listing is yet another indicator of an expired domain's commercial value. DMOZ listing has a lot of internet value and you may wish to look out for these domains.
#4: You may also need to evaluate and analyze the history of the expired domain that you wish to buy. There are a number of web portals that allow you to check the authenticity of a given expired domain. For example, you can search in a site called http://www.archive.org to check how an expired domain looked in its previous incarnation.
#4: It pays you to check the PageRank of a particular expired domain name. Some of the expired domain names may still have PageRank assigned to them. If you would like to know what PageRank really is, here are some intricate details: You may have seen a green bar in Google's search tool bar. This is the window that measures the number and quality of incoming links to a particular web site. If you see a number of 8 and above, it means that the web site that displays that number is premium and top grade.
All these tips and techniques will help you segregate the best expired domain names from average ones; this simple exercise will also save you lot of money and precious time.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Researching, detecting and later choosing good expired domains are a sure way to create an ongoing online source of income. Zeroing on good and commercially viable domains expired can accrue you handsome gains in the longer run. Searching though an extensive expired domain list needs some amount of patience and dedication as well! Good research skills, expired domain name knowledge and a willingness to succeed in the business are the most essential ingredients. However, you may need to have a small amount of capital to start off with this wonderful business. The ultimate secret to succeed in this business is to buy expired domain names that display a character of definite winner.
Once you learn and understand the ways and methods of choosing and selecting an expired domain name, you can surge ahead to register your favorite domains. Here are some simple and effective tips to buy lucrative expired domain names that can earn you handsome profits:
#1: If possible, check the number of back links and traffic of the expired domain name. In its previous avatar, an expired domain might have had a very good repository of traffic and inbound links. Laying hands on such domains will help you get better ranking for your sensitive keywords.
Tip: Go to Google search engine and conduct a simple search by typing link:domainname.com, where you can type the actual domain name in place of domainname.com. In Yahoo search engine, type linkdomain:domainname.com to have a look at the links and traffic. Yahoo Site Explorer is another place, where you can conduct your research. A listing in the Yahoo site directory is an added bonus because of its immense value. A listing in this directory costs you around @299 every year and it will help you in saving a considerable amount of money.
#2: The quality of back links and traffic: Links are not always equal and they tend to vary from search engine to engine. Generic type of sites and branded sites tend to display high quality of links.
#3: DMOZ listing is yet another indicator of an expired domain's commercial value. DMOZ listing has a lot of internet value and you may wish to look out for these domains.
#4: You may also need to evaluate and analyze the history of the expired domain that you wish to buy. There are a number of web portals that allow you to check the authenticity of a given expired domain. For example, you can search in a site called http://www.archive.org to check how an expired domain looked in its previous incarnation.
#4: It pays you to check the PageRank of a particular expired domain name. Some of the expired domain names may still have PageRank assigned to them. If you would like to know what PageRank really is, here are some intricate details: You may have seen a green bar in Google's search tool bar. This is the window that measures the number and quality of incoming links to a particular web site. If you see a number of 8 and above, it means that the web site that displays that number is premium and top grade.
All these tips and techniques will help you segregate the best expired domain names from average ones; this simple exercise will also save you lot of money and precious time.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Three Event Registrations Scams To Watch Out For
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Jim Romanik
Internet scams have become an expected, albeit annoying, intrusion on our personal and business lives. While online event registration is certainly not exempt from scams, simply being aware of the types of scams that are circulating should minimize any repercussions that they could have on your event.
That being said, some incredibly creative person is always dreaming up a new type of scam, so don't let your guard down. A recent personal experience got me thinking about how scams also infiltrate online event registration.
Recently, I was checking house rental ads that I had posted online and saw our house advertised for $500/month less than our asking price! At first, I thought that I had made a huge mistake, but it soon became clear that I hadn't posted this ad at all. Somebody had copied my ad and photos and had posted it along with a few revised "instructions" about how to send through applicant information. After some research, it soon became clear that this was yet another internet scam coming out of Nigeria.
Registering with a Stolen Credit Card and Refund Requests
Online event registration is somewhat exempt from credit card fraud because no merchandise is being shipped and it's fairly unlikely that somebody is going to pay for their event fees with a stolen credit card and then show up at the event. However, if somebody registers for your event with a stolen credit card and then requests a refund, you could fall into a trap if you are persuaded to refund the registration fees by cheque rather than by applying the refund to the original credit card.
If you mail a cheque to the scammer, they will have your money. When the person who owns the credit card sees the fraudulent transaction on their credit card statement, they will contact the credit card company to have the charges removed. The credit card company will take the funds from your bank account and you will be out for the amount of the cheque. As a general rule, you should always refund a transaction by the method it was paid.
Registering to Get a Visitor's Visa
If your event is open to international registration, people may register for the event as a pretense so that they can gain access to the country. If this occurs, the registrant will most likely contact you requesting a letter of invitation which will be required as part of their visitor's visa application. Once your event has been targeted, there may be multiple registrations coming in from the country in question.
You should question registrations from countries that you don't expect registrants from. Based off our experience, these fraudulent registrations originate from African countries, particularly Nigeria. Fraudulent registrations may have been submitted using a stolen credit card, so you will want to be aware of any with approved credit card transactions.
Requesting Personal Information
While registration data is generally of a public nature (such as name and address) as opposed to personal information (such as passwords and account information), it's good practice to establish policies about how you give out registrant information. Thank you and see you at the event.
If somebody contacts you by phone or email indicating that they have registered for your event, ask some questions to verify their identity before offering them any information. If handled properly, these scams should not have any impact on your event other than the annoyance factor.
In the next newsletter, we will discuss how to spot fraudulent registrations in your database and what to do about them. The following month, we will discuss measures that you can take to avoid being targeted by scammers.
If you have any questions about this topic, don't hesitate to contact us. If you would like to research this topic further, the following websites provide more information about internet scams:
Spamhaus: http://www.spamhaus.org/
Crimes of Persuasion: Schemes, Scams, Frauds: http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/
About the Author:
Jim Romanik - founder of ePly Online Event Registration Software (http://www.eply.com)
We are online registration experts and treat your reputation as our own to build registration forms that help your events succeed and make people wonder how you did it.
Download our Free Guide - "What Every Event Planner Should Know About Online Event Registration" at: http://www.eply.com/lp/articles.html
Copyright © 2009 Jim Romanik
Internet scams have become an expected, albeit annoying, intrusion on our personal and business lives. While online event registration is certainly not exempt from scams, simply being aware of the types of scams that are circulating should minimize any repercussions that they could have on your event.
That being said, some incredibly creative person is always dreaming up a new type of scam, so don't let your guard down. A recent personal experience got me thinking about how scams also infiltrate online event registration.
Recently, I was checking house rental ads that I had posted online and saw our house advertised for $500/month less than our asking price! At first, I thought that I had made a huge mistake, but it soon became clear that I hadn't posted this ad at all. Somebody had copied my ad and photos and had posted it along with a few revised "instructions" about how to send through applicant information. After some research, it soon became clear that this was yet another internet scam coming out of Nigeria.
Registering with a Stolen Credit Card and Refund Requests
Online event registration is somewhat exempt from credit card fraud because no merchandise is being shipped and it's fairly unlikely that somebody is going to pay for their event fees with a stolen credit card and then show up at the event. However, if somebody registers for your event with a stolen credit card and then requests a refund, you could fall into a trap if you are persuaded to refund the registration fees by cheque rather than by applying the refund to the original credit card.
If you mail a cheque to the scammer, they will have your money. When the person who owns the credit card sees the fraudulent transaction on their credit card statement, they will contact the credit card company to have the charges removed. The credit card company will take the funds from your bank account and you will be out for the amount of the cheque. As a general rule, you should always refund a transaction by the method it was paid.
Registering to Get a Visitor's Visa
If your event is open to international registration, people may register for the event as a pretense so that they can gain access to the country. If this occurs, the registrant will most likely contact you requesting a letter of invitation which will be required as part of their visitor's visa application. Once your event has been targeted, there may be multiple registrations coming in from the country in question.
You should question registrations from countries that you don't expect registrants from. Based off our experience, these fraudulent registrations originate from African countries, particularly Nigeria. Fraudulent registrations may have been submitted using a stolen credit card, so you will want to be aware of any with approved credit card transactions.
Requesting Personal Information
While registration data is generally of a public nature (such as name and address) as opposed to personal information (such as passwords and account information), it's good practice to establish policies about how you give out registrant information. Thank you and see you at the event.
If somebody contacts you by phone or email indicating that they have registered for your event, ask some questions to verify their identity before offering them any information. If handled properly, these scams should not have any impact on your event other than the annoyance factor.
In the next newsletter, we will discuss how to spot fraudulent registrations in your database and what to do about them. The following month, we will discuss measures that you can take to avoid being targeted by scammers.
If you have any questions about this topic, don't hesitate to contact us. If you would like to research this topic further, the following websites provide more information about internet scams:
Spamhaus: http://www.spamhaus.org/
Crimes of Persuasion: Schemes, Scams, Frauds: http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/
About the Author:
Jim Romanik - founder of ePly Online Event Registration Software (http://www.eply.com)
We are online registration experts and treat your reputation as our own to build registration forms that help your events succeed and make people wonder how you did it.
Download our Free Guide - "What Every Event Planner Should Know About Online Event Registration" at: http://www.eply.com/lp/articles.html
How to Create a Bad Website and Frustrate Your Visitors
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Jason OConnor
If you're a sadistic kind of webmaster or website owner and have a burning desire to royally frustrate and anger your site visitors each and every time they visit your site, these three lists are just for you. If you want to have a terrible website that looks bad, works horribly and breaks fundamental marketing rules, read on.
First let me explain why there are three lists. One way to look at any website is to break it up into three equally important segments; design, technical and marketing. In other words, every site on the Web contains these three components. They all have a design or look and feel (design), they all have to be on a server and coded properly to be live on the Internet (technical) and they all have ways in which they attract visitors and make sales (marketing).
So let's look at the top ten ways in which you can annoy your website visitors and basically fail miserably at the whole website endeavor in each of these three segments. The following is a list, broken up into the three categories, defining exactly what NOT to do.
Top 10 Web Design Mistakes:
1. Never using Web conventions, instead use crazy and wacky formats that no one's ever seen and no one can understand
2. Writing trite, predictable, boring or copied content only and never updating your site
3. Creating totally different and unique navigation for every page so that your visitors need to waste time re-learning your navigation every time they go to a new page. Also creating totally different look and feels for every page so that your visitors never know if they're on the same site or clicked away.
4. Using confusing, obfuscated and mysterious labels for all your links and buttons so that no one ever has any idea where they're going if they click. The more confusing, the better.
5. Making it impossible to search the site. Offering no search box, no site map and basically no possible way to find anything on your website.
6. Including content that only talks about you. Never mentioning anything about your visitors or how you can help them, just talk about you and your history and all your achievements. Including a big picture of you and your office building right on the home page.
7. Including only poorly-written copy with lots of grammar mistakes, and ubiquitous, curious and horrendous spelling and punctuation mistakes throughout your site.
8. Not including any text. Making every page on your site one big picture. So for instance, on your home page have one giant picture of you and your office building and have no text so search engines can't see your site at all.
9. Using buttons for your navigation only, or use complicated JavaScript drop down menus that complicate your sites navigation. Either way, if you do this and include no text links, the search engines won't be able to spider (navigate and record) your website.
10. Making your site as difficult to read as possible. Use teeny, tiny fonts that are hard to read against some funky-colored background. For instance, use blue fonts on a black background.
Top 10 Technical Mistakes:
1. Making your website take forever to load in people's browsers. The longer the better.
2. Making it so that your site looks completely different on everybody's computer. So for Macs your site looks like one way, and for PCs it looks another way. Or having it look totally different in Internet Explorer, Chrome and FireFox.
3. Making it so that any functionality on the site is confusing to figure out and works improperly and inconsistently every time it's used.
4. Including lots of broken links and missing images throughout.
5. Setting it up so that it regularly crashes. For example, if more than three people are visiting the site at the same time, the home page becomes inaccessible.
6. Has no form validation. Allowing visitors to enter any thing under the sun into your website forms. Maybe some smart hacker-types will enter executable code that corrupts or takes over your server.
7. Making all your site visitors have to download and install lots of plug ins to view your site properly. If they don't, too bad.
8. Telling people that they have to view your site in a specific browser and browser version only.
9. Making it so that there are tons of pop-ups, moving newsletter sign-up boxes, running videos, animations and Flash movies that take forever to download before you can view the site.
10. Using lots of frames
Top Ten E-Marketing Mistakes:
1. Making your website completely bounce-friendly. In other words, make it 'un-sticky' so that when people arrive on one of your pages, they leave immediately
2. Including no calls to action so that your site never asks your website visitors to do a thing. Making it so that every page is a dead end that leaves your visitors scratching their heads and then clicking away.
3. Does absolutely nothing to build your brand
4. Has no terms or policies page
5. Evoke no emotions. Making your site flat, boring, gray, dull and forgettable.
6. Making sure there is no way for anyone who visits your site to sign up for anything or give you their contact info or email address. Certainly don't use your site to build any kind of email list.
7. Converting absolutely no one who visits your site into a paying customer. Ever.
8. Forgetting to ever use an analytics program like Google Analytics or Web Trends and never measuring or even looking at your website referrals and activity
9. Including no phone number, email and absolutely no other way to contact you. Hiding behind your website.
10. Making it so that search engine can't read your site and make it so that people can't really read your site either.
Follow these three lists to the letter and you may win the Worst Website in the World list (if that even exists) and you will definitely anger and frustrate your website visitors as much as humanly possible.
About the Author:
Jason OConnor writes for The Net Gazette, a free business website design and marketing newsletter. Mr. O'Connor also owns Oak Web Works, LLC, a Web development and marketing company based min Boston. Read the latest edition and all archives at http://www.thenetgazette.net/
Copyright © 2009 Jason OConnor
If you're a sadistic kind of webmaster or website owner and have a burning desire to royally frustrate and anger your site visitors each and every time they visit your site, these three lists are just for you. If you want to have a terrible website that looks bad, works horribly and breaks fundamental marketing rules, read on.
First let me explain why there are three lists. One way to look at any website is to break it up into three equally important segments; design, technical and marketing. In other words, every site on the Web contains these three components. They all have a design or look and feel (design), they all have to be on a server and coded properly to be live on the Internet (technical) and they all have ways in which they attract visitors and make sales (marketing).
So let's look at the top ten ways in which you can annoy your website visitors and basically fail miserably at the whole website endeavor in each of these three segments. The following is a list, broken up into the three categories, defining exactly what NOT to do.
Top 10 Web Design Mistakes:
1. Never using Web conventions, instead use crazy and wacky formats that no one's ever seen and no one can understand
2. Writing trite, predictable, boring or copied content only and never updating your site
3. Creating totally different and unique navigation for every page so that your visitors need to waste time re-learning your navigation every time they go to a new page. Also creating totally different look and feels for every page so that your visitors never know if they're on the same site or clicked away.
4. Using confusing, obfuscated and mysterious labels for all your links and buttons so that no one ever has any idea where they're going if they click. The more confusing, the better.
5. Making it impossible to search the site. Offering no search box, no site map and basically no possible way to find anything on your website.
6. Including content that only talks about you. Never mentioning anything about your visitors or how you can help them, just talk about you and your history and all your achievements. Including a big picture of you and your office building right on the home page.
7. Including only poorly-written copy with lots of grammar mistakes, and ubiquitous, curious and horrendous spelling and punctuation mistakes throughout your site.
8. Not including any text. Making every page on your site one big picture. So for instance, on your home page have one giant picture of you and your office building and have no text so search engines can't see your site at all.
9. Using buttons for your navigation only, or use complicated JavaScript drop down menus that complicate your sites navigation. Either way, if you do this and include no text links, the search engines won't be able to spider (navigate and record) your website.
10. Making your site as difficult to read as possible. Use teeny, tiny fonts that are hard to read against some funky-colored background. For instance, use blue fonts on a black background.
Top 10 Technical Mistakes:
1. Making your website take forever to load in people's browsers. The longer the better.
2. Making it so that your site looks completely different on everybody's computer. So for Macs your site looks like one way, and for PCs it looks another way. Or having it look totally different in Internet Explorer, Chrome and FireFox.
3. Making it so that any functionality on the site is confusing to figure out and works improperly and inconsistently every time it's used.
4. Including lots of broken links and missing images throughout.
5. Setting it up so that it regularly crashes. For example, if more than three people are visiting the site at the same time, the home page becomes inaccessible.
6. Has no form validation. Allowing visitors to enter any thing under the sun into your website forms. Maybe some smart hacker-types will enter executable code that corrupts or takes over your server.
7. Making all your site visitors have to download and install lots of plug ins to view your site properly. If they don't, too bad.
8. Telling people that they have to view your site in a specific browser and browser version only.
9. Making it so that there are tons of pop-ups, moving newsletter sign-up boxes, running videos, animations and Flash movies that take forever to download before you can view the site.
10. Using lots of frames
Top Ten E-Marketing Mistakes:
1. Making your website completely bounce-friendly. In other words, make it 'un-sticky' so that when people arrive on one of your pages, they leave immediately
2. Including no calls to action so that your site never asks your website visitors to do a thing. Making it so that every page is a dead end that leaves your visitors scratching their heads and then clicking away.
3. Does absolutely nothing to build your brand
4. Has no terms or policies page
5. Evoke no emotions. Making your site flat, boring, gray, dull and forgettable.
6. Making sure there is no way for anyone who visits your site to sign up for anything or give you their contact info or email address. Certainly don't use your site to build any kind of email list.
7. Converting absolutely no one who visits your site into a paying customer. Ever.
8. Forgetting to ever use an analytics program like Google Analytics or Web Trends and never measuring or even looking at your website referrals and activity
9. Including no phone number, email and absolutely no other way to contact you. Hiding behind your website.
10. Making it so that search engine can't read your site and make it so that people can't really read your site either.
Follow these three lists to the letter and you may win the Worst Website in the World list (if that even exists) and you will definitely anger and frustrate your website visitors as much as humanly possible.
About the Author:
Jason OConnor writes for The Net Gazette, a free business website design and marketing newsletter. Mr. O'Connor also owns Oak Web Works, LLC, a Web development and marketing company based min Boston. Read the latest edition and all archives at http://www.thenetgazette.net/
Thursday, March 12, 2009
5 Little Mistakes That Will Affect Your Event Registration
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Jim Romanik
The last thing an event planner wants to do is to frustrate a potential participant with a difficult registration process.
If you currently use online forms to register for events or make purchases, it's more than likely you've come up against this and perhaps on occasion have even abandoned the task altogether?
When online registration is setup right, the advantages for both the event planner and the event participants are untold, but common mistakes can have a dramatic impact on the success of your event.
Here are five ways you may be accidentally frustrating your event participants.
Mistake #1: Confuse Registrants By Trying To Use Modified Shopping Cart Software To Collect Payments.
You can buy tools that claim to do the job of five different pieces of equipment, but in reality they only do a mediocre job on one task. The same idea applies to software.
Most online shopping cart software is designed for merchandise, with shopping carts, fields for shipping addresses and items that are referred to as products. Reports designed specifically to make the event planner's job easier don't exist.
Shopping cart software may work for your event registration, but it isn't the most professional solution and can cause your event participants to become frustrated trying to make sense of it all.
Mistake #2: Forget To Include Event Officials' Contact Information On The Form.
Online registration forms are self serve. If a form is well designed, the users should be able to take care of everything themselves, but sometimes there are still questions that need to be answered. If a person can't find a number to call to get an immediate answer, they will become frustrated. If a user has to click back to find a phone number and then loses all of the data they've entered expect a very unhappy caller.
Mistake #3: Make Divulging Personal Information Mandatory And Failing To Think Through "Validations".
Mandatory fields will help you get completed registration forms, but making people fill in details that aren't necessary for the event will cause frustration, especially if the information is private in nature. People will either abandon the form or enter bogus information, either way you lose.
Validation is where users are forced to enter postal or zip codes, phone numbers or other data in a certain format. It is a very powerful feature, but if you don't think of all the possible combinations such as extensions and country codes on phone numbers and postal and zip codes from other countries, you will frustrate people.
Mistake #4: Make Users Open An Account Before They Can Register.
The idea is to make things easier, so don't force people to register with a service, enter a password or jump through other hoops. There are advantages to users having accounts, such as recalling address information for future registrations, but no one needs another password to remember, especially when they are sick of giving out their information and just want to submit their registration.
Mistake #5: Make Event Participants Do The Math.
Surprisingly, there are still online registration forms out there that require users to do their own math. Not only should your registration form automatically do this for them, it should also adjust for early bird rates, provide member discounts and prevent users from making conflicting or invalid selections.
About the Author:
Jim Romanik - founder of ePly Online Event Registration Software (http://www.eply.com)
We are online registration experts and treat your reputation as our own to build registration forms that help your events succeed and make people wonder how you did it.
Download our Free Guide - "What Every Event Planner Should Know About Online Event Registration" at: http://www.eply.com/lp/articles.html
Copyright © 2009 Jim Romanik
The last thing an event planner wants to do is to frustrate a potential participant with a difficult registration process.
If you currently use online forms to register for events or make purchases, it's more than likely you've come up against this and perhaps on occasion have even abandoned the task altogether?
When online registration is setup right, the advantages for both the event planner and the event participants are untold, but common mistakes can have a dramatic impact on the success of your event.
Here are five ways you may be accidentally frustrating your event participants.
Mistake #1: Confuse Registrants By Trying To Use Modified Shopping Cart Software To Collect Payments.
You can buy tools that claim to do the job of five different pieces of equipment, but in reality they only do a mediocre job on one task. The same idea applies to software.
Most online shopping cart software is designed for merchandise, with shopping carts, fields for shipping addresses and items that are referred to as products. Reports designed specifically to make the event planner's job easier don't exist.
Shopping cart software may work for your event registration, but it isn't the most professional solution and can cause your event participants to become frustrated trying to make sense of it all.
Mistake #2: Forget To Include Event Officials' Contact Information On The Form.
Online registration forms are self serve. If a form is well designed, the users should be able to take care of everything themselves, but sometimes there are still questions that need to be answered. If a person can't find a number to call to get an immediate answer, they will become frustrated. If a user has to click back to find a phone number and then loses all of the data they've entered expect a very unhappy caller.
Mistake #3: Make Divulging Personal Information Mandatory And Failing To Think Through "Validations".
Mandatory fields will help you get completed registration forms, but making people fill in details that aren't necessary for the event will cause frustration, especially if the information is private in nature. People will either abandon the form or enter bogus information, either way you lose.
Validation is where users are forced to enter postal or zip codes, phone numbers or other data in a certain format. It is a very powerful feature, but if you don't think of all the possible combinations such as extensions and country codes on phone numbers and postal and zip codes from other countries, you will frustrate people.
Mistake #4: Make Users Open An Account Before They Can Register.
The idea is to make things easier, so don't force people to register with a service, enter a password or jump through other hoops. There are advantages to users having accounts, such as recalling address information for future registrations, but no one needs another password to remember, especially when they are sick of giving out their information and just want to submit their registration.
Mistake #5: Make Event Participants Do The Math.
Surprisingly, there are still online registration forms out there that require users to do their own math. Not only should your registration form automatically do this for them, it should also adjust for early bird rates, provide member discounts and prevent users from making conflicting or invalid selections.
About the Author:
Jim Romanik - founder of ePly Online Event Registration Software (http://www.eply.com)
We are online registration experts and treat your reputation as our own to build registration forms that help your events succeed and make people wonder how you did it.
Download our Free Guide - "What Every Event Planner Should Know About Online Event Registration" at: http://www.eply.com/lp/articles.html
Follow an Easy System
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Michelle Penfold
Although a large number of people join network marketing businesses the rate of failure is very high. Much of the reason for this is the fact that they fail to understand the importance of developing a simple system. If you do not have a system you are setting yourself and your team up for failure.
Why you need a simple system:
Starting off right: you need a proven system to propel you to success. Your system will allow you to recruit new team members and sell products easily.
Duplicating your system by teaching your team members: Team members' success is the basis for your success. The key to success is a simple system that your team members can duplicate easily. Always bear in mind that you can only be successful when your team is successful.
What are the elements of a good system?
A marketing method that does not cost too much but will still reach your niche market. It is critical for your success to understand that your team members will not have too much capitol to invest. Many people joining network marketing opportunities are completely new to a business and do not have too much money initially.
A popular market: marketing a product will be easier if you choose one that appeals to many people. Because health supplements can vary you will need to choose products carefully.
Easy to copy: if you want a successful enterprise you need a system that is easy to do and reproduce. This will allow your team members implement it fast and well. Bear in mind the more straightforward your system is the more successful you and your team will be.
With these points in mind you can understand the urgency of creating a system before you start recruiting team members. Your network marketing business will not succeed if you fail to do this. Your team members and you will not be focused and you will experience many drop outs.
To stop this from happening it is vital to make a plan. The best policy is to join opportunities that have a tried and true stem for you to use. This will greatly help you to expand your enterprise. With a good system it will be easy for you to teach your team to duplicate it. By this means you will all be able to develop your business into a profitable enterprise.
About the Author:
Michelle Penfold is a Network Marketer. She specializes in Health and Wellness products. Please visit her at: http://www.network-marketingopportunity.com
Copyright © 2009 Michelle Penfold
Although a large number of people join network marketing businesses the rate of failure is very high. Much of the reason for this is the fact that they fail to understand the importance of developing a simple system. If you do not have a system you are setting yourself and your team up for failure.
Why you need a simple system:
What are the elements of a good system?
With these points in mind you can understand the urgency of creating a system before you start recruiting team members. Your network marketing business will not succeed if you fail to do this. Your team members and you will not be focused and you will experience many drop outs.
To stop this from happening it is vital to make a plan. The best policy is to join opportunities that have a tried and true stem for you to use. This will greatly help you to expand your enterprise. With a good system it will be easy for you to teach your team to duplicate it. By this means you will all be able to develop your business into a profitable enterprise.
About the Author:
Michelle Penfold is a Network Marketer. She specializes in Health and Wellness products. Please visit her at: http://www.network-marketingopportunity.com
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Feature Article: How to Use Information Products to Get More Referrals
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Judy Murdoch
A couple weeks ago, my good friend and colleague, Mary Walewski sent me an email that contained a link and the short message, "thought this might interest you."
The link was to download a promotions planning calendar; a calendar that included specific steps to take each month around setting up online promotions.
The calendar was f'ree and simple to download. All in all a useful little tool.
And throughout the calendar are promotions for paid webinars the calendar's author is offering. Now I'm not interested in the webinars... at least not right now. But now I know they are available and I'll be looking at the calendar at least once a week and getting reminders.
This is a great example of how a small business can use information products as a way to generate referrals that lead to new customers.
This is something you can do in your own business. If you aren't you are missing an opportunity to help people send you referrals.
==============================
How Information Products Make It Easier for Customers to Refer Business to You
==============================
Small business owners love customer referrals and for good reason. Customer referrals are incredibly powerful because they are sincere, personal endorsements made because the person making the referral wants to look good to their peers. If the referral works out it's a win for everyone.
The Downside of Referrals is They're Unpredictable. No matter how much your customers love you, sending you a referral is simply not their first priority. Not because they don't think you're awesome and would like to help. Because there are hundreds of other things, some urgent, that compete for their attention.
The good news is that there are things you as a business owner can do to increases the chances your customers will remember to refer you. One way to improve those chances is by using information products.
==============================
How Information Products Improve the Chances of Getting Referrals
==============================
To give you a referral, your customer must remember you in the context of the problem you solve. What does this mean?
Here's an example:
Dave is new to town and just bought a house. He moved in a couple days ago and finds his hot water heater has sprung a leak. He needs to take care the leak quickly so the small puddle around his water heater doesn't turn into a small lake.
Dave calls his neighbor, Pete who has lived in the neighborhood for ten years and asks Pete to recommend a good plumber. Pete tells Dave to call Main Street Plumbing because Steve is great at figuring out problems, his rates are reasonable, and he makes emergency house calls.
Now here's how memorability and context work.
If Dave and Pete met under most circumstances, would Pete have referred plumbing services to Dave? Very unlikely. Why? Context.
Let's say they walk by each other or see each other at a barbecue. Would Pete say, "Hey, Dave, just in case you're looking for a plumber, you should call Steve at Main Street Plumbing." No it would sound weird unless they were already talking about plumbing problems.
And even if Pete did tell Dave about Main Street Plumbing, it's unlikely Dave would remember because plumbing problems aren't top of mind at the moment the referral is given.
You can't predict when the situation will arise when the referral is needed. But you CAN improve the chances that when the situation DOES arise, someone will remember to refer you.
One way to increase the chance someone will remember you is using an information product that your referral source is likely to use regularly.
Like the calendar I mentioned at the beginning. And remember it wasn't just a calendar (because if it were it would be competing with the other six calendars vendors send me every year) it had useful information and tips so that I would use it regularly.
==============================
Tips for Creating Products That Will Get You More Referrals
==============================
1. Make sure your contact information is clear and easy to locate. This may seem obvious but I can't believe the number of times a business doesn't put its name and contact information on information products.
Always include your company name, your website address, your phone number, and a memory tag if you have one {"24-hour plumbing at your service")
2. Make sure you include useful, relevant information that your customers are likely to need at least once a month.
3. Make sure the information helps your customer solve a problem that you want referrals for.
Let's say every year Steve sends his customers a calendar with tips on simple maintenance tasks that will prevent plumbing disasters. Maybe two to three tips each month. Or he could do the same thing with a monthly newsletter.
==============================
Bottom Line
==============================
Don't hope customers will send you referrals. Create a simple, useful information product that will help customers remember you so that when your customer encounters someone who needs your help, they'll remember you and why they want to send you a referral.
About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com
Copyright © 2009 Judy Murdoch
A couple weeks ago, my good friend and colleague, Mary Walewski sent me an email that contained a link and the short message, "thought this might interest you."
The link was to download a promotions planning calendar; a calendar that included specific steps to take each month around setting up online promotions.
The calendar was f'ree and simple to download. All in all a useful little tool.
And throughout the calendar are promotions for paid webinars the calendar's author is offering. Now I'm not interested in the webinars... at least not right now. But now I know they are available and I'll be looking at the calendar at least once a week and getting reminders.
This is a great example of how a small business can use information products as a way to generate referrals that lead to new customers.
This is something you can do in your own business. If you aren't you are missing an opportunity to help people send you referrals.
==============================
How Information Products Make It Easier for Customers to Refer Business to You
==============================
Small business owners love customer referrals and for good reason. Customer referrals are incredibly powerful because they are sincere, personal endorsements made because the person making the referral wants to look good to their peers. If the referral works out it's a win for everyone.
The Downside of Referrals is They're Unpredictable. No matter how much your customers love you, sending you a referral is simply not their first priority. Not because they don't think you're awesome and would like to help. Because there are hundreds of other things, some urgent, that compete for their attention.
The good news is that there are things you as a business owner can do to increases the chances your customers will remember to refer you. One way to improve those chances is by using information products.
==============================
How Information Products Improve the Chances of Getting Referrals
==============================
To give you a referral, your customer must remember you in the context of the problem you solve. What does this mean?
Here's an example:
Dave is new to town and just bought a house. He moved in a couple days ago and finds his hot water heater has sprung a leak. He needs to take care the leak quickly so the small puddle around his water heater doesn't turn into a small lake.
Dave calls his neighbor, Pete who has lived in the neighborhood for ten years and asks Pete to recommend a good plumber. Pete tells Dave to call Main Street Plumbing because Steve is great at figuring out problems, his rates are reasonable, and he makes emergency house calls.
Now here's how memorability and context work.
If Dave and Pete met under most circumstances, would Pete have referred plumbing services to Dave? Very unlikely. Why? Context.
Let's say they walk by each other or see each other at a barbecue. Would Pete say, "Hey, Dave, just in case you're looking for a plumber, you should call Steve at Main Street Plumbing." No it would sound weird unless they were already talking about plumbing problems.
And even if Pete did tell Dave about Main Street Plumbing, it's unlikely Dave would remember because plumbing problems aren't top of mind at the moment the referral is given.
You can't predict when the situation will arise when the referral is needed. But you CAN improve the chances that when the situation DOES arise, someone will remember to refer you.
One way to increase the chance someone will remember you is using an information product that your referral source is likely to use regularly.
Like the calendar I mentioned at the beginning. And remember it wasn't just a calendar (because if it were it would be competing with the other six calendars vendors send me every year) it had useful information and tips so that I would use it regularly.
==============================
Tips for Creating Products That Will Get You More Referrals
==============================
1. Make sure your contact information is clear and easy to locate. This may seem obvious but I can't believe the number of times a business doesn't put its name and contact information on information products.
Always include your company name, your website address, your phone number, and a memory tag if you have one {"24-hour plumbing at your service")
2. Make sure you include useful, relevant information that your customers are likely to need at least once a month.
3. Make sure the information helps your customer solve a problem that you want referrals for.
Let's say every year Steve sends his customers a calendar with tips on simple maintenance tasks that will prevent plumbing disasters. Maybe two to three tips each month. Or he could do the same thing with a monthly newsletter.
==============================
Bottom Line
==============================
Don't hope customers will send you referrals. Create a simple, useful information product that will help customers remember you so that when your customer encounters someone who needs your help, they'll remember you and why they want to send you a referral.
About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
List Building - 10 Super Fast Ways To Build Your Opt-in List
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Titus Hoskins
It is a well known fact that the key to successful online marketing comes from building a well targeted and responsive opt-in email list. This is mainly because your online marketing success comes from building relationships with a large subscriber base, but just how do you go about doing this?
An opt-in list is when you are given the option to receive bulk emails that are also sent to a large majority of other people. Generally you need a person's permission to add them to such a list otherwise it will be seen as spam. Regardless of what you're promoting or selling, if you want to succeed online you need to build up your own opt-in list. Most professional marketers use double opt-in which means subscribers must fill in an opt-in form on a web page and then confirm or verify their subscription in an email sent to them. This eliminates any spam complaints.
Virtually everyone uses email so it won't be too hard to build your list if you use some of the simple tactics listed below. Keep in mind, using an opt-in contact list should have a place in everyone's marketing plan as it is cheap, fast, and still more effective than other outdated methods of promotion and marketing. This is because a large majority of the people who are making money on the Internet are those who have built up a large opt-in list or are using strategic follow-up emails in their marketing. They will have refined, looked after and built up a trust with the people on their list who they can contact in the future.
If you need any help with how to approach compiling your opt-in email list then below are 10 quick and sure ways of getting people to sign up for your contact list:
1. Set up an auto-responder which will automatically send out messages to your visitor. It can be set up with a series of compelling messages, which will encourage your subscribers to buy your products or join your business. Using Pop-Ups, Pop-Ins and Slide-In forms on web pages will quickly build your list. Some professional marketers make the "Close" button on this pop-up form very hard to see, so that visitors will subscribe as a means of closing out the window. Use your own judgment here, do you want to be this sneaky? It's not exactly the best way to start a relationship, but many savvy marketers use it. This is the equivalent of "getting your foot in the door" and then these marketers follow-up with quality content to really get and hold your attention.
2. Have a concrete image or graphic of your ezine or newsletter when giving people the opportunity to sign up as this will increase your conversion rate. Your ezine or newsletter can then be sent out daily, weekly, monthly or whenever you need to send it. Relationship building is the key here because you just don't want a list, you want a responsive list.
3. Make it real simple for people to subscribe to your opt-in email; it needs to be quick and easy in order to encourage people to do it. For example you could put a simple form in the left hand column of your websites home page and other pages if possible. Most professional marketers place their opt-in form on EVERY page of their site.
4. Use social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter... truth be told all of these sites are only glorified List Builders; make sure you're taking advantage of them to build your list of contacts.
5. Use Forums - there are literally thousands of forums and discussion boards so all you have to do is find one that relates to your particular business and then participate in the discussion. The key is to get targeted subscribers, ones interested in your topic or subject.
6. Promote your website and yourself - this can be done through such things as article writing. This will promote your site in a way that will get your site known and recognized by more people; become an expert and people will want to get to know you and what you have to say.
7. Ezine advertising is a cost effective and quick way to attract visitors to your site in order to get more subscribers. Ezine ads can be a very cheap and effective way of building your list quickly. Many professional marketers also use co-registration strategies - this can be simply done by adding a form where your subscribers can check to subscribe to other related ezines or newsletters. You promote my list, I promote yours.
8. Have well written content - you need to ensure that your website content is well written, informative and appealing so that when people visit your site they will hopefully opt-in to your email list. Again, if you have nothing valuable to offer your visitors, they won't join your list.
9. Always use incentives to reward people for joining your opt-in list. Enticing potential subscribers with a free report, video, article, ebook or software is still the quickest way to get subscribers on your list.
10. Provide access to "Members Only" areas of your site - this part of your website will be accessible only when people have signed up to your opt-in email list. Same can be done for articles or reports... give your visitors a good teaser and then they have to opt-in to get access to the rest.
These are just some of the ways to build your list quickly but there are countless others, especially if you have a product to sell and you can do JVs (Joint Ventures) with other marketers or big-name Gurus. Then using a "Squeeze Page" to collect contact information to quickly build your list. So too is creating an affiliate program and letting your affiliates build your list for you!
Just remember, building up the perfect opt-in email list won't happen over night but by following the above steps it will build quickly. Just make sure that as your opt-in list grows, you provide your users with quality content and you keep the list organized and managed in order to keep your subscribers happy and satisfied so that they will be willing to do business with you over the long term.
About the Author:
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous niche sites. If you want to learn how to make your online marketing much more effective by building your lists try here: list building ecourse Copyright (c) 2009 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached. To learn more Internet Marketing Tactics try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com
Copyright © 2009 Titus Hoskins
It is a well known fact that the key to successful online marketing comes from building a well targeted and responsive opt-in email list. This is mainly because your online marketing success comes from building relationships with a large subscriber base, but just how do you go about doing this?
An opt-in list is when you are given the option to receive bulk emails that are also sent to a large majority of other people. Generally you need a person's permission to add them to such a list otherwise it will be seen as spam. Regardless of what you're promoting or selling, if you want to succeed online you need to build up your own opt-in list. Most professional marketers use double opt-in which means subscribers must fill in an opt-in form on a web page and then confirm or verify their subscription in an email sent to them. This eliminates any spam complaints.
Virtually everyone uses email so it won't be too hard to build your list if you use some of the simple tactics listed below. Keep in mind, using an opt-in contact list should have a place in everyone's marketing plan as it is cheap, fast, and still more effective than other outdated methods of promotion and marketing. This is because a large majority of the people who are making money on the Internet are those who have built up a large opt-in list or are using strategic follow-up emails in their marketing. They will have refined, looked after and built up a trust with the people on their list who they can contact in the future.
If you need any help with how to approach compiling your opt-in email list then below are 10 quick and sure ways of getting people to sign up for your contact list:
1. Set up an auto-responder which will automatically send out messages to your visitor. It can be set up with a series of compelling messages, which will encourage your subscribers to buy your products or join your business. Using Pop-Ups, Pop-Ins and Slide-In forms on web pages will quickly build your list. Some professional marketers make the "Close" button on this pop-up form very hard to see, so that visitors will subscribe as a means of closing out the window. Use your own judgment here, do you want to be this sneaky? It's not exactly the best way to start a relationship, but many savvy marketers use it. This is the equivalent of "getting your foot in the door" and then these marketers follow-up with quality content to really get and hold your attention.
2. Have a concrete image or graphic of your ezine or newsletter when giving people the opportunity to sign up as this will increase your conversion rate. Your ezine or newsletter can then be sent out daily, weekly, monthly or whenever you need to send it. Relationship building is the key here because you just don't want a list, you want a responsive list.
3. Make it real simple for people to subscribe to your opt-in email; it needs to be quick and easy in order to encourage people to do it. For example you could put a simple form in the left hand column of your websites home page and other pages if possible. Most professional marketers place their opt-in form on EVERY page of their site.
4. Use social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter... truth be told all of these sites are only glorified List Builders; make sure you're taking advantage of them to build your list of contacts.
5. Use Forums - there are literally thousands of forums and discussion boards so all you have to do is find one that relates to your particular business and then participate in the discussion. The key is to get targeted subscribers, ones interested in your topic or subject.
6. Promote your website and yourself - this can be done through such things as article writing. This will promote your site in a way that will get your site known and recognized by more people; become an expert and people will want to get to know you and what you have to say.
7. Ezine advertising is a cost effective and quick way to attract visitors to your site in order to get more subscribers. Ezine ads can be a very cheap and effective way of building your list quickly. Many professional marketers also use co-registration strategies - this can be simply done by adding a form where your subscribers can check to subscribe to other related ezines or newsletters. You promote my list, I promote yours.
8. Have well written content - you need to ensure that your website content is well written, informative and appealing so that when people visit your site they will hopefully opt-in to your email list. Again, if you have nothing valuable to offer your visitors, they won't join your list.
9. Always use incentives to reward people for joining your opt-in list. Enticing potential subscribers with a free report, video, article, ebook or software is still the quickest way to get subscribers on your list.
10. Provide access to "Members Only" areas of your site - this part of your website will be accessible only when people have signed up to your opt-in email list. Same can be done for articles or reports... give your visitors a good teaser and then they have to opt-in to get access to the rest.
These are just some of the ways to build your list quickly but there are countless others, especially if you have a product to sell and you can do JVs (Joint Ventures) with other marketers or big-name Gurus. Then using a "Squeeze Page" to collect contact information to quickly build your list. So too is creating an affiliate program and letting your affiliates build your list for you!
Just remember, building up the perfect opt-in email list won't happen over night but by following the above steps it will build quickly. Just make sure that as your opt-in list grows, you provide your users with quality content and you keep the list organized and managed in order to keep your subscribers happy and satisfied so that they will be willing to do business with you over the long term.
About the Author:
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous niche sites. If you want to learn how to make your online marketing much more effective by building your lists try here: list building ecourse Copyright (c) 2009 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached. To learn more Internet Marketing Tactics try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Online Fax Providers - How To Get The Best Online Fax Service
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Titus Hoskins
Times are changing and in our fast paced Internet savvy society, my advice is you change with the times. The latest example of this is sending faxes over the Internet rather than through the traditional method of a fax machine; this is done through the help of an online fax service.
Sending a fax over the Internet through the help of an online fax service works in a similar manner to sending an attached document via email but you send it to a fax number rather than an email address. The use of an online fax service is especially helpful to businesses.
Let's face it, we live in an age where email is the main form of communication within the office workplace and thanks to the fact that signatures are now legally valid when they are sent electronically; paper documents are becoming less common. This is a trend that isn't going to die down anytime soon; however many independent contractors and small business owners still prefer and in some cases require printed documents for their records, especially where legal documents are concerned.
Faxing remains one of the most efficient means of transmitting documents but in order to do this company's no longer need the help of a land line or a costly fax machine in order to send and receive them; instead you send them over the Internet and there are countless reasons as to why this is a lot better than the traditional method of faxing.
By using an online fax service you don't have the expense of buying a fax machine, nor do you have the expense that it takes to maintain the machine. All you need is an Internet connection. You are saving yourself a lot of money as all you now only have to pay is a small fee to your online fax provider and there is no longer the cost of an extra phone line. As well as money you are also saving yourself time as you no longer have to fill out cover sheets and there's no need to wait for each page to feed like there is with a traditional machine and you are able to send documents to not only other online fax services but you can also send them to traditional fax machines too but just how do you know which online fax provider to choose?
There are a number of different online fax service providers that can give you different packages and prices, which is why it is important that you do your research so that you can find the one that is best for you. Monthly rates can run anywhere from $4 to around $15 a month. Choosing the right one is important as you will be trusting them to delivery important documents; so to tell if a provider is any good there are certain features that you should look out for.
Some of the most popular Internet fax providers are: MyFax, RingCentral, eFax, TrustFax, MertoFax, Send2Fax, RapidFax and Faxage. You can tell if an online fax service provider is any good based on features such as if they have reliable customer support that is available to you on a 24/7 basis. You should also look out for whether they offer competitive pricing that comes with no hidden costs and no set up fees. Most, but not all have no set up fees but remember online fax service providers are meant to be saving you money not costing you more so check the prices!
Another feature that you should look out for is whether the provider if offering you a free trial, which is always worth trying as it allows you to test out the service to make sure it is right for you.
A good online fax service provider not only allows you to send and receive faxes through an email account but they will also have other features such as forwarding, notifications and storage options. So if you are considering getting on board with an online fax service I recommend that you visit some comparison sites to ensure that you are getting the best deal for your situation.
About the Author:
For more information on Internet Fax Services use this handy online Comparison Guide to get your own: Online Fax Service. Or if you want more detailed information on Internet Faxing try here: Internet Fax Guide. Titus Hoskins Copyright (c) 2009. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached. Learn more at: http://www.onlinefaxguide.com
Copyright © 2009 Titus Hoskins
Times are changing and in our fast paced Internet savvy society, my advice is you change with the times. The latest example of this is sending faxes over the Internet rather than through the traditional method of a fax machine; this is done through the help of an online fax service.
Sending a fax over the Internet through the help of an online fax service works in a similar manner to sending an attached document via email but you send it to a fax number rather than an email address. The use of an online fax service is especially helpful to businesses.
Let's face it, we live in an age where email is the main form of communication within the office workplace and thanks to the fact that signatures are now legally valid when they are sent electronically; paper documents are becoming less common. This is a trend that isn't going to die down anytime soon; however many independent contractors and small business owners still prefer and in some cases require printed documents for their records, especially where legal documents are concerned.
Faxing remains one of the most efficient means of transmitting documents but in order to do this company's no longer need the help of a land line or a costly fax machine in order to send and receive them; instead you send them over the Internet and there are countless reasons as to why this is a lot better than the traditional method of faxing.
By using an online fax service you don't have the expense of buying a fax machine, nor do you have the expense that it takes to maintain the machine. All you need is an Internet connection. You are saving yourself a lot of money as all you now only have to pay is a small fee to your online fax provider and there is no longer the cost of an extra phone line. As well as money you are also saving yourself time as you no longer have to fill out cover sheets and there's no need to wait for each page to feed like there is with a traditional machine and you are able to send documents to not only other online fax services but you can also send them to traditional fax machines too but just how do you know which online fax provider to choose?
There are a number of different online fax service providers that can give you different packages and prices, which is why it is important that you do your research so that you can find the one that is best for you. Monthly rates can run anywhere from $4 to around $15 a month. Choosing the right one is important as you will be trusting them to delivery important documents; so to tell if a provider is any good there are certain features that you should look out for.
Some of the most popular Internet fax providers are: MyFax, RingCentral, eFax, TrustFax, MertoFax, Send2Fax, RapidFax and Faxage. You can tell if an online fax service provider is any good based on features such as if they have reliable customer support that is available to you on a 24/7 basis. You should also look out for whether they offer competitive pricing that comes with no hidden costs and no set up fees. Most, but not all have no set up fees but remember online fax service providers are meant to be saving you money not costing you more so check the prices!
Another feature that you should look out for is whether the provider if offering you a free trial, which is always worth trying as it allows you to test out the service to make sure it is right for you.
A good online fax service provider not only allows you to send and receive faxes through an email account but they will also have other features such as forwarding, notifications and storage options. So if you are considering getting on board with an online fax service I recommend that you visit some comparison sites to ensure that you are getting the best deal for your situation.
About the Author:
For more information on Internet Fax Services use this handy online Comparison Guide to get your own: Online Fax Service. Or if you want more detailed information on Internet Faxing try here: Internet Fax Guide. Titus Hoskins Copyright (c) 2009. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached. Learn more at: http://www.onlinefaxguide.com
The A B C's of Selecting A Network Marketing Opportunity
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Michelle Penfold
There are an abundance of network marketing opportunities online. Companies have seen the huge potential of this form of marketing and everyone wants a piece of the pie. The health and wellness industry offer some of the most profitable opportunities. It is wise to be cautious, as not all these opportunities will work for you. In fact some are outright scams. The question is how to select the best network marketing opportunities for you?
Always do your research before you join an opportunity. Here are some tips:
Research the product: a good company will be offering a high-quality product. Substandard products are difficult to sell and you will also find it hard to recruit people to your opportunity. Beware of Pyramid schemes. These are companies with no product who just expect you to recruit people to the opportunity. These types of schemes are illegal. Another problem can be if an opportunity is working a saturated market. Under these circumstances it is almost impossible to sell the product.
Easy to communicate: good support should be offered and the company should have an easy way to contact them. Another important point is the speed, which they reply to you.
Instructions: these companies are meant to provide some helpful instructions and tutorials for members. This will help you to be more successful and is a mark of a good company that wants its sales people to succeed.
Be careful of hype: Exaggeration and hype on the sales page is a bad sign in a company. Companies that need to resort to these tactics are unprofessional and not worth your time.
Beware of hidden fees: This deserves some thought. Ideally you should only have to pay a monthly fee in order to make money. In order to get your commission you should not have to upgrade and pay more money.
Is the product marketable? Do your market analysis. Before you join the opportunity, be sure you know some ways to promote it.
How will you be paid? Make sure the matrix is structured so that you can easily earn your commissions.
Understand the matrix system: It is important to understand the way the matrix works before you join, as there are many different matrix structures.
Age of the company: the company should be at least 2 years old. If the opportunity is too new you can risk them going out of business before they pay you your commissions.
About the Author:
Michelle Penfold is a Network Marketer. She specializes in Health and Wellness products. Please visit her at: http://www.network-marketingopportunity.com
Copyright © 2009 Michelle Penfold
There are an abundance of network marketing opportunities online. Companies have seen the huge potential of this form of marketing and everyone wants a piece of the pie. The health and wellness industry offer some of the most profitable opportunities. It is wise to be cautious, as not all these opportunities will work for you. In fact some are outright scams. The question is how to select the best network marketing opportunities for you?
Always do your research before you join an opportunity. Here are some tips:
About the Author:
Michelle Penfold is a Network Marketer. She specializes in Health and Wellness products. Please visit her at: http://www.network-marketingopportunity.com
Saturday, March 7, 2009
The REAL Reason People Aren't Buying (You'll Be Surprised)
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Judy Murdoch
Last week someone in a business discussion forum posted this question:
"Help! No One is Responding to My Offer"
The person posting, let's call her Susan, went on to say that she loves her work and gets great results for her clients. She's excited about a new service she's promoting, yet no one was responding to her emailed offer.
Now Susan is no slouch when it comes to marketing. She sold classified advertising for a big city newspaper, she's been to lots of marketing and sales classes, and has a stack of marketing-related books on her desk.
The emailed offers she's sending reflect her best efforts. And yet, something isn't working.
When this happens Susan's self-confidence as a business owner falters. She wonders if she's somehow missing some essential talent needed to run a successful business.
I know I've felt this way when my promotions are unsuccessful. Perhaps you can relate?
================================
So What the Heck is Going On!?
================================
There are any number of reasons offers fall flat. One reason that gets overlooked by most marketing experts (including me until recently) is this:
We fail to acknowledge our customer's need to belong.
(Note: I want to acknowledge my teacher and mentor, Mark Silver, of http://www.heartofbusiness.com on whose work this article is based.)
================================
The Need to Belong is a Powerful Human Motivator
================================
Thousands of years ago, human survival depended on membership to a tribe. In a tribe, our ancestors had a better chance of getting food, shelter, and protection. To be cast out of a tribe was more often than not a death sentence.
Today belonging to a tribe is no longer about physical survival -- at least not in an obvious way. Yet it remains a powerful influence on what we do; on what YOUR CUSTOMERS do.
In fact, your customer's need to belong is so important that it actually trumps their need for your solution and their ability to pay.
================================
How the Need to Belong Affects Whether Your Customer Buys
================================
When your customer sees or hears your marketing message--whether it's on the home page of your website, an email you sent, or a post card you mailed, his or her decision to take the next step is proceeded by three "micro-decisions."
In order to take the next step (for example, click the "Buy" button) your customer must answer yes to all three questions in this order:
1. "Can I fully be myself and feel fully accepted if I work with this company?" (Do I Belong?)
2. "How much do I want really this?"
3. "Can I afford it?"
Your customer must answer "yes" to all three questions in order of importance to act on your call to action. If at any point they answer "no" you've lost them:
They'll go on to another website
They'll delete your email
They'll throw out your post card.
This is why addressing the need to belong is so important.
It also may seem a little mysterious to you as a business owner. Perhaps you're thinking, "all this makes sense to me but how exactly do I help my customers feel like they belong on the home page of my website?"
================================
How to Create a Sense of Belong in Your Marketing
================================
No, you don't need to start your marketing message off with "Hey I love you. Here comes a great big hug just for you!" Even Barney the dinosaur doesn't say that at the very beginning of the show.
Plus you'd probably creep people out a little.
Here are four ways to reassure prospects "yes, you're at the right place to get the help you need," so that they can take the next step.
1. Begin your marketing message with who you help and the problem you help them with.
For example, "technical consultants who are tired of struggling to get their next contract."
2. Expand on the problem by addressing issues such as:
how the problem shows up in regular everyday life
emotions they may be feeling
Solutions they've already tried that didn't work
Why those solutions often don't work
If it feels tricky for you to address emotions in writing, try addressing these points as you would if you were in a conversation with a trusted colleague.
When I began writing the way I speak, I found it became a lot easier to write about customer problems in a way that was natural and empathetic but still within the boundaries of the business relationship.
If you're still feeling stuck, re-read the first few paragraphs of this article to get a sense of how I introduced the problem and expanded on it.
3. Introduce your solution only after you've addressed your customer's experience with the problem.
Once you've covered the problem and your customer's experience with it (in steps 1 and 2) you've told your customer in effect:
"I understand your problem and know how awful it feels to struggle with this problem. You're not alone."
You can demonstrate your expertise and talk about your solution. Again, in this article, I first talked about the problem in detail. I then transitioned to "here's what can cause this problem" and "here are steps you can take to take care of this problem."
4. Once you've discussed the problem, the customer's experience of the problem, and your solution, add your call to action.
At this point folks fitting your ideal customer profile will be feeling seen, heard, and accepted enough to be ready to learn more about how you can help and what it will take in terms of time, money, etc.
This is where you can add a call of action like, "Click here for more details and to register for my xyz program."
================================
Bottom Line
================================
There's an old adage that "People don't care about what you know until they know you care." In this case, it is so true.
Your marketing needs to first address your customer's to belong before you say a word about value-added and cost. Otherwise, your customer will move on to another vendor who makes them feel better understood.
About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com
Copyright © 2009 Judy Murdoch
Last week someone in a business discussion forum posted this question:
"Help! No One is Responding to My Offer"
The person posting, let's call her Susan, went on to say that she loves her work and gets great results for her clients. She's excited about a new service she's promoting, yet no one was responding to her emailed offer.
Now Susan is no slouch when it comes to marketing. She sold classified advertising for a big city newspaper, she's been to lots of marketing and sales classes, and has a stack of marketing-related books on her desk.
The emailed offers she's sending reflect her best efforts. And yet, something isn't working.
When this happens Susan's self-confidence as a business owner falters. She wonders if she's somehow missing some essential talent needed to run a successful business.
I know I've felt this way when my promotions are unsuccessful. Perhaps you can relate?
================================
So What the Heck is Going On!?
================================
There are any number of reasons offers fall flat. One reason that gets overlooked by most marketing experts (including me until recently) is this:
We fail to acknowledge our customer's need to belong.
(Note: I want to acknowledge my teacher and mentor, Mark Silver, of http://www.heartofbusiness.com on whose work this article is based.)
================================
The Need to Belong is a Powerful Human Motivator
================================
Thousands of years ago, human survival depended on membership to a tribe. In a tribe, our ancestors had a better chance of getting food, shelter, and protection. To be cast out of a tribe was more often than not a death sentence.
Today belonging to a tribe is no longer about physical survival -- at least not in an obvious way. Yet it remains a powerful influence on what we do; on what YOUR CUSTOMERS do.
In fact, your customer's need to belong is so important that it actually trumps their need for your solution and their ability to pay.
================================
How the Need to Belong Affects Whether Your Customer Buys
================================
When your customer sees or hears your marketing message--whether it's on the home page of your website, an email you sent, or a post card you mailed, his or her decision to take the next step is proceeded by three "micro-decisions."
In order to take the next step (for example, click the "Buy" button) your customer must answer yes to all three questions in this order:
1. "Can I fully be myself and feel fully accepted if I work with this company?" (Do I Belong?)
2. "How much do I want really this?"
3. "Can I afford it?"
Your customer must answer "yes" to all three questions in order of importance to act on your call to action. If at any point they answer "no" you've lost them:
This is why addressing the need to belong is so important.
It also may seem a little mysterious to you as a business owner. Perhaps you're thinking, "all this makes sense to me but how exactly do I help my customers feel like they belong on the home page of my website?"
================================
How to Create a Sense of Belong in Your Marketing
================================
No, you don't need to start your marketing message off with "Hey I love you. Here comes a great big hug just for you!" Even Barney the dinosaur doesn't say that at the very beginning of the show.
Plus you'd probably creep people out a little.
Here are four ways to reassure prospects "yes, you're at the right place to get the help you need," so that they can take the next step.
1. Begin your marketing message with who you help and the problem you help them with.
For example, "technical consultants who are tired of struggling to get their next contract."
2. Expand on the problem by addressing issues such as:
If it feels tricky for you to address emotions in writing, try addressing these points as you would if you were in a conversation with a trusted colleague.
When I began writing the way I speak, I found it became a lot easier to write about customer problems in a way that was natural and empathetic but still within the boundaries of the business relationship.
If you're still feeling stuck, re-read the first few paragraphs of this article to get a sense of how I introduced the problem and expanded on it.
3. Introduce your solution only after you've addressed your customer's experience with the problem.
Once you've covered the problem and your customer's experience with it (in steps 1 and 2) you've told your customer in effect:
"I understand your problem and know how awful it feels to struggle with this problem. You're not alone."
You can demonstrate your expertise and talk about your solution. Again, in this article, I first talked about the problem in detail. I then transitioned to "here's what can cause this problem" and "here are steps you can take to take care of this problem."
4. Once you've discussed the problem, the customer's experience of the problem, and your solution, add your call to action.
At this point folks fitting your ideal customer profile will be feeling seen, heard, and accepted enough to be ready to learn more about how you can help and what it will take in terms of time, money, etc.
This is where you can add a call of action like, "Click here for more details and to register for my xyz program."
================================
Bottom Line
================================
There's an old adage that "People don't care about what you know until they know you care." In this case, it is so true.
Your marketing needs to first address your customer's to belong before you say a word about value-added and cost. Otherwise, your customer will move on to another vendor who makes them feel better understood.
About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com
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