10 tips to keep your regulars coming back– and for picking up new ones along the way
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Archive for the ‘Business Strategy’ Category
Keep Your Regulars Happy – Securing Repeat Business
Saturday, December 19th, 2009Fire your ad agency and hire customers? Unilever did it.
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Will your target audience do your work for you and create advertising and products at minimal cost?
I read this in a recent blog regarding crowdsourcing. This word had me curious. What did it exactly mean? Basically I learned it was having your customers do your ad work.
Some major consumer product companies have fired their agencies and then hold “contests” for users of their products to create ad campaigns.
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Poll – In your opinion – Is the economy getting better?
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
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No Agent? Publish Yourself.
Saturday, September 19th, 2009If you enjoyed this post, make sure you Stay updated with Don Macleod!
5 Ways to Reach Your Target Market
Friday, September 4th, 2009There are many ways to reach out and find the people you are trying to attract for your business. Here are just a handful of ways to get you started at little or no cost.
1) Attend organization meetings Where do people in your target market hang out? Research this, and then plan to attend a meeting or two to mix and mingle. What better way to meet and get to know these individuals while learning more about the market?
2) Offer to speak at a meeting or conference What do you have to offer that you feel could be of value to those you are trying to reach out to? Present a short talk or slide show on a helpful topic. Be sure you present something of value to the group. What helpful tips or other material would hold ther attention, and entice them to learn more about you and what you do? Just give them a small taste of your skills and knowledge. Chances are, they will want to talk to you after the presentation.
3) Advertise in publications your target market reads The Internet is a great place to research what publications are out there. You can probably even get your advertisement to appear online as well as in the hard copy of a publication. Advertising can be rather expensive, so be careful with this one!
4) Present a free tele-class. If you are not confident in your public speaking skills, but still feel you have something of value to teach those you are trying to influence, try offering a no-cost tele-class. It is usually fairly inexpensive to rent a bridge line to host your class. You can teach from the comfort of your own home, too. This is also a great way to get a list of names to add to your subscriber list for mailings. If you are comfortable with this option, you can charge a small fee for future tele-classes you hold, which will bring you some passive income.
5) Start a blog Write daily or weekly posts related to subject matter that will pique the interest of your target market. Spend time researching particular topics that you can write about. Then, add some pizazz…get excited when you post the information to your blog. If you’re excited about something, others will be too. And don’t forget to use keywords. These are what the search engines will use to find the content in your blog and draw others to it.
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Face the Fax (Fax Machines Are Out)
Saturday, August 29th, 2009With more and more small businesses strictly becoming online businesses and more people choosing to be independent contractors rather than have a strict 9-5 job, virtual faxing is becoming more and more popular. Virtual faxing involves no special equipment that you have to hook up to your computer… it is as easy as sending an email.
It can also be a lot cheaper for a small business or independent contractor to use this service rather than buying a fax machine and paying for the phone line and long distance bill. Learn more
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Twitter from Ideas4Rent Marketing
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009This is my main Twitter account from my holding company Ideas4Rent Marketing, LLC. After seven (7) months we are over 35,000 followers and growing. It continues to be a great source of web traffic to my websites as well as a way to meet new business leads. Check it out.
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INSIGHTS INTO SALES COPY WRITING
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009Sales copy online can make or break your business. A good sales letter must lure visitors, create trust and motivate readers to purchase. You can spend millions of dollars on ads and still have low or no response. But just pay a little more attention to your sales copy and then watch the response you get to your advertisements. Here’s some fundamental rules you could apply to see some magic work with your ads:
· No matter how “wow” your words are, you have to have a good product for sustainability. Keep away from false claims, over exaggerations, just put in pretty terms what your product really does and why people should buy it.
· Your first copy will not be absolutely brilliant. You will have to play around with it and make changes. Test it. Ask for opinions. Select a pilot market to test effectiveness. All this takes time, hence plan well
· Follow the well known AIDA strategy [source: Strong, E.K. (1925). "Theories of Selling". Journal of Applied Psychology] – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Your copy must grab the intention of people at just one glimpse of it. It should create an interest to probe in further. It should make the customer want to really buy the product and most importantly, now and not later!
· You should have a killer headline. It should really make the reader go over to the next line. Headline says it all. It should really be a class apart. Here is a great headline tool that I written about and use quite often. Headline Analyzer Tool – Check out the score of the headline above.
· Go in a descending order in terms of your product features – put the best ones on top and the less interesting ones in the end. The ones right on top grab interest and create desire.
· Stories always inspire. So tell a story and connect it with your product. The convincing power of stories is greater.
· Answer all the queries that you think your buyers might have. Your copy should not leave out any information. Think of prospective doubts and apprehensions and steer them clear by offering a good, valuable explanation to them. This way, you will earn trust and the customer will feel like you have really understood them.
· Use bullet points for each feature. It is just easier on the eye. Bold and italicize whatever is most important. Do not over use these features though.
· Set time limits. Example: limited period offers! This will get your prospects to act now, and not read and forget about it.
· Show testimonials. This is a wonderful way of convincing people, especially if the testimonial is from a well known or important person.
· Make the process of buying simple. The process should not require the buyer to spend loads of time online, looking for your product which is just lost somewhere in your website. Design the buying process in easy steps.\
· Substantiate your facts with proofs and numbers– Eg: Research carried out by the well experienced team of professionals here shows that our products contain the highest amount of natural compounds in cosmetics in comparison to others available in the market.
· Ensure you take opinions from a lot of people before actually releasing your copy.
These are some of the tips you could follow to make your copy better than it looks now. Understand your prospects and give them what they want rather than what you want to thrust on them.
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Your First Step Toward Success: Anything But Ordinary
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009It may surprise you to learn that one of the very first steps to achieving your own success is something unusual. It is the exact opposite of what most people, including you, would do. And that is precisely why it is out of the ordinary; it’s something that most people wouldn’t dream of doing!
Listen carefully and hear me out before you dismiss this as a ridiculous notion. If you want to achieve a meaningful measure of success, then the very first step toward this goal is to… do something different.
Take a few moments first to re-read that statement, and then allow it to sink in. Think about what it says. It did not tell you to try something different. No, the intended action is to do something different. Stay with me and you’ll see what I mean.
Look, if you’re current efforts aren’t bringing you any closer to achieving your success goals, then you have two choices. Keep doing what you’re doing and get the same disappointing results. Or, choose to do something else to make your goals happen. You must realize that it will require a conscious effort on your part to purposely do something different. There is nothing else that can help you move more quickly toward the achievement of your desired level of success than this one thing.
The problem is that most of us conduct our lives through a series of habitual responses that have been learned over time. Much of our daily activity is done on “automatic pilot.” Because of this fact you need to realize that it will take a great effort to begin to climb out of your “automated” comfort zone. We are prone to follow the past of least resistance. Thus, anything that is truly worthwhile is only accomplished as a result of a deliberate, concentrated effort.
Here is the heart of the matter. If you want to implement this first step effectively, you must make a consistent and concentrated effort to enable yourself to break free of old habits and thought patterns. You cannot replace something without removing it first. You need to replace the thoughts and behavior that control your life with new ones that focus on your new and purposely chosen direction.
If this seems a bit confusing still, then allow me to help you get started on the right foot. Take a moment right now and ask yourself: ”Which is more important?”
A.) Achieving your goals for personal freedom and financial success Or…
B.) Maintaining the “status quo” in your comfort zone.
If you answered letter A, then it would seem that you’re fairly serious about fulfilling your personal success goals. What you need to do now is to begin taking specific steps that will allow you to make a consistent, concentrated effort to focus on your goals and discover the means to fulfill them.
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Is Multi-Tasking Really Efficient?
Thursday, June 4th, 2009The buzzword “multi-tasking” refers to trying to do several things at one time, whether at home or work. Although on the surface it seems a desirable skill, new studies suggest that doing too many things at the same time could make you less efficient.
Researchers at the University of Michigan say that multitasking dilutes the brainpower needed to perform each task. They also found that chronic high-stress multitasking is linked to short-term memory loss. That is, you could hear something your boss said but not remember it.
Time lost switching among tasks increases with the complexity of the tasks, further decreasing efficiency.
Some warning signs that you may be trying to do too many things at once:
* Lapses in attentiveness
* Loss of concentration
* Gaps in short-term memory
* Stress symptoms such as shortness of breath.
If you must do two things at once, try to cultivate the ability to control mental focus. Weed out distractions, and stop anything else when one thing requires actual thought. The doctors say it’s better to stay in the moment briefly, focus on one thing and deal with that before moving on to the next. Of course, that’s not always possible.
Have a Profitably Day,
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