The Small Business Marketing Blog

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By Robert Moment

Everybody makes mistakes and entrepreneurs are no exception. But for an entrepreneur with a limited budget, committing mistakes too often can be very costly.

It is an open secret in the business world that most of the mistakes that can be committed in business have been committed; so why not just learn from them, saving you the agony of committing them yourself.

With that said, here are 7 costly small business marketing mistakes every entrepreneur must avoid:

1. An Incongruent Marketing Message

To effectively sell your product or service, your customer has to “get” the marketing message. A customer-centric marketing message educates your prospects and persuades them to become customers. Too many small businesses make the mistake of focusing their message on the product or company, instead of how the prospect would benefit by purchasing their product. Prepare the right marketing message with some of these in mind:

• Identify the prospect’s problem.

• Explain to the prospect why the problem should be solved immediately and explain why your product or service is the right solution to their problems.

• List the benefits your prospects would enjoy upon purchasing your product and provide an unconditional guarantee to allay any fears they may have.

2. “Spray-and-Pray” Marketing Instead Of Precision Marketing

The days of marketing as a zero-sum game are over. You must demand accountability from your marketing efforts, expecting tangible results in the form of [Read more →]

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There’s a saying about business that goes, “You’re too close to your business and services to see them the same way others do.”

You might assume your clients know more than they actually do. You don’t want to assume they will remember things. You live and die in your business. You live and breathe it and your industry. Your prospects don’t.

They have their own lives. You know every detail about your products and services. They don’t. You want to educate them instead of just advertising your business through conventional means.

One of the great ways to do this is through a newsletter. It takes time for them to learn about your products and services. You may see them just once a year, and although you may do a great job educating them, they’re still not going to remember you a year from now.

Just because your product and service is your life doesn’t mean it’s [Read more →]

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The market that you are trying to target must be small enough, or somehow, “niched down” so that the resources that you have available to you and are willing to commit, will have a huge splash.

If there were only 100 fish in the Atlantic Ocean and I gave you a fishing pole to go and catch them or you don’t eat you’d laugh; And say this is impossible. But if put 100 fish in a pond and gave you a fishing pole to catch them or you don’t eat, you’d smile with happiness because this will be an easy task, almost assured of victory.

Same is with your marketing and advertising. Your marketing and advertising approach should target a specific niche. Not a broad market that would take to many resources and too much money to ever have successful results.

This “big fish, small pond” approach is best for every business, especially if you are a small business operating on a budget with limited resources - and really, who isn’t?

I often read and see the failure of small businesses. Most of the time it comes back to [Read more →]

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If you want bring your business to making the kind of money and profit you dream about, then this list of 5 accelerated traffic strategies will be the most imporant article you read all day.

Here’s why: In a recent article I wrote that there is a money cycle that must exist if you want to see your business take off and really make the money you dreamed it would when you started it.

Here’s the money cycle:

Quality product + Traffic + Conversion = sales (money)
Quality product + Traffic + Conversion + Automation = Financial & Lifestyle Freedom

If you are not bring in the money that you want with your business then you should look at this money cycle. Start from left to right. Do you have a quality product? Do you have a solid amount of traffic? Do you convert the traffic you get well? This formula is your business plan summed up into one simple formula.

“If you ain’t bringing in the money you so desire then one part of this formula is out of wack.”

If you’re on this page more than likely you already have a quality product so what the next step. Getting traffic.

5 Accelerated Traffic Strategies for Marketing Your Business On The Internet:

1. Pay per click - This is by far the fastest way to get traffic to your site. Although if you don’t know what you are doing you could lose more money than you care to. Find inexpensive keywords to advertise your site with. To get more on this subject download this free report - Adwords Made Easy…

2. Referral traffic - This is by far the most effective type of traffic. why? If a prospect is referred by a friend to your site you don’t really have to sell them. They came there with high trust in you because you a being passed the “trust” from the person who referred them. The key is to put a system in place that you actually get referrals coming in. Here’s a ingenius way of doing this…

3. Press Releases - This is the second most effective way to get traffic to your site. Why? “Anything you hear or read from the news must be true…right?” See when people get information from reporters they take it as fact. Thus when they arrive at your site they have been presold by the media. They key - you have to connect a hot trend that is going on right now to your business. It may seem querky, but it will work. Look around at some places like yahoo buzz or the lycos top 50 to find some ideas. Then write up your press release and submit it to PRWeb.com. Use one of there paid options to really get great exposure and traffic. Here’s great information on writing press releases. And you can always just type in Paul Hartunian, the master at getting free publicity, in at Yahoo or Google.

4. Affiliate / Joint Ventures - The most important asset your business can have is a good quality list. That’s what make joint ventures so profitable. With the click of a button you can have a swarm of traffic to your site looking at your offer. And what’s even sweeter is that they got there by “recommendation”. A referral.

And can you tell me a better way to get a lot of traffic fast than by letting a couple of dozen or hundreds of affiliates promoting you product and sending you traffic. Here’s more info. on that.

5. Co-Registration - If you have ever been to a site a signed up for a offer or a quote and then on the next page it said would you also like to sign up for this newsletter, then you’ve experienced the power of co-registration. Co-registration basically partners you with some of the most trafficked websites and utilizes their ability to help you get opt-ins. You simply write a simple, but compelling ad to be placed on these networks, and then you just pay per subscriber you get. That’s the beauty. You don’t pay anything until you have got your self a lead. Anyway, the service I use is List-Opt. They offer double-optin leads and a great service.

Well everyone of those traffic strategies will have your traffic meter turning fast. They are what I call accelerated traffic strategies. That is that if you wake up in the morning and decide you want to drive more traffic to your site you can, and at will fast.

Free Report: Discover how to get more customers in a month than you now get all year. Click here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week… (11 Secrets to Small Business Marketing Magic)

To Your Immediate and Lasting Success,

Kenneth of Edwards
KE2 Global
Director

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At last, the secrets the cancer treatment centers don’t
want you to know about are smashed open…

Proven Cancer Survivor Reveals Amazing Secrets That Kill Cancer Cells Dead, Shortcuts Your Road To Recovery, Injects More Life Into You Everyday…And… Quickly Unleashes The Pain and Lethargy
You’ve Had From Being Hit By Cancer

The story I am about to tell you is true…

In September of 2004, my wife received “the phone call”.

It was a sunny afternoon.

After a few moments on the phone, I saw tears running down her face.

She sat down. Then got up again. She began to pace slowly around as she still listened on the phone.

She muttered a couple of words then she cried some more. After a few more seconds she got off the phone and turned to me and said….“My dad has cancer”!

We exchanged a little more information about the conversation she had on the phone…then for most of the rest of the day, she was quiet and spent a number of hours laying on my chest.

The next day, I told her that I was going to take a trucking job, so that we could go back and forth to see her parents and so we could be their to support them…And we did.

The cancer, originally, was just in his arm about the size of a marble, but the hospital and the doctors “dropped the ball”. The cancer quickly spread to his lungs suffocating him, and to his brain. He died 1 yr and 1/2 after us receiving “the phone call”.

He was only 63. He never even got the chance to retire. He was, and is, one of the greatest men I have ever known.

But that’s not all…

The last week he was alive, we found out the most unlikely, shocking news yet…

Not only could we tell that we didn’t have long with my wife’s father, but we found out that we might not have long with her mother either.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer just days after we lost her dad. I don’t think he would have been able to deal with that.
The only reason he held on and fought so hard was because he didn’t want to lose her. He didn’t want to feel he didn’t complete his job as a husband, a lover, and a friend.

This was almost too much to handle.

As you can see here, the power of a story to create empathy, understanding, and a feeling that we relate to one another is absolutely amazing. If you have ever had someone suffer from cancer, or just lost anyone dear to you, this story had you hooked to accomplish the one job it was suppose to…get you to the next sentence.

It just so happens that it also creates the connection we must have to convert more prospects into customers.

So, how do you tell a great story that will actually help to increase your conversion?

Tell an “underdog” story. Tell a story about how you, someone you know, or another anecdotal story about being faced with the same problem that your reader is faced with now, and that it was overcome.

Mention the pain, agitate it, then solve it.

Oh, and by the way, her mom is going to be fine. She had an extremely tough time with the chemotherapy treatments and radiation wasn’t too nice either, but she’s going to be alright. Cancer free so far. Much of the last year is blurry, and she doesn’t remember everything, but it’s been a long, tough ride that has lasted for more than 3 yrs since my wife got “the phone call”. There is still a lot of healing to do, but that’s life.

When you make a connection with the reader that says I understand you: I understand where you are coming from, I feel your pain…Then give a solution, you’ll find great success in your copywriting.

If you have just 5 minutes, You can get started learning the secrets of writing money making copy…Learning how to write copy that is explosive is one of the most powerful money making tools you can add to your business. Look what one of America’s highest paid copywriters has to say about writing copy that sells…Surefire Profits!

To Your Immediate and Lasting Success Always,

Kennth of Edwards
Director
Teach Yourself Copywriting!

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By Internet Marketing Center

A reader named Jerry recently wrote an email asking,

“There is a lot of advice about the important of having good article content on a website. Other advice says to submit articles to sites like eZineArticles.com, and refer readers to your site. Which is most effective for driving traffic to a site?

Also, would it be advantageous and proper to do both with the same article?”

Jerry, the short answer to your question is yes. Posting good article content on your site — and submitting articles to online article directories with a PageRank of 4 or higher — are key SEO techniques that will drive more qualified traffic to your website.

And both can be done at the same time — provided you go about it the right way.

Here’s what you need to do…

1. Use a keyword research tool like Wordtracker to discover your top-performing keywords

They’re the search terms that send you the most visitors that are likely to make a purchase. You can learn more about Wordtracker here: http://imc.wordtracker.com

2. Optimize your key salespage for your top keywords (two-three maximum)

This means you’ve got to insert those keywords in your web copy as well as in strategic places in your coding — such as your title tags, your headline tags, your meta tags, and your image alt tags.

3. Choose your best keyword — and then write an article around it

For example, if you sell doghouse plans and your top keyword is, “Build your own doghouse,” then you’re going to want to include it in the following places:

• The title of the article

• The first paragraph (within the first 200 characters is best)

• The last paragraph;

• At least two-three times in the middle paragraphs

If you can, try to include slight variations of that phrase, as well. For example: “build my own doghouse,” “building your own doghouse,” and “built the doghouse.”

You don’t have to write a novel! Try to keep your articles to 400-500 words maximum.

Finally, make sure you include a short, credibility-building “bio” with link to your site at the end.

Here’s an example: “ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joe Smith is a recognized authority on the subject of widgets. His web site, www.JoesWidgets.com, provides a wealth of informative articles and resources on everything you’ll ever need to know about widgets.”

4. Link the article to your main salespage

The best way to do this — so you don’t distract your visitors from your sales message — is to include a subtle link at the very bottom of your salespage. Make sure the link’s anchor text includes the main keyword in the article. (That’s important for SEO reasons.)

You’ve just made your first step toward building a content-rich site. Congratulations! The more keyword-loaded articles that point toward your site, the more the search engines will love you.

Now it’s time to send that article out into the world at large, and use it to drive even more visitors to your salespage!

You need to link the article to your site first because it helps the search engines spiders recognize your site as the original “owner” of the article. That way, you’ll never get slammed for posting duplicate content on your site, no matter how many sites end up publishing your article.

But once you have that first article posted, you shouldn’t stop there! Your next step is to…

5. Submit your article to the ‘Net’s top online content distribution sites

I’m talking about places such as…

* www.contentdesk.com
* www.ezinearticles.com
* www.freesticky.com
* www.goarticles.com
* www.ideamarketers.com
* www.findsticky.com

These sites carry hundred or thousands of articles on a range of topics. If someone is looking for content for their web site, they can download or copy an article from the distribution site without paying a dime to use it!

Now people who are plugging your keywords into search engines will be directed to your content at these highly-ranked sites, and web site owners who are looking for fresh, search engine-attracting content will download your article — along with your bio and link! — and put it up on their pages.

And once visitors see that you know what you’re talking about, they’ll click on the link in your bio, and head straight to your web site.

6. Submit your article to content sites that target your customers

Simply type “your keyword + articles” into the ‘Net’s top search engines and see what comes up. If you find a site that has a PageRank of 4 or higher and is accepting submissions, then definitely send them your article.

The more links that point to your site from high PageRank webpages that target your audience, the more relevant your site will be in the search engines’ eyes.

And that will drive your site even higher in the search engine rankings!

7. Say “hello” to all those new visitors pouring into your site!

Not only will people be able to find you through the articles you’ve submitted to all those different content sites… They’ll also find your salespage listed near the top of the search engine results.

And all these visitors are QUALITY, TARGETED traffic — they actually WANT what you’re selling, because you are meeting a need or giving them help with the problem they actually came online to solve!

Once you’ve done your keyword research, you might feel a bit intimidated by the idea of writing something yourself for the ‘Net. Or maybe you don’t feel like you have the time to do it justice.

You can always hire a writer from a freelance web site like Elance to write your articles for you (with a bit basic information from you, of course). Expect to pay anywhere from $25 to $35 an hour for their time.

But I recommend that you try to write something yourself first. You definitely don’t need to be a professional writer to create something readable and interesting… (I sure don’t have a degree in creative writing myself!)

Just try to think like your audience — what do they want to know, and how much do they know already? Then tell them simply and clearly. You don’t have to write like Shakespeare to give them content they find valuable.

And then, once that content is written, you can use it over and over again to put your site in front of hungry buyers and lead them straight to your salespage!

[Ed note: Nicole Ephgrave is our in-house SEO "wizard." You can meet up with her in our exclusive "members-only" Search Marketing Lab forum.]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Derek Gehl specializes in teaching real people how to start profitable Internet businesses that make $100,000 to $2.5 Million (or more) per year. To get instant access to all his most profitable marketing campaigns, strategies, tools, and resources that he’s used to grow $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: Marketing Tips…

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At Last, Profitable eMail Marketing Secrets Revealed Click here…

Email marketing can be extremely effective – not only in strengthening a brand image, but also in making sales. Businesses use email marketing both internally and externally to generate new customer leads, create brand recognition and awareness, improve customer relationships, cross and up-sell to existing customers, improve website traffic, educate and support customers, promote events and generate product sales.

When compared to traditional direct mail, the cost benefit alone offers the equal advantage. Consider the cost of print, postage and other production factors to realize the value gained. It doesn’t convert as high on average, but you can contact so many more people faster and cheaper. To make email marketing even more attractive, email marketing improves the speed of delivery, offers stronger controls over message delivery and measurably converts to sales.

Peter A. Johnson, Ph.D., Director and Senior Economist, Strategic Information Unit in white paper “Preserving The Promise of The E-mail Marketplace: An Economic Assessment of The Proposed Federal DO-NOT-E-Mail Registry” states: “Based on US Census Bureau data for total e-commerce from 2003, DMA research estimates that already some 14% of the $138 billion Internet commerce marketplace for 2003 was driven by commercial e-mail.

This translates into an excess of $19 billion spent in response to commercial e-mails in 2003. Again however, it is important to bear in mind that the Census Bureau E-Stats program has not yet released its first measurements on the value of e-commerce in the vitally important services sector. Since these purchases include many airline tickets and other forms of travel, hotel accommodation and car rentals, etc., that although initiated by an e-mail advertisement, may have been purchased via 800 number and thus not be categorized as e-commerce by the Census Bureau, it is likely this figure significantly understates the true impact of e-mail marketing.” The numbers, combined with the total cost to run a successful email marketing campaign, is unmatched.

In each relationship nurtured with email marketing, there are two sides– the sender and the receiver. The sender wants to reach the audience and promote the most positive image they can. They also want to reinforce their services or products in a way to increase sales and visibility. How can they accomplish this? They need to draw up a clear portrait of their consumer. Answer the following questions:

• What are the audience demographics – age, education, sex, geography and income?

• What are the audience’s interests and pastimes?

• How busy is the audience and how frequently would they appreciate emails?

• What would appeal to the audience – discounts, information, news or product updates?

• What value can the business offer the consumer or target audience?

With an understanding of the person behind the email address, marketers may devise a program that appeals to their needs. Then it’s recommended companies reevaluate and review success and results of the email marketing program on a regular basis to fine-tune the tactics.

In spite of government regulation, email marketing is growing. According to DoubleClick’s Q4 2003 email survey, deliverability and open rates grew one percent, while click-through rates grew five percent year-over-year.

Eric Kirby, vice president and general manager of strategic services at DoubleClick, expects the industry to survive emerging obstacles: “There are two fundamental drivers behind this: 1) Consumers understand and value permission based e-mail relationships and differentiate these from spam and 2) leading companies are evolving their e-mail programs faster than the environment is becoming more difficult. In other words, they are keeping ahead of the challenges in many respects.”

SPECIAL REPORT: Discover how one guy made $291,756.42 in the last 30 days alone using email marketing! This report details the dirt cheap strategies that one guy used to make over $3.5 Million last year with email marketing…

PLUS, read case studies of REAL PEOPLE who are making $113,000… $375,000… even $1 MILLION (and more) per year using these same strategies! To read this exclusive report, visit: eMail Marketing Secrets…

To Your Immediate and Lasting Success,

Kenneth & Kimberly Edwards Jr.
KE2 Global

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