A Trusted Internet? Is It Possible?
October 12, 2008 by Kimberly Edwards · 4 Comments
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How Would Your Online Life Be Different If You Could Tell Whom You Could Trust?
Would you purchase more goods or services online?
I’m sure you would, for convenience sake, if you really felt that you could trust the merchants and the security on the site that your private information wouldn’t be hacked.
Would you be more willing to download files?
I’m sure you would…If you felt that your computer wouldn’t be given an awful
Popularity: 11% [?]
Online Printing May Be the Best Way to Go
September 15, 2008 by Kimberly Edwards · Leave a Comment
Okay…2 days ago, I had to go into a huge, popular office store (that everyone knows) to get some printing done…
It was no big rush, but I wanted it to be done…The girl told me that it would be no problem and that they could have it ready in about 2 hrs…I was a little surprised, happy, but surprised…
So, I came back in 2 hrs only to have a different girl waiting on me…Guess what…The printing was not done at all yet…
The girl told me that she didn’t know why the other girl told me that they could even do that in the store…It had to be sent away for it to be completed…
Me…Not impressed!!!
So, when I got home, I went and “Stumbled” to see if I couldn’t find a better resource for our printing needs.
There are a number of online printers that will complete the order and ship it to you that is much more cost effective than expensive print shops. One I found was PsPrint that seemed to be a good one.
Now, if you need things immediately, this may not be a viable option. However, if you have don’t have an urgent deadline, this may very well be the best way to go nowadays.
Whether it be photocopies, business cards, flyers, stickers, envelopes or even poster printing, you can get it done online!
***
I think other people will be able to identify with my Rant today on The Small Business Marketing Blog! Until next time…
Happy Printing,
Kimberly Edwards 
P.S. Add me as a friend on Stumble Upon!
Technorati Tags: online printing, printing, business cards, poster printing, PsPrint
Popularity: 19% [?]
Telemarketing Blunders - Unnecessary & Easy to Correct
July 30, 2008 by Kimberly Edwards · 1 Comment
If you are a company that likes to use tele-sales/telemarketing, you MUST be aware of some Cultural Etiquette with the people you have your sales people cold calling…
Check out this great article from Cindy King:
Cultural Blunders in Tele-Sales
Cindy submitted this fabulous article to the “Dessert Course” in the “Progressive Dinner” Blog Carnival we hosted on BlogNButter.com!
She explains that Politeness is the key point of connection where telemarketing companies often fail to do now, especially since many marketing efforts are outsourced to other countries that do not understand the level of politeness required for the country they are calling.
I left a lengthy comment and wanted to share it with you here! Please let us know what your opinions are on this topic by Commenting in the Comment Box Below!
My Opinion:
” I certainly hope that cold calling/tele-sales will improve with time! I wish they improved yesterday!
This is a very valuable marketing resource really…It’s just below face-to-face sales…and I don’t think that telemarketing companies use this to their advantage…
I love the idea of using the qualified leads…If you don’t use qualified leads, no matter what you’re selling, you will have Read more
Popularity: 21% [?]
Tales Of a Frustrating Screen-Printing Situation & An Online Solution For It
March 25, 2008 by Kimberly Edwards · Leave a Comment
Chances are, if you have a small business, that you’ve pondered the idea of having Tshirt Printing or Hats Embroidered with a cool logo on it, or the logo you’ve already established…
Been there; done that! With thoughts of grandeur, my husband and I walked into the embroidery shop, only to find some rude salespeople that were not very helpful at all. They threw a book of thousands of logos at us to “peruse”. After 5 minutes, we felt pressured that we needed to have made a decision made already, and also had to pay $30 for a set-up fee.
Asking to be able to see a sample was like pulling teeth and took days. We had to find the time to drive back there to deal with the rude people to see a sample held up against a hat…Then, we had to wait weeks to get them printed, half of which were done incorrectly, then a few weeks more to get the remainder finished…
Phew…What a headache…I mean, really…It shouldn’t be that difficult.
I found a website online that I “Stumbled Upon” that’s a full-service, completely automated site where you can Design Tshirts online…(How helpful would this have been for us…) You can actually see, in any color, on any type of shirt, your chosen artwork design, including logos, numbers, words, names with lots of different fonts and options, etc…Very, very cool! You can see immediately what your shirts will look like!
Firstly, they advertise that you can get 1 item printed or 1000 printed, and they boast $0 Set-Up Fees for screen or film. You can use their artwork, or even upload your own to use.
Comparing the prices that we paid, $4.50 (and they acted like that was a huge favor they were doing us), for our shirts and hats to be printed, for only 12 on TShirtPrinting4U.com they were just over $2…and the prices go down dramatically per shirt as you increase in numbers.
They also have a section, called the Tshirt Man, that caters to your ministry or Christian business…Love that!!!
They say it is a 100% guarantee on satisfaction…Seems like you get Read more
Popularity: 35% [?]
The Diary Of A Frustrated Business Owner!
Are you tired of advertising that doesn’t work?
January 17- Just had another prospect tell me they “wanted to think about” buying our product. Said they “needed to talk to their partners.” This is the third time this year that a prospect blew me off on what I thought was a lay-down. I expect to lose some, but it kills me when I only have a handful of prospects to begin with. What am I doing wrong?
February 21- When I called my ad agency and talked to the account rep, he told me our advertising was doing well, because it was “getting our name out there”. I’m dead. Their advertising stuff truly sucks, and they say it’s good because it’s supposedly getting us “name recognition”. I cannot stand the thought of wasting money on ads that I know, and they know, DO NOT WORK!
March 2- Sent a bunch of sales letters for our new program. I thought I’d give the ad agency one more try. The mailing cost me $134. So far, I’ve had two calls. One from my neighbor who happened to be on my list, who said, “Can you pick up the kids from practice tonight?”, and one from a prospect who said, “I’ve been thinking about trying one of these for a while. Are there any you have I can try for a couple hundred dollars or so?” This is so depressing I can’t stand it. When I called to discuss this with my rep, he told me he I wasn’t being helpful always calling with complaints. When I mentioned that I still didn’t understand why the marketing they had us use doesn’t work…he told me I was just not “sophisticated” enough to understand that advertising wasn’t meant to bring immediate payback. He said I had to understand that name recognition was the whole deal, and that name recognition takes a long time. He added that getting customers and cash in right away wasn’t the primary use for advertising. Now, you tell me, is that the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard in your life, or what? If advertising doesn’t bring in instant profits, why the hell run it at all? I don’t want name recognition. I WANT CASH IN MY BANK ACCOUNT!!
April 16- Our newspaper ad rep came in and told me that we needed to take a longer look at the ads in the paper. She said my concerns about the ads not pulling responses or new customers, she said, “It’s a numbers game. If you run ads long enough, you’ll eventually get new customers.” She added, “then the quality of your products and company will take care of the rest!” That afternoon, we had another ad hit in the paper. By dinner time, we had no calls…again. I went out to get a sandwich, and went straight home from there. Had a stomach ache. Was it the food or the crappy ads?
May 11- The guy who owns the store next to me, Jerry, bought a tape set on motivational psychology he got at a seminar where everyone walked across hot coals. His business has been bad lately, with everything going on and all, and he said the seminar and tapes really opened his eyes. When I asked him, “Opened your eyes to what?”, he just gave me a dirty look and went out. I’ll be curious to see what happens with his new found motivation.
June 28- Well, his “motivational” tapes must not be working too well. Jerry shut the store down today. After sending out 10,000 mailers based on his new found “motivation”, he only got a handful of lousy leads, and only one new customer. He just gave up. I still don’t quite get how saying positive affirmations and walking across hot coals gets anyone to respond to ads and to make sales. Maybe I’m missing something.
July 21- Over half of the year has gone by, and I’m no better off than I was last year. (Or any year, for that matter.) My
wife is tired of listening to me complain about how frustrated I am. I just can’t help it. I know I’ve got the best prices in the area, the best products, the best service, and we really do care about our customers. Why don’t more people come in here to buy?
August 9- My agency rep came across with a “hot list” of prospects. Plus, the new mailer they designed to send out looks really good. It talks about our track record, experience, low prices, and is, well, very professional. It’ll sure be nice to finally get some leads. The advertising agency was really excited about it.
August 22- Final results are in from the new mailer. 5000 mailed out. 24 responses. Not bad. We followed up with the leads, and made two sales for starter packages that totaled $400. Still have along way to go to get back the rest of the thousand bucks I laid out for the mailing, and the grand I paid the ad agency.
September 14- My wife wants to go on vacation to Disney World. With the three kids and both of us, you’re looking at $2,000 to $3,000. Easy. I told her that was out of our league right now, but I had a big sale coming up, and when it hit, we’d go to Orlando for sure. (She wasn’t happy, but, hey, what can I say? She’ll have to wait.)
October 3- The big sale hits. We get some business, but NOTHING like I hoped (prayed) for. Damn! That really irritates me. Here I work on this sale for months, and it hardly makes any difference in my cash flow or sales. (My wife is not pleased. It took me a week to get enough courage to tell her the sale was a bomb.) What am I doing wrong?
October 4- Read ad in trade journal that says the reason we all struggle is that we have been given “marketing tools” by ad agencies and ad reps that simply don’t work. Says that we all push what we think people should be interested in, when, in fact, no one responds to anything except what THEY are interested in. Said that we need to stimulate curiosity, by stirring their emotions. To use compassion and empathy, instead of image and “best prices” He says that making money is simple, when you know how to magnetically attract qualified, interested people to respond! He went on to say that the ad agencies wouldn’t know a real ad that worked if it jumped up and bit them in the butt…and their garbage about “getting your name out there” is ridiculous. He concluded by saying that 99% of business owners go about advertising using techniques that only work for Fortune 100 companies who can afford to waste millions of dollars on ads that don’t work. He said small and medium sized businesses cannot afford to wait until their “image” somehow magically turns into cash. That, until we start using “emotional direct response marketing”, we’ll always get the same crappy results from our ads, yellow pages, mailers, etc. This guy sounds like he’s been through the same hell I live every day. Ordered his FREE REPORT he offers.
November 5- Got report. Couldn’t believe that somebody finally knows why what we are taught to do, is so useless. He pointed out that people respond only to what they want, and will never respond to what I think they should need! He had success stories from business owners all over the country who are no longer listening to the garbage from ad agencies and reps. Business owners who are actually getting people to buy stuff as a result of their advertising!
November 14 - Became a member of this marketing program. Stayed up all night reading all the manuals and listening to the audio tapes in my car. I’m amazed! It’s like a whole new world has been opened up to me. It’s such a relief that someone has finally shown me how to never again use worthless advertising to get business!
December 12- Ran an ad from this guy’s kit for $69, and got 37 leads, of whom 14 bought nice, profitable packages. Made over 15 times the cost of the ad within two weeks! Plus, I finally got my first referral from a business associate I’ve known for four years, who never gave me a damn thing before. I’ve never been busier in my career. (And this is Christmas time, when everyone says we shouldn’t be busy. What a joke.) I am so glad I now know how to:
- Run ads that attract interested buyers! (I can literally feel the pressure melt away!)
- Get started with little cash!
- Have 5-10% responses to mailings become commonplace!
- End the frustration of “traditional” advertising!
Get dozens of responses to cheap little emotional ads! And much more! If you want to see exactly why 13,465 business owners have finally found a “better way”, you can get a FREE REPORT that explains this all in much more detail. You can get your copy by Simply Entering in Your Primary eMail Address Below, 24 Hrs., 7 days a week.
To Your Immediate and Lasting Success,
Kenneth Edwards Jr.
KE2 Global
Director
Technorati Tags: small business marketing, diary of a frustrated business owner, marketing blog, marketing, advertising, business, lead generation
Popularity: 40% [?]
Singing The Small Business Marketing Tune…
July 6, 2007 by Kenney · Leave a Comment
Marketing Is Everything
Marketing Is Everything
Marketing Is Everything
It took me a while to get to sleep last night
I just kept thinking about marketing. It’s fun
actually.
Once you have a quality product, the only activity
that you need to do is market it.
It’s a simple formula…
Get/Create a Product, Market it, Make money.
Create freedom.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll get up singing a different
tune, share some other secrets.
NNaaa
Because it’s all that matters.
Rant:
I don’t care if you sell groceries
I don’t care if you sell real estate
I don’t care if you sell insurance
You have to understand, grasp, and put into action
good marketing in order to create a business that
explodes with profits.
It doesn’t matter if your a doctor
It doesn’t matter if your a attorney
It doesn’t matter if your a eBayer
It doesn’t matter if your a infopreneur
It doesn’t matter if your a dentist
I’ve never even seen a garage sale that was
successful that didn’t put a sign out or an
ad in the paper.
That’s Marketing
Shoot, you can do $1-2k as a garage
saler a week, if you know how to market
right.
Marketing brings in prospects
Marketing brings in customers
Marketing “brings home the bacon”
You must learn it if you want your business
to survive.
You must learn it to obtain freedom.
Marketing done right frees up time and money.
Marketing done right creates freedom in your
life, both financially and personally.
Your business, and the success of it, effects
your whole life.
Tell me something that you spend more time with,
thinking about, or talking about.
Nothing! Except maybe the freedom you’d like to
create from it.
Your business that is.
Well that’s all for now.
To Your Small Business Marketing Success,
Kenney Jr.
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Customers For INSTANT PROFITS?” New Marketing System
Reveals Secrets Of Advertising That Actually Works To
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