I have a problem. I'm neurotic when it comes to email. I manage my inbox really carefully and I care too much about proper email etiquette.
Over the years I've developed a list of what I've come to call Email Sins. Things that are just against any decent email etiquette and, in my opinion, should not be done. Here they are:
No Subject Line Emails:
If you are going to send someone an email have the decency to include a subject line. Leaving the subject line blank does make me more likely to open your email but also more likely to think you are incompetent or lazy.
Using An Old Thread:
What I think happens is you want to send an email to someone but you are too clueless to know how to create contacts and then reference them when adding a recipient to your email.
So, you do a search in your inbox for that person's name and find the last email conversation between the two of you and you reply to that email with an entirely new conversation that is in no way related to the previous email you are replying to.
This creates confusion. As I read your email I'm trying to understand what it has to do with the previous conversation and in the future, if I ever have to search my inbox to find your email I am going to have a hard time finding it because it is nestled in a threat with an unrelated subject line.
Sending An Email With a Request To Call or Text
I still don't understand why people do this. I get an email that looks something like this:
“Hey, Jacob give me a call.”
That is all. Nothing more to the email than that. This is super annoying.
There is the whole fact that you could have just called me but more importantly and really what makes this an email sin is that you went to the effort to type an email but effectively refused to tell me WHY you feel we need to chat on the phone.
Would it be that hard to append something to the end of the sentence to communicate the topic of the desired phone call?
What is worse is when that phone call takes place and the topic of conversation could and should have been fully handled via email. Why did we have to get on the phone at all? Clearly you have my email address and are capable of typing…
An Unruly Inbox
Now if your email inbox is a disaster that shouldn't affect me but what sometimes happens is I walk past a computer of one of my employees or a friend and I catch a glimpse of their email inbox and see they have somewhere between 150 and 14,000 unread emails.
This makes me want to vomit a little inside. Your personal email is your business I suppose but in the business world quality communication via email is a standard. Anyone not capable of managing an inbox so as to ensure they don't drop the ball or an important thing doesn't fall through the cracks needs to make a serious change.
So what are your email sins? What really gets on your nerves? Let me know in the comments below.
This is for any business owner or marketer who is currently NOT sending regular emails to an email list of subscribers, customers, and potential customers.
This conversation usually happens when I'm talking to a business owner who has been around for a few years but doesn't currently send much or any email.
WHY You Need to Be Sending Email
Not building and cultivating an email list is costing you money. Depending on how amazing your email strategy is, your lack of doing something is probably costing you between 5 cents and a dollar per email address per month.
Now I get it… writing emails is hard and can be expensive! That is what has been holding you back. It doesn't have to be that rough… I promise.
Scraping Together Your Email List
Before we get into the how and what, we need to build your email list. It is time to go to all your various resources and combine all the files, exports, and other assets you have to build out your email list.
Where possible, you want to capture as much data about each email subscriber as possible but specifically where you can be sure to export/capture: First Name, Last Name, Email Address, State, Zip Code.
This information will be handy later when you are making so much money from email you can't handle it and you decide to start segmenting or customizing emails to each recipient 🙂
Here are a number of potential resources you may consider where you can find email addresses you have collected over the many years you have been in business:
Your eCommerce system
Your CMS where customer data is stored
Any 3rd party system where you have hosted a giveaway in the past
If you have ever donated product to someone else's giveaway and they captured emails they may be able to provide them to you
Your fulfillment and shipping software or system
Your outlook or email contact list and that of your employees
If you are in the B2B space you may have a Rolodex or large pile of business cards. There are phone apps that can take pictures of your cards and extract the email addresses.
A Warning Not To Buy Or Steal Emails…
There is often a temptation to buy an email list from a vendor or swap email lists with a partner or vendor. I strongly discourage this. People don't like getting emails from random businesses that they didn't specifically opt-in to receive or with whom they have some sort of relationship or brand awareness.
Further, it could be a violation of terms or at very least trust from that 3rd party to be providing you with those email addresses.
Lastly, if you have personally overseen the gathering process of email addresses that end up on your email list you don't know where they came from and frankly quality is MUCH more important than quantity.
Often purchased email lists contain email addresses specifically built and monitored by email service providers to catch companies that are sending SPAM and junk mail.
Waking Up Your List or Sending the First “WARNING” Email
Now, you have put together your email list and you are wondering what to do next. Well, first thing you need to do is WARN these people you are planning to send them email.
This is tactically wise but also ethically good. If you have email addresses that up until now you have never sent anything and all of the sudden you are going to send them email with any type of frequency don't you think they deserve a heads up and the option to say “no thank you?”
In addition to the warm and fuzzy reasons, there is a tactical benefit as well. It costs money to send email and for every email address on your list that isn't interested in receiving emails you are going to be paying to send it to them.
Further, if they mark your email as SPAM or move it to their junk folder this is going to hurt your sender reputation which in the long term will keep your emails from getting to the contacts who DO want to receive them.
Getting “bad” contacts off your list is just as important as getting “good” contacts onto your list.
So We Start With The Ferris Cold Email Template
I first saw this email several years ago when top blogger, podcast, and author Tim Ferris decided to resurrect his email list and start emailing them after years of ignoring the list.
I have adapted and used this template several times and I encourage you to adapt it for your business:
The easier you make it for people to unsubscribe the better because remember one of the core goals of this email is to get “bad” contacts off your list before you start sending frequent emails.
Also note that Tim provides some value in his email by including some free resources and products that help people engage with his brand and remember who he is and how he can provide them with value moving forward.
How Often Should You Send Email?
Congrats. At this point, you have pulled together your email list and warned them you will be sending more frequent email. Now what?
Commit to a regular sending frequency. How often you send email is not nearly as important as committing to a frequency and communicating what that will be.
Meaning, be consistent. If you commit to sending weekly, plan to send weekly; and however often you commit to sending, manage that expectation moving forward by telling subscribers what to expect.
You can manage that expectation in the Ferris Cold Email template and anywhere on your website where people can opt-in to receive emails. Every new subscriber should get some sort of “welcome” email and in that email manage expectations about how often you send emails.
What Should You Send?
I have found that this is where the rubber hits the roads. Most of the business owners I talk to get stuck on this part.
Listen, if you are already busy and haven't been sending emails for the last however many years then taking on a serious email strategy that requires typing up great emails often is probably unrealistic.
I generally suggest, just to get the ball rolling that you build some sort of newsletter template that is going to be low work to build and execute.
Something with 3-4 sections that you can quickly insert content into and hit send. For example, one of our brands does a weekly newsletter which includes 4 sections.
Section 1 is their latest podcast episode (yeah its a podcast)
A social feature. Basically featuring an instagram follower/customer
Share of the week in which they include an article, video, or similar from some other website or channel that isn't them. (it is ok to share content that isn't yours)
Product of the week. Exactly what it sounds like.
I think this was my first ever marketing email. In that business we decided to write and send a weekly “safety tip” to our contacts to create a lot of value and drive high open rates. Then we put an offer at the bottom of each email.
Once you have a template built out it should be low maintenance to commit to your sending schedule.
But This Newsletter Won't Make You A Ton of Money
Now you have the foundation in place but if you really want to generate cash from your email you need to go beyond this.
You now built your list and got them to expect regular emails from you that contain valuable information. Great job. This is the most difficult part.
Now you need to figure out how to monetize this. Monetization strategies are going to vary dramatically from one business to the next depending on what you sell, who your customers are, and much more.
Obviously sending emails that promote your own product or service include sales, referral or loyalty programs, and new product offerings is a good idea.
In addition you may be able to market 3rd party services or products that are not a conflict with your own products. You might be able to get paid a commission based on the performance or just get paid a direct advertising fee for promoting that 3rd party's product(s).
This article was meant to get you to this point. You can read other articles on my site about email marketing or consult with a marketing coach to keep the ball rolling but I promise that email with be a low cost, high ROI asset of you do it right!
Before you ask, yes I own the rights to use this stock image
So you have a website and you just got an email or letter in the mail telling you that some fancy sounding law firm is going to take you to court unless you pay a settlement fee for the illegal use of some copyrighted image on your website.
What The CRAP Is This All About And What Are You Supposed To Do???
Why This Is Happening and Is It Legit?
Yeah, its real and it is happening to you. You found some image online and you put it on your website without the permission or necessary license. You probably did some Google Image search and found the perfect thing for your blog post and now you are paying the price for putting it on your site ignorant of the laws that govern image use and copyright.
There are big law firms that do nothing more than work with image services like Getty Images and make a fortune finding people like you and taking you to court. The vast majority of internet publishers (site owners like you) will pay the settlement cost before you deal with court and they know it. You know you can't win the court case because you did in fact violate the copyright so you figure why fight it right?
What Are Your Options?
Do Not Ignore It. This problem is not going to go away and you don't need the legal trouble that will come if you fully ignore it.
If the price is high enough, consider hiring an attorney. If the law firm is asking for ten thousand dollars or more you may want to hire an attorney. You may be surprised by the things that the attorney can do to help you. The attorney can help call their bluff in the threat to take you to court. Does the plaintiff really want to come to your state and make an appearance in court? Your attorney can likely force those kinds of terms and that will likely drop the settlement price and at least save you some money.
That said most of the time the cost of the settlement is too low to justify hiring an attorney. You should probably just pay it and make the problem go away. You can and should always try to negotiate the price. Talk about how you don't have that kind of money but may be able to scrape together 50% of that in cash if they you can come to an arrangement. Use your own language and don't be dishonest as that will only hurt you later should you end up in court.
When you agree to make payment make sure that you get something in writing that makes clear that the payment you are making is considered a full payment and that they agree to not pursue any additional legal actions.
As a final thought in this section, be sure to trace down how you found the image. If you happened to get the image from a website that claimed it was license free and public domain then you may be able to counter-sue that website to recover the damages you incurred having used the image in good faith.
How Do You Prevent This From Happening In the Future?
STOP using images that you don't have the rights to use. When you do a Google Image Search for example you can use the Usage Rights Tool to filter the results by images that are labeled for reuse though be warned that this still may lead you to images that have licensing requirements. For example an image may be labeled for reuse BUT require that you give the image owner credit in someway.
ALWAYS follow the image to it's source website and check that website's terms and conditions. If unsure, use a contact form to ask permission.
Here is a Google Image Search for me… apparently there is an artist somewhere that shares my name?
If you are going to have need for a lot of stock images you can always just pay a subscription to Adobe, iStock Photos, Getty Images, or any other service that gives you access to stock images at a subscription rate.
There are a handful of websites out there that provide a decent selection of public domain images you can use. Most of them make their money however by constantly asking you to consider subscribing to their paid service. Despite that they can be helpful… here are some I have bookmarked:
http://www.freeimages.com
https://pixabay.com/
http://www.freestockphotos.biz/
https://pixnio.com/
And don't forget Wikipedia as all images on that site are automatically public domain!
Happy hunting… and please share in the comments below any experiences you have had with this and how it turned out for you.
No, you shouldn't. If all you needed was an easy answer, then there you have it. If you want to understand the deeper reasons why and explore alternatives to building an email list of your own read on.
Email marketing was recently ranked the number one highest return on investment marketing strategy by US marketers in a study published by emarketer.com. Email marketing leads to big ROIs because its relatively cheap to execute and is very easy to measure. Sadly, it is also difficult to get started as most of us start with few if any contacts in our email marketing subscriber lists. The temptation to buy an email list is very high. This is especially true in the B2B space where many marketers feel like it would be impossible to construct a list on their own.
Why Its Generally A Bad Idea?
At the core of Email Marketing is deliverability. Deliverability is the term we use to describe and understand the factors that get your sent emails into the inbox of the recipient as opposed to getting caught in a server level firewall or email client junk folder. There are a myriad of factors that contribute to getting to the inbox. Chief among these is your Sender IP reputation. Your IP reputation is the reputation that the ESPs (Email Service Providers) build over time about the quality of the email you send. When you buy an email list you potentially damage your reputation in a few ways. First the ESPs consider it a red flag when they see a spike in the quantity of email being sent out from any given source. Going from sending email campaigns from 500 to 5,000 over night is a red flag that will damage your sender reputation. Also, most email lists inherently contain bad email addresses that will damage your reputation. Due to the way most lists are built they are prone to have a lot of inactive email accounts. When you send email to an inactive email account the ESPs lowers your sender reputation and this is especially damaging when you do it in bulk which is what often happens when you buy an email list. Additionally, ESPs also create fake/dead email accounts that they then submit to a lot of the list builders. They do this on purpose so that when anyone sends email to that fake account the ESP will know that the sender is SPAMing and not gathering email addresses organically.
What Are Your Alternatives?
Building an email list is difficult. Ensure that you are producing and sending out super valuable content for your target audience and beyond the valuable content consider giving additional incentives to people to opt-in. Free reports, coupons, opportunities to win something, or the like. Proactively add email addresses from online contacts but use double opt-in to allow every contact the opportunity to confirm their subscription or pass on it. Here is a blog post I prepared a few years ago that has some other specific ideas.
If You Ignore My Advice and Buy a List How Can You Mitigate The Risk?
First, slowing warm up your IP sending by only adding small portions of the list to your active subscribers over time. This gradual warm up in sending quantity will both limit the potential red flag as well as give you some immediate feedback on the quality of the list based on your bounce rate (% of inactive or bad email addresses).
Second, consider sending out “confirm your subscription” email that lets the user know that you would like to send them a lot of awesome future content and ask them to click on a link in the email to confirm their subscription. You can send out 1 or maybe 2 follow up emails reminding them to click to confirm but after a few of these invitations delete them from the list or leave them marked as inactive.
Marketing and Advertising present a very complex environment. Marketing experts have to surround themselves with people who have expertise in each part of the marketing cycle and the various mediums where marketing and advertising are placed. Within the digital space there are a lot of unique media and marketing systems used by today's experts. Below is a quick summary of some of the higher level parts of the digital marketing ecosystem for those who may be beginners and are trying to understand the moving parts.
For the digital marketers out there I have to wonder; do we have to know all this stuff really well? Digital marketing expertise is hard to find in our current marketplace. For smaller companies who may not have the budget to bring on a full team of marketers to represent these different facets its going to be difficult to find someone who has a moderate to deep understanding of all of them. As far as making yourself a strong asset in the job market is it better to be widely versed or deeply versed in one or two different media?
I would say both. For the large and small players in the game there is a need for leaders and marketing managers who can talk all the talk and form high level strategies based on a working knowledge of all the aspects of the ecosystem. And that isn't limited to digital. Getting experience and training around traditional ad platforms like TV, radio, outdoor, and print is also key. Within the best organizations however there is also a need for people who are more deeply versed in one specific vertical or medium. Depending on where you currently are in your career in the digital marketing or more broad marketing spectrum in learning and building a track record, you may choose to go niche or broad. Pick your poison and drink it often!
Email
Email isn't dead. Ranked number one in a recent study among US marketing professionals as the highest ROI medium of digital advertising, email marketing is a critical component of any company's strategy no matter the size.
Social
Understanding how to create utility and engagement in the social space is as much an art form as any other marketing medium. Often considered a low cost to free solution, social marketing is a place to invest resources and expertise in order to build short and long term results.
Mobile
Speaking here more specifically to SMS and MMS marketing, retailers and big brands can leverage the number one most responsive communication tool to connect with consumers and drive them to action.
SEO
Currently 70% of online ad budgets are allocated to SEO. This moving target marketing method is about optimizing one's site to make it rank better on the organic algorithms of major search engines like Google. Its half cat and mouse games with the search engines and half an issue of creating truly valuable content and utility in a way that is compatible with technology best practices.
SEM
I prefer to use the term Paid Search but SEM is the term most often used to refer to the practice of buying paid ads (generally pay per click) on search engines like Google based on the location and keywords used by the searcher. The ultimate compliment to SEO efforts.
Display & Rich Media
Generally referring here to banner ads, streaming audio, and video pre-roll sold direct to site, through an ad network, or through an ad exchange while using a high number of data and profile targeting filters and parameters to make sure the ad is being shown to the right people at the right place at the right time at the optimal price.
Data and Analytics
The key need to look at the large amount of data coming from owned, earned, and paid media and advertising across all these various media and come up with key insights that strengthen future marketing efforts and products.
A close friend and business partner recently asked me about my own systems for managing emails, task lists, and generally organizing stuff. I'm confident that I don't have the best system in place but its working for me right now. Here is the outline I sent to my friend.
Organizing and Managing Email:
I use Gmail's priority inbox which creates three sections of content: Important and Unread, Starred, and Everything else. About 4 times per day (or more often if I have dead time or transit time) I process incoming mail. Processing incoming mail consists of opening and reading ALL unread email. After opening and quickly evaluating the email I either: Star it (important and requires action), Archive it (may need later but requires no action), Delete it, or do nothing (not important but requires action). This leaves me with a clear set of important emails/tasks that are displayed as starred in my priority inbox. Everything else in the inbox is in the not-important but requires action area below. I try to never have more than 10 starred emails.
First is email and I've already covered how I manage that inbox.
Second is my to-do list. EVERYTHING goes into this inbox. Every random thought or consideration must be archived by category (Family, Church, Business, etc). More detail about how to use to-do lists here. In the past I've used Google Tasks to manage my task list. Its always available on the computer in my Gmail and Calendar keeping it top of mind. It isn't the most robust interface (Google needs to step it up here) but it fits my needs. It will allow you to assign due dates and input notes per task. Here are the top apps for iOS and Android that interface with Google Tasks (iOS / Android). I now use Asana which is an enterprise project management solution that better suits my needs as a business owner.
Third is the home inbox. This is a physical red basket kept on our kitchen counter. Warranties/receipts, mail, and other notes and reminders find their way into this inbox. I check it every day and try to keep up on it the best I can.
Regular Planning Sessions
The most critical regular planning session is EFC (Executive Family Council). My wife and I sit down on Sunday evenings after the kids go to bed and plan the week. Topics include: Budget and Finances, Church Work, Week's Calendar, Family Night (Mondays), Date Night, and our current Spiritual Book that we are reading as a couple. This doesn't generally take more than 30 minutes. The calendar is generally fast because when either of us adds something to our own calendar, that at all involves the other person, we always send a calendar invite. Also worth noting is that we have 2 tools that we use to manage finances. The first is Mint.com and the second is a Google Doc Spreadsheet we call “This Month.” Its a daily inflow/outflow worksheet that allows us to plan every expense and inflow to maximize our savings and ensure we never have a negative balance.
Personal Daily Planning: This is a 3 minute nightly review of the next days activities. Just reminding myself if I need to wear anything specific (like a tie) and if I need to leave early or take anything with me outside of normal.
Tools I use religiously:
Evernote
Google Tasks
Gmail / Google Calendar
Google Drive
Dropbox
Teamviewer (for connecting to any of my computers from any other computer or mobile device)
Business Tools I Live By:
Evernote
Dropbox
Asana
Google Everything
Teamviewer
Skype
Slack
WordPress
PayPal
Authorize.net
WooCommerce
MyEmailProgram
What are some of the systems or tools that you have found work best for you and your family?
When I sit down to talk to clients about their internet marketing strategy I'm often surprised how quickly the conversation gets lost in details and lacks clear objectives and goals. After all when you sit down in a meeting you want to have a clear idea of what you plan to discuss and what you want to achieve. Often however, because I'm a professional in the space I forget that the plan inside of my head may not make complete sense to my client when I try to explain it.
That is why I now always talk about the three Cs of Internet Marketing. This gives me a framework around which I can organize my thoughts and in which the clients can better understand the complete strategy and action points. The three Cs are in a certain chronological order and need to be addressed accordingly. Strategies revolve around these three points and always in this order.
Content
Your internet marketing strategy starts with creating content. It doesn't matter if you are a plumber, blogger, or widget salesperson; you must create online content. Content is IMPORTANT because it sets the stage for everything else you do. Creating content gives you added credibility in your profession. Content gives you informational products to offer to entice people to join your email lists etc. Content gives you something to publish to social media networks on a regular basis. Content gives search engines something to read and index in reference to your website and what you are about.
At the very beginning you must map out an internet marketing content strategy. Use these questions as a guideline to help you define your content strategy:
What are you going to write about? It should be related to your industry/products/services. It should have a wide audience. It should be generic enough that you can create endless amounts of content moving forward.
Where will you need to publish the content? Your blog is an absolute must but you may need unique content for newsletters or info products to giveaway.
How often do you need to produce content? Consistency is key so decide in the beginning how often you can commit to publishing new content.
Community
The second C is all about getting visitors to your site and followers in your social media and email lists. One time visitors to your website are an important part of your community plan but ultimately they will come as a bi-product of your focus on content and building the other communities we will discuss.
You should really be focusing on getting more people to join your email list, Facebook Page, Twitter Profile, YouTube Channel, and any other social profiles you focus on. Just creating content and sending it out to the world is not enough to believe that people will just start to find and follow you in these different mediums. Here are some pointers to consider as part of your community internet marketing strategy:
Putting a widget (like the one over there on the right) on your website that quickly allows visitors to find your social media profiles is a good idea but don't think it will be enough all by itself.
Building a Twitter following is as easy as being able to target your audience and then follow them, and give them ample reason to follow you back. Here is a larger overview of the software and strategy I recommend. Here are other Twitter tutorials.
Building a Facebook following is more difficult that Twitter because you cannot solicit users and ask them to “like” your page. You need to use your other communities (offline and online) to drive people to like your page, and this will go much more smoothly if you give people an incentive to “like” you there. Do product and service giveaways and contests. Produce unique (valuable) content that can be found exclusively on your Facebook page.
Building your email database is as simple as giving people a compelling reason to join your list. Offer a Free Report, a Free Preview/Trial, Free Training or Video Tutorials, or an E-Book. The more compelling the offer the more likely people are to give you their information.
Commerce
This tends to be the easiest part of the strategy for most of my clients. Most of us already know how we want to make money on our website. The bigger problem tends to be in getting enough eyeballs to look at what we are doing and offering. In case you don't know fully how you can profit from your website and it's content read this guide that explains how websites make money.
Commerce boils down to providing products that are targeted for your audience. This doesn't mean you have to produce or sell the products yourself. Many website publishers generate their revenue in affiliate marketing opportunities.
I hope the three Cs of internet marketing serve you as a road-map the same way they have served me and the many advertisers and small businesses that I work with around the country!
Are you trying to get started with a website, blog, or lead generation page? Are you trying to sort through all of the different software programs available for email marketing, blogging, managing social media, and webcasting? Here is my simple walk through:
Start With Hosting
If you are going to manage an online presence you will need a website. The first steps include setting up a hosting account where you will be able to host your domain names and build your website(s). GoDaddy is very popular but I personally prefer Hostmonster. The key is in picking a reliable company with good customer service and competitive prices. Follow the following links to get the best discounts from these hosting providers. Godaddy. Hostmonster. Hostgator, 1&1.
Setup Your Website
Unless you are willing to invest BIG money into programmers and web designers you will probably be best off utilizing WordPress. WordPress is a no cost, versatile, user friendly system that you can install in a single click through any of the above hosting providers. Tutorials abound online and on YouTube for how to use WordPress. Start on my WordPress tutorials to begin.
Blog SEO & Syndication
Setup your site to automatically syndicate your content across the web. This will increase your organic search engine rankings and bring more visitors to your site. Start with this short article on video syndication but to really make this happen I suggest getting your hands on my e-book, “The Blog SEO & Syndication Formula.” Don’t worry, you can get a free copy sent to your email if you subscribe to my quarterly newsletter. Look for the subscription form on the right side of my site.
Email Marketing
Building an email marketing database is crucial to the success of any online strategy. I have spent time writing about the best methodologies and tools. Read my overview on the why and the how here.
Social Media
Can you believe that just a few years ago the idea of a business being on Facebook was laughed at? As you get started building your online brand and driving traffic to your site, Twitter can be one of the best tools in your back pocket. As you grow and engage your audience Facebook becomes a required tool. Read this overview about how to build and grow an audience on Facebook & Twitter. Then check out this article about building & engaging your Twitter audience.
Webcasting
One of the best ways to engage your audience and present your topics is through online seminars, or webinars. Webinars present an opportunity to connect with your team, prospects, or online readers/followers in real time. You can utilize webinars to discuss a recent book, talk about industry changes, present research, present products, or train a team. Use this link to get your own webinar room.
Hopefully this short summary will help jump start your website on the track to success!
In this modern world it doesn’t take a geek like me to convince local businesses and advertisers that they need to utilize the internet to interact with their customers. Small businesses across America who don’t have the resources to hire experts struggle each day to keep up with the best practices in online advertising; but what about the sales people? 14.5 Million Americans work in sales. In this fast as light (or Facebook) world how should sales reps be using these online tools to build their client list, customer retention, and generally increase productivity and reach? Today I want to outline a clear strategy for today’s modern sales person.
The Three Sales Objectives:
The first objective is to increase the total number of customers. Building your prospect funnel to eventually increase your client base will always be one of the strongest ways to increase your check.
Secondly we need to increase retention. Maintaining the customers you have in their current buy is crucial to your overall efforts. It doesn’t take very long in the sales profession before you realize that keeping customers is easier than getting new ones but the littlest neglect can lose you customers very quickly.
Your third objective is to increase the buy per customer. Driving each of your customers to give you a greater part of their total budget/buy is sales 101. Up sale the customer to the next promotion, the next product, or the next product category and you will increase your total billing without too much more effort.
The Four Online Activities:
Build an online presence. At a minimum expense you could obtain a complete website. In a society where high school students are trained to build websites it may cost you a lot less than you think to have a professional presence online. Build the website in blog form allowing you to post new information on a regular basis. If you are too cheap to pay for a website I suggest you turn to a free blogging platform such as Blogspot or WordPress.
Create valuable content. Ask yourself what type of content your current and potential customers need. What expertise do you have to share that would both educate your customer and drive them to buy more of your product? If you want to create a loyal following you must develop high quality content. This is where the blogging begins. Share success stories from current clients that are designed to give your client ideas and encourage them to do more business with you. It’s ok to recycle articles, news, etc. If you have access to industry updates, news, etc you can just share that information with your readers/clients. No need to rewrite everything. Just post your opinion about the information and give credit to the original source. Remember that your goal is to create high leverage online activities. The less man hours you have to put into it the better.
Build a list. On your site create an “opt-in” form that allows site visitors to choose to receive your newsletters. Also ask your existing customers permission to add them to your e-newsletters. Newsletters should be sent less frequently than blog posts. If you blog once per week you may send a newsletter every month. If you blog monthly you might send a newsletter every quarter. Utilize the newsletter to share industry news or share your insight into the market changes. This is your opportunity to show your expertise and create a raving fan that will always turn to you when they have a need within your product/service industry. Ask around about different economic email marketing services you can utilize to serve the emails. See resources below.
Syndicate Your Content. There is no need to spend all your time sending links and messages on Facebook and Twitter. This is NOT a productive activity. If you want to connect with clients and potential clients on the social networks such as Facebook and Twitter that’s ok but don’t add the time burden to your day. Since you are already writing content on your blog make sure to automatically feed your blog posts into Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other social networks you feel would be beneficial. Share news stories, industry research, etc on the social networks as well. Utilize a service such as Hootsuite.com or Ping.fm to post to all your networks at once. Both of these services also offer mobile solutions to allow you to share on the go from your phone.
The Five Rules:
How often you blog isn’t nearly as important as how consistently you blog. Start out slow, maybe posting a new blog once per month; slowly increase as you become more comfortable. Get in a groove so that your audience can come to expect a certain type of content and frequency.
Online marketing is a long term, low cost investment. Don’t expect to get fast results. Be consistent over time and only commit to a plan that you are willing to execute over time.
If your audience grows large enough you will be able to monetize your online presence. You will be able to sell ad space on both the site and on your e-newsletters.
Be personable. Nobody wants to do business with a robot. Your online content needs to reflect both professionalism and personality.
Get the help of an expert and continue your online education. Subscribe to my blog and the blogs of other internet marketing gurus. Reading the blogs of internet marketers provides free ongoing training.
Resources:
The three most popular online email marketing systems are iContact, ConstantContact, and Aweber. They each charge based on the size of your contact list. The links in this article will give you a free trial of any of them. Also, let me suggest MyEmailProgram.com which is a new product on the market that is both feature rich and more economic. There are two reasons why you use software like this in place of just a contact group in Outlook. Firstly because it will facilitate automatic signups from your website and secondly because it will track which people open your email, when they open it, and what links within the email they click on.
Over the course of 2010 I have met with thousands of small business advertisers to discuss their internet advertising campaigns. Consistently I have found that most small business owners do not have the resources to hire a dedicated in house expert to run their internet advertising. This results in one of 3 scenarios:
The business does nothing being already overwhelmed with the other aspects of the business
The business owner outsources to whatever salesperson walks in the door and claims to be able to take care of it
The business owner attempts to self-educate themselves and spends a lot of time and energy accomplishing very little
Regardless of where you find yourself in this group this article is for you. I have quickly tried to outline the various mediums of Internet advertising. This will hopefully help you clarify a strategy to branding your business online and driving traffic to your website. More to come on this subject.
More Inspiration and Guidance: