Like businesses across the land, the Madison Avenue spa Wellpath tried to drum up customers by running heavily discounted coupons on deal-of-the-day Web sites. But the Internet coupon fad is shrinking faster than fat from a weight-loss laser. Deal sites are losing their steam…Get the full story here
What’s your opinion?
Category: Local Social Media Marketing
For Small Business Internet Marketing Help read the articles in this category
Using advanced analytics PC City was distinguish between their online and off-line marketing and advertising efforts to define an ideal marketing mix for their particular sales goals.You can do the same by placing Google Analytics ( a free Google tool) onto your landing pages to find where and how your customers are finding you. You can also set up tracking on your off-line advertising..you can use low-cost or free telephone tracking numbers or include a special code on off-line material to measure its effectiveness. If you’d like to discuss more ways you can improve your advertising call us (301) 576-9876
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If you take a drive down Main Street in Anytown, USA you’re going to see the proof of the economy everywhere. “Going Out Of Business Sale!” or “Closed,” and of course the “For Rent” and lease signs popping up everywhere. I’ve seen several of these over the last year in my own backyard and it’s heartbreaking.
Why did these businesses go out of business? Simply put, they didn’t know what to do when market conditions changed! They all probably knew they needed to do something, they just didn’t know what. They probably didn’t stay in touch with their customer base because if they had they could have found reasons they weren’t stopping in as frequently. Instead, most owners probably continued to do what they always had done,cut prices and use the same dry push marketing techniques that are no longer effective.
And remember – a lot of business owners and people in general are creatures of habit. This is another major reason for their marketing failures. Since they don’t interact with “outsiders” that have new ideas and techniques, they have a very narrow view of marketing and advertising. And they’re not sure how much these new marketing techniques might cost them.
But to be brutally honest, to win in this new economy you have to rethink what you’ve always done. If you’re advertising in print their has to be a way for you to monitor its effectiveness. If your current advertising efforts don’t yield tangible gains, stop doing them. Don’t rely on the salesperson’s word about the effectiveness of their marketing reach. The best way to insure that you will always have a steady stream of loyal traffic is to build you own database. If you’re not building your own database of past, present and future customers, then now is the time to start. The most effective way to build a loyal fan base of followers, even with all the talk surrounding social media and mobile is via email.
List building and database maintenance
If you’re a business owner and you don’t have a manageable list then you’re missing out on a vital sales tool for your business’ growth and survival. This is very simple to do and can be the difference between life and death for your business. An email auto-responder form installed on your website lets you automatically create a customer list and give yourself an instant on-demand source of income potential. You can do it yourself or we can do it for you. We charge $150 per month plus $100 per broadcast for special sales events. We make our services dirt-cheap for you, so that you’ll consider us for future projects. **Update this process can also be created using mobile or sms technology.
What’s the expected return on investment with our auto-responder program.
If your business runs a full-page ad in a local newspaper, it’s normally going to cost between three and four grand. If your average profit per sale is $30 or $40, you have to make at least one hundred sales just to break even!
However, if you instead create and send an email to your list, you only have to make three or four sales…and the rest is profit. That’s a big difference. You can also make a sale exclusive to your list, which drives the response up as well. Numbers don’t lie and this why this makes it a no-brainer to fit this services into your marketing budget.
We can also change your sales receipts so it directs your customers to sign up for discounts and coupons that are only available to “preferred” customers. (Your list) This way you can build a list of nothing but buyers and fans for your business, and that is a very responsive list. One properly constructed offer from you to this list will drive your ROI through the roof! The customers on this list already know you, like you, and obviously trust you because they have already spent money with you before.
Which brings me to another point to cover with you: It’s been proven over and over again that it takes almost eight times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to market to existing customers. Just about every business owner that I have pointed that out to has heard it all before. They already know that…but they just don’t take it to heart.
Just about every client I deal with spends their time going after new customers, and neglecting their current customers. How many times have you bought something from a local store and never heard from them again? Sad, but true.
The bottom line is that auto-responders make email campaigns and customer list building simple. You can honestly cut up to 70% off your advertising budget and increase your profits at the same time.
Newsletter and Email Campaigns
It’s fairly easy for us to create a newsletter template and send it to your list to build customer rapport for you. You only have to pay for the creation once and it will work for you from that point forward. An easy way to kill three birds with one stone is to incorporate your blog, social media site(Facebook & Twitter), with an auto-responder email system. So that when you create an article on your blog it gets added to your email newsletter template to be sent at specified times determined by you. Links from your article also go to your Facebook Page and Twitter account, fresh content increases interest, interest leads to sales. In other words, if you pay us $350 to set you up to create 26 bi-weekly newsletters, it’s done. That’s basically a year’s worth of content that will continue to work year after year. The key to the newsletters is to brand yourself, not the business. You want customers to get to know you personally because that brands loyalty. That’s a major way to compete against the big chain stores.
Here’s another important point I want cover with you. Now you can choose to hire a copywriter for an exorbitant fee, do it yourself OR hire us to do it for you. We completely understand that you have options, but We cost far less than a copywriter would normally charge, and we have a vested interest in your success.
A final tip: Send an email to a customer who just purchased your product and let them know that they have a coupon or other discount waiting for them via a downloadable link that they have to opt into as part of their preferred customer status. Also give them an opportunity to opt out of your emails as well.
Let me know what you think about this article.
Related articles
- How your business can produce an e-newsletter that works (premierlinedirect.co.uk)
- Building Your Business: Increase Profits with Regular Customer Contact (stepup2success.wordpress.com)
- 3 no-fail ways to collect email addresses to increase your customer database (bizcommunicator.wordpress.com)
- Laurel Business Owner | Are You Getting Enough Traffic? (locallyact.org)
The business success equation is, quite simple….
Think about this…Nothing happens in your business without traffic.
You can’t build a list without traffic. You can’t sell your products or services without traffic.
Without traffic your business is doomed to fail. Traffic is truly the answer to almost every problem.
I’m in Laurel talking to business owners all month and the one constant has been that there is not enough traffic being generated from their print advertising. I’ve seen the Pennysaver ads, the newspaper and specialty flyers including Val-Pak. What I’m seeing is that you’re spending too much money on print based on homes passed data. Homes passed means nothing in today’s market. Mailboxes are stuffed with junk mail that never gets open. However there are better ways to get found by the local customers you’re attempting to target via print. You can use the power of the internet to generate the leads and traffic you’re craving. But you need to do it correctly or you’ll suffer the consequences. So I ask you…
- Do you know how and have the time to use the power of the internet to generate the right type of traffic that your business needs to thrive?
- Do you have the trained staff and the tools to design messages, ads, newsletters, surveys and polls that would engage your customers or clients?
- Are you spending more for print advertising and not seeing promised results?
Maybe you’ve seen the possibilities that the internet offers and jumped on board. You’ve set up your Blog, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts, but haven’t been consistent with content creation and updates. Social and digital media take time and effort to work and see tangible gains; two things most business owners don’t have enough of.
- Do you have the budget to add a full time internet marketing specialist to your staff?
If you answered No to any of the previous questions, maybe we should talk
Here’s our solution: Locally Act will use the power of the internet to market your business for you.
That’s right, we now offer a “LOCAL SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING PROGRAM” which includes:
- Local Search Directory setup and management including Google, Bing and Yahoo
- Facebook and Twitter setup and training
- Digital signage Setup and Design
- Content Management System setup
- List building – database management and setup
- Online video production and distribution setup
- Facebook and Twitter page setup and training
- Pay-per-Click ad setup and training multi-platform
- Landing Page build and setup
- Online newsletter and auto responder setup
- Website poll and survey setup and maintenance
- Incorporate mobile marketing into overall strategy
Our sales pitch is simple: We market your business as if our livelihood depends on it, because it does. We provide a Done-For-You marketing service which encompasses online, mobile and digital out of home marketing products and services. We basically become your business’ marketing department.
Our services will definitely improve you overall ROI, that’s our guarantee or you don’t pay. You can start incrementally or do it all at once, the choice is yours. Next step… call or email our office for a free half hour consultation. We’ll do a quick analysis and discuss marketing ideas and solutions, and by the way you’re under no obligation to purchase anything from us, ever.
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Advertising your service or brick and mortar business online is more effective and less expensive than print advertising….and here’s why.
Online pay per click advertising only targets customers who are searching for products or services related to your business in your business area. Print advertisers sell you on the premise of homes passed, which is an outdated model in my opinion. We all know that more people get their information from various online sources and many don’t even bother perusing the number of daily print advertising pieces that clutter their mailbox.
Managing your online advertising is much easier as you or your designated agent can change your ad on the fly at anytime unlike print;you can split test every aspect of your ad and you’ll be able to monitor the ROI of a particular product or service before you (a) either begin mass production or (b) begin a new costly new venture that will yield a low return. I’ll be posting an article later this week that will explain the procedures I use to build an effective online ad to display on the Google and Bing networks respectively.
Pay only for success: You only pay when a customer clicks on your ad. Your advertising costs can be as low as 5 cents a click depending on the competitive nature of your intended market.
Online pay per click advertising also helps you build a list of hot prospects if done correctly and it’s very easy to add a call to action to your ad that will have your potential customers clamouring to give you their email or mobile phone number.
So there you have it just a few of the reasons I believe advertising your business online is way better and more effective than print advertising. What are your thoughts?
There are three and only three factors that really have an iron grip on the profits of any marketing effort. The smartest marketing minds on the planet have boiled down these factors to this simple, but incredibly powerful formula:
“The Right Message… To The Right Market… At The Right Time!”
Most businesses miss one, two or all three of these factors, and as a result, have very ineffective marketing and advertising results.
The objective of your marketing efforts is to generate leads – people you can follow up with. When you convey the right message to the right market at the right time, you get leads.
If you don’t have a computerized system in place to consistently and effectively follow up with your leads, you’re wasting a lot of leads and you’re wasting a lot of man hours doing tedious, manual follow-up.
You’re wasting money on advertising when you simply spend money on advertising that’s sent to prospects that have no interest in your products or services. That’s why traditional advertising no longer works for most businesses on limited budgets. Generally there’s only a 2-3 percent response to print advertising, which means that more than 95 percent of your advertising dollars are wasted.
Every time you run a marketing campaign, the leads you get can be divided into three categories:
1. Leads ready NOW (Hot)
2. Leads not ready now but will be ready soon (Warm – these leads are CRITICAL to your success)
3. Leads that may never be ready (Cold or Bad Leads)
Our sales pitch is simple: We market your business as if it were our business. We provide a “done for you” service that will, without question, measurably improve your overall marketing ROI. We start by tracking every single marketing strategy you employ – even if your only marketing strategies are your website and referrals. Accurate tracking is the foundation of everything we do. Through tracking, we quickly begin to understand your business like you do – from an owner’s perspective.
Our tracking process uncovers never-before-seen insights about your business and your marketing. We use these insights, combined with our online marketing and website optimization expertise, to eliminate ineffective marketing strategies, drive more qualified visitors to your website and convert more visitors into leads and sales. We do all of this – essentially becoming your surrogate VP of marketing – for less than the cost of a single entry level employee!
The choice is yours continue doing what you’ve always done or start utilizing a more effective way to market your business. Email or call us to get started Today!
Local-social search can help businesses in promoting their products/services to their audience better. And, it can also help them identify micro-target markets. And look at these numbers released by the BIA/Kelsey Group. These are from the latter part of 2009…
• 16% of consumers use Social Networking Sites as a Source for Local Shopping Info
• 47% think ratings or testimonials from users of a product or service is very important, up from 40% two years ago
• 18% of those surveyed have submitted a written review
• Types of businesses searched for in past 6 months from a mobile device: 43% search for restaurants, 37% for movies, 35% for retail stores, 32% for banks/atms, 27% for hotel/lodging
• 25% of those surveyed want to locate friends nearby on their mobile device
The game is changing and businesses must try to keep up with it and take advantage of it so that they can connect with their audience in more meaningful ways, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, or new platforms that have yet to be launched.
Here are the statistics on what small businesses are doing in this space
