I’ve been traveling a bunch lately, speaking at a ton of different events from San Diego to Atlanta to Chicago. As I fat-finger this post on my iPhone, I’m on a plane headed for Toronto. The reason I tell you this is because I just had a simple, yet profound experience during a layover in Philadelphia.

I had a few minutes to grab a bite to eat in between flights. As I surveyed my options in the terminal I noticed two restaurants, side-by-side, with drastic differences. One had a long line and the other had none. For that reason alone I decided to get in the long line. I figured the locals must know where the good food is.

After 30 seconds I realized why Eat At Joe’s had a huge line and next door they sat, waiting. Hustle. The right kind of hustle.  That’s it. That was the secret. There was man behind the counter working the crowd. Every time someone would walk by he would shout out “Philly cheese steaks here! Don’t go home, don’t leave Philly without one.” His energy was contagious. People lined up at his command.

I began to wonder. We often get caught up in the latest tactics. We search high and low for the hottest tools. We get amped on our amazing technology. We’re connected day and night trying to make our businesses go. We’re hustling. But is it the right hustle?

All the SEO in the world doesn’t do any good, inbound marketing is a waste, and the latest email marketing trick is in vain if we don’t ask for the business.  One wise man, speaking to parents, said “No other successes can compensate for failure in the home.”  I also believe that for business owners, no other successes can compensate for failure to sell.

It might make you uncomfortable. It might make some of your prospects uncomfortable. But in the end, nothing can substitute for asking for the sale. We can keep ourselves busy, really busy, thinking we’re hustling and therefore the business should grow. But sometimes we avoid the right kind of hustle – asking for the business.

Why do we avoid it?  It’s hard.  It’s taxing.  When people say no, it hurts.  We hate rejection.  We want success.  But the avoidance of rejection causes us to miss out on success.  The avoidance is illogical.  When we sell successfully, it feels great.  The bills get paid.  It creates a euphoric high.  But for many people, the fear is greater than the reward.  So, we stay busy with less important things, convincing ourselves that we’re doing meaningful work.

Here are a few tips for getting serious about sales hustle:

• Focus on your higher purpose. You’re not selling just to make a buck.  You have a product or service that makes a difference in people’s lives.  Don’t let another person pass you by without the opportunity to improve their life with your product or service.
• Turn it into a game. Keep track of how many times you ask for the business in one day. Try to beat that number the next day.  Keep track of how many accept versus reject. Try to improve your conversion.
• Find an accountability partner. If you’re having trouble actually doing it, find someone who will hold your feet to the fire and ask you on a daily basis how your progress is coming.  If you have no one who will do this for you, comment on this post – I’ll check in with you regularly (and publicly).
• Practice. If you feel uncomfortable saying the words, practice.  Sit in front of a mirror and say them to yourself over and over and over until they sound natural.  Then practice with a friend.  Practice until the words come out with 100 percent confidence. Nothing wavering.

So, on Small Business Saturday, whether you’re taking the day off or out there hustling, make a commitment to get back to the basics and ask for the business. It will probably do more good for your business than anything else.

As I picked up my order and walked away from Eat At Joe’s, I noticed a passer-by standing in between the two restaurants, reviewing the menus, trying to decide. I smiled as the man from behind the counter boomed:

“Hey man, you’re on the wrong side of the rope. Get over here and get you a Philly cheese steak.”

The man promptly obeyed. One more customer – just because he asked. He hustled the right kind of hustle.  What about you?

Image from Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock

The post Show the Right Hustle on Small Business Saturday appeared first on Small Business Trends.

1. Get found.

Many businesses invest money in building a website in order to have an online presence and then stop there. In the offline world if you put up a business in a well-trafficked area of town, you’ll get visitors. They see the building and stop by. On the Internet, it’s a different story. Once your site is built, you still need to put significant effort into getting found.

Get listed on Google Places. Get listed in local directories. Get listed in industry directories. Learn the basics of search engine optimization or hire someone to do that work for you.

2. Get leads, not just traffic.

Another area where many people goof up online is in lead generation. After you build your website and start driving traffic, your job is to turn that traffic into leads. Ideally most pages of your website should have a lead capture mechanism. You need to offer something of value to your visitors in exchange for their email address or other contact information. If you don’t, you’ll lose a lot of your traffic. You need to develop a list-building mentality. Build a list of leads with every activity you engage in. Then, follow up with that list. Email marketing systems can help you do this in systematic ways.

3. Use email marketing to tell people about your business.

Recently, proponents of new marketing techniques have bashed email marketing, claiming that the medium is dying. This is far from the truth. Research firm ForeSee Results published a study early this year that was conducted during the 2010 holiday shopping season. They asked people who made purchases online about what influenced their visit to ecommerce sites.

As you can see in the study, the overwhelming majority (64 percent) stated that they prefer to hear about sales and promotions through emails. When engaging in email marketing, make sure you follow  best practices and provide value to your leads instead of bugging them with sales messages all the time. Use email to build real relationships with your leads, not bother them.

4. Know that text messaging is not just for teenagers.

Many brick-and-mortar businesses are successfully using SMS marketing (text message marketing) to capture leads and follow up. You can have your store visitors opt into text message promotions by texting a keyword to an SMS short code. You can follow up with these people in the same way you do with email. You can even use text messaging to capture email addresses.

The world is going mobile—don’t miss out on these emerging opportunities.

5. Use QR codes in fun and creative ways.

You have offline customers. Eventually, you want to be able to communicate with them online as well. QR codes are barcodes that can be scanned with a cell phone to send people to a particular website. QR codes on direct mail pieces, your store window, your checkout desk and other strategic areas can give you an opportunity to move offline traffic online.

Keep in mind that QR codes are used by cell phone users. So drive them to mobile-friendly pages where you offer something in order to capture their contact information.

6. Use online partners–they can be huge assets.

You may have been slow to get your business online, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer forever. Most likely you know other local business owners who made the transition earlier. They may already be getting significant amounts of traffic. Hunt down the people who are doing well online and set up a way for them to drive traffic to you and you to them.

Complementary businesses can set up referral or affiliate programs to drive traffic to each other at appropriate points in the sales cycle. Using partners can jumpstart your online business significantly.

7. Give your customers an online account portal.

We’re all getting used to managing our accounts online. We can do this with our banks, our cell phone accounts, our utilities, etc. But do you offer a way for your customers to manage their accounts with you online? For those of you who provide recurring services (pool cleaning, landscaping, legal retainer, etc.), providing a portal where customers can manage their accounts online makes working with you more convenient for them.

That’s really what the Internet is all about – convenience. The more of it you give, the more your customers will love you.

8. Get social, maybe.

Social media is a booming arena for online marketing.  If used correctly, it can provide a great stream of online traffic for your business. It also is a great way to listen and engage with customers. But I say “maybe” here because I see many small businesses wasting way too much time trying to figure out how to make social media work. The truth is, it’s not for everybody.

If your target audience is social, then you do need to figure it out. If you want to get into social media, I suggest you read my Small Business Trends post on The Social Media Money Formula.  It will show you how to actually tie social media efforts to increased sales, instead of wasting time getting “friends” and “followers.”

One last point to consider is that there is a lot of hype on the Internet. Like most things, Internet hype is usually based on some amount of truth. The key is to decipher the hype about the latest trends. Adopt only the trends that make sense for your business, and make sure the tactics you use make a difference to the bottom line. If not, you’re wasting your time.

Of course there are many other things to consider when getting started online, but these steps will help you get started in a meaningful way.

The post 8 Steps to Take Your Brick and Mortar Business Online appeared first on Small Business Trends.

These small businesses will quickly discover that relying on referrals alone will cause them to get stuck in a growth holding pattern.

Let’s look at six ways smart local businesses can get more leads. As you can see, it doesn’t take a big marketing budget for small businesses to increase new leads and get more referrals.

1. Focus on Lead Capture—Establish a standard process for your business to capture lead information during any interaction with a potential customer. Train employees on the process and emphasize its importance for future business growth. When you’re interested in direct responses, you need to ask the right questions. You need to gather useful information that allows you to make business decisions that add up to profits. Coupons, discounts and trials are effective offers for capturing lead information in person. Forms, white papers and demos are effective ways to engage with your website audience and capture useful information.
2. Use Local SEO—Establish a Web presence for your business and optimize your website. Tools like Google Places are essential for getting listed and found online. Use the Google keyword tool to research common phrases people use to find your product or service. Make sure your page titles use those key words, and write page copy with those key words. Also, find and engage with local, influential bloggers. Build a relationship with them, or even offer to write a guest blog post twice a month. It’s never too late to get involved in social media and use it as a mechanism to drive traffic to your website. Make sure you’re using lead magnets across your social properties to capture information.
3. Segment Your Contact Database—Get the right message to the right person at the right time by tracking behavior. Monitor who visits your website, what Web forms they fill out, what emails they open and what links they click. Demographics and psychographics allow you to target your message and offering. Clearly outline the benefit your product or service offers based on your potential customer’s needs.
4. Create Partnerships—Build relationships with businesses that offer complementary products and services. Build your partner’s business into your business and yours into theirs. Make lead capture and your partner’s offering part of the entire sales and delivery process. The key to a powerful partnership is to create added value for your customers.
5. Promote Local—Local consumers want to benefit their local community. Consumers will buy local when it is convenient, when they have a relationship with you, and when they are informed. Consumers will even be willing to pay more for a product or service once they are loyal to a local business. There are numerous coalitions and organizations that support locally owned businesses, which form the backbone of the local economy. Join your local chapter of Local First and chamber of commerce to stay informed and visible to local consumers.
6. Develop a Referral Strategy—Create a methodical way to generate referrals. Outline a systematic referral process and incentivize your employees for collecting referrals. The best time to ask for referrals is at the time of purchase, shortly after a recent purchase or after a customer satisfaction survey. Caution: Never ask for a referral when a customer is not happy. Track referral volume and conversion rate month-to-month.

Lead generation does not have to break the bank. Established processes and focused execution have the power to grow and sustain a small business. To hear about more strategies for increasing local lead generation activities, check out this previously recorded webinar.

The post 6 Lead Generation Strategies for Local Businesses appeared first on Small Business Trends.

• “You should blog!”
• “Are you on Twitter?”
• “What’s your SEO and PPC strategy?”
• “Are you doing email marketing?”
• “You need a Facebook fan page!”
• “Have you started automating your marketing and sales funnel?”

Cutting through all the hype to see what really works for your small business can be a challenge. When you focus all your effort on tools and tactics but don’t have a clear strategy behind your actions, some serious holes in your marketing and sales funnel will start to surface in three main areas. For example:

1. Lost traffic: How much traffic came to your website today and left without giving you their information? How will you ever follow up? This is a painful reality for many small businesses. Think of how much revenue your business is missing out on because you’re not capturing the traffic you spend big bucks to get.

2. Lost leads: Did you know only 10 percent of leads are ready to buy now? What about the warm and cold leads? More often than not, they get lost in the shuffle and are eventually forgotten forever. Many small businesses would love to follow up on every lead, but with limited resources, that can be a challenge. So, the goal is to close the leads that are hot now in order to drive immediate sales and to have a nurturing system in place for not-ready-to-buy-yet leads.

3. Lost customers: If customers feel indifferent about your product or service, they’re more likely to leave you for the competition. You pay all this money to get customers just so they can leave you for the competition down the road. Ouch!

If you’re experiencing any of the pains I describe above, than keep reading to discover the remedy.

Make a Plan

Let’s start by identifying your business goals. Next, map out what your current customer lifecycle looks like, and what your “perfect” customer lifecycle looks like. I find almost every small business can break its lifecycle into seven stages.

1. Attract Traffic
2. Capture Leads
3. Nurture Prospects
4. Convert Sales
5. Deliver and Satisfy
6. Upsell Customers
7. Get Referrals

Call me old school, but I find it helpful if the business maps these seven stages out on a whiteboard. Start filling in the tools and tactics your business is using to push leads through to the next stage. In following this process, the inefficiencies in your system will become glaringly obvious. You’ll start to see where you’re losing leads and sales, when you’re missing out on referrals or even worse, at what point your customers are leaving you for the competition.

Now that the framework is in place, I want to give you some foolproof strategies you can use in these seven stages.

Attracting Traffic Strategies

Putting up a website doesn’t create traffic.  You need to become a content machine. Write blog posts, create white papers, post videos and host webinars — and give them all away. The strategy here is to pull leads into your funnel with highly valuable content.

Don’t underestimate the power of social media. Monitor what people are saying about your brand or industry and use it as an opportunity to engage in meaningful discussions. Also, share your content on your social channels.

If you have a network of partners or brand advocates, reward them for referring business your way.

Lastly, have a SEO and PPC strategy in place so when people search online for your type of business, they find you easily.

Lead Capture Strategies

I’m going to say this once and only once: “Sign up for my monthly newsletter” is not a lead capture strategy—at least not an effective one. Capturing leads goes hand-and-hand with becoming a content machine. Give away free reports or a video series that is packed with education. You can try running a contest or hosting an online event like a webinar as well. Just make sure you are getting permission from customers to follow up. Set expectations right from the beginning on what you’ll be sending them and get them to opt-in so they don’t feel bombarded.

Lead Nurture Strategies

Segment your follow-up based on the behaviors and interests of your leads. For example, I suggest segmenting your content into three groups: new leads, hot leads and cold leads. You should also be paying close attention to how you got the lead in the first place. Did they watch a webinar on “Copywriting Tips for Small Businesses” or did they sign up for a demo or consultation? The content you provide to these three audiences is likely going to be very different because the prospects are at different stages of the buying cycle.

Sales Conversion Strategies

As a small business with limited time and resources, relying solely on your sales team can sometimes be a death sentence. Try automating some of your prospect follow-up. By doing so, you are able to monitor their level of interest by looking at behaviors like email open rates, report downloads and other interactions. You know that someone who has opened every email, watched every webinar and requested a free consultation is probably a prospect that’s ready to be handed off to sales to close the deal. Automating some of the communications helps ensure the quality of leads going to sales is high, resulting in better and quicker conversions.

Upsell and Referral Strategies

Small businesses are guilty of basking in the success of closing the sale and overlooking the fact that there are huge opportunities to upsell and get referrals. Here are a few different upsell strategies:

• Checkout upsell
• Post-purchase upsell
• Product-specific upsell
• Product-specific cross-sell

You’ve invested time and money in converting leads into customers and wowing your customers with your service. Now ask for referrals! Give them a free product or a discount for referring a friend. We all know some of the best leads can come from referrals.

If you follow even some of the tips in this article, I have no doubt that you can create a strategic marketing plan that cuts through the clutter and delivers the results you want to achieve.  Here are a few extra tips for creating a small business marketing plan from a previously recorded webinar.  It’s a valuable resource for getting results from your plan in 3 simple steps.

The post Cut Through the Hype: How to Create a Successful Marketing Plan appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Are you training your list to ignore . . . or to anticipate?

Good marketers actually build a relationship such that customers want to hear from them.  The secret to developing this kind of relationship lies in understanding how to segment your list so that each recipient gets only the content they’re interested in and they get it at the frequency that they desire.

I’ve found there are three powerful ways to segment your list that allow you to deliver the right content to the right people every time.

First is By Lead Source

Knowing where a lead came from helps a marketer understand their psychographics of their prospects.  If I know a lead responded to an advertisement about lead nurturing, then I’m going to be successful talking to that person about lead nurturing, drip marketing, autoresponders and other related topics.  If I know a lead came from a customer referral, I’ll be much more successful leveraging the relationship of the referrer than anything else.

Knowing and tracking your lead source on every lead is critical to understanding how to market (build a relationship) to them.  An added bonus is that by tracking lead sources from the top of your sales funnel all the way through the bottom of the funnel gives you the intelligence you need to know which marketing activities are making you money and which are costing you money.

The Second Powerful Way to Segment Your List is by Demographics

You should be gathering as much information about your leads and customers as you can so that you can segment by demographics.  It might be that your product or service is tailored for a specific demographic – so it’d be important to know if that’s actually who’s responding to your marketing.  Also, different demographics respond to different messages.

Whether you’re comparing middle-aged prospects with young-adult prospects or east coasters versus west coasters, they’re going to respond differently to different messages.  Understanding the nuances of the different demographic groups in your list is crucial to being able to craft your messages for maximum relationship building which equates to maximum profits.

The Third (and I believe most powerful) Way to Segment Your List is by Behavior

If you track response to every message you send, you’ll be able to measure who responds to what.  If I were selling camping gear I’d track who clicked on ads about sleeping bags, who clicked on links in my emails about tents, who read my articles on fire starting, who attended webinars about great places for snow camping, etc.  By knowing what people are interested in (because they told you with their behavior), you can always ensure that the information you’re putting in front of them is the most relevant to them at the time.

Most businesses aren’t thinking about this at all.  Most people just batch and blast – they send the same email to everyone on their list.  That trains people to ignore.  If you segment your list these three ways, and you carefully think through every communication (always wondering what a particular prospect or customer would want to receive), then you’ll be way ahead of your competition.

There are many ways to segment your lists.  I’ve heard Infusionsoft customers tell me all kinds of interesting ways they’re finding profitable segments.  Please take a moment to share in the comments below your most successful segmenting ideas or tips.

The post 3 Segmenting Techniques Small Business Can Use To Train Customers to Listen and Anticipate appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Many businesses are already doing a decent job of attracting traffic and driving leads.  Actually, most people who educate businesses on Internet marketing focus solely on traffic.  SEO, PPC, social media – all of these tactics are about driving traffic and building an audience.  The problem is, if your sole focus is traffic, there’s a good chance you’re flushing much of that traffic (or at least the money spent to get it) down the toilet because your conversion skills aren’t as good as your traffic-getting skills.

If you focus on conversion before traffic, however, you can get your sales funnel operating to the point that you buy traffic at a much cheaper rate and have it produce much more profit.

Let’s talk about how that works. Dan Kennedy (marketer extraordinaire) has been known to say, “Leads are like salad.  The difference between salad and garbage is timing.” Salad turns into garbage pretty quickly if it’s left out.  Leads are the same.  If ignored, a ripe lead will go stale pretty fast (or they’ll buy somewhere else).  Timing also comes into play later.  Sometimes people know they’re going to need a product or service down the road.  Just because they don’t buy right now doesn’t mean they’re a bad lead.  It’s all about being there when the time is right for them.

Lead nurturing is the process of building a long-term relationship with each lead that comes in the door so that when the time is right for them, they buy from you.

Here are three ways to turn ripe leads into ready leads through nurture marketing:

1.  Adapt Your Message to Their Needs
You should be able to adjust your message to each lead based on their behaviors and interests.  If a lead clicks on a link for wetsuits in my monthly surfing newsletter I’m not going to send an offer about surfboards.  I’m going to send valuable content about wetsuits – maybe a wetsuit evaluation guide.  Then I might send an offer for wetsuit discounts.

Being able to adapt the message based on what people are clicking on, or which webinars people attend, or which reports they request, or what questions they ask when they call the sales line is crucial to being able to turn a ripe lead into a ready-to-buy lead.

If they always receive relevant content from you (because you’re adapting to their behaviors), they’ll consider you the best resource for whatever you sell.

2.  Provide Great Content
Many businesses try to use marketing for selling. Yes, marketing is selling, but it’s not sales.  If all you do is sell in your marketing messaging, no relationship is built, your credibility is not increased in your prospects’ minds, and, in the end, you train your audience to ignore you.  (Remember the boy who cried wolf?)  But, if you are continually providing great content, you become the trusted source for your customers.  If you’re doing this in conjunction with adapting your message to their needs, it’s a double whammy.

One question that arises often from service providers (like lawyers or landscapers) is, “Won’t they just go do it themselves if I provide them the content?”  NO!  No one wants to mow their own lawn.  They want to know how, and they want to know the best ways to keep it green.  But, eventually they will realize that it’s so much better to pay someone else do it.  And who are they going to hire?  They’re going to hire the guy who provided them all the best tips on how to keep the lawn green, when to seed, when to fertilize, etc.

Give your best content away.  Do it all day long.  Your customers will love you for it.  (Hint: Customers who love you buy lots of your stuff.)

3.  Set Expectations and Be Respectful
If your customers sign up for your monthly newsletter and then get bombarded by sales messages every other day, they’re going to unsubscribe, mark your emails as spam and ignore anything you send in the future.  Part of your marketing job, especially if you plan to nurture leads for a long-term relationship, is to build trust.  Your list will not trust you if you don’t abide by the expectations you set at the beginning.

The key to making this successful is to be very clear about what customers should expect and then honoring that expectation.  That doesn’t mean you can’t send more messages.  All you have to do is use the expected communications to give your list more opportunities to engage further.  If you put a link in your monthly real estate newsletter offering a seven-day email series on how to sell your house for more than it’s worth, that’s an easy way to have interested people tell you that they want more.  Send them the seven-day email series and then provide another option.  If they don’t bite, you still have more opportunities in your monthly newsletter.

The key is to get permission, set expectations and stick to them.  The more trust you build, the more leverage you have in your relationship to sell when the time is right for your prospects.

Nurturing leads is simple at the core, but implementation can get complex.  Focus on the relationship at all points.  Don’t make your lead nurturing sequences more complex than you can handle (chances are your prospects and customers won’t be able to handle it, either).  As the relationship develops you’ll find more and more ways to build upon it and use lead nurturing techniques to take the relationship deeper.

The post From Ripe to Ready: Nurturing Leads Increases Sales Conversion appeared first on Small Business Trends.

On the other hand, many (email-marketing vendors in particular) have come to email’s defense with a lot of data and pretty charts, claiming that email and social media are two peas in a pod and “we’re all in this together.”  While I tend to agree with this idea, it’s important to tease out what’s really going on out there.

When looking at this argument (not for argument’s sake, but for the purpose of making business decisions), it’s important to focus on two key areas: target and intent.

Who is your target?

• If your target is under 34 years old, you’re likely to be successful using social media.  If your target is under 20 years old, you’ll probably need to reach them through social media almost exclusively.
• If your target is a business, email will likely get you results faster.  If your target is a consumer, you’ll get better results through a social campaign where your target sees others singing your praises.
• If you’re targeting a person while they’re at work, email is the answer (usually).  If you’re targeting a person at home, social media can drive results.
• As you can see, the demographics and psychographics are key to deciding whether to use social media or email to reach our target.  Often, you’ll want to use both.

What is your intent?

• If you’re trying to sell directly, social media probably isn’t the place for you.  Email can work better.
• If you’re trying to build a long-term relationship, start with social media (but the relationship may move to email).
• If you’re all about providing value, social media is probably the place for you.
• If you’re trying to communicate in a personal way, either can work (but email is currently better at personalizing in bulk).
• If you need a quick response, it depends on your target.  A teen will fire back a Facebook reply in seconds.  A middle-aged cube monkey will reply by email almost as fast.  Both will fail in the other’s environment.

In the end, if you’re communicating with the intent to do business, email is still the inner sanctum.  I manage my inbox religiously.  If I don’t, I get behind, and business suffers.  If I don’t tweet every day, the business isn’t impacted as much.  Businesspeople still guard their email more closely than they do their social profiles.  So, if you want to do business with someone, use social media to get into their inbox.  Either connect personally, or drive value to an opt-in form.

This is the general flow in our current times.  This may change though.  Right now, college grads are forced to adopt the email world in business.  But over time, their generation may change business to the degree that social media becomes their inner sanctum and email is either a forgotten channel or becomes a channel that leads to the inner sanctum.

Meanwhile, DMs on Twitter and messages on Facebook look almost identical to their predecessor: email.  Not much has changed.  It’s just got new wrapping paper.  The war is not a war – it’s an evolution.

The post Social Marketing vs. Email Marketing: Is It War? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

• SEO – They understand the concept of search engine optimization, and do some work there, but they usually give up before great results are achieved.
• PPC – People get a Google AdWords account, invest some money, watch it disappear, and stop.
• Social Media – Here, people just waste time because they don’t know how to do it right.

Online lead generation is a big topic.  In this post, I’m going to talk specifically about how to spend money wisely to ensure return on your investment.

Before we begin, I’m going to assume you have a well-defined target market, you understand clearly who your target is, you know where they hang out on the Internet, and you know their psychological triggers. Without this info, you’ll always lose in marketing.

To get started, you need to think outside the box. Yes, your potential customers may search for your product or service–so being listed with a PPC ad can do you some good.  But that’s not the only way to reach them.  Plus, only a small percentage of your entire target market is searching for what you sell at any given time.

The key is to go where the customers are. Figure out where they hang out on the Internet.  Learn what they read.  Find out what social networks they visit.  Discover industry-specific forums or blogs.  You get the picture.  Once you know where they are, advertise there.

Sponsoring newsletters or dedicated solo e-mails is an extremely effective method of advertising for many businesses.  If you discover that much of your target is subscribing to a certain newsletter, find out if you can sponsor that newsletter or send a dedicated advertisement.  A dedicated, or “solo,” e-mail is an e-mail advertisement that a publisher will send to their newsletter list that contains only one piece of content: your ad.  These can be golden.

Once you find an area where it makes sense to advertise, contact the publisher or vendor and set up a test. They’ll always want to sell you on a long-term contract.  Don’t bite.  Your job is to make this process scientific.  Take the guesswork out.  The only way to do that is to test.  I like to limit tests to $2,000.  You may want to limit them to less than that.

When you run your test, be sure to split-test. If you’re running a dedicated e-mail, for example, you’ll want to test a couple different subject lines against each other.  On your next test, choose the subject line that performed best and then test something in the body of the e-mail.  Next test the landing page.  Eventually, you get to the point where you’re confident in the number of leads or sales your ad is going to produce every time you run it.  Only at that point should you sign a long-term contract.

That’s it.  It requires a bit of patience and scientific thinking, but it will produce results.

Lastly, let me just give you a few pointers:

• Always have your landing page mirror the content of your ad.  The further the landing page strays from what the ad said, the higher the bounce rate you’ll have on the landing page.  I prefer to have my dedicated e-mails and landing pages look almost identical.
• Be sure the important content and your opt-in form (or “buy now” buttons) are above the fold on your landing page.
• Use subject lines and headlines that trigger a psychological response from your target.  Talk about the benefits of what you sell first.
• Keep distractions to a minimum.  Preferably, you should only have one call to action in your ads and on your landing pages.  If you give users other options, they might take them and then you might lose the sale.  Help narrow their focus.
• Use lead capture forms to capture lead info on your landing pages if your product is not an impulse-buy product.  Offer something of value (a free report, e-book, consultation, etc.) in exchange for contact information.  The minimum piece of information should be an e-mail address.  Keep in mind, the fewer the number of fields in your form, the higher your opt-in rate.  The more fields you have, the lower the opt-in rate.  Use the fields to filter your lead flow.

Online advertising is an important marketing strategy for many businesses. This is just a start (and the most important part) of getting it done right.  Feel free to ask questions about online advertising in the comments and I’ll answer them in subsequent blog posts.

The post Online Advertising: How to Do It Right appeared first on Small Business Trends.

The game has changed!  Do you have what it takes?

Here are the five essential characteristics to be successful as a marketer in today’s world:

Risk Taker – The Internet has enabled “everyone” to be an Internet marketer.  With that evolution, the amount of competition you have has increased exponentially–and your competition is much more diverse, skilled and savvy than ever before.  In order for your marketing activities to be noticed among the barrage of messages out there, you’ve got to be a little daring.  If you’re not willing to try new things, be a little uncomfortable and take some risk, you’ll drown in the sea of similar marketers, similar messages, and bland ideas. 

Recommendation: Spend a day dreaming big.  Let your mind wander.  Come up with ways to get massive, immediate exposure for your business.  Don’t let any limitations get in the way.  Then, narrow it down to something realistic, yet crazy, and go do it.  Have some fun.

Mad Scientist – Risk needs to be balanced with logic.  This is where the Mad Scientist comes in.  Recognize that I said “Mad” Scientist, not just scientist.  Marketing has always been part science and part art.  In the past, the science part was less visible and less accessible to the masses.  Now, with Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, e-mail marketing (complete with open and click reports) and many other tools, tracking your marketing activites – both successes and failures – is easy. These tools bringthe science of marketing to any computer anywhere in the world.  If you’re not the type that likes to experiment, test hypotheses, tweak the experiment and test again – over and over and over – then you may not be cut out to be a modern-day marketer.  But, if you love test tubes, titration and mass spectrometry, it’s time to turn your skills in the scientific method into your method for determining what works in marketing. 

Recommendation: Read everything you can at MarketingExperiments.com.  Learn from others’ findings and get ideas for your own experiments.

Geeky Analyst - Experimenting is one thing.  But analyzing the data afterward is an entirely different story.  It takes a different skill set – a different kind of warped mind – to sit and look at the results through every possible lens to determine cause and effect, determine the salient variable, and ultimately determine what the data is actually telling you.  If your inner geek gets excited about slicing and dicing the numbers and the reports, then marketing might be your specialty. 

Recommendation: Read Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics 2.0.  It’s not for the faint of heart, but there’s definite gold in those hills.

Code Monkey – A general working knowledge of basic Web layout and programming is required for today’s marketer.  Why?  Because you can’t devise an experiment if you don’t know what’s testable.  You don’t need to know how to write a Java applet, but you need to understand basic HTML and CSS layout as well as the limitations of server-side and client-side scripting.  Armed with this knowledge, the Mad Scientist in you can go to work devising all kinds of schemes for testing everything under the sun.  Make sure the Analyst in you keeps the Mad Scientist in check.  Too much data can be a bad thing. 

Recommendation: Launch a WordPress site that you can mess with.  Then, use the built-in editor to edit your Theme.  Play with it, experiment, change font colors, sizes, styles, etc.  Get familiar with the basic HTML tags and CSS styles.

Copywriter -  Every good marketer needs to be able to write compelling copy (or at least be able to recognize it).  Compelling copy is not always as cute, funny or clever as you may want it to be.  That’s why the Mad Scientist tests everything.  But decent copywriting skills can quicken the testing process by getting started with proven ideas.  There’s no need to become a world-class writer, but understanding the psychology of writing powerful copy is a must. 

Recommendation: Study John Carlton’s Simple Writing System.  Read Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini and everything you can find by Gary Halbert, Jay Abraham and other classic copywriters and marketers.

I don’t claim to be an expert at any one of these (except maybe the “Mad” part of “Mad Scientist”), but I do find myself continually seeking knowledge in each of these areas to become a better marketer.  How does this stack up against what you’re seeing?  Are there other characteristics you feel are essential? Let me know by commenting below.

The post 5 Essential Characteristics for Today’s Marketer appeared first on Small Business Trends.

How many times have you wished you could get someone else to do what you do all day?  Yet, you can’t afford another employee, and you can’t even fathom getting all that crazy stuff out of your head in a way that someone else could understand.  Even if you could, would you trust that person to do it as well as you do?  Or with as much passion?

It’s a common Catch-22 in the small business world.

Big businesses attempt to solve this problem on a daily basis by throwing bodies at the problem.  I’d argue that they’re not always more successful at solving the problem than small businesses, but they have the resources to attempt a solution.  The other way they attack this problem is through the use of elaborate, expensive software solutions: CRM (fancy customer database), marketing automation, ERP, SFA, etc., etc., etc..

But what if you can’t afford a multimillion-dollar software implementation?

No sweat.  The technologies available to small businesses are improving every day.  Here is a list of five ways you can automate your marketing (I’m focusing on marketing because it’s typically the most neglected, and most important, aspect of small business).  This is how you’re going to clone yourself and actually get the work done you know you need to get done.

1. New Lead Follow Up – We’ve all heard a million times (and studies back it up) that people buy after seven touches.  Actually, most studies show that 80 percent of people buy between sales contact #5 and #12.  Yet, most people stop following up after attempt #3.  Essentially, when you stop early you’re just prepping your prospects to buy from someone else.  The key here is to plug that hole in your business.  Ensure that you follow up appropriately with every new lead that comes through the door (physically or electronically).  Never let a lead slip through the cracks again.  Today’s autoresponders allow you to set up a series of e-mail communications that are automatically sent out on a schedule that you determine.  All you have to do is make sure that every new lead gets into your e-mail marketing program and gets started on that autoresponder or follow-up sequence.

Tip: Using an autorepsonder with a little intelligence (one that can adapt the message based on the prospect’s behavior the same way you would) will increase response.  Also, use an autoresponder that allows you to incorporate direct mail, voice messages, social media, and fax or text messages.  This intelligence and use of other media is called E-mail Marketing 2.0.  When you allow your prospects to respond to their favorite medium, you’ll get a much better response.

2. New Customer Follow Up – Another major hole in most businesses occurs right after the sale.  How many times have you purchased something, never to hear from the company again?  Even worse, how many times have you ignored your customers after they’ve purchased your product or service?  Again, it’s hard to follow up in a timely fashion when you’re mired in the responsibilities of your business.  By using autoresponders with new customers, you can ensure that you wow every new customer, continue to build the relationship, and provide an experience that is much better than they expected.

Tip: When you treat your customers this way, you increase word of mouth, you can comfortably ask for referrals and get a ton of them, and lastly, you can upsell and cross-sell to your customers like never before.  We all know that it’s easier to sell an existing customer than to sell a new customer.  So, why not use automated marketing sequences to make that happen?

3. Long Term Nurture (a.k.a. Let Them Buy When They Want To Buy, Not When You Want To Sell) – We all know that people buy when the time is right for them, not when you’re anxious to sell.  So, if you follow up with your new leads and customers and they don’t bite on your initial offers, you’ve got two choices. First, you can assume they’re bad leads/customers and ignore them by moving on to your next batch of hot leads.  Or, you can use an automated marketing campaign to “drip” communications to them over the coming months.  If they responded to your initial ad or marketing message, there’s a good chance they’ll eventually get around to buying what you offer, you just need to wait until the time is right.  If you’re the person who has continually provided value to them, kept in touch, and built a relationship, you’ll get the business.  If not, they’ll buy from someone else.

Tip: The core of this campaign is that you need to be of value.  If you’re always selling, you’ll tick people off and they’ll begin to ignore you.  Be the valued expert by continually providing useful tips, tricks and ideas that help your prospects and customers.

4. Collections – Initially this may not seem like a marketing function, but at further examination you’ll find that it fits beautifully.  Not all businesses deal with collecting accounts receivable, but those that do know that it can be a pain, and it’s an area where you can lose your shirt.  I’ve seen many small businesses thwart this major problem by setting up automated collections campaigns.  A couple of weeks before a credit card expires, their e-commerce system triggers a “Your credit card is about to expire” campaign that encourages customers to update their card before there is a problem.  If the card is declined (because it expired or is over its limit), the e-commerce system triggers a “Unfortunately, your card was declined” campaign that encourages the customer to enter new credit card information so that their service is not interrupted.  I’ve seen collections double in many circumstances using this technique, while the amount of work that went into the effort was reduced by 50 percent or more.

Tip: When people’s credit card expires or is declined, don’t make them feel bad.  Start your communications with a pleasant tone: “Bob, our first communication about your credit card must have slipped past you.  We know it’s sometimes hard to keep on top of everything.  Your card was recently declined, and since we don’t want to lose you as a customer, we’d like to give you 5 extra days to provide a new card.” Then, the communications can get progressively more aggressive, ending with “Bob, if you don’t provide a new credit card within 48 hours, your service will be terminated.” But always give people the benefit of the doubt first.  They’ll appreciate you for that and reward you for it.

5. Workflow – Here’s where the cloning really comes into play.  Well, it’s not actually cloning, but you can now do what you used to do in about one-fifth the time that it used to take.  Some of the newer, cutting-edge marketing and sales automation tools allow you to bundle your commonly repeated tasks and actions into “one-click tasks.”  For example, you often answer the same sales questions every day.  When you finish with the call, you typically send a follow-up email; you might want to start that person on an autoresponder (or follow-up sequence) to provide more education; and you might want to “flag” the person as someone you need to call again in a few days.  All of those actions might take five minutes if you did them manually.  Instead, automate your workflow by bundling those actions and completing them with one click.  It’s like magic.

Tip: By using electronic systems to automate and track your workflow you reduce the potential for human error.  Most people are bad at remembering all the things they “should” do after every sales call and they’re even worse at following up a few days later.  By using sales and marketing automation, you can ensure that all necessary actions are performed every single time.

Armed with the latest in sales & marketing automation tools, small businesses can act and market like big business, but they can do it on a small business budget.

The post Your Marketing on Autopilot: 5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Automate appeared first on Small Business Trends.