Posts Tagged ‘Mortar Businesses’

Online Marketing And Branding. The Basics

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

After e-commerce companies complete a challenging and tedious process of clarifying their goals and identifying their customers, they must decide how they will define themselves within the new global marketplace. Each must decide what will make them unique and decide how they will use this unique selling point to attract the customers the)’ have already identified.
The process is called marketing and branding. Good marketing dictates how many customers will arrive at and view your Web site, and good branding dictates how they will remember your site and whether they will return.

The principles of online marketing vary little from the principles of marketing bricks-and-mortar businesses. Like the most successful traditional retailers, the most successful e-commerce companies place a major emphasis on marketing their sites. These sites take advantage of traditional advertising channels through traditional media, such as magazines, newspapers, and radio and TV commercials, as well as the new channels available via electronic media, such as banner ads, search engines, and e-mail distributions lists.

In marketing, the goal for any back-and-mortar or online business is similar: to entice customers to try your product or service, with the hope that their first experience will be a positive one and that they will return as customers again and again while referring new customers- In branding, the goals are brand recognition, customer loyalty, and better word-of-mouth advertising.

Branding online is more than simply moving a print identity to the Web, however. Instead of a good graphic design, your brand in e-commerce is much more influenced by customer?s experience on your Web site. Online branding is wholly interactive. Every element of a Web site?its entire look, feel, con tent, and service?contributes to its branding online An e-commerce company will have one shot at getting the branding right, or its visitors either will forget about the site.

Good online branding should result in customers having a positive, unique, and memorable experience on your site. Online branding is wholly interactive. Dissatisfied visitors and customers won’t complain; they will leave and go elsewhere.

Depending on your budget, some forms of marketing and branding may be too expensive to deploy immediately- On the other hand, some may prove less expensive than current methods of selling your products and service in the traditional retail marketplace.

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Integrating A Website With Your Business

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

It has been one of my continual themes when talking with clients about their websites that their site needs to serve their business. When I work with a client, I look at their website as an extension of their business model. I take a look at their overall business and evaluate:

* How do they make their money?
* Who is their public or target audience?
* How can their public be promoted to?
* How can the web be used to help automate their business?

I’ll listen to what they want to achieve with their website and then recommend options to help that website achieve the points above: making money, automate and promote to their target audience.

Anybody looking to put up a website for business purposes needs to look at this. Too many business sites are very poorly thought out and underutilized. A good website is a lot more than good design. A good design and some content means only that a website is acting as a glorified brochure. Its better than nothing and any business today which does not at least have that really needs to get on the ball. However, beyond design, you can look at how the site will achieve the points above.

Now, a business which is all web-based is very straight-forward in this department. A web-based business is going to want to collect payments from customers via the web, so we’re going to want a secure payment system on that website. We also want that website to be well-designed so that it does not confuse people and attracts the customers’ eyes to those things which make the business money. We’re also going to want to discuss how the web can be used to promote. A business which is not web-based would want to consider what they can provide on the web to extend their business. Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses may have a storefront or may need to deal with clients in person, but what can they do on the web to extend their reach?

Promotion is paramount to success in business and on the web. A website can perform any of many promotional tasks such as:

* Collecting sales leads by asking visitors to fill out a form. Perhaps give them some free, valuable content in exchange for their information.
* Collecting email addresses for use on a mailing list
* Auto-responders sending targeted emails automatically based on customer’s indicated interests on a form
* Providing metrics on customer interest using landing pages and keyword advertising
* Running polls and surveys to find out what your potential customers want
* Running free articles which educate your customers on the subject matter of your business and get them interested.

A website is a footprint on the internet which is viewable worldwide. Depending on the nature of your business, visitors located well away from you may not be that useful in terms of potential clientele. However, there is no reason why you cannot still gather information from them to use with your local clientele. After all, if they arrived to your website, they were interested enough to come. They are a public for you regardless of their location. Perhaps you can even find a way to change your business model to include these people which are not located locally to your business.

In terms of automation, keep something in mind. A web server is simply a computer. Computers are great at doing repetitive tasks that humans either hate or would find a huge waste of time. For this reason, it is always a good idea to look over those business functions which are repetitive and see if your website can serve to make your life easier. For example:

* Sending your email newsletters could easily be done using your web server. Click a button and email your entire mailing list. Easy.
* Auto-responders can take care of automatically emailing your customers relevant information at regular intervals.
* Automatically compile sales statistics and email them to you each morning (if you do web sales)
* Export sales transactions directly into your accounting software to avoid typing them all in manually.

There are a number of ways a web server can be used to serve a very real business function and actually do some of the work for you.

A lot of this comes under the heading of programming. Design is design, however making the site actually DO something means it has to be programmed. So, if you are skilled in this area, you can do it yourself. Or perhaps you can hire it out to somebody. Before any of that, though, look over your entire business and the website you have and see how it can be utilized to make your business easier to manage or actually drive in business. Unless your website is personal in nature, then it is through the lens of business that your site needs to be evaluated.

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Beyond The Weather: Small Talk Tips For Networking Your Small Business

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Have you ever been invited to a business networking meeting or luncheon, or thought about going to your chamber of commerce’s networking events, but decided not to because you never know what to say to get the conversation started?

I’ve been there ? and here’s the simple trick I learned to help me feel comfortable with the cocktail party small talk. Most people who know me wouldn’t think of me as “shy” ? and I’m not ? most of the time. When it comes to “networking” though, I used to struggle with making small talk.

That is, until I learned the F.O.R.M. trick.

F.O.R.M. works great because it works as a memory tool for when you are in social situations and you want to get to know the person you are talking with, and you want that person to remember you ? and your business. Instead of talking about the weather, use FORM to make your conversation count.

F.O.R.M. stands for Family, Occupation, Recreation and Message ? four areas you can use as conversation helpers in just about any social situation.

Family ? asking whether they live around the area, if they are originally from the area or have moved there recently, if they have a family ? all of these are great conversation starters. This gets the person talking about themselves and gives you a chance to learn about them.

Occupation ? what do you do for a living? When they tell you what they do, you have a great opportunity to ask them about their job ? if it’s in an industry you are familiar with you can comment about how competitive it is, or how challenging. If you are unfamiliar with their industry, here’s your chance to learn about it.

When they ask what you do, have your ‘30 second elevator speech” ready. This is a description of your business that you can say in just a couple of sentences that articulates what it is that you do.

For instance, for my business I would say that “I help small to medium sized business owners market their brick-and-mortar businesses on the Internet, finding new local customers, increasing their sales and growing their businesses.”

Recreation ? this one’s easy! What do you do for fun? If they participate in a sport or hobby that you enjoy as well, you can swap stories and really build a memorable relationship with the person.

For instance, if I meet someone and they tell me that they love to travel ? then I can talk to them for hours, learning about the places they’ve visited. I can also share with them my passion for photography and how my camera has gotten me into some interesting adventures while we’ve been on the road.

Message ? when you feel the conversation winding down, or you want to move on to meet other people in the group, have your “message” that you want this person to remember about you ready to go. It’s something like your elevator speech, but much more personal to the individual you are talking to.

For me, my message is simple. “It was great to meet you, Bob. If you ever need help marketing your business online ? or you run into someone who does ? you know who to call.”

If your business is selling plumbing supplies, just change it up a bit: “It was great to meet you, Bob. If you ever need a new faucet, I’m your guy!”

Of course, it’s implied that when they give you their card, you will refer business to them as well ? and you definitely should. Rising tides raise all ships, and the more referrals you can send to others, the more they are likely to send to you as well.

You can skip some of the first 3 steps, or cover them in a different order ? but your message is key. First and foremost, you want to build a relationship with the person you are talking with, and you start to do that with the first 3 questions. Your message that you give them as you get ready to leave helps them remember who you are and what you do ? which is an incredibly powerful way to use networking to grow your referrals and your customer base.

Give F.O.R.M. a try the next time you are stuck for a conversation starter, and watch your network ? and your customer base ? grow as a result.

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Online Home Based Business Opportunity ? Opt For Online Marketing As An Easy And Handy Choice

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

In this article, you will learn to see and understand Internet Marketing as an excellent choice for your home-based business oppportunity.

e-Marketing has been a powerful business marketing tool for business of all nature and sizes since the beginning of the Internet revolution in the early 1990s. This is because it presents the most viable and feasible option to reach a large customer base from all over the world without much expenses involved. In addition, your home-based Internet business will also do away with the majority of expenses associated with ?brick-and-mortar? businesses such as sales employees. All this makes Internet home-based business and Internet marketing a most viable home-based business opportunity.

Online Marketing involves a host of strategies. It would be much preferable for you to be able to identify your Internet niche marketing strategy before fine-tuning it to perfection rather than to try every strategy there is in the book. Your home-based Internet business marketing strategy is very much based on the same repetition concept similar to the radio and television whereby the more it is played, the easier it will be etched in your memory.

Home Based Business Idea brand advertising and marketing is also important since it can create awareness among Internet users and your potential customers. They might not buy from you at first sight but with the increase in branding awareness, they can be converted to be potential customers. You can do this by producing quality home-based Internet business niche market products and services from a website that is user-friendly but attractive and captivating. It is also vital to bear in mind that since not every Internet user has access to broadband Internet service, you should try to keep your website as simple but professional since large graphics and images will take ages to upload and this might drive potential customers away.

Once your home-based Internet business website is up and running, you will be able to capitalize on the maximum potential Internet marketing. If this is something that is entirely new to you, your success will largely depend on dedication, education and perseverance.

Initially, you should do best to research on the home-based business advertising methods that are effective; both free as well as paid. Personally, I would recommend that you, as a new Internet home-based business owner to utilize free marketing methods since it can give your home-based Internet business the much needed exposure while allowing you to gain useful knowledge on the subject matter. It would do you good to take the time and effort to pay attention to these methods since over time, you will get better at it and with that, better techniques and results. You should also realize that the real income will come after you are well-versed with all the methods involved. Keep track of all the methods applied as well as its results.

You should be experimenting with a specific home-based business advertising method at any one period in time; say, several months and the bearing it has in terms of traffic and sales. Free advertising methods are also known to take a longer time for results to be achieved and it largely depends on your efforts. In addition to this, by using free home-based business Internet marketing strategies, you will also eliminate the risk of getting scammed/conned. It is common knowledge that many ?marketing gurus? prey on the unsuspecting with ?easy and magical sales tips? which are nothing more than useless self-proclaimed methods. By using free advertising methods, you will also get to conduct market research which will gear you up for the next steps with legitimate home-based business Internet marketing strategies such as paid directory submission services as well as pay per click advertising.

It has been proven that many successful Internet marketers used nothing other than free home-based business advertising strategies such as article marketing. They had also gained significantly with valuable knowledge and new skills. You can emulate their success with patience and hard work with the same free advertising strategies. When you finally succeed as a well-known Internet marketer, you can easily make even more money by offering your expertise such as coaching and consultation services to other home-based business owners who are hoping to emulate your success in turn.

Blogging As Great Technique To Make Cash Online

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Blogging is a fantastic tactic to Drive hords of visitors to your Blog!, but many bloggers fail miserably. I say that not to discourage you, but to present to you the harsh truth that you can not just set up a blog, post to it frome time to time, and expect to make money with it.

Making money with blogs requires several vital components. First of all, you need unique content. The better your content, the more often
your visitors will come back to read it, the more they will trust your product recommendations, and the more backlinks you will attract to your blog.

High quality content will get you more of the other vital component to blogging success ñ traffic. Without visitors, it is impossible to make money.

Brick and mortar businesses like shops and restaurants also require traffic. They typically call it foot traffic, or the traffic that walks by or through their establishment. Online, traffic means the people who visit a website or blog.

Without visitors, the best blog in the world is not going to build your income.

Of course, itís not enough to just get visitors to your blog. You could easily order 100,000 random hits from a traffic purveyor for a few bucks, but that doesnít mean it is going to make you any money.

The most important factor is the quality of the traffic. If you get
10,000 highly targeted visitors, itís almost always better than 100,000
random visitors, especially if those random visitors are from low-
quality sources like pop-unders or redirects.

Think about it like this. If you sell pizza in your shop, would you rather have 100 rabid pizza fans who hadnít eaten in the last 24 hours walk in to your restaurant, or 1,000 people who had just eaten a 5 course dinner and may not even like pizza?

Web traffic is very similar. Itís much better to have a smaller amount of visitors who are very interested in what you have to offer than a larger number of random visitors who might just cost you a lot of money in bandwidth without making you any money.

Weíre going to look at the top ten ways to get more traffic to your
blog. Weíll concentrate on getting the best quality traffic you can get, and all of the traffic methods will be free, because you shouldn´t be spending a high amount of money to get traffic to a blog unless itís very well monetized and proven to convert very well.

You should never purchase traffic until you are pretty sure you can expect a reasonable ROI (return on investment).

Free Blog Traffic Report!

Read competent information about website traffic - your personal knowledge base.