I Could Spoil You

There’s a store in the middle of our town that’s been, in quick succession: a soft furnishings retailer, a record and CD store, a lighting shop, a pet store, and yet another soft furnishings store. It’s currently a coffee shop.

I think the store’s finally settled into its niche. Each time I pass it people are lined up to buy coffee and cake, so all appears well.

Why didn’t the previous tenants make a success of the store? Probably because the easiest way to go broke is to sell something that no one wants. Not enough people in our area wanted to buy soft furnishings and pets.

That’s the first rule of marketing. Find out what people want to buy. If you’ve got something that people want to buy, marketing is a snap — you can be as lazy about marketing as you like, you’ll still be a success.

Is lazy marketing for you? Your success may take a little longer if you choose to go the totally lazy marketing route. Sometimes you don’t have a choice; you may have a fulltime job and want to start your own business. That’s the message of lazy marketing: it’s the scenic route to success. Enjoy the view.

Here are five lazy ways to market your business.

=> 1. Get a Web site

This is the ultimate lazy way. Put up a Web site, or get someone to do it for you. Then forget about it. You won’t hear much for around six months, but once you get listed on the search engines, you’ll start getting business.

You can help the process along, by promoting your site, and by updating it regularly, but once it’s up, and you’re listed on the search engines, you can be as lazy as you like.

=> 2. Make three phone calls a day

How long does it take to make three phone calls? You could probably make them in ten minutes.

Who will you call? Potential clients, suppliers, people who are in the same business you’re in — it doesn’t matter who you call. The idea is that you’re shaking the trees. Once you start communicating, you’ll move your business along.

In any one work week, that’s a total of 15 marketing-related calls. I don’t care who you are or what you do, but if you make 15 marketing-related calls a week for a few months you’re going to kick your business along.

To avoid getting trapped in voice-mail hell, you can use the ultra-lazy person’s alternative - email. However, do make your messages professional. That is, send an email message that’s just like a snail mail message, with all your contact details. Be polite and courteous, and include your full name, your business name, and your complete address, as well as your phone and fax number.

=> 3. Contact one client a day

Call, email or fax one client a day. You’re not touting for business, you’re just touching base. This person has done you the kindness of doing business with you in the past. Call and find how he or she is.

If you’re a writer, this means send out one letter, query or proposal a day, every week day to your previous clients: that is, editors who’ve bought from you in the past.

If you’re just starting out as a writer, then send one query a day to a market you’d like to sell to.

=> 4. Give something away

“Free” is an incentive. And it works. What can you give people to remind them that you’re still in business, and that you’re good at what you do?

Give away something that’s useful, whether it’s a pen, a T shirt, a bookmark — or an hour of your time to mentor a beginner.

Be creative with your freebies!

=> 5. Do what you enjoy

This is the ultimate lazy way to work, as well as to market. If you love what you do, it’s not work.

Make a list of marketing-related activities that are fun for you. Again, be creative about this. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying: “THIS is the way you market.” There are hundreds of marketing activities you could engage in. It’s your business, so find a way that’s fun.

For example, I love to write. So writing articles to promote my business is not a chore, it’s fun.

Maybe you like to interact with others. So why not start a business breakfast club in your area? Or an online club?

Once you’ve worked out what you love to do, you’ll be able to find marketing activities that relate directly to that, and you’ll have another great lazy way to market your business.

There you have it. Five lazy ways to market your business. Take the scenic route to success today!

Author of many books, including Making the Internet Work for Your Business,
copywriter and journalist Angela Booth also writes copy for businesses large and
small, and consults on search engine marketing. Angela has written copy for
companies in many industries, ranging from technology and real estate to the
jewellery trade. Her clients include major corporations like hp (Hewlett Packard),
WestPac Bank, and Acer Computer. For copywriting services and marketing
advice contact Angela at angelabooth.com

The art of turning website visitors into paying customers depends almost entirely on good sales copy. What is that?

Simply put good sales copy is the content of your copy and presentation of your copy put together in such a way that it increases your visitor to sale conversion rate on a consistent basis.

It’s an ongoing process in which you will always try to beat your “control”. Beating the control is marketing lingo for engaging in a never ending process of constant improvement to your sales copy in order to beat your last highest visitor to sale conversion rate. The more you practice this the more money you will make!

This article will give you 5 quick tactics to get you started in playing your own game of “beat the control” which in turn will put you on the road to higher sales conversion and more money in your pocket.

Tactic #1 - Know your numbers

I am always surprised when I speak with clients who wish to increase their sales from their websites and when I ask them how many visitors they are getting per month, how many sales per visitor, average unit of sale, etc they don’t know. You must be able to measure results and that begins with knowing where you are at currently. Below are the most important factors you need to be tracking …

How many unique visitors do you get per month. This is not the same as “hits”. Most hosting companies provide a stats package that you can log into and see how many unique visitors you get each month. If they don’t I suggest switching to a hosting company that does.

How many sales do you get per 100 visitors. This gives you your conversion rate in percent. The average according to shop.org is around 1.8-2% or roughly 2 sales for each 100 visitors. I have found that this number can be dramatically improved by making even the smallest changes to your website copy and or layout.

What is your average sale price. Take all your online sales each month add them up then divide by the number of sales.

Tactic #2 - Move the big guns up to the front.

Statistics show that you have about 10 seconds to entice a website visitor to go deeper into your site before they click the back button and forget you ever existed. Remember that your online prospects are looking for information to solve their problem and if they don’t see anything on your homepage immediately upon arriving that leads them to believe that you understand their problem you lose.

You must greet your visitors with a large headline that says something to the effect of “we know what your problem is and we can fix it better than anyone else - here’s why…”. Then in your copy give them as many reasons as possible as to why your company is the better choice out of all your competitors. Give them testimonials, and other kinds of proof that you or your product gets results.

Tactic #3 - Use simple language.

Speaking to your online prospects in a conversational tone increases conversion rates. Avoid the tendency to try to sound professional using corporate sounding gibber jabber. Remember these are real people and they respond to real language being spoken by a real person. Be authentic and forget about what your competitors are doing. Find your own voice and I guarantee that more of your prospects will respond to that than to the same old tired impersonal ivory tower cliches.

Tactic #4 - Put the emphasis on what you can do for them

A lot of businesses make the mistake in thinking that potential customers actually care how long they have been in business or how much they say they value customer service and so on. Avoid platitudes like the plague - consumers are immune to them now. Your copy needs to be written in terms of not how special you think your company is but in how good you are at solving problem x for the visitor and then back it up with all the proof you can find. Try using the word “You” more often than the word “We”.

Tactic #5 - Lead your visitors to the call to action.

So if you have done a great job at enticing the prospect to keep clicking deeper into your site from the homepage with a compelling headline and copy that speaks to the prospects problem and the rest of your website copy does a good job of convincing the visitor that you are the obvious choice to do business with your job is still not done. You need to ask for the sale or lead the prospect to the call to action. At the end of any page of copy or maybe even within the main body of your content you need to tell them to buy your product or contact you today! If it’s not a high priced item or service this is all that is required but if you are selling something over $100 you might need to break your sales process into small steps by offering the visitor a free report or free trial or sample of your product or service just to get them into your sales cycle. Make it easy for them to build a relationship with you and give them a good incentive to do so.

The copy on your website sells your product or service. The website itself and the graphics are their to support the copy. The copy needs to be easy to read (break it up with headers, short paragraphs and bulleted lists) use conversational language, give the visitor substantial reasons to do business with you as soon as possible on the homepage.

Try different headlines and free offers. Keep track of your conversions and see what’s working and what doesn’t. There is always a better formula that will make you more money and by beginning the process of searching for that formula you will be gaining a significant advantage over your competition.

Links are much like referrals in the real world. When you hang out with people smarter than you then this in turn will eventually make you smarter because of your fellowship which in turn will provide you more perceived value. Referrals or links have three very important things in common: more people you know the better, the more quality people you know the better, and not knowing everybody the better.

For example, starting out in business you probably did not know alot people. But as you got more customers, your sphere of influence becomes broader. Thus giving you the ability to refer them to others. With links, it is the same way. Link popularity is contingent upon the number of incoming links you have, thus giving your web site more exposure and higher rankings.

As part of the internet, links work the same fashion. A link ( referral ) from an .gov is considered more trustworthy because of the source, thus giving you a great referral. Do not forget Bad company corrupts good character.Therefore if you start hooking up with fishy people then your website placements will go down.

Also be conscious to the fact that if you get a vast amount of friends over night, then red flags start popping up and your website usually gets punished by the search engines.

At Magnetiks, a Houston search engine optimization company should help you build your links naturally over time thus guaranteeing continued web presence As part of the internet.

Dynamite comes in small packages… or in small ads in the marketing realm. Our natural instincts scream that BIGGER IS BETTER! Is it really true? Sure, the small advertisement doesn’t have the luxury to of listing all of the benefits and cementing the deal. It does whet the reader’s appetite for more information and clearly directs them to the desired info. Here are 4 easy steps to make small ads work for you.

1. One Product, One Target
Let’s face it, you don’t have space to waste. Decide on your specific target audience and focus on one specific product. Keep it simple, direct, and powerful… a one act production.

2. Let Your Headlines Shout It
The headline is the MOST IMPORTANT part of your advertisement. It will decide whether the reader reads or trashes the remainder of the information. You’ve go to get it right, and say it loudly. Focus on the most outstanding benefit of your product.

3. Back Up Your Headline
You don’t need to write stories or essays here. Remember this is a SHORT ad. Brief benefits can back up your headline just as effectively. Fast!… As Easy As 1,2,3 … and Satisfaction Guaranteed… all speak the message you want to portray with no frills to distract readers from the main point.

Don’t forget to give the reader exact instruction on how to take advantage of the offer you’re advertising! Keep it simple and easy, yet clear and with several options to choose from. List a Website address, a telephone number, and a fax number. Make sure it’s convenient for the reader to get the information he wants.

4. Continuously Test It’s Effectiveness
The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. What will happen if you change your headline… spice it up a little? What about using different copy? You’ll never know unless you experiment!

Don’t change more than one part of the ad at a time, if you’re expecting to discover exactly what is most effective.

These 4 step advertisements are perfect for classified ads in magazines, newspapers or on the Web, direct mail postcards, and emails. The potential profits from small marketing tool can produce astronomical results!

Who is Allyn Cutts, and why should you care?
Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers. Allyn is a marketing and sales fanatic, providing measurable marketing solutions that drive huge results for small-to mid-size business clients. Allyn works personally with clients to design and deliver off-line and on-line direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at www.AllynCutts.com and you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Submitted with Article Distributor.