I Could Spoil You

Every new generation of a Web site brings the hope of increased success on the Internet for your business or organization, but too often, a project is completed and lacks the fundamentals for ensuring success on the Web. While we certainly don’t claim to be Google or MSN experts, the spider-based search engines want their results to be accurate and setting up your Web site correctly can be the difference between page 1, 2, or 2,000,000.

Everything starts and finishes with your Home page. What kind of content is featured on your Home page? What kind of navigational structure are you using? How long does the page take to load? How frequently is it updated? These are the types of questions that you need to ask your developer when getting ready to redesign your Web site. Having the right answers to these questions is crucial to success, and the answers are fairly obvious, so why do so many sites ignore these basic philosophies?

Your Home page should feature information about your products and services, provide easy access to the main sections of your site, load quickly (3 sec rule), and be updated regularly to encourage repeat visitors. While these are logical answers to the questions, working with a Web site marketing firm such as WebSolutions can take these concepts to the next level and make certain that you’ve got the right content in the right places.

The next step is to examine your interior pages and see what advantages you can exploit over your competitors. Most companies are lazy and stop after optimizing their Home page. This leaves the door wide open for those willing to get a little dirty and go the extra mile. While your Home page is probably indexed in the search engines already, getting your interior pages optimized and indexed can provide a huge boost in traffic as well.

The final step is to examine the traffic your site is getting and perform a marketing analysis of the site’s performance. Getting more traffic to the site is great, but if you can’t convert that traffic into sales or inquiries, it’s not that beneficial. The higher the conversion rate, the happier you’ll be.

While the ideals outlined here are fundamental, we can work with you to expand on the concepts discussed and take your site to the next level. If you are interested in learning how we can help, please contact us today for more information. In addition, you can find more helpful information by visiting: SearchEngineWatch.com, which is a great resource for this type of content.

WebSolutions is a professional Web site design, development, and hosting company based near Chicago. Their expertise in Web design has been highlighted in print and television and their custom developed solutions have been highly successful for businesses nationwide. Jon Kee handles all sales and marketing related activities for WebSolutions and can be reached by phone @ 630.375.6833 or email @ sales@wsol.com.

Writing a good query or cover letter will demonstrate to an editor or publisher just how serious you are about your work and getting it published.

There is a small difference between query and cover letters. A query letter is used to show an editor that your work is different and fresh. It is an introduction of you and your writing. It is a selling tool. A cover letter is a reminder that the editor requested your work. It accompanies your piece and is essentially a revamp of your query letter. Both follow the same guidelines.

The format you should use is that of a business letter. Use a standard font size and type, such as 12 point Times New Roman. Your letter should be single spaced with double spaces between paragraphs. Leave a one-inch margin on all sides.

If possible, find out the name of the editor. Address your query or cover letter directly to them. This could keep your work out of the slush pile and it allows the editor see that you have done your research.

In the body of the letter, you should tell the editor what you are sending and, briefly, why it is different and exciting. Give a short bio, no more than four sentences. Keep in mind this is the first writing sample the editor will see! Cite any works you have published and in which publication. Let the editor know that you have clips available and give information on how they can get copies of these clips. Give the editor every possible way to contact you; address, phone number, fax, and e-mail.

Wrap up your letter with a polite closing. Don’t forget to thank the editor for considering your work!

And always, always include a SASE!

This is a very basic, but important, tool for a writer. Learn how to utilize it to your advantage.

Nikola lives and writes in Oklahoma. She enjoys watching hockey, reading, scrapbooking and volunteering. Nikola is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/
which is a site for Creative Writing.

I recently witnessed a conversation about the “death” of paper direct mail due to the “life” of web presence and blogs. I’m not exactly sure why, but someone seems to declare the “death” of a marketing technique every few months…I guess that’s how some consultants stay employed - announce the “death” of something and create the “life” of something new. Anyway, I disagree with the notion paper direct mail is dead and as such thought I’d share how we integrate paper direct mail into our marketing, sales, and lead nurturing systems.

We do a fair amount of direct mail - postcards, sales letters, brochures, etc. - to generate sales leads and provoke interest in our and our customer’s services. We integrate paper direct mail with our web presence to provoke ongoing interest using unique landing pages specific to each direct mail piece and routinely use sales letters to generate leads.

Provoking Ongoing Interest To warm suspects for sales opportunities what we do is create a direct paper mail piece - postcard, letter, brochure, etc. - and send it to a list of targeted employees at specific companies we’ve identified as part of a customer profile. We provide a unique URL to continue the dialogue from a particular subject within a paper direct mail piece - in essence we ask a question in the paper direct mail piece and answer the question on a landing page. The landing page continues the flow of information from the printed source. We are careful to keep the font, color, graphics, etc. the same on the landing page - this bridges the paper direct mail to our web presence.

Example: We did a direct mail postcard for a customer not long ago. The piece begged the question of how outside counsel spent their time; a graphic included two business people standing by a water cooler. The URL that continued the dialogue of managing outside counsel was watercooler.customersdomain.com.

We accomplish two things by employing landing pages this way: we track specific interest of our customers and prospects (we track stats for the landing pages and correlate it to a mailing schedule), and bridge suspects to the “stickiness” of our web presence. Our belief is if you can hold an audience, you can continue to market to them. We’ve found this technique highly effective in bringing prospects to our site.

We can easily test messages and service offerings with this technique.

Sales Letters Within the past year we have successfully used paper direct marketing to position and sell one of your customer’s web-based service to local governments - city, school district, special district, county, state. Using a one page letter with compelling content and overt calls to action to meet face-to-face, we have successfully met with 30 county Supervisors or Executives in the state of California.

As background, there are 58 counties in California and in the campaign I’m citing we only targeted the 40 largest. Our paper direct mail campaign was designed to generate face-to-face meetings. The results of this campaign were meetings with 30 County Supervisors or executives (Chief Administrative Officer or County Counsel - the most senior non-elected officials in county government). From letter to meeting was one phone call. Our campaign had a success rate of 75%! Paper direct marketing works.

The average annual value of each customer we targeted in this campaign was $200K. Our cost of the paper direct marketing campaign was a one page letter, envelope, and $.37 stamp sent to approximately 350 people. We printed the letters and envelopes in our office and had two people assigned to follow-up. The first customer we earned from this campaign paid for this effort many times over.

We have a campaign underway at this time targeting the 100 largest school districts in the US. We’re experiencing similar results.

And, in case you’re wondering….Yes, we’ve used the same technique in approaching F1000 senior executives and have enjoyed similar success.

Paper Direct Mail is Alive and Thriving In this emerging era of Internet use, paper direct mail remains relevant and happily coexists with traditional websites and blogs - neither is an either or decision. All have an important use in sales and marketing, and paper direct mail remains relevant…it still works.

Jim Logan is a direct response marketer that writes, speaks, and consults on the topic of businesses making more money. He may be reached at http://www.jslogan.com

How Toyota Captured the #1 Market Share . . . Through Solid Decision-Making!

Toyota is arguably one of the most recognizable brand names in the world. Toyota captured the Number 1 spot in automotive sales, by creating high standards for quality, reliability and customer acceptance.

In short, the name Toyota has become synonymous with the standard of excellence to which many aspire.

Reaching this standard didn’t happen by accident. It was accomplished by having a consistent and effective decision-making process at every stage of their marketing and product delivery process.

Toyota recently launched a marketing campaign appealing to buyers’ personal aspirations. The previous campaign, “Get the Feeling” gives way to “Moving Forward”, a series of ads proclaiming Toyota vehicles will be there as drivers hit milestones in life. The company felt they needed a change because customer mind-sets have changed, and their business needed to follow the market.

This shift in direction came about because their marketing strategy was able to identify the strategic keys to the company’s future growth and make customer centric decisions. While Toyota may not have used the exact process we are recommending, it is clear by looking at their strategy, they used a concise decision making process.

Seven Keys to Optimal Decision-Making

In the long range goal to achieve a solid market presence, all people in key positions can achieve incredible levels of effectiveness by acting purposefully - by knowing what has to be done - and in getting work done as efficiently and expediently as possible.

Management in most all businesses, lament they have no time to do what they feel they need to do. For example, there are too many emails, priorities that seem to change daily, nano-second reaction to last minute requests, dealing with politics, and much, much more. Guess what? It’s not going away. No silver bullets. No magic spells. This is what you have. Get over it.

We are going to describe what you can to do to get your arms around making decisions that obtain optimal results.

Question. Are you certain your decisions will successfully accomplish your vision in the shortest amount of time?

Here are seven key elements that will give clarity to the many decisions you will want to make, for an effective business growth strategy to emerge.

Rule #1: Define the over all purpose in specific - not conceptual - terms.
Why It Is Important: To prevent decision overlap.
Ramifications if You Don’t: You can’t measure progress or verify when progress is being made.
How To Do It: Develop measurable results in time, dollars and numbers.

Rule #2: Determine specific discussion topics.
Why It Is Important: Be certain the decisions made in the session are grounded in reality and moves you toward your long-term purpose.
Ramifications if You Don’t: You can go down a wrong path and waste everyone’s time.
How To Do It: Determine that each discussion session has clear identifiable expectations.

Rule #3: Identify subjects NOT related to specific discussion topic.
Why It Is Important: It keeps the discussion focused on the specific topic.
Ramifications if You Don’t: Time and energy is wasted on unrelated issues and are possible landmines upsetting the specific outcome of the session.
How To Do It: Prior to meeting, identify important issues and non-issues relating specifically to the topic.

Rule #4: Use permission meter.
Why It Is Important: Encourages participants to challenge assumptions, resulting in bold fresh new ideas.
Ramifications if You Don’t: Participants are analyzed - not ideas.
How To Do It: Establish a new dynamic style of thinking on a 1 - 10 scale from brainstorming to analytical to planning styles.

Rule #5 Invite only essential personnel in strategy discussions.
Why It Is Important: Gets issues on the table fast and encourages the cross-functional teams to find solutions at the outset.
Ramifications if You Don’t: Avoids “silo” decision-making as well as loading the session with non-essential personnel.
How To Do It: Know how the company works and who is responsible for what.

Rule #6: Compile Background Information.
Why It Is Important: Gets all participants on the same page without using valuable meeting time.
Ramifications if You Don’t: The stated purpose is not fulfilled because time is wasted bringing everyone up to speed.
How To Do It: Before meeting, distribute background information necessary to move discussion forward with velocity.

Rule #7: Develop a well thought-out communication plan.
Why It Is Important: It ensures all essential personnel have the information they need to be successful.
Ramifications if You Don’t: All personnel not properly informed will not be in sync with the original decisions.
How To Do It: Determine what specific messages are delivered to whom; who needs to know; who will tell them; how they will be told; and by when.

Take a careful look at how your company is making decisions!

When effective decision-making flourishes you get on track towards successfully and effectively achieving your company’s vision.

In conclusion, if you follow these 7 golden rules, you will achieve success in ways you never dreamed possible. The key is to instill a reliable and consistent corporate decision-making process to get results like Toyota.

Marney Kaye is a Business Growth Specialist and provides a systematic, step-by-step process designed to develop growth strategies leading clients to take their rightful place in a dynamic and demanding marketplace. Clients who have shown interest in this process include marketers, analysts, heads of start-ups, management consultants, researchers, VCs, journalists, business development directors, trend watchers, and anyone else interested in staying on top of optimal decision-making. With offices outside Toronto, ON and Orlando, FL, Ms. Kaye can be reached at 905-873-6240 or 321-214-9231 http://www.busgrowth.com; mkaye@busgrowth.com

So, you have a business card? And you have given it to a few of your friends as well? Great! But did you get those cards to give to your acquaintances or to get business? Are they getting business for you?? That is the key question.

Most of us today have a business card, except those few who plans to survive the battle of brands without the most necessary armor. In this 20th century business world, even a mom-n-pop shop needs a business card and a logo to survivetoday these are the bare necessities for any business.

Now, having business card is not good enough, the question is how good is your business card? Is it getting the desired business for you? Or in other words, are you able to use your business card to its full potential?

We must realize a business card is not just a piece of paper or a small card stock with your contact information. It is an essential branding tool for your business and has every potential to get you new business, provided you know how to use it.

When you hand over your business card to a client, you expect him to contact you for your product or service, but have you ever thought, why should he contact you and not your competitor, if he has both the cards? This is where a well-planned business card gives you the advantage. Your business card must have something in it that would create an interest in the prospect to contact you.

There are several ways to do this.

a) You can add a tag line to your business card that speaks about your USP.

b) You can offer a discount to people purchasing your products if they present your business card while purchasing.

c) You can have a small survey at the back of your business card and ask the people to fill it up and submit back to you or your shop and they are eligible for some discount or prize based on a draw on those surveys. At the same time, when they come to return you those survey cards, don’t forget to give them a new business card without any survey.

d) You can ask people to visit your website and give them a discount for subscribing to the newsletter. (This serves two purposes, you get a client base to inform about your new products and services at the same time your prospective customers became aware of your web presence)

e) Give your business cards to all your first time customers and promise them a discount on repurchase - this can be highly effective to increase your customer loyalty.

You must also understand that when I say that your business card should get you more business I don’t want your business card to look like a billboard. You must be careful while drafting your business card and ensure that along with your contact information it has got just the minimal information that is required to prompt a prospect to initiate an action that can culminate to a sale. You should also take proper care about the design and the quality of paper that you use. If you can keep in mind, all these factors while designing your business card and then use it effectively, be assured, you have just employed one of the most effective sales agent for your company.

Ray Smith is a marketing Expert with years of experience in different industries and specialized knowledge on branding and internet marketing.
Corporate Identity Design - Corporate Logo Design

As I frequently review new internet marketing products, I recently received a free copy of a new product which is the brainchild of a young man living in Singapore. I have reviewed several of these so-called “money-making programs”, and I approach each with a wary eye. Some have valuable information, but it is presented badly or in an unusable form. Most are totally worthless for the internet marketing “newbie” either due to complete lack of substance or from having been written for experienced internet marketers…who usually already know most of the stuff in the product anyway.

The product I am about to talk about, “Clickbank Profit Machine” is one that finds the right spot by collecting a valuable range of information based on the author’s own successful experiences, designing a structured process around them, and then presenting the information in a way that is easily understood by the internet marketing beginner. In fact, for someone who is uncertain what to sell on the internet, how to sell on the internet, and how to find customers AND the resources to reach them, Dylan Loh has come up with some answers.

Dylan Loh is barely 21 years old, lives in Singapore, and makes more in a week than some people make in a month…or even two months. For some time, he has made a successful living selling Clickbank products, and has put his knowledge into a 46 page, instantly downloadable information product that can possibly have the reader making money within a few days.

“Clickbank Profit Machine” focuses on Dylan’s techniques for using Clickbank affiliate programs to generate internet income. He has been using and refining his techniques for some time, and recently decided to put them together as a program which he has begun selling through Clickbank himself. Overall, it is a well put together product which provides a wide range of information.

Dylan is attuned to the fact that he is probably dealing with a “newbie” and presents his material in a conversational manner without much technical jargon creeping in. I chatted with him recently about that, and he informed me that he was already working on some revisions which would take care of that, but, in my opinion, most people would have no problems with the program in its present state and what Dylan is going to do consists of “tweaking” the text more than anything else. In fact, even if someone were to have difficulty understanding part of the program, Dylan is temporarily providing 1 on 1 coaching to anyone who purchases his product.

Just a few of the topics Dylan Loh covers are:

**How to start a successful internet business with no website

**The system he uses to pick the most successful products

**How to use Google Adwords to produce even more income

**What traffic generators to use and how to use them

This is possibly NOT the world’s greatest internet marketing guide (which I haven’t found yet anyway), but it IS a simple, and at the current price of $34.95, a reasonable addition to the internet business training of any budding online entrepreneur.

Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer. A graduate of the University Of West Florida (1973) with a BA in accounting, he is a member of Mensa and has held several managerial positions. After retiring from the U. S. Army in 1995, he became interested in internet marketing and developed various online businesses. He has been writing poetry, articles, and essays for over 40 years, and now frequently publishes articles on his own websites and for use by other webmasters. You can find more of his articles at http://www.donovanbaldwin.com/freearticles. To learn more about the product reviewed in this article, please visit http://learnmarketing.biz/clickbank/affiliate.html.

Coupons can be a great way to promote, increase, and improve
your business. They can be used to entice new customers,
move hard-to-sell merchandise, “time-shift” your customers
by getting them to come in during traditionally slow times,
or as a stand-alone product when sold as gift certificates.

And, what could be simpler? Print a piece of paper and it’s
done. Right?

Maybe.

Coupons can get much more complicated than you might think.
What restrictions do you want to impose? Good on certain
days? Certain hours? Is there a minimum purchase required?
What about ‘rain-checks’ if the promoted merchandise is
temporarily unavailable?

What about the structure of the offer?
Buy-one-get-one-free? Percentage discount, flat
dollar-amount discount, or special one-time only price?
Should the coupon expire?

Lots of questions, but how should you go about making all of
these decisions?

Start at the beginning: before you do anything else, decide
exactly what you want to accomplish with your offer. Do you
want to increase sales, get new customers, introduce a new
product or service, use the coupon as a product in and of
itself (as in “gift certificate”), or ??? It is imperative
that you make this determination first because all of the
other coupon-related decisions depend on it.

When you finally do come up with the parameters of your
offer, be sure that it is reasonable and easy to take
advantage of. I remember seeing a restaurant coupon for $2
off the bill, but there were so many restrictions that I
almost laughed out loud. You practically had to be an
attorney to decipher the offer; it was good during certain
hours on certain days of the week, for parties of 4 or more
(adults only, kids don’t count), meals must meet certain
minimums, and so on. It was ludicrous. They apparently
wanted to stimulate business, but I can’t imagine that
ANYone EVER took advantage of the offer. (It may be
significant to note that the restaurant in question failed.)

If you are selling gift certificates, they cannot expire.
Someone has given you money for a product or service that
you have not yet delivered; to allow that to expire is
unethical in my opinion, unless you return the money to the
purchaser after the expiration date.

Accounting for them, however, can be a problem. A friend of
mine received landscaping gift certificates for several
years. She accumulated them until she had a big project to
do, and the nursery that issued them was mortified that they
were going to have to honor them all at once. If you think
about it, though, they got a better deal because they had
use of the money for all of that time, and the buying power
of the money they received has diminished over time; a $100
certificate, for example, issued 5 years ago won’t buy as
much today as it would have then. Gift certificates should
be carried on your books as a liability. That way, you
don’t realize the revenue or take the profit until the
certificates are redeemed.

Some people have the feeling that gift certificates are too
much trouble because of the liability and accounting, but my
feeling is that you should do what’s best for your customer,
not what’s best for you.

Coupons and gift certificates are good tools. Use them, but
be smart about it.

About the Author

“Make More Money and Have More Fun” with your small
business! Dave will show you how with his FREE newsletter,
or his FREE ‘Min-E-Seminar’: “Secrets of an Actual $5
Million Home Business.”
Comments and/or questions are
always welcome at 1-800-366-2347 or Dave@DaveBalch.com.
(c) Copyright 2002, Dave Balch.

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.

Despite any failures or slow starts you may be experiencing or rebounding from right now, don’t focus too much on the people you listened to who may have contributed to your current state.

We all rely on “experts” to get ahead. Problem is you never know for SURE if the expert you just listened to is right until what she told you pans out in hard results.

Case studies are nice, but results in your bank account would be better. So there is always a leap of faith when deciding on a plan of action for your online business based upon the input from an “expert.”

Many times you fall flat on your face. Whether it is a marketing test, new sales copy, or a new product or service, you can do everything that was recommended to the best of your ability, and sometimes it still doesn’t work out.

I will tell you a secret that most experts won’t admit: everyone, even the “experts,” go through the same exact thing from time to time! We are all in the same boat when it comes to trying and failing. Or trying and succeeding.

Here’s what is important when you hit the bottom of a fall from grace: that you dust yourself off and realize that a recent failure has nothing to do with whether or not “it was meant to be” or “this online business thing will never work for ME” or “it’s all the “expert’s” fault I failed!”

None of the statements above do a thing for your future success. What you need to succeed is out there. All the knowledge you need. All the tools and tactics. All the ideas you need to turn your business 180 degrees and get it back on track for eventual success.

Whether or not you should have listened to the last “expert” is immaterial. What matters is that you learn from what happened and take steps to avoid the same mistake in the future.

The answers or ideas you are seeking are very close. They can be one search away. One “chance” meeting with someone who will be crucial to your business success. Most people get stuck on failure or setbacks and miss the opportunity that was created by that failure.

They take no notice of the opportunity in front of them because of the fog of blame and shame, or the feelings of doubt about whether or not you should even be trying this online business “thing” at all.

Believe me, it is hard to stick to your dreams when everyone around you thinks you are nuts for even trying. It takes a real steadfast resolve to stick it out in the face of failure.

But the people who do, come out on top. Take that to the bank because when failure strikes, and it always does, most people run right back to the security of a paycheck without a backward glance.

These are the bitter folks who stick around the forums and write about how big a “pie-in-the-sky” all this online business success stuff is.

Yeah, tell that to the hundreds of people I work with who are singing an entirely different tune. I work around content site publishers and have associates who are making $20,000.00+ per month without serving a single customer or having to man their business with support people around the clock.

They don’t ship products and thus have no inventory headaches. They simply provide a network of information sites and make money with the advertising space on those sites. Good money. Very good money.

Publishing content on a multi-site network scale is something sort of new out there on the net, in internet time. Certainly in real-world time! It is constantly evolving and is still truly in its infancy for potential growth. Growth in billions of dollars, not millions.

The point is this: There are not only the standard, regular opportunities for successful online business models that are still making millionaires right and left. There are also constant developments on the cutting-edge of internet business models.

The opportunity bubble in online businesses of all kinds is expanding at an amazing rate of speed. Like the Big Bang, opportunity is spreading in all directions, across hundreds of online industries.

We all sometimes need to be reminded of this fact in order to get past failures and keep working hard to find our niche. I can assure you that if you work, learn, and stay involved in your online business interests, whatever they may be, that big day will come when certain things fall into place which will change your life dramatically.

Everything you need to succeed is within a few clicks of where you are right now. You just haven’t found the RIGHT links yet. But you will if you keep your eyes open for the opportunity when it presents itself.

Copyright 2005 Jack Humphrey

Jack Humphrey is managing partner at Content Desk, Inc. and an online information network publisher. For more information on the new trends in the information publishing industry, check out http://www.contentdesk.com/mardigras