How to Increase the Persuasive Power of Your Communications

by

Do you have a sales page that covers all facts to show your prospects why your product or service is the most logical choice for them… with 20 bullet points of benefits that is impeccable from the “copywriting best practice” perspective, yet fails to generate that “hell yeah!” gut motivation that makes them hit the “buy” button?

OR…

Maybe you are great at connecting with your potential clients at the personal and emotional level… they scream YES! on the phone but hem and hew when it comes time to whip out the credit card – they have to work the numbers, talk to their spouse, wait for the paycheck, wait till after their mother-in-law’s birthday… then a few days later, POOF!

… leaving you wondering what you have done wrong…

Good news is… nothing! You just need to complete the picture…

Read more

23 Ways to get your customers to love you

by
23 Ways to get your customers to love you

Getting a new customer into your business is hard.

Each one is hard fought. But it’s totally worth all the blood, sweat and tears you put into it.

So it would be crazy to put out all that effort to get your customers, only to take them for granted once they give you a shot. Unfortunately, that happens far too often in businesses.

Many entrepreneurs have a leaky bucket. Many of the new customers they earn, leave soon after, never to return.

No bueno.

Smart business owners know it’s best to work just as hard to create loyal customers, as they do in trying to find new ones.

That’s because it costs a whole lot more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Research shows loyal customers buy more, and they cost less to maintain.

Also, loyal customers tell their friends about you, and they stick around on those days when you’re not quite at your best.

In short, the smart way to grow your business is to love the customers you’ve already got. And you’ll do that, by giving them numerous reasons to be loyal to you.

In other words, you need to get your customers to love you.

So without further ado, here are 23 ideas to help you create delighted, loyal customers:

 

23 Ways to get your customers to love you

Build a relationship

Read more

7 Free Tools to Help You Get Publicity for Your Business

by

It is absolutely crucial that you properly leverage public relations to grow your business. Utilizing sound PR strategies helps make others aware that your company exists, but what if you’re on a tight budget?

For those looking for cheap (read: free) tools to help get publicity, read on for our seven favorite free tools.

1. Product Hunt

The first tool is Product Hunt, a curation of the best new products across a seemingly unlimited variety of niches. Product Hunt surfaces the best new products, every day, and is the go-to site for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations.

It’s easy to add your own product to the collection, but this PR method should be combined with other marketing campaigns to reap the highest benefits. Gregory Koberger, founder of ReadMe.io, says, “Who knows if we’d be launched by now if someone hadn’t posted ReadMe.io for us.” Through the Product Hunt launch, ReadMe.io not only became profitable, but Koberger points out that “people I had emailed previously and got blown off by were now emailing me.”

Read more

10 Bad Writing Habits All Bloggers Should Avoid

by
10 Bad Writing Habits All Bloggers Should Avoid

A successful blog requires one thing and one thing only: puppies. Readers love puppies. Give them puppies, and they will come. Puppy pictures, puppy videos, guilty puppies wearing hats—anything with puppies will do. Play to your readers' love of cuteness, and they will forgive you any bad writing habits, never straying from your blog. (Anything about stray puppies is sure to be a hit as well.)Incorporating puppies into your posts is never a bad blogging habit.

Okay, okay. So maybe bad writing habits can't be cured only with puppies, although I  do recommend incorporating them into your blog posts as much as humanly possible. The way to overcome a majority of bad writing habits is not to focus on baby dogs but to focus on balance.

The answer to the question “What is the secret to blogging?” should always be “balance.” Your blog writing should strike a balance between humor and information, between substance and fluff, and between perfection and humanity. When it comes to blogging, most bad writing habits have to do with a serious lack of balance.

Writing for a blog can be tricky, but a well-written blog post is certainly possible as long as you know what to avoid. Let's take a look at some bad writing habits and what you can do to avoid them.

Read more

5 Things New Business Owners Must Know About Online Marketing

by

Whether or not you believe it, there is not some hidden, illusive secret to online marketing. Once you have a firm grasp of the fundamentals, the rest will almost fall into place. The trick is to get started. This process can be quite intimidating if you have no prior experience in the marketing field. However, there is no reason to fear – when you are armed with the essentials you can be better prepared than most college graduates who have degrees in PR.

Five essential things you need to understand about marketing your business online are found here.

There are Numerous Valuable Tools that Cost Absolutely Nothing

A number of resources that are available to assist you with online marketing are available at no cost to you. For example, it costs absolutely nothing to create accounts on social media – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. This will provide you with links back to your website and also allow you to communicate directly with your customers.

Creating and running your social media presences will provide you with a simple, yet highly effective, method of promoting your business online. Some other free (and pretty cool) tools that are available for you to use include:

Read more

Quick E-Commerce Fixes that Can Significantly Increase Your Conversions

by

In the current era, growing your business online is not as easy as it was a few years back and you really have to take everything seriously if you want to hit the sales graph that you presented in your business plan. When in the e-commerce business, things become tougher as competition in the online retail business is getting higher.

According to Forrester Research, Inc. U.S. online retail sales can hit $370 billion by 2017, which is the 10% share of total retail sales:

http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEzLzAzLzEyLzM1L2ZvcnJlc3RlcnJlLmE0ZjgzLmpwZwpwCXRodW1iCTEyMDB4OTYwMD4/b060902b/5e7/forrester-retail-sales-fore.jpg

So, online retail business is tough and in order to hit the number in the sales graph you are doing everything from Social Media to PR, offline campaigns. You have even hired a new SEO company to build quality links back to your website but the results are not as “WOW” as you would have expected.

If this is the case, this post is exactly for you! There are literally tons of businesses I know that make silly mistakes on their website. These are stopping them from reaching out to wider audiences and increase their sales online. Even in the event where a website manages to attract the eyeballs of a wider targeted audience, they usually fail to convert those into customers. In this post I am going to discuss why and how one can fix these problems on their website and make it a number one choice for the audience.

Read more

Online Entrepreneur – What Does It Take

by

The first step to getting paid by companies as an Entrepreneur, called affiliate partners,  is to be a business. What do I mean by business?  Let me tell you a little about me. Well, let me tell you having owned 3 corporations and 3 limited liability corporations and 2 dba (doing business as), I may know a little bit about what a business is.

 

The short story is you need a name make up a name. Come up with a business legit name or add it to the end of your name example: Brian Brown Advertising.

Once you have established a real name you want as a business, now you have to make it official. The easiest and fastest way to do this is to Google this “fictitious name registration ohio” use your state of course. Now it’s going to be so competitive and confusing you’re going to just want to leave. I am sorry marketers have caused this industry to look really bad. Look for a url link at the bottom of the description that has your state in it. It is really not hard. Stay focused and don’t click on other people services…… they are going to charge you your left and right eye just to submit a stupid form.

 

 

As a business owner you want to have a clear purpose. Always have a goal in mind when you sit down at the pc or use your phone. Don’t get caught up with everyday minutia of life and distractions. Have a clear goal in your head and focus on that achievement.

 

Tangent…… whooo sorry, had to spew my thoughts just a tad. LOL

 

Read more

Becoming a Professional Blogger: What Everybody Ought to Know

by

 

I may not be Darren Rowse, but I'm still a professional blogger. That's because blogging is the main way I make my living as a writer. In the last 10 years I've written for sites covering everything from travel to business to social media marketing.  Some days I still can't believe that people pay me to do something I enjoy so much!

That said, it's been quite a ride. Apart from a brief flirtation with Blogger when it started up, in 2005 I'd never written a word for publication online and I had no idea that blogging would be a paying career. I had plenty of writing experience, gained from years as a reporter and editor. But blogging was an experiment.

At the time, not many companies had blogs and not many businesses took blogging seriously. But personal bloggers were everywhere, and I became one of them, honing my skills on a now-defunct site. That got me into the habit of writing daily, responding to comments and getting ideas for new posts from readers' comments and questions. And I learned about SEO, online writing and other useful skills.

Lesson one: hone your blogging skills

Read more