19 Oct 08 Why Tracking Your Marketing Now is More Important Then Ever

As the country slips into a recession more and more

08 Oct 08 Generating Leads for Your Business - Know your Numbers

I met with a new client last week to talk about how he could generate leads and I was amazed at how little he knew about how much money he was spending to get a lead and convert the lead to a customer. I was also amazed at the process his company used to track leads (none). Here are some tips for finding leads and tracking those leads.

In my opinion, the most important part of lead generation is having an easy to use automated system. That means having a easy system to track leads and as importantly an easy way to market to those leads.

Tags: Lead generation

07 Oct 08 Do you know your clearly customers

One of the hats I wear is as a consultant to businesses that are looking to use the Internet to find leads and customers. We recently got a new customer on a lead generation strategy on the Internet. This is a rather large internation company  (Can’t even say the industry becasue they may see this post) and as usual I asked my normal questions.

1. Who is a lead?
2. What is a prospect?
3. What is a qualified lead?
4. How are leads moved to a buy?

and to my surprise I got this response. “We don’t know”.

I must admit I was floored. How can you find a lead if you don’t know what a lead is. Now mind you this is a large business (+$200 mil in sales) and their marketing department couldn’t define a lead, a qualified lead or an ideal customer. No wonder they are getting creamed in the marketplace.

If you own a business (my passion is small business) then you MUST define your ideal customer  or client. Define what they look like (demographics) and what they want (Psychographics) as clearly as possible. Just the definition could help your business tremendously.

Dedicated to your success.

Tags: Business Management, Customer relationship, Lead generation

06 Oct 08 Avoid Financial Disaster, Leverage YOUR Business’s Social Network

Will your business face “Financial Disaster” For the first time in 4 years the DOW is below 10,000 and the world seems to be in financial panic.

So the question is “How do you avoid Financial Disaster?” How to do ensure that your business will prosper in these tough economic times.

A couple of posts ago I talked about using your existing social network. You know the customers that have decided they trust you enough to spend money with your business. Well these people, current customers could save you and your business from Financial Disaster.

How, using your relationship with those customers. These customers, clients know and trust  your business. They have decided that their hard earned dollars are best spent with you when the want or need the product or service you sell.

So why not capitalize on them. What you say “I have no relationship!!!!” Well it’s time to start building one.

The reason many business owners can’t leverage their existing customer base as it turns out is many  business owners don’t even know who these clients or customers are. Many don’t have any systematic way to stay in touch so they can’t leverage them. Many business owners never even talk to this powerful network, never even ask them what they want.

Well starting today, if you want to avoid “financial disaster” start talking to the 20% of your customers that provide most of your business, find out what else they want or need and sell it to them. Just that could save your financial hide.

Dedicated to your success….

Tags: Customer relationship, Financial Disaster, Social Networks

30 Sep 08 Same search term for Google - Different Results in two different Browsers

Ok, I heard about this but never eperienced it. I searched for the term “Christ Church” and got to different SERPs from two different browsers. Any SEO guys got any ideas.

I searched the exact same term in both Safari and Firefox. In the Safari browser “Christ Church Nashville” is listed first in the FireFox browser “Christ Church Philadelphia” is listed first.

Any smart SEO guys want to weigh in I am listening. Also notice the other results are not the same. Looking for comments.

Safari Example

Firefox Example

Tags: Google, Search Results

30 Sep 08 You already have a Social Network.. Just use it

Are you using your businesses “social network”? Not the online social network like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc but your businesses social network? Do you even know what your Businesses Social Network is and who is in it?

Well lets define “Social Networks”. I checked some definitions on the web and here is a list of definitions of social networks none of which has anything to do with computers

• The personal or professional set of relationships between individuals
• The extent to which individuals or groups are connected to or isolated from others, family, friends, work colleagues or schoolmates
• a social structure made of individuals or organizations that are connected through various familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close relationships

When you read these definitions they have nothing to do with computers. Social networks have existed for years and they live in your business.

This is no great mystery folks, every business that has customers, clients etc has a social network, you may not be using it but your businesses social network is the people that have evalutated your product or service and  trust your business enough to spend their hard earned dollars with you. That is your businesses social network.

So you have a social network if you have clients or customers the question is are you using that network?

Dedicated to your business success

Next post - How to use your businesses social network.

Tags: Customer relationship, Social networking

20 May 08 What are Automated Leads… and How Do I Create a Lead Gen System

I recently was talking to a prospect about his business. I love talking to folks about their businesses because I get learn about their successes and their failures. This prospect is a financial planner so we talked about how he found new customers and he admitted that he had no organized way to gather, store and nurture new leads. (I was not surprised because many business owners don’t have a system). So I asked him how he found new customers. His response “By luck”.

Now in my mind this was crazy but he went on to explain that his business had thrived for years with this tactic and until recently he had not thought about changing it. We talked further and I suggested he may want to consider creating an automated lead gen system that finds, stores and nurtures clients until they are ready to buy. Here is my non technical criteria for creating a system

1. Easily implemented across the entire sales process. Sales has many steps and any system created needs to integrate and be easily implemented in every step of the process. Actually any system must seamless integrate and not imped the sales process.
2. Automated. Any system must allow for the following steps to be done and must be completely automated including

Find new leads. - The system automatically find new leads once it’s created using your existing advertising methods

Store - All leads and lead data needs to be stored in an easily accessible way.

Nurture - Sales and Marketing is a process. The process starts by gathering leads but those leads have to be nurtured basically your system needs to automatically communicate with your leads and move them down the buying cycle.

1. Easily added on to whatever you’re doing now - the system you create must easily integrate into your existing systems, so there is no (or little) disruption in your business.

31 Mar 08 What is Social Bookmarking

Again, I am using these videos to help me understand these new social networking sites. Last post was social networking, today social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is a way to organize the websites you love. From a business perspective if you customers bookmark your sites, your site gets rewarded with more external links and your page rank increases. In a few days I’ll talk about strategies for encouraing your clients to bookmark your site but in the mean time discover social bookmarking.

09 Mar 08 The Google Advertising Enterprise Adds - TV Advertising

Google recently announced a beta program that allows advertisers to buy ads on television networks. Google will allow advertisers to upload 15, 30, 45 and 60 minute advertisements. The Google platform allows advertisers to closely connect TV advertising to the Internet and measure the results. As you know, I am a firm believer in only buy advertising that can be measured and this new Google beta mets that goal.

According to the Google website the program works the same as adwords, you basically pick networks and dayparts, set a budget and maximum CPM, upload the video and track you ads. As usual it’s simple, easy and easily trackable. You can finally track advertising results and ROI.

The benefits are obvious, you can track and measure your advertising results, Google says it is attached to various setup boxes so advertising results are measured. In the TV business, there is something called “make goods” where you repeat the ad to get the demo promised. There is also givebacks, where you give back money, the Google system helps reduce or eliminate this challenge.

The last benefit is the benefit you get using the Google platform, once you launch your ad, you can see performace of you advertising message and tune it to get better results.

If you are looking to advertise on TV, consider the Google network. If you want to know how it works, Call Today

04 Mar 08 Why Most PPC Campaign Don’t Work!! (or not well)

I’ve been working on a client’s PPC campaign and just got off the phone with this client. Basically I had an argument with the client about his campaign and why it’s not working. The client insists (despite concrete evidence to the contrary) on landing prospect on the main page of his website forcing the prospect to search all around looking for what they want. More often than not what they want isn’t even obviously available on his site, so the prospect flounders around until he quits (We can prove it by looking at his bounce rate)

My argument is that this is stupid (I guess you can tell I’m still steamed). When a prospect see a PPC ad and they click on the ad, they want to see the same message on the site. The process is called message to market match, in other words, when the prospect clicks on an ad, they land on a page that continues the sales message alluded to in the ad.

My client insists this is hogwash (his words), my client wants to have the prospect see everything he had to offer. I say he is wrong and have decided to design a landing page (for FREE) to prove my point.

BUt this isn’t my thinking the effectiveness of landing pages has been proven over and over again compared to landing a prospect on your home page.

The prospect is looking for something specific, remember the client typed in a specific search string “womens shoes in philly”, when they click on your ad, they don’t want to have to find the womens shoes, they TOLD YOU WHAT THEY WHERE LOOKING FOR.

So, when running PPC, land your prospect on a page that helps them find what they want. If your like my client and don’t beleive that this increases conversion then at minimum test to see what works best.

Dedicated to your success

Dwight

BTW - If you want to learn more or talk about your campaign call me