This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Email Marketing Still a Great Small Business Tool

Having lots of channels and lots of ways for folks to receive relevant, education based content is a must.

While social media and other web based marketing tools are getting most of today’s hype, email marketing to a list of willing recipients is still a very powerful way to market.

Staying top of mind is often half the battle and a steady drip of information via email is a simple, effective and low-cost way to get this done.

There are many great options for tools to use in your email marketing, but today I would like to tell you a little about Vertical Response and a free trial of 500 emails available to Duct Tape readers. 

I’ve use Vertical Response over the past few months to send my email newsletter and I can tell you that I really like the simple and very intuitive interface. When I did have a question or two, I found a real person on the phone that got me running right away. They also have a survey tool and recently added the ability to send snail-mail post cards to your list.

They have a nice selection of email templates and monthly pricing as low as $10 per month.

One of the secrets behind the most successfully marketed small and medium sized businesses, is that they utilize more forms of marketing than their less successful counterparts!  In my experience, ‘the average’ business will use just two or three different kinds of marketing - yet the most successful businesses will be benefiting from eight or more.

Compound marketing leverage

By developing a marketing strategy, which leverages many complimentary forms of marketing, you start to build a ‘compound marketing’ effect.  This is where the results you get for your combined efforts, are far, far greater than they would be; if you had done each activity in isolation.

Also, by relying on a number of different forms of marketing, your business’ future is far more secure.  I interviewed a businesswoman once, who relied on an advertisement in an industry magazine for almost all her new business. A competitor then started advertising in the same publication.  Overnight, her sales and enquiries dropped by more than half and she eventually went broke!

If you currently rely on just a small number of marketing activities, no matter how effective they currently are, make sure you are not too reliant on any one of them and always look for new ways to get great results.

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

New Local Search Listing Resource

GetListed.org does a nice job of collecting info on your basic local search listing in Google, Yahoo, MSNLive and Best of the Web.

Simply add your business name and zip code and will produce a report showing what listing you have and whether or not you have claimed them (something you should do)

There is also a resource center with some nice information on the subject of local search.

Create runaway word-of-mouth marketing for your business online.
By: Deborah Cole Micek | 11/07/2007 - WomenEntrepreneur.com

I like to think of new media marketing as entertainment marketing. This term helps paint the picture for entrepreneurs as to what’s involved in new media marketing if they want their campaign to be successful.

If your company wants to get exposure by creating buzz and runaway word-of-mouth marketing, it’s not going to happen with a paid advertising spot on TV. Rather, it must be something so entertaining and engaging for viewers that they feel compelled to share your video with a friend and talk about you at parties. You want to create something buzz-worthy that makes people actually smile as they talk about your latest YouTube video or podcast.

Before I share an example of someone who is so buzz-worthy you’ve probably heard about him or seen one of his videos, let me share a few cautionary words so you won’t get banned. Read article…

Small business owners such as myself are always on the lookout for ways to promote their business. With over 150 million users and still growing, Facebook can be a great way to do that.

My business is almost entirely dependent on word-of-mouth referrals, so making sure that as many my friends and contacts as possible know about Addicott Web is crucial. The vast majority of my social network is on Facebook already, so it’s the perfect way for me to reach a broad audience. Read article…

Promotional products that are imprinted with corporate logos or messages, are more cost effective per ad impression than magazine, TV and radio ads, according to a research study conducted by the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI), a trade organization for the advertising specialty and promotional products industry. Read article…

(Note: If you’re mystified about Twitter and how you can use this tool, here is an interesting article that reveals this New Media tool. — Chumley)
The Tweet Life by Todd Friesen , Friday, January 23, 2009

IT’S 2009, AND LIKE MANY of you I made several New Year’s resolutions that I may or may not keep. Some of them revolve around my vices. I like to smoke. I like to sleep in to the last possible minute. I like to eat food that will kill me and I like to drive too fast. Also, I’m a complete and utter Twitter addict — a Twaddict, if you will. All the former vices are addictions I really will try and address this year. The latter is a different story. In fact, I intend to increase my addiction to 140 character “life bytes.”

Now before you get all fired up and click away to something else thinking this is just another Twitter article, at least take the time to go read about the Ketchum/Fedex debacle and heed the moral of that story. If you are interested in how Twitter is replacing search, at least for this writer, then stick around.

Twitter For Local Search

I have begun to use Twitter and other-third party Twitter tools in place of traditional search for a number of things. I was recently at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. It was packed, there were multiple sessions, events and parties happening simultaneously, and it was impossible to keep track of where people where and what the hot part was. Impossible, that is, without Twitter. I set up a custom search for #asw09 that fed all tweets regarding the conference to my iPhone in real time. Ten seconds of screen scrolling later, I knew exactly where to go and how to get there. That was the passive method — the active mode, of course, is to tweet “Where is everybody? #asw09.”

The beauty of all this is that it reaches a community that is multiple times larger than your contact list in your phone. In fact, I used Twitter for at least 50% of my digital communications at the conference.

Recently a Twitter user I follow tweeted that he was in Seattle and jonesin’ for some good sushi, but it was 1 a.m. He had already exhausted Yelp trying to find an open restaurant — but within three minutes of his tweet, he had several suggestions from locals on places to go that were still open and close to his location. Twitter trumped every single local search service that night.

Twitter For Shopping And Reviews

Last year I was speaking at Shop.org in Las Vegas. I had waited too long to book my room and get the discounted conference rate. Enter search.twitter.com or www.whostalkin.com or www.twingly.com. A few combinations of hotel name plus “discount,” “promotion,” “code,” and “sale” produced a Web promotion code that resulted in a better rate than the conference was offering.

Sure you can use Yahoo, Live, or even Google for that search — but sifting through the results takes much longer. Twitter search is real time in reverse chronological order. You know right away how fresh that sale code is immediately. Needless to say, I check Twitter before I buy anything online these days. I also follow Twitter accounts like @delloutlet and @VirginAmerica.

Product and company reviews are also a snap to find and address what is happening today, not last month or last year. We have yet to hear of someone gaming Twitter for reviews as Belkin did when it posted a bunch of fake 5-star reviews at Amazon this month.

Twitter For News

I used to scan headlines in an RSS reader for my news, but I haven’t fired up my news reader in a long time. I simply keep Twitter open on a second monitor and from time to time scan the public timeline, so it’s easy to spot breaking news very quickly. I knew about the US Airways flight landing in the Hudson within minutes. I knew that the head of Merrill Lynch spent $1.2 million decorating his office and no longer works there.

These are the things I like to know; my news is largely filtered based on the people I’ve chosen to follow, like @richsanchezcnn, @weridnews and @mediapost.

My name is Todd Friesen and I’m a Twaddict — and I’m OK with that.

12 Ways to Thank Your Customers: Client Appreciation Strategies You Can Use Year Round by Stephanie Chandler

One of the biggest mistakes a business can make is investing the majority of marketing efforts in attracting new customers and forgetting about past customers. Your current and past clients are the foundation of your business because without them, your business would not exist. It also costs far more to acquire a new client than it costs to generate business from an existing client.

Showing appreciation for your clients can set you apart from your competitors, increase loyalty, improve retention, inspire sales and even build relationships that last a lifetime. Reaching out to your clients is also an opportunity to remind them that your business exists. Effective marketing relies on repeat exposure and showing appreciation is an affordable and effective way to keep your marketing wheels in motion. Read article…

Blogging for Business - Small Business Tips by One SEO Company
2009-01-20 04:13:17 (GMT) (WiredPRNews.com - Business, Press Releases, Technology)

Blogs generate traffic

Dallas, Texas (WiredPRNews.com) — I have been in the web business for many years now and have worked with a variety of local and international companies on their web design, search engine optimization (SEO) and web marketing projects. Inevitably, during a meeting where the client and I discuss multiple means of attracting web traffic, the client dreads blogging, usually because of unawareness or lack of time management.

I usually get the reply ‘Why don’t you blog for us, we don’t have time.’ Sure, we can blog for you but the business owner must understand the importance of using blogs a medium of attracting attention, and generating more qualified web traffic to the web business. The reason why blogging is necessary and the benefits of blogging are not clearly understood by business people. Let’s understand the basics of blogging and its benefit:

a) Blogs initiate dialog with web visitors

Blogs start a two-way traffic with web visitors. When you write about your products and services and write with authority, as though you are the master of your business and with in-depth knowledge about your products and services, you not only create awareness of the benefits and disadvantages about the product and service you deal in, you engage people’s attention. Your blog should also have a call to action, to make the readers of the blog interact with your website.

A call to action can mean asking them to leave comments, encouraging them to speak out. Comments left by the readers of blogs might include inquiries and leads that could lead to sales.

Blogs generate a prospective about your company. It silently speaks about the culture and vision of your company and even helps in building a brand image.

b) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Benefit of blogging

Blogs peppered with targeted keywords, keyword phrases and search terms related to your business puts blogs in plain sight whenever web visitors use related search terms. Instead of using long-tail keyword phrases, targeting niche keywords will help in attracting more qualified web traffic.

c) Blogs attract more links

Blog are meant to be informative and not advertisements. Informative quality, industry related articles that provide insight or a critical analysis of product and services you deal in helps you to get more links.

Links will get better search engine rankings for your website and will help in generating more traffic.

d) Fresh, original content for blogs

Fresh and original web content is the feed for search engine spiders. Websites that are updated frequently get crawled by the search engine spiders more often. Your website gets more authority and better search engine ranking.

By now, you should have enough reasons to being seriously considering blogging. For your interest and for the interest of getting more visitors to your website, blogging is the way to go. Don’t wait to begin blogging right away.

Start writing blogs, use targeted keywords and keyword phrases, generate qualified web traffic and get better search engine positioning and ranking. Fresh content and informative articles with SEO are best for search engine marketing

Contributor: One SEO Company = Web Design + Web Marketing + Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For Custom Blog Development for your business give us a call and we will build a custom vanity blog for your online voice.

Contact: One SEO Company Tel: 214 722 6423

by Robbi Gunter

Promoting your business is one of the primary keys to solvency. There is no point in having a product or service to offer on the marketplace if you don’t let anyone know it exists. It is the responsibility of the promotions department in your business organization to let the public know you have products and to create a demand for those products. Using promotional products is a tactic for branding your organization correctly.

Familiarity and Goodwill

Branding your business is an essential part of promotions since it involves getting the public familiar with your company name or logo and having it invoke a feeling of trust and confidence when it is seen. Delivering more or better than you promised is the foundation for creating the reaction you want when people see your logo. People that receive promotional items as gifts are eager to show them off because the items are unique. Read article…