Success Point Consulting

Hi, thought I’d do something different today and do a Video Blog (or Vlog as they are called).

Enjoy!

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Every Moday morning, right to your cellphone, you’ll get a short marketing tip that you can use right away to market your business.  How fun is that?  Subscribe today!

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Adventures in Uncovering the Mysteries of Facebook Demographic Targeting

If you are at all in tune with the world of social media, you probably heard about all the changes Facebook has been making the past couple weeks.  One of the big changes is that Facebook   is going to start aggregating the data from all the websites you “like” on the web and is going to make that data available to marketers.

Now, wearing my small business consultant and marketer hat, I’m absolutely drooling at the possibilities of being able to talk to exactly who I want as a customer.  But wearing my advocate of privacy and “no one needs to know that I sometimes visit certain celebrity blogs” hat, I’m leery.

But Facebook already has an awesome database available for marketers.  And my clients and I are proof.  I was working with a client on Friday who showed me the ad she had put out on Facebook last week.  She is selling a customized Sham-moo Shammy package (very similar to the as-seen-on-TV ShamWow) as a promotional give-away for companies like car dealers, marinas, motor home manufacturers, and car enthusiasts.  She had very wisely targeted men in certain age categories, in certain professions, and with certain hobbies.  In about 2 days, she had garnered 161 clicks through to her website but no sales.  But she is only spending $.32 per click, so it wasn’t outrageously expensive.    I suggested some changes to her ad and to her conversion page, and showed her how to get a code for $50 in free Facebook ad credits, and she’ll be running it again this week.

But as we were working on her Facebook page, an ad popped up for a set of exercise CDs.  We commented on how eye-catching the ad was and I said I had never seen it before.  She said she sees it every day and then said, “I think I get it because my husband and I go dancing.”  Wow.  A consumer who knows why they are being targeted.   A few minutes later, it was for a fat-burning muffin.  A little bit later, we noticed an ad for a nutritional supplement.  So on a whim, we pulled up her profile.  Sure enough, among her interests are dancing and health.

Later that evening, I got on Facebook.  And on my home page, I have an ad, no, not for an exercise CD, not for a nutritional supplement, nothing nearly so healthy.  My ad is for Oscar Mayer hotdogs.  Oscar Mayer?    The next ad that pops up is for Taylor-made golf clubs.  That makes sense, I like to golf.  Then an ad for a bouquet of flowers appears.  Ok, I have a mom and it is Mother’s Day next week.  The next ad is for real estate funding.  Great targeting because I dabble in real estate investing and am connected to lots of real estate folks. 

And then another Oscar Mayer ad, this one touting a contest to get a ride in the Wienermobile.  Oh No!  How did they know?   Is it possible that Oscar Mayer somehow has a record of everyone who has ever ridden in the Wienermobile  (which I did in 2001 – see!). 

Never thought anyone would ever find out

 Did they somehow share that information with Facebook?  Believe me, there is nothing in my profile that screams hotdog lover.  Or is there?

Let’s see, I don’t have k ids, so that’s not it.  I’m female. Females tend to do the household shopping. So they may just be targeting females of a certain age.  I love golf, reading, and … Cleveland Indians baseball.  Ah, could it be the baseball?  Nothing else really makes sense.  It has to be that they are either targeting females, people who like baseball, or maybe even females who like baseball.  Or they might just be excluding people with healthy activities and lifestyles.  Whew, at least I think my secret fascination with the Wienermobile hasn’t been leaked, yet.

But the moral of the story:  if you are getting ads that don’t seem to be targeted to you, you may want to look at your profile and figure out why.  Then think about your product or service and try to come up with characteristics that would be shared by the majority of your target audience.   How could you get an ad in front of them?  There is going to be so much data available, it’ll be your own fault if you are talking to the wrong people.

As always, if you need help defining your ideal customer or other marketing needs, just let me know by dropping an email to SuccessPointConsulting@hotmail.com.

Here’s to your success,

Trina

P.S.  Heather Tapia’s Abundance Marketing Pro series continues tonight (Monday, May 3) at 6:30 p.m. at Raisin Rack in Westerville. Tonight’s topic:  Creating a Plan of Action.  Should be great.  Check it out.

P.S.S.  Most of you have heard, but just in case you haven’t — I’m now the Columbus Business Events Examiner for Examiner.com.  Send me your press releases and event announcements and I’ll do what I can to get your events promoted and reviewed.  Also looking for event-support types of news, like venues, caterers, DJs, event planners.  It’s gonna be fun!

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Like it or not, if you want your small business to be successful online, you need to have an understanding of Search Engine Optimization and you need to take steps to get listed in the organic search results of the major search engines, especially Google, Yahoo, and Bing. 

One of the ways you get noticed by the search engines is to develop backlinks. Backlinks are exactly what they sound like — they are links which directs others towards your site; they are also often referred to as inbound links (IBL’s). In the world of search engine optimization, the number of backlinks your site has is an indication of how popular or important it is according to your peers (other site owners). These are especially important because search engines such as Google will give more credit to those sites with a good number of quality backlinks. So they will then consider these sites more relevant than others in the results pages of a search query and will show your site higher on in the rankings.

Most search engines will want websites to have a level playing field, and so will more often than not look for natural links that have been built slowly over time. Although it can be fairly easy to manipulate the links on a web page in order to achieve a higher ranking in the short term, it is a lot harder to influence a search engine with external backlinks from another site. This is why these count so highly in a search engine’s algorithm.

One of the best ways to achieve quality backlinks to your site in a fairly short time is Directory Submissions.  Why don’t more small business owners do this?  I know it may have been some years ago, but you actually had to buy an ad to be listed in the  yellow pages, or at least buy a telephone line.  It’s no different online.  You actually have to DO something to be listed in a directory.

 It takes time, it takes effort, but it gets results. Believe it or not, you actually have to submit the link for your site to directories in order to be listed. Many directories allow free submissions. There are dozens more that want you to pay for the privilege of being listed. If you can afford it, DO IT. There are many sites around which offer a service where you can submit your site details to numerous sites. Do a search, you’ll find them. In some industries (like legal, for instance) there are well over 2,000 potential directories your business can be listed in. Every one of those listings then becomes a backlink.

But another benefit of submitting to directories, in addition to creating backlinks, is getting a boost in traffic. Imagine, some people actually use directories that they know to search for businesses instead of just Google search. The key to getting a traffic boost from directories is to actually write out a good description of your product or service and use your targeted keywords. I know, it begins to sound like a broken record, but if you use the same targeted keywords on your site, in your LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook posts and profiles, in articles that link back to your site, and also in business directories, you will start to become associated with those keywords in the eyes of the search engines. You will start to rank higher and be seen as more relevant. Isn’t that what you want?

I almost feel like the directories I tell clients to submit their site to are a closely guarded secret, but they really aren’t. This isn’t my complete list, but here are some ideas to get you started. You should make sure your business is listed in: Local.Yahoo.com, Google.com/maps, MerchantCircle.com, Brownbook.net, Cityslick.net and if you can afford it, PR.com.

There, now don’t tell me I’m not helping to make you successful online. I don’t get paid to advertise these directories (though occasionally clients pay me to help them listed on all of them ). But because you are friends of mine, I feel like I need to at least give you a hint.

Here’s to your success,

Trina

P.S.  We’re only 10 days away from the How to WOW! Now Seminar.  Have you registered yet?  HowtoWOWnow.eventbrite.com

There’s now a discount for friends of mywebWOW!com, which I would be glad to share.  Just let me know that you are going to attend and I’ll get you a discount code for 50% off the ticket price.  What are friends for?

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I recently started working with a new small business client who, on the surface, seems to be very internet-savvy.   They are blogging, they are active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  They have an attractive website.  They are SEO smart so they are getting decent traffic to their site.

The problem is: they aren’t getting any sales off the internet.  They have a presence, yes,  but it’s not translating into dollars.

Can I help them?

In my analysis of their to-date efforts, I opened up their Twitter account and looked at all their 1,061 Tweets (4 to 6 a day for about a year now).  What struck me immediately was that I had no idea whose Tweets I was looking at.  Their picture was their logo, which is fine if you know them, not significant if you don’t.  About half of their Tweets were about the weather or current events, maybe a quarter of them were Re-Tweets of other people’s stuff (which is good if there is some sort of tie-in to you, which there typically wasn’t), and maybe a quarter actually mentioned a product or service they offer.  Every Tweet used a cloaked URL.

In 1,061 Tweets, the actual name of their company had not been used once.

The company name is not terribly long (it’s half the length of Success Point Consulting).   Honestly, it’s probably the same length as the cloaked URL.  “Why use the cloaked URL?” I asked.  So they could get reporting from Hootsuite.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am all about tracking and measuring.  So I looked at their Hootsuite statistics.  The most clicks they had ever received on any one message over the past 12 months was 48 clicks, and that was a Tweet about support for relief efforts in Haiti.  Those Tweets didn’t go to their website, they went to a relief organization.  The next Tweet with the highest number of clicks got 14 people to click through to a Youtube video that had nothing to do with their company.  The rest of the top ten were 5 clicks or fewer.   Most of their Tweets are going unnoticed and the ones that are getting noticed are sending people to other sites. They are not engaging with anyone.

They are also following 3 times more people than are following them, but that’s another discussion …

So, as an experiment, I set up a couple of marketing-oriented Tweets and used the actual web address of the company’s home page instead of a cloaked url.  The next day, I was going through my usual morning routine in my consulting email account and I saw a Google Alert come through for their company name.  Surprise!  Google had picked up the Tweet that had their company name in it.  This was the first Tweet that had come through to Google Alerts.  The previous 28 Tweets or so since I had started working with them had been ignored.  Ever have one of the “Ah-ha!” moments?  Does a cloaked URL block Google from recording Tweets as backlinks and if we use the full company URL, will we get better ranking in Google?  Is this actually a SEO tip that I had somehow missed in all my previous research?

So I went surfing the web, trying to find an answer.  One place I went was SEOmoz.org, which does list url cloaking as a negative factor for Google rankings.  But I couldn’t find a whole lot of talk on the subject. 

My gut tells me that companies should be using their brand name on Twitter at least occasionally.   I understand the benefit of cloaked URLs and I use them myself, but I’m going to be more selective on where and when from now on. What about you?  If you pull up all of your company’s Tweets from the past year, are they clearly from your brand?  Would readers be able to learn anything about you and your company?  Do you try to use your company name in your Tweets, or do you rely strictly on cloaked urls?

In my mind, the jury is still out and I still have lots of work to do to start generating sales from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn  for this company, but I feel I might be going in the right direction.  I’ve changed their mix of Tweets to about 75% marketing-oriented (I’m actually putting offers in the Tweets, how novel!) to only 25% Re-Tweets and comments on the general nature of the world. 

Please leave your thoughts and comments below.  If you need ideas on how to better utilize social media and other online marketing strategies, please give me a call at 614-753-5979 or email me at SuccessPointConsulting@hotmail.com

Trina

P.S.S.  Another friend, Dr. Gwen Dwiggins, runs an outstanding clinic for autistic children, The Accelerated Learning Clinic, 5158 Blazer Parkway, Dublin.  She is having an OPEN HOUSE on Saturday, April 10, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.  If you know anyone with an autistic child, please pass this information along. 

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Okay.  First things first.  You ARE getting Google Alerts every time your small business is mentioned on the web, aren’t you?  If you’re not, get with it.    It is an awesome tool that can make increasing the online visibility of your small business online so much easier.  (Side note: I’m talking about the real Google.com/alert, not the commercial googlealert.com.  I don’t know the commercial version, only the free Google service.) Basically, you ask Google to troll the web for you, looking for specific keywords or your company name.  Every time a Google bot finds what you requested, it captures the page and sends it to you.  You can choose to have it sent “as it happens,” which means immediately upon the bot finding it, once a day, or weekly.  Your own site isn’t included in the results, nor are Tweets or Facebook mentions at this time, but those will be coming soon. 

Google Alerts are great for finding out when you are mentioned on someone else’s blog, or in an article, or in an Answer in LinkedIn.  If you are submitting press releases to dozens of press release services, Google Alerts can give you exactly which services are distributing your releases, and which aren’t.  You’ll know what sites are promoting you.  It’s the easiest way to create a file of your online press clippings I’ve found.  It’s also a great tool for monitoring who is talking about your competitors, what blogs are actively talking about your areas of interest, and catching any negative reviews or bad-mouthing before it goes viral.

But what I have found with many small business owners that I consult with is that they set up Google Alerts, they get the email from Google every day or every week, they open it up, say, “Oh goody, my press release was published,” and go on with their day.

Wrong.

You got the information, now DO SOMETHING with it.  For instance, if a press release about your small business’ upcoming event was published by one of the online news agencies, go to the site, capture the URL, and send a tweet announcing you’ve been mentioned.  Don’t stop there.  Submit the URL to Digg, Redd It, StumbleUpon, and every other social bookmarking site you participate in.  Go to a couple forums and say, “Hey, PRNews just published our press release.”  Update your wall on Facebook, submit a little news items to each of your LinkedIn groups.   

I suggested this plan of action to a client and she responded with “Why should I promote their blog?  Aren’t I just sending traffic to them instead of to me?”  I had to pause for a second.  But really, why wouldn’t I want to promote a blog that is talking about my business?  Sure, I’m making an effort to make that blog successful, but I think that’s OK.  If that site publishes a mention about your small business, and their site viewership increases, what are the chances they will be interested in publishing the next release you send, or mentioning your small business again?  Pretty good, I’d say.

But Google Alerts can be used for so much more.  For instance, if you are a graphic designer looking for a new project, you can set up a Google Alert to look for “graphic designer wanted.”  You’ll get an Alert that has combed through Monster, Careerbuilder, Elance, GoBig, and other sites and condensed it down to a daily digest of potential projects.  so much easier and more convenient that going through each site separately.  It can work for just about any job or project search.  I’ve used it to identify companies who are actively looking for an online marketing consultant. 

Think about the topics you want to know about on a regular basis and create an Alert.  You’ll be amazed at how much information you get so easily.  I have found in my small business consulting practice that my topic research for certain clients has been cut to almost nothing because Google is doing it for me and delivering it right to my inbox.  It’s like having an intern doing your research and just presenting you with a summary of the latest news.  How cool is that?

I’m curious about how you use Google Alerts.  Please leave your comments below.

And as always, if I can help you create an online or offline marketing plan or help you get your business growing and moving toward your success point, please call me at (614) 753-5979 or email me at SuccessPointConsulting@hotmail.com.  I would be honored to help.

Here’s to your success,

Trina

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Okay, okay, yes, I admit it.  I have been slow in getting on the Facebook bandwagon, but with small business clients and friends seeing FANTABULOUS results, I’ve been forced to take another look.   

And I’m here to tell you — Facebook advertising is the real deal.  You can target demographically and geographically, it’s cheaper than Google, there’s less competition, and small business owners are seeing results.  I just ran a little ad myself — I had a simple landing page offering a FREE Report and asked the respondents to fill out a short survey about their current online marketing activities – and got 6 very high-quality business leads in about 36 hours, for less than $100 ($82 to be exact).  I’m excited.

Facebook Ads provide two ways to advertise on the pages of Facebook. You can create an ad campaign that links to a landing page within your Web site, or you can advertise something on Facebook, such as your new Business Page or an application you have developed. You can also employ a Social ad. This shows your image and text alongside the social action you take on Facebook pages.

The targeting available for Facebook Ads is awesome.  You can choose  the location, gender, interests, relationship status and other demographics of your target audience.  For my test, I chose to target women, in Ohio, who were business owners and involved with service professions, like attorneys, accountants, insurance sales, etc.  And sure enough, every response I got was from a woman, from Ohio, and all but one is in an industry I was targeting.  And my guess once I dig a little deeper into her background, I bet I find she is or was connected somehow to a law firm.

In creating a Facebook Ad campaign you will need to decide which type of ad you want to run and provide the link the ad will lead visitors to.  The link does not appear in the ad — it’s behind the scenes.  The entire ad is a hotlink to the URL you select.  The ad title is restricted to 25 characters while the  text (body) must fit in 135 characters. If you choose to include a photo (which I recommend), it needs to be 110 by 80 pixels.  And like any good ad test, you should run at least 2 versions, if not 3 or 4 versions, to make sure you are getting the absolutely best response rate you can.

Very similar to the Google model, Facebook Ads can be run on a Pay for Clicks (CPC) or Pay for Views (CPM) model. During the ad creation process, you set your daily ad budget and the maximum bid, which is the most you are willing to pay per click. CPC ads are displayed in Facebook’s Ad Space, Home Page (or both), while CPM ads are shown only in the Ad Space. Facebook selects the best ad to run based on the cost per click or impression and ad performance.

After creating the ads you want to run, Facebook will approve your ads for use and suggest a max bid if you have bid too low.  This seems to take anywhere from 4 hours to 24 hours, which is very comparable to Google.  Through your Ad Management Page, Facebook provides ad data so you can track your progress, change the audience, or adjust other metrics as the campaign progresses.

And here’s a little tip for the day (you’ll never be able to say I didn’t help you out after this) — do a search for FREE Facebook Ad Credits and you’ll find several companies out there willing to give you $50 to $100 in Facebook advertising credits.  I did it — I took a $50 credit to test with — so my $82 campaign only cost $32 — and it would have only cost me $0 if I had shut it down a little earlier.

So go ahead, try it.  You just might find a new PPC platform that really performs for your small business.  If you need help coming up with a strong headline or ad copy, just ask me.  I’ll give you three or four versions for you to test for a very reasonable $80.00 — I’ll even do the set-up for you, if you want.  Call me at (614) 753-5979 or email me at SuccessPointConsulting@hotmail.com and I’ll do what I can to help you succeed.

Here’s to your success,

Trina

P.S.  Plans for Speed Networking at being finalized.  May 18 is the target.  Stay tuned!

P.P.S.  If you’re in the Columbus Ohio area, make plans to attend the How to WOW! Now seminar on April 29, 2010.  Local celebs like Gabe Speigel, Ryan Bauer, Bruce Heinemann, Shelley Moore, and Andrew Catapano are going to talk through the process of going from having a dream about owning a business to starting a business and then promoting your business online.  A portion of the proceeds from the night is going directly to Junior Achievement.  Make your plans now — it WILL sell out.

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In talking with small business owners who are struggling to find success, I am often struck by how strongly they resist change.  In my role as small business consultant, I seem to have to bite my tongue at least twice a day so I don’t blurt out that Dr. Phil one-liner, “So, how’s that working for you?”  I try to listen, give constructive suggestions, and try not to over-promise on how I can help their small business grow, but it’s so hard when I see what great potential there is with offline relationship-building techniques complemented by online social networks and online marketing techniques, and so many small business owners don’t.

Take the insurance agent I recently met.  He has been a small business owner selling property/casualty/health insurance for almost 12 years.  The past 2 years have been the hardest of his career.  He is struggling to find new business.  Where does he currently get most of his clients?  The majority of new business comes from a half-page ad he runs annually in three yellow page-type directories, but the phone doesn’t ring as much anymore.  The other main source of new business are leads he gets from his parent insurance company.  Where do those leads come from?  Those leads are people doing online searches, of course, not people looking in the yellow pages.  Lightbulbs coming on, anyone?

Does he have a website?  Yeah, the one the company put up for him almost 5 years ago – and it’s never been updated, at least not by him.  Does he promote it?  Not really.  Ever think about a blog? No, too time-consuming.  ”Are you on LinkedIn?” I asked.  ”I think so,” was the reply.  I looked him up.  Yeah, he has an incomplete profile and only 12 connections.   Facebook? That’s for kids.  Twitter?  Doesn’t get it.

“So what steps are you taking to encourage your current clients to refer more business to you?” I asked.   Nothing systematic, it turns out.  I didn’t have my laptop with me at Panera, but if I had, I would have made him sit through THIS VIDEO right then and there.  Ah, live and learn.  He got a follow-up email from me AND a thank you greeting card is on the way, so he’ll be exposed to the information that can literally turn his current customers into a dynamic referral machine.  Will he take action?

“What networking events do you regularly attend?”  None.  He used to be involved in the local Chamber, but not now.  I suggested a couple groups that he may want to check out, but he has young kids so evenings are spent at home.  Some of these groups meet in the morning or over lunch.  No enthusiasm.  I don’t want to say the guy was negative, but I think all he could see was the desperation of shrinking business, not the excitement of growth.  But he’s not willing, right now anyway, to hire me to help him.  The pain isn’t great enough — yet.

On my way home from my meeting with him, I was listening to a CD I had gotten a couple years ago from my good friends, Dave and Linda Brincks, of ActionCoach International, entitled 6 Steps to a Better Business, featuring ActionCoach founder Brad Sugars.

One of the things Brad talked about was overcoming resistance to change.  (Sidenote: I once said I wanted to be like Brad Sugars when I grow up.  I still do.  He imparts a lot of common sense.)  Turns out, there’s an actual scientifically-proven mathematical formula that governs when an organization – either an individual, small business, or even the largest corporation or government in the world — overcomes resistance to change.  It was actually introduced back in the 1970s by corporation efficiency expert Peter Drucker and then mathematically proven by the team of Gleicher, Beckhard & Harris in the late 1980s.

Anyway, the formula is stated something like this:

Dissatisfaction + Vision + Action > Resistance to change

Basically, in order to overcome the resistance to change, there has to be a certain level of dissatisfaction, often rising to the level of actual pain, the small business owner wants to alleviate. But pain is not enough.  The small business owner will continue to do what he or she has always done despite the pain unless there is also a vision of what their business can look like after the pain is removed.  That’s where a business consultant like me can help.  I help refine, or maybe even completely define, the vision.  But envisioning the result is not enough.  There has to be action.  Meeting with me may have been my insurance agent prospect’s first step.  But he doesn’t yet have the vision.

I have my work cut out for me with him.  Only when all three elements are in place: 1) enough pain, 2) a clear vision, and 3) action will he be willing to let go of his current ways to doing business and try some new things.

I am convinced that building relationships is the way to build a successful small business today.  Whether it’s offline relationship-building activities, like consistent communication strategies like SendOutCards, or newsletters, or even one-on-one personal networking, or it’s online relationship-building activities like email, blogging, and social media strategies, no small business owner is going to be able to really experience the success he or she seeks without embracing a new vision and overcoming  resistance to change.

If you are dissatisfied with your current business, and are ready to seek out a new vision, then take that action and call me at 614-753-5979 or email me at SuccessPointConsulting@hotmail.com.  I’m ready and excited to help.  A more successful small business is in your future.

Until next time,

Here’s to helping you reach your Success Point,

Trina

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The Internet can be a big, intimidating place for anyone thinking of starting a new online business.  Much like the hungry person facing        the all-you-can-eat buffet, a small business owner goes online, sees so many programs and webinars and systems, each one shouting Buy Me!  Buy Me! that he can’t help but sample this and that.

But eventually, our new online business owners doesn’t feel so good.  His credit cards balances are bloated and credit limits are maxed.  He’s committed to several hundred dollars a month in website hosting , autoresponders, co-op advertising plans, and other various programs and systems.  He has 100 emails a day flooding his four email accounts, each one touting another sure-fire marketing program to buy.   He signed up for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Tagged, Friendster, and four other social networking programs.  He starts to spend time, not on building a business, but reading and deleting emails and tweets, writing on walls, bouncing around the internet to see if that NEW marketing system fills in a blank in his business plan he didn’t even know was there.  After two months, he becomes so discouraged by his lack of progress and overwhelmed by the sheer effort of just trying to keep up, he quits.

It’s okay.  Most of us have been there.  You are not a failure as an online business owner, you are human.  But you are also proof that online marketing works.

While there is no one solution that is perfect for everyone, here are four easy steps that should take you from overwhelmed newbie to money-making pro in record time.

1)  Make a Business and Marketing Plan and Stick to It

Finding your way through the myriad of opportunities online can be a daunting task.   And having the perseverance to work through the chosen program until you succeed is the difference between business success and failure.

Write out a game plan before you even buy your first domain name.  Do your due diligence.  Check out. your online competition.  Do an online search and see if the marketing program or online income system is getting good reviews in forums, on Squidoo, HubPages, in articles, and on blogs.  You have to read every review with a grain of salt, of course, but in my experience, I have not found a single program that didn’t have both pros and cons discussed somewhere.

Your first decision needs to be what kind of online business you want for yourself.  Some of your choices are:

1)  Promoting other people’s digital products as an affiliate

2)  Recruiting other marketers in a Multi-Level Marketing program

3)  Promoting your own products on your own websites

4)  Purchasing other people’s products to re-sell on your own websites or Ebay-type sites

Any of these business strategies can be successful.  There are people making hundreds of thousands of dollars each year doing each of these strategies.  But you can’t do them all at once.  It will make you crazy, unfocused, and ultimately, unsuccessful.  The marketing strategies that make digital-product affiliates successful are not exactly identical to the online marketing that works for Ebay.  There are similar concepts, but the devil is in the details.  Pick one type of online business and commit to it.  The other types of programs will still be out there after you’ve mastered your first choice.  The beauty of the Internet is that there are no limits.  Conversely, the problem with the Internet is there are no limits.  Give yourself the best shot at success.  Pick one online business, make a plan, and then work the plan until you succeed.

2)  Learn All You Can

Becoming a successful online business does not happen overnight.  Do not believe any program that says it’s easy.  If it says you are going to plug-in this program and viola’ you’ll make $30,000 in the next 3 months, it’s most probably a scam.  Could it happen?  Sure.  Will it happen for you if you are a complete newbie?  No.

3)  Set an Initial Budget and Stick to It

It’s so tempting.  Every program on the internet sounds like a winner.  It’s just another $197, and look, I’ll get $5,000 is free software that will let me beat Google Adsense at its own game.  Really.  Before you buy that first program, set a budget.  Do not spend a dime over that initial set budget UNTIL you have made your first sale.  This is a cardinal rule, and you shall not break it.  It doesn’t matter how tempting the offer sounds, if you have to spend more than you have budgeted, you can’t buy it.  Period.  There are tons of ways to promote products and services online for free or at little cost.  But even at a little cost, it can add up quickly.  The free methods take a little more time and effort to see results, but it’s worth it.

4)  Take Advantage of Any and All Support Offered

The most successful online business owners are the ones who reach out and take advantage of any and all help.  They participate in forums, they read blogs, they continually read and learn.  Take advantage of coaching programs if it’s within your budget.  If it’s not in your budget, use the free resources until you have made enough money to afford coaching.  The answers and solutions are out there.  You can find it if you look.

Building an online business takes time and effort, but for many, the rewards can be enormous.  Just stay focused and don’t give up.

If I can help you develop your online business plan, or create your online marketing strategy, please let me know.  Helping small businesses succeed is what I do.

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Every small business online quickly discovers that you need to have traffic to make any website or blog successful.  Just as quickly, you’ll discover that traffic is an elusive thing to find.  Traffic, traffic, traffic. The fact: building traffic to a website or blog takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. Even if you find the perfect keyword that has no competition so you’re on the first page of Google for that keyword, chances are it only gets a few hundred hits per month, if that. So unless you have the resources of Fort Knox at your disposal, you can’t effectively buy clicks for keywords that get thousand and thousands of clicks per day, especially if your site is not already highly ranked by Google.

What if they were all on their way to your website?!

Building traffic to any small business website or blog is a result of cumulative efforts. Traffic at first will be a trickle. The trick is to create a plan to exponentially expand your reach so that each effort builds on the next. Here are several proven no- or low-cost traffic-building strategies that should be in the marketing mix of every internet marketer.

First of all, make sure your website URL is connected with websites that get lots and lots of traffic. If there are ways to have direct links on your site to Amazon or eBay, do it. Even if the connection is tenuous at the beginning, it will help increase your visibility in the search engines.  Google ranks websites according to how “relevant” they think your site is.  Lots of links to and from your site or blog make it look more important.

Also, take advantage of the link and content opportunities available at sites like Squidoo or HubPages. Create a lens or a hub complementing your product or service and make sure your URL is either in the text (conservatively, of course, no spam), and in your signature and profile. Then promote these pages. Theses sites are highly ranked by Google, so if you can rise to the top in these formats, you will increase your own site’s relevance.

Write articles and submit to multiple directories, making sure your URL is in your author resource box.  Definitely get some articles in Ezinearticles.com, as it’s the biggest and Google loves articles accepted there. Different readers prefer different directories, so make sure you spread your work around. Go a step further and submit your articles to sites like Digg, Reddit, De.li.cious, Stumbleupon, and similar bookmarking sites. Again, traffic is a result of exposure so do whatever you can to get your links in front of eyeballs.

Learn how to use some of the social bookmarking and networking sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace.  Participate in forums, making sure you include your URL in your signature and profile. The more comments you make, the more the URL to your small business website or blog will be seen.

Make sure your small business site is listed in directories. There are thousands and thousands of directories. You can manually submit to several hundreds, or pay a service to submit for you.  I have been using TrafficBug.com lately, and I must say, the results have been impressive.  If you do it yourself, just make sure you submit your sites to categories that make sense.  How many newbie website or blog owners forget to even register with Yahoo?  It’s the simplest thing.  Just go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and put in your URL.  It may take a few weeks to register, but doing that simple, 20-second submit will leapfrog your site over thousands of others that are waiting to be “found” by Yahoo.  Raise your hand, tell Yahoo you’re there and ready for business.

Never forget Google Adwords, as it can be very effective, though costly if you use the wrong keywords. But also consider advertising directly on Yahoo search marketing or even Microsoft AdCenter. These provide a great deal of traffic and are typically less competitive and less expensive than Google.  Personally, every head-to-head test I have run so far between Google and Yahoo, Yahoo has won every time as far as quality clicks for less money.

Just keep working on each of these traffic-building strategies and traffic will begin to build to your small business website or blog. The more traffic, the more eyeballs, the more Success. Just keep at it and you will succeed.

If you need help developing a traffic-building strategy for your small business website or blog, please let me know.  I would be glad to map out a step-by-step plan to build traffic and get the results you want.  I want you to reach your Success Point.

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Does your computer do this to you?  I woke up this morning, all rarin’ to go, ready to finish up some market research I owe a client on, of all things, reikki for animals (this is the small business she wants to start and by golly, I think there may be a market for it — who knew?!) and when I fired up the computer, I saw the dreaded “Do not turn off your computer. Installing update 1 of 13.”   Ugh.

My first reaction was “Oh no, what a waste of time.  There’s nothing wrong with my computer. It’s running fine the way it is.”  But then I recalled a conversation I had just this past Tuesday with my good friend Tony.  So I sat back, had a third cup of coffee and said “Okay, it’s needed.  So go ahead baby, update.”

Tony has been in business for himself, quite successfully I might add, for about 12 years.  He has a law degree, an MBA, and is a CPA.  He specializes in auditing the financial records of mid-size to large companies, often when the company is preparing for a merger or sale or restructuring.  I’ve known him for several years and he was on my “get in touch with” list.  So we were talking and he was complaining about how business has just dried up this past year.  He has laid off a couple accountants and is afraid he’ll have to close his doors.  This economy, oh dear, it’s ruining everything.

I couldn’t resist putting on my small business consultant hat, so I asked him what marketing he was doing to find new clients.

Well, he buys lists of the CEOs and CFOs of companies over a certain size and mails them a direct mail package.   He used to have a salesperson on staff fulltime who would follow up with those companies with face-to-face appointments, but his salesperson resigned last Spring and he hasn’t found a replacement yet.  So he calls, or one of the other accountants calls, when they can.  Does he go to networking events?  No, between his daughter’s soccer and his church choir practice, and his school district’s elimination of busing, he just doesn’t have time. Again, his salesperson was the one who always did that.

As a friend, I tried to gently point out that he needed to get a salesperson on board right away, that this was not something that could wait.  He said he couldn’t afford to hire anyone right now, especially since he had just let two accountants go, both of whom were both fairly long-term employees.  It didn’t feel right to hire someone new.

I wanted to be helpful, so I asked him if he was using LinkedIn.  He had heard about it, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.  He thinks his previous salesperson was on LinkedIn, but he wasn’t sure.  Twitter?  No, he doesn’t really understand how it works.  Facebook?  That’s something kids do.  Blog?  He’s not a writer.  Every suggestion I threw out was met with resistance.

His marketing methods have provided a decent living for his family and his employees for twelve years.  In his mind, the thing that is making all the difference this year versus previous years is the global economy.  His small business is a victim of circumstance.  Success will return once the economy bounces back.

Will it?

Just like my first reaction this morning was “ugh, who needs this, what a waste of time,” I now realize that his reaction to my suggestions were actually exactly the same.  Just like me and my computer, his small business needs a system update, but he doesn’t see it.

Whether he realizes it or not, he is relying on old, tired marketing techniques.  Sure, they can work but to really perform at an optimal level, he needs to embrace new marketing methods.  Becoming a successful small business in today’s market requires a different set of tools in the marketing toolbox.  And the fact that he could leverage a network like LinkedIn and maybe achieve similar or even better results than he is currently getting from those lists and direct mail packages at almost no out-of-pocket costs … but I couldn’t convince him.

He thinks his system is running fine.  No update needed.

I offered to put together a plan for him, to introduce him to the world of Web 2.0, but he declined.  He can’t afford me right now, he says. I know where he’s at.  How many times have I hit the “remind me later” option when presented with an opportunity to update?  But eventually, either I accidentally hit the button the computer cleverly puts in the path of my cursor or I get so tired of seeing the notice that I give in and say, “Okay, update now.”

So I guess I’ll have to keep on him for a little while.

If your marketing is not performing like it used to, perhaps you need a system update, too.  Just like a computer, if you keep putting off update after update after update, eventually your computer will just stop functioning altogether, and so will your marketing.  You don’t want to wait until your small business has ground to a complete halt before you take action.

If you need a fresh set of eyes to look at your current process and made suggestions on how to improve your performance, let me know.  I would be glad to help your small business reach it’s Success Point.

See you soon.

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