Increase your Email list with these Tips
September 30, 2010 by admin
Filed under E-Mail Marketing, Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Resources
Email Marketing is a very effective tool to use in your business. One key however to using Email Marketing successfully is to build your list of subscribers. Without an active list of subscribers your Email Marketing efforts may not produce the results you are hoping for.
Here are a few tips to help you increase your list of subscribers:
Make it easy for subscribers to sign-up for your list– Make it easy for people to sign-up for your email list by placing your subscribe form above the fold on your website. This will help make sure that it is seen by visitors.
Offer multiple ways to subscribe to your list – Provide your prospects and clients several ways to subscribe to your email list. Provide a link in your email signature, add it to your facebook pages, add it to your print material and always as them for their email address when you do business with them.
Make your subscribe form simple – If your subscribe form is simple in most cases you will have a better response rate. To get started in most cases you will want a name and an email address. You can always ask for an address and phone number later in the process.
Give your prospect or customer a reason to subscribe –Often in order to capture interest and trust of your client of prospect you must offer something in exchange for them providing their name and email address. Provide an incentive. This incentive can be a coupon, free report, teleconference, or even just a newsletter packed full of information.
Ask for referrals –When you do send email out to your list add a line in there asking them to forward it to others that may benefit from your information. In a lot of cases this will prompt the person receiving the information to also sign up for your list.
Remember that effective Email Marketing starts with your list. Using these tips will help increase the size of your list and make it more effective.
SourceOne Technologies offers Email Marketing assistance with various programs available from the do it yourself system to a full service system. To find out more please use the form below.
Goolge Updated its SEO Starter Guide – Grab a copy today
September 29, 2010 by admin
Filed under Resources, Search Engine Optimization
When it comes to being found online in most cases the main test is…. Is my site found in Google?
Google has just recently updated it’s SEO Starter Guide and improved it from the original 2008 version of 22 pages to the 2010 version with 32 pages.
The guide covers some important high level items you can do to improve your SEO or Search Engine Optimization rankings.
You can grab the guide here.
You can also get a peak at the GoogleBot
Questions from Customers and Prospects make great Content for your Blog
Producing content for your blog is often a big struggle faced by businesses; however it doesn’t have to be. There are several things that can be used to produce good content for your blog. Some items include recent industry news, new product or service information, current events and many other items.
The item we want to focus on today is creating content from previous questions or emails from your customers and your prospects. I am sure if you scanned your email right now you could find at least 10 questions that you have received from either current customers or prospects around your products and services. These make for the start of great content for your blog.
Scan through your past email and make a list of the top questions you receive and turn these into blog posts. You could even post them as a question with the answer, or take the question and extract the topic and write more information around it.
Using the questions you are getting already to create blog content will allow you to answer these questions for everyone, create content and also drive search engines to you based on prospects searching for this information.
About the author:
|
SourceOne Technologies offers several blogging packages. We can get you set up and running with your blog or we can even provide you with a program where we do your blog postings for you. For more information you can contact us today at 720-306-5001
Tips for Using Email Marketing Effectively in your Business
September 27, 2010 by admin
Filed under E-Mail Marketing, Email Marketing
Using Email Marketing as part of your marketing mix is a great way to stay in contact with your prospects and current customers and in most cases generate more revenue on a regular basis.
One key to using email marketing successfully is to be consistent. Being consistent with your email marketing will keep you in front of your market and help build a connection. Consistency being key you should market to your email list approximately 2 – 4 times a month.
Here are a few additional tips to help you use email marketing effectively in your business:
Provide something of value to members of your list when you send them email. Coupons are great to send out to your list and are often shared with others.
Track your results. It is important that you know what emails are effective and which ones are not. This can be achieved by using a system that shows you who opens the emails and if they click on any links included in the email or not.
Personalize the emails you send. Use a tool that will allow you to personalize the email you send to each prospect and you will see an increase in your open rate. Everyone likes to be addressed by name.
Respect your list. It is critical that you respect your list and never spam them with email they do not want. To prevent this a system should be used that allows subscribers to un-subscribe if they no longer wish to receive your email marketing.
Make it easy to share. Make it easy for your list to share any email you send with someone else. This will help you grow your list over time.
These tips will help you effectively use email marketing to reach your prospects and customers and stay in front of them on a regular basis, ultimately generating more revenue.
|
If your business is ready to capture the benefits of Email Marketing SourceOne Technologies can assist you in getting started. We offer several plans that range from the do it yourself to the everything done for you plans. Click here to find more about our Email Marketing plans.
How to Always Keep Your Blog Updated
Often businesses start a blog with the goal of business promotion. This is a great goal and one top reason we suggest that you have a blog. The problem we see however is that often the blog is started
and great content is posted and then the posts become further and further apart because it has become harder to come up with content or busy schedules get in the way. This is a problem though because one of the biggest keys to a successful blog is being consistent with your posting schedule. A blog with frequent and consistent postings will train your visitors to return regularly for updated content as well as train the search engines to spider your site frequently for updates.
Here are a few tips that you can implement to help you stay on track with consistent blogging – even when you have writers block or your busy schedule gets in the way.
Write your blog content ahead of time
Providing content is one of the best things you can use your blog for, it is also often one of the hardest things to do. Sometimes it is just hard to identify the topic you want to write about when it is time to update your blog. To help deal with this there are several things you can do. One great tip is to carry around a notebook with you so that if you get an idea on a topic you can quickly jot down some notes to refer to later when you are writing your blog content. Now that you have some notes on possible topics you can block out some time in your weekly schedule and scan these notes and begin to write content. Having the ideas is a great starting point. Now you can sit down and create a handful of blog posts that you can use on your blog. This will allow you to have a collection of content pieces to add when you need something.
Set a Schedule for your Blogging
Having a blogging schedule is very helpful. It helps train your visitors when to look for new content and helps keep you organized as well. There are several bloggers out there that update their blogs daily, however in many cases 2-3 times a week is the average. If you start out posting 2-3 times a week in most cases your visitors will be used to this. If you are posting 2-3 times a week and then suddenly you do not post for a week your regular visitors will wonder what happened and may think your blog has been abandoned. This is why it is important to stick to a schedule you can follow, maybe start with once a week until you have a lot of content built up and then move to a 2 to 3 times a week.
Use tools to post your blog posts for you
It is possible to schedule your blog posts to be sent to your blog automatically for you. This is a great tool to use and one that I highly recommend. This feature is available in the top blogging software WordPress. It allows you to schedule the day and time that you wish your blog post to appear. Here is a quick screen shot on where this feature is in WordPress:
In your post hit the Edit option as seen below:
This will open up the ability to set the day and time for your post to be sent out:
Once you have set the day and time that you wish your post to go out hit publish. This will allow your post to be published without you.
A lot of the businesses that we work with will pick one day a week to schedule all of the blog posts for the week and use the scheduling feature to do so.
Following these steps will help you manage the content for your blog successfully. These tips will also ensure that your blog is updated constantly and appears very professional to your readers and followers. The more content you provide the more you will connect with your prospects and clients and your blog will do a great job of pre-selling for you.
About the author:
Stefanie Blackburn is an Internet Consultant with SourceOne Technologies. SourceOne Technologies currently offers assistance to business owners in establishing a complete online presence by offer their services as an Online Marketing Consultant.
SourceOne Technologies offers several blogging packages. We can get you set up and running with your blog or we can even provide you with a program where we do your blog postings for you. For more information you can contact us today at 720-306-5001
Implementing an Automated Email Marketing Campaign for your Business
September 27, 2010 by admin
Filed under E-Mail Marketing, Email Marketing
Businesses that are run online have been using a strategy for years for selling products and services; email marketing. This is a marketing tool however that many businesses with a store front or office 
overlooked and did not include into the marketing mix. Email marketing however, can no longer be overlooked and should be incorporated into every businesses marketing mix.
Email marketing will allow a business to build a list of customers or prospects and keep in touch with them on a regular basis. In most cases staying in contact with your list of prospects and customers will increase revenue.
There are several benefits to using email marketing in your business. Here are a few of those benefits:
- Low Cost
- Offers Unlimited follow-up with your prospects and customers
- Offers increased opportunity for more sales
- Is a great customer retention tool
- Can be automated
- Implementing Email Marketing typically increased revenue
There are also several ways that you can use email marketing with communicating with your prospects and customers. Here are just a few:
- Thank them for their purchase
- Provide a coupon
- Send information on a sale or special promotion
- Promote an event
- Send a newsletter
- Share information on new products or services
- Profile the customer of the month
As you can see using email marketing has many benefits and uses for every business. Email marketing should no longer be an overlooked item in any business marketing mix.
Stefanie Blackburn is an Internet Consultant with SourceOne Technologies. SourceOne Technologies currently offers assistance to business owners in establishing a complete online presence by offer their services as an Online Marketing Consultant.
If your business is ready to capture the benefits of Email Marketing SourceOne Technologies can assist you in getting started. We offer several plans that range from the do it yourself to the everything done for you plans. Click here to find more about our Email Marketing plans.
Why You Need a Blog for your business
One thing that all business owners large or small should be focusing on this year is connecting with prospects and customers; moving them into the sales and marketing funnel. There are several ways that this can be accomplished, however one key way is by having a blog and using it to share information and connect with your target market.
A blog is really just a simple website that is typically updated frequently with what are called posts. In most cases the posts on your blog are shown in reverse chronological order. This allows the visitor to see your last post first.
A blog can be used in addition to your main website, instead of a main web site and your blog can even function together with your website. A blog however should be updated frequently, once a week at minimum if possible, two to three times would be better.
A blog is very easy to use to share information quickly and typically this can be done without calling your web master or IT support. This makes a blog a great cost effective tool to use to share information on upcoming specials or promotions, review new products, features customers and even address customer complaints.
There are several reasons that every business large or small should have a blog and use it in their marketing mix for connecting with prospects and customers and moving them through their sales and marketing funnel. Here are just a few that you should consider:
- Search Engines Love Blogs
Google and other search engines love blogs. Blogs offer what is called an RSS Feed and these feeds are typically picked up very quickly by search engines. It is very possible to write a post on your blog in the morning and have it appear in the search engines by lunch time.
- Builds your Brand
Building a brand takes works and requires many pieces of marketing collateral, a blog being one of them. Having a blog with your branding will allow you to be seen by others on a regular basis and your target market will begin to recognize who you are and what you offer.
- Establishes You or Your Business as an Expert
Having a blog where you provide up to date information on a topic or niche that you have experience in will help you become known as an expert in that area. Once others begin to see you as an expert of subject matter expert on the topics you focus on you will develop a reputation and hopefully a following as an expert.
- Drives Traffic to Your Web Site
When a blog is used as an extension of your web site often readers of your blog will also check out your web site and see what products and services you offer for sale. To ensure that this happens always be sure to include a link to your web site from your blog.
- Builds Relationships with Prospects and Clients
Blogs and be opened up so that your readers and add comments to your posts. Using a blog to share information, get feedback and then respond is a great way to build relationships with your readers who are your prospects and clients.
A blog is definitely a tool that you need to include in our marketing mix this year if you haven’t already. Blogs are great cost effective tools to create exposure and connection with your prospects and customers.
|
If you are ready to include a Blog in your marketing mix and don’t know where to start SourceOne Technologies would be glad to help you establish your blog and other online marketing components. Contact SourceOne Technologies today, your Online Marketing Consultant.
Business Marketing — Fewer businesses will continue with Yellow Pages
If you are a business owner that has used the Yellow Pages in your marketing mix you know that this can be very costly, and sometimes there is little return on this cost. A huge cost with little return is something that most businesses can not afford to keep and remain profitable.
We have one client that was paying almost $1200 a month for their Yellow Pages listed and from what little tracking tools they had were only able to attribute about 2 customers a month from those ads. We have now switched this client to other marketing channels which include Social Media, Blogging as well as Email Marketing. The goal is that within three months of adding these services (at a MUCH lower cost) that we will be able to a substantial increase in traffic and revenue from these efforts.
Looking at other methods to market besides the Yellow Pages is becoming a trend with small businesses or what some call micro-business (micro-business = 10 employees or less). Personally, I believe that there are better methods to market than the Yellow Pages where you can better track and measure the effectiveness of your marketing.
Vistaprint conducted a survey in April of 2010 of 1,100 customers and in this survey found that two-thirds surveyed have no interest in marketing in the Yellow Pages and only 11% plan to use it in the future. Here is graph of the marketing channel trends of those surveyed:
In looking at this graph it is nice to see that many businesses are currently using Social Media, Online Direct Marketing and Physical Direct Marketing. This is a trend that will continue and is one that will help small or micro-business cut cost and build focused prospect lists.
If you would like to read the full survey you can do so here at Vistaprint’s Small Business Blog.
If you are interested in learning more about how you can use social media in your business please contact us via the form below:
Social Networking Can Produce Great Benefits for Your Business
September 23, 2010 by admin
Filed under Resources, Social Media
If you're a business owner, large or small, now is the time to begin to capture the benefits of using Social Networking for your business. Many businesses in today's economy have tightened their belts and no longer have a large budget to use for marketing; so now is the time to explore another and possible better avenue; Social Networking and reap the benefits.
There are several benefits of using Social Networking for your business, however we are only going to touch on a few at this time; increasing your network, building relationships, building an online reputation or brand and zero cost marketing.
Increasing your network is a very important thing to do in order to bring more business to you. Social Networking can help you do this. When you begin to use Social Networking and start connecting with others you will find that they know others that are either a resource for you or someone that is interested in your product or service. Since you are currently networking or connected with the first layer of individuals this gives you the opportunity to connect with their contacts as well and increase your network or sphere of influence.
In today's market things have changed and marketing is more about building a relationship than it was 10 or even 5 years ago. People are more selective in who they do business with and prefer to do business with someone they know. If you do it correctly Social Networking gives you the opportunity to learn about your prospects and understand better the needs they have and the challenges they face. Social Networking creates a relationship that will position you as a resource and possibly an expert so that when your network needs what you have to offer you will be the first person they think of.
Using Social Networking properly can allow you to build a reputation as someone that provides tremendous value. In the past companies may have invested thousands and even millions of dollars to create a reputation or brand with advertising, but now you have another method that is faster and less expensive. You can establish your brand and reputation using Social Networking by providing information and value to those that you network with.
A key benefit of using Social Networking in business is the ability to create a zero cost marketing stream. It is not advocated to blatantly promote your product or service, however as you build your Social Networking profile you can provide information on who you are and what your business is, even including the URL to your website or blog. Using this form of marketing is often more effective because it draws customers to you in a non threatening way and it is zero cost marketing.
Social Networking is truly a tool or medium that every business should be using. The benefits are great and in most cases can be seen quickly. You can increase your network, build strong relationships, create an online reputation or brand and create a zero cost marketing channel, using Social Networking. The benefits will improve your business, just be sure to focus on providing value and information to your prospects and building that relationship before you focus on making the sale.
|
If you are interested in more information on how you can use Social Media in your business please contact us by using the form below.
A search engine just for Facebook – FacePINCH
September 23, 2010 by admin
Filed under Social Media, tools
FacePINCH is a search engine that will search posts and status updates on Facebook of those that have thier privacy set to public. Once you enter a keyword or a phrase FacePINCH will return real time results.
In playing with this tool, it can be very useful in tracking a brand, watching keywords and finding new connections related to a specific niche
