opt in – Micro Business Specialist

You’re about to experience a Mind Shift

Ready or not, this WILL affect you…

Everything you know about email marketing is about to change. And trust me, ignorance is not bliss. If you miss this it WILL affect you.

Do me a favor and watch this short video from Glen Hopkins because it’s a real wake up call.

Watch The Video Now

If you’ve been marketing online for any period of time then you already know how important your email contact list is.

It’s the most important component of your business! It gives you leverage like nothing else can. Allowing you to contact your customers, drive targeted traffic to promotional offers, set up joint ventures, and much more.

But a lot has changed in the world of email marketing in the last few years. And building a quality, responsive list is getting harder and harder. The same old tactics simply do not work as well they once did.

Yes, prospects are still very interested in getting their hands on your freebies and ethical bribes.

But with email spam and unethical marketers running rampant, people are becoming more and more resistant to sharing their REAL information.

So what do they do? Well, sadly as you know, all to often they enter bogus names and email addresses into your opt-in form just to get their hands on your free gift. Or more likely they have a separate email account they use just for freebies and do not check on a regular basis.

So now you’ve given away some of your best content just to add bogus names and email addresses to your mailing list. Which of course destroys your email conversion rates and increases your monthly auto-responder fees!

I don’t know about you but that’s what I call a complete waste of time and effort!

And frankly it was really starting to tick me off. I knew something had to be done. There needed to be a new and better way to build quality, highly responsive lists.

Ready or not, the impact IS coming.

So you’re about to experience a ‘mind shift’.

I’m not saying it’s for better or for worse, that depends on what you decide to do.

But this WILL affect you.

At least you’ll know what to do. Most people will be blind sided. That’s why I’m posting this today.

We’re at a cross roads and one path leads to something much bigger, the other is a dead end.

So I hope you take the time to watch this right now…

[tags]Facebook Instant Optin Plugin, WP Plugins, Opt-in, Opt-in plugin[/tags]

Web Pages: It’s what happens afterwards that counts

This is the fifth of five posts comparing web pages to a trade show. In the first we compared the multiple reasons people have for being at a trade show and how people browsing the web have varying interests as well.

We then discussed exhibitor’s booths and drew comparisons to web page design, booth location with keywords and exhibitors signage and the importance of the the web real estate that is “above the fold.”

We then talked about attractors, how they bring people passing by to the booth and how their goal was to transform prospects into leads. I suggested and maintain that this is precisely the purpose of both a trade show and a web page.

And yesterday, I discussed the people at a trade show and how this was one area where a trade show had a distinct advantage over a web site. It’s much easier for people to be interactive. To ask and answer questions. I went on to talk about an empty trade show booth with just brochures left behind. I think you would agree with me that having people interact with prospects is far more effective than a stack of brochures, however nice they may be.

Unfortunately, most business’s web pages are just that, electronic brochures. This is a shame as its not difficult at all to begin the process to change that. The key component is an opt in box that can either be tied into the web page design, ideally “above the fold” and promoted with an valuable attractor. Of note, its possible to add a “light box” style Opt In form, that doesn’t require you to make any changes to your existing web site.

For many businesses the best type of attractor is a free down loadable report providing useful “How to,” or “What to look for” information. Think about the types of questions the people at your trade show booth would be most likely asked and answer them in a short and concise format.

The goal of both a trade show and your web site is to transform the web browser from being just another face in the crowd into a “lead.” A lead is someone the trade show people call or mail to after they empty the sweepstakes box of all those names that didn’t win the “free siding” or what ever they used to capture people’s names and contact info.

The advantage for the web site is that it’s easy to capture your leads name and email address, if you offer the viewer something they want. What I call an ethical bribe. And once you do, you can design a series of follow up emails to provide them additional useful information they need to make a wise buying decision.

There are two types of emails a business owner might send these new leads. This first set is a structured series of email that are pre-written and are “dripped” on the recipient at appropriate intervals. These are “evergreen” messages that once written and installed in an auto responder can be left to do their thing over time. Once set up they run on auto pilot.

These can be simple or sophisticated. An initial email for instance could ask the recipient if they want specific info an several different topics. If they pick one or more they can opt into as many different specialized series of followup messages as may be desired. This is useful for firms with multiple product lines.

Designing and creating this initial series of follow-up emails is the biggest investment in the entire process. A top notch auto responder service such as AWEBER can cost under $20 a month and will reliably capture the lead from your web page or even permit people to sign up even if you do not have a web page. Once the initial series of emails is created, will work day in and day out for you for peanuts.

A second type of follow-up message is the broadcast message. These can be used to advertise special sales, or send out holiday greetings or any other message you want. The combination of preloaded evergreen messages and occasional broadcasts can fulfill many purposes and can serve to not only win new business, but effectively stay in touch with existing customers as well.

This ongoing aspect of maintaining periodic contact with current and past customers is one of the best uses of an auto responder, and one that will generate significant new sales for any business that takes the time to creatively apply it to their specific circumstances.

Follow up is the name of the game in new sales and in developing repeat business. As I said in the title, it’s what happens after a person has been to your web site that counts, when you get around to counting your bottom line.

Check out the page above that discusses my services. I can help you apply these concepts to your business and help it grow, even in these challenging times.

The Omega and the Alpha

Normally, the phrase is alpha and omega, but as we approach the end of a year, I prefer to reflect on the end and then the beginning.

This has been a momentous year, for the nation, world and for me. For me it has been a transitional year, from one where my focus was on my collectibles business, and the journey I have taken to migrate out of into a new internet venture.

The beginning of the year was taken up with the Marty Estate, by far the nicest accumulation of philatelic material I have had the privilege of handling in my almost 30 years as a part to full time dealer. Toward mid year, I focused on the home staging industry. I designed and conducted a significant survey of home staging professionals from around the US and Canada.

It was, if I may say so myself, a well done survey that focused on the individual needs of home stagers as small business people. I created a significant report that clearly set out the circumstances and obstacles faced by home stagers. My hope was that I would be able to follow up and create some products to assist them as a group. I did conduct one teleseminar on the need for opt in forms on their web pages, which was well received by the handful of people who caught it. I was less successful in selling my report on the survey results.

During the year, I discovered Bob the Teacher. I took about a half dozen of his online courses, and credit him with my breaking through on many of the critical skills essential to internet marketing. The break through course for me was his teleseminar course, but not so much for the teleseminar part, but rather a piece of it that gave me a glimpse of how to use my Cpanel. I eventually took his Cpanel course which did a lot to demystify much of the barriers that had gotten in my way previously.

By accident, I chanced into a relationship with Doug Champigny which has turned into a godsend. Doug is leading a group of marketers who are helping each other out, for free. Now we do promote Doug’s products as well as those of others in the group, which is certainly not a difficult thing to do, as they are generally low price and high quality.

As the year progressed, I have learned more about blogging, article writing, traffic exchanges, and more importantly realized that my home stagers were not alone in their individual plight. I shared it, and so to do thousands of other small business people.

We may as very small business owners know one or two things quite well, and many others pretty well, but for the most part we all have arenas where we don’t know diddly squat. What’s often a problem is that that’s where we either spend too much time, or not enough time.

If we spend too much time trying to figure things out ourselves, we are taking time away from what we are good at. If we spend too little time, it’s because we have decided to live without. Neither is optimum.

For my home stagers, it was clear that for many of them, the area they left out was marketing. Almost none of them had any form of lead capture. I suspect this is true of many people in other businesses as well. This fact was so obvious to me, I focused my first teleseminar on it. And so it seems, this earlier work I did with home stagers will become my focus for the future.

The vast majority of offline businesses do their web pages wrong. They have web pages created by their children or even by first rate web designers, but as good as many are creatively, they fall flat on a critical understanding of what the potential value of a web page is for a business.

And that is my plan for the coming year. I have decided to all but abandon my philatelic pursuits. Instead I will focus on assisting small businesses move from their static web sites into a more aggressive format that will reduce their existing advertising costs while building their customer base.

This blog, MicroBusinessSpecialist will become my flag ship for the coming adventure. I know I can help hundreds of businesses do better. I can do it cost effectively for them, and yet make a good fee for myself. This is my Alpha for the coming year.

I will succeed, because I have to. But additionally, I have a solid set of knowledge I can offer that will make a difference for my prospective customers. I learned a long time ago, that you make money by helping other people make money. I guess I was too into my hobby to not recognize that I wasn’t actually doing that there.

My plan is to focus on offline businesses, in my own area, although much of what I have to say and do can be done for businesses wherever they are located. So I will maintain an active web presence.

And while I will focus on this key function of helping businesses develop more aggressive web sites, I will continue to develop my own skills as an information marketer. Through this process, I will learn to keep up to date on new techniques. Afterall, the “how to make money on the internet” arena is probably the second most competitive arena on the internet after porn. This is where the cutting edge tools are most aggressively taught and experimented. By building my skills here, I will be all the better equiped to assist those for whom learning internet “how to” is boring, or confounding.

This is my Omega and Alpha. A transitional year is ended. A building year is ahead. If I can be of any assistance to you. Let me know. It’s going to be a blockbuster of a year.