enetwal – Page 16 – Micro Business Specialist

Small Business Marketing: Why Market Maker?

Why Market Maker? Podcast

Home Staging Marketing: Why Market Maker?

The Market Maker program is now live and available for Home Stagers interested in getting more business from their existing web pages.

I did a survey of home stagers last year. One of the things many expressed disappointment in was how little new business they got from their web pages. This is true of almost all small business people. For most, their web sites are little more than electronic yellow page ads, showing address, hours and contact info, with maybe a fancier display ad.

Since I did my survey, I have held a tele-seminar, and written dozens of articles on how to turn that around. Yet relatively few home stagers have applied the secrets well known and taught in professional internet marketing circles.

I recognize the problem in myself. I often know what to do, but doing it is often another story.

Properly setting up your web page to get customers isn’t about nicer and fancier before and after pictures. It’s about attracting people potentially interested in home staging from YOUR market place, and getting them to identify themselves, so you can directly market your services to them.

The steps required include: changing some techie things about your web site; adding an opt-in box, which used to mean you needed to redo the front page of your web site; writing a special report; and then a long series of email marketing pieces.

Now none of these are too difficult, if you know how to do them, and seemingly impossible if you don’t.

And so, most people didn’t.

That’s why I developed Market Maker. Market maker will do all this for you. Develop new Meta Tags for your web site that will help more people from your town find your web site. Create an opt in form that doesn’t require you to redo your existing web site. It provides a great “ethical bribe” that will encourage people that visit your site to let you know they were there. Let you know they are interested in home staging and most importantly giving you permission to tell them more about you and your services.

Market Maker will dramatically boost your business.

Market Maker improves your marketing in two ways.

First it helps your home staging company stand out among your competitors. You will be the one that catches and keeps your prospects attention. This will get you a larger percentage of the existing business in your community.

Secondly, not everyone who thinks about using a home stager ends up doing so. With Market Maker, a larger percentage of them will, and when they do decide to use a home stager, it’s highly likely they will pick you.

To get more information go to Market Maker

And if you think that market maker will work for home stagers, let me suggest I can make it work most local businesses, even yours. Drop me an email. enetwal@gmail.com

Market Maker is Live: Marketing Breakthrough for Home Stagers

Market Maker Launches

I have been focused on my home stagers blog the past week as I prepared for the launch of Market Maker. Market Maker was designed to specifically address the needs of the Home Staging Industry, but it is applicable in many other businesses as well.

The fundamentals of Market Maker are little more than what I have been preaching here for some time.

Effective use of an ethical bribe, and solid follow-up. It’s easy to preach, because it works. And I get a lot of people who will nod their heads and say it makes sense, but will they follow-through? Often not, because it’s work and more importantly because it takes them out of their comfort zones.

With Market Maker I hope to alleviate most of those obstacles, by doing the work for them. I will do their keywords to get them more traffic. I have provided a great ethical bribe, and even a selection of follow-up messages. I will create a opt in box for them that won’t require them to change their existing web pages. All they will need to do is to get their computer person to upload some code. And provide some basic information about their business so I can present it properly.

I’m willing to do the same for most any other business as well. The advantage of the home stagers is that they are a scattered industry. And multiple people can use the same tools without a conflict.

The genius of the home stagers program is that I have transferred to them the ability to sell the eBook of which the ethical bribe is a sample and keep half the proceeds. It should be a no brainer, but it may take a few pioneers to lead the way.

It will be a new idea for many, and in these economic times many will be afraid to invest in their businesses. I hope I’m wrong about that. Time will tell.

Marketing to your Target Market

Constancy is the hallmark of an effective marketing campaign.

In the ubiquitous blizzard of advertising that is modern life, a single ad needs to be pretty darn spectacular if it’s to get noticed. Even the best, the super bowl champions of ads have little staying power. How many can you remember from the last super bowl? Three, two, one, none?

Most businesses cannot afford super bowl sized ad budgets. So how can we compete? Can we compete?

The answer is clearly yes. As evidenced by the billions spent on advertising. It must be doing someone some good. But is most of it cost effective? That may be less clear.

The key to a good marketing campaign is to have a clearly targeted audience. Finding that audience is the first hurdle.

There are two major segments to the audience. Those who you have a relationship with and those you don’t.

This sets up the need for two marketing approaches. One approach builds relationships with new people, the second maintains and nurtures the relationship with those you already have.

Each approach has its own hurdles and objectives. Some businesses routinely confuse the two. And this can be costly.

Proselytizing to the unknown multitudes is expensive. For starters, there are so many more of them. Secondly, you don’t know a whole lot about them. Third, they are already doing business with one or another of your competitors. Typically you need to use mass media to reach them in any significant numbers. Newspaper, TV and Radio advertising is expensive. Direct mailing and coupon programs can often be better tailored to the smaller business needs, but it too is expensive.

Marketing to those with whom you already have a relationship should be easier. First they are fewer in number, and you have a better understanding as to who they are. More importantly, they have an idea who you are. (For better or worse.) This is your primary target market. The key to business success is to focus your marketing on your target market.

Too many businesses rely on traditional and expensive tools of mass media aimed at the broad market of unknowns when the primary respondents to their efforts are their own customers. Instead they should be using inexpensive non traditional tactics aimed exclusively at existing customers and friends.

Many small business people know their customers by name, but lack an effective list and means of communicating with them. This is unfortunate…and costly.

Instead of spending thousands of dollars a month for occasional print or media pieces, they could be communicating with a large percentage of their existing customers for virtually nothing. These communications could be more consistent and nuanced. And as a result be far more productive.

The trick is to get people on the list. That should be easy enough for most businesses. A barber could offer each customer a business card, inviting them to sign up on their email system for a chance at a monthly drawing for a free haircut. A grocer could offer a chance at $50 of groceries. A tax preparer could offer a free tax return. A lawyer perhaps a “get out of jail free” or a free will.

The goal being to convert that mass of people with whom you have an established relationship into a emailable list of people you can communicate with on a regular basis.

This offers a lot of additional ways to market.

For example, a Barber who will be taking a few days off to go fishing can advise his customers that he will to come in a few days earlier than normal. Every week or so he could publish the best jokes told for the prior week, and be sure most of his emails get read.

A grocer instead of focusing on cents off ads, could spend some time talking about new products, and maybe even offer meal preparation ideas pushing a basket of products.

The attorney may wish to fill slower periods with will work or other matters people tend to defer, and when busier may just want to pass on some useful general legal insights.

A restaurant may offer a special to fill seats on slow days, combined perhaps with a weekly or monthly cooking tips feature.

The key to all this is a good dependable auto responder system. I use and recommend www.BuildRelationships.aweber.com to serve as the engine or heart of the system.

Once a business has migrated their customer base to their auto responder list, they can communicate on a regular basis. Now you don’t want to overwhelm people with emails. A consistent regular pattern appropriate for your type of business will solidify customer relationships.

While you may still want to offer discounts and coupons if your competitors do, you can focus on other things as well. Give your customers an inside look at you and your business. This will result in more repeat visits, and if you use some imagination, larger total sales per visit.

Money Word Matrix- An internet marketing idea you should steal.

Normally, I focus this blog on internet marketing tools that can be adapted by offline businesses. Last Friday, I came across a new approach to finding relevant keywords that amazed me in terms of its simplicity and power. The technique is called the Money words matrix. Two very successful young marketers discovered and refined the technique. It has ton’s of applicability to many offline businesses.

They gave the idea away for free as part of a series of promotional videos for a new membership site they have opened. The site is designed for folk who are looking to build an internet business, and in today’s economy that’s a lot of people.

On the strength of their free promotional videos, they had their new membership site explode. They initially hoped to attract 250 people, within a 2 weeks they had 1500. I am one.

They just plain have a solid approach to internet marketing that will work for a lot of people. But whether you are interested in finding a new way to make money online or not, you have to check out their Money Word Matrix. It will transform the way you think about keywords and keyword advertising. Whether you are primarily an on or offline business.

Now that is covered in the second of their promotional videos, so you will need to sit through the first as well. But I think you will find that interesting too. (Even if you’ve never met a Beta Fish before.)

Click on the banner below and relax, listen and learn. Be sure to sign up for the second video, and be blown away. I was. You may even decide to join the Niche Marketing Classroom. Like I said, I did.

How Do You Create Your Own Ethical Bribes?

Creating your own ethical bribes to use on your web site as gifts for people who leave their email seems like a big thing for some people. Others are afraid to create even simple reports for sale to the public. It seems as though many people are frozen in their tracks when it comes to creating reports.

This need not be.

Joel Osborne has just released a three report package on product creation. And while getting over the hump and creating your own internet information product is probably the most valuable thing you can do, he is all but giving these away. All three books for just $17, plus he is giving you resale rights so you can turn around and sell all three reports to others while you are writing your first report.

– If you have ever wanted to create your own product but was unsure of how to do it, the “Product Creation Success Package” has the information that you are looking for!

– The package contains 3 informative reports which cover virtually all areas of product creation.

– At the price that Joel is offering this package for, I don’t think he will keep it live for too long.

Product Creation Success Package

If you haven’t already created a half dozen or more of your own products, you will find these to be well worth your time and a no brainer from the investment side.

Targeted Lead Generation

Listen to this post on Targeted Lead Generation on MP3

Targeted Lead Generation

Many sales people lust after good targeted leads.

Like a fisherman who traps their own minnows or digs/farms their own worms, it’s possible to set up your own targeted lead generation system. The advantage, in addition to cost savings, is your own exclusive access to your targeted leads, and the ability to build a positive business relationship with them from the start.

Targeted lead generation is not too difficult to do on your own, if you are clear about what your potential targeted lead wants. Understanding your customer is key to any sales process.

The first step is to set up a simple web page or blog site. If you want your leads to be targeted, your site needs to be targeted as well.

Generate a list of the ten most frequently asked questions your customers raise during the sales process. Add to it the five things you wish they knew about your product before they made a buying decision. Then write out the three things that make your particular product unique. If you can come up with more than ten, five and three do so.

This list of questions, features and benefits will be the basis of your web page or blog. Examine your list through the eyes of the targeted lead you wish to generate. Of the topics on you list, which 3-5 would generate the most interest from a casual prospect not actively searching for your product at the moment?

What ever they are, design a 3-7 page report discussing them in reasonable detail. These you are going to make into a free report that you will give away to anyone who comes to your web site and requests it.

To make it even more appealing, it would be a good idea to come up with a sexy title, and a nice graphical image to catch your prospective targeted leads attention. But if the creative juices aren’t flowing you can go with something like the “The Top Three Things You Need To Know Before Buying an X”

The rest of the topics you have come up with should then be turned into individual articles. The best 6-10 should be used to create separate pages on your web site if you go the web site route, or if you go with the blog approach, all of them should be turned into blog posts.

The combination of multiple web pages on a narrowly defined topic that focuses on the key issues and questions a prospective buyer may have will attract just the people you are hoping to find.

By creating a free report, that answers their most burning remaining questions, you have a giveaway you can offer them in exchange for their email address.

By linking this system to an auto-responder you can follow-up with your new targeted lead automatically.

Your follow-up messages can repeat in a reworded manner the exact information you have already posted on your web page or in your blog. But with each message you make sure to indicate your willingness to personally answer any additional questions they may have and invite them to contact you when they are ready to make a buying decision.

The best part of this system, is that they will call you when they are ready to buy.

This method of targeted lead generation does take some effort to set up and to refine. But once it is set up, it can operate on auto-pilot and generate targeted leads for you for years to come.

It’s the equivalent of teaching someone to fish. But there’s nothing fishy about it.

Article Writing is the Key to Building Google Ranking

If you are in a competitive field, and are unable to use my geographical long tail keyword approach to gain top ranking on Google, you need to bring out the big guns. And the best way to do that is with Article marketing.

There is an art to article marketing. You need to focus on your keywords in your article title and in the body of your article. But as important, you need to write a worthwhile article that a blog or ezine editor will want to share with their readership.

You also need to pay attention to your resource box. This is particularly important to you, for this is where your payoff rests.

Finally, you need to get your article launched on as many article directories as you can with a special effort to get it to targeted directories that serve your niche.

I have just acquired rights to a new eBook called Winning the Article Marketing Game. In addition to the eBook, I have acquired master resale rights, which means that not only can I sell you a copy of the eBook, I can transfer to you the rights to sell it yourself.

If you decide to buy it, you will not only get the download, but also a sales page you can use to market the book as well.

This is a great way to get good information that you can profit from and the ability to profit from reselling the book.

To See the Sales Page, Click on the Image of the Book Below!

It’s Alive! Putting Life Into a Dead Web Site

The “It’s Aliiive!” line from the scene in which Dr Frankenstein’s monster comes alive has been parodied thousands of times. I am borrowing it for an upcoming speech to my Toastmaster’s Group.

In my speech I will be discussing the alchemy necessary to turn a dead web site into a living marketing machine capable of generating tens of thousands of dollars worth of effective advertising at a fraction of the normal expense.

Unfortunately most business web pages are deadly dull one way communications. Many are little more than an electronic brochures. Retailers will maybe have their hours posted, and maybe a help wanted form to recruit entry level clerks. Professional sites tend to read like resumes. And neither offers much of a chance for interaction with the person browsing. Oh, they may offer an email address or even an email form to ask questions, but surprisingly often these email go to an email account that only gets checked intermittently since so few people use it.

If your web page is to be more than a stale brochure taking up cyberspace you need to add a little chemistry to the equation. You need to add something. In this case it will take more than adding vinegar to baking soda to get your web site to fizz. You need three ingredients, added in combination to bring your web site to life, to turn it from a dead brochure into a powerful living marketing machine.

And those three things are an ethical bribe to capture your viewers interest and email address. A double opt-in autoresponder system that can build a data base of your opt-ins respond to them. And a series of follow-up messages that can drip on your visitors over time.

These three elements when properly combined make up the magical molecule that is the sorcerer’s stone that can transform a dead web page into a marketing marvel.

The ethical bribe must be relevant to your business and appeal to your browser, its content will vary depending on your business type. A retailer may offer coupons, a business with a longer sales funnel will want to offer information the buyer needs to understand the issues surrounding their buying decision.

The auto-responder itself is the heartbeat of the system. I recommend www.BuildRelationships.aweber.com

The follow-up is then critical. The purpose of bringing your web site to life is to be better able to converse with your prospect. They came to your web site originally for some purpose. They were intrigued by your ethical bribe. This suggests that they are at least potentially customers. Now you need to followup with them. Tell them what they need to know and/or make them an offer they can’t refuse.

But don’t do it once. Instead think about the life time value of this person who like your web site has been transformed. Before they were a browser, now they are a prospect. Treat them to relevant information and treat them well.

Any web site can be set up to take simple orders or list the hours you are open. It takes an auto-responder system to convert a dull lifeless internet brochure into a living and breathing marketing machine. Do you want your web site to be dead and dull, or do you want it to be alive?

Listen to the Podcast of “It’s Alive.”
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It\'s Alive!

Which is Worse no Meta Tag Keywords or the Wrong Ones?

This afternoon I am giving my short version of my “trade show as web pages” talk to the board of a local business group. My goal is to find additional speaking opportunities where I can present to larger audiences of business people. Because as my report says, I think most small business web pages stink!

In preparation for the meeting, I checked the web site of the host location as well as the associations meta tags. I offer businesses a free worthwhile tip just for listening to my pitches and felt I should offer the same to these good people as well.

It turns out the association had no keywords or site description in their meta tags at all.

But perhaps even worse was the host locations web site. It is a private housing facility offering student housing. Its meta tag keywords were totally irrelevant to its web site and mission. It included keywords of voting, survey, course evaluations, census, segmentation, and others that clearly were intended for a totally different site.

Presumably someone copied a desirable format as a template and plunked the residence halls content on someone else’s framework.

I’m not sure which is worse to have no keywords or bad ones. What do you think. I’d appreciate any comments you might have as I will probably use it as a bad example in future presentations. I will of course keep the people involved secret so as not to embarrass anyone.

As I spend more and more time looking at local business web sites, I find such omissions and or errors are not uncommon. Usually, people just plain have ineffective keywords.

Some will argue that meta tags don’t matter, but they would be wrong. While Google may spend less attention to them than in the past, a good 40% of all computer searches still use other search engines that do.

Outside the internet marketing niche’s internal wars, most main street businesses are too busy getting product out the door and struggling to meet payroll to worry about meta tags. Their web pages are built by their son’s or nephews of techies who may know how to put a page together but are clueless about how to market.

No wonder most small businesses are disappointed with their web pages. They don’t get the traffic they should, and then when they do get traffic, most people don’t seem to do anything.

In the resources section of this blog, I offer a report for sale called HTML in Simple Terms. It’s only $9.97 and well worth the price if only to get the information on pages 16-18 on Using Meta Tags.

My guess is that over 80% of all small business web sites need work in this area alone.

Blank Billboard for Sale: What will you pay?

Have you ever passed by a blank billboard on a backwater highway with a 1-800 number on it? Or perhaps one saying, “Your message here?” I have, but it’s been a while since the last time. Mostly I suspect, because I seldom venture off the main freeways in my normal travels these days.

In past years, I did a bit more traveling to smaller towns in out-state Minnesota and Wisconsin and I would see a fair number of them. Mostly on roads that used to be the main thoroughfare in the pre-freeway era. I suspect a good many of them still exist.

In those traveling days I used to consult with towns and counties on how to attract businesses to their communities. Today, I consult with businesses on how to attract customers. Same business, different focus.

A billboard is a marketing device some businesses use to attract customers. It’s like a display ad in a newspaper or magazine. It provides a graphic image and perhaps some keywords to people who happen to be passing by. On the highway, in their cars. In the newspaper or magazine as one’s eyes pass from one article or story to the next, one page to the next.

They have a hard job to do. They need to make an impression on your conscious or sub conscious mind quickly. It must be the sub conscious the advertiser is aiming for because there are very few such images that ever really capture my conscious mind’s attention.

Now as a kid, I remember the old Burma Shave signs because they were different and funny. I remember a number of teaser campaigns over the years that had me guessing as to what was coming next, but I can’t remember what any of them were about at the moment. I admit that I do notice some of the new billboard campaigns from time to time when they change along one of my regular routes. But I don’t remember ever buying something because I saw a billboard, do you?

My uncle Urban had a billboard on the highway from the Minneapolis to St. Cloud where he had a butcher shop. The sign read, “Gaida’s Meats” with a sausage on on fork that protruded above the sign. It was a clever enough visual effect, breaking out of the box. I suspect he got at least occasional comments from customers in the store about it. Particularly when it was new. But I doubt it brought in any new customers. It may have, however, brought in a few more existing customers. Not because it made his product any more valuable, but because it created status. A sense of importance because everyone who lived in St Cloud saw it whenever they returned home from a trip to the cities.

In my uncle Urban’s eyes the sign wasn’t meant for people from Minneapolis that happened to be going to St Cloud, it was for people from St Cloud who happened to have traveled to the Twin Cities. They would be coming back on this road. And that’s where he placed his sign.

Now I’m talking about billboards today, because in many ways they are like a business website. The clever ones may catch my attention as I browse through many related sites online. But only if they are on the highway I am traveling. If I am on the freeway, and the web site is on a dusty county road, I will never see it. And no matter how cute, creative or otherwise inspired it may be, it may as well not exist at all. It may as well be blank. In my book, it’s not even worth a toll free call to find out how much someone wants to put my message on it.

When it comes to online advertising, far too many people have spent all their effort coming up with a great image and feel for their sites and not given any thought to whether to put their site on a freeway where it will be seen by thousands or on a dirt road where only the crows and gophers will see it.

On the internet, the way you get in front of the traffic from Minneapolis to St Cloud is to make sure the keywords in your meta tags put you on the right highway. In addition, you need to use those same keywords in your message – in the body of your web pages.

This is particularly easy for local businesses, and a bit more difficult for those who compete on a national scale.

If my uncle still had his butcher shop, I would encourage him to use St Cloud Butcher Shop, St. Cloud Meats, Saint Cloud Butcher Shop, Stearns County Butcher Shop, Benton County Butcher Shop, and Polish Sausage as just a handful of maybe several hundred keywords in his meta tags.

In fact, I would take every conceivable term like meat, sausage, etc., and pair it with every conceivable geographical term that people in the area might use to find what they were looking for in a computer search. I call such terms geographical long tail keywords. And they are designed to mimic the actual phrases people might type into their search engine. While they might type “sausage” the first time, when they see over 20 million responses they will quickly find a geographical term to narrow their search if they are looking for a place like my uncle’s where they can get good Polish sausage.

And yet if you look at most business web pages you will see terms like plumber, attorney, dentist, groceries, resort, bait, or what have you in their meta tags. Such keywords are worthless. But so too is having Minneapolis, or Saint Cloud, or New York.

As my frequent readers know, I have been working with the Home Staging Industry for the past 9 months or so. As I dug deeper into the keywords that people actually use, I have grown a list of 124 terms for the home staging industry. Most were fairly obvious, others less so. I have been offering a service to the industry where I concatenate the various keywords I have researched together with the relevant geographical modifiers for individual home stagers. It gets a bit tedious and time consuming. But the result has been a block of keywords that puts my client’s web pages on the internet freeway, while their competitors are advertising their business on the dusty back roads of the internet where no one goes.

Where do you want your billboard to be? If it’s appropriate for your business, follow my example and create a series of geographical long tail keywords. It will make a difference in how often your potential customers find you. It also will make it far more likely that you get top ranking for a keyword phrase when you are the only person who has taken the time and effort to include in in your keywords.

Don’t forget that you also want to incorporate as many of the major terms into the body of you text as well. So if you are a Homestager in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, make sure to say so in the text of your web page as well as in the meta tags.

This Might Not Be Appropriate for You

This might not be appropriate for you.

But rather than deciding that for you, I feel obligated to share it with you. Then you can decide.

As you know, I am a big believer in the maxim, “Give and you shall receive.”

That’s why I promote Giveaway Events, and products like Jeff Dedrick’s Instant Bonus Pages.

Now while I have benefited from participating in Giveaway events, the organizer of such events does way better. They end up with everyone on their list. Contributors and Members. And they know which contributors promoted the events and which sat on their hands.

Think about the power of that.

Now, Imagine you were the promoter. Not in internet marketing where a new Giveaway event launches every other day, but in your niche. Whether that niche is online or offline, you could take the same free giveaway idea and over night build a massive list of both people interested in the niche and joint venture partners who you can work with to mutual benefit.

Now I said overnight, and the truth is it won’t actually happen overnight. It will take effort and a strategy and follow through.

Frankly, I don’t know if you have the vision and maxi to make it happen. Now I’m not saying you don’t. I’m saying I don’t know if you do. Do you?

Well to make it happen, it will take that maxi, some determination and a workable plan. And that’s the reason for today’s post.

Jason James has just released his “Giveaway Riches” Manual. This is your key to unlocking the locked door that is holding your back.

If you access this material and put the plan into action, you will be able to use the power of the Giveaway to catapult yourself into a dominant position in whatever your niche market is.

The cost of this key is only $37 during launch week, which began today Tuesday February 3, 2009 at noon EST. The price will be going up next week and then again the following week.

If you have been exploring internet marketing while working in another niche or job, imagine the power of being the first to bring to your field the power of the giveaway. This is the type of technology – the type of idea – that can take a 1or two person company to the top of the heap. By passing the established “Old Style” firms virtually overnight.

Do you have the guts to transform your industry?

Those who accept the dare and take action will be winners.

The innovators who lead their sector, their industry, their niche out of the current economic downturn.

They will be the ones others will marvel at and wonder how they managed to become so successful overnight.

And the answer to that question will be, as it always is… you had a plan and you took action.

Now I still don’t know if you are up to this. Frankly I have my doubts. But if you are go to Giveaway Riches

Do You Need More Than One Web Site?

Within the internet marketing world, people have ten’s and hundreds of web sites. Each with a different URL and each targeted to a specific niche or purpose. That permits each web site to be addressed to a particular audience. And since the site is targeted, so too are the keywords, which means these sites tend to rank higher than if they were attempting to be all things to all people.

Off line businesses and those firms operating online in niche arenas should consider whether or not they too would benefit from multiple web sites.

I will once again use my friends in the Home Staging Industry as an example of a situation where two web sites may make a lot more sense that one.

If you go to most home stagers web sites you will see that they are primarily directed to the home owner. But if you were to survey home stagers as I have done, you will see that most of them market not to home owners but to Realtors, who they hope will refer home sellers to them.

This means the Home Staging company has two different marketing objectives. One is to convince realtors that they can help sell a home faster and for more money, and the second is to convince the home owner that they can help sell a home for more money and faster. While it appears to be the same objective, it’s not.

For the home stager, the sale to the individual home owner is critically important, but represents just one sale. The sale to the Realtor, might not in itself win any direct business, but represents a series of prospective future business.

Home stagers offer two primary benefits to their customers, faster sales and higher price. While both are important to home sellers and to Realtors, the relative ranking between the two vary. A home owner is more likely to be impressed with the prospects of a higher price, as any such higher price will help pay for the services they are being asked to cover. For a Realtor, the higher price may mean a marginal improvement to their commission. More important to them, is the speed with which a home sells, so they can go on to the next.

Now while both share same objectives their motivations differ. To be most efective, the sales pitch to either market should lead off with their primary motivation. That in turn calls for two web pages, and two marketing pitches.

This is going to be true for any business that markets to distributors as well as final customers. And probably many more circumstances as well.

How about your business. Do you have multiple audiences you are marketing to?

If so, you really should be thinking in terms of multiple rifle shots rather than a blunderbust shotgun spread.

Most businesses try to accomplish this with multiple pages on one web sie. And this may be an adequate compromise in some cases, but it is always a compromise, and an opportunity for a competitor to step in and out compete you.

One objection has been the need to buy multiple domain names and hosting accounts. And while this is a pound wise penny foolish objection, the fact is that with the right hosting service there is no need to pay any more to host a second, third, fourth, or even twentieth web site.

It would take me a while to sit down and even count the total number of web sites I have. And they are all on one account. And that account costs me less than $25 a month. I use HostGator

They offer me the opportunity to have an unlimited number of web sites on one account and enough bandwith to cover my needs and that of most small business people. These can be readily stepped up should my increased use of video require a future adjustment.

I mention the hosting problem, as just one barrier to having multiple sites. A second site, probably means reworking the first and then adding the second. This will take some site design work and of course that entails a one time expense. But the final result is a more clearly targeted marketing campaign, and better marketing results.

I would have two “ethical bribes,” one each on each of the two new web sites to build a separte email list of prospective home owners and Realtors. Using my home staging example, I might offer a report on how to de-clutter your home on the web site directed to homeowners, and a different report on how to discuss home staging with your clients on the Realtor Oriented Web Site.

The prepackaged follow-up messages would be distinctly targeted as well.

It’s important to clarify your marketing objectives, and then to develop approriate marketing tools such as web sites and autoresponder porgrams to meet those objectives over time. If you need three web sites, you should have three.

What do you need?

Auto Responders: The Magic Pill to Transform Your Web Site

The key component required to transform your current static web site into a marketing tool, is your auto responder. The service I use and recommend is Aweber, www.BuildRelationships.aweber.com . It is by far the preferred service, and is used by most of the internet marketers I know.

While it’s possible to have a programmer develop an auto responder service on your own web site, using a professional service makes a lot more sense in the long run. First, it’s cheap. Rates will vary depending on how much traffic you generate, but as of my writing this, most small businesses will be able to start for well under $25 a month, even less if you take advantage of their annual payment plans.

There are a couple of things you should understand. Aweber uses what’s called a double opt in system. What this means is that when a person signs up to be on your mailing list, they are actually signing up on a form you create at BuildRelationships.aweber.com. Once Aweber gets their initial message, they send out a confirmation message to the email address registered. This asks your new subscriber to confirm that they want to be on your list. Your new list member must confirm, or they will not be included.

This accomplishes two things. First, it keeps people from putting in phony email addresses, just to get your free report. And more importantly, it serves to protect you against spam complaints when people register someone else’s legitimate email address instead of their own.

Aweber is a known entity in the internet marketing world, and it’s well known they use this double opt in system. Thus the folks who monitor and prosecute SPAM complaints are far less likely to raise any issues with you, even when someone forgets they signed up for your list and complains. This avoids problems you don’t need.

In addition to the double opt in feature, they automatically insert both an automatic “opt-out” link and your legal address at the bottom of each of your messages. This means you will always be compliant with the anti Spam laws, and your subscriber knows that they can stop your emails whenever they want. Best yet, if your subscriber decides they want to stop, all they have to do is click the link and it’s done automatically. You don’t need to be involved at all.

These peace of mind features make the monthly fee more than worthwhile by themselves.

But you get a lot more than peace of mind. Aweber offers a lot of features, more than I can cover here now. But lets lay out a few, for the sake of clarity.

First, you can have multiple lists, at no extra charge. You can have a list for those people who sign up on your web site. You can have another list for people who sign up because you add, an invitation to do so on you cash register receipt or invoice forms.

This may make sense as a way to conduct separate conversations with prospective customers who are first finding you online, as opposed to the conversation you want to have with people who are existing customers.

You may also want to use this capability to focus on different product lines. Say you are a restaurant that also does catering. You might have a sub list for the catering business in addition to a primary list that promotes your weekly or monthly specials.

This ability to run multiple lists is a great asset. It allows you to have multiple conversations going on, with multiple people at the same time. All on autopilot.

There is one more basic concept to get across regarding auto responders. There are two types of basic messages. The first is the follow-up message. These are written and stored in the system and are sent automatically once a person signs up for your list. The first one goes out immediately once they have confirmed that they want to be on the list. Then you can pre-schedule any number of additional lists as you wish. Depending on your particular needs, you may want to send a second message three days after they get the first one, and then maybe another in 3-5 days, and then weekly thereafter.

Some people set up mini courses on topics of interest to their customers. A Liquor store may for example create a series of posts on wines, or the characteristics of different beers they sell. A restaurant, may do recipes or cooking tips, etc. The key thing about follow-up messages is that they should be “Evergreen.” With any luck people will be signing up to your list every day from now till the end of time. You want messages that make sense no matter the time of year. So event though it may be Spring, when you are writing you messages, eventually it will be winter when someone joins your list. All of these follow-up messages are sent sequentially based on the number of days since the person signed up on your list. So on any given day you will have message 1 going out to newly signed up people, message 3 going out to people who signed up last week, and message 14 going out to people who maybe signed up four months ago.

The second type of message is the Broadcast. This is sent to all people no matter when they signed up. This type of message is ideal for sending out messages about this week’s specials, of attractions for the coming month, or holiday greetings. If you are a dentist and want to let your patients know to schedule their appointments prior to you upcoming two week vacation cruise, you send them a broadcast message six weeks in advance and then again periodically up until you send them a message on who to contact in case of an emergency.

The best part of this, is that you can pre-schedule broadcast messages. Thus if you want, you can send a Happy New Years message for exactly at midnight next year right now.

If you have a three month advertising plan, you can schedule all your broadcasts for the coming three months at one time, and then forget about it. The messages will be sent automatically, and your customers will get you messages and respond and it won’t cost you any more than the cost of your auto responder and the time to write the messages.

There are other more advanced features available once you have you system up and running. For example you can do split testing to see which of your ads get a better response, and there are ways to tie your blog posts into the process and even pod casts. But such services are beyond the scope of this report.

Again the service I recommend is www.BuildRelationships.aweber.com.

They offer a series of helpful tutorials which should be more than adequate to get you up and running in no time. I am also available to assist you. Contact me at enetwal@gmail.com.

Most Business Web Pages StinK! Free Download Now

I just completed my newest report, called “Most Business Web Pages StinK!” subtitled, Web Sites are like Trade Shows. Readers of this blog will soon realize this is a recompilation of five previous blog posts on the Trade Show theme. The current version is number 1.2, I am working on 1.3 which will be revisions after my wife gets done proof reading it, and a resources section at the end.

I intend to use this as an eye opener for hopefully thousands of small business people. In these tough economic times it only makes sense to better utilize all of our existing resources such as our web sites.

And since upgrading them is not difficult or expensive, it makes even more sense.

Let me know if you need my help.

Is your web page a billboard on a deserted highway?

A decade ago, small businesses flocked to the internet. It was going to transform the way business is done and they wanted to be part of it. And many are today quite disappointed and perhaps philosopical about how their web pages didn’t do didly squat.

While there is no doubt the internet has changed how business is done today, for most businesses all that changed is they now have an internet Yellow Pages add in addition to there actual listing.

The only people that go to their web site are people who already know about their business, and are jsut checking for a phone number or the times we are open.

While that’s certainly not true of all businesses, it is true for a good many, how about you?

I’ve been preaching on three major topics here about why I think most business web sites stink.

Most aren’t using their ability to list their business in multiple categories.
Most have just a billboard, or an electronic brochure and not an interactive site
Why most web sites are so bad, even when you paid good money for them.

In my prior posts on this blog, I have tried to use the trade show as a metaphor as to what the role of your web pages should be. I encourage you to look back at my past postings and read them.

In the last few days, I have been focusing on how most web sites I’ve reviewed lately have poor and often no keywords.

If you were able to afford it, and were in the wall paper business, you might buy a yellow pages ad under wall paper, and maybe under decorating or a number of other yellow page headings. Most businesses don’t as its very expensive to do so, even with multiple category discounts.

With your web pages, you don’t need to pay extra to be listed in multiple categories. You just need to do a systematic listing of all relevant keywords that your possible customers might use in an effort to find you.

This may take a little time and effort, but once done, it will pay tremendous rewards in additional traffic and potential new business.

You may have thought your web designer would have done this for you. But unfortunately most web designers are not marketers. They tend to be graphic artists or techno geeks. Great at creating web pages, but not necessarily at getting your web site to generate the business you had hoped it would.

Keywords: Missing in Most Small Business Web Sites

So far, I haven’t found a single home staging web site with good keywords in the meta tags of their web site. In my search of web sites in South Minneapolis, I have found fewer than 1 in 20 that was even close to having effective keywords. In general, that’s true of most small businesses.

This is a big mistake, as the keyword placed in your web pages meta tags are what almost all the search engines other than Google uses to find web sites to display. And while Google may have the largest chunk of web search, they certainly don’t have it all.

That’s because most people are likely to use the search tool that comes with their computer. My wife for example has Yahoo on hers. While she may say she is going to “Google” something, she actually uses Yahoo. Yahoo uses meta tags. So does MSN, ASK and virtually everybody but Google.

I have been focusing on the Home Staging Industry for the last half year or so. As part of that effort I am trying to help these small businesses improve their web sites to first draw more traffic, and then get more of those people who do visit to do something.

I have created a base list of some ten dozen key words people often use to search for home stagers in their market. I add or subtract a few depending on the scope of service of the individual home stager, and then incorporate geographical elements to come up with a comprehensive set of what I call, “geographical long tail keywords.” These are the phrases people actually use to search for to find a business in their neighborhood. For a recent client in Virginia, I ended up with 599 keyword phrases. In time this should more than double the amount of traffic her web site receives.

Every locally based business should have a comprehensive set of geographically relevant keywords in their meta tags. This is the hidden code that the search engine “bots” see, but no one else does. Unfortunately most web site developers are techies, and not marketers, and they often don’t have a clue as to what they should put in there.

Depending on the industry sector, I can create a set of geographically tied keywords for as little as $75. I will review your web site for free, in advance to determine whether or not it’s needed in the first place. email me at enetwal@gmail.com with any questions.