social media marketing checklist
February 16, 2010
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For a social media marketing checklist
click here - http://www.theresultsacademy.com/Online_Social_Marketing_Plan_Checklist.pdf
99 Ways to Raise Awareness of what you offer
February 10, 2010
1. inserts in your local weekly newspaper
2. submit an article to your local paper
3. Word of mouth - ask for referrals
4. Write a press release - check out prweb.com
5. Get interviewed on local radio
6. Offer to speak at your local chamber…
7. Give a donation to a local charity
8. Use postcards in shop windows
9. Use community notice boards
10. posters / leaflets in local doctors, chiropractors etc
11. Submit an article to local paper/national magazine/forum
12. leaflets, posters at a local hospital
13. conduct a door to door survery in your area
14. conduct a survey on your website
15. Readers offer/lcompetition in your local/national paper
16. Encourage clients to write testimonials
17. Ask for 5 referrals from each client
18. Offer a FREE report, CD or DVD,
19. Give out promos with your name on - mugs, pens, etc
20. Give leaflets to your local paper boy or milkman in your area.
21. Use a search engine to target prospects, then PHONE them
22. Attend a trade show or exhibition
23. Update your answer machine/voice mail message regularly
24. Offer a FREE “clinic”
25. Offer a FREE “Seminar”
26. Get listed in as many trade directories as possible
27. Ask to speak at your local business club
28. Ask a local office supply company to send a letter to their database
29. Set up your own forum, bulletin board, or blog
30. Offer discount vouchers
31. Offer a loss leader
31. Set up a message/telephone line
32. Download and use aol/yahoo/msn messenger or Skype
33. Create Audio/talking emails
34. Try a bumper sticker on your car
35. Give out business cards to everyone you meet
36. Do you Produce a community Newsletter?
37. Offer to give a talk at your local WRI (they’re influencers)
38. Ask other companies to put your leaflet out with their statements
39. Send out postcards offering a free consultation
40. Try parking metre ads/advertising on car parking tickets
41. Launch your own annual award scheme in your industry
42. Apply/submit/enter yourself/your company for an award - you might win
43. Check out www.linkedin.com, www..bni.com
44. Get accredited/approved by an outside organisation and tell the press
45. Get beermats with your logo on and distribute in local/regional pubs
46. Offer to do/share a co-op mail shot with non competitive organisations
47. Offer to do/share a co-op postcard cardeck mailing with non competitives
48. Find celebrity to endorse your product or service give you a testimonial
49. Offer to do a TV interview or a radio interview
50. Advertise on Google ad words, overture.com, ecademy
Marketing: The Future
February 8, 2010
The Future
Many people who contact me are anxious about the future. They are stressed, lack confidence and are uncertain how they will achieve certain results or whether they can make progress in a particular area. A lot of people can be suspicious about new people new ideas, new ways of doing things, and in fact, many people often are afraid of the way things might turn out.
Now the irony here is they tend to do the same as though that can’t let go off the past. They play over and over in their minds all these negative possible outcomes - all these negative “what if” scenarios of things could or might turn out, if they don’t make a particular choice, decision, or take a particular action. Many feel not in control of their own destiny, a feeling of hoplessmess, as they become more and more tense and uneasy about how things might turn out.
Me. Well lets face it, the past is gone. Hopefully I’ve learned from both the good and bad decisions I’ve made in my life. They say we are the sum total of our experiences to date, and I can’t necessarily argue with that.
Dog Food: A lesson in marketing
February 5, 2010
Take Fido.
He’s a consumer - and he eats lots of beefy meaty chunky balls.
He likes it.
But he doesnt buy it.
That’s his owner - Fred.
Fred’s the customer - not the “consumer”.
All the marketing in the supermarket and the dog food manufacturer tends to be targetted at the customer - not the consumer.
Poor Fido has no say over whether he’s going to get beef chunky balls again or not.
He doesnt even get to use the tv remote control to watch all those sexy female dogs appearing in the tv ads he likes.
As for Fred, he doesnt really know that Fido really prefers the Game and Poultry flavour chunky balls, he just responds to the latest marketing offers he sees when he’s down the supermarket.
It’s the Buy Two get one FREE, SPECIAL offer, new TRIAL SIZE that are all targetted at the CUSTOMER
…who makes the buying decision.
Another 4 Reasons why prospects might not be buying from you
February 4, 2010
1. They just don’t believe in you.
Then prove it. Demonstrate it. Give them reason to. Offer a sample, a puppy dog close - a FREE trial. See 3 above. Show them the hundreds of testimonials you have, or all the videos you have on You Tube, links to your previous blogs - so they can sample you, what you know, what you’ve achieved and what you believe in - People buy from people they like. Your prospects want 3 things - Confidence. Progress and Results - so give it to them. Give them the confidence they crave - and that you can help them to achieve the progress and the results you offer. Quite often they simply don’t know what it is they want because they don’t where they’re at, or where they’ve been, and thus they don’t know where they’re heading. So why not help them do that - it starts by building confidence in your prospect’s mind so that they can start to make progress and know that by workign together will lead to even bigger and better results. Allow them to experience the help, guidance and support you offer, and how much you go the extra mile in order to nurture the relationship.
Take a peek at this.
3 Reasons why prospects might not be buying from you.
February 4, 2010
1. They don’t know you or trust you.
Give them a reason to want to get to know you, and give them a reason to trust you. Testimonials can help. A Money back guarantee can help. Offering a FREE trial or download can help. Start raising your profile, and visibility by blogging, writing articles, networking, attending events, exhibitions, hosting workshops etc. Be different. Offer something different. Stop offering features. Start offering real benefits. Do you empathise with your target audience, do you know the problems they have, and can you genuinely help them? Do you serve to help? Or do you serve to control? What tactics can you use to get people talking about you and referring you to others who need help in the area you specialise in?
Take a peek at this.
2. They don’t want what you are selling.
24 Ways to generate traffic and Back links
February 4, 2010
The majority of your competitors will either:-
a) Not know of these resources
b) Simply be lazy and not take advantage and use these resources
Whether you do or not, is up to you.
1. Use http://technorati.com
2. Get friends in your network to Tag your blogs at http://digg.com
3. Use http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2/
4. Publish an RSS feed (a news feed that people can subscribe to)
5. Use http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
6. Set up your own feed on http://feedburner.com
7. Use http://www.bloglines.com/ping
8. Use http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC25.
9. Use http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
10. Try Reddit, Netscape, Del.Icio.Us, and StumbleUpon.com
11. Leave comments on other people’s blogs
12. Use Deep linking (refer to older blogs in your latest blogs)
13. Invite people to link to your blog
14. Get a mybloglog.com account
15. Submit your articles of about 500-800 words to Ezinearticles.com, Goarticles.com, & Searchwarp.com
16. Create Video Tutorials on Youtube.com like this one
17. Participate on sites like Cnet, HowardForums and Mobiledia
18. Use pr sites like www.prweb.com and www.pressbox.co.uk
19. Interview other website owners
20. Answer other peoples questions on Yahoo! answers and Linkedin.com
21. Submit your site http://dmoz.org
22. Place an ad on craigslist.com
23. Create your own page on Squidoo.com
24. Publish an article on www.business-scene.com
Any use?
Trust and its place in marketing
February 4, 2010
Prospects are often mistrusting towards potential suppliers for they may never have heard of them before, or simply lack confidence in some way. Stop and think. Maybe, just maybe trust isn’t there because there’s something they don’t like about the supplier. Maybe just maybe, the supplier does something that reminds the buyer of something they don’t do or perhaps need. Perhaps the buyer is reminded of a weakness they have by the supplier, and they don’t like it - and that’s the real reason why they are being “mistrusting”.
We can often be mistrusting towards others when we don’t understand why certain people behave in a certain way and we question their motives or “intention”. Once we understand the intention behind someone’s actions everything becomes a lot clearer, but quite often we simply don’t give people the opportunity or we don’t take enough time to try and understand their intention. Sometimes it’s not about taking someone’s word or about trusting them, perhaps its all about you, finding the real you, and what it is you really want.
Perhaps its about knowing and trusting yourself to do what you want to do, and recognise what you need to do, or perhaps you need to have more faith and belief in your own knowledge, skills and solutions you have in order for people to trust you. Maybe the problem is inside of you - not them. We don’t like looking in the ugly mirror, and sometimes potential suppliers can scare us or un-nerve us, for we know that they speak the “truth” when they tell us how big a problem is or how much it will cost to fix it. We sometimes, don’t like hearing the truth.
