Having a large list of clients/customers/prospects you regularly communicate is a VALUABLE ASSET you’re your company and its revenue. It is a well known saying “The Money is in The List”. One of the first things you need to put into place, if you do not have it already, is a program for collecting names, email addresses, mailing addresses, and phone numbers to every customer/client/prospect you have come across over the years along with new ones.
Setting up a program to do this can be a combination of several things, here are a few:

1. You should have a website – Create a section to host the registration box. Give them a reason to register here something like you are going to “Solve Their Problems” or “Answer All Of Their Questions”. This code will come from your newsletter platform you use. See www.vaagogo.com on the tools page for some suggestions of wonderful platforms to use.

2. Another GREAT way to increase your sign-ups is to You should have a Facebook Fan Page for your business – you have the opportunity to use an application called FBML static page – you will set this up and use the same code you used on your website.

3. Write a blog post, article, flyer or direct mailer explaining the benefits to joining your newsletter list! Include an incentive or an offer as a “reward” for joining. Offer a “Free Report” (visit www.vaagogo.com and see I have the free report offer) Offer a discount or a birthday club – a lot of large restaurants are successfully using this method – Red Robin, Denny’s, Chi-Chi’s and so many others!

4. The most important way is to ASK!!!

Building a strong and sizeable database will help the strength of your marketing efforts More next week…
Don’t forget productivity is the way to propel you forward professionally and personally… Feel free to contact us if you have any questions!

Blogging Build Leverage! GET NOTICED!!

Having a successful business is what we are all looking for, right? We each may have our own definition to “successful” but success is what we strive for! In working towards success we do a lot of things… network, advertise, get out in the community and volunteer, do “pro bono” work and so on. Each of these items brings attention to your business but each has a life span to it, would you agree? Each of those items are built around getting your business noticed, create longer term visibility, friendships and increase your business traffic but don’t you feel that a lot of the efforts, not to blame anyone are short lived, advertisements are read and thrown away, networking is a chat for that hour or two once a week, volunteering is one event after another – DON’T GET ME WRONG THEY ARE ALL VITAL AND NEEDED AND EVEN ENJOYABLE, DON’T STOP DOING THEM! But by starting a “web-blog” a “blog” site you give a longer life to your activities. Share an event, a meeting, a new relationship, a conversation and facts in your blog. Build leverage using this blog site and spot-light things you don’t want people to forget or things you want them to share! Start out by planning your blog in your head and on paper – do you want a specific “theme” or look to your blog – visit some blog sites and see the differences – start getting used to them!!!

Blogging Become the “Yapper” of the Internet and GET NOTICED!

In March of two years ago I did an article on “Why Blog??” I wanted to take a bit to revisit this idea.. blogging is getting more and more attention! We have all heard of Twitter, right? And if you have not – call me you MUST know what it is!! Twitter is a micro-blog and it is taking over! Static websites are becoming less and less featured by Google and other search engines because they are just that “Static” no movement, no growth, no sharing of new content! Of course you can pay for placement on Google and the others, but have you earned it? Are you sharing information?? Blog sites can be combined with the information from your static site it will just have a “blog” page that will be updated with information hopefully every week. I have a client, Casey Eberhart, that coaches people on “The Art of Networking” to build your reputation, your presence and your business (www.theidealnetworker.com) – his key point is, at a networking event is to find the “Yapper” (the person talking a lot, visiting a lot and making a point to be out there) well think of your blog site as the “Yapper” of the internet.. how is yours doing? In the next few weeks I am going to go over key reasons why to blog and some ideas of what you can blog about… I look forward to sharing this information with you and hope to create a lot of “Santa Clarita Bloggers” out there to build their businesses!

Branding… Are You Paying Attention to Your Branding & Marketing? Part Four

Now that we are planning BIG.. do not let your past (or any future) failures stop you from launching new things. All companies, small and LARGE have had failures in a launch they have done.. if you let anything you have tried in the past that did not work out so great stop you from tying something new again OR the fear of failure stop you from trying something new you will not be growing BIG!!! Just a side note, do not launch too many things at the same time – one at a time and even one every 6 months should be your limit – you do not want to confuse your market, you don’t want to overload them and you defiantly do not want to not have enough time to evaluate the “success” rate of your product/service launch.

• Use Failures for Knowledge and Growth Using Coke as anexample, remember when they launched “New Coke” in 1985.. what a bomb. It was quickly removed from the market and the old formula returned as “Classic Coke”. Sales for them increased and that failure has turned into a HUGE success for them.

Marketing niched Virtual Assistants are a great way to have support and to have a support person focusing on this area!

SPAM and I Am Not Talking Canned Meat!

Today I want to talk a little about SPAM – “Self Promotional Advertising Message” – we have all been affected by SPAM and SPAMMERS! If you have not been inundated in your inbox (and mailboxes) with “Viagra” , “work from home”, “You Won” mailings YOU ARE LUCKY! But in reality most of us have and do deal with this on a daily basis…. Because of people that send out unsolicited mass mailings to people “emailing laws” have gotten a lot stricter! This has not affected EVERY MARKETER out there…
In 1999 Washing State started the ball rolling on regulations making it illegal if the following existed:
• Has a misleading subject line
• Has false routing information
• Sends an unsolicited having a third party domain name without their permission

Later other states came onboard with the “rules”. George Bush signed the CAN-SPAM act into law – and violators can be fined up to $16,000 and also be convicted of other criminal charges! It has not stopped the “con artists” or “hackers” too much from scamming people or overloading our email systems BUT what it has done is made it extremely difficult for “authentic” marketers to reach their target market – double opt ins, spam check messages, servers blocking delivery from certain mail companies, and the list goes on! We all know the story – “One Bad Seed Ruined It for the Apple”!

My advice to you is as you build your “list” make sure you keep records of the people wanting to be on your list – like biz cards noted where you met them and date if you ever go under a “List Review” from an email broadcast company you will need to prove those ARE your contacts.

The Power of the Unsubscribe Button! {advice from a bystander}

Do you find yourself getting too many email newsletters, updates and blasts from people out there? Do you sit wondering “why did I sign up for this?” or “Oh this is not what I thought it was?” or even “I did not give this person the right to email me!” ? With so many business out there focusing on internet marketing and building lists it s no wonder that you end up a a few of them.

It is likely some are very valuable to you and some are not. Some you just joined the “list” to get the free offer that was available, he he he.

The question is what do you do now with all of these coming into your email account? First of all STOP using your main email account to sign up for promotions – create a free Gmail account or Yahoo account to accept those. I prefer Gmail because of all of the filters and automatic actions you can have it do ~ if you would like more specific strategy information on using a dummy account contact me and I can give you more…

BUT what I want to focus on are emails that you feel “you get too many from this certain person”, you “feel they are too focused on just selling their products and not contributing” or you “feel you never asked to be on their list”. It is very easy to report them as spammers yes, and for some that fall into these three categories it might be warranted but when you think about it they are just trying to make it. By reporting someone as a spammer you really mess them up… their email management account can be shut down and worse yet they can loose their entire database. Is it worth doing that to someone just because they are bugging you? I say no.. it is just as easy to push the unsubscribe button! Some people will email back “Please Remove Me” but understand if the one in control of that account does not remove you correctly you can be imported again and back to getting emails.

As someone who manages several client’s email management accounts on several different platforms it is much appreciated when you just choose to unsubscribe. You might think, well they can see my name and that I unsubscribed – Yes They Can, oh well – they have to understand you do not want their information any longer, it is your choice. In reality if you are just trashing their blasts any ways you are not a true customer and their count is not accurate. Also if you take control and push the unsubscribe button you are blocking them from just importing your name in later down the road – you would have to personally sign up again to get their info!

Unsubscribing can be helpful to the marketer or the leader that is doing the blasting…when you unsubscribe use the comments area to let them know why you are unsubscribing. If you think they are pushing for a sale too much, sending out nonsense, you no longer belong/participate with that organization company or if you have a suggestion to make their marketing better don’t you think they would want to know? I would!

So when you are bothered by your overloaded inbox – think of cleaning out your “subscriptions” and unsubscribing to a few things, but be proactive and helpful at the same time!