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 Create a Voice of Authority! GET NOTICED!!

There are a lot of blogs out there and just as many “whys” for people putting them up. Most brick and mortar business owners here in Santa Clarita think, “why do I need a blog?” “No one wants to know what I am doing everyday” (same oppositions to Twitter when I introduced Twitter in my articles but hey now look at the amount of BIG businesses now on Twitter, not because of me but they see the usefulness!) Blogging for a business owner is not about what you ate for lunch or what you are personally doing (even though this does have a place in your blog). It is about VISIBILITY and we all want and need that! In your company blog you want to begin to create a voice of authority. You have categories in your blog – one should be tips or tools, one should be status or relationship centered, one could be personal, one could be events and so on! Blogs are very helpful to get information out there and gives you another outlet! Some examples – a realtor can create a blog that contains trends in the neighborhood, community events, and pictures and listings (yes those can be blog posts). A dentist can blog about tips to strengthen teeth and better health, about information coming from the “dental professional’s community”, and myths/truth’s to teeth cleaning. A Plumber can blog a weekly tip for fixing “small fixes” around your house, about water saving tips and tools, and about their involvement in the community. A company offering products can blog about the facts of using their products – not based on their self promotion but about facts they find around the world, blog about new techniques used to create what their product is, about their “customer of the month” and do some cross promotions, and of course tips and tools for their industry! Your goal is to start a way for people to look to you and your blog for answers! I hope you are starting to see some important reasons why and how to start a blog.

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!!!

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

Most people use electronic mailers to keep their clients/prospects updated throughout the year. Some are sent weekly, monthly or even quarterly. Popular programs are Constant Contact (very user friendly), their shopping cart program (helps keep their list together in one place), aWeber (offers the ability to have a structured autoresponder created) – if you have any questions about these feel free to call me. BUT what I want to talk to you about is Old Fashion Letters and Cards.. do you do that too or not at all?

• Old Fashion Mailings still work!: Now that I have said that – let me clarify, I am not speaking of the old fashion advertising mailers that just promote your business but the old fashion connecting mailings – letters and cards! There is a service that I have found to be a viable tool in my (and several client’s businesses too), SendOutCards. It allows you to pick from over 15,000 cards or create your own with your own logo or pictures! Reach out and touch your clients/prospects just because – touch them and ask about them do not advertise! Rebuild or Continue that relationship. We are all overwhelmed by emails and they are not personal! We are all guaranteed bills in the mail – why not send someone a smile in the mail and give them a card to brighten their day!! It makes a HUGE difference. Check it out and send 4 cards on me for free! Promise no hassles just an introduction to a great tool!! – click on the banner SEND FREE BRANDING/MARKETING messages and set up your free account!

Personal touches are so important – we need to get back into the habit of reminding people (friends, family, business connections) how important they are. We need to get back to “Relationships” with our clients and prospects! I hope you have gotten some nuggets out of this series!

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

Now that you are getting all of your branding and materials together with BIG in mind, start working on image – remember when you were going to review your website? Do you have testimonials on it? These can be done in written form (add a pic), audio form (add a pic) as well as video form! Testimonials or Endorsements are the BEST way to gain credibility! People do business with people they can trust – by having recommendations and endorsements from your community members makes you one someone can trust!

• Don’t be shy, just ask!: I am sure you know of people that have or are using your product or services. Are they happy with what they get? I am sure they are if they are coming back for more. Ask a few of them for testimonials, be sure to show them some samples of other ones so that they know what you are looking for.. change it up and do one in writing, do one on a conference call line so you can download the mp3, and meet someone for a coffee and take your “flip” camera and record one – it will be fun and you will also get to see the fruits of your efforts!

Branding Branding Branding – just remember if people are doing testimonials for you, take a moment and create a testimonial for them as well!

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!

Who is GOOGLE pt 2, Google Alerts

First you might ask, “what is a Google alert?” This is a service that Google offers for free, it allows you to set up an account, choose topics that you would like to get alerted about when there is info on the web written about them. It is a great tool to have if you specialize in an area and want to keep up on what is going on out there about it and if you write content for a newsletter or blog! You can sign up for different variations of alerts, News, Web, Blog, Comprehensive, Videos and Groups: once you choose your variations then you niche it down even more by key words you want them to look for! It is a GREAT way to stay on top of things. The variations breakdown like this:
• News – the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top 10 results of the Google news search
• Web – the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top 20 results in a Google web search
• Blogs – the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and would appear in the top 10 results in your Google blog search
• Comprehensive – combines your results from the News, Web, and Blog on your search terms into one email alert
• Video – the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top 10 results of a Google video search
• Groups – the latest “posts” in groups that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top 50 results from a Google group search

If you have a Google account you just activate the Google Alerts and set it up – if you do not have a Google account get one today, it is free and you don’t have to use Gmail because you sign up for one – you can register for your Google Account using your primary email addy as the registration email address. I highly recommend you try this out! When you set up your Google Alerts, be sure to do a comprehensive alert for your name and your company name – it is great to be informed of what people are saying about you… Be on the watch for next week and I will go over the new Google Buzz tool out there!

Who is GOOGLE?

In this Google series my goal is to make you more aware of tools out there you can use for free to help your visibility. Google is the King of the Internet for sure! Now you might ask why and how can Google offer all of these tools for free, even a phone number, well trust me it is not just out of the kindness of its “heart”. Google is an advertising monster! That is what it is! So by the more of us that list on it – they have more content to offer people when searching for things.

Google History: Google began in 1996 as a research project by two Stanford students. They were exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web – and the web-crawler made its debut. They then created the page rank algorithm that we all strive to be at the top of even today!! Talk about a home-based business – they registered the domain Google.com in 1997 and was working out of a friends garage into 1998. Fun Fact: Google is actually from a misspelling of “googol” – which is represented by 1 and one hundred zeros following it. In 1999 the company moved into offices in Palo Alto and called their complex “googleplex” a play on the word “googolplex” which is represented by a 1 followed by googol of zeros. In 2006 bought their property for $319 million dollars! What a growth! Also in 2006 Google was added to the Merriam Webster & Oxford English dictionaries.

Check back for more on Google Tools offered to us all!

The BIG Debate, Picture or Not!

I wanted to discuss the BIG DEBATE going on at some “open” networking events. Your Picture on your business card – should it be there? Yes or No? I have run into people that support both sides of this argument. I have to say YES in my opinion… In this world of networking, facebooking, twittering and so on we rely on visual reminders – if all I have is a name I run the risk of not recognizing someone I have done business with, chatted with or just met before. I changed my business cards mainly for that reason. I know my logo has become very visible and when people learn what company I am with they go “oh you are the one with that great card” but they did not connect the two right off the top. I want it to be easy to recognize me while I am out in the community or re-visiting different chambers and meetings – adding my picture will help in this.

So that is where I stand on the debate! Check out your business cards you are bringing to events and look at all of your “marketing” materials together – do they the information they should: Biz Name, Your Name, Address, Phone Number, Fax, email address, website address, tag line and your pic? Do they tell everyone exactly who you are and give them something to remember you by?
Personal touches are so important – remember we are building “relationships” with our clients!

Next Page »