How is your business doing connecting with your customers?

“Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.”

Have you heard this before?

The reason I ask is due to the fact several organization owners, I talk with, are completely  frustrated with the declining sales and earnings that is occurring within their  businesses, yet they feel like they have no control over helping their situations.

Even so, when I ask them what their current marketing and advertising strategy looks like, they give me a blank stare and say, “What marketing plan?”

Can you see the issue?

By producing a sold marketing and advertising strategy, and writing it down into a structured, planned process for increasing sales and profits, there is an nearly immediate result as far  as improving profits for a enterprise.

What is often a marketing plan exactly?

Basically it is really a written blueprint of what methods and actions that will likely be used to promote the marketplace-specific elements of the organization to your target market.

The secret to a successful advertising and marketing system is identifying exactly how you will take a prospect and transition them into a paying customer / client.

By mapping out this system, you will not only see higher ROI for your promoting efforts, but you will also be able to identify where the “profit leaks” in your marketing are,  and figure out how to stop them!

This results in less wasted advertising, and increased profits!

That’s the simple version of producing a marketing strategy, but you get the idea. By  creating and implementing a written marketing strategy, you can be far ahead of your  competition who can’t figure out why their sales are down!

Such plans should also be produced for any marketing campaigns, advertisements, events,  etc. to identify (PRIOR to the marketing) what steps you need put in place to transition any leads  generated into paying clients.

Yes. That’s right. I’m going to talk about cutting your marketing budget.

I know that we are in the middle of the worst economic downturn our country has faced since The Great Depression. Unemployment is in the double-digits. Businesses are closing left and right. Homes are being lost. Dreams shattered. It ain’t pretty.

It’s during times like this that business owners look for ways to cut costs. You can probably guess where I’m going to tell you to cut your budget. In fact, you might have already made cuts to your marketing budget. Many business owners cut marketing budgets first when they feel the squeeze of the economy.

You do need to cut your marketing budget, and you need to cut it today. BUT, here’s the catch: you need to stop advertising in any medium that you aren’t tracking.

Let me say that again…

Stop advertising where you aren’t tracking your results! If you are running a Yellow Pages ad, a newspaper ad, a Val-Pak coupon offer, Search Engine Marketing, Facebook, a radio spot… whatever the medium, and you AREN’T tracking how well that ad is bringing in new business, either START tracking that marketing campaign, or STOP spending that money! You are likely throwing away THOUSANDS of dollars EVERY MONTH on advertising that isn’t being tracked.

This is one of the most common PROFIT LEAKS that I find in businesses today. So many business owners are throwing money at so many different marketing efforts today, hoping one of them will stick, but they aren’t tracking what’s working. What’s worse is that business owners are cutting their marketing budgets to save money, and they very likely are stopping advertising methods that were bringing in new business. BUT, because no tracking systems are in place, they had no idea what was truly working.

Cutting your budget wholesale during a recession is the WORST thing you can do. In fact, you actually want to maintain your marketing efforts because EVERYONE ELSE is cutting their marketing budgets! Recessions are one of the best times to gain market share!

So don’t follow the rest of your fellow business owners by stopping your marketing efforts completely. Start marketing with intelligence by keeping track of what is working, and stop any marketing effort that ISN’T working. If you don’t have tracking systems in place, take steps today to start tracking what is working, so you know how effectively you are spending your marketing dollars.

Your website may very well be the most powerful tool in your marketing kit. Not only is it the place prospects and clients go to learn more about you and your services, but it has a huge impact on their ultimate purchase decision. In fact, only 3% of the 200 buyers surveyed – from companies of all sizes – say a provider’s website has no influence whatsoever over their purchase decision.

The survey was conducted by RainToday.com and included more than 200 buyers responsible for more than $1.7 billion in professional services purchased, such as accounting and financial consulting; architecture, engineering, and construction services; human resources consulting; IT consulting and services; legal services; management consulting; marketing, advertising, and public relations; and training services.

The influence of professional services websites on purchasing decisions has increased significantly over the past four years. According to the survey, 74% of buyers report the service provider’s website holds at least “some influence” over their ultimate decision to buy services from the provider. This is 23 percentage points higher than in 2005 and represents a significant increase in the importance of websites.

It’s clear that professional services firms must take advantage of this power. With well-designed websites they can:

• Establish that they are professional: through professional design, writing, and arrangement of content.
• Establish that they are worthy of consideration: through an overview of their services, their client list, biographies of their professionals, and case studies that show how they helped clients and delivered what they promised.
• Establish themselves as an authority: through blog posts, publications, videos, and other resources to help build credibility, reliability, and trust-all essential elements necessary to win clients

How important is your website to growing your business?

Source: Hubspot

We recognize many Internet marketers have difficulty maintaining their email marketing understated. Thus, this article will supply some beneficial info on how e-mail marketing can be kept refined so it is not viewed as spam. The Affiliate Millionaire Review is a perfect illustration of what can be accomplished when working at this.

An essential element for being sure your email advertising is understated and will not be viewed as junk e-mail is to provide some thing of quality to the reader. This may include informative articles, intriguing polls or other useful resources which members of the market are likely to find beneficial. When e-mail users recognize an email they received is providing them something worthwhile, like expertise or info about a specific niche subject, they’re much more most likely to commit some time reading the email simply because they will not consider the email to be spam. In addition to utilizing the text to persuade readers that the e-mail is not spam, the company managers may also utilize this chance for a little bit of skillful advertising. This might include item references in the subject matter or links to a web site throughout the e-mail. Eliminating text which makes crazy claims will also help to maintain one’s advertising refined. Using superlatives and talking about how fantastic a specific item is likely to be considered as outright marketing. When this crops up, it is not likely that readers will think there is any validity in anything included in the e-mail because they will consider the entire email is merely 1 big ad.

Another way to maintain marketing understated when running an email marketing campaign is to just send your e-mail to people who are likely to be really interested in your business . It is important because when email recipients get an email which doesn’t echo their interests at all, they are not most likely to take the email seriously. However, anytime the email is only sent to those who share a similar interest the e-mail appears much more personal. In this instance the readers are not very likely to view each product reference as a blatant advert. Consider these supplemental guides:

Email advertising stays refined when the text of the email is created as if it isn’t originating with the business owner. The content may speak about one’s products as if they’re being offered by a third party. This can make the advertising appear more subtle simply because it appears as more of a recommendation compared to an advert. Business owners can help to make sure their email advertising efforts aren’t viewed as spam by maintaining references to your own website at an absolute minimum. Most Internet users frequently view hyperlinks from one website to another strictly as an advert. This is why it may be worthwhile for business owners who are controlling an email campaign to keep hyperlinks to a minimum and to very carefully weave these hyperlinks into their content. The hyperlinks should be given as though they were mainly included to provide you with an opportunity to learn much more concerning the products and not a way to persuade you to buy.

Lasty, it might be worth it to think about hiring a copy writer with this type of expertise to make sure the copy conveys the right message and has the right influence on the target audience.

Article Source : Delicate Email Marketing Campaigns : ArticleBase

Stuart Collier
Check out much more search engine marketing help and advice available at nextgensem.com.

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:
Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.Words/phrases:
Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:
Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

• http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
• http://www.bondedsender.com
• http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

Closing thought from Tom Osypian: With email deliverability so incredibly important, I know I can’t leave it to chance. That’s why I use and highly recommend Aweber.

However Twitter is much more incredible than that. Truth be told, Twitter is a local communication tool too. It’s likely your town government is using Twitter, your local TV and radio news, your local Fire Department, your library, your local college, even the guy that cleaned your carpets last week. If they are not on Twitter today, it’s just a matter of time.

But there’s another audience moving with great interest toward Twitter. It’s an undercurrent of a more serious nature whereby businesses and entrepreneurs are starting to tap the profitable potential of Twitter. When you observe established companies like: @HomeDepot, @comcastcares or @rubbermaid start lining up on the Twitter bandwagon, it’s without doubt time to take notice.

Perhaps this “business phenomena” boils down to the commonly known fact that a lot of business actually occurs in social gatherings, at cocktail parties, on the golf course, or at numerous other social events. Now, through Twitter it’s become possible, if not down right easy, to benefit from the internet version of a non-stop 24 hour, 7 day a week cocktail party of incredible proportions.

It’s impossible to overlook some of these facts and stories:

• “TechCrunch CEO states “about 1% of our total traffic comes from twitter.” ~BusinessWeek. Do the math and that’s over 14,000 unique visitors per month.
• “Global Twestival used Twitter to raise over $250,000 as of February 2009 providing clean water for just over 17,000 people in Ethiopia, Uganda and India”
• “Unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009, making it the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for the month. Zimbio and Facebook followed, growing 240 percent and 228 percent, respectively.”
• “By a long shot, Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook were the top four social media tools used by marketers, with Twitter leading the pack.”

What’s the meaning of all this? It means that if you are an entrepreneur or in any business, you must not hesitate to head over to Twitter and set up a free Twitter account.

Simple enough?

Well, not exactly. Once you have your account opened, that’s when the fog rolls in. It’s a very very simplistic concept, but like a Rubik’s Cube, unless you have a clear strategy, you’ll soon be scratching your head.

Thankfully, there’s help. Internet strategist and social media marketing expert, Dan Hollings has spent over 12 months researching and testing Twitter strategies for business. Along the way, Dan wrote 100 extremely helpful Twitter tips for business. Next he created a browser toolbar for Mac or PC that puts about 240 Twitter tools, tips and apps within one-click of your Twitter activities. Recently, he released his remarkable Twitter training program called, “Twitter Twenius” (that’s Twitter-talk for genius).

Here is a sample Twitter tip, to get your juices flowing:

Follow those who meet TWO of the following FOUR criteria: informative, interesting, dialectical, original.

Naturally, there’s significantly more to learn, however if you’re looking for viable strategies for making money using Twitter or a way to turn-on the Twitter rocket boosters on all your marketing campaigns from local to international, I enthusiastically recommend Twitter Twenius.