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Marketing Specialties Without a Storefront

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)
Monday, January 30th, 2012

Roughly around 45% of Zero To Sixty Marketing clients don’t have an actual brick and mortar store to sell their items. Many of our clients offer services from office buildings where they have no intention of actually entertaining clients. Still others depend on event marketing to sell their wares to industry retailers and discriminating customers.

If you operate a business like these, without a storefront where buyers to come to you, making sure your products can be fully appreciated is a challenge. Tangible items may need to be felt, services need to be shown relevant and necessary, and conveying luxury is often the missing element when it comes to being able to convince upscale buyers to purchase.

Tablet and mobile devices.Knowing how to sell your luxury item face-to-face isn’t the problem for smaller brands. The problem is that type of salesmanship has an ineffective ratio. It’s far better to harness the online environment, where your efforts can be multiplied to reach an unlimited number of customers.

How do you replicate the luxury, class, and ease-of-use to an online market? Especially when so many shopping online are looking for a discount and low-ball pricing?

No matter what your technical ability is at the moment, this year you’re going to have to stretch. It’s seriously that important. Video, audio, imagery, and social media avenues couldn’t be more effective than right now.

Equation Research conducted a study in November of 2011 over the last quarter viability of tablet, smartphone, e-reader, and PC purchase habits. With a reliability of +/- 3% accuracy, the results should change how American business owners think about their company growth for the future.

Tablet shoppers said they feel more fulfilled, happy, and inspired when shopping on tablets. They liked to linger; they liked the entire experience. And, they said they’d do it again in 2012. Smartphone shoppers didn’t particularly enjoy using apps, surprisingly, but liked the ease of following brands and sharing that Facebook offered. It was obvious, according to ZMags, that mobile devices drove 20-30% of revenue. Their upscale online magazine measured 5x-6x growth during Q4 2011.

29% of tablet and mobile users cited convenience as the #1 reason they purchased, and 24% said they enjoyed the entire ‘browsing’ experience.

Knowing these precursors to purchase, we should be getting real excited about how to convey our luxury and convenience items and services. It’s not going to be acceptable to offer these items in a poor light. Polish on marketing copy and design, while maintaining a conversational and approachable manner, are the new goals of the year.

My advice to you? Learn how to develop videos, audios, and images the right file size for the online environment, and use a service with a reputation for making the process easy. For audio and video, I use AudioAcrobat. I can count on easy streaming and mp3 download for my clients and subscribers, and my information can be shared easily. I like that. It’s really easy to learn, too.

If you use a WordPress website, start uploading product images to your media library. This will be a necessary step when we go forward learning how to use those images. They need to have an ‘online home,’ and your WordPress.org (not .com) is a great place to keep them to be used easily in the future.

Are you planning on being available to a mobile crowd? Leave me your comments below!

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Categories : Facebook
Tags : audio, AudioAcrobat, mobile marketing, video, WordPress.org

Links Help You Get Found Online

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)
Monday, January 23rd, 2012

You can read today’s post, or listen here:

Just when you think your great new website will help customers find your company, you learn there’s more to do to keep it in front of people. New websites have to get a lot on the ball quick. It doesn’t seem fair, does it? But you really have no choice on this one, folks, you have to take steps in the right direction regularly or all you have is a pretty, unseen, and virtually unusable website.

I want to spend a little time explaining links, why different links matter, and why you need a healthy mix of them all for maximum benefit. Links show the relationship between your reader’s interests and your website information.

When you have a well-linked business website, you show that your interest is in your visitor’s experience, that you’re a resource for them. When your visitors follow links, they agree with you. Last year, Google made changes concerning ‘content relevance.’ The more easily your visitor browses page to page, following those links in and out of your website, the more authority your website is given because they believe your content is then more relevant. Links weigh in heavily when Google decides who gets top billing, so learn everything you can about how to use them wisely.

Internal Links
Internal links take a reader from one page of your website to another. Done properly, they add value to your reader’s experience because the information on each page adds to the information on the other. Each of your pages should contain some common reason a reader might want to look farther into your website, and a link helps make that easy for them. Make it even easier when you link actual words used in the course of an explanation. For example:

Instead of writing, Click here for more information on your business website page,

An Inside Line reader will be invited to learn more about website marketing strategies.

Additionally, each page of your website should be easily accessed by your visitor from every page, unless you have areas available by subscription only.

From every page, your visitor should be able to get to:

  • Navigation bar
  • Blog post links to landing pages
  • Blog post links to other blog posts, and your
  • Contact page

Phone lines also link businesses externally.External Links
External links are also valuable, adding credibility to your site. Offer additional detail about your product or service through a link to a higher authority website to become a resource for your reader.

For instance, links to .gov or .edu sites are generally accepted to be trusted resources. If you write about things that can be backed up by information found on a page of a .gov or .edu site, your link to that additional information helps your reader. If you operate a plumbing business, link to a water conservation site. If you own a HVAC company, a link to a page of product information from the brands you carry will also be helpful.

Visitors will be more likely to follow that link, and also more likely to link to your page when it’s a handy reference. Your material becomes more shareable, increasing your website’s value.

Back Links
Back links weigh the heaviest, but building them takes the longest time and most strategic effort. Back links are links that exist in other locations that connect to your website. The sites linking to yours should also come from a healthy mix of locations that vary in authority.

Because of their importance, there are many shady ways to build these. If you use a WordPress website, you notice in your comment dashboard all the totally freaky, terrible ways this is done stemming from all over the globe. Don’t think to yourself, “Oh, that’s how you do it,” you’ll be wrong. Shari wrote about this in her post, How To Recognize Comment Spam, and I showed a good example in my post, Your SEO Company Can Actually Hurt Your Business.

Building back links correctly starts with being absolutely certain that you offer information others need or want. That means good website copywriting, and posts about things that matter to your client base.

The best ways to take advantage of the web are through listing your company in high authority directories. Every company has a ‘Top 5′ directories list their industry typically does well being listed in. A correctly-filled-out profile with an accurate website link will benefit a company three ways:

  1. Directories are always listed first in search results so your company is easily found by consumers, and
  2. Your company’s link carries the authority from the directory, improving your overall rank, and
  3. The best directories give your clients and customers an opportunity to review your company publicly and then share it with their social media contacts. (Super important to Google right now.)

I can’t stress enough how important this is to do.

Additionally, back links can be accumulated when you spend time reading other blogs and commenting on them.

  • They can be built using a good 2.0 strategy. (Ask me about this.)
  • They’re also built every time you use your website link in a social media profile, usually regardless of whether or not you communicate there. (NOT suggesting to NOT communicate.)
  • They can be built using article marketing, and
  • Press releases

Get started when you leave me your comments below! We use the CommentLuv plugin to help our readers get exposure for their websites – go ahead, try it out.

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Categories : Link Building
Tags : back links, external links, internal links, website marketing strategies

Blog Content Tips For New Bloggers

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)
Monday, January 16th, 2012

This post originally published on the Richardson Copywriter by our writing assistant, Bridget Skinner. We know you’ll find it helpful, so here it is again!

~ Susan

Dot com construction workers image.A quality piece of content work takes quality time. You might think you have all the right content ready to go – and maybe you do, maybe it is.

Don’t hit that “Publish” button before you’ve let your piece sit for at least 24 hours. This piece of advice has been instrumental to me in the world of writing content. I can guarantee that when you pick it back up you’ll find changes that need to be made, every time.

Frustration comes easy when you think you have it all together, but something doesn’t seem to fit. If it doesn’t seem to fit after your first draft then let it sit! It will most likely be a difficult read to your audience if it’s difficult to you.

What do you offer that helps your reader?
Writing content for your business is more than just writing for you. To be the business that your customer needs, you’ll need to look through their eyes for the best perspective when you’re writing. Get to know what will be helpful to your reader before you publish anything.

Then read and re-read your work again – making sure you’re capturing the customer’s attention. Does it make sense? If not, try again. Article quality will be improved by the time you spend away from your original copy. When you pick it back up, the changes needed will be right in front of your face.

Will your reader follow the train of thought?
Subject matter is important, but so is keeping their eyes on the page. You want to review the length of your sentences. Are you being too wordy? Can your run-on sentence be made into two sentences? Can you get rid of some content altogether and avoid saying the same thing twice?

Titles don’t come easy, and if I can grab your attention with an exceptional title then I want to keep your attention with an exceptional article. In order to do this I need to read what I am writing out loud, and reading it once is just not enough. I might need to read it over a few times. After I’ve cleaned up any grammar and punctuation changes, it’s ready to go! Practice this yourself and watch your posts improve.

Don’t get frustrated with a blog that isn’t getting noticed. Figuring out how to write to your audience can be tricky when you’re just starting out. A little extra time put into detail will really make the difference.

Do you have trouble writing your blog posts? Tell us, what concerns you about blogging?

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Categories : Business Blogging
Tags : having trouble blogging

It Might Be Time To Expand Your Target Market

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)
Monday, January 9th, 2012

Who Has Been Your Target Market?
Closing the deal.If you’ve been in business a number of years, it’s time to think about who you have considered to be your target market. This is actually not an easy question. If your business is in a service industry, construction company, or even if you’re a CPA, you may have considered your customers to be anyone who needed those services. That’s not the data I want you to consider.

When you look at your sales history, do you see a discernible pattern of those who buy from you? Within that group, take it one step further. Do you see a discernible pattern within those who buy your biggest ticket item? Who purchased more frequently? They may not be the same people.

Knowing what’s been going on will help you keep your finger on the pulse of your marketing. Each group should be handled differently, catered to based on their buying behavior. People like to be treated according to their preferences, and you can do a good job of courting them when you know what group they belong to. Then the questions become “How do you stay in touch with them?” and “How do you continue to sell to them?”

Meeting with new customer.Don’t Be Afraid To Enlarge Your Net
Based on your soul searching and research, you may realize there are others who might benefit from your products and services.

How does your company provide additional benefits to another group?

Targeting can be based on just about anything, providing a trend shows increased interest from another group with similar qualities. The list is endless.

It may be helpful to write down every single trait of your current customer, and then in another column, list the traits of the customer you believe you can serve. This will give you a good idea of how they may or may not connect, and how you might reach them by tweaking your sales message or even the time frames you try to engage with them through email or social media. Think about what they read or listen to.

Trade publications are not dead. Neither is radio. All TV advertising is not a waste of money. There are always loud voices saying ‘go this way, not that,’ but marketing is about understanding the target audience – and matching the media and the message to the market.

If you can accommodate another demographic, you should consider doing so. One sure way to unplug a dam is to route water another direction.

Are you wondering if targeting another customer base is a financially smart decision? Have you already decided you can reach more people through additional offers? What concerns you about casting a larger net? Tell us about it below.

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Categories : Local Marketing
Tags : target marketing

What’s Your Plan?

By Shari Voigt · Comments (0)
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Are you operating your business month-to-month, even year-to-year, without a plan?

We’re all so busy – too busy, if you ask me. When business is good, we’re so busy filling orders that there’s little time left for anything else. When business is not so good, there’s an urgency to do something, almost anything to bring in new customers. Sound familiar?

No feast or famine for Chippy!It doesn’t have to be feast or famine.

But you won’t fix the problem in 30-minute sound bites. You’re going to need to set aside some time to go deeper, to ask and answer some fundamental questions once again or for the first time, before creating a plan that will direct you through 2012 and beyond.

Questions like:

Why are you in business? For most of us, there’s a much bigger reason than just ‘making a living.’ In fact, if  ‘making a living’ is the only reason you’re in business, that’s mindset leads directly to poverty. So what’s your why?

What goals have you set for your business 10 years down the road? Five years? Three years? and for 2012?

Who is your ideal customer? Are you serving that market now? Why or why not?

  • What does your ideal customer want?
  • How are you serving your current customer base?
  • Are you even reaching your ideal customer base?
  • How can you do a better job of meeting their needs?
  • How can you improve what you offer them?

Do you have a marketing budget?
If you don’t, you’re not serious about growing your business. Effective marketing requires an investment of time, expertise, and money. Leave any one of those items out of the equation and it’s just not going to work. Far too many business owners try throwing money or time at their marketing, but you can spend an awful lot on marketing that takes you nowhere, or spend all your time going in the wrong direction.

Expertise without time or money is just as damaging. You have to be able to implement what you’ve learned, and that often requires additional expense. It can get real frustrating real fast trying to master intelligent marketing practices for your particular business.

Be honest – we’ve all been there.

You need to start somewhere. Setting up a budget will help you get started and show you where the holes are.

Buyer Beware
You’re no doubt getting several calls each week from companies offering to improve your website’s rank on Google. You’re hearing about getting your business on Facebook and Twitter, on television, in local directories, and from companies like Groupon and Living Social. You’re getting calls from big companies and from freelancers – offering everything from full-page phone book ads, websites, and videos to website optimization so your site shows up in local search. It may all sound pretty good. How do you know who to trust? How do you know which you need?

First, return to the basics – to those questions about your why, your goals, and your ideal customer.

Social media icons.Then you listen – to your market AND to those people offering to sell you services. Are they asking ANY of the right questions? If they’ve skipped right on over to how to get your site listed as #1 on Google, they’ve tipped their hand. After all, anybody can get a site listed #1 on Google for something!

Frankly, I’m tired of Internet marketers preying on small businesses. There is no one-size fits all solution – and (SURPRISE!) it’s not all about your website rank. It’s time to look at your business, your goals, and your marketing holistically. Now open a new Google doc or grab a pencil and paper, turn off the distractions, and let the 2012 planning begin in earnest.

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Categories : Business Solutions

Systemize Your Email Campaigns

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

Systems make everything you do work better. Automation helps you stay current with some  things while you work on others, so it’s a good idea to really think about all the ways you can make your day more efficient. When you systemize your email campaigns, you’ll begin to see a world of opportunity open up right before your eyes.

If you haven’t been using email to communicate with your customers, you may be a little overwhelmed by the whole thing. First there’s figuring out what to write, then there’s the CAN-SPAM compliance laws, and how do you even know if it actually helps your bottom line?

Here are some ideas that work for many businesses, and whether you currently use email marketing or not, these methods will help you sign, seal, and deliver your brand to a targeted consumer in smart, non-spammy ways – and keep it in front of them for the long run.

Topping the tree.Follow-up Post Sale
Businesses that follow up with their clients using a follow-up email, like a thank you or customer service survey, show their customers that they’re a priority. Not only does it put the ribbon on the deal, it also gives you an opportunity for feedback, turning a one-way communication into a dialog.

Make a habit of collecting email addresses along with phone numbers and street addresses, and develop a list of questions that will help you understand where your customer service could be improved. Then develop a follow-up email that you can customize to use with ease.

New Product or Service Introduction
When you have a change in product lines or services, share that information with your email list of happy customers. Invite them to review it, or ask questions to gauge their interest.

I suggest adding a link to an image you’ve uploaded to your website or wrote about in a blog. Images and video improve attention spans by 50%. If you send them to your blog, request comments or a Facebook ‘like.’

Holiday Messages
You don’t have to wait for the holiday biggees like Christmas or the Fourth of July. Holiday messages can go out about Veteran’s Day, Halloween, and Martin Luther King Day, too. Customize your approach by asking your readers how they recognize important dates.

These are just a few ways to be a part of an email conversation. We use AWeber for all of our email campaigns because we can choose templates that reflect our current emphasis. We can draw from statistical information, too, and learn who opened what and if they responded to a link.

Scheduling emails to go out when we choose gives us an opportunity to test time frames to see when most of our customers actually read our information.

Given the scope and reach of effective email marketing, this information is extremely valuable. Your odds of generating repeat sales from a targeted email list are greater than any social media emphasis that mainly encourages the sale of a discounted product or a give-away.

Even so, getting through an inbox can represent the biggest challenge. If you could use some help in that area, our Email Success Series was designed for you. Sign up to learn effective tips and strategies that you can begin to use right away to develop your own system. We offer this program free of charge with no strings attached because we believe in and support the economic recovery of American businesses. We know email marketing improves sales, and want you to benefit from these types of intelligent marketing practices.

Was this information helpful? Please leave me a comment and let me know, I love to hear from you. Don’t forget to sign up for our completely free tutorial – Email Success Series with Audio.

By the way, have you ‘Liked’ us on Facebook yet?

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Categories : Business Email Marketing
Tags : business email marketing

Good Decisions Grow Businesses

By Shari Voigt · Comments (0)
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

A little over a month ago, we made the smartest business decision of 2011. We outsourced our bookkeeping to a qualified small business accounting firm. I’ve long prided myself on handling the books internally, so this was a monumental change of operations.

I heart my job.I thought I was simplifying my month-to-month tasks and eliminating the dreaded end-of-year tax preparation burden, but have been humbled to learn that what I didn’t know could fill volumes. In fact, it’s felt a bit like drinking from a fire hose. The insight from a professional looking in from outside our business, even in these early stages, has made a dramatic impact on how we conduct business. Without a doubt, this will help us to be far more profitable in 2012. How exciting!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no slouch in the bookkeeping department. But it’s not my area of expertise, not something I’ve gone to school for, and studying tax law would bore me to tears. Outsourcing it makes total sense. It’s an investment that will save me money, and make it easier for me to focus on profit-producing tasks.

Are there tasks you should be outsourcing?

As small business owners, we’re probably all guilty of trying to do way too much on our own. We figure we’ll handle everything until we can afford to hire help or outsource. Many business owners also figure they’ll forego marketing until they can afford to spend the money on advertising. While I don’t advocate going into debt to build your business, if we wait until we can afford to do these things, it’s likely we’ll never do them – and we’ll miss out on the full potential our businesses offer.

Take website development, for example. Sure, you can buy $4.95/month hosting and set yourself up a simple website – using WordPress or one of the many site builders on the market. But do you know how to set your site up securely so that it won’t be hacked? (Hint: There’s more to doing it right than using the one-button installation within your hosting account.) And how long will it take you to get your site to look the way you want it to? Do you know how to set it up so that it’ll rank highly on the search engine results page? In short, is website development one of your core strengths?  If not, outsourcing your website development to a qualified professional will allow your business to put its best foot forward and allow you to focus on profit-producing tasks.

I encourage you to assess your skills and interests honestly, then find a way to outsource those items that fall outside of your core strengths.

Did you make an outsourcing decision that helped you grow in 2011? Tell us about it in the comments below.

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Categories : Outsourcing
Tags : business website hosting, WordPress websites

People Open Email on Smartphones, Are You Ready?

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)
Monday, December 12th, 2011

Email is the number one method of communicating with your customer base, with a reach that outweighs social media by a huge percentage worldwide. More and more, those messages are opened on smart phones, and that tiny screen changes the rules. Design, text and messages need to accommodate a busy person on the go viewing on a small screen – or you risk missing out on a large part of the population.

Christmas gift.Text should be larger for smart phone reading. Increase your font to at least 14 points for body text and 30 points for headlines. Avoid serif fonts for easier reading. Serif fonts have those little ends on the letters, to look nice in print. The problem is, they’re harder to read online. Make text easier to read on a smart phone by choosing a sans serif font.

Audio and video are easier to consume for most on the go. Consider offering those versions of your message at the opening of your email. Be sure the length is clearly visible so a subscriber can choose to listen or watch at home.

Keep your design neat and clean. Your text should be narrow to avoid having to scroll to the right and left as it’s read.

Use additional spacing for links. It’s harder to click on links that are too close together on a smart phone screen. Space them out for easy tapping.

Last but not least, don’t forget to test your email message across many different phones and readers. Smart phone technology isn’t going away, so learn to get the most out of this medium today. Sign up for my Email Success Series to learn more about techniques and strategies that will motivate your readers, and increase sales.

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Categories : Business Email Marketing
Tags : email on smart phones

Get Subscribers to Respond

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)
Monday, December 5th, 2011

Kids with presents.The most effective method of reaching your audience is through an email campaign. Learning how to be straight and to the point can be tricky for many business owners. The longer you’ve been in business, the harder it is to realize that your customers don’t think like you.

You own the business; they want or need the products and service you provide.

Two totally different mindsets.

One key component to message clarity when developing a campaign is to outline for yourself exactly what you want from your customer. You have to clearly know what you want to accomplish, and it has to be more specific than ‘sell more stuff.’ Email campaigns drive readers to your website, so your landing page has to reflect what your email encourages – in copy (text), design, and offer. And although you wouldn’t think it needs to be said, your call to action has to be very specific to get a response!

People follow links for:

  • An exclusive offer
  • A desire for comfort or luxury
  • To learn something they want to know
  • Humor
  • Free stuff

Your reader needs to be motivated to follow the links in your email campaign, and those items listed have been proven highly effective.

Consider what you already know about your readers, based on the data you have at your fingertips. You’re probably already accessing information that you can leverage for higher conversions, like which pages or posts received the most attention according to your Google Analytics or Get Clicky (recommended) account. Do your customers call you with certain questions over and over? Those answers are a good place to start!

Write your campaign in sequence. You’ve probably heard me talk about Google Docs before, I find it simple to use and easy to transfer completed messages into my email template. When I use Docs, I write several messages and separate them with a dashed line. I make sure my message is easily understood from one to the next. I constantly scour it to be certain the information has value, and to be certain my links work.

Have you signed up for my intense Email Success Series? It includes many details to help you develop your ideas from the very beginning to more advanced techniques.

I encourage you to sign up for this valuable resource: Email Marketing Success Series

Design your message around what motivates your reader. If you’re not sure, testing two different methods will help you understand. AWeber Email Services makes A/B testing simple, and if you analyze the statistics they make readily available, it becomes easy to know what your reader responds to.

We recommend AWeber Email Services to all of our clients, and use them ourselves. Here’s a link to sign up, if you haven’t already: AWeber Email Services

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Categories : Business Email Marketing
Tags : Email Success Series

Food For Thought

By Susan Hamilton · Comments (0)
Monday, November 14th, 2011

Handshake over new employment.Kids are hungry and we can do something about it. Go to FeedTheChildren.org and find out how to get involved in another child’s life. Many people are out of work, out of money, and hungry.

Zero To Sixty Marketing wants your business to grow so you can hire and get Americans back to work. Americans shouldn’t be going hungry; there’s something very wrong with that. We lend to nations, how can we continue if we let our own go hungry?

People give when they are able.
They’re able when they are working.
Let’s get America back to work.

Don’t be discouraged about the economy; do your part to change it. Start today.

We offer free resources, sound advice to get your business found online and making money. If you haven’t signed up to learn these strategies, don’t wait another minute. People need employment, and your growing business could be the answer.

Build a Better Website

List Yourself!

Email Success Series

And be sure you’re getting the Inside Line,

you can sign up for that right over there >>>>>>

What is your business doing to help your community? Leave us a comment and tell us about it.

Comments (0)
Categories : Local Marketing
Tags : American local business, FeedtheChildren.org, philanthropy
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