I’m sure you’ve heard of press releases, and perhaps even have some experience with sending them out for your local business.  Did you know that there are also press releases that can be distributed online?

Traditionally, sending out a press release meant that there would be a great amount of work involved.  You would need to print several copies, and spend several hours mailing and faxing the information out to the various press release centers (if you even knew what they were!).  Fortunately, online press releases have simplified this quite a bit:

Press play below to watch the lesson:

*If you would like our 14 part Video e-course with the rest of the series, just click the “Home” tab above and request it for free.

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Twitter is the new buzzword.  It seems one cannot turn on the news without it being mentioned.  Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service which allows its users to communicate with each other through short messages known as “tweets”.  Though Twitter is not as popular as Facebook, it continues to grow very rapidly.

Press play below for today’s video lesson

*If you would like our 14 part Video e-course with the rest of the series, just click the “Home” tab above and request it for free.

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There has been a lot of talk about Facebook in the media recently.  Facebook is a global social networking website and is one of the most popular places on the net, with over 300 million users.  Many people use Facebook as a way to connect with old friends but it has also become a major part of many businesses as they use it to promote and share information.

Press play to learn more

*If you would like our 14 part Video e-course with the rest of the series, just click the “Home” tab above and request it for free.

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Recently I talked about the importance of being listed in the Google Local Business Directory.  I’d like to share a few additional directories with you that I think are also very important to be listed in.  Please note, you don’t need to be in every single directory that exists, but there are a few that carry quite a bit of weight.

Press play below to watch:

*If you would like our 14 part Video e-course with the rest of the series, just click the “Home” tab above and request it for free.

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There is a resource out there that is incredibly powerful, and if your business isn’t benefiting from it, you are missing out on a HUGE opportunity.  I am talking about the Google Local Business Directory.

Google’s local business directory is simply a directory that contains information on local businesses.  When someone searches for “their town restaurant”, a listing of relevant restaurants in their area appears before them.

Here’s the catch though, press play below

*If you would like our 14 part Video e-course with the rest of the series, just click the “Home” tab above and request it for free.

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One of the most common questions I get in my line of work is “what is seo, and how can it help my business?”.  Search engine optimization, or SEO as it is commonly called, is the process of “optimizing” your website for the search engines.  In other words, it is the process of preparing your website so the search engines rank it well in the search results.

Click play below to watch today’s video

*If you would like our 14 part Video e-course with the rest of the series, just click the “Home” tab above and request it for free.

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Google is currently the top search engine online.  When people want to find something online, a majority of them use Google.

Did you know that Google actually keeps track of what people search for?

This gives us a HUGE advantage.

Click play below to find out how to use it for free!

*If you would like our 14 part Video e-course with the rest of the series, just click the “Home” tab above and request it for free.

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The times are changing drastically on how people find things.  Phonebooks will soon be a thing of the past as people are turning to the internet to find information on local businesses in their area.

I’d like to share an example with you, click play below

*If you would like our 14 part Video e-course with the rest of the series, just click the ”Home” tab above and request it for free.

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Conversational hypnosis or NLP Hypnosis has one of those eery rings to it. The term sounds like you’ll be putting someone under your spell. This isn’t exactly the case. Conversational hypnosis in its basic form is telling stories. Now there are more advanced methods, far too many to go into in this post. The point is, to have you prospect buy something from you, they have to imagine owning it already. The best way to do this is to tell a story.

The last time you read a good book, was it the words on the pages that engrossed you? Of course not. It was the images and feelings the book evoked within your mind. Even though you knew that what you were reading was not necessarily fact, the critical factor of the mind shuts down so you can experience the story. The human mind thinks in pictures, sounds, and feelings. When you read a good story, in your mind, you are actually living what you are reading. You experience in the first person all that is going on with the various characters of the book.

Remember the last time you went to the movies. I bet something happened in the movie that was absolutely not realistic. Yet still you played along and enjoyed the movie. Am I right? Well somebody out there, and you know who you are, the guy or gal who counts the number of shots being fired out of each type of gun. The wannabe physics expert who likes to tell you how that move somebody did just broke all the laws of Newtonian physics. Well these people, thankfully, are in the minority.

For sake of brevity, let me give you one other conversational hypnosis or NLP hypnosis technique. This is known as the command tonality. Now most people are aware that when a person raises their tonality (makes their voice higher) at the end of a sentence it makes it sound like a question. If you haven’t noticed this just pay attention to people speaking and you’ll notice it immediately. Conversely if a person lowers his or her tonality (makes their voice lower) at the end of a sentence this is a command. Just imagine your mom saying, “Go do the dishes, RIGHT NOW,” with a downturn of her voice on the “RIGHT NOW.”

What do you think happens when you ask a question, but don’t use the question tonality? Instead you happen to use the command tonality at the end of the question. That is where the magic occurs. Give it a try the next time you are closing a sale.

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Click below to listen to this 50 minute Podcast I conducted about a month ago on:

7 Devastating Mistakes You Cannot Afford to Make in Today’s Economic Crisis.How to Use New Marketing Strategies to Not Only Survive…But THRIVE in This New Economy! 

With both statistics and marketing data, Mike will not only expose the problem, but also the solution with specific strategies to dramatically increase your chances of getting more business from your current customers as well as from new prospects!

Learn action items unknown to 80-90% of all small business owners do not know! 

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Outsource your marketing to a “Virtual Marketing Department” and set your mind at ease

Outsourcing has always had the good and the bad associated to it, but the success of outsourcing all over the developed world has proven beyond doubt, that the volume of the pros associated with outsourcing overpower the cons to a great extent. Latest in the field of outsourcing is the concept of “virtual marketing departments”.

Wondering what these are? Well, just like any other outsourcing job, virtual marketing departments take care of all your marketing needs and strive to make your startup/established business a success in the online world. Right from branding to developing market strategies and getting leads and tackling the media etc., these departments know all the tricks of the trade and the best part is that they help you save a lot of time that you otherwise would have wasted on doing each of these things on your own.

You might put a question to me at this juncture- why outsource when I can hire people and see them formulate plans in front of my eyes? Well, I understand your apprehensions about outsourcing your marketing job to a third party virtual department, but in doing so, you are entitling yourself to a hoard of benefits. First up, you don’t pay these virtual departments on an on-going basis. Rather, you pay them only for the work they do. On the other hand, if you had a dedicated marketing system set up for your company, you would have had to pay them a fixed salary and compensation packages, irrespective of the kind of work they are doing. In outsourcing, therefore, you tend to save at least two quarters worth of money that you would have paid your local marketing department.

Besides, you would also have incurred the cost of setting up the office, telephone connections, travel alternatives etc. for your dedicated marketing department, while this is not the case with virtual marketing departments. Virtual departments have their own infrastructure set up and all you have to do is pay them and put your idea across, without worrying about anything else. So, what are you waiting for? Just outsource your work to a virtual marketing department and give yourself complete peace of mind. Contact us today to get this started for your business!

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When the Internet started out in’97, it was naturally vulnerable to abuse. Those who created it had yet to perfect it while dealing with the unknown. Nobody exactly knew how such technology would make it outside where people would be using it. When search engine optimization and its benefits first came to public knowledge, it was automatically explored and practiced by businessmen who believed it was the solution to their classic problem of poor Internet visibility which automatically translated to poor sales.

Of course, the Internet itself was technology and its advantages had to be exhausted if it were to serve man significantly. Since the only way to improve site performance was to make it turn up on results pages, seo experts toyed with all sorts of ideas on how to beat these engines’ algorithms and actually have their sites landing where they wanted them – at the top of a search engine ranking page or SERP. This became a fight among programmers who were commissioned by site owners to crack the formulas that the engines used in indexing pages. By this time, spammers were born.

Search engines used so called “spiders” to pick up information for each web page on the Internet so it would know which sites to display on its search results. When an search engine optimization submission expert knew exactly what keywords to use in his meta tags, he site had a great chance of getting a good ranking.

On the other hand, as the Internet had yet to be perfected back then, spammers bombarded their content with all of these keywords even if they started to diminish the quality of their sites. In other words, search engine optimization then was simply about overstuffing your information with search spider-friendly words and working HTML magic to be able to beat the engines and competing sites.

Today, old-school seo just wouldn’t work because search engines have become smarter and better at spotting black hats. In fact, when content is detected to have a higher keyword density than allowed, the site is simply skipped by the spiders, hence, burying the site down into the deepest pits of search engine results. In worst cases, it is simply barred.

Nowadays, some web programmers still attempt to crack the search engines’ algorithms in indexing pages but none has, so far, succeeded. In fact, a more holistic approach is now being used for evaluating sites with deeper aspects of seo marketing such as competitive analysis, copywriting and copyediting being factors in a site’s possibility of getting good Internet visibility.

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We all have different motivations for doing things. Sometimes we’re motivated by something we’re moving toward and other times by something we’re moving away from.

One person might start a business because they hate their job and don’t want the restrictions imposed upon them by a boss. Another starts a business because they’re driven to produce something.

We all start our businesses in many different ways and for many different reasons. I don’t think many people start a business to RUN a business. They embark upon their career in commerce because they want to produce a product or a service. The business is a means to an end.

Most entrepreneurs are self-employed but don’t actually own a business. In fact, the business they have often owns them. And if something catastrophic should happen to them, the business would cease to exist.

A real business is one that isn’t dependent upon the owner being there. It has staying power and can support the employees, customers and other stakeholders without the owner’s presence. It is a living, breathing entity.

Regardless of whether you’re self-employed, just starting into business or running a 100-person, 15-year-old company, it pays to examine what, why and how you operate your enterprise.

But why even HAVE a world class business? My answer is a question: Why NOT?

If you’re going to invest 10, 20 or even 40 years of your life building something, why not create something exceptional? Why not create a company that can outlast you? Something you can sell, something you can pass on to your children-or your employees?

Did you really begin your business or your career to be average? Average is the best of the worst and the worst of the best. Working at something that’s average isn’t very inspiring. Doing something extraordinary, on the other hand, IS inspiring-not only to ourselves, but to others.

I don’t love every aspect of business, but I do enjoy it. I love the challenge. I love innovating. I love constantly working to improve our systems, service and the value we deliver. Doing the same things in the same way is incredibly boring to me. And I think it is to most people.

Building a world class business is one of those things that’s never complete. There are always more ways to be MORE world class. Creating and building a world class business is challenging, exciting and fun. It’s something you can be very proud of. It’s a bigger game. It’s a game worth playing.

Building a world class company enables you to attract and keep better people. It gets the attention of the media and your prospects. People want to do business with a world class company.

Those who are called to this great challenge will not only create better businesses, they will grow personally in ways they never would have otherwise. They will do uncommon things in uncommon ways. They will live a better life and will create better lives for others. They will make a real difference-in their communities, in their nation and in the world.

I challenge you to commit to creating an exceptional company-a world class company. I challenge you to push through perceived limitations. I challenge you to re-think, re-evaluate and re-invent your business model on an ongoing basis.

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Federal grants for small business are all the buzz with websites and television ads that use hype to try to sell some magic formula for getting one of these grants.The problem is that these grants are not a government grant.

Now this does not mean that grants for small business do not exist, it just means that there are no federal grants for small business at this time.There are other ways for a small business owner to get grants to grow their business.  Many states offer grants, low interest loans, and other types of financial aid to entrepreneurs in need of funding.

If you own a small business and need capital to grow, or are just dreaming of owning your own business one day, there may be hope for you.Although there are not any federal grants for small businesses, your business could still qualify for grants form non-profit organizations or perhaps your local state government.Grants are normally provided for a specific purpose, so if you do not find a grant that you are qualified for at first keep trying.You can never tell when a grant will come up that you are a perfect candidate for.

A great place to start looking for small business grants is the Small Business Administration.These sites will tell you that there are no government grants for small businesses, but they will provide you with information on how to find funding for your venture.  There are usually grants available for women business owners and minority business owners, so if you fall into one of these categories, be sure to let someone know.  There may be a grant available to you that would not have been otherwise. If there are no small business grants available at the time of your search, the SBA may be able to help you obtain a low interest small business loan.

If you do find a grant that you think you may be eligible for, be sure to give yourself plenty of time to fill out the application correctly.  Most grant boards will disqualify an application if it is not filled out fully or if there is something missing that was requested in the grant.  Grant applications are not easy to complete.  Even though the grant applications are not for federal grants for small business, they are still official documents that need to be treated as such.One old saying that is true here is that “nothing comes without a price”.It may not require money to obtain a grant it will cost you time if you want a chance of being awarded a grant.

Again, at this time, there are no federal grants for small business.  That does not mean that all is lost however.Contacting your local SBA and doing some research could produce some great results for your efforts.

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The beauty of using written articles to market your small business is that you do not need any experience, this is one line of work you can perform and learn as you go. With that being said, there are distinct abilities you will wish to acquire rapidly to help make your site prosperous. It is unrealistic to believe that you can pull in money and not know anything or learn anything as you go.

One skill you need to acquire is the ability of picking the right written articles that will help make your websites and business a success. There are many types of written content, from free written content to high dollar content, and each comes with its own advantages, and disadvantages (although expensive content is more probably going to give you a successful site in the end).

The next skill that you need to learn is how to pick the right keywords so that you can take hold of visitors and increase your rankings so that you are on the 1st or 2nd page in the searches. If you want to make it to the first 2 pages you have to know that picking the highly competitive keywords the big wigs are employing is not going to assist you.

Thirdly, you will have to know how to optimize your sites for various search engines. Search engine optimization skills will permit you to get high ratings for your selected niche keywords, which will help to get visitors and pull in profit.

You are going to have to know how to market your Internet site through advertisements and text links if you are going to build a large website that will be the center of your business. Some people choose to generate smaller 2 to 5 page niche websites specializing on specific points in their business and if that is the situation, you will not want to promote all of your websites this way as you will use up all of your marketing finances.

Here’s an example of article marketing resource Experience for article marketing If you can capture some of these abilities and attack them aggressively during your initial few small web sites or the first few months of a larger site, then you will finally become adept. Being that you are going to be confident to learn these skills on your own with hands on experience, the only requirement you are going to have to fill is to read up on how to get up and running. Although you would be wise to maybe obtain an Internet marketing e-book or two and make sure that you have the funds available to begin a small website.

The point is that writing short 1-page articles that educate your customers and prospects and posting them on your website or blog is a very helpful way to get business because you are teaching not selling. These articles must be educational not sales-oriented! Then if you submit them to about 10-20 top article directories with the proper keywors with backlinks to your website and blog and online videos, then you will see more visitors to your website.

* I have a special program that I offer my clients that completely implements these techniques including:

• Keyword Analysis
• SEO Analysis
• Writing the article for you
• Submitting it to the directories
• Writing a Press Release For you
• Submitting the press release
• Creating a video commercial for you
• Submitting it to the online directories
• Setting up and managing yout Twitter account
• Setting up keyword-specific backlinks for you
• Social Bookmarking for your site

*If this package interests you please email me at Mike @ MarketingHuddle .com

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With scarcity of funds, smaller companies are having a harder time than ever before in these bad months of economic recession. It has become imperative for them to make intelligent use of their diminishing resources so that they can reap maximum benefit out of a small investment. Adopting marketing options that are affordable and yet competitive is a good solution for such businesses, and herein lies the importance of flyer printing.

It would surely be giving you sleepless nights if you have to pump in your hard-earned earnings on costly marketing plans, when all you want to promote is a small business like a restaurant or a garment store. Big and expensive marketing campaigns are generally not suitable for smaller businesses.

Flyer printing is not only less expensive compared to other forms of advertising but also is highly effective in raising public awareness and good opinion about your business. It is one of the best ways of promoting your products or services, and of creating a recall in the mind of the customers.

Before you print flyers, you must give wise thought to several aspects. Very thin paper or one that is too thick should be avoided. The final design of the flyer and its contents, must be carefully studied to avoid even the least of errors. Your organization loses impression of reliability if your flyer displays glaring mistakes in spellings, grammar or the message. Colour selection is also a critical area, as it ensures that the flyer is neither too dull nor too bright. The flyer should only use pictures that complement the theme and have a high enough resolution for fine printing.

What can you do with these flyers? Put them in every bag with your customer’s purchases advertising your upcoming specials. Keep them with you at all times and put them up on community bulletin boards etc.

It is imperative for small businesses to check out the option of flyer printing. It is a smart marketing strategy. It will save you money and effort, which you can channelize in running your company more effectively.

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In the current environment of tight credit, even successful small businesses are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to get a bank loan. CIT’s recent bankruptcy filing only spells more trouble for companies looking for financing—and underscores the need to look for alternative sources of capital. Here are six possibilities to consider:

Peer-to-peer lending. Online sites such as Prosper.com and LendingClub.com match small business owners seeking money with potential lenders. In general, businesses will post a profile with background information and what they need the money for. Potential lenders then scour the profiles for possible investments. And the site handles such back-end functions as disbursement and recordkeeping, charging a percentage of the loan or a flat fee.

In 2008, several sites shut down while they waited for permission from the Securities and Exchange Commission to register their loans as securities. Now, most have received approval and opened for business again. As a result,  the industry could grow from about $500 million in annual loans to more than $100 billion in 2012, according to Forrester Research, a market research firm in Cambridge, Mass.

Micro-lending. These mostly non-profit organizations provide loans of up to $150,000 to small businesses. Generally, the groups are community development corporations, which are partially sponsored by the Small Business Administration. Probably the best known is ACCION, but there are many others across the U.S.

The good part is their flexibility. Micro-lenders usually look for a good credit score, industry experience and collateral. But, “that can even be a television or a car,” says Jim Olp, senior business consultant at the Denver Metro Small Business Development Center. “They’ve been the major source of all the loans we’ve gotten for our clients this year.”

Factoring. Otherwise known as receivables financing, a factor advances businesses 70% to 90% of the value of their receivables and then assumes responsibility for collecting the money. While CIT has been a big player in this arena, there are others, like Wells Fargo, that also do factoring. (For more about factoring, check out Anita Campbell’s story here).

But there are definite plusses and minuses to this approach. For example, factors get a fee and it can be steep, anywhere from 3% to 15% of the invoice. And, if the customer doesn’t pay, “The small business eats it,” says Olp. On the other hand, you  can often get your money in just 24 to 48 hours.

Take Yesenia Loya. Earlier this year, Loya, vice president and co-founder of  Loya Construction, a 10-employee, Denver-based construction company, was turned down by four banks for a loan. So, she found a factoring company that paid her $20,0000  for a 3% fee; she got it in about two days. She’s using the money for payroll and operations.

 Purchase order/merchant cash advance financing. With this tack, companies advance cash before a sale has happened, generally for a signed purchase order for goods or services. Or they provide cash upfront in exchange for collecting part of a merchant’s future credit-card receivables.

As with factoring, “The financing depends on the customer’s, not the small business owner’s. credit, so your credit rating doesn’t matter,” says Olp. But, also like factoring, cash-advance companies  get a steep percentage of the purchase order.

Credit and charge cards. They’re the first source of funding for many small businesses. It’s an easy way to fund operations, of course, as long as you pay off the balance in 30 days. While many companies have been tightening the amount of credit they allow, successful businesses can still negotiate expanded lines, according to Ken Gaebler. A small-business consultant in Chicago, he also runs Walter Sands, a 15-employee marketing company. Recently, Gaebler was able to extend his line of credit to $30,000 from $20,000. “It took about two seconds,” he says.

In addition, Gaebler notes other benefits, as well. For example, most credit card companies give business owners checks that can be used as cash equivalents, so long as they don’t go over their credit limit. “If, for example, you’re short on cash, you can write one of these checks out to your business and make your payroll,” says Gaebler.  And some charge cards, like the American Express Plum, will let you defer payment for limited periods of time.

Supplier credit.  This involves negotiates payment terms that, in effect, provide you with more money. An approach long used by small businesses, it’s on the increase, according to Joe Abraham, a small-business consultant in Hoffman Estates, Ill., who says he’s seen a significant increase in activity among his clients since about March.

Abraham points to a 21-employee nutritional supplements company in Houston that recently asked a supplier to renegotiate their 90-day payment terms. The supplier agreed to what amounted to a $1 million line of credit to buy any product needed, with a  minimum monthly payment for 48 months.

But be forewarned: To negotiate such terms, you usually need  long-standing relationships with a supplier. “Trust is critical,” says Abraham.

provided by: Anne Field

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Search Engine Optimization has brought forth many new concepts to online marketing. Since people are getting more and more familiar with the search engines to find suitable services in the Internet, the website owners are giving more and more importance to promote their ranking in the search list.

This type of SEO can be extremely effective when a website is concentrating on a specific geographical locale. Localized search engine optimization focuses on the long tail keyword phrase, which attracts actual customers who are ready to buy your goods or services.

Lets take a look how you can improve your SEO by localizing your efforts. The first thing you want to do is add location into the keyword phrase that you are targeting. That would be an example of a long tail keyword. By doing this you may decrease your traffic, but you will increase your buyers. To give an example, keyword like *Pizza Wood bridge New Jersey* is a localized keyword, while the *Pizza* is a generic one.

Localizing your SEO will target a specific kind of user. Not all businesses will benefit from this type of strategy. This type of marketing will not work for you if you are trying to target people all over the world.

This type of marketing is essential these days to small businesses located in a specific location and rely on local customers. Small local businesses will not benefit by targeting broad match keywords over the entire world. First, you must decide if local search engine optimization is the right choice for you or not.

Search engines are now focusing many of their resources on helping local businesses with local SEO; in turn its popularity is rapidly increasing. Now search engines are even using your IP address to filter your results when searching online.

If you want to expand your local consumer base then localized SEO is the solution you are looking for. That’s the main reason that localizing your search engine optimization efforts is so important to any business that relies on its local community for a customer base.

The main reason local SEO is becoming such a big deal is because of the recent changes in search engine behavior. People are now taking the help of the Internet to find out services in the locality.

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Think of your brain as one of the most powerful muscles you have, because in a way it is.  It may be an organ however, without it, where would one be.  People spend tons of money yearly to workout in gyms, go to spas for relaxing massages, and do everything in their power to stay physically appearing young, however they fail to take the same care and consideration to the most powerful part of their body, their brain.  Without exercising your brain, you will lose its powerful functioning that was the reason behind your success to maintain the job that enabled you to hit the gyms, spas, and other forms of treatments to stay looking young.  That is your first tip in improving your memory, work the brain, or lose it.  

You can exercise your brain by stimulating it to new information, hobbies, and knowledge.  Other ways you can exercise your brain is by moving away from mindless television and picking up a book, playing board games, memory games, doing crossword puzzles and other types of puzzles that force you to think.  Break away from normal routines that become monotonous.  How many times have you felt your car could drive you home from work because you have never strayed from a beaten path?It is the same way with your brain; if you do not give it new surroundings from time to time, it becomes stagnant or stale.  Do anything you can do to throw a little spice up into your brains life.  

That is just one tip that will help improve your memory, recall ability, and knowledge base.  Here are some other essential tips to help one improve their memory.

•    Pay close attention to details in print or when someone is speaking to you.  Many times we assume we know were the conversation is leading so we tone out parts if not the majority of it.  Learn to focus closer on conversations and details even if you do not think they are pertinent.  It takes eight seconds for your brain to process a piece of information.  Practicing focusing even with the most boring conversation will help you drastically in improve your memory and recall skills.  
•    Know your learning style and try to intake new information in that style.  It will help your brain process the information quicker and even help cut down on study time.  
•    Use as many styles of learning that are best suited for you.  Try to utilize as many senses in your learning styles as possible.The more style utilized the more your brain will absorb as well as you can give your brain an excellent workout.  
•    Associate new information to information you have already learned previously or have stored.  This will help immensely with recall.  
•    When taking in new complex material, learn to repeat it back aloud in your own words then write the information in your own words.  
•    Remember the days of spelling words and writing them repeatedly to memorize them.  It worked then and it will work still at the age of 30, 40, and 50 and up.  
•    Remind yourself frequently that you want to improve your memory.  This alone will help improve your memory up to 30% if done actively.

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Sometimes the best marketing is showing grattitude!

How To Choose The Perfect Corporate Gifts For Your Customers

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Here’s a question you may want to ask yourself regularly:

What am I doing with my 24 hours?

In other words, every day, what do you have to show for burning
through another 24 hours of your life?

If the answer is, ‘next to nothing’, or ‘not nearly as much as I
would like’, then I’m happy to tell you that you can change that
right now, and in moment, in this post, I’m going to give you a
simple system for doing it.

If you’re ready to put more life and more action into your day,
then get a pen and paper and write down this simple system.

It consists of 3 basic steps. Here they are:

1. Write down all the tasks you want to get done today

2. Assign a specific block of time for completing each task
   (like 30 minutes)

3. Select a task, start a timer, and focus on nothing else until
   that task is complete!

That’s all there is to it.

Simple, yes! Incredibly effective, YES!

By itself, this system can put your productivity into high-gear -
IF you use it.

The challenge for most of us is that in a day and age of
technology and automation, writing things down on paper and
using something like an egg-timer feels a bit clunky and
inefficient.

But I’ve recently discovered an incredible piece of software
that not only automates this system in a very unique way, but
includes some tools such as simple reports (so you know WHERE
you spend your time), as well as a very slick and intuitive
interface.

I highly recommend you watch the demo presentation which shows the
software in action, by clicking this link:

 http://tinyurl.com/ActionProSoftware

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Mobile computer use is on the rise, in 2017 they’ll suck down 1.3 billion Gigabytes of video per month. Your videos should be included in that and if you start Marketing with YouTube now, you will be. Here are some quick ways to make your YouTube videos excellent marketing tools for your company, service, product and brand.

Why YouTube? With over 110 million unique visitors a month who watch, on average, 65 videos per month, why would you want to be excluded from that? There are loads of opportunities available to market your product or service and expand brand awareness. Of course you’ve got to start somewhere so create an account, setup a channel and get it looking how you want it to look.

YouTube has a search algorithm that includes the optimization of the following: Title, Description, tags, Number of views and Rating. When you are first creating and uploading you only have control over the first three. The last two come later but you can help yourself in this regard. Make sure that the content is interesting and that it makes people want to interact and respond. If your creative quality is low and your content either uninteresting or uninformative, you simply won’t get the views and ratings you need to make your YouTube Marketing campaign successful. The best idea for content? A How-To video. They generally get loads of views and if you can tie your brand into it then you’re on the road to marketing success.

You not only need interesting content, you need to optimize for the search engines. Since YouTube processes over 3.5 billion searches a month it’s the 2nd largest search in the world. Optimization means having a very good, concise title, highly relevant tags (keywords), and a great description. In regards o the description, it’s always good to include a clickable link in the first 27 characters. Why 27? Well that’s the length of descriptions prior to ellipsis (the three dots you click to read more). Use a major keyword or tag as the clickable link as well and it will save space and be useful.

Branding via URLs and phone numbers in your video is also a good idea. Also have a call-to-action which will lead people to your site and services in the video. Make sure you get the branding or call-to-action in the thumbnail as well. When you have your videos available, dropping links on popular videos helps, but be careful, don’t make them look like spam. If your product or brand ties into other popular videos in some way, make spin-off videos. That will get you listed in related videos and more visibility. You can check out even more YouTube Marketing tips at ReelSEO.com.

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It’s been 2 years in the making and it’s now done! I just received my final grade in my Capstone class for my MBA in Marketing from Regis University!

It was 12 classes and I took the Marketing concentration and I’m very happy to announce that I received 11 A’s and 1 B….the B was in Financial Decision Making which was the most boring and difficult class I could imagine because it was all financial spreadsheets and how to interpret them!

But at the age of 41 to pull off a 3.8 GPA is awesome considering a full-time job and Wife and 4 kiddos!

So now I am taking one last class as an Independent Study in Internet Marketing so that I have 18 hours in Marketing at the Graduate level. This is because many Universities require their Adjunct Professors to have this to be able to teach Marketing at the College level. My goal is to teach online at a few Universities in Business and Marketing as I thoroughly enjoyed the online learning environment and see this is the most reliable way for a College to grow in the future.

If there’s any Marketing Related issues or questions that I can ever help you with I’ll be happy to help!

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When you hear the term “internet marketing”, what do you think of?

For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.

At its core, internet marketing is about these things:

* Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
* Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
* Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
* Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
* Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads

Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.

My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.

My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well. Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine: It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our list. When you have thousands of loyal subscribers – as we do – and you put a strong and compatible offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.

However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers. If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.

Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular and frequent basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously, and as a result your emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is really an exercise in trust.

While there are many more aspects to internet marketing than just permission-based email marketing, email has definitely been the cornerstone on which our business is built. Here is the bottom line: Always, Always, Always….give massive value to your readers! Help to educate them with issues they have and sometimes (NOT in every email) provide your services as the solution.

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Outsourcing has always had the good and the bad associated to it, but the success of outsourcing all over the developed world has proven beyond doubt, that the volume of the pros associated with outsourcing overpower the cons to a great extent. Latest in the field of outsourcing is the concept of “virtual marketing departments”.
Wondering what these are? Well, just like any other outsourcing job, virtual marketing departments take care of all your marketing needs and strive to make your startup/established business a success in the online world. Right from branding to developing market strategies and getting leads and tackling the media etc., these departments know all the tricks of the trade and the best part is that they help you save a lot of time that you otherwise would have wasted on doing each of these things on your own.
You might put a question to me at this juncture- why outsource when I can hire people and see them formulate plans in front of my eyes? Well, I understand your apprehensions about outsourcing your marketing job to a third party virtual department, but in doing so, you are entitling yourself to a hoard of benefits. First up, you don’t pay these virtual departments on an on-going basis. Rather, you pay them only for the work they do. On the other hand, if you had a dedicated marketing system set up for your company, you would have had to pay them a fixed salary and compensation packages, irrespective of the kind of work they are doing. In outsourcing, therefore, you tend to save at least two quarters worth of money that you would have paid your local marketing department.
Besides, you would also have incurred the cost of setting up the office, telephone connections, travel alternatives etc. for your dedicated marketing department, while this is not the case with virtual marketing departments. Virtual departments have their own infrastructure set up and all you have to do is pay them and put your idea across, without worrying about anything else. So, what are you waiting for? Just outsource your work to a virtual marketing department and give yourself complete peace of mind. Contact us today to get this started for your business!

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Having access to powerful internet marketing tools is elementary if you want to succeed in your online ventures. Latest in the range of internet marketing tools are automated marketing tools, installing which, you can get your message flashing in front of your prospect until they finally decide to buy the product in perspective.
In essence, the idea behind employing such marketing tools is to bolster your marketing work improve the sales without spending additional effort on re-doing things that you would already have done. Having access to a good marketing center is also helpful as these marketing centers are your gateways to effective and powerful automated marketing tools.
The whole idea of minting money in the autopilot mode has caught up with a lot of seasoned and new internet marketers alike, and is likely to stay for the days to come. Some automated marketing tools are more effective under some circumstances than others, and it is you who has to decide which tools to opt for, depending upon the kind of work you want them to perform. Whatever you do, be rest assured that after installing them and making the initial settings, they will work on their own, without conflict!
Now, to show you the power of automated marketing tools, we pick up one internet marketing vertical and explore some tools that have personally worked wonders for me. Let’s talk about link building, basically this is what it means: Google looks at a website, and when it sees a blue link going somewhere they count it as a “vote”.  For example, let’s say one of your vendors has a section of their website that has “Recommended Resources” and list your company there with a link to your website….this is a vote and Google will rank you higher in the search engines based on the amount of these links you have!
First and foremost, article marketing is one of the easiest ways to go about link building on autopilot. You can outsource your writing jobs to professional writers and submit those articles at various internet marketing directories. These articles stay there forever and the link to your site is also shown in your signature box. This means, that if your articles are good, then you have chances of people building links with you, virtually for the rest of your life. Once written, you can use a single article and submit it to hundreds of directories and get traffic for life, on autopilot. Apart from article marketing, one way link builders, reciprocal link builders, diggs and blogs are some other ways of generating leads for the rest of your life. These were just some of the marketing tools that you can use, research more to figure out more ways of milking the cash cows- on autopilot.

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Being referred by some as the “newest marketing revolution”, video marketing is definitely gaining a lot of popular audience. So what is it that sets video marketing apart from other marketing paradigms? What are the main benefits of using video marketing over other conventional and well known ways of marketing? In this write up, we try and explore the answers to these commonly asked questions and try to evaluate and analyze the essence of video marketing in general.
First and foremost, video marketing is one of the most interactive ways of interfacing with your prospect. The whole feeling of watching someone live and talking gives the clients a more reassuring effect and thus, it bolsters your brand image in the minds of the client. As the common phrase goes, people these days tend to believe what they see and video marketing therefore, happens to be one of the best mediums to stamp your point across to your prospects with authority. The simplest way to picture this concept is by putting yourself in their shoes. Imagine you are reading about a product, lets assume that product is a used car. Now, if the same car is being listed by another dealer, who is willing to send you a video of the vehicle, it is eminent that you would favor buying the vehicle from the dealer who is willing to share some videos, photographs and other media with you. This is as simple as saying, you just don’t trust anyone owning a blog and claiming to sell a product, claiming to be effective, until and unless you see the product and its claims right in front of your eyes.
Another reason as to why video marketing has gained considerable popularity amongst marketers is because it gives the marketers more space to test their creative juices. What I mean by saying that is, that it is not possible for all marketers to pen their thoughts down and some campaigns do require video marketing. Therefore, those marketers who find it difficult to jot their ideas across on a text pad and paste it on their websites, find it easier and better to use video marketing to put their points across to their prospects in a cleaner, more interactive and youthful way.
Besides, thinking from a prospects point of view, which medium would you like   to be detailed through? Interactive, moving pictures depicting a story, or boring mundane lumps of text written in stereotypical language, describing a product that is not actually present there for you to review? Think about it, I am sure you would be prompted to move onto video marketing to strike that special chord with your clients.

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As a Small Business Owner looking for the best Marketing Tips sometimes it’s best to have someone on the “Outside” look “Inside”…sometimes what is right under your nose that you cannot see or notice….is very plain to the trained eye on the outside.

As a Denver Marketing Consultant, I can be that “trained eye” for you!

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The current recession is causing a definite shift in consumer behavior. During the boom years of the past decade, we saw a huge number of small startup businesses trying to compete with the big boys. Many of these websites have gone local to global in a very short space of time, thanks to their prices. Before the recession web users searched out the best price for the products they wanted, now they look for the best brands that will still be there when they need them if something goes wrong. But business are losing the battle against the recession every day, many of them most likely leaving customer orders unfulfilled, thus consumer confidence is at an all time low. What does this mean? well it means that all of those bargain hunters are returning to the big brands that they recognize, even if that means spending more money, because they don’t want to take the risk.

With the recession causing people to lose their jobs, some have looked to the internet as a portal for their salvation, but starting their own business.

I think that underestimating your companies branding is as detrimental as not having a website at all. You brand and logo are the first things that your future customers see. This is your window to the word, it says everything about you and what you stand for in the blink of an eye, it needs to be right. But it’s so often the case that startup owners put off paying professional logo design in the initial stages. They think “wait till I get a few more customers, then I can afford it”. So what they do is, try to knock one together in paint or get a mate down the pub to create one. Lots of companies merely go for free options such as clipart and templated designs that look cheap and unremarkable.

This is a big no-no. You need to look like a professional organization that’s in it for the long haul.  In these anxious times the image of stability and reliability is more crucial than ever. You also want to avoid looking like a very small business, even if you are one. So, these days online customers are looking back to the bigger brands or at least who they deem to be the big brands. So basically, these days users care more about who a brand is and less about what they are, a good brand is much more likely to be recommended to friends than one that consumers are less sure about.

The fact of he matter is. Bankruptcy will hit around half small business very early on in their life, usually within two to three years. Badly planned marketing strategies are thought to be the main cause of most websites decline. A custom logo design helps you create the right image for this marketing to succeed. So do yourself a favour – start looking at some sample logos in your industry and see what the successful ones have in common.Find yourself a professional designer who can carve out a unique identity for your brand and ensure its success in such a stormy climate.

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With the worldwide economic crisis we are facing right now, business has become more difficult to control. Every enterprise has their ups and downs. It is difficult to keep a steady flow of one’s company when things are getting unsure. Business either succeeds or fails. In times of difficulty in a business, it is difficult to keep up and still be optimistic of what tomorrow will bring. Running a business is quite difficult most of the times especially if predicaments arise one after another, like a chain reaction. You must take them as dares and make them your motivation to convert bad things that are occurring in your business into good things. However, once you have outdone all the tumbling blocks along the way, the success and achievement will be very rewarding.

In all businesses, despite the many predicaments which arise once in a while, being optimistic at all times can make the situation lighter and the predicaments can be handled with less pressure and with open minds. You just have to stay focus on the condition and think clearly in coming up with thoughts as to how to solve the problems your business has been facing in a while.
Personally, to be able to have a positive trait, there are some simple things which can make an individual feel and act optimistically. Our mind is a powerful tool in toning our system. What we think about is what we make. If we think optimistically, things that will occur in our business endeavor shall be optimistic too. We have to free our mind and body with negative feeling and vibrations. There are lots of negative things that occur in our lives but by seeing the optimistic side of them, we may try to utilize them as dares as to what good we can do about them to make our business a success. If we have changed something pessimistic into optimistic in our business, the feeling of fulfillment is bigger.

No one is exempted in undergoing life’s trials and trials. Every business as well as every individual experiences things which could make our business to close down and break. It is up to us how we can battle the feeling of closing down and needing to force bankruptcy of our business. All we need to do is be concentrated and motivated in our business so we can climb up to the top and achieve our goals in life. Despite the difficulties a business will be encountering, being concentrated and optimistic, coupled with sheer persistent and hard work, the business shall be successful. To be successful in a business undertaking, one needs to be industrious, be consistent and remain focused on your aim, working towards fulfilling your goals. Failure something else to learn from. We have to learn from our downfalls to become better persons in life and Flourish in whatever we will do.

Don’t forget to attend our Teleconference on Sept. 18 and let me know when you’re ready to start installing automated marketing systems in your business!

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Denver Marketing Consultant presents Small Business Marketing Ideas to increase your business!

Press Play below for details, and register at:

 www.MarketingHuddleCoaching.com/Teleseminar

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Whew! This one is done and boy was it a lot of work….but really fun!

The entire class was a Simulation where our Team set up a computer company
and made dozens of executive decisions each week regarding expanding
Internationally, hiring, Advertising, Sales and Marketing etc

My Team took 1st place!!

Now it’s off to my last class in my Marketing MBA!

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Business owners know that new companies need to keep a tight rein on the company’s funds. Which is why forming an LLC has become of the most accepted means to begin a business.

Every state, including the District of Columbia, permit the formation of LLC corporations. In most regions, filing charges, as well as permits, are fairly low, contingent on your kind of enterprise.

Many business owners want to incorporate their businesses…
but don’t know where to turn for fast, reliable & affordable incorporation
and LLC services. Look no further!

Get incorporated or form an LLC with The Company Corporation^®
It’s the wisest decision you’ll ever make.
For a FREE “How To” Guide, Click Here

The attractiveness of starting a LLC for start-up businesses especially would be that it covers the proprietor’s personal assets from being held for the use of clearing financial obligations related to the owner’s enterprise. Simultaneously, an LLC extends a pass-through income tax option, by which profits accumulate against the owner’s individual earnings like a sole proprietorship. Doing so averts the risk of twice the tax revenue that may occur on corporations while the company is taxed, and then the shareholders profits can be taxed.

A number of states are very friendly to companies and want LLCs to form within that state. This alternative is available for businesses that do not plan to do business in the owner’s region of residence, particularly when it has elevated personal taxes or elevated registering charges.

Forming an LLC involves several steps, but they are simple. Attorneys often offer legal solution packages that can help the company create the LLC for just $150. This often consists of researching region databases for the unique business name which will contain the title LLC on the end.

Registering for an LLC requires filling out the easy paperwork known as an operating agreement. Often this is just a paper furnished through a state LLC division that is filled out with the company proprietors. LLC owners frequently are required to appoint a designated agent who will acknowledge legal paperwork for the enterprise.

The enterprise will pay the filing charge as well as issue a legal notice of the company’s intention in order to forming limited liability company. Secure every one of necessary state, county as well as city enterprise permits, and the LLC is operating.

 

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There is one special quality that you can develop that will guarantee you greater success, accomplishment and happiness in life. Of a thousand principles for success developed over the ages, this one quality or practice will do more to assure that you accomplish wonderful things with your life than anything else. This quality is so important that, if you don’t develop it to a high degree, it is impossible for you to ever achieve what you are truly capable of achieving.

The quality that I am talking about is the quality of self-discipline. It is a habit, a practice, a philosophy and a way of living. All successful men and women are highly disciplined in the important work that they do. All unsuccessful men and women are undisciplined and unable to control their behaviors and their appetites. And when you develop the same levels of high, personal discipline possessed by the most successful people in our society, you will very soon begin to achieve the same results that they do.

All great success in life is preceded by long, sustained periods of focused effort on a single goal, the most important goal, with the determination to stay with it until it is complete. Throughout history, we find that every man or woman who achieved anything lasting and worthwhile, had engaged in long, often unappreciated hours, weeks, months and even years of concentrated, disciplined work, in a particular direction.

Fortunately the quality of self-discipline is something that you can learn by continuous practice, over and over, until you master it. Once you have mastered the ability to delay gratification, the ability to discipline yourself to keep your attention focused on the most important task in front of you, there is virtually no goal that you cannot accomplish and no task that you cannot complete.

Need a little help with self-discipline?

CLICK HERE

to see a short video from Brian Tracy on how to create self-discipline!

Successful people engage in activities that are goal-achieving. Unsuccessful people engage in activities that are tension-reliving. Successful people discipline themselves to have dinner before dessert. Unsuccessful people prefer to have dessert most of the time.

Successful people plan their work, and work their plan. They take the time to think through their responsibilities before they begin. They make clear decisions which they then implement immediately. They get a lot more done in a shorter period of time than the average person. And it all has to do with their disciplines.

Perhaps the most important benefit of self-discipline is the personal benefit that you receive. Every act of self-discipline increases your self-esteem. It gives you a feeling of personal power and accomplishment. Each time you discipline yourself to persist in the face of distractions, diversions, and disappointments, you feel better about yourself. As you continue to discipline yourself, you achieve more and more in life. As you achieve more things, you feel more like a winner. Your self-confidence goes up. You feel happier about yourself. You get more done and you have more energy. You earn the respect and esteem of the people around you. You get more rapid promotions and are paid more money. You live in a nicer house, drive a nicer car, and wear nicer clothes. You get a natural high from the thrill of achievement. And the more things that you achieve as the result of employing your personal habits of effectiveness and productivity, the more eager you are to achieve even higher and better tasks. Your life gets onto an upward spiral of success and happiness. You feel great about yourself most of the time.

Every act of self-discipline strengthens every other discipline in your life. Every weakness of self-discipline weakens your other disciplines as well. When you make a habit of disciplining yourself in little things, like flossing your teeth every night, you’ll soon become able to discipline yourself to accomplish even larger things, like working long, long hours to bring a major task to completion.

Your entire life is an on-going battle between the forces of doing what is right and necessary on the one hand and doing what is fun and easy on the other hand. It is a battle between the forces of discipline and the forces of ease or expediency. And when you develop the strength of character that gives you complete self-mastery, self-control and self-discipline, you feel wonderful about yourself. You develop a deep inner sense of strength and confidence. You replace positive thinking with positive knowing. You reach the point inside where you absolutely know that you can do whatever it takes to achieve any goal that you can set for yourself.

Self-discipline is its own reward. Not only does it pay off in terms of greater self-esteem and a more positive mental attitude, but it pays off throughout your life in terms of the goals that you achieve and the success that you attain in everything you do.

Self-discipline is a skill and a habit that can be learned by practice. Every time you practice a little self-discipline, you become stronger and stronger. Bit by bit, you become more capable of even greater disciplines. As you become a totally self-disciplined individual, your entire future opens up in front of you like a broad highway. Everything becomes possible for you and your future becomes unlimited.

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As I continue through this class it has been so much work in a time sense, but it has definitely been the most fun! Basically it takes so much of the foundation we have learned in business, accounting, marketing etc. and puts all that knowledge into this Game/Simulation.

We are making dozens of decisions each week, which represents a Quarter in the game, for example, should we open a web center initially…or a brick and mortar retail location? Do we staff it with 4 sales to 2 support or 5:1? How much money do we invest in advertising and then make sure that the advertiding exactly meets the brands we created to target the audience we chose….whew!

Then when all the decisions are made each week the Simulation

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As a Small Business Owner, you know that just hanging out your sign and buying an ad in the paper will not equate to success!

Press play below to see how to use “New Media” in your Marketing Plan!

Enjoy!

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This means that even with the knowledge I have about stocks, finances, sales, marketing and real estate, without the right money blueprint, I’ll have a lot more trouble succeeding. The good news is that every one of us can change our internal money blueprint to one that can make us a lot more successful. That’s what Secrets of the Millionaire Mind can do for us – teach us to fix our blueprints.

We’ve been programmed to either be rich or poor, and for most of us, that programming has caused us to be poor. However, I’ve managed to change the way I think about money recently, and so can you. If you want to be a millionaire, first you have to think like a millionaire.

This book spends a great deal of time talking about our financial blueprints and telling us about our money-related beliefs and why we have them. However, this blueprint metaphor isn’t allowed to obscure the real message. On our own, it’s hard to identify what holds us back, but Secrets of a Millionaire Mind has the ability to show it to us and help us fix it.

This process might seem like it takes a long time, but the reality is that changes are going on each and every time we open up the book. You’ll see results right away, even though the journey to success is a bit longer. This million dollar advice is available for a lot less.

Should you check out Secrets of the Millionaire Mind and see what it can do for you? That depends – there are probably some people out there who shouldn’t read this book. Anyone who’s not willing to deal with the discomfort of having their mind changed and thinking about money in a whole new way should definitely steer clear; after all, it takes some dedication to learn a new way of thinking.

If you have the determination to succeed, however, this book really is for you. You won’t spend your time going through lots of positive affirmation, and some of the things you’ll learn might actually be fairly uncomfortable. However, you’ll know that they’re true as soon as you hear them.

If it was possible for me to change my mind about finances, you can too. This Millionaire Mind Book could be the perfect path to financial success. Find out what Secrets of the Millionaire Mind can offer you, and get started on the road to financial fulfillment.

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Why should you bother?

Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although new customers are important good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business will secure many more customers through word of mouth and you should always keep in mind that if you are not taking proper care of your customers there is always a competitor that will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will help by not only identifying problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where do you start?

Objective – Before you start compiling your survey consider what the objectives of the survey are, in that way you will remain focused and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – When the survey is complete consider how you will analyse the answers.

Bare in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are ‘open’ (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

Much will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – Keep in mind that as well as obtaining valuable market research data customer surveys are also a good way to advertise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analyzed will help you make informed decisions.

Then, from a marketing view point read through the survey, confirm that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

In asking this question the store will hopefully not only receive useful feedback on the baby changing facility but they will also promote the store as being a child-friendly and caring store even to those the customers who do not actually require the facility.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to be prepared to accept criticism.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to identify any problem areas so that they can be fixed; conducting regular customer satisfaction will help prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where you may be losing business to your competitors initiatives.

What questions should you ask?

Depending on their own particular size and makeup each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – What do you do to help your customers communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is the phone answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services properly handled? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If customers reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be helpful, courteous and knowledgeable.

Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For an online business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Physical store or online website, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – In addition to measuring the quality of the service that you provide you should ensure make sure that the products and services that you provide do fully match your customers’ requirements.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is rarely a good measure, value for money is.

Do your customers equate your business with value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Customers want their enquiries or queries to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything to prevent any delays?

Customers like to be treated as individuals, how do you treat your customers? Attention is one thing but only if it leads to a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example what is their age group and where do they live?

By understanding your customers more, the better your chances of correctly targeting your business.

Allow customers to highlight their specific problems and provide contact details so that any problems might be later addressed and their concerns followed up.

What next?

Having completed the survey analyze the results.

Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the customer service is found wanting.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid and is there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where customer service training programs have been implemented have they had the desired effect and improved the customer experience?

Follow-up – If a customer has raised a specific issue through completing a survey ensure that they are contacted and that their complaint is properly addressed.

Don’t lose a customer by squandering an opportunity to resolve a problem.

Continuously Monitor – Make changes and then measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.

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In today’s “microwave-I-want-it-now” society you really have no business taking enormous amounts of time to sell….just get t othe point, and now!
That’s why Twitter is so popular, 140 characters is HARD to keep your message under!
Let’s take a lesson from Twitter and use that in ALL our marketing!

Click Play below to listen to the Podcast on Twitterize Your Marketing

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Business plans are usually things that an entrepreneur thinks about last.  Instead, you should write your business plan as soon as possible.  
I am not suggesting that you wait to start your business until your business plan is perfect. Then you will never start your business because you will be stuck in analysis paralysis land where you agonize over every single detail of your business, and you will miss out on profitable opportunities while you do that.  Here are some reasons to create a business plan for your small business.

A business plan will provide your small business with direction.  If you don’t have a business you will be saying, “We’re lost, but we’re making good time.” In other words, you won’t know where your business is supposed to be going, but you will be getting there quickly.  A business plan will put your goals in black and white for you and your whole company to see.  You will know exactly which projects to take and which ones to pass on because you will have your business plan to look at.

A business plan can alert you to financial problems before they become a crisis.  If you have a clear business plan with reasonable financial projections, you have a road map for the future.   Looking at your business plan every so often can remind you of where you are supposed to be versus where you are.  
You do not want to wait until you get into a crisis to try to figure out ways to get out of it.  Instead, you want to have things in place beforehand so that you can make a quick correction and a speedy recovery.

Yes, I know business plans are not the most exciting thing in the world to sit down and write.  You would probably rather sit down and write your sales letter or do your taxes.  A business plan is important because it is the foundation for your business.  Once you have a strong foundation, the sky is the limit for your business.

Once done, you will not only have a great sense of accomplishment and direction….but you must schedule time to review and study your own plan on a regular basis. This is the only way that you will know if you are on track.

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Press play below to view the article on dramatically increasing your profits with the customers you already have!

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Practicing good money management is one of the ways to improve your business profits. Companies and start up businesses can save a substantial sum if they are careful with everyday spending, but this is often overlooked. These are called the ‘not critical’ aspects of the business, or certain things that can be replaced with cheaper and just as effective techniques. There are entire companies that are dedicated to this, called damage control.

The damage a business does to itself is failing to tighten the tap on the money tank, their employees or even their basic infrastructure seems to be spending on things that are totally unnecessary and totally inconsequential. You need to investigate every aspect of your business and how your money is being spent. Sit down with your partners and your employees and bring out the accounting sheets, tracking every dollar down.

The amount of money that could be saved from preventing unnecessary spending could be rather substantial. Some businesses have found that they were over spending in excess of $30, 000 a year – money that could have been used to increase the effectiveness of the management process or simply to develop the business further.

Another way to improve business profits is to diversify.

Business models that are stuck in a single dimension paradigm often see profits stagnate because they are hooked on a single market and refuse to trying new things. Some ways to diversify are to try new projects or venture into more risky markets. But with that comes a risk. You need to have the ideals of effective money management and a good head for seeing threats on the horizons. Taking risks have been the mantra of the most successful, look at Microsoft, or Apple or Virgin Airlines, Google etc. They have been carrying the flag of taking risks from the first time they have started and they have diversified into every aspect of the market. Think small scale and apply it to your business. By having different revenue streams that can allow you to maximise your assets and obtain great returns, your business will grow and profits will increase.

Lastly, another way to improve business profits, especially for start up companies, is to obtain a virtual office.

As starting a business equals to taking risks, what you should do before investing tens of thousands of dollars into leasing a physical office and purchasing office equipments, is to first get a virtual office and see how your plan works out. If your product or service is successful in the market and the response is brilliant, then you can think about getting a base of operations. It is all about reducing the risks in your plan and cutting costs through avenues like a virtual office is a great way for you to test bed your ideas on the living market and see whether it will reap you the rewards you deserve.

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OK I realize it’s been a few months since I update my journey through my MBA in Marketing but here’s why…after the Consumer Behavior class I went right into Financial Decision Making and Market Research….not fun! In fact I am the guy who has the 30,000 foot vision for success. I can put together a marketing plan, I can strategize joint venture relationships to increase sales. I can create back-end marketing systems to increase revenues….but show me a Balance Sheet or Income Statement and I throw up a little in my mouth (sorry). So the last 2 classes were a bit dry, but I got an “A”  and a “B” in them (the only “B” in the entire MBA so far….oh well)

So now I have started “Product Management” and it really is looking like a lot of fun….a lot of work, but fun!

Here’s the overview from week 1:

This class is a bit different than the classes you have had so far in the program. The activities you will participate in will revolve primarily around playing a computer simulation of business – so most of the course content will involve the simulation in some way.

The main emphasis of this course is Product Management. Product Management is a function that requires a great deal of interaction between the different functional areas of the business. It is important that each functional area understand the impact their decisions have on the rest of the organization. The business simulation that you will participate in during this course does a good job of doing just that

So this entire class is a game simulation of starting a computer company and EVERY SINGLE decision needs to be made to start and run the company over 6 quarters. Finance,Advertising,Branding,Manufacturing,Sales etc….and we compete against other teams to see who has the best results. It actually allows us to draw on all the learning we have done up to this point and put into a real simulation of business application. Pretty cool. Looks like a lot of work because we have to spend 3-5 hours a week in the simulation program and hold a team conference call and also an Executive Board meeting with the Prof and turn in a 10 slide PowerPoint each week…

I’ll post updates throughout the rest of this course and then I begin the last class at the end of August and should complete my MBA in Marketing by November….Whew!!

Until next time

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Have you noticed a certain kind of radiance and aura surrounding people who are successful and doing well in their lives?

Some people have one particular skill that they tap on for their success while some people have a whole range of plus points that work in their favor in their professional life and otherwise. Its important to identify things that you are good at and concentrate on them and to know how to work them in your favor.

Especially with regards to your professional life, it’s important that you should be doing something that you truly love. If you are not sure about what it is that you really want don’t be afraid to experiment. Look around. Spend time doing things that you haven’t done before. This will also enable you to discover your strengths, weaknesses and interests.

Before everything else, you need to identify what success means to you. Largely speaking there are two spheres in which people seek to be successful—personal (relating to friends and family) and professional (relating to your field of work). Some skills are however useful for both these spheres.

It’s important how you react to and act upon emotions. Its important to maintain your cool in all kinds of stress-ridden situations. People who maintain their calm are most likely to make logical decisions be in control.

Failures are a part of life. Learn to take them in your stride. It is ideal to learn from your mistakes. The key to success is that you should stop being afraid of failures. If you have a goal in your mind you have to persistent. Don’t give up.

You have to be innovative and think out of the box. When faced with a problem retain your cool and think of all possible ways to tackle it.

Don’t be afraid of fear. You might be afraid of doing new things and taking new challenges or of pushing yourself to new limits. This would also limit your success. Use your fear constructively.
The curiosity might have killed the cat but it is good for you.

Ask questions, when you are not sure about what is happening. It’s important for you to get a clear picture of the happenings before you can even identify the problem and then eventually tackle it.

If you want to be successful, you need to inculcate level headedness patience. You need to be willing to learn from people around you and keep an open mind. Don’t be afraid to do new things and think beyond conventional framework.

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As a small business owner who uses social media like a blog or Twitter to keep your audience updated on how to best use your products and services….notice that this statement is that you educate the group, not send sales messages all the time! Help them learn about your product and why they need it, and then you can provide your solution!

Enjoy this short article, press play below!

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Here’s a short Small Business Marketing Idea you can use every day!

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So when is  the “best” time to send your email messages by autoresponders ?

• Deliver themselves only during the days and times you want.
• Avoid days and times that don’t work for your subscribers.

Throughout most of the history of email marketing, this sort of focused delivery scheduling was only available for broadcasting – not for autoresponders.

That’s about to change. To learn how, watch this video or read on.

Send Windows Make Your Autoresponders Smarter

Today, we’re excited to announce that you can deliver your automated follow up messages during the days and times you’ve determined to be best for your subscribers.

To see Autoresponder Send Windows in action, watch the short video below:

As you can see, you can easily choose during which days, and times you want your autoresponders to go to your customers and prospects.

And when you opt to use the geographic awareness, we’ll automatically adjust delivery to each subscriber’s time zone – no matter where they are in the world, if you tell us to deliver your follow up in the morning, that’s when we’ll send it to each person!

How Can You Use This To Make Your Email Marketing More Effective?

A few ideas:

• Look at when subscribers are opening your emails and/or clicking your links (the Opens over Time and Clicks Over Time reports will show you this) and adjust your send windows so your messages stand out at the top of the inbox during those times!
• Run a weekend sale – schedule one of your follow ups to only send on Friday mornings!
• Are there certain days and/or times that you know are bad for your subscribers? Use send windows to avoid sending during those days/times!

Learn More About Autoresponder Send Windows

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Successful people are identifiable by their masterful positive attitude, which makes it appear as if there’s nothing that they couldn’t achieve if they wanted and nothing they couldn’t possess! It is a positive attitude which separates the successful from the losers: a self realized energy that propels towards success as opposed to a self defeating one that creates problems and provokes suffering in life.

Positive attitude is a state and condition of your mind that allows you to handle stress with optimism and patience, promoting hope and nullifying despair. This empowers you to be undeterred by problems, maintain your focus and continue to persevere without frustration, and thus eventually overcome all problems.

So if you have been a pessimist and have been filled with negative thoughts, here’s how to get rid of your problem, embrace your cherished goals and develop a positive attitude.

1. When you sense any signs of negativity or pessimism creeping into your mind, immediately check your thoughts and stop: Instead try to imagine and visualize your favorite memories, expectations or ideals.

2. Experts recommend another way to banish negative thoughts from your mind, a mechanism which involves two basic stages: The first which drives away negative thoughts and emotions, and the second which allows negativity to be infiltrated and overcome with positive thoughts and feelings.

3. Talking to yourself and repeating positive affirmations are proven techniques to develop a positive mindset. So devise your personal prep talk and motivation statement and make it a point to talk to yourself regularly.

4. Another helpful way is to make posters or sticky notes carrying positive and affirmative statements such as: I can do it, Success is mine, My goal is within reach, etc, and to put them up around your home or workplace where you are apt see the message regularly, day and night.

5. Try to make the highly successful people be your friends and acquaintances, and try and spend time with them and know their approach. In the right company, its easy for the secret to a positive attitude to rub off onto you.

6. Begin to read positive self help books and magazine, or better still the biographies or autobiographies of your heroes. You could also attend relevant seminars and workshops.

Remember that a positive attitude can only be cultivated and maintained by you; it is wholly internal to you which no body can take away. It requires much time, effort and dedication, but is an invaluable asset.

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Take a quick look behind the scenes at Twitter, if Dell and Comcast and other big corporations use the service….and Twitter is being spotlighted in Fortune Magazine….shouldn’t you use it in your small business?!

Helpful news articles on Twitter in Small Business:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/columnist/strauss/2009-04-12-twitter-reconsidered_N.htm

http://www.americasbestcompanies.com/blog/small-business-tips-twitter-marketing-benefits.aspx

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/05/twitter-local-business-and-results.html

Let me know if you’d like to chat about my customized 100% hands-off Twitter Magic solution.

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Employees of small organizations or groups are usually given various health coverage choices by the company owner. These plans covers practically almost everything, ranging from trips to the physician to prescriptions to emergency room trips, and more.

To help companies make a decision as to which kind of small business owner health insurance fits best with the budget of their company and the requirements of their employees, the below offers guidance in regards to the various types of plans available.

Indemnity plans – This type of medical plans usually have a deductible. The insurance company will start to pay the cost of coverage after the deductible has been met. After the medical costs go past the amount of the deductible, medical bills are generally paid as a fraction of the actual expenditures, which is usually 80%. These plans generally offer the greatest versatility in choosing where to get health care.

HMO (Health Maintenance Organization plans – This type of self employed insurance plans generally allows the insured person to make a decision on a PCP (Primary Care Physician) from a network of authorized providers. The PCP is in charge of handling the medical care of the covered individual. If the covered individual is in need of treatment from a provider not in the network, they usually need to get a referral directly from their primary care physician.

The insured individual should receive treatment from a network provider so as to get paid by the HMO.

PPO, or Preferred Provider Organization plan – This plan is characterized by the insurance company making an agreement with specific doctors and medical facilities to offer treatment at discounted prices. If you are a PPO member, you can get medical care from a facility or doctor who is not from your network, but a copayment, or larger deductible, will be necessary.

POS, or Point of Service plan – This coverage gives a combination of a PPO and a HMO, yet is more adaptable than a HMO, but does need you to pick a primary care doctor. Similar to PPO, you can get medical attention from a hospital or doctor outside of your network, but you need to pay more of what the actual cost is. Then again, if your primary doctor recommends you, POS will compensate the cost.

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You’ve probably had a friend tell you about a great website and when you visit it….Well, it was absolutely detestable!

It definitely had pretty pictures and a flashy look but the write up could hardly be read or understood. The webpage was designed craftily but was not a user friendly webpage.

The webpage was pathetic as it lacked a unique personality. It had no distinctive feature or that zing to hold my attention. The write up was quite uninteresting and so were the apparently lovely pictures. The write-up consisted of too many We’s! The website lacked vitality and enthusiasm. It was a bit too perfect in its endeavor to impress all and thus could impress none!

People generally wish to conduct trade with people they have faith in and are fond of. You need to understand that people will be fond of you only when your personality impresses them. There is no use at all concealing your true personality behind the veil of that silly, dull and dreary website! People will never get to be acquainted with you this way and they will also not wait for you for too long.

According to Dan Kennedy, if you are dull and tedious in your advertising plans then it will lead you absolutely nowhere. No one will bother to pay you any attention if you are uninteresting. Most people will not even turn to look twice- there is so much more to do in life and so many other interesting things to look into!

Well these questions are now forming clouds in your mind: how will I work things out in case am not appreciated or in case I put off potential buyers? Well this might be the case with you and it probably should too. I shall explain why I incorporate the word “SHOULD”.

The moment you are writing a note that is so sugar coated, you should immediately realize that it will be extremely dull and will attract none. In your endeavor to make it appealing, you will actually put off people. Your note will not incite any enthusiasm and hence you will not receive any clients. They would prefer someone who is adequately interesting.

Peter Montoya says that a nice label can excite people and also similarly fend them off. Hence if your organization is not resisting a certain crowd, then it is also not attracting your potential customers in a way it should.

Business is not just about formalities and official statements. This is the conventional view about business. You might be little apprehensive in the beginning but know that the more thrilling and stimulating your web content as well as write up is, the more popular will be the response to it.

So you understand that your personality needs to blend in your label. Here you ask yourself “how do I go about this?”. Well I will be giving you certain hints and suggestions in the upcoming posts! 

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A lot of reasons exist why you should use online Project Management Software solutions. One of the reasons is the following: online Project Management Software systems provide peace of mind. This means that you are allowed the peace of mind to use online Project Management Software anywhere in the world. You are provided with the freedom to have access to the World Wide Web wherever there is a wired or wireless Internet connection. Once you have logged onto the Internet, you can access the online Project Management Software.

Are you a small business owner who is interested with productivity and return on investment (ROI)? Then online project management is critical to your success. Having premium online project management software, you’ll be better able to track and manage all your projects. In the process, you’ll increase your productivity and efficiency, will maximize your effectiveness as a manager and optimize your return on investment.

Solid web project management skills are important to ones success as a business owner, and an online project management system can help you achieve that enjoyment. An online project management solution enables the accomplishment of the following:

• Total online project management tools
• Completion of tasks
• An online project management software environment
• Timelines

No matter what your small business type: technology, creativity, health-oriented, government-related, marketing, education or some other service, you will achieve worth in an online project management system. On top of that, online project management software is surprisingly inexpensive, meaning that you will obtain its productivity and monetary gains without costing you an arm and a leg. If the ins and outs of doing business have got you at your wits’ end, we encourage you to give this online project management solution a try. Online project management wise, you have a lot to reap and not much to lose. Moreover, that states that you have most likely achieved online project management bliss and become an all around satisfied owner of a business and become a more efficient and satisfied business owner all around.

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In today’s “microwave-I-want-it-now” society you really have no business taking enormous amounts of time to sell….just get to the point, and now!
That’s why Twitter is so popular, 140 characters is HARD to keep your message under!
Let’s take a lesson from Twitter and use that in ALL our marketing!

“Twitterize your marketing” to make your marketing messages brief to make impact.
Follow the Twitter example to succeed. Twitter has revolutionized the way people have been conducting business and this has led to a change in brand perception. It is elementary that modern marketers appreciate this change in paradigm and adapt to this change, in order to stay afloat in the market.

Making your marketing messages brief, is the new order of the day. Earlier, viewers preferred in-depth marketing messages, sales letters and Press Releases in order to gauge the product, but today, times have changed. Its the era of instant success and instant rejection. If your marketing messages are so long that they get your prospect to yawn instantaneously, chances are that they would not even browse through the content, however helpful and well written it might be.

“Twitterize” you content and make it brief. It should hit the client where it hurts the most. Its a single, well thought out line or phrase that will be pivotal in getting you the leads you had always desired. You can bring in the lengthy literature later, when you think that you have got hold hold of your prospects. Remember, the motto of today’s marketing guru is not “in-depth info”, but it is “the shorter, the better!” and this is exactly what people are looking for.

Consider this- you are browsing through a site, looking to weightloss products and you have been coming across similar products, offering similar results and being offered at the same price. You might open a few pages and get info on these products, but with time, you would get bored of the same, mundane, and often mis-leading content. Now, imagine that you come across a link saying “one stop shop for all your weightloss problems”. Thats it!

Wouldn’t it generate some curiosity in you? I am sure it will and this is the power of twitterizing your marketing efforts. It is not only easy on your pocket (you don’t have to pay copywriters to write long flowing articles), but, it also guarantees instant recognition in the eyes of the end user. So, go ahead, and start twitterizing your efforts towards a meaner, leaner marketing approach!

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Your business will prosper greatly if you build and consequently sustain a positive attitude. Even when things in your business are not going according to plan, you have to remember that you are not alone. All business ventures have their ups and downs.

Those impediments can be easily overcome and you can always get back on track if you keep a positive outlook to everything. You will also have increased confidence in yourself and your business capabilities.

A positive attitude will make finding prospective customers simpler. Others will react well to your optimism. They will want to hire you and suggest you to others.

This will also assist you in other departments of life. You will be in good health. Positive people have less fear of heart inflictions.

Here are some useful tips for you to expand on your positive attitude.

• Be Nice to Others: Being polite and friendly with other individuals will make you feel nice about yourself. You will have a brilliant and happy day. However, you shouldn’t be gullible and allow people to manipulate you because of your friendliness.

• Mix with Other Positive People and Avoid Those who Have Negative Attitudes: Attitudes rub on to others very quickly. If you spend more of your time with positive people you will automatically find yourself developing a more optimistic attitude.

However, negative attitudes can also be very infectious. There is a popular saying which goes, “Misery loves company”. When you are always in the company of people who perpetually complain, you will automatically find yourself beginning to do the same. Insignificant factors that would normally not bother you will suddenly seem to spoil your entire day. You will feel like you have lost all your energy.

The moment you lose enthusiasm and incentive, it can prove very difficult to get back on track. These factors can take a negative toll on your business. You will not get anything constructive done this way.

• Be Organized and Practice Time Management: When you are systematic you will work faster and be able to complete more tasks. You will know exactly what you need to do achieve your target each day. You will do constructive work if you stay within a system instead wasting time searching for phone numbers or email addresses that you have misplaced.

• Be Proactive: The moment you are aware of an oncoming obstacle in your work, solve it instead of leaving it till the last instant. Be practical and have a solution ready before the problem can get out of hand. By being ahead of possible impediments, you will permanently be able to avoid setbacks.

• Consider Hiring a Coach: Many individuals hire tutors nowadays to attain success in business. These tutors of guides will assist you in deciding exactly what you require your business to yield. They will set attainable targets and will also demand justifications for actions.

Therefore, the right and positive attitude is the most important ingredient for a successful business. Practice it as well as follow it daily. You’ll soon see you have become much more successful than you ever conceived of.

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As a Small Business Owner, you find it hard enough to keep all the details of the day under control and many times you feel that marketing is too time-consuming and get’s pushed to the back burner. I know that you agree, and even validated this with research I recently did for my MBA in Marketing (let me know if you’d like to get a copy of the research).

Press Play below to watch how you can set up marketing tools in your business that work on autopilot to keep your marketing message in front of customers and prospects to increase sales. I hope you enjoy the video and as always, please let me know how I can help your business with marketing.

CLICK HERE to download the Small Business Marketing MindMap in PDF format

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No matter how big your company is, you need to have a logo to represent your business. Fortunately, many options are available to you should you desire to have a custom business logo created just for you. You should be aware what to look for when picking a design company to come up with a custom logo for your company.

Following can be found five considerations to think about when picking a firm to design a logo:

1. Cost – You can pay just about any amount of money from under a hundred dollars to thousands of dollars to get a custom designed logo. Figure out what your budget is and determine which companies are in your price range.

2. Satisfaction guaranteed – A reputable logo design company will offer some sort of money back guarantee, even with affordable logo design. Typically this can be anywhere from being able to receive a complete refund if you are not completely happy, to receiving a refund, less a service fee.

3. Number of designers – The more artists that create initial logo concepts, the more unique concepts you get to decide on. It is important to have a variety of choices, making sure you are more likely to be pleased with how it portrays your business.

4. Number of revisions – After you have chosen a design that you desire to further develop, you should have the opportunity to have the designers make the corrections you request. Typically you may not want a whole lot of corrections, but you need to have the option to request as many revisions as you need to be completely satisfied.

5. Logo files – After your logo is completed, you should receive it in many different file formats. No matter how you will end up using your new logo, you will have the right file type for different applications. You need to have available the right file type available when you need them.

Discovering the best designer to create your logo is an important step to ending up with a custom logo that not only properly represents your business, but also is something that you are very pleased with. Research which is the best designer to go with and you should have a custom logo that you can use for a long time.

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Attention Small Business Owners:

Are you on Twitter yet? Surely an opportunity such as this cannot be missed!

Twitter is a global phenomenon that is growing every second of every day, with millions of people eagerly awaiting your messages. All your messages are funneled straight into their page and they don’t even have to click to read them.

There are people in every niche imaginable out there, I tried to find one that wouldn’t be on there, I thought ‘crochet’ wouldn’t be on there, boy was I wrong!

After 8 pages of results I got bored and stopped. I even saw someone who has the name “foxygramma”….this really is a tool for all ages!!

 Introducing “Twitter Magic”:

Your Hands-Free Solution to Getting Your Business Up and Running on Twitter. Don’t want to learn how to set it all up…and “Tweet” 3-5 times EVERY day to keep fresh content….and follow/unfollow to properly grow your followers?

Click on the image above to see if this new 100% Hands-Free Marketing Service may be right for you.

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As an Entrepreneur and business owner it’s so hard to keep everything moving in the right direction, especially regarding marketing! It seems like if you let up just a little bit, that it takes twice as long to get back on track!

June is “Do-it-Yourself” Marketing Month and I am offering my DIY Marketing Packages at a 50% discount! Just go to www.MarketingHuddleCoaching.com and once you read about the details of the automated marketing systems I coach on….close the page down and watch what happens!  

Consider these statistics:

* In 2008, there were an estimated 27 million small businesses in the U.S. (Source: Small Business Administration)
*In 2008, 12 million people were involved in starting new firms. (Source: Small Business Administration)
*For 90 percent of these beginning entrepreneurs, it takes more than five years for an outcome to be determined. In that time, one-third disengage, one-third continue in start-up mode and another
third implement a new firm. (Source: U.S. Small Business Administration)
*Small businesses provide half the nation’s nonfarm, private real gross domestic product, and half of all Americans work for a small firm. In addition, small businesses have been the primary job generator
in the U.S. economy, creating 60 to 80 percent of the new net jobs annually from 1994 to 2004.(Source: Small Business Administration)
Obviously, there’s a  huge audience that can benefit from Do It Yourself marketing tools customized to their unique needs!

Take Action Now!

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Local Ad Link is a new company that allows the small business owner to capitalize on marketing online….big deal right?!

But this technology senses a web visitors IP address and knows that they are reading content that matches the business owners online ad….so because the web surfer is in the business owner’s list of zip codes they target….and because they are searching a topic that matches the biz owner’s ad….the technology pushes the ad out to the reader! 

[You can do this right now….with Google "pay per click" , but typically this is highly expensive and confusing] 

This service solves it and allows the business owner to dominate their local city

Would you have a moment to review this ?  

·        It uses Geo-Targeting Technology and Zip-Code Based online advertising to help business owners attract new customers from their own backyard.

 There’s no set up fee, no contracts and a very low monthly fee: 

•  $49.95/mo. to target 3 zip codes
• $99.95/mo. to target 10 zip codes
• $199.95/mo. to target 50 zip codes

(these are good through May 2009, in June they go up by $20-$50/mo. Set your ad up in May and you lock in this pricing for life!)

Traditional print advertising is becoming less effective each year. 

Already 54% of people have traded in their old Yellow Pages and solely search online and this number is growing daily. The revolutionary part of LocalAdLink is that we take your business listing and push it out onto the web. 

What does that mean for you? 

Well, you’re not just sitting back and waiting for people to visit your site. 

Your listing can be seen on some of the most popular websites, search engines, and social networks in America. 

www.LocalCustomerAttraction.com

• Are you still using the yellow pages, direct mail, door hangers or flyers? 
• Are these methods working?
• What is the best way to re-connect with your local customers? 
• Would you like to connect with local people truly interested in your products and services?

 On-line geo-targeting by zip code allows you to concentrate your ad dollars on your interested local customers. 

1. We do this by proactively pushing your on-line ad out onto the Internet though our partner websites. 
2. These partner websites are relative websites with your business based on business type. 
3. This way you know your ad dollars are being seen by people truly interested in you.

 Geo-targeting by zip code and the bargaining power of LocalAdLink allows the little guy to compete with the big boys.

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Deciding to use a online fax service solution instead of using a fax machine is a liberating decision. Not only is faxing online much easier to use and cost effective than the old way, but it gives you access to very powerful faxing features. But how do you tell which faxing service is the best choice?

Below you will find 5 things you will want to pay attention to when it comes to choosing your online fax service:

1. Monthly fee – When shopping for a service, you have to notice the differences when you are looking at web fax services. Some choices may look to be similarly priced, but when you really take a hard look at what comes in the monthly cost, it becomes apparent that some solutions are better than others.

2. Included pages – Each fax plan comes with a set number of incoming and outgoing pages in the plan price. More pages can be had for a per-page charge, which can vary quite widely. Pay attention to what you are getting for your money.

3. Storage time – A Internet fax software service offers web storage for your received faxes, varying from 30-days to 1 year. The time period probably will not critical for most people, as you can receive an email copy of your incoming faxes, allowing you to keep the important ones.

4. Edit faxes – The best online fax solutions give you the capability to make changes to your faxes via your computer, without the need to print them. This is incredibly useful if you need to sign, or make changes to a document. Having to not use a printer brings great amounts of ease when it comes to faxing.

5. Free trial – All of the best online fax solutions let you have a free, 30-day trial. This lets you take them for a spin to make sure the particular service is right for your situation. Be forewarned, as soon as you see the benefits of online faxing firsthand, you will be spoiled and never go back to a fax machine.

Finding the best online fax solution is equally important as deciding to use the Internet for your faxing requirements. Compare the available services to ensure that you choose the right one for your situation. Once you begin using a fax via Internet service, you will never look at faxing the same.

Feel free to comment below on any other ideas you have found!

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In a recent assignment for my MBA in Marketing, we covered an interesting topic of Vicarious Learning Process which is:

The process where consumers learn from observing the consequences of what happens to other consumers is called vicarious learning. It is also called modeling. Viewers can empathize with certain characters in advertisements that experience positive results from using a product or service. In vicarious learning, when consumers observe other people engaging in a particular behavior (testing a new brand of soft drink at the supermarket) or set of behaviors (shopping for groceries), they also closely observe the consequences of those behaviors (brands purchased, amount of money spent, affective states produced, exposure to these environmental factors). Also, vicarious learning can have a positive effect on changing overt behavior, in terms of the cognitive processes of attention, comprehension, and integration.

So in the spirit of “Vicarious Learning” I thought you may liek to read the results of my survey to small business owners regarding marketing….I think you’ll see some of the very eye-opening information that I researched!

CLICK HERE

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I think that even if you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve probably heard about Susan Boyle. She is the amazing singer who has become an international celebrity after her show-stopping performance on the Britain ‘ s Got Talent TV show.

The online success of the clip of Boyle singing is simply amazing. According to the online video measurement firm Visible Metrics, in less than five days, clips of her singing were viewed more than 47 million times and generated more than 125,000 comments.

To put this in perspective, that is more than twice the views President Obama’s election-night victory speech received and many more than videos of the shoes getting thrown at President Bush.

And this data is a couple of days old. By now, with news about Boyle appearing everywhere, the numbers are no doubt substantially higher.

This happened the same week that movie and TV star Ashton Kutcher went over 1 million Twitter followers.

What does this have to do with small business?

Simply put, small businesses can no longer ignore social media. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs are now mainstream information channels. In addition to entertainment, this is where customers are increasingly going to find out about products and services.

Don’t get me wrong. Most small businesses do not need a social media presence—at least not yet.

But all small businesses should be aware of the impact social media is having. And all small businesses should evaluate social media as a marketing and customer service.If by chance you haven’t seen Susan Boyle’s performance, click here.

[I found this great post at http://bit.ly/ysr68

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As the owner of a small business, you need to be using a phone service that is meant for a small business. You should be using a phone system that meets the demands of your company.

A small business phone system is the perfect solution for the phone requirements of a small business. This system makes use of your existing telephone lines and makes your business phone system behave like a phone system belonging to a large company.

If you have a single business telephone line or a bunch of phone lines, a PBX phone systems can seamlessly tie them all together to act as a single telephone system. Your operation will have one main toll-free or local telephone number used by your customers, and then the incoming calls are routed to the right existing telephone line.

GotVMail is a leading provider of virtual office phone systems. They have a great feature set that turns your regular small business phone service into a phone system to challenge that of a large corporation. The GotVMail virtual PBX system takes your existing phone lines to a whole new level.

The beauty of a GotVMail PBX phone system is that incoming telephone calls can be sent to any working phone, regardless of its location. This means you can receive telephone calls while you are vacationing in Florida, or while you are home, away from work. You have complete control over the GotVMail PBX phone service, with the ability to update the routing of inbound telephone calls when it is necessary.

GotVMail also comes with a virtual receptionist (virtual secretary) that answers incoming calls and sends them to the appropriate destination. This allow you to have have more than one phone extension, even if you have no employees. GotVMail makes your business seem larger than it is.

If your small business telephone service is in need of an overhaul, then GotVMail may be the service for you. Use GotVMail to complement your existing telephone lines, allowing you to devote your attention to making your company larger and less time thinking about your phone system.

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Join America’s Best Companies Today!

A Small Business Association Dedicated to the Future of Small Business.

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Small Business Owners struggle massively these days…..did you know that over 80% of new jobs are created by small businesses?

But they currently need Marketing Tips, Marketing Plans etc just to survive.

This is why I support the 3/50 Project

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There has always been and will be conflict in the supply chain, no matter what industry is in question. And I believe that will continue to be true in the future too.  All supply chain partners can improve with a collaborative relationship and communication.

To build efficient and productive relationship with any supply chain partner, important thing that will definitely help to improve the level of communication is an ability to understand a value that your supply chain partner has to receive from that relationship. One good example of this is that a procurement department can be in position to believe that a supply partner could lower the price in such way that they can not make any profit. And that is just ridiculous.

If you make an effort to understand the total value your supply partner needs and help them to receive that total value package, they will perceive you as a great partner and communication will become easier. It is best to put the energies you have at disposal into activities, services and similar tasks that will provide the value your strategic partner needs, but you should not give away the bank.

Improvements of the Supply Chain

Just-in-time inventory purchasing and supplying as exemplified by the famous relationship between Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble has continued to prove successful. Another example are Dell Computers and Home Depot that have built a strong strategic alliance with the just-in-time inventory that is so much cost saving. You could also apply this in your business. It is possible to develop much closer relationship and communication with a supply chain partner.

You and your partner should share the same strategy, and that is a very important issue. Conflicts and complaints must be of highest priority and promptly responded to. It is one of the best ways to improve the trust and build up loyalty betwenn you and your strategic partner.

As a Denver Marketing Consultant, please contact me if you need some advice on how to improve your revenues.

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Small Business Owners who need to focus on customer retention and acquisition need to be aware of these 2 key statistics in the quotes below:

According to Chet Holmes, best selling author of The Ultimate Sales Machine, only 3% of people are in the market to buy your products or services at any given time. There’s an additional 7% open to buying your product or service because they are either dissatisfied with the current item or provider or are willing to change. The remaining 90% are either neutral about your offering – meaning they haven’t decided whether they are interested or not, think that they are not interested or know for sure that they’re not interested. With only 3% of your potential prospects and clients ready to buy right now, you need a way to stay visible with the others so that when the time comes for them to buy, they will think of you. 

Key Quote:

Frederick Reichheld, of Bain & Company, reports :

Over a 5 year period businesses may lose as many as half of their customers. Acquiring a new customer can cost 6 to 7 times more than retaining an existing customer.

Businesses that boosted customer retention

 rates by as little as 5% saw increases in their profits ranging from 5% to a whopping 95%! A survey recently showed that 8 out of 10 small business owners had no formal customer retention program in place          

Here’s the solution:

Click on the graphic below for more information about this Greeting Card service and how it can help you increase sales, referrals, and retain your customers!

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If you’re a marketer your hold only concern is customers.  You’ve probably read again heard a million and one ideas about how to build relationships, retain customers, create a list of customers, and induce consumer loyalty. Your main concern is customers.  You’ve probably read and heard a million and one ideas about how to build relationships, create a list of potential customers and encourage customer loyalty….but the tough question is, “How do I turn prospects into customers?” 

There is an enormous amount of people who see your ads, think about them and maybe even think: “I ought to…”  They’re just waiting to be convinced to to do something about it….they need something to convince tham that you are the authority to trust and to get them moving!

1.  Improve Your Offer
Put yourself in their shoes and think about what they need and are searching for. Now what information report could you offer them that would completely educate them on how your products and services will solve this for them? Now, I’m not suggesting that you drop your prices to sweeten the rush.  You can just as easily load the followup contacts with bonuses to increase the perceived usefulness to increase sales.  Bonuses motivate sales, maybe even more than a cut in prices.

 
2.  Follow Up!
How would you like to increase your sales by more than 50 percent?  Sounds good, huh?!  There’s really a very simple tactic that you can immediately implement that will help you achieve this….

 Simply contact the “almost customer” every few weeks with educational advice on your products with a new offer. It doesn’t have to be a pushy sales-pitch,  just something like “don’t forget to come by our store when you need_______________”.  

Keeping in touch goes a long way toward building relationships and “top-of-mind” awareness… life-long customers….and increased profit!

Let me know when you’re ready to install some cutting edge follow up tools to convert more sales in

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This week in my MBA in Marketing through Regis University online, we continued to focus on the consumer’s decision making process.

The premise for both of these models is that variables such as: awareness, comprehension, interest, evaluation, conviction, etc  are a very important concern for marketers and the major indicators of behavior.

Marketing’s responsibility is to change these variables and move consumers thru the consumer problem solving and decision making stages until they make a purchase. Of course there are a thousand and one ways that we see marketing efforts to accomplish this, but one very easy thing to keep in mind is…be genuine and helpful without being pushy! When you approach a prospect with helpful and educational material that in-and-of-itself will benefit them, you are perceived as someone adding value to their life and business!

Notice in the graphic above that the 1st block is “Attention”. This is critical because there’s so much marketing “noise” out there for our prospects to see that we must find ways to stand out above the crowd. This can involve being creative, this can involve doing the opposite of what your competition is doing….or it can be using such specific knowledge that you have learned from your target audience that your message really “hits home” with them!

Until next week!

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OK so I’m now beginning class 9 out of 12 in my MBA in Marketing….if all goes well, I’ll be done in November!

I spent the last 2 courses building out my Marketing Plan and Marketing Strategy, the really neat thing is that we are allowed to choose an existing public business to focus on or one that we “create”. So I thought it would be fun to create the Marketing Huddle, a marketing coaching firm, and what you see on the home page, and “interview” page is my MBA project taking form!

There’s a few reasons why I am already picking up clients, since I have 18+ years of sales and marketing experience I can draw off of successes as well as failures, and also I see that business owners value the fact that I have a fresh perspective by being in a marketing MBA program.

Small business owners really are the backbone of the economy with over 90% of all new jobs being created by a small business! And what is very motivating is that there’s an enormous need thay have…and that is MARKETING!

OK, back to Consumer behavior, I’m just in the middle of week 2 but so far it’s highly interesting because it totally gets into WHY a customer buys a product or service. Until a company knows this they are driving blind….or at least not maximizing what they could be doing. After all, it’s all about the customer, right?! Ao why not discover why they buy, what their needs are, and then you can fine-tune what you offer??!

Sound simple, but it is often ignored because it takes work!

Here’s a concept from this week’s assignment:

It is called the “Wheel of Consumer Analysis,”* and is taken from a model created by the psychologist, Albert Bandura. Bandura revealed four factors that are important in the study of consumer analysis and he emphasized that all of these factors continually interact with one another as illustrated in the model below:

Each one of these spokes of the wheel on this model “touches” and can affect the other elements at any time within the consumer purchase experience. A truly effective marketing strategy affects all four spokes of the “Wheel of Consumer Analysis”. By researching all of these elements on the wheel and developing strategies based upon your results, you can better understand your current and future customers within your company.

Can You Help??

In week 5 I have to turn in a “Laddering Interview” which is a series of 10-15 questions I interview 10 different business owners on regarding their marketing needs…..would you be willing to let me ask you these questions? (If you’re like me, you HATE surveys, I know…)

But the good news is that you will learn a lot about yourself and your business and it will actually be a “free consultation”. Everyone who participates I will send the results at the end of the class so that you can see the responses from all the people I interviewed which will give a great perspective outside of your own! (Don’t worry I will not and cannot disclose names so it will be something like “Business Owner “A” etc.)

Please either e-mail me your desire to help at mike@marketinghuddle.com or “Tweet” me! @marketinghuddle

Thanks in advance!

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Get a Flood of New Traffic through your door
and burn through more cash register tape than you ever thought possible!

“Discover how Geo-Targeting Technology and Zip-Code Based online advertising can help business owners attract new customers from their own backyard.”

www.LocalCustomerAttraction.com 

• Are you still using the yellow pages, direct mail, door hangers or flyers? 
• Are these methods working?
• What is the best way to re-connect with your local customers? 
• Would you like to connect with local people truly interested in your products and services?

1. On-line geo-targeting by zip code allows you to concentrate your ad dollars on your interested local customers. 
2. We do this by proactively pushing your on-line ad out onto the Internet though our partner websites. 
3. These partner websites are relative websites with your business based on business type. 
4. This way you know your ad dollars are being seen by people truly interested in you.

Can you afford this? 

Geo-targeting by zip code and the bargaining power of LocalAdLink allows the little guy to compete with the big boys. 

Would you like to learn more? 

 We will be glad to provide you with all the facts.

www.LocalCustomerAttraction.com 

*Also, CLICK HERE to read the most recent Press Release about the company

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CLICK HERE   and Enjoy!

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This podcast covers part 2 of the 7 Devastating Marketing Mistakes that you cannot afford to make in this economic time! Marketing Tips in how to set up automated marketing tools to lower expenses and increase sales!

Don’t waste money on non-effective marketing!

Press Play below and let me know if I can help you in your marketing.

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“Discover How A High School Dropout Sought After By Bill Gates And Bill Clinton Can Boost Your Business And Keep You From Earning Heartbreak Profits”

Here is what you’ll discover when you listen to this

content-packed  audio:

• The one thing you must do if you want to get ahead in business (this is something very few people do?even though it only requires a trip to the library!
• The one emotion you must always sell to (it’s amazing at how many people mess this up!)
• If you’re looking for funding for your business, these places are perfect places to start (no need to go into debt to start your business!
• The secret to managing people and getting what you want from them (what’s the point in doing everything yourself when you can get other people to do it for you!)
• The truth about competition marketers know about ? and they end up running away with their tails between their legs!)



To order the Free MP3, just go to www.MarketingHuddleCoaching.com & scroll down to the middle of the page and fill in the form ”Ask Me Your Biggest Marketing Question” and request your Business Accelerator MP3!

 

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One of my all-time favorite author’s, Seth Godin, wrote a book a few years ago called “Purple Cow”…

I completely identified with it’s message because it’s all about making your company, brand, message….Stand Out in a big way.

After all, your competition tends to follow all the “me-too” techniques, right? Why not go in a fresh new direction and when your target audience coomes into contact with your message they literally have to stop and think “How Cool is That?!”

You will be well-served to put the phones on DND and brainstorm with a friend or mentor about how you can “Purple Cow” your products and services. And in the spirit of giving and helping you, I have attached a great 119 pg E-Book from Seth Godin called “99 Cows” to get your brain in gear! Click Here for 99 Cows!

I hope you enjoy it, and I encourage you to please come right back to this blog post and make comments on your ideas….when you do, I’ll give you my input and thoughts to help too!

OK, I’m done, it’s your turn!

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Are you a small business owner or sales professional looking to reduce advertising expenses? And simultaneously increase sales? Create automated marketing followup tools to stay in touch with your prospects until they buy and your clients to ask for referrals.

Watch how my Marketing Coaching System will help you accomplish just that!

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In helping small business owners and sales professionals “tame the 800 pound marketing gorilla”….these Power Action Quotes will help keep your mind sharp.

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How to Double Your Sales with Backend Selling and Up Selling

The prime purpose of any business, whether online or concrete, is to make and close a deal or a sale, by taking money for a product or service which we provide, and thereby gaining revenue….it’s like I learned in my MBA program “No business makes a profit until something is sold”!

While engaged in business, you should always try to get newer people to buy from you, so that your customer base builds up.

It is also essential that you keep your existing customer base happy so that they keep returning to you. A returning customer is generally a happy customer and making him return over and over again is termed back end selling….and they are FAR more cheaper to earn sales from than creating a new buyer!

Along with back end selling, where people who have previously purchased from you or have used your services return to you for a repeat purchase, it is also important to promote up selling.

Up selling occurs when a customer who has returned to you, comes back for not only the earlier products but more that that, thus effectively have a sale value greater than the last time he or she visited. This reflects that the customer is happy with your products and services over and above that of your competitors.

The lions share of your sales and profits are going to come from a section of your customers which is quite small. It is this small group of people that you need to keep happy and therefore returning to your website.

To make this easy and automated, you need a system (contact me if you’d like to discuss how I can help you in your business! Just make a comment below and we’ll connect)

You also need to pitch hard and ensure that people enjoy shopping on your web site and leave wanting more, in order to bring over people from being casual customers into the group of people who are your primary profit drivers. You want these people to come back over and over again and not go elsewhere, so you need to ensure that the old adage of “the customer is always right” is followed to the maximum, and these prime customers are kept happy.

The next step, after ensuring that your customers are returning, is to get them to buy more than what they were planning to buy. When they are finalizing a sale, offer them some other product along with their chosen product at a discounted rate or a product which compliments the one that they have chosen. This is somewhat similar to what happens when you go to a fast food joint and you are asked if you want fries with your burger! Or “would you like me to super-size that for you”. Over 30% of the time they say yes and that is pure profit!

So, basically you should always try to convince your customers to buy more than what they were planning on doing and then watch your profits soar. Yet just because you are up selling doesn’t mean that you should ignore the needs and requirements of your customers.

Up selling is a tool which should be used for the benefit of both you and your customer and never to their disadvantage as if a customer feels that he was coerced into buying something, he might not return the next time. All sales should always be beneficial to both the buyer and the seller ad never o only one side.

Back end selling and up selling are powerful tools at the disposal of any one into sales and you should use these tools to the best possible use that you can.

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Backend Sales and Email Marketing

You may have scored an early deal from your ecommerce website and want to step up your marketing initiatives to drive home the advantage, and expand the base with more new customers.

Now, while it is indeed desirable to keep a lookout for new opportunities to grab customers, you must take care that you don’t lose your old customers who have actually expressed faith in you and your product by purchasing it. With email marketing you can secure for yourself backend sales numbers without too much new investment on advertising.

But you may ask, how can one expect email marketing to be effective, given the pervasive antagonism amongst email users towards spam? The answer is simple—what is called opt-in emails in marketing jargon. In this variant of email marketing, the person gives you permission to send you advertising emails.

One simple way to secure this permission for your website is to offer some kind of freebies. Ebooks are known to be popular. But it is advisable that you give something that is related and relevant to your ecommerce website. You could offer one of your cheaper products, which would not only be more appreciated but also a sort of promotion for your brand.

One thing to keep in mind is that you should desist from sending direct product advertisements as many people don’t like being advertised to. What you should do is develop interest through interesting write-ups that will give some background information about your product. You should develop an e-newsletter that can be sent to customers.

You must prepare enough material for a 7-day advertising cycle so that you don’t let the customer slip away, while at the same time not boring him or her with repeat content. You may also wish to utilize an autoresponder service in case you have a very long mailing list.

Email autoresponders, apart from making things more convenient for you, also reduce chances that you will be hauled up for spamming. Paid email autoresponders are known to be more effective than the free ones, and also don’t require you to carry another company’s advertising on your autoresponder as is the case with a free service.

So, the crux of the matter is that in your rush to get more, new customers you should never neglect your old patrons. If you have a useful, reliable product, it is these older customers that will bring you more gains, as they have tested your product and are happy with it.

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As a small business owner or sales professional, our ATTitude determines our ALTitude!…let me know when I can help you install automated marketing systems in your business!

Enjoy today’s Power Action Quote from Og Mandino….Remember, to “Persist Until You Succeed”!

Press Play!

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I was guest on a radio show a few days ago and covered the topic of “7 Devastating Mistakes Small Business Owners Cannot Afford to Make in this Economy”

We discussed topics such as: followup marketing, automated marketing tools, email marketing…basically an overview on what a SBO or someone setting up a “Family Business” would need to do without spending a lot of money!

If you would like a copy of the 18 page PDF Workbook I prepared just go to www.FollowupMagic.com and enter your info into the lightbox opt-in and you’ll be given that plus a few other goodies!

Click below to listen.

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How to Increase Backend Sales from Your Current Customers

If you are selling a product that is giving you very good profits at the front end, but are making very little or nothing at all from your backend operations, you could actually be letting go of a golden opportunity to make money.

Many smart entrepreneurs out there are actually making a fortune for themselves by catering to the needs of customers for backend products. The top of this list is dominated by information products and some kinds of software applications.

But before we start the discussion, what are backend sales? The frontend sale is the main product you have on offer. Thus, the backend sales are other products that you are able to sell to the customer along with this frontend product.

This is how it works: if a customer has purchased a product on your website and clicks a link to download her product, you can send them thought o another page that makes a ‘one-time offer’ to the customer before they go ahead to their main download page.

There are, in fact, a number of ways to increase your backend sales so that you make more profit. Backend sales are important and in one sense easier because the customer is already buying a product and is in a purchase-friendly mindset to start with, which makes it easier to sell him anything.

This concept of backend sales will also have a bearing on how you develop your main product. You should develop a product that will encourage higher backend sales. While designing your frontend product you should know that you don’t necessarily make only one sale to a customer.

If someone likes your product, they will surely come back. At the same time, just having a backend product does not always mean that it will ring in the sales. The backend product must be related to the frontend you are selling.

One smart thing many businesses have discovered is to offer a small discount on the frontend product if the customer buys one of your backend products along with it. This is tempting to the customer for the savings it will mean, and also the convenience a complete package offers.

Finally, one thing that everyone must do for garnering higher backend profits is to capture the names and email addresses of your customer for follow-up later on. This might sound simple but many people actually neglect it, at their own cost.

So, what you basically need is a little creativity and some initiative to make your backend sales make you more money than you ever thought possible.

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Very eye-opening article I found!

Small businesses in the US will not cut spending on most forms of online advertising in 2009, judging by a survey conducted in December 2008 by Ad-ology Research. A higher percentage of respondents said they planned to spend “about the same” in 2009 than planned to change their spending.

More small businesses said they would increase their spending on social networking than on any other format. And respondents were more likely to say they would increase spending in 2009 on e-mail and their company Websites than make cuts on those formats.

The percentage of small businesses who said they did not use various online marketing tactics was high. Well over one-third of respondents said they did not market using social networks, their own Website or even e-mail. 

A lot of small businesses’ marketing efforts this year will focus on lead generation, according to a study conducted in December 2008 by Issues and Answers for the Yellow Pages Association (YPA). More than one-half of responding small-business owners named lead generation as their greatest challenge. Nearly one out of five said lack of ad dollars was the toughest marketing problem they faced. Many respondents said that ROI was the main way they measured success for their marketing tactics

Bottom Line?

Small Business Owners need to install cutting edge marketing tools and systems to reduce their non-productive advertising and increase and ROI.

source:http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006847

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Backend Marketing Method

When your business is in need of some kind of a push, you mostly resort to the old method of broadening your clientele. This is not an easy task, and more often than not, you cannot tide over your dipping sales. An easy and innovative answer to your problem is the method of backend marketing. This is the trick that most salesmen have mastered, and it involves nothing but a bit of persuasion to make another sale to a customer who has purchased your product.

This is relatively easy for a salesman because once the client has purchased your product he has shown that he believes in your product and has thus invested his money. This also shows that they trust your services and won’t be averse to buying something recommended by you. You do not have to spend time building up their trust in you by proving that your company has excellent credentials.

You could work out this backend marketing strategy by suggesting a product that aids in the performance of the product your customer has already purchased from you. The key to a higher profit is to recommend a product that has better performance than the one just bought, and hence more expensive.

If you have recently kept an eye on Amazon.com, you must have noticed that a statistical account of the products purchased by each customer is maintained.

Suppose you decide to buy a book through Amazon.com, they will display a list of customers who have bought some other book-perhaps indirectly related to the one you chose- while buying the one you are going to purchase for yourself. They suggest you to check out this related book. You might even like the suggestion and go for both the books, even though you set out to buy just one.

Similarly, if you follow this simple yet effective marketing strategy, you could effortlessly bring in the profit you require and make your customers feel that their needs are being efficiently met with. Meanwhile your clientele-base gets strengthened.

You could offer to knock off a small percentage of the sales price in a bid to sell your expensive product. The customers feel that they are making a good bargain and they buy it!

Simply put, this tactic entails nothing more than first selling a reliable product to your client and then suggesting something more expensive yet useful to aid the aforementioned product.

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While the vast majority of small-business owners are concerned about the current economy, this isn’t putting over a quarter of them off spending on more advertising in the coming year, according to a report from Ad-ology Research.

Ninety-seven percent of small business owners are going in to the New Year with some concerns over how the economy will impact sales, but that isn’t going to stop 26% of them spending more on advertising, in particular online advertising.

Ad-ology’s survey of 863 owners of U.S. businesses with less than 100 employees in October 2008, found that 67% intend to spend the same, or more, on online advertising this year. Yellow Pages (54%), newspapers (51%) and direct mail (51%) are also among the channels small-business owners are looking to to deliver results.

What is apparent from the research is that small-business owners are beginning to realize that mass marketing may not be the most effective way forward. Over three-quarters (78%) believe referrals to be their best acquisition route and just 37% believe getting a marketing message to as many consumers as possible is best.

[click on the tab above "The Referral Movie" to see a great solution]

Other key findings:

• “Knows my company/line of business” is the top attribute small business owners look for in a media advertising sales rep. “Delivers what they promise” is the second most desirable attribute.

• 52% of small business owners surveyed agree with the statement “you can gain market share by marketing while your competitors are cutting back”.

• 74% believe their company “must be one of the first 2-3 that come to a customer’s mind” when they need what the small business owner is selling.

• More than half of respondents plan to spend the same or more time and money on their Web sites and email marketing in 2009.

• The majority of small businesses are not using other emerging media: 77% do not use online video, 83% do not podcast, and 82% do not use mobile advertising.

“Small business owners rely on advertising sales reps for guidance and are clearly looking for consultative partners in the advertising process,” said C. Lee Smith, president and CEO of Ad-ology Research. “They are more likely to purchase advertising from those that understand their business.”

source:   http://tinyurl.com/9o4qrm  Helen Leggatt

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