No email list? You are at a marketing disadvantage

2011 marks the thirteenth year that Focus Consulting and Training has been in business. As I look back at all of the brilliant and less-than-brilliant moves I’ve made over the years, there is always one that sticks out.

I wish I had started my email marketing list on day one of my business in November of 1998.

The ability for you to capture one-time web visitors and stay in touch with them is relationship and marketing brilliance. When someone is initially shopping  they will visit several websites. On each of those websites the average user will stay less than 30 seconds. They will leave and never come back again. In a couple of minutes they will have forgotten all about the most recent sites they visited .

Your online presence needs to have a built-in way to capture and stay in touch with shoppers. And you need to take action TODAY to do this. A good long-term email strategy requires planning and multiple toolsets. But there are steps you can take today to get on the right track. If your competition is taking those steps and you are not, they have an advantage over you. When the prospect is shopping and comparing your two companies and the prospect signs up for your competition’s email list, your competition can immediately start building a long-term relationship with that prospect. As opposed to you who lost them after they left your website.

Check out the impact of email on this infographic from SmarterTools . Click on the graphic to see it full size. And then keep reading below to learn how you can get started today on your own for free:

 

If you are interested in more information about planning and building great email campaigns visit our Contact Page and let us know about any questions you may have.  We use Infusionsoft for our email campaigns because it is an amazing platform that can make your life easier and make your days go by stress-free.

What you can do today on your own to fix this disadvantage (This is the oversimplified version. Contact us if you need help setting this up):

  1. Design a 5+ page report on inside information that you would share with a hot prospect that you took to lunch. Get that report proofread and looking great. Make sure you include plenty of visuals . Ensure  your contact information and website is all over that report (in the header and footer). Save it in PDF format.
  2. Get a free Mailchimp email marketing account. Create a new empty email list in your account.
  3. Set up an “autoresponder” for that new list. This means when people subscribe to your list Mailchimp will automatically email that report.
  4. Use your new list to design a sign up form for the left or right side of your site.
  5. Add that Mailchimp form to your site. Offer that report that you designed for free. All the prospect has to do is fill out your form.

Even though this is oversimplified I hope you get the basic idea. You want to offer your brilliant report for free if they give you their contact information. I use this method and generate a continuous stream of new, free leads every day.

So what are you waiting for? While you have been reading this blog post it is likely new visitors have come to your website, shopped around, and then left. Don’t let that keep happening. Get your email marketing list started today. Trust me – you don’t want to regret it 13 years from now.

Take care my friend,

Patrick

Yeah Baby! 13 Marketing Mojo webinars added

When you have a holiday Monday like we did in the US, your mind plays tricks on you. Since you are relaxing your body feels like it is just Sunday again. Then on Tuesday you go into work on you are in that Monday state of mind. At best it’s just confusing. At worst all of that Tuesday stuff gets screwed up because your mind is in Monday mode. That continues to mess with your mind until you get to Friday which feels like Thursday, and then you end up happy at 5pm when you realize that you’ll have the day off on your Friday which is really Saturday.

Or you could be like a lot of business owners and completely forget that it was a holiday. That is what I did. But you will benefit from it.

The great part about this is that I scheduled 13 new “Marketing Mojo” webinars for you to join. You can see the complete list by visiting –> Focus Consulting Online Marketing Mojo Webinars

Sign up for one or for all. We’d love to teach and share what we know on the call.

– Patrick

P.S. See that form over on the right side of our site to get our Marketing Mojo book? You should fill that out. Not because I want to email you in the future (Which I do). But I ask for a brutal, honest critique from everybody that reads it. I take all of that feedback and revise that book every couple of months. I’d love your feedback to add also. Thanks.

P.P.S. If you don’t want to attend any of the webinars but know someone who does then share this post with them. Thanks.

 

Pay Attention: Facebook now allows ad targeting by zip code

I am far from a tin foil hat kind of guy. But pretty soon you will start seeing ads on Facebook that are very specific to your area.

As of two weeks ago Facebook allows advertisers to target their marketing campaign to specific zip codes. This will only work if you have zip code information in your profile. You should take the time right and check that information. Remove your zip code if you don’t like the idea, but also consider adding your zip code if you’d like to see better advertising. Your zip code information is in your Facebook profile under ‘Contact Information’. Ads are only annoying when you get the ones you don’t want. Now you have a chance to fix that.

About a year ago I wrote my first Facebook application to specifically loop through all of my friends information and show me their zip codes. At that time less than 10% of my friends had filled in that field. So while I think this is a great feature for targetted advertising, I think it will also cause ads to show up less frequently for advertisers.

What is next for Facebook? I’d make an guess here and say that Facebook has a lot more area code information than zip code information. This is due to the fact that many users access Facebook via their phone/mobile application and in some cases the mobile applications require you to validate your mobile number. I can see Facebook turning on area code based advertising in the future. But that will not give the marketing too much more information that they cannot already get by targeting you via your state and your city.

[ Original Facebook Zip Code Targeting article is here ]

Online Marketing Rule 2 of 5: You Have to be Very Loud

(Welcome to the 3rd post in the online marketing mindset series of 6. Click here to read the original summary post and Part 2)

Rule #2: You Have to be Very Loud

I am going to have a lot of people that are going to disagree with me on this point. But I have seen it be a major factor in the success or failure of companies that build online marketing campaigns.

You have to be constantly talking about how good your business is, and how you do it better than your competition. This is why there are so many cases of a great company with no marketing performing poorly while their competition that provides mediocre service but has great marketing is prospering. One of the many functions of marketing is to spread your message repeatedly to as many people as possible. Once or twice is not enough. Your potential client base needs to your brand in their head as the one that solves their problems. They need to think of you whenever they encounter somebody that has a problem that they know you solve. And your company name needs to be on the tip of their tongue at all times. The only way this happens is by demonstrating your expertise on a frequent basis. You cannot rely on the hope that people will find you and just give you money. That might happen occasionally. But the best and loyal customers are the ones that think of you first, trust you, and will buy from you without question when you have a problem that they need fixed.

Once you hit a marketing tipping point you don’t have to worry about talking about yourself as much. Your raving repeat customers will do all of your marketing for you. But until that happens you have to constantly work at putting your message into the consumers head. Example of ways to get that message out over and over: Make sure you have an active email campaign that hits your database between once a week and once a month. Start looking into paid advertising that is very targeted towards your market.

I’d like your feedback on this issue in the comments below. What are other online marketing methods (outside of your own website) that you can drive your value message repeatedly but still be cost-effective ?

Performance Optimization WordPress Plugins by W3 EDGE