Tag: marketing

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Having a CRM system doesn’t mean you no longer have to pick up the phone!

 

  In many types of businesses a salesman is required to close sales. This is not only true for big ticket items like cars and airplanes, but a myriad of different types of businesses too numerous to be named.

Even for most of the items on your grocery store shelves, a salesman probably was involved to get the supermarket manager or chain, interested enough to provide shelf space for that particular product at some point in time. Even though new automation marketing may provide prospect data and up to the minute d detailed information on how your prospects interact on your website, this information alone will usually not close the sale.

 

This is quite obvious basic information, of course, but no company with a CRM system (Customer Relationship Management) software should be unclear that the CRM software is merely a tool to provide additional data for the salesperson, and to help find the prospects who are ready, willing, and able to buy at the current time.

 

Face to face visits, (when possible), phone calls, Skype calls, webinar events, presentations, etc. are where sales are made. Everything else is just background to the actual sale. Sometimes the amount of data can be a little distracting, but keeping all eyes on the prize should prevent this.

 

The relationship between the salesman and the customer is the most critical one a business has, and all the advertising in the world, cannot substitute for the personal relationship that exists there.

 

Sales and marketing managers also need to make sure that this fundamental level of contact with the customer is taken care of. Tracking calls, visits, and all of these one-to-one connections with prospects is just as critical as the detailed information you receive from a CRM, if not of greater importance. CRM systems, once costly propositions restricted to entrerprise-level companies are now highly affordable, even for the smallest business.

 

For more information, click the link below. click here —-> Affordable Automation for Everyone  

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Al Zibluk

General

What are all those connections on LinkedIn for anyway?

A segment of a social network  

A segment of a social network (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

The number of your LinkedIn connections is a critical factor in your long-term marketing success on this unique social network. If you connect with someone that has 10k 1st level connections on LinkedIn. That person's 10K 1st level connections automatically become your second level connections. their 2nd level, automatically become your 3rd.

The larger your network, the larger your reach of potential prospects.  Or, to put it another way, large networks command a larger sphere of influence.  With large networks it is apparent that you cannot know everyone in your network personally, but the advantage in my opinion outweighs the benefit of a smaller network of known associates.

As your network grows it will be more attractive for others to connect to you in order to widen their sphere of influence. For example, it is clear that a certain point, you will have to make less effort to find connections.  (It has been reported that this usually happens on LinkedIn when 3,000 or more 1st level connections have been made).

3,000 connections may seem like a big number if you rely only on friends and associates.  If you could add 30 connections per day, however, then it would take you only about three months to accomplish.  Not bad, right?

The larger your network, the more invitations will come to you, instead of having to reach out for every one of your connections. It is healthy for the growth of your network to have a mix of incoming and outgoing connection requests.  If you only send out connection requests and never receive any incoming requests, it may look unbalanced to LinkedIn. You might want to check your profile to see if there is anything that would prevent someone from connecting to you, if you notice this happening.  

Every time you post on Pulse inside of LinkedIn, your post automatically goes out to all of your first level connections.  If you have 10k connections, you have the chance for your content to be seen by over 10,000 people!  You will likely get many more views, likes, and comments with a larger network receiving your posts. LinkedIn is much more likely to promote your content on Pulse, with a greater number of views.  

If LinkedIn does promote your post, it could potentially be seen by tens of thousands of people.  It is not an easy task to get a blog post to command that kind of attention on a typical hosted WordPress blog. It takes quite a bit of time and effort.

One caution here. You will inevitably get more spammy type messages in your inbox. How long does it take to click delete?  If anyone becomes annoying and sends you repeated messages, you always have the option to remove them from your network. In my opinion the rewards far outweigh the risks, so I am busy building a large network on LinkedIn.  See the following links to find out more about the best ways to do this.

MarketHive — Social Network for Entrepreneurs

Goldfinch Digital Marketing — one-stop shopping for all your local marketing needs

Goldfinch Digital Publishing — marketing blog

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Al Zibluk

General

I Would Have Written a Shorter Blog Post, but I Didn’t Have the Time

Does this sound familiar to you? Originally the phrase has been attributed to Blaise Pascal in the form, "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time".

Do you think that the world would have known about Malala if she had not blogged about her ideas and communicated them online? It is a fact that if you want to be successful online, you will have to learn to write.

Writing is not only about blogging. Most digital products have text. Even videos have some sort of script. Presentations, slideshares, webinars, emails, autoresponders, press releases and most forms of squeeze or sales pages, are essentially text. Each of these forms of communication has a different, somewhat specialized form of writing, but learning to blog on a consistent basis can help all of the other forms.

You will often see that some of the best writers in a particular niche are also quite prolific. That is not just coincidence.  It takes time, effort, and consistent practice to become a good writer, and extraordinary effort to become a great one.

You don't have to have a fancy vocabulary, or perfect spelling, (always use a spell checker), but you do have to learn to communicate your ideas in a clear, if not persuasive manner. It is necessary to empathize with your reader, prospect, or customer to hold their attention, and help them to learn something they did not know before.

Blogging in particular, requires good communication skill, but it is more than that. You have to have something to say that is interesting to the reader, and if possible, informative, educational, and even entertaining. This is a tall order, without a doubt, but the good news is that blogging is an acquired skill.

Especially in terms of efficiency, an online entrepreneur has many hats on this head, so no one can afford to spend excessive amounts of time dedicated to blogging. I have to say that a new social network called MarketHive has taught me a great deal about blogging and blog promotion.

For most entrepreneurs, it is not easy to generate traffic to a blog, especially a new one without resorting to paid traffic methods. At MarketHive there is a rapidly growing base of friendly entrepreneurs that view content, comment, and quickly engage with your blog posts.

I find the number of views is quite remarkable considering the size of the network. Sometimes is not only size of the network that matters it is the level of engagement. One final note: It really is true that practice makes perfect. With the right attitude, practice and using the right tools, anyone can learn to publish a blog post in about 30 minutes like this one.

For additional information on this topic visit Neil Patel's Quick Sprout Blog and the following links:

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Al Zibluk

General

Are Sales Funnels Really that Critical to Online Success?

update

What is this thing called a sales funnel, and why is everyone going crazy over it? There is always talk on the Internet about sales funnels, but who really understands what a sales funnel is and how to correctly implement one?

Well, perhaps there is a considerable amount of confusion about sales funnels because it is one of the distinguishing factors that separates the successful marketer / business person from the unsuccessful one. Have you ever bought something online or over the telephone from a TV advertisement? 

The kind of funnel that most of these TV ad-men design more closely resembles a black hole. The realize that they probably have one shot and one shot only to sell to a customer calling on an 800 number. After you have made one purchase, you will usually be given a chance to double the order, for only the (inflated) cost of shipping and handling. Then one product after another will be offered in an attempt to squeeze every last dollar out of the call. This is distasteful to the consumer, but this kind of sales funnel is common in that industry. You really do feel like sucker if you let yourself get caught in their "black hole", and buy product after product.

Just ask any typical business person, what do you do with the people who do not buy your products or services?  Most would say, well, nothing.  Well, you probably have what is called a leaky sales funnel.  This is not so easy to set up for a brick and mortar type of business, but every online business should pay attention to their sales funnel. There almost always is a significant impact on your bottom line.

Everyone knows that taking care of customers is a priority.  If any business is to survive, it is a well-established fact that you have to take good care of your customers.

Say what you will about the Internet Marketing Industry, one thing that good Internet Marketing Professionals have going for them is that they understand very well that it is not only the quality of the product you promote, but the specific design of your sales funnel that can often make the difference between a mediocre success and big success. To rephrase, a well-designed sales funnel could be the difference between losing money, merely breaking even, and making a significant profit.

Let's try to clear up some basic confusion about sales funnels using the above graphic. Most businesses think that everyone in America, or everyone in their hometown of business is a prospect. In reality, until someone walks into your store, they are only a potential prospect. In the case of online business, until someone signs up for your email newletter, free product download, webinar, or other offer, there are no prospects, only potential prospects.

Everyone outside of your sales funnel is the audience you are trying to reach.  This nearly limitless pool contains all of the potential prospects for your business. They have not walked into your store. They have not signed up to be contacted by you in any way. You don't know who they are, although you might have some idea where they hang out.  They are only potential prospects because you have no way of contacting them, until they take the first step into your sales funnel.

Once they walk into your store, or provide their email address, then they actually qualify as a prospect.  Now you can contact them and work with them to help them become a customer. Everyone wants to do more than just survive. If you want to thrive, you need to find a way to quickly determine who is ready, willing, and able to buy right now.  That should be the first step.  

I have to give Steve Rosenbaum credit for identifying this as such an important step.  He also talks extensively about leak-proof sales funnels.  This is a guy who really knows the sales process, both online and offline. As you can see from the graphic above you can see there is a step-by-step process until a prospect becomes a customer.

Also, there should be a clear method to allow customers to become what I would call loyal customers, by making repeat purchases. As shown by the arrow on the right side of the funnel, they should easily be able to become repeat customers. It may be because the product is renewable, or relies on a subscription model, or they simply like your product or service enough to purchase additional products or services from you.

There is obviously a great deal more to discuss about funnels, but I think the fundamentals discussed here are important enough to warrant this kind of post.

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Al Zibluk

General

Not You Typical Business Opportunity

A brand new online community is about to launch which will allow you to make money by performing simple online tasks. And the best part is you don’t have to spend a dime to be part of this community

The first thing you need to know and understand is that THIS IS NOT AN MLM!

What if you got paid a few cents to even a few dollars for doing simple online tasks like:

Joining an email list

Liking a Facebook fan page

Sharing a Facebook post

Liking a Facebook post

Visiting a website

Providing feedback about a website or a video

Providing feedback about a logo

Answering a few short questions

(Just to name a few) Well now you can!

Join Here: http://hive.pe/a4

This is also NOT a "traditional online biz opp" where the only way you make money is by "sponsoring" others or selling a product or service. NEITHER one of those things are REQUIRED here to earn! And that's NOT just some marketing scheme and a "line" we use to "get you in". It's 100% true.

HOWEVER…as you will understand shortly…the more people you personally refer to the system, the more potential earnings you will make!

Just imagine this…let's say on any given day there are say 100 tasks available for you and other members to complete to get paid on.

Let's say the average reward for those tasks is just $.25! (25 cents!)

That would mean that on any given day, if you completed those tasks you would earn roughly $25. For every task you complete there is a 10% fee taken from the potential reward. HOWEVER, we (the company) do not KEEP all 10% of that fee. Instead, we share it with YOU (Those who are helping our community grow) and this is how we do it.

Out of the $25 in rewards you earned by completing those 100 tasks…there would be $2.50 held back in referral fees. GetPaidSocial shares 40% of those referral fees with the DIRECT referrer who brought that person into the system, which in this case would be $1. The company then keeps $1.50 (and this is how the company makes money, in case you were wondering)

Let's say you have just 10 people directly referred to you, and let's say that each of those 10 people completed the 100 tasks available that day just like you did.

This means that you would be paid a $1 referral bonus for each of those 10 people, which would mean an ADDITIONAL $10 in earnings for that day ON TOP of the $22.50 YOU MADE by completing the tasks as well!

That's a total of $32.50 you made in a single day!

Simply do that every day and BOOM…

You've earned $975 for the month!

What would an additional $975 a month mean to you in your life?

Here's the best part…

You haven't spent a single penny and you didn't have to "sponsor" or "recruit" your friends and family into some "biz opp" or MLM opportunity that they have to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars in before you can make anything.

We have over 1,000 members in our community right now…if only just 10% of them post tasks for others to complete every single day at an average reward of just $.25…you're enabling every member here, including yourself to make the kind of money I just explained…PLUS you're growing your list, you're building your social following, you're getting leads and you're making more money in your primary business.

Talk about a HUGE WIN/WIN right? smiley

When you join us I'm encouraging you to go out there and share this with EVERYONE you possible can…because I'll leave you with this thought…

What if you personally referred not 10 people, but 100, 200, 300 or MORE?

The more you personally refer…the more bonuses you will earn!

AND I will tell you…the average reward will more than likely be MORE than $.25! What if the average reward was $.50 or $1 or even $5?

Join us and help our community grow.  Join Here: http://hive.pe/a4

Al Zibluk