Archive for the ‘Creative Marketing’ Category
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
Pretend you are opening a store in a busy shopping mall. As a savvy business owner you will budget for the monthly rent, utilities, security, signage, advertising, marketing, fixtures and inventory. Will you expect to begin making money the minute your doors are open for business?
As a website owner, let’s use the retail store analogy – you invest money in the building of the website or the retail storefront. Next, you open your doors for business or your website goes “live”. The thinking is that once the website is built, the search engines should find you immediately and the cash register will start ringing. Is this realistic? Why are online expectations so drastically unrealistic from offline expectations?
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Tags: Business Strategy, effective web design, internet marketing, marketing ideas, Web Marketing, website marketing
Posted in Creative Marketing, Effective Web Sites, Small Business Owners | 16 Comments »
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
1. Easy – Let the visitor know it is easy to do business with you. Easy to order, easy to buy, easy to subscribe, easy to phone, easy, easy, easy. Don’t we all want everything to be easy? This is a buzzword for sure.
2. FREE – yes, put this word in big, bold capital letters at least once on your home page. Everyone can give something away for FREE. The Internet was built on the premise of FREE. What can you give away for FREE?
3. Today – Why delay? Order today! Now is good, today is better! This word invites the visitor to take action today. Tell them why today is better than tomorrow and that’s even better. Encourage them to buy from you today.
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Tags: effective web design, internet marketing, Small Business, Web Marketing
Posted in Creative Marketing, Effective Web Sites, Small Business Owners | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
This is a wonderful time of year to express gratitude to your clients. Here are three quick ideas for giving thanks to your greatest source of referrals.
- Place a special offer or bonus on your site for the month of November. Example: Sign up for our newsletter and receive a special report “How to Escape Family Drama During the Holidays”.
- Plan a client appreciation celebration. Join forces with some other businesses for a joint appreciation party. Imagine the connections! Who better to sing your praises than your clients?
- Stand out from the crowd by sending cards or gifts to your clients now instead of in December. Remember, your greatest source of referrals comes from existing clients so reward them!
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust
How do you thank your clients and make them feel special? Leave your comments below and we’ll all benefit from your ideas.
Tags: Client Relations
Posted in Client Relations, Creative Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
Flash, Frames & Blinking Banners – Avoid building an entire site in Flash. Search engines cannot find or read a site built totally in Flash. A good alternative is to create an html site and implement Flash elements inside this type of site. Frames are difficult for users and search engines can’t read sites built in frames. Avoid frames completely! Too many blinking banners, moving text or images can be distracting to the visitor and give the wrong impression. Too much bling is not a good thing for a website.- Poor Content, Too Much or Not Enough – What you say on your site is extremely important. Be brief and get to the point with effective, powerful words. If a visitor has to scroll multiple times to read all the text they and move on. People are typically in a hurry and want the info fast. Have you been to a site with no text and wondered what they were all about? Text on the home page is important for the visitor and for the search engines. Don’t make them guess what’s behind door #1, tell them what you are about so they will want to explore further. (more…)
Tags: effective web design, web site mistakes
Posted in Creative Marketing, Effective Web Sites, Small Business Owners, Web Design Ideas, Web Marketing, Web Site Design | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Whenever I do a workshop or speaking engagement I ask the audience, “What search engine do you use for finding sites and information?” I’m often surprised at the responses and almost always learn about one or two search engines that I’ve never heard of before. Google, MSN & Yahoo remain in the top three so I’ll summarize some of the data for those.
Google is preferred by males and Google users are 43 percent more likely to buy online over other Internet users.
MSN is preferred by females and those 55 and over prefer this search engine. MSN users are 48 percent more likely to purchase than other Internet users.
Yahoo! users make up the 18-34-year-old segment and are 31 percent more likely to make online purchases.
As a web marketer how will you use this useful information?
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Tags: Demographics, Google, internet marketing, MSN, search engine, Web Marketing, Yahoo
Posted in Creative Marketing, Small Business Owners, Web Marketing, Web Trends | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
I often hear from weary website owners that they just don’t have the time to market their websites. Thinking about doing this in large chunks of time can be overwhelming. Just the thought of it may discourage you from taking any action at all. So here’s a challenge for each of you. Do you have 5 minutes? Here’s what you can do in 5 minutes:
- Go to any website – just pick one out of the blue. Preferably someone you don’t know. Be brave. Pretend I’m there holding your hand (grin).
- Send the owner a friendly email and compliment him/her on a great site.
- Indicate that you are looking for help. Remember people LOVE to help. Your single question may look like one of these:
- I need your help. I wonder if you could give me one idea for getting more clients in the area of _______?
- Would you mind giving me some advice? I’d like to know some techniques you’ve used to attract your ideal customers.
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Tags: internet marketing, web site marketing
Posted in Creative Marketing, Small Business Owners, Web Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
It’s baffling to me when people put up a website and expect people to just find it. If you read these suggestions and smack your forehead saying, “Oh, I can’t believe we ran that $3,000 magazine ad without our web address! “ You are not alone! Businesses every day are frequently overlooking offline marketing to bring visitors to their site.
How many people are going to find out about your website off-the-web before they are online? Print your web address and e-mail on every piece of paper and promotional material that leaves your office. Your web address and e-mail address should be on business cards, brochures, letterhead and envelopes. The recipients of these items may not know you have a website and will be prompted to take a look. If they know about your website, maybe they haven’t been back to visit and will place your business card by their computer as a reminder to check it out.
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Tags: marketing ideas, website marketing
Posted in Artists, Client Relations, Creative Marketing, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, Web Marketing | 6 Comments »
I read and process about 150 business emails on a daily basis and look at over 80 websites. Adding any social media activities to this already heavily multitasking type schedule is overwhelming. I feel first and foremost I need to be responding to clients and scheduling projects with our team. I tried delegating this social media aspect to my assistant and that just didn’t work. I think social media is something one personally needs to do. It’s kind of like sending my assistant to a networking meeting – it’s not the same as me being there in person.
