What To Do When You Can't Sell More

Without a doubt, the quickest and easiest way to generate more sales is to sell more to your current repeat customers. But sometimes, that just isn't an option. Let me share an example…

Are You Violating These 6 Blog Credibility Rules?

Blogs are a great way to enhance your website content. (For more ideas on enhancing your web site content, check out this article on our sister site.) And it's true, blogs allow you to easily maintain your site without having any technical expertise.

Unexpected Ways To Stay In Touch With Your Clients, Customers and Prospects

You know the old adage, out of sight, out of mind. That goes for your clients and prospects, too. I hate to burst your bubble, but your customers are not sitting around thinking of you, wondering what you're up to, thinking about all the great items you have for sale.
 
Chances are, on an everyday basis, the thought of you doesn't even enter your customers' minds. Ouch! What's a small business owner to do?

What Does White Day Have To Do With Your Business?

As you may know, my daughter is currently studying in Japan, and March 14 in Japan is White Day. White Day is basically the day on which...

Website Not Generating Enough Leads? Is It Really Trying To?

I have a client who complained that his website was not generating enough leads. So he hired me to critique the site and propose a new design. 
 
When I took a look at the website, the problem was immediately apparent. As it turned out, his site was...

How To Yield a 7% Sales Increase With An Incredibly Easy Redesign

I have some very interested split test results that I think will really surprise you. Here's the story of a major retailer who increased sales over 7% by going against conventional wisdom.

Create a Text Based Logo For Guaranteed Email Display

I just designed an email campaign for a client and, naturally, I created the templates in multi-part MIME format. One major concern, especially since this is a B to B company, is that many readers will have their images turned off. My client was extremely concerned that his logo would not display and his readers would not know where the email message came from.
  
(I didn't necessarily agree with this. Relevant, well written content should speak for itself. But I decided to give my client what he wanted…)

How To Get Out Of Overwhelm

In December, I got very behind schedule. My husband and I were planning a trip to Japan to visit our daughter who is attending university there. There are a lot of details that go into traveling overseas for three weeks; and planning our trip had been more time consuming than I originally expected. Plus, the end of the year is naturally busy for my business as my clients prepare for the upcoming year. 

I guess you could say I was totally overwhelmed.

Are You Planning to Fail by Failing to Plan?

I love this time of year! I really enjoy putting my business and marketing plan together and imagining all the endless possibilities that face my business for the new year. It's exciting and invigorating. Business planning is a process that all businesses - especially small businesses - should undergo on a regular basis.

An Easy Website Split-Testing Schedule You Can Use

By now you probably know that I am a testing fanatic. You'll never know if your marketing is performing at its absolute best unless you test. You should be testing your display ads, your sales letters, your email messages and yes, even your website.
  
I don't seem to have any trouble convincing my clients to test their copywriting and their ads. But, when it comes to website testing, many of my clients shy away. It's easy to look at your site and get totally overwhelmed and unsure...

Address Their Objections To Increase Your Sales

One of the services I provide for my clients is sales copy critique, and one of the problems that I see very often in sales copy is "too good to be true" syndrome. I understand the importance of highlighting the great benefits of your product or service; but it's important to address the downside also.

6 Common Mistakes in Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is by far the most profitable way to grow your client base, but it's easy to do it the wrong way. Be sure to avoid these six most common mistakes:

Planning Your Email Re-Send

You crafted a great email campaign, with a compelling subject line, the perfect mix of html and text, dynamic supporting graphics. Your headline is persuasive, your offer is unbeatable, your product is top-notch…

How Does Your Landing Page Measure Up?

You managed to entice your email reader or web surfer to click your link or your ad. In today's cluttered web marketing world, that's quite an accomplishment. But don't start celebrating yet. It's what happens after the click that determines the success of your campaign.

How To Optimize Your Website For Ask

While Ask's share of the search market is comparatively small, it offers some great features that are sure to catch on. Consider grabbing a good ranking now before the word gets out and a tidal wave of webmasters start clamoring for top spots.

Want a Better Search Engine Ranking? Follow These Easy Tips

Having a hard time ranking in Google? Why not try optimizing for Yahoo? After all, Yahoo commands over 22% of the search market - and 22% of billions of users is quite a lot! 

How To Deal With Bounced Email

I have a client who sells advertising in her e-zines, so she is hesitant to remove bounced addresses from her list. I've been trying to convince her that she is doing more harm than good, and I thought I'd share some facts with you to prevent you from making the same mistakes.

Optimize Your PDFs For Better Search Traffic

I recently came across a quote from a web marketer saying that people who include PDFs in their websites don't realize the search engines cannot see this text. Fortunately, that's not really the case.

Increase Open Rates: Be Direct With Busy Readers

On-line marketer, ProspectZone, increased open rates by 28% and click-throughs by 53% in a recent split-test. What can you learn from their results?

Are You Speaking Warmly To Cold Prospects?

Sometimes we're marketing a product our service that our prospects don't even realize they need. We refer to this as a complex sale. A complex sale is generally a strategic decision...

What To Consider When Designing Your Display Ad

So, you decided it's time to grow your small business, and you think advertising is going to generate the growth you need. Whether you choose to place an ad in your local newspaper, in a trade magazine, in an e-zine, or anywhere else you can think of, there are a few things you should know beforehand.

Address Their Objections To Increase Your Sales

One of the services I provide for my clients is sales copy critique, and one of the problems that I see very often in sales copy is "too good to be true" syndrome. I understand the importance of highlighting the great benefits of your product or service; but it's important to address the downside also.

This Easy Change Can Lift Your Ecommerce Conversion By 30%

Have you taken a look at your "About Us" page lately? Is it boring, dull, lifeless, a veritable afterthought? If so, join the crowd. Most "About Us" pages are completely lackluster.

6 Steps For Managing Your Search Marketing Campaign

Your search marketing campaign is not a set it and forget it effort. To be effective, search marketing requires continual attention. Here are a few things you should be doing on a regular basis:

How To Turn Over 90% Of Referrals Into Customers

My client Amy is in an industry that is heavily built on referrals. Like her colleagues, she relies on referrals to grow her prospect base and generate more sales. Unlike her colleagues, Amy gets tons of referrals on a regular basis and turns more than 90% of her referred prospects into clients.
  
Let's take a look at how most of Amy's colleagues handle their referrals…

How To Make The Selling Process Go Faster As Your Budget Gets Smaller

Since most small businesses have small budgets - and I'm betting that includes you - effective targeting becomes even more critical. A form of targeting that I use often is targeting based on trigger events. This helps speed up the sales process by reaching prospects at the time they are most likely to make a purchase.

How To Design Your Email Messages For Mobile Devices

According to a 2007 study, 64% of key decision makers are reading your email messages on their Blackberries or PDAs. To grab their attention, and make sure your mail gets read, it's important to follow these guidelines:

Enhance Your Site Content to Ensure Holiday Traffic

With the busy holiday shopping season right around the corner, you probably don't have time for a complete website overhaul. And yet, at this time of year, it's more important than ever to ensure that your site is in tip-top shape and getting adequate traffic.

How to Create an Abundant Flow of Perfect Customers

What is the greatest weapon a small business can have in its marketing arsenal? Most marketing experts and small business owners alike agree that the single most cost effective and efficient way to grow any business is with referrals.

Turning Your Direct Mail Campaign Into An Online Lead Generating Machine

Here's a GREAT way for you to save time, save money, and increase your sales leads. Let me tell you a quick little story...

I have a client for whom I run a lead generation direct mail campaign. I've been trying to persuade him to move some of the campaign online in order to cut down costs and increase conversions. He's been a pretty hard sell, but I've finally...

Create a Text Based Logo For Guaranteed Email Display

I just designed an email campaign for a client and, naturally, I created the templates in multi-part MIME format. One major concern, especially since this is a B to B company, is that many readers will have their images turned off. My client was extremely concerned that his...

7 Simple Steps to Getting Your Mo-Jo Back

Ugh, it's that time of year again when we look at what we've accomplished and what we still have to do and for some of us, we kind of teeter out. Has this ever happened to you…
  
You're in the middle of a great project, or working on an exciting activity, and all of a sudden *BAM!* it hits you… your Mo-Jo is gone.

Does Short Web Copy Outperform Long Copy?

If you've been marketing - either on or offline - for any amount of time, you've probably encountered the long copy versus short copy argument. And the definitive answer is

Add This Great Medium To Your Marketing Repertoire...

Audio is a great tool for your lead generation and relationship building, and it also makes a relatively easy-to-produce info-product that you can use to generate revenue. If you have a service business, especially any service that is very personal or intimate, or if it’s very important that your prospects trust you and really feel comfortable with you before they would consider becoming your client, then audio would be a great asset to your marketing mix.

Are You Leaving Money On The Table With Your Upsells?

I have always advised my clients on the importance of upselling, and, as a marketing student, I was indoctrinated with the common practice of gradually working new customers up the price ladder. Obviously then, it would be a normal procedure that the price of upsells be only slightly higher than the original item being purchased. But, is this necessarily the best practice?

53% of Your Email Subject Lines Are Probably Broken

Do you realize that 53% of your email subject lines are probably broken? According to a recent study by Pivotal Veracity, that's how many email subject lines don't display as the sender had intended. And, if you are doing your own email marketing, there is a very good chance that your own subject lines are among those that don't display properly.

7 Quick Fixes To Gear Up For Holiday Shoppers

As the holiday shopping season is drawing near, it's time to get your website ready for what could possibly be your busiest time of the year. Here are 7 quick fixes you can easily implement on your site in one single afternoon:

Is Your Email Campaign Ready For The Holidays?

We’ve barely got our Halloween costumes packed away, and already it’s time to think about the Christmas retail season. If you’re using email to supplement your holiday promotions, keep in mind these helpful hints:

Get Visitors To Read Your Site By Using Smaller Text

A recent eye tracking test found that smaller text on a web page actually encouraged site visitors to read, rather than scan, the page’s text.

How To Create Your Own Information Product

Information products, such as e-books and special reports, are the most profitable products you can sell on the internet today, not to mention the easiest. If you've spent anytime in internet marketing, you're probably already aware of this fact.

The best thing about creating info products is that it's so easy. All you really need are...

Do You See What I See?

You’ve set up a beautiful email campaign. Your copy is tight, your graphics are eye-catching, you’re just sure the click-through rate will be more than respectable.

But are you sure your readers are seeing what you see?

Discover the Secret to Effective Subject Lines

Email marketing has become so competitive lately! As marketers try to push their own emails to the top of the “notice me pile” we’re seeing more and more really aggressive subject lines. But do these hard-hitters actually work?

Can Your “Free” Marketing End Up Costing You Thousands of Dollars?

Many entrepreneurs start email marketing campaigns because they provide an easy, inexpensive way to stay in touch with prospects and clients. But beware! If you’re not following these few simple rules, your “free” marketing could land you with thousands of dollars in fines.

Well Commented Code Slows Your Page Load

Documenting your web site by using comment codes definitely helps in site maintenance tasks, but unfortunately, it slows down your web page load time.

Part 4 - Discover the 4 Simplest (and FREE!) Tactics For Increasing Your Customer Base and Growing Your Small Business

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed giving something away for free in order to grow your customer base. In Part 2, we discussed the need to create a surefire referral system. Our third technique was to take advantage of customer testimonials. Which brings us to our final free tactic for increasing your customer base and growing your small business:

Part 3 - Discover the 4 Simplest (and FREE!) Tactics For Increasing Your Customer Base and Growing Your Small Business

Our third technique is similar to customer referrals in that it, too, uses the value of social proof. Our third free tactic for increasing your customer base and growing your small business is...

Part 2: Discover the 4 Simplest (and FREE!) Tactics For Increasing Your Customer Base and Growing Your Small Business

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at giving something away for free in order to grow your customer base. We discussed knowing the lifetime value of your clients to help you determine how much, monetarily, you could afford to give away for free. 

Discover the 4 Simplest (and FREE!) Tactics For Increasing Your Customer Base and Growing Your Small Business

As small business owners, we often struggle to find new ways to market our business and grow our customer base. We’re caught between a rock and a hard place – the time and expense involved in traditional advertising, and the limited marketing budget we have to work with.

New HTML Standards Coming Soon

We've all known for awhile now that the web is moving away from HTML and toward XML. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has advised us that they will no longer develop HTML standards and we should shift our coding toward XHTML.

But hold on! The W3C has recently announced...

Should You Upgrade to Windows Vista?

According to Microsoft, their new operating system, Windows Vista, will be “more informative, intuitive, and helpful.” The new Vista features are designed to make you more productive while providing more flexibility and PC responsiveness.

But not all PCs are capable of being upgraded to Windows Vista, and while Microsoft is plugging its new system as the “most secure Windows ever”, a security risk was discovered which delayed its release. So, should you consider upgrading or not?

Find the Best Keywords for YOUR Web Site

Even though it's been around since 1999, I just started using the Wordtracker service. Now I no longer have to waste time or money on keywords that are just not profitable.

Do You Really Want To Be The Low Priced Leader?

A recent survey sponsored by the National Retail Federation concluded that Wal-Mart shoppers do more comparison-shopping than Macy’s customers. It also found that the average Macy’s customer will spend $1,102.15 for holiday gifts this year; the average Wal-Mart customer will spend $764.09. And the national average spent on holiday gifts this year will be $791.10.

So what does that have to do with you and your business? Actually, quite a bit! Let’s take a look at some of the insight we can take away from this study...