Top of Google for $100 a Month
On several occasions I’ve had clients tell me that a telemarketer has called with this promise. “Pay us ($40, $100, 200, etc) per month and we’ll put your website at the top of Google. We have a special relationship with Google. ”
Is this a scam?
It’s generally not a scam in the strictest sense. They aren’t lying, but they do leave out a lot of important facts. Most of these places are using Adwords to promote your business. Adwords allows you to bid on a keyword (choose an amount are willing to pay per person who clicks through to your site) and therefore is called Pay Per Click advertising. Using this system, you can be at the top of Google (the sponsored listings show at the top and on the right), by just paying enough money.
Creating Multiple FaceBook Accounts
Is FaceBook an effective tool for a business person? I believe it is, and it’s also a great way to connect with family and friends. One FaceBook account isn’t a great tool for doing both. My solution is to break my FaceBook account into two accounts. One is for Personal and one is for business.
HotFrog – Free Local Directory
Alert reader Dat with DC Connections, sent me a link to this very cool local directory – hotfrog.com – This is a free directory and it has the best system for finding categories I’ve seen. Additionally, it lets you add products which would increase your exposure and is also free.
The Repetition Myth
If you’ve read many marketing books you know the huge number of times a potential prospect needs to be exposed to a marketing message before actually purchasing the advertised product or service. I was reading one of Jay Levinson’s books recently and he said that it takes 9 impressions before someone takes action. Furthermore he says only one in three attempts at making an impression are successful. This means you need to put your message in front of your prospect 27 times.
This got me thinking. Why does it seem like some people just instantly buy? Here’s my BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious). The repetition has already taken place before you get there. In other words, through various sources that prospect has already heard many times how much they need what you’re offering.
The trick is tapping into an internal dialog that someone is having. Let me give you a totally self-serving example:
Fred the business owner knows he needs a website. His clients keep asking him if he has one, and everywhere he turns he sees evidence that this is a must. At the same time, he keeps having the same discussion in his head, “Yeah I know I need a website, but I can’t afford it.” Now I come along with a simple marketing message, “Basic Websites Under $500” This instantly presents a potential solution (a scratch for an itch) that he has had for a long time.
If you can craft the right marketing message, the repetition has already been done. You only need to delve into what your customers really need and want, and tap into that inner dialog.
Tip for Processing Email
A few months ago, I set a goal to empty my inbox. It all relates to Getting Things Done by David Allen and Inbox Zero.
To make a long story short, I had to process 10′s of thousands of emails. During this exciting work, I figured out something. When you are processing email it’s much easier if you sort by “from” instead of the default of sorting by date. This puts all of the messages from the same people together. This makes it easy to delete a block of spam all from one person (click on the first message, hold down shift, click on the last message, press delete). Additionally, it makes it much easier for reply’s because if someone has sent you multiple questions, you can read all and reply to all in one email.
To sort by from you simply click on the Column Name (in Thunderbird that’s ‘sender’, but I believe in Outlook Express it’s ‘from’).
Using this method I’m often able to process a couple hundred emails within 20-30 minutes, including answering several.
Using Video to Promote Your Business
I just watched a very interesting video about using videos to promote your business. It’s about an hour long and certainly worth the time. Click here to view it.
Social Networking – Not just for Oprah
Are you looking for ways to pinch pennies? How about a system for getting in front of more people that doesn’t cost anything? I’ve put together a new video training website called “Social Networking Professor” with both free and paid video tutorials. You know why I did it?
Bing Local
MSN has changed it’s name to Bing, and is doing a ton of advertising. It’s probably a good time to add your free local listing to their directory. Click here to get started.
Oregon Live
OregonLive.com has a business directory and you can add a business listing in there for free. Click here to get started.
Free Dynamic Email Backup
I’ve come to understand, as you may, that one of the worst set of data for me to lose would be my email. To that end, I’ve come up with a way to automatically backup all of my email.
I created a new Gmail account just for backups. I forward a copy of all of my email to this account. If I was ever to have a problem, even if I just accidently deleted an email, I can go back and search for it at that Gmail account.
Many hosting companies give you the ability to forward copies of your email to a secondary address. If you’re not sure how to do it, you’ll need to contact your hosting company.
Needless to say, if you host with me, you can ask me.