Get more results with Facebook

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

A great conversation about being more productive with Facebook took place with Alex Mandossian and here are a few nuggets:

Tips to maximize Facebook for business

Want more people to visit the links you post
in your Facebook updates? Be sure to include the http:// before the
www to make them clickable links

Why not make a theme for each week for your posts

On a page, add events manually, rather than letting the event app
post them.Just copy the URL
of the event, and add as a link, along with relevant copy of your
choosing on the wall of the page.

You can subscribe to any Facebook page in an RSS reader and monitor
content from afar.

Connect the Networked Blogs application
(http://networkedblogs.com/) to your Facebook account. Then add
the rss feed from you main blogs. Next, select the option in the
Networked Blogs setting to post your RSS feed to your Facebook
Page. As soon as you have 20 people follow your feed your content
is syndicated on Facebook!

Create a Welcome tab and a default setting for first time visitors
to your page so that they can learn a little more about you and what
you do.

Research shows that people watch video on Facebook for an average
of 1-minute, 45-seconds

To get the free report click here:  Facebook tips

Tags: facebook, facebook for business, facebook tips, market on facebook
Posted in Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

Information Marketing- Turning your Knowledge into products

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Life is not easy for a lot of people out there these days. Unemployment is high and people over 40 years old know that chances of getting a job will be a daunting task. The only way out for many people is to finally start their own business. The selling of franchises is on a all time high and a lot of home based businesses are popping up.

Starting your own business comes with a lot of challenges and money is always a concern.

From all the options out there, one that offers low risk and great profit margins is an information marketing business.

In a nutshell an info-business is when you turn your knowledge into products.

Information based businesses can have many formats and it is a lot more than just making an e-book.

The entry point to start an info-marketing business is really low, you can really start with a few hundred bucks. Compare this to a normal $200,000 to buy restaurant equipment for example; money that you will invest with no guarantees of success.

An information marketing business can be totally automated. There is no need to be face to face with customers and prospects the whole day which buys you back time to do the things you love and create more info-products.

In most cases you don’t need to have a staff. There are minor things that you can outsource and in some cases you will want to have a fulfillment company doing the fulfillment for you.

There is no need for a store front or office. An information marketing business can be run from anywhere.

Let’s not forget the profit margins in an info-business. They are quite tempting. For example, a CD will cost you around a dollar to burn and will be sold for at least $27.

Besides CDs, e-books, DVDs there are close to 40 different formats of info-businesses out there many offering residual income.

As long as you are passionate about a subject that other people are interested in, you can start your info-biz.  You don’t need to understand technology, have degrees etc.

You might be asking yourself that information is available everywhere and anyone can Google anything and will find information about it for free, don’t forget that while this is true, people will always pay for knowledge they can apply right away and see results.

We are all very busy and researching for information can be quite frustrating. We all save time and money for specific information we can apply.

In times like this we need to improve our skills or acquire new skills. This is an opportunity for savvy people looking to start their own business.

If you want to know more about information marketing and how to start your info-business take a look at this: Info-marketing business

Tags: info-business, info-marketing, info-marketing business, info-products, Information Marketing
Posted in Information Marketing | No Comments »

List of uses in mobile marketing for small business

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 by shahar

I’ve talked a lot about QR codes and the possibilities it has for business, so, let’s talk about something close to codes today. We will talk about mobile marketing for small businesses.

As you probably have noticed, almost every one carries a mobile phone. Some of us cannot imagine life without a cel phone anymore and many families are getting rid of land lines because they have no more use for them.

When you think about marketing a business, most of the time we think how to reach them in a specific place. For example when they are online in a search engine on a social network or we try to reach them with direct mail or phone when they are at home.

Up to a short time ago we had no way of reaching people wherever they are. Here comes mobile marketing and QR codes, geo-based games like FourSquare and text messaging. All very powerful ways to reach your audience and if used properly, a great way to increase sales and do follow-up

Here I want to provide you with a list of things you could use mobile marketing, more specifically, text messages to promote, sell and follow-up.

1. You can send people a Today’s special

2. Buy one get one free

3. contests

4. New items arrived

5. Raffles

6. birthday specials.

7. Restaurants can text when a table is ready.

8. Send basic info about an item

9. Basic info about you

10. Photos of products

11. for Real Estate you may want to send the property description

12. Property virtual tous.

13. New property listing

14. Link to websites

15. Appointment remiders

16. Meeting reminders

17. Networking events

18. Special promos

19. Emergency alerts

20. Events

21. Fundraisings

22. Time to refil your prescription

23. Reminder to set next appointment

There are probably many more ways to use mobile marketing in your busienss. Remember that text messages are usually received within seconds of sending, which means it is a great delivery method and is more reliable than e-mail.. you don’t need a special phone to received messages, most phones have this capability.

Americans sent over 90 billion text messages just last month, that is a lot more than voice calls.

You might not be texting a lot but you are not your audience. Mobile marketing is simple, effective and very low cost so there is no reason to not use this as a way to keep in front of your audience.

Basically you choose some keywords that you display in other marketing amterials like flyers, car window etc. People dial a number and input the keyword. They will see a personalized message(ex coupon) and now you have access and permission to send that person other messages. Be careful not to over do it. Ideally not more than 2 messages a week.

Posted in Marketing for small Business, mobile marketing | 1 Comment »

Different uses for QR codes for small business owners

Friday, June 11th, 2010 by shahar

We get a lot of questions about our favorite social media tools. Well, most social media tools can be useful in one moment or another and when they help you convert prospects into customers or strengthen the relationship with existing customers, I tend to love them.

There is one social tool that I think is one of the best things out there for savvy business owners.

It is the QR code. This simple code does something that every small business owner should dream about every night. It creates a bridge between the printed or offline world to the online world.

How powerful is that?

I don’t know about you but when I started my business money was not easily available and every penny spent counted. One thing that annoyed me a lot was going to networking meetings and passing some flyers knowing most of them would end up in the trash really soon. If at that time QR codes were around things would be different.

QR codes stand for quick response codes. They store a lot of data- around 250 characters. Not enough? Well, it is a lot more than a tweet and people are doing just fine marketing themselves with tweets.

The QR codes can be scanned with any smart phone and will take the person to a web page, a coupon, a contest, whatever you can imagine. Just think of the possibilities. They are simple to create and very inexpensive. People can check right away and get the offer right away too.

Authors for example can have QR codes at the end of their book with an offer. Yes, I know you can add a web address to a page but let’s face it, how many times have you gotten a book or a flyer with a web adreesand took to your computer to check the URL? For me, most of the times I make a mental note to check the URL and then just forget.

I think QR codes can become huge allies for small business owners. Maybe what is missing is just some ideas on how to use the codes, so here is a list I compiled:

1. linking to full text journals from print journals; making mobile friendly videos available at the point of need; embedding videos & links to extra help online in printed guides.

2. QR Code on bus stations to allow you to purchase ticket without typing the message.

1. At bus stations with the schedule

2. Geo caching adventures

3. Share presentations

4. Music Downloads

5. Apps downloads

6. Self-branding

7. Geo-based reviews

8. Geo-based tours

9. Green tickets

10. Fashion

11. Product details

12. Offers

13. Event details

14. Contests

15. Competition details

16. Contact details- we use them in our business cards

17. Coupons

18. Random coupons- Starbucks does this very well, each time you scan you get a different offer.

19. Social media Ids

20. Links to your videos

21. how to information in products

22. How to information in printed materials

23. Book offers

24. Authors bio

25. Use in Billboards

26. Use in your shop window to entice reviews

27. Maps

28. Invitations

29. Link to your blog

30. Special offer on flayers

31. On trade shows

32. On trade shows where when you scan tells you to go to a specific booth for a freebie. (saw this one done by a company called Print concierge. Very clever!

Probably there are many more ways to use QR codes, just takes a little imagination and as usual, action.

Want to master marketing for small businesses? Try Small business marketing mastery program

Posted in Business, Marketing for small Business, Small Business Marketing | No Comments »

Refining your positioning

Monday, June 7th, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Positioning is not a simple thing. you don’t get done in one day. You need to answer several questions in order to know how to position yourself in the market as a small business owner. You need to know exactly who is your ideal client, in what business you are really in and what is the end result your provide.

You may get quite close to the perfect positioning but there will be some refining over time either because your business changes or the market changes.

Have always in mind that there are two main reasons that impact sales conversion: the level of trust people have in your company and how clear is your message to your target audience. Positioning has to do with both of them.

We try to refine our promise to the market every now and then because we think that although it is ok, was never perfect. We finally think we have something that will resonate well with our audience and makes the message really clear about what we do.

It is: Your modern marketing GPS.

I don’t know about you but I love my GPS.  It took  a lot of frustration out of my life and quite a few arguments between my daughter and me. i don’t get lost anymore and I arrive wherever I’m going with no anxiety and on time. We named our GPS Nicky.  We are about to buy another one for our geoaching experiences.

They are a piece of new technology that don’t invade your life and are extremely useful.

We believe that what we do as marketing advisors is pretty similar. We provide the kind of knowledge that people can apply and see results. They don’t feel overwhelmed or anxious and can track results. We can guide them to amazing new places in their business and lead them through business breakthroughs.

So we are quite content with this promise.

Tell me about yours

Tags: business promise, business tagline, gps, marketing advice
Posted in Business, Small Business Marketing | No Comments »

A little bit on conversion marketing

Sunday, June 6th, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Did you know that less than 2% of typical website visitors complete a transaction and also that the average website receives only ten visitors a day?

This is only 6 transactions a month!

That is not very exciting!

It is also clear that if you just put a site out there and don’t take very specific action to convert better, you will never see a good return in sales.

There are two things that you need to pay a lot of attention and work towards improving:

1- increase the traffic to your website. This can be done through SEO, Pay per click or social media. Hopefully you will use all of them.
2- Increase the rate of conversion from visitor to leads to buyers. so, you need to capture some of the visitors and conert them into leads and then into buyers.
In order to do that you might want to offer an ethical bribe that they give name and e-mail to get it. Those e-mails will go to an auto-responder program where you can do proper follow-up in order to get them to buy.
You will also make sure that your website is very clear in which path your visitors need to follow. what they need to click next, what they will get and how many clicks it will take them to get waht they want.
You want as fewer clicks as possible when asking them to buy something and you want to make the purchase process as simple as possible.

60% of sales are lost in the checkout process. This is a lot! Some of the resons why this happens are: asking for irrelevant or too much information in the checkout, too many screens before transaction is complete, name of product different than what was offered.
The next thing to improve conversion is to pay attention to your follow-up strategies.

Leads need to go to an auto-responder system where you have sequential messages increasing credibility and asking for the sale.
Remember that if people don’t buy from you, usually the main reason is that they don’t trust you. Use messages, newsletters, videos, video testimonials and direct mail to increase the level of trust.

From moment zero, when you think about your website, think how you will improve conversion into sales.

Tags: conversion marketing, convert prospects into buyers, making sales
Posted in Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing for small Business | No Comments »

How to use FourSquare

Saturday, June 5th, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Here is a good video that shows how to use FourSquare, the geo-based game that helps businesses. Don;t forget to add your business to FourSquare.

Tags: foursquare, geo based games, how to use foursquare, social media games
Posted in mobile marketing | No Comments »

Facts on small business marketing and social media

Friday, June 4th, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

1. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
2. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
3. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
4. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the  populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.  Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
5. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
6. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
7. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
8. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
9. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
10. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
11. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
12. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
13. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
14. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
15. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
16. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
17. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
18. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
19. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
20. Only 14% trust advertisements
21. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
22. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
23. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas

These are facts from the video social Media Revolution

Tags: small busienss amrketing, social media, Social Media Marketing, social media revolution
Posted in Marketing for small Business, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

Google TV. When TV meets Web

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

TV meets web. Web meets TV. Learn more at www.google.com/tv. Produced by Epipheo Studios.

Tags: google tv, web shows, web tv
Posted in Google, Internet Marketing | No Comments »