There are major benefits of using a mobile app.
* First, the web is decentralizing. We are transitioning to use more cel phones and tablets. Just making a website mobile friendly doesn’t mean much although it is necessary.

*Second, an app can teach your audience to come back to you on a regular basis and this is huge because it is very difficult to do that, specially online. If they perceive you as a content provider and want to consume your information, they will come back to you but if they carry “you” in their pocket, you just made this a lot easier for them.

*Third, when someone clicks on an app and uses it, for that period of time they are giving undivided attention to your content. Another action that is really hard to happen online. As business owners we want attention and we want undivided attention.

So here are a few ideas:

In real estate:

Display available homes with pictures
Home buying or selling consultation form
Allow clients to view nearby schools, restaurants, churches
Push messages with new offers

Restaurants, clubs and bars:

Offer loyalty coupons
Available food ordering from your phone
Reserve seats
Full menu
Push messages with special offers or events
Include your event schedule

Law firms

Legal consultation form
Blog, videos and podcasts
send clients a one touch message
market to potential clients at the app store

Music bands:

Sell your songs though Itunes
Stream your videos and audios
Display concert schedules

Gyms
Complete work guide
Track your record notepad
Full class fitness schedule
Send messages to your clients

Churches

Send donations
Prayer request
blog, videos and podcasts
Send messages directly to your members

Non-profits

Receive donations
Full event schedule
Send messages to sponsors

And there are many more things that can be done, including generating sales from the phone. We have also used as a training tool for distributors with some of our clients.

Mobile apps can be huge for your business and yes, you should be getting one. The investment is not high anymore and most business can afford building an app.

If you need more information on mobile apps for businesses, let us know.

Here you have an one hour audio showing you how to cash big in affiliate marketing.

Listen now: Cashing big with affiliate marketing

This week I found this article in Springwise on some fellow brazilians selling bread in a continuity program.

You can see that there are membership ideas everywhere:

Los Paderos is a Brazilian site that sends subscribers three loaves of fresh-made artisan bread each week.

Scarcely a week goes by without us discovering some fresh new application of the subscription model, and this week is no exception. The innovation this time? Los Paderos, a Brazilian site that sends subscribers three loaves of fresh-made artisan bread each week.

Los Paderos’ breads are made in a wide range of varieties, without preservatives and using natural fermentation processes. Rather than baking them all the way, however, Los Paderos sells its breads semi-finished and cooled. Customers can then store them in the fridge for up to two weeks; when they’re ready to use the bread, they simply finish baking it and enjoy it piping hot from their own oven. Subscribers get three loaves of their choice each week for a monthly price of BRL 60.

Is there any limit on the convenience and appeal of recurring home deliveries for frequently used products? We don’t think so either, and the added element of semi-baking for completion at home only adds to the appeal. How could a subscription model deliver some fresh stability and repeat business to your innovative brand?

Website: www.lospaderos.com.br/pagina/?CodSecao=16

Login in to your Google analytics account

1. From any of the traffic sources sections, click Advanced Segments in the upper right had corner.

2. Click Create a new advanced segment

3. When asked for source in the “condition” menu, pick a value that contains chose words such, Facebook, YouTube etc.

4. Name the new segment and save segment

To view how it is working click on Advanced segments menu and then select the segment you saved.

According to The secrets of paid search

1. Add social networking logos to the header or footer of your e-mail template. A share icon would do.

2. Send solo e-mails promoting your presence on social media sites. You can also offer coupons for those who like your page or create unique promotions.

3. Capture data.

I have and so far i like it a lot. I specially like it because it is not like Facebook. I think it can become a lot more relevant for businesses than FB. This because it relies on keywords and relevant searches, which Google is already very good at. In fact we shouldn’t even compare Google Plus with Facebook because even though they are both social, Google Plus is built to be mobile. it provides a more rich experience, less noise at the moment and is aligned with a shift in behavior that we are all leaving the desktop and using mobile devices more and more. Is is social media I can carry with me. not part of it, like Twitter, the whole thing.

The interface does not have clutter and very easy to use from a small device. It will free all of us to follow people hoping they will follow us. This does not matter here.

I specially like the hangout feature. Where you can video chat with up to 10 people, make the event public and even repurpose it later. This can be addicting and very useful for businesses. I plan to spend a lot more time researching this feature.

I say useful for business but Google wants real people there, not businesses at the moment. This will change

1. Use Google first and research which keywords people are searching for. This will bring you a lot of insights and will teach you to think like your audience thinks.

2. Work constantly on your copy. There is no such thing as set and forget. You can always refine bullets and prices and test different approaches.

3. Don’t forget testimonials. They help increase trust and credibility. Use testimonials in text format with pictures, audio and video.

4. Online Video matters. They don’t need to be fancy. Make as many videos as you can. How to use the product, product suggestion etc. You can combine here QRcodes in your products leading to videos suggesting different uses, other products, what is the product good for etc.

5. Don’t forget follow-up. Contact your audience with interesting e-mails or videos. You need to be top of mind here.

1. Facebook.com —14.2%
2. MySpace.com — 9.9%
3. YouTube.com — 8.1%
4. Doubleclick.net — 6.4%
5. Twitter.com — 2.3%
6. Ad.yieldmanager.com — 1.9%
7. Redtube.com —1.4%
8. Limewire.com — 1.3%
9. Pornhub.com —1.2%
10. Playboy.com — 1.2%

The favorite one in this post is Google Wonder wheel. it is a great tool when you are doing keyword research.
It is good to optimize your site, create content and see what users are really typing.

One tool that we use a lot around here is Jing. We specially use the tool to help us outsource and train the people we outsource to. you can use to share content through e-mail, Twitter and Facebook. Jing is a tool that allows you to simply and easily capture images or create a short video of what you see on your computer screen to enhance your written content.

Caption tube is good to create captions and don’t forget that captions are written content to add to your video blog. This is a utility to add captions to your YouTube videos after you have imported the content.

Google is much more than just a search engine. They fascinate me. Especially because they make my life easier. As business owners we’re always asking ourselves “what problems do I solve for clients?” – that’s a tough question to answer because the answers are always evolving. Today I decided to feature some of the problems I’ve learned Google solves for me:

Local Time (gn-time.png)
In our business we’re constantly talking with people from all over the world. Sometimes it’s imperative that we know the time in their location to avoid scheduling conflicts, that’s when Google comes into the picture! What time is it in Thailand right now? Ask Google. Enter simply “what time is it” to get the local time in big cities around the world, or add the locale at the end of your query, like what time is it hong kong to get the local time there.

Currency, Metrics and More (gn-convert.png)
As you probably know by now Shahar and I do quite a bit of outsourcing in our business. As much as we’d like to keep our toes in everything, outsourcing was an essential piece of our success. Sometimes however, the job is done in a different country and it helps to know the currency difference:

Google’s powerful built-in converter calculator can help you out whether you’re cooking dinner, traveling abroad, or building a PC. Find out how many teaspoons are in a quarter cup (quarter cup in teaspoons) or how many seconds there are in a year (seconds in a year) or how many euros there are to five dollars (5 USD in Euro).

Search The Site (gn-site.png)
More often than not in our benchmarking we need to keep an eye on the competitions moves and website. That’s when we turn to Google to peak at their site!

Use the site: modifier. This will return results only from a specific website. For example, to search for an article by Nashlah, you’d enter – site:buzzbooster.com Nashlah

Beyond Pages (gn-filteype.png)
Searching for more than just images and pages has been undeniably valuable to me. Every now and then you’re in search of a specific file type, contract, spreadsheet, etc. Google can help you find those too!

You can search for Word Documents, PDFs, MP3s, Excel spreadsheets, images and much much more with the filetype: modifier. All you need to know is the file extension and search away. You can find some pretty good stuff via this method. Say for instance marketing plan filetype:pdf

Flight Tracker (gn-flight.png)
To see flight status for arriving and departing U.S. flights, type in the name of the airline and the flight number into the search box.

Stock Quotes (gn-stock.png)
To see current market data for a given company or fund, type the ticker symbol into the search box. On the results page, you can click the link to see more data from Google Finance.

Package Tracking (gn-track.png)
You can track packages by typing the tracking number for your UPS, Fedex or USPS package directly into the search box. We’ll return results that include quick links to easily track the status of your shipment.

Area Codes (gn-area.png)
To see the geographical location for any U.S. telephone area code, just type the three-digit area code into the Google search box and hit the Enter key or click the Google Search button.

Zip Codes (gn-zip.png)
Want to find where that zip code is located? Simply enter it into Google search and you’ll have your answer.

Public Data (gn-pop.png)
o see trends for population and unemployment rates of U.S. states and counties, type “population” or “unemployment rate” followed by a state or county. You can click through to a page that lets you compare different locations.

Fill in the Blank (gn-wild.png)
Sometimes the best way to ask a question is to get Google to fill in the blank by adding an asterisk (*) at the part of the sentence or question that you want finished into the Google search box.

1) Bring More Traffic To Your Site With One SIMPLE Word! I’ve seen a massive rise in hits on my counter after discovering the magic word that draws people in crazed hordes! And the word that delivers for me is FREE!

By simply putting that one word in my ads, and backing it with something that the reader will really value, I’ve noticed a steady surge of traffic coming to my site. And even though I’m baiting them with a FREE offer, I’m still making a hefty profit from this technique.

2) Steal Other People’s Targeted Traffic! Whether promoting an ezine or ebook, any business can instantly benefit from the increased exposure of joint venturing with someone in a business similar to your own.

The secret? Find someone that has a large opt-in list that doesn’t directly compete with your offer, but instead compliments it. Approach them and let them keep half the profits from sending your offer to their list, then do the same for their product through your list. It’s a win-win situation.

3) Bring Hordes To Your Site For FREE When You Share! By far writing articles is one of the best ways I know to bring highly targeted traffic to your site. And all it takes is minimal writing ability and a bit of knowledge that will interest your target audience.

Articles run about 500 words, and instantly advertise your product in front of thousands for free when only a few quality ezines decide to use your article.

Spend a little time writing an article or two. Edit them the next day and find places to submit. You can hit the jackpot when you enter “Free Articles” in a good search engine.

4) Pay A Little For Lots Of Targeted Traffic! Pay per click search engines delivers. And you can do it on a budget.

Check out http://www.overture.com for what is, in my opinion, the best of the best for lots of targeted traffic to your site.

And here’s a tip. Have a sales letter that really converts visitors into buyers. That way, if you offer a product for $29.00, and sell 1 in 30, you can get a high ranking by bidding $.50 for each click, and walking away with about $14 for each 30 visits. And it’s possible to receive hundreds of hits in a day using pay per click search engines.

5) Only Pay For Advertising When It Makes You Money! Nope, it’s not a dream. You can bring tons of high quality traffic to your site and only pay when the traffic buys from you.

The secret? Affiliate programs. And if you’re not using one right now then you’re paying too much for your advertising.

With a few minutes of set up and promotion you can have your ads on hundreds or thousands of websites. And you’re only going to pay when that advertising makes a profit for you.

Check out http://www.clickbank.com for an easy way to set up an affiliate program.

===================================
FREE $17 ebook “Secrets Of Writing Hard-Hitting Copy” by Grady Smith shows you how to write sales letters and ads that sell your product hard. Plus, get a FREE $50 critique of your current sales letter and an explanation of how you can improve it for bigger profits. Go now: http://www.cheap-copy.com ====================================

This blog post by Gigdon gives an in dept view on Google TV.

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.

The internet receives millions of searches a day from people looking for specific services and products. These are very targeted prospects ready to buy.
When people look for you online, do you show among the first results without paying for clicks?

Have you heard of local search?
When people look for your services on Google, a Google map shows up showing the local results. Are you on Google Maps? Even if you are, are you showing for the different types of services you provide?
I’m asking you this because many businesses are listed on Google maps but they don’t show for their main search terms or show only for one of them.
There is more. When people are searching for a service like yours from their mobile phones, do you show up?

35% of all online searches contain a city, state or zip code. If you’re not showing up you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
The internet has now surpassed print Yellow Pages and newspaper as a primary source for local consumer service information. And the adoption of smart phones will only add to these numbers; 27 percent of all mobile searches are for local information.

When I mentioned that you can benefit from this without spending a penny, I refer to the fact that Google will not charge you for the listings, nor the directories that will help people find your business over the phone.
You just need to do it right and you can have your business showing for different search terms, have it listed on local directories that will drive traffic to your business and will show on smart phone applications that are geo-based, so people will find you when using their phones.

This is part of what Google calls Local Marketing and is one of the best ways to get more clients and spend less.
This is so important to Google that when you type a service on the search bar that contains a service that is supposed to be local even if you don’t type a city, it will provide local results only.
Go ahead and give it a try. Go to Google and type “Restaurants”. You will see that the results shown are all local.
You just cannot ignore the power this has and not have your business listed. Have in mind that 75% of all online activity is related to local. 54% of the US population has already substituted online searches for books, yellow, blue or any other color.

While the strategy here is a simple one, I can assure you that most of your competition is not paying attention to this and are still offering the same offers using the same channels they have used for years.

I know you are different and you want to stay ahead of the game. You want to attract clients without a lot of work and without spending a lot of money. You understand that things have changed, the economy has changed and the way people buy has changed. It just doesn’t make any sense to keep marketing to them the same way!
Did you know we can do the work for you and list you on the maps, on geo-based applications and local directories?

The normal investment is only $350, but just for my subscribers i’m offering the same package for $250 for the next 24 hours. After that, it goes back to normal.

Dominate  local marketing

In the last year alone, searches for coupons increased 41%.

One great advantage of using web coupons is that you can easily track conversion and forwards.

If you use a shopping cart like 1shoppingcart, you can easily create a coupon code to add to your pages or you may want to go with companies that specialize in coupons and offer more tracking possibilities.

Some of these companies are Couponsinc.com, miva merchant and e-centives.com

After you decide which system to use, you need to create and  “give” coupons away. One way of doing that is to add the coupon to your existing e- newsletter or printed newsletter. You may want to add the offer to the subject line since it tends to increase response up to 24%. You should offer coupons in your newsletters on a regular basis. You may even have coupon newsletters (just with your deals) going out once a month.

You may send coupons using RSS feed .

There are hundreds of websites that allow you to post coupons for free. This will also increase traffic to your website that is an added benefit.

Add your coupons to Facebook, Twitter, pay-per-click campaigns and other social networks you belong to.

Look for companies like Cellfire.com where you can have coupons send to cell phones.

Depending on the coupon system you are using, you may even accept your competitor’s coupons. How sweet is that?

When creating your coupons don’t forget to clearly state the offer and have a deadline. The deadline creates a sense of urgency. Express the exact amount very clearly.

Don’t forget that coupons offer value, help people make a decision and improves the shopping experience. Coupons will improve conversion and will help your business a lot.

Start your coupon program today.

Here are some sites where you can add your coupons:

Retailmenot.com

Couponmom.com

Couponcabin.com

Coupons.com

If you have a website, and I hope you do, you need traffic to be able to convert leads or sales. The traffic you bring to your site needs to targeted. You don’t need a lot of visitors, but you need visitors that buy. Here are a few ways you can get more traffic.

1. If you use Facebook, use the notes aplication to pull your blog feedto your profile or fan page.

2. When writting anything on your site, don’t forget to insert a keyword that could bring a targeted buyer. The title is usually the best place to do this.

3. Use videos on all video sharing sites. Don’t forget to include a link to your site and a compelling offer.

4. Google profile. You need a Google profile with links to your site and blog.

5. Include a link in your signature in your e-mail

6. Have a form on your site or blog where people can subscribe for your tips and come back often.

7. The more focused the topic of your blog or site, more likely to bring the right kind of people.

8. Add a ReTweet button on your blog. Get one at Tweetmeme.

9. when you have a very good article or blog post, submit to places like Digg and StumbleUpon.

10. Constantly update your blog or website. Treat it like a living being and remember, if you don’t feed, it will die.

Because Google now pays a lot of attention to your social graph, your social presence, it is important that your business has a presence on social networks like Facebook and Twitter and if possible have some videos on YouTube.

For the mobile marketing part, set up an account on FourSquare and list your business in the app’s directory.

Gowala is another one you want to have an account and list your business.

Creating an application for smart phones like Google phone or the Iphone is easier and less expensive than you think and can create a lot of traction for your business too.

Local search and mobile marketing will only increase in importance for businesses and even though listing the business in the above mentioned places may take a couple of hours, it will not cost a lot and will bring over time a lot of people knocking at your door.

So don’t waste time or find excuses. Just do it.

If you have questions or want someone to do it for you contact our social media agency

Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page. David Scott