Archive for the ‘Marketing for small Business’ Category

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Are you coachable?

Sunday, September 5th, 2010 by shahar

Have you ever asked yourself this question? Of course we all think we are coachable, but are we really?
There are some points you need to check before approaching a business or marketing coach:

Are you willing to face your fears and take action? You can create a multitude of excuses but for a coaching program to work you must be willing to face your fears and take action.

Do you follow instructions and test new approaches?

Are you receptive to ideas that are different and take you out of your comfort zone?

Do you trust that your coach has your success in mind?

Do you listen with the intent to learn?

Do you allow the coach to follow his/her system or do you come with your own agenda and spend all the time asking questions?

Do you understand the breakthroughs might come during and after the session and credit your coach?

To be coachable means to lack arrogance and defensiveness… to minimize pride and ego. Completely teachable. Completely trainable.

Can you be coached?

A short while ago we decided to get a coach that could take us to our next level. One of the things we agreed on was to try not to over analyze each idea and do what he told us. When one thing didn’t work our approach was to try to figure where we failed instead of blaming him. We acted fast and followed instructions and what we saw was not only our business changing into a far more profitable model, our income doubled after 3 months. Funny enough, on the first 30 days some things we tried didn’t work, but we kept going. Major breakthroughs happened later, not because he was there but because we were able to learn a different thinking process. Made all the difference. How much is that worth? A lot.

Every business owner needs a coach or mentor. No matter where they are in their business. But they need to allow the time for things to happen and be open to changes.

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Posted in Marketing for small Business | No Comments »

Marketing a small business: Changes in Google Algorithmn

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 by shahar

If you saw your site loosing rank in Google search engine, this might be the reason. Watch these tips to have your site ranking well again. Marketing a small business today includes paying attention on how your site behaves in the search engines and making sure you rank for keywords that bring buyers to you. It is not something to ignore because not only people searching for what you offer make the best prospects for you , but because it means less money put into advertising and more market domination.

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Attraction marketing: How to Create Your Unique Marketing Message!

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

I’d like to feature another post from Chris Makel talking on how to create a unique marketing message.

Here it is:

Many solopreneurs and small business owners focus on creating a “kick-ass” elevator pitch so that they’re armed when they are at networking events or asked the age old question, “what do you do?”

One of the reasons they struggle with creating the clarity needed to create that powerful elevator pitch is because they aren’t clear on their unique marketing message.

This unique marketing message is as clarifying for you as it is for your prospect or client. It demonstrates that you know your prospect’s pain, why they’re experiencing it and how you can help them relieve the pain with your solution.

So, how do you create YOUR unique marketing message? Read on to learn three simple steps to begin crafting your message today, that will help make your elevator pitch more powerful and get your prospects take notice immediately!

Step #1 – Define your prospect’s problem…what is their pain point?

What is the pain they are facing today? Is it that they are not generating enough leads, they aren’t retaining their clients and need a simple “stay in touch” tool, or they don’t have enough energy to be more efficient and effective in their position?

How can you define the pain, SO clearly that the prospect will instantly know that you “get” them? Can you give them examples from your own experience? Can you tell them about case studies that illustrate the pain so that they can feel it, know that others experience it and have found a solution?

You have to make it as real for them as possible, because we are not always able to identify our own pain, so that we can easily find the solution.

Step #2 – Explain why they are having the pain.

Let’s use the “need to generate leads” pain point as an example. Perhaps the strategies they’ve been using are to attract local prospects. And either they aren’t finding new prospects with their current methods or they should consider shifting to an online presence.

How often do you see smart business owners networking at local meetings and yet their websites don’t even offer the ability to capture their prospects contact information? It may be obvious to you, but the prospect may not see the “gold 3 feet in front of them”.

You have the opportunity to give them clear examples as to why they are in this place of pain and demonstrate that you have some expertise by explaining the what and why of their challenge.

Step #3 – Demonstrate how you and your solution can relieve their pain.

Once you’ve identified the prospect’s pain point to the degree that they KNOW you get it and then explain the WHY of their pain, your next step is to demonstrate how you relieve the pain with your solution. This becomes a welcomed conversation. It’s as if your prospect hears you describe a headache and the reason they are having the headache and they can’t wait until you give them the aspirin to remove said headache! And if your solution provides that kind of relief, you are obligated to help them. And they are far more likely to want to work with you.

So get some paper and a pen and dedicate some time to writing out your unique marketing message based on this three-step process. It will help you identify your prospect’s pain, the situation they are in that’s causing the pain and how you and your solution can provide the “painkiller” they are searching for.

This exercise will give you your unique marketing message in the language your prospect easily hears, responds to and appreciates.

Posted in Marketing for small Business | 1 Comment »

Attraction Marketing: Small things that businesses can do

Friday, August 20th, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

I saw this sign in a store today. It is such a clever way to tell moms to take care of their kids. It is clever because it approached a potential difficult situation with humor and incorporated some magic into it.  not hard to do and effective and a lot less annoying than signs that say: don’t do this, don’t touch that. Attracting and keeping clients is not difficult, just require people to think a little bit out of the box and try new things.  People will be attracted to your business if you can incorporate some storytelling. This store did this with a sign.

Attraction Marketing

Attraction Marketing

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Creating an irresistibel business with grilled cheese

Saturday, August 7th, 2010 by shahar

We tend to over complicate things when they are related to marketing a small business. We just need to think what would make our business attractive to our market and take action on it. Any business can do it. Let me tell you the story of a guy that sells sandwiches from his apartment:

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Client attraction: Creating rituals in business

Monday, July 26th, 2010 by shahar

In order to have a irresistible business you need to create rituals in your business in order to create an aura of value around your business. You also need to make sure you have processes in place. this makes client attraction a bliss.

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Online Advertising versus Phone Books Ads

Thursday, July 8th, 2010 by shahar

Yellow Pages vs. Online Advertising (”Let Your Fingers Do The Finding”)

• Yellow Pages are difficult to track and have limited tracking options. Online marketing offers extensive tracking options.
• Yellow Pages reach can only go so far and if you advertise in more than one directory it can get very expensive. Online marketing has an unlimited reach and is very cost effective.
• You can only change your advertising message on a yearly basis with Yellow Pages. You can change your message online at any time.
• There are over 13 billion searches on the web/month and growing. Yellow Pages receive an approximate 1 billion references/month and is losing more and more customers that advertise in the Yellow Pages every year.

Don’t forget we can help you with local marketing.

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How to choose a marketing consultant

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 by shahar

With the internet and social media marketing along came a huge line of new marketing consultants. Unfortunately a big chunk still live in their mother’s basement and never made a penny online.  Even worse, they have no business experience.  Getting advice from these people can cause you a lot of headaches and take your business down.

Here are several tips for securing talent that will save your project time, mistakes and money when choosing a Marketing Consultant:

- Meet 1 on 1

- Look at their work product, PR, past strategies, designs

- Ask about the products they have launched themselves

- Check the Alexa Rank and Page rank of their websites.

- Check their presence online.

- Ask about their revenue models online and check examples given.

- Have they won or been nominated for  industry awards?

- References are nice, but really, who gives bad references?

- What specific, off-the-cuff strategies does the consultant propose?

- Do the strategies proposed seem cogent, offer fresh perspective?

- Check if what he/she is offering are real strategies or just a bunch of tactics you could learn from a book.

- Do they have hands on experience in business?

- Don’t price shop. Good consultants are not cheap. Here the saying “you get what you pay for” really applies.

- Listen to your guts.

Posted in Marketing for small Business, Uncategorized | 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.

- You can send people a Today’s special
- Buy one get one free
- contests
- New items arrived
- Raffles
- birthday specials.
- Restaurants can text when a table is ready.
- Send basic info about an item
- Basic info about you
- Photos of products
- for Real Estate you may want to send the property description
- Property virtual tous.
- New property listing
- Link to websites
- Appointment remiders
- Meeting reminders
- Networking events
- Special promos
- Emergency alerts
- Events
- Fundraisings
- Time to refil your prescription
- 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 | 2 Comments »

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?

qr codes

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 »

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.

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Posted in Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing for small Business | 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

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Posted in Marketing for small Business, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

Sell more in this new Economy

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

The new economy has changed the way we sell and the way people buy.

You might have felt this in your business, but do you know how to adapt to the new reality?

BuzzBoosters has just release a new flash program that will guide you step by step on how to sell more in the new economy.

I don’t want to brag but this program can change your life.

This program targets decisive business owners that want to take action and generate more sales.

We’ll not be offering this program in the same format in the future.

Check more about the Off-Road Sales Strategies for the New Economy

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Posted in Fantastic Events, Marketing for small Business | No Comments »

How FourSquare and Mobile Marketing Benefits Users and Businesses

Saturday, April 10th, 2010 by shahar

I’m not a game person but FourSquare caught my attention since the beginning. Some call it a game but I see it as a location-based application that works with most smart phones.

Nashlah started using FourSquare on its first moments. She just loves it. Even though, right now, there are a lot of professionals saying they know all about it and are super users, you should take a look at what she’s done in a small place like Salt Lake City: Nashlah on FourSquare

Most social media gurus focus on tactics and telling people how to use the tool, but they seldom talk about business strategy.

Let me show you how  businesses can benefit from Foursquare. Have in mind that the application is addicting because users will compete for mayorships and badges which is something that ends up benefiting businesses. The app promotes exploring the town and trying new things which is great in itself. It will tell you if a place is trendy by the number of check-ins, and if you accomplish some requirements that vary from business to business you may win a badge.

Why is all this important to businesses: visibility, popularity, more customer loyalty, more business.

Why do people do it? They like to compete, they have ego, it is fun and they can promote your business even though you might not be aware of it happening.

Have in mind that people want to become mayor of locations and oust previous mayors. When this happens they get posted publicly to twitter and Facebook with your business name and a link to your business’ profile page on foursquare.com. The same may happen when they arrive at your business.

Well, there are already savvy businesses using Foursquare to promote their business. A bar in San Francisco gives free drinks to the mayor of their location, and gives $2 off any performance night for those that show the phone and prove they checked in. This obviously motivates people to come back to the business and to use even more the application. In Las Vegas if you become the Mayor of the Miracle Mile Shops you’ll get your face and name on the 126-foot LED video screen. Big companies like Brave network,  Pepsi and the New York Times are also using Foursquare. AJBombers a restaurant, did a Foursquare party and increased business in 110%.

Foursquare is already working on showing banners with the promotions.

The other day we were checking in at the movies and a message popped up telling us to try a restaurant around the corner with a coupon for us to use. What a proactive way to promote businesses in nearby locations!

The application allows people to recommend the place and suggest favorite dishes. It allows businesses and people to connect, bring foot traffic to the place and recommend to others. What more can a business wish for?

Badges for your business and badges to sponsor events is another possibility. For the users the more badges they have the more fun it is.

So, to put it into perspective, here are a few things you can use Foursquare in your business for:

  • Coupons
  • Special rewards for mayors or check-ins
  • Encourage customers to come back
  • Special promotions on slow days.
  • Be a sponsor of Foursquare leaderboard.
  • Brand awareness
  • Deeper connection between customer and patron
  • Instant feedback
  • Promote events

    • I always say that the gold rush today is for being found, and getting attention.

    About the being found part: Google and Bing maps are showing Foursquare venues when people search locally. Foursquare pages rank on search engines which means your business name, phone number and link come up.

    Foursqare has the potential to revolutionize social media and turn it into a form of currency.

    Out of the over 1.4 Million venues, only about 1200 venues have special offers. Less than 1% of businesses are going after this amazing opportunity. It is free.

    Remind me how much you’ve spent with advertising that didn’t work? So what are you waiting for?

    Posted in Marketing for small Business, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, mobile marketing | 2 Comments »

    Local marketing and mobile marketing

    Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 by The BuzzBooster Team!

    If you do business locally, I’m afraid to say the Yellow pages is not your best option. I really don’t know many people that use the phone books other than as a door stop or seat booster.

    The search engines are the new phone books, where people go to get the information they want, when they want and wherever they are.

    Local businesses need to wake up and start promoting their businesses online now more than ever and if they think that they just need to wait until things go back to normal, they will never wake up. They will die a slow painful death.

    Due to the economy, people are more resistant to buy and they don’t buy from businesses they don’t know about or don’t trust.

    It is your job to increase the level of trust, be in places they can easily find you, (like on their phones) and promote your business more than ever.

    Today is naive to think one ad in one place will do the trick. You need to do more and on a constant basis and you need to be the marketer in your business like it or not.

    We live in an age where the gold rush is to be found and to get attention and this is your main job.

    You need to be found on search engines, social environments, phone applications if you want to be in business for the next five years.

    You will need just a fraction of whatever you have been spending in advertising and some time.

    You can outsource most tasks or you can learn how to use local marketing and mobile marketing in your business.

    The only thing you cannot do is wait.

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

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