How would you like to maximize all your marketing investments, limit your downside, and boost your profits? Well, what you’re about to learn will put you ahead of 95% of the so-called experts in marketing, whether it’s online with business blogs or off-line with a simple post card mailing.

It simply amazes me how so many business owners waste away thousands upon thousands of dollars on marketing that doesn’t work. And that includes the dollars and hours they blindly dump into the new online marketing arena of business blogs. These are often the very same people who otherwise scrutinize every other dollar they spend in improvements or upgrades to their business. Yet when it comes to their marketing — they’re willing to take whatever comes their way without much thought.

But you don’t have to fall into that dark, dank marketing money-pit! In Law #10 of Marketing With Business Blogs you’ll learn the how your business blog can help you avoid substantial losses and maximize all your marketing.

Law #10. Test, measure, and track before you “go big” with your marketing

This is one of the single most profound marketing truths you’ll ever encounter. And it’s also one of the single most ignored. I’m going to let you in on a secret: companies that take the time to test their online and off-line marketing efforts outperform their competitors by as much as ten fold!

There are so many different elements you could potentially test, and I can’t possibly begin to cover them all here. But what I’d like to be sure I do is give you a solid introduction you can run with.

First — what do I mean by testing and measuring?

Let’s look at a couple of quick examples.

• In off-line marketing, take magazine ads for instance. The same ad, identical in all respects, may pull differently when run during different times of the year. You won’t know until you test.
• Or online on your business blog or website, how about changing something as simple as the headline on your name capture offer. We’ve seen this one change result in a registration difference of 250% or more! Once again you just don’t know what works best until you test.

If there’s one thing that you can take away from today’s installment that will save you tens of thousands of dollars, it’s (more…)

If your current clients are visiting your business blog regularly, listen up! Today as we look at the ninth of the 12 Laws of Marketing with Business Blogs, we’ll help you shine the light on an awesome sales and marketing opportunity that’s right under your nose.

How great would it be to have a sales team that’s always growing, always at work and never wants to get paid out of pocket? Better yet, how would you like it if attimes they paid you to sell your products or services?

Well if this sounds like an outstanding idea to you, I’ve got good news for you. If you have clients, customers, buyers – whatever name you’d like to use — you’ve already got the best sales force right under your nose.

Law #9. Existing clients and vendors are the quickest, surest way of getting more new clients

When it comes to generating leads and attracting new clients to your business, most conventional advertising is useless. Like to prove it to yourself? It’s easy. Just go and grab five or six consecutive months of your favorite magazine. Browse through them and track how many ads are repeated.

So… how many ads did you find that ran more than once? I’d bet precious few, right! And here’s the simple explanation why — the ads didn’t generate enough new business to justify ever being run again.

The problem with conventional marketing and advertising

So why do so many businesses continue to focus on conventional advertising to generate fresh leads and build a prospect list?

· It could be pride. It could be falling prey to the lemming mentality. Thinking that says, “Everybody else does it this way, so I will too.”

· It could be that the marketing and advertising industry have tried to fool us into thinking that this is standard business practice. That we should just accept these poor results as part of the game of advertising.

Most businesses continue to pour huge chunks of their budget into these wasteful types of ads, always telling themselves, “This time, this one will really work!”

The problem with online and off-line direct mail campaigns

Direct mail lists (online or off-line,) do not bring in leads. They lead to dismal results. You know the drill, a 1% average response… or as we like to look at it — a 99% failure rate! We don’t let our business coaching clients stand for these types of results, and now you don’t need to either. (more…)

Did you know that business blogs can make multiplying your profits with current clients a far easier task than it’s been in the past? In today’s installment of the ongoing marketing with business blogs series we’ll take a look at some practical ideas you can use to leverage and maximize the current client relationships you already have.

But let’s get started first with the eighth of the 12 Laws of Marketing with Business Blogs.

Law #8. The fastest, easiest way of increasing your profits lies with your current clients

It’s one of the easiest (and often most neglected) ways to grow your business – focus your primary energy on your current clients. In our coaching with business owners we’ve seen systemized strategies in this area improve relationships, extend loyalty, and increase profits of 40% or more in a matter of months. And business blogging is a powerful tool to have on your side when you’re executing these strategies online.

Yes, if your business is less than two years old, you will have to put more effort into acquiring new clients. But even brand new businesses should know that this principle is often what separates people “surviving” in business from the winners experiencing “outstanding” success and extremely high net profit margins.

What most business owners do wrong with their marketing

Most businesses approach marketing from a “lead-generating” standpoint. Their major objective? To get as many new clients through the door and into the selling cycle as possible. As a result, nearly all of their advertising and promotions are geared exclusively to generating new prospects.

This is a fatal flaw!

Pretty strong statement, but true.

I’ve seen businesses literally sit by and watch their current sales dissipate while trying to attract more and more new clients. New business is not the primary source of increased profits. Your existing client base is.

If your focus in marketing is primarily getting new clients, then you’re seriously hamstringing your profitability and growth. Even worse — you’ll soon be watching your client list dwindle as you slowly slide toward the poor house.

The mindset that will help you reverse this trend in your business

As you (more…)

What’s the ultimate reason you’re business blogging? You need to know that, precisely — right up front because every blog post or business podcast you create needs to be focused on that end goal. That gives you clear overall goals, but how do maximize every step you take reaching those big targets? What happens after the initial contact, or even the first sale from a prospect?

Many business owners treat their blog marketing much like their other online and off-line efforts – moving from one action to the next as quickly as possible. Even if they are getting traffic and making some new sales here and there, they’re not maximizing each and every contact that occurs along the way.

To help you avoid that same mistake and making the most of every new person you come in contact with, here’s Law #7 of the 12 Laws of Marketing With Business Blogs.

Law #7. Business blog with your backend in mind

Think of your backend simply as an added reward for people when they interact with you. It’s a way of instantly maximizing a contact or purchase with a small incremental “step-up benefit” that adds even more value to the prospect or client’s life.

No matter what business you’re in, back-end offers are what separate marginal cash-flow company from one with truly outstanding profits. Growing with a strong backend is as simple as going to the bank – IF you delivered what you promised to. If so, you’ve got a substantial amount of trust on “deposit” with your current clients. All you have to do in order to make “interest” on this goodwill is to provide a useful offer to your clients.

There are literally hundreds of ways to apply this (more…)

Want to watch your list-building and sales soar? Then you don’t want to miss the little known, (and even less applied,) marketing secret you’ll learn in this seventh installment of the 12 Laws of Online Marketing with Business Blogs, RSS, and Podcasts. (If you missed earlier installments to this 13-part series, you can catch up here.)

So many people in life make things more difficult than they need to be. For business owners this seems especially to be the case with marketing.

Maybe it’s because the so-called “professionals” out there have muddied the waters so much with their self-serving idea of marketing that the average business owner has no idea what works. Or maybe it’s because many owners and professionals are so overwhelmed with the many different ways they can market that they procrastinate and doing nothing.

Whatever the reason, you’re about to learn a simple marketing law that will cut through all the hype and B.S. A law that can help you use your business blog to effortlessly build your subscriber list and increase your overall sales.

Law #6. Reverse the risk to watch your list grow and your sales soar!

This is a law that applies equally online and off-line. It’s tied to your online marketing in general, and to your business blogging in particular. It’s a simple law with a lot of hidden marketing power, but it’s easy to understand once you put yourself in a consumer role.

Think about it — have you ever noticed how most companies put the risk of doing business on you, the client? I’m sure you see it all the time, both online and off-line.

Here’s an off-line example I can share with you from just the other day when I was at a garden center. While I was waiting in line to check out, I noticed a sign behind the counter that stated in big bold red letters:

“Absolutely NO REFUNDS After 30 Days.”

When I read that sign I caught myself double-checking my intended purchases to see if my use of any would fall outside this 30-day time frame. I didn’t put anything back, but I did immediately think about how many other people must have the same reaction. And I thought about how many of those people must end up not purchasing some products, or worse — not buying at that store at all.

Now it’s not that I disagree with the policy of the store. As a business owner I understand they need to protect themselves. But the way this policy is stated is destroying client trust. The risk is being put squarely on the shoulders of the consumer, and the business is making it plain-as-day.

Reversing the risk …

In this case, the garden center owner wouldn’t even have to change the actual policy to improve the risk reversal. The exact same policy I just shared could have been (more…)

Business blogging is gaining more power and momentum as blogging in general gains popularity. Blog readership has increased 45% in the last year according to a recent report by comScore. And that means more and more businesses are trying to jump on the marketing bandwagon and take advantage of this groundswell.

But when it comes to marketing effectively with business blogs, most companies (large and small) are stumbling along blindly, or just falling flat on their face. A recent example is highlighted by Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal. He goes into significant detail about what the upstart search engine company Quintura Search has done right, and verrrry very wrong with their blog marketing campaign.

Quintura Search just released their 1.0 beta system, and when they did they simultaneously started a press release/public relations campaign which has built some solid web coverage on their search application. But when they started their blog marketing strategy, that’s where a downhill slide started. It’s something we’re seeing again and again as businesses try to jump into the new and expanding World Live Web to quickly piggyback or blatantly exploit the blogosphere. Many companies just don’t understand how to market with business blogs so they try to apply “old school” internet marketing methods to get results — and that’s where they fail miserably.

I’m not trying to say that Quintura has knowingly stepped completely and intentionally into the internet marketing spam arena. I only bring this to your attention so you can learn from their mistakes. And Loren makes it clear that he’s not launching an all out attack on Quintura either when she states:

… I would like to say that I do not intend for this post to be an attack on Quintura Search, just a review of their questionable blog marketing tactics to date and how they can improve on their strategy by building a trustworthy relationship with bloggers and the search community.

The key point that Loren addresses is the comments Quintura’s blog marketing team has been posting to blogs all throughout the search engine optimization industry are as he puts it, “spammy.”

I found it especially funny (or sad, depending on your view) as I read the comments Loren highlighted — Quintura’s blog marketing people had obviously at least scanned the posts they were submitting comments on. But none-the-less they still leaned way over into spam comment territory anyway. It almost seems like there was a combination of a self-promoting spam approach combined with a poor understanding of the English language. At any rate, I seriously see that you can learn a lot from (more…)