November 2022 - Page 2 of 11 - BOLLYWOOD SURKHIYAN

Can It Get Any Colder? Tips For Warming Up Those Frosty Cold Calls

Just about everyone that has ever worked in the business world has had the experience of making a cold call. Even the executives you target when you perform this dreaded task probably had to make them at some point in their careers. So why is it so hard and why do they call them cold calls? It seems that categorizing them with that stigma gives them a bad reputation from the start, which makes the cold callers job that much harder. I’ve been in the cold calling seat for close to 4 years within the information technology (IT) industry and although it can be like climbing a steep, jagged mountain covered in evil Furby dolls when you first start, I have compiled a list of tips that can give any cold caller an advantage over the competition. These tips apply to any industry and are not limited to IT.

1.) Job Titles – When speaking to a prospect for the first time, unless you are 100% certain of their job title, make sure you always give them the benefit of the doubt and assume their title is incorrect. For example, lead information sites (jigsaw/data.com/discover.org, etc.) may list a contact as an IT Manager or IT Administrator and after speaking to the contact or looking them up on LinkedIn or the company website you find out they are actually the IT Director or CIO. We have all done this before in our calls. “Hi Jim, I had you as the IT Manager with ABC Corp?” To their reply of “I’m the CIO” and an almost guaranteed hang up afterwards.

You may have the suave skills to turn this call around, but when these contacts get double or triple digit cold calls every day, the last thing you want to do is undermine their hard work with a title that insults their intelligence.

2.) Name Pronunciation – If you ever have to cold call in the IT world, you will quickly realize that not everyone you call has an easy-to-pronounce American name like Sally, Bob, Fred or Kim. On your first day, you will run into names with enough syllables to tongue-tie the writers on Sesame Street. It is vital that when you come across one of these behemoths that you A.) Take note of the pronunciation of the name on the prospect’s voicemail B.) Ask the secretary or operator for the proper pronunciation before you call them C.) When you get the prospect on the phone, clarify the correct pronunciation of their name and/or ask what name they typically go by if their first name is long-winded. I have found in my experience that this can go a long way and help you stand out from the average cold caller who would pronounce “Jaise” as Jay-zie when it is pronounced Jace with 1 syllable (actual real life example).

3.) Be Respectful – This is a major factor that every cold caller should take into consideration and is something that took me to the next level. Everyone has a different approach when presenting themselves and their company in an opening greeting, but after you do that in no longer than 10 seconds, you should always ask if the prospect has time to speak or if it’s a bad time for them. You have to accept the fact that the people you are calling have their own agenda and may not have “take cold calls” blocked off on their calendar when they pick up the phone. You will ask “then why did they pick up?” They may have thought you were an internal employee, family member or friend calling from a similar number. By asking if they have time, they will usually either say “yes,” in which case they respect you for asking or “no,” in which case they will provide you a better time to call them back or may try to blow you off completely. However, even if they give a negative response, you will find that your numbers will improve by doing this versus simply going into your pitch without asking first.

4.) LinkedIn – DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE the power of this tool. Even if you get contacts or account information handed to you from a site or service that claims to know it all, you should always be verifying your information before calling a prospect. Depending on what service or product you are selling (I’ll stay in the IT realm as that is where my experience lies), you always want to make sure you are targeting the right person and not wasting your time. As an example, say you are provided the contact, Will Smith (no relation) as IT Director for Prince of Bel-Air Corporation (also no relation). You are selling pre-packaged software, but before calling you look up Will on LinkedIn and see that his experience is strictly hardware related and nothing he does has anything to do with software. It may sound stupid, but I would say more than half of the time you are calling the wrong person. By verifying that your contact actually works within the area you are selling, you will be 90% more likely to get a meeting, sale or interest from the prospect.

I’ll provide some expert tips on LinkedIn and ways to find more prospects in a future article.

5.) Attention to Detail – This is vital if you are sending out emails, meeting requests or any form of communication. You are the luckiest person on earth if you have never received an email with your name misspelled at the very top. My name is Jeff, but I’ve seen Jef, Jeef, Geoff, Jefff, Jefforey, Jeffy, you get the point. It’s really not that hard. Again, go back to your friend, LinkedIn, and verify the spelling. If that doesn’t work, talk to the secretary and confirm the spelling so you don’t look like a retard and/or a foreign spam mailer.

Attention to detail is also vital when speaking to a prospect that provides you with information to follow up on. If they say they are not looking for a solution now, but think that they will in 3 months, you should be taking down the notes and marking a follow up on your calendar. Again, you may follow up and find that the initiative may have gone dead or got pushed back, but you are still giving yourself better odds than not following up at all.

6.) Short and Concise Pitch – This is where the cold can get colder. Everyone has their own method of madness when establishing their pitch. You have to keep in mind again, that most of the time (especially in IT) prospects are busy with their own responsibilities and don’t have time to sit through 50 cold calls per day, where the cold caller takes 7 minutes to convey what their company does.

You want to tailor your specific message to the prospect you are calling (you don’t want to be selling software solutions to a prospect that only deals with hardware and vice versa). Again, LinkedIn can be your best friend as the prospect will usually have a summary of their experience listed on their profile and/or skills listed (at the bottom of their profile) that were endorsed by past and current co-workers, friends and people they do or did business with.

My recommendation is to have a solid idea of what your company does and be able to give an elevator pitch within no more than 30 seconds. Most decision makers that you target will probably lose interest in about 15 seconds, if you don’t mention a keyword that matches their current initiatives. Don’t be afraid to practice and continually change your pitch until you find one that matches your style and gets consistent results.

7.) It’s Tricky – I’ll leave you with 2 additional tips that I picked up along the way. Google and voicemail surfing. Google is an immensely powerful tool that many people don’t take advantage of. You will run into secretaries, gatekeepers and people whose only job is to keep you from speaking to the targeted prospect. When this happens and you have no other way to get the prospect’s direct phone number or email address, try typing their name, the company name and/or the company phone number into Google and see what comes up. For example, try “Will Smith Prince of Bel-Air Corporation 610-484-” and see what results comes up. Try the company’s website URL too such as Will Smith Prince of Bel-Air Corporation @bel-aircorp.com. Again, don’t stop with these two examples. From time to time, you may come across valuable spreadsheets with additional information you can use or another site where their information is listed. Remember, you are cold calling and you need every advantage that you can get. Maintain the mindset that if you don’t sell to them, someone else will.

Voicemail Surfing can be tricky, but can pay off big time. It can be as simple as using the dial-by-name feature when you first call a company or more complex as in hitting **6 when you get transferred to a prospect’s voicemail. It all depends on what kind of phone/voicemail system they have set up. Sometimes, it will provide you with their extension and others it may not. I’ll focus more on this in a later article, but it is worth trying by dialing * or # when you get to a prospect’s voicemail to see if they have a searchable directory. This is ideal for when you have to ask a secretary to be transferred to a prospect and there is no initial dial-by-name option. It won’t work every time, but as Paul Rudd stated in Anchorman; “Sixty percent of the time, it works every time.”

10 Ways to Promote Your Business Using Mass Media

Never rely on search engine traffic to support the bulk of your marketing efforts. The risk of doing this a greater than you think.

Search engines are constantly changing and evolving to stay one step ahead of spammers and unethical optimization practices. Recently, thousands of Web sites that were #1 in the Google search engine for many years suddenly found themselves on page 10, 20, 30 or worse.(This actually happened in September through early November 2005 due to a change in the Google algorithm.)

It is crucial to remember that your “natural rankings” or “non-paid page placement results” in the major search engines of Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask Jeeves are free. Search engines do not guarantee the inclusion of any Web site in its search results.

That’s why a solid marketing plan will have diversity. In today’s advertising universe, media channels are converging. Television, radio and print are driving viewers to Web sites and Web sites are becoming 24/7 advertising mediums that supports them all. The World Wide Web allows us to re-experience commercials, music, messages and imagery.

The news media outlets and commercial broadcast companies use the World Wide Web to extend their reach into our homes and businesses. For example, after every HBO special of Rome, they drive viewers to the HBO series Web site to see additional clips and features. Fox Broadcasting did this with their popular military series “Over There.”

Think about it – the World Wide Web supports and extends 99.9% of all mass media communication including the federal, state and local governments. From the Wall Street Journal to the White House, Web sites have proliferated at an incredible rate of 10,000 new Web sites a day.

Global businesses are competing 24/7 for their fair-share of your attention with millions of dollars at stake. How in the world can small businesses compete? Fortunately emerging technologies and the Internet have helped level the playing field. Small business has a distinct advantage when targeting regional niche markets using mass media. Here’s how…

1) Placing Ads in Print Media

Basically there are two kinds of print advertising; newspapers and magazines ‘classified and display’. Classifieds are the small ads towards the back of the publication, while display ads can be almost any size depending on the publication.

Advertising in the print media can be expensive, and for most home businesses it won’t be economical. This is where you can really benefit from the expertise of a media or public relations specialist. My company contracted with David Rourk of Rourk Public Relations. David knows where my ad is going to get the most bang-for-the-buck. He also knows which local, regional or national publications reach the client base I want to target.

2) Buying Radio advertising

Once your business grows to a decent size, you may consider buying some radio time. But ad-buyer beware! You could get a big response. Maybe a little too big! Thanks to the immediacy of radio, you could get mobbed the next day, so make sure you have a support system in place to handle multiple inquires via the phone, Web site, emails and walk-ins. If you have a Webmaster or you can do this yourself, load a digital copy of your radio commercial in your Website for your customers to revisit. I did this for of my Web clients, Easy Money Now, featuring multiple radio and TV commercials.

3) Advertising on the Television

Unless your business is getting big, this would be a bad idea. You’d have trouble producing and airing an ad even on local cable channels for less than $5,000. Of course, if there’s a market for your product and you’ve got the budget for this, you could take the plunge and make a mint. Purchasing air-time or ‘media buys’ is a tricky business. Again, this is best left to a professional who has your best interests in mind. A public relations or advertising professional knows the best station and time slot in which to place your commercial. If you have a Webmaster or you can do this yourself, load a digital copy of your commercial in your Website for your customers to revisit.

4) Advertising on Billboards

If you do this right, a billboard campaign can be very effective. Billboard ads are relatively expensive, but they do generally stay up for a long time,and they can be specifically targeted to an area. Phone numbers and addresses are pretty useless, whereas your Web site address will extend your reach providing your URL or domain name is easy to spell and remember. If you have a domain name that is difficult to remember, consider acquiring a second domain name for advertising purposes.

5) Advertising at the movies

One type of advertising that often gets overlooked is cinema advertising. If you arrive to the cinema early, you’ll see local business ads followed by big-budget ads. This can be a great place to advertise relatively inexpensively in quite a high-profile way. Contact your local cinema chain and compare advertising rates.

6) Organic Advertising

There are multiple types of collateral advertising that help “brand” your business. These include printing, stamping or embroidering your business name and Web address on the following;

1) Pens, pencils, coffee mugs, coulees

2) Golf shorts, t-shirts and ball caps

3) Presentation folders, invoices, fax cover sheets and calendars

4) Bumper stickers, window stickers

5) Phone system ‘infomercial’ about your company for clients on-hold

7) ‘Grass Roots’ Advertising

Nothing beats the basic “meet and greet” or “smile and a hand-shake.” Get your name out in the business community. Check online and the local newspapers for business networking groups. Your local Chamber of Commerce would be a good place to start. Talk to community leaders, private business schools, and associations about business programs and events in your area.

8) Press Release Advertising

PR is popular because it is cost-effective and it works. Sending out a press release is just one example of free PR. There are many reasons for sending out a release: introducing a new product or service, celebrating an anniversary, winning an award, reaching a milestone and so on. Doing this on a regular basis is key to keeping your name in front of your customers and prospects’ eyes and being on the top of their mind when it comes to awareness. Popular forms of PR for the World Wide Web and print are; Writing Articles, Newsletters, Letters to the Editor, Online Forum and Blog Participation and offering Free Reports or (white papers).

9) Web Advertising (Web Marketing)

The most effective Web based advertising I’ve used is “targeted business directories” or business specific directories. For my business this would be any directory having to do or related to Web design and development. There are thousands of business specific directories to include: real estate, law, construction, engineering, flowers, bridal and so on. To find a directory that has top search engine presence on Google, Yahoo or MSN Search and type-in a ‘frequently used search phrase’ relating to your business, products or sevices.

10) Web Site Development

When you surf the Internet, the first impression you get from a Web site is its design. Much like a storefront, it either looks attractive and professional, or it looks shoddy and questionable. A powerful Web site design creates a sense of trust and respect between you and your on-line visitors. The site explains its purpose clearly and quickly, and why a visitor should spend time browsing it.

A Web site is your 24-hours, 7-days-a-week advertising brochure. Take time to plan, research, design and implement your Web site with a professional firm.

As you go through the process of selecting a Web design company, one of the keys to success will be the questions you ask. Following are some questions that will help you find the best company at the best price:

Important Web Design Questions to Ask

– How do you maintain communication with the client?

– How many designs of the home and interior pages will you provide?

– How are any design revisions handled?

– Do I get to keep all ordinal files and source code used to create my Web site? (Some of these ordinal files may include Photoshop files, Flash movie files and database files.)

– Do you charge for minor revisions once the Web site goes live?

– Do you provide a Web site maintenance plan? At what cost?

– Will you submit my Web site ‘manually’ to major search engines?

– Do you build ‘search-engine-friendly’ Web sites?

My 2010 Business Experience

If it is complicated then it needs to be worked on more carefully.

The year 2010 has been my lowest in terms of hope for the survival of my business, however is has been my best success story in my nine years experience as a business owner.

As the year ends I reflect on my business experience so far in the years. The successes and the challenges, the successes where a very good experience which I believe will continue in the new Year and beyond. But the challenges which didn’t start in 2010 but I can say it ended in 2010. This challenges where as a result of bad business decisions due to inexperience ignorance and lack of my seeking advice from those whose business it is to help businesses succeed.

In April of 2010 I was almost sure my business will not survive the year, but I meet this great organization which helped me with vast management techniques I couldn’t have thought of. They are the small business success center, the subsequent corrections and lessons learnt will be greatly beneficial to me for the rest of my business life.

Example.

Financial planning is a prerequisite for the success and growth of any business enterprise. With out financial planning it is impossible for a business to function effectively and achieve goals set by the business. In essence financial planning means that the owners or managers of a business have to continuously determine the right financial management strategy to apply in successfully running the business.

Budgeting. Whether budgeting time or funds we all work on one form of budget or the other. Budgets vary form household budget, personal finance budget, to business budget. Every business has to work according to a budget to ensure it has enough fund to effectively fund its activities.

Budgets serve as an aid to the financial planning process. For example, in the budgeting processes capital requirements of the business for the budgeting period is determined – this enables the business manager/s to make provisions at an early stage for its financial needs.

My help came from, Small business success center. smallbizscenter04@yahoo.com

Also it is important to pay close attention to all that makes your business work be it online business or offline business. Example. Marketing, employing personnel, tax management, credit management, customer relations, Etc. As neglecting any aspect of business management will negatively affect your business.

Online Reputation Control – Branding, Insurance, Or Blind-Luck?

In today’s world it is far too easy to be ignorant of your online reputation. It is even easier for it to instantly vaporize and let someone tear it into a barely recognizable brand that you will fess up to being involved with. Every blog, community site, customer review, or competitor has hundreds of different options to voice viewpoints and concerns against a company. If you haven’t done it already, start understanding how to use tools to monitor social media and take proactive steps to keep your business in working order.

Your second option is to ask the simple question:

Can this happen to me?

Yep it sure can.

As a case example, I pulled a local article from Washington CEO Magazine on the Top 100 Companies to work for in 2007. I pulled some of the names off the list and did a quick query in Google. Here are some of the headlines I found on the proper names of the “Top 100 companies:

Result 7 – Zillow – Google Headline “How Good are Zillow’s Estimates?”

“Zillow came within 5% of the price in a third of the transactions studied by The Journal. It was more than 25% off target on 11% of them. In 34 of the 1,000 transactions, Zillow was off by more than 50%.”

Our view: If you are a user or an investor of Zillow, you’ve more than likely been exposed to this article and several like it. How does it make someone feel that the Wall Street Journal (considered to be one of the most respectable news sources) is saying Zillow zestimates are 50% off?

Result 6 – Comcast – Google Headline “A Comcast Technician Sleeping on My Couch” A Comcast cable technician came to replace a cable modem and fell asleep while waiting for the customer service group. As of this article it was viewed: 1,219,303 times! (At 58 seconds long, that is A LOT of bad reviews for Comcast.) It had 714 comments.

Our View: Holy smokes Batman. 1,219,303 views! I don’t know any company that wouldn’t suffer a marginal impact to marketing, sales, and customer service numbers when a million different people have watched how lackluster Comcast support is.

Result 3 – Spokane Federal Credit Union Review – Citysearch Review – “I had an account with Spokane Federal for many years and I was never really that impressed, they pretty much just took care of what I needed and nothing more, overall I would say that they met, not exceeded my expectations”

Our View: Even though Spokane Federal Credit Union has plenty of coverage, it would be easy to bump off a lack-luster review saying they are nothing but mediocre.

Result 3 – Zango – PC Hell: Zango Removal Instructions – “Zango is a entertainment site with free access to videos, music, games, and other downloads. The site is free to all users, but is paid for by advertisements. Visitors are presented with an end user license agreement that they accept before downloading any content.”

Our View: Here is a Desktop Software company that has hordes of people using Zango gaming software, and every time someone Google’s their name you get “PC Hell – Zango Removal Instructions” thrown at you. If I bought a desktop system that had them pre-installed on it, you can bet that I would remove it in a heartbeat. I don’t need some casual gaming platform slowing down my PC while I need to number crunch my data or send an important e-mail.

It doesn’t make a difference of who you are (how big, or how little), this can happen to you.

It happens to Comcast and Zillow.

It also happens to the little guys.

If you look at this problem from a strictly numbers point of view, Comcast buys it’s own keyword of “comcast” from Google so that it can keep company branding and results at the top of Google. If I were to buy that keyword, it would cost roughly $1.25 per click, and there are 5500 estimated clicks per day on it (that is a daily budget of $6000 to $8000 per day on that keyword).

If Comcast is paying only $.25 per visitor for that keyword- imagine that those 1,219,303 video views cost Comcast a minimum of $250k in lost “clicks”, not counting how many customer service problems and public relations issues it causes.

Marketing Your Business in a Globalized Economy

Sales are the lifeblood of any business. Selling your product is the foundation of business success. Sales drive profits. Sales drive business expansion. Without sales, there is no customer satisfaction or customer relationship.

Therefore, one of the critical functions of any business organisation, small, medium or large scale is marketing. Business enterprises spend billions every year marketing their products to the target market. This might be in the form of advertisements like billboards, television, radio, newspaper ads or sales promotion techniques or public relations.

The critical question for every business is how to maximise their marketing expenditure. It is essential that the benefits exceed the cost. Therefore, the burden of every marketing manager is to delineate the marketing media that is most profitable for their business.

A world outside your ‘world’

We live in a globalised market that has been made possible by various technological innovations, especially the internet and mobile technology. The urgent question for every business owner is ‘what is the best way to maximise the globalised market for my business?’ Part of answering this question is another question, ‘how do I market my business in a globalised economy?’

According to the Statistics Portal, as of April 2018, there are 4,087,000,000 internet users all over the world. In like manner, there are 3,297,000,000 social media users. More than 50% of the world population are active internet users.

For every traditional means of advertising, your reach is limited to the number of people within your geographic location. Even if you are a large scale company, your advertisement can reach only as much as the population of your country and maybe some neighbouring countries. China, the most populous nation has less than 2 billion people. Traditional means of marketing can only reach as much as 2 billion potential people even in China.

But with the internet, the scope of ‘target market’ has changed. Your target market does not have to be the people within your geographical location. In a globalised economy, your target market can span across the whole world. A firm in China can position their business online to target customers in Canada. A manufacturing plant in Nigeria can target customers in Russia.

This is most especially true for people who sell services. A writer in South Africa can be writing for a magazine in the United States while an Accountant with the knowledge of International Financial Reporting Standards and accounting packages can be prospecting clients in far away Australia. A graphics designer in France can design flyers and banners for a client in Ghana. A relationship or self-development expert in Britain can be prospecting clients in Spain. In a globalised market, not even language is a barrier to such opportunities.

The first step

The point is this; a globalised market provides business owners and marketing managers with unique opportunities to expand their reach. In a globalised market, the internet offers vast potentials for businesses to grow and industrialise. The target market of your organisation can reach to the whole world. If done well, your goods or services can be a click away from customers all over the world.

If your business is not yet visible to these 5 billion people, you are not maximising the potentials of your business.

Millions of people are searching through Google and other search engines looking for information as well as products to purchase. Why not position yourself to get some of the benefits?

Every serious business in the globalised economy needs a website. Owning a website is the first step towards gaining from the internet as a business owner. A good business website can cost within $100-$300 (depends on the developer). In some cases, it can be lesser or higher. In a globalised market, you can get competitive prices from credible freelancing websites or individual designers that have positioned their services on the web.

Some of the advantages of having a business website include:

1. It provides a platform where potential customers and current customers can get vital information about your business and products 24 hours a day at just the click of the finger. Instead of answering thousands of calls every day, your website provides a medium to get desired basic information.

2. It makes your goods and services accessible to a globalised market 24 hours a day and seven days a week

3. It is an opportunity to be indexed by Google and to become a destination for relevant Google searches for your product or related products.

4. It provides a platform for a detailed explanation of your products and services without the limitations of a newspaper page or a radio time.

5. In the 21st century world, having a website showcases you as a serious business owner.

Many people all over the world are depending on the internet to purchase their goods and services. It is important to take advantages of such opportunities.

Having a website is not enough to get the sales. But it is the first step in a series of steps that can prove to be the most effective marketing strategy in the globalised economy.

Follow the author on this page for more on this topic.

Common Small Business Web Design Mistakes to Avoid

As a small business owner, you probably already know that your website is a very important tool for marketing your brand and reaching your target audience. Ensuring your website design is attractive and functional to your audience is also necessary for success. Unfortunately, there are quite a few small business web design mistakes that are all too common. Sometimes this occurs when small business owners hire a cheap designer and believe they’re getting a value, although sometimes it’s mistakes the website operator makes by excluding certain important information.

To make sure you maximise the potential of your business website, keep these pitfalls in mind and avoid them.

Mistake 1: Not Building Trust

Building trust with your audience is arguably the most important thing any small business web design should do. There are actually some really easy and quick ways to build trust, as well as improve your conversion rate. Start my making sure your full address, company name and phone number is included on every page, preferably the footer. If you have an e-commerce storefront, make sure you are displaying badges like your SSL certificates and sitelock. After all, most people are not going to want to place an order if they doubt the professionalism and security of your website.

If you are a very small business or a freelancer, it also helps to add a picture of yourself to your “About Us” page along with a personal quote. Be prepared to be very transparent about your services and offer as much detail as possible, including any return policy or guarantees you provide. You should also have a privacy policy on your website, which tells your visitors what you will and will not do with their personal information that’s collected.

Finally, consider adding the rel=”publisher” link to your homepage, which points to your business’s Google+ page. This way, the image used on your Google+ profile will be displayed alongside your website on Google search results.

Mistake 2: Website is Too Flashy

It’s not uncommon for business owners to get a little carried away with the content and design of their website, requesting flashy graphics and bold colours that detract, not add value. To effectively market your brand and improve visibility, you want a clean and minimalist interface that impresses customers but makes it easy for them to find what they are looking for.

Content should be straight-forward and relevant, not a long rambling monologue or an excuse to stuff in keywords unnaturally. Users should come away with a good experience and feel like they found exactly what they were looking for.

Mistake 3: No Call to Action Buttons

Call to action buttons are important because they funnel your visitors further into your site. By keeping website users on your website for a longer amount of time, you’ll lower your bounce rate and increase the chance of a conversion. It also improves user experience by directing users exactly where they want to go, assuming it isn’t overdone. If you sell insurance, for example, you would have a call to action button encouraging users to request a quote. If you sell products online, you would have a call to action button for users to “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart.”

Mistake 4: Not Using the Rel=”Nofollow” Tag on Outbound Links

Finally, a really common small business web design mistake is not using the rel=”nofollow” tag on outbound links away from the website. While it may not seem like a big issue, it actually allows you to control the “link juice” of your website, which gets leeched out to all of your “dofollow” outbound links. Only links going to your internal pages should be “dofollow,” which means they pass along this link juice.

It’s also important to avoid linking to a lot of low authority or low quality websites, especially if you do not have a great deal of inbound links to your website.

Unfortunately, these mistakes are all too common, but very easy to fix, for the most part. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so the best option is avoiding these mistakes in the first place by working with an experienced individual who can create a custom web design for your business.

Find the Number 1 Home Based Business

Finding the number 1 home based business isn’t easy. In fact, it’s different for everyone. Everyone has different goals, strengths, and timelines. Do you want a business you can use to generate additional income, or are you looking to replace your current job at some point? Do you mind putting the hours, or do you work too much already and are trying t spend more time with your family and friends? What type of exit strategy are you looking for? Do you want to sell your business in the future, or will you pass it on to your relatives when you decide to retire? Maybe you have bigger plans and want to you’re your company beyond the home based realm and take it public at some point.

All of these questions have an impact on how you find the number 1 home based business. What may be the perfect business for you may not work so well for someone else. You may be simply looking to supplement your income by a few hundred or a thousand dollars a month by working extra hours here and there. If that’s the case, you’ll have very different needs than someone who’s planning on having a full time business and income to replace their current employment.

There are many good candidates for a home based business. Your number 1 will be the one that fits your individual needs and strengths the best. Here are some great ones that have been well proven throughout the years, in no particular order.

1 – Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is a favorite of marketers everywhere. The affiliate marketer sells other company’s products and/or services and is paid a commission or finder’s fee for doing so. The advantages are that you have no inventory or customer support requirements. You’ll have nothing to store, no tech support or customer service phone calls to field, and no shipping to worry about. It’s perfect for the person who wants to operate out of their house and have very little overhead.

There are of course negatives to affiliate marketing. Depending upon what you’re selling, you may not make as much money sale as if you were selling your own products.(however, for some information products, the affiliate often makes more than the content owner) You also have no control over your right to sell the products when you’re operating as an affiliate.

Any individual affiliate, affiliate program, or product can be terminated at any time. This can be a real pain, not to mention expensive, if you devoted a large amount of resources to developing a website and marketing campaign around the product or program in question. It’s also frustrating to watch as a nice income stream evaporates, and you can do nothing to stop it, except another product, or program and hoe it performs as well as, or better than the old one.

Another disadvantage of an affiliate business, is that you can lose large sums of money through your advertising and marketing efforts if you’re not careful. It’s the same with many other businesses as well. There are many free or inexpensive ways to promote, but some marketers find that they achieve their best and quickest results using pay per click (PPC) advertising. The most widely known example of PPC is Google’s AdWords program.

2 – eBay or Other Online Auction Business – Here again is a way to generate fairly large amounts of money if you’re so inclined. eBay and other auction sites have large amounts of traffic that you leverage into a nice income and brand recognition. The upside is that there is practically unlimited income potential. The downside is that there are few barriers to entry. Anyone with a pulse can start a home based eBay business, and it costs little or nothing to do so.

While those attributes could be viewed as advantages, just know you have over 240 million potential competitors that are registered eBay users. Of those, 83 million are active users, so starting an eBay business gives you access to a huge potential market. Over 600 million items were sold on eBay in 2007. Some of that could have been your merchandise. In fact there were 532,000 eBay stores in 2007, and well over 120,000 people earn their full time income from the on-line auction pioneer, so you could be next.

Those are two of the most popular types and it could be argued that simply by virtue of their sheer numbers, eBay stores ranks as the number 1 home based business. However there are countless others, from consulting to landscaping firms that can be run out of one’s home. Actually firms such as consulting readily lend themselves to being run from home.

With the advent of the Internet and other modern communications systems, there is little reason to have a traditional office. In fact, keeping overhead low is one of the keys to success in your business, and a traditional office is one of the largest sources of overhead in many businesses. Eliminating the office adds directly to your bottom line, which is the point of having your business in the first place.

How to Find the Best Digital Marketing Agency

In order to find the best digital marketing agency, first, we need to understand “what is digital marketing”, “will digital marketing benefit your business” and answer the question “how do I get more leads for my business?” – which should be the purpose of any marketing.

What is a Digital Marketing Agency?

The dictionary definition of Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium. So simple to summarise in one sentence, yet it can be a complicated process to get right and to ensure that all of your digital marketing is working together, not as silo activities. This is where the expertise and experience of the best digital marketing agencies can be hugely beneficial.

Traditional advertising, newspapers and paper directories, such as Yellow Pages, are increasingly less effective for businesses. Whilst a few years ago people would go to a computer to search for a product or service, nowadays people are connected to the internet all day, every day and “live online”. Looking for information, a product or service is as quick and simple as searching on a laptop or computer at work or picking up their mobile telephone or tablet. Digital marketing focuses on getting your information, products and services in front of people when they are looking online. The best digital agencies understand the buying process of your products and services and ensure that your information is prominent to the potential customer at the appropriate time. In the digital marketing world, the various stages of the buying process i.e. research, consideration and purchase are called “micro-moments” and the very best digital marketing agency will present the relevant information, service or product at the targeted time in the buying process.

Whilst some digital marketing agencies will also create and manage traditional advertising or business marketing, such as newspaper advertising, specialist digital marketing agencies will concentrate on online marketing as opposed to “marketing companies” who commonly concentrate on TV, radio and print marketing.

Regardless if your business is business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C), digital marketing can be a fast, often instant, and reliable way of getting leads into your business and driving up revenue. The very best digital marketing agencies will manage all of the digital advertising based on return on investment (ROI) ensuring the leads generated are at a cost that makes business sense and increases profit levels. Digital marketing will benefit your business and answers the question “how do I get more leads for my business”?

Digital marketing, sometimes referred to as website marketing, can be broken down into a number of important features and services:

SEO Services

Search engine optimisation, most commonly abbreviated to “SEO”, is the process of getting your website found on search engines like Google when people make a search relevant to your business, services or products.

Regardless if your website is e-Commerce or selling services it will drive leads and sales into your business if it is found for the search terms people use (often referred to as “keywords”) to look for them in Google.

SEO requires experience and understanding of how Google reads your website. What messages and information you want Google to read for a webpage or website and knowing where to place that information so search engines can find it. A good SEO company will have a proven track record of ranking websites high in the search results.

SEO works best when the proven methods of obtaining rankings are applied in conjunction with latest trends that are driving traffic. An example of this is the “near me” phenomenon, which has seen a 150% growth in the last 12 months, where mobile phone users are adding “near me” to their search query i.e. “SEO Company near me”. These customers are looking to buy and buy from a local service or product supplier.

Although SEO can be a stand-alone service, it is most effective when combined with PPC, social media and reputation marketing. SEO is also the cornerstone of effective PPC, social media and reputation management campaigns.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click (PPC) often referred to as “Google Advertising” or “online advertising” is where you position adverts at the top of the search results for specific search terms. These search terms can be the words people use when in the “research” phase of making a purchase or targeted at the “buying keywords” when potential customers are looking to buy.

Although your advert, depending on your budget, can be shown every time a search is made, you only pay when an internet user clicks on your advert and is taken to your website or calls you direct from the search results page meaning you only pay when you get a click from a potential customer hence the name for this form of marketing of Pay Per Click (often abbreviated to PPC).

How much you pay for each click is determined by a few factors. The “cost per click” (abbreviated to CPC) is determined by the quality and relevancy of the advert to the search term being used and the relevancy of the page on your website that the potential customer land on. These factors contribute to your overall “quality score”. The higher your quality score, the less you pay per click and less you pay per lead into your business.

In the UK, Google has the vast majority of search traffic and most of your budget should be placed their, however, you will not want to miss the smaller, yet still considerable potential for customers from search engines like Microsoft’s Bing platform, and a small part of the budget should be allocated to other search engines. Also, the very best PPC management companies will also discuss spreading your PPC budget over a number of campaigns aimed at different parts of the customer journey. A small part of the budget should be allocated to the research stage of the buying process when people are using broad search terms to find information, a small part of the budget when people are searching for yours, your competitors or market leaders company name. The majority of the budget when potential customers are using search terms directly related to making a purchase and lastly, a small part of the budget to re-market (show your advertising to people who have shown an interest in your services or products by visiting your website) to capture and drive up conversions from the customers previously advertised too.

The best PPC Agency will be a Google Premier Partner. A Google Premier Partner status indicates that the company has a proven track record in delivering high-quality campaigns, which generate good competitive/low CPC’s and deliver high and positive ROI’s. The very best PPC agency will have a robust PPC management process in place to quickly react and capitalise on changes in the PPC campaigns of your competitors.

Unlike SEO, that can take some time to be fully effective, Pay Per Click is instant in the fact that as soon as your campaigns are live they can be generating leads for your business.

PPC is highly effective when carried out in unison with SEO. A well-optimised website will improve the quality score of your Google advertising campaigns resulting in a reduced “cost per click” meaning you get more leads for your budget.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are now legitimate places for a business to attract leads. Facebook has over 38 MILLION active and regular users in the UK and the number is anticipated to rise to over 42 MILLION by 2020. Regardless if your business sells to consumers or other businesses, your potential customers are on Facebook and using it often.

Facebook is excellent at raising awareness during the customers “research” stage, reminding them of your services or products during the “consideration” stage and putting your specific products in front of potential customers at the “buying” stage. With such a large audience and the flexibility to target customers throughout the buying process, Facebook can be a good avenue to generate leads and sales and to deliver a great return on investment.

A good digital marketing agency will have a proven track record in delivering highly effective Facebook advertising campaigns. The very best digital marketing agencies will be able to demonstrate the conversion rate and cost per lead of your social media marketing.

Again, social media marketing and specifically Facebook marketing can be carried out as a stand-alone activity however it works so much better when combined with SEO and/or PPC. When a potential customer visits your website their computer is marked as having visited. This then allows you to target the user of that computer, who has shown an interest in your products or services.

Reputation Management

When considering making a purchase, a potential customer will scour the internet to find feedback and reviews from previous customers. Your online marketing and sales can live or die by the reviews for your business, services or products. Ensuring that positive reviews are easy to find and that any negative feedback is managed well, can be a huge benefit to your conversion rate.

Digital marketing companies call this “reputation management” or “online reputation management” however, in reality, it is creating systems to generate customer reviews and customer feedback ensuing positive customer satisfaction is captured and easy to find for potential customers.

Many businesses are concerned with allowing the public the ability to openly provide feedback. You cannot please all of the people all of the time, and companies worry that a bad review will have a negative impact on their business. Firstly, if someone is determined to leave a bad review for your business they will find a platform to do so and there are 1000’s of platforms to choose from. It is better to have control of where customers are encouraged to leave a review. Secondly, a poor or bad review, if managed well, can be a positive for your business. Engaging with a bad review highlights that you care about feedback and subsequently, you care about your customers. One well managed bad review can be as good for your business ten good reviews.

A good digital marketing company will use one of the handful of recognised review platform and provide the tools and means of allowing you to capture, manage and respond to customer reviews.

How to Protect Your Business From Cyber Crime

Is your business secure? It may not be. Many unscrupulous individuals are operating online looking for new ways to exploit honest people.

I was recently pulled into a scam enacted by someone yet to be identified via a freelance work website. Because of how personally this affected me and my brand reputation, I’ve decided to write today’s blog post about securing your business online.

My personal experience involved Upwork.com, which is a website boasting about the value of freelance talent.

Well as the old saying goes: there is nothing more expensive than cheap labour.

Someone posing as me purporting to be a writer/editor from NYC took a job writing a book for a client and the results were bad. 3 chapters completely plagiarized bad.

Even worse – the fraudulent work got blamed on me! This person’s profile had my name and my photo and her client found me (the real me) through a Google search that matched my profile photo. You can imagine the shock I felt of being falsely accused of ripping someone off!

After realizing this was a clear case of identity theft, I immediately contacted UpWork to have the fake profile taken down. This person’s client did the same; we hope they were able to get a full refund of the monies spent on the useless book written for them.

Scary stuff. But compared to what others have encountered it’s small potatoes.

While hiring and supporting local talent has always been my thing, if you have to outsource (overseas or via those freelance sites), then a great idea to protect yourself is to insist on seeing a scan of government issued ID. Take your identification proof one step further and insist on a video conference before making any commitment.

Fraud is on the rise

2016 saw a significant increase in fraud over 2015. While the numbers show the amount stolen went slightly down the volume of theft went up. A lot.

While those figures relate more to consumer fraud if you’re the seller, you can be out of pocket money if the claim means sending the now used product back to you.

The point to take home is fraud is up so you need to take action to prevent yourself and your customers from becoming victims.

How to prevent and report cyber crime

According to The National Cyber Security Alliance there are several steps you should take to protect your business and customers:

• Evaluate Risks

Identify what types of fraud or crime you may be most susceptible to. Do you work with medical information? Financial information?

Even if the purpose of your business is simply B2C there are steps to be taken to protect yourself.

Users who purchase through your website are trusting you to keep their financial information safe so take steps to do so such as having SSL installed for any e-commerce or sensitive information and it’s wise not to store it.

• Monitor Threats

This can be as simple as making sure no spam messages are opened or any emails with attachments are scanned with some sort of antivirus software. While the software is not 100% effective it will stop the better circulated scams.

• Report Attacks

If you are the victim of a cyber attack you are going to get frustrated and with good cause.

Currently Canada is really vulnerable when it comes to cyber crime and your best hope is just to call the police. While promises have been made to address this, very little has been done and international criminals are impossible to go after.

If you are a victim of cyber crime contact local law enforcement and cross your fingers. But the bad news is you are likely to get no resolution. This is something to consider if you’ve been hiring anyone overseas.

In the US reporting cyber crime is much easier. You contact the FBI via this website. They have the capacity to address international criminals and recently America has cracked down on international crime operating within its borders.

For those reading from any other country I encourage you to do your own due diligence regarding protocol for reporting cyber crime so you’re prepared should you ever need to be.

• Execute a Security Plan

For this the recommendation is to work with your ISP on a cyber security plan. While your ISP may be worth talking to you should really speak with your website’s hosting company first and foremost.

The security of your customer’s info and your business is delicate so make sure your host knows to have things such as routine backups of all information made and stored on another server.

Most of the majors stay on top of things but it’s always worth calling them for a quick review especially if you have pertinent info for them that may help.

If you have been a victim already let your host know what happened. The information may help others down the road.

• Safeguard Your Clients

The suggestion found in this article of scanning all USB drives routinely is a good one. Sometimes the information can be air tight behind the most advanced firewall but it still gets out.

One of the easiest ways to exploit technology is social engineering. Many times the information isn’t so much stolen as leaked by someone internally.

Have a privacy policy in place and make sure your employees know that any time they connect anything to your computer network it will be scanned.

Make sure all software is updated and that all computers connected to your network are running the most updated version of their operating system.

• Educate Your Team

This is an easy one.

Have protocol in place that ensures your employees follow all steps noted above.

All computers must be scanned when attached to a network and all USB drives as well.

Most people are accustomed to this now so don’t worry about implementing it suddenly.

Stay Safe

By taking measures to protect yourself you’re ahead of the game should something occur. Scrambling after you’ve been a victim only helps the people who have stolen from you by giving them time to disappear.

Online business is only likely to grow even more and along with it fraud. The complexity of the scams will evolve and hopefully so do the solutions. In the interim I hope you enjoyed these tips and that you never become the victim of cyber crime.

Starting Your Home Based Business With MLM Prospecting and Generating Leads

Starting your own home based business can be hard, never easy. You always need money to pay your bills, and things just don’t happen for you very easily in terms of getting unique visitors, them turning into leads, converting those leads into prospects and then actual clients, and then enrolling them into your primary business. All of this while trying to pay your bills. It’s hard for a person whether they are single or whether they have a big family to support so I won’t talk about that. What a lot of people don’t realize is that business expenses are 100% tax deductible, but that doesn’t make it free, especially if you’re not earning any money. So most people that start with a home based business do so while having a job or do so from savings as a big investment.

They are many types of home based businesses and most of them, I mean besides the kind that are there for stuffing envelopes, require the use of a telephone or more often the computer with an internet connection. All home based businesses pay you for how much processing or prospect conversions that you do.

This is especially true with a Network Marketing or MLM home based business. So how do you get your unique visitors to come to you? How do you turn those unique visitors into leads? How do you get them as prospects who are interested in your company or product? And, how do you actually enroll them into your business as a client? That’s when they are now in your boat asking these exact same questions. Questions that you, like I will have to answer for them.

So the first step, getting unique visitors is usually the most easiest thing to do, specifically you must invest enough money into marketing. But how much does it cost, and are you marketing in a specific niche that is interested or caters to your product or service? Once you find your target niche, after that you have to worry about your competition. So how do you stay ahead? Well, it’s really up to you. And I’m going to try to help you as much as I can.

First of all, what is a niche market? A niche market is composed of individuals and businesses that have similar interests and needs, which can be readily identified, and that can be easily targeted and reached. Finding a niche for your business means finding a great product or service for a highly targeted audience. An example of a niche market is women teenagers clothing, or boys clothing, or catering for needs of the elderly.

A great tool is ranking on Google for free, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve which I won’t discuss in this article and am saving for my personal team. Another great tool is pay per click advertising using overture, word tracker, or my favorite, Google AdWords. This is where you can find a specific keyword term with less than 300,000 results that you can actually compete in. Of course pay per click marketing is very expensive, and seldom people can afford this at first unless you’re already making money with your online business. But to find a good keyword phrase with little competition use Google’s, Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. Just Google that phrase on Google and you’ll find it.

But before I get into more trends, I have to establish that if you’re going to have an online business, what you need is a lead capture page and an email auto-responder so people can subscribe to your newsletter and it helps you keep track of your leads. Now if your great with computer technology you can get a very affordable domain name with GoDaddy and host it for less than $4 per month using HostGator but then you have to really understand html and create a programming environment where every time someone clicks somewhere on your page that, that information is tracked, stored, and processed using some type of program environment tool. Most people that have a home based online business or are interested in having one are not savvy enough with computers, much less savvy when it comes down to html and especially programming. Things like cgi scripting, perl scripting, php, asp, java, java scripting, etc. What most people need is a capture page that already has everything set up and running for you. A capture page that lets you sit back, relax, and see exactly what is going on with your online campaign. This isn’t going to cost you $4 dollars per month. If you want all these tools available to you you’re going to have to find something a lot more technologically practical, useful, convenient, sound, and concrete; and yet still at an affordable price. Say for under $50 per month? I personally recommend this site. It’s called lead system pro and it automates a lot of or all of the things necessary to effectively host a web capture or lead page and allowing you to track your visitors and doing a whole bunch of other cool things, basically also giving you a back office where you can manage and edit your site and content without any knowledge of html or web based programming. You could also take advantage of a whole bunch of Web 2.0 applications that are all free and link them into your capture page. Applications such as youtube, MySpace, Facebook, twitter, and more are covered in the tutorial section with step by step video guidance in lead system pro. The company also has recorded webinars or phone/computer seminars that are pre-recorded that you can watch or listen to so you can take examples from what others already know and apply it to your own site(s) and business and market that way.

You’ll also need some type of advertising that you can do about every 3 days or so in order to get consistent traffic coming to your site. I know about two services which cost about $200 each for 1 year and I think that, that is a great offer. It comes down to advertising costs of about a little over $16 dollars per month each, and lead system pro shows and tells you about these great non-spamming email list advertising programs. So you can learn a lot of information from that website, and I highly recommend it. It costs about $1 for a 14 day trial, where all other similar hosting sites only give you a 7 day trial for the same price, and probably offer a lot less. They also offer you a bunch of affiliate programs that you can sign up for on other websites to generate money from each lead whether or not they join you in your primary business or not.

Now I know I’m talking about a lot of upfront money here just for a capture page and advertising, but if you decide that you want to join my team, I’ll share with you ways to do marketing and generate 20 leads per day guaranteed and all for free.

But for now, let’s get back to more trends. How do you turn those unique visitors to turn into leads? Leads are people that opt-in or sign up for your newsletter, an interested market, that put in their real name, email, and phone number and automatically get put on your auto-responder newsletter. If you’re worried about the auto-responder newsletter, don’t be, lead system pro has all of that built in and taken care of so you don’t have to write a thing to your list unless you want to. Once a person is a lead, there’s no cold calling, no hunting people down, no convincing other people or telling them about your business. These are people that are already interested, so they are called your warm market. What that means is that they’re open to you, what you have to say, and what you have to offer. But although I’ve told you what a warm market is and what a lead is, I never explained how you turn those unique visitors into these leads.

Simply put, to turn a unique visitor into a lead requires original content. Just like you’re reading my article now, or watching one of my videos on YouTube, you need to be descriptive, creative, and unique basically coming up with a marketing formula or system that brands you instead of your company. That is what makes people interested in what you have to offer them. People are not generally interested in buying into a company. People are more interested in leaders so what they will usually do is sign up with the person that offers them the most value. And that person, that leader, is going to be you. And I’ll show you how.

You need to create Your own unique selling position – study your competition to find out what they emphasize about the product which makes them stand out from the crowd or their niche that you want to compete in. Then decide on something that will make your business unique from the others. It could be something unique about the product, the service, or you, or you could choose a more highly defined target market. You need to build and promote your web site – to develop a profitable web site for your niche product you need to create a number of informative pages that will not only attract visitors from the search engines, but inform and move them to purchase from your site.

Define Your Purpose – Without a clear purpose for your site, you will not know where you are heading, for example, to help small business owners attain a presence on the web to sell their product or service. Now, write down the statement of purpose for your web site. Go over it a few times to make sure it is crystal clear, then write an article and/or make a video. Otherwise your unique visitors will be trying to figure it out for themselves.

Realize many others may be competing to sell the same product. Focus on something unique you may have to offer, that stands out from your competitors. If you are setting up a company, make sure it is a reputable company with a good track record with lots of help available from others involved, such as your upline, partners, coaches, mentors, etc. Don’t recklessly jump in – you will waste a lot of time and money. This is the number one reason, why many entrepreneurs give up so quickly and basically fail.

You have to have to put on your customers shoes. Make a thumb nail sketch of this person – who is your customer? What is his/her wants, needs and worries? Try to understand what makes them tick. Then you can understand what gain you can offer and what worry you can solve. This is the only way to gain trust or confidence in your customer so that they will buy from you in a very competitive market.

Develop your product that addresses one or more of these needs. Always refer back to your thumbnail sketch as you write for your site. Elaborate on the points that fit your product and what it delivers. As you start writing, new ideas will naturally emerge, but always keep them focused on your targeted customer so you won’t go off the track of what your customer wants. Remember, to sell to your customer you have to have their wants and needs in mind.

Maybe you have seen the ads, “Get 10,000 visitors to your site, for only $20”. Wow, you think, that’s a great bargain, I’ll go for it. The result – 10 people visiting your site and no one buying. What do you do?

Write Your Copy to Sell – When you begin to write the copy for your site, always stress the benefits. Develop a theme for your site that focuses on this benefit and don’t stray from it.

Also, make your customer want to click through to the next page or click through to your order page.

Now, that you have identified your targeted customer and written copy tailored to solving your customers’ problems, you will no longer lose those that you have driven to your site.

More realistically put, to turn a unique visitor into a lead, as mother said, you only get one chance to make a first impression – and that’s the one that sticks. What she didn’t say was that when it comes to web sites, not only must it create a good impression, it must be effective.

Your web site has two choices. It can choose to sit quietly in the corner like a wimp, or it can engage with visitors, make contact, and do business. Not much different to a real world encounter when you think about it. If you have something to offer, you either go out and tell people about or sit home and get ignored. And guess which web site does more business – the inactive wimp or the pro-active go-getter?

But there’s a problem. To interact online, you have to have some way of establishing contact with your visitor. Most importantly, finding out who they are, what they need and when they need it. With lead system pro, on your capture page they have a form where people put in their name, email, and phone number. This is what you need to contact the person and truly find out their needs.

Let’s get one very common misconception out of the way. However good it is, don’t expect your web site to sell your organization, your product or your service immediately; it won’t.

Using the Web is called browsing for a reason. Visitors are browsing, not shopping. But be it on the Net or in the local shopping mall or store, people do see things that catch their eye while browsing [aka window shopping]. They do ‘come in’ and ‘look around’. They may not need what you have at the moment. They may not even be able to afford it right now. But they are interested or they would not have ‘come in’ and browsed around. Your web site’s critical task is to ensure that when they can afford it or when they do need it; they know exactly where to find your web site – easily and quickly. But how do we achieve that?

I use the term pro-active. To me web sites that just sit there and wait for visitor requests or signs of interest are re-active [aka: wimps]. They do nothing until poked by the visitor. Pro-active web sites poke the visitor – in the nicest possible way, of course! It is vital your web site finds a way to engage your visitors again in the future.

You must always give in order to receive. The better quality you give, the more you receive. It is a universal law of nature established long before the Internet or probably even the dinosaurs. Provide a *quality* ‘something’ to you visitors in exchange for the ability to contact them. Then treat this exchange with the care and respect it deserves and, sooner or later, that visitor will become your client. It may take days, maybe months, but sooner or later, when they have a real need of what you provide, they will come to you and ask for it – guaranteed. You won’t have to sell it. They will want to buy it.

A good example of this is building that email list and writing articles for your leads to read on a weekly basis, sort of like a newsletter, adding value and insight, not just promoting what you can do for them but also helping them to solve a want or need as well.

Thousands of people may visit your site every day. This is totally futile unless you help them to help themselves. Help them remember you by offering articles, newsletters, RSS feeds, Blogs, Videos or whatever does it for you. There are many avenues you can choose from. Whichever you choose, don’t just have your web site sit there in the corner looking pretty – and doing nothing. Make it work for its living.

You invested time, effort and probably money in putting your website up. Make it earn its keep – it owes you that. Ensure it greets the visitor, what you do, have plenty of attractive and useful content, but above all else, ensure you make all efforts to get your visitor’s calling card/email address before they leave your web site.

I think by now you’ve got the general idea. We’ve also covered how do you get them as prospects who are interested in your company or product.

The last step is, how do you actually enroll them into your business as a client? Well we’ve covered that as well, and with a system like lead system pro it is all automatically done. Your content, your brand/image, and what you put into your site will make the browsers actual shoppers.