Tag: Customers

Driving Customers to You – Your Car as a Marketing Vehicle

You can turn your vehicle into a rolling advertisement. Costs start at just a few dollars, and you can put your business name, slogan, phone number and web site URL in front of thousands of potential customers while you are driving along the freeway, stuck in traffic or even while you are parked. Here are some of the best ways to use your vehicle as a marketing tool.

Bumper stickers are so inexpensive that you may want to print enough for employees, friends, family members, customers and others. Publisher Susan Sabo of Small Dogs Press made bumper stickers saying, “I do bad things for love,” along with the Small Dogs web site URL. The line is from one of their books, and everyone who sees the bumper sticker wants one. Sabo sells them at her web site, and gives them away at book fairs. Of course, she has one on her car, and says she has given them to all of her friends, too.

License plate frames are a favorite of car dealers and auto repair shops, but they can work for any business. You can have them custom made with your business name or slogan, along with a phone number or URL.

Magnetic signs are an easy and low-cost way to put a lot of information on your car. Put them on both sides of the car, and make sure the lettering is large enough to read, even from a distance and when the vehicle is in motion. Personal chef Sue Gaughenbaugh added an effective twist to this idea. She bought a supply of magnetic business cards and placed them around the sign on her truck. When customers see her truck in a parking lot, they can pick up a card to take with them. Gaughenbaugh started getting calls from new customers within days of putting the take-away magnetic cards on her truck.

Vinyl decals and window stickers are a highly visible way to promote your web site. Put the URL in large letters across the width of your rear windshield. After all, you never know who might be behind you in traffic. This is most effective if you have a catchy and descriptive domain name. Custom stickers are available at prices starting under $20.

You can order many of these items from local printers and sign shops. Or, do an online search for companies that can create bumper stickers, magnetic signs, decals and other promotional items.

And when you are ready to go all-out, consider a vehicle wrap. These vinyl decals look like a custom paint job and cover your entire vehicle with bright, high-quality graphics. This is not a do-it-yourself project, but you can hire companies such as http://www.coloredink.com to design and install the graphics. At an estimated cost of $3,500, this option is much more expensive than the others described here, but it will certainly make an impression on the other drivers you encounter.

When your car is a traveling billboard, the time you spend in traffic will become more productive.

10 Tips for Writing Newsletters That Will Get You Customers

A newsletter can be a powerful tool for your business. It’s a very effective way to disseminate helpful information. It is also an effective way to demonstrate your expertise and to promote your company. Newsletter marketing is popular because of the benefits it can bestow. Here are 10 ways to make it work for you.

1. Write a newsletter that has a relatively narrow focus in terms of content. Readers want unique, in-depth information that helps them achieve their goals. You are much more likely to do this if you have a narrowly focused newsletter that provides rich, detailed information on a specific topic.

2. Publish your newsletter monthly or consider writing multiple newsletters so you are producing at least one issue a month (e.g., two newsletters, each published every other month). You can publish your newsletter more often, but remember, the more frequently you publish the more burdensome it becomes!

3. Select a catchy name for your newsletter. This increases the likelihood that people will read it.

4. Make sure your newsletter is concise and full of rich content. This may be the most important tip of all. Newsletter marketing only works if you have an informative newsletter that offers significant value to readers.

5. Distribute your newsletter in both hard-copy and electronic formats. E-newsletter marketing has become very popular but you should still produce a hard-copy that you can distribute at conferences, trade shows, meetings, seminars and other promotional events.

6. Make sure people can subscribe to your newsletter through your website. You should also post every issue of your newsletter on your website in a PDF format. You will find that many visitors will return to your site to read the latest issues.

7. Provide opportunities for a diverse array of people to subscribe to your newsletter. This includes customers, colleagues, business associates, friends and family members. Let them know about your newsletter and how it can benefit them. Create an e-mail distribution list so you can deliver it to them upon publication.

8. When your e-mail distribution list gets big, consider using a newsletter distribution service. You can find a host of potential services by typing “e-mail newsletters” into any internet search engine.

9. Use graphics when possible. Research has shown that people are more likely to read your newsletter if it has compelling graphics related to the newsletter topic.

10. Proofread, proofread and proofread again. This is an important step because you will lose credibility if your newsletter has spelling, grammar or factual errors. Make sure you get your facts straight and have a trusted colleague proofread it as well.

Why You Won’t Sleep Tonight Until You Discover 5 Secrets to Gain New Customers

Is your business growth starting to plateau or stagnate? It’s easy to sit back, take the foot off the accelerator and watch the sales roll in, especially if you are satisfied with how well your business is doing. But keep in mind that if you slack off too much, your competitors will soon catch up and eventually put you out of business.

Marketing your business is even more important than ever if you want to succeed in challenging economic times. Competitors are closing their doors – which means more potential customers for the businesses that do survive. Today is the best time to take steps to revamp your marketing efforts and respond to the needs of your target market. In these times, it’s going to take more than “thinking outside the box” and goodwill with existing customers to secure the survival of your business.

What you need are new and innovative ways to bring attention and profitable sales to your business instead of depending on the “old ways” to get people to learn about you. Here are “5 New & Innovative BE’s” to market you business during challenging economic times. Use these little known ways to increase your market share and watch your business soar.

1. Be Resourceful – It’s Not Stealing, It’s Called “Market Research”

Steal, don’t invent your success from scratch! Watch what other successful companies do – take their innovative ideas, adapt them to your own business and then apply them.

For example, even small or mid size businesses can benefit from carving out a unique image for their vehicles (whether you have 1 car or 100). Think of how quickly you recognize a yellow taxi cab, an emergency vehicle, a Linfox truck. All of these well known icons have been developed because of necessity, purpose and design. You don’t need to spend $1000 to make your branding impactful and memorable either – stickers, magnetic signs and personalized license plates can start from as little as $150. On an average day commuting back and forth to work in traffic, how many vehicles do you think you might see? Statistics indicate that in a busy city like Melbourne, the average commuter is exposed to 5000+ vehicles/hour. That’s 5000+ opportunities to get your brand and contact details out there for very little cost. Can you afford not to try it?

Do yourself a massive favour and STOP concentrating on selling 1 thing to 1 person. What can you do right now to sell your product/service in bunches or bulk? If you are a bookseller, look for opportunities to form alliances with schools, book clubs or companies to generate large orders or group sales. Coaches and trainers may want to consider holding workshops and seminars to increase their leverage and reach. Even if you are in the dry cleaning business, you could arrange to stop by a corporate office on Friday to pick up a pile of orders and then deliver the clean, pressed garments on Monday. I don’t care what business you are in – if you can sell to one person (or business), you can make more money for virtually the same time and effort selling to 10 or 100 people (or companies). Think about it – thinking BIG and selling BIG is the best use of your time.

You may even want to go so far as to consider bribing a “significant other” in order to attract a new, dream client or get in front of a key decision maker. If there is a person that you really want to meet but you can’t seem to get your foot in the door to have an appointment with him/her, you may want to get resourceful and win the backing of a key motivator – i.e. the producer of the radio host’s show, the spouse of the client, the EA (or right hand) of the decision maker etc. Find out what that person likes – whether it’s chocolate, flowers or tickets to a sports event or music concert – and use it to build a relationship and get your foot in the door with the endorsement of this influencer. You will find it pays huge dividends to be sincere and generous!

2. Be Partners – I’ll Scratch Your Back, If You Scratch Mine

This strategy follows along the same lines as what we just discussed above. Question – if given the choice at a networking function, would you rather find one potential customer or a strategic alliance that could help you win 10 customers?

This is not a trick question – of course you would rather develop a relationship with a complementary business or strategic partner who can recommend or refer you to many customers. But how many of you go to events and spend the majority of the time talking about what you do and trying to sell your products/services to anyone who will listen? You only have one mouth and two ears – the key to getting the best result and really growing your business is to use each in the correct proportion. Spend at least 2/3 of the time asking questions and really finding out (1) what is important to the other business and (2) who their customers and suppliers are. Great companies develop great people who really know how to listen. Unfortunately in most prospecting or networking conversations, both people are just waiting for the other person to finish! If you are not listening, you are likely missing opportunities and buying signals.

Be patient and persist – sometimes the synergies are not immediately obvious. I was at a networking event myself last year and met a woman with a small IT company. On the face of it, our businesses really had very little in common. However, after chatting for some time I discovered that one of her suppliers was a company that I was very interested in working with and she also had many contacts (from her previous career in HR) that could be extremely beneficial for my business. She also revealed that she really needed solid business content for her website and ezines that I could provide very easily, at no cost and with little incremental effort on my part. Always think Win-Win.

The easiest way to find potential partners and alliances is to start off by making a list of all of the businesses that might be interested in working with you. Where else does your ideal customer shop? What other products and services do they need? What are they interested in? Get as many ideas down on paper as you can and then sort by order of priority – write a note on your to do list each week to contact 5 people or businesses from this list to set up a meeting and discuss ways that you can work together to become even more successful.

It may be as simple as having a commission in place for referrals between you or as complicated as providing special pricing to customers on bundled packages of goods. Perhaps you may even want to offer free trials of your product to the best customers of your new alliance? This may make perfect sense if the acquisition cost of a customer is high in your industry or if you are looking to break into an established market where there are well known players who dominate the market.

When looking for potential partners, contemplate:

o Businesses in your same industry

o Businesses that sell items that naturally go along with what you are selling

o Businesses that sell similar items but do not compete directly with you

There are an unlimited number of options available – the ways that you can work together and produce a mutually beneficial result are limited only by your imagination. Consider:

o Giving out promotional materials on behalf of your partner with every sale

o Trading existing customer and mailing lists

o Selling your products cooperatively

o Holding a closed door sale or VIP night where both companies cooperate to offer excellent value and enticements

o Linking to each other’s websites

o Offering tickets to a joint workshop or seminar

o FREE trials/demos to best customers on each other’s database

o Combining sales teams or shipping on bulky items (or items that go out each month)

o Press releases out to media or best customers about how you are working together to make it easier/better for your customers

o Coalition loyalty (giving great value back for purchases by customers across multiple brands)

o Writing a joint newsletter or combining materials into a book or audio file that customers can get for free

Remember to do your due diligence and thoroughly research your potential partners online and offline. Google searches are an excellent way to get a preliminary feel about your potential partners and it will also reveal how committed they are to promoting themselves and growing their business.

3. Be Out There – Master PR & Social Media

A good press release should be between 200 and 400 words. Less is more. The priority is to give only enough information to whet the appetite of the reporters and entice them to contact you to for the main course.

Most make the mistake of thinking that a press release is the opportunity to give every conceivable fact and overload the media with data. A press release is really just an elevator pitch–something you could comfortably say to someone in about 30 seconds. You wouldn’t dream of giving a three-hour lecture in order to get someone’s phone number at a bar. Similarly, you don’t need a 1,000-word press release to get booked in a newspaper or on a radio show. Keep it short, news worthy and intriguing.

The story should be about how what you do/sell relates to something newsworthy or will help the audience to fix an annoying or costly problem once and for all.

Did you know that most individuals and businesses are posting press releases purely to boost website traffic? A press release is much more than just a way to get media attention and free editorial. It can also be a great way to increase the organic traffic you get from Google and other search engines. The online press release services focus time and money on search engine optimization and rank extremely well in search results. You can literally piggyback all of this for next to nothing! All of these links create more ways for your potential customers to find you PLUS you receive the added bonus of appearing to be the expert in your field. You can literally receive thousands of visits to your website, without paying a dime on advertising.

Aside from organic traffic, search engine optimization has the potential to produce radio and TV bookings months after your release is sent out and long after you have forgotten that you even sent it! Think about it, a busy, overworked journalist, booker or producer may search on Google for “self sabotage experts” only to find your well-written, opinionated and informative release appearing on the first page – and a direct link to your website!

In addition to the above, social media and viral marketing are the latest phenomena to generate massive exposure and rocket people/companies from relative obscurity to international fame. If you are not involved (or don’t even know what I am talking about), you need to seriously assess your commitment to your business. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Linked In, blogs etc. are just some of the many ways to build your community and get the “word out” globally about what you do, your products and services, for little or no cost.

In my experience working with the Top 22 brands in this country, 90% of their customers lived within a 10km radius of their office/store. However, the biggest competitor to almost every single one of these businesses was the internet – not another physical location or office. Yet most companies focus on marketing to a set pool of customers. They fall into a fatal trap of doing mail drops and advertising in local newspapers to customers within a certain distance from their store. There is a huge fallacy in this level of thinking – if 20,000 people live within 10km of your business this year, you can bet that the same 20,000 (or similar group) also live within the same radius next year. You are effectively marketing to the same group of people over and over again but you are not reaching many new customers or addressing your #1 competitor – the internet.

Your customers are online right now looking for various goods and services and they are watching the YouTube videos, Facebook profiles and blogs about your competitors. If you continue to ignore the power and reach of the internet, you will do so at your peril. If you want to build a successful business and prosper despite what is happening in the global economy, you need to educate yourself on what is available and what will work best to build relationships with your potential customers. Many of these mediums deliver audio and video right to the computers of your customers – what better way to make a good, personal first impression?

And don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Baby Boomers and retirees are not online. A recent national study showed that this demographic was one of the fastest growing consumer segments in online research and purchases for travel, insurance, health care and several other categories. No matter what business you are in, someone somewhere is selling a similar product/service online and is capturing the trust, interest, permission and sales of your potential customers. When is NOW a good time to do something about it?

4. Be Direct – Ask For Referrals

Chances are your best customers hang around with or know other [potential] best customers. Asking for referrals is the best way to capture opportunities and acquire new customers that have the ability to become best customers.

And speaking as someone who knows, the best way to encourage a customer to refer new customers to you is to offer a referral bonus. Do not fall into the trap of blindly offering them a $20 bonus, 15% off or free merchandise for every new sales lead. The key to preserving the relationship and building the lifetime value of your existing customer is to give them a valuable offer (if possible) on a product they do not already purchase from you. Giving them a discount on what they would already buy erodes your profitability on existing sales. This is not a good strategy for you in the long term.

You want to increase their business with you by introducing them to additional products and services that they could buy from you. The key is to identify something that is of value and give them an irresistible offer. Make it easy for your customer to refer others to you – keep your offer simple and concise. Consider holding a special by-invitation only event where they can bring a friend and remember to follow up with a hand-written thank you note and their bonus in a timely fashion. Statistics show that a simple, personalized thank you (with no actual offer) has the potential to increase sales by 12-18%!

In my experience, this simple and effective strategy is overlooked by about 90% of businesses. This is by far the most lucrative and cost effective strategy to get new customers. If you are not doing it, you are likely missing out on about 20-25% of sales from top [potential] customers. Can you afford to continue throwing money out the window on mass advertising when you are not doing this 1 simple strategy that could cost you less than $1/customer?

It is not enough to casually ask your customers to come back and bring their friends – you need to put it in writing and make it worth their while. You are essentially asking them to sell your business for you and they will gladly do it, if you reward and thank them for their effort.

5. Be Unique – Do What Others Don’t

Stop right now and make a list of everything that you (and your competitors) do not do for your customers. Next, I want you to start asking customers what they want. If you want to succeed you will take a good hard look at both of these lists and find a way to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to win customers and keep them. Those who are unwilling to do this will never build a truly successful business. End of story.

I had a couple come to me once for advice and coaching – both the business (they were partners in a retail shop) and the relationship, were at the breaking point. The husband said to me “I don’t understand it. I do everything humanly possible for my wife and she doesn’t appreciate me and I don’t think I can possibly do anything more to satisfy my customers – they are never happy and always want more.”

My answer to this age old dilemma is simple and it applies to both relationships and business. “Sounds like you may be doing a lot. Too bad it’s everything BUT what your partner and customers want.”

Let’s take a moment of silence now to contemplate the obvious implications of this poignant story for your own business…

I don’t really care what you are doing or how hard you are working. There is no prize for volume or quantity here….what counts is quality. Are you giving your customers what they want and are you willing to do whatever it takes to give them what they want? More of the “same old same old” is not going to differentiate you from the pack, build trust, win customers and grow a business.

Take some time today to really think about what you offer and how it could be improved (either simply or via a complete overhaul) to revolutionize your business. If all of your customers were to leave today, what would you need to do in order to attract new customers? Consider:

o Everyone loves a freebie – can you offer a free trial or sample?

o Do you offer a guarantee that takes 100% of the risk out of trying your product?

o Is someone (who is respected) willing to endorse your product/service?

o Are you on the cutting edge of technology – are your products/services able to better fulfil a need or fix a problem?

o Do you make it easier than your competitors for customers to buy from you?

o Can you offer free installation or maintenance?

o Is there a unique way to introduce what you do to prospective customers – without all the pressure of a typical sales meeting?

o Can you offer free upgrades or special financing terms?

o Can you negotiate other products/services for your customers at no charge?

o Can you create a sense of community for your customers that will be perceived as valuable?

o Do you incorporate customer feedback into your product improvements or customer service standards?

o Do you offer free training, manuals and assistance?

o Does the relationship with your customer begin or end with the sale itself?

o Do your team members believe in the product and are they willing to go the extra mile for your customers?

At the end of the day, price is never the determining factor. People will always be willing to pay a fair price for a superior product and for the peace of mind that comes with excellent service and a strong guarantee. If you solely focus on having the lowest price, it will eventually put you out of business. Take stock of what the competition is not willing to do and what your customers want most from you. Do something unique – listen and be willing to do whatever it takes to deliver what they want. Anything less, is simply a lot of time, energy and money wasted on all the things that don’t really matter.

Web Hosting Reviews Offer Useful Feedback From Customers

Imagine this scenario: You’re a small-sized online business hoping to find a reliable web hosting service provider that could help put your business on the internet map. You Google one up and immediately sign up on the first reasonable and affordable web hosting plan you find. Months later, your business is in shambles because the attractive hosting plan you trusted turned out to be a mess. You blame yourself because no one told you about the pitfalls of signing up on an unknown host provider. Moreover, because you never thought of using web hosting reviews to check up on customers’ feedback about that host you eventually choose.

This scenario is not as uncommon as you think. It happens a lot in the competitive and cutthroat industry known as web hosting. You put up a website about an important work or research only to wake up one day to discover that your website has been obliterated from online view because the web hosting provider you hooked up with was an unreliable service provider.

Hosting reviews are important because they serve as a road map that could safeguard the integrity of your work, and the long-term profitability of your business. Most importantly, web hosting reviews offer a wide selection of reviews and comments that could help you pick the right hosting company. Besides helping you establish the honesty and level of support from the hosting company, a reliable host review can give you a step-by-step guide of what a good host should look like. It can give you details, even a short list of honest web hosting companies you might like to do business with.

What an honest host review does not do is favor other hosting companies that are widely known as bad apples by everyone who’s in the hosting industry. A good host review is something that encourages customers to other places where they can find other reviews from credible customers.

Host reviews are written by commissioned reviewers who like to rank hosting companies in the top 10 or top 20. Since many of them are commissioned by the hosting companies themselves, it won’t be difficult to understand that most, if not all of them, are unreliable and untrue.

The best web hosting reviews should be updated often, and should carry information, even quantitative data, culled from web reviews on various web hosts. It’s not enough that a host review ranks one hosting company as “having really good customer service”. A reliable host review should go one-step further and compare host providers, even give customer’s criteria on response time, reliability, and customer service.

The best web hosting reviews even gather current information on hosting web sites and breaks down their typical one-year package based on pricing, storage space, and bandwidth. After that, the data is then summarized and at least two independent reviews included in the final results.

Selling Online – Make it Easy For Your Customers to Reach You With Google Voice

Too many online sellers want to remain anonymous and do business without having to have any contact with the buyer. That’s just not going to work and if you don’t build relationships with your customers they may buy from you once, then never again. Building an online business means being accessible when the potential buyers have questions. Ignoring them and leaving their questions unanswered will only make them find another company to do business with.

I had a telephone call today from a gentleman in another country wanting to purchase some of my items in bulk. He called me on my business phone and we worked out a deal. This man told me he hates doing business via email because he can’t type well and would rather have a conversation face to face or on the phone. I agree. Although I do most of my correspondence via email, I would rather talk to my customers and find out who they are and what they really need. I can make recommendations that help my customers get exactly the products that will work for them and maybe upsell them a related product they didn’t know we carry.

Now, with that said, you don’t want to give out your home telephone number and have people calling at all hours of the night and day. You need a separate business telephone number and I recommend you get a Google Voice account. It is a free service from Google that you can sign up for. Google Voice issues you a telephone number in an area code that you choose and you get free voice mail with your account. You can set the call forwarding so that it rings at your home, your work or cell phone. There are a lot of features offered with this product but I like the voice mail feature the best.

When callers leave voice messages for you, Google Voice translates them and you can view them on your computer screen or cell phone like a text message. I have found that the translation service is pretty accurate considering a computer is doing the translating instead of a human being. I have even called my own Google Voice account to record myself when I had an idea I didn’t want to forget. When I get back to the office my voice recording is all typed out for me. You can even email the message to another person if you need to.

There is no reason not to have a business telephone number if you are selling online. The call you miss may be money gone forever.

How To Attract Local Customers – A Quick Guide To Local SEO

If you are running a local business, you may be wondering how you can target even more customers in your region. If you already have a website, that’s a great start, and if you don’t, it’s definitely time to join the digital marketing revolution.

More and more people are searching for businesses like yours online. That means they are using their computers, tablets and phones to find you. If you’re not online, or your website can’t be found, you can kiss goodbye to the chance of doing business with them. Whether you are selling products or services, you could be missing out on a huge chunk of your market.

But I have a website. Isn’t that enough?

No, you need to ensure people can find your website. The only way to do this, short of delivering your website address to everybody in the area by hand, is by making your website known by the search engines. And the only way you can do that is through local SEO.

Local SEO – It’s Not As Hard As It Sounds

When it comes to ensuring local customers can find you, the process is easier than it sounds, but it needs work. It also needs constant maintenance if you want to ensure you stay in front of your target audience and ahead of your competitors. Fortunately, there are companies offering professional assistance with search engine optimisation that can do everything for you, but more on this later.

Here are 5 ways you can improve your chances of being found by local customers:

1. Create a Google My Business account – by claiming your own Google My Business page, you will be joining the millions of businesses that are benefiting from this service. It’s almost like an additional web page, and is just another way to get your business known. This services allows you to add all the important details of your business, and to receive and show customer reviews too.

2. Acquire as many local reviews as possible – local reviews also have a direct impact on local search, and so try to get as many as possible. Use Google, Yell and other review sites, and ask previous customers if they would be happy to leave a review.

3. Optimise your landing pages – every single page on your website is a chance to get your business noticed in the search engines. By using the keywords that your audience is using to search for you online you automatically increase your chances of being found. So, if prospective customers are searching for “roofing”, make sure your pages contain that search phrase.

4. Build a link strategy – business is largely based on trust, but how do you convince people to trust you if they haven’t dealt with you before? The answer is to become an online authority in your field. Blog posts are a great way to do this and will add more keyword juice for the search engines as well as showing you know your stuff. You should look to write blogs on your website that link to good quality sites within your industry, and also look to write guest posts on relevant blogs that then link back to your own website.

5. Don’t forget social media – social media is another way you can boost your search engine rankings, so use it as much as you can. It’s also a great method to build a rapport with your target audience, and yet another way you can advertise your service, communicate directly with your customers and attract reviews.

If You Don’t, Your Competitors Will

Search engine optimisation is one of the best ways to reach your target audience. When it comes to attracting local business, you have a lot of tools and options open, but you must use them well to get the best returns. It’s only a matter of time before your competitors start to take up these methods, if they aren’t already doing so.

B2B Marketers Get Customers to Tune in and Connect Through Online Social Networking

A recent survey of online marketers conducted by research firm Forrester and marketing resource MarketingProfs found that in a recession, the first marketing channel in which online marketers said that they would increase investment would be social networking. The beauty of using social networking sites for marketing is that it is cost-effective and if done well, can establish and strengthen your company brand and generate the sales you desire. 

 

Connection and engagement are the heart and soul of online social networking. Two ways to successfully achieve connection and engagement are through video sites like YouTube and through Open Identity Programs like Google Friend Connect, MySpaceID and Facebook Connect.

 

When business-to-business (B2B) buyers are looking for resources to help guide their purchases, chances are good that they are visiting sites like YouTube. Home to an increasing amount of B2B content, YouTube welcomes marketers trying to reach these potential customers.

 

According to eMarketer, which conducts market research and trend analysis on Internet, e-business, online marketing, media and emerging technologies, more than one-half of the U.S. population now watches online video, and eMarketer predicts there will be 190 million online video viewers in the US in 2012.

 

At that point nearly nine out of 10 Internet users will be watching online video!

 

Why all this growth? Videos capture users’ attention and make your message stick. In fact, research firm MarketingSherpa reported over 98% of business technology decision makers found viral videos more memorable than other forms of marketing.

 

If you aren’t utilizing YouTube for online marketing yet, a good place to start is with a YouTube channel. You can customize your channel so that visitors can access your videos, post comments, and engage with your brand and company. Recorded webinars, product demonstrations, video case studies, industry events and advertisements are just some of the ways you can use videos to engage potential customers.

 

Another way to engage and connect is through Open Identity Programs like Google Friend Connect, MySpaceID and Facebook Connect. For marketers, these Open Identity Programs are a significant advancement in social advertising because of the cumulative power of pushing information out through connected sites.

 

For example, Facebook Connect is a new application of the Facebook Platform that allows users to integrate their Facebook data into their own site. Users can connect their Facebook profile with any partner Web site, including Amiando, CBS.com, CitySearch, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC, Evite, Flock, Hulu, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Socialthing!, StumbleUpon, The Insider, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo and Xobni. By applying a small piece of code, Facebook Connect enables seamless integration with the Facebook platform.  A visitor logs in to a “connected” blog with their Facebook ID, which enables their profile to appear on the blog and link commenting back into their Facebook activity feed.

 

This gives your Web site a new level of dynamic social context because you are able to link your Facebook friends and publish information back into the News Feeds on Facebook.

 

In today’s business environment, it is important to take advantage of every opportunity to not only get in front of your potential customers, but to connect and engage them. Marketing through social networking sites are an excellent way to accomplish this.

Social Media Marketing – Make Friends and Gain Customers Online

Today’s business can benefit from Social Media Marketing. This involves using websites that bring people together in an informal cyber-setting. The majority of these sites are free to join and use. The best news is that, by making friends on these sites, you can foster business relationships that will help you win over friends and associates.

Facebook or MySpace are two of the primary Social Media Marketing sites. Setting up an account with either is easy; just follow the virtual form that is given. When you enter your data, include your company name and important information about your company. This will become a part of your profile for people to see whenever they visit your home page.

You do not have to stop there, though. Continue with your marketing by updating your status frequently. Go onto Facebook or MySpace and write a bit of news or information about your company as a post. You can also post links to your website whenever you choose.

The important thing to remember about these Social Media Marketing websites is that you want to make friends online. You will be given a chance right away to invite people to be your friends. It is a good idea to start out with as many friends as possible, but having even a few is helpful. Over time, you will be given the option to add friends who have mutual friends with you. The more friends you get, the more people you will reach.

Twitter is also becoming popular these days. People like to tweet messages about what they are doing and read about their friends. Again, use this Social Media Marketing tool to make as many friends and potential customers as possible. You will have followers, some who will decide to follow you with no prompting from you at all. It is also a good idea to follow others, as these people will probably follow you. The things you can post are similar to what you can post on other sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

There are special Social Media Marketing groups online that work as insiders’ clubs. You are asked to join, and then you ask others to join. This is a way to create a professional network. LinkedIn is one of these directory type programs you can use. Not only can you create a network of associates; you can also get people in other businesses involved who might, then, be your customers.

Social Media Marketing is the one of the best ways to reach people through the Internet on a personal level. It is all about making friends and then updating them on your business. It will only take a fraction of your time, and it may pay off in large rewards.

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