Getting the Most from your Online Marketing Budget

SEO or search engine optimization has become the heart and soul of the Internet marketing industry and many Canadian MSPs and VARs are looking at Search Optimization as part of their overall online marketing strategy.

Each and every reseller or service provider wants to be on the top of search engine results page (SERP). This has created a need for search engine optimizers who alter and optimize the Web sites in such a manner that they become search engine friendly and bring in traffic and revenue to the organizations.

Like any competitive field of business, SEO hasn’t escaped from the hands of crooks and ne’er-do-wells who make tall claims on search engine optimization. It is important for you to detect such frauds before you assign them an optimization job. Here are a few tips which will help you in sorting a fraud SEO service provider from a real one:

• Guaranteed Ranking: The only people who can guarantee you a ranking are search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing but the fact is none of them do SEO! Not even the top ten optimizers in the world in the world can guarantee you a ranking so never fall for such tall claims.
• Quick results: Good SEO is a time-consuming process. It takes time to organically rank a Web site high. It takes at least a month to effectively reflect growth after optimization. So stay away from catchy claims like ‘First page ranking in 15 days’. ‘Guaranteed results in 7 days.’
• Too-Good-To-Be-True Rates: ‘Quality never comes cheap.’ If you choose the wrong SEO service provider, it can be an exercise in futility costing you time and money. The Internet is a great tool to search for market-standard rates. Do not go to optimizers who quote unbelievably low rates.
• Black Hat Techniques: There are lot of unethical techniques for getting your Web site higher ranking on the Web. The down side of this is such practices might invite permanent penalty from the search engines and prove detrimental for your Web site. Make sure your optimizer doesn’t use black hat techniques for optimization.
• Secret and Proprietary: As the owner of the Web site, you are entitled to know what are the exact optimization techniques that your Web site is going through. In case any service provider denies you the information citing secrecy and proprietary information, it is advisable to stay away from them.
• Technical Brainstorming: If your SEO service provider is bombarding you with technological terms and high end techniques it is most likely that he/she is poor with the application of what business is looking for. Good optimizers seldom talk in technical language with their clients and fake optimizers might want to hide their lack of knowledge with such terminology.  The old ‘dazzle them with BS’ truism comes to mind.

Keeping these things in mind will help you in choosing the perfect SEO optimizer for your job.  It is critical that you find a SEO provider who also understands your target market and the industry that you are in.  Search Engine Optimization is not guaranteed, involves hundreds of variables and is a continual process of adjustments and building authority over time. It is a fine mixture of art, science, and research and never comes cheap. And the most important thing – there are no guaranteed results is SEO.

By Stuart Crawford

Source: ChannelBuzz.CA

Cold Calling - Is it Good...!!!!!!

Why it's good that cold calling is so difficult for most sales people??????!!!!!

Cold calling is traditionally the most challenging part of the selling process.

Moreover, for most sales people cold calling is becoming increasingly difficult - because the prospective customer's time is increasingly pressurized and therefore increasingly protected, and so cold calling sales people are increasingly resisted.

Prospects and decision-makers are increasingly difficult to reach, on their guard, and very sensitive and resistant to obvious 'sales techniques'.

Consequently the sales person feels extra pressures, not helped by scripted or contrived language, or an over-zealous sales management or system, which understandably creates a feeling in the prospect of being pushed or manipulated. In these circumstances any hope of forming vital trust is of course lost at this point, and recovery is virtually impossible.

However, sales people who adopt a positive and skillful approach to cold calling generally find that cold calling becomes easier.

This is because cold calling itself is influenced hugely by market forces, i.e., all the other cold calling sales people attempting to do it.

The more difficult cold calling is for the majority, then the easier it becomes for the successful minority.

If the cold calling challenge were easy, then it would be easy for everyone, and therefore very difficult to achieve differentiation or advantage, to stand out, to be noticed and respected and valued - to succeed.

Happy surfing!!!

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Begin an Email Campaign

E-mail marketing has evolved, moving from simple one-way messages and autoresponders to a much more sophisticated way of communicating with your customers. There are a few basic things you need to know about e-mail marketing to build deeper relationships with your customers to generate revenues, grow your business and get ahead of your competition. They are,

Efficient & Effective Communication

Build a List

Even if you only have 10 e-mail addresses, you need to start somewhere. Add those to your database. Once you have your list started, make sure that you launch a campaign to keep in touch and in front of your contacts without overwhelming their inbox. I suggest two e-mails per month maximum. It's not about e-mail quantity; it's about quality.

Set up Contact Information Capture Forms

It's easy to add forms to your website or blog to allow visitors to give you their contact information, such as e-mail address, name and phone number.

Decide What You Want to Accomplish

Before you launch your first campaign, you need to decide what it is that you want to accomplish. Do you want to deepen the quality of relationships, take your list through the sales cycle, educate them? Why are you sending your e-mails? Set clear goals before you send your first e-mail, and build your messages and campaign around those goals.

Set up Auto-respond E-mails

Set up at least six e-mails that will automatically release on the dates and times you choose to send out to your list. Keep them short, simple and to the point. Do not make them "sales pitchy"; use autorespond e-mails to educate and build relationships, and the rest will follow.

 

Add Triggers to E-mails
Triggers are used to send clients into a new sales cycle based on topic. If your client clicks on a link in one of the e-mails you sent her about your product or service. As soon as she clicks on that link, it automatically triggers the release of a message sending her information about a similar product or service based on the original link.

Monitor Results
Once per month, look at reporting to see which e-mails are more effective and have a higher rate of opening as well as click-through. Use the lessons learned to build your next campaign. It's important to know how your list is responding to the e-mails that you send. If you aren't getting a good click-through response, the problem is either the quality of your message or the topic.

E-mail Marketing is an effective way to increase relationships, response rates and conversions through smart, targeted communication.

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Essential Tips for Doing Competitive Analysis

For anyone trying to grow a business, one of the first tasks is to map the competitive landscape. With a good understanding of the competition facing your company, you'll be able to spot and exploit opportunities as they develop. These dozen points should help you draw and refine your map, beginning with your earliest efforts to plan your new venture and continuing for as long as you stay in business.

1) Be a customer. Bring a notepad and pencil to competing establishments and ask a lot of questions. Testing a firm's ability to serve you will reveal much about their business. And don't just pretend to shop from competitors. Buy something. It's the only way to gain first-hand experience with the company's products and services.

2) Find out as much as you can about the people who run competing businesses. Where did they go to school? Where have they worked? How long have they been in the business? What are their strengths and weaknesses? This information can help you anticipate your competition's moves. For example, a local, life-long farmer will run an Indiana seed company very differently than will a young MBA.

3) Buy stock in your competitors. If you're competing against a publicly traded firm, consider buying a few shares of its stock. That way you'll receive regular updates on the firm's financial results and business strategies.

4) Talk to your competitors' customers. Why do they buy from your competitors? Is it because of the quality of the product or service, the price, the location, or the customer support? What do they dislike about the company? What do they wish that company would provide? Why don't they buy from you?

5) Use the Internet. Online services such as Dow Jones Interactive allow you to search through thousands of publications for information about your competitors, especially if they include large companies. Searches are free, but you'll have to pay a fee for articles on Dow Jones or for a monthly subscription. You also can learn a great deal about competing businesses simply by going to their Web sites.

6) Check public filings. As an entrepreneur, you already know that companies must disclose information to government agencies. Such disclosures are required to undertake public offerings, receive building permits, register for patents or trademarks and so on. Many of those filings are public record and contain information about the company's goals, strategies, and technologies.

7) Get to know local librarians. Many are virtuoso researchers and can save you a great deal of time and effort. Your library also will have local publications that may have information on competitors in your area.

8) Attend industry conferences and trade shows. Your competitors' representatives will be pounding their chests about their firms' products or services. Take advantage of the opportunity to familiarize yourself with their product offerings and strategies, and how they sell themselves.

9) Assess the competition's goals. A competitor trying to increase its market share might lower prices; a firm attempting to increase profits may cut costs; and a business that wants to accelerate sales growth might kick off a marketing campaign. If you know your competitors' goals, you'll be better able to anticipate their strategies.

10) Be aware of the potential for new competition. These days, the competitive landscape can change faster than Net-stock valuations. A national chain may not have entered your region yet — but what if it does? Likewise, companies that don't currently compete with yours might shift their focus and pit themselves against your firm.

11) Don't delegate the job of keeping up with competitors. You might appoint someone to work with you on the task, doing research and the like. But as the entrepreneur, you're in the best position to appreciate and act upon information about your competitors.

12) Define the competitive landscape broadly. Your competition includes anything that could draw customers away from your business. For example, movie theaters compete not only with other cinemas, but also with restaurants, live music venues, theater —l even cable TV, video rentals, and video games.

Source: All Business - A D&B Company

Time Management

What is it?!

Time management starts with the commitment to change. Time management is easy as long as you commit to action. The key to successful time management is planning and then protecting the planned time, which often involves re-conditioning your environment, and particularly the re-conditioning the expectations of others. In terms of time management, you are at your most efficient the day before you start your annual leave. Your time management and efficiency on this day is probably awesome. If you really want to, you can be that well-organized every day.

Time management enables each of us to improve and be more productive and fulfilled individually, so logically the effects across whole organisations of good or poor time management are enormous.

The collective implications of wasted time, and happily also the benefits of increasing personal productivity, are immense.

Effective Leadership Skills

Why People Give Their Best Effort?!

Effective leadership skills are so important in an organization. It's not rocket science, but it's the real reason why managers need to make the effort to develop the people skills and personal strengths that will make them better leaders.

Why is it so important for a manager to be have effective leadership skills? To me, the answer is simple.

If all you ever wanted was for people to come to work on time and do what's specified in a job description, you could just manage them the way you do anything else, such as funds, tools, equipment, supplies, etc. You wouldn't need people skills.

But what most managers really want is for team members to do their best work - both individually and as a coordinated effort.

People have talent. They have energy. They have the potential to be creative. They can be bold, patient, persistent, and a lot of other things as they work through tough challenges.

The problem is, even if they're capable of delivering this kind of effort, they don't have to. There's a certain level of performance - and they know what it is - that's specified in their job description. To keep their jobs, that's what they have to do. When the boss tells them to do something, that's what they have to do.

But this level of effort is what managers recognize as "business as usual." It's not the kind of high performance team members are capable of. What managers want most are things that can't be specified or measured: courage, compassion, commitment, composure, optimism, decisiveness, and dozens of other aspects of performance. You can't demand these things and you can't hold people accountable for them.

To get what you really want in the workplace, you have to lead others. You have to grow them into the kind of people who do these things. You have to inspire them to do it. You have to support them and encourage them. You need effective leadership skills. Eventually, when they know the leader, like the leader, respect the leader and trust the leader, then they may choose to give that level of effort. And if they do, day in and day out, work will become very satisfying to them. And of course it will be satisfying to the manager.

Effective Leadership Skills

Four Vital Things Every Leader Must Do

Even though "leadership" is one of the most common words in the English language, people's interpretation of it varies widely. But understanding a few basic concepts about leadership opens the door to leading more effectively.

First, people in charge are typically called "managers," but they're expected to both manage and lead. Managing and leading are two totally different activities. Managing involves the effective use of resources such as funds, supplies, schedules, systems, tools, equipment, and so forth. It takes special abilities to administer these resources, but none of these skills applies to working with people. On the other hand, when managers lead, they influence the performance of team members to perform at their best, both individually and collectively. Simply put, you manage things, and you lead people.

Another basic fact about leadership is that it's not just something executives do. Most books on leadership are about presidents, generals and CEOs and the more strategic things they do. The truth is, foremen, section chiefs and team leaders are leaders, too. Their success depends mostly on how they deal with their direct reports. All managers need to have effective leadership skills: from first-line supervisors to middle managers to executives.

Also, leadership isn't about personal qualities, attributes or traits. It's about what you DO. Yes, having good judgment is important, but in the end, it has to translate into effective action. When you lead, people can see you doing it.

So what actions are we talking about? How do effective leaders get people to perform at their best?

#1 - DEVELOP. To work at their best, people need know-how. As a manager, you optimize their abilities by helping them get stronger on the job. You do this by stating expectations, setting an example, instructing, giving feedback, coaching lessons from experience and supporting learning activities.

#2 - INSPIRE. Team members may know how, but do they want to contribute their best work? You influence their desire to work by tapping into their motivation. Not with rah-rah speeches or monetary incentives, but by setting an example, getting to know their values, needs and interests, expressing the team vision, assigning the right tasks to the right people, and showing appreciation for jobs well done.

#3 - SUPPORT. Think of yourself as a "servant leader," the one who gives team members what they need to succeed, removing barriers and allocating information and resources. These are things they don't have access to except when empowered through the chain of management. This happens during delegation, when responsibility, authority and guidelines are shared along with the assignment. It also happens during execution, when you trust someone with freedom of action.

#4 - ENCOURAGE. Work isn't easy. People nearly always encounter adversity-problems, mistakes, shortfalls, and failures. When it happens, they could lose energy or quit. You need to give timely encouragement so that people work through the adversity and continue striving.

As a manager, you're responsible for all four of these areas of leadership. Doing it all will require effective leadership skills and personal strengths. You aren't born with these behavior patterns. You ingrain them by applying the best practices every day. So a big part of your job will always be to grow stronger as a leader.