Archive for the ‘Beating the Competition’ Category

Flowers are blooming, birds are singing, grass needs mowed and spring is in the air for most of the country. April showers bring May flowers? But what about your business? Is your business growing and blooming? What steps should you take this spring to ensure growth into the summ

1. Clearing Clutter:
Probably the largest part of spring cleaning is getting rid of all the clutter and getting organized. It’s time to do that with your business. It is so easy to get into a rut of doing the same stuff day in and day out. Take a moment to organize yourself on paper. What  are you wasting time doing? What are the most productive activities you should be doing. Then clear out the clutter? Get rid of it or get someone else to do it.

2. Fresh Ideas:
Every morning show and many newspapers and magazines try to give you fresh ideas and new takes on how to conduct your spring cleaning. Maybe it is time for some fresh ideas for your business as well. Pick up a business magazine you don’t ever read. Attend a networking function you usually don’t have time for. Look at what other industries are doing in their marketing and see how you can apply to your industry.

3. Get A Little Help
Don’t do it alone. My dad always says that “None of us is as smart as all of us.” Find someone to bounce ideas off of. Take someone to lunch. Quit trying to learn it all yourself and hire someone that is an expert in what you are trying to achieve. For example, if you are trying to figure out the world of online marketing, instead of spending hours detracting from your core business and flushing money down the drain experimenting with what you hope will be the magic bullet, why not hire someone like Click2Grow to take care of it all for you.

Food for thought. Let me know your comments below.

Are you collecting email addresses of your customers and don’t know what to do with them? First of all, if you answered no to the first part then shame on you. I don’t care what business you are in – make sure you get email addresses of your customers and potential customers!

There are a number of ways to easily set up a form on your site and collect emails. My wife and I went to a  new restaurant in town and the waitress brought an index card with our bill requesting our email address to be notified of specials. You can’t get much more low-tech than this, but we did it and they use it.

Let’s say you’ve got email addresses so now what?

Email marketing is not about blasting sales messages to these people. It is about providing valuable information that would be useful even if they never buy from you. You need a service to be able to take full advantage of lead nurturing – a process by which you remain in front of your customers and potential customers so that when they are ready to buy they think of you.

For basic email marketing that allows you to set up auto responders and send a series of messages to someone probably the big three are:

Aweber (http://www.aweber.com) starts at $19/mo
Constant Contact (http://www.constantcontact.com) starts at $15/mo
InfusionSoft (http://www.infusionsoft.com) starts at $199/mo

All three allow for basic email marketing campaigns. Obviously based on pricing alone you can tell that Infusionsoft is more than email. It is a complete contact manager that allows for detailed account records that sales people can access, add notes, move into various email campaigns based on conversations, set reminders, etc. However, if you are a small business just looking for basic email marketing this is not a good choice.

Aweber and Constant Contact are very similar in service and pricing. For me and my company, we use Aweber. Aweber has a unique feature that allows you to broadcast blog updates by email in addition to an RSS feed. There are free ways to do this, but I like to remain in complete control of my subscriber base so I use Aweber.

Another good option if all you want is the bare bones minimum is a service called Campaigner (http://www.campaigner.com). You can get essentially all the basic email auto responder features you find in Aweber and Constant Contact for $10/mo.

So what do you use? I’d love to get your comments below.

Tonight is a the NCAA Championship Game: Butler vs Duke. A classic David vs Goliath match up.

Duke has made 34 tournament appearances including 15 Final Fours and 3 Champsionships

vs

Butler’s 10 tournament appearances including this year’s first and only Final Four and chance at a championship.

So where do you see your business? Are you Duke? The powerhouse Goliath? Or do you identify more with Butler? The small David?

If you are like Butler then I have good news. Not only can you compete with the giants in your industry, but you can dominate. David had his slingshot and stones. You have Internet Marketing.

With a comprehensive Internet Marketing plan you can make a powerful impression online. When you combine old standard tactics like article marketing and blogging with current trends like Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and cutting edge future trends like mobile marketing (via cell phones) your business can rise up and thrive.

You might be thinking, whoa, hold on a sec. To continue the analogy you cannot spend years learning how to be a shepherd and utilize the slingshot as a deadly weapon. You see, the good thing is you don’t have to worry about spending years learning the art and science of Internet Marketing. You can partner with Click2Grow. Send us into battle in your place.