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Powerfully Promote Your Offer for an Outrageous ROI

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

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Creative Commons License photo credit: Lori Greig

Don’t leave your new product or service high and dry after an initial introduction. You must promote it like there’s no tomorrow in order to achieve the sales you’ve always dreamed of. Of course, we’d like to think that our business offer is attractive enough on its own and can magically magnetize paying prospects to our virtual front door. But you have to remember that without actively promoting your business offer it’s like a ghost ship in the vast ocean, it’s not coming up on anyone’s radar. However, actively and consistently promote your business offer and you’ll create lucrative pings on everyone’s radars and make your offer extremely real.

Serious Money in Series Marketing

One of the biggest causes of failure for any size business is inconsistency in their marketing efforts. Fortunately, the flip side of the equation can be very lucrative. Market your business offer with consistency and you will significantly increase exposure and vastly improve your chances of your product or service showing up in front of your prospects.

First, we’ll clarify that just because you regularly market your business does not necessarily mean that you are being consistent. It is important to note that you will need to consistently market each individual product or service! If you are trying to sell any product or service that requires more than a $100 for the prospect to purchase it then there is a good chance that you will be battling at least some degree of procrastination or doubt; regardless of the state of the current economy. A prospect who’s not ready to buy after the first offer doesn’t mean that they’ll never be ready to buy—you may simply need to continuously market to them until you’ve built up enough value and sound logic to bring them from their point of procrastination to a point where there’s no doubt in their mind that their lives will be better with the help of your product or service.

Marketing each of your offerings only occasionally is like firing a buckshot at a target 10 yards away—sure, you may spray the entire target, but you won’t cause much damage. But if you fire that buckshot at pointblank range then you’re sure to get the sales-kill. Make sure that you prevent your marketing efforts from getting too spread out.

Some of the absolute best marketing tools for series marketing are e-mail campaigns, article marketing, and blogging. These tools are all very easy to manipulate in a manner that allows you to schedule out marketing messages on a regular (very regular) basis. Simply create an introduction/overview piece to send out first, and then consistently follow that intro piece up with a series of feature/benefit pieces, making sure to build off of each preceding piece. Make sure to never leave features stranded on their own as this will hurt the overall value and integrity of your product or service.

Chinese Marketing Water Torture

Sometimes businesses feel afraid that they’ll annoy their prospects if they market to them too much. While quality business owners will of course want to avoid sending out spam-like materials to their prospects, if you offer a product or service that can truly improve other people’s lives, then you should market boldly and with full confidence, without worrying that you’re going to annoy people.

Countless businesses have been able to achieve record-breaking sales through drip campaigns. These campaigns are usually marketed to people who have opted in and requested additional information regarding a particular product or service but can also include general leads you have collected through your website.

These drip campaigns often feature an automated series of emails, which do not require any ongoing maintenance once they’re launched and are highly effective at building an unbreakable case regarding your product or service. Not only do you continue to build value with each drip, a highly targeted marketing message that features a portioned segment of the product’s overall features, you also keep your business offer in the front of your prospects’ minds so that they think of you first before all the competing offers.

To your success,
Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

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Posted in Article Marketing, Article Marketing Automation, Blogs, Business Tips, Email Marketing, Offline Marketing, Online Marketing, Publishing Articles, marketing | No Comments »

Altruistic Marketing Makes Money

Friday, July 9th, 2010
free 'sweet' hugs
Creative Commons License photo credit: kalandrakas

Regardless of whether it’s for business or personal matters, if you concentrate on giving something for nothing you’ll eventually get everything. Businesses have an outstanding opportunity to bring in new business by providing their prospects with free resources. This will help you establish your business as a comprehensive, caring and credible resource which is guaranteed to eventually improve your sales.

Providing free information will also create a tremendous foundation for trust. Let your prospects know you’re there to answer questions and address concerns and they’ll think of you as a credible online friend—one they’re willing to write checks to!

This free information approach also provides an ideal opportunity to create a wedge between you and your competitors. If your business is coming in even with a competitor, provide certain elements for free that most other competitors would charge for and you are sure to gain the competitive edge. It’s simple—as a consumer, would you rather spend money with a business that just gives you the bare minimum or a company that goes above and beyond to provide you with additional value?

Some of the best methods for providing free information include e-books, newsletters, Web conferences and training sessions, Web videos and e-mail marketing.

Free Info Creates Need

Not only will your prospects appreciate free information, the information you provide could provide the missing link which will motivate them to buy. First, free information has the ability to maintain a friendly, soft sales approach, which prevents prospects from automatically putting their guard up against your offer. With their guards down and their listening caps on, prospects will be much likelier to pay full attention to the information you provide.

Take advantage of this, ethically of course, by using your information as a catalyst. Whether your prospect is in a state of procrastination or simply isn’t aware of how they could benefit from your product or service, the information you present to them will catalyze them into action. Your information-based marketing grants you an ideal opportunity to both persuade and educate your target audience.

You should also use this opportunity to illustrate specific examples of how people are using your product or service to better their lives. Concrete examples of how others are experiencing an improved quality of life will always sell more than a list of your business’ features.

Web Training Sessions

You can easily create a series of Web training sessions, webinars, regarding highly relevant material within your industry. There are several very simple options available online that allow you to present material online. Those who attend your virtual presentation will be able to view your desktop and listen to audio, allowing you to show them specific material, discuss the material, and actively field questions from your audience. (Hint: Try typing “free webinar software” or “free webinar hosting” in the search engine.)

The focus of these sessions must concentrate on providing useful information. You must stay away from sales speak or your attendees will quickly perceive your session as a thinly veiled sales call. Maintain a friendly, relaxed and informative tone for the best effectiveness here. For example, let’s say you’re a moped dealer. Pitching how your mopeds are the best in the industry will quickly disgust your audience and leave them feeling as though they’ve been duped. Instead, educate them on what exactly makes a moped environmentally friendly, how they can repair their own moped to mitigate maintenance costs, etc. By providing all this information and free value it will be readily apparent why your company is the clear choice, making it completely unnecessary to blatantly point out why they should buy from you.

These free Web training sessions and presentations create the perfect opportunity to position yourself as an expert in your field. And they also provide an excellent opportunity for direct interaction with your prospects. They’ll get the chance to see exactly how you do business and how much you truly care about helping others.

Web Videos Make You Money

You can just as easily mirror this approach by generating a series of online videos. Producing these Web videos also creates another excellent opportunity to show up in search engines and boost your rankings. For example, YouTube is now considered the second largest search engine on the Internet; behind Google but ahead of Yahoo and Bing. Get your business message into videos and you’ll unlock a huge market for new clients!

Build a Herd

While you’ll obviously be hoping for some direct sales from your free-information marketing, the most lucrative element you’ll gain from this is the leads you’ll generate. Providing free information is one of the best ways to get people to provide you with their contact information. Every time you get someone to opt in for one of your free e-books, newsletters, Web videos or Web training sessions that’s a qualified, exclusive lead. Build yourself a herd by logging those leads into your database and then continuously marketing to them.

To your success,
Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

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Posted in Article Marketing, Blogs, Content Distribution, Email Marketing, Online Marketing, SEO and SEM, Social Marketing, marketing | No Comments »

Avoid Fluff and Keep it Real with Your Marketing Message for Improved Conversions

Monday, June 28th, 2010
Clown Mask Burgundy White Gold Black
Creative Commons License photo credit: royblumenthal

There’s a reason why it’s said that “content is king” and not “content is the court jester”—you must provide value and useful information in your content. Stuff your marketing messages with too much fluff and your prospects will be able to tell the difference. Combine this no-fluff approach with your overall sales methods and you’ll significantly improve your sales conversions.

Constant Value in Your Content

After each and every paragraph you write for your blogs, ebooks, social marketing posts, articles, newsletters, direct response pieces, and email campaigns, you must ask yourself, how will this paragraph help my prospects and current clients? This will help you stay on target in consistently providing value to your audience.

With the virtually endless number of resources that can be found online, few things frustrate or even enrage an Internet user more than being misled online. So much information and so little of it is actually useful—a true testament that many of today’s SEO-based articles are purely written to boost search engine rankings and drive traffic to websites instead of actually helping their readers. Online consumers are going bald from pulling their hair out in frustration over reading through entire articles only to find that they completely failed to address the title or the keywords that brought them to the article.

One of the primary culprits here? Fluffy content that features no useful material. Businesses need to be very wary of using too much meta speak, essentially talking about talking. Correct this by maintaining highly purposeful content and language in all of your online and offline pieces.

Distrust Demolishes Sales Potential

No one wants to buy from someone who they don’t trust. Fluff-filled content that mirrors what a court jester would produce instead of what a king would bestow on his loyal subjects creates sales-killing skepticism. While some of us might be wishing for a line of lemmings mindlessly marching off a cliff and into our bank accounts, you must respect your audience as educated readers, savvy consumers and highly trained value seekers.

Besides, when you look at it in terms of apples to apples, who in their right mind would buy from a business that provides fluff as their main marketing message when there are countless other businesses to choose from? The marketplace is more saturated than a five-pound bacon sandwich, so you’ve got to make every marketing piece count. If you fail to make your online and offline marketing messages useful to the public, then you will be wasting everyone’s time, including your own.

Keep Your Business Healthy

You must remember that word-of-mouth marketing and referrals go both ways—negative viral marketing will infect your business. If you flake your way through your content and copywriting then you will quickly raise countless red flags against your business. And what do consumers do when they sense that there’s something sketchy about your business? Warn all of their friends, family and business associates about the potential pitfall that your business promises.

Fortunately, all you have to do is maintain a proper degree of integrity with your content, keep it honest, and you’ll soon be able to enjoy positive word-of-mouth marketing that will assist your business in going viral—the money making way.

To your success,
Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

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Posted in Article Marketing, Article Marketing Strategy, Article Marketing Tips, Article Writing, Blogs, Email Marketing, Online Marketing, Quality Content Writing, SEO and SEM | No Comments »

Keep the Knowledge Pool Fresh and Build Your Client Base

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
Oven French Fries
Creative Commons License photo credit: Avoir Chaud

Let’s not forget that one of the premier reasons for the Internet’s birth was information exchange. Keep the dream alive by encouraging idea sharing among your prospects. Your open idea forum will attract new prospects, promote sales-boosting interaction, and even provide you with hints on how you can improve your business and best address your audience’s needs. And by demonstrating that you are interested in what your prospects have to say, you also show them that you’re human and value them as a person; not just a credit card. This new bond persuades people to buy.

Blog Posts Are Building Blocks for Better Business

A corporate blog can be a dynamic powerhouse for your business. It’s like the Wheaties of the marketing world…actually, it’s more like Raisin Bran since it offers flavor in addition to a high nutrient count, whereas Wheaties tend to taste a bit bland. Frequent blogging combines SEO benefits with the value-based benefits of providing your blog audience with useful and interesting information.

Blogging allows you to delve into the more unique aspects of your product or service and create interesting topics. Always maintain your prospect’s perspective to think of what will pique their interest. What about your product or service can you discuss in order to assuage general fears they might have? What can you talk about that would invoke their interest about making more money? Can you offer a way for them to provide added stability and safety for their families?

And while blogging provides an ideal opportunity to discuss finite areas of your business such as your USP, it also grants an excellent realm for touching on some relevant tangents. This helps open up your topics, making them friendlier for comment posting. Your blog audience is much likelier to respond to your posts when you make real-world connections for them—create the numbers and they’ll paint in the corresponding colors.

How to Simplify Complex Issues

This is especially helpful for products or services that feature complex technologies. Telling your prospects that your CPU products will help them get their work done faster is fine. Taking advantage of your blog as a way to explain exactly how multiple cores in a CPU will help them do that is much better. Don’t stop there though. Do everything you can to encourage questions, because the more they ask, the better they’ll understand your offer and the greater the belief they’ll have in your product. And by responding to their comments you’ll not only position yourself as an expert, you’ll show that you care enough to take the time to answer individual questions, which is sure to give them the confidence necessary to purchase your product. Make your blog a personal experience for your audience. (Hint: Remember to program visitor comments to not post until you review and accept them to protect against spamming and malicious remarks by random jerks.)

SEO Blogging Tip:

  • Try to write at least three posts of at least 250 words spread out through the business week (business-related Internet searches trail off during the weekend). While it’s hard to pin down a finite minimum word count for SEO purposes, 250 and more is generally agreed as a good number for search engines to recognize your blog posts as useful content versus a quick advertisement.

Would you like fries with that?

McDonald’s didn’t become one of the world’s leading food service retailers because they serve the best burgers (tasty, but barely qualify as actual food). One of the premier reasons why they’ve maintained such lucrative momentum is because they’re master marketers. Probably the most classic example is their automatic up-sell attempt with every order: “Would you like fries with that?” This simple question has been incredibly successful at getting people to order more than they planned to when they first walked in through the door.

Use this same technique with your business. “If you found this blog post interesting and useful then please forward on this link to your friends or business associates.” It is absolutely guaranteed that your blog post will find its way to at least one more person using this method. Think one person is merely a drop in the ocean? Then perhaps you should think of the lifetime value of one customer. Or better yet, think about how many people they might end up referring to your business and then multiply their combined lifetime values. After all, you’re not pitching greasy, heart-stopping fries, you’re asking them if they’d like to share helpful information with others. Now that’s some McWordofMouth you can feel good about.

To your success,

Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

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Posted in Blogs, Online Marketing, SEO and SEM, Social Marketing | No Comments »

Use Article Marketing Automation Plus Blogs and Social Media to Build Your Online Business

Friday, June 4th, 2010

It’s important, as an internet marketer, to have many irons in the fire to build your business. Relying on one tactic only limits the exposure you can gain for your business. Efficient marketers employ article distribution with article marketing automation, blogs, and social media to build their ventures.

Article Distribution with Article Marketing Automation

Widespread distribution of your writing is essential to building tons of backlinks. You want people with an affinity for your products linking back to your website. If you have no website, you want people linking back to the websites of affiliate programs you promote.

You need two things to facilitate this backlinking. The first is content of excellent quality that speaks to the needs of readers.

The second is premium distribution from a quality content distribution service. These two work in tandem to produce significant traffic for you.

Your articles must engage your readers with thoughtful insight that address subjects your niche finds interesting. Fluff content that offers nothing new to readers is not a characteristic of quality content writing. Therefore, it behooves you to do the necessary research to create information-rich content.

Next, you have to get your work to the most popular publishers on the Web. A top-notch article submission service does this cost-effectively for you.

They utilize their extensive distribution list to do this. This list contains the best publishers across numerous categories.

They also provide article marketing automation so you can schedule all your distribution ahead of time. This helps you manage your time better as an internet marketer. Quality writing and far reaching autopilot distribution are that one-two punch for article marketing success.

Blogs

Blogs are “right now” writing. They let you get the message out fast about your online business and products you offer.

If you don’t have a blog you could go to a provider this minute. In fact, in a few minutes you could have one up and running.

That means you could be engaging in a new promotional effort today for your business. It’s that new iron in the fire.

It can work in concert with your articles. If you write a new piece and it publishes, you can let your blog readers know about it immediately.

This is important because you drive traffic from your blog to your informative content. Your blog readers experience your quality content writing published by someone else. They then perceive you as an authoritative voice in your niche.

From your blog and your articles they link to your website. They have an interest in your articles and posts and decide to find out more about you. That’s the pre-sold traffic you need that converts to customers on your website.

Blogs are also great places to present quick product reviews and in-depth product reports. Imbedded in each of these types of posts are links to your website or affiliate program website. In addition, you can update your blog several times a week to keep your readers up-to-date on promotions and new products you’re offering.

Social Media

Diverse social media portals are extremely popular these days. You probably don’t have the time to use them all or even most of them. However, it does help your promotional efforts to use some of them on a regular basis.

Again, you can promote your writing through your social media accounts. An example is the content you submitted to a quality content distribution service.

Once they distribute your articles you can promote them through your social networking accounts. You do this via the user-friendly links from your author account that you have with the service.

As you engage in good discussions on social media sites, you can promote your business and articles. Only do this as a way to offer good advice and resources to others. Your goal is to help them secure the quality information they desire.

There’s nothing wrong with attaching your website or article link in a discussion. This is as an addendum to the quality comments you already put forth.

If you expound like a blatant commercial on a social media site you get the “spammer” label. It’s a signal to others to avoid you.

Be respectful, helpful, and full of useful information on social media sites. Engage in intelligent conversation with the needs of others in mind. It’s the way to build a good reputation and credibility as an online marketer.

Use article distribution with article marketing automation, blogs, and social media to grow your business faster. This multi-pronged approach, along with other strategies garners traffic for your website. Once that pre-sold traffic arrives, you can further the selling process and grow your income accordingly.

To your success,

Mike Lawson

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His service provides quality reviews for article marketing automation programs. Read review of Content Crooner.

Follow Us on Twitter: ContentCrooner

“Crooner Rocks”

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Posted in Article Distribution, Article Marketing, Article Marketing Automation, Article Marketing Strategy, Article Submission Service, Blogs, Distribute Your Articles, Quality Article Distribution Service, Social Marketing, Submit Articles | No Comments »

Promote a Positive Public Image through the Power of Online Marketing

Monday, May 17th, 2010
No need to shout
Creative Commons License photo credit: Bashed

Do you know how the public views your business? Do you know if the public even has the opportunity to form an opinion of your business? While your website may do a great job of talking about your product or service, it usually doesn’t have enough information to truly do your company justice. Plus, there’s a reason why it’s called a “home” page and not a “mobile home” page—it doesn’t go anywhere. You must uphold an active approach to promoting your business image online. You will achieve powerful positioning through aggressive online public relations efforts.

Online Public Relations Provides Perspective

Ultimately, comprehensive PR efforts give your audience a magnifying glass and show them exactly where to look. Remember that no one knows your business better than you do. Your audience needs guidance. Consider an automobile accident site. The closest squad car responds to the emergency call. They observe the scene and create chalk outlines around what they’ve determined to be evidence. The accident reconstruction specialist is then called in to determine the cause of the accident and who was at fault based on the outlined evidence. Your PR responsibilities do not necessitate that you tell your audience the cause of the accident. Instead, provide them with enough evidence so that they can come to their own conclusion. Anything more than that and you’ll toe the line of propaganda. An intelligent audience appreciates the provision of enough information to decide an issue for themselves.

PR Creates a Business-saving Buffer

Even though you abide by the best business ethics and uphold integrity in all of your business endeavors, the occasional mess can still happen. Whether your accountant screwed up the paper work and your business made the news for falling behind on taxes or a customer service rep flew over the cuckoo’s nest and decided to loudly belch into the ear of every customer that called, you never know when you’ll need a PR buffer. Building up a positive company image acts as a shield, defending you against such situations. It won’t make the public completely blind to these negative incidents, but it certainly will afford you a great deal of forgiveness. Just be sure you don’t make yourselves out to be arch angels as you could experience a Tiger-Woods backlash, suffering from even harsher criticism because of the uber squeaky clean image you promoted.

Show Your Face in Forums

While you can set up your own forum and attach it to your website, you can gain some lucrative exposure by creating threads (topics of discussion) on other forums. Provide thought pieces that will encourage interaction and get people talking about the benefits related to your product or service. Be sure to keep these threads general though. You’ll be perceived as a spammer if your piece comes off as an overt sales pitch. Provide a general topic of interest and then include a subtle link back to your website or to an article for additional information—always be on the lookout for opportunities to link back to your business.

Comment on Blogs

Search the Web for blogs that relate to your product or service. Not only will you have the chance to learn some new ways to present information about your business, but you’ll also get the opportunity to comment on blogs. Write a highly relevant paragraph that people will find useful or interesting and then link back to your website.

Mobile Marketing

Thorough article submissions are one of the most mobile forms of online marketing, getting out into every nook and cranny of the Web to spread the word about your business. This exposure enables you to craft a company image of your choice and promote it throughout the online marketplace.

To your success,

Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

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Posted in Article Marketing, Article Marketing Strategy, Article Marketing Tips, Blogs, Public Relations, SEO and SEM, Social Marketing | 3 Comments »

Article Distribution Using Article Marketing Automation

Friday, May 7th, 2010

It’s a competitive online business environment out there. Being an affiliate marketer, you need to use the quality resources available to build income streams.

Article distribution using article marketing automation is one of several resources for building your business. Used in tandem with other resources, it can help you grow your income faster.

The following are five ways to help you promote your affiliate products and affiliate programs. Set aside time each week to engage in at least one of these activities. Try them and develop processes suited to your working style so you benefit from these initiatives.

Here they are:

Article Marketing

This involves you being a consistent content producer. You write articles loaded with useful advice, tips, instruction, and plain old good information for your audience.

You use a quality content distribution service to get your work to market. They distribute your writing throughout cyberspace.

An excellent service provides article marketing automation. What is this exactly? This is you scheduling the distribution of your writing ahead of time. You submit your writing once and schedule when they go out, up to a year in advance.

Then you go your merry way onto other affiliate marketing work. Distribution happens automatically, on autopilot, when you’re not even thinking about it. This simplifies marketing and is a perfect example of excellent time management.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a way to build your affiliate income. It involves using existing social and other platforms to get the message out about your business.

Therefore, your links spread around the Internet. This is akin to getting extensive link exposure when you distribute your articles.

Viral marketing can involve sending out your eBook, brandable software, video clips, images, text messages, emails and such. The viral aspect comes from the spreading of your information. This can happen fast.

Consider an email, video, or text message you send with your link. Many people you send it to may forward it on to others. These people can then forward it on as well. That can add up to significant link distribution.

Guerilla Marketing

Guerilla marketing is a non-traditional way of promoting yourself. It involves creative marketing and requires an investment of time, energy, and imagination. Again, it’s the same as your quality content writing, which requires the same effort.

Guerilla marketing could involve you doing something as drastic as standing on a street corner in a “guerilla suit.” You have, in your hands, a host of product samples you’re giving out.

You’re attracting attention to yourself and your affiliate products. The point is, you’re engaging in an unconventional form of product promotion.

You can do guerilla marketing digitally as well. You send out unique, even wacky advertisements, ads, videos and such that startle.

The shock value provokes a reaction from your potential customers. Just go about it in a dignified, un-crass way so you don’t alienate your target market.

In Person Marketing

Talking, in person, to someone is still a great way to build your business. Take every opportunity to talk up your business, when and where appropriate. Someone you meet may need exactly what you’re promoting. They won’t know about it unless you tell them.

Consider numerous business events in your city or town. Your local business association may have various networking events throughout the year. Check a few out and talk about your business.

Meet up with others who work to promote various affiliate programs. Share tips and experiences. Let them know what you promote and you may secure a new downline member.

Blog Writing

Blog writing is a great way to keep your niche market current on your business. Blogs allow you to post information quickly. You can do this daily, even multiple times in a day. Provide useful information, of the quality you submit to an article submission service, and you build a following.

When you post on your blog, provide links to your affiliate parent’s site. Provide links back to your own website, where you can engage your readers further. You can offer product suggestions on your blog, as well as reviews.

You can then elaborate more on your website once people link back to it. You can offer product suggestions or additional helpful resources to your readers.

Explore the options available to you for building your affiliate business. Get writing and get that content ready for running multiple campaigns.

In addition, try other methods for building your business, in concert with article distribution using article marketing automation. Together, they generate that relevant traffic to your website that converts to customers.

To your success,

Mike Lawson

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His service provides quality reviews for article marketing automation programs. Read review of Content Crooner.

Follow Us on Twitter: ContentCrooner

“Crooner Rocks”

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Posted in Article Distribution, Article Distribution Service, Article Marketing, Article Marketing Automation, Article Marketing Strategy, Article Submission Service, Blogs, Distribute Your Articles, Quality Article Distribution Service, Submit Articles | No Comments »

Article Marketing Promotes Use of Your Core Strengths for Better Business

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
Michael Phelps wins 8th gold medal
Creative Commons License photo credit: bryangeek

Although we’d all like to think that we have fantastic abilities that span a great number of skill categories, the truth is that we’re experts in just a few areas.

Of course, you can write and you may have even found a few free article submission sites, but your business is guaranteed to suffer when you take time away from your core capabilities.

Employing the help of a professional article submission service ensures not only that your articles are well crafted and only submitted to verified sources for the greatest potency, it also promises that you’ll stick to your core strengths.

Highest Income-producing Activities

Take a few minutes and look through your accounts receivable—which factors produce the most amount of revenue for your company? Pinpointing these areas will help highlight the activities that you should invest the most time and effort into. However, there will be overlapping or several contributing factors to consider as well. Perhaps your article marketing produces the most revenue—this doesn’t necessarily mean you should dedicate all your time to that though. It might be the networking you’ve been doing with prospects that’s been getting people to read those articles. Get the picture?

Identifying Core Strengths

Is it more profitable to struggle at writing an article, dedicating five hours to what should be an hour-long task, or to employ your natural networking skills and actively generate new business contacts, taking just one hour to complete an hour-long task? Whether you want to refer to it as maintaining efficiency in the workplace or simply not wasting time, sticking to what you do best enables you to hit your target with less effort and greater strength. Do what you’re best at and then employ the help of others to supplement your core skills.

Improve Your Career Satisfaction

You can also look forward to a greater degree of career satisfaction when you work at what you’re best at. Of course, it can be very rewarding to overcome a challenge that falls outside of our usual realm of skills, but you’re sure to enjoy more consistent rewards when you build off of your strengths. Executing tasks that you excel at creates immense gratification because you’re using your top skills. An administrative assistant with a mind for management will feel like they’re suffocating in the workplace. Give them the opportunity to delegate a few tasks and they’ll breath easier.

Take a Mental Inventory

To help you get started you can take a mental inventory of what you’re good at. What comes easily to you? Start with a bird’s eye view such as determining that you’re good with numbers. Then take a closer look at this ability to see what tasks you most aptly use your number skills with. Keeping track of your business’ taxes is quite distinct from identifying statistical trends in web-user behavior. And what do you enjoy doing? Our enjoyment of activities is often linked to our ability to actually perform them. You can also look into services that are designed to help you identify your core strengths.

Confidence Booster

Not only will establishing your core strengths give your company greater clout in the marketplace, it will also create a confidence booster. A solid grasp on your abilities arms you against the anxieties that can accompany major business challenges. All you have to do in those situations is take a deep breath and remind yourself of how your core strengths will power you through to a successful end. You can also use specific successes in your past to bolster yourself for new challenges. For example, I ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain and now use that as my mantra when things seem to be stacking up against me. Find a point of power, a specific success you’ve experienced, and use it to fuel your next triumph.

To your success,

Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

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Posted in Article Distribution Service, Article Marketing, Article Marketing Automation, Article Marketing Strategy, Article Submission Service, Blogs, Quality Content Writing | No Comments »

Fast-track Your Sales with Automated Marketing

Monday, April 19th, 2010
Chariots of Wire
Creative Commons License photo credit: jurvetson

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been annoyed by an automated phone directory system…okay, we see that all hands are raised.

Then why do companies use these automated services if the annoyance factor is so prevalent? Because automation allows us to work smarter, not harder. And since working smarter involves less work, we’re then able to pass on the savings to customers.

Provide specific answers to questions with automated marketing submissions and you’re guaranteed to save time and money, both for you and for your customers.

Automated Articles Promote Virtual Representation

You may not have the money to support a customer service team, but you’re sure to have enough wiggle room in your budget for automated article distribution, especially if you write the articles yourself. Automated article submissions efficiently route prospect concerns and questions before they reach your staff. After they’ve read though your thoroughly crafted articles your customers will be much likelier to be ready to buy when they visit your website or call you or your reps.

Plus, once articles are posted to the Web they stay there to answer the same questions over and over again for one initial price. This saves you from having to repeatedly pay customer service reps to simply address the same recurring issues time and again.

Frequently Asked Questions Require Frequent Answers

Develop a simple FAQ document to help you get the most out of your virtual representation approach.

  • Organize a Tuesday morning meeting and conduct a think-tank session with key members of each department. As with any company or industry, you’ll attain the most comprehensive view of your business when you include personnel from all levels; from the trenches all the way up to “el jefe.”
  • Have each person list the top three to five most frequently occurring issues or questions that they face.
  • Use this feedback to create a master FAQ doc which you will use as a reference for your marketing pieces. You can then break each FAQ down and address each one individually in separate marketing pieces. Of course, you can always simply write a single marketing piece that speaks to each of your FAQ’s, but that may turn out to be too lengthy a piece for easy reading.

Become a Blogoholic

Today’s blogging platforms are easier to use than ever before. They feature extremely user-friendly interfaces that even allow you to automate your blogs through scheduled publishing dates. All you have to do is write your FAQ pieces ahead of time and then edit the publish dates accordingly. Have these scheduled posts go out regularly to your audience, providing them with helpful information about your products or services and even indirectly related issues that sometimes arise.

Any News is Good News—Automate Your Newsletters

Although they’ve been around the online marketing scene for a long time now, newsletters are still a highly-effective marketing tool. They promote constant touch points for your prospects and clients, keeping your business in the front of their minds, and providing your business with a magic talisman to ward off the competition.

And as much as we may strive to answer questions before our prospects have a chance to ask them, it’s also highly beneficial to create questions. Get your readers involved by presenting thought pieces and debatable topics. Not too debatable though—raise just enough interest to encourage interaction without inciting heavy controversy.

Newsletters also provide an ideal platform to slip in some special product or service offers. Since they are enclosed in a medium that provides readers with value and information, these offers appear more like helpful suggestions than requests for their credit cards.

Highest Income-producing Activities

Working smarter not only promotes lower operational expenses, it also frees you up to stick to the business tasks that make you the most money. Besides, you’re sure to have a lot more fun operating your business when you don’t have to manually answer the same questions over and over again.

To your success,

Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

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Posted in Article Marketing, Article Marketing Automation, Blogs, Content Distribution, Email Marketing, Social Marketing | No Comments »

Marketing Can Be a Fire Extinguisher for Your Company

Thursday, April 15th, 2010
Just in Case....
Creative Commons License photo credit: Lola_TC

If business was easy then we’d all be rich. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try to run successful businesses things can go awfully wrong in the blink of an eye. Perhaps one of the computer processors you sell caused thousands of businesses to crash, but it turns out that the factory you outsourced your design to is the one to blame. You’ll need massive fire control to prevent your company from taking the blame — use your marketing to extinguish the sales-killing flames.

Your Website Isn’t Enough

Don’t expect your website to provide sufficient fire control. Nowadays, with all the new social media tools popping up, people rarely get their information directly from the source. The truth is that there’s an extremely slim chance that Internet users will consult with your website in order to validate the nasty claims against your company. Besides, it’s like believing a four-year-old child that they didn’t dip into the cookie jar when they’ve got cookie crumbs on their face. No matter how well your website content is worded, it will always maintain a certain feeling of propaganda. Internet users are much likelier to believe auxiliary marketing pieces than your website.

You must take swift and mobile action against damaging claims — your website is static and can’t maintain sufficient spin control.

Anti-arsonist Article Submissions

Among the best auxiliary marketing pieces you can arm your business with are high-exposure article submissions. Submitting a series of articles grants a simple and cost-effective way to smother these nasty fires as soon as they break out. You can easily execute an article blast that goes out all over the Web as well as to specific recipients that you designate. This content-rich platform supports a double-prong approach, allowing you to both explain away the claims made against your company as well as provide supporting information as to why you’re actually one of the most solid companies out there.

Fight Fire with Fire

There’s a solid chance that part of the damage being done to your company is through various social media tools. Fight fire with fire by using social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook. If these social media tools are being used to talk trash about your company then use the same platforms to correct the damaging misconceptions out there. Caveat: Hold your head high and address these misconceptions and bad-mouthing with patient, thorough and information-based responses — do not get sucked into the fray or you will only damage your company’s image further!

Another benefit to making use of such tools is that they often feature an application that connects your social media content to your website and other marketing pieces (E.g. Your Twitter.com account > Settings > Connections). This delivers simultaneous updates to your website which can help save you from having to double your efforts and repeat the same message across platforms.

Blog Away the Blame

Blogs provide an excellent opportunity to share the real deal. Suppress the urge to include dozens of explanation points. Keep it simple and convey an honest and transparent response for comprehensive damage control. Remember, as the incorrectly accused, you should be considered innocent until proven guilty. Maintain integrity and poise in your marketing messages to garner the most belief from your audience.

To get the most out of this approach you’ll need to already have a steady blog established. No one’s going to believe your fire-control piece if it’s the first post your company has written. It will be immediately obvious that the blog was set up simply to put out a fire. Your message will be bolstered by the existence of a solid collection of previously written blogs, adding vital credibility to your fire-explanation post.

So get started right away! Go out there, create good content, and spread it far and wide!

To your success,

Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!

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Posted in Article Distribution, Article Marketing, Article Marketing Strategy, Article Marketing Tips, Article Submission Service, Article Writing, Blogs, Public Relations, Social Marketing | 2 Comments »

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