Sue Scaletta Blog » Marketing

4 Ways of Effective Marketing

Guest author — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 21:07:48 +0000

If you want to get your marketing message across to the masses you need to develop and master your skills. The four steps you must follow to accomplish this are:

1. Convey knowledge about the product.

2. Create a bond with the reader or listener.

3. Allow your credibility and trustworthiness to show.

4. Cultivate the need of the recipient to share the message.

You may wonder how other writers and speakers are able to attract the awareness of their readers and listeners. To emulate them and effectively market your product or service, you need to be able to draw the consumer’s attention to what you have to say so that you can make a sale or close a deal. The trick is how to do this effectively. You can check out this marketing communications writer to help improve your skills and become more proficient.

Convey knowledge about the product

One of your main goals of creating a marketing message is to make sure that the readers or listeners completely understand your meaning. To validate that they do comprehend what you are trying to get across, it is a good idea to have them restate your message in their own words. Make sure that your message is obvious, complete, and easily understandable. Don’t try to impress your readers or listeners with how great your vocabulary is.

Create a bond with the reader or listener

To make your message understood, you need to make it both meaningful and of value to your readers and listeners. Look for ways to produce emotional responses such as anger, pleasure, and enthusiasm that will make the audience want to take action.

Allow your trustworthiness to show

Trustworthiness and credibility are critical in communicating and marketing. You may be able to convey knowledge and create a bond with your readers and listeners, but end up loosing your audience if you are unable to demonstrate your trustworthiness. If they don’t find what you are telling them credible within a short time they will be gone. You must be able to make your readers or listeners believe in what you say or write.

Cultivate the need of the recipient to share the message

If you only try to convey understanding and connect with your audience your marketing message will be less effective than if you can get your audience to share and spread it with others. Your goal should be to have your message go viral, which encourages your readers and listeners to repeat and circulate your words.

Applying these four communication steps whenever you create a marketing message will in time make you a good marketing and communications writer.

Move Beyond the Marketing Newbie Stage

Sue Scaletta — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 17:58:56 +0000

Most of us that spend any time on the Internet have heard of the term “newbie“. Let’s face it, every Internet marketer begins at this stage. Just like when taking on any new project or task there is a “learning curve” that we all must go through.

When we first started out we had the desire to learn and grow, we just lacked the skill necessary. It’s just this lack experience and technical knowledge that makes us a “newbie”.

Moving Beyond the Newbie Stage

How do we move from the “newbie” stage to beyond? Here are 7 steps we can take to successfully accomplish this goal.

Invest some time in ourselves to gain personal growth.
Read some books and articles about Internet marketing.
Invest in some products that help us gain more knowledge and experience.
Take some marketing classes.
Search the web for blogs that are packed full of marketing tips and guidelines.
Have a good understanding that the Internet is nothing more than a medium we can use to make money.
Build websites around niches that people are looking for and work to drive traffic to them so that they become profitable.

To get beyond the “newbie” stage we need to be visionaries with a forward-thinking attitude. We must always be on the lookout for the next big trend and be ready to take action when the opportunity arises.

If you want to succeed you need to follow these 7 steps and by doing so, you will take charge of your life and your financial future.

CA Family Winemakers 20th Anniversary Wine Tasting Event

Sue Scaletta — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:28:41 +0000

This year the California Family Winemakers 20th Anniversary Tasting event was held at the Fort Mason Festival Pavilion in San Francisco on August 22nd and 23rd. The day was surprisingly a very hot sunny day, which is not typical for San Francisco.

As you may know, California wines are known worldwide for their outstanding taste and quality. If you are planning to have a wine tasting party, you can’t go wrong choosing a California wine.

This is a two day wine tasting event with 342 wineries pouring some of the best available anywhere. On Sunday the public is welcome, but on Monday it is restricted to the “trades“ which includes restaurants, bars, and retail stores looking for new inventory to bring to their establishments. Also included in the Monday event is the media.

My husband and I have volunteered to work this event for 5 years and we have never been disappointed in what the wine tasting event has to offer. This year we were assigned to winery check in. We got the opportunity to meet and talk with many of the winery personnel. These hard-working people are a really great group of individuals to get to know.

After our volunteer shift we were able to taste some of these great wines, which is one of the advantages of volunteering to work at this wine event. We had to be very choosy with 342 wineries from which to taste.

The northern California wine tasting event this year was a success that was enjoyed by many. Keep this event in mind if you live in the San Francisco area or are planning a trip there next year in August. You will not be disappointed if you attend it.

Use a Slogan to Enhance Your Business Branding

Sue Scaletta — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:18:18 +0000

In today’s competitive marketplace to be successful businesses must put some effort into business branding. Establishing brand recognition is one of the main components that can make your business name stand out from the rest. It doesn’t matter whether you are a large corporation or only one person with a home based business, either way business branding is essential for success.

Why Have a Unique Slogan?

Creating a unique slogan that reinforces the identity of your business is one of the key factors in branding your business. The ultimate goal of your slogan is depict the objectives of your business thus letting your customers know just exactly what they will get when dealing with you.

Your slogan should be specific to your brand and convey your message in a few concise words. When people see or hear your slogan it should cause them to picture in their mind your company and what it can provide for them. Your slogan must drive your customer to take immediate action.

When creating your slogan you can use your company logo or some specific phrase that depicts what your core business is. In time your business may be recognized by your business brand alone if you choose the exact slogan that describes what your company stands for.

Why Have a Slogan?

Slogans are so effective when it comes to marketing and branding your business because if you have a memorable slogan consumers may remember you just from hearing your slogan. I bet most of you can come up with at least a few slogans that you instantaneously think of the company when you hear them. This is what is termed as “brand recall”.

With just a few precise words you can achieve “brand recall” and your business will be the first thing your customers think of when they hear it. In your slogan it is important to capture the immediate attention of the consumer and create a need in them that requires them to seek additional information about your company.

When you create your slogan you must appeal to the emotions of the consumer. Very few products are purchased based on intellectual needs; more often than not, purchases are based on the buyer’s emotional needs. A great slogan entices the consumer to take action right away. That action should be to buy your product or use your service.

Make Your Slogan a Visual Image

Your business brand will have an advantage if you develop a slogan that creates a visual image of your business in the consumer’s mind when they hear it. People remember what they see much better than what they read.

Benefits vs. Features

Your slogan should address what your business can provide the customer. Forget trying to impress them with all of the great features that your product has to offer. Consumers are looking for what they will gain from your product; they are not interested in the product’s features.

Business branding is extremely valuable in the competitive world we live in today. By designing a short “catchy” slogan to brand your business you will achieve greater success than if you attempt to brand your business without a slogan. Whether you decide to utilize a slogan or not, the worst thing you can do is to not make any business branding efforts at all.

Why Have a Unique Slogan?

Why Have a Slogan?

Make Your Slogan a Visual Image

Benefits vs. Features

SEO Tips – 5 Easy Tips How to Get Your Site Indexed in Google

Guest author — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 10:41:27 +0000

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is considered as the heart of Internet marketing, that’s why all the websites should put it into practice. However, before you can boost your website, you must have it indexed by search engines. If your website doesn’t get indexed, there’s a slim chance that it will emerge on Google search result page.

It’s really not impossible to get your site indexed right from the very beginning; you just have to learn about the numerous ways for Google to notice it. Below are some tips:

1. Forward your websites to well-known social bookmarking sites. You should know that Google prefers well-liked social book marking sites such as Stumble Upon, Reddit, and Digg. Each day, Google dropped by these websites and gather fresh contents to index. Therefore, if you will put forward your website, then there’s a big chance that Google will pick it within the day.

2. Generate an XML sitemap file and then present it to Google. This sitemap file contains all the links to all the pages of your website.

3. Create as many articles as you can and forward them to article directories for publishing. You should insert a resource box where they will see your website’s URL.

4. Put HTML text links on your site. Google follows text links in order to find other pages of your website.

5. Try to put in your URL on social networking websites. Choose the most recognized sites such as MySpace and Facebook. These networking sites are frequently being indexed by search engines.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_A_Osborn

Bizpack Marketing Solution Eliminates Tedious Tasks with Ease

Sue Scaletta — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:21:55 +0000

If you have a small or a home based business, or have ever wanted to start one, you will want to take a look at this new web-based service. It has a ton of tools and features that the small or home business owner needs. Bizpack is a new marketing system created by the well known award-winning company United First Financial. It takes care of those wearisome tasks with one simple solution.

The life blood of any business is their database. The Bizpack suite gives you a simple to use turnkey system that handles your database and moves your clients forward through the sales system with its auto drip campaigns.

This “all-in-one” marketing product has a widespread application for any business owner with any product they want to market. All of the products in the Bizpack suite add up to more than $550 a month, but you can get them conveniently located in one package for less than $100 a month. Bottom line is that Bizpack will help all business owners become more successful, no matter what their business is.

When you sign up for Bizpack, you get your own website that allows you to share this product with other like-minded individuals who want to make their businesses successful in today’s marketplace. Prospective customers can go to your website and sign up for their own use and can offer this system to others and allows them to earn substantial commissions.

Here are some of the things this system can do for you:

Go To Meeting / Go To Webinar – Web Conferencing Tool worth $499

This component of the system is worth its weight in gold. Bizpack has aligned itself with the leading web conferencing system for home based and small businesses. With this feature you can minimize or eliminate travel and expand sales outside your local area. You can hold online meetings and webinars from the comfort of your own home or office with up to 1000 attendees of your choice and share the information from your computer screen to theirs no matter where they are located.

There is no security risk with this either for you or the attendees. You are in complete control of your computer and have no access to theirs. And you can save money on long distance charges because there is no additional cost for the visual and audio services which are included.

Contact Manager – Customer Management Tool worth $20

Get a fully integrated contact manager system that allows you to follow-up and track clients, manage all contact information, send emails and videos that are tractable and show when and how much of the video was watched, and use the drip campaign feature to automatically keep in touch with your clients.

Marketing System – Email Broadcast Auto Drip Tool worth $50

With this aspect of the system you will learn how to be a successful Internet marketer and how to keep marketing costs low. Learn ways to generate new leads for your business, keep in touch with your warm market, and increase sales outside of your warm market.

UDeduct – Business Expense Record Keeping

Keep track of all of your tax related expenses and deductions. Become aware of the over 100 different legitimate deductions that home based and small businesses are entitled to take. Track actual business expenses for income tax purposes and have them available for viewing with a click of a button.

Business Opportunity – Earn Residual Income with this All-in-One Marketing Solution

If you are looking for something that can complement your own small business or if you want to start a new home business to supplement the income from your ”job” you can sign up and become an authorized seller for the Bizpack business suite. You can receive a substantial residual income month after month.

Email Marketing Secrets (lanechase.net)
Seven Classes Online Entrepreneurs Should Take (distance-education.org)
Online Entrepreneur Rules to Live By (dcincome.com)

The Nature of SEO

Sue Scaletta — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:20:33 +0000

The Internet is a highly competitive market. To achieve more revenue companies strive to get the attention of billions of users. The key to getting this attention in the Internet marketing arena is by knowing how to use search engines to your advantage.

Search engines are where billions of Internet users go to find information. Google, Yahoo, and Bing are the most prominent search engine giants. The amount of traffic these search engine companies receive per daily is enormous.

Search engine optimization is the method used to improve a website’s ranking in a search engine listing. Savvy website owners use search engine optimization (SEO) tools to maximize their site ranking and search engine placement results.

Site content and usability, as well as acceptable advertising methods like viral marketing are among the conventional search engine optimization practices used to improve the nature of a website’s ranking in the search engine results.

Search engines are continually changing their complicated algorithms they use to keep their search results valid and to keep illegal SEO methods from flourishing. They are expected to continue to make more complex algorithms to filter the out the dishonest practices that the “black hat” SEO users apply.

To improve the nature of your SEO efforts here are a few tips on improving the content of your site:

Use your strengths. Your site must be on a subject that you consider yourself an expert on. Amateurs can be easily spotted.
Check out your competition and see what is working for them and what is not. Get user feedback on what they like and don’t like about your site.
Focus on the layout of your site. A good layout will make it easier for your users to move about your site.
Create your site based on a few important keywords and include them in the Meta tags, title, description, page name, and content.
Concentrate on only one topic per page that has a direct relationship to the page’s keyword or keywords.
Backlinking is a very effective SEO method. Contact other related sites and ask them to place your URL link on their site. Use anchor text as the link and that can be keyword associated with your site.

The nature of SEO is repeating what works and eliminating those efforts that do not. Be consistent in your efforts and in time you will prevail in the results you are seeking.

The ABCs of Off-Page SEO Tactics (hubspot.com)
SEO: An advertising process (convonix.com)
How to Conduct SEO (demandmetric.com)

Use Twitter Tweet for Business

Guest author — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:43:15 +0000

I do wonder at times if some Twitter users have any time to get any work done. Several of the more prolific ones that I follow swear they spend no more than 30 minutes a day on Twitter, but I really find that hard to believe. Many times it seems they are twittering just to say something, like “Good morning Twitterverse” when they begin their day, give more details than I want to know about what they had for lunch, what their children said to them, or when they take a nap.

I realize that this is part of the “like, know, and trust” process that enables people to get to know each other, but sometimes it’s simply too much information..LOL. I’m Twittering primarily to market my business. Consequently, I try and limit my personal twitters to no more than 2 per day. My clients, who create Twitter accounts for marketing, as well, tell me, “I’m signed up. Now what in the world do I Twitter about? How do I market my business with this tool?”

Here are 10 strategies that I use regularly to market my business and my expertise via Twitter. Remember, you have only 140 characters for your tweet (Twitter post).

1. How you’re helping clients

Talk about specific ways that your business helps clients and use their Twitter ID if you have their permission, i.e. “Just finished @clientname brainstorm great Internet marketing plan for 2009” or “Finally finished setting up Quickbooks for local hardware store – now they can invoice their clients”

2. What you’re doing in your business

This is a perfect time to tell others when you’re blogging, writing an article, creating your weekly ezine, recording your podcast, i.e. “Had great interview with Jane Smith today on speaking to grow your biz. Great ideas! Subscribe to podcast & listen here (URL here)”

3. Useful tool or resource you’ve found

I run across these all the time in my daily activities, and Twitter is a perfect place to share,. i.e. “Found great new Firefox plug-in to monitor & check multiple Gmail accounts at same time at (URL here)” or “Read great blog post on working at home with kids under 5 at (URL here)”

4. Ask a question

Need some ideas or some quick brainstorming? Twitter is an ideal place to gather opinions, i.e. “Help! Desperately seeking new laser printer. Recommendations?” or “How do I find training organizations online?”

5. Conduct a survey

What do your Tweeps think about a particular issue? Ask them via Twitter, i.e. “Quick poll: Do you get more clients from Facebook or Twitter? Respond at (URL here)”

6. Report on live events

The latest Twitter trend seems to be tweeting what’s happening at conferences or workshops. In order for Twitter users to follow a particular event, it’s usually referred to by a name preceded by a # sign, as in #JVAlert, for example, to make it simpler for people who want to follow those posts. So, if you were at an event, you might tweet “#JVAlert John Smith speaking on affiliate programs. Just got great idea on training affiliate managers!” Just don’t get so wrapped up in tweeting that you ignore the content delivered in the conference!

7. Product or service launch

If you’re about to launch a new product or introduce a new product, let your Twitter followers know, i.e. “Pre-launch pricing for new DVD set about how baby boomers can start an online biz. Get $100 early bird discount at (URL here)”

8. Responding to others with advice or answers

The way to build professional relationships on Twitter is to help your tweeps. So, if someone asks a question, comments about something to which you have a response or an idea, or you want to ask a followup question, this is the perfect place to do so.

9. Acknowledging new followers

I’ve noticed a recent trend of acknowledging people who’ve decided to follow a Twitter user in the past day or so. I initially thought that others were doing this as a measure of popularity, but what I’ve come to realize is that it’s actually helping out the new followers because it exposes their Twitter profiles to others who may have never heard of them and who might like to follow them. So, to thank your followers, you’d tweet, “Welcome new followers @twittername, @twittername, etc.”

10. Automate your tweets

Many of my tweets have been automated and connected to other things I do. TwitterFeed turns all of my blog posts into tweets. aWeber turns each ezine issue into a tweet. EzineArticles.com tweets my followers every time I publish an article through their service. Typically all that’s involved here is connecting the particular service to my Twitter account. Once all the services are connected, I get free and automated Twitter posts with no additional effort on my part.

Twitter can be a great time-waster or a wonderful way to market your business and leverage your expertise online. Follow these 10 strategies and you’ll begin to attract more followers and get more clients through social networking.

About The Author – Online Business Manager and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at OnlineBizU.com. Follow Donna on Twitter

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The Importance of Backlinks for Page Rank in SEO

Guest author — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 20:53:05 +0000

The idea behind including backlinks as part of the page rank algorithm is that if a page is good, people will start linking to it. And the more backlinks a page has the better. But in practice it is not exactly like this. Or at least you cannot always rely on the fact that your contents are good and people will link to you.

Yes, if your content is good and relevant you can get a lot of quality backlinks, including from sites with similar topic as yours (and these are the most valuable kind of backlinks, especially if the anchor text contains your keywords) but what you get without efforts could be less than what you need to successfully promote your site. So, you will have to resort to other ways of acquiring quality backlinks as described next.

Ways to Build Backlinks

Even if plenty of backlinks come to your site the natural way, additional quality backlinks are always welcome and the time you spend building them is not wasted. Among the acceptable ways of building quality backlinks are getting listed in directories, posting in forums, blogs and article directories.

The unacceptable ways include inter-linking (linking from one site to another site, which is owned by the same owner or exists mainly for the purpose to be a link farm), linking to spam sites or sites that host any kind of illegal content, purchasing links in bulk, linking to link farms, etc.

The first step in building backlinks is to find the places from which you can get quality backlinks. A valuable assistant in this process is the Backlinks Builder tool. When you enter the keywords of your choice, the Backlinks Builder tool gives you a list of sites where you can post an article, message, posting, or simply a backlinks to your site. After you have the list of potential backlinks partners, it is up to you to visit each of the sites and post your content with the backlinks to your site in it.

You might wonder why sites as those, listed by the Backlinks Builder tool provide such a precious asset as backlinks for free. The answer is simple – they need content for their site. When you post an article, or submit a link to your site, you do not get paid for this. You provide them for free with something they need – content – and in return they also provide you for free with something you need – quality backlinks. It is a free trade, as long as the sites you post your content or links are respected and you don’t post fake links or content.

Getting Listed in Directories

If you are serious about your web presence, getting listed in directories like DMOZ and Yahoo is a must – not only because this is a way to get some quality backlinks for free, but also because this way you are easily noticed by both search engines and potential visitors. Generally inclusion in search directories is free but the drawback is that sometimes you have to wait a couple of months before you get listed in the categories of your choice.

Forums and Article Directories

Generally search engines index forums so posting in forums and blogs is also a way to get quality backlinks with the anchor text you want. If the forum or blog is a respected one, a backlinks is valuable. However, in some cases the forum or blog administrator can edit your post, or even delete it if it does not fit into the forum or blog policy. Also, sometimes administrators do not allow links in posts, unless they are relevant ones. In some rare cases (which are more an exception than a rule) the owner of a forum or a blog would have banned search engines from indexing it and in this case posting backlinks there is pointless.

While forum postings can be short and do not require much effort, submitting articles to directories can be more time-consuming because generally articles are longer than posts and need careful thinking while writing them. But it is also worth and it is not so difficult to do.

Content Exchange and Affiliate Programs

Content exchange and affiliate programs are similar to the previous method of getting quality backlinks. For instance, you can offer to interested sites RSS feeds for free. When the other site publishes your RSS feed, you will get a backlinks to your site and potentially a lot of visitors, who will come to your site for more details about the headline and the abstract they read on the other site.

Affiliate programs are also good for getting more visitors (and buyers) and for building quality backlinks but they tend to be an expensive way because generally the affiliate commission is in the range of 10 to 30 %. But if you have an affiliate program anyway, why not use it to get some more quality backlinks?

News Announcements and Press Releases

Although this is hardly an everyday way to build backlinks, it is an approach that gives good results, if handled properly. There are many sites that publish for free or for a fee news announcements and press releases. A professionally written press release about an important event can bring you many, many visitors and the backlinks from a respected site to yours is a good boost to your SEO efforts. The tricky part is that you cannot release press releases if there is nothing newsworthy. That is why we say that news announcements and press releases are not a commodity way to build backlinks.

Backlinks Building Practices to Avoid

One of the practices that is to be avoided is link exchange. There are many programs, which offer to barter links. The principle is simple – you put a link to a site, they put a backlinks to your site. There are a couple of important things to consider with link exchange programs. First, take care about the ratio between outbound and inbound links. If your outbound links are greater than your inbound, this is bad.

Second (and more important) is the risk that your link exchange partners are link farms. If this is the case, you could even be banned from search engines, so it is too risky to indulge in link exchange programs.

Linking to suspicious places is something else that you must avoid. While it is true that search engines do not punish you if you have backlinks from such places because it is supposed that you have no control over what bad guys link to, if you enter a link exchange program with the so called bad neighbors and you link to them, this can be disastrous to your SEO efforts. For more details about bad neighbors, check the Bad Neighborhood article. Also, beware of getting tons of links in a short period of time because this still looks artificial and suspicious.

Article By: Shivi.K.Kashyap Article Source: http://www.smartfindsdirectory.com

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Simple Steps to Take to Create Killer PPC Ads on Google

Sue Scaletta — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:33:57 +0000

What is the best way to create killer pay per click (PPC) ads? It is all about choosing the “right” words when you create text ads on Google AdWords because you are only allowed a small headline and a couple of follow up sentences (3 lines of text and your URL) to entice someone to click.

Be sure you review the Google Ad guidelines and policies before writing your ads.

Headline: Use your primary keyword in the headline. You have to get attention. While tempting, adding the word “Free” might not be such a great idea if you are trying to sell something. Remember you are paying for every click. Taking a controversial stance to attract visitors can even work.

Here are two headlines to compare:

1. Resume Writing Advice

2. Burn Your Resume

Which one gets your attention? Most likely the second one.

Make sure that the next line states a benefit for the reader. The first line should give the searcher the benefit of your product or service using relevant keywords you think people are searching for.

In the second line state your service or product’s best feature. Give the searcher a reason to click on your ad. Avoid using meaningless superlatives such as “best,” “lowest,” or “most.” These words do not give real meaning to your ad.

Here is a tip: Many people do not pay close attention to sponsored links or keyword ads in search results. They tend to look past them for the organic or natural search results. These users are generally more concerned with their search results.

Your ads are in heavy competition and must stand out. Come up with an eye-catching grabbing concept that compels people to click just to see your website.

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