Why? Because it builds the brand name, showcases them as an expert, puts real people behind the name, speaks to new customers, gives important information, offers real live customer testimonials, brings in new traffic, and increases sales.

Here are some types of videos YOU could use to grow your business:

* Customer testimonial videos with real people giving their honest feedback. This is the social proof that will help you sell more products or services.

* A brief video introduction into what you do. This is like a video version of your elevator speech.

* A brief walkthrough of your website video. Show them the page tabs and the search function so they can find what they are looking for on your site. Also show them the contact page so they can ask questions or leave feedback.

* How To videos. Perhaps you can show potential customers how to use the product or you can explain how to purchase the best product based on their needs.

* Question and Answer videos. Take the typical questions you get and make a video answering them. This shows the customer you care, and also cuts down on your time having to repeatedly answer the same questions via email.

Video on your website can have a tremendous influence on your business, but there are some details you should know regarding how to get the maximum impact from your media efforts.

Please give me a call if you realize the potential of using video and would like to discuss it further.

Bryan Kenny
506 549 2046
CLICK HERE to contact me

“What? You did it yourself?

“Let me take a look… oh… ummm…”

Does your website scream amateur? It might be that you did put your site together yourself or you got your cousin, Charlie, who knows a little more than you do, to put it up for you.

Now cast a critical eye over it, as if you were your customer. While you may be proud of your newfound graphic skills, you may actually be scaring potential customers away.

Simply put, a professional website header and other graphics make your online business face professional by association.

If your graphics look, well… lame, then everything else is suspect too, even if you do have valuable information on your site.

A site’s graphics are so important, but often overlooked. If you’ve gone to all the work to bring new people to your website, don’t you want to leave a good first impression?

Take a look at some of the websites you like to visit and check out their website header, their “buy now” buttons, and the other graphical elements.

* Are they in keeping with the overall theme of the business?
* Are they pleasing to look at?
* Do the graphics in the content make the site easier to read?

The good news is you don’t have to be a graphics artist to have a professional-looking website! I can arrange to have it done for you to save you time and hassles.

You can email or call me anytime to discuss this.

Regards,
Bryan Kenny
506 549 2046
CLICK HERE to contact me

They’re wearing all the hats and making things happen as best they can, yet they haven’t begun marketing online with a website. Having their own website could really take a load off their shoulders plus give them a whole new world of customers.

Why don’t they have a website? These are the top 3 reasons I’ve come across…

1. They don’t know what to do.

They’ve been in business long enough to know there’s always a steep learning curve with something new – the technical details, the marketing details, the necessary insider info.
Very true. A real amateurish-looking, poorly laid out website can do more harm than good. A website should be more than one page filled with ads. Building a website is something that can be learned and some aspects of it are easy, but it takes time. Which leads to objection #2.

2. They don’t have the time to mess with it.

They don’t have time to learn what to do, time to get it going, time to keep it going.
Agreed. That’s why there are companies like mine that specialize in setting up your website and even keeping it updated if you want.

3. They can’t afford to.

Their business is just starting off or they’re not in the position to afford “luxuries” like a website.
A website is a necessity today and I would argue it’s better to get it up as soon as possible so it can help bring in clients. People like to check your company out online, it gives them more of a sense of who you are, and they like to buy online. A website means customers are global, not just local, and that should tell you your chance to profit from your website can far outweigh the cost of getting a website designed and “put up”.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m harping, but adding the online component to your business is so important. It gets me jazzed because I know how to put it all together and make it work for you.

Regards,
Bryan Kenny
506 549 2046
CLICK HERE to contact me

People still do not spend all their time glued to their computer screens and hence can be reached by incorporating a variety of offline marketing methods to successfully communicate their message. It should be kept in mind that while the internet is an important tool for reaching larger audiences in a short span of time, the more traditional and age long methods of offline marketing cannot be ignored completely without suffering ill consequences.

In this series I will be exploring different ways to market your business using tried and true offline marketing methods to bring your business more customers.

Offline Marketing Basics

• Before the internet and social media, conventional offline marketing techniques were being practiced by organizations all around the world and some of them are as old as the history of mankind.

• Even in the beginning days of radio and television, people had figured out that they could play a key role in the propagation of their businesses. If you are a business owner and want your product to be known across the households of your locality, it will perhaps be a good idea to prepare and run commercials on radio and television channels. The larger and more popular the channel, the more you will have to pay to get people to listen to what your advertisements have to say. However, the upside of this increased cost is the obviously greater and wider influence of these channels.

While I believe the radio is an excellent medium for mass distribution of your marketing message it does come with a few cons. The first con is that you are paying to advertise to the masses. What I mean by that is that your message is being broadcast to every set of ears listening to the commercial at that time and not all of those ears will be interested in what your selling or may not have a need for your particular product. Therefore your paying to advertise to an audience which may not be interested in what your trying to sell them. An example of this would be a business selling services usually purchased by another business (b2b). It would probably be more cost effective to simply make sales calls rather then spend advertising dollars using the radio. You need to know who your customers are and then match the offline marketing methods to match your target audience.

Another con of advertising using the radio is that it is very difficult to analyze and track the effectiveness of your radio advertisement.  What I mean by that is unless you present every customer entering your business with a questionnaire then it becomes next to impossible to track the results of your ad. A work around is to incorporate a direct response message into your ad copy, like tell them Mike sent you for a 15% discount or ask about our new X service when you visit.

• Newspapers and magazines continue to be the primary tool for offline marketing of products and services. Companies can pay to acquire space in a newspaper for their advertisements. And the featured ads can be as brief as a line or as massive as an entire page of a particular edition. An advertisement of your product on the front page of a newspaper might do wonders to your sales.

Once again this form of offline marketing has its cons as well which are much the same as radio. Unless you incorporate a direct response message into your ad copy then tracking and analyzing its effectiveness becomes very difficult if not impossible all together. The advantage of the newspaper over radio is that you could create your entire ad to be a direct response ad by getting your potential customer to clip out the ad and bring it to your place of business. They may be required to fill out information for a draw and must visit the store to deposit it into a ballot box or simply use the ad as a coupon when making a purchase.

• Distributing business cards has been an age old yet effective form of offline marketing for building a relationship with your trusted consumers. It gives a more personal and friendly look to your dealings in addition to providing the necessary contact details of a business outlet and/or personnel. It’s important to mention that I believe you should definitely make your business card stand out by thinking outside the box when it comes to design as well as the copy you use on the card itself. There is no steadfast rule to how your card should be designed or what information is on it. Be creative and remember to spark curiosity.

• Posting of flyers, leaflets, and posters. These should contain information about your business—an overview of the service or product you’re offering, rates, business address, and contact number. A warning before you begin plastering these offline marketing methods all over town though is to check with your local laws to make sure you’re allowed to put up posters. Also…you guessed it…be sure to incorporate some sort of a direct response message for tracking the results.

• Conventional mail systems have been in place for centuries and are still a trusted offline marketing method for reaching out to your existing customers. People who sign-up to be updated via mail are usually sent brochures, pricing plans and newsletters containing new products and available discounts etc. If you haven’t begun a database of your customers…then what are you waiting for? Just think of all the time and money you’ve spent attaining your existing customers…its much easier to sell to an existing customer who you’ve already gained the trust of  then to sell to a brand new customer right? Learn to nurture your existing relationships for greater profits using this key offline marketing method.

• Another strategy of offline marketing is simply giving away free stuff. People love getting something for nothing so why not capitalize on this by using promotional material. Items such as stickers, pens, key chains, cheap gadgets bearing the company logo pleases people and makes them want to come back for more…and lets not forget about the fact that having your potential customer using your offline marketing promotional material with your logo on it keeps your business at the forefront of their mind.

So still think offline marketing is dead? I don’t either. I believe it just needs to be tweaked. I read somewhere that the average human is bombarded by hundreds of both online and offline marketing messages per day so you’d better make sure your message stands out.

One thing I hope you take away from this article is this…if you’re going to use these or any other offline marketing strategies, I highly suggest you incorporate direct response marketing strategies into it. If you’re not analyzing and tracking your offline marketing methods then how can you tell if its successful? Don’t just spend the money you’ve allocated to your advertising budget on the traditional offline marketing methods because that’s what you’ve always done. The perfect practice is to use every medium of advertisement (both offline marketing as well as online marketing) to its maximum potential and integrate them effectively for the convenience of your customers as well as the betterment of your bottom line.

Therefore, in order to get the most out of Facebook for the purposes of marketing, one must realize that a fine balance should be struck between the content of interest and the relevant advertising. And a Facebook fan page must not solely focus on placing ads.

The Facebook fanpage page should be designed and managed in a way that the people who join it develop an affiliation with it through intelligent marketing which – despite serving your business interests – also provides something for them to go through.

Another advantage of a Facebook fan page is that it gives you an opportunity to be in touch with your consumers. People can provide feedback – positive or negative – about your products and services. However, the best practice for moderating comments and feedback on your page is to try not to meddle with them unless absolutely necessary i.e. it is not wise to delete feedback from a user who thinks your product is not as good as it is made up to be.

If possible, use your fan page for things like contests, giveaways, discounts and coupons. This will get people to pay more attention to your fan page, because it will give them a reason to visit your fan page often.

Also, in order to make sure that people keep revisiting your page without losing interest, you can make sales announcements or organize contests with winners walking away with discount coupons to your upcoming product.

If they find it interesting and rewarding enough, your Facebook community of users will not only make sure they keep your page alive with their contributions but may also invite their friends to join. This, at least on Facebook, is the best way to expand your consumer circle.

However, perhaps the most significant thing to remember while managing a fan page over Facebook is for you to maintain an active presence and not keep the users waiting for any queries or suggestions that they might have.

Free newsletters are much easier because you can get a lot of people opt-in and you can sell them a subscription in the future.  Everyone loves free stuff.  Occasionally, at the end of the email you may want to offer special subscriber only promotions or notify your subscribers of new products or services.  You could even offer special subscriber only bonuses with a purchase.

By the way, if you send your subscribers what begins to look like sales letters, they will opt out quicker than you can say wait! Be careful because this is your potential customer crowd and it is like gold to you.

1. Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.

2. Offer additional value on your website. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos, if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.

3. You can allow customers to ‘opt in’ to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite customers to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.

4. Add a link to your primary page with a script ‘Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites’.

5. Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a prewritten title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.

6. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.

7. Create a ‘Our Policies’ page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site.

8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. This helps to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.

8. Ensure that each page on your website has appropriate titles and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the book mark.

9. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails. Later if they decide they want to ‘opt out’ of the mailings, be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

Social Media from Luke Frederick on Vimeo.

When it comes to advertising there are many business owners who literally cringe.  Are you doing this now?  There is a good chance that you are because many advertising methods cost money. As a business owner you want to make money not spend it, right?  Unfortunately, if you believe that all forms of advertising takes money, you are sadly mistaken. Although you may have to spend money to make your business what you want it to be, there are ways to promote your business and the products or services that you sell without having to spend any money at all.

Is your curiosity peaked yet? There is a good chance that it is, rightfully so.  One of the ways that you can promote your online business, without having to spend a dime, is by using something that is readily available online. That thing is an online social networking website.  A large number of internet users, in fact millions of them, belong to at least one social networking website.

When it comes to social networking, there are many individuals who think of online friendships or online relationships. While these types of relationships are the most common, did you know that social networking is also used for businesses?  In fact, that was originally how social networking got started.  If you are a small business owner, especially one that operates an online business, there is a way that you can use social networking sites to your advantage.

Although social networking websites are traditionally focused on those that would like to make online friends or develop online relationships, there are networking sites that are designed for business owners.  These websites will not only allow you to share your business information with other business owners, but it will also allow you to develop close relationships with those that share an interest that is similar to yours. Essentially, this means that you could not only learn valuable business information, but you could also walk away with a new business partner or a new friend.

As previously mentioned, social networking websites with a focus on businesses, are a great way to promote your business. However, this does not mean that you should completely forget about the other online social networking websites, the ones that are designed to make online friendships. Although you may not learn any valuable business tips by joining Yahoo! 360 or MySpace, you may be able to get new customers and new customers is exactly what your business should want and need.

If you are looking to join an online community, you will need to create your own profile or profile page.  If you are planning on joining a traditional social networking website, to gain access to millions of potential new customers, you are urged to be careful when making your online webpage or profile.  One thing that internet users hate is being solicited for business. This does not mean that you cannot use social networking to your advantage; it just means that you need to be careful with how you do it. Instead of creating a MySpace page or a Yahoo! 360 page for your business, you are advised to make one for yourself, but, of course, you will want to include information on your business.

By joining a social networking website, especially one that is popular and has a large number of members, you should be able to generate interest in your business, including the products or services that you sell. Who knows, but that interest generated could turn into sales; thus making your social networking experience more than worth it.