All too common is [...]]]> When you are in business for yourself, especially one that is conducted online, you’ll find there are a number of different things for you to learn about that can save you time and make you money. Outsourcing is by far one of the more exciting things to discover and put to use.  

All too common is the business owner who feels they have to do everything themselves in order for things to go smoothly in their online venture. This couldn’t be farther from the truth! In case you’re curious about why so many online business owners are singing the praises of outsourcing, keep reading to see just five of the many benefits it can obtain. 

More Value for Your Time

When you own an online business, one of the most important things to remember is how much your time is really worth.  When you think about the dull or repetitive tasks that you are doing, you’ll find this work is not worth your high per hour price tag!  When you outsource, you’ll pay someone else to take care of those responsibilities while you give attention to the more important, money-making projects. 

Saving Resources

Think about everything that goes into the tasks that you would outsource.  This will range from things like your time and space to costs such as Internet and software. After awhile all of these costs add up. For instance, graphics software can get quite expensive.  If you are outsourcing an activity, you get more than just the task itself out of the way.  You will also get someone who specializes in areas of your business that you may not know quite as well as or have no desire to learn. More than likely these people will already have the tools needed to complete their assignment. Depending on the project, this might save you money and learning time.  This brings me to the next benefit of outsourcing. 

Going to the Experts

The tasks you are outsourcing might not be ones that you have no desire to learn about, whether they are troubleshooting, manufacturing, taking orders, website design and maintenance, or something else.  By handing the work over to an expert who enjoys and makes it their business to know these things, you’ll be able to take advantage of their knowledge in the area without having to learn it yourself. This in turn will give your customers or clients more than you could possibly give them yourself.  

Expand

When you outsource, you will soon realize that you are in a great place when it comes to getting more involved with your business.  You will be able to expand and provide everything your customers need.  Outsourcing frees you up to try new things with your business, learn more and experience new aspects of your industry.  

Accountability

When you outsource, you will have a contract with the person or company you are working with. By having someone else who is depending on work from you, you are more apt to stay ahead of the game by planning better and making sure that you’re tasks are getting completed as well. 

When you first begin learning about and implementing outsourcing techniques within your business, you’ll find out those boring or repetitive tasks can easily be handed off to someone who enjoys doing them. This will allow you, as the business’ owner, to free up more time to concentrate on more important aspects of your business such as product creation, advertising, networking and other marketing practices. 

These are the things that will help your business to grow even more profitable. 

Are you a slave to your Online Business? Break the chains. Check out www.OutsourceWeekly.com to find out how!

Have you ever called a business that you were unfamiliar with, and the person who answered sounded less than eager to help you with the information you were looking for? Did they sound too busy to help you, or under too much stress?

Maybe they answered with just one word that described their type [...]]]> By: Jim Newell

Have you ever called a business that you were unfamiliar with, and the person who answered sounded less than eager to help you with the information you were looking for? Did they sound too busy to help you, or under too much stress?

Maybe they answered with just one word that described their type of business, with no greeting, something like “garage”, “locksmith”, or “plumber”, leaving you a little confused as to who you actually called. Unless you are in a very small town, there may be more than one of that type of business in the area.

Many times the first contact a new prospect has with a business is a telephone call. This is especially true for “brick & mortar” businesses. It is therefore of paramount importance that this contact be positive for the caller.
That telephone call will usually be from someone who is totally unfamiliar with the exact products and services your business provides. They most likely need information. If they receive the information they need quickly, and in a friendly manner, they may very well make the jump from prospect to customer.

The first contact a prospect makes with any business sets in their mind an unconscious picture of how that business responds. If that contact was positive, great. However if it was negative, that prospect may be lost forever.
I have presented sales and marketing classes and seminars to many industry trade groups. I use as an example one of my customers who always answers their phone in a way that you can feel their enthusiasm to help you, it makes no difference who answers, because they all use the same enthusiastic greeting and you can “feel” the smile. I have even given out their phone number, so attendees could hear a good example.

So how do you convince your employees to answer the phone with enthusiasm? You should start with a short training program for all people who answer the phone.

• You need to let your employees know how big a part of how they answer the phone is to customer acquisition.
• Have them help you develop a script that everyone will use. They will feel a sense of ownership.
• Put a mirror at each phone station, so the person answering can see their smile. People on the other end of the phone
can “feel” that smile.
• It is very important that you monitor how the phone is being answered, if a particular person cannot learn and use the
script, they should be reassigned so they are not responsible for answering the phone.
• All persons answering the phone, including the business owner, senior managers, whoever must use the same script and
enthusiasm.

In closing, remember any contact with a prospect or existing customer needs to be treated as an opportunity to gain a new customer or help the existing customer decide to buy more products or services from you. In other words all prospect or customer contacts are part of marketing.

One of the more powerful marketing automation tools for online marketers is the auto responder. Many “brick & mortar” business people are not aware of this amazing tool, however it is just as useful and powerful for them as well.

Read that first sentence again slowly…did you see “powerful marketing automation”, think about that [...]]]> By: Jim Newell

One of the more powerful marketing automation tools for online marketers is the auto responder. Many “brick & mortar” business people are not aware of this amazing tool, however it is just as useful and powerful for them as well.

Read that first sentence again slowly…did you see “powerful marketing automation”, think about that for a moment, what could it mean for your “brick & mortar” business? Automation of repetitive tasks is one of the keys to running a successful business, either online or “brick & mortar”, especially when you have a small staff.

Auto responders first came into use as a way of alerting e-mailers that their message bounced, or did not get sent. Have you ever sent an email message to someone and got an immediate reply that they are on vacation?  Those messages are sent by a basic auto responder system included in their email system.

As people saw how useful these auto responses were, and how quickly they were delivered, it just became natural that they be adapted to marketing. What is somewhat amazing however is how few businesses make full use of this automated and and very useful message delivery system. If you are reading this article in the one of my newsletters, that newsletter was sent to you via an auto responder, which points out another great attribute of this great tool, that being the ability to deliver specific communications on a predetermined schedule.

The real power of an auto responder is the users ability to preload the communications you want to send, and when you want them sent, ie; message number 1 could be sent immediately, then number 2 a few days later. number 3 two weeks after number 2 and so on.

When your subscriber signs up for your list, or when you enter them on your list the schedule stars, so that no matter when someone starts on your list they receive the same messages as everyone else and on the same schedule. You would also have the ability to send a special message to all subscribers at any time, without changing the original schedule. Some auto responder users have their communications scheduled a year or 2 into the future, kind of a set it and forget it procedure.

This is all part of the making money while you sleep magic that you hear about, you are marketing to your subscribers on auto pilot, all of the time, are you beginning so see the possibilities?

There are 3 basic ways to set up auto responders, the amount of work done by you and the amount done by the auto responder varies quite a bit depending on which method you choose.

• Auto responder software on your site – a lot of work for you
  • Pros
    • Open source software available, no cost
    • No monthly charges
  • Cons
    • You handle subscriptions
    • You set up messages and schedules
    • You email messages as per schedule
    • You handle subscription cancellations
• Auto Responder Service – some work for you
  • Pros
    • They take care of subscriptions and cancellations
    • They send all emails, on your schedule
    • Easy set up of messages and schedule
    • Most guarantee all subscribers are double opt-in subscribers
  • Cons
    • Charge a moderate monthly fee to manage
• Full service email marketing management services
  • Pros
    • More than just auto responders, they handle all of your email marketing
  • Cons
    • Can be expensive

In my experience, most auto responder software loaded on your site, is to much work. It is very easy to get busy and forget to email messages on time, add subscribers to your list, remove cancellations from your list, not insure that all subscribers are double opt-in, etc.

Auto responder services offer excellent management of your list or multiple lists, they handle the double opt-in procedure, they all have tutorials to get you up and running quickly. Once you get your campaigns are up and running, they run on autopilot, occasional changes or tweaks are easy to make. My service costs me less than $20 per month and is worth every penny.

Full service email management services are well suited to larger businesses, do a fantastic job of handling all of your email issues, however cost can be higher.

Whichever method you choose remember than communicating with your prospects and customers on a regular basis is one of the best ways to increase customer retention and one of the easiest ways to add sales.

I recommend Aweber, for your Auto responder needs

 You have gone to the effort to attract subscribers, if taken care of and offered information and the occasional product, these folks will stick with you and even be profitable. That said some people do very well with this method.

When building your marketing list do you consider what motivates a subscriber to sign up?

One of the biggest motivations is the hope that they are going to get information on something that interests them, or will solve a problem they are experiencing.

The marketing methods you are using, and how effectively you are using them [...]]]> By: Jim Newell

When building your marketing list do you consider what motivates a subscriber to sign up?

One of the biggest motivations is the hope that they are going to get information on something that interests them, or will solve a problem they are experiencing.

The marketing methods you are using, and how effectively you are using them dictate in large part how well targeted the group of prospects you are trying to entice will be. Popular methods of trying to attract subscribers, or buyers, include;

• Pay Per Click advertising, also known as PPC. The main attribute of PPC advertising is that if not done correctly, and constantly monitored, these campaigns can become quite costly. They can however be very targeted.
• Article Marketing is the activity of writing and distributing original article that you write or have written, with the express purpose of attracting readers and enticing them to become subscribers or customers. Well written, keyword optimized articles can be very targeted. Article Marketing can be very effective, and if you do you own writing and distributing, very low cost.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a way to dramatically improve the overall effectiveness of both of the above online marketing methods, and do it with no added cost. What could be better, supercharge your efforts be being sure your PPC, and Article Marketing campaigns are optimized, just by using a few techniques that should have been used anyway.

Whether you have a website, a blog, or just write articles, Using basic SEO techniques in large part determines how easily your site or acticles are found, and thus how well they are ranked by the search engines. The good news for the astute online marketer is that a very large percentage of websites, blogs and article are not optimized at all, or at best very poorly, this gives a decided advantage to those who will take the time to learn and use these simple techniques.

• <TITLE> tag – A relevant title tag, included in the <HEAD> section of your page will do more to improve page rank than just meta tags. The title tag should contain your main keywords, and may or may not read like or even resemble the title of your article or page. Title tags must be closed.
• Meta tags – Meta tags are not by themselves the “magic bullet” to page rank, they are however overlooked by a very large percentage of web publishers. They really just help search engines find information about you page, article and site. The most important Meta Tags for search engine standing are the description and the keyword tags, and are also the most misused.
  • The description tag describes what your page is about, search engines will use part of your description tag in listings for keyword searches. Your description needs to be enclosed in quotes, and should contain your main keywords.
  • The keywords tag should contain very targeted, keywords, most search engines only allow a limited number of keywords, be sure yours are the most relevant to the page content.
• There are more meta tags that are useful, do a search on “meta tags” for extensive information.

There are many more ways to optimize your pages, some of which will be covered in subsequent articles on this site. For more immediate extensive information and access to a product that can automate your SEO efforts, check out the premier SEO tool at this link Click Here!

You hear it everywhere on the Internet, the money is in your list. It seems that every other online marketing guru sells a program for building your list. Most of them lead you to some PPC scheme, this of course will cost money, in some cases a lot of money.

If you agree that [...]]]> By: Jim Newell

You hear it everywhere on the Internet, the money is in your list. It seems that every other online marketing guru sells a program for building your list. Most of them lead you to some PPC scheme, this of course will cost money, in some cases a lot of money.

If you agree that the money is in the list, and that you do not want to spend huge amounts of money to build it, where do you turn?

Would you be interested if I told you that all you really need is a computer and a take charge attitude? You can be collecting email addresses for your own list within 48 hours. And you can do it without spending your money on paid traffic sources!

If having an online business is your goal, finding new customers every day, without having your own list of opt-in prospects is a lot of hard work and near impossible.

When you have and cultivate your own list you have a ready audience for each offer you create, each newsletter you send out, each blog post you make. Each of these items is being sent to someone who asked to be on your list, you already know they are interested in the subject matter on your blog, newsletter, or the products you promote. This kind of “targeted” traffic is priceless to the online marketer.

Once you start building your own list you can even begin to automate your contacts with them by using an auto responder program, once you have the messages you want to send entered and scheduled, folks who subscribe to your list, or lists will begin receiving your messages on your schedule.

You can start building your list on your own with an opt-in subscription form on your website or blog, with social marketing, article marketing or any of a dozen or so more methods. This will work, however without someone to guide you, someone who has already been through the “try & fail” gauntlet, who has perfected the methods that really work, you could be wasting valuable time and money.

Let me introduce you to Carrie Wilkerson, The Barefoot Executive. Carrie has “been there done that” with list buiding, she has developed a fantastic list building training program that will have you up and running with building your list very quickly.

Here is the program description directly from Carrie, check it out, if this would work for you, take action now! Click Here!

There has to be a reason that some part of a business does better than other parts, why some employees are more productive than others, why some sports team dominate their sports etc. There really is a logical explanation, and once you understand what it is and how it works, your business in [...]]]> By: Jim Newell

There has to be a reason that some part of a business does better than other parts, why some employees are more productive than others, why some sports team dominate their sports etc. There really is a logical explanation, and once you understand what it is and how it works, your business in fact your life will never be the same. 

The Pareto Principle, or sometimes referred to as the 80-20 rule, applies to almost every facet of business operation, every management function, in fact it is applied to and holds pretty much true to almost anything in life. 

The rule was developed from observations made in the early 1900’s by Vilfredo Pareto who had an engineering degree, was an economics lecturer and philosopher in Italy and Switzerland. His 1906 observation was that 80 percent of the property and wealth in Italy were held and controlled by only 20 percent of the population. He also observed that 20 percent of the pea pods in his garden produced 80 percent of the crop. The names Pareto Principle or 80-20 rule were not coined by Pareto but actually credited to him by noted management expert Joseph M. Juran and others who became familiar with Pareto’s work and observations and determined that they could be applied to almost any problem or procedure and seem to always work out to the 80/20 ratio. 

1. 80 percent of your profits will come from 20 percent of your products or services. The key is to identify which of those products and services are in the top 20 percent. Those are the products you never want to be out of, those are the services you want to continually improve on or expand. These services and products are the ones you want to advertise the most heavily. You will want to be sure which of the remaining 80 percent of your products and services are really needed and that they support the top 20 percent. 
2. 80 percent of your sales will come from 20 percent of your customers. After you have identified which of those customers are in the top 20 percent, they are the ones you want to be sure are always catered to, they are always made aware of specials and new products, that they are always given to opportunity to become repeat customers. These are the ones you want to solicit testimonials from. 
3. 80 percent of complaints will be generated by about the same 20 percent of problems. Tracking your complaints will allow you to see and focus on the specific problems and areas that generate the most complaints. Finding those specific problems will allow you to identify and fix them. Of course you should never stop tracking complaints, because as soon as you fix one another will take its place. 
4. 80 percent of your successful campaigns will come from only 20 percent of your advertising. Identify your successful campaigns and duplicate or build on them. Use similar delivery methods for your message; some will work better than others with a particular audience. Knowing which methods and campaigns actually work will save o lot of money in your advertising budget. 
5. 20 percent of your sales force will produce 80 percent of your sales. Nurture, grow and reward that top 20 percent, they are the superstars who will make your business successful. One of the attributes you will find in this group is that they will be the self starters who will always find a way to get the business. This will allow you to put more resources into developing the other 80 percent. 

As stated earlier, the Pareto Principle or 80-20 rules works almost anyplace you apply it, the percentages will not always add up to 100 percent, however the ratio will be very close. The 80-20 rule works with online as well as “brick & mortar” businesses. This is truly a Common Sense Marketing tool that you should make part of your decision making and evaluating arsenal.

What It Takes to Be Number 1

How is it that some businesses seem to just take off to instant superstar status, while others take years to get noticed? I think it all comes down to communication.

Communication takes many forms it includes the most basic simple things, such as just saying “thank you” all the way up to the super [...]]]> By: Jim Newell

How is it that some businesses seem to just take off to instant superstar status, while others take years to get noticed? I think it all comes down to communication.

Communication takes many forms it includes the most basic simple things, such as just saying “thank you” all the way up to the super bowl ads that some companies place, and everything in between.

Communicating with your existing customers, you know the ones who have demonstrated their trust, and have given you money, the ones who already know who you are and like you, is much cheaper and easier than finding new customers. It just stands to reason that you would do all that you can to retain these folks as customers. With the right blend of attention and tender loving care they can and should become repeat customers.

If you are not already doing so, here are some things you should be doing…

• On the first contact or sale, ask for your customers email address, be sure to ask permission to send them email, tell them what you will email to them, and how often.
• Be sure to record what product or service they purchased. You need this in order to target your message correctly.
• Contact all new customers either by phone, personal contact or email, within 48 hours of their visit or purchase.
• Ask if what they bought solved their problem, was it what they really wanted, does it work as expected, what could your business have done better, do they know anyone they would refer to you.

These simple steps are what helps start a culture of communication. If you have employees who will not ask these questions, find new ones who will.

News flash: 90% of offline businesses do not even ask for email addresses.

If you have been under a rock for the last 15 years, you may not realize that the people who are now in high school and college communicate almost exclusively via text message, email and maybe cell phone. These are your future customers.

My ah-hah moment to this phenomena occurred when my son was a sophomore in high school about 1995. I was at the dining room table working on some report and needed an address from a phone book that I knew was in the basement, so I yelled at James to please get the phone book for me. He was at the time working on homework at the computer and just went online (with a sssslow dial-up connection) and found the information I needed. It was at that moment that I realized that we were in a brave new world, where we would have to adapt to how the younger generations wanted to communicate.

The more ways we can figure out to communicate with our current customers, without becoming pests, the more business we will do with them. Tips for email communications:

• The subject line has everything to do with if the message gets opened or not.
• The first email message should be heavy on “welcome”, “how are we doing” and light on selling.
• Every other week or even monthly should be about right, they don’t want to hear from you every day.
• Automation can really help you stay current, “think auto responder”

View this movie for another customer retention key (just click on the banner)