This is featured post 1 title

To set your featured posts, please go to your theme options page in wp-admin. You can also disable featured posts slideshow if you don't wish to display them.

This is featured post 2 title

To set your featured posts, please go to your theme options page in wp-admin. You can also disable featured posts slideshow if you don't wish to display them.

This is featured post 3 title

To set your featured posts, please go to your theme options page in wp-admin. You can also disable featured posts slideshow if you don't wish to display them.

This is featured post 4 title

To set your featured posts, please go to your theme options page in wp-admin. You can also disable featured posts slideshow if you don't wish to display them.

This is featured post 5 title

To set your featured posts, please go to your theme options page in wp-admin. You can also disable featured posts slideshow if you don't wish to display them.

12 Clever Ways to Boost Your Traffic

Posted by admin on October 13th, 2011

By Terri Seymour

Traffic is essential to anyone who owns a website and/or blog. Without traffic we have no customers or sales. Unfortunately traffic does not just come to us, we have to work at it and we have to be consistent and persistent.

Sales conversion rates normally average less than 5%. What this means is that only 5% of the people who visit your site will become a paid customer. So, to grow your sales, you need to boost your traffic and/or your conversion rates. Below are twelve things you can do right now to start increasing your traffic to get those sales.

 

1. Launch an Article Marketing Campaign – Writing articles is not as hard as you might think and it can do wonders for your traffic! Write about something you know and just pretend you are telling a friend all about it. There is no need to use big, fancy words because people just want basic, straightforward information. Submit your articles to some of the more prominent article directories such as Ezine Articles.

2. Guest Posting and/or Commenting on Blogs – Do a search to find quality blogs in your niche and ask if they accept guest posts. Write helpful comments on existing posts and leave your link. Get involved and start building your reputation! A good place to find blogs that need guest posts is BloggerLinkUp.

3. Write Website Reviews – Review websites on Alexa and get more traffic and improve your Alexa rating. Go to Alexa, register an account and start reviewing and getting that traffic.

4. Relevant Keywords – There are a lot of free keyword suggestion tools you can use to find the top keyword searches for your niche. For example: if you own a pet care site, you would enter the words pet care and the tool would find the most relevant keywords for you to use on your site.

5. Yahoo Answers – Visit Yahoo Answers regularly and post as many answers as you can but be sure to follow their policies. You cannot try to directly lead people to your purchasing pages or leave low quality answers with your website link.

6. Interactive Site – Make your site interactive with forums, polls, surveys, etc. If your visitors feel more involved with your site, you will get repeat visits and longer stays. Add a little fun as well with contests, games, etc. Have a weekly or monthly scavenger hunt, trivia game, etc. Running a contest for a month can boost your traffic by thousands.

7. Business Cards – Produce an effective business card and hand them out wherever you go. Be sure to make it unique. Offer a discount on a first order. Add a personal message. Offer a freebie. Make your business card more than just your name and address.

8. Podcasting – A podcast is an audio or video broadcast which people can listen to and/or watch on many devices. Make your podcast informative but interesting. Talk about how your site can help the people listening and let them know about any contests or other interactive activities you offer. All you need to make a podcast is a working microphone and a voice editor such as Audacity. Once you have made your podcast, promote it in podcast forums and podcast directories such as PodcastBlaster.

9. Moving Billboard – Turn your vehicle into a moving billboard to advertise your website wherever you go. Use affordable vinyl coverings such as Car Wraps or magnetic signs from Esigns. A day of fun can bring you a lot of traffic from your mobile billboard!

10. Social Media – These days social media is a must for more traffic. Join Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. Visit message boards and forums and really get involved. Answer people’s questions, offer helpful advice and information. Becoming an active participant in social media can do wonders for your traffic.

11. Offer a Freebie – Write an informative report or ebook and offer it for free. Put in your website link and other business info. Let people know they can give it away on their sites as well. Add it to your email signature. Post it on your social media pages. Before you know it, your report could be all over the web bringing you new traffic every day.

12. Sitemap – Create an XML sitemap for your site and submit it to Google. A sitemap will allow more accessibility to your pages by the search engines, thus making your pages easier to find by people doing searches. You can easily create up to a 500 page sitemap with XML-Sitemaps. There are other options as well such as XSitemap. Do a search and find alternative options to choose from.

There are numerous ways to get more traffic to your site. Some will work for you and some will not. Try the ideas in this article and add to them, or mold them to work even better for you. Traffic does not come easily but by working hard, trying new ideas and finding out what works best for you will be very effective in boosting your traffic.

Read More »

Nine Steps to Social Networking Success

Posted by admin on October 13th, 2011

By Wayne English

Social Networking has taken the world of business by storm. Properly used, it can establish you as an expert in your field, keep you in-touch with customers, sell your products, and market your business or organization. It is an around-the-clock marketing machine that never sleeps.

In our seminars, we are asked how to get started using it. While that is a simple question, it requires detailed understanding of the company, knowledge of business goals, and much more information as well. So, to provide people with meaningful assistance we developed these steps. Be advised that they do not provide answers, but lead you to asking the right questions.

Why? Pertinent questions that apply to your business and situation only are invaluable. And those questions, my friend, are far more valuable to you than their answers. There are people, books, consultants, aplenty to give you answers, but if you don’t answer the right questions, where are you? By developing the high quality questions that apply to your business, you will create a social networking campaign that is customized to your specific needs. To be successful, that is essential because your customers, their needs, your employees, your very business is unique. This is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor.

So, treat these steps as guidelines. Reorder them, combine them, delete any that you care to, but please read them all. Number nine you will find particularly interesting as it combines the online world and the offline world. Social networking has been around for hundreds of years. Don’t think that it only takes place from your keyboard. Nothing could be further from the truth.

1. Goals are not Wants and Wishes. List the goals of your social networking campaign and verify that they are achievable. As one goal approaches completion have the next goal ready to implement.

2. Who Will Conduct Your Social Networking Campaign? Creating your own content takes time. If you hire someone to create your content, provide information on your company and approve the material before it’s published. If you give the job to an employee, provide the time and resources necessary to carry out the work.

3. How will you Motivate Your Audience to Tell You What They Want in Your Social Networking Campaign? Ask, and offer a premium. For example, a free report, a discount coupon, entrance in a contest, a gift, or something else of unquestioned value for the time they spend responding to your query.

4. Determine What Social Media Sites are Best for Your Needs. Look for ways to distribute your social networking campaign into every niche. Visit the major social networking sites and determine which are best for your needs. A blog requires writing, a micro-blog requires you to write tight headlines, video requires you to make, edit, and upload them. Choose the site(s) that fit your needs and create your accounts.

5. Your Web Site is the Crown Jewel of Your Social Media Campaign. Bring your Web site up-to-date and be sure that it supports your social networking campaign by providing the pertinent information your audience is looking for. Integrate your site into your social networking campaign.

6. Create Your Content, Place it Online, and Implement Your Ongoing Content Creation Plan. Only create content of unquestioned value that your audience wants. There is no point spending time and dollars to create material that no one will view. Remember, you are selling your social networking campaign for something more valuable than money, someone’s time.

7. Go Live and Tell the World. E-mail your audience to notify them that your social media campaign is online. If you have an over-the-counter business, place signs in the store, include an insert in bags, put your online information on all company paperwork including business cards, invoices, and billing statements.

8. Determining the Effectiveness of Your Social Networking Campaign. Look for increased activity on your Web site. Have your Web master provide you data on where your visitors are coming from. Look for traffic from your social networking sites.

9. Offline Activities to Assist Making Your Social Networking Campaign Successful.

  • Attend conferences in your field and those related to your target audience.
  • Become an acknowledged expert in your field by publishing in Twitter and on a blog. Publish articles in industry magazines, newsletters, and blogs.
  • Collaborate with cause marketing. The old saying, “Two heads are better than one,” is true.
  • E-mail marketing, use it as a marketing tool and to keep-in-touch.
  • Engage your employees in your social networking campaign. Publish a social networking policy that tells them what they can do, not what they can’t do.
  • Give a free seminar at your place of business. Promote it online and with a press release.
  • Host free seminars at your place of business.
  • Join Chambers of Commerce, networking, and business groups.
  • Paper magazines. Don’t throw them away, cut them up and send pertinent articles to your clients. Find the article(s) online and use e-mail to send a link your clients.
  • LinkedIn is perfect for your needs. Use it.
  • Market to those who can refer business to you, and to those who do business with you.
  • Publish a Newsletter. Include trivia, winter driving tips, a crossword puzzle, Windows and Mac tips, new products with links to independent reviews, gift ideas, etceteras. Do not use your newsletter for selling. Do keep it informative, timely, and fun.
  • Send hand written Christmas cards, and thank you notes to your clients. Begin writing them in October, if that’s what it takes.
  • Quality content provides unquestioned value. Customers want answers. Provide them.
  • Speak at conferences and industry events.
  • Subscribe to industry magazines, blogs, and newsletters that your customers read.
  • Take every opportunity to get together with customers, and potential customers.
  • Throw a party.
  • Use both sides of any handout. The space you waste could be marketing for you.
  • Video. Create your YouTube channel and place your videos there.
  • Your Web site is the crown jewel of your social networking campaign. See that its design supports your business needs.
Read More »

Why SEO in All the Right Places Doesn’t Cut It Anymore

Posted by admin on October 12th, 2011

By Jill Whalen

When I teach my SEO classes, I begin by telling the students all the things that SEO isn’t. I’ve always felt that it was important because they’re often expecting to hear some secret formula for SEO success. And why wouldn’t they, with all the myths and outright wrong/bad information that constantly swirls through the SEOsphere? When I finish telling them that everything they thought was SEO really isn’t, they stare at me with their mouths hanging open. So I tell them what SEO actually is: Making your website the best it can be for the search engines and your site visitors.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much to alter their blank stares. After all, it’s an incredibly open-ended definition of SEO. Still, it’s the only one that truly encompasses what good SEO is all about, as well as why you need to do it. While my method of SEO has always been based on that principle, more people are coming around to it in the wake of Google’s Panda Algorithm.
Pre-Panda, many people built thriving businesses using the following basic SEO process:

* Buy a keyword-rich domain name that encompasses the products you want to sell.
* Build a templated website around it.
* Link internally to the product pages with descriptive anchor text.
* Use those same keyword phrases in the Title and H tags.
* Submit the website URL to lots of directories.
* Drop links to the website in other people’s blogs and forums.

Voila! Instant Google Success!

They’d repeat the process hundreds of times with different types of products, and then run on autopilot. While it might not have worked on every site they created, the sheer volume of websites they ran would be enough to make them a decent living. So maybe there was a secret formula after all? Perhaps, but after Google’s Panda Algorithm was implemented, many (but not all) who followed and succeeded with that formula for years suddenly lost a good chunk of their revenue.

What Changed?

My own speculation, based on numerous websites that I’ve reviewed where this happened, is that Google finally decided that there needed to be more to a website than having “SEO in all the right places.” And it makes sense. Why should one site do better than another just because they read up on SEO and knew the best places to stick their keywords? It shouldn’t. And by allowing exactly that to happen, Google was enabling sites with old-fashioned, by-the-book SEO to beat out potentially higher quality websites.

The result was Google not always giving their own users (the searchers) the best, most relevant sites for the search query at hand. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally blaming Google here. It has to be a daunting task for a machine to know the difference between an okay (but great with SEO) site and a great (but perhaps not so great with SEO) one. Especially when so much of how Google tried to determine relevancy and quality was based on links – and even more on anchor text. It simply became too easy to game that system.

Giving Google What They Wanted

I certainly understand and even empathize with those site owners who’ve lost a significant portion of their income. They were just giving Google what it wanted. And because it worked so well, they had no reason to go above and beyond their basic formula. Why build a brand for your company when a keyword-rich domain would provide a better return on investment? Why spend time becoming an expert in your industry and educating your target market on the intricacies of your products when you could hire someone to write low-quality “SEO articles” and submit them to article directory sites instead?

Interestingly enough, many of the business owners I’ve talked to who have been getting by with formula SEO all these years have told me that they have tons of happy customers. Yet there are no obvious signs of this online, such as glowing reviews on Google Places or other online review sites (there aren’t bad ones either). How are customers even supposed to remember the name of a company called something like WoodAndMetalDiningRoomChairs.com? (I just made that one up.)

Mainly, customers found these websites through Google, made their purchase and received their merchandise. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there was also no personal connection made. This is further illustrated by the fact that if you look at social media sites, you won’t see much chatter about these companies. In fact, many of them don’t even use social media, or simply have cursory accounts. Again, they didn’t need to.

No Marketing Budget

A marketing person, plan, or budget was never necessary nor even a consideration. Sadly, for those companies, they don’t have much choice anymore if they want to stay in business. But ironically, now that they really need a marketing budget, there’s no money in the till to go toward it.

If I’ve just described your business and websites – even if you haven’t lost a portion of your revenue (yet), you may have thought you could hire a new SEO company to mix in a little extra SEO mojo and fix up your Google problems. But while they might find some on-page or off-page things you could be doing better, I wouldn’t count on that to bring back your lost traffic and sales.

So What Should You Do?

You need to seriously rethink your online strategy. You need to stop saying, “Well, it always worked for me in the past.” You need to build a brand and you need to market the heck out of it. You may even need to consolidate all your related keyword-rich domain websites into one big brand website. (Don’t do that last one without consulting a professional.) You need to learn everything you can about social media marketing and start doing it. You need to get in contact with your happy customers and ask them to write reviews online as well as to evangelize about you to everyone they come in contact with. You need to also keep in contact with them in a variety of ways.

All of those things are going to make a much bigger difference over the long haul than rewriting your title tags or adjusting your keyword density. The big takeaway here is that while your website may already be the best it can be technically for search engines, it’s time to make it the best it can be for your users. Both parts of that equation are equally important. It’s not going to be quick or easy, but if you want to stay in business, it’s probably going to be necessary.

Read More »

Finally… Google Analytics to Provide Real-Time Reporting

Posted by admin on October 12th, 2011

By David Jackson

Like millions of other website owners, I use Google Analytics to analyze my website stats. And while I actually like GA a lot, it isn’t perfect. My biggest pet-peeve with the software is the fact it doesn’t provide real-time results. It has a lag time of at least an hour or two before you can view most of your data, and a full 24-hour lag time on full data reporting. With all the brilliant engineers Google employs, that particular flaw hasn’t ever made any logical sense to me.

That negative aspect of GA has been bugging the heck out of me for years. Well, finally, that’s all about to change and fast. How fast? By the time you read this article or shortly thereafter, GA will be providing real-time analytics. All I have to say is, it’s about time!

Google Analytics Announces Real-Time Reporting

On September 29th, John Jersin of the Google Analytics team announced: “Today we’re very excited to bring real time data to Google Analytics with the launch of Google Analytics Real-Time: a set of new reports that show what’s happening on your site as it happens.

You’ll find the Real-Time reports only in the new version of Google Analytics. If you’re not already using the new version, you can start by clicking the “New Version” link in the top right of Google Analytics. Real-Time reports are in the Dashboards tab (though they will move to the Home tab in the updated interface next week). You will have access to Real-Time reports if you are an Administrator on your Analytics account, or if you have access to a profile without profile filters. Real-Time does not support profile filters.

We just turned the reports on for a number of you, and over the coming weeks, everybody will have access to Real-Time. If you can’t wait, sign up for early access here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/.” Source: (Google Analytics)

Obviously, this is great news. But having access to real-time data will be wasted if you don’t follow the practice of testing your marketing to obtain optimum results. While testing sounds like common sense on the surface, you’d be surprised how many marketers don’t bother testing at all. They operate blindly – throwing a bunch of crap against the wall to see what sticks. That’s no way to run a business and is a recipe for disaster.

So Why is Testing So Important?

Testing allows your business to operate as efficiently and profitably as it possibly can. Or, in the words of Pat Benatar, testing allows you to “hit the competition with your best shot!” Testing is crucial to your overall business success. I can’t emphasize that enough. In my opinion, you should test every aspect of your marketing to make sure you’re obtaining maximum efficiency and profitability.

Me personally, I’m a fanatical tester. I test different advertising methods. I test the color of my websites. I test font styles and sizes. When I write articles and ads, I test headlines and copy. I test forum signatures. I test various website analytics programs for accuracy. I test domain names for SEO effectiveness. I test mailing list services for efficiency. In a nutshell, I test virtually everything, as it relates to the marketing of my business.

But whatever you do, don’t just test blindly. Closely monitor and record your results, so that your findings are as accurate as possible. Google’s Website Optimizer is an excellent free, multivariate testing software that allows you to test virtually every aspect of your marketing.

Split-Test Your Marketing

For example, Google Website Optimizer gives you the ability to split-test your marketing. What’s split-testing? In a nutshell, split-testing is basically a method of testing multiple versions of your sales pages and ads in order to determine which version performs best, and is the most profitable. Testing should include fonts or font size, the size and wording of your headline, the images you use, the price of your product, paragraph text, text color, etc.

If that first definition wasn’t layman enough for you, here’s another one: Split-testing is the method of creating multiple versions of your ads to see which version converts more visitors into sales.

Always Track Your Advertising

In order to ensure that you’re not throwing your money down the drain, when it comes to your marketing campaigns, it’s important to always track your advertising. Always make sure to carefully track the results of your direct mail, pay-per-click ads, ezine ads, banner ads, etc.

Advertising is measurable by the amount of responses you get per dollar spent, and you can quickly analyze your results to determine whether or not your advertising is profitable, or if you need to make adjustments to your ads. If you’re not effectively tracking your advertising, you’re foolishly leaving money on the table. That’s what amateurs do, not professionals.

One last thing: Testing isn’t something you should do every now and then. For best results, you should develop the habit of testing your marketing constantly.

Read More »

Three Rules for Ideation Suceess

Posted by admin on September 28th, 2011
Brainstorming

Image via Wikipedia

How often do you gather your team for a day of brainstorming? Jeff Hirsch calls these freewheeling powwows “ideation sessions,” and they might just produce an idea that leads to your company’s next great feature, product or service. “You’re in the moment, sparks are flying, your brain’s going a mile a minute,” he notes at MarketingProfs. “The friendly competition from a diverse range of bright, talented colleagues stimulates original ideas that you never thought you could have.”

If you want to get the most from an ideation session, Hirsch recommends rules like these:

  • Jump right in. Lengthy preambles and presentations will kill the energetic buzz you’ve stoked with a buffet table of caffeine and carbs. “Say hello, state the target problem in one sentence, and then start with a crazy creative exercise,” he says.
  • Bring in a few ringers. Hirsch likes to recruit creative non-marketers—e.g. actors, musicians, writers and artists—who keep the conversation going during natural lulls. “They might not know ‘the business,’” he allows, “but they do understand, intuitively, how to communicate and connect with people.” The outside perspective can also challenge your company’s usual way of thinking.
  • Give concepts the benefit of the doubt. Some ideas might grow on you; some might lose their appeal in the light of day. “So if there’s even just an inkling of something you like about an idea, keep it around for a while,” he suggests.

The Po!nt: The best ideas happen when you create a conducive brainstorming environment and give them a chance to develop.

Source: MarketingProfs.

Read More »

Top Tips for Multicultural Marketing

Posted by admin on September 27th, 2011

by Darren Megarry

In this article, you’ll learn…

- Why it’s important to be culturally sensitive when marketing
- How to preserve your brand when marketing to a multicultural audience

Are your campaigns reaching the intended audiences? That’s a key question facing marketing professionals, as the combined wave of technology, communication access, and spending power continues to extend across the globe.
Those trends are putting an increasing number of international customers within reach of your products and services, and they’re also raising important implications for marketing to growing ethnic groups here in the US.

Here are some tips to keep in mind for reaching your intended audience.

1. Moving Beyond Translation: Know the Intent of Your Efforts

To be successful, marketers must embrace the nuances of their intended audience’s culture. Whether that means paying closer attention to culturally sensitive imagery, employing appropriate communications media, or incorporating popular jargon or slang, the most successful marketers demonstrate a deep understanding of—and respect for—different cultures throughout their communications initiatives.

If you translate information without adapting your message, you’re branding your appeal ineffectively.

The three largest ethnic groups in the US are Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian Americans. Though many organizations may already be reaching those markets to a limited extent, doing so is often a low priority; and the ethnic groups they do reach have had to cross the cultural barrier themselves to get the message.

Moreover, each culture in and of itself has diversity. Consider the US Hispanic population, for example:

Significant regional, socioeconomic, cultural, religious, and racial differences can exist even within one Hispanic group.

For example, a recent immigrant from Guanajuato, Mexico, may have more in common with a Salvadoran refugee than with a middle-class Mexican American.

2. Create an Effective Multicultural Marketing Campaign

An effective multicultural campaign will deliver a clear message and connect emotionally with the target audience. It will confirm your credibility.
Sometimes, however, seemingly little things can come back to haunt your efforts. Even if you’ve achieved accurate translation and done your homework on the localization side, you’ll need to watch out for certain pitfalls.

When adapting your content to the target culture, enlist the help of representatives from your target locales. They should review your content in the following areas, which typically cause confusion and lead to poor comprehension:
*Culturally inappropriate or confusing analogies, metaphors, puns, idioms, and slang
*Cultural references that are inappropriate or could lose meaning (e.g., gender-specific roles; humor; ethnic, geographical, or historical references)
*Key messages, names, and slogans
*Confusing graphics or icons
*Grammar issues (e.g., ambiguous use of direct and indirect objects, gerunds, nouns, adjectives, relative pronouns, questions in negative form)
*Active/passive voice
*Pedagogical issues

Who’s Doing It Right?

Companies that are doing multicultural marketing right include Google, HP, American Express, Philips, Skype, Ericsson, Procter & Gamble, and Cisco.

What are they doing well? For the most part, they are making sure that…
*They provide websites in multiple languages and for multiple countries, with direct access from the main page.
*Each marketing piece contains images and content specific to the country or ethnic group being targeted.
*Each piece adheres to the same look, feel, and tone as the main corporate theme, preserving the brand.

The Human Element

Though machine translation may be tempting, marketers should steer clear of it. Applications such as BabelFish for online (or print) translations won’t be able to catch potentially embarrassing mistranslations, and they certainly can’t ensure that they are translating information in a manner that preserves brand integrity.

Trained, professional native-speaking human translators do both, and they can provide valuable insight on popular jargon or slang. That said, always have copy triple-checked by another native speaker prior to releasing any campaign.

A proper focus on cultural adaptation will help you avoid having to rework campaigns—and, more important, wasting effort and losing credibility with your audience.

Read More »

Proven Attention Grabbers

Posted by admin on September 26th, 2011
An email box folder littered with spam messages.

Image via Wikipedia

by Olga Taylor

In this article, you’ll learn…
Pitfalls to avoid when soliciting new business via email
A real-life example of an ineffective email message

On any given day, between 20 and 50 pieces of unsolicited email sail past my spam blocker and into my inbox. When I worked in business development, I purged them indiscriminately. As I got involved with marketing, I skimmed through them occasionally for ideas and inspired copy.
Once I became a writer, I often edited the messages in my head—until the day a direct mailer arrived that set off all the “newbie” alarms and I had to intervene at once.
The following is my response to the emailer. Below that is the original email, with identifiable details withheld to ensure privacy.
* * *
Dear X.

I left Quartesian last year to become a full-time writer of digital marketing content, including direct email like the one I was lucky enough to receive from you.
Before that, I had spent four years in your shoes, trying to do both marketing and sales on a shoestring for a small ambitious B2B service provider. So, I hope you take this letter in the spirit in which it is written: one professional reaching out to another to share insight and offer support.
Getting Attention
Let me start with the subject line. When I get an email from a name I don’t recognize at a company I’ve never heard of with the subject line “Conference Call with Quartesian LLC,” I know right away that it’s spam. If my assistant doesn’t delete it for me, I will do so on my next break between meetings when I get a minute to glance at my BlackBerry.
A better choice would have been something like “WSJ says 40% of B2B providers will include mobile apps into their marketing budgets”—but only if it’s true. That way, the email promises to tell me something new or important, and I will be more likely to put it into a “read later” pile—or forward it to a colleague.
Making the First Impression
Let’s just say I opened your message in spite of the telltale subject line. I will delete it after I read the first sentence. Why? “I would like to get on your calendar” is the BD equivalent of “What’s your number?” Try using it as a pick-up line, and see what happens.
In a live conversation you would first introduce yourself and try to arouse my interest and build some trust. Emails are no different. Of course, stating your purpose up front is important. In your case, though, everyone knows that the purpose of “personalized” junk mail is to get a meeting.
A better use of the 30 seconds I will spend deciding whether to read the rest of your email is to show me what you know about my business that I don’t. For example: “Would you like to stay ‘top of mind’ with your best prospects while making their day a little better? That’s just what Mxx’s clients in the insurance, restaurant, airline, and many other industries are doing—with the help of our customized turnkey mobile app solutions.”
Captivating Your Audience
Does spam really work? Survey says yes, but only when it correctly addresses the needs of a specific buyer segment. But even if I laugh off your first sentence and keep reading, I will delete your message after I read the first paragraph.
Why? Because my clients are businesses. Though they are a hit with consumer brands, mobile apps are still a novelty in the B2B world.
By glossing over that important distinction, you make it clear that you don’t understand my business and will waste my time. A better approach would have been to create a separate version of the letter for the B2B segment (even better if you can make it industry specific)—showing the value of your solution to my business, or at least citing relevant market data.
Using Common Sense
Are white supremacist groups your core market? Or did you really expect to score points with corporate America by saying, “Our developers are best-of-breed, based in Nuremberg, Germany. We don’t outsource to India or other third-world countries—and never will”?
I am sure you know that most “respected” companies in your target group do outsource to the “third world,” as does my old employer, Quartesian. Besides, how do you know that I myself am not from there?
Making a Compelling Time-Bound Offer
$5,000 for a purebred German piece of code sounds outrageous. Even if you can afford to do it that cheaply, first year online MBA courses say you are not obligated to sell at cost.
The throw-away pricing reeks of desperation and casts a doubt over the existence of “the most respected” clients you alluded to earlier. Now I don’t think you have any clients at all.
You tell me that the price goes up next week. I don’t believe that either. I think Mxx is made up of amateurs who have no idea how to price, market, or sell a product. And at this point, I am not even sure that you have a product to sell.
Since Mxx already includes “a detailed list of competitive or similar apps on the market” with every job, why not use it as an introductory offer instead? There is a natural urgency to staying abreast of the competition. And what better way to showcase your expertise and the value of your product?
Ending on a Personal Note
So, after you’ve spammed my mailbox, obnoxiously requested to “get on my calendar,” ignored my real needs, insulted my company, and made a ridiculous offer followed up by an equally ridiculous sales push, you are ready to show me the fun and caring side of yourself with “I hope you are able to spend some quality time with your friends and family this past Easter weekend. I’ll be in London for the royal wedding, but available all next week.”
I too hope you spend some quality time this weekend. Then come back to work and write a sales letter that has a fighting chance.
While you are at it, think of other ways to spread the word about Mxx. Wouldn’t it be nice if those most interested in your product were able to find and contact you themselves—through strategically placed content?
If you need help wording your message or telling your story, you can get on my calendar anytime. The price will be the same next week. And I promise I won’t outsource your writing project to India.
Wishing you success,
Olga Taylor
* * *
April 28, 2011
Subject: Conference call with Quartesian LLC
Dear Olga:
I would like to get on your calendar to speak with you about mobile app development. We develop apps on the iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Symbian, Android, and Windows Portable Media platforms. Our speciality is developing apps that are multi-platform for the same cost others charge for a single device. We offer a turn-key solution. Simply tell us your goals, give us a list of the apps you like the most, those you like the least, describe the basic functionality you require, and we will take it from there.
Our process is truly unique. We write the technical specification documents for you. We provide a detailed list of competitive or similar apps on the market today. We design the interface for the app, provide a working prototype, detailed wireframes and documention PRIOR to writing the first line of code. Our creative team ensures the look and feel of your app matches your brand. We can create apps for less than half the cost of other developers because we leverage existing code for basic functionality. Our developers are best-of-breed, based in Nuremberg Germany. We don’t outsource to India or other third world countries—and never will.
Our development efforts are used by many of the most respected banks, insurance companies, airlines, casinos, cruiseliners, restaurants, retailers, rental car companies, law firms, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, telephone and utility companies. Our introductory program is limited to one per company and this provides all of the aforementioned functions for only $5,000 until May 1st. ($10k thereafter)
I’ve asked my executive assistant S. H. to call your office to arrange a time for us to speak. I’ll provide a web-ex style presentation that will focus on how we can best meet your mobile needs. I only need to know a) desired devices, b) overview of functionality, c) your favorite app with similar functionality d) name of project, e) min and max budget and f) timeline for delivery of product. I hope you are able to spend some quality time with your friends and family this past Easter weekend. I’ll be in London for the royal wedding, but available all next week.

Sincerely,

X. Y.

Executive Vice President Business Development, Mxx, Inc.

Read More »
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites More

  • Featured Video

RSS FeedSubscribe
Follow UsFollow Us