Philadelphia's Liberty Bell

This week I find myself a long way from home. I am in Philadelphia at my corporate sales forum where I am learning new ways to help my customers.

This forum has me thinking a lot about self education. You may already be an expert in your business and you most likely have undergone extensive training and education to achieve your current level of knowledge and experience. But what are you doing to continue to self educate yourself in your field?

In business, it is often your responsibility to educate yourself and stay up to date on industry trends. This can seem like a daunting task when you consider the million and one things you need to get done in your eight hour work day, but it is essential to your success. Many industries are evolving at lightning speed and if you don’t stay current you will lag behind. You must continue to educate yourself, and if you’re not I would bet that your competition is. Ignorance may be bliss, but overlooking opportunities can cause blissful ignorance.

There are many options self educating yourself, and many can be automated in such a way to save you time and get you to the resources you need faster.

Training

Participate in training opportunities that are available. These might be offered by your company, like my training this week in Philadelphia. Some may be offered by your vendors and others may be offered by local trade organizations in your area. Many of these events may be free while others may require a financial investment, and all will require an investment of your time. Please view these training opportunities as an investment in your success.

Learn more and grow more.

Trade Magazines

Do you read the trade magazines of your industry? Why not? These magazines are compiled by experts in your industry that understand your unique needs. This is also a great way to keep up on industry trends such as buying habits, equipment, or new products. Subscribe to the magazine so it shows up in your mailbox each month/quarter and read it. If you think that you don’t have time to read a trade magazine think again. Keep them on hand to read during lunch, coffee breaks, commutes, and anytime you have a few minutes of down time.

Target Marketing Trade Magazine

Books

What books are you reading or what books have you read lately? Hopefully you can answer with a title, if not head to Amazon right now. Books are such a great source of information and you can make time to read them. You don’t need to complete a whole book in a week and cram information. Keep it leisurely and make it enjoyable. Turn off the TV. or computer a little earlier and commit to read a little every night. Whether its five pages or one chapter a night, you will pick up great tips and strategies you can implement immediately.

My current book choice, Wikinomics

Business Journals

Most cities have a local business journal that functions as the premier business news source in your area. Read this cover to cover, it is filled with invaluable information. It will allow you to understand business trends in your area, read interviews with potential prospects, view lists about every different kind of industry, learn about new business openings, find people who have been recently promoted or hired, and learn more about training and networking opportunities. I cannot stress enough how useful your business journal can be, if you are not a subscriber go subscribe now!

The Tampa Bay Business Journal

Blogs or News Sites

Visit blogs and websites that are writing about your industry or clients’ industry. These are your fastest opportunities to obtain information because they are updated all the time and typically consist of short, condensed information.

While searching for the content you want, it is easy to get sucked into the web and waste time looking at irrelevant websites. You know the drill; you start out with a specific Google search and end up watching silly videos on YouTube and your whole morning has been wasted. To avoid this, utilize Google Reader which allows you to subscribe to blogs and log on to one space to see what your subscriptions are doing on a given day. You can also take advantage of the Custom Sections area of Google News that allows you to select the type of news that you see on your Google News page. For example, you can choose a section such as social media where you can view only social media news and cut out the clutter.

Subscribe to your favorite sites

Webinars and podcasts

These are useful tools that may be offered by your vendors, your business journal, or even your favorite author. Keep your eyes and ears open for these useful opportunities and take advantage. Many are live, but there are some that are prerecorded that you can watch after working hours.

Take advantage of webinars and podcasts

Social Media

Use social media as a way to view information, articles, or news that might be relevant to you. This is another opportunity for you to read short articles and access them instantly. Social media also has the ability to suck you in and waste a lot of time. A good strategy to avoid this is to create lists on Facebook and Twitter so you can view the useful information faster and avoid the clutter.

Also explore joining groups within Facebook and LinkedIn where you can interact with other people in your industry and collaborate.

Streamline your social media

These are just a few suggestions of ways to keep yourself up to date on what’s going on in your industry. Self education should not be optional for you, it should be required. Essentially I am arguing that you should try to do one of these things everyday so you are constantly learning a little bit of information regularly. If you have any suggestions other than what I mentioned please share with us!

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Technology has changed to allow for more efficient and cost effective color printing. Although offset is still widely used, digital color printing is becoming more popular for its cost effectiveness and rich color reproduction.

During our twenty years in the printing business we have seen it all, and we often get questions about color reproduction. A few issues that often come up:

• Why doesn’t the printed piece look exactly like it does on my screen?
• Why doesn’t the printed color look like the color on my website?
• Why does the printed material look different than the last time I printed it?

Most of these questions can be answered with a quick explanation of RGB vs. CMYK

RGB

RGB stands for Red, Green, and Blue. RGB configures the color on computer monitors and television screens. Think back to grade school when you would mix your primary colors to make a new color, like red and blue make purple. RGB mixes these three colors to make up all that you see on your screen. Sometimes a color will appear on your screen differently than it prints because print is done in CMYK.

CMYK

CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. CMYK works just like RGB in that it uses a mixture of those four colors to produce what we print. These four colors, when printed correctly, form all of the colors that the human eye can see. All full color printing, from daily newspapers to full color brochures, is done by printing only the four CYMK colors. Because these colors differ from RGB the printed image can be slightly different than what you see on your screen.

RGB vs. CMYK

Color Separations

CMYK is used for both digital and offset printing. When printing offset, however, you need to be sure you can take the CMYK one step further by allowing for color separations. Color separations allow for an image to be separated into the four color “pieces” that make up the individual CYMK colors like in the train example below.  The Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black are not simply the same image in different colors but instead they are actually separated into a series of “dots”. Each color is individually worthless and omitting one will obscure the image. You need all four to duplicate the original correctly. They must also be printed precisely to capture the shades of color (think grey vs. black). If any are printed slightly off, or out of registration, color variations will occur.

Example of Color Separations

Hexadecimal color

Hexadecimal color is not used for print, but often we have clients who want to print and match a color that is used on their website. Hexadecimal color is the color code used for HTML websites. It is typically a series of numbers such as 2E0854 for indigo. This color code is used strictly for websites. It is then displayed on the screen through RGB and would have to be converted into CYMK to print.

As a designer, it is important that you know the differences between RGB and CMYK. When you place an image or photo in your project, that photo must be in a CMYK format (not RGB), and your project must be saved in a software format that allows for CMYK color separation for offset printing.

Other Factors

We may know the exact combination of colors needed to print your job, but a few other factors can affect your end result.

• All computer screen displays need to be calibrated. What we see on our screen may be different from what our customer sees on their screen depending on whether or not the screens have been calibrated.
• Additionally, digital copiers also need to be calibrated regularly to ensure the highest possible color match.
• If a digital copier is running low on toner the color might not exactly match the same job if it was printed with a brand new toner cartridge.
• When mixing custom color for an offset press, human error can be a factor.
• Beware of color traps such as plain black and rich black. Black only looks one color on your RGB monitor but can print differently depending on if your art is designed with plain black or rich black.
• Every machine is different. If you printed brochures with one printer then changed to another printer, the same art work may look a little different. We experienced this when we upgraded to a new digital copier, the color was slightly off and adjustments needed to be made.

As you can tell color matching can be challenging. Knowing the differences between the RGB, CMYK, and Color Separations can alleviate a lot of the difficulty involved with designing art for print. However, these examples should be an indication that an absolute exact color match is vulnerable to many factors. Although we can get it very close, color is never an exact science and variations will occur.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Would you like fries with that?

A paper vendor of mine came in for his weekly sales call yesterday. He usually comes in to just make some face time in hopes that when we need to order paper, we call him and not his competition. He usually comes in and visits with everyone, tells a few jokes, and heads on his way.

Yesterday, he told me that his company was really pushing the sales representatives to sell more office supplies. Office supplies? I didn’t even know that my paper vendor also could sell me office supplies. Apparently my vendor has mentioned this to us before, and it never really clicked.

Chances are that your customers and prospects are also oblivious to some of the products or services that you provide; similar to my surprise that my vendor also sold office supplies. Selling more is the goal of every business, but selling more to your current clients can be easier than you think–it will just take a little work. Constantly and consistently marketing to your current customers is key to cross selling and upselling products or services.

The Marketing Fix

Whether suggesting complementary products and services or offering an add-on to one your customer has recently purchased, cross-sell and upsell strategies require understanding your customer’s buying habits and needs. You can analyze the customer data that you probably already have to target the needs of your current customers.

Using this data can help you to create more timely marketing. For instance, you may know customers who purchase a lot of sale items whom you can target and market to when you have a sale event. You can also identify the types of things that they buy. In a retail situation for example, if you know of customers who purchase a lot of children’s wear, you may market to them during the back to school season.

You can also use data to help remind your customers that they need your service. Car dealerships do this all the time as many monitor when their customers are due for a service and they email them or send a reminder postcard. Perhaps you know that a particular client always uses your service at specific times of year. Be proactive and reach out to them ahead of time and remind them of how much they love your service. An example of this could be a catering company that has a list of clients who typically utilize them for holiday parties. They could be proactive and reach out to them so they don’t risk losing them to a competitor.

The Tools

The tools you need to effectively cross-sell and upsell to your clients will vary depending on the product or service you are trying to sell, the amount of data you have available on your clients,  and the marketing channel you wish to use.

Some marketing channels to consider:

• Signage-Signs, posters, and banners can communicate your message at a point of sale or at an event. It can suggest a new product in a very big way. The only draw back to signsis that  your customers present to see the sign.
• Direct Mail-Direct mail remains a very influential marketing channel. Boost up your direct mail by using your customer data to create personalized one-to-one marketing efforts.
• Email Marketing-Emails are a fast and inexpensive way to suggest products and specials to your customers. Make sure that your customer data includes email addresses and entice customers to join your mailing list.
• Social Media-Social Media is a great tool to use when promoting a product or service. However, these forums are “social” so do not use blatant advertising. Instead, use statistics and case studies to support you service.

By implementing effective cross-sell and upsell campaigns, you can sell more to your existing customer base. As a result, not only will you sell more, but you’ll also be increasing brand loyalty and market share at the same time

PIP Tip: In order for your customers to care about the product or service you are pitching them you must demonstrate value. Why do they need this? What’s in it for them? How will this help them? What problem or issue will this eradicate?

What an example of a cross-sell/upsell campaign? View our Case Study.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Here at PIP Printing and Marketing Services, we use Constant Contact for our own email marketing and we also use the service to send emails on the behalf of our clients. Today I wanted to share with you how to take your email marketing one step further by sharing your email content on social media platforms, another channel you can add to your integrated marketing efforts. Although linking your email blasts to social networking sites may seem trivial, it is in fact crucial because today’s consumers are growing more accustomed to being reached through multiple platforms–and social media is a very powerful marketing tool today.

As you may already know, Constant Contact gives you the opportunity to add links to your Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube channel so that receivers can click through from your email and find you or your business on these social networking sites.

Constant Contact Social Media Links

Constant Contact also gives you the option of adding share buttons at the top of the emails that you send out so that receivers can share your email content on their social media sites.

Email Share Buttons

You should also be using those share buttons to share your email content on your own social media sites! Hopefully, you are already including your own email address in the recipient list when you send out an email blast (if not, you should be). When your Constant Contact email shows up in your own inbox, simply select your desired social media platform from the share buttons mentioned above and share it.

Your social media friends will see a unique URL that Constant Contact has generated specifically for you.

When clicked on, this link will reveal your email content in a tab on your internet browser—like a mini website that is branded just like your email blast!

Unique URL Sample

This is such a simple thing that you can do to add more channels to your integrated marketing efforts. Think about the impact this reiteration can have on your end receiver. Imagine that you send out a postcard mailing that is followed by an email blast branded like the mailer and is also supported on social media sites. That means three opportunities to “touch” your customer and reinforce your message and offer.

Original Postcard Front

Original Postcard Inside

It also means that if by chance your recipient threw away your postcard (it happens) or deleted your email (we all do it), you still have an opportunity to reach them on social media networks. Plus, sharing on social media means that other friends and prospects that are not on your email list will have an opportunity to see your content and share with their networks. It’s a win-win situation!

Psst…sharing this link on your social media sites is free if you are using Constant Contact!

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Check out this video case study that demonstrates how integrated marketing can be used for anything. In this case, integrated marketing was used to generate traffic to a child’s birthday party!

Do you have any creative ideas about how to use integrated direct marketing efforts? If so, please share!

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Does your Customer Retention Strategy feel like this?

Getting new customers is the focus of all businesses. But did you know that it could cost up to seven times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing customer? That’s right, seven times more in cost! That’s why I think it’s about time that you consider developing a Customer Retention Strategy (CRS).

For many businesses, it takes a lot of time, money, and effort to gain new customers. Once you get these new customers, it is important to your bottom line that you keep these customers and nurture their lifetime value. Most customers buy from companies and people that they know, like, and trust. A good CRS is intended to build customer loyalty, increase brand awareness, and increase sales.

WEWE

To gain more value from your customers ask yourself and your client the WEWE question—Who Else and What Else. Who else at that company could benefit from your product or service? Who else could your contact refer you to within or outside of the company? What else could they buy from you that they are not already buying?

I suggest writing a list of your top ten clients and identify who within the company purchases from you and exactly what products or services they utilize you for. Then, look between the lines for an opportunity to sell more to your current accounts.

Marketing to Current Customers

Marketing is obviously important for business growth, but don’t get so wrapped up in marketing to prospects that you forget to reach out to your loyal client base. These customers and companies already enjoy doing business with you, so they are easy to market to and typically receptive to receiving materials from your company.

Your CRS should focus on the specific needs of your current customers. You no longer need to “sell” them on doing business with you, so it won’t do any good to include them on the same mailer that you send to prospective clients. Your current customers have different needs from you, and your marketing should reflect that and approach them differently. Some suggestions for ideas:

• Reward or incentivize a testimonial.
• Reward or incentivize a referral.
• Send a thank you note for a recent purchase.
• Reach out to customers you haven’t heard from in a while.
• Continue to build brand awareness.
• Notify them of a new service or special.
• Alert them to products and services they might be unfamiliar with that might compliment what they are already purchasing from you.

Cutting Costs

In today’s uncertain economy, many companies have cut budgets, including their marketing expenditures. Some companies have even replaced their traditional marketing efforts with cheaper marketing activities such as email and social media marketing. Although I grant that these may be “sexier” marketing activities, I still maintain that they by no means are a replacement for the tried and true methods such as direct mail, promotional products, etc. I would be leery of cutting costs and replacing typical marketing efforts with social media and email. Social media and email are great marketing opportunities, but they need to be implemented with, not instead of, traditional marketing efforts.

Many companies are also seeing a decrease in response rates to their marketing efforts. It is easy to look at cutting costs by reducing your CRS. Don’t make that mistake. It’s a well-known statistic that 80% of sales come from 20% of your customers and you need to keep engaging them. Instead of hacking away at your marketing strategy at the first sign of a diminishing ROI, consider doing some A/B testing to get a better idea of what is working and move forward from there.

Beware of your competition

Multichannel marketing has increased customer expectations about the communications that they receive. Because communication has become faster, convenient, and mobile, they expect that you can and will reach out to them. If you are not communicating with your current customer, then you can bet your competition is. Your best customer is your competition’s best prospect, and most likely your competition is marketing to them. Don’t lose your client to your competition but remember—the squeaky wheel often gets the oil.

Do you or your company have a CRS? Is it a different strategy than what you use to generate new leads?

Want to see a successful CRS? View our Case Study.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Industry giant announces a $40 million re-branding campaign.

Ad Age has reported that Barnes and Noble has hired a new creative agency to oversee an upcoming re-branding campaign. Barnes and Noble is intending to spend over $40 million dollars in marketing and re-branding strategies for the company. Interestingly, this news comes just weeks after competitive bookstore chain Borders files Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

With their largest competitor going under, and their industry changing rapidly, it is a crucial time for Barnes and Noble to reconsider their value proposition. Anyone familiar with the book industry should agree that it is being turned upside down as more and more consumers are turning to digital books rather than traditional paper backs and hard covers. Analysts are stressing that Barnes and Noble needs to focus on marketing their e-book reader to remain competitive with Amazon and Apple, something Borders was not able to do. The company seems to agree, as it is reported that the bulk of the $40 million dollar budget will be devoted to marketing for the Nook.

The news of Barnes and Noble’s attempt to update their brand identity is a classic example of re-branding. The company is recognizing that they need to stay competitive in an evolving industry and is taking proactive measures to communicate their differentials with their customers.

What is branding?

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. The legal term for brand is trademark. A brand may identify one item, a family of items, or all items of that seller.”

Branding also incorporates brand image, the perception of a brand by the consumer, and brand identity, how a company wants their brand to be perceived. Good branding will bridge the gap between brand image and brand identity. Re-branding is an attempt for companies to alter their brand, brand image, and brand identity.

How does your branding stack up?

In order to establish a brand, companies market their brand and value statements to their clients and potential customers with marketing and advertising efforts through logos, imagery, taglines, websites, commercials, sales collateral, etc.

However, branding goes far deeper than just a cool logo. Branding also includes value propositions and communication. You can’t just slap another logo on the company and call it re-branding. Branding means thinking about your company differently, conducting your business differently, and then conveying these differentials to your clients and prospects.

When is re-branding necessary?

Re-branding is an opportunity to have your company perceived in a new and fresh way. Although it isn’t something that companies should do regularly, there comes a time in every business when it is necessary to change your clients’ perception. Before you dive into a re-branding project it is important to think about why you are re-branding. Consider client feedback to understand your current brand image. Think about what you want your new brand to look like, feel like, or act like.

You may want to consider re-branding if:

• Your industry is changing and you need your clients to see you in a new light.
• Your products or services change.
• Management changes.
• Your current brand has a negative brand image.
• Your customers or target audience has changed.
• Your company has outgrown its original brand identity and value proposition. The old branding may be too narrow and it may be time to expand.
• If your brand needs a facelift.

Re-branding can be a daunting task as you consider all of the elements that need to be updated. However, it is a great way to get your business off on a new start with a fresh perspective. It will be a challenge, but it is an opportunity to get your clients and prospects to see you in a new light.

What a real life example of successful re-branding? View our Case Study.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Are you targeting a specific audience in your marketing campaigns?

An interesting postcard showed up in my mailbox this week from a gym in my area. The headline and photos on the postcard advertised the gym’s child care facility where members can drop off their kids while they workout. Sounds like a great amenity that many people would want to take advantage of! There is just one problem- I don’t have any children. This postcard has no relevance to me as the receiver, so my first instinct is to throw the postcard in the trash.

With the exception of the kid friendly focus, the gym actually had a really great marketing piece. The postcard had wonderful graphic design and was aesthetically pleasing, it had a unique offer to use a temporary pass to visit the gym with no membership obligation, and it had a call to action that I needed to call a toll-free number to obtain my complimentary visitors pass.

The problem with this mailer is that it did not reach its intended target audience of a gym seeker with children. After further examination, I also noticed that the postcard was addressed to “current resident” which tells me that this gym has no clue who I am and is probably mailing to every address in my area.

The underlying issue is that this gym did not do their research. Without good data, and a good list, your great offer/messaging/design will fall on deaf ears. Even a really bad marketing piece sent to the right target market can earn results, but a great marketing piece sent to the wrong target market will earn no results.

Identify Your Target Audience

Identifying your target market is easy. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Who buys from you?
• What do they buy?
• When do they buy?
• Where are they located?
• What are their buying habits?
• What are your customer demographics? Consider age, gender, lifestyle, family, residency, income level, etc.

Cookie Cutter Marketing Doesn’t Work

Don’t try to generalize you marketing to fit all of these demographics or assume that one type of marketing strategy will work for everyone (like the gym postcard). You need to market to all of these audiences differently as every audience has different needs and preferences.

Bianca Te Rito, contributing author for She Takes on the World, said it best when she blogged that, “It is a big mistake in online personal branding (or any branding for that matter) to try to be all things to all people.  If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one”.

I agree with Te Rito that we cannot try to approach all audiences in the same. My experience confirms that many people try to create cookie cutter marketing strategies that can apply to everyone, but this just simply will not work.

Instead of sending everyone in the area a postcard advertising their child care services, this gym could have greatly benefited from three distinct mini campaigns.

One could have targeted parents of young children with the messaging and imagery that was in the original postcard.

Another could target young adults with photos of young, good looking, fit individuals and the gym’s state of the art equipment.

Another could have targeted active seniors by showing images of the diverse ages present at the gym and perhaps advertise senior friendly group fitness classes.

Cost

The first reaction I get when I suggest three mini campaigns to my clients is that it must be more expensive to do three mini campaigns than one campaign, but this is not necessarily true. It costs just as much to mail 3,000 of the child care post cards as it would to mail 1,000 child care, 1,000 young adult, and 1,000 senior target postcards. If you have customer data on file, and you probably do, than you might not need to buy multiple mailing lists. If the only design variations in your postcards are images and a headlines then the graphic design charges for three postcards will not be that much more than the one.

Target audience and good data are key a successful marketing campaign. Don’t just spray and pray for success. Having a clear marketing strategy target towards a specific audience will increase response rates exponentially.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

–So you have an amazing website-what do you want your visitors to do once they get there?

Are you funneling your website traffic into valuable sales leads?

Should your visitors know exactly what to do when they get to your site? In a perfect world yes, but they will be depending on your clues and navigation to guide them there.

Driving general traffic to your company website is great for brand awareness and conveying information. In his ebook, Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Building a Web Site that Works, marketing guru Seth Godin states that the goal of a website goes further than brand awareness and its main purpose is to “turn a stranger into a friend, and a friend into a customer.” The trick is to figure out how to convert those visitors into sales leads. Not everyone will purchase your product online or pick up the phone and solicit your service, so you need to find an effective way to capture information from visitors for future marketing efforts.

Capturing information usually starts with obtaining the visitor’s email address to add to your email marketing campaign. Email addresses are typically the easiest information to get because it results in the least intrusive marketing efforts. However, in some instances it might be necessary for you to obtain a mailing address or phone number-but you might have to work a little harder to get it.

To get your visitors to turn over their valuable contact information you need to optimize your website to capture this information.

Use a call to action

Tell the visitor what you want them to do. Prompt their participation by letting them know what types of interaction you offer. Subscribe to us, share this, get our e-newsletter, etc.

Be sure the call to action is easy to find

Most sites feature their subscribe buttons and share buttons at the top right corner of the website. Internet surfers are accustom to finding this type of content here so make it easy for them to find by featuring your call to action in this area.

Screen shot from PIPtampa.com

I would also suggest that you duplicate this on every page so that if the viewer navigates away from the home page, and we hope they do, they can still find the call to action no matter what page they are on. We utilize this technique on our own corporate site to encourage visitors to subscribe, follow us, request a quote, and more. Check it out at www.piptampa.com.

Encourage sharing

Make your website visitors your extended marketing arm by making it easy for them to share, like, or tweet you webpage. Rather than going through the hassle of copying and pasting the link into their newsfeed, they can participate with a few simple clicks. Making these sharing tools readily available also encourages visitors to share when they might not have considered it on their own without your suggestion. This technique may not provide you with an email address but you can track these social media interactions in order to locate leads for social media marketing. See how Business Networking Life utilizes a social media sharing contest to incentivize sharing and capture leads.

Social media share buttons.

Add value

Be creative with your offer. Everyone these days seems to be offering an e-newsletter, so think outside the box. Offer a creative or valuable incentive for people to surrender their precious contact information. Notice that Busniss Networking Life offers a weekly email update for networking events rather than asking viewers to join an email list.

Subscribe box from BusinessNetworkingLife.com

Consider required vs. optional fields

The attention span of a website visitor is short to say the least. The best way to capture the necessary information you need with an opportunity to gather more information is to utilize opt-ins that offer required and optional fields. This way you get the information that you need such as email address and name, but give the options for visitors to provide more. Make sure you only require a limited amount of information to satisfy visitors who don’t want to offer as much.

Example of an opt-in box with optional and required fields.

Utilizing required and optional opt-ins also gives you the ability to use check boxes to request even more detailed information that the visitor might be interested in. In this case, what region the visitor is from. This gives you the ability to segment your data and get even more specific lists.

These are just a few general practice tips that will hopefully encourage your visitors to opt-in and share their contact information. I would suggest that you test one or more of these options on your own website and compare your opt-in conversions to your website’s analytics to measure your conversion rates.

You are certainly not limited to these suggestions as many sites utilize creative tactics to capture visitor information. Does your website have a different conversion tool that I haven’t listed here? Or have you visited a website recently that did a good job of encouraging you to supply your contact information? Please let us know!

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com

Add marketing mantras to your daily business routine.

Every business has a set of strategies that they follow in order to be successful. There are standards in place in order to be sure that you meet all of your quotas, goals, standards, expectations, etc.

Do you apply these same strategies to your marketing efforts? If not, you definitely should.

Marketing is a key part of your business’s success. You need to market your business in order to create brand awareness, cross-sell/upsell, retain customers, reactivate dormant customers, generate new leads, and measure business performance. It is important that you address your marketing needs when addressing your business objectives. To help you get started I have provided a few of my own personal marketing mantras:

• I will create and update a calendar to specifically manage my marketing objectives.

• I will be in constant (meaningful) contact with my customers (more on this subject can be found here).

• I will utilize integrated marketing systems to market my business (more on this subject can be found here).

• I will update my website regularly with fresh content.

• I will use opt-ins and subscriptions to build my list online.

• I will have a gratitude strategy in place for customers who purchase.

• I will actively seek out new sales leads.

• I will keep my mailing list up to date and reach out to them regularly.

• I will participate in at least one networking event each month.

• I will analyze my marketing performance and measure my response rates (more on this subject can be found here).

• I will follow up on sales leads.

• I will utilize social media marketing.

• I will post to social media sites at least once a day with meaningful content.

• I will utilize free local search engine marketing.

• I will ask for customer testimonials.

• I will ask for referrals or run a referral campaign.

• I will utilize incentives to increase participation from my audience on offers that I make (more on this subject can be found here).

• I will respond to all interactions from my audience (social media, voice mails, emails, etc).

• I will be open minded to new marketing techniques.

Many of these mantras are very involved processes requiring different mediums, applications, and strategies. All of these mantras can be satisfied with aggressive marketing via print, internet, and social media-and all of them can be integrated to create a super marketing force to help you grow your business.

These are a few of my personal favorites that I try to abide by regularly, but you don’t need to limit yourself to these. Any action that you take to create brand awareness, cross-sell/upsell, retain customers, reactivate dormant customers, generate new leads, or measure business performance is considered marketing your business. If you are already fulfilling some of these mantras then bravo! If you are not, I would consider trying a new marketing avenue that you haven’t explored before.

What are your marketing mantras? Do you have any that I haven’t listed above? Please share.

Amanda Moore

www.piptampa.com