The amount of businesses and websites that I come across that do not have a strategy to capture the visitors email address is staggering.

It’s one of the most fundamental and essential things that YOU SIMPLY MUST HAVE.

Why?

Well, without it approx 95%+ of your visitors will most likely never return to your website and you need to build an ongoing relationship with your prospects in order to sell to them over time.

Back in 2002 when I started out on the internet I started to build an email list for my business coaching business. At the end of year one I had around 980 people on the list.

I had continued to provide lots of valuable information to them over the course of the year and had great feedback. I did not send them one sales letter or invitation to purchase a product all year so I decided to try it out!

I ran a seminar in London called “Make 2003 your best year yet”

It was all about setting goals, making action plans etc

So I sent out an email and at that time I knew nothing about effective sales copy either so it was a “Hey, I’m running this seminar in December etc” type of email.

I got 30 orders paying me £200 each!

£6,000 for just one email.

That proved to me that the value is not in the list. It’s with the relationship that you have with your list.

If you build up a relationship with your list you don’t need to be an ace crack pot copywriter although it does help!

So, start to build your email list right now!

And then set about to build a valuable relationship with your list. Don’t make it a pitch fest all of the time.

Instead, give give and give some more and you will be rewarded down the line.

Happy email list building!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Internet Marketing Consultant – Motivational Speaker - Internet Marketing Courses

It’s the World Cup, England are playing Algeria tonight and the time is right for World Cup Marketing offers and slants on what you do.

Here’s an innovative, relative and unique piece of marketing that just dropped into my inbox.

It’s an email from a recruitment firm:

“Dear Sean

Let the England Team pay your invoices today!!

Place your permanent vacancies today (18.6.10) and however many goals England score tonight (England v Algeria) we will deduct £100.00 from your fees!

1 goal – deduct £100.00
2 goals – deduct £200.00
And so on…..

If you want to place temp bookings – we will knock £0.10p per hour per goal off the hourly charge rate for the duration of your booking!

Place your vacancies by calling David Stew or Dawn Lawson on 02476 230800 or email

david.stew@irweb.co.uk  or dawn.lawson@irweb.co.uk 

With the exception of the above deductions usual terms of business for fee structure and rebate period will apply.

Interaction Recruitment – supporting you and the England team!!

Regards
Dawn Lawson
Branch Manager”

I’ve left Dawn’s email address and contact details on there because I want to promote this to you guys too.

Well done Dawn, a very effective piece of marketing.

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

I’m often asked to work with small businesses to help with their marketing.

The thing is, marketing need not be expensive as long as you know what you’re doing and for the small business I recommend that you try out different marketing mixes and test, test, test until you nail a marketing approach that works best for your business.

No matter what any “marketing guru” may say, no one really knows how effective a marketing campaign will be until you’ve tried.

The first thing you need to do is work out what budget you want to play with. And it is to play with.

You need to go into this with the mindset that you’re going to use this money to see what works and what doesn’t. You’ll then modify, refine and test some more until you nail it.

So many small businesses start with a budget, they implement some ideas and then because they do not get an immediate return they just bin what they were doing when all it took was just a couple of changes and bingo! A winning formula.

So your mindset is really important when going into this.

So you’ve got a budget. Now you need to work out what to spend it on.

If I were you I would really get to grips and understand everything there is to know about your prospects and clients first. Who are they? How do they make ther buying decisions? Where do they “hang out” on the internet or otherwise?

Armed with this you will be better informed as to where to advertise, what campaigns to run and how to split your marketing spend. 

Then select some marketing approaches and do everything that you can to measure the response that you get. Direct marketing works best for small businesses rather than just brand awareness so bear that in mind when conducting pay per click campaigns, direct mail and when running adverts.

Then it’s a case of testing, measuring and tweaking. There’s lots of advice on this site but my biggest piece of advice is to just do something! And then modify what you’re doing as you go.

Happy marketing

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Motivational Speaker - Internet Marketing Consultant

Just how do you put an internet marketing plan in place?

Now many business owners just implement a set of tactics in a very haphazard way with no planning or well thought through outcomes.

These same business owners then give up as soon as the results do not go their way! 

Instead, what you need to have in place is a solid internet marketing plan.

Here are 8 factors you need to take into consideration as you complete your internet marketing plan:

1. Set Your Objectives

What do you want your website to achieve? To sell your products? To create leads? For positioning? To educate your visitors?

2. How Are You Going To Make Money?

What’s your business model? Do you have a funnel in place that offers low end products first and then over time you sell more expensive products to them? Do you know EXACTLY how you are going to make money?

3. Marketing Budget

 How much do you want to spend up-front and then each month on advertising, content product etc

Many business owners go into this blind. Instead, work out how much you’ve got to play with and then cut your cloth accordingly.

4. Target Market:

Get to understand your target market very closely. What their pains and desires are. You need to know everything about them.

5. The Competition:

Who are they? What do they do? What are they better than you at? What are you better than them at? How do they market themselves online? What’s their online profile like? What’s their business model? Keep you friends close and your enemies even closer!

6. USP’s:

 Be very clear on what your Unique Selling Propositions are. Sometimes you think they are unique when they are not!

7. Assess Your Current Website:

Does your website match up with points 1 to 6 above? Conduct a thorough audit.

8. Traffic Generation:

Based upon your available budget, what internet marketing methods are you going to use to drive traffic to your website? There are countless ways to do this: SEO, pay-per-click, banners, text ads, ezine adverts, link swaps, social media, joint ventures, articles, content generation, posting blog comments on others sites – the list is endless! Work out which ones you’re going to use and then test them.

There are other factors but this is a good start!

Happy marketing

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Internet Marketing Consultant - Motivational Speaker