Day 8 – Marketing Arsenal

Staying On Their Mind

The marketing scope we have today is not the same as what was available ten years ago, one year ago and in some cases even ten minutes ago!

Marketing has been revolutionized by the incorporation of the internet into our common marketing tools.   If you make yourself familiar with electronic marketing and don’t resign yourself to being stuck in the dark ages you are going to find that there are new markets and broader horizons full of potential available to you that you did not know existed.

With electronic marketing you can take your local business and give it regional, national and global exposure all at the same time.

In order to attain and also effective utilize this tool we have to know what electronic marketing is and why it is so essential to our marketing arsenal.

Electronic Marketing is the marketing or promotion of your products or materials by electronic means using a computer and the internet.

With the rise in technology changing the face of our lives it is inconceivable to think that technology will not change the way we do business.   In truth, the likelihood of most of our marketing and promotions moving to an electronic format is increasing and a paradigm shift is occurring as the push continues to evaluate the causal and effectual relationship between man and electronics.

As computers and technology become more advanced and less expensive to make and more people adapt to an electronic way of life, electronic marketing via the internet is going to be essential to business success as it reduces production and printing costs.    Aren’t you glad that you are working now to ensure that you are “light years” ahead of the competition?

How Electronic Marketing Works

At this point most people begin to get intimidated because in the place of English words that are known and familiar are new words that are made up of only letters that represent complex terms and functions in technology.

It is easy to see and understand how the plethora of data and information can be overwhelming – after all our brains although are highly advanced cannot process information at the level and rate of a computer!

Electronic Marketing works by utilizing the internet, which is the vast configuration of larger networks of computers connected to each other creating a “web” that links smaller computers to other smaller computers electronically.

In simplest terms, electronic marketing works because your computer is linked to my computer and they talk to each other.   What a door-to-door salesman was in 20th century, computers and the internet are in the 21st century.

In order for computers to share information there are many working details that help broadcast the presence of a business in the World Wide Web (the global internet) and they are:

1.  Websites,

2.  PPC Lead Generation Software and Services,

3.  Major Search Engine Exposure such as Google Local Business Center,

4.  Content that is “SEO-rich”, and

5.  Co-registration and Partnering through Affiliate Marketing.

Each of these tools makes up the larger tool of Electronic Marketing and each has many elements to them – so many in fact that people go to college to get the training and degrees they need to understand it all.

While this chapter is not meant to provide that extensive knowledge to you, you will have the basics you need to build out in your marketing as you understand what electronic marketing is, how it works and how it can work for you.

Electronic Tool #1 – The Website

A website is your visual calling card on the internet.   In this modern convenience you can create and design the look and feel of your business in a style and manner that is only limited by your imagination.

Visually-speaking, a website is the best investment you can make for your local to global advertising dollars.  There is nothing comparable in print media that can do what a website can do in less time and with less money.

In order to blanket the world with paper versions of advertisements or solicitations of your business you would have to spend a small fortune!

In order to utilize a website you need three things:

1.  A domain name

2.  A web-hosting agreement

3.  A website that meets your needs

When selecting a domain name it is essential that you look for the most simple name that your clients can easily remember.   Think short and memorable.

Shorter domain names are easier to remember and less likely to have common typing mistakes made that can cause your site visitors to get lost, get redirected or get nowhere at all.

Your domain name needs to uniquely represent some aspect of your business.

Like your business name, your slogans and your advertising catchphrases and pitches – your domain needs to be significant enough and unique enough for a domain to be connected to you and your business.

If there is too much similarity in names between you and a competitor you may mistakenly be driving your business to their place of business.

Common domain names you might want to register:

1.  The Name of the Business.

2.     A Key Idea, Product or Service Offered.   (If you own an accounting firm and your business methodology focuses on you being value-driven, having a domain name with the word “value” in it is a possibility for you.)

3.     The Name(s) of Principal Persons in the Business.

4.     Terms associated with the nature of your business.

To get a domain name you have to register it using an online domain name provider.   While there are many resellers of domain names, some of the major domain name providers are GoDaddy.com, Register.com, Yahoo.com, Google.com.

When you access these websites to “purchase” and register a domain name you may be asked to enroll or sign up as a member to allow you to have an account and to establish who you are and who your provider is to satisfy the requirements of ICANN, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.   This organization keeps track of who owns what name and requires that you keep the record of who or what entity owns the domain name as well as the contact information for the same up to date.

The internet since it is technology-based does not typically deal in names but in numbers or codes.  A domain name is simply a convenient way for us to remember how to get to a website instead of having to see and remember what a computer sees which is a long string of numbers identifying the specific location of your website on the internet.

A integral part of the electronic marketing tool of domain names is not only selecting a domain name that is memorable, short, represents your business but also ensuring that no one else can select a similar domain to yours by not only registering the .com extension of a domain name but also registering the .net and .org of the same domain name.

If you had “TennesseeBasedAccounting.com” the last thing you would want would be your competition down the street to register and launch a domain at “TennesseeBasedAccounting.net” or “TennesseeBasedAccounting.org”

If the domain you wanted is not available, check into back-ordering the domain name through your registrar.   Business changes rapidly and a person may have registered a domain for one reason and then decided not to use that domain name.

Back-ordering or even utilizing the contact information to get in touch with the owner of the domain to make an offer to buy the domain name from them can often get you the domain name you want for a reasonable expense.

Keep in mind that domain names, like real estate, often have select domain names that are considered “premium” names because of their being related to a branded name, are easy to remember or are “one word” domain names.   These premium domain names often are available for registration but for a premium cost.

Web-Hosting Agreements

In order for you to utilize a domain name you have to have a website designed and connected to the domain name through web hosting.   Web hosting is simply a service provided by a company that puts your website onto the internet.

Think of it as a company that is taking a whole stack one-, two-, three- page flyers for your website in hard copy and tossing them up in the air among a crowd of people.   While there is no paper copy, a web host strategically places your website onto the internet to allow it to be seen by others that are looking for it, you or the area of services that you offer.

Most companies that offer domain registration services also offer economical hosting packages that can include everything from free e-mail, to unlimited storage space, online checkout or shopping cart services and more.

The best way to get the deal you desire is simply to talk to your domain name registrar and ask tell them what you need, what you are planning to do and see how they can custom-fit a hosting package to meet your needs and your budget.

In order to help you get started in your electronic marketing, your IPB membership includes free web hosting during the life of your membership.  Services may vary, but the IPB service is free and solid.  You can sign up for your free account through the IPB membership portal.

Web Design

As technology gets more advanced, software gets developed to help us do the most complex things easily and effortlessly.     There are many easy-to-use web design programs that allow anyone with little to no computer or design experience to learn how to create and set up a web page.

Your IPB membership comes with a selection of professionally designed web templates, including Flash ™ templates if you wish to use them. You can download your starter package through your IPB membership access portal.

Also, domain registrar and web hosts like GoDaddy.com and others offer web page templates which are pre-designed web pages that you only have to add your text to make it yours.

If you want more complex features such as streamline video, flash intros or custom designs that set you apart from the rest there are countless web designers that can provide you with what you need at reasonable prices.

To find a web site designer:

1.     Look on the Web.   Often some of your favorite websites will show towards the bottom who designed the website.  If you like that look, contact that website designer or design firm and see what their rates are to do web design.

2.      Ask around.   If you know of anyone who enjoys working with computers ask them if they or someone they know does web site design.

3. Check your local colleges, universities and trade schools for a college-age web designer who can provide what you need for less.   All computer graphic designers and many of art majors are required to have examples of web-based designs and web pages that they have created.

4. Contact IPB technical services through the electronic marketing section of your IPB membership portal.

Remember when looking for a designer as well as getting prices for web design that simple is less expensive and easier to create.   The more complex the elements are that you desire for your web site the more design time it takes to create which means more expense.

Most websites need an introduction page or a home page, an about us page, a contact page and page that lists what products and services you offer as well as perhaps your hourly or per project rate.

Websites are the #1 Electronic Marketing tool that allows your business presence to be established in your community as well as around the world.   You can use your website as an information portal giving your clients everything they need to find you IRL (in real life) or you can utilize your website as a tool to help you introduce new products, showcase new services or allow your users to check out you and your business without feeling obligated.

Whatever way you decide to utilize your website is up to you the essential fact is – use it! And allow electronic marketing to make informed clients of casual web searches by offering them an explosion of onsite and easily accessible information about you and your business.

Electronic Tool #2 – PPC Lead Generator Software and Services

PPC Lead Generation is “pay per click” services that you pay for as a person clicks on a lead or a link to your website.   A great example of this is when you visit Google.com notice the businesses profiled in a highlighted box on the right-hand of the page or perhaps in the headlining box at the top of the search results.   Those businesses pay a small fee to Google each time a person clicks-through from the Google search engine result page onto their website.

Think of this PPC fee as a referral fee.   You cannot draw in all of the clients you need yourself.   They need to go to a search engine or a central place that would allow them to type in key words, phrases or terms in order to find what they are looking for.   Using “SEO” or Search Engine Optimization that we will discuss shortly, a website is presented as an option for a potential client to select.

Electronic Tool #3 -  Major Search Engine Exposure

As mentioned previously, a search engine is simply a central place or website that a person goes to when they want to be directed to the information they are looking for.   Think of a search engine as a library full of encyclopedias and easily-accessed card catalogues all in one.

The major search engines are:

1. Google (www.google.com)

2. Yahoo (www.yahoo.com)

3. Ask Jeeves (www.askjeeves.com)

4. All The Web (www.alltheweb.com)

5. HotBot (www.hotbot.com)

5. AOL inteernal search (http://aolsearch.aol.com)

6. AOL external search (http://search.aol.com)

7. Teoma (www.teoma.com)

8. AltaVista (www.altavista.com)

9. Gigablast (www.gigablast.com)

10. LookSmart (www.looksmart.com)

11. Lycos (www.lycos.com)

12. MSN Search (http://search.msn.com)

13. Netscape (www.netscape.com)

Each search engine has their own requirements as to how to get listed among the top results but the number one criteria is popularity.   The more popular or the more your site is visited the higher it gets listed in the search engine results.

Each of these search engines have “crawlers”, “bots” or “spiders” which are simply programs that look through all of the material on the web collecting, organizing and storing data so that when someone looks for that item, that person or that business on the search engine they will find what they are looking for.

You can make your website more popular by doing the following:

1.     Exchanging Links.   Link exchange is a fast and friendly way to build your web presence.   Each time a crawler, bot or spider “sees” the link to your webpage it makes note of that and the more sites that link to yours the more visible your website is to the internet.  Visibility equals popularity.

2.     Pay to have your site promoted.   More and more websites are selling advertising space just like what you would find in a magazine or newspaper.  If you secure one of these highly-visible marketing spaces on their website your website is going to rank higher in the search engines.   You can also pay to have your site promoted utilizing the pay-per-click  as well as pay to have certain companies drive your website higher using software that is designed to work around the system and make your site appear more popular than what it actually is.

Popularity is the key to promotion and exposure on major search engines.  Additionally, most search engines have a way that you can list your website with them either on a paid basis or free basis.

Electronic Tool #4 – SEO-rich content

If you wanted to order a pizza you would not look in the phone book for a car dealer.  Instead you would look in the phone book under “pizza” and find your restaurant of choice.   SEO-rich content is search engine optimized content in which the right words are being used to describe you, your business and your website.

For example, if you own an investment firm that specializes in retirement accounts you would use words like “retirement”, “Boomer”, “money”, “savings” and “investment” to describe your website to search engines.

Additionally, to ensure that your site is discovered during a “web crawl” or a “web search” you want to also make certain that key phrases associate with your business are highlighted.

In the example of our Retirement Investment Firm, some key phrases you could utilize are “Retirement Income”, “Baby Boomer”,  “Setting Up a 401K”, “IRA vs. 401K”, “401K penalties” and so on.

A website is described to the major search engines with key words and phrases that the search engine using a crawler, a bot or a spider as mentioned previously will collect and add to its store or database of information.

There are several ways to add SEO-rich content to your website:

1.     Page Text and Content.   Each webpage has paragraphs written that describe your products.  A crawler/bot/spider can distinguish words that are set apart, repeated, bolded, highlighted and conveyed as essential text to your website to give the materials on your page meaning.

2.      Using meta-tags.   When your web page is designed and hosted you can incorporate or have incorporated, key words or key text within the “code” or HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) that allow your web page to have header information that is presented to search engine tools that are gathering information.

This is a quick and easy way for search engines to get the big picture of what your website is about in just a few quick and applicable words that you select to help drive traffic to your website.   Many internet hosting and service providers have an easy-to-use form that allows you to enter in your words and then their software programs will convert your text to HTML that the search engines recognize.  You do not need to know how to write code to have your website search engine optimized.

Electronic Tool #5 -  Co-registration and Affiliate Marketing

Co-registration is the practice of one organization, on its own subscription and membership registration forms, of offering subscriptions, memberships or leads to another organization.

Just as in print media, the electronic marketing is full of opportunities to team up and work together in partnerships with complementing (and even competing) organizations.   If you are promoting the services of your insurance company, you may team up with other insurance companies or you may team up with services that are related to yours.   For example, if you sell home insurance you may team up with a restoration service that would come in and clean, repair or replace items within your client’s home that have been damaged by fire, wind or water.

It is not uncommon for an accountant to team up with certain investment firms, insurance agents, and a variety of professional organizations that compliment the services within the accounting field or the needs of the accountant’s clients.

Affiliate Marketing is similar to co-registration, but instead of creating a joint web presence or partnership, the relationship between you and your affiliates is based upon referrals.   If you are participating in an affiliate agreement with a financial newspaper or perhaps Amazon.com, you can offer subscriptions or post links to certain materials such as books, DVD’s or videos that relate to your services.

If you own a credit card servicing company and one of your products is credit card reading machines, you could have affiliates who promote your products to their web-based clients and in return for those leads or referrals you would give them an affiliate commission – which is a small finders fee typically based upon the total amount of services purchase or the total number of click-through activities originating from the link on one website that leads a potential client to your website.

In Summary

Establishing a web presence is the most valuable and least expensive electronic marketing tool you have at your disposal.  With computers becoming portable and built-in to cell phones and personal handheld devices, mobility of your marketing is increasing and building your business depends on you getting your products and services on the information highway and capable of traveling around the world.

Tomorrow – Cold Calling Techniques that Heat Up Your Market.

While there are many ways that you can get the word out about your business and your products or services, nothing beats face to face contact.

Cold calling is one of the things most of us think of when we think of the world’s worst fear – public speaking!   Tomorrow I’ll teach you practical tips that enable you to add another tool to your marketing arsenal and that gives you the face time you need to show exactly why your business is capable of servicing a potential client’s needs.

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