Do the Business Plan First!

I'm constantly amazed by how many entrepreneurs just jump in and start spending money on websites, marketing, etc., without having first accomplished their homework. Then after several months and maxed-out credit cards, they turn to someone like myself to help them understand why they are not getting any leads or generating any business. In almost every case, these fledgling millionaires failed to complete a business plan before leaping into the unforgiving world of commerce.

A business plan forces one to apply logic and rationale to "bright ideas." Done right, it highlights the risks, tests assumptions, helps to identify winning strategies (if there is one), and presents the expected return on investment in cold hard numbers for different scenarios.

Completing a business plan before launching a business will not guarantee success, but it will give you a much better chance of succeeding. Rushing to market without a business plan almost always results in expensive surprises and ultimate failure.

Having a business plan provides a targeted roadmap and benchmarks against which progress can be measured. It also alerts you to "bailout" opportunities if things are not going as expected. And it will help you to avoid costly pitfalls. In short, preparing a rigorous business plan upfront will more than pay for itself.

PPC Advertising Is Not For Novices

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a challenging, dynamic endeavor. You can't just set it up and walk away from it. PPC advertising requires constant monitoring and tweaking to be effective.

Those who first launch a PPC advertising campaign are usually disappointed by the results. Expectations are high; results are low. That's because the initial launch parameters are just a starting point (i.e., your best guess based on keyword research, etc.). From that point on, be prepared to make adjustments to inch towards desired results.

The tools to refinement are provided by the PPC vendor. Google, for example, has excellent tools...if you know how to use them. For example, what ads and what keywords are giving you the best results? Narrow down your market attack to get more bang for your advertising dollar.

Here are some other parameters to employ in optimizing your advertising campaign:

• Set up your ads to run during daylight hours (why spread your budget over ad impressions in the middle of the night?).
• Focus your ads geographically (city (also by zip or radius from a zip), region, country, language, etc.)
• Unless you are selling consumer products or really know what you are doing, avoid settings that display your ads on other Websites, but do take advantage of having your ads appear on major auxiliary search engines (e.g., AOL).
• Target your keyword bids to get your ads to appear in positions 3 to 5 - your money will go further and you will still get good results.

Of course, the purpose of PPC advertising is to sell something or capture a sales lead. Hence, your real measurement of success is not how many ad clicks you get, but how many of those click-throughs turn into useful conversions that lead to more business.

Most PPC advertisers take the clickers to the home page (or an internal page) of their Website. What happens thereafter, nobody knows because there is no easy way to track clicker behavior. Most wander around and leave the site because material germane to the reason they clicked on the ad is not readily apparent. And there is no way of knowing how many ad click-throughs turn into customers or at least prospects. So, these advertisers spend a lot of money without any means of determining whether their advertising bucks are worth the effort.

That's why it is critically important that you have special landing pages where ad clickers find content relevant to the ad AND the ability to make a purchase or fill out a form to acquire an incentive. Completing this desired process is the goal of your campaign, and by arriving at a "thank you" page afterwards, you can measure how many ad click-throughs actually result in achieving this goal. Inserting special code into a "thank you" page allows the PPC vendor to report how many conversions your campaign is achieving and the cost for each. This is the real cost for your PPC advertising.

By tracking your PPC advertising results through the entire sales process, you can measure your return on investment. For example, if you sell Widgets at $10 each and the PPC advertising cost to achieve a sale is $1, then it's working for you. If PCC advertising costs $10 per resultant sale, then you probably want to re-think your marketing strategy.

PPC advertising is not for the novice. You can burn through a lot of money very quickly with little or no results. In the long run, small businesses are much better off by employing a professional, such as Pacifica Endeavors, who understand the pitfalls and can fast-track PPC advertising while saving them money. The result can be a dramatic growth in sales within one-to-two months, which more than compensates for the advertising expense.

Get More Mileage with Internet Marketing Compared to Traditional Marketing!

I'm often surprised by how many small companies haven't yet grasped that Internet marketing is far more economical and yields much better results than traditional hard-print marketing. Compared to the latter, online marketing yields a significantly higher ROI.

Having a good Website that is optimized for search engines is a first step. Once accomplished, ongoing expense is minimal. Email newsletters cost less than a penny apiece compared to about $.50 each (minimum) for direct mail pieces. And online press releases reach a larger audience than hard-print coverage. Moreover, pay-per-click advertising costs only a fraction of - and is much, much more effective than - newspaper or magazine advertising.

In short, Internet marketing is the perfect answer for small businesses on a budget. Done right, it can dramatically increase sales while saving a bundle over traditional marketing. Contact Small Business Smart Marketing for a free consultation.

Close Sales with Testimonials and Reference Letters

Never underestimate the value of a customer testimonial or reference letter. Whether you sell a product or service on the Internet or by direct sales force (or both), these are gold!

Prospective customers feel more comfortable making a "buy" decision if your business has glowing endorsements from existing customers. In their eyes, this reduces the risk of selecting your company as their vendor. So, always ask for a reference letter or testimonial upon completing projects or transactions.

If your business has performed as agreed, there will be no problem getting this endorsement. You can actually ensure this by writing it yourself and then emailing the "draft" to the customer to get their blessing, asking them "if they want to make any changes."

Place one-to-two paragraph testimonials in conspicuous places on your Website. If you have a direct sales force, make sure customer reference letters are printed on the customer's letterhead and signed. Often, a prospect will even forego calling references if your sales people give them high-caliber endorsement letters at an appropriate stage in the sales cycle. These are great closing tools!

The Fastest Way for a New Company to get Sales

When you finally launch that new business, you probably start your marketing campaign with a Website. But it takes a long, long time for your Website to bubble up in organic search engine ranking. So until it does, you're still invisible on the Internet. Meanwhile, you need sales and money to pay bills. Right?

Want to know how you can quickly begin to generate sales leads from the Internet? It's simple - implement a local pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign. That way, your PPC ad will be visible to Internet searchers at the exact moment they are looking for what you're selling. This overcomes the weaknesses of your Website being nowhere in sight in organic search returns. And you are only charged when someone actually clicks on your ad. Otherwise, it's highly-visible free advertising.

Done right, local PPC advertising can be VERY effective...and very economical. But setting up PPC advertising is not for amateurs. Believe me, you can run through a lot of money real fast with little or no results. Google and Yahoo have their own algorithms for managing PPC advertising and they are not obvious, nor do they necessarily work to your favor.

It pays to engage an experienced PPC advertising manager to set-up, optimize and manage your online advertising campaign. Someone who knows how to create winning landing pages that capture leads or gain online sales after a rpospective customer clicks on your ad. You will save money and start generating sales sooner by turning to someone who knows what they are doing. Just ask anyone who rushed into PPC advertising - I'm sure they'll echo these sentiments.

Need help launching your PPC advertising? Contact us at info@smallbizsmartmarketing.com or at (866) 284-4955. ;~)

All You Need is a Website to Get Internet Business. Right?

The days when you could just put up a Website for your business and wait for sales leads to come rolling in are long gone. It's amazing how many small business Websites are actually "invisible" on the Internet.

Today, your Website must be optimized for those little critters known as "search engine spiders" that continuously crawl the Internet, indexing and updating a humongous database of Websites. Next, you need a sustained program to acquire cross-links with complementary sites, something that all search engines place a high value on in determining your site ranking. And you need a form or two on your site to collect sales leads. Finally, you need meaningful content on your site, and the more often you update your content, the better Google and other search engines like your site.

Don't kid yourself - all this takes work...lots of work. But the results can be phenomenal. I've seen small businesses go from zero Internet business to being bombarded with leads in just a matter of a few weeks. Done right, Internet marketing does work!

An easy way to find out what you can do to boost Internet lead generation is to take advantage of our Online Marketing Appraisal. We will examine your site and prepare a custom report with specific recommendations for turning it into a powerful Internet marketing machine.

Organizing Your Customer and Prospect Marketing

As your small business grows and you pick up clients and solicit prospects, it becomes very important to organize your customers and manage them properly. That's where customer relationship management (CRM) software earns its money.

With a CRM solution, you can easily keep track of your customer and prospect contacts, their status in the sales funnel and even create a unique marketing program for each. The latter is especially important. If you lay out a series of steps in your marketing program (e.g., send customized greeting, sign up for email newsletter, send autoresponder set of special offers, etc.), then you can rest assured that you will not neglect to nurture your customers or pursue possible new clients.

Remember, it costs a lot more to capture a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. Also, it is easier to sell more products or services to an existing customer than a new one. And finally, nurturing prospective customers through ongoing marketing messages helps to close sales.

For small businesses, an easy CRM answer can be found online at www.zohoCRM.com. This Web-based service is free for up to three users in your company. I use it and recommend that you take a look at it.

Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly?

The days when you could just put up a Website for your business and wait for sales leads to come rolling in are long gone. It's amazing how many small business Websites are actually "invisible" on the Internet.

Today, your Website must be optimized for those little critters known as "search engine spiders" that continuously crawl the Internet, indexing and updating a humongous database of Websites. If these spiders can't easily traverse your site, you are in trouble. If they can't readily identify your line of business through indicated keywords, you've got problems. If your site is in a heavily competitive marketplace and it's not optimized for a specific market niche, it could take a long, long time before you see it showing up in the first three pages of search results. And if you don't show up in the first three pages, chances are that the only way your marketplace will ever know you exist is if you point them to your Website address.

Of course, it takes more than just search engine optimization to turn your Website into a high-power lead generator. Most search engines also place a heavy factor on the number and quality of incoming links as a measure of your site's popularity. And that takes a lot of work to achieve.

An easy way to determine if your site is search engine friendly is to take advantage of our Online Marketing Appraisal. Our experts will examine your site and issue a custom report with specific recommendations about what you can do to turn your site into an Internet marketing machine.