Archives for December 2011

Creating Your Own ATM

When is the List Used?

The list is used each and every time you wish to communicate with more than one person that you do business with. You can also create multiple emails to be sent out to certain people on the list over the course of days, weeks, or months. You can create different series of emails to be used for different processes in your business. For instance, you might have a certain communication that happens consistently to welcome a customer, to walk a customer through a process, to announce a new product or even to say good bye to a customer.

Creating Your Own ATM

By creating regular communication with your customers, your business will always be top of mind with your customers. You can use the autoresponder to give your customers regular tips and training as well as to periodically offer them a product or service to help them to move forward in what they are doing.

Because you are able to make an offer through the email, once your list becomes large enough, you will learn what your normal conversion rate is so that you know as an example if you have 100 people on your list and you make an offer that typically 20 people will purchase what you are offering.

If you have a follow on product for what they just purchased because of the email you just sent, wouldn’t it make sense that you would offer them the follow on product within a few weeks? Of course, it would! As such, since you can calculate your conversion rate (percentage of people who buy), you can also know approximately the dollar amount of sales you can expect when you make an offer.

If creating money this way is interesting to you, you’re in for a treat. I’m still working out the details; however, I believe you’ll be excited by what I have to share!

FEATURED RESOURCE: Freelance Writer NZ

By SoftwareGirl

Today’s featured resource is Paul Callaghan of Freelance Writer NZ. Paul Callaghan is a freelance writer, content strategist and SEO and social media consultant.

He has been publishing online since 1997 and in print since the early 1980s. Most of his work has been landing pages, articles and blogs and he also write email campaigns and advise on or manage social media and content strategies. He writes fiction for fun. In 2010, he decided it was time to give up his day job as Head of English at a New Zealand high school in order to set up Freelance Writer NZ and write full time.

Read along as Paul describes what he does and why he does it:

Q. What is your passion?

A. I have always been passionate about words. What I love about the freelance lifestyle is the way it allows me to write for so many different people. I could be writing articles about cloud computing one day, and landing pages for jewelry or commentary on American politics the next. It makes for fascinating work.

Q. What are the primary keys to a successful web business?

A. SEO, search engine optimization, is one of the keys to a successful web business. In the years that I have been online I have seen SEO develop from a time when just about anyone could stuff a rough article with a few keywords and the search engines would pick it up. These days there is a lot more to it than that. While keywords are still important, search engine improvements like the Google Panda update mean that quality is what counts. It’s often said on the web that “content is king.” These days that should be “high quality content is king.”

Q. Where does social media fit into marketing in today’s market?

A. To improve your search engine rankings today you must also have a social media presence. It is likely that what happens off your page is as important, or sometimes even more important than what is on the page.

Many businesses start out with high hopes for their Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. After a few months, they feel they are not getting enough ROI from the time expended and either give up or barely post. That’s why it is important to have a clear strategy for your social media and any other content you publish online. And that includes on-going reviews of what works and what doesn’t.

There’s a lot of talk about the difficulties of online marketing. I like to keep things simple: regular high quality content backed up with an interactive social media campaign will lead to preselling your products or services. Once presold, the customer will head for your landing page where high quality copywriting makes the conversion from potential to actual customer.

It’s all about quality. Successful businesses know that.

Paul Callaghan is a freelance writer, blogger, copywriter, social media advisor and content strategist. Words are his passion. You can contact him through his website at www.freelancewriter.co.nz

Seasonalize Your Website

By SoftwareGirl

As we approach the coming holiday season, it seems that everything is getting decorated. Have you thought that perhaps you’d like to decorate your WordPress website a bit as well? Now you can! I found a nice little plug in that will float objects down (for snowflakes and such) or up (for balloons and such) on your website pages. The plugin is called “Snow, balloons and more” and is a no cost solution for you!

What I like about this plugin is that it shows the images you want and they show up nicely then over the next 30 seconds or so and then fade away. The images are there long enough for the “Oh cool” effect but not so long that your reader becomes irritated with the movement on the page. There are several options of what you want to fall across your page. You can choose snow, balloons, leaves, raindrops, etc. The author of the plugin also encourages sending additional graphics to be included in the plugin.

This is a nice plugin that works well, doesn’t look too cheesy and gives the reader an uplifting experience while they visit your website. Enjoy!

Planning to Succeed in 2012

By SoftwareGirl

Do you have the processes in place to help you to succeed in 2012? If you’re just starting, do you have your list in place? If not, what are you actively doing to create your list?

The ability to use processes for the basic functionality of your business tells the tale of whether your business is a smooth running machine or if it’s an only half drafted

Rube Goldberg mechanism

Rube Goldberg mechanism that changes with each day. The difference between the two is the ability for the system owner to focus on what is actually occurring repeatedly in the business in order for the business to create revenue. The good news is that you already do this to some extent when you get up in the morning.

Most people get up, attend to personal hygiene, eat, drink and then move to the first item on their to-do list for the day. At the end of the day, they come home, eat, recreate a bit, personal hygiene to prepare for bed and then bedtime. The getting up process and retiring process that are used here personally could be compared to the process that you use to bring a customer on board and the process that you use to let a customer go.

Processes can be used in all areas of your business even when you’re just starting. Processes are generally put in place in a rough form and refined over the course of time. So the good news here is that you can start with just the idea that “Hey, I think this is a good idea for a process!”. Once the process is in place, working well and refined to where you could almost do it in your sleep, then you’re ready to automate the process and take yourself out of it so that it runs by itself without you. That’s the real beauty of having a process! You don’t have to hire somebody, you don’t have to double check anything, you just have the confidence of knowing that until IT tells you it’s having an issue, you know it’s working! This is where the machines truly begin to work for you and it’s a beautiful thing when this happens!

So you have the beginning and the end processes of what you need for your business. The rest is just the processes in the middle. Those will vary in specifics from business to business. In an information marketing business, you might have processes such as newsletter creation and production, speaking engagements, order fulfillment, credit card processing, reversing credit card transactions (hopefully there are at a minimum), affiliate communications, and so on. Once you have found all the processes at a high level that you need, you will label and define those processes. Think of the processes as a point of arrival. For instance, once a customer has arrived at the “on board” stage, what does that mean? What activities have already occurred that have brought the customer to this point. Those activities are your action steps. You will have at least one action step between each stage.

Obviously, this is a very simplified version of what you are doing; however, I believe this will give you an idea of the basic structure. Some of the common business processes are procurement, financing, marketing and sales, human resources, manufacturing, transportation and customer service. To assist you in getting started with thinking about what you want to present as offerings to you customer, I have created for you a Freedom Funnel, calendar and cash flow projection template to assist you in planning for 2012 in your business.