Services Archives - Monetization Magic

10 Ways to Expand Your Brick and Mortar Business – Part 2 of 2

This post is a continuation of 10 Ways to Expand Your Brick and Mortar Business – Part 1

Meaningful content on the website. Due to the Google search engine, it is imperative that meaningful content be placed regularly on your website. That is why most static websites do not rank well with the search engines. The search engines and your potential customers are interested in what is new and exciting. If you just have a billboard website that states your name, address and phone number, and your competitor has a website that talks about weekly events, what’s new in the industry, new inventory, new employees and is constantly updating their website, they will naturally outrank you in the search engines. Ranking is what the industry is all about because let’s face it, if you’re not on the first page or two of search results, most folks will never see your website. The object is to engage your customer so they see you as a friend even before they pick up the phone or park in front of your business. People buy from people they know, like and trust. They want to see people and people in motion on your website rather than just having pretty pictures and text to read.

Google places. Google places is a free ad for businesses so that their basic information can be found out on the internet. Optimally, your place on Google places will also have a link to your highly interactive website along with your business hours and a map so that your business can be located.

Host events. Your business needs to be a hub of activity and the way to make it a hub of activity is to host events. Invite people into your business. Host a Chamber of Commerce after hours event, ol’ Cal would often film the commercials at his lot so there was always a new animal to view. You can also invite people in for free maintenance or checkups to ensure they will not need expensive service later. For a car dealership, offer to have heater and air conditioning check ups, tire rotation, brake inspection, belt and hose inspection and other easy value added services. The events you host are done to add value to the customer experience. When you add enough value, your prospective customer will come to see you as a trusted resource.

Incredible Offer. You want to give prospective customers an incredible offer. For the car lot, it could be a coupon book for discount services or free detailing on their current vehicle. When you give the incredible offer it is always something they would definitely want and it is in exchange for their name and email. You will continue to use their name and email to notify them of future events and other items of interest.

Complimentary Products. Once your customers purchase an item or service from you, they usually will purchase complimentary products to make their initial purchase last longer or to decorate their initial purchase. In the example of the used cars, complimentary products would include extended warranties, car insurance, supplemental car insurance (like AAA), car washes, car audio, specialty rims, car security, tinted windows, windshield replacement and repair, mobile oil change services, after market part suppliers and apparel.

Digital Products. Digital products are great because you can make them once and sell them over and over again. Digital products for a car dealership might include a video of what to check when buying a used car, it could be an affiliate link to a supplier that carries something that is commonly ordered that you choose not to stock, digital products could be tickets to a concert for a celebrity that happens to be coming to town next week that sponsors your vehicles, or sound file of what your cool mufflers actually sound like when installed on your car. You’re probably laughing about that last one but that is an actual product…and my friend paid $29 for that sound file….still laughing?

Newsletter. The newsletter is published at least twice a month telling your customers about upcoming new events and information having to do with your business. You can also tell them funny stories or invite to future events. For the car business, a newsletter could be used to notify customers of recalls and give them ways to quickly and easily take care of needed maintenance. Let them know about your shuttle service.

Social Media. Social media is where you create a community around your business. You’re still being of service and it helps to create a buzz around your business. For the car dealer, you might want to list videos of the latest sliding cars due to the ice storm last week, or pictures of the most modified cars. You could have poll on the upcoming changes in the new car models. You could have a poll on whether girls or guys like a particular model better than the other. You would want to take pictures of your live events and post those up on social media for others to see.

If you like what you read in this article and would like to see how you can expand YOUR business, apply for a complimentary Action Strategy Session so that you can have a clear roadmap to take your busines to the next level! The Action Strategy Session is valued at $297.00 and will give you concrete ways that you can move forward in your business.

10 Ways to Expand Your Brick and Mortar Business – Part 1 of 2

By SoftwareGirl

httpv://youtu.be/QOsLdT4slsk

When I was a little girl, my family moved to New Mexico from New Jersey. In New Mexico, we only had 3 TV stations and they would only broadcast during certain hours of each day. The information broadcast on that TV station was selective and even back in those days, what they broadcast was determined by what would get the TV station the highest ratings. Everyday, I would see a commercial for a used car dealer who was in California and has some of the goofiest commercials I had ever seen. His commercials often featured his “dog”, Spot. His dog was often not a dog but would be an elephant or a tiger or some other wild animal. Sometimes I wondered if people would watch him just to see the day when dear ol’ Cal actually got eaten by his “dog”, Spot!

I tell you this to make this point…Cal Worthington was all the way in California and I was a little girl all the way in the desert of New Mexico…but I knew who he was. Cal Worthington sold a lot of cars when he ran those commercials. Eventually Cal passed away. Many years later, I had an opportunity to visit the great state of California. When I got there, what did I remember about California? You guessed it! I remembered ol’ Cal Worthington and his wild dog, Spot. I actually passed by the car lot and it was an event to me because I was able to remember all his commercials and the friends I was with at the time remembered him too.

Cal Worthington used TV to advertise his car lot and he attracted customers from the next town, the next county, the next state away. There are a lot of people in the great state of California and he advertised so well that a little girl all the way in New Mexico (954 miles away) and 30 years later remembered his car lot. Think about it, he was just another used car dealer and he found away to make his name known to a much broader audience. Within 10 years of beginning in the business, his dealership was #1 in the nation! He attracted so much attention that Johnny Carson even had him on the Tonight Show which had a national reach!

You are blessed because business owners now do not have to purchase TV air time to get our message out! We are able to rely on the technology that we have at our figure tips and our own ingenuity to promote our message.

To illustrate how this works, I’ll be using ol’ Cal Worthington’s business to show you how we could expand his business using today’s technology:

Website. Your website is the virtual hub of your business. The website could be used to show people the new car models, book appointments with customers to come in a look at a car, apply for car financing so that they could have the convenience of knowing that they were already approved for a vehicle before they arrived and they could just come in a pick out their new vehicle. They could schedule their normal service appointments, talk to a mechanic live via the website chat feature, order new accessory items for their new car or get a trade in value for their vehicle.

Keywords on the Website. Using keywords helps the search engines to direct customers to your website. Cal Worthington’s keywords might have been “Ford”, “dog Spot”, used cars, new cars, Long Beach, CA, and so on. Today, Cal Worthington dealership still exists and the keywords they use are as follows:

long beach ford, ford long beach, long beach ford parts, long beach ford service, used ford long beach, new ford long beach

Advertisements that get read

By SoftwareGirl

FACT: 90% of SMS messages are read in the first 5 minutes.

FACT: 95% of 18-24 year olds text.

FACT: 94% of messages are read.

FACT: 292 Million U.S. cell phones

Text messaging is the whisper in the ear of your potential clients. Even in a crowded room or meeting, they will still get your message. Text messaging will often work when an actual phone call will not. If you are a small business owner, this is a MUST HAVE due to it’s effectiveness and affordability. You could potentially create your own special every day of the week to drive traffic to your business.

Imagine you own a restaurant and it’s a slow day. You’d really like to pump up your sales but what do you do? What if you had a way to notify all your customers of a 20% off deal to all your interested customers at 11:15 just in time for the lunch rush? Do you think that would make a difference? You bet it would and you can do this just by sending a text!

Display

Display your text-2-join keyword on table tents, menu’s, posted signs and of course your web site if your restaurant has one. If the offer is enticing enough a potential customer will see it and happily join for the incentive of a discount or a free item of food clients anywhere they go.

Collect

Use other alternative means to collect some of your valuable customers information. Raffle off prizes with tickets where customers can fill out their information. Have a line printed on the bottom of the receipt check that allows for a mobile number. Add the web opt-in widget to the sign up page on your web site.

collect

broadcast

Broadcast

When you are having a slow day with sales, send out a mass message to your list of clients and sit back and watch them flow in. Give updates on promotion and sales you’re offering. Keep your regular clients updated with new products you may be adding to your menu.

Examples

text examples

Reach customers instantly

Use text message marketing to reach your customers when you want to speak to them. Don’t rely on them to wait and think about your business, get their attention and make them think about your services. Send broadcasts out around lunch hour to catch the business rush or broadcast your happy hour specials to get them after they leave work.

Contact your entire staff in seconds!

Ever had a missed shift? Need to bring in some more people to deal with an unexpected crowd? Shoot a text message to all your employees in few seconds and get back to dealing with running your business.

Changing your hours of operation?

Notify all of your customers that you’ll be closing early or staying open later. They will appreciate the advance notice since they wouldn’t have found out until it was too late.

Celebrating a holiday?

Send your customers a happy holiday’s greeting. They will greatly appreciate it and remember the friendly atmosphere that you have in your restaurant. This will help with developing customer referrals and bringing in new business.

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New Merchant Credit Card Account Service

By SoftwareGirl

What is it?

A merchant credit card account is an account set up with a bank to process credit cards. It allows a business owner to accept credit cards for purchases made in their business. The account is completely PCI compliant so your information and your customers information is safe!

Who needs it?

If you own or will be owning a business, you will need a merchant credit card account. The amount the bank charges for processing the credit cards can vary and some are quite expensive! I am able to offer VERY competitive rates for this service. If you are currently paying over 2%, we definitely need to talk!

How does this benefit you?

This benefits any business owner by lowering their overhead and increasing their profits. I am also able to provide equipment and give you the ability to accept credit cards using just your cell phone, if you have a need for portability. Doing business at the beach? No problem! This is a great option for those vendors that will be selling their products at the state fairs that are currently taking place across the country!

Does it really make a difference?

Yes! For example, let’s say your current rate is 2.75% and let’s say your rate is reduced by .75% down to 2.0%. A business with only $1000 in monthly sales would save $90 or 9% of their gross monthly sales in fees! That can make or break many businesses today! If you happen to be using PayPay and receiving a rate of 3% + $.30 on each transaction which is common, you’ll save even more! Over the course of a year, your savings really add up!

Would you like to learn more?

I would love to explain to you how I can help you to retain more money in your business by getting a better rate on your credit card processing. Simply fill out the form at http://monetizationmagic.com/merchant-credit-card-accounts and I’ll be in touch with you within 24 hours!

Best Advertising for Small Business Owners

By SoftwareGirl

Surely by now you’ve heard about the coupon sensation called Groupon? If you’re a small business owner, this is an excellent service! Since the buzz created with Groupon produces paying customers rather than just browsers, I consider this the best advertising for small business owners!

Groupon will use the social networks for you to get the word out about your special offering. They encourage deals to be sent out to friends or being using by friends to add to the fun. Prospective customers can use their social networks to arrange plans and further spread the word about your business.

Groupon negotiates huge discounts—usually 50-90% off—with popular businesses. They send the deals to thousands of subscribers in their free daily email, and they send your business a ton of new customers. These are not just browsing folks on the internet, these are actual paying customers that have already purchased and are ready to redeem their coupon purchase. That’s the Groupon magic!

There are no out of pocket costs associated with being featured on Groupon. They make money by taking a piece of each Groupon they sell. In other words, they only win if you win – and you know what you’re getting at every step of the process.

Since a minimum number of people must buy for the offer to be valid, Groupon guarantees paying customers. These subscribers are not looking for “the perfect deal.” They’re looking for the perfect excuse to try something new. They get them to your business, and you bring them back again and again.

A Groupon feature puts you in front of thousands of subscribers in each Groupon city – with thousands more opting in each day. Their subscribers share your offer with everyone they know via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. This buzz will continue to attract new customers for months following your feature.

Just as you’ve seen people who have appeared on Oprah before they are ready, you should also be ready to receive a flood of customers to your business prior to advertising on Groupon. It makes you look better when you’re prepared and there’s less stress that way! Before advertising with Groupon, think ahead of time about how you will bring these new customers back again and again by offering a special promotion just for them once they visit your store.

Do you have a fitness business and you’re offering New Year New You packages? Perhaps you’d like to offer a special on a cruise celebration once they’ve reached their goal weight to show of their newly acquired physique? Or perhaps you could do a buy one get one at half price special for the cruise or other special event?

Groupon allows you to target a specific area which makes it great for opening up a new area of your town or state or section of the country. Perhaps you would like to couple it with a fund raising event to double your exposure and donate to a good cause as well.

Be ready to create a buzz about your incredible offering and get your message out to thousands of people for your next big launch. Contact Groupon today!

Blogging Economics and Disaster Recovery

By SoftwareGirl

Are you getting good value for the money you are spending to keep your blog up and running? Are you overspending on tools for the position your list is in this month?

Hosting can run anywhere between $0.01 (yes, you read that right) and $20.00 per month per website. An autoresponder can cost anywhere between free (yes, you read that right) and $75.00 per month or more depending on your list size. So if you’re beginning, do you think positively and buy the largest package available believing that you will grow exponentially this month or do you sign up for what you need today and upgrade as you need it?

Are there other factors to consider besides price in choosing your services? Some of the factors that might be worth considering would be ease of use, flexibility, support, availability, scalability and speed. Does the tool do what you need it to? If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t matter how much it costs – it’s not worth your time to mess with it!

For a beginner, support is essential! Do you enter a ticket into a help desk system to be answered …. someday (which is not a day of the week) or does a human with a pulse answer your request? When I’m learning something new, I find it to be quite nice to have a friendly voice on the other end of the phone. I don’t mind waiting 24 hours to get an answer; however, I’d like an acceptable answer within a reasonable time frame. If I’m paying a premium price, I’m expecting great service!

Quality in hosting is many times determined by service availability and speed. Did you know that you can get hosting that has 99.9% availability for less than $5 USD per month? That’s not the introductory offer.

What does 99.99% availability mean? Why is that important? Availability is defined by uptime. I.e. the time between failures. It is dependent upon

Downtime and
Recovery Time

Downtime is the amount of time that the system is unavailable due to either failures or scheduled maintenance. Recovery time is the average time it takes to recover from failures. This includes time for detection, isolation and resolution. This is important if you are expecting your website/blog/store to be open 24x7x365 days.

Well, if we consider a 24×7 environment like that of eBay, Amazon, etc then four nines would mean that in a year the total downtime + recovery time is approximately 52 minutes and 30 seconds. And three nines would mean downtime + recovery time of 8 hours and 45 minutes.

Simple math

3 nines –> (365×24) – .999(365×24) = 8760 -8751.24 = 8.76 hours = 8 hours and 45 minutes

2 nines -> (365×24) – .99(365×24) = 8760 -8672.4 = 87.6 hours = roughly 3.5 days!

1 nine – > (365×24) – .99(365×24) = 8760 -7884 = 876 hours = more than one month!!!

Just because you expect that a service will be available 24x7x365 doesn’t mean that it is available for that long. You need to look at your contract. Maybe it is only 24x5x365 (big difference)! That would allow for the system to be down for about 3 months out of a year without a raised eyebrow.

Will Google know who you are if your blog is offline for over a month? Do you have someone technical in your corner who is able to respond in case something technical happens or do you just have a helpdesk e-mail system that will be answered…someday? If your website/blog/store is your sole source of income either now or in the future, this would be considered a mission critical system.

Mission critical systems still fail but when they do there are knowledgeable people available to fix the system 24 hours a day everyday and give you an update of what is going on and when difficult decisions need to be made, they are knowledgeable enough to give you all the information for you to make a good business decision. Even if that means assisting you to move your website/blog/store from your backup (you DO have one, right?) to a different platform until theirs becomes available again.

For your autoresponder, think about what you are currently doing with your system today, especially if you are just starting out and don’t have that large of a list. It is possible to use a system to send 12,000 emails per month to a list of 2,000 subscribers completely free! If you are paying $20 – 75 per month to e-mail 10 people or even 50 people, it may not be the best use of your money this month.

Are you using your autoresponder as part of your membership program(s)? If your autoresponder went offline this afternoon, would that put a kink in your systems? I know it would kink my systems a bit! Once an issue is detected, it should take a very short period of time for you to switch to a different method of communication for your lists and programs. Not all systems that are readily at hand can send out large amounts of e-mail all at once.

The time to identify how to recover from such circumstances is before the issue arises so that you can respond calmly and orderly. Be aware of your contracts and use your resources wisely.

How to Use a Blog in Event Planning (Part 4 of 4 )

By SoftwareGirl

The Rest of the Year (continued)

Video is another important feature. You may have a video portion of your website for conference videos, but a once a week update or feature with a few with links to your other pages are an easy way to keep traffic flowing and people interested.

During conference use

Special download area can be used to allow conference attendees to obtain a copy of the speaker’s slides along with any special conference material that is included with the price of the conference ticket. Once the conference sells out, you can offer a backstage pass to those not attending to still generate interest.

Your show daily should be in electronic form and be emailed to conference attendees (you do this don’t you?), it should also be in the blog every day of the show. Even if it is posted elsewhere on your website, you can do a preview with a link to that page where the daily resides. This is called spreading the wealth. The more places something lives, the better the chance it is going to be found and read.

Take a few videos during the show in the form of interviews, highlights of speakers, backstage photo opportunities,etc. post them to YouTube or Vimeo and then embed them in the blog. Make them interesting and (intentionally with purpose) raw, that gives the impression that it is breaking stuff. This also gives non attendees and “aw shucks” moment that maybe they should have been there.

How to Use a Blog in Event Planning (Part 3 of 4)

By SoftwareGirl

Preconference use (continued)

Information about the host city. This is a great way to get the community behind you. In the weeks prior to the conference, feature local restaurants, shops and hotels and let the venues know that you will be doing this, ask them to contribute an article. They will love the exposure. You may ask these local vendors to offer a discount and you can put the code in your blog.

Video from past conferences. This is a great place to highlight snips from past events and talk about them. If someone did a crazy crowd sourced jig and someone posted it to YouTube, embed it in your blog. This builds excitement and makes people want to attend.

Post conference use

Surveys for venue, speaker feedback could be hosted on the blog. Calendaring for the next event could be hosted. Attendees could tell their friends about the value they created at the event to entice others to attend the next event.

Write recap articles, post video (or highlights with links to your video pages) and thank your sponsors and attendees. Spread this out over a few weeks, you can get a lot of mileage out of this tactic.

The Rest of the Year

Feature sponsor press releases throughout the year, if XYZ company has a new product and they have a press release, post it (and then send the link to the sponsor). They will love this because not very many events care about them beyond their sponsor dollars. This is a great way to show that you value them.

The same can be said for speakers. Let the world know what they are up too since they presented at your conference. If a speaker went on to become President or a Nobel Prize winner, this gives your conference or event added credibility. Ask speakers to provide articles on the industry.

You can also do something that almost no show does and will truly set you apart from the crowd. Feature some of your attendees in the months between events. Pick some attendees from your list and call them and interview them. Ask them what they learned at your event, why they loved it and how this learning has impacted their daily lives. Ask them why they would return and use this as an extended testimonial. A WARNING – Make sure that the focus is on the attendee, not the event or conference. People love to get kudos and be mentioned, it helps them in their career and it helps them with the boss. Talk more about their accomplishments than the events. This is loyalty that money cannot buy…. Again, do not cut corners, you may be tempted to have a testimonial part of your website which is critical but if you do not do longer pieces in blog format, you are missing an amazing opportunity.