Marketing Archives - Monetization Magic

What IS an Income Producing Website?

Quite simply, an income producing website is a website that produces more money than what it takes to keep it running each month. Every business person knows that it takes money to have a website and to keep it running. There are domain names to be purchased and hosting companies to pay to allow your website to be housed on their systems. Typically this amount is less than $20 each month. Business owners don’t mind spending money on their business if they know that they are getting a return on their money. If your website is not producing money for you, it might as well be an unlit billboard on a desolate desert highway in the middle of the night! Fortunately, there IS something that you can do about it.

Begin by finding out who sees your website. This will simply tell you about the traffic your website receives today. Think of this as being point A. This will tell you the good news and the bad news. The good news is you’ll know where people are going on your website and how long they stay. The bad news is you’ll know how small the traffic stream really is. You can find out who sees your website by installing Google Analytics on your website and allowing it to gather statistics while you work on the other items in this article.

Think about your ideal customer. If you can identify one customer in particular, an actual person with a pulse and a name, that is best. What are this customer’s needs in relation to your business? What do they buy? If they were to look for something to satisfy their need or problem and they wanted to use Google to search for a solution to their need or problem, what would they type into the search field to find that solution? What location do you want to service? Where is your ideal customer located? These are the items that make up your basic key words for your website: customer problem, customer need, location, services offered, best selling items. Your keywords need to be used on your website and in the content that you produce for your website.

Your customers are interested in your products and services and they want to know more about your business. This gives you an opportunity to create meaningful content to place on your website. Sell the sizzle of your product!

Your website has the ability to sell your products and services even when your business is closed. Allow it to do just that by providing a way for your customers to book their own appointments, email you, buy products from you, interact with polls about upcoming products that you’re thinking about offering, finding out about upcoming events and purchasing tickets to those events. Make it easy for the customer to interact with your site and they will continue to come back.

Just having a website is a great first step. Setting up the website to work for your is a wise business move because it begins to work for you and will free up your time and resources so that you can concentrate on your core business.

Monetization Series

By SoftwareGirl

We’re kicking off the year with a series of training events on how to monetize your existing business. If you’re just starting out, these training events will help you too. The trainings are 3 hours in length and cover some amazing content. This is the roll up your sleeves information that you need to actually get into action. No fluff. No hype. This is the real deal!

Just as results come from our thoughts which are transformed into our feelings which is typically transformed into action, I want you to get the results. It’s great to receive great information; however, most folks get all motivated and then somewhere on the way to the action step, something happens…maybe confusion sets in or life happens or something doesn’t work out right and the action step doesn’t quite get put into place.

Well, no more, I say! I want you to get the awesome results that you’re after so I’m including a Q&A call after the training call so that you’ll have time to put the training into action and if something is not working right, you can ask questions and get back on track! What?! You mean I get support for the training?! Yes! That’s right! This is Build It Yourself training; however, you can consider it your “Get It Done” training. I want you to get the pieces done so that you can move on to the more exciting bits of what you do!

Yes, we’ll be dealing with technology; however, I want to help you through and shield you from as much of the crazy coding as possible. We’ll be doing some cutting and pasting but that’s about the worst of it. You don’t need to be intimidated by technology any more! You can literally look over my shoulder as I do the actual work to get these items done (as in “off your to-do list!”). As a bonus, you may also get some insider information from me along the way about no cost and easier ways of getting these items done.

The topics for the training events are as follows:

Build Your Bodacious List
How to Build an Income Producing Website
Traffic Creation Made Easy
Newsletter Creation Made Easy
Time Leveraging for the Already Overwhelmed
Social Media for Lead Generation
10 Steps to eBook Creation
How to Create Your First Audio Series
Membership Programs
How to Automate Your Operations (and get your sanity back)
Teleseminar Creation
No List Marketing: What to do while you’re building the list
How to Use Webinars to Expand Your Circle of Influence
How to Create Joint Ventures
Proper Pricing Strategies
Creating Holiday Cash
Creating Workshops
Product Creation

Note the exact names for these events will likely change; however, the topics will remain the same. Most of these events will include live training, webinars and the Q&A call after you’ve had time to implement the material. The live training and webinar will both be 3 hours in length. That is 7 very full hours of content! The training will be held on the weekends.

I’m attempting to accommodate folks from all walks of life which different demands on their time so some of the training is held on Saturday morning, some on Sunday afternoon. If you are unable to attend the training due to physical or time constraints, it’s no big deal, it’ll be recorded so you can catch up on your schedule. You can even submit your questions to me for the upcoming call on the AskSoftwareGirl! tab and I’ll do my best to address your question on the recorded Q&A call so even if the Q&A call happens in the middle of your night, you can rest assured that your concerns will be addressed.

Each of these trainings is easily a $397.00 value. If you register early enough, you will receive significant early bird pricing. For example, the Build Your Bodacious List class will be this weekend, January 7, 2012 and there is current early bird pricing for registration of $97.00 available on the Monetization Series page at http://monetizationmagic.com/monetization-series/.

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.

30-DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE ON ALL ACCOUNTS

1,000’s of people have accounts with ExpressText. Get yours in just 60 seconds.

ExpressText is used by companies both BIG and small

clients

Blogging for Business Growth

By SoftwareGirl

Gone are the days when having a website meant that you had a cute picture of your store front with your business name, address, phone number and hours of operation. Today’s website needs to include a blog, social network connections, free give-away items, an area to get more information from the business, an area to submit an e-mail from the website, items for sale and in some cases an events calendar.

Does that sound like a lot of hats to wear in addition to your normal day-to-day operations? Actually, it’s a blessing rather than a curse. It’s a blessing because you don’t have to do everything yourself. You are able to hire someone else to do some of the work for you at a reasonable rate. Other tasks can be created once and automated so that you can get back to the normal operations of your business.

The websites of today can introduce several additional streams of passive and residual income to your bottom line. The optin area is used to gather names and email addresses for people who are interested in learning more about what you have to offer or perhaps to receive your monthly newsletter. The email addresses are fed to your auto-responder software to send out communication to your current and prospective customers to let them know key items about your business.

For instance, let’s say you have a heating, ventilation and air conditioning business. Every fall it starts to get cold and every spring it starts to get warm. Every month we’re supposed to change the filter in our systems. What if every summer, your email system automatically began to notify customers that they needed to contact your company to set up an appointment to have their furnace serviced to take advantage of the Early Bird special? What if every winter, your email system automatically began to notify customers that they needed to contact your company to set up an appointment to have their air conditioner serviced to take advantage of the Spring Early Bird special?

Customers might even choose to schedule their appointments and pay for the service prior to you performing the service. It’s convenient for them and would remove some receivables from your books. WooHoo! Instant cash flow! I can see your accountant clicking their heals already.

Your blog could be used to educate your customers on the proper way to install a filter or drain a sprinkler system. It could also be used to let your current and prospective customers that you regularly maintain the local soup kitchen for no charge just because you like to give back to your community. Your blog gives your business a human touch to an otherwise cold relationship. If your little business will be doing an exhibit at the local home and garden show, you can let your customers know to stop by and see you to pick up their coupon for one of your services along with something nice to drink. People like to do business with people whom they know, like and trust. You may not have time and resources to meet and greet all your customers, so put some systems in place to do that work for you.

Take a look at the website you have today. If your website is more like an unlit billboard in the night than a fully interactive, systematized money-making machine, consider having an Action Strategy Session with me so that you can begin adding more to your bottom line before your competition gets a hold of this valuable information. The normal investment for this service is $349.00. The Action Strategy Session is even priced for today’s economy because you can take advantage of the Take Action Special for $97.00. You may just find there are 10-15 different income streams that you can take advantage of that you hadn’t even thought about before your Session. Reserve your time at I’m always happy to help!

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.

How to Use a Blog in Event Planning (Part 2 of 4)

By SoftwareGirl

Sales

A lot of times speakers will have published a book, are able to offer special offers on continuing training/coaching or have upcoming events of their own that attendees would be interested in. Assist them in extending those offers to the audience in return for a percentage of the total sales. Partner with a travel agent and negotiate a special rate for travel and hotel accommodations. Partner with the venue’s kitchen to arrange for a special deal on meals so that the conference attendees are not inconvenienced by having to go offsite for a meal and assist the venue in generating revenue. Allow them to purchase conference materials (coffee mugs, stationery, t-shirts, etc.) online and ship them before the event to generate interest.

Preconference use

A room and/or ride share area can be arranged for those needing assistance with room or ride accommodations. A forum can be put together to help future attendees to communicate and generate interest for the event. Information about the venue and amenities can be communicated to assist attendees in getting ready for the event. Pre-conference training calls can be coordinated via the blog along with pre-conference material lists or training materials or assignments can be posted via the blog. Encourage potential attendees to link to the blog post via Twitter or Facebook to generate interest for their personal tribes. Advise everyone when the Earlybird registration deadlines are approaching. Create a tweet session the night before the big event to elevate the excitement about the upcoming event.

Tell attendees about important happenings and press releases. If you are announcing that there will be a networking reception on the first night of the conference, this is one of the outlets you should use.

Inform attendees about a new speaker or go in depth on each speaker. This is especially useful, take one speaker per week (day) and feature them. Write an article about them, their accomplishments, their expertise and why attendees would want to attend their session. You could also have the speakers write a guest post which they like.

The same can be done for sponsors. Talk about event sponsors and what they bring to the table and why attendees should visit their booths. A WARNING – DO NOT make blog mentions or blog articles part of a sponsorship package, this will free you up to talk about lower level or new sponsors that may have an amazing product or service but may not have the funds for the larger sponsorship, it shows that you value them and that they are important as well.

Announce milestones, if the conference has reached an attendance record or the early bird is ending, make it a post in addition to the other places you will announce it.

How to Use a Blog in Event Planning(Part 1 of 4)

By SoftwareGirl

What is a blog?

Wikipedia defines a blog as (a blend of the term web log)^[1] is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.^[2]

^{In case you were not aware, you are currently reading a blog.}

How long does the event occur?

Let attendees know in advance when the event will occur. Also advise them the hours of the event. Sometimes events are scheduled earlier than 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m. Typically your event will last 3-5 days. Typically people travel the day before and the date after.

What happens at the event?

Travel, sleeping accommodations, networking, sales, coaching, food consumption, gift consumption, entertainment, sightseeing, training, event testimonials, speaker feedback. These are all topics that can be covered in the blog and points that could be coordinated with reliable sources at the venue. Addressing these topics ahead of time will generate interest for the event and set the expectations of the event attendees.

What is needed at the event?

Tell attendees what to bring, what to leave a home, what the weather will be, remind them to bring business cards for networking. Will they need paper and pens for note taking or are you supplying those materials? Will recording and videoing be prohibited? Advise attendees of the expected attire (high heels or hiking boots, shorts or slacks, polo shirt or sport coat and tie). Will there be any formal events? Advise attendees of any special points that they would want to be aware of such as being prepared for a day at the beach or morning yoga or whatever you might have planned that they would like to be aware. Will you have special accommodations for disabled attendees?

Generating interest

Interest can be generated by giving prospective attendees a brief overview of the benefits that will be gained by attending the event. Will they also receive a DVD of the event? Will they receive valuable knowledge at the event? Do you have testimonials from past attendees? All that can be shared via e-mail. Invite them to bring a friend/business partner/team for free or at a deep discount.