The Marketing Monsoon System™

Updating Your Blog is as Simple as Email

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:37:43 +0000

I know that having a blog is daunting for some business owners. It's hard sometimes to convince you that it's worth the effort to write everyday. I know, it's often the last thing on my list too. I do answer and write email messages everyday. What if it could be as easy as writing a friend or writing a business email?

This post you are are reading right now was created by writing an email and sending it to a handy little site called Posterous.com. I set my posterous account to then distribute my post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and oh yes, my blog. Then through the magic of RSS feed, it's sent out to my subscribers!

I'm going to see what happens when I include an image, too. Stay tuned. I'm going to share how I do this so you can systematize your blog too!

Posted via email from marketingmonsoon’s posterous

If Content is King, How Does the Business Owner Keep Up?

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:28:09 +0000

Sometimes the toughest part of marketing on the web for busy business owners is keeping up with creating new, relevant content to build a substantial presence in a niche market. It takes time to write, post and distribute the articles necessary to become known as a market leader.

Unlike entrepreneurs focused on Internet marketing as their primary business, most traditional business owners don’t have time or the web marketing strategies in place to blog or publish on a regular basis. That’s why we offer the service of regular article creation for our business owner clients. We write the content with niche marketing keywords, post the items and distribute them through social media networks. This is a great time saver greatly appreciated by our clients.

While having an article or two written and posted for you each month, certainly helps your search engine rankings and visibility on the web, it doesn’t keep you in the ongoing dialog going on in your market. To become a market leader online, you need to be commenting and posting at least weekly, if not daily.

How does a business owner who is not in the thick of Internet marketing hope to do that? By setting up a system that can create content as easily as reading and responding to email. We’ve created such a system and it’s working ! Look for more details in future posts.

Technorati Tags: create content, small business, strategic internet marketing, systematize, Web marketing strategy

One More Post to Test the System

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:50:44 +0000

By the way, I’m using aWeber. Check out the Web Marketing Tools page for more information on how to use aWeber to put your email marketing on steroids. Be back soon.

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Creating a System Saves Time and Money

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:18:50 +0000

As I write this I am creating a system for communicating with you and updating my blog at the same time. Many business owners put off starting a blog for a couple of big reasons. One, they don’t know where to start, and two, it can be very time consuming to write, post and then let everyone know you’ve published. I am creating a system that can make keeping up with your social media marketing, blogging and newsletter as easy as writing an email to a friend.

Right now I’m testing the system by publishing this blog article that will automatically be sent to all my newsletter subscribers. Is that cool or what! I’ll put my system together in one package that you will be able to use in a step-by-step format. Stay tuned for more!

The Keywords You Use Make a Huge Difference

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:35:16 +0000

If you have someone creating a website for you, make sure that you provide them with the best keyword phrases for your niche. Unless, of course they will do the research for you, you will need to research those keywords yourself.

The copy or text on your site must contain the words your market uses in the search.

Why? The biggest reason is that the search engines use the words on your site to know if your site is a good match for what the searcher is looking for. The second reason is that your visitor will know that they have found the right place when they find the words they used to search.

If you don’t use the same language as your potential customers, they will go away. They may click on your link and if they don’t see what they are looking for, they will hit the back button with lightening speed. You have about 5 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention!

If you don’t know what the best keyword phrases to use for your niche are right now, it’s time to do your research!

A Few Keyword Research Tips

Start by doing a quick and dirty survey of your current customers. Ask them if they were going to look for your type of business online, what they would type into Google. Then take those words and use one of the many keyword suggestion tools available (we’ll tell you more about keyword identification a little later on.)

Find the “right” keyword phrases is just the beginning to finding your market. “So, how do I find the right keyword phrases?” you might be asking.

There are many excellent tools to help you find the best keyword phrases in your niche. Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool is free to use and can be found at http://google.com/sktool site.

Type one or two words that describe your niche, like “real estate,” or “life insurance” or “plumbing” into the Keyword Suggestion Tool.

You will get back about 100 or more related phrases commonly used in its search engine. The results will tell you how many searches a month and what your competition is for those searches.

There’s a lot more information available there, but number of searches and the number of competing sites is all you need to get started to narrow down a great niche phrase.

With the Marketing Monsoon System™, we thoroughly research our client’s niche for just the right keyword phrases. The best keyword phrases are identified before we begin to build a website, and even before the domain name is purchased.

Part of what makes the sites we build for our clients so effective is that we work the best niche phrases into every aspect of the site. This is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

The best keyword phrase (best means high searches and low competition) is then included in the domain name, the title of the site and many other aspects of the site. This strategy makes sure that Google and your customers know exactly what the site is about. This is what is known as “optimizing” a website.

You might also be asking, “What makes the keyword phrase right for my niche?” You will have many keyword phrases that apply to your business and your niche. We look for the top 3-4 keyword phrases to build into your website in the beginning. As you continue to build your site you will include dozens more over time.

How Do You Find the Right Keyword Phrases for Your Business Online?

Your keyword research can be done using Google and other free tools. However, this process, done thoroughly, can be long and tedious, which is why many business owners short cut their research, to the detriment of their profits.

We use special tools that cut to the heart of the niche search. Use the right market research tool and you can spy on your competitors to know just what you need to do to get traffic.

Would you like to know our secret weapon in the online traffic wars?

I thought so. Here it is!

Market Samurai is a software program available for purchase. We use Market Samurai for Keyword Research, Competitive Analysis, Content Creation, and Tracking the search engine ranking of the our websites all with a few clicks. It’s like the Swiss Army Knife of Internet marketing.

If you have someone creating a website for you, make sure that you provide them with the best keyword phrases for your niche. Unless, of course they will do the research for you, you will need to research those keywords yourself.

The copy or text on your site must contain the words your market uses in the search.

If you don’t use the same language as your potential customers, they will go away. They may click on your link and if they don’t see what they are looking for, they will hit the back button with lightening speed. You have about 5 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention!

If you don’t know what the best keyword phrases to use for your niche are right now, it’s time to do your research!

A Few Keyword Research Tips

Start by doing a quick and dirty survey of your current customers. Ask them if they were going to look for your type of business online, what they would type into Google. Then take those words and use one of the many keyword suggestion tools available (we’ll tell you more about keyword identification a little later on.)

Find the “right” keyword phrases is just the beginning to finding your market. “So, how do I find the right keyword phrases?” you might be asking.

There are many excellent tools to help you find the best keyword phrases in your niche. Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool is free to use and can be found at http://google.com/sktool site.

Type one or two words that describe your niche, like “real estate,” or “life insurance” or “plumbing” into the Keyword Suggestion Tool.

You will get back about 100 or more related phrases commonly used in its search engine. The results will tell you how many searches a month and what your competition is for those searches.

There’s a lot more information available there, but number of searches and the number of competing sites is all you need to get started to narrow down a great niche phrase.

With the Marketing Monsoon System™, we thoroughly research our client’s niche for just the right keyword phrases. The best keyword phrases are identified before we begin to build a website, and even before the domain name is purchased.

Part of what makes the sites we build for our clients so effective is that we work the best niche phrases into every aspect of the site. This is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

The best keyword phrase (best means high searches and low competition) is then included in the domain name, the title of the site and many other aspects of the site. This strategy makes sure that Google and your customers know exactly what the site is about. This is what is known as “optimizing” a website.

You might also be asking, “What makes the keyword phrase right for my niche?” You will have many keyword phrases that apply to your business and your niche. We look for the top 3-4 keyword phrases to build into your website in the beginning. As you continue to build your site you will include dozens more over time.

Technorati Tags: keyword research, seo, strategic internet marketing

What Online Marketing Activity Brings You the Most New Business?

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:49:21 +0000

I lean towards the Permission-Based Marketing System (websites designed to attract, qualify and begin relationships with new customers on autopilot – ie with an autoresponder), but wanted to find out how most people are using the web to market their business these days. I created a poll on LinkedIn to survey business owners. http://polls.linkedin.com/p/68379/gfolt

What are you using and how is it working for you from the perspective of getting new business? Do you track the results of your online marketing efforts?

Here are the choices in the recent LinkedIn Poll:

Are you active on Social Media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter?
Are you building an email list with an opt-in page?
Are you advertising online with Adwords?
or do you send an eZine or email newsletter to your offline contact list?

Are there other activities that you do that do not fall into these categories?

All of these strategies are important. Some may work better for you than others, or you may have more comfort with some than others.

Please comment below and share your experience with these strategies.

If you are on LinkedIn please participate in the Poll: “What online activity brings you the most new business?’ http://polls.linkedin.com/p/68379/gfolt

If you aren’t on LinkedIn (it’s a really good idea if you are in any type of business or sales) please join me and request a connection if you are not already in my network.

All the Best,

Jayne

P.S. Don’t forget to add your “2 cents” below in the comment section! Thanks!

Technorati Tags: autoresponder, small business, strategic internet marketing, Web business marketing, Web site marketing strategy

New Product Makes Email Capture Easy

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:30:24 +0000

If you’ve be following Marketing Monsoon you know that WordPress is the heart of the Marketing Monsoon System. We’ve been developing a product called the Permission-Based Marketing System that includes an email capture page using WordPress. WordPress was originally created for blogging so getting the one-column design that works best with an optin page has been a challenge

Well, halleluia! Unique Blog Designs has just released a product that is going to make your Permission-Based Marketing System(TM) even better!

It’s called Squeeze Theme and it’s a template that is applied to a self-hosted WordPress website to create the optin page. Go here to take a look: http://bit.ly/7zqwrA We’ve been creating squeeze themes with WordPress for our clients and our own products for a year now. Before WordPress, to get an optin or squeeze page you had to wrestle with an HTML editor like FrontPage or Dreamweaver and know how to upload your pages to your host etc. Now you can automatically install WordPress and the Squeeze Theme and Voila! You have your site set up.

We use a great program called WordPressDirect to install WordPress with Search Engine Optimization already built in with special plugins. It takes about ten minutes to intall WordPress on your hosting account including the special theme that creates your squeeze page. Go to WordPressDirect.com to find out more.

Keep an eye out for the launch of our new Permission-Based Marketing System that will show you how to attract and engage new clients or customers online on autopilot!

An Autoresponder Email System is Ideal for Customer Relationship Building

Does Your Web Marketing Strategy Include Multiple Web Sites?

admin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:41:06 +0000

Does your web marketing strategy include more than one website? There’s more than one type of website and each has it’s own purpose and function. Why would you have just one? The most important purpose your web site can have is to attract, qualify and capture new leads.

In the past, a website was more like an online brochure or even a storefront. Today, the web can do so much more for a business than a passive brochure or sign out front. Today, a website can be an active participant in building your business.

There are are two types of web sites that can generate leads for you:

Business Blog
Lead Capture system

The first, a business blog, is a way to communicate with your target market or audience to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Blogs are a great way to get found on the internet – if you know how to do it right.

The latter, a Lead Capture System, is a well oiled machine that has nothing to do but build your business one visitor at a time.

A lead Capture system website is simple and presents the visitor with a decision – “Yes, I like what I see and I want more!” or “No, this isn’t for me”

The visitor raises their hand as a qualified prospect by opting to receive some free but valuable information from you - or they go away (this is actually a good thing. You only want to hear from the visitors who are excited about what you offer.)

You then have their permission and blessing to communicate with them further. No door slamming on your foot! They’ve invited you in!

No matter what type of lead generating web site you are creating there are several critical steps to take before you do:

1. Start with a business plan. Your website should be designed to support your business. No website, no matter how beautiful, will make up for lack of clarity about your target market. Make sure you are targeting the right people for your message. Need help with a business plan? I recommend www.Freebusinessplanformat.com

2. Do Keyword research. If you are going to invest time and money into a website don’t cut corners on this step. Finding the “phrase the pays” or in other words, the keyword phrases your target market uses when searching for your type of business is essential. An excellent tool for market research and managing keywords in your content is Market Samurai. Get it for free here. It’s the key to getting found by the right people on the web.

3. Build and Leverage your social media network. Build lots of connections in Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to get your message out. Your social media contacts can be a bigger source of traffic to your web site than search engines, and they are more likely to be open to your offer.

4. Develop an offering to give away. Giving away something of value to your web site visitors is a must. It gives your visitors a reason to leave you their email address. It gives them an opportunity to get to know you and start a relationship.

Once you’ve completed these steps you’re ready to put together a Lead capture web site or start building your blog.

What’s your website doing right now to build your business?

Technorati Tags: artist web sites, email marketing, Michigan web site development, small business web sites, Web marketing strategy, Web site marketing strategy

Want to Jump Start your Business?

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:43:10 +0000

Before you can get the most out of a web presence you have to have a clear path set for your business. The Entrepreneurial Edge System by Lisa Mininni is a rare opportunity to get it right, right from the beginning.

I’ve been working with Lisa Mininni using the Entrepreneurial Edge system to fine tune my business. I’m getting some amazing results already and I’ve just barely started!

For more information and a valuable ebook on getting it right, go to www.FreeBusinessPlanFormat.com.

What’s the one thing you most want to know about getting more business, online or offline? Please use the comment form below!

Technorati Tags: business plan format, strategic internet marketing

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An Autoresponder Email System is Ideal for Customer Relationship Building

admin — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:21:31 +0000

How much more could you get done and how much more money could you make if you could automate a large part of your sales and marketing?

The web gives you that option – if you set up your website correctly.

Ideally, you don’t want any visitor to leave your website without leaving at least their email so you can contact them again. What’s even better is having the follow up done automatically.

The best way we know of to do this is to put an opt-in form on your site where visitors can elect to receive mailings from you. An autoresponder, as it’s called, is a simple program that collects Email addresses from your webpage and compiles them into a database. That same program sends personalized email messages in the sequence you set up.

The best system we have found to create this automatic lead capture system is AWeber.com. AWeber has everything you need to set up an email database and the web form to capture visitor information. It’s a monthly service for a fee, but they have a 30-day free test drive. To take the test drive, go to:

http://marketingmonsoon.aweber.com

Aweber also has extensive tutorials on how to set up the database and the series of messages to your prospects that will be sent automatically at intervals you specify. It’s not difficult to set up an autoresponder system yourself, but it can be very time consuming.

We feel so strongly that an autoresponder should be part of every web marketing system, it’s a critical part of our Permission-Based Marketing System.

Relationship building on Autopilot

The wonderful thing about autoresponders is that you can follow up with your prospects and clients, build your relationship with them, on autopilot. Be sure the messages you send have your web site link in them and give them a reason to go back to your web site.

Having a list of people who have asked to receive your information is perfect for asking what is important. Aweber also will allow you to send out broadcast messages to your entire list. Perfect for announcements, offers and requests for feedback.

Remember, most people are reluctant to give up their email addresses because they are leery of being spammed or they’re getting too much email already. If you provide something of value, something that your market really wants and solves a problem, and you give it away to them, many visitors will opt-in to have your freebee. Be sure you provide something of value. It can be a report or access to a recording.

Note: you are required by law to make an unsubscribe link available on any of the email you send. That’s ok. You only want to have people on your list who want to be there. Using what’s called a “double opt-in” will mean that you have fewer sign ups but you will know they really mean to be on your list. In the long run you will have fewer “unsubscribes” as well. With a double opt-in your subscribers will receive an email asking them to confirm their request.

While you are getting their email information you might also ask them “What is your most pressing question about ______ (the topic at hand or your field in general.)” This will help you in the next step of your marketing strategy: “Give it to them!”

To explore AWeber go to: http://marketingmonsoon.aweber.com.

Then let us know if we can help you set up a robust automatic email system using your AWeber account.

Technorati Tags: autoresponder, aweber setup, email marketing, Web business marketing