Simplenomics

Do You Want To Train Your Brain To Be A Marketing Machine?

Mike Sigers — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:26:55 +0000

I’ve been listening to Sean D’Souza for a long time … on my iPod, that is.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Sean or Psychotactics.com, but I’ve enjoyed his teaching’s and have found him to disseminate very useful business and marketing information.

Now I’m going to get a chance to hear more of his no-nonsense tips, tactics and strategies. For zero cost.

How’d I get it for free and how can you?

Just today, I got an invitation that said Psychotactics were giving away a workshop they sell for $2500. And that they are doing a test and giving a limited number of copies away absolutely FREE…No charge.

This workshop, the Brain Alchemy Masterclass, explains why structure, not marketing, is critical to growing a business effectively.

A free giveaway like this would normally have a catch of some sort, but this one (strangely) doesn’t. I’ve made sure I’ve signed up to their waiting list, so that I can get my copy of these goodies soon. You should check it out, and if you find it useful, you should get on the waiting list before it’s filled.

I’m letting you know because I think this workshop could help you. You should check it out and judge for yourself.

Here’s the link: http://www.psychotactics.com/freezone

P.S. I read somewhere on the page that there’s a deadline for this free offer, so be quick to click and don’t dawdle while deciding.

The Ridiculously Extraordinary Way To New Customers by Karol Gajda

Mike Sigers — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:56:22 +0000

Today’s guest post is by my friend Karol Gajda who is travelling the globe in search of business ideas, exploring new cultures and living the internet entrepreneur lifestyle. His writing style and personality come thru loud and clear his blog, which we’ve linked to at the end of the post. Do yourself a favor by subscribing to his RSS feed and following him on Twitter.

Although the Internet has been around for quite a long time now, many small businesses still aren’t using it effectively. A Web site as a brochure is fine to have, but it’s useless for attracting new customers.

If you run a small business I recommend you start with just 1 of the following tips, moving from 1 to 3 in chronological order. #1 is especially important. Once you’ve mastered it, add another to your marketing arsenal.

Trying to tackle all of them at once will, more often than not, hurt more than it helps.

1) Start an E-mail Newsletter

One of my favorite restaurants in the world, Ethos Vegan Kitchen in Orlando, FL, has a very simple monthly newsletter.

Every month they talk about what’s going on with the store, give away 2 gift cards to newsletter subscribers, and generally just keep in touch with their fans. The key is they’re not doing anything difficult or spectacular. But it works.

I lived 30 miles from Ethos before I went nomadic and wouldn’t usually make a special trip out unless I knew something cool was happening. Like their rare (once per month) Pierogi night. I made it out to almost every Pierogi night, but only because they reminded me about it through the newsletter.

Starting a newsletter, as I’ve already mentioned, is not difficult.

I recommend you go to Aweber or iContact (2 of the top e-mail newsletter services) and sign up. They both start at under $20/month and, if you just keep it simple and give your customers what they want, the newsletter will pay for itself right away.

How to promote the newsletter:

- Put a newsletter signup for on your Web site. Both Aweber and iContact make this very easy. Just follow their steps.

- Put a physical newsletter signup sheet inside your business. When somebody is paying for their meal, product, or service ask them if they’d like to join your e-mail newsletter to keep up to date on special events and discounts. It’s important that you don’t waste your time with people who aren’t already spending money at your establishment. You want buyers, not browsers, on your e-mail newsletter list.

2) Get On Twitter

The only two tips for Twitter.com you will ever need: Don’t spam. Connect.

Much like your e-mail newsletter, Twitter gives you an opportunity to connect with your fans. But, unlike your newsletter, it’s a 2-way connection.

Communicate daily with your customers and rarely promote your store, product, or service. When somebody connects with your business on Twitter it’s because they already know what you’re selling. Trying to hard sell them is a waste of time. Spend 10-30 minutes per day connecting and you’ll build loyalty.

Twitter is also a great tool for instant customer service.

A few months ago I e-mailed a local pizza place that stated on their Web site they sold vegan pizzas. I wanted to verify this statement, but I didn’t get a response. So then I messaged their Twitter account. I didn’t get a response for days.

That is unacceptable. It takes just minutes to read/respond to messages on Twitter and there’s no reason you shouldn’t check your messages at least once/day.

3) Start A Blog

The next step after starting a newsletter and Twitter account is starting a blog. If you already have a Web site, starting a really nice blog is free and easy using Wordpress.org.

Why should you bother with a blog? You get local targeting and the benefits of becoming a leader in your field. International respect may lead to more opportunities for your business either by franchising possibilities or speaking/consulting gigs.

Much like with Twitter, your blog shouldn’t be used to blatantly promote your business at all. If somebody is reading your blog, they know what you sell.

That’s not to say you can’t use it to offer up a special blog discount every once in a while, but your blog should focus more on what your customers want and what your industry needs.

There are countless other ways to attract new customers online, but if all you do is master these 3 you’ll have a veritable line of people waiting outside your doors.

Karol Gajda, a lifelong entrepreneur, writes about Freedom, Health, Travel, and Life at Ridiculously Extraordinary. To learn about his goal of helping 100 people achieve Ridiculously Extraordinary Freedom subscribe to the RSS feed here or visit RidiculouslyExtraordinary.

Looking For Great Trending News Content For Your Website?

Mike Sigers — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:40:50 +0000

(20/10/2009) Viipr Media has launched a new news wire service. The Viipr News Wire offers hot, breaking news stories to news sites, bloggers and any site that relies on breaking news content for traffic generation. All stories are optimized for the web, maximum visibility in search engines and sharing via social networking sites.

After working as lead writer for an online news site, Viipr Media founder, Paul Short, saw that the current state of the bigger news wire services was lacking in news stories written especially for online readers. Most of the content coming out of these companies is written with an offline, print media audience in mind. If you look at the current state of the big media industry, that old fashioned news doesn’t transition well to the the immediacy of the web. Paul then saw a wide open market that is long over due for a change.

Paul says “More and more people are looking to the internet for their news because it’s published there faster than any other form of media in history. Readers want their news now. They’re demanding it. It’s why big media who are set in their ways are a dying breed – they’re not adapting to the online news landscape as fast as their readers are and they’re sinking because of it. Someone needed to start syndicating news written for a web based audience. So the Viipr News Wire was born.”

The Viipr News Wire uses the real-time web to monitor breaking news events and collect information as those events are happening. Stories are written in a clear, concise format, optimized for search engines, online readers and social sharing. This content is then pushed out to clients immediately via email. Client’s then have their staff review the stories and publish to their sites.

The Viipr News Wire service is competitively priced, easy to understand and sign up for and gives client sites that edge of being one of the first on the web to post hot breaking news.

About Viipr Media

Viipr Media is a new media company based in New Brunswick, Canada. The company was founded in October, 2009 by Paul Short, former lead writer for Inquisitr.com. Paul has also been actively producing content online for over 10 years. Paul founded his own blog network in 2005. Prior to that he was one of the top search engine optimization experts on the web.

Viipr Media can be found at http://viiprmedia.com and the Viipr Media News Wire service can be found at http://viiprwire.com.

To request more information, email paul@viiprmedia.com

# # # ####

I’ve known Paul for “several” years, as we started blog networks about the same time. His SEO advice and his quick with have been invaluable and uplifting to me.

Read the Press Release I pasted above, check out the site, especially the FAQ and see if this is something you can use. This type of service is especially good for news & trend bloggers, or those who are interested in setting one up.

Would Your Website Benefit From Visitors Who Stay Longer And View More Pages?

Mike Sigers — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:33:46 +0000

I’ve read a smattering of different opinions about what Web 3.0 is going to be like, but I like to keep things simple, so I’m saying it’s when we get all the info we need brought to us, instead of us having to go looking for it.

Simple, huh?

To me that means if I’m on a site that has great shoes for sore feet, like I have been of late, I can get recommendations while I’m on the site, rather than having to go find out what people are saying about the shoes on that site or made by that company.

Or, if my wife and I happened to love movies, which we do, we can get recommendations while we’re on our favorite site, rather than having to search manually and filter the results.

I’ve done a little digging and found a fascinating engine that helps ecommerce and social sites with the implementation of just that type of recommendations.

The Strands recommendation engine provides personalized recommendations for e-commerce and social media sites based on user behavior, facilitating cross/up-selling or keeping eyeballs on the pages longer in the case of media sites.

In other words, if your product or service would benefit from people who see that other people are loving your product or service, you can use the Strands recommendation engine to keep eyeballs on the page longer and get those eyeballs on other pages on your site.

More pages, staying longer should equal more sales, bigger sales, more profits, bigger profits.

Simple, huh?

I can see more and more “social proof” in use every day and you can be sure that if you don’t get started now, your website and the business it does will shrink in use, in sales, in users and in it’s relevance.

Your Sales Reputation Is …?

Mike Sigers — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:17:56 +0000

Your reputation either precedes you or it exceeds you.

There’s simply no other way to say it.

While I’m driving down the road today, thru another rep’s territory, on my way home, I see a potential sale and called him on the phone.

“I called that guy the last time you saw something he was into. I guess he doesn’t want to buy from me, ’cause he won’t return my call.”

This rep’s reputation precedes him. Some time in the past he either:

Didn’t return a call
Took advantage of the guy
Screwed him royally
All of the above

I can recall this same rep bragging many, many times over the last 5 years about how he “… knocked his (insert body part of your choice) in the dirt.”

Today that’s come back to knock his own (insert body part of choice) into the dirt.

I prefer to have my reputation as a salesman “exceed” me.

I can’t be nearly as good as many of my accounts think I am, but that doesn’t stop them from thinking that way.

I couldn’t possibly explain all the little things you have to do to get to this status in the sales arena, but I will tell you this – in 2009 and into 2010, when we’re in a bit of a slowdown and people are not as busy as in the past, they’ll have more time to evaluate those that sell to them.

If your reputation precedes you, you’ll struggle to stay afloat.

If your reputation exceeds you, you’ll be fine and may even exceed what the market has to bear.