Does your dentist seriously need a Facebook page? If you want to know how dentists are doing on Facebook, check out these 3 dental practitioners.

#1 Facebook page Aspen Dental

Aspen dental promises to treat their patients with dignity and respect. According to the following patient reviews they are doing a splendid job:

“I wanted to write this to let you know how you have changed my life and helped me.” and “I recently transferred from NY to VT and wanted to share the level of professionalism that I experienced when I visited Aspen Dental for my initial consultation. “

Aspen dental has a neat tagline “it’s time to smile”. Growing a fan base of over 12,783 fans (ATTOW) would certainly put a smile on a lot of page owners. Amanda, one of Aspen dental’s moderators is doing a fabulous job by promptly responding to patients’ comments on the page timeline. By signing off every answer with her first name, Amanda makes the user experience truly personal.

Aspen Dental’s Video Tab presents a series of high quality videos to help first time visitors and prepare them well for their first time visit of the Aspen dental office. Unfortunately, Aspen does not present real patients in their video, but uses an actor to share a real patient experience. IMO allowing real patients to share their experience on video would increase credibility and authenticity.

With 350 locations in 22 states, I would certainly expect Aspen Dental to go for a global page on Facebook with a single Like count and multiple regional pages accessible via a drop-down menu on the corporate page. For more info on global pages, read Facebook testing global regional fan pages.

#2 Facebook page Grand Dental Group

Grand Dental Group services patients in four different locations in Northern Illinois. According to their patient reviews, they are doing a tremendous job. Here are a couple to give you an idea:

“Everyone was so friendly and caring. I was made to feel that I was the chief concern of every one who came into “my cubicle”. Thanks for helping a nervous Nellie! ” and “…the staff was helpful and cheery. The only bad part the computer system was down. But they did everything by hand and tried not to delay. These things happen and they just kept going and did the best they could and tried not to delay me. “

Grand Dental Group has 583 Facebook fans (ATTOW) and manages to trigger on average 2.07 percent of their fans to engage with their page updates. I certainly would encourage Grand Dental Group to change their most recent Cover Image and use a photo that offers page visitors a unique experience. The current image is right out boring IMO.

Grand Dental Group chose to set up 4 local business pages serving patients at their various locations. Unfortunately, all four local Facebook pages have the same boring Cover Image with the Grand Dental Group logo. Using specific cover images for each location would certainly support differentiating the various locations in Northern Illinois.

It’s abundantly clear that managing these four local pages is four times more work than one page. That might explain why some pages haven’t shared an update since months. One wonders what’s the use of having four pages when there’s no one to keep the content up to date!

#3 Facebook page The Super Dentists

The Super Dentists offer orthodontic care and pediatric dentistry to children, teens and adults in Chula Vista, Oceanside California and surrounding areas including San Diego. Here are some reviews by youngsters visiting super dentists:

“I like the Super Dentists because: they go soft on your teeth and because they have lots of games. I like the movie that they show to know how to brush your teeth. (7 yr old)” and “My husband and I are so happy with the super dentist. My kids never get nervous when getting procedures done here. All the staff is caring and nice to my children. Thank you super dentist, I’m so happy my kids have the best dentist in all San Diego.”

The Super Dentists have a remarkable Cover photo and their profile image certainly stands out. They are the only ones using a number of tabs to enhance the user experience of their page visitors. If you visit one of their three Facebook pages, you’ll find a reviews tab, appointments tab, YouTube tab, Twitter tab and a Fun Holiday Contest tab. The last one is hidden in the third tab’s row, although ATTOW the contest was still running until December 25th 2012.

The Super Dentists manage 3 different Facebook pages, each with their unique Cover image and page settings. Although their page posts are not always up to date, this dental practice succeeds in creating a unique fan page experience for their youngest patients. Certainly a perfect example for other dental practitioners on Facebook.

Takeaway: if you want to stand out on Facebook consider hiring professionals who know how to build your Facebook fan page that differentiates your business on Facebook and offers your page visitors a unique brand experience. Take action now and optimize your Facebook fan page. Just a straightforward tip to make your New Year’s resolution stand out!

Ever wondered how to attract more buyers for your latest book, product or training? Continue reading to discover easy to follow guidelines to construct your own content marketing system to attract high quality leads.

Let us explain this marketing system with the following business challenge:

Let’s assume that you are about to launch a new book, titled “How to Master Client Attraction”.

Your challenge: how to attract buyers for your new book?

Your main short term goal: fill an event or workshop to launch your new book.

Your strategy: start social buzz on your book launch with education marketing.

Your tactics: use 6 WOW’s to attract attention for your new book. Create a core story to expand your reach: attract not only buyers, but also people who might never have thought of your new product or training program or did not know they needed it.

Define your target audience: if you want to be successful, you need to define your niche market well! Here’s an example: solo professionals, business coaches, female entrepreneurs in the East Bay Northern California.

Let’s continue with 5 key questions to master client attraction:

#1 Start with Content

Content is the main driver of interest for new things. So, it’s wise to choose education marketing as your strategy . Create valuable pieces of content to educate your prospects on how to attract more clients.

Determine what kind of content should be part of your content formula to get more traffic to your landing page (for the event and workshop) and what kind of content will create more buzz around your book “How to Master Client Attraction”.

Use the hub and spoke model as the foundation of your content marketing strategy: where you identify your central hub (website, blog, microsite, landing page) and define at least four distribution channels as spoke (think about Facebook page, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn).

Develop and create content types and messaging to share via these social networks.

#2 Manage Content curation

Include Other People’s Content (OPC) as a proven concept for a successful content strategy. Follow Pareto’s Law: 80% OPC and 20% your content.

Based on your keyword list and target audience, identify 3 to 4 sources for content curation. In this example, you’ll need to follow topics that are relevant to female entrepreneurs in the East Bay Northern California. Plus, you will develop a system for identifying key topics for curation.

Set up Google alerts or a specific monitoring system (use your favorite social media monitoring tool) to track topics that are relevant to your target audience.

And start sharing curated content.

#3 Identify Key Social networks

Identify which social networks fit best with your ideal buyers (readers). Start at the social networks in which you already have presence. Determine which social networks you can use to cross-promote and repurpose content.

Evaluate your current social profiles and optimize them to improve your results. This could mean hiring a designer to optimize your brand (social profiles) and add specific applications to your Facebook page.

Identify key influencers within each social channel you’ll be participating in and determine how you can engage with them.

Create a content promotion plan for your main social media channels and use your content as the vehicle to connect with key influencers and drive traffic to your central hub (landing page for the event or workshop).

#4 Buy Facebook ads

Use Facebook as the ideal platform to laser target your audience with Facebook ads. With demographics like gender, age, region or education, you can target precisely enough.

But if you seriously want to laser-target your specific audience, use Precise Interests. As Facebook explains:

“Precise Interest targeting lets you define your ideal audience by what they are interested in, using terms people have shared in their Facebook profiles. These may be drawn from their listed interests, activities, education and job titles, pages they like or groups to which they belong.

Topics (marked with a #) let you target everyone who has expressed interests closely related to the term you select. E.g. “#Cooking” lets you reach interests like “cooking”, “cooking tips”, and “cooking and eating”. Precise interests (unmarked) target people who have expressed that specific interest. E.g. “cooking” includes only the interest “cooking”.”

There’s a lot to say about Facebook ads, but two essential things to consider are:

1. Run multiple ads at the same time, vary the image or tag line and close the ones with low conversation rates;
2. Check your Facebook campaign stats to know which ads perform best;

#5 Evaluation of results

Identify your Key Performance Indicators, establish benchmark measurements and implement social media and SEO tactics with matching content.

Assess your content performance (conversion) and re-optimize or scale accordingly.

Takeaway:

Your business success depends on your ability to identify and build a relationship with your ideal buyers. Connect with key influencers and share remarkable content that will trigger a constant buzz around your new stuff. Welcome those who are interested on your landing page and use the right ingredients to convert visitors into buyers.

Are you Millennial ready?

We can not change the state of the economy, but we do control how we manage our business in changing circumstances. So, listen to this wise advise: “the only way to manage your successful business is by acquiring the right knowledge and skills”.

Let me give you one example of an industry that faces extremely challenging circumstances, and at the same time has a lot of BIG opportunities for success! I’m talking about the wedding industry. And here’s why…

Wedding vendors have to attract a new generation of young man and women to stay in business. This new generation is labelled “Generation Y or Millennials“. This primary target audience (born after 1975) is a generation that grew up with the internet. They have known technology their entire life. And they use these mobile devices as their main source of information. Not to listen to marketers, but to connect with their friends and family.

So, how do you connect with an audience -a young generation that does not want to be sold anything- and wants you to be invisible until they need you? Read on to learn about 3 critical success factors to stand out in today’s world of digital technology!

#1 Really get to know your target audience

The first massive advantage for wedding vendors is that their target audience is identified and studied by many. There’s a lot they can learn about this generation Y or millennials.

Let me just share 7 pretty fascinating stats to give you a clear idea about these millennials [Source: report by the Boston Consulting Group].

You can read them here or watch the interview with the lovely Emma Burford instead [or do both ]

1. Millennials are always in a hurry, So, when they need something, they want it fast, and they want it now. So, it’s essential to understand how to communicate with them in this state of “no time”;
2. They trust their friends more than “corporate mouthpieces”;
3. These are social creatures -both online and offline. They use social platforms to explore brands. You don’t have to tell them anything, they’ ll find out themselves. In fact, they want you to be invisible until they need you!
4. When it comes to purchases, Millennials are far more likely than non-millennials to favor brands that have Facebook pages and mobile websites;
5. This generation of Millennials loves to share their opinion with others. 64% of them feel that companies should offer more ways to share their opinion online;
6. 71% of Millennials continue to share opinions because they believe other consumers value their opinions;
7. Millennials are much more likely to be engaged in online activities such as rating products and services. So, support them with reviewing your products and services. Feedback is a present! Learn from your customers and improve your business to stand out even more!

My NEW training program “Bridal Leads Mastery” teaches wedding vendors to get Millennial ready. Because 70% of today’s weddings involve millennials. If you want to learn more, check out Bridal Leads Mastery!

#2 Keep Engaging Your Future Clients

The second advantage for wedding vendors is that their target audience wants to be entertained. And they spend a lot of time on social channels! Learn how to entertain your audience and share something of value to them. That’s how you build relationships and how you gain raving fans for your business. Don’t talk about your products or services. Share valuable stuff and attract the audience to your central hub. They know how and where to find you when they need you! Just work on your search engine rankings and be present on the right social channels and you’ll be ok.

#3 Cash in on your raving fans

The third advantage for wedding vendors is that engaged couples need wedding services! The main question is “why should they pick you?”

The answer to this “why” is TRUST. They will spend their money at your shop if they trust you.

Bridal Leads Mastery teaches businesses how to create a strategic approach (a plan for the long-term) to increase their reach, improve their visibility, attract the right audience, work on a solid reputation, gain trust and convert this all into solid cash to build a long-life thriving business. Sounds good to be true? Well, there’s only one way to find out if my words hold any value. Take action now
 

P.S. If you know a lot of businesses in the wedding industry that need help with standing out, this is for you: become a SUPER affiliate NOW for Bridal Leads Mastery and earn 50% on each sale of Bridal Leads Mastery via this site. Just sign up here!

Renowned author and personal-development legend Jim Rohn used to say: ‘What we lack in skill we can make up in numbers!’ Have you built a habit of going through your numbers? Do you know what social media numbers really count in your business? If you want to learn more on social media ROI, I invite you to continue reading.

Know Your Social Media Numbers

Here’s the secret value in knowing your numbers. Study your numbers and watch for the upward trends. Key question: “is your business doing better now than yesterday, last week, last month, last year, three years ago, five years ago, etc…”. And if the answer is a solid “no”. The next obvious question is: “what do we need to do to change the numbers and make our business grow”?

Let us apply this for a moment to social media investments. How do you know if your social media efforts are paying off? What numbers do you have to check for social media ROI? To answer that question, you need to check your purchase funnel: the visualization of your customers journey, from the moment they were exposed to you or your brand for the first time, up to the moment they decided to take action.

Nichole Kelly -president of SME Digital – has just released a new book How to Measure Social Media: A Step-By-Step Guide to Developing and Assessing Social Media ROI.

1. increase brand awareness;
2. generate quality leads;
3. retain customers;

In her new book, Nichole explains how Social media allow you to “extend” your sales funnel. Social media expose your brand to new audiences (brand exposure), connect with influencers (brand influencers) and foster engagement (interaction with your brand).

Take advantage of the social media multiplier

Social media have the amazing multiplier effect, that when people interact with your brand, this accelerates your reach massively. And on top of that you get rewarded with social proof -especially if social media key influencers support your brand. Now, generating more reach -with the help of influencers- should be aimed at engaging your audience. You want your target audience to respond (interact with your brand). My dear social media companion Mari Smith has said this many times “Content is king but engagement is queen, and she rules the house”. People who interact with your brand (content) are more likely to buy from your brand if they have taken the time to engage with it (content).

Be patient!

This brings us to the next stage in the sales funnel: action and conversion. Here’s a super important lesson to remember. Social media lead generation takes time. People who interact with your content may not be ready to buy what you have to offer. But, by continuously sharing something of value to them, they will be more inclined to buy from you when they are ready. So, be patient! If all your social media efforts have resulted in a sale, make sure you keep adding value to your newly acquired customer. Social media offer an excellent opportunity to nurture enduring relationships with your clientage. They will reward you with coming back to buy more and referring you to others.

Takeaway: here is your social media numbers takeaway. If you value this article I would urge you to buy Nichole Kelly’s new book How to Measure Social Media: A Step-By-Step Guide to Developing and Assessing Social Media ROI. In this book Nichole shares a ton of tools for collecting your numbers. If you want to make 2013 an even better year than 2012, this is the time to get this book and study the content.

Thanks for reading and I’d love to hear your opinion and invite you to share this with your peeps! Thanks again.

5 Basic Obstacles of Sales

I’m sure you have heard of Zig Ziglar – an American author, salesman and motivational speaker.

According to Zig Ziglar, “every sale has 5 basic obstacles: potential buyers have 1) no need, 2) no money, 3) no hurry to buy, 4) no desire and finally 5) no trust in you or what you offer”.

Trust is the foundation of all successful relationships!

Before we look into how you can earn trust, let us go to the core of trust:

Trust is focused on something that will happen in the future, it allows your customers to give you control over their purchase, and it reduces the risk that their buying experience will be a total disaster.

But most of all, trust is a human emotion, a feeling, based on shared beliefs and values.

Avoid Cognitive dissonance

Trust reduces “cognitive dissonance”. If customers experience cognitive dissonance, they feel a discomfort, caused by conflicting ideas, beliefs or values. And in a state of dissonance, your customers feel awful, anger, or embarrassment.”

Guess what happens next? They go to your competitor. The one they do trust!!!!

What can you do to avoid this cognitive dissonance?

The answer might surprise you:

“Get people talking about you in the most positive way that you could ever imagine”.

Generate Positive Word of Mouth!

Now, let us work on this idea of positive Word of Mouth.

What I am basically saying is: “You need to work on receiving positive reviews”.

Positive reviews from your customers, shared by WOM with friends or family, will reduce the cognitive dissonance, and this generates Trust.

Social proof confirms people in their beliefs that you provide the best product or service!

I don’t know if you are familiar with Andy Sernovitz book: “How Smart Companies get People Talking“? In this must have WOM book he shares 3 reasons that get people talking about you.

#1 they like you and your stuff.

#2 talking about you makes them feel good.

There are 3 things that explain this behavior:

• We want to look smart.
• We want to help other people.
• we want to feel important.

#3 The final reason people talk about you is that they feel connected to the group

So, ask yourself these 2 questions every day:

“Do your customers have an enduring desire to maintain a relationship with you / your brand or company?”

and

“What do you do to earn your customers trust each day?”

Takeaway: to build your phenomenal business success, you need to gain trust faster than your competition. Customers, clients will only hire you or buy your products if they trust you! If you offer unique products and services, your customers will talk about you in the most positive way you could ever imagine. So, give people something of higher value to them (than your competition does) and get people talking about you!

Thank you truly for your attention! Let us know your thoughts about trust. Share your comment and invite your friends to our brand NEW course “Bridal Leads Mastery”! Check out Tweet below and be welcome to share this with your peeps.

Starts Now! @juanflx brand NEW Course “Bridal Leads Mastery”! Check it out: felixrelationshipmarketing.com/bridal-leads-m… 80% Off! #course

— Juan Felix (@JuanFlx) November 17, 2012

Meet Generation Y or Millennials

When it comes to really knowing your audience in the wedding business, you need to look at Generation Y or Millennials. There are no exact dates for when Millennials or Generation Y starts and ends, but most use beginning dates ranging from somewhere from the early 1980s to the early 2000s.

Liene Stevens, author of the book, “Speak now or forever hold your piece”, explains how marketing your wedding business in today’s world works, given that millennials are the primary audience. In her book Liene shares, that today, 7 out of 10 weddings involve millennials.

Now, this youngest generation on the planet, accounts for 80 million people in the US. And according to a Comscore White paper, Millennials have a strong purchasing power, estimated to be 170 billion dollars per year.

Now, how do we define a generation? I think, this quote, by Scott Gross, the author of “Invisible: How Millennials are Changing the Way we sell” points us in the right direction to think about generations:

“A generation is determined by the values and experiences of its Youth, anchored by the music and ceremony of the Times”.

If we apply that to Millennials, here’s the experience they all share, while growing up:

As this video demonstrates, this generation is the first that grew up with the internet. Technology is something they have known their entire lives. Just listen to this conversation between Millennials:

“My mom has a new iPhone and asks, ‘How do you know how to do this?’ And I’m thinking, ‘How do you not know how to do this?’ We’ve grown up with it. I’ve done computers since I was four!” Source: Scott Gross – “How Millennials are Changing the Way we Sell”

Now, let us continue with digging a little deeper into the digital behavior of millennials and what that means for wedding businesses. I wish to share with you some fascinating results by Comscore. As you may know, Comscore is a global leader in measuring the digital world and for many the preferred source of digital marketing intelligence.

Around 240 million people in the US use the internet. And 68 million are millennials!

Video is now a regularly viewed medium among those millennials. In fact, at a given time 45 million millennials are watching 667 million videos! Millennials are the heaviest consumers of online video, and they showed a large increase in the number of videos viewed. It’s also intriguing to note that millennial men spent 3 times more time watching video than millennial women.

Watch this presentation to see some of Comscore’s graphs at the end!

According to Comscore, social networking and millennials are a match made in heaven! Social networking sites reached 99.8% of millennials. And about 40% of the total time spend online by millennials, is spend on Facebook!

Now, if we look at the smartphone audience, we see that nearly half of the total smart phone users are millennials!!!

It’s also interesting to look at the smart phone behavior. Many millennials are now using their phone as their primary camera and method of distribution. There is a digital platform shift that challenges Facebook, and is led by millennials. As Comscore’s data shows, the number of millennials, using their smart phone for videos & instant messaging has increased significantly. Social networking and blog activity ranks as top mobile activity among millennials, reaching nearly 30 million users.

Takeaway:

If you want to create more awareness for your brand, product or service, you need to speak up in a way that is relevant to today’s generation. Millennials have a lot of buying power. But you will only earn some of that money, if you know how to gain their attention. That’s the first step to lead generation. If you like to learn more about lead generation and how to engage with millennials, I invite you to check out Bridal Leads Mastery.

Let us know what you think about this or our new program Bridal Leads Mastery.

P.S. Reading tips:

3 Things Chinese Brides can teach you about Lead Generation

How Smart Marketers Lower their Cost per Lead dramatically

Would you like to know one of the secrets to stand out in your competitive market? Great! Read on to learn how building a solid reputation on Google is the very foundation for your business success.

#1 Business is emotion

Before I continue with sharing a couple of my secrets with you, I like to point out that the label “standing out” for me, does not mean “being superior”. With “Standing out” I refer to this: people start noticing you, because you start to treat them in a certain way. You treat them with LOVE!

The insights I share with you today, are part of my new online training program, titled: Bridal Leads Mastery. As the title explains, this program is especially created for businesses in the wedding industry.

But here’s a secret that applies to any business: if you love and respect yourself, you will treat your clients, customers, prospects with the highest respect and love!

Business success is all about emotion!

#2 Online spending is growing fast

Now, if we look at the size of the wedding market, according to theweddingreport.com, wedding couples in the US together spent 53.3 billion dollars on weddings in 2011.

Although the total wedding market was declining in 2011, the Online Wedding spending was up 43 percent over 2010. And Wedding Mobile Spending was up 44 percent. Total online spending for weddings in the US in 2011 equals 8.6 billion dollars.

#3 Search generates most traffic

Now, here’s something important for you to know: 80% of the engaged couples used search engines to find their wedding vendors. In fact, the wedding site owners that know how to rank high on Google are in the top 5 of most visited sites. Just look at the following table:

Top 5 websites in the US for weddings are (used in 2011)

1.  theknot.com
2.  davidsbridal.com
3.  weddingwire.com
4.  theweddingchannel.com
5.  brides.com

You may know that the top 4 sites on Google’s search results, receive 70% of all the clicks. So, ranking high on Google is what gets you a lot of traffic. But, this may come as a surprise to you, using the right keywords, is not what will rank you high on Google. You need to work  on your reputation! Read on to learn more on this…

#4 Google loves solid reputations

Now, the important question is: “How do you build a solid Reputation on Google”?

The answer is in getting people to talk about you! In other words: word of mouth marketing. This word of mouth marketing works the same for Google. The more people refer to your blog site, the more this proves to Google, that people trust your site.

But, here’s the most important differentiator: it’s not only the number of links that count, but the quality of the links. In other words, you need to get links from certain authorities on the web.

If you want to know which sites are linking to you, you can start a link audit. There are a lot of tools to do this. The free link audit tool is: Google webmaster Tools. And there is also MajesticSEO. This link tracking tool uses the link intelligence database to analyze the links to your site.

In this graph, you’ll see how the top 5 wedding sites are doing with their link building strategy.

If you conduct a link audit, you need to look at certain things:

1. the url that is linking to you
2. the page linked to on your site
3. the anchor text used for the link
4. whether the link is followed or nofollowed

Here’s an example of a nofollow value, assigned to the relation attribute of an HTML element to create an anchor text.

<a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link text</a>

This rel=”nofollow” action means that Google will not use the link for ranking.

#5 Build your reputation with inbound links

There are a number of ways to generate more links to your site.  I’d like to share 7 examples of link building with you:

#1 Comment links

By commenting on other blog posts, you can earn backlinks to your site.

#2 Social Media Profile links

Include links to your site on all your social profiles

#3 Editorial links

Whenever you share great content, other blog sites might link to your content in their blog post.

#4 Guest post links

Start writing guest posts for other blog owners and get rewarded with a link to your site in the author bio.

#5 Resource links

Become a valuable resource and receive a link when others include your blog site in their list with resources.

 #6 “May I have a link” links

Just ask for a link in return for offering something of value to the other site owner.

#7 Local links (think Google places)

97% of consumers search for local businesses online. With adding your business to Google places, you not only improve your online visibility, but also receive another backlink to your site!

If you want to learn more about how to capture quality leads and generate a solid cash flow, I invite you to Pre-Signup today for my new online training program “Bridal Leads Mastery“.

With Bridal Leads Mastery you’ll learn how to leverage the power of search and social to generate high quality traffic to your central hub: the place where the conversion takes place, generating the solid cash flow you need to build your sustainable business.

All that is within your reach, by signing up to my special list of first subscribers to this new and unique online training program.

Takeaway: if you seriously want to connect with your target audience, you need to give them something of value to them. That will get them talking about you. All this word of mouth marketing online, generates referrals to your blog site. With these online referrals, you will gain a solid reputation on Google. The giant search engine will reward you with high-ranking in the search results. That’s the real secret to differentiate yourself online!

Thanks for your attention, and I’m looking forward to support your business success in 2013 and beyond!

We love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave a personal message in the comment box below, and if you value this, please share it with your peeps!

Let me ask you this super important question: how can you build TRUST faster than Felix Baumgartner’s record-setting jump from space to earth? If you want to learn the answer, read this article and/or watch the video included in this post.

#The Power of Trust

Trust is a feeling, it’s an emotion. Trust feels comfortable. It is defined as the firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or an object. Now, to come back to Felix Baumgartner’s record-setting jump.

As Felix was sitting on the edge of his space capsule, staring at the earth, rotating 24 miles (38 kilometers) below him. Why could he jump into space, to become the first person to go supersonic without the support of a vehicle? Because he felt trust! He trusted his equipment, the team of engineers that supported him, but above all, he trusted himself. That is how powerful the sense of TRUST is!

Watch this video now to learn more:

#Relationship Marketing

Let us look at this in the context of relationship marketing for a brand. Think about your favorite brand. The one you seriously trust! If you trust a specific brand, you expect that the things this brand produces, turn out the way you expect them to be. However, you expect them to be, is based on your perception. The ideas you have about this brand. And the perception you have of this brand, the set of ideas, is based on your experience with this brand, plus all that you hear or see about this brand. If you trust a brand, you build a relationship with it.

The set of ideas you have about this brand is stored in your mind. As Al Ries and Jack Trout have illustrated in their famous book: POSITIONING. It is this brand position that enables brand marketers to stay relevant for customers or clients.

#Social Media

When social media became readily available, brands were challenged to maintain their brand position. Social media generate social proof. It makes the brand perception transparent. With social media we are no able to see the position brands occupy. It shows us the mental landscape. If a lot of our friends, and the people we know, use a specific brand, we are also inclined to trust that brand. Hence, the success of Facebook LIKES!

It works the same for companies. If you are a business owner, or work for a company, it is this social driving force, that challenges your organization. The challenge to strengthen the relationship your company has with your customers or clients.

Nurturing the relationship by listening to your customers. Knowing how they perceive you, how they are talking about you, and maintaining a healthy position in their mind by delivering the best service and products.

It is by engaging in the conversation, that brands will remain known, likable and trustworthy. Knowing you, liking you, and trusting you are 3 fundamental conditions for your long-term success. But, above all, TRUST.

If you lose trust, you will fail!

#How Trust makes Incredible Dreams Come True

So, we all have witnessed the magnificent record-setting jump by Felix Baumgartner. The first and only human to break the sound barrier outside of an airplane. This all was possible based on the feeling of TRUST. That’s how powerful it is!

Takeaway:

Doing business with others is a human interaction. Earn mental relevancy and nurture the basic foundation for building and maintaining successful relationships with your customers or clients: trust.

Let us know what you think about this. Leave your reaction in the comment box below.

Your cookie content might attract a lot of eyeballs, but traffic does not equal solid cash! For that, you still need to ask for the money the right way and get it. Sounds harsh? It’s the cold bone fact.

Fortunately, a lot of marketers have tested tons of landing pages to come up with 10 rock solid elements to improve your conversion. Here they are:

#1 Establish your IDENTITY

People only do business with people they know, like and trust. Make sure you add all elements on your landing page to be trustworthy. Think about your personal name, brand name, logo and your profile photo. Make sure it’s the best head shot you can get. Smile and look people in the eye.

#2 Create a killer Landing Page HEADLINE

Killer headlines make or break your content. Don’t confuse this with your “call to action”. Your headline explains to your visitor what value you have to offer.

Some interesting statistics by copyblogger: on average, 8 out of 10 people will read your headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. The secret to killer headlines: study headlines, crafted by the pros.

#3 Build Trust by Repetition

The web offers a lot of magic solutions to laser target the person that needs what you have. It all comes down to the “zero moment of truth”. That first moment someone sees your tweet, Facebook status update, YouTube video, Google+ post, or Google ad. If you succeed to earn a person’s attention in this zero moment of truth, make sure you don’t lose it again! The magic word here: consistency. Simple advice: repeat on your landing page what got them to click in the first place: build trust by repetition.

#4 Present an OFFER they can’t resist

Congratulations. So, you got this person’s attention. They clicked on your link and landed on your landing page. I expect you did your homework. You know what the itch is and how to satisfy it. Time for your offer! Make sure it’s clear.

Be warned: the confused mind always says no! Offer them a crystal clear solution to their problem. Reinforce what got them to click in the first place. Put together an offer they can’t resist.

Offer a very attractive simple-to-understand package: something they want, not what they need.

Tip: solve a pressing problem. Something that bothers them today and not tomorrow. To learn more on killer offers, study “58 killer offers“.

#5 Create a Landing Page with skimmable BODY COPY

People’s attention spans are short! Offer body copy that is scannable and skimmable, so people can get really to the core points as they need them.

Use bullet points to make your content accessible. Fill your symmetric lines with key benefits. Tell them what they get, not what it does. To give you an example: this vacuum cleaner has a 1000 Watt engine. So what! Key benefit: gives you the cleanest house possible and prevents suffering from dust mite allergy. Aha, where can I get it?

#6 Improve Your Landing Page with high quality IMAGERY

The imagery on your landing page is critical. Choose high quality images. Tap into emotions. A lot of our decisions are driven by our subconscious mind. To know what works, you should run some A/B tests. Vary the imagery and learn what works best for your particular offer.

#7 Make your CALL TO ACTION stand out

Your call to action is not the same as your offer! Your call to action falls down to 3 things: a link, a button or an opt in form.

Make your call to action stand out clear, so people know what to do next. Your offer and call to action should have some proximity, they should be somewhere near each other.

Give them a reason to act today. Add an urgency element. Choose between a bonus or use scarcity: only room for 10 people or ends in 2 days, or a special price if they act now.

#8 Generate social proof with TESTIMONIALS

The social web has accelerated word-of-mouth promotion. Social proof has always been very effective, but now it’s more visible than ever. Facebook likes and Twitter retweets show that you might have something valuable to offer.

Think about using a testimonial headline. Example (the next example includes 3 affiliate links): Darren Rowse -full time blogger and owner of Problogger.com- uses the Genesis framework for his website. If you offer this software as an affiliate, the next headline will get you some extra clicks:

Discover why Darren Rowse entrusts his million dollar business only to the Genesis Framework.

#9 Apply TRUST marks on Your landing page

Suppose your headline, body content and testimonials got your landing page visitors excited. Next thing you need is them to pull out their credit card or pay pall password to transfer some digital hard cash to your bank account.

Improve your conversion with adding trusted seals, security icons and stuff like that. Think about the little lock to tell them they can pay via a secure connection or a 100% money back guarantee. Show them little indicators of trust, like card icons from Visa, MasterCard or Amex.

Add some links to build more trust. Lead them to the about section that tells them more about you or a FAQ with the top ten questions you get about your offer.

#10 Finish with your Landing Page FOOTER

The finishing touch should be in your footer. Use your footer to show them ways to contact you. Your footer should have your address and phone number.

Add these 10 rock solid elements to your landing page to transform it into a money-making machine. And follow this golden marketing rule: always test the results. To learn more about A/B tests visit Anne Holland’s Which Test Won? Create multiple landing pages that cater to a laser targeted niche audience. Tweak and refine until you get the right mix of targeted traffic to the right landing pages. Ready to go for 2013!

Please leave your reaction or question in the comment box below.

Ever wonder how to earn or save money with Facebook? Look no further! Read this article to discover 12 tips to create your Marketing success and grow profits in your business because of Facebook.

#1 Choose Your Platform

Facebook has grown into the largest social market place on the web, with 955 million monthly active users (end of June 2012). These active users account for 3.2 billion Likes and Comments per day, 300 million photos uploaded per day and 125 billion friendships.

Marketing these days is all about connections and engagement. So, if you want to build your thriving business in this open and connected world, you better hop on Facebook and create your Page. Learn to leverage Facebook’s marketing features and build a successful quality lead generator.

#2 Create Your Marketing Strategy

Design Your Social Media Strategy

Every strategy has its own set of rules. To get you started with your Facebook marketing strategy, consider these 7 key elements:

1. Objectives: define clear goals;
2. Mission: define your primary motivator. What would Facebook users miss if your page would be deleted today? Make that your elevator pitch and present it in the About Section of your page! (Place pages by default offer no space for your tag line in the About Section);
3. Story: create enchanting stories that connect with people’s mental and emotional relevancy;
4. Voice: how does your brand sound like. Think of your brand as a character or persona (e.g. casual, playful, inspiring, simple, fun, savvy);
5. Resources: pick your resources with the end in mind (what are you trying to achieve and what Facebook resources do you need to get there?);
6. Audience: know who you are talking to! Facebook offers a lot of unique data to laser-target your niche;
7. Monitor: review your actions with Facebook Insights and learn what works!;

#3 Understand Facebook Branding

Getting your fans to engage with your page content is a powerful multiplier for building trust. Facebook users tend to like and share things that their friends like and share. By generating a lot of engagement -word of mouth branding- you’ll build a strong brand.

Let’s first distinguish brand and branding. Mari Smith has made this remarkably clear by saying:

“Your Brand is what people feel when they come in contact with your branding”

“Your Branding is everything you do to let people know about your brand”

Here’s the uniqueness of Facebook. You are no longer in complete control of your branding. By nature, Facebook users are sharing their experience with your brand daily with likes, shares and comments. Does this mean you have lost complete control over your branding? Absolutely not! It just means you have to be super creative to give your fans something unique and incredibly valuable. Do just that -frequently and continuously- and watch how your fans can’t stop talking about you.

#4 Work on Your Facebook Page Design

Tell Your Story With a Cover Photo

Your unique page design will kick start your business. Before you start hiring a professional designer, make sure you’ve set a budget in place. How much are you willing to spend on the design?

There are a couple of visual elements to consider:

-Cover Photo (851 x 319 pixels), first impression;

-Profile picture (logo) (160 x 160 pixels), represents you on Facebook;

-Views (Photo Album Cover) (111 x 74 pixels), shows last uploaded photo;

-App Thumbnails (111 x 74 pixels), customize to fit your brand;

Here are a few basic tips to increase your uniqueness even more: vary your Cover Photo, choose your custom App thumbnails wisely and reorder the Apps to make the most prominent ones stand out (your welcome App should be next to Views).

If you want to see a great Facebook page designer, visit Social Identities.

#5 Share Compelling Content

Getting your fans to like your page is fantastic, but keeping their attention can be quite challenging. First and foremost, show that you genuinely care about your fans. Always put the spotlight on your fans. Understand what interests them and share valuable content in the most entertaining mode.

Attention spans are limited, so vary your content and share no more than 1 to 3 updates per day. Use curation sites like Smartbrief or Alltop for daily inspiring pieces.

Subscribe to Facebook’s Interests to organize the content your fans are interested in.

Here are 3 basic steps to manage your content curation:

1. search for Interests on Facebook
2. subscribe to the list of your interest
3. bookmark your list and add it to your Favorites (so it stays in the upper left-hand column of your home page)

#6 Run Facebook Promotions

Online promotions -like contests or sweepstakes- deliver a lot in terms of user engagement opportunities and lead generation. Data shows that brands that run contests have more followers and fans. Here’s what Ben Pickering (Strutta’s CEO), has to say about this:

“Ben Pickering (Strutta’s CEO): “we see on average for every link that is shared out in one of our contests it is about 10 clicks. So, you have this multiplier of a factor of 10 for people coming and engaging with your promotion who wouldn’t have otherwise been there, which is a massive boost. You have the organic traffic and the socially driven traffic. And I think that is a powerful thing for a brand.”

Facebook has clear rules for promotions on your page. One of them is that you have to use a third party App to start a promotion. It means that you can’t use Facebook’s features to run promotions.

Wildfire, Strutta or LikeOurBusiness offer exceptional platforms to run your contest or sweepstake. But you might also check out TabSite, Involver or North Social. Whatever platform you choose, make sure you follow Facebook’s promotion guidelines.

#7 Target Your Audience with Facebook Ads

Facebook ads offer excellent targeting options. With demographics like gender, age, region or education, you can target precisely enough.

But if you seriously want to laser-target your specific audience, use Precise Interests. As Facebook explains:

“Precise Interest targeting lets you define your ideal audience by what they are interested in, using terms people have shared in their Facebook profiles. These may be drawn from their listed interests, activities, education and job titles, pages they like or groups to which they belong.

Topics (marked with a #) let you target everyone who has expressed interests closely related to the term you select. E.g. “#Cooking” lets you reach interests like “cooking”, “cooking tips”, and “cooking and eating”. Precise interests (unmarked) target people who have expressed that specific interest. E.g. “cooking” includes only the interest “cooking”.”

There’s a lot to say about Facebook ads, but two fundamental things to consider are:

1. Run multiple ads at the same time, vary the image or tag line and close the ones with low conversation rates;
2. Check your Facebook campaign stats to know which ads perform best;

#8 Connect your Social Channels

Every social platform has its own unique audience and marketing effectiveness. However, integrating Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest with Apps on your Page could increase your reach substantially.

Presenting your other social profiles to your first time Facebook page visitors might entice them to connect with you on Twitter or Pinterest, as well. If your page updates do not show up in your fans’ News Feed, they might still see your Content via a Tweet or Pin.

There are quite a few impressive looking Apps to show your latest Tweets on your Facebook Page. Just, visit App developers like Involver, NorthSocial or TabSite to check out their Twitter Apps.

One of my personal favorites is Tabsite’s RSS Widget (paid version). It pulls your blog posts and Tweets on a page that looks terrific.

If your business depends a lot on visual effects, like for a Weddingplanner or Graphical designer, Woobox Pinterest App offers you a marvellous opportunity to share your latest designs.

#9 Set up Systems to Manage Your Updates

Systems are meant to support your systematic approach! In other words: if you know the best times to reach your audience and what type of content they value, you can use systems to preschedule updates and monitor the results.

Facebook no longer penalizes updates that are shared via third party Apps that allow you to pre program your posts. However, I would recommend combining manually and prescheduled posts. Just pre program one Facebook update to go out early in the morning at 7 am and manually post something else later on the day, like 11 am.

To support your systematic approach on Facebook, check out tools like HootSuite, SproutSocial or PostPlanner.

#10 Boost Fan Engagement

Value your relations

Rule number one: don’t ignore your customers! Use tools like HootSuite or SproutSocial to monitor the engagement of fans with your content.

As your business grows, you might have to consider hiring a Facebook Page Moderator. Look for people who want to work for empathy. Make sure you have well written instructions for your moderator and set up a separate Team page to distinguish your personal voice from your Team. Instruct your page moderators to sign off with their first name. This makes the post more personal and allows you to track whoever made the comment.

#11 Increase Conversion Rates

Great products always sell, but offering them on a well designed dedicated landing page helps a lot! Facebook users love deals and coupons. So, consider using a specific Coupon Code to reward your fans and increase your conversion rates at the same time. Woobox offers an excellent solution. Check out their Facebook App to create fan-only Coupons.

#12 Track, Measure and Monitor

Marketing without measuring is like hitting a nail in the water. It won’t stick! So, use a combo of various systems such as: FB insights, PageLever, CrowdBooster, TwentyFeet, Social Bakers, Zuum Social, Polygraph Media, Infinigraph.

Define your key performance indicators and decide on what action to take if your marketing efforts don’t meet your results.

Take Away: Facebook has a lot to offer for businesses of all sizes. However, your success does not depend on the tools, but on a clear goal, a well worked out strategy, frequency and consistency! If what you’re doing right now is not getting you results, it’s time to change your course. Follow these 12 tips and I’m sure you’ll start to see the profits in your business grow.

Let me know if you find these 12 Tips helpful. Leave your reaction in the comments below. What would you add?