Recently, there has been some buzz surrounding cinemagraphs; still photos with some animated areas. Many people may see cinemagraphs as just works of art/creativity but I see a future where they are used by businesses to introduce their products or employees online.

Below are some examples of cinemagraphs. Click on the images to visit their sources:

1) Could wine and beverage companies be using cinemagraphs to make their products look more appealing on their websites? I bet they can!

2) Can’t grocery shops be using cinemagraphs on their websites to show the freshness of their groceries? I bet they can!

3) Can’t fashion houses be using cinematics to reveal their latest designs? I bet they can!

4) What about phone companies? Can they use a cinemagraph like the one below and say something like, “You just can’t stop using it”? I bet they can!

5) And I bet make-up artists and/ cosmetic sellers can have a cinematic similar to the one below and have a thought bubble over the woman’s head, saying something like, “The new Sociatic lip-stick is fantastic! Henry will love this!” and then there’ll be a link to that exact lip-stick?

Okay, maybe I was a little biased with the “Sociatic lip-stick” thing but I guess you got my point.

I don’t believe there is an easier way to use cinemagraphs all over a site that carries thousands of products. Just one cinemagraph on the homepage or one in each product category might work well.

If it is used to introduce every new product a manufacturer makes,

1) Will it be more sharable across social media? Yes!

2) Will it appeal to people more than just using regular photos? Yes!

3) Will it increase sales? Maybe! Just like video, I don’t see it being a miracle invention! You need to be creative with it in order to get the best out of it but I trust that it will be a better tool than regular (still) images.

So, I have got some work for you to do. Share this post across the social web and let’s see your friends reactions. Do you believe cinemagraphs will be used in future online marketing? Do you think it should? I will like to know what you also think.

If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to the RSS feed so that you don’t miss future articles. In my next post, I will be sharing a free landing page template with you. Don’t miss it!

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Are you launching a product soon? Well, I am and I’ll be taking you through the product I will be launching and how it will help you in launching new businesses and profit avenues for your existing business. But first, let me take you through some lead generation lessons.

Some time back, I wrote an article about how to generate leads with social media and it is my most read article to date. After seeing the success of that post, I saw the need for an easier and better way of generating leads. So I came up with an idea to develop a product that will make it easy for businesses to generate leads.

Simple Lead Generation:

If you need real simple lead generation ideas, follow these steps:

• Read my post on generating leads with social media
• Get an email marketing/ newsletter software
• Set up a landing page to receive the traffic you generate
• Post a video presentation or screencast to describe what you are about to launch
• Setting up some lead ‘bait’ will do (Just a reminder . This is very important)
  
• Set up a confirmation page for your subscribers
• Continue driving traffic to your landing page to build more leads
• Analyze your traffic to lead conversion ratio and test with new videos and screencasts
  
• Nurture your leads
  
• 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blast off! Go ahead an launch.
  

Having a high converting landing page will be one of your keys to success. Luckily, I have designed and developed (with some help) a site that will make you convert your traffic to leads without a sweat. It is almost finished and it can be used in many different ways to achieve one result; generate leads.

Before I show you how it will look like, here is what you can use it for:

1. Event invites
2. Webinar invites
3. Beta testing invites
4. Lead generation for product/ service launches
5. Lead generation for blog launches
6. Lead generation for membership site launches
7. and Just any type of lead generation

It will be called the Ultimate Lead Generation Theme. You can see a photo below off what it looks like:

The Ultimate Lead Generation Theme is a site template that will do more than just convert your traffic to leads. It will also help you get more traffic.

Here are the features it will have:

• A video panel; This supports Youtube Videos and Flow Player Videos. Actually, you can replace the video panel with scripts like SlideDeck if you are not into videos.
• Easily Editable subscription form; You can easily put in
• Contact Form (Ajax based); In case your message wasn’t clear, visitors can contact you for more information using this form instead of going away and not subscribing. So this will give you a second chance to try and convince them to subscribe. Also, because it is Ajax based, the page doesn’t load when the enquirer clicks on the “Send” button. This will also enable your visitors to reconsider and subscribe to your newsletter without being taken off the homepage.
• Text section: You can enter a brief information about you or about what you’ll be launching on the site
• Social Sharing Buttons; If you are really interesting, some people might consider sharing your home page by clicking on any of the sharing buttons at the top of the site. If you are lucky, this will make your traffic generation a little easier .

So expect my product to launch soon. It will come in 4 color variations during the first launch. I will be running a competition during the launch so that you can grab it for free. Stay tuned (oh, you can do this by subscribing to the RSS feed) for more. If you have any questions or suggestions, the floor is yours in the comments box.

There are a number of ways you can reuse your blog and newsletter content. It doesn’t matter how old or new it is. It just needs to be relevant at the time you’ll be reusing it.

Converting your content to various formats allows you to reach many content consumers, thus, boosting your traffic level and conversions. It’s like killing two birds with one stone; in our case, getting more leads with one content.

I’ve divided this article article into three parts:

1. How to Convert your blog and Newsletter articles into PDF;
2. How to Convert Your Blog and Newsletter articles into Audio; and
3. How to Convert Your Blog and Newsletter articles into Video.

By the way, if you need some lead generation and content ideas and haven’t already seen these posts, check them out. They are related to this content marketing related article:

25 Blog or Newsletter Topic Ideas For Company Bloggers

10 Ways to Generate Leads With Social Media

Now let’s look at converting old text content to PDF.

1. How to Convert your blog and Newsletter articles into PDF

PDF documents are popular lead baits for many online marketers. How do you use them in your marketing? If you publish a blog or a newsletter, we’ll be looking at how to convert them into marketable PDFs.

Before we begin, here are tools you’ll need:

• Content
• PDF making software
• Email marketing software
• Retweet buttons
• Graphic design software

Don’t worry if you don’t have any of the tools mentioned above. I’ll show you where to get some.

Converting Blogs to PDF:

There are two ways you can convert your blog into a PDF document:

• The manual way and
• The automated way.

The manual way requires some time to complete but the automated way doesn’t. The manual way is also the best way to convert your old newsletter content into a downloadable PDF document.

We’ll be looking at both methods of PDF creation.

Manual conversion:

Follow the following steps to convert your blog into PDF:

1. Open your text editing software (I use Microsoft Word)
2. Go to your blog and copy some of your best articles and paste them into the text editing software
3. Format your content; text size, alignment, colors, etc. Strategically place the retweet buttons in your content; preferably, on the first page and in the footer of every other page. Save everything.
4. Import your saved document into your PDF making software. If you don’t have any, you can buy the latest version of Foxit Phantom or use Bullzip (free).
5. Design your cover, using your graphic design software. I use Photoshop because you can easily save your finished design as PDF. After designing your cover in Photoshop, save it as a PDF.
6. Insert your cover design into your PDF document just before the first page. If you’re using Foxit Phantom, go to “Organize” and “Insert Pages” on the menu bar.
7. Now you can add links to your retweet buttons. This tutorial from Social Media Examiner will help you do just that: How to Add Retweet Buttons in Your PDF Documents
8. Add other links to your content if you like. Save everything when you’re done.
9. Your PDF is done and ready to be used as lead bait for your newsletter subscribers.

If you think the manual way of converting your content is long and boring, you can use the automated way.

The automated way of repackaging your content to PDF documents works best with blog posts than with newsletter content.

You can use Zinepal to convert your blog posts into PDF. If you want more control over the formatting and design, you’ll need to purchase a premium version of the service.

You can find step-by-step guides on Zinepal to help you in your PDF creation. If you’ve already installed social sharing buttons on your blog, Zinepal shows them in your finished PDF document so you don’t have to go through the struggle of inserting them in your post manually.

You can also use PDF24 if your blog is on WordPress.

Marketing Your PDF

Read this article to get ideas for promoting your PDF: 11 Easy Tips For Better Content Marketing

PART 2: Converting Blog Content to Audio

First of all, you don’t have to convert all your text content to audio. You’ll have to convert your best articles to audio. You can have a schedule for producing audio content. You can record audio content once a week, twice a month, once a month or you can use any schedule that you see fit.

There are two ways of converting text content to audio; the automated way and the manual way.

Services that can help you automatically convert your blog’s content to audio are:

• iSpeech

• Odiogo

• Buzzvoice

These services use text to speech converting technology to change all your text content into various formats of audio so that your readers can download your content and upload it on their mp3 players, their PCs or iPod.

If you want to do the conversion manually, it’s pretty simple too.

Tools you’ll need to do a manual text to audio conversion are:

• PC mic
• A Computer
• Content
• Audio editing software (use Audacity. It is free and simple to use).

The process is simple. All you have to do is to install Audacity on your computer, install your mic and then start recording. After recording, save your audio in different audio formats so that you can share it in different ways and on different services.

Marketing Your Audio Content

1. Upload it to iTunes as a podcast

2. Start your own radio show on Blog Talk Radio

3. Create a blog category for your audio content so that your visitors can easily find and download them.

Part 3 Video post:

Videos are among the most powerful promotional tools you can ever use in your marketing. There is no doubt about that since most of the video sites receive tons of traffic and daily views.

There are a number of ways you can convert your text content to video.

1. You could make video screencasts
2. You could choose to just stand in front of a camera and talk to your audience
3. You could make physical product presentation videos.
4. You could also stand in front of a black board to give a lecture on one of your topics

The type of content you have will determine what video you should do for it.

1. Screencasts are mostly used for on-screen tutorials of how to use a product or service or to explain how something works.
2. Videos where you just stand and talk are better for content that carry announcements.
3. Physical product presentation videos are videos you can use to showcase your company’s physical products
4. Videos where you give a lecture using a blackboard as your aid are great for explaining situations and outcomes. They are similar to screen casts but definitely not the same.

If you want to create screencasts, you’ll need these tools:

• Screen casting software: You can use Camtasia (premium) or Screenr(free)
• PC microphone: To record your voice
• Computer

If you want to create any other form of video, you’ll need a video camera and probably a microphone to record everything.

Promoting Your Videos

1. Upload your videos to video sharing sites like Metacafe, Youtube, BlipTV, Vimeo, etc.
2. Copy the embed codes for your videos and place them on your website or blog.
3. Practice video SEO.

Conclusion:

I hope this article gave you some ideas for your content marketing campaign. The next article I’ll be sharing will be on video SEO (video search engine optimization). I’ll walk you through how to get your videos easily found and watched on video sharing sites like Youtube.

Subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified when that post is live.

As usual, your comments and points concerning this article are always welcome and appreciated.

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Do you use content to drive traffic and generate leads? Content marketing has become the preferred means of marketing for many businesses. It’s a great strategy for attracting leads to your business. Blogs, whitepapers, online videos, podcasts and other content forms are there to show us the truth behind content marketing.

If your content is not getting you the results you want or even if you are new to content marketing, there is good news. It’s possible to change.

With that setting the stage, here are 11 tips to help you in your content marketing.

1. Have a goal: When you’re planning your content, set a goal for it. What do you want to achieve with your content? Perhaps, you want it to get you more newsletter signups or more sales for your products. The best way to set goals for your content is to categorize them. For example, you can categorize your content like this: drive traffic, generate leads, generate sales, etc. Delving further:

• List posts: Drive traffic. Traffic may convert to leads
• Downloadable Documents: Increase traffic conversions to leads
• Customer reviews/ testimonials/ case studies: Convert traffic and leads to sales

Categorizing and setting goals like this helps you choose the right words to use to achieve your content marketing goals.

2. Produce enlightening content frequently: The two keywords here are “enlightening” and “frequently”. When you produce great content, people will want to share it and subscribe to your RSS feed or newsletter. Teach people in your industry new ways to do things. If you disagree with an accepted norm in your industry, produce content to debunk it and share it with top players in your industry.

When you produce great content, people talk about you on their blogs. When you produce great content, your business grows. When you produce great content… the goodies goes on and on and on.

3. Analyze and Proofread: After planning and producing your content, take your time and double check for errors. If you’re unsure of any mistakes, work with someone who is better at spelling and grammar to help you out. Also make sure your content is easy to understand and is convincing enough especially when you are using it as a sales tool or to debunk a theory.

 4. Stack up content ideas: Plan your content ahead of time. This reduces the probability of not having any content to share when you want to produce content. I keep a word document with many content ideas so I’m not often faced with writers block. Stacking up content ideas also helps you write great content because you have a mental picture of what you’ll be writing about.

5. Use different content formats: Don’t only rely on text to promote your business. Use graphics, PDFs, audio, and video. People want to be spoiled with choice when it comes to giving them content. They want to watch screen casts of what you are talking about. They want to listen to your content on their mp3 players. They also want your content on their desktops in document format.

6. Stay informed: Be attentive online. Subscribe to blogs in your niche. Set up alerts on Social Mention and Google to track news and articles with keywords you’ll be interested in. Learn about new marketing opportunities. Learn about new trends. Use the information you collect to keep your content and strategies up to date.

7. Manage your time: Having a time-table or to-do list is a great way to manage your time as a content marketer. Producing great content can take some time so you need to give yourself enough time when you are producing content. Learn how to manage your time so that you’re ready when you feel the urge to create content.

8. Network Effectively: Do you want influential bloggers to link to you or talk about your product? Then don’t just follow and friend them on social networking sites. Most of them won’t follow or friend you back anyway. You’ll have to prove yourself worthy to be talked about by networking properly with them.

Start by commenting on their blogs and joining in their conversations on social media and networking sites. Leave insightful comments on their status updates. If you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything. You can also contribute an article to their blog.

Another great way to network is to use interviews. Interview opinion leaders about the latest industry trends or get yourself interviewed by bloggers.

Networking gets you noticed. When you get noticed, you’ll be talked about on these blogs and their readers will also notice you and talk about you on their blogs.

 9. Do your research: When you’re not sure of something, do some research online. Never add statements and quotes to your content without finding out whether they’re right or not. If you make a mistake with this, people will question the credibility of the rest of the information you’re giving them.

10. Identify and use content aggregators: Some websites are programmed to aggregate and show content from various sources. I call these sites content outlets. These sites will help you reach a larger audience with your content. Some examples are Social Media Today, The Daily Brainstorm, The Customer Collective, Alltop, etc.

11. Think SEO: If you publish text, audios and videos, you have to always think S.E.O. when producing your content. You’ll have to optimize your titles and use the right key words in your descriptions. It’s the only way you’ll reach more people.

Conclusion:

What strategies do you use in your content marketing? Share them with me.

Next week, I’ll start a series of articles that will show you how to reuse your blog and newsletter ideas to generate more leads. You’ll learn new things including video and audio SEO. Subscribe to the RSS feed in order not to miss this.

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Do you sometimes forget the ingredients needed to cook up great sales content? Writing quality content is the only way to convince people to buy your products. If you sell soccer boots and just write, “red soccer boots”, next to a picture, all you’ll be doing is showing bones. And that’s scary.

Give your sales copy some skin. People want details so give it to them. You also need sales so here is a simple list to help you remember how to write your copy.

1. Picture your audience: You need to have a clear mental picture of who your audience is, the problems they have and how you think your solution will help them.

2. Talk to them: Not about yourself. Your “About” page is there to say everything about your business. Your sales content is supposed to have “you” and “your”; directly referring to anybody who reads it (in this case, your target audience).

3. Emotions trigger action: People act on two basic emotional principles:

• They take action on their fears
• They take action on their pleasures

With this knowledge, you can use words that spell out your reader’s fears and couple it with the joy (pleasure) they’ll get after using your product.

4. Spill out the benefits: What benefit does your product offer? People read about products because they want to know what it does so add some detail.

5. Spark imaginations: Make your content memorable by sparking the reader’s imagination. Some people read content with half-dead minds so you need to awaken them by taking them to Wonderland. Use phrases like, “imagine you …”, “think about the benefits.” Etc.

6. Where’s the proof?: Has your product helped many people already? Has it won any awards? Are people saying anything about it? Where’s the proof? Show it. It will help you get more conversions.

7. Any offers or bonuses?: Do you have any bonuses to offer? Do you have any discounts? What are they? This is not a necessity but it helps in conversions.

8. Where’s the call to action? Your content needs an enabler and that is what a call to action is for. After reading your content, people want to know what to do next. Tell them what you want them to do: buy a product, fill out a form, etc.

9. Say your last words: Your post script (P.S.) is a great tool for summing up your content. It’s a way of reminding the reader of what they’ll be getting or why they need to act fast.

10. Go over it: Your letter is not perfect yet. Go over it and see if it sounds right. Does it convince you? You can also show it to your family or friends you trust. Does it convince them? To find out, ask them if they’ll take action if they were to be your audience.

All you have to do now is to save this list somewhere and use it when you write.

Did I leave anything out? What do you use to spice up your sales copy? Let me know.

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All too often, businesses choose celebrities to be ambassadors and evangelists of their products. Celebrity endorsements can mean more sales for you but I think it is a short sighted way of marketing because it has some limitations.

I have two reasons why I think of celebrity endorsements as short sighted marketing.

1. People have their celebrity favorites. If you let celebrity “A” endorse your product, I may not be a fan of him and I won’t be moved to make a purchase because celebrity “A” is not my favorite celebrity and I don’t care what he has to say.

Give me celebrity “B” and I’ll buy your product, period! Can you afford to sign a contract with celebrities “A”, “B”, “C” to “Z”? I guess not.

2. Most people know that celebrities are paid to endorse products regardless if they like the products or not. Most of them do it for the money. You’ll have to use another strategy to convince them. I am this type of customer. Give me some real endorsement and I’ll follow you forever.

The best way around these two problems is to use your real customers and regular users of your products as ambassadors and endorsers of your product.

Here are 4 reasons why you owe your customers the ambassadorial right:

1. They give you their money. That’s how your business keeps growing remember?

2. They do your marketing for you by referring their friends to buy your products. Yes, you got that right; it’s called word of mouth marketing.

3. They help you improve because they give you their feedback. The awards for “quality”, “best product”, et cetera, was made possible because of them.

4. They use your product. They bought from you because they trusted you. You also owe them some trust and need to appreciate them. Fair right?

Why do you think Facebook is asking us to share our Facebook stories? Most of us have been evangelists for them and even continue to be. Sharing stories on Facebook means bringing back memories. Memories carry emotions along with them. Emotions sell. It means you’ll be promoting Facebook even more.

I read some people’s stories on Facebook and I thought to myself, “This site is really changing the world in other areas too, apart from business”. I think Facebook made their stories application public (you don’t even need to sign-in or sign-up to read people’s stories) in order to make us all see how they are changing the world and also encourage others to join. That sets our emotions in because they are not things Facebook is saying, it’s what ‘we’ (the users) are saying about what Facebook did for us.

My point with Facebook is that, they have created a category for their loyal fans (or evangelists) to share their stories. This has gotten blogs and other news media to talk about their (Facebook’s) new innovation and more people will jump on board to see what people have discovered/achieved through Facebook. It will also increase loyalty among current users.

Planning Your Company’s own stories:

So how do you choose ambassadors from your customers? Use the people who have already bought from you as your brand ambassador. Contact them and tell them you want 1, 3, or maybe 5 of them to be ambassadors of your brand. Tell them about the benefits and exactly what you want them to do to be considered. Whatever you do, don’t tell them to send an application in.

Tip: Instead of telling them to send in an application with a resume attached, you can organize a short quiz of say 10 questions and ask them to head towards there and answer the questions. Don’t forget to collect their names; email or phone numbers after the quiz so that you know who answered what.  This whole process will let you assess the strengths of your ambassadors-to-be before you choose them.

Things to be considered as useful strengths for brand ambassadors are:

1. Good communication skills; language, grammar, etc.
2. Knowledge about your products
3. A little time to spare after their day job or on weekends.
4. Feedback givers or readers of your blog

After choosing your ambassador, send a message to your other customers and prospects and let them know the criteria you used in making the decision.

Get your brand ambassador(s) a blog on your domain to share experiences with your product and interact with other customers.

Do any of these to allow customer interaction:

1. Allow comments on the blog,

2. Get a Twitter account for ambassadors only,

3. Get a number for them where other customers can reach your ambassador. If your ambassadors are extremely busy during weekdays and can’t take the phone, allow calls only on weekends.

Just get creative. Play with ideas (gosh, I like saying this a lot ).

Treat your ambassadors like celebrities and let them show on their special blog. Put your product ambassador’s picture on your home page and link to their blog from there. Other customers will definitely like to be treated that way. This will increase customer loyalty.

Let your brand ambassador(s) work with your marketing team. They should report to the marketing manager or whoever you deem fit.

Some brand ambassador responsibilities include:

• Gather feedback: let your ambassador(s) help you gather feedback
• Organize meetups with other customers to talk about your product or show off their versions or models of your product. Note that this works best with physical goods
• Report on product updates based on the feedback he or she delivered
• Share their own thoughts and experiences with your products
• Tell other customers what they are enjoying as ambassadors to your product.

Your brand ambassadors should be paid for all their work.

You can pay them back by:

1. Giving them the biggest discounts on your products
2. Giving them some cash benefits
3. Giving them some of your products for free
4. Letting them choose a cause they will like you to donate some of your products or cash to.

Try a combination of these payment methods or add your own.

Five benefits of using real customer(s) as brand ambassador(s) are:

Okay, let’s slow down for a bit. The four reasons I stated for why you owe your customers the ambassadorial rights are the first four benefits you will get from your customers if you make them brand ambassadors.

The only difference is that, there will be more of it; more money in your bank (sales), more referrals, more feedback and more trust. So the last benefit will be:

5. It creates new buzz for your business. People will talk about what you are doing regardless of them being customers or not. Just like what is happening with Facebook stories right now.

Even though you have all these ideas to try out, make sure your brand ambassadors approve of what is included in the contract.

Do you already have a customer strategy? What would you like to add or subtract?

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As marketers, we are constantly faced with the challenge of getting leads and converting those leads into customers. Because of the challenging nature of our trade, some of us tend to get frustrated and thus, ignore the basic ingredients needed for getting sales.

We are going to look at some common mistakes marketers make and how to avoid them. If you are making any of these mistakes, get rid of them immediately.

1. Over-promising: When you over-promise, you almost always deliver products that are at or below par with your promises. It’s better to under-promise. Leave some of the good stuff (services or bonuses) and give it to people who take action later as a reward. This will mean, you will be over-delivering on your initial promise. This has worked for me and most other good marketers and it will work for you too.

2. Arguing With Your Customers: Don’t argue with your customers. An argument is bad for business. If a prospect or customer challenges you, don’t tell them they are wrong because they may be right. Telling them they’re wrong will lead to an argument and this will do your business no good.

I remember buying something online and after 2 hours, my account was deactivated without any notice. I didn’t receive an email or a call giving me reasons why my account was deactivated.  I sent an email to support and they told me my account was active. I sent another one and then a third one before I got a message that said something like, “Oh, I just checked your account. It wasn’t active. I have activated it now.”

Then I checked my account again, and it was active. I had to send 3 emails. What they were telling me indirectly when I sent the first 2 was that I was not telling them the truth. Meanwhile, they were the ones not telling the truth about the status of my account. That is bad customer service. I haven’t bought anything again from them ever since.

3. Not studying your better competitors: You can learn and use the techniques that your better competitors are using to rake in sales for their products. Study and emulate their winning selling strategies, product launch strategies and their customer feedback.

The internet has made it possible to learn more about your customers. There are tools like SEMRush that help you know what keywords your customer is using. Again, you can use Twitter search, Facebook and Youtube to study your competitor’s customer feedback. You will know their winning strategies if they use it over and over again. If they use one strategy and stop using it after a little while, it means it went bad. Copy the better strategies but make yours stand out by adding extra value.

4. Lying in sales presentations: Nothing can ever make you suck as a marketer as much as lying in your sales presentation. If your product can’t perform a particular stuff, don’t say it can. If you haven’t sold 1,000’s of products in 24hrs don’t say you have. When just one of your customers find out that you are lying, it spreads out like wildfire and your reputation goes down the drain. You lose your customers to your competitors and it will be hard to get them back. Avoid lies, speak the truth, and you’ll win.

5. Not following-up: After your presentation, some people will buy your product straight away. Others will have to be courted. They may need a better offer or they may need a reassurance. Follow up on your leads and reassure them of your product and offer. Also, invite them to send you any questions they may have about your product via email, Twitter or on phone. They may need some things cleared up before they buy. Find out what it is.

6. Not Using Compliments: Compliments sell products. It is one of the most powerful marketing weapons that will help you sell more and also help start customer relationships. Psychologically, people are happy when you compliment them on their actions. It makes them start to like you.

Examples and Ideas: If you sell shirts, you can say something like, “Excuse me, I am Alfred, I like your suit and I know just what shirt will match it perfectly. Here is my card, call me or visit my website if you want to see some of my shirts”. This is a much friendly approach and you can see there is a compliment in that statement. If you say something like that, you will have the guy thinking, “What? Doesn’t this shirt match my suit?” and he will probably check you out. Be sure not to put the prospect in an embarrassing situation..

Membership site owners and newsletter publishers often use something like, “Bravo on your decision to join us” or “Congratulations on wanting to fulfill your desire” or “You made a right choice to visit us”.

Let’s say you are selling video game CDs, you can say something like, “You bought a wonderful console but there’s no fun in it until you have a game to play on it. Check out all the latest games from our store. We carry the best titles. It’s time to make your friends jealous.”

The compliment here is “You bought a wonderful console”. The last statement, “Time to make your friends jealous” sends the prospect or customer imagining what his or her friends will think about his new game. Let’s face it, we all like to impress.

Complimenting people after they have purchased something from you makes it easy to sell more products to them. You know why? When you compliment them, their brains translate it as “You made a smart decision”. So in order to keep that smartness, they will take the same action they took before.

Imagine a hot guy or girl complimenting your perfume or cologne. What will you think? Will you throw away that cologne or keep on using it? Will you buy a different one when the one that got the compliment is finished? I guess not.

That is how the human brain works. We like to feel smart and when someone tells us that we are smart, we always want to show them we still are smart so we do what they want us to do.

When you use compliments, avoid desperation. The whole idea is to make the customer feel like it is their idea when they buy what you are suggesting.

Don’t let it seem like you are trying to sell them another thing. Make it sound like you like their first action but you will suggest they should do this and that to get the complete solution to their needs. Do you get the idea?

7. Not Showing Interest In Your Customer’s Problem: Offer to solve your buyers problems with your products or services and then they will naturally be interested in you and keep coming back.

If you listen to what your market wants and let them know your product can solve their problems, you will most likely make the sale.

You can gather info through surveys or requesting feedback about your products or services through email, suggestion boxes in your office, telephone, etc. This is how you can find out your market’s problems.

People are interested in themselves more than anybody else. This principle also applies to when they are buying something so you have to make sure they get what they want; not what you want them to buy from you. Persuade your prospects with a good offer, excellent communication and a great product.

Be a good listener and encourage your prospects to tell you about what they need. Also, encourage them to give you their complaints about your products and their ideas of how to improve it. Get them involved and you all will see positive results.

8. Not Showing Appreciation: Show appreciation to your prospects after each action they take. Send them cards during occasions like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc. Write a short message to them and make sure you refer to them by their individual names. This makes the card more personal.

You can finish the message by leaving a discount code by saying something like: “Use this code during this festive season to get a 20% discount on our items” or you can also say something like, “Bring this card to any of our shops for a special gift when you order items costing $100 and above”. Don’t sell any particular item. Just give them a discount code.

You can also send a “thank you” note even if it’s not Christmas or even if your customer has not ordered anything in a while. Make sure it is branded to fit your business; with your logo, contact details and USP.

Again, don’t try to sell them anything in your thank you note. Just keep it simple like “(your customer’s name), Thank you for buying from us. We value you as our customer and we hope to be at your service again soon. We promise another special buying experience or a better one since we constantly keep improving.”

You will increase sales and will get a customer who will stay with you for long if you show them how valuable you think they are by appreciating them like this. If you love your customers, they will love you back. Period!

9. Making Market Assumptions: You can’t assume that your customer will buy your products if you haven’t done any research on what they want and how they want it. You can use the internet to research buyer conversations on the products you’re selling or about to sell. Use Twitter search, your competitor’s Facebook fan page and blogs and find out what their customers complain about in the comments area. When you find a couple of holes, write down which ones you can fill and add it to your production selling process. Using feedback and testimonials from your existing customers also helps you understand them better.

10.Providing inadequate product information: If you are selling a book on marketing, can you please tell us the contents? Some sellers don’t provide enough information about their products but they expect us to buy them. I won’t buy a book that only has “The Sociatic Marketing Book: A book for 21^st century marketers. Price: $27” as its description. Even if it is selling at $1, I will find it difficult to buy because I don’t know what it is actually about. What if it’s like all the other marketing books I have bought and read? I won’t take any chances and I bet your prospects will also feel the same way.  Note: This is not a counter-argument against my first point of under promising. Under-promising involves waiting for customers to heap praises on your products; how it helped them and what they think about each feature. Over-promising is when you praise your products and tell your customers that it is 100% efficient. Instead of praising yourself, let your customers do it for you and use their praises as testimonials in your sales material.

Conclusion:

If you are making any of the mistakes above, make sure you take them out from your marketing. Some of the mistakes will damage your reputation and will sink your sales fast. Change is possible. It only takes some effort and some patience.

If you want to receive more tips like this one, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Further reading:

Customer Loyalty Comes from Conversation: ConversationAgent

What Does Your Audience Need: Chris Brogan

There are so many ways you can get free publicity. I will be sharing them on Sociatic but it will not be all at once. I want you to get time to savor and apply my tips to your business.

Writing is one way of getting free publicity…targeted ones of course.The trend towards online writing is on the increase. Those who actually take advantage of online writing are mostly bloggers. Businesses seldom use writing to promote their products. The keyword here is seldom.

However, there are some businesses that use this technique very often to promote their business.

If you are not already using writing to promote your business, you better start now.

Two reasons why you should use guest writing in your marketing:

• You don’t pay anything to write for a publication; whether it is online or offline.

• You get free promo to the blog’s audience (RSS readers, Twitter followers, Facebook pages; generally, people who love to visit and read that blog).

The web is not the only place you can write. You can also write for magazines and newspapers. You could try and get a column in a newspaper and share your expertise or in other words, help people solve problems related to your niche.

I have seen doctors and lawyers with their own columns in some newspapers and then in return, they get their byline (itsy-bitsy bio about the writer) published along with their article.

If you can’t get a column, you can contribute to an existing column in the newspaper or magazine. Just make sure you write something related to what you do. Also make sure you are writing for a publication your target market reads.

If you prefer web writing too, there are a number of blogs that accept guest writers. Writing online is an excellent way to get all the promotion you need. This is because, these days, things on the web are shared more than things offline.

For example, let’s say you write a very interesting article that gets lots of people’s interest. If you are lucky, your article may go viral when lots of people share it through email, Digg, on their blogs, facebook, et cetera.

Actually, some guest writers have experienced this with their articles and it shot their brand up and boosted their business.

Okay, so now you know why it’s shoe-string marketing. Now let’s look at what to consider before you guest post.

Things to check before Guest Writing:

• Audience: The publication’s audience (or readership) should be targeted towards your product or service. For example, if you are a web developer, write for a web development publication and if you are a business coach, write for a business blog.

• Numbers: Check the number of subscribers the publication has. You can find out by asking the publication. Some blogs share their RSS subscription number on their blog via a chicklet/widget (what’s the difference?). If that is not available, you can ask the owner of the blog. You can also check other stats such as Twitter following, traffic ranking(use Alexa.com), et cetera. This is to make sure you get many eyeballs to read your content and thus, drive traffic to your website.

• No Selling: That will turn people off.  Besides, many publications won’t accept a guest post like that. Your article needs to be original and should provide value for the blog’s readers by solving a problem. If you want to add a sales pitch, write a press release instead.

Oh, one more thing. Some publications give you a secondary benefits for your guest writing efforts; they pay you for writing for them. You can expect to be paid as much as $150 per guest article. That’s secondary benefit to us because what I want you to achieve is free publicity for your business.

Some online publications that accept guest writers are:

• Pro Blog Design – Graphic and Web Design niche
• Freelance Switch – Freelance and web Design niche
• Daily Blog Tips – Blogging Niche
• Small Business Trends – Small business niche
• Marketing Profs – Marketing niche
• Dumb little man – Productivity niche
• Make Use of – Technology niche
• TutsPlus Network – Graphic and Web Development niche
• Read Write Web – Web Technology niche

After going through all the processes and check lists, I can’t end this article without stating that you need to keep doing it to get the result you want.

A single article could get you some sales or leads but in order for you to achieve more valuable results (with “more” as the word of emphasis), you need to get published a couple of times. One article might bring in some showers of profits but several articles will bring in a flood of profits; that is, if you are selling a good product .

In my opinion, it will be better to write regularly for one particular blog so that the community over there gets to know you and trust you more to do business with you through your own site. After you establish some authority or relationships on that blog, move on to another one (also related to your niche) and build more relationships. It may surprise you that some of your friends from blog number 1 read blog number 2 too.

Give yourself some time to get serious results. You don’t always have to write the articles if you get frustrated along the line. You can always outsource your writing to professional writers on Elance or Odesk for a few bucks.

Before paying anybody to write your articles for you, request that all the applicants (or bidders) submit a small introductory piece so you can assess their writing.

Oh, you will also need to make sure the writer has some knowledge about your niche for obvious reasons. It will make the work easier for both sides.

Which shoe-string marketing techniques do you use? Have you ever used guest posting to market your business? Let me know your experiences in the comments box below.

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A paid review is a promotional method used by many online businesses to spread the word about their products or service. It is a promotional technique used by both big and small business to get new business for new products and services. We are going to delve into its importance more but let’s start by defining what a paid review is.

What is a paid review?

A paid review is a review whereby one is paid to write about his or her evaluation or appraisal of a product or service. The reviews are based on personal knowledge or experience with the item being reviewed. It is a cheap way of getting news of products and services out.

If you don’t have enough cash to spend or if you have the cash but don’t want to take a lot of risk, you can pay someone who has a big follower base to tell their followers about your product.

Five reasons why paid reviews are great for start-ups:

• Your brand gets some recognition: Your brand will be put in front of an audience who may be having problems that your products can solve. If you find the right audience for your products, pay the leaders of your audience to tell their followers about your products or services.

• You will get traffic to your website: The readers of the blog on which your review is published will flock your website to find out more or take a free trial (if you have one available). Some readers might tweet about it on Twitter and some will share it on Facebook, Linkedin, et cetera.

• Other people will start reviewing your product or service for free: Whether you pay them or not, people will start reviewing your products on their blogs. I have seen this happen on a lot of blogs.

• You save a lot of money: You will save money since paid reviews generate free word of mouth marketing (the best form of marketing in world if you ask me).

• You get back links: This will help increase your website’s page rank and your search engine rankings. If your product or service is reviewed on an authority blog with high PR (page rank), your own page rank will get some credit and if other bloggers review your products for free, their page ranks add up to help increase your own.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money on reviews. You can have a small budget and still get it to work.

Before you pay someone to review your product or service, you need to do your due diligence. You want to get lots of traffic to your site right? 

Three tips you can use to help with you get great results:

• Make sure the blog has a lot of RSS subscribers: This will help you get more eyeballs to read the review, thus, increase the effectiveness.

• Make sure the blog’s readers are targeted or suitable for your product’s market: For example, if you are selling an eBook about internet marketing, make sure the blog is about internet marketing or internet business.

• Make sure you are paying a reasonable price for the review: Some bloggers charge higher than others but provide little value in terms of all the points I have made above. 

If you are lucky, some bloggers will share the review article with their email list. Most bloggers have thousands of newsletter subscribers and it will be your lucky day if they decide to share it with their email list too at no extra cost.

You can ‘manipulate’ readers and bloggers a little bit if you also offer an affiliate program. That will even spice things up more since people will get a commission just by telling other people about your product on their blogs, on Twitter, and all over the internet.

You can also spice things up a little more if your review includes a promo code or discount code with an expiry date. This will create some sort of urgency for people to buy your product before the price is regularized.

You can also try and add a competition to your review where you give out prizes to people who visit your website or who also write a review of your product on their website. Just play with ideas.

What do you think about marketing with paid reviews? Any experiences, thoughts or ideas questions? Let me know in the comments box.

We all love competitions and winning prizes don’t we? We certainly do. The businesses who organize these competitions and sweepstakes also love giving out their prizes.

That is why they spend money easily to organize these events. Hmm, I guess I have to explain more.

There are tons of benefits of organizing your own competitions and sweepstakes. I will be sharing the benefits your business can derive from organizing such events and also share some ideas on contests and sweepstakes with you.

First, let’s look at the difference between contests and sweepstakes:

A contest is an event in which individuals with required skill sets submit their work for judgment. For example, an art contest will require good art skills.

A sweepstake is an event which requires no skill at all to enter to win a prize. With sweepstakes, winners are chosen through random picking in the style of a lottery.

With those two words defined, let’s look at the benefits of organizing them.

Sweepstakes and contests can:

• Drive traffic to your website or social media profile

• Build brand awareness

• Increase your social media following or fan base

• Make people (who may or may not be your customer) feel connected to your brand.

• Help you build some sort of collaborative bond between your brand and people. For example, let’s say you have a site with an API that you want people to develop into apps, one of the best ways you can do that is by hosting a competition or sweepstake to get people to start building an App community around your website.

These and many other benefits can be derived from hosting a sweepstakes or contest.

I want us to also look at how you can organize your own and also what criteria you can (or should) follow.

First, you must set rules for your competition.

Rules of the Competition:

The rules of your contest or sweepstakes must cover:

1. How to Enter:

State how people can enter; basically, the requirements and non-requirements.

2. Number of Entries:

You will need to state how many times participants are allowed to enter.

3. Prizes:

You will need to tell the participants about what they will win if they are chosen.

4. Disclaimer:

If you are going to use the winner’s name or photos in an advertisement or infomercial after they have won, you may need to ask them to sign a waiver that will confirm their agreement.

5. Liability Clause:

You may also need to state in a clause that your company will not be responsible for any injuries or damages that participants may incur as a result of entering the competition.

6. Other Rules:

You may also need to state other rules and guidelines you will want participants to adhere to.

You may need to advertise your competition so that more people will see it and participate.

You can buy advertisement or you can use free forms of advertising that may be available to your business.

If you don’t have any online influence (on Facebook, Twitter, your business blog’s RSS or email list), then you should consider paying for advertisement to get exposure for your competition. On the other hand, if you have online influence, you can use that influence to promote your competition.

I got the chance to get Maya Grinberg, Community Manager and Product Evangelist at WildfireApps to answer two questions about online competitions and this is what she had to say:

KWAME: Where do most businesses go wrong when they organize competitions and sweepstakes?

MAYA: Organizing competitions and sweepstakes is an excellent way to drive user engagement, increase awareness of your brand or product, and build up your fan base. Creating great, engaging, and fun promotions like these to accomplish your social media strategy goals is one thing though– there is another key step to the equation that sometimes gets left out.

Creating a promotion and sitting back to “hope for the best”  will not lead to success. Unless you’re one of the lucky multi-national companies who seem to have infinite brand awareness and tons of fans who send news on its merry viral way instantly, you’re going to have to kickstart the spread yourself a bit.

We wrote a blog post previously about some of our favorite advertising strategies that will help companies do that…and the good news is, many of these wont cost a single penny! Feel free to read that post at http://blog.wildfireapp.com/2010/03/25/7-strategies-for-marketing-your-facebook-fan-page-promotions/

KWAME: What makes a successful competition or sweepstakes event?

MAYA: A successful contest or sweepstakes depends very much on how relatable, engaging, entertaining, and interactive it is for your users. This is a relative thing– depending on what your brand or company does, your users may appreciate different things, like gardening tips for home improvement enthusiasts or pictures of babies for parenting communities.

The key is to listen to your audience, capture some of their interactions with your brand, and use that knowledge to create compelling promotions. For example, fan pages for products related to raising toddlers can almost always feel secure in creating user generated photo contests relating to cute babies. Parents just love to take photos of their kids, and the only thing they love more than that is sharing them.

If you know things like this about your audience, use them to your advantage. Have a dental office that needs a social media strategy? Consider a sweepstakes that rewards the winner with a free teeth whitening. Have a bakery? Put up a coupon for a dozen free cookies with any other purchase. The most important thing to increasing your odds at running a successful promotion is to try to understand your audience, and cater your promotion to their interests.

Thanks to Maya for providing this wealth of information. Anyways, you can follow Maya on Twitter @papayamaya

WildfireApps is an excellent service that can help you promote your competitions online if you don’t want to do it alone or if you need help.

You can share your thoughts or experience with contests and sweepstakes in the comment box below.