Back to the Basics of Business by Timothy Caron

Archive for the ‘Blogging For Business’ Category

What’s going on in your neck of the woods?
-by Timothy Caron

Hey Guy’s and Gal’s, I just wanted to see what everyone is doing these days. And try and play catch up.

I’ve seen a lot of scuttle but going around about the new laws being put in place by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) in regards to testimonials and endorsements of products and services on the internet and I was just wondering how this effects your business.

I personally had used testimonials in the past, which were entirely unsolicited, but after doing a little research with my past clients, I found that they had moved on to other things and were no longer using the designs and programs that I had developed for them.

So, if your a website designer, take heed to what’s going on in this area.

What if your an affiliate marketer, and your selling a product or service as an affiliate, do these rules still apply. Because in essence we are endorsing a product for someone else.

I’d like to get your take on the matter. Please let me know your thoughts by posting your comments below.
Until next time, have a wonderful day.

Thinking outside The Box

-by Timothy Caron

Hey Guy’s and Gal’s,

A recent video by Seth Godin talks about a different way to do business, by not playing it safe.

All to often we play follow the leader because it’s safe. Let me explain.

How many newsletters are you a member of, so you can be kept up-to-date on the next latest fad in internet marketing? And is it getting you anywhere? Are you following through with what they tell you or are you just sitting on the fence?

Step out side of the box for a minute and watch and listen to what Seth has to say.

I’m interested in hearing what you think about this video in the comment section below.

Does it make you re-think anything about your business?

How can you go about finding the people who want to hear what you have to say.

Until next time, have a wonderful day.

Why Not Going Viral, could Kill Your Business.
by Timothy Caron

Are you going Viral?

This is one virtue a site must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition in the Internet based business. With so much competition and rivalry going on, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make it big. Worse of all, you business could just get killed.

While there are so many methods and schemes used by so many e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the so called Viral Marketing.

While the term Viral easily depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary it just might kill you. Everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spywares.

Viral Marketing Overview

Viral Marketing also known otherwise as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. They use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product by riding on in other forms of addictive means that could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pas on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.

Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentive they can be attributed with.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage

The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

Most every site and companies are catching on to the effectiveness of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. They are also very low cost that not investing in it could be downright a business suicide. All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them more popular. Remember the movie “The Blair Witch Project”?

Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had many success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail. They were the first known big company to utilize the scheme and it has worked wonders for them.

Now it’s your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for you. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.

Until next time…

7 Things you Must Have on your Sales Page if…
you are selling a product from your Blog or Website

A compelling Headline
Having a headline that states your BIGGEST benefit and builds curiosity that leads your reader to read further down your sales page is a MUST.

MOST of your visitors will leave your page BEFORE reading anything more than your headline so the better the headline, the better the chance to read more and close the sale

Listing your benefits
You should have a list of your benefits each with an explanation on how this applies to your reader (i.e. what is it going to do for them)

Testimonials
Do not underestimate the power of testimonials Feedback from happy customers is one of the best forms of “social proof”. If you are just starting out and have no customers, there are a couple of things you can do:
- ask friends and family to review your product
- Send review copies on forums to a few people in return for a testimonial
- run a small PPC campaign before launching and give free copies in return for feedback

An image that represents your product. an ebook cover, a software box, a DVD box image a report paperback cover image etc are some of the ways you can represent a digital product. The image is extremely powerful. A picture is processed a LOT faster in people’s minds than blocks of text describing what the picture showcases.

A Professionally looking design
If your website is NOT professionally looking, then your potential customer will think that is how sloppy your product is as well and NOT buy from you. A long form sales letter is Not the exception. there are many things you can do to make it look nicer. Here are a few:
- Put your letter in a 750 pixel table and center it
- Put your text on white background
- Use a border around your text
- Layout the elements of your sales letter using”balanced” design principles
- Use spacing and white space to enhance readability
- etc etc

A PROMINENT order button/link
A light yellow box with a dotted border that restates the main benefits and call to action has proven to be a winner. It is Extremely bad when your visitor is ready to order and cannot find your order button (it happened to me a few times.)

A Guarantee
You MUST have a guarantee. At least 60 days. It always increases conversions. But if you don’t agree with me, think about it this way:

Your customers can contact their banks and do a charge back which NOT only gives them a refund, but also hurt you (you end up paying on top of that). So why not offer the refund since you gonna end up giving it anyway.

Just do it and you will see what I mean by judging your results.

(bonus tip)
Your Bonuses. Including relevant bonuses with your product almost always increases conversions. It increases your offer’s perceived value dramatically. Some people will even buy your product JUST for the bonuses. Make sure you give quality bonuses that complement your product.

Until next time…
Timothy Caron

Blogging For Business Owners

If you run a small company, you may find that the world of blogging for business owners is a world that you want to be a part of. Blogging is a great way to get the word out to consumers about your product or service, and it can even be useful for inspiring employee loyalty and helping you keep your workers at peak morale. If you are looking for a way to take your business to the next level, consider what starting a blog might be able to do for you.

Blogging for business owners has a lot in common with all other types of blogging, but it has its own unique pitfalls and strengths. The key to having a successful blog as a business owner is keeping your goals clear and concrete at every step of your blogging adventure. It can be all to easy to get sidetracked, especially if you are just learning about the exciting possibilities of blogging technology, but if you want your blog to succeed you need to stay focused. Write up a plan for how often you will update, how you will promote your blog and retain readers, whether you will feature photographs or video, and other aspects of your blog, and then stick to it with the same kind of determination that you used when you built your company.

Until next time…
Timothy Caron