Once you have a few very powerful marketing messages that enable customers to see clearly the value in your products and when they hear what is in it for them, it will feel good to buy from you.

So think about the following when you put the headline on your next flyer:

1. How could you polish the message and is there a way you could improve any word of it?
2. Is there a way you could test individual marketing messages by asking customers how much they value the benefits you used in the messages?
3. Imagine you could transfer each of these messages into powerful testimonials from customers – what would be the best way to do this?

Make sure that you use your top keywords in your website copy. The text of your pages should contain your keywords in the exact phrasing as you have them in your meta tags and title. To make this even stronger, you can make them bold.

This is a crucial step to get conversions, since when people search for “your [YourTown]”, they want to see a page on your in [YourTown]. A conversion is when a customer contacts you regarding your offering or signs up for a newsletter or takes any action you would like them to take.

When your web page does not include the keyword your customer typed in when looking for your products, it is not very likely that they will keep browsing your website. Moreover, it is recommended that you create a separate page for each of your keyword, or combination of keywords.

The more text, the better for search engine spiders when they index a website; it is strongly recommended that your homepage has at least 200-300 words of “visible” text. Moreover, search engine spiders crawl especially the first 20 words of your website so try to keep an eye on them and make them really relevant to what your website is about.

An ebook, or, electronic book, as it is called, is simply a short or longer book you can view on the screen of your laptop, or even on your iPhone.

Don’t feel daunted by any technicalities – it’s a simple document, usually saved as a pdf file, which you can email your clients or prospects, or it can be available on your website for download.

Even if you are an expert on your, it sometimes might be a challenge to know where to start and how to approach writing this masterpiece. Remember, on every single page of the ebook you will put your contact details, so you better make sure it will only enhance your company image – so the quality must be excellent.

You can come up with free tips for your and give them out as a gift when somebody signs up for your newsletter or just use it as an introduction to your company. Make sure you make the use of all content you have already created – you can even put together your newsletter articles etc.

It is very important to make sure that your ebook has these items:

• Value adding content
• Contact details to your company
• Call to action – eg. “if you need more advice, call us now”

To promote your ebook, here are a few hints:

• Mention your ebook on your website and your blog
• Submit it to ebook directories
• Email your related websites about it and ask them to promote it
• Offer it as a free gift to your customers or prospects

Probably the best way of tracking the effectiveness of your brochures would be to ask your customers where they heard about you and when they mention the brochures, you will know where they came from.

You will then have to make a note about where a particular customer heard about you, so that you can track back which ways of advertising brought in most sales.

Have you tried various forms of cost-effective marketing and do you know how to use them effectively so that you get the maximum results? Are your campaigns planned carefully, or do you just passively react to the special offers of ad sellers?

What if there was a way to measure what worked and what didn’t so that you could base your decisions on real facts?

So what do you need if you want to boost your advertising and direct mail?

• A list of activities pertinent to your and customers you are trying to reach
• A simple outline of how and when to do each marketing activity that will deliver the results you desire
• A methodology to measure all of your marketing activities so that you can easily see what brings you the best results

You can now start to implement your marketing plan and see the real results as they happen.

Does your current marketing strategy achieve your revenue objectives?

Do you know how to set the right goals to get ‘there’?

Without enquiries from customers that you can convert into sales you will fail – FACT. So do you know precisely where you are going to get your leads from?

Does your current marketing plan really outline your planned steps?
Is it a plan of action to follow to retain and grow your existing customer base?

If you’re not sure about the answers to these questions, think how you could go about these:

• Create a proper marketing strategy for your company
• Get a good handle on how you believe your business should perform in relation to leads and sales
• Know exactly what budget you should be spending and you will be able to plan your time effectively
• See how you can measure the effectiveness of all monies being spent on marketing and precisely on how they will impact your bottom line

Before we start talking about search engine optimisation and link exchange in more detail, let’s define a few terms:

1.     URL – this is the address of the page you are linking to, i.e. http://www.YourWebsite.com. Make sure that when you are building external links, you include the whole URL address, also with “http://”

2.     Anchor text – this is the clickable text you can see on the website that is linking to your page. This should contain your most important keywords. For example, your website could be using “your [YourTown]”.

3.     Hyperlink title – this is a little bit into coding – but don’t be scared, it’s pretty easy. Every hyperlink looks something like this in the HTML code:<a href=”http://www.YourWebsite.com” title=”Keyword1,Keyword2, Keyword3”>Keyword1</a>

Can you see the title=”Keyword 1, Keyword 2” there? Yes, it should contain your keywords, although you can use a sentence as well – and when you hover over such an optimised hyperlink, you can see these keywords.

Successful marketers all share a common trait; they are passionate about their services and they are persistent in ensuring they are successful. So you know your company inside out. Agreed, you may not see it precisely as your customers see it, but you should know what it does!

The following three questions will help you see clearly where your products match the specific problems and desires of customers and how you should phrase these benefits using a marketing message that will make people buy.

1. How could you translate all your product features into benefits that actually matter to your customers?
2. How could you rephrase each of the benefits as a question you could ask a potential customer so that they would easily understand what you offer?
3. Is there a way you could relate to these benefits when you communicate with individual customers?

Would you believe that you are probably about seven contacts away from Bill Gates? When you participate in various networking events, your chances to meet influential people who can make a big difference to your business soar.

Again, for the list of suitable networking events consult these:

• Chambers of commerce and other business networking groups
• Members of your associations and various organizations
• Your customers’ “watering holes”
• Any other relevant networking events where you might meet important people with contacts to customers

So how can you maximise the effectiveness of your networking strategy so that you win more business?

Let’s work on your 3 power questions, you will always have ready when participating at networking events:

1. Ask them what are the issues in your they (or their friends, customers, partners etc.) are facing right now or what are their desires in the area
2. Ask them to elaborate on that – and LISTEN to them!
3. Ask them how can they see their issues solved

Now try to put the above in your own words.

Do you know how effective is your your marketing? Which is the half of the marketing costs which you spend uselessly? How much of what you spend on marketing is actually effective?

How many sales a given campaign generates? Are the sales team happy with the quality of leads that marketing supplies?

If you don’t know answers to these questions, you don’t know how much revenue you are leaving on the table.

Therefore, you now probably need the following:

• An understanding of what actually worked and what was a waste of money
• A benchmark for success, showing you where you could have got value for money
• An idea of where to focus your future marketing budget to get results and what you should be looking at when creating your next marketing plan