Are You Using Online Coupons?

Those of you who are subscribed to my email list or have been working with me know that it's important to be listed locally in the major search engines so your business can be found. And for those of you who actually took action to create your business listings, then you may have a listing in MerchantCircle.

MerchantCircle is a great local resource for your bricks and mortar business, as well as your online business. In addition to creating a listing letting others in your area know where you are located and how to get a hold of you, you can create coupons. Online coupon use is on the rise! Shoppers are proactively searching for coupons before they shop. This past weekend I was visiting family in Wisconsin and we wanted to eat at a local restaurant (not a chain either!). We searched online and found a $75 coupon off our dinner if we spent $150 or more. That worked for us since there were 7 of us eating. Pretty cool and a great way to still do the things you love at a discount. :-)

To learn  more about MerchantCircle and how you can participate, click here.

But wait - there's another REALLY cool thing MerchantCircle has just introduced! For those of you using Twitter for business, MerchantCircle pushes all the coupons created on their site to the appropriate LOCAL Twitter account. For example, if you are in Minneapolis and you have created a coupon using MerchantCircle, they push (tweet) your coupon to your local city Twitter page. This allows you to gain new exposure to an audience who may not be searching for your business name, but searching for deals in their location (the search engines list these results). Plus with the retweet feature, Twitter users can pass along your coupon to their followers. This is word-of-mouth advertising at its best!

Top 11 Emotional Triggers That Convert Prospects Into Customers

I listened to a teleseminar yesterday that went covered the top 11 emotional triggers in the sales process by Sue Painter of ConfidentMarketer.com

Sales are made on emotion, not logic. So MANY times, I write my Web copy from a logical perspective. I'm such a logical person that I think others are the same as me. That's a mistake! You need to put yourself in your customers place and find out what motivates them to buy your products/services.

Your sales approach or Web copy should include 3-4 of these triggers. So before you begin to write, sit down with a piece of paper and identify/"answer" 3 or 4 that apply to your target market, then write your copy so that it provides a solution for these.

There are more than 11, but these are the top in order of importance. Your customers can be motivated by:

1. Saving time
   
2. Saving money (wouldn't you have thought this would be #1?!)
3. Making money
4. Avoiding effort - they want EASY
5. Increasing their happiness
6. Finding success, accomplishment
7. Being pain free or in better health
8. Having fun
   
9. Gaining praise
10. Feeling safe and secure
11. Feeling liked, loved, popular
    

Identify your customers passion or pain and tell them why your products/services can help them.

All of us have a tendency to sell the "features" of our business rather than the benefits. Features are your credentials, trustworthiness, testimonials, etc. These do play an important part, but they are NOT what makes a sale. Benefits answers the "What's in it for me?" question for your customer. Bottom line, that's what they want to know - how it's going to solve my problem?.

Sue says "...if you can't identify any emotional benefits, you don't have a business!"

Are your sales where they should be? If not, then your message or your Web copy isn't connecting with your customers. Triggers change over time - evaluate constantly to see if you are feeding your customer's emotional triggers.

Join me as I continue to change my thinking process in an effort to grow my business. If you are logical like me, it will be a challenge and a learning process! But one I look forward to.

Ciao, Paula
Links to my other Web sites are in the side bar to the right of this post, under the Blog Archive section.

If you are on Twitter, you can see more of the conversation around this subject and teleseminar at #clientconversion.

About Sue:
Sue Painter, The Confident Marketer - Everything you need to conquer fear or uneasiness over marketing and networking for your business is right here. You’ll learn the how-to’s, answer the what-if’s, and create marketing strategies that build your business and your bottom line.

Small Businesses that Blog Get 55% More Visitors

This HubSpot study of 1,531 of their customers showed that those who blogged, got more visitors. That's significant!

The average company that blogs has:

• 55% more visitors
• 97% more inbound links
• 434% more indexed pages by the search engines

Look at the graphs and more information that support the #'s in this study at HubSpot's Web site.

Creating DIY Products for Web Site Promotion

Wow, has it really been 2 weeks since I added a small biz tip? Sorry for the delay!

I've been thinking about adding some do-it-yourself, downloadable products that small business owners can purchase (affordably) that will help them with their overall web presence. I need your input!

What are the top things you'd like to know how to do for your own Web site? Please add your comments and I will consider them as I develop new products.


Thanks, in advance, for your input :-)
Ciao, Paula

Customer Service: In Search of Excellence

Here's a link to a recent Star Tribune article (Minneapolis/St. Paul MN) that I thought was worth sharing. Harvey Mackay writes about customer service from a retail standpoint (bricks and mortar store), but we can also apply these good practices to our web sites. For some small businesses, our web sites are our point of contact with a customer - good customer service applies here just as much as if you have a customer face-to-face in your store.

http://tinyurl.com/StarTribune07292009

Ciao, Paula
Links to my sites are in the side bar to the right of this post.