Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Craft Email Messages That Get Response

MarketingSherpa has really been a good resource for me when it comes to optimizing Web site landing pages and emails. They conduct research among B-to-C and B-to-B businesses and share the results and trends. It's always very insightful!

Their latest research report shows how to optimize email response. Best of all, you can access The Five Best Ways to Optimize Email Response free!

If you learn by reading, you can download the PDF (electronic document; open and read online or save to your computer). If you prefer learning by listening, you can download the audio version. Or if you learn best by watching, you can view the webinar online.

I hope you find it useful in your email marketing campaigns.

What?! You aren't doing any kind of regular email marketing? Get started now! :-) It really is the best way to begin a conversation with a customer and to keep it going. Not everyone is ready to buy from you the first time they visit your store or Web site.

If you are just beginning and have a low volume of addresses, Vertical Response it your best bet - you can pay as you go and costs about 1.5 cents per email address. Get more information and sign up here: Vertical Response

If you need a more robust experience where you can set up a series of automatic response emails, check out AWeber.

For additional information about these 2 and one other email marketing solution, visit this page of my site: DIY Email Marketing

Ciao, Paula

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Understanding Google's PageRank

First, let me start with the definition of PageRank (PR) according to Wikipedia...a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting...
The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google, but the PageRank process has been patented to Stanford University, not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent.

Here's an elementary explanation of how Google determines your PR. (In reality, it's anything but elementary. Google doesn't fully share how they determine this.) A link from one page to another is a 'vote' for that page. But not all votes are equal. Votes from higher quality pages are weighed more heavily. Other factors in the ranking process include the relevance of keywords on a page and the actual traffic to the page among many other factors. Understanding the basics of PageRank is a part of a good link building campaign. But don't fixate on it, just use it to build a reputation for your site.

You can build good PR by getting quality links coming in to your site. Quality links means links from relevant, authoritative sites in your industry. This, in turn, "passes" authority to your site. Don't bother linking to any sites that are NOT related to what your site is about. They simply won't pass any authority, you will be wasting your time, and they could damage your reputation if they are a low quality site. Getting relevant, high quality, incoming links is one of the most affordable SEO methods at your disposal. It just takes some time. Don't try to get to a specific number, you just want to improve it.

Just like creating unique META data will help any page of your site get listed, each page in your site can obtain PR. Remember...the search engines index PAGES, not SITES. Link to the most relevant page of your site; not necessarily your home page. Ex. You have a gardening site that sells many gardening tools, has gardening information, etc. You find a good site that sells spades and you contact them for a link. You'll want their link to your site to go to a page that is as closely related to spades as possible...not a generic page that focuses on multiple products or unrelated information.

PR is ranked on a scale from 0 to 10.
Sites from 0 - 2 = newer site with few incoming links
Sites from 3 - 5 = more established site with more links
Sites ranked 6 and above = well established site with many high quality links
There are very few sites that have ranks from 7 - 10. They are usually large, highly trafficked sites with longevity in the search engines. Don't expect any PR for at least the first few months after a new site is launched. You have to 'play the game' for awhile before Google will assign a PR to your page, if at all.

Where do I find my site's PR?
There are many tools online; these are all free -
PRChecker.info
Free-Pagerank-Checker.com

I use a FireFox add-on called SearchStatus. With this add-on there is a toolbar added to my browser that shows the PageRank and Alexa Rank of the site I'm browsing. To find this add-on, go to "Tools/Add-ons" (when your browser is open) and search for it by name.

The Google toolbar also has a PageRank function you can enable. You can download it here: http://toolbar.google.com.

For those of you with bricks-and-mortar stores, consider linking to other business owner's sites in your local area, if you feel you have some of the same customers and can offer each others' customers value. It's a great way for local customers to find you.

Now you are armed with information [knowledge! and knowledge is power :-)], so go get some links!

Ciao for now, Paula

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Who Will Have Access to Your Digital Data If You Die?

Believe me, I've really been thinking about this lately! My husband and I have been chatting about updating our will now that our children are grown. It's such a lot to think about and we need to add our digital data to the picture also.

I know many of you that follow this blog are also small businesses with either just a few employees or you are THE solo owner/operator. Who will be able to carry on if you are not around? We have and need passwords for EVERYTHING digital these days. And, if you are wise about protecting your digital footprint and identity, you DON'T have the same password for everything. PLEEEEAAASE tell me you don't! So, what happens if you get hit by a bus tomorrow? Do you have a plan?

I've always been careful about giving sensitive client information to another person within the client's company should I become inaccessible. BUT, I haven't been good about seeing that my own digital data is located somewhere with instructions for someone to carry on. Yikes...passwords for absolutely everything I do will need to be recorded in a safe place - Web hosts, Web sites, email accounts, password-protected files on my computer, social media accounts, bank accounts - and the list goes on!

I'm not sure what the answer is for me yet, but you can read more about ways to accomplish this for your business at the Inc. Magazine Web site.
Passing on Your Digital Data

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

7 Steps to Boost Customer Referrals

If you are like me, you are 'lazy' or even 'shy' about asking for and getting referrals. This is not an easy thing to do and it's time consuming if you want the best results.

You know I like simple, straight-forward action items for getting things done. :-) I came across this post by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing outlining 7 steps or tips for boosting your efforts.

It helped me; I hope it helps you generate some ideas about how you might do a better job of getting quality referrals from your associates and customers.

Take a look at the full article here: How to Boost Your Customers Referrals in 7 Simple Steps

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

How Businesses Are Using Facebook

Get a free webinar download from Hubspot! Provide your email and you can download and listen at your convenience to find data on how businesses are leveraging Facebook and case studies covering ways to use Facebook for marketing.

Find the link to the webinar and other free resources on my site: http://PaulaBonelli.com/resources/free-stuff/
or go directly to HubSpot now: How Businesses are using Facebook

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Ad Networks for Facebook and Twitter

If you are already using some sort of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising in your marketing mix, here are 2 more options to try.

Facebook already has an ad business model in place similar to Google's. You can target based on demographics or psychographics and bid based on CPC (Cost-Per-Click) or CPM (Cost-Per-Impression). Facebook's ad revenue is estimated to reach $1 billion dollars this year. In January, their user base surpassed 4 million! Read more on my site.

Rumor has it that Twitter also is ready to launch some sort of ad business model, possibly as soon as March 2010. Read more here.

As always, if you have a question [doesn't matter what it is :)], you can post me a comment below.
Ciao, Paula