If you are in a B2B industry and have ever bought a prospect list from a list broker, then this post is for you.
For the past week I have been testing out a piece of software called Google Maps Scrapper that pulls business records directly out of Google Places. So far I have a list of over 17,000 prospects including business names, mailing addresses and emails and I’ve only run it against a fraction of the cities I plan to market to. Total cost = $99 one time. I don’t see why I would ever need to buy a marketing list again, ever. Allow me to explain.
Google is currently making a major push to educate business owners about the importance and value of creating and/or claiming their business profile on Google Places. It is in the business owners’ best interest to provide accurate and complete information so that potential customers can find them online and offline. This is the exact database that the Google Maps Scraper pulls from!
Do you see the beauty? No more middleman. Now any B2B marketer can get quality contact information directly out of Google Places.
You could get the data by assigning the data collection task to an assistant or outsourcing it to a freelancer on oDesk. But, why do that, when you can pay $99 one time for a piece of software that pulls the data directly into a spreadsheet. (My 17,000+ rows thus far would have been hundreds of outsourcer or assistant hours!)
There is only one thing that could make this even better… a free trial download. The free trial version disguises the data so its not useful for marketing, but you’ll get to see the software run on your machine before you buy. You’ll be able to tell from the free trial whether it is a good fit for your prospect list needs or not.
What if everywhere you went on the internet you kept seeing the same ad…all day…everywhere…over and over again. Its called retargetting and its a small business owner’s dream come true.
I fully except 90% of you reading this post will have no idea what retargetting is. Frankly, neither did I until the concept was introduce to me a few months ago. If you spend $50 or more on pay-per-click marketing of any kind (Google, Facebook, etc…) you need to know about this.
Retargetting is the process of following your web site visitors around the web and bringing them back to your site for a second visit. Its a way to bring the PPC visitors you paid good money for back for a second look. Anyone that does paid internet advertising hates the fact that ~50-95% of your web site visitors don’t buy and don’t leave any contact information. You paid for them to come, but have no idea who they are! That sucks.
There must have been something about your initial ad that appealed to them or they would not have clicked, right? Generally if you write clear ads, your paid traffic will be a good fit for your offer. So why not bring them back again for a second look? Maybe they were rushed, maybe they wanted to do more research first.
Retargetting companies like FetchBack allow you to place a tracker in your paid ad and then show that same person banners ads of yours on other sites they visit that day day, week or month. Can you imagine having a prospect leave your website, head over to the NYTimes.com and see an ad of yours there? Then they go to a favorite sports site and see your ad again. Later that day they see your ad on green energy blog? Your ads are following them around the internet!!!! (Scary yes, but very, very cool don’t you think?)
They start thinking…”These people are everywhere. This must be a big, successful company. Maybe I should check it out again.”
That is exactly what retargetting is intended to accomplish. To bring your paid visitors back for a second visit. I can’t tell you exactly how it works, but FetchBack has a free white paper that will give you more details.
I took a walk with a dear friend today to admire the snow on Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens on one of the rare days that no rain clouds we blocking the view. So spectacular. The air was crisp and clear and the mountains seemed so close that you could reach out an touch them. I was calm. Very much at peace and enjoying the day. And then…
We got to talking about small business websites. Forgive me realtors, florists, plumbers, dentists…but most of your websites are butt ugly. Why does this happen when clean and simple website is less than $500?
I think its because that type of product for that kind of price is only known to those of us in the Internet Marketing world. We know about beautiful WordPress themes for under $50. We know about hiring professional graphic designers for headers on Odesk for under $50. We know about hiring native English speakers to write well-researched blog content at $10 for 500 words. We know how to add free contact forms or create ‘lead magnets’ to attract names and email. We know about free plugins to integrate your social media. The list goes on…
What most small business owners know is what they hear from solicitors.
Those solicitors have every incentive to make the web sound imposing and difficult so that they can justify their high fees and ongoing maintenance plans. Truth is, the need the huge profit margin to continue to pay an army of cold callers. (OK, so not every web company is only out to get your money…if you have found a good one congrats…I warned you at the beginning this was a rant.)
If you are a small business owner whose site is butt ugly, I want you to know that a little knowledge and $500 can fix that. You just need to know the basics so you can ask for the right things and smell when you are being overcharged.
Getting your business ranking well in the local Google Maps has several underlying factors. One of those factors is the number of citations for your business elsewhere on the internet. A citation is different from a link in that the citation doesn’t need to link to your website. A citation is generally a text reference to your business name, street address and phone number that validates the existence and popularity of your business.
When creating citations be sure that you use the EXACT SAME business name, address and phone everywhere. Be anal about abbreviations and punctuation. Make the citations EXACTLY the same. Here are several place to submit free citations. Some of these will be posted immediately and others have other requirements you must fulfill or go through a manual review process first.
So you’ve finally decided that enough “serious” people are using Facebook, that you should take a look at it too. That was my attitude about a year ago and it was the exact attitude of the insurance agent I spoke with this morning.
At some critical Tipping Point (an excellent book by the way) Facebook became too big for large businesses to ignore, then it was too big for medium-sized business to ignore and now it is arguably too big for the mom-and-pop shop to ignore. The beautiful thing is that Facebook levels the playing field for the mom-and-pops and the big kahuanas. That tips the balance of power toward the smaller entrepreneur that is social media savvy.
Ready to get a quick dose of savvy?
In this blog post I want to focus on branding and perceptions. Remember the comment about the mom-and-pops competing with the big guys? All it really takes to LOOK like a big player in your field is:
A professional looking page graphic
A couple hundred (or thousand) fans
If you look professional and you have fans then you have ‘social proof’. With so much garbage on the Internet, social proof is becoming more and more critical to your branding and positioning. What you say about yourself takes a backseat to what others have to say about you. On Facebook there are two steps to social proof…A) get fans and B) get fans to say nice things about you. The latter is the equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising, but the former (just having fans) is critically important to your first impression.
I’m sure you have experienced this yourself…you walk into a restaurant with 3 of 45 tables occupied at dinner time. You have formed an immediate opinion about the quality and value delivered by the restaurant without looking at the menu or asking the diners their opinion, right? When you walk into a restaurant with the same 45 tables and a 20 minute wait to get one, you form a more favorable first impression. Again, you did not ASK the diners about the food or the service, the simple fact that the diners are present in the restaurant is the social proof.
See the analogy? When a new person comes to your Facebook business page and sees that you have lots of fans (including names and faces they recognize) they form a favorable first impression and are more likely to look around your page and/or respond to a specific call to action.
OK, so where do you get a professional looking graphic and where do you get fans?
Options for Creating a Professional Facebook Graphic:
Hire a professional designer
Do it yourself (see video below)
Find a tech-savvy family member or friend to do it for you (send this person tot he video below)
Options for Getting Fans on Your Facebook Page
Invite people you know and allow it to build on its own (definitely do this)
Advertise your fan page inside Facebook. Here you are paying for clicks and can target your ideal customer profile very well.
Pay people to become fans – $50 will get you are 1000 fans and make you look like a rockstar (strongly consider doing this). These people probably won’t care about your business, but they will be strong social proof.
The following videos explain each of these parts in more detail and show you exactly how to do it.
This video shows you how to create your own good looking large facebook profile picture (200×600) pixels using only Microsoft powerpoint. You can use the profile picture on your personal pages, fan page or both.
Part 1 of 3
Part 2 of 3
Part 3 of 3
This video shows you how to get a Facebook Fan page profile picture professionally created for dirt cheap. It also shows you how you can get up to 15,000 fans on your page for as little as $80. WOW! Here is the link to the website I discuss => Outsource your Facebook Design Tasks
Final Video
TO LEARN EVEN MORE: Clearly I cannot tackle the entire topic of Facebook for Business in one blog post. That’s why I elected to focus on branding via graphics and fan counts. For a detailed review of strategies, the technical details and other ins and outs, I strongly recommend the Facebook for Business eBook by Marc Krisjanus. You could hunt all over the Internet for free articles, tips and ideas to get yourself up and running on Facebook, or you could drop $47 on Marc’s 130 page guidebook. You’ll be able to read the book while commuting, highlight and mark ideas and and share it around the office. It’s a great investment to get yourself started.
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Today I share two strategies for getting an endless supply for super high page rank backlinks. If you consistently apply this strategy your ranking will skyrocket. When it comes to backlinks, slow and steady and CONSISTENT wins the race. One of my keywords that I thought would take 6 months to rank for is in the #12 spot on Yahoo after only 15 days. I attribute that to the high page rank backlinks that I was able to get very quickly. Amazingly powerful stuff.
ABOUT THE ROAD TO 10,000 BACKLINKS PROJECT:
On May 5th, 2010 I launched my plan to build 10,000 backlinks to my brand new niche site at http://NetworkMarketingLeadsBlog.com. It’s a pretty slick and useful site so I encourage you to check it out. The trouble with any brand new site is how to get the word out. How to get traffic to it!
I’ve always believed in content marketing as the way to long term success with free earch traffic, so I set a goal of 10,000 backlinks for my site. In this video series, I discuss my exact strategy and my day-to-day plan of attack. Follow along with the series to see how long it takes me…or if I crash, burn and give up….
FEATURED TOOLS:
I get asked all the time what tools I recommend and use myself. The problem with that question is that tools in the internet marketing world are constantly changing. Anything I attached to any one blog post could quickly be outdated. Instead, head over to the Andrea Recommends page. I promise to do my best to keep this up to date
Anyone that is serious about article marketing knows that is is both very effective and very time-consuming. Unless you are able to outsource the writing, spinning and submission, you’ll need to find labor-saving ways to get the work done yourself. As you build up an income DEFINITELY look into outsourcing. Until then, I hope you can use some of these article spinning tips:
Article Spinning Tip #1: Use Numbers because they are Easy to Spin
When you write a sentence like…”In just 24 hours I had over 450 new visitors to my blog” it is super easy to spin the number “24″ as “twenty four” or even as “20″ or “twenty”. Same goes for the number 450. Spin it as “four hundred fifty” and also as “425″,”410″, etc…
Article Spinning Tip #2: Spin Your Contractions
This is another easy but often overlooked method. Spin cannot/can’t and would not/wouldn’t and I am/I’m. You get the idea. If your spinner has a thesaurus where you can upload these variations do it. You’ll never risk a mistake in meaning.
Article Spinning Tip #3: Write Your Original with Lots of Adjectives
Adjectives make your writing descriptive and are also among the easiest to spin. As an example an adjective like “beautiful” can be transformed into “lovely” and “gorgeous” in almost any context.
Article Spinning Tip #4: Spin the Hyperlink
If you are using article marketing to build backlinks, spin the anchor text itself with variations of your long-tail keywords. It will look more natural for deep links into your website to have some variation in anchor text. As an example you could spin MLM Mentor/MLM Mentoring/MLM Mentors without any change in meaning for the reader.
Article Spinning Tip #5: Do Your Own Spinning
As time consuming as it is…have a human being do your spinning. Computer spun articles read like junk. The tips in this article are small additional steps to take to make your article spinning easier. Ideally you should be spinning full sentences, paragraph order, and sentence length in addition to individual words. A thesaurus will help with the words, but won’t help at all with the other critical components.
2/26/11 Update: I’m still using Automatic Article Submitter to submit, but I’ve moved all spinning to The Best Spinner. It seriously lives up to its name. Fully functioning free trial.
Charlie Page, the owner of Directory of Ezines, stands behind his product in a very personal way. He’ll even get on the phone with you once per week to make sure that Directory of Ezines delivers business results for you. That’s on top of numerous unadvertised bonuses that come with being a member. So what is the Directory of Ezines and is it right for you?
What is Charlie Page’s Directory of Ezines?
Principally, Directory of Ezines is a labor saving tool. If you are currently advertising in ezines or are thinking about doing so, this tool simplifies and streamlines the process. For those of you not familiar with Ezines, they are online newsletters or electronic magazines that users subscribe to. They exist in just about every niche from weight loss to cycling to work from home opportunities and can have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
The Directory of Ezines is just what is sounds like…a directory. It lists the ezine niche, publisher, circulation, advertising options, advertising rates and more. A massive, massive time savings to have this all in one place to sort and filter based on criteria you specify.
What Makes the Directory of Ezines Unique?
All the extras that Charlie Page packs into the membership make it truly unique and special. Charlie Page is recognized as the leading authority on advertising with eZines and he makes himself available to members by phone at no additional charge. The membership has so many extras and bonus gifts it would almost be impossible to list them. Included among them are:
Free ad writing
Permanent ad placement on Charlie’s personal websites
A website review and follow up phone meeting with Charlie Page
Teleseminars and webinars on important topics like article marketing
A free membership to any CharliePage.com website of your choosing!
What Can You Advertise with the Directory of Ezines?
There are ezines in nearly every niche, but I personally use it to promote my SEO service businesses and to send out CPA offers from various affiliate networks I belong to. There are several general interest/consumer lists. Not as many B2B lists. If you have a broad interest consumer offer, you’ll probably do quite well.
What Does Directory of Ezines Cost?
I’m not sure if the price is fixed or not, so better to check the Directory of Ezines site directly to get pricing. I do know that the affiliate commission payout is 50% so you only need to recommend this service to two people to get your own membership 100% free for life. A complete no brainer.
Click on the banner now to get your complimentary copy of Ezine Traffic Formula from Charlie Page himself!
Today’s video is all about being opportunistic. I spotted a wide open niche – Russell Brunson’s new Local Marketing Myth – and quickly crank out articles, videos and social book marks to fill it. This is a super cool, much needed product at just the right time. The 52-week trainign course is a superb idea and the affiliate program is very generous. Who wouldn’t want to promote this?
Here are the links to Russell Brunson’s Local Marketing Myth and the reviews and videos I did about it:
On May 5th, 2010 I launched my plan to build 10,000 backlinks to my brand new niche site at http://NetworkMarketingLeadsBlog.com. It’s a pretty slick and useful site so I encourage you to check it out. The trouble with any brand new site is how to get the word out. How to get traffic to it!
I’ve always believed in content marketing as the way to long term success with free earch traffic, so I set a goal of 10,000 backlinks for my site. In this video series, I discuss my exact strategy and my day-to-day plan of attack. Follow along with the series to see how long it takes me…or if I crash, burn and give up….
FEATURED TOOLS:
I get asked all the time what tools I recommend and use myself. The problem with that question is that tools in the internet marketing world are constantly changing. Anything I attached to any one blog post could quickly be outdated. Instead, head over to the Andrea Recommends page. I promise to do my best to keep this up to date
This will be one of those posts that evolves over time. Yesterday I picked up the right’s to Russell Brunson’s Local Marketing Myth product launch and began testing it out. So far so good. The set-up is as easy as can be. A new marketers could be up and running in minutes. (Seriously!)
As regular readers of my blog, you know that I gravitate toward multi-level marketing businesses where you can leverage people as well as Internet marketing skills. As I’ve become known for Internet Marketing abilities, I get asked constantly by other professionals (dentists, financial planners, insurance agents, etc.) for internet marketing help. The MLM courses and systems I promote, just don’t fit.
This was the right product at the right time for me and if you are an MLM enthusiast you should strongly consider adding it to your arsenal because:
You need to profit from your internet marketing expertise wherever possible to continue to fund the marketing of your primary business.
Being a trusted-advisor to local small business owners will do wonders for the your MLM business in the long run.
Russell Brunson’s Local Marketing Myth system is so turnkey easy you’ll only spend minutes every week managing this lucrative additional income stream.
If you are in a B2B industry and have ever bought a prospect list from a list broker, then this post is for you.
