Would you Buy an Email List?
Whilst I’ve always had a strong opinion on this topic of buying email lists, it’s been forced to come to the forefront in the past few weeks as I witness talk in the market about this topic.
Many of my clients and pretty much all online marketers that understand the incredible value of email marketing are on a continual quest to grow their email lists. That is, to increase their database of potential clients with email addresses.
One possible way to quickly boost your email database is to purchase an email list. So, is Buying an Email List a good idea or a bad idea?
Create YOUR Marketing Calendar!
Have you ever felt overwhelmed with your marketing options? Have you struggled to know what to market and when? Felt overwhelmed by the possibilities but in complete inaction because of the fear of getting it wrong?
Then creation of your own unique marketing calendar could be just the answer.
Your marketing calendar could just be the first step to getting a clear head about what you’ll be marketing and when in the next 3, 6 or 12 months. This will essentially help you to plan the marketing strategies that best support your business and get your message out to your ideal clients.
Every six months I create my own Web Chameleon marketing calendar. I map out what I will launch & promote in the next 6 months and the exact timeframes of what I will be marketing within specific months. In fact, I map it down to the day.
For me, this marketing calendar provides me with clarity on time frames, program launches, product promotions, workshop planning and more.
It also provides clarity on how we will achieve our financial plans and goals, as well as helping to plan my own and my team’s time.
If you like to make planning complicated then it may not be for you. But if you appreciate keeping life and business simple and making things work then you might like my plan for creating your marketing calendar…
Online Marketing Review Time
As we start a new financial year it’s time to take a fresh look at how you are marketing your business. This includes a fresh look at your website, branding and online marketing.
Here are some ideas on what to ask yourself and what needs review:
When was the last time you updated your website?
If you want your business to grow then you need to send a clear and professional message to your prospects and clients via your marketing, and that includes your website.
Five lessons in Business Growth
As mentioned in my last article ‘To Grow or not to Grow?’, over the past 5 years I have loved what I do and I continue to love what I do. It does not feel like work to me because I have amazing clients, I work with fabulous people and well I just love the transformation I can help my clients create with their website, online and email marketing.
Where my business was 5 years ago is a totally different place to where it is now. In fact, the vision I held back then for what was possible was a fraction of what I now envision as being possible for myself, my clients and my business.
The main reason for the change in vision and thinking has been due to the influence of other people in my life. The mentors in my life. Both personal and business. I am in gratitute to the awesome mentors who have contributed to my own growth and today I share the five success lessons that have contributed to the growth of my own business over the past few years.
To Grow or not to Grow?
I’ve been involved in many conversations over the past few months about growing my business. I’ve come to realise that the decisions I face are similar for most small business, so I thought I’d share my thoughts with you today.
Web Chameleon has been in operation for almost 5 years now. We’ll be celebrating 5 years in August – yeah!!! With a growing database of happy satisfied clients who refer our services and an ever increasing revenue, I pat myself on the back for creating a successful small business.
In recent years I’ve expanded the business from being just me, to a small team, including a virtual team to support myself and Web Chameleon.
The question (aka decision) now lurking is – Do I want more? Do I keep it at this size or do I grow it by expanding our service and product offerings?
The Social Media Numbers Game
I’ve been watching with interest the fast uptake of ‘Social Media Marketing’ by business lately. It seems that every second business website includes an array of funky social media buttons and icons. Yes, even mine!
We can now follow, fan, like and connect with all these businesses. My questions is why would we want to? And when we do connect, how interactive are we truly? Do we really take any notice of their ’social media marketing’?
Over the past few weeks, maybe months, I’ve started to doubt some of the strategies being promoted to small business. We’re being told to build our social media profiles or we will be left behind. And that we should connect with as many people as possible.
Email Marketing Success Secrets
In this article I outline some tips (aka secrets!) for ensuring your email marketing is highly effective in 2010…
Email Marketing remains as a highly effective marketing strategy in 2010. In saying that, if you’ve been doing it for awhile you may need to rethink your strategy to ensure you are addressing the demands that are relevant to email marketing right now. And if you are new to email marketing now is the perfect time to get started.
The most effective emails are the ones that your clients and prospects open, read, share and respond to. It is not as simple as writing some words, adding an image and hitting send. It’s a longer term strategy that requires planning and consistent management.
One email done wrong can cause immeasurable damage. In fact, one email done wrong can mean the rest of what you do, even if done really well, can all be wasted. People WILL judge you by your emails. If you send them emails that are not relevant, that they did not consent to and that are not quality you need to be ready for damage control
Here I will share with you 4 factors to address to ensure maximum results.
Measure your website marketing!
I’m often surprised that the majority of business owners and managers don’t measure their online marketing activities and website statistics. Many do not even measure how many visitors they are getting to their website each month! How about you? Do you know how many visitors you get to your website? Do you know if your online marketing is working?
To be able to track trends and to assess the success of your website and other online marketing activities it’s essential to have access to some statistical information.
Business Blogging
I’ve been a fan of Blogging for a few years now and I continue to think it’s a great marketing tool for business. Of course not all blogs are for business, but for the purpose of this article I am talking business blogs! Most people I talk to these days understand what a blog is but many still are not quite sure how it could work for their business.
Before I give some examples of how a real business could use a blog, I just want to point out that a blog is really just a website where the blogger can easily publish their own content as often (or as little) as they like. They don’t need to know how to build a website, create code or anything complicated. Their blog allows them to log-in and add content including words, images, video and audio. Once they’ve added the content they can publish it instantly for the entire world to view.
Three tips for Email Marketing Success
If you publish (or are thinking about publishing) a regular email newsletter then it’s more than likely important to you that you are able to maximise it’s effectiveness and return on investment (ROI). I’m sure you would like to be consistently receiving positive feedback, enquiries and conversions from your email newsletter. And all of those results are most definately achievable.
Here at Web Chameleon, we often get really positive feedback about the Web Chameleon email newsletter. Recipients generally tell me they enjoy reading it and get great value from my articles, or they comment on something I’ve said in a recent edition. So I’m pretty happy with the results and yes, I have also seen an increase in enquiries and sales that I can directly attribute to my email newsletter marketing!
The truth is that one of the top reasons why an email newsletter works is because most people need to get to know, like and trust you before they’ll be ready to hand over their money and buy from you. A regular email newsletter gives you an easy way of keeping in touch and building the trust and rapport to improve conversion and sales over time.
