Duct Tape Marketing

Can you believe it’s November already? I’m not really sure how that happened, but it happened nonetheless. 

And while I’m always sad to see the Summer go, I love this time of year because it’s a great time to start preparing your 2010 marketing plan. But before you do that, you’ll need to evaluate which of your 2009 marketing strategies worked and which were not effective. Since email marketing is one of the best marketing strategies for increasing your online presence, you should be constantly evaluating it and making any and all improvements.

Now that you have gone live with your blog, what’s next? How will you know if it is successful; how will you know if you are delivering the content your readers, your prospects and your clients are after? You will definitely want to monitor your pageviews, traffic, clickthroughs, search engine rankings and other overall indicators of website success. Your number of blog subscribers, however, may be the most accurate and reliable measurement you have for determining the success of your blog.

According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) small businesses enjoy a $43.52 return on every dollar spent in email marketing. That's the strongest ROI-yielding direct marketing tactic, and it's a result that even small businesses on a small business budget certainly can't ignore.

The great thing about Twitter is that it helps create a conversation with your clients and prospects and joint venture partners and other interested parties in a quick and fast-paced manner. Thanks to the 140-character limit, you've got to get to the point and move on very quickly.

It's true that email marketing can get pretty technical. We've got HTML coding, and multi-part MIME messages, and cross browser compatibility, and designing for preview panes, and blacklists and blocklists and SPF records… It's enough to make non-techie marketers throw up their hands and give up on the thought of ever improving their email performance.

I think every website should have a site map since it does help in traffic generation. As the term suggests a site map is a map of the web site and can be a simple list of links or a more complex representation. The type of site map you’ll need depends on the type of website you have.

I've got to warn you – you're about to read about the pot calling the kettle black. That's because with each and every coaching client I have, I always discuss the creation of a testimonial capturing system. And yet I am woefully inept at using testimonials myself. Because I have non-disclosure agreements with most of my clients, I'm often hesitant to ask for testimonials. But I'm leaving a huge opportunity on the table.

My email in-box is jam packed, I have several calls from sales people that I haven't returned yet, my desk is a mess, and I'm finding it very hard to concentrate. What in the world is going on here!

We often get inquiries from prospective clients who would like us to build them a new website. They believe that their current website must be “bad” because it's not listed in the search engines. They're convinced that a new website will automatically ensure a top ten Google rank.

First, I want you to understand that I am NOT giving you license to steal other people’s content. There ARE repercussions to using duplicate content, but it is not a penalty per se.