We have been in an ever-evolving battle against internet bots….it’s almost like like a sci-fi thriller….we put up an anti-bot shield and the bots defeat it, so we put up a better one.
This anti-bot shield is known as CAPTCHA. You have all seen the different things on forms, such as typing in the letters that appear, or doing some arithmetic.
We’re often told that these days marketing is a visual art. You need stunning, dynamic images that will grab your audience’s attention and make your other content really pop. And to produce those images, of course, you’ll need top quality dedicated graphics professionals.
There is some truth to this idea. Quality images can definitely make your content stand out, and potential customers will quickly turn away from large, ungainly blocks of text. But do you actually need to spend a fortune on top quality graphic design? Should you attempt to do some of it yourself?
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but those words still count. With all the technological toys at our disposal, great copy is still the heart and soul of any great marketing effort. It has to immediately grab a reader’s attention and then hold onto it. In today’s market, you have about 7 seconds to hook a visitor before they decide to move back to their search engine results. Great copy can set your brand apart and make all the difference in your conversion rates.
Featured Resource this week - Grammarly
Grammarly is the world’s most accurate grammar checker.
Grammarly makes you a better writer by finding and correcting up to 10× more mistakes than your word processor.
Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.
Featured Resource this week - Call Monitoring with Infusionsoft
Call Monitoring Integrated With Infusionsoft!
Novice marketers focus on getting the lead, but experienced marketers know that the job is only done when dollars exchange hands. You can cut the cost of generating a sale by 50% or more when you monitor and track how well incoming calls are being handled.
Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.
Last week, our article was about how storytelling has worked for thousands of years to get a message across and have it stick. I got to wondering why it works so consistently, so I did a little research and here’s what I found.
Stories are fun or interesting or engaging or profound or touching or scary or, well, you get the picture. But why they ‘stick’ in our heads was an interesting question to me and my research taught me about the physiological and chemical changes that happen in our brains when we hear a story.
In a previous article, we took a look at making a five-year plan for your business. The next step is to put that plan into action. What resources do you need? What steps do you need to take to get started? To make it even more challenging, you’re also trying to predict future events you might not fully be able to control.
Getting started is pretty simple though, and it begins with writing your plan down. There are many good reasons for writing down your business or marketing plan. This makes you take the time to think your plan through and will make you feel more confident in it.
One of the most fulfilling things you can do is share your knowledge and experience by mentoring someone who is passionate to learn what you know. Sharing what you know as a mentor can be just as powerful for you as it is for your mentee.
There are different scenarios for the mentor-mentee relationship. Sometimes mentors and mentees are actually employed at the same business, and the relationship may develop informally or by mandate. Other times, the relationship develops between two people who are not commonly employed and don’t work together in any way. On occasion, you’ll find a paid mentoring program such as our Infusionsoft Mentor Program. Often the relationship is initially pursued by the mentee when they have defined a need and know you have the skill and experience to help them meet that need.
Featured Resource this week - Time Fusion
Automate Your Appointments
Are you using TimeTrade or Full Slate to give your clients online access for setting appointments with you? If not, you should be!
TimeFusion integrates Infusionsoft with TimeTrade and Full Slate to automate your appointment scheduling!
Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.
Featured Resource this week - Digital Product Delivery
Digital Publishing for eBooks and Downloads
DPD is an easy to use digital publishing platform for selling and delivering downloadable content. Upload your products to DPD and start selling in minutes. With DPD, all sales are paid directly to you with no per-sale fees, bandwidth charges, or commissions.
Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.
What you don’t know can’t hurt you, so we’re told as kids. When we grow older, we quickly find out that not knowing about something can ruin our day before we can even say our first ‘Good Morning.’ As a small business person, you know the best way to avoid problems is to anticipate them ahead of time, which is why you track your results to stay ahead of the game.
But are you tracking the right results?
Like it or not, texting has become a communication standard in today’s world. Whether we’re setting up a meeting or simply asking our significant other to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home, texting is often our go-to means. According to a 2015 report by Informate, a mobile tracking firm, U.S. smartphone users are sending and receiving five times as many texts as phone calls, and that trend is even more pronounced among millennials.
So if texting is here to stay, should you be using it in your marketing?
Summer is coming to an end, and your marketing calendar is about to get a lot busier. Starting with Labor Day and continuing on through the end of the year, there is a virtual cornucopia of great holidays. Is your marketing ready for the blitz?
Do you have the resources you need? Unless you have an exceptionally large marketing budget you can’t go after every holiday, or you’ll risk spreading your resources too thin. What about some of the new marketing holidays that have sprung up in recent years? Events like Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday may not appear on a traditional calendar, but they may be extremely valuable to you.
Featured Resource this week - Copy Doodles
Handwriting and hand-drawn enhancements have been used for years in advertising and marketing because they are a proven way to grab attention and increase response and readability. There is NOTHING out there that matches the quality, expertise and level of support you get when you become a CopyDoodles member. Their extensive library of direct-response marketing graphics features thousands of hand-drawn CopyDoodles, which can be easily downloaded to your computer and placed on any of the online or offline marketing pieces you are working on in a snap.
Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.
Do you remember all those predictions for the future? Some of the wilder ones included flying cars, colonies on Mars and personal robots to cater to your every need. What about your prediction for your business? Where will you be next year, or in 5 years?
While the future is always a little murky, it’s important to create long-term goals for yourself and your business. The best business plans are more than just documents you create and stick in a drawer somewhere. They’re more than just simple vision statements. Instead they’re living roadmaps for reaching your goals.