3-Year Edison Study Reveals Twitter Marketing Insights
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Have you caught the Twitter bug yet? If not, at the very least you should be leveraging it for business marketing purposes. A lot of business owners express doubt that Twitter holds much marketing potential for their company, but those who use it know its power and do not question it for a second.
And awareness of the “tweet” phenomenon has exploded in the later part of this decade. According to a recent report, “Twitter Usage In America: 2010,” the percentage of U.S. citizens who know about Twitter has taken an impressive leap from 5% to 87% just in the last 2 years!
The report, which was put together by Edison, goes on to show that Twitter serves more as a “broadcast medium,” and what this often means is people are less likely to be sensitive to blatant marketing than they would be on Facebook. In fact, 40% of users are there specifically to obtain information about or tweet their take on available products. People are also 3 times as likely to follow brand or company-specific Twitter accounts as compared to trends on other media platforms.
The actual interaction on Twitter occurs far less than it does on Facebook, but the nature of the platform makes it simple to semi-automate your campaign, and the tolerance to Twitter marketing makes it easier to do that without making mistakes as well. The study shows that people are far less involved and do not post status updates as often, but a big part of this is owed to users being less focused on interaction and more focused on receiving regular broadcasts.
A Twitter campaign is quite easy to put together, and if you are already making regular blog posts or maintaining activity on other social networks, it can be partially automated. And extremely powerful if you do it right.
The majority of Twitter users are are African-Americans who have a university degree, went to grad school, and make more than 50K a year.
I just read in an article by David Sims over at TMC.net that Google is going to start throwing a new spice in their secret recipe—and this time it doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of your links
or how many spammy keywords you shoved into that tossed content. This time, the new ingredient is nothing less than the time it takes your site to load and respond to users.
It’s an interesting concept, and it certainly makes sense. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked off a website just because I didn’t want to wait for it to catch up with the speed of my laptop. And if you think about it, Google isn’t doing a user any favors by putting a website like that into the top results—no matter how high-quality and relevant the content might be.
To go even further, your slow site isn’t doing YOU any favors either. The speed of a site has a direct and obvious correlation with online sales conversions. If you make oozing through your sales pitch a test of patience, your profits are going to reflect the decreasing length of patience in modern society.
Think about it this way—what’s good for the reader is good for you—that’s typically a good rule of thumb in all cases.
To confirm these claims, I ducked in over at the Google blog. While they certainly are adding in the speed variability, for now it’s like the tiniest pinch of salt the simmering pot. Google writes, “While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed…” It also appears that at this time it only applies to Google searches done in English.
But don’t get me wrong—if you ask me, this new flavor is going to get a lot stronger in the future, and by all means, it should. If you want some recommendations on how to prepare yourself for this change, go check out Google’s blog post yourself. Or take a look at Sims’ article to find out how you can start working on your site’s “performance optimization” today.
Or feel free to drop a comment below and tell me how you feel about this development. Is it just one more thing to worry about, or is it the best thing for everyone?
If you’re looking for new ways to bring in additional revenue in this economy, you might be thinking about getting some Internet marketing help. For a lot of business owners who don’t know much about computers or the web, this is completely undiscovered territory, and they don’t even know where to begin. You’re right to look at the web as a place to go because there really are 
some amazing marketing channels that can have an exponential effect on your profits, but are you really ready to start this campaign?
There are some factors you need to take into consideration before you get started.
The first thing you need to do is take a good hard look at your current business processes to make sure you’re making the most out of what you are doing right now. And when I say business processes I really mean every aspect of what you do. For instance, have a friend, or, even better, a marketing expert, make some phone calls to your business as if they were a customer.
This will give them an idea of what the customer experience is like. Are the phone operators picking up phone by the second ring? Are they knowledgeable and helpful when asked the tough questions? Figure out what the LTV of a customer is, and then assume that every time the phone rings and it is left to ring until the person hangs up and calls a competitor, that this is how much money is being thrown away. In many cases, it is the truth.
What you want to do is look at every contact point between your business and your client prospects and identify instances such as the one above which are potentially amounting to a lot of money left on the table. Think of these issues as profit leaks and start brainstorming ways to plug them up using smart small business marketing strategies.
After you’ve dealt with these profit leaks, analyze the process even more. Is there more you could be doing to increase the bottom line with what 
you already have? Are you doing enough to get emails from your prospects and previous or current clients and focusing on building a long-term relationship with them?
How can you make these people repeat buyers and thus increase the lifetime value of the average client? Can you improve the quality of your products and the backend support so that you can increase prices by being the best in the industry? Is there opportunity for upsells that you are missing out on?
As you surely noticed, I’m throwing a heap of questions at you right now, and this is exactly the mindset you need to take to analyzing your business before you start thinking about internet marketing help–or any other kind of additional marketing for that matter. Once you’ve completely optimized everything you have in place, THEN you can start thinking about further prospecting possibilities. I think you’ll find that this analyzation process can reveal thousands, hundreds of thousands, or possibly even millions of dollars in missed revenue.
Imagine what some focused internet marketing tactics could do for your business once the current marketing funnel is as effective as it can be…Think about it this way. With some solid search enginge optimization and social marketing through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, I 
could send hoardes of customers to your website, but if you’re not ready for them, what is the point? Sure, you’ll pick up a few of them through the sheer statistics, but if you had a system set up that made converting them from prospect to customer a certainty in place, you’re talking about the kind of program that can double revenues.
To find out more about analyzing your marketing efforts and getting some internet marketing help when you’re ready, go fill out my contact form and see if you’re eligible for a free marketing consultation. Or, if you really feel your business is ready for a flood of new customers, check out my free buzz marketing video for some tactics that can do wonders for a modern business.
One of my favorite small business niches to consult are actually other consultants. Obviously I don’t work with marketing consultants because they already know marketing—well, at least they should—I’m talking about life coaches, executive coaches, diversity consultants, and management consultants. While many of these professionals have a great eye for marketing, they often do not have the time to do it themselves or they just want to focus on what they do best.
Here are 5 simple ideas I use when marketing for consultants.
1. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of my favorite online marketing tactics, and many experts see it as the most powerful internet marketing skill to have. For a business involved in consulting, the relationship-building nature of this tool is especially powerful (particularly for life coaches).
For most businesses out there, it takes a minimum of 7 contacts to turn a prospective buyer into a customer, and for a consulting business, an industry where them being hired is often up to a board and their high fee rates make it a budget-decision, a long decision-making process is the standard.
2. Testimonials
I cannot stress enough how important testimonials are for this type of business. Do not wait for someone to be impressed and volunteer to rant and rave—always ask for a testimony. Your website should be plastered with them, and executive consultants should cultivate testimonials from high-profile companies.
3. Referrals
Every time you take on a new client, the first thing you should do after the contract is signed is ask for a referral. In fact, create a standardized form with 5 empty slots for names and contact info, and ask them if they’d be willing to fill it out while you slip into the restroom. Most people are naturally inclined to fill out empty forms because they were trained to do this in school.
Some may not be comfortable with this tactic. No problem. Then do the best job as you can for every client, and ask for referrals after they are convinced of your worth. Or, if you are starting out, you can take on clients for free or at a discounted price if they promise to give a certain number of referrals after they see results.
4. JV with Centers of Influence
Centers of influence relevant to consultants are lawyers, accountants, CPAs…people who have constant, direct contact with executives in big firms and are trusted by their clients. If you can get in good with professionals in these fields, you can do JV partnerships to help each other out.
If you have a decent client list, you have just as much to offer them as they do you. If you can get in really good with one of these centers of influence, one of the best tactics you can use is an endorsed mailing to their client list. People trust these professionals sometimes more than their own family.
5. Host a Seminar
Seminars are a fantastic marketing tactic for consultants. Find a local banquet hall and you can usually book the room for a few hours at a decent price with meals included. Send out a targeted direct mailing to executives offering a conference—you can even charge a reasonable fee to cover your costs—and put on a presentation teaching something valuable.
Do not use this as a platform to sell. If the information you give is valuable enough, people will approach you or contact you after the seminar and inquire about your services.
These are just a small sample of tactics that work wonders when marketing for consultants. Businesses who offer consulting services are growing in demand these days, especially as companies, from small businesses to big corporations, seek out new ways to stay competitive in this economy.
Are you interested in learning more about savvy marketing for consultants? The truth is I have kept my #1 tactic—my bread and butter—out of this article. If you want to find out what it is, contact me about my free marketing consultation. Or check out my free video about buzz marketing strategies you can put into action to ramp up profits.
Note: My bread and butter tactic has nothing to do with buzz marketing.
6 Reasons I Am Not Just a Web Marketing Consultant
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I love internet marketing—don’t get me wrong—and the Internet is a very powerful tool. But I am not a web marketing consultant. A lot of people get the wrong idea simply because I use the Internet to market myself and because I do, after all, often leverage the power of the Internet to bring my clients more customers. I know how to use those tools, so it would be foolish to completely ignore them, but I am not a web guy, and here are 6 reasons why:
1. Encourages Stereotypes
When a marketer defines themselves as a web marketing consultant, they put themselves in a box, and this is bad for more than one reason. For one, it means when they market themselves, they are coming to the game with a whole list of preconceived notions in the minds of their prospects.
They have already drawn lines around what their customer expects from them and what kind of customer they can get. Personally, if I were a small business owner, I would never take on a marketing person who would make such a bad marketing blunder.
2. Limits Creativity
By defining themselves as web marketing consultant, a marketing pro begins to identify with that label and starts thinking within the box they have built for themselves. Instead of looking at all the different amazing opportunities out there, they are always paying attention to the next big internet thing and they lose creativity.
3. You Can Get 20% More Profits In-House
I’ve said it over and over again, and I will continue to do so—most of you can get 20% or more profits simply by taking a look at your current processes and policies, cutting the fat where it isn’t needed, and plugging up profit leaks. This can all be done without ever looking outside the company for additional revenue streams! Who needs the Internet with those kind of nuggets sitting right before your eyes?
4. Offline Marketing is Still Golden
There are still plenty of offline marketing tactics that work wonders, so there is no need to simply be a web marketing consultant, and to do that is bad strategy. Direct mail is more effective than it has ever been. Even yellow pages, of which I’m not a fan, can do wonders for the right kind of business (if done right, which it usually isn’t). There are countless marketing avenues that do not depend on the internet and are still very legitimate.
5. Proper Marketing is About Relationships
A lot of this we look at when we do our work in-house, but it’s important to point out that in the new millennium, proper business marketing is all about relationships. People who have already made an effort to seek out your business or have already purchased from you are EXPONENTIALLY more likely to buy than a prospect you have never contacted. This relationship-building is where efforts should be focused, and while that may include some web marketing strategies, there are more ways than one to skin this cat.
6. A Web Marketing Consultant Can Be Annoying
And finally, web guys get on my nerves, and I know they can get on a small business owner’s nerves too. With the growing popularity of the Internet, you’ve got every guy with a keyboard knocking down your door trying to sell you SEO or that #1 spot in Google.
Let me tell you something—that number one spot in Google is not always what it is cracked up to be. For some industries, it is absolutely worthless. Again, I can do all this stuff, and I do use it when it makes sense, but it is not my default plan.
Wait--did you just say 25%?
There are many other ways to market, online and offline, and by not painting myself into a box, I allow myself the creativity to focus on the task at hand—finding new ways to minimize your profit leaks and seek out new revenue streams so I can increase your revenue by a minimum of 25%. People have been doing this kind of thing for years. People have been calling us marketing consultants for years.
Only recently did people being to label themselves as an “SEO guy” or a “web consultant.”
I’m a marketer. Nothing more; nothing less. And that’s exactly how I want it.
That said, if web strategies are what you are looking for, check out my free video for a buzz marketing strategy you can use for your business.
In this recession, a lot of small business owners are trying to figure out how to survive and push into the next decade with their business still intact. It’s a scary thought that you might lose it all. I’ve been there before, and there is nothing worse in business than seeing all those years of hard work shrivel up and fade into nothing. If you are ready to face the reality that marketing is what you need, you might be interested in my free marketing consultation.
But what can you expect?
What happened to a lot of the newer businesses was you got spoiled by the early years of this new millennium. Money came easy, and marketing was not really mandatory to do business. Times have changed, and now you need to do something or you are going to lose your business. A lot of you respond by cutting the little advertising you do have in order to save more money.
Big mistake! This puts a business in a situation where business goes into a steep decline and before they know it there is no business.
When most people come across my business, it is because I have already identified that they are the type of small business I’d like to work with and that there is room to increase there revenues by 25% or more, often by addressing your current marketing mistakes. So by the time someone makes it to this website there is a good chance I’ve already contacted them in some way, and for good reason.
This is a good sign because I do not work with every business. I am very picky about who I choose to take on, and so if I have made the effort to contact you in some way, it’s because I think you’re a prime candidate for my services. It is no guarantee, but it means you fit the right profile.
What typically happens when someone contacts me about a marketing consultation is I direct them to the short questionnaire on my Contact Page. This is just a small list of questions that helps me determine if we can work together, and what it does is save us a lot of time and energy so we can get to the chase.
You see, I like traveling. I like scuba diving, hiking, and jumping out of airplanes. I like spending time with my friends, and enjoying some good wine or a microbrew. What I don’t like doing is spending hours on the phone wasting time with people who aren’t right for my business.
That might leave you asking, “Well, then why would you offer a free marketing consultation?” That’s a good question. To be completely honest, I offer a free marketing consultation because it is a fantastic way to get customers.
But I still don’t give you a sales pitch or pressure you to work with me. The information you derive from our meeting is yours to act on 100%, but before I agree to give that much of my time, I like to know you are at least a prime candidate should we decide to work together. Otherwise, what is the point?
Most people want to work with me after they see what I have to offer, but others cannot afford it; either way, I don’t agree on all cases.
What happens after I have a look at your short questionnaire is I’ll do a little preliminary research on your business and the competitors in your area. If I am 90% positive I can help your business decrease spending and ramp up revenues in this economy, only then will I get back in touch in order to arrange an interview. If I’m not convinced, I’ll just let you know we aren’t a good fit.
Notice I said arrange an interview. This is how my marketing consultation works. A lot of marketers will try to get you on the phone and talk themselves up and sell you everything under the sun. Listen, that’s not how I do things, so if that’s what you want, then drive down to McDonald’s and let them push a hamburger special on you. I know what I can do for your business. I’m not here to convince anyone.
The interview is nothing more than a chance for me to get to know your business. I am not a commodity salesman. I am not a “web guy.” I am not an SEO. There is no one-size fits all package when it comes to marketing. I want to know about YOUR business so I know what needs to be done to help YOU.
The marketing consultation interview takes about 1 hour, but sometimes it can go up to 2. If you don’t have 1-2 hours to sit down and talk about your own business and how you can increase profits, please don’t bother calling me. I don’t have time for someone who doesn’t have time to save their own business.
During this question and answer period, there is no sales pitch whatsoever, and in fact, even if you were to decide right then and there that you wanted to work with me and whipped out a checkbook, I would decline. This is a time for me to get to know your business—nothing more. I want a detailed look at your specific company so I can identify what is going on.
After this meeting is over, I take the information I’ve learned about your business and I head back to my office. I spend about a week going over what I’ve learned during my free time and do some of my own research about your company and the processes you have in place. I compile a marketing plan.
This plan is intended to cut the waste off your processes so you can stop losing unnecessary profits. It is also intended to outline avenues for pulling in new profit streams to fill your bucket after the profit leaks have been plugged. I will tell you right now that for most of you, especially if I have taken the time to make contact, 20% of your profit increases can be derived WITHOUT having to seek out these other streams of revenue.
Once I have a marketing plan in place, we arrange a second appointment. This is where I walk you through all the different points in your business process where you are losing revenue and all the areas where you could be doing more. Then, we go over each point one more time, identifying exactly what I have determined can be done to remedy the problem. The end result is a step-by-step, mapped-out marketing blueprint for carrying your business through the recession and not just surviving but finding massive profit growth.
At this point, our meeting is over. If you are interested in my services, you are welcome to ask for a quote, and I will identify a setup fee and monthly payment to work on your business. If you want to use my ideas on your own, you are way more than welcome to put them into action yourself or even pay someone else to do it.
If you want to stop worrying about what the future brings by learning how you can stop the wasteful spending and claim more of a market share for your business, so you can spend more time with your family or on the other important things in life, contact me today and claim your free marketing consultation. There’s nothing to lose but an hour or two of your time, and everything in the world to gain.
To learn more about what I can do for your business, check out my free video.
A key part of my marketing philosophy is that the biggest, easiest increases in any small company’s earnings typically comes not from grinding out more sales and tapping into more markets but by focusing on what is already coming through the door. In 99% of cases, companies looking to expand marketing efforts have not yet fully optimized the systems they have in place. But the first step in smart marketing is to make sure your systems are ready for you to turn on the faucet.
Here are 4 small business marketing strategies for plugging the profit holes without seeking out new prospects.
1. Harvest Emails
On your website, forms your customers fill out when they walk in the door, prize give-aways…you absolutely need to be making the effort to collect emails and build a customer database. Email follow-up is possibly the most valuable of online small business marketing strategies available.
One reason is because it takes repeat contacts with most web visitors to decide to buy something–we’ll get in depth on why in later articles–but there’s a lot more to the story than that. Did you know that buyers who are inspired to buy via email contact typically spend 138% more than the typical customer?
2. Track Your Advertising
If you are not tracking your advertising, you are making a huge mistake, and this is number one reason small businesses who rely solely on yellow pages drive me nuts. That said, if you get creative, there are ways to do it even with yellow pages ads.
Setting up a special phone number for an ad and monitoring how many calls it brings in is one clever way to do it, and you can even evaluate what happens when the ad is changed in small ways. When it comes to online analytics, however, there is little that can’t be tracked and tested.
3. Pick Up the Phone
There are companies out there missing out on tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year simply because they do not handle their phones correctly. Many don’t even have a live operator on the phone, and this is about the biggest mistake you can make. Even in this age of technology, when it’s so tempting to send calls to an automated system, customers want to talk to a real person.
There’s a lot more to this phone thing than that, but the first thing you need to do is put an operator on that line, even if it means outsourcing to a fulfillment house.
4. Raise Your Prices
One of the easies ways to increase profits is to ask for more money. Competing on price is the worst thing a small business can do and in many cases is a surefire path to business extinction. I recommend charging higher prices but over-delivering on value. If you deliver more than your competitors–higher quality and better customer follow-up, clients will be glad to pay more.
It’s cliché, but these really are the very tip of the iceberg. From upselling to system evaluation to outsourcing
to eco-friendly innovation to promotions to dunning mailer methods, there are literally thousands of different strategies that can cut back your company’s expenses while boosting profits and bringing growth in this economy. Typically, small business owners just don’t know where to start, or they know where to start but haven’t’ got the time.
Contact me today and get a free consultation. As a disclaimer, I only give consultations to those I think would be a good fit for my business, but if I do give a consultation and you don’t want to work together, you’re free to use any of the small business marketing strategies we discuss as you please.
Go watch my free video and find out about getting a free marketing consultation now.
How many times has someone tried to sell you SEO services in the last 5-10 years? How many times has someone pitched you that Google #1 spot? Companies have been ripped off by these search engine optimization experts so many times that a lot of them don’t want to hear a thing about marketing as soon as they hear the word SEO.
And I can understand that. Amateur SEO guys annoy me too.
Fortunately, there’s a big difference between “web guys” and Marketing Strategy Consultants. Because when it comes down to it, there is no one-size fits all package in today’s world. No two companies are the same. Internet Marketing is not even the answer to every business’ problems—for some the issues they are facing have a lot more to do with depending on technology TOO much and alienating your customers–believe when I say that in the majority of cases this is the first thing that needs fixing.
And then even when internet marketing is the answer, that doesn’t necessarily mean Google is the answer. It can be for certain kinds of businesses, but for other businesses, Google can mean nothing. Just the number one spot in dead air—a door that no one ever opens all the way and if they do it’s just to have a peek, not to buy.
If that’s not plain English enough for you, let me give it to you straight. Not every search term sells, and not every industry even has the possibility to sell via Google position—even if they had a million visitors via that medium per day. Fortunately, there are plenty of other ways to reach out online—plenty other tools to use. SEO guys might not know about these other ways, but good marketing strategy consultants do.
To go even further, when I look at a company’s business, the Internet is typically the last place I look to increase sales and cut back on wasteful profit leaks. The first place I look is your company’s day-to-day business. The old school stuff like customer interaction, contact points, and processes.
In many cases, that’s all it takes to find out how companies are wasting tens of thousands of dollars and making a few tweaks to substantially influence their bottom line. Then, after offline processes are in order, that’s when I have a look at internet marketing strategies.
And because I also worked extensively in that industry, I can formulate a plan that works there as well. Not by focusing solely on Google and not by applying the same methodology to every local business, but by formulating a plan that fits your needs and makes sense for your business.
Marketing Strategy Consultants know that this is the key to maximizing profit opportunities. It’s different for everyone. It’s different for you.
What strategy does your business need to grow in this recession?
Go watch my free video and find out about getting a free marketing consultation now.
