by admin+ | Sep 3, 2013 | Uncategorized
Small business marketing budgets are often relatively small. You need to get in front of prospects and you need to get their attention quickly. First impressions count. You’ll likely have no more than a minute (probably less but I am being generous) of attention from a prospect so you need to grab their attention with your important message. (As an aside, if you don’t understand, the name elevator pitch comes from the ability to answer the question “so what do you do?” if you are stuck in a lift with someone for 20 seconds or so.) The Elevator Pitch must contain the following elements if you truly want it to be an effective tool in your content marketing arsenal. No Jargon – Industry jargon and buzzwords do not impress anybody. They can also be hard to understand. The best elevator pitches use simple but powerful words and create a strong impact. Under 45 seconds – I haven’t scientifically tested this one but in my anecdotal experience, people’s attention spans are getting shorter so you need to practice your elevator pitch until you get it under 45 seconds. this is all the time you will have to hook someone in before you lose their attention. Tells a story – Position yourself as a problem solver. Tell a story. Help illuminate what you do in the mind of your prospect. Stories are more likely to keep them interested than boring statistics or features. Targeted – Make sure your audience wants to hear what you have to say. If you have a number of target audiences you may want to write a...
by admin+ | Sep 2, 2013 | Uncategorized
WordPress, whilst initially built as a blogging platform, has become one of the most popular platforms for website Content Management systems. I am not going to share with you why WordPress in this article. That is an article for another day. The purpose of this article is to share with you 5 basic SEO tips to improve your SEO using WordPress. Download a Plugin to help manage the process of Basic SEO– WordPress Plugins make everything easier. A good WordPress plugin will simplify your SEO process and save you a lot of time. I recommend YOAST. Ensure META Tags are filled in appropriately – Google loves the META Tags. As they say “Meta tags are a great way for webmasters to provide search engines with information about their sites.” With META tags you can tell search engines what a page is about so they can rank them in search engines appropriately. Choose appropriate keywords and descriptions and you will boost your rankings. The plugin mentioned abovemakes it easy for you to update your META tags. You can do it as you are writing your posts and pages – there is no need to alter HTML code yourself Ensure an appropriate permalink structure – Permalinks, the link structure you use in the address bars is important. My personal recommendation is that you go with the structure Post Name – eg www.domainname.com/postname Ping site update services – You should share links to your articles. You should share with automatic ping services that you can default setup in WordPress. This can be done under Settings Share your content and build backlinks –...
by admin+ | Feb 20, 2013 | Uncategorized
For many small business owners, their business marketing strategy is an afterthought – if there is a strategy in place at all. Marketing for these businesses is a haphazard approach at best – something that they do if they have the time between the day to day running of other aspects of their business. It shouldn’t be this way. Business marketing strategy, as a solution for driving sales, should be front and centre in all decision making processes. It should be front of mind and be considered before anything else in your business. Without a business marketing strategy you will unlikely find you get many leads and your business will struggle to thrive. Business Marketing Strategy – What to measure. Part of any business marketing strategy should be measuring and tracking results. Here are some of the things you should be measuring (at a very minimum.) No of leads generated and where they come from – Without leads, without someone interested in potentially buying your product or service, you won’t make any money. Any business marketing strategy should involve a number of different marketing channels and measuring the effectiveness of these channels. This means that your strategy should identify how many leads are generated and where they came from. You should then concentrate your efforts on those that generate you the most leads. Total qualified leads – A word of caution though. Not all leads are created equally. You need to qualify the leads that are generated and you should measure the total number of qualified leads you generate. Your business marketing strategy should also identify those marketing channels...
by admin+ | Feb 14, 2013 | Uncategorized
Network Marketing and MLM seem scary and put many people off. It’s true that MLM can have some negative connotations that arise from bad practitioners but this does not mean that all businesses cannot learn from successful Network Marketers. The best MLM networkers implement a number of lead generation techniques to successfully grow their business. they don’t rely on pressure selling to friends and family. Lead Generation Techniques that you can use starting today. Here are some of the lead generation techniques used by the successful entrepreneurs can learn from those who are excellent MLM practitioners in order to grow their own business: Create content and be an authority figure Cold-calling has lost its effectiveness as a lead generation technique. For many businesses it used to be the go to option as you could reach a number of prospects quite easily and cheaply without even leaving the office. It does still work as a lead generation technique but because it is overused now people are not as receptive to cold calling and telemarketing as they used to be. And why needs cold calling anyway? Chances are people are already looking for your product or service and you need to spend some time giving them a reason to choose you over your competitors. By creating content – whitepapers, ebooks etc – and writing articles for your local media or other authority sites you will begin to position yourself as an expert in your field. This means that your prospects will begin to trust you and, instead of selling to them, you will find that they come to you with their...
by admin+ | Dec 13, 2012 | Uncategorized
5 Social Media Management Necessities for a Busy Professional Social media is no longer just a haven for gossiping students sharing photos or for keeping in touch with old friends from school that you would have lost track of years ago were it not for Facebook. Chances are that you know this but this does not necessarily mean that your social media is as effective as it could be. Effective Social Media Management is vital for the busy professional. Effective Social media management is important in any business – no matter the size of your business. Large corporations have social media management teams for their online presence. Chances are you don’t have this opportunity. This doesn’t mean that social media management is any less important. Having said that, even if it is just you, there are tools you can use to manage your social media presence and improve your productivity. If you are going to engage with social media, you want to do so with a tool that makes your life easier. If you are looking for the right social media tool you want one that offers the following: 1) Scheduling – Social Media Management in Advance Your target audience may not be online when you are awake – and what about when you want to go on holidays. Social Media Management tools with scheduling functionality mean that even if you’re in New York, you can schedule messages out to your customers in Tokyo during their workday. I participate in a number of Twitter conversations. One of them happens twice a day (to cater for different audiences in different...
by admin+ | Jul 25, 2012 | Uncategorized
Check out the Optus Future of Business report here. It covers a lot of interesting statistics that relate to online markeitng and social media management. This is a must-read document for all business owners and entrepreneurs. Social Media Management and Digital Marketing – The Future of Business. On the importance of digital marketing and social media management, the Optus Future of Business Report asks the following questions. “Should a business develop a mobile website or should it invest in a mobile app? Should a business rationalise it’s bricks and mortar presence & Increase it’s online presence? Should a business move some of its IT from a department into the cloud and allow more teleworking?” Do you even know the answers to these questions? Does your business already have a social media management strategy in place? If you don’t know what your business should be doing with its social media management or digital marketing strategies., it might be time to give us a call. The team at Greenlight Communications are specialists in the online space. We live and breathe social media management and digital marketing. We dream about Facebook and Twitter. With Social Media Management and digital marketing you can grow your business and reach out to new customers. Social Media management and digital marketing is cost effective and easy to track. Unlike traditional advertising methods (television, radio and newspapers) where you are uncertain of the effectiveness of your campaigns, with digital marketing you can reach out to new, laser- targeted audiences and achieve the results you want. Do yourself a favour. Read the Optus Future of business report and take some...
