I hear it all too often, “We’ve engaged a company to setup a Facebook page for us” or “I’ve decided to setup a Facebook page so we can start marketing on Facebook”… then I always ask “Why?”…

Seriously, Why? Why do you want to be on Facebook, what do you plan to get out of it?

Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook it’s the social media platform I spend the most time on personally and professionally but for many businesses it’s going to be a waste of time and money at least if you are still in startup and needing to get new business quickly.

Here’s 10 Reasons Why Your Facebook Page Won’t Work For Your Business

1. Your customers aren’t on Facebook

If your ideal customer is 80 years old, they aren’t likely to be on Facebook are they? So why put time and effort building a page just so all your friends can click Like and you can feel significant, then you forget about it.

2. Your customers don’t use Facebook often

What if you’re targeting 60 year old business owners. Maybe they have a Facebook profile so they can stay connected with their kids and grandkids but how often do they check it? When was the last time they logged on and bought something through liking a page? I’m not saying that they definitely aren’t, but have you done the research do you know if your market is actively on Facebook and using it reguarly?

3. You are interested in Generating not Connecting

Facebook and social media in general is about connecting with people. If all you are interested in doing is generating new business from your Facebook page then you are bound to fail. You must use your Facebook page as a way to engage, discuss, share and even get a little personal with your tribe.

4. You don’t have the time to commit

“If you build it, they will come” – Field of Dreams. That’s exactly what it is DREAMS, if you think you can just create a page and not continue to update it with new content you won’t get any results. You must commit time and effort to your page. There are many time saving tools available for social media, such as Hoot Suite – which lets you manage your Facebook pages and schedule posts, but there can be negative effects to the effectiveness of your Facebook page strategy when you use these tools.

5. Looking for Quick Results

Facebook pages are not a short-term strategy, you won’t create a page, get some likes and start making more money and getting more customers straight away. It’s about building trust and rapport with your followers and building a tribe of people who will promote you and buy from you regularly. Building that tribe takes time to achieve and to do it you need great content to be shared, which takes preparation.

6. You’re down to your last dollar

A client once came to me and said… “I’ve got about $500 to spend on marketing I was thinking of paying someone to do a Facebook page for me.”

If you are down to your last few dollars and only a limited budget there are so many better avenues that have measurable ROI’s and will deliver much better results than a Facebook page.

7. Your delivery and customer service suck

Facebook pages are a two way street, you communicate with your customers and they communicate with you, and it’s all done PUBLICLY! So if you fail to deliver your product or service well, and you have customer service issues be prepared to have it made widely known to all their Facebook friends and to all your otherwise satisfied clients.

8. Have no clear defined goals for your Facebook Page

All marketing should have a Return on Investment (ROI). You invest time or you invest money or you invest both – so you should expect a return. Here’s the question though… what return are you looking for?

• Do you want more customers?
• Do you want more repeat business?
• Do you want to build a community of customers?
• Do you want to be more well known?
• Do you want to be seen as an Expert in your field?

You must know your outcome and goal for the page, how will you know if it’s succeeding and it’s a worthwhile investment?

9. Your goals don’t serve your audience

Having a goal as discussed above is crucial, but there’s an extra element. Your goal needs to serve your audience. If making your business more well known is your goal, ask yourself, how does that serve your audience? Will you being more well known help them in some way?

The quickest way to achieve your goal will be to have others enrolled in helping you, and to do that helping you needs to help thems.

10. You are always selling

You’ve met those people right, they are slick and salesy and all they ever do is offer their products or services to you. How do you feel when you meet them at a dinner party or networking event?

So why are you going to do it on your Facebook page? As stated earlier, Facebook is about connecting. Give first then ask for their business. Help them in advance, then they can feel that you actually care (which I’m sure you do) and will be happier to do business with you when you suggest it.

So is a Facebook page going to work for your business?

The answer is I can’t tell you for sure, what I can tell you is that Facebook is a long term strategy, it takes time although there are ways you can automate it to reduce the time required.

Is your Facebook page working? Will you create a Facebook page for your business?

If used wisely, email marketing can be a very powerful tool that will increase not only sales but customer retention through the strengthening of your relationship with your prospects and customers.

So often my clients say to me, I understand I should be using email marketing in my business, but where do I find the best Email Marketing tools available and how do I know they are the best.

It’s obvious that email marketing is a fast way to reach your target market and distribute information and marketing materials. Plus it is so easy and convenient since the good ones will automate much of the process for you.

Results are fast and astounding if you use the best Email Marketing tools.

Today, Email Marketing software are a dime a dozen. You have to be careful in choosing the right program for your business.

Here is a list of the best email marketing tools that you can choose from ranked from 1 to 10. I’ve ranked them based on my experience and from what feedback I’ve received from my clients and entrepreneur networks.

While I highly recommend and use personally Office Autopilot, I’ve ranked it 3rd due to it being not an entry level product so therefore it’s baby sister Send Pepper gets the #1 spot.

1. Send Pepper – Affordable, Scalable Email Marketing and Basic CRM

This is perfect for small businesses, start-up companies and small-time entrepreneurs who do not have a huge budget for marketing but you’re looking for a high-quality marketing tool.

They have 3 affordable packages to choose from – starting from $29.95 per month, then you can upgrade as your needs change and as you begin seeing success from your email marketing campaigns up through two additional packages which gives you extra features like shopping cart plugins and more contacts.

What I like most about Send Pepper however is that once you outgrow all the Send Pepper packages – and if you are serious about Email Marketing you will –  is that it’s really the baby sister of Office Autopilot, an Email Marketing and Automation CRM that is designed for entrepreneurs and information marketers and all you need to do to upgrade to Office Autopilot is click a button and all your data comes with you – no painful migrations, or paying people to move your data.

So if you are looking to just get started and then get more advanced later on – This is where I’d start.

2. Aweber – The Most Used Email Marketing Software in The World

This is probably the most affordable and easy to use Email Marketing program for small business and entrepreneurs. For only $1 for the first month and $19.00 per month for the following months with a money-back guarantee, you get a great deal and great results.

The reason Aweber is the most popular system in the world today is due to it’s 99% deliverability rate, proven and tested. This means 99% of emails get through spam filters and are delivered to inboxes.

The thing that you might not like with the Aweber’s service is one of the reasons its so popular – its 99% delivery rate. To achieve this 99% delivery rate Aweber is extremely strict with its opt in process, not allowing you to Import your past or current customers that you have in another system without sending them all an email saying “You’ve just been added to a list, Click here to confirm” this can means you lose up to 50% of your database when you move to them.

As the most popular system, you should check it out. I’ve used it but definitely preferred Send Pepper due to Importing and scalability.

3. Office Autopilot – Your Marketing on Autopilot (I personally use this for my email marketing)

This is a very useful tool that I highly recommend for most small businesses and for the serious entrepreneurs. It is very effective software that will help you market, promote, up sell, monitor and follow up marketing and sales efforts across all your websites and lead capture channels.

Now it’s not necessarily cheap, which is why I recommend starting with Send Pepper and upgrading as you need the features. Their starting package “Pro” is $297 per month and their Team package which allows you a team of 5 users is $597 per month.

This is the tool I myself and many of my marketing and high level entrepreneur friends use, due to its flexibility through the use of “active response rules” – which trigger based on certain actions your database contacts take.

If you are serious about your marketing and how you will automate your sales and prospect pipeline. Office Autopilot is a great choice to make.

4. InfusionSoft – Sales Automation and CRM for Small to Medium Sized Business

Infusionsoft is very similar to Office Autopilot feature for feature, but while Office Autopilot focuses more on the small business solopreneurs and businesses with a team of less than three staff, Infusionsoft’s CRM abilities makes it better suited to companies with sales staff and larger teams.

Boasting automation functions of email, payment processing, affiliate program and all the goodies you want for an automated online business or an offline business with strong online sales channels.

Packages do start from $199 a month going all the way up to $999 per month. But there is a required setup fee of roughly $2,000+

There are also some challenges if you aren’t based on the East coast of the United States, the time and date for all scheduling and all aspects in infusionsoft will not be in your time and you’ll have to manually convert the time yourself. It was for this reason mainly that I chose not to go with Infusionsoft myself, plus also a lot of features that Office Autopilot now has built in are additional monthly fees for in Infusionsoft.

If you have a team of 5+ and want a strong automation tool, check out Infusionsoft

5. MailChimp – Free Email Marketing Tool – Great for Startups

In the Australian startup community MailChimp is by far the most popular and I’m pretty sure it’s because it offers some great features, a really funky user interface and branding, and to get started its 100% free.

Mailchimp is a great email marketing tool for business who send out monthly marketing materials to regular and potential customers and they don’t really want to create sequenced marketing campaigns. It has been a while since I’ve used MailChimp but it doesn’t really handle Autoresponder marketing sequences very well and is better suited for individual email blasts.

Overall it’s an easy-to-use email marketing tool but I found it to be less professional and flexible when it comes to true marketing automation.

If you are a small startup just starting out, it might be a great place to start.

6. Constant Contact – Professional Designs Without A Designer

With 400 templates to choose from, surely you will find one suitable for your business. Constant Contact offers a great 60-day trial and affordable monthly rates starting from $15 per month.

The platform also includes extra features like sending Survey’s but these are additional services that will be charged for.

If you are looking for a system that sends graphical and professional looking newsletters easily without needing a web designer – Constant Contact is a good bet.

7. GetResponse – Reports and Analytics That Marketers Drool Over

Another popular platform when it comes to Email Marketing. What GetResponse does well is its tracking and montitoring, very similar to Google Analytics, you get a huge amount of flexibility in how to interpret the data.

There is also heaps of documentation and tutorials on how to use it, but the feedback I’ve heard is that if you want to speak with someone, their customer support isn’t that reliable and you’ll often turn to a Google search to find the answer instead.

It’s worth a look, while doing your comparisons – I’ve not used it so can’t say for sure.

8. iContact – Easy, Intuitive and Affordable Email Marketing

Easy to use but sophisticated email marketing features. Outstanding user interface that is not intimidating to anyone. Their prices are affordable and iContact offers many customisation options when it comes to sign up and lead capture forms.

It’s a popular system, again I have no direct knowledge only what is passed on to me. Check it out and see if it suits you.

9. Vertical Response – Email Marketing Made Simple and Effective

Simple but very effective email marketing tool for less than $10 per month. They have good tracking options and professional templates plus excellent customer service.

They’ve recently acquired and moved into the social marketing space as well, and the email platform will soon integrate with their Roost system that managed Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all from one place, very similar to Hootsuite actually.

I’ve never personally used it, so can’t comment much more, but it has been recommended to me a number of times before. And I’ll be watching the Social Marketing space for a while.

Find out more about Vertical Response here

10. 1ShoppingCart – Lots of Features, Used by Many, Basic Email Marketing

A shopping cart system for your website that also offers basic email marketing. This platform is again quite popular but I’m not entirely sure why. As an email marketing platform it is very poor, which is why most people who use it then integrate it with another like Aweber.

Also if you are not a tech-savvy person, it may take some time to get used to the software, as its interface is restrictive and not always easy to follow.

It made the list, mainly because it is used a lot, but personally I wouldn’t actually recommend it.

If you want to find out more, take a look at 1shoppingcart.

So bottom line – What are the best email marketing tools?

From the list above, if it’s not already clear my recommendations are all affordable, effective and user-friendly.

If you are looking for entry level go with Send Pepper or Aweber, just be wary of Aweber’s strictness on requiring double opt ins.

And if you are serious about your email marketing Office Autopilot and Infusionsoft are the best Email Marketing tools for today’s full service online marketing.

Do your own research, give them a try… and ensure you have a great system that meets your business needs.

Do you know a better one?

Have you found a different tool that works well for you?

Do you have any experience with any of the above and want to weigh in?

Leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you.

Infographics are a visual representation of data that has become very popular in recent times. In my browsing recently I came across this very interesting business infographic that shows what countries are the best to start and do business in.

So here’s the infographic… What is the best countries to do business in?

Infographic by Infographiclabs

Where does Australia fit?

As you can see represented in the above infographic, Australia is among the top countries to start a business in and based on what I’ve seen especially in the young entrepreneur market this is definitely true. Australia is breeding a strong entrepreneurial community and new business start ups are on the rise.

What’s interesting is that doing business in Australia rates number 15 in the “Ease of doing business” category, I believe this is due to things such as high employment costs, high taxes and high competition within such a small customer audience.

Do you agree with these statistics?

I’m about to share with you a tool that every small business must use to help you do just that, and I’m going to show you some practical applications on how this tool could apply to your business.

Why You Need An Email Autoresponder For Your Business

Emails are so common now in everyday business life, many of us send hundreds of emails a week if not per day, and sometimes they are the same things again and again and again just to different people.

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, right?

Then some genius entrepreneur came up with a great solution known as an Autoresponder. An email autoresponder is a software tool that allows you to create emails and schedule them into a sequence that gets drip fed out at the scheduled times.

Let me explain what I mean, you may have a sequence like…

Day 1 – Email goes out to contact at 11:30am introducing who you are

Day 3 – Email goes out at 11:30am saying here’s how we can help you

Day 9 – Email goes out to contact at 10am give me a call for a free consultation

You wrote the email template once, and you put in personalisation tags, things like the contacts First Name or business name. And then you can send it to as many as you need and without having to think about it.

3 Ways Small Business Can Use An Email Autoresponder

Build Relationships with Customers

One of the most important points of your business is to build a customer database and keep building a stronger relationship with those that have done business with you in the past and are doing business with you right now.

Using an autoresponder you can keep them educated about how to best use your product or with tips on how to get the most out of your service, valuable information that helps them mixed in with a combination of offers and opportunities for them to work with you more.

Educate Prospects

For many businesses prospects don’t just buy, they often need to be taught and educated about why they need the product or service or at least why they should choose you as the supplier for the product or service.

By utilising an autoresponder you can have a sequence of emails go out at predefined intervals each with a different education piece or point that helps to build trust, teach them why you are the supplier for them and ultimately ask them to buy.

Automate Regular Emails

I know for me, especially in my IT business, we had many standard emails we would send out regularly. For example when we brought on a new client, there were at least 3 or 4 emails we would send them with different information they needed to know to work with us.

If you do this manually it can easily be forgotten or if you have heaps of new clients starting in one go, its going to mean you are very busy.

Autoresponders solve all that, create a sequence with all the emails and then just assign the sequence to your new client.

I’ve put together a list of the top 10 autoresponder software available.

Just Do It…

There are so many benefits even more than the above few suggested, just start using one and you’ll realise the potential of what you could automate.

Are you using an Autoresponder in your business to save time and make more money?

As far as my personal profile goes I made the switch to the new Timeline layout early on. As a business user, I was initially not impressed with the new changes to the brand timeline page, now… I couldn’t be happier with this most recent change. Timeline for Pages will offer a great many benefits, both for entrepreneurs looking to solidify their brand and established businesses hoping to further integrate their Facebook presence with their brand as a whole.

Today we’re going to take a brief look at some of the changes coming to Facebook, and explain how you can best use the new features for Facebook page Timeline marketing.

A Much-Needed Facelift to Facebook Pages for Business with Your Brand Timeline

While the simple, classic blue and white layout has helped Facebook establish itself as a brand in its own right, this look has never been all that positive for businesses hoping to establish a solid presence on the site. The new Timeline layout – and especially the ability to post a large, imposing cover image at the top of the page – will be a boon for businesses looking to solidify their brand in the social space.

As you may have already seen on personal Facebook pages, it’s easy to get the cover image wrong. Since Timeline first arrived I’ve seen all too many pixellated disasters from shots too small to blow up to cover image size. On the other hand, I’ve seen a good amount of eye-catching cover images from people with a creative streak and (perhaps) too much time on their hands.

While personal Timeline cover images are just a bit of fun, businesses should think long and hard about the image they’re trying to project. Do you want a simple company logo? How about something more creative? You’ll need to come up with something, as you’ll be switched to Timeline automatically by the end of March.

When changing your cover image you should bear in mind that the default image size is 851px by 315px. If you want the image to look clean and polished, make sure to resize it correctly.

Curated History Can Help and Hurt Your Facebook Page Marketing

The Timeline layout allows visitors to your page to browse through your archives much more easily than in the past. While this is a nice little feature it could also dredge up moments you’d prefer to forget. Before switching to Timeline as your default layout you should scroll back through the months and years to remove anything you’re not too proud about.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re the PR manager for an SEO firm, and two years ago you bragged about the fact that you’d managed to push a client’s site to #1 in the rankings for a ferociously competitive keyword.

Two years later the site is languishing at the bottom of the second page, making your firm look amateurish by proxy (even though you may no longer perform SEO for the site). In the past this wouldn’t matter so much, as old posts were buried quickly. Now, though, any visitor to your page will be able to call up those old boasts in an instant, and it won’t reflect well on you or your company.

In short, Timeline gives you the opportunity to curate the history of your company, presenting only that information that makes you look good. Without curation, though, every mistake you’ve ever made will come back to haunt you.

Use Featured Content on your Brand Timeline

One of the biggest frustrations of Facebook business pages was that, if you allowed visitors to post directly to your wall, the content you carefully created and timed perfectly to have the largest impact could easily have been buried beneath random comments.

Perhaps the biggest opportunity for Facebook page Timeline marketing comes in the ability to ‘pin’ featured content to the top of your page. If you have a special or time-sensitive announcement, contest or promotion you’d like to be seen you can make it sticky, pinning it in place for up to seven days.

This is a great way to push your important content front and center, and it allows you to keep a call to action posted almost permanently in a prominent position your visitors are sure to notice.

As you can see it’s an exciting time for Facebook marketers. The new Timeline layout will offer unprecedented control and customization to brand marketers. With a little creativity and a dash of savvy you could see your brand awareness and social interaction go through the roof!

Have you ever said to yourself, I’ll give back… when I’ve made more money, I’ll give back… when I have more time?

Let me tell you about my recent trip to Thailand where I spent 3 days in Khao Lak, one of the hardest hit areas of the Boxing Day Tsunami back in 2004.

I visited the Briza hotel which sits right on the beach that got devastated by the tsunami (the above video was shot on the beach there) and the most rewarding part of the trip was when I visited and stayed at the Baan Tharn Namchai Orphanage which was setup after the Boxing Day Tsunami as a place for the kids who lost their parents, brothers and sisters on that tragic day.

I think so often we get stuck in our own lives, that we forget just how lucky we all are here in Australia.

Yes we have problems, everybody does. There is no such thing as a perfect life however seeing these kids, learning about their backstories and some of the horrible things that have happened in their lives – yet they are still smiling, laughing and wanting to play – it is an absolute inspiration.

These Kids Are the Inspiration… Why We Must BE MORE… DO MORE… and HAVE MORE to give.

You and I are the Answer…

I believe the world will be changed by those of us in it who choose to change it. I believe we need more businesses to succeed and that we must create more business owners who are not chained to their businesses but have freedom and flexibility.

As Entrepreneurs and Business Owners we are the people who make real impacts on the world, through the creation of jobs, through the creation of wealth that can be shared, as facilitators of dreams and as the creators of change and legacy.

That’s why I’m really excited about my upcoming event “Magnetic Marketing” in Sydney on the 30th of March.

If you haven’t secured your seat yet – GRAB YOUR COMPLIMENTARY TICKET NOW! ($997 Value)

At this event you will be hearing from 4 Leading Marketing experts here in Australia. Alex Coulson, Jesse Forrest, Tyrone Shum and yours truly – It’s our way of helping create more successful business owners who will make an impact on the world. We won’t be holding back, it’s going to be practical step by step ways to get your business more customers.

We Asked… You Answered… You Want More Of The Right Customers!

We’ll be covering the latest cutting edge strategies like

• How you can use Video to reach millions of potential customers for under $1000
• The changes that Google has made that means it’s now a level playing field again when it comes to getting to #1 on Google
• The exact structure you need to make your website actually work and make you money
• How to find and attract the right customers who love spending money with you
• and much much more.

I’d love to see you there, click here for more info or register below.

Time to Get Re-Invigorated

Welcome to 2012 everyone. I trust that you have all taken a well deserved break and enjoyed your holiday period.

I don’t know about you but for me after a break I find getting back into the swing of business takes some time and is a bit of a struggle. Maybe you are a jump starter you feel refreshed and your roaring to go. Either way this exercise is for you.

In this blog post I want to teach you my exact New Years Business Optimiser session that I am doing this week. Im going to share the questions i ask myself and what i look at to ensure this new year is a success.

You know being the start of a new year it’s the perfect time to reflect on what you achieved last year and what you are going to achieve this year.

Your Business Planning Session

What You Need

• Blank Piece of Paper
• 1 or 2 Coloured Pens (Blue and Red are my suggestions)

The Next Steps

1. With your blank piece of paper draw a line down the middle turning it into 2 columns.
2. Now at the top of the page in the left column put the heading “Rear View Mirror”.
3. At the top of the page in the right column put the heading “The Road Ahead”.

In The  Rear View Mirror…

Write down and answet the questions…

• What are you most proud of last year?

• What were your biggest challenges last year?

• What did you start doing but didn’t finish/ why?

• How many leads or enquiries did you get?

• How many new customers did you get?

• How often did these customers buy from you? Did they come once the entire year, did they buy from you 3 times, or 10 times?

• If you sell more than one product or service, What was your most popular product or service?

If you don’t know these numbers then one of your focuses for this next year better include tracking these things so you are ready for next year.

You’ll also notice we didn’t take a look at financials, because you should be doing this at least monthly if not more reguarly. So if you are only looking at your financials once a year, I highly suggest you also add that to your focuses for 2012.

For The Road Ahead…

• What do you personally want out of your business this year?

• What profit do you expect to make this year?

• How much money will you invest in your education, in marketing, in research and product development

• How many new customers do you want and how many do you need?

• What is the average amount they need to spend?

• How often will customers buy from you?

• What strategies are you going to focus on to achieve if not exceed all these targets you just set

Don’t bog yourself down with analysis paralysis just look at the big picture. What are you planning to achieve this year and what strategies are you using to do it?

No matter what you are focusing on, remember to keep educating. The more your learn the more you earn so buy books, attend courses, find free resources online.

Is getting more customers one of your focuses this year?

Then put your name and email in below to ensure that you stay in contact with me and get lots strategies that will make your business be seen more, convert more and ultimately make more money.

At the begginning of this month I ran a promotion, Giving away a Free 16GB Ipad 2 to one lucky winner… all you had to do was fill in a short survey around Marketing and Yourself as an Entrepreneur and Business Owner and tell me in 20 words or less why you wanted an iPad 2 for your business.

After 375 Entries and going through each one to see the amazing responses and reasons… A winner was chosen – Below is the video that announces the winner and answers the most asked question from the respondants to the survey.

Did you win? Watch and Find Out

Why Did I Do This Survey?

I’m launching an exciting new program in 2012, called The Marketing Matrix, and as a part of this I needed to learn more about you and the challenges you face and what you like around business education. This is a something you should be doing in your business when you are starting out, or are launching a new product or service – you must do Market Research and ask your audience what they want, what they like, what they don’t like and their biggest challenges.

The easiest way to do this is send an survey to them via email… here are the top 3 tools I recommend to send a survey

• Survey Gizmo
• Google Docs – Forms
• Survey Monkey

What have I done with these responses?

The responses have helped me shape the structure and format of the Marketing Matrix as well as helping shape what will be covered to ensure that this brand new business education program will (I hope) be a game changer in the industry of business education.

One that guarantees and actually delivers real results and actions in an intimate learning environment with real participant collaboration.

Can You Find Out More About The Marketing Matrix?

If you want to be kept in the loop about this new course that will help you Get More Customers, Who Spend More With You, More Often… just put your name and email below and I’ll be sure to send you some of the free videos that will help you (the first video is about defining and finding your ideal customer) and then invite you to learn more when I’m ready to announce.

The Email Newsletter Is Dead - You Need To Offer Value

With everyone getting too much email, is it time to give up on Email Marketing?

Ten years ago, if you had a form on your website that said “Subscribe to our newsletter” you were leading the way in online marketing for small business. But today if you have this same form it means you are straggling behind all the other small businesses who use direct email marketing as part of their online marketing strategy.

You see, no one ever subscribes to an email newsletter anymore, people get enough emails as it is – I know because hundreds of people have invested in my course Inbox Domination just to combat this exact problem.

Seriously, think about it… when was the last time you put your email address in on a website that said “Subscribe to our newsletter”

Does this mean Email as an Online Marketing Strategy is Dead?

Certainly not, Email is still a great online marketing strategy if you know how to use it. Email marketing has just evolved but too many businesses haven’t caught up with the changes yet. You see people don’t want more emails and special offers they want value, they want content.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the number of websites offering free e-books and special reports about “buying the right guinea pig” and “how to eat your way to a six pack with no exercise” are on the rise, this is because this is the type of enticement that your potential customers need in exchange for their name and email.

Your first sale online really should be in exchange for their Name and their email address – and nothing more.

This is because you want to build your database so you can follow them up and convert them to a sale later. Plus the size and the quality of your customer and prospect database is one of the key elements that make up the value of your business when it comes time to sell.

5 Email Marketing Tips for Small Business – How To Make Email Marketing Work

Step 1. Create your Money Magnet

Also called a Lead Magnet or Free Gift, this is your product of value (note I say value, it can’t be junk that has no substance) that you offer in exchange for an email address.

Many people write e-books, or special reports. Other people develop videos and free courses.

My suggestion is, as with all good marketing strategy, start by finding out what the most common question you are asked by your customers and find out if you can answer that in an interesting and valuable way.

For example, if you run a Personal Training Studio and you are commonly being asked “Do I have to change my diet as well or do we just exercise?”

You could create a 6 Part Free Video Series on “How to Lose Weight while Eating More” and you could cover specifically why you recommend eating more to activate the metabolism and recommend some great recipes and give some exercises your prospects can do at home.

This 6 Part Video Series would be an email sent to them every day or maybe every second day with the next video and the final video would include a call to action, so in this example it would probably be best to offer a free session in the gym.

You see what you’ve done here is shown that you are the expert, you know what you are talking about and have given then value that when you ask them to consider buying they feel they owe you something.

Step 2. Get a System to Send Emails On a Sequence

To be able to do this properly you need to automate it, and this mean you need whats known as an Autoresponder. I recommend SendPepper as the best system but there are others like the popular Aweber.

Both of these start from around $25 a month, its very affordable and they will let you set up a form on your website that your visitors can leave their name and email and it will then in exchange send them an email or a sequence of emails in an order and on a schedule.

I recommend a schedule along the lines of 4 emails of value for every one call to action or request to buy.

Follow a Sequence of Value Before Offer like…

Email #1: Your Money Magnet Delivery

Email #2: Link to a recent Interview you did

Email #3: Case Study or Success Story

Email #4: Powerful tip that really helps them

Email #5: Get a Free Consultation

Step 3. Put the Opt In Form On Your Website

Once you have your money magnet and your email delivery system in place, you need to make it easy for people to join your email list to “opt-in” as its called. The email systems like SendPepper and Aweber have Smart Form builders as part of the software that you can use and it will give you some code to put on your website, however there are some other cool tools that can dramatically increase the amount of people who actually subscribe to your email list.

Pop Up Domination is a tool I personally use to allow you to make a popup appear on the screen after a set period of time.

If you use wordpress for your website you can also get the free addin Opt In Domination to create a cool looking side bar opt in box.

Or if you want to create a dedicated website just for capturing names and email addresses, you can’t go past OptimizePress which lets you easily create what are known as Squeeze Pages that the designs look professional and have been tested for high conversions of visitors to opt ins.

Step 4. Promotion

Now you need to promote. If you have already got an email list, don’t just import them all into your new automated sequence. It will just annoy them, especially if they haven’t heard from you in a while. Instead send them an email suggesting they might like your Money Magnet (just don’t call it that) and send them to a page where they can put their name and email to get it.

Make your business card actually work for you and state on your business card that you have free stuff when you go to your website to get it.

Put updates on social media sites like Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, Google +. Send direct messages to some of your closest friends and ask if they can also promote it for you as well.

Step 5. Follow Up

Good email marketing needs to have good follow up. Meaning you need to stay in contact but don’t drown your customers and prospects with emails as they, just like I teach in my email management course Inbox Domination, will just unsubscribe and you’ll struggle to get them to join your database ever again.

Slow down the frequency of emails, aim to stay in contact about once a month and ensure you stick to the rule of 4 emails of value before you ask for something in return.

Has Email Marketing Worked For You?

Share your experiences below. If you have a cool tool you recommend or a success story around Email Marketing I’d love to hear about it.

Your business card, it’s probably the first thing you created when you started your business.
And if you are like most Entrepreneurs and Business Owners, your business card looks just like this one, right?

And what’s worse, you might even be wasting the valuable space that is your business card by only using one side of it, right?

Or even worse again, you used a free business card printing company that has their logo on the back of your business card!! I can’t tell you how many business cards like this I see and throw out right away. I’m sorry but your business card is an extension of your company and if it looks crap and unprofessional, if it comes across as cheap then I instantly assume your entire business is cheap and unprofessional.

If you can honestly say those don’t’ apply to you and your business card then congratulations, you are doing better than 80% of business owners who have a business card. However your business card is probably still boring as most business cards are.

Think about this for a moment, how many cards do you have at home or your office that you have no clue about who the person was that gave you the card?

You see the problem is that very few entrepreneurs and business owners stop to think about the purpose of their business card, and actually consider what is it’s role in your marketing funnel.

Let’s look at 4 Ways to Avoid a Boring Business Card

1. SALES COPY

This means benefit driven… what’s in it for me… converting sales copy.
So few business cards do this and that is why they are boring. So start simple, have a Benefit Driven Headline and some points of benefit for the products and services you provide and remember to finish it off with a call to action offer.

While we are talking offer, let me be clear… you are extremely unlikely to make a sale from your business card, it however is your qualifier and it gives your prospect an opportunity to ask for more information and that is what your offer should be… a chance to get more information.

2. FUNCTIONALITY

Does your business card have a function? Check out the case study below for a really great example. Business Cards all should serve some kind of function, as I mentioned above it should allow someone to request more information, another function might be to get people talking, or laughing or something more than just giving name and contact details.

3. WALLET SHARE

Will it be kept and get some room in someone’s wallet?When I owned my Gift Business, our business cards all had important dates to remember on the back. So you could always know when Mothers Day, Valentines Day and other important dates that year were… this achieved wallet share… it served a purpose that was worth hanging on to.Another example is fridge magnet style cards, these get kept and left on fridges this is still wallet share because they are easily accessible and could result in business further down the track.

4. SHAREABILITY

Will people talk about your business card? Does it offer them a way to share your business with others?For example a coffee shop business card could have a tear off coupon, for a free muffin with every coffee purchased.
 

Here’s one of the coolest business card designs I’ve seen that definitely isn’t boring!

Mod hair salon is a “Rock ‘n Roll” hair salon based in Rome, Italy.

So the first thing you should notice is that it doubles as a comb, that is a fantastic idea for a hair salon. And if I saw something like that from a hair salon I’d already be impressed… but they didn’t leave it at that.

They took it from fantastic to remarkable by designing the teeth of the comb so that they worked like a musicbox.

So what this means is when you rub the teeth of the comb with your fingernail the card plays a song, and not just any song as they are a “Rock ‘n Roll” hair salon it plays “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones. Absolute Genius!

So, ok it’s not the best business card ever, and I’d be interested to know how effective it actually is.

If it were mine I would add a clear call to action offer. But do you think anyone throws this “business card” away? How much conversation has this card created for them do you think?

The real question is, How much conversation is your business card creating? What attention are you capturing?

I’m going to leave you now with a few business cards to get your creative juices flowing… see what you can come up with and remember your business card should serve a purpose which is to get an enquiry not just be a gimmick with no clear reason.

Is it a business card or a paper plane?

Give People Something Do do… Like this play a game when there’s nothing else to do

Not sure of the practicallity of putting these in your wallet, but definately stand out

Here’s a practical use business card

Secret Message Business Card

Perfect for Divorce Lawyer… perforated edge down the middle so you can Split the card

Scratch Panel reveals the call to action

Showing your clear benefit