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The 7 Most Important Factors to a Successful Online Business

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

For some reason many people have the mentality that creating a website to sell a product or service online is easy.
Whether they have received this advice from an internet marketing seminar telling them they will make thousands almost overnight, or have read about the online stores reaping in huge profits.
People hear about the billions that are being made online by Google, Facebook and other mainstream sites and somehow build up the picture in their head that the information super highway known as the internet is paved with Gold.

I agree wholly that there certainly is a lot of money to be made online, just as there is with creating any successful business.
Take Coca-Cola for instance, they make hundreds of millions every single day, so why not set up a soft drink company? Because it is extremely hard work!
There are reasons businesses success, both in the traditional form and the online form, and this all comes down to a few key ingredients

The 7 Most Important Factors to a Successful Online Business

1. If you’re planning an online business, you need a business plan!
This sounds so stupidly obviously, but the fact is almost 70% of all websites and blogs have no plan in place, and the major reason online businesses fail within the first 12 months, most times, even quicker.
If you plan on setting up an online business, treat it like a real business. You don’t just suddenly wake up one day and think ‘I might open a shop today!’, and then go purchase a shop and fill it up and sit there until someone walks in the door. this approach would lead to failure within the first month!
A website is no different. Your goal is to make a profitable business online, so plan it out like a business. Think about everything involved in setting up a standard business and pretty much the same will apply for a website.

Firstly you need the basics. A business plan to work out a realistic timeframe, investment costs for the development for the website, hosting and domain name registration, etc
Work out the initial timeframe to get online and then set your goals for 3 month, 6 month, 12 month, 2 year plan, and then every 6 to 12 months after so you can review your website. internet technology moves at a faster pace than traditional business, so any advantage you might have over a competitor can lead to a much healthier income for you.

2. Researching your niche.
Before racing off with the brilliant idea of unleashing your business online, always do market research first. This could save you a lot of money or even possible failure online.
The internet is full of businesses trying to make a success of online business ventures. Some do succeed, and very well too, but others fail purely because they forgot to look at the marketplace first and check out their competition.
Always check who your main competitors are, their target audience, what they are selling and for how much. If they are selling the same as you, work out a plan that you can out-sell them. A smart bit of marketing either in the initial stages of the design of your website or your marketing can make all the difference.

3. Plan your website development
Many people take the totally wrong approach when planning their website, and base everything on getting their website built for the cheapest price possible.
Many people are shopping around offshore to India, Malaysia and Pakistan to find web developers that will work for $9 to $15 an hour. Now I’m not saying you won’t get a quality job done for this rate as I have many friends that are web developers in these countries, but finding the good web developers amongst the bad ones is hard and time consuming. You might also find it could cost you more than you initially budgeted if you don’t spend a lot of time working out exactly what you want the site to achieve, and how it functions, and then can successfully relay this information to your new developer. And remember, there is always a chance that if you require any updates to your site in 12 months the developer of your site may have moved on to a different company, which could end up costing you much more on re-development costs rather than a simple job from a local web developer you know. So this is something important to keep in mind before basing the website purely on getting the cheapest job possible. Like anything often you get what you pay for. If you get $9 an hour labour don’t always expect a million dollar job.

4. Functionality
As I mentioned in the past 2 points, keep functionality in mind when planning your website before rushing in and getting your website built. Some simple smart thinking can be the difference between success and failure online.
Talk to a professional web consultant and also review other successful websites of the major companies in your trade and look at what they do to achieve online success.
For example, just small editions to your site such as a mailing list form so people can subscribe to your mailing database can turn into thousands of dollars every year on email marketing up-sells. Adding social media buttons for Facebook and Twitter can not only spread your online brand like wildfire, but have people recommending, ‘liking’ and tweeting about your products to their friends which will almost definitely return sales for you.
These take a web developer only a few minutes to add but can make you thousands of dollars. Unless you are a web developer yourself, don’t try and plan, or worse, build your website yourself, Spend an hour or two with a real consultant who understands social media and online marketing techniques, not just web development.

5. Branding
There are so many ugly websites online! These websites are representing your business, your product, and most importantly – you!
If your website looks like a steaming pile of shite it sends out the message that you don’t really care about your business brand, your products you sell or your clients, and you will probably turn away more people than make sales.
think about all the successful brands both online or offline, not think about their branding. Most you will be able to automatically visualize their logo in your head, or their slogan, jingle or catchy tune on their advertising.
This is smart branding and smart marketing, and a good part of their success.
If you don’t have a professional looking logo, go get one! A professional logo doesn’t have to cost the earth, and a good logo designer will provide you with a visual style manual of your logo upon completion, providing you with full ownership of your logo, plus provide the logo in all the different formats you require and details of colours used, etc so your logo will always remain consistent at all times no matter what the medium it is being used in, web, advertising, tv, signage, etc. If your logo designer didn’t provide all this, ask for it. You need it and it saves you money getting it redone later.
The more professional your online business looks, the more trustworthy you appear and the more confident the customer is in handing over their hard earned money for your services or product.

6. Marketing Budget
Probably the most important aspect of any business, yet people never seem to leave enough dollars for marketing.
People often tend to think you can just throw a website up onto the internet and it will have people flooding your website with wads of cash in hand. Unfortunately this is not true.
You need to have a marketing plan in place before even building your website, and more importantly have the money available. Put aside some cash for launching the website, allowing for spending on Google Adwords, Facebook ads or pay for links and hits just to build up the traffic to your website. Maybe even look at buying spots on some website directories with banner advertising. Also do the traditional marketing of flyers, business cards and even radio and tv just to get your business name out there until you get found easily on the search engines. But also plan every few months to do a few campaigns, some email marketing and other savvy marketing to keep drawing in fresh crowds, and get the old customers back again.

7. Creating a Mailing List
If you have a tight marketing budget, the number one way to attract and retain customers online is through a mailing list. By simply adding a mailing list on the homepage of your website, or even throughout the entire website, can see you gathering a list of potential clients you can market to in the future.
But if you are going to do this, do it properly! Use an email marketing system such as Aweber, Constant Contact or iContact, create your email templates and automate emails that will send out to new signups while they are a fresh hot lead, then set the system to send new campaigns on a timed basis of say every 3 weeks or so. This keeps your brand awareness up and the potential to make additional sales.
Getting people on your mailing list is easy if you dangle a ‘carrot’. Add a special offer, like a 10% discount coupon code if they subscribe, a free downloadable e-guide, or to really attract them, a real valued giveaway. Giving away something might cost you a few dollars initially, but the returns will outweigh the costs fast.

Author: Chris Bourke of WebSEOCoach.com and Devision Design Australia

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Social Media Network Marketing Etiquette

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Social Media Networks such as Facebook, Twitter Youtube and LinkedIn is quickly becoming the latest trend in powerful business marketing.
Never has there been a marketing tool so dynamic that can promote your brand on a massive scale and link you instantly to a global network of potential customers.

Social Media Marketing truly has the capability to generate awesome sales with almost no hard costs involved…just a little time, and a little marketing knowhow.

However, Social Media Network Marketing is a little different to traditional marketing. As the name suggests, it goes down to ‘networking’.

If you want to really success at online network marketing you need to focus on your etiquette.

Attracting Followers
Think of Social Media Networking in the same way you would traditional networking.
Don’t just follow anyone just because you want to be known by everyone, selectively search for followers you want to be associated with and that you can see the potential of a future business partnership.
Online social networks usually have an easy search tool allowing you to search keywords or business names to find others in a similar industry or the industry you want to attract to your business.
When you decide to connect with that person or business, send them a greeting to say ‘hi’ and introduce yourself. Keep it brief, simple and lighthearted.
First impressions can possibly be your only opportunity to connect with that person so as well as being informative, let them see your true character and also see how they can benefit by connecting to you.
Twitter only gives you 140 text characters, so it needs to be straight to the point, a little like having to introduce yourself and your business to someone in one single sentence.
Remember people don’t always respond straight away to your requests, so don’t keen trying every day if they don’t respond or you will just drive them nuts!
Give them time to respond to your request.

One of the easiest ways to get new followers on most social media networks is simply post messages that attract interest!
Whether it is a blog, a new Youtube clip or just a short tweet on Twitter, what you write and how you write it can be the difference to losing followers or gaining hundreds of new ones.
A social network doesn’t have to be 100% all about your business. What makes a social network really work is the personal touch you give it. People love to know about other people, even if they don’t really know them.
Post something insightful, a quirky message, add a little humour or even post a question for people to respond to, and people will respond to you, and your personality.
Sharing what you can do for them with interesting tips (like this blog post!) can be hugely successful in gaining new customers. It doesn’t have to always be about directly flogging your products all the time, otherwise you start looking like a television commercial…and we all hate TV commercials!

New Connections
When someone connects with you, always acknowledge them.
They have chosen to connect with you for one reason or another, whether it is just to make them look more popular or to actually want to genuinely be interested in what you do or sell, so so your appreciation and say thanks.
Drop them a short tweet or message back and tell them thanks for following and let them know you are always happy to help, or give your product a light plug.
For example, if you sell financial advice, your message could be ‘Hi Janet, thanks for following! Visit my blog (add web address) for more helpful hints on reaching your financial goals”
You will then be not only acknowledging them as a person by adding their name, but also directing them to your website or blog, which they will most likely visit as soon as they get your message.
Now, add other Social Media Network buttons to your site or blog, like Facebook, and you will find they will also start following you there as well, which then every time you post a message on Facebook they will receive and their friends will also see it, attracting new potential friends for you!
It’s a simple little system, but works very well!

Posting Etiquette
Whether you have decided to connect with others or they have connected to you, the secret of retaining them is in your posts.
Keep your audience interested but also always remember to watch what you type. The worst thing about the internet is that you can’t really express yourself humanly.
You can’t actually laugh, smile, frown, cry, show love, etc. And sometimes what you write can come out sounding not like what you really intended.
So always re-read your messages before hitting the send button. Social Media messages have the potential to spread like wildfire…if your message is witty or useful people will click their ‘like button on Facebook or retweet it on Twitter, but if it comes across rude or annoying, people may also retweet this, which can instantly give your business a bad name.
Don’t ever badmouth an actual identity online (even if they are a politician!). Your views may not be that of others, and when you send that message out into cyberspace, there could be many more people reading than just your network.
The old saying what goes around comes around can bite you on the bum!

Happy social networking!

Author Chris Bourke of Devision Design and WebSEOCoach.com
Chris is a graphic designer, web developer and online social media marketer.


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Property Project Marketing in a Global Financial Crisis

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Over the past 18 months or so we have seen many sectors of the retail, property and financial market drop, and still continuing to fall.

The property and housing market in particular has been hit hard by the GFC.
But is it really the global financial crisis to blame, or a global marketing crisis?

A few years back when the financial market was a blossom of buyers ready to throw their money into every new development and investment properties, marketers really didn’t have to push their marketing too hard..
A few billboards, good press advertising, nice glossy brochures, a few Television commercials in primetime spots and they had the sales rolling in.

But as the GFC kicked in sales started to slow down, and people weren’t as committed to hand over their hard earned cash, mainly concerned or scared of financial security.

So what has really changed.. the marketplace, the mindset of the consumer?

Are the marketing and advertising professionals adapting to this change and counteracting the situation?

Are property marketers still thinking inside their square and not looking at a bigger picture?

Many advertising professionals still look to the traditional methods of marketing because in the past it has proven to work for them.
Smart TVC marketing, elegant brochure designs worked a treat, and quality press advertising in premium publications. Maybe even a nice looking website to sell the product.

Apart from the website, the problem with these other traditional forms of marketing is they are not really trackable.
Does your ‘marketing guru’ know the age of every single person that saw your advert, can they tell you how many times that person read the magazine ad, or if they are english speaking or foreign?
And most important, did they capture that person’s details for future potential marketing?
The answer to most of the above is probably not.

If doesn’t really matter how glossy your brochure is, how ‘wow’ your TV ad is, or how nice your website is, if it doesn’t capture your target audience, and more importantly doesn’t capture your audience’s details for potential sales, you may as well sack your marketing and design team.

Traditional marketing is dead.

Here is a few helpful tips on how to enhance your traditional marketing and make spectacular sales through a Global Financial Crisis:

1. If you are doing TV advertising, make sure your ad has a link on the screen to point people to a special page on your website, so you can track the effectiveness of your TVC campaign.
This could even be a series of ads all pointing to different web pages to monitor which works most effectively.
If you are selling a real estate project the page must have an enquiry form to capture leads. Provide an attraction to entice the viewer to subscribe to your marketing form.
This may be as simple as a download of your brochure, or something more impressive like a night’s accommodation at one of your hotels. For the cost of a night’s accommodation this is still extremely cheap marketing.
This enquiry form should be linked to a professional email marketing system such as Aweber. Don’t try doing email marketing through Outlook..it is a guaranteed way to fail!
Aweber allows you to set up automated campaigns so you can send targeted marketing on a scheduled basis to your market. Most people don’t impulse buy real estate and won’t usually purchase on first contact, so targeting them with scheduled email marketing will usually eventually hook them. This is where traditional brochures and TV ads can’t compete.

2. Brochure Marketing – A nice glossy brochure is great, but again only if there is added value for the reader. If it is simply showing nice design and photos and not really prompting them to want to find out more it usually ends up in the rubbish in a few days. The brochure should always have a link to the website as well, allowing them to sign up for a special VIP membership, so they get first pick at new real estate projects. Adding ‘VIP’, ‘Exclusive’, or even ‘FREE Membership’ and people feel important and want to sign up. They are no longer just part of your anonymous marketing campaign…they become a ‘person’ to you and feel special. remember, these are the people that could turn out to million dollar clients in time, so capturing them and treating them nicely is important. The usual marketing brochures don’t do that and usually can cost a sale.

Incorporate online social media into your brochure – Adding links to your Twitter, Facebook and Youtube accounts [help your potential audience to interact with your business and extend your branding online.
These people that connect usually share their links with their friends, usually with similar interests, and before you know it you have a global audience of thousands.

3. Press Advertising – Similar to brochure advertising, your press needs to draw your market to a webpage to capture your audience, and again you can also do this through other online networks such as Youtube.
Upload your TVC to Youtube and then add a link in your press ad. A press advertisement is very two-dimensional and capturing an audience with a few sales words, a nice design and a couple of static photos of a new real estate project is pretty bland. Drive traffic to a video can secure a deal. Make sure you brand up your YouTube Channel with the company logo, and a few tricky advertising tools to drive them back to your site to sign up to your mailing list.

4. Website – I see a lot of property developers and real estate websites which are usually designed by a ‘graphic designer’, not a ‘web developer’. What’s the difference?
It doesn’t matter how good a graphic designer you might be, unless you know how to apply the principles of website development and internet marketing your nice shiny design won’t hit awesome sales, especially in hard financial times.
The website needs to work as a marketing tool, not just an online brochure.
Make sure you pack it with all the tools required to capture the online marketplace, and think big. Remember, your audience is GLOBAL. You have potential sales leads coming from every corner of the world viewing your website and looking at your properties.

Adding tools such as Language Translation tools, the enquiry marketing forms (mentioned above), Social Networking links, Google Maps, A live chat support system, TVC videos on your homepage, plus the standard tools to create traffic, such as search engine optimisation, will help turn your website into the the most powerful marketing tool (and probably the most cost effective) you could ever have.
Most of the tools mentioned here are totally free, so if you’re not using them you should be.

If you can’t get at least 1000 good leads a day in Property Marketing with modern marketing tools you advertising team is doing something wrong.

before planning your next big ‘traditional’ marketing campaign, consider if your current marketing is really working for you.
Maybe a few changing in the way you market could change the global financial crisis, for your business at least.

Author: Chris Bourke – Devision Design Australia and WebSEOCoach.com
Chris Bourke is an graphic designer, web developer and Internet marketer, who also runs a online global accommodation network.

Follow Chris on Twitter at twitter.com/devision or twitter.com/webseocoach

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The real price of a website?

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

When it comes to web development it is always interesting to see the reaction of the potential client when I produce a quote.

Smart business owners who know the importance of a good website usually think I am too cheap, the rest usually choke on the price.

See, most people don’t see past that dollar sign on the quote and understand the real potential and power of the internet, and the fact that there are ‘websites’ and then there are online marketing websites.

Every time I build a website I try to encourage the client to think past using their website as an online poster, but create a website that works as a powerful marketing tool.

Sure adding in value might mean paying a little more, but in the long term, or even as little as a week, you will see the returns pay for themselves.

I’d like to share a recent example…I had a potential client who owns a motorcycle shop ask me for a quote on the rebuild of an existing website. The website looked ‘okay’ at first glance, but it wasn’t working as a marketing tool, it was more like a roadside hoarding online, and probably not directly making him any money.
After a quick review I found at least 20 things that could be improved on the website to most likely double his profits, yet when I presented the quote, (which was less than one of his average motorcycles!) he balked at it.

Now, I’m not giving this chap a hard time…I get this reaction a lot from people that don’t understand the power of the internet.

If I were to put it into simple terms for him it would be easier to compare a website to a motorcycle..
Firstly, the difference between a motorcycle and a website would most likely be that you pay a big price for a motorcycle with maybe around 35% of the total price probably going to the dealer, another 20% going to shipping/export costs, another 5% going to the manufacturers big marketing campaigns, which leaves you with a 40% value, which then depreciates each time you ride it. Then of course you have registration, insurance, fashion accessories, etc. Unless you run a postal or courier service, that motorcycle probably isn’t going to provide a return worth way more than what you purchased it for.
(These figures may be incorrect – I build profitable websites, not sell motorcycles, so I am approximating the breakdown of costs.)

On the other hand, a website designed as a marketing tool will most likely pay for itself within months and then continue to make money for you, in some cases while you sleep, depending on what type of business you have. Keep the website for a few years and I usually see a 800% or more return on investment.

So while a motorcycle is fun to ride, I’d love to have someone get me an 800% return on my purchase after a few years.
I’d jump at the chance to purchase one if that were the case!

Yet, explained so simply, people still don’t get it.

So how do you add value to a website to get an 800% return?

Let’s look at just a few of the basics…

Always make sure your website is well branded.
If you have a logo you use for your business/business cards/stationery/press ads, use the same logo and colour scheme on your website so your brand is strong and consistent. Branding is everything!

Make contact simple.
I see so many websites (including the motorcycle site mentioned) that don’t have a phone number visible, or they have it way down in the footer of a long scrolling page. Thats perfect, if you DON’T want people to call you!
always try and keep the phone number near the top of the website, and reinforce it on every page of your site, in the same location, and even throughout your web content.
Add a contact form on your website so people can contact you outside of business hours, and add clearly defined links in your main text that link to the contact form (eg CLICK HERE TO CONTACT US).
And make sure the links actually click through to the page! It’s amazing how many people forget to add a live click through link or forget to test it.

Create a marketing list of potential clients
It doesn’t take much to set up an automated email marketing system with a simple form on your homepage to entice people to join your mailing list. Adding a mailing list to your website is one of the most important marketing tools a website can have, and you will find on average your potential client database will grow around 400% every week!
Using an email marketing system such as Aweber allows you to easily add a contact form into your website, and the contact details of each person that signs up is saved to a database for future email marketing, which is fully trackable for each campaign.

Online Brochure
When people are visiting your website looking for a particular product, odds are they are also going to look at your competitors websites as well. If they visit a bunch of competitors sites there is always a good chance they will forget your web address. Add a downloadable PDF flyer of your latest products to your website, so they have something to keep after they leave your website. Ideally kill two birds with one stone and add the downloadable brochure into the Mailing List subscribe form, so you collect their data each time someone wants a copy of your PDF brochure. Your marketing database will grow fast!

If you are marketing a product (such as motorcycles), they look much better when they are moving rather than a static photo. Adding a Youtube clip into your website is quick and easy and adds another dimension to your website, plus it creates additional online marketing for you through Youtube. Youtube videos allow you to create a live link from the videoclip to your website, producing much more potential traffic for your website.

Online Social Networking
‘Tweeting’ new products through Twitter, and adding the Facebook ‘Like’ button to your website allow visitors to share your product marketing with their friends, who usually share similar interests. This creates a great deal of website traffic for you and potentially a lot more new business. Social Network marketing is a must of the modern age of online marketing.

Search Engine Optimisation
We all know the importance of being on the first page of Google, yet a lot of people struggle to get their website up there.
google is not as complex as many people make out, and a few simple steps can see you reach a page one spot on Google, and retain it. Always ask your web developer to include search engine optimisation when they build your website, and ask them to integrate Google Analytics into your website so you can monitor the results of where your visitors are coming from and how they found you online.

Ask for feedback
Unless you ask your website visitors for feedback you won’t really know how you are performing online. Website visitors’ feedback can really help you create a successful online marketing tool and most people are happy to give feedback if you ask. Add a Feedback form on your website in the footer, or simply ask through Twitter occasionally and review the responses. It’s always good to look at your business from the other side of the window!


Author: Chris Bourke of Devision Design and Web SEO Coach.

Chris is a graphic designer, web developer, internet marketing and SEO expert based in Australia

Follow Chris on Twitter @webseocoach

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Choosing an Email Marketing System

Friday, July 9th, 2010

When you’re considering email marketing to help your business flourish, you should look into a few important aspects before making a firm decision on which way to go.

Firstly, somethingI have to advise against…DON”T use Outlook or any other email app running directly from your own personal computer!

Why not? Personal computers are for personal emails. If you want to use emails for promotional marketing, you need to be able to track your readers, allow them to unsubscribe, and most importantly subscribe to your email database as well as send the email to a friend.

The best way to do all this is to choose a professional online email marketing solution.
Yes, there is a cost involved to do this, but we are talking as little as around $15 per month. If your email marketing campaign is good you will make this money back without a doubt.

Making sure you choose the right provider for your email marketing needs is a bigger decision than you might think, because if you find you are unhappy with the service once you have started growing your email marketing database it can be a huge setback to change over to another provider. You see, most professional email marketing systems will ensure that each person that subscribes has clicked and given permission to add them to your database list. If you then go and move to another provider, you will them need to ask each person to re-subscribe to your list, which usually leads to a 40% drop in your subscribers. This can take a long time to build up again, equating to the loss of a lot of revenue through email marketing campaigns.

So choose your email marketing provider wisely.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A GOOD EMAIL MARKETING SYSTEM

Firstly, you want a system that is easy to use.
Creating emails needs to be easy, sending and monitoring the success of the emails needs to be even easier.

SETTING UP TEMPLATES FOR YOUR EMAIL CAMPAIGNS
Most good email marketing systems provide both these options, and even allow you to create your own Subscribe forms, response forms and auto reply email templates. Aweber allows all this, but even goes the next step and lets you set up timed auto response follow up emails, which is ideal for online marketing. Sending out additional emails for the following weeks can ensure a sale before they forget who you are.

EMAIL RESPONSE TRACKING
Tracking the response of each campaign can help you determine who is reading your emails, which products they clicked on in your email, who they forwarded the email to, and even how long and how many times they read it. This sort of marketing information is very important. My 3 favourite email marketing systems, Aweber, iContact and Constant Contact all provide these type of services, though I find Aweber the easiest to read. They provide simple graphs that you can review quickly.


iContact.com - Email Marketing Service

iContact is a close second, though a big plus for iContact that Aweber is yet to develop is the free iContact iPhone App, which allows you to check your campaign success anytime, anywhere from your iphone! Brilliant for the busy marketer, especially when you are running multiple campaigns at the same time.

Constant Contact and MailChimp also offers iPhone Apps, though being a graphic/web designer I just tend to like the iContact App and website much better. It’s fresh, simple and both the website and iPhone App are easy to learn and use.

MANAGING AND IMPORTING CONTACTS
whatever system you use, make sure you have the ability to be able to easily add or download your mailing list database of clients. You don’t want to sign up and then find you have to individually add one person at a time! Make sure you can quickly and easily upload a CSV or EXCEL file so you can get started on your emailing success faster

SETTING UP FORMS ON YOUR WEBSITE
This is usually where the systems let me down the most…setting up a Subscribe form on your website.
Mailchimp seems a little awkward if you aren’t too web-savvy, and I haven’t had too much luck with getting the contact form layout just right when I have used Constant Contact.

Icontact and Aweber are both fairly straight forward and easy to do, even for a novice, allowing you to fully customize your Subscribe form as well as providing you some great templates to get you up and running quickly, though I did have a few issues with Aweber not totally liking the fact that I was doing it from a Mac, though it runs fine on a PC.

PRICING
The pricing to use an online email marketing package various a little from business to business. Most start at $15 a month for around 500 subscribers and then allow you to send 3000 emails a month. Aweber lets you sign up for the first month for just a single $1! So you get a good try out of their system and if you don’t like it you can change before you get too attached to it. Aweber works out a couple of dollars more expensive than some of the other leading packages such as iContact, but in the long run the tools they provide for professional email marketing will probably provide a higher return to your campaigns, which is why most email marketers usually choose Aweber.

But have a look at them all, try them all out for a test run and see what you think yourself before making a decision.

Article by Chris Bourke of Web SEO Coach and Devision Design Australia
Chris is a full time web designer and developer as well as an internet affiliate marketer.

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Building Your Business Using Twitter

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Popularity of the Twitter social network is growing tremendously on a daily basis. It’s the perfect place for people and businesses to share their thoughts and suggestions for personal and business benefit. Businesses can profit from the use of Twitter, and building your business with Twitter is possible if you have the knowledge.

Enjoy the benefits of Twitter business marketing

There are many benefits to using the Twitter social marketing program. Some of the most important benefits include the following:

News related to your niche, and technologies related to it are available online when and where needed. The latest enhancements to make your job and marketing endeavour easier can be found. Also many people are willing to share their experiences and ideas with others who need the information and assistance.

Using Twitter is an excellent method for traffic generation. More visitors to your website and online presence will help to increase sales, and perhaps more importantly potential sales.

The social database is a very good source for building a contact list, finding potential employees for your business and more sales will be generated from your marketing efforts. Many professional marketers have built their contact lists in this manner.

To find more potential customers the easy way without having to manually do the hard work yourself, download a copy of Tweet Adder.
Tweetadder is a brilliant software package that pretty much manages your Twitter account for you.
You can pre-set tweets to send on a regular basis so there is no need to remind yourself to post new messages. You can literally be on holidays and Twitter will be working for you!

Prove to the community you are an expert in your niche. The more beneficial information you can provide, the better the impression that you leave.

Another benefit is that using the network marketing method is free. The only investment is your effort, time and determination.

Not only is this enterprise used for building your business, it can also be fun to keep in touch with your family friends and colleagues. Share an entry or two to let people know what you have been doing. Let your true self shine through when posting comments

Easy and valuable tips for successfully building your business with Twitter:

1.Twitter is a place where people share information about themselves and other aspects of their lives and their specific niche. Because of this, it is important not to spam. If, in error, you are banned the possibility of building your business with Twitter will be exhausted.

2.You should follow people and not only have followers. The more people you follow and the more followers you have, and the higher your exposure will be.

3.Post information and share comments as often as possible. Posting may be time consuming but worth the time and efforts when you reap the benefits. Commenting or reply to other member posts is also recommended.

4.As the saying goes, ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’ Post information followers can benefit from.

5.Build your collection of followers. You may be intimidated by knowing this but the task is not as difficult as you think. Links to your Twitter ID can be placed on your own website and also in the signature in forums and message boards used for promotion of your website.

6.Follow as many people as possible. Try to balance the number of people following you to the number of people you are following.

7. Once you get a good flow of followers going look into using tools to manage your Marketing, such as Easy Tweets.
Easy Tweets is so easy to manage through it’s simple user-friendly interface. While it may sound like an advanced piece of TWitter software, it is so easy to learn, even for beginners. In fact, they will even give you a 30 day money back guarantee if you can’t use it!

If you are really serious about using Twitter for business, check out Twitter Rockstar. Twitter Rockstar provides you with all the professional tools to really power your Twitter marketing and to use Twitter to generate income online. Brilliant.

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Professional Business Marketing on a Small Budget

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Starting up any new business can be tough at the best of times, and the current economic climate doesn’t make it any easier!

But don’t let all the doom and gloom you hear everyday stop you.

I would like to share some simple cost saving business marketing tips and services that our business, Devision, can provide that can have you looking as professional as the big guys, all for under $1000, including professional logo, business cards, letterheads and well ranking website!

Read on and I’ll tell you how!……

Branding & Logo Design – A few hundred dollars

We all know that one of the most important assets of any business is their brand and corporate identity. A professional eye catching and clever logo and brand is one of the key ingredients to any successful business, however a custom designed logo and corporate branding can usually cost big dollars.
But if you want a professional logo at a budget rate, many agencies such as Devision have a bank full of hundreds of unused logos created in the design process for other clients, which we offer at a discounted rate. Obviously it will not be a totally custom logo for your business, however many of the logos are generic enough that they can suit almost any type of business by simply changing a few colours, and you will save hundreds on the cost of your branding.

Business Card Printing – 1000 full colour for $50

Professional Business Cards are one of the next things on any new business list. They are the ‘first impression tool. for most businesses, so you don’t want some cheap laser-printed homemade business cards!
And with any new business you will want to hand out as many cards as possible to get your business name out there.
Devision offer 1000 full colour business cards for just $50!These are double sided (full colour front, greyscale/black reverse side) on a nice 300gsm artboard stock. There is a small charge if artwork or delivery is required, but you’ll agree it’s still very affordable!

Letterhead Printing – 500 full colour $170

Letterheads are the next thing you’ll be needing for your invoicing, promotional letters, etc. You can get started with 500 full colour professionally printed letterheads for as little as $170! And like most printing, the price per copy gets cheaper the more you have printed, saving you a packet!

Website – as little as a couple of hundred dollars

As I have mentioned in previous ramblings, your website is probably the single most important and most affordable marketing tool you can possibly have for your business. We receive around 85% of all new business directly through our website, and have clients all across the world that have found us online. The beauty of a website is you can start with a small website – a single page or a couple of pages for just a couple of hundred dollars, and in time build it up to suit your needs. With every website Devision design we professionally search engine optimise and submit it to the search engines using the latest techniques and SEO gear, so you’re not paying additional expenses later on to get on the search engines. In fact we are happy to coach you in SEO techniques so you can learn the secrets yourself and make sure you always stay ahead of your competitors!
Alternatively, for a few hundred dollars you can purchase a copy of Web CEO, the leading search engine optimisation software used by the professionals, and quickly learn to do it yourself.

Website Hosting - $7.95 a month

With your website you will also require a domain name and website hosting. Our partner company Webcrowd offer professional hosting plans for $7.95 a month, which are perfect for any small to medium professional business website, and you get the domain name of your choice (pending availability) for free!
The Webcrowd hosting includes unlimited email account, professional website statistics for your website, and you have full control via a Control Panel, allowing you to set up email accounts, add databases, etc as you need. And the best thing about Webcrowd is they are located in Australia so you get real local support!

So, add the services up that I have mentioned and you have no excuse not to get your business up and running in a few easy steps at a cost much cheaper than you probably thought. You have no excuses to get out there and beat the Economic Crisis Blues!

For full details and plenty of examples of our work, visit Devision at www.Devision.com.au

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Posted in Branding, Brisbane Printing, Brisbane Web Hosting, Brisbane Website Design, Caloundra Website Design, Marketing, Maroochydore Web Site Design, Mooloolaba web site design, Noosa Website Design, Printing, SEO, Sunshine Coast Website Design, Sydney Printing, Website Development | No Comments »

Business Marketing Tips to flourish in an Global Economic Crisis.

Monday, August 31st, 2009

We all hear people every day blaming the ‘global economic crisis’ for a decrease in business sales.

We hear them saying people just aren’t spending on services, or people are’t going on holidays, or people aren’t buying new products, etc etc.

I find the term ‘global marketing crisis‘ more of an excuse for business failure, than the truth.

If an economic crisis is truly the case then why are some of the major retail players such as Apple, JB Hi-Fi and others posting record profits in the past 2 quarters?

The answer is ‘simple’ – The employ simple marketing strategies!

By using simple, and often free, marketing tools and strategies you will blow off the excuse of a ‘global marketing crisis’ and your business will boom, no matter what the media is saying!

Here are a few handy tips to help:

1. USING THE WEB…

Your website is a great point of presence and reaches a wider audience than most other advertising and promotional mediums. And the best thing about it is that web hosting only costs around $95 a year. Thats value for global marketing!

Make sure all you website content is up to date and the site looks fresh and professional. People are more likely to deal with someone with a professional looking website. You wouldn’t paint your own signage, or build your own office building, so don’t build your own website! Get a professional!

Make sure you have the main basic contact details so people can contact you easily. Add a contact form to your website and collect additional information, such as how did they hear about you, would they like to join your mailing list, etc. This information can be used for future promotions.

Make sure your website is well search engine optimised. If you aren’t on the first page of Google you are out of the running. And believe it or not, a first page listing on Google is easily achievable if correctly optimized. If you’re not on that first page, go have a quiet talk to your web developer! SEO should be part of the standard service provided with any website. Without it, it is like buying a car without an engine…you won’t go far.

Embrace the many free Google Webmaster tools to promote your business, like the free Google Business listing, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Keyword Tool, Blogger, Google Trends, etc. Google have made it so easy to be found online, and they charge nothing!

Invest in SEO Tools such as WebCEO – It’s a great tool for reviewing your website’s SEO (and your competitiors, and fine tuning and submitting your website yourself. It really makes the difference.

Use online Social Networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace to promote your business and services. Your listing on any of these also gets found easily on the search engines. Using Twitter alone, one of my businesses profitability has jumped 180% in the past 3 months. Free marketing works wonders!

Create and write a regular blog. Blogs such as WordPress and Blogger provide free software, and they get picked up on Google within minutes. They can also be lined directly to you Twitter account or LinkedIn accounts so your post automatically reaches an even larger crowd.

Submit your website to as many free directories online as possible. The more sites you are directly linked to the better your pagerank, and in turn the better your listing chances on the search engines. Plus you reach a much wider audience from people that use the directories.
For starters, you can add a free listing to our own directory, BusinessBrisbane.com. It currently ranks as one of the best directories in Brisbane and we don’t charge a cent to list! Go on..sign up! www.BusinessBrisbane.com (for Brisbane regional businesses only).

Employ email marketing tools, and send regular enewsletters to your customers. Many customers will usually send to a friend if it is interesting, so your potential customer base rapidly expands.

2. BRANDING…

Ensure your branding and advertising is professional. The use of an effective logo and brand elements such as a slogan can be a very simple yet powerful marketing tool. Look at McDonald’s for example..they probably don’t make the world’s best tasting burgers, but they are still the world’s largest hamburger seller! Their iconic logo and simple catchy adverts is the real success. If you don’t have a nice little logo, it is worth the small investment.

Ensure your branding remains consistent. Make sure your logo is always the same colour, your advertising templates remain consistent, and print work is always in tune.

3. SELF PROMOTION & NETWORKING…

People like to deal with people they know and trust. Find your local business networking clubs and sign up. Many invite you as a guest to your first meeting to get a feel for it. Within no time you will be meeting business referrals that will be needing your services!
Make you go to each meeting well equipped with the basic marketing tools including a few brochures and nice business cards. Spend the extra few dollars and go for the nice feeling matt celloglazed finish full colour business cards. You can usually purchase 1000 for around $140, which is a great first impression investment!

For more tips on how to market your business on a budget, visit our website blog: www.devision.com.au/blog

Article by Chris Bourke from Devision Design Australia

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E-marketing on a Budget. We show you how to do it FREE!

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

The sure fire way to successful e-marketing in a recession.

E-marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to promote your business or services on a budget.

The advantages of emarketing over conventional promotional marketing material are huge -

• Cost effective – no need to purchase stamps, stationery/envelopes.
• Less time to prepare and send
• Successfully track reader response.
• Cross promote products
• Make extra money with affiliate marketing (which I will mention shortly!)

But before you decide to rushing toward your computer (although you are probably already there to read this!) and start planning your email to send, there are a few things you need to consider….

First up, DON’T ever send a mass email marketing campaign through Outlook or another email program! There are certain laws against spamming, and one of the main laws is that your email must be ‘permission’ based and must have an automatic Opt-out link, so the person is removed from your database immediately if requested. Outlook cannot do this. Furthermore, sending a bulk email out can clog your mailserver leading to your email being removed from the mailserver and nothing gets delivered.

There are a number of great online systems to send law-abiding email marketing to your clients, such as Vision6 or Constant Contact, both of which require very little internet related knowledge to send great looking emails allowing you to send and track the response. The only downside is that they charge you for sending bulk emails, and if you have a large group or send regularly, while still reasonably cheap, you do have to pay.

But if you already own your own website you can download a program called Pommo, which is a free professional email marketing system which you upload to your own web server, and set up in about 5 to 10 minutes. And there is no cost whatsoever!

If you don’t own your own hosting, then for a tiny sum of around $7.95 a month you can purchase a hosting plan from WebCrowd.com.au and we will install the software for you for nothing! This works out much cheaper than what you would be paying for the other systems mentioned, and Webcrowd also give you a free domain name and unlimited email accounts as part of the standard yearly hosting fee!

Now that you have your email system up and running, lets get down to business!….

You don’t need a degree in rocket science to know that to get people to read your enews it needs to be:

• Short and sweet – people will trash it instantly if they see a days worth of reading.
• Informative and interesting – Don’t just drone on about yourself or your products, include some interesting facts, some fun stuff, a thought of the day…add things people want to share with others..this is a great way to viral market yourself.
* Add incentives for signing up and reading your enews, like subscriber-only discounts or specials. This always works!

Now, how about if I was to tell you about a way you can make an income from e-marketing, with no products!?

No I am not joking, and yes, it is very easy…

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make extra cash every day, even every hour. Investing a couple of hours a week on email marketing can very easily reward you with a full time income. I’ll share with you the basics of how it’s done once you have your hosting and email marketing system in place…

Step A - Find yourself a few affiliate marketing programs.They are free to join. My favourites are Clickbank, DGM Pro, Commission Monster and Commission Junction. There are also plenty of travel agencies, fashion labels and others offering affiliate programs to choose between. MAke sure it ties in with your enewsletter topic.The process is simple – You sign up, you pick the products you wish to promote and they provide you with a script that you cut and paste into your enews. When someone click on the product link and makes a purchase you are rewarded with a commission. This commission could be anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. All you have to do is have that link in your email and attract them to click it and make a sale.

Step B – Join up with Google Adsense. Adsense is the other half of Google Adwords. The way Google Adwords works is people pay Google to promote their business or products, but for Google to get those ads out there they rely on affiliates that are willing to promote them, so they developed Adsense. Adsense lets you join up for free and you simply add the google code into your enewsletter and the Google script will automatically find ads that match your content of your enews. When someone click on the Google Ad while reading your enews you are rewarded. On average it doesn’t pay as well as Affiliate programs but you can easily make $10 or more on Adsense.

Step C – Work out a calendar to keep your marketing consistent and regular. Don’t send them too often or people will get annoyed, but don’t leave it too long either.

If you’d like to see how easy it really is to turn a few hours a week into an income, contact Devision and we will be happy to teach you the secrets to e-marketing success!

Article by Chris Bourke of Devision Design
Devision are the Sunshine Coast’s leading graphic design and e-marketing specialists.

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Twitter – Spreading the Tweet!

Monday, May 11th, 2009

By Chris Bourke of Devision Design Australia

So you’ve set up your Twitter account and followed my notes from ‘Making an Income from Twitter‘ and you are now hopefully building a continuously growing base of followers to your Twitter account.

But how do you catch up to the Twitterers that have thousands, even tens of thousands of followers quickly?

Well, I would like to share a few of my favourite Twitter Tools and online Twitter directories that you can add your Twitter account to, attracting many new followers faster than you can say Tweet!

My first and favourite Twitter directory is Twellow. Twellow is a Twitter Directory which is free to join and grabs your details from your existing TWitter accounts, so getting started on it is easy and set up in a couple of minutes. Twellow is basically a Yellow Pages of TWitter, allowing you to search for users with similar interests or similar products, or may be located around you. Twellow is the perfect companion if you use Twitter for online marketing.

Just Tweet It is another great easy to use Twitter directory service which helps you find other users just like you. This directory is great for business as it has a huge selection of pre-categorized sections to add your business, or to search from.

Another very popular Twitter directory on the rise is We Follow. We follow breaks the categories up into the most popular Tags (eg, Celebrities, TV, SocialMedia, News, Music), and then sub-categorizes into the most popular of each section. Once you add yourself to We Follow you will quickly see arise in followers, plus it is easy to search for other people you would also like to follow. You will have thousands of followers in no time!

GeoFollow is a Twitter directory with a difference. Geofollow is a location-based Twitter directory, allowing you to search by City and State, as well as the usual Tags, Username and Keyword. Another very easy to join and use directory service, and quickly gathering momentum as one of the most popular Twitter Directories

Remember, you don’t have to understand the Twitter phenomenon, but you have to be part of it! Adding your Twitter account to these directories is a great start to really benefit from Twitter.

Next week I will be chatting about Mashable Tweets.
It might sound tasty, but it’s not..but it is very interesting!

Author: Chris Bourke from Devision.
Chris is a graphic design/ web developer specializing in search engine optimization & online affiliate marketing. Chris is also co-mananager of Devision Design based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia

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