This month I’m going to spend some time explore Backend marketing strategies and how they can impact your business as well as the content you share with your audience and community.  This is the first in a series of posts I’m going to share this month and if you’d like to explore the idea a bit more you can down load my free report which you can download in the top right hand corner of the site.

Backend Marketing is critical to the success of your business. Why? Because without them a sale is just a sale. Possibly a one-time only sale. But apply backend marketing strategies, and now you have a customer who is invested. Now you have a customer who has not one, but two experiences buying from you. And that customer (if you approached the backend sale correctly) now feels appreciated, catered to and well-served.

Have you ever heard of the 80-20 rule? In marketing, 80-20 refers to this simple theory: 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers. In other words, make your customers happy above all else because they are the ones who hold the power. And the good news is, you know that you already have their attention.

Why waste your time targeting unknowns when you have an ingratiated audience at your fingertips? Now, of course there is a place – a very important and prominent place – for new customers. The ultimate goal is to continually grow your business and you can only do that by gaining new customers. However, you cannot and must not neglect your existing customer base.

They are the ones who feed you. They are the ones who have already invested in your business. Serve them well and you will be well served in return. Not only will they continue to make purchases from you, but they are likely to recommend you to others should you show them what true customer service and quality product delivery really are.

So remember, take care of your customers. Because if you follow up on the backend, your business will flourish.

I just spent about 15 minutes of my day using a service called UnTweet, what does this service do?  It allows you to review your twitter account and filter out users that haven’t posted a tweet in a certian number of days.  You can choose the amount of days, I choose 90 and discovered a total of 269 different users that have posted anything to their twitter account.

So this got me to to thinking…

When is social marketing too much?

The Scream by Edward Munch

We live in a time where information is thrown at us in so many ways and at a speed that you need to be super human to keep up, so how do you manage all of the this information?  How do you take everything that is presented to you in a day and process what is important and what isn’t.

Truth?  You can’t.

There is now way one person can manage all of the information, reports, blog posts, youtube videos, free-teleseminar recordings, facebook comments, twitter micro-blogs, emails and now google buzz.

Okay fine, so what can I do about it?

You have a few options, you can choose to disconnect completely, you can choose to automate (not a good option), you can choose to delegate (works for somethings, but not everything), or your can choose to get selective.

My Choice?

I choose to get selective.

So how do I do this?  I pick where I want to spend my time on social media and try my darndest to do that well, versus spreading myself out too thinly and do nothing very well.  Social media like any other marketing requires focus, determination, consistency and a plan.  Yes, diving in and learning social media is a good thing, but then once you’ve spent some time checking out everything to do with social media take a breather.  Sit back for a few days, turn off all of your social media access.  Yes!  That means no twitter, no facebook, no linkedin, no YouTube nothing.  Take sometime to get clear on how the idea of social marketing can impact you and your business.

Some things to consider:

• Social media like any other marketing adventure requires a plan, with goals and outcomes.  If you work with a virtual assistant brainstorm with them on how social marketing can impact your business and what is the best approach.  If you are part of a mastermind group, ask to make social media the focus of one of your calls, brainstorm with the members on how each of you can make an impact using social media.
• Be consistent. Just like any traditional marketing program or anything you choose to try out  you need to make a commitment to it and be consistent.  Don’t think that you’re going to see immediate results. Layout a plan that help you build up your presence and commit to doing it for 60, 90, 120 days or longer.  Then each month review the results and see if you are getting the results you seek.  You can expect to have turn around in just days, things simply don’t work that way.
• Be choosy. I’m a firm believer that you are better off doing a few things really well, than to try and spread yourself out over all of the various social media areas and expect amazing results.  In my opinion for someone new to the whole concept of social media marketing, initially stick with some of the big guns – build a blog, create a fan page on Facebook, and  professionally connect on Linkedin.  Yes, I left twitter of my newbie recommendation.  It all comes down to the sense of overwhelm and if you take on too much at once you’re not going to want to manage any of it.

No matter what kind of marketing plan you wish to implement, some early planning can help you keep you on track and focused towards your ultimate goal.  If you are looking for help in building a social media plan, add a comment or leave me a question and I’d love to offer some insight.

This past weekend I had the great opportunity to attend a friend of mine’s workshop called eBook Jumpstart, it’s facilitated by Peggy Richardson of Wizard of eBooks and well worth your time to attend if you are thinking of getting your own eBooks and info products out on the web.

Attending this event I quickly learned was how many people weren’t yet aware of a powerful Google Tool called Alerts.  So this got me to thinking that though it’s something I access and use everyday, maybe some of my readers as well as my clients we’re yet aware of this great tool.

It’s a pretty simple concept in it’s idea, but extremely powerful and limitless in it’s use. The basic concept is this, you tell Google Alerts what you’d like it to search the web for (a great one to start with is your name), be sure to put quotations around your topic so that Google Alerts only search for that combination, see the example below

I have quotations around my name so that only instances of Renee Shupe will appear in the email that I receive.  The Type, How Often, Email Length and Deliver To are all customizable options.

Using Google Alerts automatically updates you on any terms you choose and you can have an infinite amount of alerts set up.  The value in this gives you the opportunity to not only see what is being said about you, your business but others in your industry and niche, fantastic for competitive intelligence!

Don’t be limited to names and companies, think of niche terms, industry jargon, products, others in your industry that you’d like to know what’s going on with them.  It ‘s really whatever your imagination chooses, but ultimately it’s a vital application to have in your toolbox for your business.

You can find Peggy on Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn as well at her website www.WizardofEbooks.com

So I had a wonderful opportunity to take sometime out of my busy schedule to connect with a great group of women at the Nanaimo Women Business Network. I was their guest speaker this past week, and it was great to connect with such a cool bunch of women. It’s interesting how events or imposed deadlines such as this event motivate you into action and that’s exactly what this event did for me.

If gave me the opportunity to finish a white paper I had wanted to write for quite awhile and now it’s available and I’d love for you to take some time to read it. It’s all about how our success is directly tied to how we choose to delegate and leverage our time. No matter what for anyone who is a solo professional or micro business owner, you need to build connections to help in your success.

This paper walks you through the reasons why you might not be delegating and what you can do change that…

So if you’d like to learn more, click here or on the graphic and you can sign up to receive your free report right away!

If you’ve spent any time on Facebook and statistics show that the average user spends at least 55 minutes a day on Facebook, you may have come across some pages that look different from everyone else’s. As many of you know you can create your own Fan Page as way to help promote your business, product or service, but like much of Facebook it has a standard look. Every so often though you come across some Fan Pages, like Best Buy and Victoria Secret that give it a custom look.

While you don’t necessiarily need to go to that extent you can take some steps to customize page to help your interaction with your fans and potential clients. Here is my list of some customizations you can do and if you’re looking for helping in taking care of your facebook customization then give me a shout!

Add the Static FBML App

This App allows you to create a customize tab at the top. All tabs are apps which can be customized and changed as you see fit. The Static FBML app allows you to have a static page, using the same idea as Best Buy or Victoria Secret.

You can grab the app here (if you’re logged in to Facebook you can add it to your page)

You can add whatever you want here, including standard HTML

You can learn even more by reading this great article on Open Forum by Matt Silverman of Mashable

Great summary of some of the key books about social media…

Thanks to Mashable and Steve Cunningham

In general the answer to this question is always but the answer is much more involved. Sure Internet marketing is worthwhile but as with any type of marketing it is only worthwhile if it is done well. For example you can spend thousands of dollars on a television marketing campaign but if no one sees your commercials or your commercials do not reach your target audience and generate sales, the advertising was not worthwhile. So perhaps a more appropriate answer to this question would be that Internet marketing is worthwhile when it works. This is a rather vague statement but this article will investigate the issue further and explain how you can make Internet marketing work for your business.

One of the most basic principles of marketing is to make sure you reach your target audience. This is so important because your target audience is the people who are most likely going to be interested in purchasing your products or services. It is much easier to sell your products or services to those who already have an interest in the products and services you have to offer than it is to convince those who are not interested in your products or services at all. As an example consider a business who sells fishing rods. You will want to market your products to those who enjoy fishing either competitively or as a leisure activity because among this audience you are likely to find people who may be interested in purchasing a new fishing rod. It would make sense to place an advertisement for your business on a website selling bait and tackle or a website which organizes fishing trips in exotic locations. Conversely it would not make sense to place your advertisement on a website selling telescopes because you are not likely to reach a large target audience here. There may be some stargazers with an interest in fishing but your advertising dollars and efforts would be better spent placing advertisements with websites more closely related to your business.

Another factor to consider when purchasing advertising space on another Internet website is traffic the amount of traffic the other website receives. This is significant because you want to place your advertisement on a website which is closely related to your own and likely to attract a similar audience but you also want your advertisement to receive a large amount of attention. For this reason it is important for your advertisement to appear on a website which receives a great amount of traffic each month. This will help to ensure your business is getting a great deal of exposure through this advertising.

When it comes to Internet advertising, there is a fine line between great advertising and spam. Some business owners get carried away trying to get as much exposure as possible and can sometimes go overboard and wind up being considered spam. Internet users who see your advertisement in a couple of key locations will likely notice the advertisement and may be compelled to visit your website immediately or may keep your website in mind for future use. However, Internet users who see your advertisement everywhere they look are likely to view your advertisement as spam. This can be harmful because they are not likely to visit your website because they expect it to not be worthwhile.

In any Internet marketing campaign it is important to carefully monitor the results of your marketing efforts and make changes to your campaign as necessary. This is important because you want to make sure your marketing efforts are paying off and the best way to do this is to evaluate the results of your advertising carefully. One way to do this is to place specially coding in each one of your advertisements so you will know which advertisements are generating business for you and which ones are not. You can use this information to decide whether you should modify the ineffective website or stop running these advertisements. If you decide to modify them you will want to continue to monitor the results to determine whether or not the changes made the advertisements more effective.