Business Alone

Does the headline of your sales ad or marketing piece really deserve 80% of the time you spend on writing the ad copy?

That's the suggestion of author Ted Nicholas, one of the all time greats in direct marketing.

He figures that between 50 and 80% of the sales generated in direct advertising are attributable to the ad's headline.

That's a pretty amazing statistic, but maybe not totally surprising given the way readers skim copy and jump from heading to heading.

Let's face it, many folks that start their own solo business are first time entrepreneurs. They have no history, background, or training in small business development or operation.

That presents a great challenge - one that can certainly be overcome - but one that must be recognized and met head-on.

You see, operating a business is like most other professions. You don't just declare that you want to be in business for yourself and all of a sudden possess all the skills and knowledge that you need to be successful.

In a lot of online business situations, email is the lifeline between you and your customers and suppliers.

You don't have face-to-face contact and you may never converse over the phone.

Since your emails are so important, so critical to your communication with both customers and vendors in the business world, it is very smart to pay particular attention to both the substance and presentation of your emails.

All of us get in the habit of becoming lax in the business "chores" that are commonplace and routine. Email is no different.

Late in 2005 (December), several PR experts gave presentations at the Utah Information Technology Association's (UITA) gathering that was labeled: "PR Tips from the Trenches."

I was quite interested in the event because of my belief that public relations strategies are:

(1) often ignored by small solo businesses,

(2) assumed to be too expensive or too complicated and out of reach of the "little guy,"

(3) seen by small businesses as exclusively the tools or resources of the large and well-connected companies,

The ways an auto responder can be employed to automate your business tasks are many. Here are just a few of the typical business uses of an auto responder:

- if an email address is no longer valid, a message can be sent from the mail server that the email is now "undeliverable,"

- if the business changes its email address or URL, a new forwarding address can be sent to those that send mail to the old address,

- if you go on vacation or are otherwise unavailable for a time, your auto responder can alert customers to your absence and when you'll return,

Today's solo business owners have an amazing array of tools at their disposal to share their story and their wares with customers compared to days bygone.

Now I'm not an expert in the use of this strategy by any means, but I'd like to mention to you one tool that is easy to put your hands on, and learn how to use, that will open the door to greater customer loyalty and put your web business in front of a growing audience.

I've always believed that business owners should stay on the leading edge of technology available to businesses in order to profit from new advances and efficiencies.

Often, new business owners figure the only way to increase sales is to put your product or service in front of more people.

Such a strategy usually means that you spend increasing amounts of money on advertising so you can extend your reach in to more and more markets.

Increasing sales by ramping up advertising is one way to pump up the bottom line. But there may be other more effective uses of your business operating budget.

Over the short history of the Internet, there have been many creative and unusual strategies attempted by entrepreneurs to generate income, both as a means to make a living and also to simply add additional streams of income to the owner's business.

The popularity of the blogging craze has given some blog authors an additional stage or venue for their money-making tactics. It was only a matter of time before smart folks realized that anywhere there's traffic on the Internet, there's the opportunity for monetization of those visits.

If you own and operate a blog, you have a number of avenues open to you to pull some income from your effort. As is usually the case, the greater your exposure and traffic, the larger the opportunity will be to make substantial money from the blog.

The premier search engine Google has come up with several programs that may be of interest to the solo small business owner. But there seems to be some matter of conflicting opinion about whether a web site owner should do anything to send his traffic away to someone else.

Here's the deal: Google allows web site owners to advertise products and services on their web site in exchange for a small referral fee each time a viewer clicks on one of the Google ads.

This is not an affiliate program since Google pays for each click rather than for a product that is actually purchased. In a sense, the web site owner is sharing in a PPC (pay per click) program. Google serves the ads and keeps track of the clicks. The web site owner puts Google's html code on his pages and provides relevant content for Google to match to its advertisers.

Most profitable Internet business owners will tell you that a consistent, fresh, value-packed email newsletter is one of their key ingredients to success.

But you would be surprised at the number of businesses that don't have one.

Popular excuses for the lack of a newsletter include lack of time to write and mail one, the owner has nothing to say, customers won't read it, the business doesn't want to be confused with a spammer, and the cost of writing and mailing it.

Of course you will never know if a newsletter will be of value to your specific business until you try it, but for many it has proven to be the difference that has allowed the business to thrive.

Why?

Successful Internet business owners know that a consistent, fresh, value-packed email newsletter is one of the best marketing tools at their disposal in terms of both cost effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

Here are some tips that will help a solo business operator create and develop a valuable and profitable newsletter.

1) Before you begin publishing, answer these four questions:
- Who is my perfect customer? (My targeted prospect)
- What do I intend to accomplish? (My purpose)
- How can I be different and unique? (My specialty)
- What do I have to offer? (My personality, experience, skills, etc)

I'm no expert on the subject because I've only been blogging a short time now (since February 2006 on a blog different than Business Alone).

However, I have been a writer for quite some time and many of the same rules apply to blogging as well.

I have taken the time to do some research on the subject.

Specifically I have been reading about "How to Blog" and trying to follow the instructions of some who have been successful bloggers for quite some time now.

I've also spent a fair amount of time visiting popular blogs, watching what other authors are doing, and trying to follow their lead by seeing and incorporating their techniques into my own blog.

One of the great advantages of being a blog writer (author) and a blog reader (viewer) is the fact that there are few hard and fast rules about what a blog has to look like, say, deliver, and accomplish.

Every blog is a little bit different and unique.

Some actually go way out on a limb and try to be extremely different to the point of overstepping the boundaries of good writing.

Nonetheless, blogs are a form of digital expression and learning.

By their very nature they are personal, custom, and a reflection of the blogger's preferences and wishes.

We've been discussing how to write a blog. I've given six suggestions so far that will help you to be successful and attractive to the readers in your niche.

7. As much as possible, include a title that grabs your reader's attention and forces him to stop and read more.

Some have suggested that the title is 80% responsible for the post being read. Some just skim through titles and short blog excerpts to determine if they want to take the time to read the whole post.

If your title is weak or sounds boring, there is a very good chance the viewer will skip on by to something else. Try to fit key words from your niche into the title if you can.

I got this question for an inquiring young lady that had been following my posts at a previous blog site.

It was really kind of interesting because she didn't leave me a comment on the blog; but rather she sent me an email and asked about several of the style elements I'd incorporated.

She is starting her own blog and I suppose wanted my opinion and wondered what the rhyme and reason was behind my style choices were.

Here are my feelings about the quotation marks around a title of the blog post.

Title preference: quotation marks or not and why?

I have not tried this strategy but I read about it and I think it would work extremely well in a solo home business application.

It's relatively inexpensive and easy to do, yet it brands your business in ways that you determine and it will make your direct mail stand out from the crowd.

I read about a lady that uses an inexpensive digital camera to snap photos of everything from her own portrait, to images of her products, to places she likes to visit that relate to her business.

The idea is to get pictures she can use legally in her advertising that relate to her products.

If you have visited some of the large stock photo stores on the Internet, you know that buying the rights to just one small image for use in a mail campaign can cost up to several hundred dollars.

I've noticed over the years that I've been online (since the mid-90s) a change that's taking place in the way Internet users are visiting web sites.

In the very early days of the Internet, when it was a brand new and very exciting place to visit, most people that surfed liked to move about randomly and quite excessively.

It seems they wanted to go exploring to not only see what kinds of things were available online, but to survey niches and see all the players in them just in case they had a need to return sometime in the future.

It was kind of the same experience as you might have when exploring a new shopping mall or an amusement park for the first time.

You dash from store to store or ride to ride making sure you experience everything you can so you'll know what you like and what is not worth coming back to a second time.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I thought press releases were one of the most effective yet misunderstood tools the business owner had at his disposal to market his business and drive targeted traffic to his products.

No one ever taught us how to write a good press release!

The single most important rule to remember is to focus on the wants of the reader. Write what the viewer wants, what will make him happy, save him time, or solve a problem he has.

Forget what you (the business owner) want. It's not about you.

In addition, here are some simple suggestions to boost your copywriting effectiveness and increase your chances of having the release published:

Press releases are one of the most effective yet misunderstood tools the business owner has at his disposal to market his business and drive targeted traffic to his products.

Here are a few simple suggestions to boost your copywriting effectiveness and increase your chances of having the release published:

6. Leave 'em hanging. One technique that is effective in getting press release viewers to head to your web site is to offer part of a story or a list but tell the reader he can find the remainder at your web site, at such and such address.

You build some curiosity and maybe a little suspense in not giving all the good details right then and there.

I've often spoken and written of the accelerated pace of business on the Internet. Online, everything moves quickly and changes happen almost overnight.

It seems products, businesses and the strategies used to reach customers are here today and gone tomorrow.

Press releases and the way businesses keep in the public eye have also changed significantly with the speed and open access of the Internet.

Just a few years ago, press releases were confined to a very predictable format and were used to relay certain kinds of company highlights and events to the mass media.

Today, things have changed and press releases are nothing like they used to be. Here are some of the changes:

Did you know there are cheap places to display your small classified ads all over the Internet?

How successful you are will depend upon a number of factors, but doing your homework in advance will increase your chances greatly of having a profitable campaign.

There is a lot of psychology that goes into developing a winning classified ad - much more than can be discussed here. But you may want to try a few inexpensive ads while you're learning about the subject so that you understand the process of finding good sources and writing tantalizing copy.

If, indeed, the Internet is a great information highway with traffic, data, digital goods and services, and communications whizzing back and forth at the speed of light, it would be worth the effort for every business owner to create as many links to that highway as possible.

Think of these links as little roads that feed a tiny portion of this traffic back and forth between your small business and the super highway.

Every business connects itself (or should) to the highway traffic. Some do a great job of it and others don't. Each owner determines for his business, both the number roads leading in and out and the ease with which those roads are found by passers-by that have an interest in this side trip.

If you have a business based in the U.S. and you pride yourself on having the lowest prices in town (or in your industry), are you ready to be severely challenged?

One of the most evident changes that the U.S. economy has undergone in the past 15 years or so is the flight of industrial and manufacturing companies away from the U.S. Why?

Well there are a lot of reasons, but the basis of this exodus is the fact that labor in the U.S. is increasingly expensive and hard to find.

Of course the Internet small business has many formats to choose from when advertising its products and services.

I believe using a variety of methods is generally preferable to always relying upon one format. Your customers may tire from the same looking message received repeatedly.

One of the most effective selling formats is the personal letter from you (the small business owner) to the customer. It's a proven strategy that often works better than any other because it's:

(1) personal - most of us are much more likely to buy a product that is personally recommended than one we have no human tie to;

(2) intimate - we feel that a personal letter is not something that would be shared with lots of other people, hence we view it as tailored to our own needs or geared to our own circumstance (even though that may not be the case since the same "personal" letter might be sent to thousands of prospects);

We've all heard the "knock" about web surfers - they stay at a site long enough to quickly glance or skim the home page "above the fold" and they're gone in seconds.

Is it five seconds, seven seconds, twelve seconds? Who knows?

The point is, the web site owner is granted only so much of the surfer's time online and he'd better make a good impression during that time or the prospect will most likely never return.

Of course there are a lot of elements to making a good web site impression. I'm only going to talk about one small piece of that puzzle right now: page load time.

The web site owner is granted only so much of the surfer's time online and he'd better make a good impression during that short time or the prospect will most likely move on to the next site on his list never to return.

Of course there are a lot of elements to making a good web site impression. In this installment we're only talking about one small piece of that puzzle right now: page load time.

That's the length of time, usually measured in seconds, from the instant a viewer clicks on his mouse to head to a particular web site until the point at which that web page is fully loaded in the viewer's browser.

Nothing grabs a prospects attention like seeing his own name printed in a hand-written letter from a friend.

When a business customer feels like he is appreciated, singled out by the owner for some personal attention, and given the opportunity to join in the membership of a group of "insiders," he will likely commit to being personally involved in the niche with this business.

Personal involvement invites activity in forums, registration as a member of a community of serious like-minded folks (either free or paid), and status as a preferred customer (one most likely to buy products from the business.)

If you were to hear this complaint (which by the way, I hear very often) what would you guess the business owner was really saying?

Was he saying that he had a great product, but his targeted customers were just too dumb to recognize it and hence they weren't buying?

Or was he lamenting the fact that he was not selling to the right customer niche market?

Or maybe he was charging too much for his awesome product and nobody wanted to buy at that price?

Or could it be that no one was hearing his sales message and seeing his ads and therefore he was not making sales?

One-on-one advertising, that is direct response advertising, is designed to solicit some type of action from the viewer. It may also have the side benefits of building a companies brand or attaching credibility to a product, but the main desired outcome is still related to getting the customer to take action.

One step response selling is pretty simple: the prospect sees the ad, reads the copy, is prompted to click on the "Buy Now" button, and leaves with a digital file of some type that will help him solve a problem or enjoy a passion.

In a two step direct response ad, the customer is prompted to take some action (not purchase initially) like register a name and address, download a free e-book, or watch a short video clip.

This first action is generally designed to provide some type of partial benefit to the prospect, or create a sense of urgency or scarcity, or build a swelling desire for the latest model, or to educate the buyer on the benefits of ordering the widget now because there are only 13 left!

The answer won't be a surprise to most; nevertheless, the concept or principle behind the answer needs frequent repeating until it's permanently embedded in the business operator's memory.

Suppose you're hungry and anxious to find something to eat. So you stroll down the block past all the shops peeking in display windows and looking for something to satisfy your appetite. You're particularly sensitive to the sights and smells of each open door as you pass by, but you're not willing to venture inside unless you're fairly satisfied that you'll stay and dine.

Are you likely to stop and sample food that appears to be many days old? You can see the mold and dust growing everywhere. Or would you be more apt to pass on that shop and find something that appeared fresh?

Are you going to stop at the store that displays its food in used, dirty, or leaking containers? Or will you search for items that are presented in an appealing and appetizing manner? Wouldn't you like to see some nice garnishments and maybe a succulent cherry on top?

No one knows the exact number, of course, but professional marketers generally agree that a strong and powerful headline accounts for 70-80% of the effectiveness of every advertisement.

That's a pretty remarkable statistic when you think about it. A few words at the top of the ad can either make or break the selling power of the entire remaining ad copy.

Why is that true? Well, if you consider that most readers sprint from one headline to the next when they "read" a newspaper you'll understand that the viewer is randomly (or maybe methodically) sorting each entry to find clues that tell him "this might be the type of content I want read more thoroughly."

Headlines are usually bold, easy to locate, and often they are summaries of the content of the ad or article. At a quick glance, it's pretty easy to decide if you want to stay and dig deeper or jump to the next headline.

I'm convinced that press releases are one of the most misunderstood tools a small business has available to tell its story and drive targeted traffic to its web site and products.

But industry surveys show that the vast majority of all press releases (some estimate the number to conservatively range between 90 and 98%) from small businesses never get past the desk of the editor. Why is that? Don't editors want good releases?

Of course they do. There are a variety of reasons why a release isn't accepted and subsequently published, but the main reason given most often by the editors questioned has to do with the copy that the author submits.

You see, authors write in an effort to put the best light or spin possible on their business or product. In other words, they write from the business point of view, usually with a marketing slant or focus.

I believe in small business! I believe in entrepreneurs!

I believe that anyone can create and operate their own successful small business if they will choose a viable niche and apply sound business strategies and principles (which you can learn here).

My favorite solo Internet business strategy suggests you create an information-based business around your education, training, interests, knowledge and passion.

So what is this "passion" I'm talking about? Does it mean you have to like the subject of your business?

Well, not exactly. You see, passion is much more comprehensive and deep than simply "liking" what you do.

I visited a web site last night related to Internet marketing that touted all the methods the large corporations were using to build trust in the company - thereby reducing the fears of customers with the end result of making them more apt to make an online purchase.

There were something like thirty methods of building trust listed, but I was very surprised to notice the lack of mention of using testimonials from satisfied buyers.

In my mind, there are few things you can do that are more important than using testimonials.

So why did this marketing "authority" leave this method out? Who knows? Maybe it was a large corporation "thing," an acknowledgement that the site was too important to place one person's comment in the showroom of this company.

Maybe I should have titled this "Tips from the underground" or "Marketing secrets that few businesses discover."

These are not the kinds of tips you find in textbooks or "how to market your business" courses or articles.

Yet, many of them are common sense based and really pretty logical in their thought and implementation.

So here you have some of the most simple, down-to-earth, practical yet seldom followed ideas that will boost your marketing traffic and success almost immediately.

Most marketing experts will tell you that they go to great lengths to try to draw the prospect into a sales pitch.

If he remains on the "outside," so to speak, he will not be affected by or overcome with the emotion, motivation and sense of urgency that marketers try to build into their sales presentation.

One of the many and best ways marketers draw prospects into the sales dialogue is to use the word "You" often in their content so the reader begins to feel like the message is directed right squarely at him. The dialogue is personal and engaging.

"You will receive these benefits when you buy the product..."

Blogs, like most every other type of Internet web site, gain value, grow, and even thrive when they are heavily viewed.

The more traffic a blog receives, the greater the chances for continued relevance and possible revenue generation.

Of course, money and income don't drive most blogs.

Typically bloggers are content with having their own soapbox to publish their opinions and feelings to the world (or at least those who care to visit.)

Bloggers are also finding that most search engines seem to like blogs. Why?

The owner of a solo digital information business is the perfect candidate for a targeted niche blog authored by the business owner and directed to support and advertise the business and the product.

Remember that the solo business owner is generally an independent, a free spirited thinker, one who prefers to do business alone without the constraints of employees, physical overhead, or management induced policies and rules.

This is exactly the profile of a successful blogger: one that is not shy about forming his own biases and opinions based on his life