How’s it going? It’s been a minute since I’ve blogged. I moved from South America back to the U.S. and I’m now living in the San Bernardino Mountains.
I’ve dropped a lot of my services that I was providing, except for my Business Consulting. That’s still going strong.
I’m basically building small websites that are SEO’d and designed for the specific purpose of having someone contact the site owner or do a specific action.
I’ve also just got involved with Pay-Per-Call advertising which has led me to get involved with doing an Internet Radio Commercial. It’s for confidential STD testing. This is where I get paid for every person who calls into my affiliate 800 number regardless if they buy or not.
I’ll keep you posted on that, but let’s get to what I want to talk about.
Taking Your Business to the Next Level
I deal with a lot of guys who are just starting out with their business… or they’ve been struggling along for the past couple of years and they’re at a point where they’re ready to take their business to the next level. I give them specific and exact advise and structure to follow and I tell them what to do.
There are 6 things you can do to help that you’re getting off on the right track.
- Know your target market
- The more details you know about your target market, the better you’ll be able to market to your ideal clients.
- Have specific short term sales goals
- How many clients/ calls/ emails/ sales/ whatever do you need over X period of time?
- What specific hours/ time of the day will you want your campaign to run?
- How many people do you need dedicated to handling call volume?
- Have a marketing plan & budget
- Come up with a plan on how you are going to market and how much it’s going to cost; then set aside enough money for a minimum of 3 months specifically for the purpose of spending it on said marketing.
- A good traffic driving website
- A lot of people I speak to want either really want pretty websites with flash pictures and tons of rotating images or they want to put every piece of information they know about their subject on their website. The purpose of your website should be to get leads. Either by making them call, email or do an action. Simple is the best way to go with a website if you want the visitor to turn into a lead. 3-5 pages tops (unless you have a portfolio of pictures or videos).
- Before you build your site or go to have it built, be sure to type out all of the information you want on the site. Then don’t take it personally when the person who is building your site rewrites everything and makes it 10 times shorter… It’s just for SEO purposes and to help drive leads to your business, it’s not a personal attack on you or your business.
- Social Network integration
- Facebook and Twitter are the two most important sites you can get on and tie back to your website (if your target market is a younger generation MySpace is a must too). As much as a lot of people I speak with say they “hate” going on those types of sites… if used correctly they are awesome at driving traffic/ customers to your website. The secret is, getting on and interacting with your followers and the people you’re following.
- A solid pay per click/ pay per impression campaign
- Search engines are where the traffic is. If you pay to be on top for your search terms, people will click on your link. Facebook and other social networks are totally rad to market on, not only because of the ability they give you to target market. A solid campaign that utilizes a little in each is the best way to start out. Once you see where you’re getting results from, then it’ll be time to hone your marketing… Just remember, a test should NEVER be shorter than 3 months.
There’s a lot that goes into each step… But everyone I know who has followed these steps has had success.
