The Twitter Hashtag Game

Posted on January 27, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

This post is part of the “Marketing That Works” Ideas Contest, showcasing 20 of the most innovative marketing ideas from the blogosphere’s up and coming marketers. If you like the post, please show your support for the contestant by tweeting, liking, sharing, and commenting below!

For my marketing idea, I created something called the “Hashtag Game.”

Like Naomi Dunford said: “It’s the shit that we do to get people to buy our shit.” There are many things we can do to attract potential readers and customers such as: producing powerful content; word of mouth; Facebook marketing; free eBooks to lure people in; and guest posting.

There are also the little, effortless things that we forget to do that can add up overtime: adding hashtags at the end of our tweets.

For example: If I were tweeting “Engagement From Scratch” . . . and let’s just say I don’t have 50,000 followers but I want to spread the word about it. By adding hashtags that are relevant to the subject of the book or who the book is targeted to, it can:

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How to Set Up Retargeting in Google AdWords

Posted on January 26, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

This post is part of the “Marketing That Works” Ideas Contest, showcasing 20 of the most innovative marketing ideas from the blogosphere’s up and coming marketers. If you like the post, please show your support for the contestant by tweeting, liking, sharing, and commenting below!

Seventy percent of online shoppers abandon their shopping cart without completing a purchase.

For a small business owner, this can mean losing a lot of potential revenue. One of the most powerful ways to get website visitors that didn’t buy back to your site to increase the chances of gaining that lost revenue is through a strategy called “retargeting.”

For business owners that aren’t familiar with the term, retargeting means targeting online ads directly to people that have been to your website in the past. Retargeting is done through building a targeted list of visitors and displaying your ads to those specific users on different sites across the web. Google AdWords Remarketing is a great way to set up retargeting and increase the overall ROI of your organic and paid search strategy across the Google Display Network.

Retargeting strategies can become very complex. You can set up campaigns and ad groups that target just about any landing page you choose with appropriate messaging to get the results you want. Here’s just a few examples of ways retargeting can help:

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Pulp-Fiction Style Get Found Online Adrenaline-Shot to the Heart of your Small Business

Posted on January 25, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

This post is part of the “Marketing That Works” Ideas Contest, showcasing 20 of the most innovative marketing ideas from the blogosphere’s up and coming marketers. If you like the post, please show your support for the contestant by tweeting, liking, sharing, and commenting below!

When Danny Iny asked me if I’d be interested in participating in this contest I was both nervous and excited because in full disclosure I’ve never entered a contest of this nature before.  Not being known as a person with much in the way of patience I immediately accepted the challenge and turned my marketing brain on.

I printed out the flyer Danny sent me outlining what the contest entailed, shut the door to my office and got to thinkin’… If I worked for a small business, what could I do that would be quick and easy to implement (small business types don’t have much time to budget for marketing) and wouldn’t require me to be a marketing-guru-ninja-rockstar but could completely change the game for my small business?

Then it hit me… I’ll write about the importance of a quality ad in the Yellow-Pages…

Psyche!

Look, I try to be funny and break the ice, but the deal is simple, I work for a small business, an independent family-owned insurance agency in Upstate NY.  All my clients are small businesses, so this is actually a very important exercise because small business is struggling right now and contests like these help drive innovative thought creation that could potentially help small business get back on their feet…

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Content Marketing for the Biz Blogging Telesummit

Posted on January 24, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

This post is part of the “Marketing That Works” Ideas Contest, showcasing 20 of the most innovative marketing ideas from the blogosphere’s up and coming marketers. If you like the post, please show your support for the contestant by tweeting, liking, sharing, and commenting below!

I had a crazy idea over the summer.

Why not run a telesummit featuring experts in blogging, social media and SEO providing information designed specifically to help small businesses market online? Oh, and why not add in actual small business case studies as well?

Great idea, right?!

Well, I pulled together the pitch, signed up some amazing interview subjects including Marcus Sheridan, Pamela Slim, Denise Wakeman, Jack Humphrey and Danny Iny (of Firepole Marketing) and started conducting the interviews.

This may sound easy, but how I did this is another story! Anyway… halfway through the 18 interviews I started to realize the enormity of the task required to not only pull this off, but to get people to attend!!

So I quickly pulled together my marketing plan consisting of…

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Why Should Any Marketer Write A Book?

Posted on January 23, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

Having a book on your topic of expertise, with you as the author, is a solid gold credential.

Even before anyone reads the book, they know that you are a leader in your field. Even if all they see is a picture of it on your website, you already have distinction, by virtue of being an author. Wouldn’t you prefer to buy products or services from the person who wrote the book on your topic? So would your prospects.

So why haven’t you written one?

Well, you may have heard that it’s hard. Or expensive. Or both.

But actually…

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The Pivotal Role of Social Context in Your 2012 Marketing

Posted on January 21, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

First, there was inbound marketing.

Then came social proof.

This year, the focus will be on social context.

Online, social context is the “push” behind the goal to get you to take action.  It’s a combination of social proof (such as “14,380 people like Zangy Spaghetti Sauce”) and people within your social sphere that could influence your decision (such as “Joe Bloggs and Suzie Homemaker like Zangy Spaghetti Sauce”).

As both sociable and influenceable creatures, we recognize the pull that numbers can have – but what really seems to spur action is the fact that our friends approve of it and can even motivate us to try it – even something as insignificant as the brand of spaghetti sauce we use…

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What Phase of Marketing Are You In?

Posted on January 20, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

I hate to be the one to break it to you but you’re probably clueless about where you’re at – marketing wise. (Who am I kidding, I love it :D ).

Oh I know, you’ve studied it, you’ve made progress, you ‘get’ marketing, but I’m talking about something deeper. I’m talking about the 3 phases of marketing + creation.

The amount of people in the world who are clueless about the phases of marketing + creation is gigantic. The 1% get it, the 99% don’t.

There are phases of creativity and marketing that everyone is moving through, and most people have no idea where they’re at, or where they’d prefer to be.

I want you to be one of the one’s who ‘get it’.

I’m gonna give you a taste of the good stuff right away, but only to whet your appetite, because it’s the in-depth explanations that really blow the doors open on your potential, and we’ll address those later in the article.

So here they are, the 3 phases of marketing:

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What Ants Can Teach Us About Sales Pages

Posted on January 19, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

What do you do when you have a very large area to search, and limited time?

When the area is far larger than can be systematically covered using available resources?

You wander around randomly.

Not because you’re lost, but because in this situation wandering around at random is about as efficient as any other method of search.

You wander around like ants at a picnic.

Ants essentially wander about at random in search of food. When they find it, they leave a trail of pheromones on their way back to the nest. Other ants can follow the trail back to the food. Each ant adds more pheromones to the trail. As a result of this collective, cooperative behavior, the most efficient path to the largest food source emerges over time.

Good for the ants. So what does this have to do with sales pages?

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Marketing with Chocolates and Birthday Cards

Posted on January 17, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

Hey, I’m Lain Ehmann, and I’m here to help you bewitch your market and enchant your audience!

Want to know how I used birthday cards and chocolate to build a six-figure business in just a little over a year?

Watch this video and I’ll share:

-Why internet marketers need to think “high touch”

-How the Pony Express can be your best friend

-Four things to keep in mind when wooing your customers with offline marketing techniques

…all in only six minutes!

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Are Your Calls To Action “Ransom Note Worthy?”

Posted on January 16, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

If you’ve been blogging for long, you know that there are good days and better days. Sometimes great ideas are harder to come by, but sometimes with every stroke of the keyboard you spin gold.

Hidden within your website is this golden “best of the best” content. Why make your readers search for it?

Sometimes this can look a bit too much like searching for a lost kitten. Your readers have a problem you might be able to help them fix (their kitty “Mr. Poops” has been gone for 3 days and you have written the perfect post on how to find a lost cat), they might do some “searching” on their own around the house, look under the couch, ask friends what they would do, or eventually go to animal control since they are the authority on lost cats, after all.

It’s time consuming, labor intensive and often it’s so frustrating you just want to give up.

But what if there was a scrap of paper slipped under the door, a ransom note giving strict direction, a command, on what you must do to solve your problem? Suddenly all the advice, and searching that has been done thus far has very little to do with what comes next. The words on that note have your full and undivided attention and give you clear direction on what to do next.

“Download my e-book or the kitty gets it.”

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5 Reasons Why You Should Give Referrals: How it Creates the Best Leads You’ve Ever Had

Posted on January 13, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

Imagine you’re looking for a house.

You contact a real estate agent and she shows you a few houses. One of them is perfect but it needs renovating. You decide to buy it anyway.

Then the agent gives you a business card of a contractor she trusts with renovations.

How likely are you to use that company? Unless you have serious trust issues, you’re likely to buy their services.

What’s in it for the agent?

She doesn’t get a commission, so nothing, right? Actually giving the referral has great marketing value to her.

In fact there are 5 reasons why you too should give as many referrals as possible…

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Guarantee That Your Next Post Will Lead to New Clients

Posted on January 12, 2012 | In Guest Appearances

Guest blogging is undoubtedly one of the most talked about content marketing tactics around – the reason is that it is such an effective method for building brand awareness, driving traffic and increasing search engine visibility.

I found also (much to some people’s surprise) that it is a really effective way to attract paying clients.

You just need to go about it the right way.

Most approach guest blogging as follows; You run an SEO consulting firm – you want to get into guest blogging… where do you start? SEOmoz, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land will probably feature in your response. Sure, it makes sense, you’re an SEO business, these are SEO blogs.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with aiming to guest blog on these types of sites – you’ll gain industry credibility, build awareness, generate peer recognition, a relevant link and I must say the odd client or two.

However, what if your primary guest blogging goal was getting new paying clients through your door – well, this requires a slightly different approach…

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