WHat about your Brand?

A Manta tip:

Here are 5 branding tips to keep in mind when designing a bold promise to your potential clients and customers:
1.    Bold brand promises are unique.
Your brand promise can NOT be something that your customers automatically expect, like “great service” or “quick delivery.” You need to think outside of the box and make a promise that your prospects are not expecting.
2.    Strong brand promises capture the core benefit you provide the consumer.
It’s essential that you identity the main benefit your customers receives when they do business with you. Once you’ve figured that out, you need to wrap your promise around that essential benefit.
3.    Bold brand promises are simple.
You only have three seconds to convey your brand promise to your prospects, so it’s better to be clear than clever. A confused prospect will never make a purchase.
4.    Bold brand promises are consistent.
You’ve got to be steady, reliable and unfailing when delivering your brand promise. If you’re brand is perky, happy and cheerful, then you’re not allowed to get crabby at your customers. Ever.
5.    Bold brand promises constantly reinforce their message.
Once your brand promise takes hold, you need to make sure that every single interaction that you have with your prospects and customers reinforces your brand promise.

Until next time

Joe Rossini

New info on Google

Google still needs text to understand your web pages, rich-media ads have higher click-through-rates, Google doesn't allow phone numbers in AdWords texts, and more.

A new study shows that Google's tolerance of spammy backlinks is decreasing:

"The Portent analysis found strong evidence that Google is steadily lowering the bar for what it considers spam link profiles. [...] We found that the majority of websites — 36 out of 50 — have “clean” profiles with less than 10 percent of their links coming from questionable sources. [...]

We discovered Google has been applying a stricter standard over time. In the initial Penguin update, the only sites we saw penalized had link profiles comprised of more than 80 percent manipulative links.

Within two months, Google lowered the bar to 65 percent. Then in October 2012, the net got much wider. Google began automatically and manually penalizing sites with 50 percent manipulative links."

Google has become much stricter when it comes to spammy backlinks. If you want to get high rankings on Google, you should make sure that your website doesn't contain spammy backlinks.

The following backlink types can be considered spam:

• Too many keyword-rich links in press releases: If the linked keyword doesn't make sense in the press release, it's better to avoid that link.
• Low quality article directories: Links from websites that contain thousands of low-quality articles about every possible subject provide no value.
• Low quality blogs: automatically created blogs with a lot of articles about a wide range of topics usually trigger Google's spam filters.
• Link lists with hundreds of unrelated pages: Link lists aren't bad as long as they are related to the topic of a website. If a link page lists to every Tom, Dick and Harry, you should stay away from that page.
• Random forum links: If you're not participating in an online discussion, you should not add your link to that forum. 

Shortcuts often lead to dead ends:

People who use these spamming tools often said things like "this tool got my website to number one within two weeks." Six months later the same person had to say "my website rankings plummeted." Shortcut SEO methods lead to short-lived results:

I really like this last one I can not tell yu how many people tell me I can go to this Indian company and they promise me number one rankings quick!  Now all they will get yur web site is black listed.  Go slow, use tested and old but good ways to get yu ranked.  Also remember that Google is not the only game in town!

The article was written byAxandra with my touches added of course.

Until next time

Joe R

Sales the good old fashion way..

OK as I await the big snow dump coming this Saturday I have been doing my normal Friday customer support stuff.  It seems to me that no matter what we do as a small business we are always looking for leads and sales.  How have we gone about this task over the years well let me bring back some oldies that some of you may remember:

• Use a pager to get important calls or at least announcements that yu have to call that pager company to get the info.  Yes I carried one of those things on my hip for man a day and it was like an anchor yu had to have it. I was checking it often and even in the day I would call them and ask them to wake me up early if I had an important plane flight to catch...It worked :)  Well yu dont see many of these any more but we did use them to respond to leads.
• Mailing out flyers about your business. Oh I would often sit at a coffee shop or a place where I could get lots of coffee and just address envelopes to send out my company flyers.  I would spend a lot of time at the post office and I had to buy those little bottles that had water in them so I didn't have to lick the darn stamps.  So how many of you remember the days before the nice stamps came out? I got several of those mailers back a waste of money but they did work sometimes:(
• Going to the library to use books, SIC books to look at areas and companies to mail to and call and yes I said books remember them??? Actually it was kinda of fun but those darn books were pretty big.  Now of course you sit at a computer terminal and it is much easier than the good old days of big heavy books.  Oh yea spent a lot of money copying the pages in the copy machine.  Funny I was at the library and did not see a copy machine hmmm  At least I didn't have to worry about having a lot of quarters with me:)
• I used and still use the old fashion one ringie dingie, two ringie dingie  telephone. yes some of the old rotary phones were still around but I rejoiced when we got touch tone phones yeaaaaaa! One thing though there was no such thing as a wireless phone back then so you had to have a long, long cord to get to the table:) The phone was a fast and economical way to reach your potential clients. So naturally i got good at using the phone and still can do a passable job today.  Today when I call someone they are surprised or just in shock that someone would actually call them! I usually get to the top person and that is where I always start!
• Cold calls yes I mean cold calls, the youngsters today do not even know what they are, they want leads on a silver platter. We use to pick an area in the city the whole group to help one of the gang and we would fan out and make calls in that area for our fellow salesperson. It was fun, it built team work and wow did I get use to having the door shut in my face :)  There is still some fun associated with cold calling, most people will see you and sometimes I do it just to keep sharp and do a change of pace.  You never forget the people that grab you by the shoulder and show you the door, I remember a lot of them but you also remember the nice ones that talked to you and bought or just treated you politely. I still keep in touch with one of my old sales buddies and if you ever need content writing, check with Tom Rambo of Rambo Writes.  Tom I am sure will get a chuckle out of this article.
• It is starting to fade away but I use to go rent a hotel room or conference room and set up my cash registers or computers or what ever I was peddling at the time and set appointments for the day to have people come in. I would have pastries and coffee in the morning, a small assortment of sandwiches in the afternoon and again more little trays of food to eat with Coke or Pepsi for later in the day. Yes it was sugared Coke or Pepsi the only non sugared or sugar free was called TAB and oh did it suck!  You want sugar free you ask, here is a nice glass of water with ice:)  The bottom line was a full day seeing maybe ten to twelve good suspects. It worked and probably would work today also.

All of these above were before the big use of the micro computer, cell phones, and such but seemed simpler to me back then, you got to see your clients often and your prospects face to face. It is harder for a person to say no to you if they are looking at you and know that your job could be supporting a family and by saying yes and if the product was good you would be helping yourself and that persons family perhaps.

Yes I do miss those days but the fundamentals of sales and sales calling are still there. The basics of making a sale is still the same. Know your product, your territory, and never give up,it is a hard life but a rewarding one.

More to come, hope you liked my little visit to the past.

Until next time

Joe Rossini Jr.

Social media, video, SEO, PR releases and more

 I use two blogs, Face Book business and personal pages, Google+ page, Twitter, LinkedIn, Adwords and more!  There is so much to do and so little time it seems to do it in. I know you think I am nuts but I really believe you need them all.  How about a newsletter to remind your customers what is going on in your company. Tuesday I filmed my first video. I will be posting it here shortly. I will be doing more of these to be informative, short topics that I will both write about and video. Video was a little scary, I prepared and prepared and even with that I needed six takes but in the end it turned out good.  A word to the wise, diet before yu take your video, I think I looked like the Pillsbury Doe boy on camera :):) oh wait I am the Doe Boy, OK it was not that bad.  I do recommend you try video it will help you in the search engines and it should help your business.

Blogging did I mention that up above, yes I did, it can be fun, I am adding guest bloggers and video and well I am trying to do more to make these things worth your time. Blogging can get the attention of potential customers and who knows maybe if you are really good you could make a living out of it.

I do not do enough of this but e-mail marketing could be a way to catch peoples eye. It is more difficult than it use to be in the old days, spam and virus filtering shouts you off to more than half of your audience but if you have a big audience well then again sales might come at any time from one e-mail. I often tell my customers, what if I made or you made just one sale from your e-mail? What if that e-mail was worth a million dollar sale, well I think it would be valued as a big plus.

I guess the whole idea behind this blog today is that there are so many ways to make money and make sales on the web so utilize if necessary a pro that can help you....I just so happen to know one:):):) MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe. Ok shameless pitch.

Until next time

Joe R

One of my inspirations....my Abby Cat!

A call to action on your web site

This is a good tip from Manta:

Limit Choices to Get Action

Providing too many "calls to action" on your website or emails can result in "action paralysis."  Remember:  less is more. Limit the number of choices or options you present so your customers are focused on the action you present to them.

I myself also believe that a not so cluttered web site with key information peppered through out is the best web site to have.  Remember to ask for an e mail to capture for some reason. Remember to have a Google map locator on the web site if you wish to have your location known.

In the end, nice basic colors, do not use Flash for your web site and use or have a web site you can change and keep the content fresh.


More to come

Joe R

Are we alone?

OK now I got ya thinking, you thought I was talking about Aliens didn't ya? I am really talking about who is watching us daily, hour by hour minute by minute.  When we go on line they, that big computer in the sky knows it. When we post on social media post , it knows it. It knows what we search for, where we live, what we like to watch on tv, what we buy in the grocery store and much more. It knows our health, our prescriptions, everything.  Most of us don't really care, we go about our life oblivious to this but it does matter to a point. be careful what yu say and post on line because, it never ever goes away it is stored somewhere by somebody.  So be careful, surf wisely and know that the big computer in the sky has drones.  OK maybe not yet.:)

Joe R

How far does Google go with your information?

Got this today from Kim Komando

QUESTION

Hi, Kim. I read your tip on managing Facebook search privacy, which was a great help. However, I'm a bit more worried about Google as I use that more often for searching. Does Google really keep a record of everything I search for? If so, how can I find out what is in there and get rid of it? Thanks!
-Jeannie from San Antonio, TX, listens to my national radio show on WOAI 1200 AM.

ANSWER

Excellent question, Jeannie. Aside from Facebook, Google probably knows more about you than any other online company.

Every search you've ever performed is stored on its servers, and that information is cross linked to search data from YouTube, Google Maps and any other Google services you use. With all that information, Google can tell a lot about you: your location, hobbies, age, health problems, religion and more.

More importantly, it uses that information to target you with its advertising network. Don't forget that Google regularly gives out user information to the government

This is true, you have to be careful when you use most search engines, a lot of eyes are looking!!!

Until next time

Joe Rossini