Why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best option for most Small Businesses

What do you value most?

If you are a small business owner and you read beyond this paragraph, I’m going to share my inexorable logic why outsourcing inbound marketing is the best of all possible options to find new customers for your small business.

If you are a small business owner, what are the two things that you value most?

After speaking and working with many small business owners, and being a small business owner myself, I can tell you without a doubt, the two most valuable things you possess as a small business owner are (1) time and (2) money:

1. Time. There’s just not enough of it. It’s your most valuable resource. With it you create the 2nd most valuable thing which is:
2. Money. It’s scarce. If you invest it, there’s got to be a return on investment, period. The higher the better, so if you can measure it, and improve it, so much the better.

Time and money are your most valuable resources. And everybody wants what you’ve got. That is precisely why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best of possible options for you.

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Are you confused by all the Local Internet Marketing options? You are not alone…

Who's the trusted advisor?

The typical small business owner does not have the time or expertise to effectively manage all the Local Internet Marketing investment options.  

Not only are there more numerous–more complex directory relationships, but pace of the fragmentation in the marketplace is outpacing everyone’s attention span.        

How is a small business owner supposed to keep track of all the different ways to promote their business? Directories, Internet Yellow Pages, Search Engine Optimization, Pay per click Marketing, Blogging, Social Networking, Mobile Advertising, Hyperlocal Advertising Sites–as well as Web Design Issues, Marketing Experiments, ROI Analytics, and all the other time-consuming issues of running a Local Internet Marketing program.           

This is the primary reason so many 3rd-party providers have jumped into the Local Internet Marketing game over the past few years. There is a void to fill. And there’s a desire on the part of small business owners to hand off this business of Local Internet Marketing to a trusted advisor.          

Who ‘s the Local Internet Marketing Expert?

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If you want to build a great website, how do you do it?

A horse designed by a committee is a camel

If you want to build a great website, the number one mistake most people make is not that they’re not thinking “big enough“.    

On the contrary, most mistakes occur because they’re not thinking “small enough“.    

To build a great website, it doesn’t take rocket science. But too often a great idea gets bogged down in committee, or shot down by an influential person with a different agenda–and it’s too bad because everyone suffers.    

The number one failure of most websites when you want to build a great website is a two-pronged failure: (1) failure to articulate the vision, and (2) failure to execute. That’s why I am a big advocate of web projects that are small and easy.    

To Build a Great Website, think Small and Easy

Small is understandable. Easy is doable. After you’ve had a success or two, then you build from there. First you build a great website - then you promote it (using SEO, PPC, Blogging, Social Media, PR) – and then you enjoy the results (and you keep working on improving).    

In the small and easy spirit of projects that are both understandable and doable. here are seven ideas that will help you build a great website that will yield many positive returns for your business or community.    

Seven Small and Easy Steps to Build a Great Website:

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Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins for Direct Marketing 2.0

It's a work in process

 The greatest thing about WordPress is that it’s open source, and there’s a huge community built around designing and developing WordPress Websites.       

Used by over 300 of the 10,000 biggest websites on the Internet, WordPress is the most popular blog software in use today.  It has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install–at last count there are 10,872 different plugins!      

In fact, there’s a plugin for almost every kind of functionality I’ve ever wanted or imagined to add to any of my blogs.  Undoubtedly you have seen blog posts claiming to be the Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins, but here is my very own Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins that I have used or tested, and use regularly in many of my websites.    

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Why is Lead Generation and Nurturing so Important?

Focus on Your Sales Funnel

One of the most challenging and most commonly misunderstood components of successful business-to-business marketing is Lead Generation and Nurturing (or ‘demand generation and management’).

Starting with how you generate inquiries through the challenging hand-off and follow-up by your sales force, and most importantly how you measure the results, this ”discipline” sees more wasted money, more missed opportunities, and more downright mistakes than any other area in business-to-business (B2B) marketing and sales.

Now that some of the traditional direct mail disciplines (Multivariate testing, A/B splits) are being used on the Internet (web design, email marketing, search engine marketing, pay-per-click advertising, landing page optimization, social media, web 2.0), it has made Lead Generation and Nurturing (or Demand generation and Management)  process more complex to set up, but at the same time easier to manage than ever. 

Why Lead Generation and Nurturing is so important

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What are the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO?

Google wants to deliver what you're looking for

“If SEO works so well,” many of my clients ask me, “why I’m recommending the use of Blogs to drive traffic to their websites?”

In order to understand why Blogs are not only necessary, but they’re an essential part of driving traffic to your website, and why you’d want to know the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO, it’s  it’s important to take a step back and talk a minute about how Google develops the rules that determine how high our pages rank in the search engines.

The Google PageRank Algorithm

Several years ago,  few people really could imagine the explosion of social media engines like Linked-in, Facebook, and Twitter.

Google did.

“The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” ~ Google co-founder Larry Page 

When Google modified its Pagerank Algorithm to include backlinks, it was the beginning of the Social Media Revolution (or the revolution of user-generated content). Google dictated that it’s not only structure of your code on your pages that determines your page rank, but also how many influential websites link to yours…, in other words, your search engine visibility is determined not only by the quality of the content on your website, but by who is linking to you. 

This is why why Blogging is the new strategy to attain search engine visibility - and why it’s important to know the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO - because Blogging provides a platform to share your ideas, get others to connect with you, and if your ideas are good ones, they can share you ideas with others. So you’ve got one platform that facilitates all three actions of social media: (1) Connect (2) Collect and Share, and (3) Create.

Success breeds success. If your posts are popular and they follow the best practices in blogging for SEO, chances are they’ll also achieve greater search engine visibility.

Here are the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO

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How do you Create a Better Linked-in Profile?

While Linked-in is acknowledged as the premier business-oriented social networking site, many people look at it as a simple online CV or resume.     

But Linked-in is greatly underrated as a place to showcase your talents, grow your capabilities, and develop new business opportunities.  It is certainly worth your time to build a better-Linked-in Profile.   

I know for a fact that many Human Resource Professionals use Linked-in to help find and screen candidates. If you’re a job seeker, your should optimize your Linked-in Profile–just in case someone is looking for someone like you at this very moment.  If you’re a manager or an executive, you should take time to create a Better Linked-in Profile–to put your best foot forward.     

I realize there are many blog posts out there about how to Build a Better Linked-in Profile, but I put together the 5 main things that I do whenever I update someone’s Linked-in Profile. These 5 things will help you (1) connect with others and let them connect with you (2) collect and share information that’s important to you, and (3) to showcase your own content that positions you as the expert, so that when a client or prospect has a need they call you first.     

5 Easy Tips to Create a Better Linked-in Profile

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What is Lean Marketing, exactly?

Improve your marketing

Everyone’s looking for results. 

Is there a sure-way method to find them?  

Yes–if you take the time to measure your results, which many companies are simply too busy to do.  

“You can’t improve what you  can’t measure.” 

Many companies think they’re practicing “Direct Marketing” without taking the time to measure and report the results… they enjoy the results, but they don’t try to figure out how they could do better. 

Like Direct Marketing, Lean Marketing is targeted, personalized, measurable, but most importantly, it’s improveable.  

As consumers, and as business managers, we’ve all seen successful examples of Direct Marketing. You go to your mailbox, open your mail, and there’s a letter that stands out — it comes from a real person directly to you with an offer designed to delight you and make you want to respond.  

As marketers, if you use Direct Marketing regularly, you know that for every $1.00 you spend you can get $20.00 back, or $24.63, or whatever. Predictable return on investment helps you with your budgeting, your cash management, and your profitability.  

Lean Marketing is Continual Improvement applied to Marketing

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Do you have a compromised WordPress Website?

Have you been hacked recently?

If you have a compromised WordPress Website that has been hacked recently and affected by malware, you are not alone, particularly if you’re on a shared server (like the Rackspace Cloud, or Godaddy for example).

These attacks are not specific to any particular hosting company or to WordPress. These malware attacks can affect any website running out-dated software hosted by any company.

I have 20+ WordPress websites hosted on The Rackspace Cloud (about which by the way I am a “raving fan”). And several of my sites, along with innumerable others, were the target of malicious hackers. Rackspace has been great throughout this whole process. And they reminded me ‘why it’s important to implement security measures in the first place‘ and keep my software updated with the most recent patches.

An ‘ounce of prevention is definitely worth a pound of cure’. But what are you supposed to do if you’ve been hacked? How do you fix a compromised WordPress Website?

How to fix a compromised WordPress website

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3 Social Plugins to Gain Likes on your Facebook Page for Business (or 3 Easy Ways to Get People to Like You)

Even Scrooge "likes" it

Facebook is changing consumer behavior.  

Instead of searching online, consumers and business buyers who have a need are connecting to people they trust, and asking for referral sources. This is why it’s *more important than ever* to be connected, and Build a Facebook Page for Business. 

As I was writing this post I was trying to come up with a punchy headline, and it occurred me that maybe I ought to write a headline that would appeal to the Ebenezer Scrooge in all of us. I too, was resistant to the social media bandwagon at first, I admit it… Social Media, Bah humbug!  

One this is undeniable though–there are 500 million Facebook users and counting.  

So if you’re a small business owner these days, while you’re counting your pennies and watching every expenditure, you’re also wondering “how do I leverage my network and tap into my market that’s on Facebook?” It’s gotten too big to ignore. That’s why it’s important to know how to Build a Facebook Page for Business. 

To illustrate how this works, I’m using 3 Facebook plugins that illustrate how you can quickly and easily ”Like” your Facebook page from your website. 

3 Social Plugins to Build a Facebook Page for Business

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