Or at the very least “Why I love Infusionsoft”

Infusionsoft is simply the most powerful CRM/Marketing Automation tool for small business. There’s nothing better.

It’s like Salesforce.com + ExactTarget + 1ShoppingCart all-in-one.

And for two seats at $299/month, plus $59/month per additional seat, the price cannot be beat.  

You will not find a better all-in-one CRM/Marketing Automation System.  It includes:  (1) CRM (2) Autoresponders (3) Web forms (4) Order forms (5) Sales force automation (6) Shopping cart (7) Affiliate marketing management, and (8) lots, lots more, and what’s best, you can get it all without spending tens of thousands of dollars, or cobbling together other systems that do parts of what Infusionsoft can do (like Salesforce.com + ExactTarget + 1ShoppingCart, which you’d probably spend 5 figures putting it all together anyway).

If you’re looking for a CRM or Marketing Automation System for your Small Business, but haven’t been able to decide which one is best for you, here are 5 good reasons to get off the fence:

5 Reasons to get off the fence

If you’re shopping for an online CRM, and are sitting on the fence, here are 5 really cool, unique features that should make you want to sign up today:

1. Tags — Known as “custom taxonomies” or “tags”, these became popular with Wordpress, and “Tag Clouds”, this is an alternate method of classifying information so it can be easily found, and it’s also great for segmenting your list “to get the right message to the right person at the right time.”
2. Marketing/Action Sequences — You can easily add/change a record’s status based on actions/ conditions, or example: A prospect buys “Product B” from you, you can change the record’s status from prospect to client, add a tag indicating that they’ve purchased “Product B”, and initiate the “Upsell marketing sequence of emails for Product B.”
3. Trackable Links — You can send an email with a link that says “Yes, have someone call me!”, and if someone someone click the link you can start an action sequence, for example, create a task, and assign it round-robin for a salesperson to follow up, followed up by another specialized sequence of emails.
4. Infusionsoft API — It’s one of the very few systems that allows you to tap directly into your database via an API, which gives you virtually unlimited ability to tie it into your operations.
5. The Infusionsoft Organization — The Infusionsoft organization and culture is really a wonder to behold; and the upper management should be praised for the culture they’ve created. They practice what they preach and are absolutely committed to customer delight.

Ultimately, the biggest reason why small business owners love Infusionsoft (and why I love it) is because it helps them make more money, while at the same time increasing their productivity so they don’t have to add any more staff.

As the company who was first-to-market in the Marketing Automation Category, they’re on an upwards trajectory, and are continually coming up with product enhancements that make the system easier to use and manage.

Does the Shopping Cart need some work? Admittedly. But Infusionsoft is working on it. You’ve heard it here, and I guarantee they won’t disappoint.

Right now Infusionsoft is running the Double Your Sales Guarantee with a Free Trial. Simply click here to do it now.

You know the definition of insanity, right? “Doing the same old thing and expecting different results.”

So why do so many companies keep doing the same old thing, and expect anything different? It’s insanity.

If you’d like to break out of the same old routine, and produce some real results you need to try something new.

Here are 12 great marketing ideas you can try in the coming months to achieve better results.

12 Cost-effective Marketing Ideas you can implement to Achieve Better Results

1. Update your strategic positioning so you really stand out from the competition
2. Create a new offer, like a payment plan, to make your services more affordable
3. Simplify your website to make it easier for customer and prospects to do business with you
4. Do an SEO Makeover to achieve a #1 ranking so prospective customers and buyers can find you on the web
5. Get other websites to link back to you using Off-page optimization to boost your search engine rankings and your website traffic
6. Start a Business Blog to establish thought leadership and niche dominance
7. Implement a Social Media Marketing Program to share your ideas with your followers
8. Create a Pay-per Click Program to augment the leads you’re getting from other sources
9. Test Landing Pages (Landing page optimization) to maximize the results from your Pay-per-click budget (you can do a lot with $200/month)
10. Create an Affiliate Marketing program to get others to identify opportunities and generate leads for you
11. Implement a Marketing Automation System with powerful marketing automation sequences to educate the prospects who aren’t ready to buy yet and convert them into ready buyers who want to do business with you
12. Accept Credit Cards online with Automated Recurring Billing to reduce time spent on invoicing and collecting payments from customers

How many of these ideas have you already implemented? Are there any other ideas you’d add to this list? What are you doing to ramp up your marketing activities?

The most successful companies are continually trying new ideas to achieve better and better results. That’s the only way that you can hope to improve.

Everyone says they want better results.

So why aren’t companies more adventurous when it comes to trying new things?

It’s the “I hate brocolli” syndrome of marketing and business.

If you ask the average CEO, “What’s the rationale for the way you’re currently marketing your services?”  Many say: “It’s what we’ve always done.”

The sad truth is that many companies are engaging in the same old tried marketing tactics rooted in strategies that were developed eons ago (a.k.a. 2007).  They’re wasting money on tactics that are not rooted in any real, current strategy – or based on the realities of today’s marketplace.

How to get higher response rates and higher conversions

 Any Direct Marketing old timer will tell you that the secret to getting and maintaining high response rates and higher conversions is: “Test. Test. Test.”

In fact, there are some who say that  30% of your budget should be set aside for testing.

If you’re testing new ideas agains the old ones it’s the only way to know for sure that you’re marketing is continually improving. 

Apply the principles of continual improvement to your marketing. In Direct Mail it’s called “A/B Splits and Multivariate Testing.” In Google Web Optimizer it’s called “Marketing Experiments.”

Test everything. Test in order of importantance. Your offer, your keywords on your pay-per-click ads, your landing pages.

Or if you don’t really want new and better results, you can just keep doing what you’re doing — what you’ve always done.

Blogging and Social Media Sitting in a Tree: K.I.S.S.I.N.G.

What is the purpose behind Blogging? It’s not to show how smart or cute you are. If it’s going to be a part of an effective business strategy, you need to provide value, to show people the way, and establish yourself as a thought leader.

What is the purpose behind Social Media? It’s to connect with People: Friends, Associates, Affiliates, Prospects, Customers, and let them know what you’re up to. If you are using social media, you get to build your own channel, and you are literally the Editorial Board, Editor in Chief, Writer/Anchor, and Ombudsman all in one person.

What’s the purpose behind integrating your Blogging and your Social Media? Quite simply, it’s a radical new opportunity to put yourself “out there” in front of your clients and prospects, to help them solve problems,and position yourself as a potential solution provider, so that when they have an itch they’ll remember that you provide the scratch.

How to Integrate Blogging and Social Media: In 8 Simple Steps

1. Reserve your social media names: If you haven’t done so already go to Linked in, Facebook, and Twitter, and reserve your social media names. Optionally you can create a corporate Facebook account so that people can follow your business instead of you as an individual.

2. Build out your social media profiles: Building a good profile takes time and evolves as you evolve. To start take an hour or two and do your best to build your social media profile so that it tells people what you do and how you do it better than anyone else.  Optional: On Linked-in add Wordpress (if you have a Wordpress website) and Twitter.

3. Build your base group of followers. Upload Gmail, Yahoo, AOL accounts. Or Upload a .csv file. This allows you to connect with everyone in your address book quickly.

4. Work to add followers on a daily basis. Did you meet someone at a networking event? While you’re adding them to your CRM, invite them to connect, to be a friend, or a follower.  This requires some discipline. But once you add it to your routine it’s easy.

5. Blog about things your customers and prospects are interested in. And educate them about what you do at the same time. Make what you do relevant to your followers. Jerry Seinfeld was a genius at this. Share practical tips, insights, humor, personal triumphs. Your editorial could be topically-related business news, the economy, or about the seasons and the weather.

6. Download Tweetdeck: Add your social media accounts to Tweetdeck. There are others tools out there like Hootsuite, Social Oomph. I’m wary of “auto-magic,” i.e., anything that automates your marketing so much that you end up losing the human touch. Think quality over quantity as it pertains to the content you’re writing, and your number of followers. There are no shortcuts. Just do a good job, and success will follow.

7. Update your statuses: When you post a new blog, update your statuses to all three networks (Linked-in, Facebook, and Twitter) using Tweetdeck. This will increase the likelihood that your thoughts will be seen, and picked up by others. The more you interact the more you get picked up.

8. Interact with Others. Remember that Social Media is a two-way street. It’s not simply a broadcast medium. If someone takes the time to comment on something you’ve written, take the time and have the courtesy to respond. Also, comment on other posts that you find interesting. Retweet (RT) other people’s Tweets.  Follow and comment on status updates that you find interesting. Take advantage of opportunities to interact with others.

If you follow this Simple 8 Step Plan, others who use Social Media will see that the lights are on and someone is definitely home. 

Don’t forget that Social Media is “Social”

Remember to emphasize the “social” aspect of ”Social Media.” Its purpose should be to genuinely connect with people because you genuinely care about connecting with people (**not to connect with them so you can sell something**). If you’re at a cocktail party, you are a boor if all you do is talk about yourself.

So that’s how you can begin to integrate Blogging and Social Media. And if you do it right, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes YOU pushing all your new business around in a baby carriage shopping cart.

Postscript: The one item on this list that people ask me the most about is #5. “What specifically should I write about about?” My answer: “It all depends.” What is going to engage your followers? You’re the Editor-in chief; you decide what will engage your followers. Write about problems and solutions (and oh by the way if you provide the solution let your followers know, but don’t lead with a solution before you’ve got people agreeing that there’s a problem in the first place).

Why is everyone talking about “Inbound Marketing?” Who cares about the “Real-time Web?”

Several years ago when Google modified its Pagerank Algorithm, and started factoring in how other influential websites link to yours,  few people really could imagine the explosion of social media engines like Linked-in, Facebook, and Twitter. Your search engine visibility is determined not only by the quality of the content on your website, but by who is linking to you.

Just recently, Google has launched the real-time web. Now more than ever there is an extraordinary opportunity for small businesses to carve out a niche in their social media marketplaces — effectively creating their own channel to communicate with their customers and prospects.

In an article in Huffpost by Manish Mehta, the Vice President, Social Media and Community at Dell Inc. (who can attribute $7 million in sales to Twitter for doing nothing at all!),  Mehta affirms “Social media isn’t a means to further a corporation’s strategy, it’s a means to help determine it.”

Sometimes pictures (or mindmaps) are better than words, so I’ve created a Mindmap that illustrates a general Inbound Marketing/Social Media Strategy.

Inbound Marketing / Social Media Strategy Cashmap for Small Businesses

It’s anchored by strategic marketing: (with introductory offers to acquire new customers, upsell/cross sell them into higher margin/higher value products, and convert them into customer advocates), and it includes what I consider the essential elements of inbound marketing strategy, which dovetail with Google’s Pagerank Algorithm: (1) a web presence that is search engine optmized, and empowers real-time expression (2) content generation to display thought leadership / attention to customer’s problems and (3) off-page optimization strategies which are essential to building followers and getting other influential websites to link back to yours.

For those who’ve been sitting on the social media sidelines hoping the whole fad might go away…, social media is not a fad, and it’s not going away. It’s going to be a critical way for you to reach your customers and prospects, and it’s more important than ever to get connected.

On the web, the time is literally now.

I love Wordpress, and others small business owners and marketers should too.

Over the past two years, it has become my web design platform of choice.

“Why?” You might ask….

Simply because a Wordpress website can do everything an old-fashioned website can do, and about 100 times more.

10 Reasons Small Business Owners Love Wordpress

Here are ten excellent reasons why, if you are looking for a website, you should choose a Wordpress as your publishing platform:

1. Easy to use — If you can operate Microsoft Word, you can probably use WordPress.
2. Flexible — There are thousands of free themes are out there to use, and customize for your specific needs
3. Full-fledged content management system — although it’s thought of as a blogging platform, it’s really so much more.
4. No software required – Do you have a mini laptop and wireless connection? Blog from the airport in between planes.
5. Design it once and forget it — and you can blog to your heart’s content for years without ever going out of style. 
6. Easily add an e-commerce — it’s easy to accept credit cards via Google Checkout, Paypal, or accept credit cards via Authorize.net
7. Completely customize your site — with a press room with all sorts of cool links and forms on a website.
8. Achieve top search engine visiblity — and get your prospects to call you when they have a need. 
9. Get social / learn more about your customers and prospects — because a blog is designed to be more interactive than a static website, and can integrate with Linked-in, Facebook, and Twitter.
10. Trick it out — with Hundreds and hundreds of plugins to customize the functionality of your website/blog so that it fits your unique needs!

Thesse are 10 excellent reasons why small business owners should love Wordpress. Not to menation that it’s cheaper, easier to implement, and easier to maintain.

When Warren Buffet speaks, people listen.

Recently I happened to catch Warren Buffet on TV talking about how leaders should set business priorities.

Buffet was saying that you should run your business like it’s a family business–one that you are going to hold onto for 100 years, and the #1 thing you should think about is how to build a sustainable competitive advantage, like building “like a moat around your castle.”

If you look back to medieval times, moats were excavated around castles as part of the defensive system–an obstacle immediately outside the walls–and usually they were filled with water.

A good moat made it difficult for your enemy to access your walls with siege weapons, such as towers and battering rams, which needed to be brought up against a wall to work effectively. A water-filled moat made it impossible for your enemy to dig tunnels under your fortifications in order to effect a collapse of the defenses. A good moat protected your castle and everything in it.

The wider your moat, the longer you can protect your profits. The deeper your moat, the more profitable you are.

“Understanding your customers” is key to building a good moat

If you’ve followed him for any time, you also know that Warren Buffet invests primarily in companies that “understand their customers.” To me this means companies that make Marketing a priority in their strategic plan…, not just the 4 P’s (Product, Place,  Price, and Promotion), but also RSPT (Research, Segmentation, Positioning, and Targeting).

In essence, applying the Fundamental Principles of Direct Marketing not just to your Marketing but to all your Operations.

One of the best ways to protect your profits and build higher margins, the key to a successful business, is to continally work to understand and serve your growing customer base. The way you do this is by mastering the Fundamentals of Acquiring and Managing Customers:

1. Find a suspect (on a good list or use of demographics)
2. Convert the suspect to a prospect (a lead),
3. Convert that prospect into a customer (an account),
4. Convert into a regular customer or multibuyer (someone who has purchased from you 3 times or more), and
5. Convert that regular customer into an advocate for your business who provides you a testimonial and a stream of referrals.

Literally all the things you can do to protect your profits and increase your margins derive from “understanding your customers, managing this fundamental process, and managing it well, i.e, all of the traditional methods of creating a competitive advantage: (1) Product Differentiation (2) Branding and Positioning (3) Pricing Strategies (4) Locking in customers, and (5) Locking out competitors derive from making great offers, establishing a real relationship with your customers, and being responsive.

“Understanding your customer” is the equivalent of protecting future revenue streams, and forms the basis of value. It’s the modern-day equivalent of building a good moat.

With this perspective, what are the competitive threats in your environment, i.e., the towers and battering rams that could impact your profitability? And what are you going today, this week, next month, next year to ”build your moat and protect your relationship with your customers?”

The biggest mistake people make when it comes to Google Adwords is to create one ad, send it to the home page of your website, and choose all the keywords that Google Adwords suggests.

That’s a great way to go through your entire budget fast with zero results.

The trick to getting higher higher response on pay-per-click ads is to create a separate landing page for each of your top keywords in three easy (but time-consuming) steps.

3 Easy Steps to Better Pay-Per-Click Results

1. First, discover which keywords are driving the most traffic. If you have 100 keywords in your campaign, chances are that 20% of them are driving 80% of the traffic (or more like 10% of the keywords are driving 90% of the traffic). Turn off the non-performing keywords.
2. Second, create a separate landing page for each logical grouping of the remaining 10 or 20 keywords. Make sure that the headline and the offer of the landing page matches the ad to reduce your bounce rates and increase your conversions.
3. Third, and this is something many people forget to do, but is to filter out the negative keywords to fight the “My Simon effect (people looking for something for nothing: “free, cheap, affordable, and low cost”).

How to Get Great Leads
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www.howtogetgreatleads.com/ppc

A successful pay-per-click campaign requires a process similar to that used traditional marketing.

The process involves strategic planning, creative development, results analysis, and mindful execution.

Your success (or failure) is dependent on the critical analysis and thinking that your efforts, as well as the reassessment of the results following each set of efforts.

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 more 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 the the demand generation and management process more complex and more difficult than ever. 

Why Lead Generation is so important

But this really presents businesses the greatest opportunity for three reasons:

1. There is always room for improvement – And, the return on investment from improving your lead generation program is usually well worth the the time and effort. 
2. You can build a competitive advantage – in most industries your competition is probably managing their lead generation and nurturing process at the same level you are, or worse.  Your efforts can help you develop a competitive advantage and win market share from your competitors. 
3. You can make more effective use of your budget–when you measure your results, you can put your money where it’s working the best, and align your budget to achieve strategic objectives.

The purpose of this series of blog posts is to outline a solid process, and offer some tips and techniques that, when applied to your business’s sales and marketing process, it will turn your lead generation program from mediocre into a source of pride for your organization.

Next: “B2B Lead Generation and Nurturing: An Overview“

Once you’ve established a unique identity, you need to create a web presence that works for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with an offer that engages your prospects and prompts them to contact you.

How do you get your prospects to engage with you? Top search engine rankings are nice, but it really doesn’t matter if you’re not converting traffic into inquiries, and inquries into sales.

Here’s the secret: “It’s not about you.”

Most websites are guilty of the biggest strategic copywriting blunder

People like to talk about themselves. And they love people who empathize with them, and who show they’re good listeners. On the flip side, people do not like braggarts, and people, ironically, who focus only on themselves.

If you focus on your prospects: their problems, their worries, their desires. And if you show show them in your content that you can help them solve their problems, alleviate their worries…, and help them achieve their desires, then your customers will love you.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a profile company profile listing your qualifications, but telling your prospects on a constant basis why they should pick you can be boring.

Focus on your customers and prospects

So in your website copy you should:

1. Focus on your prospect’s problems
2. Present a solution to the problem
3. Illustrate how you can solve the problem

What’s the problem? > There is a solution to the problem > You are the solution

Be a good listener

If your customers and prospects feel like you really care about them, then they are going to like you. And if they like you, they are more likely to contact you, to purchase from you, and to continue doing business with you.

So show you care by listening and focusing on your customers and prospects rather than yourself. You are the one who will benefit the most.