Monday, December 12, 2016

Monday Morning Marketeer, 22 Ways for Holiday Sales with Products & Service



Hosted by: technogranny
Title: Monday Morning Marketeer, 22 Ways for Holiday Sales with Products & Service
Time: 11/26/2016 10:00 AM EST
Episode Notes: The MondayMorningMarketeer, Joanne Quinn-Smith, aka TechnoGranny has been off for a year writing books but she's baaaaack! And this time as Santa Claus giving you great ideas to finish the year strong without excusitis because it's the holidays. Client and Executive Career Coach Bette Novak will join with testimonial on how she has used JQS coaching to take her business into the big leagues. 22 Tips Really!!!! to increase your holiday sales and finish the year strong. Tis the Season to DO BUSINESS starting with "Back to Black" Holiday Sales, Small Business Saturday and not stopping with Cyber Monday.| If you were paying attention, this is a reschedule from last week due to technical difficulties.





Most departments within companies have to spend what is in their budget for this year to avoid losing it for next year.

This is what you may propose to organizations: "Is there money left in your budget from 2016 that you may lose next year if you don't spend it.  Let me show you a way to spend down your budget for maximum productive impact on your organization."



The holidays are the perfect time to build relationships with clients and customers. Most people are in a good mood, and are more open to being distracted with lunches, parties, and other things. Therefore, use this to your advantage to take clients out to lunch, thank them for their business, and foster stronger relationships. This will pay dividends moving forward!

Even if your business is done mostly online, set up Skype and Facetime with holiday decorations in the background and low Christmas music to put clients in a good mood. For existing clients, let them know you just wanted to get an update on what you are doing and an update on new programs that you have available. 




The holidays are a great time to take advantage of your competition by outworking them! While they are making excuses, taking time off, and generally distracting themselves from what they should be doing (ie what you used to do), step up your efforts and take business away from them. Run some promotions, make some additional sales calls, and do some additional sales presentations while the opportunity is available.
Expand your product offerings.



Add gift cards to your line of products or services. Besides being quick to purchase and giving recipients more flexibility, gift cards infuse cash into your store immediately. 
Offer gift card to you clients for amount of a great end of year program to give to friends, students, business associates not in business with them.



Business Advocate, Janet Attard from Business Know-How, recommends to ask for the Shopper’s Email Address Build your email list every day by asking
·       customers and prospects to sign up for your email list to receive
·       special offers,
·       sales notices or advance access to new merchandise.
·       Have signup links on your website or blog
·       and in your social media posts.
·       Put signs near your cash registers with Text-To Subscribe instructions (get details from your email service provider),
·       Put a flyer promoting your email list in every shopper’s bag. Put the flier on your blog if you don't have an in person customer base and send it out in emails.  
 Holiday Promotion

      Small Business Saturday
            The most popular Small Business Saturday promotions in 2015 were



·       limited time offers (24 percent),
·       free gift offers (21 percent),
·       coupon discounts (20 percent) and
·       buy one, get one free offers (19 percent). One for you and one for a friend  Or get an additional program free, highest money one is the one they pay for. 
·       Run an OOPs I went a little crazy and made a calculating error offering on the BOGO for you to pay the lesser program fee and get the greater price one for free.  I don't feel like changing this so for 24 hours if you are crazy enough to read this email, you can benefit by my mistake. BUT ONLY FOR 24 HOURS Offer ends at midnight on___________



·       Cyber Monday
For Bette offer 75% thru November 30  Run second (Christmas/New Years Special) from December 23 to January 2
offering a ten percent discount for work booked the week leading up to the holiday, you can use this day to drive customers to your business.



Small Business Saturday:

Some things you need to know about Small Business Saturday: 
·       Small Business Saturday marketing spend last year was$5,500, with respondents using a combination of
·       digital marketing (email, website ads, paid social media, etc. – 77 percent)
·       and offline marketing (direct mailers)
·       Add holiday flier to letters and send immediately with title "JUST IN CASE YOU DON'T READ YOUR EMAIL, WANTED TO MAKE SURE YOU GET THIS."
·       I'VE SENT THIS TO YOU IN THE MAIL BUT JUST IN CASE IT WENT INTO FILE 13(THE TRASH CAN) THOUGHT I WOULD TRY E-MAILING
·       FACEBOOK MESSAGE:  IT'S OCCURRED TO ME THAT OVER THE HOLIDAYS YOU PROBABLY DON'T OPEN YOUR MARKETING MAIL OR YOUR EMAIL, SO I DECIDED TO FACEBOOK  MESSAGE YOU BECAUSE STATISTICS PROVE THAT PEOPLE SPEND MORE TIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA OVER THE HOLIDAYS.
·       TV/newspaper ads – 23 percent).


·       Thanksgiving

·       Get BAck in the Black Instead of Black Friday
·       BETTE'S "GET BACK IN THE BLACK" ANSWER TO "BLACK FRIDAY"
SEND ON 24TH
YOU CAN DO SIMILAR PROMOTIONS FOR:

·       Christmas
·       New Years
·       End of Season
·       Pre New  Year's Resolution

        OUTWORK AND OUTSMART YOUR COMPETITION.  

WHILE HE IS BASKING IN GLOOM AND DOOM, GET BUSY!
AND GET HOLIDAY CASH

OUTWORK YOUR COMPETITION DURING THE HOLIDAYS,
DON'T WINE A LITTLE, EARN A LOT!
For help with 
  • holiday marketing
  • end of year marketing
  • first of year marketing
  • Contact the Monday Morning Marketeer, Joanne Quinn-Smith aka Techno Granny at 412-444-5197 for your fifteen minute free consult.


This blog post can be reproduced in its entirety with the following information:©Joanne Quinn-Smith 2014, Monday Morning Marketeer™ 412-444-5197 Listen at: http://tinyurl.com/MondayMorningMarketeer 
This was reported as a reproduction of Monday Morning 




Tuesday, January 26, 2016

MondayMorningMarketeer, Determining What You Are Worth as a Consultant




Great answer on Quora for the Pressing Question 

that You Should Be Asking Yourself
What Are You Worth?

For consultants who charge $500+/hour, what do you do differently to add immense value to your clients (vs what you did when you were charging $100/hour)?


Liked this answer on Quora the best.

Marie Stein
Marie Stein
1.4k Views
Listen. 

At $100/hr, you might be able to grind through lots of material, or work on your own.  But typically, you also lack judgment, experience, and understanding of where the client is within a particular competitive universe, and how to help them achieve their goals.  You may not have all the technical expertise down; or you might have some of the technical expertise but not understand how to apply it.  You don't yet know how to listen.

Some consultants will charge $150/hr; and those might be people who can do some of those things above; grind out the technical detail; and give you a bargain basement solution.  With no more, unless you pay them for it.

At $500/hr, you have the judgment, experience, and listening skills.  Or you should, anyway.  At some consulting firms, the $300-500/hr guy is the one who sells the project and is responsible for staffing it, but not always the one who can actually do it to the level of professionalism and expertise that the client might wish for.

At $1000/hr, you can do all of it and still make the client think that they're getting a bargain.


Read Faisal Khan's answer to For consultants who charge $500+/hour, what do you do differently to add immense value to your clients (vs what you did when you were charging $100/hour)? on Quora

Note from the TechnoGranny, Joanne Quinn-Smith

I would add that your value should be determined by your ability to solve problems and create sustainable solutions.  Money is not a four letter word in business, you are meant to make a profit commensurate with your ability to produce.  These answers are so great,  if it ain't broke, don't fix it but I would quote Dan Kennedy, "If you are too busy, you are not charging enough.

Thank you for your viewing and listening support. If you would like your business featured on the Monday Morning Marketeer please contact us HERE.

This blog post can be reproduced in its entirety with the following information:©Joanne Quinn-Smith 2014, Monday Morning Marketeer™ 412-444-5197 Listen at: http://tinyurl.com/MondayMorningMarketeer 
This was reported as a reproduction of Monday Morning Marketeer™ done by Joanne Quinn-Smith.© Joanne Quinn-Smith 2015 All rights reserved.

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Monday Morning Marketeer, Citations, Free and Easy Way to Boost Web Rankings



What are citations? Citations are powerful links that give credibility to a website.  They are especially powerful in local marketing.

  Listen to Interview Here

According to DMoz

Citations Create Success for Local Businesses

"Citations are defined as mentions of your business name and address
on other web pages—even if there is no link to your website. An example of a citation might be an online yellow pages directory where your business is listed, but not linked to. Citations can also be found on local chamber of commerce pages, or on a local business association page that includes your business information, even if they are not linking at all to your website."

Citations are a large component of online ranking algorithms such as Google and Bing.  Businesses with greater numbers of citaitons can rank higher than larger businesses with fewer citations. 


The citations should be from well indexed portals like Merchant Circle, Superpages.com, Yellow Pages.com, Yelp, etc. These citations help consumers and the algorithms confirm you are who you say you are.

Citations are really improtant in niches, like construction services such as plumbing or electrical, where many service providers don't have websites themselves. Without  a web site, search engines rely on what information they can find.
Why should I care about citations?  They are free high Domain Authority links to your site.  Some of the DAs are in the 80 and 90 range.That is a lot of link juice going to your website.



Where do I start?  Start with your web page.  Is it accurate?  Would you like to change anything such as punctuation or abbreviations?  This is the time to change it. Next claim the Google business listing.  Complete the listing with a bio, hours of operation, pictures, address, descriptions.



Now here is where the magic comes in - take that same exact information in the Google listing and the Website (they should be exact) and put in other business directories.

So you say exact does that mean abbreviations and phone number and
fax number? When I say exact I mean exact if the address is 123 Main St,  with a period put the period in every directory.  If ST is all caps then put in all caps.  The best thing is to not have punctuation.  Don't put commas or periods in the business listing address or name or phone number. If the name MIP INC.  it can't be MIP Inc   (724) 555-555 should be 724 555 5555 because certain sites don't allow punctuation. Your website must also match.    If you see NAP concerning citations this is an abbreviation for Name Address Phone Number.

Am I done after I list it in Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Bing and Manta? If you think 5 or 10 is enough you are off base.  There are many business listing directories. There are directories based on geography, for type of business, membership sites Chamber of Commerce or Pittsburgh Technology Council,  and there are general  ones as well.  I have seen over 160 citations for certain businesses. 

They are all free listings and links?  Oh yeah It is the least expensive most powerful linking strategy for local businesses. Period.

So if I get messed up and have a few with different addresses and a few with different phone numbers that won't matter will it? Don't forget Google is about relevance and if your citations vary with phone number and addresses Google has a difficult time knowing which one is correct.  Google wants to show what is relevant and give its users a good experience. 

If Google served up a page with a bad phone number its customers would not trust them as much.

Are there other places for citations? Citations can also be bylines for answers or guest posts.  It can be in video comments and descriptions, forum signatures and press releases.
Don't forget to claim the listing in the directories.  It adds relevance.

Listen to Interview Here


Check out my by-line below and also Rich's, when you are a guest blogger, when you post in forums, you should always use one.



Thank you for your viewing and listening support. If you would like your business featured on the Monday Morning Marketeer please contact us HERE.

This blog post can be reproduced in its entirety with the following information:©Joanne Quinn-Smith 2014, Monday Morning Marketeer™ 412-444-5197 Listen at: http://tinyurl.com/MondayMorningMarketeer 
This was reported as a reproduction of Monday Morning Marketeer™ done by Joanne Quinn-Smith.© Joanne Quinn-Smith 2015 All rights reserved.