It doesn’t do a man any good to sit up and take notice if he keeps on sitting. -- Unknown

What is your level of belief in your product or service? Have you lost your enthusiasm? Are you merely existing and maintaining or are you motivated and moving? These are questions we all need to address when it comes to business building. Your level of belief in what you have to offer whether it is snowshoes to Eskimos or drink umbrellas to tourists is directly related to your bottom line.

If you truly want to make a difference and pump up the volume in your business you need to return to the commitment level you found when you first discovered your passion for your business. Rediscover your ‘first love’. It is when you totally believe in what you have to offer and your excitement is uncontainable that you infect others with your enthusiasm.

As you become heady with joy and belief you will begin to ‘infect’ others around you. Not everyone you come near will be ‘infected’ but some will and that is really all you need to succeed. When you truly believe in your product or service you will find it is easy to tell others about it.

Show the benefits and make it personal. Share your story. Your own story of how you came to where you are today will greatly impact your potential customers. Be honest and truthful; show genuine interest and concern and the rest will fall into place.

What a great world we live in. With today’s technology we can market to an international (soon to be inter-planetary) market without leaving our comfy office chair that swivels, vibrates, reclines, and produces cold drinks on demand. One click of a mouse and we can meet someone in a chat room who just happens to need our product. Then with another click we can send it off to them and they are our customers for life, right? Do I hear hesitation? Someone clearing their throat?

I venture to say that even in this fast pace, technological world we now live in that humans still have basic needs; shelter, food, and a talking teddy bear. Oops, I meant shelter, food, and to be cared for (companions, friends, etc). This naturally spills over to business relationships.

People want to feel important. They want to be remembered for who they are as individuals.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it said a million times; it’s all about relationships,” you mumble under your breath. “Let’s get real here, who has time to chat with every prospect about soccer games when the invoicing needs to be done, there’s a ton of paper work piling up on the desk, the drop shippers dropped my order and it didn’t go out, and to top it all off I have to get to the bank and straighten out the lost deposit from last week so that everything doesn’t start bouncing around like a kangaroo. I wish people understood that I am a one man/woman show around here. Then they would understand I don’t have time to remember every little detail about them.”

Although customer relationships are the absolute foundation of every successful company, it is difficult to find time to build strong bonds with your customers. Believe me, I understand the dilemma. Time seems to be speeding by like a bullet train anymore. The first day of the month seems to come 7 and ½ minutes before the last day. Yet, if you could retain only 5% more of your customers it would increase your revenue by 50%. That would mean you could hire someone to do the work for you that is not bringing in an income (filing, etc), generating even more time for you to spend on those activities that bring in revenue - like building relationships with prospects and existing customers, hence building an even stronger bottom line.

So, how does one go about building relationships and still have time to get anything else done while they are a one or two man/woman operation? Email! Now, there’s a nifty little invention and used with other forms of communication it does wonders for businesses. Another way of touching base is the good old phone call. It’s a lot more personal than an email, yet if a prospect is the type that is difficult to get off the phone it can eat up hundreds of your business hours. Sending greeting cards has a track record of boosting repeat business. Many business owners have given testimony to the use of greeting cards to give a personal touch and yet they are not tied up by a phone cord. This is an option worth looking at. Stop and think about it. How long has it been since you received a thank you card? It seems the world is too busy these days to even send a thank you. Fortunately technology has answered this problem. You can now use an online greeting card shop such as http://www.kim skardshop.net to buy cards while sitting in that comfy office chair and send them from the internet with the click of your mouse. The greeting card is delivered by the US Postal Service to your prospect’s/customer’s mail box. They get the warm fuzzies and you get more business.

Subject: Unbelievable but True!

Dear {first name},

What I am about to reveal to you may be hard for you to believe but it is definitely true!

Here’s what I have in mind,

I have just recently discovered a {technique/product/service} that will revitalize your business. It has been proven to significantly increase your {sales/profits/customers}.

This new {technique/product/service} is so simple to implement that once I reveal it you will wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself. But don’t take my word for it, see what others are saying.

{testimonial #1}
{testimonial #2}
{testimonial #3}

And that is not the end of the story. Just for taking the time to {request more information/browse our website} I will send you absolutely with no strings attached {freebee}.

To learn more about this {technique/product/service} and to receive your free gift contact me at {xxx-xxx-xxxx}. Don’t delay as this offer is only good until {short expiration date}.

Sincerely,
{your name}
{your title}
{your contact information}

This is just one idea for an actual email campaign that we welcome you to personalize and utilize. If you need a complete email campaign or phone script specific to your industry or service please contact us at info@nibrocmarketing.com and we will be happy to assist you.

PPC engines are important to varying degree to most internet marketers. They're a great way to make income without a product or a site, and if done right, you can easily make over a few hundred dollars a day. Good adwords had the monopoly over the PPC engine market for quite a while, but now many other PPC engines have emerged that offer services comparable to Google Adwords. Below is a list of a pretty decent percentage of PPC engines out there with their Alexa rankings. The ones without my comments are the ones that I haven't tried yet. A general rule is - the lower the ranking, the more the traffic that they deal with.

7SEARCH – 4,538 - Higher ROI than both Google and Yahoo, this is quickly becoming my personal favorite. You can get cheap click rates, yet good quality traffic. I wrote a more detailed review comparing Adwords and 7search to help you understand the limitations of each of them and how they're different. I recommend that you read that for more details. (http://7search.com/)

8LA - 469,766 ( http://www.8la.com/list.htm)

One subscriber offers this question:
What is the most effective way to market a product or service?

Answer: This is such a broad question that to give an accurate answer would be nigh impossible. However, in today’s tech savvy environment the best and most sensible answer is whatever your mode, do it with all the honesty and enthusiasm that you can muster.

We are so accustomed to spam that if you don’t employ these two concepts your potential audience will soon fade into oblivion. Word still gets around when you misrepresent yourself; for example, if you promise something then you better deliver. I choose to deliver even more than I promise whenever possible. Remember a bad comment will travel farther, faster, and be remembered far longer than a good word or deed.

Another subscriber asks:
Where does one go to find out how to put pay per click ads (PPC) on your website? ~ Techno Challenged in CO.

Answer: Each PPC engine will provide you with that information. For example if you want to use Google Adwords go to their PPC engine and read through their their instructions. You will find the information you seek and then some. As each one is different, with different features and limitations therefore the instructions will vary.

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