Small business and website marketing

Have you ever heard of the following phrase, "facts tell, stories sell?" Well this is certainly true when it comes down to marketing your products and services. While it's important to identify what it is exactly your product or service does, if you want to make lots of sales, it's just as important to include powerful testimonials in your sales process.

So what is a testimonial exactly? A testimonial is a story provided by a third party person or company saying good things about your product or service. For instance, if you have ever watched those infomercials for one of those exercise products, they always include a testimonial of someone showing their figure before and after using the product.

Why do testimonials work so well? They work because people tend to believe a 3rd party person more than they believe you. The reason why is because you have a financial incentive to tell me the product is good because if I buy it, you get paid. A 3rd party person has no financial incentive to say good things about the product. Therefore, the only reason why they would say good things about the product is if those good things were really true.

So how do you get testimonials for your products?

One of the best ways to get testimonials for your products is to provide a free copy of the product or service to some of your target prospects in exchange for a testimonial. While this might cost you in potential sales, this strategy will more than pay for itself for years to come in that it will allow you to launch the sales of your product with testimonials. This is a win-win for all parties involved. Your prospects get a great product for free and you get great testimonials that you can use for your marketing.

If you have a product that you have already made sales for in the past, one way that you can get testimonials is to contact some of your previous customers. Ask them what they liked best about your product and ask them if they would be wiling to give a testimonial. John Reese, the author of a home study course called Traffic Secrets (which is unfortunately no longer in print) implemented this strategy after he made some initial sales of his course. He sent an email to all of his customers asking them if they wouldn't mind sharing a testimonial as to how this home study course helped them in their business.

As a result of this strategy, John Reese received HUNDREDS of testimonials about the quality of his home study course, as well as the positive results his students achieved as a result of applying what they learned from the course. He then turned around and displayed many of these testimonials of the sales letter of the web site he promoted the Traffic Secret course on. You can use this exact strategy regardless of what your product or service is.

By using testimonials in your marketing, you would be amazed when you see the results it gives you. Try it. Create one page with testimonials and one page without them and see which page converts more sales.

There's an old saying that goes "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail." That saying is certainly true in the marketing world. There are many people who want to make a lot of money from their business. However, many of those same people don't even take the time to set marketing goals that will help them to produce the results that they want to achieve.

Setting goals is very important in life overall, but it is even more important when it comes down to marketing your products and services. If you don't set a baseline as far as where you want to be and what you identify as success in your business, you are building your business in a very haphazard fashion.

Why is setting goals important?

Let me ask you a question.

If you wanted to take a road trip from New York to California, what is the first thing that you would do? Wouldn't you decide WHERE in California you want your final destination to be? What if you never decided on a final destination in California? You could wind up anywhere in the entire state. What if you never even decided on California being your final destination? You might end up in Texas, Florida or even in Mexico!

The same applies for your business. If you don't take the time out to set marketing goals that produce results, you might wind up anywhere in your business.

So how do you set goals and practice goal setting when it comes down to the marketing of your business?

The first thing that you want to do is set your final destination for your business. If your goal is to build a successful business, what do you define as success exactly? Perhaps success to you might be to make an extra $500 a month from your business to help out with your car payment? Maybe you might want to make $2500 a month from your business so you can quit your job? Success could be building a six figure income from your business? Maybe you might even want to build a multi-million or even a multi-billion dollar business and take your company public? Whatever you define as success for your business, you want to write it down.

Once you have your final destination in place, the next thing that you want to do is set milestones along the path. Using the road trip example, you're probably not going to drive straight to California from New York. There is a good chance that you are going to make stops along the journey. The same goes for your business. You need to set smaller milestones along the way so that you can clearly see that you are on track towards meeting your goal.

Finally, you want to identify marketing strategies and techniques that can help you to reach the milestones that you have established. These marketing strategies and techniques are going to be the tasks that you are going to implement to drive and convert prospects into customers for your business. The customers provide the money for your business and the money helps you to meet the milestones and goals that you have established.

By taking the time out to set marketing goals and implement goal setting in your business, you are building your business on a sound foundation and dramatically increasing the likelihood of reaching what you define as success in your business.

Mark Garland is the author of this article and the owner of Analyzed Marketing Solutions. He recently released The Analyzed Marketing Business Area which helps websites and small businesses establish a successful online presence, along with teaches individuals how to generate a significant income on the Internet.

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Everyone is always asking for the secret method to getting listed in the search engines. While there's certainly value in learning the tricks to the trade and the general principles of getting a good search engine listing, the fact of the matter is that knowing everything about Search Engine Optimization really isn't necessary to master the search engine game.

Here's why.

First off, the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN have special algorithms that they constantly change on a regular basis. They do this because they are in the business of providing reliable search results to their end users. If a group of people were able to identify the algorithm, they could manipulate it and thus distort the search results for their millions of users. As a result, that would have a direct impact on the ability of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to build a profitable business,

Secondly, even if you know everything about search engine optimization, the chances of you getting a top placement for a very high traffic keyword or phrase is very slim due to competition. There are web sites that have been around for years with tons of content and even more links from other web sites. You are already at a disadvantage if you are starting out with a new web site.

That doesn't mean that you can't win the search engine game. The key is to take a different approach.

Instead of focusing so much on getting listed for the high traffic keywords and phrases, a better approach is to focus your efforts on what is called long tail keywords and phrases. Long tail keywords are words that contain the main keyword you are focused on as well as several other words. These words don't get as many searches as the high traffic keyword. However, when these keywords do get searches, they are usually very targeted and the visitors that are typing in these keywords are usually very responsive.

For example, lets say your web site offers site seeing tours in New York City. What most people would do is target general keywords like New York city or travel. However, these keywords are going to be very difficult to get ranked for and because they aren't that specific, there's no guarantee that many of the people searching for these terms are even looking for what you offer.

What you can do instead is create specific long tail keywords and phrases and increase the likelihood of getting visitors to your web site by focusing on such keywords and phrases such as guided tours new york, site seeing tours new york city, etc. While you certainly won't get as much traffic as you would for the more general keywords, the traffic you will get is more specific and targeted and as such will be more responsive.

Also, many times, people spend a lot of time focusing on what they should put, how many times they should include a specific keyword etc. The problem with such an approach is that if the algorithm changes, all of your work is for naught. A better approach is to create lots of targeted content in a variety of different forms and place it on web sites all over the internet. This way even when the search engine algorithms changes, content that may drop in listings will be replaced by other content of yours that will go up in listings.

By focusing on long term keywords and phrases and spending your time getting lots of targeted content out on the internet, that is truly the best way to get listed in the search engines.