Month: February 2007

Yes, you may have read some of my posts before about sales. Everyone should have at least one sales job in their life if they want to feel complete! People that say sales isn’t for them are full of it: everyone sells something every day of their life. Have you ever had a job interview? You had to “sell” the interviewer on why you were the best for the job, didn’t you? Have you ever had a disagreement with a friend or family member? Weren’t you “selling” your foe on why your opinion or idea was the more correct? That’s what I thought!

So, to help you in your “sales endeavors”, here are a few great quotes I like to read from time to time. Use them!

I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in somethin, I sell it, and I sell it hard. – Estee Lauder

Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. – Zig Ziglar

Consistency is a critical key to your success in sales. Whether you are making telephone calls, visiting clients, or direct marketing you have to hit your numbers everyday. A consistent sales work ethic will mak you more successful than the sporadic every third day over-achiever hands down. – Dennis R. Kyle, International Speaker

Are you convinced yet, or do you need more reasons why sales is a key part of success in any business? Nothing starts without a sale! If you haven’t developed a sales mentality yet, what better time to start than now…

Talk about Internet Branding – the video below has been viewed over 42 Million times on You Tube! It’s been commented on 22,162 and Favorited 150,885 times. Can you believe that? I’d be interested to know where this video has taken this comedian, Judson Laipply. With that type of traffic, I’m sure he’s had some amazing things happen with his business. All this funny stuff and he’s actually a professional motivational speaker.

Video posts, as we can see here, are another way we can market our products and services. Video advertising have definitely helped this guy get seen. Here’s some of the reason why:

Creativity – Also know as differentiation in the marketing world. As you think about your product, service or idea – are you one of millions trying to market the same thing? What differentiates you?

Wide Target Audience – Everybody likes comedy; everybody has at least danced once in their lifetime; This video was a compilation of different eras of music and dance that we can all relate to.

Hilarious! – Everybody likes good, clean humor. Just like I talked about the other day – word of mouth advertising can have a huge effect on the traffic you get to your website, repeat business, and bottom line income. I’m sure word of mouth advertising played a huge role in over 42 million people viewing and sharing this video. Then it was favorited 150,885 times.

Check it out!

When you see a great new movie, how many people do you tell? Why do you tell them? What’s your intent? Most likely you want them to see it too. No other type of advertising is more powerful than word of mouth. Your friend probably didn’t pay attention at all to the Hollywood hype about the movie, but they know you as a friend and respect your judgment.

If the show’s terrible the negative vibe will spread even faster than the positive. Statistics say that: “Negative word of mouth influences future patronage up to five times more than the person who experienced the problem first-hand…meaning that the original problem description is continually embellished as it passes from person to person.” (Verde Group and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania).

If you’ve been involved in marketing for some time, or even if you are just getting started, you probably know the result of negative word of mouth advertising too. Why do we tend to tell people a lot more about bad experiences we’ve had with people, businesses, or services? We all hate confrontation don’t we? It seems that some actually must like confrontation – they continue to be jerks over and over again. These business owners must have no idea about the effects negative word or mouth advertising can and will have on their business plan.

If I’m unhappy with a product, service, or employee of a company, I’m going to whatever I can to get things resolved. If they don’t make any changes or solve the problems, I’ll warn everyone I know to stay as far away from them as possible. My thought is that you never know the effects a bad product or unfriendly service may have on future business. Just like the smell of a stinky diaper, bad news spreads all over the place. You’d think someone would take it out to the trash sooner than later!

So, the point I’m trying to make is this: if you want your business to really prosper, to really get to a level you may have never dreamed of, be nice to people and follow the “golden rule!” It’s not really a new concept. Everyone likes friends; not many people like jerks. The effects of negative word of mouth advertising will have effects that we may never be able to track with our business.

Had a great question from a client who is busting her butt on her new website: www.artistichomeowner.com: What is spam? This is a great question that needs to be cleared up, especially as you get a website started. Many of us have heard pharses like “keyword stuffing”, “black hat SEO”, “GoogleBombing”, SEM (Search Engine Manipulation), etc. All these describe spam. I found some good content by typing “What is spam” in Google.

Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send — most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.

What do you all consider spam?

Here are more of my thoughts on PageRank vs. Cache.

What I’m seeing more and more is that it’s really hard to accurately determine EXACTLY why sites have PageRanks and how important they really are. Example, Christer Edwards starts a blog in December that is basically a compilation of other people’s blogs. It’s a great idea and is something I look at a lot. All of a sudden it has a PR3 after only a few weeks online. Why? It’s hard to say for sure. Maybe it’s because he’s got links to others sites that have high PageRanks. Maybe it’s because alot of us have linked to him. Maybe it’s none of those factores. To me, and I definitely may be wrong, Christer’s website contradicts what Jim Boykin is saying about the “3-6 months prior” idea.

If Link Building and submitting to directories is so importatnt, PageRank must be important too, right!? If PageRank doesn’t have some clout, how do we determine which places are best to build links? How do we determine if a site is “link quality” or not?

I’m definitely open to suggestions and am implementing new ideas all the time. The best thing I’m learning is that there are so many opinions out there about what works and what doesn’t. It seems like the old cliche “Moderation in all things!” fits here too: focusing all your efforts on just one thing, be it PageRank, Cache or whatever else, is not a balanced, most effective attack.  Diversify!