Larson and Associates Marketing Blog

Watch Your Content

2012-01-11T06:56:00.000-08:00

In bringing in new customers you need to move away from thinking like you are in charge of your message. With the advent of Social Media Marketing you need to engage your prospects. If they don’t like it, you had better not like it.

So what is a poor marketer to do?

Ask yourself a few important questions:

1) What are you trying to say about your product or service that will help to influence the customer to buy from you and not your competition?

2) Can you help customers identify which of your products or services will fit their special needs?

3) In what way can you address unseen objectives that might stop the sales process?

4) Are there others out there in your network that can justify and validate your product or service?

5) What will keep you at the top of your customers mind as they go through the sales process?

6) In the fast paced world of today will let you gain customer loyalty

7) Keep your basic message consistent. Nothing ruins a good marketing campaign more than inconsistency. You might be tired of your message but for most of your target it is new.

Larson Notes & Satire: Can your marketing program cut the mustard? Keep a clear message that moves with the customer in ways they need, not you. You don’t count.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates, a Division of US Telemarketing Group LLC
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Decision Making For Today's Reality

2012-01-05T06:51:00.000-08:00

In today’s world of lead generation you need to take a hard look at how you are generating interest in your company. As dumb as it is, you might be surprised to find that some prospects are prompted to consider using you thru twitter posts, let alone longer blogs or facebook fan pages.

As a B2B marketer I spent my time, aside from dong active lead gen, trying to figure out how a person (or company) makes a buying decision. Perhaps Hank Trisler said it best when he said “People buy on emotion and justify with facts.”

Larson Notes & Satire: I spend alto of time posting my successes. Why? Because if you are in a similar industry where I have had success and I post about it, you might start thinking, mmmmmmm they did it for XYZ Company, maybe they can do it for me.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”
Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?

Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates, a Division of US Telemarketing Group LLC
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Don’t Assume

2012-01-04T07:55:00.000-08:00

When looking over the potential of your company’s expansion never assume that a brand or company with higher awareness and exposure than yours is already under consideration.

You might need to identify various audience segments and cross them off your leads list but in doing so you need to better understand when and where marketing functions can play a stronger nurturing roll in new account acquisition.

In a report from McKinsey & Company it seems that the number of companies that come under consideration during an active evaluation for service expands rather than narrows as companies look for the best possibilities for what they really need. This change in thinking behavior from what was relevant even 2 years ago shows and creates a tremendous opportunity for marketers by allowing them (or you) the opportunity of more touch points to influence the all mighty customer.

Larson Notes & Satire: So yes you have more and greater opportunity to get new customers but remember you also have new and greater ways to lose customers. And remember it is easier to keep a customer that it is to go out and get a new one. Keep your defenses up high and controlling and keeping what you got, so you don’t have to get twice as many new accounts.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates, a Division of US Telemarketing Group LLC
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

14 Stats of 2011

2011-12-16T08:03:00.000-08:00

14 stats that mattered most for media and marketing in 2011.
1.) 50 million -- The big number from the Census everyone was talking about was the number of Hispanics, which crested this milestone for the first time. Later the Census and the New York Times found that even more people in the U.S. (51 million) are at or near the poverty line.

2.) 50% +1 -- Sometime this year the children being born in the U.S. tipped to majority-minority, according to Brookings Institute demographer William Frey. It'll take the population as a whole decades before the white population is not the majority, but the newborns are there now. Diversity marketing is in for a makeover.

3.) Half of kids under 8 (and 40% of 2- to 4-year-olds) have access to a smartphone, iPad or some other mobile media device.

4.) In October 2011 Facebookers in the U.S. spent 136,000 aggregate years on the site, according to Comscore. That's more time than… well, all of recorded history.

5.) The U.S. added just 11.2 million households between 2000 and 2010, the -- slowest household formation rate we've seen in a long time. This impacts industries like construction and any sort of household goods and services and is helping to keep the recovery slow.

6.) When asked all the reasons they subscribe to a local paper, 85% said local news, but nearly four in 10 said "habit," according to the Ad Age/Ipsos Observer American Consumer Survey.

7.) Nuclear families account for just one-fifth of all households but more than one-third (34%) of total consumer spending. Nationwide there are 1.3 million fewer of them in 2010 than there were in 2000.

8.) One in three consumers can't afford your product: The 2011 Discretionary Spend Report from Experian Simmons finds 34.5% of households have less than $7,000 to spend on non-essential goods. Just over half have less than $10,000 to spend on entertainment, education, personal care, clothing, furniture and more.

9.) How big is big? The big four agency holding companies have nearly twice the revenue of the next largest 46, $40.1 billion to $21.5 billion.

10.) Don't count out old media. Fifty-seven percent of millennials indicated in a study from OMD that TV was the first way they hear about products and services.

11.) Is this surprisingly low, or high? In a survey from Insight Express' Digital, 56% of mobile users admit to using their phones to text, call, etc. while on the throne.

12.) For the first time in American history there are now a million more females than males college graduates, according to the Census.

13.) In 2011: The twin birthrate is up 76% since 1980, reaching a new record of 33.2 per 1,000 in 2009

14.) The non-U.S. portion of P&G's measured-ad spending rocketed to 71% last year from 22% in 1986. Sixty-three percent of the company's revenue came from outside the U.S. in the year ended June 2011.

Larson Notes & Satire: What does all this mean to you? Look it over again. Where does your service or product fit in to the grand scheme of things? Who do you sell to? Do you need to add Spanish to your company’s way of doing business? Would a 6 year old want to buy and if they tied how are you going to handle that? Do you take a new look at old media I.e. TV as a marketing tool? Do I hear cable? Should you be looking at selling overseas and does China fit or India? Selling to the “minority market? If so, which one?

Again what does this all mean to you and your company?

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates, a Division of US Telemarketing Group LLC
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Opportunity Selling

2011-12-15T08:45:00.000-08:00

Think about it. Why did you buy the last product or service you bought?

Two things come to mind with that question. First off you bought or purchased, you were not sold, and second you must have had a reason to buy or at the start of the sales process, you must have had a reason or need to buy or at least have a need.

Every successful salesperson I work with has a few impeccable traits. They don’t get greedy, they don’t sell to people that don’t have a need and they find either the pain of not buying or the reason or the gain of why the prospect should buy.

That need or gain or the pain of not in your opportunity is what makes you becoming the sales doctor you have become. What do you know about the industry you sell into that causes people the most pain and how can you become the Good Doctor?

Knowing this there is only really one more part to the equation you need to keep doing and that is finding more people to talk to about helping them.

Larson Notes & Satire: Most sales people I talk to, do not like to do what I like to do, that is COLD CALLing people that they have never ever talked to before. But ask yourself, how are you going to sell more of what you sell if you don’t get yourself in front of more people who have a deep need for what you got to sell?

We find that more and more sales people who what to be the good Sales Doctor want a leads company to get them in the door so they can to their “thing”. How ‘bout you?
“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates, a Division of US Telemarketing Group LLC
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.
Sales, Telemarketing, Telesales, Cold Calling, Lead Gen, Lead Generation

Keep The Basics Upfront

2011-12-13T07:08:00.000-08:00

Why do you think that businesses are not getting the kind of results out of Social Media Marketing that they are expecting?
Quite simply they are reacting rather that evolving. Social Media Marketing is too new to be totally understood. Every day there are new players entering the marketing in ways which we cannot imagine, and that is not to ever consider the plans of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter as the look to secure their importance and the beach head they have established in SMM.

I’m here to tell you to keep the basics of good selling and marketing at the forefront of your plans because even with new tools (and all there are, are tools) the old ways are still really the only way.
The question you need to be asking yourself is, are you a reacting company or are you evolving?
In the mad rush to “do” Social Media Marketing have you lost your way? Are you in a state of flux in the redefining of your goals from hard hitting working sales into retweets, getting more of the 3Fs, and just trying to be linked? If you all you want to do is be linked up, go out and join your local Chamber of Commerce and they will be happy to shower you with love. Then sit back and see what happens. My bet is nothing. No knock on Chambers but yes, been there done that, and SMM is just the same thing only online.

In many ways SMM is the same thing only online. Nothing really has been invented, just redefined to happen at the speed of cyber. What once took 1 month or 1 week, now can take 1 day or 1 hour, but the rejection is still there.

As SMM evolves todays successful sales and marketing people are using techniques of earning their prospects purchases. They are using the new tools of Google, Facebook and blogs to answer their prospects needs and problems. Do I hear the word “probing”? When prospects understand their problems clearly they are more ready and willing to be excreted towards the answers you and your service/product provides.

Larson Notes & Satire: If I did not know any better this sounds like sales 101. Yes fans nothing new here only a new way of doing it. You still need to probe, probe, probe to find the needs and wants, the pain of not buying from you, your customers and prospects need to get an answer for.

If you don’t know or understand the basics you will not understand selling and marketing in the new cyber world we are all expected to be working in.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates, a Division of US Telemarketing Group LLC
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

4 Degrees Of Separation

2011-11-28T07:03:00.000-08:00

According to Facebook there are now only 4 degrees of separation in the world. And you know they might be right.

For years, there's been a theory that every person is only separated by six degrees, or relationships. I found it sometimes hard to believe when one year when not thinking hard I found that I was only 3 degrees of separation from the President of the United States. Like WOW!

Then in comes Facebook, with its data of over 700 million people and their al their relationships and interconnections with friends. Facebook is saying we're all just four degrees of separation apart. Below you can see how many degrees, or "hops" apart people are around the world.

Larson Notes & Satire: THAT does not do you any good if you don’t do anything with it. You need to be there, and everywhere all at once. It might be easier said than done but it is getting easier to be everywhere and anywhere all at the same time. Yes maybe you now can be 2, 3 or more places at the same time.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Customers, Prospects, Engagements

2011-11-22T07:12:00.000-08:00

As a lead generation – telemarketing company we are in a constant dilemma as we shift though and search for prospects, leads and customers for our clients.

We are suppose to be the miracle workers, finding golden nuggets where normal sales people cant or aren’t able to.

It’s a not nice world out there. We don’t always get want we want nor are we able to get the desired result we are looking for.

That is why I love the rule of #2. The rule of number 2 states that every account is already owned by someone. Muhammad Ali after fighting Joe Frasier once said “You got to beat the champ, you don’t just trade punches you go to beat him.”

The same holds true in sales. You got to beat the current supplier not just match his price or service. You have got to be better; you got to beat the champ.

In the land of Customers and Prospects maybe what we should expect more is engagements. Yes that might be lowering our expectations but we need a legitimate place to start the dialogue to becoming a customer. Don’t think I am trying to lower the bar on my work expectations. No, what I am saying is that we are going after the bull’s-eye but when we do find a company willing to start the engagement process that is not a lose.

It is far better to have a prospect you are engaged and conversing with than no conversation at all. Your real problem is to be able to measure the level of conversation. As long as you are communication with the prospect you have or should have some level of progress along the sales cycle. And while there is no true gauge for measurement every marketing and sales program should have distinct goals.

So what is a successful engagement? Is in increased sales? That would be nice and very trackable. Is it responses? Again very trackable and countable. As we move though the sales funnel we start to define more specifically if this is a quality lead or a “tire kicker”. An email campaign, direct mail program, all help to keep you in front of and on the mind of the prospect. I would hope you are in for the long term and not a one close, one sale wonder. Email, direct mail, social media marketing are areas of engagement or continuing engagement. It is keeping the flow of conversation going until you not just bid on a job but get your first sale.

The number of channels you can engage prospects is ever growing. Not just Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter but MerchantCircle, Storeboard and the ning sites to name a few more. It is getting more complemented in some ways which it is important you keep track of what works and what does not work.

Larson Notes & Satire: Telemarketing can only take you so far down the sales process. Sure sometimes we get quote specs off a cold call right over the phone, we get appointments, but sorry more often than not we get companies in the ball game for them to do the job of closing the deal.

We have created a program that some companies follow and some don’t. Their choice of course. Most sadly take only a part of the entire program so they don’t receive the full benefit.

As stated best is a multichannel attack because one size or one approach does not fit all. Need help call us.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Are You Yelping?

2011-11-21T07:34:00.000-08:00

I have been playing a little bit, a very little bit with Yelp. It is not my main push as a marketing tool that being a B2B company but still I play just in case I have a client that needs to be there.

But how long will Yelp be around? Does it, can it make money?

Well, it doesn't! At least, not yet.

The company lost $7.6 million through the first nine months of the year on revenues of $59 million. They (industry experts) think if should become profitable, it will be due to advertising, specifically local advertising, which stands at at $40 million and is 70% of its total revenue through the first nine months of this year. Brand advertising stands at $13 million is 22% of revenue. And "other services," like Yelp Deals, remnant ads, and revenue from reservations is 9%, or $5.4 million.

Here are the most important details:

Revenue: $22 million in Q3 2011, up from $12.6 million in Q3 2010.

Yearly revenue: Yelp brought in $47.7 million in revenue last year. It brought in $58.4 million in the first nine months this year, compared to $32.5 million in the first nine months last year.

Profits: Yelp lost $3.8 million in Q3 2011, up from 2.9 million in Q3 2010.

Yearly profits: Yelp lost $9.6 million last year and lost $7.6 million in the first nine months this year.

Visitors: Yelp had 61 million monthly unique visitors as of the end of its third quarter.

Reviews: Yelp has 22.4 million reviews on the site as of the end of its third quarter.

Advertising: 71 percent of Yelp's revenue comes from local advertising, compared to 21 percent from brand advertising and 8 percent from "other services.

"Google in particular is the most significant source of traffic to our website accounting for more than half of the visits to our website from Internet searches during the nine months ended September 30, 2011," the S-1 filing reads.

CEO Jeremy Stoppelman owns 11.1 percent of Yelp. The company's investors own 61.1 percent of the company.

Yelp has $23 million in cash, down from $27 million at the end of 2010.

And here are some interesting tidbits:

42 percent of Yelp's customers are between the ages of 18 and 34, and 33 percent are between the ages of 35 and 59.

45 percent of Yelp's customers are college graduates.

Nearly half of all reviews (23 percent each) are restaurant or store reviews.

PayPal co-founder Max Levchin owns 13.8 percent of Yelp.

Yelp has spent $4.4 million on infrastructure this year so far, up from $2.9 million in 2010.

Yelp's business could be adversely affected by "earthquakes, fires, floods and other natural catastrophic events and to interruption by man-made problems such as computer viruses or terrorism."

Yelp says it does not intend to pay dividends in the future.

Yelp employees outside of Stoppelman only own 14 percent of the company. Stoppelman, his investors and Levchin own a collective 86 percent of the company.

Yelp's employee with the second-highest ownership is chief operating officer Geoff Donaker at 1.6 percent.

Larson Notes & Satire: My yelp numbers are going up? Are my prospects there? Yes, prospects can be everywhere. It is all in how to touch them in a way they want to be touched.

As Henry Ford once said, he knew half of every dollar he spent on advertising was wasted. He just didn't know which half.

So where should you be advertising and marketing everywhere and anyway you can be 90% effective. The key is to be as effective in each area you are involved in so you own that channel. A multichannel attack works because one size or one approach does not fit all. Need help call us.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Cold Calling Brings Relationships

2011-11-18T07:36:00.000-08:00

With so much emphasis being focused on Social Media Marketing these days it is easy to under estimate the power of the phone for establishing deep long lasting customer relationships.

What I think you need to remember is that of all the channels you can use for Marketing, Cold Calling is still one of the FEW ways if not the only way to be proactive in your marketing attack. Everything else waits for the prospect to contact you! With cold calling you go out and contact the prospect. In addition it is one of the only marketing tools that will give you an instant two way conversation with your prospect to allow you to secure a long lasting relationship.

So here are 5 ways to set up and focus yourself on attaining desired cold calling results:

1. Define your criteria. In any sales and marketing attack you need to define your target as narrow as you can. The more specific the better. Narrow nitch yourself

2. Have a preset agenda. You need a road map to get where you want to go. If not a “script” have an outline of where you would like to guide the conversation towards. Use open ended questions (how many times have you heard that?) and pointed questions. Might as well find out if their needs are real and what their time table is on your product or service. 1 day, 1 week 1 month 1 year, ask and find out.

3) Keep it relevant. To be effective you need to be relevant to the prospect. If it’s not important to them they will not care. So before you pick up the phone ask yourself, Why am I calling and why should they want to hear about it. If you cannot answer this question, you might as well not even pick up the phone in the first place and go on making that paperclip chain.

4. Have a voicemail strategy. Ya sorry but you got to figure that at least 75% of your calls are going to voice mail. That is just the way it is. Have a 15 to 20 second voicemail advertisement ready to go. If they want it, if they need it, they will call back.

5. Integrate your marketing channels. As a standalone you can and will get activity off your telemarketing attack but… if you can put it together with a planned multichannel attack you up your odds of success. You give them ways to approach you that they might find more suited with their nature.

Larson Notes & Satire: Telemarketing works cold calling works that is why we do it. If it didn’t people would not pay us to pick up the phone on their behalf and make the calls.

As stated best is a multichannel attack because one size or one approach does not fit all. Need help call us.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Lead Gen: When Where How

2011-10-20T07:40:00.000-07:00

You want new customers, I want new customers, everyone wants new customers. (Well not everyone, believe it or not but in some of my calls some owners tell me they don’t want any. Go figure.)

Lead Generation is a game, cat and mouse, back and forth, win or lose, give and take. If you’re in it you want to be taking more than your giving, I would hope. And if you want your business to survive you need to win more than you lose. Even in losing you want to win.

So how do you win in a mostly loosing game, and you will lose more that you win.

1) The Rule of #2. It’s ok to be number 2. Now you’re asking yourself if I have lost my mind. No its still there, I think. But let’s think about this. You out there going after a new account, which btw belongs to a competitor who wants to keep it. Now think further that you the owner or the account and 2 other competitors also want THAT account. Yet you would really like to have that account as a customer. Use the rule of #2, which is be the number 2 supplier (even if that does not get you any sales) so when #1 messes up (and we all mess up at one time or another) the account already knows you and your capabilities so you can take it over.

2) The Little Things: There is no magic formula in getting new accounts, no magic pill or secret potion or wand waving (sorry Harry Potter but there is no such thing as magic). It’s just doing a lot of little things right for a long long time. Then once you get a lead nurturing it till it grows up to be a real customer.

3) Don’t get tired of your message. As you’re out there in the land of self promotion you are going to get tired of saying the same thing over and over again and again. You might but guess what your prospect wont. To them, it is new and or you are being consistent which to me means you are a candidate for a reliable supplier. Just don’t lose faith in your message. You don’t change horses midstream.

4) They need to know you to buy from you. You can’t play turtle, hiding in your shell and expect people to find you to buy from you. Fact is, if you’re not out there promoting yourself, people will not buy from you. Period, end of story!

5) Look for yourself. Are you a needle in the haystack? When was the last time, or first for that matter, that you did an online search for yourself, of for that matter did a keyword search for yourself? Well get cracking, if you can’t be found they can’t buy. And oh yes, don’t forget the power of the landing page.

6) Engage yourself in Social. This for the average to above average sales or marketer is no longer an option. The creation of a powerful Social presence centered around your marketing strategy will come back to pay major dividends. Work it right you make friends and money at the same time.

7) KISS. Yes, Keep It Simple Stupid. We all or so it seems, seem to go into the world of complex or industry jargon at times. Know your place. You need to be able to talk the talk yet at the same time, make it so everyone, even my 86 year old mother can understand.

Larson Notes & Satire: Two interesting things happened yesterday. First we got 2 new accounts, always exciting. One was thought Online and Social Media marketing the second from just sort of hanging around till the project dropped, which took 9 months. Go figure. But what we do and say does work; you just need to have the consistent staying power. We are now getting 4 to 5 new prospects just from our online social marketing a week. At the same time we still use the “old way” to go out and find customers.

Second is I got a cold call from a company who had down a “inspection” of my web site and were telling me how they could fix my errors and get me listed first on Google. After I got the guy to SHUT UP, I said yes my site age makeup errors but did he do a key word search because if he had done a keyword search he would have found out that I am listed 1st page on Google, Yahoo and Bing for my key word strings and if he could get me higher than 1st page we could talk wherein he went back into his canned speech on how our page had all kinds of errors and on and on and on. He did not listen nor did he care what I said or even wanted to pretend to listen. Now while I might care that my website has errors, fact is, it is coming up on page 1. Then 1 minute later a young lady, from the same company called saying the same thing. Told her I just talked to someone form their company, I am number 1 and get me OFF their call list NOW! Dare I say it was an Indian Company using auto dialers? If that is what you want, they do work cheep.

At Larson & Associates we don’t work that way. We listen and respond to what the customer or prospect says. What is important to them is what is important to us.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Better Phone Results

2011-10-19T07:17:00.000-07:00

Getting more hits or sales off a telemarketing campaign can be difficult and daunting to say the least.

It is somewhat a science in setting up a good campaign and then it becomes an art form. An art form you ask? Oh yes, only 7 percent the communication process is based on what's said. 38 percent is based on style of speech and 55 percent on body language.

Basically you have 2 different ways to get a better ROI. First is to decrease the cost per order (CPO) and the second is to increase the amount of product of service ordered.

To decrease CPO you can either lower the cost per lead or increase the conversion rates. Both of which can happen through practice.

Most phone leads come from off line sources. List managers, SIC numbers, direct mail all play a pivotal role in your leads list. You can slide into web, and social media to get a different kind of lead but it still comes down to picking up the phone and making the call.

Then there is your call team. There are 3 basic kinds of phone agents. There are assassins who burn off all the leads off the list that they don’t get. The prospect then hangs up saying nasty things about you and your mother. Next there are the order takers. These people can be great if all your company needs to do is present an idea or product they can’t live without, also good for inbound telemarketing campaigns. And last there is the Sales based call agent who can take the time to ask questions and find out what their needs and trigger points are. Put this together with a good script and solid need based questions and you have a winner.

If you are out to sell more by increasing your revenue per order, you need more of the Sales based agents who can ask hard (or good) questions to cross sell your company. Or do you need to do a transfer program where the lead is passed off to a sales expert who can answer all the hard questions and leave the telemarketer as a lead in person who does not need to know EVERYTHING about you, your company and your product or service. If you’re selling technically orientated services or products you can use the transfer to have a telemarketing agent, who is not as trained to make the initial call and them pass off the call to the sales agent with their knowledge and experience.

Then look passed the initial sale to the repeat sale. You want that customer to have a good feeling on what happened so that the keep coming back for more, and yes, more is good

Larson Notes & Satire: We thrive on the transfer method of telemarketing. If we know 30% to 50% about you, your company and your product or service we usually have enough information to set up a call back with a more knowledgeable person on your staff. This is one of the best ways I know of to get a faster higher ROI out of your experienced sales staff. Use them for the hard stuff and use us for the easy things like making cold calls, with no call reluctance. Maybe that is why we get our clients into companies like Disney, Microsoft. We don’t care. We just pick up the phone and make the call.

Next!

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

The Daily Deal

2011-10-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

Is it the right thing to do? Does it work? Do people or your kind of clients respond? The daily deal has become one of the hottest marketing trends going on in marketing today. Thank you web and social media marketing. Heck we at Larson & Associates are using it. Groupon, LivingSocial, Larson, are all hammering the Daily Deal idea. If done right it can be a good thing as 74% of those using daily deals do make a profit, but that does leave 26% losing money. If they are doing their deals via Groupon or Livingsocial there are commission costs deeper than just the cost of the enticement. You can try to do it alone, but the drawback is exposure.

Yes, location, location, location! Or is it exposure, exposure, exposure!

So what makes the daily deal so exciting is the impulsiveness of the buyer. There it is, buy it or lose it. Do it now! As I see it the only real long term reason to push into the daily deal is to drive brand recognition and customer loyalty. Sure if you need some quick cash it can help as well but don’t we all want long term growth?

Larson Notes & Satire: Do you want a spike in your sales. Try a daily deal to find out. For today Larson has 2 going:

The winning state of the day is Montana. If you have a company in Montana and sign up for a telemarketing pilot program (3 weeks minimum) of at least 15 hours a week minimum by 4:30 central time today 10/18/11 there will be no set up fee for your program. http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

Today's "Build Illinois" county is White County. If you have a company in White County Illinois and sign up for a telemarketing pilot program (3 weeks minimum) of at least 15 hours a week minimum by 4:30 central time today 10/18/11 there will be no set up fee for your program. http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

Both have bought in new accounts that I think we probably would not have gotten.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Facebook Time

2011-10-06T07:02:00.000-07:00

If you did not already do it, do yourself and your business a favor and make a Facebook Fan page. If you can make a Social Media Profile page you can make a Facebook Fan page.

In looking at Time Spent On web sites even the most callus person has to admit that Facebook not only rules but Is Growing At An Astonishing Rate.

In the United States we now spend roughly 16% of our online time on Facebook. Just stop and think about that and what are your chances of being seen and where?

In Q3 2010, the number was around 10%. That is not good for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL, which are getting hammered. Of those four, only Google had any increase over the last year but not even Google could come close to matching Facebook's growth face paced growth.

Larson Notes & Satire: It all somehow works together. If done right push one and you get responses on the rest.

Why? Ask the little web spiders not me. As for spiders, start liking and embracing them. They are your friends. And as for friends try liking and becoming a fan of my companies Facebook Fan Page https://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans .

I thought I was a late comer to Facebook as I clung to my love for Myspace but now that I’m there (and the rest of the world) I have not just embraced it but am working it like a mad man. I have often said, “Be where you are” and for now, I’m on Facebook.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Power Drive Your Search

2011-10-05T05:57:00.000-07:00

We all understand how powerful it is to own the top spots in a key work search. The higher up you are usually means you are going to get some good quality hits on your site. On the same line of thought, a keyword search is one of the few chances where you have someone just stopping by (your web site) and basically saying “This is what I am looking to buy.”

So some of my more aggressive customers have come to old Uncle Howard and asked, “How can I get more without killing my budget?” And to solve this problem I put a plan that wedded Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Marketing a little differently. First I had a landing page created for the project, packed with all those juicy key words in content, Meta tag key works and title. Then launching that I constructed a Social Media attack around that message basically pushing it into and through their Social Media world so when we were done, they actually owned the first page of a keyword search.

Now it you push it to its logical conclusion you will use those same keywords and content in email, mobile to direct mail to yes your telemarketing attack and hammer those words home.

Now add a pay of click?

Larson Notes & Satire: Can it be done? It already has. I have always preached that you need to work within your budget and your means to hold and work your media at near 100% efficiency. Do that day in and day out and you will control your position and your destiny.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

17 Laws Of Teamwork

2011-10-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

1) Law of significance – One is too small a number to achieve greatness

2) Law of the big picture – The goal is more important that the roll

3) Law of the niche – All players have a place where they add the most value

4) Law of Mount Everest – As the challenge escalates, the need for teamwork elevates

5) Law of the chain – The strength of the team is impacted by its weakest link

6) Law of the catalyst – Winning teams have players who make things happen

7) Law of the compass – Vision gives team members direction and confidence

8) Law of the bad apple – Rotten attitudes ruin a team

9) Law of accountability – Teammates must be able to count on each other when it counts

10) Law of the price tag – The team fails to reach its potential when it fails to pay the price

11) Law of the scoreboard – The team can make adjustments when it knows where it stands

12) Law of the bench – Great teams have depth

13) Law of identity – Shared values define the team

14) Law of communication – Interaction fuels action

15) Law of the edge – The difference between two equally talented teams is leadership

16) Law of high morale – When you’re winning nothing hurts

17) Law of dividends – Investing the tem compounds over time

Larson Notes & Satire: The buck might stop here but I want my team to stand at my side.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Starting Anew: Social Media Marketing Plan

2011-10-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that most would be marketers using Social Media; yes even the big dogs have a major challenge in getting it right. Now right can be a very ambiguous term in talking about Social Media Marketing because what is right for you is not right for me or anyone else. Then you throw in the big dogs into the mix. They clog up the screen with banner ads, sponsored ads, pay for clicks etc. What the big dogs have that you might not have is money, time and people power to throw at it. But money and the amount of it you can throw at Social Media is not what it is about nor is it going to take you where you want to be. It’s not about the money but about the conversations and influence.

You need to get yourself in front of the right people looking for that edge in branching out to the channels where these people are.

When I start out a new plan for a customer I have them wipe the slate as clean as possible, most people have a Social Media presence of some kind so it is hard to start from scratch. I mean you don’t want to go losing all your current 4 F’s (family, friends, followers, fans) but what I do have is a 5 step plan.

1. As yourself why. Why do you want to do social media marketing? Why personally or as a company do you want to be suing this channel? What is your motivation for it? What do you expect to get? What are you willing to put into it, be it time or money?

2. Then ask who in your customer base is now out there using social media. A survey of engineers and industrial professionals showed that only 15% of those people had a twitter account and that those that didn’t, did not don’t plan on creating one. That being said, if your market is engineers, twitter is a useless tool for you as well might be any social media. So think, maybe this is not where you should be putting in your time and energy.

3. Next, open your ears and shut your mouth. At least for a little while. Then when you open your companies twitter account run some searches on key words and key terms. Start with your company’s name. Do a search on your name. Read blogs in your industry and your clients or prospects industry, and don’t forget to read the comments.

4. Now sit back and take it slow. Small steps are best. Comment on the blogs. Join an existing community group and offer some thoughts and advice if you can. Find and follow some key people on twitter and retweet their posts Post your own tweets with links to articles and information your clients will find useful. Start to become a trusted resource.

5. Once you have a good sense of what is out there in your area both your industry and your client’s and prospect’s industry (‘s) get more active. Launch a LinkedIn group (our LinkedIn group is "The Sales Lead Funnel”) or ning site of very your own. Create a Facebook fan page and a blog for your view points to be made and commented on. The more relevant you are to your target the more you and your company start to become the industry expert.

Larson Notes & Satire: I’ve been working Social Media as a lead souse for over 5 years now. That makes me an old timer. Am I an expert? Hardly. I don’t believe there are experts in this field. I feel there are only people that are working it better, are a little more advanced in using the technology, and pushing harder, that is until something changes.

Now you ask, am I getting sales leads off of Social media? Yes, about 1 a day. Am I making sales off of those leads? You better believe it. If I wasn’t I would stop doing what I am doing. Now good is it for me? Let’s just say my currently my largest customer came off of Social Media Marketing.

Could I put a program or run a Social Media Marketing program for you? Probably.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Want to be a Blogger but can’t write?
Try our ghost blog writing service!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Ladybug Keyword Search

2011-09-26T06:04:00.000-07:00

Sesame Street: Ladybugs' Picnic Lyrics

One two three
Four five six
Seven eight nine
Ten eleven twelve
Ladybugs
Came to the ladybugs' picnic
One two three
Four five six
Seven eight nine
Ten eleven twelve
And they all played games
At the ladybugs' picnic
They had twelve sacks so they ran sack races
They fell on their backs and they fell on their faces
The ladybugs 12
At the ladybugs' picnic
They played jump rope but the rope it broke
So they just sat around telling knock-knock jokes
The ladybugs 12
At the ladybugs' picnic
One two three
Four five six
Seven eight nine
Ten eleven twelve
And they chatted away
At the ladybugs' picnic
They talked about the high price of furniture and rugs
And fire insurance for ladybugs
The ladybugs 12
At the ladybugs' picnic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr8vUTm64h0

How many words does it take to get you to the top of a keyword search? The Ladybug keyword search picnic knew. What keywords does it take to get you where you want to be? How many ladybugs came to the picnic? Are you inviting people (though keyword strings) to your ladybug picnic?

One, two, three, four five six?

When people are doing an organic search for something the number of keywords they use is
23% - 1 word
24% - 2 words
20% - 3 words
14% - 4 words
8% - 5 words
5% - 6 words
2% - 7 words
4% - 8 words
* Experian Hitwize January 2011 from a sample of 10 million US internet users.

I can push myself up to the #1 spot in my target areas of the marketing with word strings; I now have it down to 3 words in a keyword search to get the #1 on Google, Yahoo and Bing. With met tag works, landing pages and the like, I can make magic happen on the web.

Just because all the focus these days is on Social Media Marketing these days does not mean you can sit back and not pay any attention to Search Engine Optimization) (SEO).

If you’re like me, and I’ll bet you are, the hardest thing you face in your business is differentiating yourself from the competition. It is hard to say the least, to stand out from the crowd. You can adjust your blog posts, develop web landing pages to go after specific markets, create your set of keywords, do a search engine submission, etc, etc, etc.

If you want to get anywhere in organic natural search (still the best kind of online marketing in my mind), it takes time. Don’t expect any miracles in the first month. After posting your first set of keywords, playing with content and links, the doing an optimization you need to wait, sometimes as much as 30 days.

In talking to Google (ok here it is tech time) they say they are using more that 200 signals with up to 50 variations to determine a websites ranking and that this algorithm is updated weekly! The good folks at Bing say that its algorithm looks at more than 1,000 signals and the emphasis is on newer signals such as social (see previous blog on Bing and Facebook working together). Of course Google is working with twitter to spider out those postings so what do we have?

Looking at this from a Search Engine Marketers perspective with the introduction of social media content into the search engine rankings sort of steals the marketer’s ability to control their specific message and the companies or clients brand message. Or does it?

Still you can’t cheat your way to the top. Sorry Social Media Friends, Followers and Fans it just doesn’t and isn’t happening (yet). You still have to go through the natural selection process to get ranked high. Keywords and solid content still rules.

It might really pay to hire a writer well versed in web site content writing to help you. This is a specialty field of which the payback is usually more than worth the price, provided you have the funds to wait for a ROI of a few months.

Now let’s get things even more confusing. To put in another clog in the system, there is Mobil Search. Another high interest area of the “new media” people. Don’t get me wrong, this is an important marketing tool and with more and more smartphones coming online this becomes a more important area. Google reported recently that there was a 400% increase in their “Click to call” feature and 1 out of 5 of those were Local Related clicks. How important is this? Just follow the money, Walgreens increased their mobile search budget by 300%.

So where are we? Things are ever changing and there is and always will be new online marketing tools to use and play with but for now one thing remains the same, to come to the Ladybug picnic of Keyword search it takes 1, 2, 3 – 4, 5, 6 – 7, 8, 9 – 10, 11, 12 words at the ladybug search picnic.

Larson Notes & Satire:
I was halfway into writing this blog when I took a moment to stop, save and go to my web site and play with my keywords. Yes, they needed a major overhaul. Now I sit and wait for the little spiders to come through and take a peak. Will they like what I just did? I’ll find out in a week or 2. Until then I’ll keep working the social media side trying to passively find some new customers while working the telemarketing side to actively hunt down some new accounts.

Like everything else you need to put a multichannel attack into place if you can. Time, energy and money all come into play and as I have said in the past, it is better to work in only 1, 2 or 3 channels that you can work completely and hard, than 6 that you only work half heartily or every once in a while.

Does it work? That’s why we help to “Make good businesses great and great businesses even better.”

Want your very own blog but can’t or don’t have time to write it?
Larson & Associates has the people who can write specifically for your business, call today!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Facebook dominates SM

2011-09-23T06:39:00.000-07:00

To show how thoroughly Facebook dominates the social networking landscape, comScore passed along this chart of time spent on various social networks.

90% of all time on social networks is spent on Facebook, with other social networks comprised of Myspace, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others, according to comScore.

Larson Notes & Satire:

So where are you focused on when developing your Social Media marketing plan. If it does not include Facebook go rethink your plan. 90% is a lot of people. Now you may tell me that I don’t sell to consumers I sell to the B2B marketing place only. Guess what? So do I. And Guess what? The owners and executives and workers in those companies that you sell to are, unless I have going totally off the deep end, are people

Does it work? Try it; you’ll (probably) like it.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

2011-09-06T06:38:00.000-07:00

Moving on to using telemarketing in combination with Social Media can be very powerful.

Telemarketing is an old school marketing tactic. Social Telemarketing is new, very new approach. When used together and done right it can combine the power of telemarketing for lead generation with information taken from your 3F connections on your social media sites.

If you have ever picked up the phone and called a connection from Facebook, LinkedIn MerchantCircle or a Ning site or even just responded to a tweet you might be already starting or have an understanding of how powerful this marketing activity is or could be.

Social & Telemarketing puts a structure around that concept, combines with professional telemarketing skills and practices, and broadens the range to monitor pretty much most conversations online!

When telemarketing is done correctly it delivers results with a very superior return on investment (ROI). This will of course vary by industry, product or service, timing, and target audience but it is one of the best “attack” modes in marketing while most others are asking for the prospect to pick up the phone on their own volition. The trick is to figure out where telemarketing will deliver the biggest bang for your buck. The same is true for the combination of Social Media Marketing and Telemarketing.

Keep in mind, a straight Telemarketing program goes out where you have a prospect data list of companies in a certain area, or industry matching a list in the best way possible.

Social Media Marketing and Telemarketing combines the power of telemarketing for lead generation with information and connections on your social media platforms.

If you already pick up the phone to call a connection on LinkedIn or respond to a tweet you will already understand the powerful this activity can be.

Social Media Marketing and Telemarketing puts the structure you need in a telemarketing program, and believe me you need to work in an orderly fashion to be any good at telemarketing into the free flowing concept of Social and the off-the-wall prospect controlled climate it sends you into. It combines telemarketing skills and practices, and takes them to a broader level to work and monitor conversations online!

When you think about it, it’s no wonder that businesses are accepting the concept of Social Media Marketing and Telemarketing or at least are thinking that way on an individual level. The point is, it’s a winning combination you can afford not to engage in. It is more of a question of who, when and how someone is going to be doing this for your business and how you are going to integrate into your sales and marketing structure.

The most typical challenges with Social Media Marketing and Telemarketing tend to be:
•It’s not very practical to sit in front of a computer all day to monitor conversations.
•Subscribing to social media monitoring tools is still a pricey for an individual license or for small volume of conversations.
•Working through search results gotten without the use of social media monitoring takes up a lot of time that maybe should be spent in other places.
•Even if there was an ideal alert for a telemarketing call, who wants to be the one to actually make the cold call!
•Going though and actually calling the prospects on your 3F list checks still need to be done and they are still cold calls.

Larson Notes & Satire: Using Larson’s as your Telemarketing / Social Media Marketing provides you with a cost effective way of becoming a major player:

• We are effective in social media monitoring
• We can give you a lower cost than if done in house
•We just happen to love cold calling!
•We are professionals use to calling C-Suite executives in a professional way with an awareness of social media and high profile calling.
• We can offer you support to let you integrate this information into sales and marketing processes and a CRM system
•We can work with you to internal social media activities that are not suitable for calling.

The benefits to you in using a Telemarketing / Social Media Marketing attack are:
• You have access to immediate leads from highly targeted cold calling turning them into more qualified prospects
•You can get a higher ROI (probably better than most other sales and marketing activities)
• You can provide a quicker more timely response to prospects
• You give out an increased brand awareness
• You build upon the impression you have already made as one of their 3F’s.
• You are working in a world of an ongoing sales pipeline of high quality leads

The benefits of using the Telemarketing / Social Media Marketing combo over straight Telemarketing.
•There are fewer barriers to getting through to the actual decision maker
•You should get a more immediate rapport with better knowledge of their needs.
• Your name is a known entity before the call is made.
• You have fewer wrong numbers, out of date info, and less unqualified prospects.
• The people are usually more receptive, friendly and positive!

Seems that most Social Media Marketing encourages engagement, connections, relevant conversations, compelling offers, and there is an emphasis is on pulling people to you. In using the Telemarketing - Social Media Marketing combo you actually pick up the phone and talk to them! It’s about going out in a positive way using a professional and appropriate medium to get to know them better. It’s also about being organized so you can take and integrate your Social information into a CRM system and start the real sales and marketing processes.

Telemarketing Social Media Marketing is not about:
• Using low skilled telemarketers who annoy people
• Becoming a replacement for engaging people online
• Becoming a quick win so you that you don’t have anything else with social media.

Does it work? Plan your work and work your plan.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Telemarketing / Direct Mail

2011-09-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

I view these two as the big 1-2 punch in a direct marketing campaign

You might view Telemarketing as a separate method of getting sales leads, something that alone should solve the problem of prospecting, and many of my customers use it this way, some with good results and others not so good.

Still for the best results telemarketing when combined with direct mailing is so hard hitting if you have the chance go for it. Each channel offers the prospect a different form of sensation, direct mailing appealing visually and telemarketing audibly. The combination of this strategy is a kind of delayed action audiovisual experience for the prospect and if used correctly, more powerful than an earthquake.

As stated above many of the companies we at Larson work with rely only on the single form of telemarketing or some other channel in their marketing and/or advertising in acquiring prospective clients and sales leads, I think I can say that most B2B companies who use a mix of marketing channels for creating interest for their services and products, as our top 2 ROI accounts show blend different Telemarketing/Direct Mail strategies.

When Direct mailing and Telemarketing are put together with one supporting the other we have worked past one of the main problems in a telemarketing only program, that being a problem in the lack of TRUST.

It's not easy to get trust in someone who you've just got on phone for the first time. Regardless of the skill of the telemarketer in putting people at ease, first time calls on the phone have major limitations.

You can't see the other guy and you might not have ever heard of his company. So trust goes way down and why, because people receive more than half of their information VISUALLY.

On the phone while receiving a telemarketing call, they have the problem of not seeing the telemarketer, so we can't see if he looks honest and thus we can't truly trust this person.

The main goal then of the telemarketer is to get the other person talking which will gradually build up trust in their mind toward the telemarketer themselves and the company doing the telemarketing.

So creating trust with telemarketing with a direct mailing piece can have a greater effect.

Then there is the use of telemarketing as an ongoing marketing attack channel which should not be a one-time event. If you want leads you need to be consistent in your attack. If your telemarketing campaign is done correctly, telemarketing has a repetitive effect creating interest and trust.

Pushed out further this gradually increased attack can be cemented by working prospects between direct mailing and telemarketing, weaving the two channels together into a multi stream of contact.

If done right the mailer should give the prospect one positive thought with a visual element and if the telemarketer works it right they should have a good solid connection.

They should know you, and understand what you can do to help their company! You are no longer a stranger on the other end of the phone line no matter if is your 1st call or your 4th.

The prospect has heard of your company, he has already formed a positive opinion about your company. You are proven to be real, the direct mailing is tangible evidence and things will start off at higher level of communication from the get go.

And so your telemarketing direct mail attack progresses, month by month, in a planned out organized way.

It might take a week, a month, or more... but who cares? If you plan your telemarketing & direct mailing attack right, it can only end one way, and with hundreds of ongoing communication cycles, it will soon start raining new clients!

And that's the power when you combine direct mailing with telemarketing.

There are a few ways to be doing this mix. Mail first, call second. Call first mail second and call mail call. They all have a way of hitting people at different levels.

If you mail first it opens the way for your call. When the call comes in your can reference the letter or postcard giving your quick 20 second opening and . . . Send them out bulk rate. Zip coded for even less in postage but as stated a few blogs ago, your through rate is going to go down unless you have a very clean list, but unlike email if you have the wrong name odds are it will go to whoever too that persons place or job.

If you call first and mail second, I use a paced out approach sending out mail as addresses are confirmed the mailing package is send. The mailing cost goes up but the through rate goes up as well so less in postage loss and direct mail content.

If you go with the Wave mailing approach you send out 3 to 4 letters, then a call. The first letter is usually thrown in the bucket, but they at least will see your company name, the second they might think, I’ve heard of this place haven’t I? The third they might actually read it. Then the call. They know you, and they have heard good things about you. Why, because you told them ONLY good things.

You can use a letter, a postcard the key is only that you mix them in a constant flow to pull them into you.

Larson Notes & Satire: Does this work? You bet ya it works. Of the companies that we do telemarketing work for, the 40% have a direct mail program. They get on the average a 66% better ROI that the straight telemarketing customers. Their numbers go from 4.54% up to 9.833%.

Are those numbers you would want to see?

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

So Many Marketing Channels

2011-09-01T05:50:00.000-07:00

It’s a mix and match world of Marketing with not only more and different choices than we had 10 years ago but new and different ways to use and mix them together. It is a mix and match world. So let me ask you, do you have a marketing attack plan, have you thought about what tools you want to be using and mixing and what their effect on each other is? http://www.larsonassociates.ws/marketing_tools For our part in this battle over the customer’s mind over the next few days I will be mixing and matching telemarketing, direct mail, social media marketing, e mail, TV, radio, blogs and a few others and try to find how they each can work with the other so we can all make better, more educated decisions on what to use.

Your needs and choices are not going to be the same as the ones I need to make for my company and its growth.

Direct marketing has always been tough and now more than ever everything is on the table, every dollar spent, every second used is questioned and is held accountable.

We have the big 6 channels, telemarketing, direct mail, social media marketing, web marketing / SEM, TV and radio with a cast of smaller but possibly equally important channels for you to be incorporating and weaving in.

You drive to work or home, do you have the radio on? You get home or to work, you check email, you listen to any voice messages the mail comes you scan though it to see what there is. The phone rings you pick it up. You sit back and turn on the news or a TV show. Banner ads come up on your browser as you do a web search. There are just so many ways to be touched with today’s marketing. And while we might not be able to pick the channels that are the cheapest or easiest for your customers, yours, not mine, you can determine how you want to blend them together to get the maximum ROI as you go along.

Larson Notes & Satire: I have said over and over my big 3 tools are telemarketing, direct mail and social media marketing. My social work might also include blogs if not add that. You need to figure it out for yourself of have someone like me do the figuring and implementation for you. But whatever you choose you need to pick your channels and use them to the utmost. I mean 95%-100% use. If not, back off that channel and use what you can use at a high level.

Over the next few days and maybe weeks depending on the time I have Ill look at mixing and matching different channels and how they work or maybe don’t work together. I hope you enjoy it.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd is our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Need A Social Media Expert?

2011-08-25T06:38:00.000-07:00

After our blog of yesterday “Bing To Index Facebook” I have to ask the leading in question, Do you need a Social Media Expert on your staff or team?

As Social Media grows as an accepted form or marketing, advertising and sales do you need a Social Media Expert? If you are a Social Media enthusiast you are probably jumping up and down saying Yes! Yes! Yes! If not, you’re sitting there thinking ya right. Social Media is a bunch of busy bodies sitting around with nothing else to do.

I doubt if you even have to guess where I stand on this issue. Yes!

No matter what side your on, pro or con I think that we can all agree that when a SM program fails it is because of 1 of 2 reasons, either the company went out and set up a Facebook pang with a twitter account in a loud voice declares “We are doing Social Media” and does not work to be established and noticed and makes no consorted effort to become a involved player or a company goes out and tries to buy their way to the top without any real strategy. Wrong platform, wrong content, and they push out there message thinking it works like traditional advertising does.

Think again, Social Media heavy on the SOCIAL.

I have found and seen that companies that are doing well in Social Media Marketing for the most part have a person or group of (excited) people who serve as the core to their program. This is a person or people who want to be using the social channels any way they can, tying to push the envelope to deliver the kind of INTERACTION MESSAGE that the F’s (friends, fans, followers) want to see, hear and interact with.

Now the key question for me, Can this function or should this function be outsourced? IN some ways yes and others you better think about it.

Using a company like mine can help you plan out your attack, organize it, putting together the strategy, policies and general education of your employees on what to do with this new tool. Some people say that what they, an outside source might not be able to do is actually speak for the company, but again I question that. In the Larson plan there is 1 person and1 person alone that works on any given account. They know you, love you, understand you. They can get so close that they are able to speak as “the company” would. Then you need to trust them to do it. Can you? If you hold the leash too tight your Social Media will stagnate and stall.

Larson Notes & Satire: As a company I have for the last 13 years devoted myself to lead generation and the kind of advertising and marketing the gets customers to my clients FAST. Today, not tomorrow. They don’t have time to wait, and I don’t have the patience. So where does Social Media fit in? When we started at it was a little more each year, then the year became a little more each month and the month became a week and the week became a day. Will the day become an hour? http://www.larsonassociates.ws/SocialMediaMarketing we are ready to serve you if you want us.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Bing To Index Facebook

2011-08-24T06:24:00.000-07:00

Bing has made an announcement that might prove to be a big hit, I mean a very big hit for those of us now are using Facebook as a Social Media Marketing tool and at the same time huge blow to Google’s dominance. Starting now, yes now, Bing is incorporating Facebook data into its search results. Been there and did some searches and yes it is up and running on the Bing search engine! So now if you search for something on Bing and you have activated Facebook results, you will see the pages, products and websites your friends (even their faces show up) like and recommend way up in results, no matter if that website normally ranks first second or heaven forbid, the last page on a search.

Perhaps even more interesting is that these results will appear totally independent of any traditional and what we thought of as normal SEO practices. If your friends like it, it will appear on the first page. Magic?

More than ever for companies engaged in Social Media Marketing “It's Not What you Know, but Who you Know”. Content is important but it is who you are rubbing elbows with that will be making a major difference.

The more your business is visible on Facebook, the better chance of your website being Liked and your content, products and services being pushed higher up on this new social search results.

If your business has not been active in Social Media Marketing you better get it going. (A pause for a commercial message: At Larson’s we know what we are doing and we can get you going on a Social Media Marketing campaign, quickly, easily and completely)

Yet, content is still King, long live the King. The only way a page will be Liked by the masses on Facebook is if it contains great content. So don’t think you can park your content on the side and get all your friends to like you and you will be projected up onto the heaven of web search pages, the first page. It is still going to take work, lots of work. Varied content, blog posts, videos, images and audio, not to mention content that is optimized. And not to add more challenges but this does not kill off traditional SEO. Pages will still need to be "found" in order to be Liked from this new Bing button. Total strangers to your business can still influence search results, so SEO still matters.

It's easy to see that Bing is relying, or are they hoping and praying on using Facebook for social search. You might think that, because it's focused only on Facebook, this news is not totally earth shaking, as Facebook goes past three-quarters of a billion users across the world, but, it is. At least to Bing. Consider now that Facebook users 750,000000,000 (looks more impressive when you type out all the zeros) of them now have a reason to use Bing rather than Google.

Another interesting thought is that Facebook could technically block Google from indexing any or all of its content. This would and could kill Google’s need to heavy Facebook users.

In the words of Bing:
"At Bing, our mission is to help you make faster, more informed decisions. We designed a new way to experience search, focusing on great design, task completion, instant answers, and vertical categories like shopping and travel to help you make decisions faster. While we’ve made great strides in these areas, there is a huge opportunity for improvement. Today, search remains largely driven by facts and links – we think it’s time to change that.

Research tells us that 90% of people seek advice from family and friends as part of the decision making process. This “Friend Effect” is apparent in most of our decisions and often outweighs other facts because people feel more confident, smarter and safer with the wisdom of their trusted circle. A movie critic may pan the latest summer block buster, but your friends say it’s the feel good movie of the year, so you ignore the critic and go (and wholeheartedly agree). Historically, search hasn’t incorporated this “Friend Effect” – and 80% of people will delay making a decision until they can get a friend’s stamp of approval. This decision delay, or period of time it takes to hunt down a friend for advice, can last anywhere from a few minutes to days, whether you’re waiting for a call back, text, email or tweet.

Today, Bing is bringing the collective IQ of the Web together with the opinions of the people you trust most, to bring the “Friend Effect” to search. Starting today, you can receive personalized search results based on the opinions of your friends by simply signing into Facebook. New features make it easier to see what your Facebook friends “like” across the Web, incorporate the collective know-how of the Web into your search results, and begin adding a more conversational aspect to your searches. Decisions can now be made with more than facts, now the opinions of your trusted friends and the collective wisdom of the Web.

You can quickly see what your friends like and are sharing. Find and connect with the right friends faster. Pick the brains of friends of who live where you’re traveling and share shopping lists with your own team of retail gurus. And, return the favor to your friends by liking more things on the Web. With one click you can let your network know that you like a brand, an article, a celebrity or even a place. Because we know the best decisions are not just fueled by facts, they require the opinions and recommendations of your friends."

If you are a heavy social or local Social Networking person Google search results, while complete are now less relevant as my person search needs become more social and localized. How many online socialites are there? Now you can start to understand why Google has been frantically trying to enter the social space with Google +1. Maybe, for once it's too little, too late for Google.

Larson Notes & Satire: Ill just let the above words set in and let you think on it for a while. If you are not hammering away at Social Media Marketing like we have (active since 2006) you better. I’ve been saying it over and over. Get involved in Social Media Marketing for your business, and then Google started doing “Real Time Search”. At that time the Larson web site http://www.larsonassociates.ws/ saw a 1000% weekly hit increase, yes you heard me 1000%. Now with this new Bing deal? http://www.larsonassociates.ws/SocialMediaMarketing we are ready to serve ourselves and you. Will we see another 1000% increase? That would be nice.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Holiday Email Planning

2011-08-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

HO! HO! HO! Its’ that time of the year. Yes it’s time to start planning your holiday emailing.

If you have been at this a while you already have a list of email addresses you can use. If not here are some holiday tips to get you in the right direction.

Start with building your subscriber list with your Social Media F’s (you know, Friends, Fans, Followers) this might be your greatest resource in securing email address fast. IN addition it will cement your Social Media and your business marketing together giving you a maximum reach with your Social Media Marketing and (hopefully) fewer kick backs and spam digs on your account. If you are providing content that is worth their, your recipient’s interest with things such as educational tips, valuable coupons or time sensitive discounts you on the right track. At the same time, through Social Media alert your F’s that you have special offers heading their way and that they should be on the lookout for them. At the same time if you are hitting multiple Social Networks you should be tailoring your offer and content specifically for them. This is not print (like we talked about yesterday, and it is not as costly or difficult to change copy. Be flexible like the channel demands and always end with a call to action! Tell them what to do to BUY!

At the same time you can be testing the format and different kinds of offers to see what entices your customers and prospects to take the action you want, do they want $10.00 off on a large purchase or does a 25% off grab their attention more? Give it a try.

As for make-up and the visual aspects of your email, test where to put a call to action (buy) button, up, down, right, left? Color, red, green, blue, yellow, pink (?). Then clean up those navigation bars Make them visible and make sure they work!!! No I’m not kidding, check the links!

Then as stated above, segment your target audience into categories, site you got them from, age, sex, geography. If you want to take this down deeper, take a look at the activity of your F’s on your list. At the active or inactive? Another step is to find out (dare I say ask) how often you’re F’s want you to contact them. Not that they can’t change their minds on how much email they want from you but at least you are engaging them and teaching them to talk to you.

As with any marketing campaign the key word is always engagement. You want to have as many people as possible talking and interacting with you. Only in this way will your message, your brand, your offer(s), penetrate the marketing noise that bombards your customers and prospects.

Larson Notes & Satire: Start now friends. If holiday marketing is important to your business now is the time to get into gear. If it is Halloween your almost too late. Thanksgiving, run fast. Christmas, you have enough time if you start out as a good pace. It can get easier. If you started working on this a year ago, yes look back I did a blog like this about a year ago, you would already be working on what you need to be doing to have it all in place. Heck you might have made the Back to School blitzes that were going on in July and early August.

Email does work. Its cheep so you’re ROI can be very good. But if done wrong, you will get a black eye to how not just your customers and prospects see you but how the search engines and internet providers see you has well. Do it wrong and you will end up with 2 black eyes.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Profit Loss Of Direct Mail

2011-08-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Ampersand Graphics

Most of you know that direct mail is one of the 3 legs of a Larson Target Marketing Plan. If you have been following us for any length of time you know the 3 parts are Direct Mail, Social Media Marketing and Telemarketing.

Most of my clients and maybe even you want to shy away from Direct Mail. I understand, there are (necessary) expenses involved. Yet it is or can be a crucial element to a complete program working on multi channels and levels. So let’s take a look at the P&L of a direct mail program.

You need to start by measuring each individual marketing campaign as a unit not part of a monthly or quarterly figure. The application of overhead expenses depends on the nature of the marketing campaign and the elements you are using.

You want to know is Response Rate %, Average Order Value, Sales Per Piece, Complete Costs, Cost of Order Fulfillment. It is in finding out or knowing these fugues that you can make educated choices on what is happening, what to do, what to change and how to get and make it better.

By being able to analyze all the metrics you are able to implement the actions needed to either take corrective actions during the campaign or to take advantage of new markets that unfold as the campaign goes on.

Average Unite Price and Average Order Value. The average unit price is calculated by dividing your gross sales by the number of orders.

Response Rate and Service or Unites per order. This is a way for marketers to rapidly fix any P&L imbalances. You measure this by the total number of orders by the total number of mailed pieces. If you add in current clients, they should be higher than if you only use new clients or prospects.

Your Cost Of Goods or Services. As a main part of your success you need to be monitoring all the elements of your Cost of Goods and Services. These costs include things like, product/service costs, freight, shipping, mark downs, etc.

Fulfillment Costs. These costs include everything that is involved with not just receiving a client’s orders and inquiries but shipping them out as well. Remember the costs of returns as well.

Advertising / Production costs. In a direct mail or print campaign this can be the largest cost center. Creative costs, print costs, mailing costs. If you look at your response rate, as it goes up (or down) the % of the campaign as a % of sales goes up and down. This is the number that scares away most potential direct mailers from working on and with this channel.

General Overhead. Can’t get away from running the company and the costs involved. Even if you did nothing these costs exist. Do you know what your break even is, if you do NOTHING? Rent, salaries, gas, water, electric, waist removal.

Once you have identified all your costs you can start to go to work. As you do your first and them more campaigns you will start to have a personal company benchmark, until then you might be able to pull out competitors results or industry averages. With this benchmarking step you can evaluate your program and your current position.

Larson Notes & Satire: Start talking real numbers in sales. Don’t be using Monopoly money but real dollars that can make or (sorry to say) break your company. With knowledge comes power. If you’re going to jump into direct mail be smart about it. More and more the mail box is become empty. Why do you think the US Postal Service is losing money at such an alarming rate? No one is sending mail. This is why it has become, if for no other reason such a powerful channel you your overall marketing plan. If you do nothing else and have put a solid offer together you should expect 1.5% to 3% return. To me that is not good enough. All you need to do is put in a little telemarketing to call up each and every one of those mail recipients and your numbers should at the least double.

You got to hammer down your attack and make it pay, else go and blow your money, your competition will be happy to see you waist your efforts.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Are Likes A Positive ROI On Facebook?

2011-08-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

While ROI can be hard to calculate on and in Social Media, one of the top ways people and companies are doing it is by the 3 Fs, friends, fans and followers. With over 500 million people going in and out of Facebook alone it is a sizable place where you need to be in your Social Media Marketing attack, no matter if your B2B or B2C.

You are betting that your biggest fans are going to become your biggest marketer proponents in social media. That being said the more “LIKES” you get the more your sphere of influence becomes. In addition “Likes” are valuable because they help you get to know who your best customers are as well as who your best influencers are and (here is the biggie) what they want to see out of your postings for your company. The more they “like” the more you and your company get sent out into the Wild World of the Social Media world.

If you start to offer specialty coupons or discounts you can see how your promotions work out in real time. You can figure out transactional data like order history, time of day, kinds or promotions that work in Social Media. The possibilities are endless. If you keep up the attack posting information, promotions, special “fan” deals you should not only see monetary increases to your bottom line but see a better longer ROI in a shorter amount of time.

Larson Notes & Satire: Ok so it might not be all rosy in the land of Social Media Marketing, at least as much as you want it to be. Sad truth is that 3% to 10% of your fan base is going to opt out and or make your posts “hidden” at a minimum. So make sure you are relevant and inspiring each and every day!

Real ROI is about sales. It is about your Friends, Fans and Followers taking action of some kind on your behalf. You don’t want to be spinning your wheels; you need to dig in and cash in. you need action, you NEED sales!

In and of themselves Fans and their Likes do not make for a strong ROI, but it is a start. Without them you have already lost the battle. The more of the 3F’s the merrier. If you haven’t started call us, and we can make it happen for you. If you have already dipped your toe into the Social Media Marketing world, and need a push, again call us and we can help take you to the next level.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Social Media ROI

2011-08-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

I have been spending way too much time pondering and thinking, reading and studying about Social Media and ROI. But then I am spending time, more time than it is worth (maybe) on this marketing channel. So where is the pay back? Where is MY ROI?

Is it the 3 F’s (fans, friends, followers)? Is it the number of calls or emails of interesting in your product of service? Is it the number of actual sales? In all my studying and real time experience, it is or has become all of the above. Yes the more exposure the more hits the more hits the more prospect inquiries the more inquiries the more sales. Makes sense doesn’t it? To my simple mind it does.

Now it seems that most marketers want to put a hard number on what this site is doing this for me or how that site gave me this hit, and while that is important and should be kept track of I tend to look at it as how many hits am I getting in my overall Social Media Marketing efforts. I am in over or on 100 sites some I work some I do nothing with unless I get an inquiry. I try to set them up on automatic postings and getting an email saying I got a reply as much as possible. Is it working? Sometimes.

That being said a report I read somewhere said that over 70% of respondents expect that they will be able to tie in Social Media Marketing into some form of ROI. To date another report said that as of now only 40% of respondents can put a ROI number on their efforts now.

For me I still say the best strategy is to put your ROI in terms of what it is doing to your sales funnel. Yes I still believe in the sales funnel. Silly me huh?

Last May Facebook introduced their version of an ads dashboard which shows not just the number of people who clicked on a “sponsored” ad but how it compares with its potential reach. Pretty neat. It also lets marketers look at the clicks as compared with the number of connections or those actually taking action on the click. So maybe there is progress being made. Or not.

Larson Notes & Satire: Yes friends throw that Social Media Mud! The more mud you throw the more is going to find a wall to stick on! As I said above I am on some 100 or more sites and growing (found a new one yesterday) and with each new week I am getting more inquiries about my serves directly from my Social Media Marketing efforts. Not as many as I should get or deserve to get but it has seen a marked improvement. That does not mean I am abandoning telemarketing and direct mail. No not at all, I am ADDING to my already well oiled machine of multichannel marketing attack methods. If you can handle it the more channels the merrier. Just remember if you’re going to add do it well or don’t do it. If you can’t do it with at least a 90% proficiency level drop it our outsource it to someone like me. If not you are only wasting your time!

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program
Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Reach Out And Call

2011-08-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

We have more marketing choices than ever before. Yes, there is mail, there is email, there is SEO, there is Social Media, but don’t underestimate the phone. You can twit all you want, you can blast away you can fill a mail box but until you talk to the prospect and sell something nothing is going to happen. It can be their dime or yours but some way shape of form someone has to reach out and make the connection.

Those businesses and marketers who put all their eggs in one basket, who fail to put together a well balanced multi-channel attack will miss out on connecting with some their prospects. Systems that want prospects to opt in to receive content can help a marketing harvest names and numbers, if they opt in. Systems that ask and ask and ask, but give back almost nothing.

Social media might be a wonderful thing (jury is still out) but until you pick up the phone and actually speak to the prospect you will never know.

In one survey put together by Rasorfish an interactive agency, people are STILL more inclined at a when they want something to go to a company’s actual web site or make a connection over the phone and talk to a rep.

Larson Notes & Satire: Telemarketing, telesales call it what you want, that is the main focus of how we help companies attract new clients. Sure we do mail, we do social media marketing, we can email blast, we get involved in SEO but in telemarketing we can go out and get the prospect rather than sitting back and waiting, hoping that they will call us. Now between you and me, I’d rather be more proactive in my sales rather than reactive.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

The Cost Of Bad Leads

2011-07-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

Leads, can’t live without them and for some companies can’t live with them. What you ask. Can’t live with leads? Oh yes my friend that is if the leads come with a high cost.

If you are a company looking to expand you might be looking at buying leads. If you go this route you need to keep in mind several things.

If you go to the US Census you will find that every year there are about 600,000 new businesses created and there are about 600,000 businesses that fail.

In addition there has been a 33% turnover rate in jobs and employment of the more than 40 million jobs listed and that (are you sitting down) 6,000 people change jobs every hour!

Put that in the same area as the study done by “The Sales & Marketing Institute” it was bout that 70.8% of collected businesses cards had 1 or more changes within 12 months.

If you just go and buy a list, even a good list, you can almost figure that 10% of the information is incorrect.

If you were doing a straight direct mail piece at a cost of $0.75 to $1.50 of say 1000 pieces you are going to lose between at a minimum $75.00 to $150.00 of your costs up front.

So think about your looses before you start and you won’t be surprised. But then think, that is why there are companies that can keep you out of trouble in this area. You might pay the same price but you will get more and better results.

Larson Notes & Satire: Normally we don’t do a flat out direct mail program. At Larson’s we have a program that we normally put our clients though. Telemarketing-Direct Mail-Social Media Marketing. We get not only good results but results that are higher than normal. Call or email us to find out more.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Progra
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Is It Worth You Doing It?

2011-06-29T07:41:00.000-07:00

Average ratio is 60 to 1 / calls to sales 1 of 10 cold calls leads to prospect appointment
1 of 6 appointments leads to sale

Most experts agree that it takes at least 5 ‘touches’ to finalize 80% of sales. The general statistics go something like this:
- 2% of sales are made on the 1st contact (touch). These are usually people who have already done their research and know exactly what they want;
- 3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact;
- 5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact;
- 10% of sales are made on the 4th contact;
- 80% of sales are made on the 5th contact.

The above are industry standards. So how can you get the odds more in your favor?

First off you need to be aggressive. That does not mean the traditional agressivenss associated with a telemarketer that brow beats you into submission or the classic “Used Car Salesman” idea. If you go in with a multiple touch, multichannel approach you will not cork someone off. How you construct your program will make all the difference on how fast your lead generation program will start producing.

Now while I use telemarketing as the main core of my programs. We also put in place SEO . direct mail, email blasts, social media marketing strategies, blogs, to name a few. In this way we can lower the odds of engagement. And getting a lead from ground zero to happy customer in the shortest amount of time possible, based on your sales cycle, of course.

Larson Notes & Satire: We need sales, we need them now! How many salespeople have hear that cry out of the mouth of their sales manager? What do you do? It’s like a street drag race. Your stopped at a stop sign. Engines poised and ready, the light turns green, you pop the clutch and go………. It can be done but like the drag race it takes a lot of energy to go from ZERO to 60 in 5 seconds.

“HeyLittle Cobra” by the Rip Cords:

Hey, Little Cobra, don't you know
you're gonna to shut 'em down

I took my Cobra down to the track,
hitched to the back of my Cadillac,

Everyone was there just a waiting for me
There were plenty of Stingrays and XKEs,

Spring little Cobra getting ready to strike
Spring Little Cobra with all your might
Spring little Cobra getting ready to strike
Spring Little Cobra with all your might

Hey, Little Cobra, don't you know
you are going to shut them down

When the flag went down, you could hear rubber burn,
The Stingray pulled me going into the turn

I hung a big shift, and I got into high,
When I when I flew by the Stingray, I waved bye bye.

Spring little Cobra getting ready to strike
Spring Little Cobra with all your might
Spring little Cobra getting ready to strike
Spring Little Cobra with all your might

Hey, Little Cobra, Don't you know
you are going to shut 'em down

Around the turn into the straight away
I was blowing off everything that got in my way,

Stingrays and Jags were so far behind
I took my Cobra out of gear and let it coast to the line.

Spring little Cobra getting ready to strike
Spring Little Cobra with all your might
Spring little Cobra getting ready to strike
Spring Little Cobra with all your might

Hey, Little Cobra, Don't you know
you are going to shut 'em down
Shut'em down, shut'em down, shut'em down...

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

It’s Really In The Outbound

2011-06-28T06:25:00.000-07:00

How many emails, how many sales calls do I get by online web guys, SEO experts, get 2000 leads on line in a day people? Every week they hit me with their offers of more and more leads. It is wonderful to be loved. Now I admit my web site is nothing to write home about but it is getting the job done, people are finding it, reading it and some are reacting and even becoming clients. And as much as these wonderful people want to help they don’t seem to understand that in some categories with the help of landing pages I come up #1. Include that with my #1 status in a local search and well . . .

But hold on a second, let’s look at this a moment. Seems these we will make you #1 on Google guys are doing, can it be, OUTBOUND MARKETING. Oh MY Gosh, say it ain’t so! They are selling me “inbound marketing”, using “outbound marketing” techniques.

Don’t get me wrong here; I don’t want to be misunderstood. Having a marketing strategy of being found is good and being 1st on a Google search is a beautiful thing but it just does not create enough volume. We, you and I, need a certain number of leads which can then be converted into a certain number of sales to stay in business. Inbound leads only make up a small percentage of those needed prospects.

To get it done you need to implement two key elements, predictive prospecting and an outbound marketing plan.

When you need to find who would buy from you. You can find names but who out of the 1000’s of names you can collect are real prospects? Here is my way of finding top prospects, the same way I do it for my clients. I ask them to tell me 2 different things. 1st who are their top 10 customers. 2nd what kind of work is most profitable for them to do. If you can tell me that I can compile a list of the best possible prospects that will fit your business. Once you have this list of golden leads you are already down the path of easier closes because you know this kind of prospect and you already know you can help them with what you are now doing. Be lazy my friend.

The 2nd part is you need to go out and get proactive about prospecting, which is why many companies call us. It can be telemarketing, cold calling, direct mail, email blasts, but it is about pushing, yes pushing yourself in front to the prospect to talk to them, let them know you exist to help them in your specialty. Do it right you will find this the fastest way to find selling opportunities. Unless you are lucky most people do things and buy from the same companies they have worked with before. As Muhammad Ali once said, “You Got To Beat The Champ”. To beat him you have to go after him, not just trade online punches.

A special mention here of Social Media needs to be made. Singularly it is an important channel for you to be working. If you are paying attention to your 3 F’s (friends, followers, fans) you can send out targeted messages and get instant feedback which you respond to. Remember Social Media Marketing is about being social and that means you need to be there to socialize and become a known factor in your area of expertise, the expert in your field. It your listening your 3F’s will tell you everything you need to know to sell them.

Larson Notes & Satire: Be lazy my friends. Outbound Marketing is becoming a lost art. Sales people and even marketing professionals want to take the easy road to lead gen and prospecting, but the easy road is not the lazy way to do it. I strongly urge you to be proactive with both your inbound and your outbound marketing / sales work. Get 1st page in Google, twitter your way to the top, find your Facebook fan feeding frenzy that is all fine and wonderful but take a hint if you want to be “found” you need to be seen and the best way that I know of is in outbound sales and marketing. Don’t wait from them. Even if your 1st page Google, if they don’t search they won’t find you.

Create a balanced sustainable attack for long term success. Together inbound/outbound marketing can deliver you the best and most leads possible. Be lazy, stay lazy my friends.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Steps To Better Leads

2011-06-27T06:40:00.000-07:00

I don’t know too many companies that went out for business because they did not have enough sales. And in those sales there are 3 kinds all important but all different.

1) The One Time Sale.
2) The Repeat Customer
3) The New Customer

For today I will focus on finding the New Customer. In the process you will find The one time sale but isn’t what we want the new customer that becomes a repeat customer? Those are the bread and butter of a company. The ones you can “go to the bank” with.

It is an unfortunate fact that sales people now are under “quota” at an alarming rate. From what I’m hearing almost 50% of all sales people will be below expectations. In my humble opinion, as if anyone cares, this is due to first off the economy and second, fewer leads to sell to.

So what are the some solid steps you can be taking to rectify this problem?

1st Define your market. Sit down and identify your 5 most profitable accounts. Figure out what kind of companies they are. Find the largest grouping of those industries and picking the largest industry first, create your basic lead list.

2nd Decide in your own company what is the definition of a lead. Don’t get trapped into your definition being ONLY those with budget, authority, need, and a time frame, broaden your scope. As important as these are as a whole there are glaring areas where need (or any of these singularly) might trump the buying process.

3rd Agree on expectations. Sales and marketing need to agree on what is a qualified lead or not. Your salespeople should know the kind of lead they can work with and convert and then marketing needs to be able to get them that targeted prospect. Measuring results should help you to pin point what you need to be even more successful.

4th Reports and how often. What do you measure? Cost per lead, cost per opportunity, cost per sale? Having good controls is important but don’t make it stifling to the overall process.

5th Fewer but better = better. Time is money so when looking at your lead gen program providing your sales staff with fewer but a more qualified leads list is more cost effective for them and they should love you for it. If you only look at and demand numbers that is what you will get.

6th Long term leads. I don’t care what you sell; some companies that DO buy what you sell are not ready to buy for their reasons. Don’t ignore these people. If you have a list of 2500 prospects and out of those 50 become “quick” sales there might be another 50 long term sales. In working these people you can in essence double your sales 6 months to a year down the road.

7th Hit them with a multi channel attack. This one is my personal favorite. You got to hit them in all kinds of different ways at all kinds of different times because different people respond to different channels of communication. The so called trick is to know what media to use, when to use it and how often. As John Wannamaker once said "I know that half my advertising budget is working, I just don't know which half." You need to be where they are, not where you want to be. I suggest you use a series of multichannel touches over a period of time to educate, stimulate and give the buyer name recognition of your company.

8th Create offers based off of what you already know on needs and benefits. Remember people but for their reasons not yours. Go back and look over your offers. You needs might want to include the fear or pain of not buying or using your service.

9th Set up a realistic action plan with deadlines. Make people accountable for actions and when those actions need to be completed. If there is no end date there is no compelling reason to do the action by the time it needs to be done except for a person’s own reasons. If everyone on the team know where they fit in and how they will be held accountable you start to from a cohesive unit and plan of attract

Larson Notes & Satire: So you take a company like mine. This is what we do for companies. Some like to dump the whole thing in our laps, most like to do some and have us to a piece, either way to do it right we need to be a key player on their team. The more we are integrated into their action plan the more impute we can give them. As most of you know our main focus is on the telemarketing aspects with some entries into social media marketing and direct mail. We don’t have it all down right and after 36 years of sales, marketing and advertising we still don’t have it perfected but if there is any one key to the door of perpetual prospects and customer sales or all kinds it is found in one work, persistence.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Getting More Out Of Your Leads

2011-06-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

If you want to get more value in the leads you collect, you need to be consistent. Day in and day out you need to keep in close effective content. You need to speak to the ones you need to talk to when and how they want to be talked at.

Be relative, action oriented to get to where you and your potential customer need to be. If you have their best interests at heart you are doing them a service. You become a trusted advisor. Earn and keep that trust.

Larson Notes & Satire: Now I have my way of working, and it works pretty darn good for me. After all I have been in business for over 36 years, so I must be doing something right. For me the key is pack in the leads and find people I want to work with. Now I think I am a pretty likable guy and I want to work with (almost) everyone. The other key is consistency. Do what you say and say what you do. I get my leads just like I get leads for my customers, so I figure if I can find and sell them, well I should be able to find and sell for them. Does that make any sense?

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

ROI in Social? Just Show Me The Money!

2011-06-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

They pour in, more and more each day. Marketers that want to or are using Social Media Marketing. They hear about it. They think that this is the ticket to help their sluggish sales. (The Larson Lead Generation Team could set them straight on getting more sales but they aren’t asking good old Uncle Howie) So guess again. A large percentage of professional marketers, 58% find that not being able to get a handle on the metrics of Social Media as a major problem. Is it? Most (75%) don’t even try. And if they can’t measure it they seem to not be able to understand it.

For those few that do, the key metrics was listing to the Social buzz (61%), Branding (61%) Customer feedback (53%). SEO (52%), Lead generation (51%), and product or event generation (50%).

As for what is most important to these same marketers?
26% LinkedIn
20% Twitter
20% Facebook
14% Community
13% Blogging*

*Larson voted blogging

Just remember these are B2B marketers not B2C so LinkedIn is going to be more important.

Larson Notes & Satire: As for ROI off of Social Media? There is only one yes one figure that makes any real difference SALES!

Better ROI off of Social Media? We here at Larson's are going to be making special landing pages for each of the Big 4 sites we work. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and MerchantCircle to track the hits coming into our web site. Is this perfect? No. But it might give us a better handle on where our hits are coming from. If you have a better idea I would love to hear about it. Last week our unique hits took a 33% spike in activity. I am thinking this is off of Twitter but I cannot be sure.

At the same time we got 1 new account. Now that is what I really like to track, sales!

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Making More Out Facebook

2011-05-25T07:27:00.000-07:00

With 500 million users a business should not sit back ignore Facebook. Are you?

And if you are out there, you might be asking yourself, now what?

I talked a few weeks ago about the collection of the 3 F words “friends” “fans” and “followers” . You did that right? Good!

Now, as you work to further enhance your businesses Facebook base by collecting all those “friends” “fans” and “followers”, working at making it a positive experience for them to connect with you. Yet at the same time I believe you need to consider using some SEO practices.

First, your name. I know mine is rather bad with http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans but then I am me and I don’t care. ( lol ) Really I do. I am pushing the Larson name as my brand so really that is just want I want to do. Yes, I want you to talk about Larson & Associates around your kitchen table.

After your name work on your “about” and “info” sections. You want to incorporate the key words or what you are trying to attract like I do with Telemarketing and Telesales. If you make and sell cookies, use the word cookies or chocolate chip cookies, or if in insurance use the word insurance or benefits provider.

Next in the “info” section get copy happy. This is a very crawlable part of your page and you want it to be full of what you want to attract!

Remember when it comes to text, copy and links more content usually equals more value to the search spiders. Pages that have lots of copy and content are thought of to be more valuable and rated higher in and by the search engines. So think about adding more tabs other than the “info” and “about” mentioned above. Adding more copy heavy tab sections will or should benefit your pages ratio of text and help your ranking. As long as you keep it “White Hat” you will be ok.

Then remember this is a part of the Social Media Marketing world and you need to be posting regularly and things that your “friends” “fans” and “followers” find relevant. You want not just gobs of “friends” “fans” and “followers” but you want there page views and comments as well.

Then tie it all together. Search Engines DO view the number of links that point to a page as a major criteria of ranking a page. To do that make sure your Facebook page and your non-Facebook pages are linked together as much and as often as possible. The more links your page has pointing to it from other sources the better it is.

Larson Notes & Satire: Show me the love. It’s not just sports athletes that want you to show your love, its businesses as well. See me, fan me, comment me and I will thank you.

If you need help in making your page more attractable to the Search Engine Spiders give us a call. We have ways to get things done.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

LinkedIn Went Public (yesterday)

2011-05-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

LinkedIn hit the public market yesterday looking to raise $274 million. Seems like they did alright as the stock went from an opening of $45 up to $122.70 to end at $94.25. ) For the record NONE of Uncle Howie’s money was used) for what many people call an online rolodex that is not too bad. This gives LinkedIn a Profit to Earnings ratio of 554. Now compare that to the average ratios of say Apple which is 15. Yet I like where LinkedIn is standing as how they plan to make money. How much the stock is worth is another question.

So, what exactly is LinkedIn's business? Now that is a good question, that is aside from an online rolodex?

For me (http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates ) it is a B2B Social Media Marketing App that has given me some rather nice connections but I have not hit “gold” there yet, but there is “color” so I keep panning for gold on the site.

Last year it generated $243 million in revenue through the first nine months of the year from three categories: recruiting, advertising, and subscriptions. The bulk of the revenue comes from recruiting, or in LinkedIn's phrasing, "hiring solutions." If you have ever tried to post a job opening you have come across this asking for money feature. I guess it takes in more money than I might have thought, but then I can see lots of head hunters in my list of “friends” and in the groups I am in.

Basic Description: LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site intended for professionals. When users join, they create a profile that summarizes their professional expertise and accomplishments. LinkedIn was officially founded in May 2003 by Reid Hoffman and founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri). Its current CEO is Jeff Weiner, was previously a Yahoo executive. According to its Web site, LinkedIn has over 80 million members in over 200 countries. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Company Background: Founder Reid Hoffman, previously CEO of LinkedIn, is now Chairman of the Board. Dipchand Nishar is Vice President of Products. LinkedIn is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in Omaha, Chicago, New York and London. It is funded by Greylock, Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and the European Founders Fund. LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006.

On June 17, 2008, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and other venture capital firms purchased a 5% stake in the company for $53 million, giving the company a post-money valuation of approximately $1 billion.

In June 2010, LinkedIn announced it would be opening up a European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.

On July 28, 2010, Tiger Global Management LLC purchased a 1% stake in the company at a valuation of approximately $2 billion.

On August 4, 2010, LinkedIn announced Mspoke acquisition. This is the company's first acquisition for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition aims to help LinkedIn users do more than just find a job, increase users' activity and improve its 1% premium subscription ratio.

Membership: With 80 million users, LinkedIn is ahead of its competitors Viadeo (http://www.viadeo.com/profile/00218n8vjhv1ydda/en/?readOnly=true&ga_from=Fu:/tableaudebord/compte/index.jsp;Fb%3Atopmenu%3BFe%3AL2%2Bdrop_see%3B just found it so just listed myself) (30 million) and XING (https://www.xing.com/profile/Howard_Larson but don’t work the site) (9 million). The membership on LinkedIn grows by a new member every second or so. About half of the members are in the United States and 11 million are from Europe. With 3 million users, India is the fastest-growing country as of 2009. The Netherlands has the highest adoption rate per capita outside the US at 30%. LinkedIn recently reached 4 million users in UK and 1 million in Spain.

Main Features: The purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. The people in the list are called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection.

This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:

> A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (termed second-degree connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections (termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a mutual, trusted contact.

It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one's contact network.

> Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.

> Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.

> Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in identification.

Users can now follow different companies and can get notification about the new joining and offers available.

> Users can save (i.e. bookmark) jobs which they would like to apply for.

> The "gated-access approach" (where contact with any professional requires either a preexisting relationship or the intervention of a contact of theirs) is intended to build trust among the service's users. LinkedIn participates in EU's International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles.

LinkedIn also allows users to research companies with which they may be interested in working. When typing the name of a given company in the search box, statistics about the company are provided. These may include the ratio of female to male employees, the percentage of the most common titles/positions held within the company, the location of the company's headquarters and offices, or a list of present and former employees.

The feature LinkedIn Answers, similar to Yahoo! Answers, allows users to ask questions for the community to answer. This feature is free and the main difference from the latter is that questions are potentially more business-oriented, and the identity of the people asking and answering questions is known.

The searchable LinkedIn Groups (my personal favorite feature) feature allows users to establish new business relationships by joining alumni, industry, or professional and other relevant groups. LinkedIn groups can be created in any subjects and by any member of LinkedIn. Some groups are specialized groups dealing with a narrow domain or industry whereas others are very broad and generic in nature.

Another LinkedIn feature is LinkedIn Polls. A mobile version of the site was launched in February 2008 which gives access to a reduced feature set over a mobile phone. The mobile service is available in six languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish.

In mid-2008, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn DirectAds as a form of sponsored advertising.

In October, 2008, LinkedIn revealed plans to opening its social network of 30 million professionals globally as a potential sample for business-to-business research. And, in doing so it's testing a potential social-network revenue model-research that to some appears more promising than advertising.

In October, 2008, LinkedIn enabled an "applications platform" that allows other online services to be embedded within a member's profile page. For example, among the initial applications were an Amazon Reading List that allows LinkedIn members to display books they are reading, a connection to Tripit, and a Six Apart, WordPress and TypePad application that allows members to display their latest blog postings within their LinkedIn profile.

In November, 2010, LinkedIn allowed businesses to list products and services on company profile pages; it also permitted LinkedIn members to "recommend" products and services and write reviews.

Larson Notes & Satire: Well that is the scoop on LinkedIn. So are you going to have 1 scoop or 2, or are you just on a diet? Did you / are you going to buy stock? As for me? You do what you want with your money but I am going to keep investing my company.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Marketing In A Backwards World

2011-05-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

You have a great service or product. Who cares? You have wonderful customer service. As if I cared. You on time delivery is impeccable. So what?

Sorry Charlie but for today’s marker you need to be bottom up, and I don’t mean a stiff drink although if you’re doing it backwards which is (traditionally correct) you might need one.

In today’s creasy world with all the new and changing marketing channels you need to sit down with your strategy team and first decide which tools you are going to use to achieve the results you need and want.

People, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Tools. These 5 words need to be the focus and order your marketing now needs to be done in.

It’s a very Social world and people come first. Remember my last blog, the 3 F words, Friends, Followers, Fans. If you do this right you can put a plan together that you can tweak and change but won’t have to totally abandon later on.

You start with your audience which are your 3F’s. What are their needs wants and goals? Does your company fit into what they want? Yes it is all about them. If you choose to ignore them, it your sites give no motivation to what they want, you get put on the sideline. You sites need to be showing how you can help your prospects your 3F’s achieve their goals, needs and wants. If you can do that you might just get to achieve yours.

You still want to educate them. You still want to answer their questions. You want to walk with Rudyard Kipling’s 6 honest serving men: “I keep six honest serving men, (They taught me all I knew) Their names are What and Where and When And How and Why and Who.” If you do your site becomes more valuable. Rudyard knew why back then so maybe we should all take a hint.

Enter Social Media Marketing. Now you have the tools to keep customers and prospects engaged. If you are or can use bottom up thinking and engagement you will not be missing the opportunities that are right in front of you. Good content, consistent content is important, but more so is engagement.

Larson Notes & Satire: the 3 F’s: What do they want and Where are they and When do you get to interact with them And How do they want this interaction and Why do they want to interact with you and Who the heck are they?

Now take some time and think about it. Preferable with a pencil and pad of paper.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Friends, Followers, Fans

2011-05-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

The 3 F words, Friends, Followers, Fans. Do they mean anything or affect your business at all?

Last count my Facebook Fan Page had 232 fans. On LinkedIn I was standing at 613 and on MerchantCircle 1504 Connections, and Twitter at a massive 3106 and all growing. Does it do any good? Does it bring me business? Sales? Qualified leads?

The biggest thing on Social Media is for companies to go around and collect the 3 F’s. Some of them count the ROI on Social Media by how many F’s they have collected. Those of us that have been in the Social Media world for a while, know better, but still keep our eye on what is happening and changing with our numbers. It’s like, you never know who can or could turn into the bedrock account.

Why do I still do it? Eyeballs. I want more eyeballs on me. I want to be seen, not for myself gratification and ego but because the more eyeballs that are seeing me and my posts get a better shot I have at striking a cord that would make them want to buy some of what I sell.

Now, let’s be honest here just between you and me. The numbers game is simple, comfortable and so very countable. Yet research shows that fewer than 20% or your fans, my fans, every ones fans that go and “like”a page ever return to it. Ouch. Again, when I think about it, if I am honest with myself, I’ll take that 20%. If I could take that 20% to to the bank with 46.6 fans active on my page it would be a happy day with a better than not chance to get them become money paying customers. Some say likes are useless hits and wasted page views and an overall drain on resources. Again I disagree. I have my pages out there for all to see. I have no secret stuff. So what is the loss? ZERO!

There is no harm in spiking up your numbers of F’s. Just be ready to nurture them if all those companies and people decide to get active.

Larson Notes & Satire: When dealing with the 3 F’s think about the nurturing that you might want to be putting into it. Use the comments as places of interaction. Take those shares and engage your now broader audience. Remember this is Social Media Marketing so you need to be heavy on the SOCIAL …please.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Is Your Direct Marketing a Disaster?

2011-05-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

Do you settle for too little, talk about yourself too much or rely on outdated and inaccurate data?

1) Channels: Most companies and marketers rely way too much on standalone channels that aren't focused on demand, that are not asking for a call to action. As a direct marketer needs to be committed to a well disciplined, programmed, result oriented approach while building a multichannel marketing attack.

2) Results: What kind of results are you willing to accept? If you only accept a 1%-to-2% response rate because that is the industry average you are making a big mistake. NO really if you want to be like everyone else and just as good as everyone else, ok be happy, but think about it, in what other part of your business do you accept 98-99% waist? You need to be expecting, getting, and insisting on double-digit response rates for you program.

3) Social media: As a marketer you are probably spending too much time talking about yourself and not taking enough time engaging in conversation with your friends, fans, prospects and customers. The main point of social media is to be social to be able to create a dialogue with people quickly putting aside the self-serving side of marketing.

4) Segmentation: As a Marketers I doubt if you are getting down into your lists deeply enough. Unless you are using a large enough segment of people or prospects you don’t have enough hits to know if you are on or off in your attack. Then again the smaller the nitch or audience the more pointed the message. This can work to your advantage. It is harder to create content for any particular audience but you can start using your experience and jargon words and knowledge if you are narrow enough.

5) Content: Are you one of the guilty ones who’s arrogance sticks out like a sore thumb? Are you one to the one’s that when it comes to creating relevant content you get lost in your own rhetoric and press releases? You need to be more humble about yourself and a little more engaging towards customers so they can tell you what they consider to be relevant and important to them! Get rid of the I’s and Me’s.

6) Metrics: What do you measure? We should to be more focused on sales conversions, not lead creation. What good is a lead anyway? Try taking a lead to the bank? Lead creation is part of our job as a direct marketers but the real thing to be measuring is sales conversions.

7) Lead conversion: Marketers spend too much time focused on the wrong people. Here is where you need a sales person. A blood hound. The person who initially responds to you is more often not than not, NOT the buyer. But marketers go after them as if they were the VP of purchasing. Turn that lead over to your sale people they have a way to get to the heart of the matter quickly and fast. That is after all their job specialty.

8) Lead nurturing: The problem in more companies is a lack of focus. Marketers spend too much time and money on lead acquisition instead of nurturing existing customers. I have been told (I don’t remember from who) that 66% of your advertising budget should be directed at existing customers, who already know you and love you. Thank about it. Do you only get excited about your customers at the end of their contract? Customers will and should go with the company that has been good to them not just at signing time and sending a required Christmas card but all though the year.

9) Value: You need to improve how they demonstrate to the “Suites” in your company on the value of direct marketing. If you are the “Suite” take a step back from what you’re doing and ask yourself “Prove it!” Then using hard data write down the proofs and facts on paper. And you can only accomplish this with insight that can only come from hard data. Numbers don’t like.

Larson Notes & Satire: 9 things here and I know I left out lots of important things to really make your marketing hum. I guess you will just have to keep reading from time to time to find what I missed putting down.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Lessons From The Social Media Trenches!

2011-04-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

I am one of the lucky ones. I have been in some form of marketing and advertising all my life and did not let all that get in my way of grabbing hold of Social Media Marketing and doing it as if it were a traditional marketing/advertising channel. Not so easy. Many of my comrades-in-arms cannot make the leap from formal channel advertising to informal.

But it is here, Social Media Marketing and it is here as a major player in many companies, be it B2C or B2B, be a player of a bystander. More that even in traditional Marketing SM is dog-eat-dog out here and its tough eating dog!

Social Medial Marketing is a living entity; it’s alive and changing almost daily. Clubs, groups, organizations, fans, prospects, clients, people all listening and making comments and responding to more marketing stimuli that ever before.

In as much as SM is making us change something my father once told me still rings true, “you need to know the rules to know how to break them”. Yes, you heard me right, break them. So consider this, Social Media is in essence one big “Focus Group”. Here you can test to your heart’s desire, ideas, slogans, new products. Yes, test, test, test!

Message Testing: If social media is about conversation test your companies “conversations”. The major difference between traditional marketing and social marketing are really quite clearly drawn. Traditional marketing does not talk directly with the target person and it cannot talk back in real time. So for Social Media Marketing I suggest that you make a message map that outlines the “message” and then keeps track of the direct messages to that “message”. When on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Merchant Circle, keep careful track of the flow of conversation revolving around what you have floated out. If you get an increase in hits, likes, of feedback of any kind make a careful note pro and con. What should you be measuring?
a) Likes on Facebook
b) Retweets on twitter
c) Comments on your social network and/or blogs
d) fans/friends/followers grown in actual numbers or %
e) Average times spent on your blog site

Time Testing: When do you get the best results? Early am? Mid morning? Afternoon or evening or during the middle of the night? The experts will be telling you that am’s are best but they are not you nor do they represent your company. So, what is best for you and the kind of customers you want to attract? Again, test your posts! You might find out that 75% of your sales come on a Thursday. You might want to look or think about why? Are they getter ready for the weekend, or do they need to make a decision on a purchase before the end of the week? Why, why, why? Next consider time zones. If you sell to multiple time zones like I do, from the Eastern Time zone to the pacific, keep track of that as well. You could be surprised on who is buying from you and where which will lead to why.

Social Media Ads: It could be Facebook, LinkedIn or Merchant Circle, but there are proprietary advertising products that you can take advantage of. Depending on what your over all objects are doing a focused marketing could pay off in spades. If you have assembled your fans and friends with any kind of care. This is similar to a pay-for-click situation so there might be a cost.

Promotions, Contests, Surveys: These are ways to create a call for action. The idea again is to create a buzz around you and your company. Again test and measure and decide what you are trying to really achieve with each action. Be it an increase in your friend or fan size, feedback response, whatever? Just have a plan. See above (in Message Testing) for what you should be looking for.

Sales: Ya Sales. Sales are how we keep (real) score, isn’t it? At least that is how I keep score. If you’re not getting sales from your efforts change or go to something that starts to generate sales for your company. Different kinds of social media messaging drive sales. You can be blunt and straightforward in your buy requests of you can use the more subtle message. Either way it all comes down to needing, wanting people to buy something. Leads must lead to sales!

Larson Notes & Satire: Need help we are here to help you make money for your business all you need to do is call 847-991-0488.

In many ways social media marketing is the most extreme channel you can be using. On line, in your face marketing! I love it. (Ya, I’m an in your face kind of guy, what can I say.) Innovation abounds or can at every turn in your Social Media Marketing experience. Opportunity knocks and many times only once. When it does you need to be ready to spring into action, and that might require some old school tools like a business card and company brochure, and oh yes, we do those too.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Low Ball Pricing? Don’t Go There!

2011-04-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

It is a common strategy for small businesses is to undercut the competition by charging lower prices. Especially true for new businesses, those looking to expand quickly or those who see sales deteration and loss. Don’t do it!

Think about it. If every graphic artist charges $100 an hour, you figure you'll gobble up the business by charging $50 an hour. Don’t do it!

Charging low prices or "low-balling," as it is commonly known is a terrible business strategy for service businesses Why? There are quite a few reasons really.

First, the thinking that a lower price makes you more attractive to clients is not totally true. Sure, some clients are price buyers and your low price will draw them in but I will tell you now, they will leave you just as fast! You really want to find clients who do not buy based on price but a value in the service you offer. These (other) clients value other things such as quality, reliability, speed, customer service, expertise, track record, and reputation and are quite frankly, willing to pay for it.

Fact is, your low price might be perceived of as signal that you do NOT deliver the kind of service that they are looking for and need. They might start to think that you will do anything for any old project and that you and your services are probably garbage. For these kinds of clients the low price sends them packing!

This is a fact!

Direct marketers have shown in split tests of price and service, that a low price for a product or service often loses and is less profitable than higher prices, which generate more orders and sales. Low prices, it seems create a perception in the client's mind of low value and poor service.

Second, low price attracts a less desirable clientele, the price buyer. You really want the kind of clients who value good work and excellent timely service and don't mind paying for it. Price buyers are the least profitable clients to work for and I know this for a fact based on past experience, finding them also the most demanding and difficult to please. They don’t value you or your service and think even with your lower price, that you are charging them too much money.

Third, in a service business, time is money. Time is all you really have. The less you charge, the less money you make and the less profitable your business. Think about it. Given the choice, wouldn't you rather work for $100 an hour instead of $50 an hour put in another way or earn $200,000 a year instead of $50,000 a year?

So now if low-balling is such a bad pricing strategy, where should your pricing fall in relation to your competition? A general rule of thumb for setting service fees is that your price should fall in the middle of the top third. Yes TOP third!

So if the lower third of service firms in your trade charge $30 to $75 an hour, the middle range charges $75 to $125, and the highest-paid charge $125 to $175 you should aim for $135 to $150 an hour.

Why?

Well, first, those in the lowest third are the low-ballers. They will only be project based customers going from low price to low price on every project, and by the way, you will need to quote or bid out on every project.

The middle range isn't totally bad. Might be the kind of company that needs to watch its penny’s more than others. There are some good clients in this group. Ones that will stick with you over the long run. Yet, this middle price strategy can create a perception of mediocrity. Is that how you want to be seen and known in your marketplace? Nothing wrong with being here but judge it on who the actual client is.

So given all that, you should charge somewhere in the top third.

In the example given above, we would charge somewhere between $135 to $150 per hour.

Yet why not go all the way and charge the max in our case $175 an hour? Well, if you go here, to the maximum price, your fee becomes a major concern to your clients. It stretches their finances to the limit, and they begin to feel like you're trying to take them for every penny they have. At the same time, almost all your competitors cost less than you so you are being hammered by price concerns or price objections at every turn. By backing off just that little bit, you can still maintain a solid price structure but not have that be the biggest concern in the client's mind.

Larson Notes & Satire: If you can get it I guess go for it, I myself would love to work for $300 an hour and only work say 4 hours a day rather than 100 and work for 9 hours. You need to find the right balance for you. Don’t just go steal your competition’s pricings and think it will work for you. You are not them and they not you. You have different hidden costs then they do and vice versa. Use what you can leverage to your best advantage and, don’t ignore the other things but, well don’t mention them unless they become an issue then, be ready to have an answer to whatever that might be.
And oh ya, if you think you are going to charge good old Uncle Howie any $175 an hour, think again. I am a reseller and I need to have some markup room.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

How Do You Score Your Social Media?

2011-04-21T09:20:00.000-07:00

So how do the “pros” score their social media efforts?

Today's top marketers are starting factor social interactions into their lead scoring. Why? Because that is where the action is! These conversations often can indicate buying signals and behavior and allow marketers to bring leads to a sale or the sales department faster, and beating out the competition that is using traditional lead scoring or dare I say no lead scoring at all.

So what is sales ready behavior? It could be a tweet about you or your product, a comment left on a blog, a question posting on LinkedIn, or any other online posting outside of your website. The key is to have a system in place that can see this data and put the appropriate score to this information.

In order to score social media interactions properly, you must implement some data capture processes:

1. Use a social media monitoring tool. There are free tools like Salesforce for Twitter, or more options like Radian6. Or you can simply manually enter your data.

2. Then get the data from your social media monitoring into the CRM system so the comments or activity can be used in lead scoring for future sales activity.

3. Then start to study and understand how these interactions in social media affect the actual buying process and sales cycle. Create scores to reflect these different activities.

Like other behaviors, all social media interactions are not equal and should not be scored equally. Some actions should receive higher scores others lower. Do they mention your company, your competition, or that they are looking to buy. Sort it out and keep track of what and how you need to score it. Others that probably need lower scores are actions such as retweets or posts without content.

Now the sales attack, but how can you email or contact these people if all you have is their Twitter IDs or a Facebook pages link? You can't, but you can send an alert over to sales so a rep can start to do their thing be it with social media or a phone call. That is what a missionary sales and lead generation is all about (Need help in this area contact us here at Larson & Associates 847-991-0488 http://www.larsonassociates.ws/ and we can help you in this area.)

All of this doesn't have to take a lot of manual work. Social media lead scoring can happen automatically on sentiment, topic or general keywords used, automating the scoring program or you can go manual. Whatever floats your boat.

So start prioritizing your leads not just by company or behavior, but by pertinent information.

Larson Notes & Satire: It really comes down to sales and what you sell but you got to start somewhere to know what is happening out there.

To that I can only say test, test, test and the start all over again.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Landing Page Optimization

2011-04-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

The term “optimization” which these days is getting close to becoming not only overused and burnt out even meaningless due to its overuse still maintains some value that marketers and Web masters still must understand and apply. It is crucial to understand the meaning of the word as we have come to define it.

For support of an optimization program you need to be doing content testing and audience targeting. The effective combination of these two core areas of direct digital marketing functions brings out success. Yet, however, many organizations have taken a divide and conquer approach to the roles and responsibilities of testing and targeting. As these organizational silos take shape, production speeds slow and landing pages are drained of their real effectiveness.

In a good approach to a landing page optimization you want to constantly be doing “data,” “testing,” and “targeting” of all areas involved. The data, at the top filters down to each function. The data is important because the data must constantly feed the content testing and the audience targeting.

Your Landing Page Optimization Starts with Data. The ideal data for landing page optimization is a universal profile management system. This kind of system is designed to do two things:

1st, it stores valuable data points like customer data & purchasing history.
2nd, it captures behavioral information like browsing patterns on a page, keyword or banner click entry points to the landing page. This combination of information on your site visitors and the behavioral information helps you to build unique segments and lay a foundation for testing and targeting strategies.

Test and Target in Tandem. Once the data is setup the optimization process can start. The most important thing to understand in a good landing page optimization is that testing and targeting must work together. When launching a landing page optimization, your strategy should begin with an initial testing of the content that may identify a real need on what to target. Your ability to be flexible and being able to easily add testing or targeting data to the landing page is important to be able to meet your conversion targets and adapt to the constantly changing prospect and customer.

Selecting Landing Page Optimization Software. Like anything else in software, optimization tools and software can run from that of a low cost solution and simplicity to high costs and complexity.

It is easy to love Google because they offer helpful tools for free. But it is important to understand that free also means a trade off somewhere. In the case of Google Optimizer, the trade off is a free testing tool for one that is incapable of targeting. Low (or no) cost tools are tempting, but the combination of testing and targeting is mandatory for true landing page optimization success. Yet something is better than nothing.

At the other end of the spectrum, many tools that provide both testing and targeting cost a ton of money and time. The right optimization software probably really falls in the middle where reasonable cost meets up with a full set of features.

Extend Landing Page Optimization by Learning From Other Channels. While the optimization principles here are primarily within the context of landing pages, they also apply to the different functions of digital marketing. Good optimization set up and practices in email, mobile, blog, social and website improves the overall online marketing campaign performance. But remember that cross channel optimization adds valuable hit points that can be leveraged to create better landing page exposure, and we really want exposure. Remember also that landing pages are just one part of your digital online marketing strategy. The data that powers them, and the data they record, must connect to a database that focuses on the site visitors and coordinates the experience across the entire direct digital marketing landscape.

Achieving Optimized Landing Pages. A successful landing page creates two outcomes for marketers. The landing page hit leads to either a lead for other marketing programs to nurture and develop or an immediate transaction, yes a sale or at least a start to the sales process. Optimization is the best and most proven approach for achieving either outcome, whether a transaction happens immediately or must be nurtured for several months.

Once a database is properly configured, develop a landing page strategy that is not set to the limitations of specialty silos. Avoid silos and prevent trading off testing in favor of targeting.

The end result of applying a defined landing page optimization strategy is a more coordinated experience that improves conversion rates and performance.

Larson Notes & Satire: What market or markets do you go after? Do you sell different product lines or service areas? If you do you what to be thinking about each one having its own landing page. Yes, each one. It takes a little time, a little effort but it does make a difference. Now me, one of the things we do is specialize on industries like printers ( http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Printing_Telesales ) and advertising agencies and graphic studios ( http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Telesales_for_Ad_Agencies ) so I have individual pages set up for those to where I can place wording that those industries would appreciate and use. Yes I use some jargon on those pages. So they get found on a specialty key word search and so the people in those industries know I know and understand them. And when you think about it, don’t you want to use a vendor that understands you and where you are coming from?

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Every Channel Has Its Problems

2011-04-13T07:45:00.000-07:00

Cross-channel, multi-channel, mixed channels, some channels, part-time channels, no channels. It’s ok to scream or pull your hair out. It is one creasy marketing world out there.

When all is said and done all good marketing is starts with listening to your customers and prospects. It is not about you and your products and services. Hardly! It’s not about you at all.

How you talk (or sell) to your clients and prospects is not as important as how they want to be talked to.

Larson Notes & Satire: I hate white papers. Why? Because when I want to look at one I need to give the company all my information. Then some not well informed sales person calls me up trying to sell me something when they don’t know a single thing about my company and don’t really care. They just know I requested a certain “white paper” they sent it and now they want to sell me a product that goes along with that white paper. Makes me turn red. It seems I am a growing part of society in my dislike of white papers. As I usually bypass the papers so too are a good 66% of other people just like me.

I figure that I will give away information as I have been doing for years. If you like my ideas and practices and are not able to implement them for yourself you will hire me and my firm to do lead generation for you in all the various ways we can do it and work in. I have repeatedly told you what my company’s sales and marketing plans are. I follow the Vince Lombardi plan where he reportedly said that he could give any team the Packers were playing his play book and still beat them, because it came down not to the plays made but in the execution. Yes to achieve perfect execution. That will get you the results you want

The philosophy of giving and sharing has worked for 36 years and I think I it works just fine, now.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

The Difference Between Metrics & Analytics

2011-04-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

A funny thought hit me as I sat down to work today. Almost every article I read in some of the journals and scanned though in my email account talked about small business yet they talked as if small business had all the elements of a large business. It was frightening to think on how they were trying to talk to small business. By that I mean the articles assumed that (even as a small business) I had a marketing director, a sales director, and IT director, a financial director, a purchasing director, a comptroller . . . should I go on?

I assume that when I am talking to small businesses even the ones with sales up to 2 million, you the owner or sales manager wear 2, 3 or more different hats.

That being said what really is the difference between Metrics and Analytics. We hear these words bantered around all the time but what the heck at they and what do they mean to MY business.

Marketing Metrics are all the descriptive measurements such as number of leads, number of sales, and number of prospects in the sales pipeline

Marketing analytics is the data to see patterns that allow you to predict outcomes and to create a marketing strategy. It is not about the sheer numbers but how you use the numbers or could use the numbers so you can take the “proper” action.

Now just so you don’t think I’m going “Egghead” on you. I still believe that Marketing is an Art and not a science. But there is nothing wrong with knowing the numbers to you can devise the best marketing and sales attack you can. Also calm yourself into thinking everyone is doing Analytics. They aren’t and if they are I personally think most of them don’t know want to do with the data anyway. In an ITSMS member survey only half the companies are doing any kind of formal analytics and we are talking some major companies in this group. The ones with layers of management.

Now the Big Dogs seem to want you to think that to be effective here you need to have a sophisticated management team in place and statistical analysis skills. I say no! The writes of all these articles and studies work for the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Cisco and have layers or management that take them so far away from the pulse of the customer that they are immune by what is really coming down on the street. They make good products but as a small business I don't know how much hands-on marketing advice I would be taking from them.

So what can analytics do for you?
1) Help you to develop new promotions
2) Have a new way to look at target customers and patters
3) Help to predict how well your promotion should do
4) Help predict future buying patterns
5) Let you see possible new markets

Larson Notes & Satire: Been reading a few things on the art of selling to woman and the art of selling to men. Have started to put thoughts down for a couple of blogs in this direction.

I love being in the trenches with my associates. Yes I work in my ivory tower and sit in the famed ebony throne but don’t think that I am not down there working my butt of keeping a solid feeling for my customers and what my associates are facing every day.

This last week I went to a networking group, a seminar, got a short video taken and still had time to get down and dirty with some work. That is why I am so angry when I was going though reading about what all the big Muckety Mucks though I as a small business should be doing. What does a $100,000,000 dollar company really know about me? Case in point, I got a phone call from a certain Social Media company wanting to set up a phone appointment to get Uncle Howie to spend some money on them. I initially said ok. I mean I love Social Media Marketing and think it is great for promotion. They then went and forwarded me information to set the stage of the meeting. It was a whole big spiel about what they had done for American Express. My company has nothing in common with AE. And there they were telling, no trying to show me how they could do the same wonderful things they did for AE for my company? I did the only thing a nice person like me could do. I stopped that appointment and told them I did not want to waste their time. I was really thinking about my time, but I am a nice person.

What does this have to do with Metrics or Analytics? Know your numbers, but also know how to feel your numbers so you can make an educated guess on what to do next. Yes I said guess. I am still a Right Brain kind of person. I still do things by gut feeling more than by fact, but knowing what the Left Brainers are doing never hurts. Marketing is still an art more than a science. Still there is nothing wrong with practicing a little alchemy.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Multichannel Is Always Better

2011-04-07T06:40:00.000-07:00

When in doubt, whenever possible go multichannel. When you can make it both high tech/low tech, do it. When the possibility exists put in on-line/off-line.

Now first I’m going to tell you if you can’t be at a minimum 85% effective in using a certain kind of marketing tool stay away of it, you are just wasting your money and more importantly your time. But then I am going to tell you if you are hitting the same marketing base with different kinds of marketing tools and channels your need of effectiveness in their usage goes down by 2.5-5% per channel. So maybe, just maybe if you are using 4 or 5 different marketing tools you only need to be 70-75% effective in their use. Maybe.

Second, the old adage I am going to throw out at you is that you need 7-9 seen touches to a prospect to make a sale. This figure has been around since in got into advertising back in the 70’s but still holds true? Now you seem to need at least 21 to 28 touches in a two to three month period to make a sale. Don’t faint. You just need to be using the Big Fish in the little pond method. Focus your attack. Narrow your nitch. Drive your pitch. You can do it. Then multichannel them to death, nicely!

Telemarketing, Direct Mail, Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Landing Pages, Blogs, classified ads. Need ideas see http://www.larsonassociates.ws/marketing_tools you can do it. You got to do it and do it all, well. How well? Penetratingly well.

I push direct mail and telemarketing not just because my company does that as a service but because it works and it is a direct and seen (or heard) approach to be heard above the clutter. Yes those mail boxes are sitting there empty, fill them. People are sitting out there waiting for your marketing piece to land in their box so give it to them. Let your message can be seen and read in your words not that of an exclusive Social Media Marketing chat. And telemarketing, if done right, is not high pressure offensive, it works in a high touch, very friendly account selling way that nothing else can give except for an individual sales person. Online marketing, search engine marketing, are still needed and important so don’t stop what you’re doing there but people want touchy, feely, hearing as well. Then need and want access to you.

If you go exclusively online, well, I think we all are feeling how the online channels are getting over saturated. I can’t tell you the number of emails I delete without reading. I can’t count that high. As companies stated pounding out more emails and they will (you have heard the “constant contact” ads on radio haven’t you?) it’s going to get more cluttered as companies look for cheaper ways to market) As for SEM (search engine marketing) it is just as dog eat dog. My own hits have been going up and down like a yoyo. You can do pay for clicks but when you pull the money plug you disappear so driving your site up in the search engines is the best (think Landing Page here) to get a long term key word natural or universal search.

Marketing is a game of chess. Will you go to check, or checkmate?

Larson Notes & Satire: It’s all about finding what works for you, your business, your customers and your prospects. You are unique. Is your marketing plan unique to you or did you read and take it out of a book you loaded from the library?

Take the time to sit back uninterrupted and do some brainstorming. Let your mind fly and get those great ideas out of your head and down on to paper. Then IMPLEMENT. You have got to implement! If you don’t apply what you have “created” you have already lost. Yet there is a way out. . .

If you can’t do it, if you aren’t able to implement your ideas, if you don’t have the time to do it, don’t be ashamed to pick up the phone and dial 847-991-0488 and talk to us. That is what companies like mine are out here for. To help your business become great!

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Implementing Marketing Integration

2011-04-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

You want to do it, Integrated Marketing. It sounds like it is the right way to go about doing a good strategic synergistic marketing plan but what do I do?

You might want to start out by not getting lost in doing a Situation analysis, establishing Marketing objectives and putting together your Marketing budget. At this point you would most likely be pulling your analysis ideas, and money out of thin air like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But isn’t that what you are doing anyway. If you’re a small business I expect that is your plan. Open the check book, look at how much money is in there and go spend some of it.

If you are really serious keep reading.

To implement a good solid Marketing Integration plan you need to shack up your entire organization thinking on what you want to achieve and have the message, one message, a consistent thought patter permeate down through the ranks.

So grab a chain and sit down at the kitchen table, pour yourself a good hot cup of coffee and . . .

1st start by establishing your strategic goals and set financial projections in each product or service you have. Then pick which marketing channels using both direct and indirect, online and off line, you are going to use. Remember less used at a high level of involvement is better than more used a lesser amount.

2nd, make a list of all customers, prospects and other leads you have. How did you find them, How are you touching them in your on-going follow up now?

3rd, capture and assess all the data you have.

4th, Find the gaps in your system. Where do your customers and prospects get lost or fall out? Then put plans together for sales and marketing that address customer selection, acquisition, retention and growth initiatives. Draw these out (on paper) and prioritize your tactics on importance and roll out, with detailed steps to responsibilities, budgetary obligations and timing.

5th is to plan and start roll out (if you are a large company with a big budget you would do a test market at this point rather than a complete roll out) the offers of your campaign. Keep track of any results in real time and pounce on any results in a prescribed manor.

6th Push any results to your bottom line and assess performance of all marketing channels used. Identify correlation between them while identifying the gaps you find in implementation. Go back re-plan, re-budget and reload your timing gun while comparing them to your ROI projections you set out in your initial goals. Factor in any inconsistencies that you might have experienced.

7th re-launch plan towards your reworked plan pushing towards a higher level of expectation with the knowledge you have achieved and gained.

Larson Notes & Satire: Sometimes I look at this stuff and think what is really new here except a new buzz word for Marketing Directors and People to start throwing around to cloud good marketing practices in fog of jargon. Good marketing with a solid plan is the same. So what is new here? To be honest I am not sure.

All Marketing Integration is, is really taking the marketing process and the marketing message and permeating it throughout your organization. New? Hardly. Back in the ‘80s I went and had company business cards printed up for every one of my employees, even Hank the janitor. They might not have completely understood what was happening. I don’t know if I did either, but just for fun they would pass them out to their friends and acquaintances and low and behold for a period of 4 years straight we picked up 1 new account a week. This “Integration” stuff is about getting your consistent message out to all your employees to all your marketing channels to all your customers and prospects to everyone knows and understand what you and your company is all about.

What I can say is that if you sit down with a cup of coffee (ok tea if you must) and plan out your marketing and define the results you want to achieve you stand a better than average chance to succeed and isn’t that why we are in business?

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Powering Your Marketing Integration

2011-03-31T08:08:00.000-07:00

Ok first off what is Marketing Integration? According to Wikipedia Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is the coordination and integration of all marketing communication tools, avenues, functions and sources within a company into a seamless program that maximizes the impact on consumers and other end users at a minimal cost.

A marketing plan will consist on the following:
1. Situation analysis
2. Marketing objectives
3. Marketing budget

You have to understand what the consumer's wants and needs are. This might or might not be what your wants and needs to sell are. You need to be understanding to the fact that consumer's costs are to be a cost competitive solution to satisfy their needs or wants. It is using a variety of channels working together in harmony to present a unified message with the ability to give feedback and make communication a two-way street.

It is a strategy aimed at unifying different marketing methods and tactics such as mass marketing, one-to-one marketing, social media marketing, telemarketing and direct marketing with an objective being to complement and reinforce the market impact of each used channel, and to employ the market data generated by these efforts in product development, pricing, distribution, customer service.

So you are using 3 or more marketing channels. Wonderful, now let’s get them integrated and working syngeriously.

Integrated Marketing is not just grabbing some marketing tools out of the box and start using them but rather a strategy and implantation plan to coordinate each task in harmony with the other to construct your efforts like the construction of a building. It’s not a series of efforts that once you do them you cross them off the list of things you’ve done, but rather a series of unified efforts of vision, branding, positioning internal coordination and customer communication to propel your efforts better.

1st start by working internally with your own people. If you are big enough to have multiple customer touch points, everyone needs to be on the same page in being able to communicate your companies brand and its desired position in the customer’s mind.

2nd is to leverage your marketing consistently. If you can create a single point of attack message you want to get across to your market you stand a better chance of winning. Have 1 core message and have all channels tie into this one single message.

3rd part to this plan of attack is to standardize the customer experience. Ya, we can’t leave out the customer in all this, they are, after all, the reason we are doing all this marketing stuff, aren’t they? So take the time to evaluate your company’s core message and service / product offerings so at the times of interaction you control the conversation. Work to keep yourself consistent at every level of your company.

4th part of our attack is to consolidate your data. The can be no fiefdoms. Everyone MUST have access to what is happening so they have a part ownership in what is going on. There is no private sales information, there is no secret marketing stuff, there is no privy purchasing knowledge, it’s all for one and one for all. If you make this BIG step you and your company can find greater insights into all the parts of your customer’s experience

5th is to look for ways to be putting social median marketing to work for your company. Online social media marketing has not just captured the interest of consumers but some companies as well. Poke around and find where you fit in best and exploit the knowledge you find out.

You can be improving your prospects and customers experience with you. If you keep your eyes open, get your team working as one and pulling in the same direction. But you are still the boss and it all starts at the top.

Larson Notes & Satire: Yesterday I pulled out a statistic that most marketers are only working Social Media 6 hours or less a week. That in my mind does not cut the mustard. SM is where the people, your prospects, your customers are right now. I don’t care if you are B2B or B2C they are out there on line now.

Now I have been training for a marathon all winter long, and I’m going to tell you there were some days this winter where I just did not want to go out into the cold and run. Then I would think about all the other runners out there who are choosing not to run today and my race and training plan and how doing it now and my competition not running only makes me that much better and them that little farther behind. The same is true with Marketing. Each step you take that your competition does not makes you that much more visible. And in marketing being visible is a good thing. If you think that in a key word search there are only 10 listings on the first page and if you have 1 of those that is 1/10th of the page “real estate”! Get 2 (which when using a good Social Media marketing campaign is not as impossible as it might sound and you start to OWN 1/5th or more of a page. Now the more consistent your message and ALL your sites, your web site and your social media sites the more 1st, 2nd and 3rd page ownership you will start to own.

Just this morning when I did a key word search on just one word “telemarketing” for the very first time my site came up on the 1st page in the local search section! Am I excited or what? Yes like “oh ya baby, its working!”

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

The World of Social Media Marketing

2011-03-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Let’s start with the statistics to set the stage.

65% - Marketers who have been using Social Media for 1 month or less
14% - Businesses who outsource any part of their Social Media Marketing
9% - Marketers that are saying they are planning to decrease the use of MySpace
6 Hours – Average number of hours per week the majority of marketers are suing Social Media
85% - Marketers who say exposure is the best benefit of Social Media

Ok we have set the stage with our props.

The pros will tell you it is hard to get a firm number on their ROI with social media efforts that is why they don’t know what to do with it. So they turn to things like Alterian, Bazaarvoice, Radian6 among others to tell them what is happening. While these tools are helpful you can also be paying upwards of $600 a month. If that is what you need to know what is happening in your Social Media network and your Social Media Marketing I don’t think you are very social.

Yet if you need numbers to show the “Shirts” I guess you need to do it. You can measure how online reviews affect you, how influential your blog is. This lets them target their overall message in their marketing which can produce higher sales. It can difference the kinds of hits and sales coming for different sources such as a blog, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. In Constant Contact (I am told) there is a “Social Media Stats” program that was stated last September to all users to track where emails are being posted in the social media world. Alterian even offers a service that will tag and sort “relevant” social media information.

The old days (1 year ago) the idea was just getting people to collect information that was coming back at them, now? Now we seem to be demanding mountains of data so we can make sound decisions. We need information to make a decision. Is this the next evolution in Social Media Marketing? Do we need to do a business analyst to tell us “This is what we should do.”?

I live and die by gut instinct. If you’re not quick on your feet you will get passed. Sometimes it has worked out, other times, not. But I know quickly if I have made a good choice or not.

Larson Notes & Satire: If you are Daddy Warbucks, and have deep pockets I guess you can do all this statically programming stuff. Uncle Howie’s pockets are not that deep and I am not in that club. The fact I’m Norwegian can make a penny cry has nothing to do with it.

I have 2 reports on what kind of marketing efforts companies are planning on using and where the money is going to be going this year sitting in my stack of stuff. Some I agree with, some I don’t. I guess I should put them out in a blog for you. Ya think?

If you have been reading or watching me you know I operate Marketing with a “Seat Of My Pants” philosophy and use information requests, proposals and sales as my ROI criteria and count.

I know how many hits, both unique and multi, my web site got yesterday or a month ago. I can also tell you, once I peak in my files how many proposals I did last week or a year ago and how many sales that translated into.

When I saw that the “Big Dogs” are spending all of 6 hours in and on their Social Media Market and world I clapped my hands and clicked my heals! Talk about getting lost in the shuffle. I started leaving MySpace over a year ago in favor of Facebook. Keep running boys! And as for exposure being the best use of Social Media Marketing, forget it, exposure is nice but I want to sell something.

Bye bye boys. . . This is my pond and the water I’m swimming is (still) just fine.

If you need to go on and spend that money on those fancy programs. Get all your stactical analysis done. For me, I got myself and my staff racking over the Social Media world keeping the world safe for us here in the Land Of Larson.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassoiates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

How’s Your Key Word Usage?

2011-03-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

Using different words that mean the same thing can make your web page or blog post more interesting for readers and followers. It can also help you from making search engines think your site is all about some random overused term. I can across this (and quite a few other tools in my work the in the last week. This tool, the Keyword Analysis Tool helps you take a look at your use and possible under or over use of any given word or words.

Just provide the tool with a URL, and it'll return a list of the most commonly used words on the page. Look them over, and you should be able to see if you're using terms that aren't keywords too often.

Just go to http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-analysis-tool.shtml and enter in your web site.

Now I don’t know about you but every time I do one of these little exercises I not only learn something but then I actually apply some of what I learned and guess what? My site gets better and stronger. I found words that I want stronger and maybe some words that I don’t really care about that are over powering some of the others.

Larson Notes & Satire: I have lots of tricks up my sleeve. Not that I’m a web Houdini or anything but as most of you know my web site is noting to really write home about. So why do I keep it? It is a work in progress to see just how high I can get a two bit web site up in the rankings.

It is a work in progress to show how with a small budget I can go up against the big dogs with all their big time web developers, search engine optimization programs and (compared to mine) massive marketing budgets and blow them out of my pond. Ya, I want to be the Big Fish in my Little Pond. I don’t need an ocean of customers or leads but I will be the one who takes out the biggest catch out of my pond.

I figure that if I can do it my way for me, I can do it for my guerrilla loving marketing customers. You want to own your fishing hole? Then call me!

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Effect Of Universal Search Planning

2011-03-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

Local search, natural search, paid search, pushing your web site to get higher and higher, that’s what it’s all about.

In working towards higher rankings on this level will if nothing else decrease the overall visibility of your competition. The more you “own” of the search page ranking pages the less there will be for other companies web sites. Do I need to tell you who their loss of visibility is a good thing? Additionally your ad and blog copy can start to be pushed up getting you greater resonance and more responses or at the least web hits.

So what can you be doing to get yourself up there. Or should I say what more can you be doing?

Knowing full well that I talked about this in my last blog, lets really put the pedal to the metal and move forward

A) Examine Yourself. Check your overall online self in how you come up in the engines NOW. To get where you want to be you got to know where you are starting. If you don’t how will you know if you are making advances in and on the web?

B) Keep Your Eyes Open. Make sure that you appear on the keywords that your target audience use or would use to find a company like yours.

C) Keep Your Ears Open. Listen and pay attention to what and how your target marketing audience is talking to and about you and your industry. The more you know the better chance you have in applying what you are hearing into your over all marking.

D) Test It. The more we think we know the more we find out how little we actually do know. So test, test, test and tweak that copy and those key words till you see or start to see movement. Then do it again.

Larson Notes & Satire: Universal search has opened up huge opportunities to you as a marketer as well as for your customers and prospects. Use it or you will lose it. Grind yourself up or at least work at getting up there of be prepared to fall in the search rankings even more than you are now.

If you’re smart you will push your set to the top, if not, well it’s like a dog pile, and you will end up at the bottom.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Positioning Yourself For The Top Spot

2011-03-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

That coveted top search position, so tantalizing makes my mouth water.

Now with universal search including images, product links, shopping links, social media commentary, video, news outlets to name a few of the new searchable items in the last 9 months,

Web searches and ranking has become more complex when going for a higher listing what is a search engine marketer suppose to do?

I would suspect that most of us underleverage our abilities in the area of natural search marketing. Without optimizing your site in some way shape or form you don’t stand a chance. Point is Goggles algorithms have become so dependent on off-site promotions that what you are doing away from your main site such as your Social Media Sites has become even more important in regard to Universal Search.

Now I might not need to be telling you this but it never hurts to hear it again. Start with the basics such as finding out how your customers and prospects are now finding you and talking about you. And make sure your site is fully optimized to play into this action.

After that I have 5 handy dandy tips for you.

1. Get tagged and named. Web sites are getting more and more complex and larger. Again images, video, auto posting capabilities. Doing such things as making sure your fines are named and not numbered. Now you do know that the Search Engine Spiders can’t see your fancy images and videos right? So you also know you need to tag or name them in a way that is relevant to both the search engine needs and what you actually have posted.

2. Your Outreach. Reach out and touch someone is a slogan that rings as true today as it did for MaBell way back when. You have a better chance to capturing that top spot if you go viral. Ya blogging starts to become critical. Your blog other blogs, you need to let people know that you have pics and videos out there. But in the necessary back links that are relevant to help with search engine rankings, but make sure it is relevant. Be a good neighbor and don’t force feed yourself and posts.

3. Be Newsworthy. News any news is a big part of universal search content. Not just the earth shacking kind we have just seen in Japan but softer kind, the kind that said you launched a new service or introduced a new product or open up a new social media page. This too is newsworthy. Try a press release both in traditional print as well as some of the online press release sites. All this helps you get seen and found.

4. Keep working Social. Social Media plays a very important roll in search and has since about last June (2010) when real time search came into being. Social Media’s roll in universal search in very important. Get yourself the object of a big twitter feed and you might move up a few pages. The more twits the higher you go. You might want to try posting a video on not just YouTube but try BrightCove, Viddler or Vimeo.com, and I would do this even if you are hosting the video on your own site.

5. Get Local. More than 20% of the searches on Google revolve around some sort of localized search. So get local. You have multiple locations? List them. Let people know where your brick and mortar is.

Remember it is game of moving up and down in the engines. Learn to play and play well and you to up. Don’t learn or play good, you go down.

Larson Notes & Satire: The search engines can be very remarkable. They don’t care about your race, creed or color. They don’t care how big or small your company is, they care about 1 thing: How well you feed them information in a way they like. Ya it’s all about them, not you! It’s me me me but in the way for them them them! You want to be rated high, then do it their way or it’s the bye bye on the highway . So hand spoon them your information. This is your time to shine. To tell your story as you need it to be told. The louder you can get the more ears will hear about you. So SHOUT it out!

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Where are your Back Links (and other stuff)

2011-03-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

As a piggyback from yesterdays blog today’s [post is a Free SEO Tool called

Backlink Analyzer for search engine optimization. The SearchBliss Backlink Analyzer will report the total backlinks for your website and list the top (up to 100) URLs by value linking to your site.

It’s like decorating search engines walls with awards and certificates, people like to spotlight their achievements. Backlink Analyzer will let you do that in terms of connections.

Just feed this tool a URL, and it'll attempt to determine the number of backlinks the sites received. Then, it will highlight up to 100 of the most valuable URLs that link to the site, letting you see your accomplishments.

Go to; http://www.searchbliss.com/seo-tools/backlinks-report.asp
Enter your web site URL in the little box and find out where your site links to.

On my site
We Found 389 Backlinks
Top URLs Linking To
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/:
I will not list out the top 100 here but try it and see how many backlinks you come up with

Then for fun I hit the link for Social Bookmark & Blog Search Checker and got
Site: http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
Engine Incoming Links
del.icio.us: 0
Diigo: 0
Google Blog Search: 140
IceRocket: 9
Total: 149

With a score of 149 that did not bode well considering they score blogs out at
Limited Presence 0 - 500
Average Presence 501 - 1,000
Above Avg. Presence 1.001 - 5,000
Contender 5,001 - 10,000
Player 10,001 - 50,000 900 lb. Gorilla 50,001 +

Then I did the Search Engine Saturation Checker another Free SEO Tool. Search engine saturation simply refers to the number of pages a given search engine has in its index for your website domain.
Site: http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
Engine Indexed Pages
Google: 51
Bing (MSN): 12
Yahoo!: 32
Total: 95

Larson Notes & Satire: There is work to be done! SEO is a game. To get higher ranking all you need to do is learn how to play the game.

If you don’t want to do it yourself we are more than happy to play the game for you, we find it fun and exhilarating, especially when we win!

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Watch Your Back. . . Links

2011-03-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

Social Networks Backlink Checker is a Free SEO Tool for search engine optimization. Social networks have become important part any SEO campaign. Check any website's back links on the major social networks with this SEO tool, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more for free

At the most basic level, search engines try to find results that are useful to real people. For that reason, social signals of linked in sites are starting to carry more importance. So if you want to see if people using social networks like your site(s), consider using this Social Networks Backlink Checker tool.

The Social Networks Backlink Checker takes a URL and tries to determine how many incoming links it's received from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, StumbleUpon. Then you can gauge whether you need to increase your social media marketing efforts.

Simply go to: http://www.searchbliss.com/seo-tools/social-backlink-check.asp

Enter your URL (Website) in the little box with the access code and you get your results.

Here is how I came up:
Site: http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
Network Incoming Links
Twitter: 70
Facebook: 578
Myspace: 0
LinkedIn: 726
StumbleUpon: 0

Larson Notes & Satire: I can handle that. Was very happy with Facebook, very pleased with LinkedIn but on Twitter? Well I guess I have not been working that as much. As for MySpace, well I have almost abandoned it. And StubmleUpon? I expected at least 1 incoming link but I think that would have been to one of my blogs so. . .

Taking this to its logical conclusion I need to pound harder so on the Social Media site I have more links out there and more links should mean a higher ranking and a higher ranking should mean more hits on my site and more hits on my site should mean more customers, right?

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

What Is a Rumor Worth?

2011-03-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

Marvin Gaye I Heard It Through The Grapevine

Ooh, I bet you're wondering how I knew
About you're plans to make me blue
With some other guy that you knew before.
Between the two of us guys
You know I love you more.
It took me by surprise I must say,
When I found out yesterday.
Don't you know that...

I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I'm just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.

I know that a man ain't supposed to cry,
But these tears I can't hold inside.
Losin' you would end my life you see,
Cause you mean that much to me.
You could have told me yourself
That you love someone else.
Instead...

I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I'm just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.

People say believe half of what you see,
Son, and none of what you hear.
I can't help bein' confused
If it's true please tell me dear?
Do you plan to let me go
For the other guy you loved before?
Don't you know...

I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I'm just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.

As a rational human being we need to have an understanding of the social and business world around us. Add that to the combustible world of Social Media and Social Media Marketing and you as a business owner and or marketer face an ambiguous blanked threat from situations that you have no, yes NO control over. People say things. Post things, regardless of their validly or not and away they go. . . flying at the speed of light across the world wide web!

Good or bad rumors affect you and your business. So what, if anything can you do?

1) Strengthen your key influencers. Keep them close, safe and informed. What is said from a close friend or family member has or weight than that of an unknown person to push the good or help you to down play the bad

2) Immediacy of influencer action. Rumors more often than not take hold in your close knot groups and neighborhoods. Keep your home base safe and informed.

3) The number of sources. The more people in a given network who believe in a rumor the more likely that someone else is going to believe it.

Using these 3 components of the Rumor Mill, we can start to see how a rumor can spread based on varying motivations for spreading it. Good or bad, people talk and repost.

So what can you do?

First: develop a trust with your clients, friends and followers. The more you are trusted the more you can squelch negative rumors and push forward positive ones. So how do you get trust? Try keeping your word, giving regular communication and keep yourself going in one stead direction. Be who you are and you should have no problem with this.

Second: If you keep a regular channel of information flowing you are more likely than not to limit any uncertainty and anxiety over rumors that are circling around you.

Third: Keep an ear to the wind. Use search alerts that search for your name being circulated online. Google yourself, you and your company, a couple of times a day. Be proactive

Forth: Be fast on your feet. Quickly confirm good rumors or squish bad rumors and steal the thunder of those who would benefit from people in your Social World hearing it.

Fifth: Always be ready to rebut and dispute a false rumor. That is where a so called neutral third party friend or follower comes in handy as your Lone Ranger or White Knight.

Larson Notes & Satire: Was Marvin talking about his girlfriend or his customer? If you can hear about a customer looking to take their work to a different company before they do or before they really get into active conversation with the other company you stand a much better chance of righting the wrong of what happened. It makes no difference if the wrong was real or perceived. To the customer it is real and that is what counts Take me and AT&T. Hint hint. I spend a lot of money to Ma Bell. They should be licking my boots. Funny how they don’t seem to care after they have my yearly contract under their belt. Enter new phone system and internet provider. A new communication company here in the Land Of Larson? Well I can’t say yes and I can’t say no, but …. If I could save you up to 66% on your communication bill would you be interested?

Ok see how that happens?

This is going to be a very fun year in the Land Of Larson. The tip of the iceberg has only started to hit the ship! If you are my competition I would start to be worried. The kid is on his game and moving in the right direction with new products and services? I was looking at getting into Video E-Mails.

Another rumor? I wonder. Did I or didn't I?

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!

Cross-Browser Website Compatibility Test

2011-03-08T11:22:00.000-08:00

Found this little tool today from Gomez (www.gomez.com ). It has always been a problem that you make a site then cast it out there and you have no idea who will look at it or on what browser they will take a peek at your site. Heck I still have a machine running windows 98 for special purposes. Your customers and prospects are accessing your Website using different versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Google Chrome and you have no control at all.

Now you can be a little more proactive and take a look at how your site will look on any number of platforms fast and easily at:

http://www.gomez.com/cross-browser-website-compatibility-test/tm-22-feb/

Enjoy

Larson Notes & Satire: It’s pretty good but it is not perfect. My site came up looking good on Safari 2.0.2, Macintosh OSX 10.4, Internet Explorer 6.0, Windows XP, Firefox 3.6.10, Windows Vista, but on Chrome & Windows 7, it showed a “no show”. I called it up on my machine using my Chrome browser and bingo there it was all nice and pretty or as pretty as my site can look.

Yet when putting together a new page or when I get around to a remake or a new site on a different platform and place now I have a tool to look at it in multiple screens.

So how did your site do? All good to go?

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!

Saving Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

2011-03-07T08:44:00.000-08:00

Was Simon & Garfunkel’s song “A Hazy Shade Of Winter” a song made to describe Social Media Marketing.

“Time,
Time,
Time, see what's become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities.

I was so hard to please.
Look around,
Leaves are brown,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.

Hear the Salvation Army band.
Down by the riverside's
Bound to be a better ride
Than what you've got planned.

Carry your cup in your hand.
And look around.
Leaves are brown.
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.

Hang on to your hopes, my friend.
That's an easy thing to say,

But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend that you can build them again.
Look around,
The grass is high,
The fields are ripe,
It's the springtime of my life.

Seasons change with the scenery;
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?

Seasons change with the scenery;
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?
Funny how my memory skips
Looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme.

Drinking my vodka and lime,
I look around,
Leaves are brown,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.”

Seems like today the talk on the street is how to revive an almost non-existent Social Marketing Campaign or how to save a dying one.

For the most part marketers and entrepreneurs have gotten the content for their Front pages down correctly, they have and are producing more than enough content and useful information about their companies and they have set up the sites for good search engine optimization but they are still missing that key element for social media marketing. They, you, we, I, are just not being SOCIAL.

With content on the internet growing at over 50% a year if you are relying on Search Engines only it’s just not going to happen. You can’t just publish and hope it will work its way up to the top of Google, yahoo or bing. You need to get out your soap box, get up and start proclaiming your message.

Soap Box 1: Start a newsletter. Start working with your existing audience. This is the easiest and most assessable group of people you have. With a delivery of monthly or more often, biweekly or weekly are not out of the question if it is a value option for the reader. Give them good solid content not just a bunch of gobblity gook advertisements about yourself.

Soap Box 2: Engage your key influencers. I’ll bet you that you have at least one or two major bloggers in your list of followers. You already have 1 here with me. Now the idea is to reach out to these key Social Media Players and get really personal. Ask to meet them or for a phone appointment. Comment on their blogs. Compliment them on their work, offer to republish something they wrote and posted, (some “experts” say if you need to offer to pay a licensing fee or something to that effect, Larson says forget that stuff. You are giving them a FREE outlet to your followers and that should be more than enough of a payback) If you can get them excited about you and what you are trying to do, they will send people your way with a number of online possibilities.

Soap Box 3: Let them in. Tear down the walls of hindrance. Ya drop the registration forms. Why they don’t work. If I see a white paper that I want I might take a peek, If I have to fill out a form the first thing that comes into my head is, “Ok if I do this I will either get a sales call from the company which I probably don’t want or I will get emails from them till the end of time. So I don’t down load, I don’t read and I don’t find out how good your company is. It is a fact over 50% of people leave a sight when a registration form appears so I am not alone. This blatant abandonment is a loss of possible referrals, retwitts or reposts to you. If I were you I would be thinking of ways to encourage people to though your name and content all over the web. Those that want what you do, will then find and come to you!

Soap Box 4: Invite comments. Try to have your blogs be through provoking and response generating. Fill it with feedback, ideas and questions that beg for your readers to make comments. Try to address each and every comment. You want to control the flow but not stymie the thread. Then go one step farther and use twitter Facebook and LinkedIn to repost the best of the best.

Soap Box 5: Be Responsive. When a post or request for input brings you fruit thank whoever it is. If you are unable to (again) respond to each and every comment, at least acknowledge the thread or open discussion. Again use twitter Facebook and LinkedIn to repost the best posts.

Soap Box 6: Repackage and reuse. You can publish podcasts or video versions of your blog entries or put a few past posts together that have a synergy between them into a new post. Again give people a way to have some ownership in what you are doing. Show your expertise in how you handle the threads.

Larson Notes & Satire: Time time time, so put time on your side, these are ways to maximize your time and even mutiply your time buy getting action and reposts. This could be any of the seasons for your Social Media Marketing, winter, spring, summer or fall. It is all what you make of it; you are in charge of what you do and can’t do in The Social Media arena. It is all up to you, unless you go out and hire a Social Media Marketing Company (like Larson could be doing for you). But if you hide yourself under a wall of fear and not let in the full scope of what this Channel can bring you are only cutting off your own nose. Stand up. Get up on that Social Media Soap Box and start engaging. Hire a brass band and blow your horn!

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!

20% of your customers are draining your profit by 80%

2011-03-04T07:24:00.000-08:00

20% of your customers are eating up your profits by 80%. The old Pareto’s 80/20 rule does tend to hold true more often than not. The bottom 20% of your customers or even prospects are the people who are costing you more money to service than what they spend with you. They might be killing your business.

Now let’s take that down to creating or buying a list of prospects. You don't want to just buy a list when 20% of the names will be automatically unprofitable. Think about it. You don’t have the time or money to be wasting, do you? You want, no need to understand who your best customers are so you can go out and find more just like them. There are ways to do this, be it on your own or by using a list manager.

If you start to take this approach it will start to force you to think differently. Consider: What if you changed your sales incentives to be aimed at only closing deals only with those kinds or accounts that have the same needs, desirers and structures of your now most profitable accounts rather than closing any and every deal that falls on your desk? If you did this, you can start the shift to a mindset of going after the perfect customer.

Coming out of a direct marketing company where it's easy to build a list of names, we need to refine those efforts and not get into the Oscar Olsen syndrome of “good enough”. Don’t do the same old again and again. If you want to run a meat market marketing attack go down to Bob's the butcher's Meat Market, if you want to be going out and running through a cycle every two or three months of acquiring new names and pushing them out through the funnel system, go on. For my money I want and need more bang for my buck.

Larson Notes & Satire: When you are wearing your marketing hat you need to get more. More visibility and more action. This means using databases in every conceivable ways possible on every channel you can work with at 95% and above. That does not mean you just in dabble in direct mail or email. Mix it up, shack and bake baby, ad in a secret ingredient. Mix in telemarketing, digital advertising, dare a say go out and buy a key word if you can identify those high value customers and plan your entire advertising campaign accordingly, you might actually get higher ROI. And this in turn can contribute to the success of interactive marketing by using customer knowledge to create relevant email, deliver real-time offers in online and off line channels.

Did I say plan out your advertising and marketing? Now that’s going to hurt! All you fly by the seat of your pants marketers out there, you are not Procter and Gamble who have more money to through at advertising in one day that any of us have in 5 years so “choose wisely”. It’s only your company and your life.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!

Finding Your Sites Key Word Ranking

2011-03-02T11:42:00.000-08:00

How good are your key word search rankings? It gets a little tiring to go though and test your site's ranking, one keyword or search engine at a time, isn’t? Here is a little thing I found a few days ago and have been playing around with called Keyword Envy and it addresses that issue in a very significant way by helping you find out how well you are doing much more efficiently by using all major search engines

This tool will measure a URL against up to five different search terms at a time, and will also check it on Google Canada, Google UK, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask in addition to good old Google.

http://www.keywordenvy.com/

Well I did it and talk about a slap in the face. Ouch! In one word string I came up NUMBER 1 but the rest of the word stings I really would like to be hitting (at least in the top 100 searches) nothing, nada, zip, goose egg! I guess I have some major work to do.

Then what reading level is your site?

I have done this a few times and well mine keeps coming up at a college level. Should I change it? I have thought about it but then I think, no, I am saying what I want to say in the way I want to say it and going after the people I want.

I have a few other pages that I need to elevate the words and word usage but I want my site at a higher level, not because I am stuck up but because I want to target a higher level of buyer.

So see how your sites words are constructed and the effect you are having on visitors in Readability Test:

http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php#readingresults

This tool takes a URL and (at its most basic level) sees how frequently you're using long words. Then it'll pop out several scores to indicate whether you should bring the level of discussion in the direction of "The Cat in the Hat" so as not to lose people.

Larson Notes & Satire: You got to know what you got if you are going to change it to where you want it to be. I know (at least my front page is doing what I want. Word usage wise) but as for my key word search. Well I am going to have to do some major playing and restructuring. But it’s a game I intend to win.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!

Social Word Of Mouth?

2011-02-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

Think about it, WOM or Word Of Mouth advertising has been around forever. And what better medium and channel than to Social Media to harness WOM. It’s the ham and eggs of advertising. It doesn’t make any difference if your technical orientated, nitch specific, a shopping B2C or a Manufacturing B2B. You should be collecting the kind of followers that need and want and understand what you do and sell. You can be almost sure that in your collection of friends and followers there is at least 1 if not more people that need to tell everyone the latest news and gossip about you, your brother or your latest Blue Duggers.

These WOM wonders are the virtual influencers of your world. Give them something to talk about. They are asking, no begging you to say something good, new and juicy for them to spread around. They are your hidden virtual marketing team. Your online hidden sales force but how can you put any muscle to this online power house?

1) Find the influencers. There are processes and software (especially on Twitter but also MerchantCircle and Facebook if you’re watching. If you find and locate the leaders of discussions and repostings you stand a greater chance of yours getting retwitted or posted or whatever. Research people as to who does the most retwitting and thoroughly understand who they are and what they cover and topics they like. Then develop a relationship with them online.

2) Listen to them. Ya shut your mouth and listen. You need to listen and understand these top influencers. Track and monitor their online discussions. See if they are positive people or come off as negative or just plain vanilla neutral. Not everyone posts and reposts equally.

3) Find and make your advocates. Some of your best social media WOM marketing examples just simply begin with a company (person) giving a group of influencers previews to their product or service and simply asked them to tell their networks what their ideas and thoughts were and are. You will get great feedback and everyone loves to get the inside scoop first, don’t they?

4) Give them a forum or soap box. You have gone and provided them with the information on you and your company’s product or service, now give them the keys to door. Give them a megaphone. Make them special. How many times have I been a featured person in a Ning? And what do you think I do. I post it on my Facebook fan page http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans which flows into my twitter account which flows into my LinkedIn account and bingo their site is all over my social media sites.

Larson Notes & Satire: Your one person, only one. So am I no matter how bad I want to clone myself it’s just not going to happen. Yet WOM can seemingly make more of you and really get you into new places fast and some you would never get into without out help. People like to help. They really do. There are bullies out there in cyber land. People who have no reason to be in a social network site because they are just not social. All they do is push their way in and take over. Or if you choose to disagree with them they blast you into submission. These you should avoid.

But the good ones? Embrace them and run with it.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!

Why Are You Doing Social Media?

2011-02-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

Why are you involved in Social Media & Social Media Marketing? To pass the time away or to promote and make money for your business? I’m in it for the money. If I pick up a friend or two, wonderful but show me the money.

Social Media Marketing can produce spectacular results in more way than 1 but it needs to be carefully crafted and planned out sooner or later or it becomes a black hole of time and possibly money.

If you can develop a disciplined approach to your social media marketing you can reap in the promising rewards that are out there seemingly just beyond your reach.

The key is engaging people at the critical touch points of the buying cycle; you know the critical spots you engage people in when they are thinking about your product or service.

So when you sit down how can you get all this done and done in a way that lets you touch people in the way that want to be touched?

1) Get your audience right. If I have said it once I have said it a thousand times: Go narrow nitch. If you try to be everything to everybody you will be no one to yourself. Look at your top 5 to 10 customers. Who are they, what are they and why do they buy from you?

2) What makes this group of people buy? What is special and unique that makes this kind of person buy? What triggers them to open up the check book? Emotion? Relevance? Originally? Need?

3) What is the 1 most important touch point? Of all those things what is the 1 most important point of why they buy? Go narrow my friend as narrow as you can. You can’t sell to the entire world but you can sell to those who need what you got.

4) Measure, monitor and do it again. Go on and tally up the numbers. From unique hit numbers to actual sales. Use some of that gray muscle up there in your head.

Larson Notes & Satire: Setting your tag line right Special Site Only Coupons. Special Site promotions. Whatever the mind can conceive you can do on your site. Push it, push it hard. Find what works for you as fast as possible and leave the rest and push hard in that direction.

You can’t and don’t want to be everything to everybody. Think of the inventory or the service line you would need to be providing? Ouch!

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!

Driving Your Social Strategy

2011-02-24T06:52:00.000-08:00

Social Media has come. We know what Facebook is doing number wise, Likewise twitter, LinkedIn, MerchantCircle and others. Social Media is now established enough that it is considered an actual channel in marketing programs, be it so all over the place so that is hard to get a real handle on it.

To establish your Social Media marketing and presence requires an execution of some tired and true practices to get you credibility and trust. This is your investment not so much in dollars (unless you enlist a company like mine to do it for you) but an investment in time.

The key ideas that you need to be following to help you to create this social presence are reciprocity of and open relationship, keeping relevant and commitment to the long term of the site.

When someone chooses (and is a choice), chooses to listen and follow you they are doing it with a certain expectation of what to expect from you. For you to stay on topic and relevant to them. If you digress into other areas you are going to lose them. So stay consistent above all else. Going out and sticking up a profile page does not make you social either. You need to interact on a regular basis to become a “topical” expert in your field, a go to person.

So now what?

1) Interact. Don’t blast your friends with your emails about what YOU want. Enable a sharing attitude of your content throughout your channels.

2) Advertise. Yes you can advertise on and through social media but do it topically. Know your Social Media Place. Social Media by its very nature is supposed to drive people to action. Take a roll in that action.

3) Segmentation. If you are in different topical Social Media sites recognize that and stay on topic. If you are in a board based site, expound, if a narrow nitch site, so narrow, but again stay on topic of who and what you are and can provide.

Larson Notes & Satire: So are you ready, really ready to get involved in Social media or should you be hiring me to do it for you: http://www.larsonassociates.ws/SocialMediaMarketing . I am not what I call an expert. I am an active user that puts forth the effort to be engaged in Social Media. If flows and new things are always happening. Because we are actively involved we can implement quickly trends that are working for us into our clients programs. You can be doing the same thing. But you got to be active and be a player. There are few mistakes in Social Media except 1 and that is sitting around doing nothing.

Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program.
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Take the Larson Challenge to double your sales this year and get listed on our web site @ http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larson_Challenge . Email us your company name and web address to get listed. Make this year your best ever!