Moving your business to the next level in two words: Permormance Metrics

How do you know you reached your goals? How do you know that you’re on the right track? The only way to do this is to measure your results with performance metrics. Performance metrics, also known as key performance indicators (KPI) are specific measures to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of an organizations offline and online operations. For example, if a company wants to make sure that it has 20% of its leads from search engines, your company needs to keep an eye on this and make sure this goal is being achieved. If you measure this goal and see you are only reaching 15 percent, you can make a correction in your approach and measure again. When a company sets a plan, it needs to consider four important things to measure the effectiveness.

Step one: translation of a company’s vision, strategy, or e-business model into components that are measurable in a quantitative way is the goal. For e-business, some goals should include conversion of visitors to the site into sales or building customer loyalty.

 Step two: the performance measures need to be understandable and easy to use.  All employees using them should have access to the information in order to make an informed decision. Organizations should use KPI in order to sort through all the data gathered. Keeping a dashboard is an easy graphical tool.

Step three: you must be able to act on a metric. Most companies will use benchmarking (using a baseline of one’s company compared to others) and also the past metrics to set goals for the future metrics. For example, decrease the bounce rate (the percent a person hits the “back button” on the home page and leaves your site) on the website.

Step four: Motivation of employees to reach desired metrics with the use of compensation and employee involvement will help reach the goals set in place. Bringing in employees from the beginning of the process and throughout will help ensure that the goals set forth are achievable and important to the organization.   

Therefore, the use of metrics to measure how your company is performing will ensure the longevity of the company. If your company is in operation now without metrics or goals, then your company is not utilizing the tools available to take your company to the next level. Do not settle for average, push your company and the sky is the limit. Let The HELM Group show you how to set performance metrics and how to track them.

Network Marketing

Communication has changed, people want to be heard and social networking is a great tool to achieve that purpose.  Different brands, politicians, governmental organizations, and many others have been forced to accept this new way of communication.  If they didn’t, they would not be heard and people would not receive their message.

Social Networks are a natural platform. Brands can explore and prove their products and services before launching them into the market.  Companies are creating forums for their clients to promote ideas of products and share opinions about themselves. With this, they not only give a sign that they are paying attention but the clients are part of the creation process of a new product or service. 

The free innovation covers; observation, experimentation, orchestration, collective creativity, collaboration, sharing ideas, co-creation, and bringing their company close to their customers.

Below are proposed principles to marketing through the main platforms and Social Networks, where different people and brands are expressing their ideas around the world.

Interaction Principles

Answer the questions and consider the follower’s opinions, this is very important at the moment.  Each question you answer is an opportunity of loyalty and strengthening the follower’s cooperation with what you say and do. Each opinion that you consider is a unique sign to your followers, if you actually listen to what the follower has to say and if you take time to comprehend. The more information you have about your followers, the more knowledge you have about them you will recognize what your follower needs are to satisfy them.

Selection Principle

Be wise on who you reply to, who to recommend, who to share, and who to follow. If not you will lose coherency and consistency with your audience.  Communicating and writing about things you really know strengthens your image, assertively, and credibility.

Materialize your selection by creating lists and groups of similar profiles and contents. This will optimize your recommenddations and link accounts to your profile. Remember that a good recommendation usually becomes a good promotion for your account and you’ll start to build a reputation.

Quality Principle

Quality is an important relation to the content that you create and distribute. The degree of assertiveness and relationship of your content with your followers depends on how you inter act, because it is where you develop the knowledge and needs of your followers.

Being emphatic allows you to look deeper at the motivation of your followers. This makes it easier for the production of content to be of higher quality. With higher quality you are able to create or reproduce high-rated content to your followers, creating close ties will make a stronger loyalty of your followers.

Automation Principle

Do not automate too much of your account, you will lose the link with your followers. People value a personalized treatment. The automatic and standardized answer weakens the link between the followers, therefore, weakens loyalty.

Relevance Principle

Everything you write and communicate should give real value to your followers. The followers value the utility of the contents that you provide and recommend.

Attraction Principle

Always draw attention to your followers. Write and share important information to the target groups. Surprise your follower every day in shape and substance of your content. You can do this by debates, pictures, and videos.

Reputation Principle

Be consistent with what you say and you will achieve prestige among your followers. Never lie or invent comments that don’t have the power to gain followers in the short run. A lot of times we fall into the temptation of posting some sensationalist news to get some impact, but we are actually mortgaging our credibility in the long run.

Coherency Principle

Never, contradict yourself. You must revise everything before you upload something. Respect the editorial line of your biography. Remember that you owe all the respect to the followers have put trust in you. Changing your mind from one day to the next in the network, may generate the reject of your community.

Empathy Principle

Put yourself in other’s shoes, understand what he/she needs and wants. Empathy allows you to generate high-demanded and accepted contents from your audience.  This translates into a high tuning between what you do and what you audience wants, affecting positively in the loyalty of your followers.

 Innovation Principle

It creates a new and significant value for a lot a people. You have to enhance the capacity of converting a good idea into a product, service or successful process.

Innovation in the social networks allows you to communicate with people which you wouldn’t normally have the chance to meet. Tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn and other, allow you to manage brands, political campaigns, educate about digital platforms, create community support services, and provide direct customer service. The statistics indicate that 500 million is the number of impressions that the customers share online annually with other people about products and services.

For Entrepreneurs-Small Business Marketing Strategies

A marketing strategy is a plan or approach for marketing your products and services.  An ad campaign, on the other hand, is the means by which your marketing strategy is accomplished.  Your objective is to tie your advertising efforts into a comprehensive marketing strategy that has carefully designed to attract attention in the marketplace.  Here are a few marketing strategies to help your business develop and achieve its goals. 

Boost Consumer Confidence- Consumers are frequently hesitant to buy a product they know little about.  If your business or products are new to the area, you could create a marketing campaign that emphasizes the quality and value of your products.  The resulting boost in consumer confidence will likely translate into more action at the cash register.

Create Awareness- Another way to spark interest for your products is to conduct a campaign designed to promote your products in as many ways as possible. In other words, your marketing strategy could be to create buzz by blanketing the local airwaves, print space, and other advertising mediums with your name, logo, and products. Increased awareness will definitely bring more people into your store, but it also costs money, so you should be prepared to increase your advertising budget to pull it off.

Leverage Emotions- No matter what they say, the buying decision is emotional for many customers. Large corporations spend millions of dollars playing on their customers' emotions and what works for them, can work for you, too. The key is to create a campaign that makes consumers feel themselves, your company, and the decision to buy your products.

Overcome Objections- The task of overcoming a buyer's objections is usually assigned to the sales team. However, a well-crafted marketing campaign can work toward overcoming your customers' buying obstacles before they walk in the door. A marketing strategy that emphasizes warranties, testimonials, endorsements, and other positive reinforcement devices can not only make the buying decision easier for existing customers, but also attract new customers who hadn't previously considered buying from your business.

Set a Deadline- Why do so many ads emphasize the date the sale ends? People respond to deadlines. Marketing strategies designed around the idea of limited supplies, temporary price reductions, or other mechanisms that create a sense of urgency can provide a quick influx of customers and can potentially jumpstart a business suffering from a diminished customer base.

Let The HELM Group help you create a marketing strategy catered to your product.

China E-Marketing Potential

Why not consider China to broaden your customer and secondary learning group bases?

China has the largest number of internet users. There are presently over 380 million internet users in China, which account for one fifth of the 1.75 billion internet users the world over. 

Of these users, 176 million are users of social networking sites, and over 280 million are search engine users.

The value of online business transactions in China has reached 36.5 billion US dollars.

The use of social networking sites has also been expanding much more rapidly than expected, with the actual number of users exceeding predictions by over 50 million people. Even more importantly, over the past year the number of online business transactions grew by 82% while the value of these transactions more than doubled.

Why avoid these enthusiastic Chinese consumers?

** By learning to effectively employ Chinese search engines, being culturally sensitive in how you target a foreign audience, and learning to navigate the language barrier, a relatively modest investment of time and effort may pay dividends later.

 By simply translating the homepage on your website into Mandarin to encourage people to conduct business with you in English, your page will be able to appear in Chinese search engines.

Considering China's rapidly expanding economy and internet user base, it only makes sense to venture forth into Chinese e-marketing.
There's still plenty of green grass (or bamboo) to eat in China.  Make money while others stay in the U.S. !!

Social Bookmarking in China

Social bookmarking is becoming more and more important now, both for English SEO and Chinese SEO. All  would like to use social bookmarking for building links and to drive traffic to your site. It enables users to share links to sites they find interesting.

In China, links are shared on QQzone and Baidu Soucang. It is time consuming, and some software would help you do it automatically, but most of them are very expensive. This is the way to do it free and fast. Baidu Soucang is the example used below.

1. Register Baidu account by using freeware “Baidu account superman”. You must set proxy for registration.

**((Before you start, make sure all of them work normally. Export the account list and save it on your computer.))


2. Import the account information into “baidu marketing assist”, it will switch you from different baidu accounts.





3. Start sharing: “Bookmark sharing” doesn’t allow you add customized title and description for the url.

At present, you can say Chinese bookmarking equals to “Baidu Soucang”

___________________

Market Your Business in 4 Easy Ways

Marketing your business is all about interaction.  You have to talk and communicate with people and your community and promote your business.  In today’s business world we are more influenced by comments from friends and anonymous reviews.  Today’s business economy is about listening, engaging, guiding and supporting your customers.  As a company it is imperative to develop a relationship with each of your customers.  These four simple steps will help you develop relationships with your customers.

1) Your Entire Organization Needs to Participate

Salespeople need to listen to their customers no matter where they interact, understand their needs and build deeper relationships. Product specialist will need to listen to product feedback. Customer service needs to proactively help and guide the customer. CEOs need to keep their finger on the pulse of the business. Everybody needs to listen and bring that knowledge back into the organization. Everybody needs to engage with the community.

For example, in 2009, 3,000 Best Buy employees volunteered to answer customer questions on Twitter (@twelpforce) as part of their daily work responsibilities. In three years, 50,000 questions were answered, employees engaged more deeply with their community and customers became evangelists for Best Buy.

2) Be Social Internally

You can’t present yourself as a social business to your customers if you are not a social business inside your company’s walls. You must enable the voice of the people to flow through your organization -- both the voice of customers and employees. Empower your team to make important decisions in favor of the customer at the moment of the interaction.

To do that, you need to break down the silos and boundaries that exist between departments. You need to give front-line employees the authority to be responsive to customers' frustrations. You need to create the same sense of community internally as you create externally with your customers. This means listening to every individual in the organization and helping them to collaborate more effectively, with the goal of continuously improving the customer experience.

3) Be Real

People like to connect with real people. They like to share their ideas, questions and frustrations with people who will listen and engage with them. They do not like canned responses, impersonal messages, or one-way communication.

People buy from people they like, and they can only like people they know. They cannot know you unless you step out from behind the curtain and reveal yourself.  Start by sharing things about yourself: your successes, your lessons learned, your observations, and your passions. When you open yourself up and really engage, your customers will begin to trust you, be responsive to you, and guide you to success.

4) Leverage Technology

Social businesses need to leverage the power of socially enabled software platforms. These tools unify customer communication and provide businesses with a 360-degree view of all your customer interactions. They provide deeper insight into who your customers are -- as individuals and en masse. As a business professional, you can tap this knowledge to find ways to connect and engage on a personal level.

Social CRM tools also help companies better collaborate and bubble up internal ideas that would have otherwise never seen the light. They help companies centralize their activities around their constituency's feedback, be it from customers, prospects, influencers, or partners.

Social CRM is the glue that will help your business become a true social business.

Viral marketing lessons from KONY 2012

By midday Friday, just three days after its release, more than 70 million people had viewed or seen parts of the video, with the issue trending on Twitter and much of the mainstream media providing coverage.

Viral simply achieves remarkable reach very quickly, presenting a dynamic model of marketing, changing traditional timelines and targeting strategy.

Lessons from Kony 2012
Effective use of the new media: the campaign effectively made use of Tumblr, Facebook, Vimeo, Youtube, website and Twitter to proliferate the cornerstone of their campaign – the 29 minute video about Kony and the issue of child soldiers in Africa.
Identifying and connecting with the target market: Knowing your target market can make or break a marketing campaign and IC has certainly done its homework. The choice of a viral video as well as the engaging, fast paced format resonated with the original viewers enough for them to share the video. Asking viewers to grab the attention of popular culture influencers such as Justin Bieber by spreading the video appealed to their desire to engage with celebrities encouraging action.
Clear messages: IC has come up with an easily understood single minded proposition, and what’s more important, they encapsulated that proposition in clear messages that resonated with the audience. Here are some below:

• ‘Make Kony famous.’
• ‘Stop at nothing.’
• ‘Kony 2012. The worst.’
• ‘Joseph Kony is the world’s worst war criminal.’
• ‘Kony 2012. One thing we can all agree on.’

Clear calls to action: like the messages, the campaign’s calls to action were clear and simple

• ‘Wear the bracelet.’
• ‘Sign the pledge.’
• ‘Share the film.’

Consistency: these messages and calls to action appear on all IC’s marketing materials including posters, bracelets, pamphlets and action kits. IC’s social media platforms also carry these calls to action and the campaigns overall messages.
Listening: it is evident that the IC has been closely monitoring the unfolding of Kony 2012 and responding the conversations around the campaign. Their ability to respond to both positive and negative sentiments has stimulated further conversation.

Campaign resultsThe campaign has been covered by reputable publications (nationally and internationally) and even made its way into mainstream television in Australia when Channel Ten dedicated a thirty minute slot to a Kony special.
The blogosphere has been discussing the campaign actively and the campaign finally reached the ears of the influencers the IC had been targeting, including Justin Bieber and Oprah Winfrey who tweeted in the response to the campaign.

The viral spread of the campaign has also ensured widespread popularity on social media. Here are the stats at the time of writing:

• 370,729 followers on Twitter,
• 2.3 million fans on Facebook,
• 14.2 million plays on Vimeo, and
• 43,354,020 million views on Youtube and 2,246,157 subscribers to Invisible Children’s Youtube channel.

Taking away lessons from Kony
Know your audience and know your online platforms. This will allow you to make informed decisions about your campaign and to maximise the benefits of each platform.
Support your online campaign with offline elements. In the case of Kony 2012 action kits with posters and Tshirts were produced for sale and distribution. IC also went to the streets to put up posters and established an offline culmination of the campaign.
Keep informed. Continue engaging with your audiences and monitor the direction your campaign is heading in. This helped IC to address criticism and thank its supporters quickly.

At the end of the day the virality of the campaign depends just as much on the quality of the message as it does on the format and the channels it is distributed in.

How to Make a Viral Contest - Gettting Started w/Social Widgets

Make Viral Contest Pages with Social Media Widgets

 

Entry requires that the visitor retweet the message and a link back to the landing page creating the viral effect

1. Create a landing page offering a contest prize suitable for your target market
2. Add Facebook & Twitter widgets to facilitate sharing
3. Add a simple one field email collection form
4. Require that entrants use your selected social sharing devices in order to enter the contest
5. Specify that email is required to notify the winner
6. Do a random draw to determine your winner(s)
7. Notify winners via your new email list and include an extra promotional offer

An example
Our latest contest is to give away a free $600 conference pass to the H.E.L.M. Conference.

Which Social Widgets Should You Use?
Try these 2 widgets:

• Facebook Like Box: This allows you to acquire new fans for your Facebook page. The widget in question also provides an element of social proof by showing your fan count and some photos of your fans. You can customize this widget and grab the embeddable code for it from the Facebook share section.
• Twitter “Tweet This” Box: This is the widget that can make your contest viral. It requires that you set up a Twitter @Anywhere app (instructions for how to do it with Unbounce here). Now as part of the contest entry, people retweet your message and a link back to the contest page, driving more traffic to your contest and extending your reach.

The power of VIRAL marketing contests

Run your own viral contests, and flood your website with Free Traffic....
To Create An Army Of Back-links... To Capture Tons Of Subscribers... To Recruit Loads Of Affiliates... And To Produce Viral Storms Of Buzz & Attention Rapidly All Over The Net!

Transform Your Website Visitors Into Wild Fans
Visitors enter your contests to earn points and they do the things you want them to do. You could give them 100 points to post about your product on Facebook.

• You could give them 300 points to post a Youtube video about your product.
• You could give them 100 points to Tweet about your product.
• You could give them 50 points to "Like" your product on Facebook.
• You could give them 100 points per subscriber they send your way.
• You could give them 50 points to just view an article you wrote and another 300 points to give you feedback (better known as a TESTIMONIAL!)

Is Strong Digital Strategy your Missing Piece ?

We know that every marketing campaign needs a strong digital strategy. We have built strong partnerships with student-targeted sites across the web. From viral sweepstakes and contests to promoting student deals, we focus on developing digital campaigns that are impactful and generate a response within the college market. We leverage a combination of traditional media, high-impact placements and integration with social touch-points to effectively drive traffic. We understand what will resonate with students and can help your brand generate digital campaigns that students are excited about – and share with their friends.

• Digital Strategy
• Campaign Development
• Sweepstakes and Giveaways
• Viral Contest
• Traditional Media
• High Impact Placements
• Social Integration
• Student Deals

Expand Global Marketing Reach

 

"H.E.L.M. can help you tap into the minds and motivations of a global audience while ensuring brand consistency across borders and international divides."
 

Translating global marketing goals into successful localized campaigns takes linguistic profiles that identify the nuances of a language, market research that helps you understand the motivations of a culture and international marketing strategies that cater to a global audience while staying true to your brand. We’ve done it all in over 200 countries around the world.

Content is King in Every Country

Whether you’re marketing in America or Argentina, one thing is universal: Consumers demand content. And lots of it. But you have to go beyond simple translation and create localized content that inspires and motivates your audience in a given geography. 

H.E.L.M. has over 30 international copywriters that provide translation and localization services.

And we have copywriters on the ground who write in their native language in more than100countries around the world.

Centralized & Localized Structures

We can help you tap into the minds and motivations of a global audience while ensuring brand consistency across borders and international divides. But how you want to go about it is up to you. We can support both centralized and localized account management structures, giving our global clients a choice of delivery models to meet their individual needs. Whether you choose a centralized or localized approach, our teams work to ensure global visibility and local accountability. And we share infrastructure and processes across all of our offices to ensure efficiency, collaboration and success for your international marketing strategies.

The five basic things consumers do online and why you should pay attention.

Understanding your customers and their intent online is vital for your company. There are five main things people do online – connect, create, enjoy, learn, and trade. Each one of these things are full of marketing possibilities. Why do we do business online or in general, for profit of course! Lets explore how we can take advantages of these consumers habits.

Connect:

Consumers have a low cost medium to connect with businesses and friends locally or across the world with email and social networks. It’s a way to communicate back and forth and you don’t even need high speed access. Almost all Internet users send email (89%).  You can even use your phone, it’s that simple. Other forms of communication include instant messaging, Internet phone calls, and online dating. Most of this communication comes from dedicated sites such as Skype, eHarmony, and Gmail. Remember that, they go through an online dedicated site.

Create:

Connecting is the start, and then they like to create by updating profiles and uploading photos to their favorite social networks. Users also have content creation where they are adding to their web sites, Myspace, Facebook, and Linkedin for professionals are the most used.

                                                        Enjoy:

Seventy-two percent of users go online for entertainment. Over half the users watch videos and thirty-seven percent download music. These numbers will grow as more is offered on the Internet; most TV shows are transferred digitally and on demand. Hulu is a popular program that stores programming for delivery to a PC at any time. As more people make broadband part of their cable packages, it will be smoother for consumers to stream and download. Marketers should keep an eye on popular searches entered into Google or Yahoo! to keep up with the trends.

Learn:

Consumers surf the web for information also. Local weather, driving directions, news, and sports scores are just some examples. Users claim they learn more from the Internet and has made them resourceful. Many classes form major universities have classes online and some students take these classes just for fun! Search engines are the main resource for these users; they can type in any question and get results.

Trade:

Most consumers will shop, buy, or create another form of transaction online. Seventy-five percent purchased products online and a quarter paid for digital access content (like the New York Times). Craiglist is providing any easy way to post a classified!

Ask yourself again, why do you need to purchase display ad’s?  We think it’s pretty evident when many consumers’ lives have these five reasons for going online: connect, create, enjoy, learn, and trade. Each of these activities drives consumers to a specific site, let us at the HELM group help you determine which sites to add your brand to.

Do you know how to reach your audience?

Advertising is an art and how to deliver this art to your potential buyers is specific process. You must understand the different characteristics of both the physical and digital media. Understanding what you want to accomplish as a company is the start, do you want to get the name out to the masses, reach smaller groups, or work on a more direct individual approach? Knowing the difference between these types of communications can help you reach your target.

Broadcast media is a way to reach large audiences at one time. If you want to get the brand name out there and stuck in the minds of consumers, use this approach, but it comes at a cost. Although 98% of consumers own a TV and usually three of them, the cost to advertise is $100,000 to $550,000 per 30 second commercial. Radio can also reach a fairly large audience for a much lower rate of $20 to $200 for 60 seconds of air time, but can largely be used for the local markets.

Print media is exactly what you think, magazines and newspapers. The one thing this type of media can do that TV doesn’t; gives the viewer the ability to stop, read, digest, and re-read if they want. There can be much more information in print media that cannot be included in a 30 second commercial. You can also reach some specialized targets by paying a little more to advertise in magazines.

Narrowcast media pertains to reaching out to a smaller focused group. The use of cable TV is a prime example; although it’s not broadcasted to a wide audience it is shared to special-interest groups that are a larger audience then the internet audience.  ESPN or Lifetime are examples of this as they are specialty channels and the broadcast only reaches those interested in those specific channels. Normally the cost per advertisement is lower based on this criteria, but some instances this may not be true.

Pointcast media is a type of media which is aimed at a party of one. There are various ways to distribute this: email; personalized Web pages; and cell phone. This type of marketing essentially sends out bulk messages to individuals in different formats and expects returned messages in the same format. Remember though that unsolicited messages via phone, fax and email are illegal.

Direct postal mail, yes some people may say what is postal mail? It is the same as email and can target specific audiences, can be personalized, gives good information and time to read, and gives good tracking information of responses. Only problem is many see postal male as junk mail anymore and the print can be quite costly.

So as you can see, there are pluses and minuses to each type of delivery, let the HELM group help you determine which is the best way to deliver your message!

These are 10 easy steps to follow and help create opportunity and success for your business.

Owners and businesses are always looking for ways to market themselves and get their name out. Social networking is an easy and fast way to get your business name out to the public.  When marketing is continuous and targeted business gets easier.  If prospects have a positive view of your wares and reputation before you call or they start shopping, you’re that much closer to nailing a sale.  Here are 10 cheap and successful ways to market your business.

1. Take steps to make customers feel special. Customers respond to being recognized, especially in these rush-rush, get-the-lowest-price times.  Take time to recognize and appreciate your customers.

 2. Create business cards that prospects keep. Most business cards are tossed within hours of a meeting. Instead of having your card tossed, create one that recipients actually will use — say, a good-looking notepad with your contact info and tagline on every page. The business card notepad is referred to almost daily, kept for 30 days or so and carries a high remembrance factor.

3. Stop servicing break-even customers. If this idea makes you gasp, think harder. You're falling for the fallacy of increasing sales instead of boosting profits. If you stop marketing to unprofitable customers, you have more time and resources for customers who actually grow your business. More than likely, 20% of your customer base is contributing 150% to 200% of total annualized profit (TAP); 70% is breaking even; and 10% is costing you 50% to 100% of TAP. Take a detailed look at your customer profitability data and then direct premium services and marketing to customers who count.

4. Develop an electronic mailing list and send old-fashioned letters. Most businesses have harnessed the power of e-newsletters — and you definitely should be sending out one, too. It's very cost-effective. But exactly because e-mail marketing is now nearly ubiquitous, you can quickly stand out by occasionally sending personal, surface mail letters to customers and prospects. Just make sure the letter delivers something customers want to read, whether an analysis of recent events in your field, premium offers or a sweetener personalized for the recipient: a discount on their next purchase of whatever he last purchased, for instance. This mailing has to have value to those that read it, so it reflects the value of what you offer.

5. Boost your profile at trade shows and conferences. You can quickly create signage, glossy postcards with your contact information, product news inserts or an event mini Web site.

6. Combine business with pleasure — and charity. Spearhead an event, party or conference for a cause you care about. That puts you in the position of getting to know lots of people, and shows off your small business leadership skills. This is a great networking task.

7. Create a destination. Bookstore chain Barnes & Noble has its coffee bars. Furnishings giant Ikea offers child-care centers and cafeterias. Why? So customers gravitate to the stores to enjoy an experience, to hang out for a while. Sunday morning at Barnes & Noble becomes a pleasant weekend routine, rather than a shopping errand. Steal this idea. This tip isn't limited to offline destinations, either. Using pay-per-click advertising, you can cheaply drive traffic to a one-time news event or specialty offerings.

8. Become an online expert. This is the "free sample" approach to bringing in business. Research active e-mail discussion lists and online bulletin boards that is relevant to your business and audience. Join several and start posting expert advice to solve problems or answer questions. You may need to keep this up for a bit. But the rewards come back in paying clients and referrals. 

9. Court local media. Editorial features convey more credibility with prospective clients than paid advertising does. To get coverage from the local media, whether from the town newspaper, from TV or radio stations, or from trade journals, you need a fresh, timely story. It's usually worthwhile to hire an experienced publicist to position the stories, target appropriate media representative and write and send press releases. Usually, you can work on a short-term or contingency basis.

10. Finally, don't let customers simply slip away. Make an effort to reel them back in. It costs a lot less to retain a disgruntled or inactive customer than to acquire a new one. If you haven't heard from a customer in awhile, send a personalized e-mail inquiring whether all is well. For a customer who suffered a bad experience, pick up the phone, acknowledging the unpleasantness and ask if there's anything you can do. A discount can't hurt either. Being kind to customers is the smartest low-cost marketing you can do.

These are 10 easy steps to follow and help create opportunity and success for your business.

The 3 Pillars of relationship marketing for e-marketing

1st pillar - customer relationship management (CRM)

Target, acquire, transact, service, retain, and build lon-term relationships with customers.

2nd pillar - customer experience management (CEM)

This represents the discipline, methodology, and/or process used to comprehensively manage a customer's cross-channel exposure, interaction, and transaction with a company, product, or service.

3rd pillar - customer collaboration management (CCM)

This is a philosophy and business strategy, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value.

"If you have an unhappy customer on the internet, he doesn't tell his six friends, he tells his 6,000 friends." Jeff Bezos, President, Amazon.com

__