10. There’s always one guy judging what we do as if he could do it better. Nobody knows who died and made him expert. Every business has one or knows one. In fact everyone you tell about the business seems to know it all.

9. Usually the one who wears the most makeup gets the most attention at the office.

8. A bakers dozen creates more raving fans out of your customers than a regular dozen.

7. If you can make it to year 8 you’ll be making big money. Most small businesses tank before 1 year.

6. No matter how hard you work at your business there will always be a 16 year old who seems to accomplish more in less time and with much more ease.

5. Some times it still pays to finish 2nd or 3rd. 2nd is not always the first loser as they say.

4. Like American Idol Finalists most small business owners who experience some success think they can do anything.

3. Coca Cola is everywhere.

2. If you have a Enlishman on your board of directors you will be more successful.

1. The underdog sometimes does actually win.

Please contribute and add to this list.

Fill out the form below and we will contact you.

If you are a small business owner you need to watch this video and then you need take advantage of google local.  It is  a free listing that many small, brick and mortar businesses don’t know anything about.  If you are looking for ways to get your website to show up in the search engines and want your site to get crawled and indexed by google then you need to watch this video.

Matt Cutts is the head of web spam at google.  He knows his stuff and he makes the search engine rules. So small business owners would be wise to listen to what he has to say.

But, after you’ve delivered that first bit of information to your prospect, do you send him any further information?

If you are like most Internet marketers, you don’t.

When you don’t follow that initial message with additional
information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp!
This is a potential customer who may have been very interested in your
products, but who lost your contact information, or was too busy to
make a purchase when your first message reached him.

Often, a prospect will purposely put off making a purchase, to see
if you find him important enough to follow up with later. When he
doesn’t receive a follow up message from you, he will take his business
elsewhere.

Are you losing profits due to inconsistent and ineffective follow up?

Following up with leads is more than just a process - it’s an art.
In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system, and
stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don’t follow up with your prospects
consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as
well forget the whole follow up process.

Consistent follow up gets results!

When I first started marketing and following up with prospects, I
used a follow up method that I now call the “List Technique.” I had a
large database containing the names and e-mail addresses of people who
had specifically requested information about my products and services.
These prospects had already received my first letter by the time they
requested more information, so I used the company’s latest news as a
follow up piece.

I would write follow up newsletters every now and then, and send
them, in one mass mailing, to everyone who had previously requested
information from me. While this probably did help me win a few
additional orders, it wasn’t a very good follow up method. Why isn’t
the “List Technique” very effective?

• The List Technique isn’t consistent. Proponents of the List
  Technique tend to only send out follow up messages when their companies
  have “big news”.
• List Technique messages don’t give the potential customer any
  additional information about the product or service in question. He
  can’t make a more informed buying decision after receiving a
  newsletter! If someone is wondering whether your company sells the best
  knick-knacks, what does he care that you’ve just moved your
  headquarters?
• List Technique messages convey a “big list” mentality to your
  potential customers. When I used to write follow up messages using the
  List Technique, I was writing news bulletins to everyone I knew! I
  should have been sending a personal message to each individual who
  wanted to know more about my products.

What follow up method really works?

Following up with each lead individually, multiple times, but at set
intervals, and with pre-written messages, will dramatically increase
sales! Others who use this same technique confirm that they have all at
least doubled the sales of various products! In order to set this
system up, though, you need to do some planning.

First, you’ll need to develop your follow up messages. If you’ve
been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you should
already have a first informative letter. Your second letter marks the
beginning of the follow up process, and should go into more detail than
the first letter. Fill this letter with details that you didn’t have
the space to add to the first letter. Stress the BENEFITS of your
products or services!

Your next 2-3 follow up messages should be rather short. Include
lists of the benefits and potential uses of your products and services.
Write each letter so that your prospects can skim the contents, and
still see the full force of your message.

The next couple of follow up messages should create a sense of
urgency in your prospect’s mind. Make a special offer, giving him a
reason to order NOW instead of waiting any longer. After reading these
follow up messages, your prospect should want to order immediately!

Phrase each of your final 1 or 2 follow up messages in the form of a
question. Ask your prospect why he hasn’t yet placed an order? Try to
get him to actually respond. Ask if the price is to high, the product
isn’t the right color or doesn’t have the right features, or if he is
looking for something else entirely. (By this time, it’s unlikely that
this person will order from you. However, his feedback can help you
modify your follow up letters or products, so that other prospects will order from you.)

The timing of your follow up letters is just as important as their
content. You don’t want one prospect to receive a follow up the day
after he gets your initial informative letter, while another prospect
waits weeks for a follow up!

Always send an initial, informative letter as soon as it is
requested, and send the first follow up 24 hours afterwards. You want
your hot prospects to have information quickly, so that they can make
informed buying decisions!

Send the next 2-3 follow up messages between 1 and 3 days apart.
Your prospect is still hot, and is probably still shopping around! Tell
him about the benefits of your products and services, as opposed to
your competitors’. You will make the sale!

Send the final follow up messages later on. You certainly don’t want
to annoy your prospect! Make sure that these last letters are at least
4 days apart.

Again, if you want to get it right you need to use aWeber.  Here’s the link http://aweber.com/?309479

Regards,

Curt Clapier

801.809.0369

www.DotcomifyMyBusiness.com

In the video I talk about some tools you will need.

First I mention a FREE DVD that will teach you how a former wrestling buddy of mine turned $20 into a Million Dollar per Year Business. You can pick up your free copy of the dvd at http://dotcomify.TheSecondTier.com/freedvd

or click on this banner.

Next I talk about how to manage the content or emails you send to your prospective clients or customers. I call this a Content Driven Marketing Solution. You need an auto responder to manage, collect and send out these emails automatically. This auto responder system is one of the keys to putting your parketing efforts on auto pilot.

Here is the auto responder system that I recommend. I can give you FREE 15 day Trial.

To get the FREE Test Drive fill out the form below or click on this banner.

If you want another option for an auto responder you can try iContact but I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend aWeber over iContact.

Now, here is a shameless plug. I teach you most of what I know about interenet marketing and building home businesses for FREE. If you decide to utilize any of these tools please do so by clicking on the links that I have provided. Please don’t go straight to the companies home pages because then I end up doing all of the work and they get all of the money. All I ask is that if you like what I teach you and you decide to utilize any of these resources that I recommend is that you do so by clicking on my affiliate links so that I can earn the affiliate commissions. Thanks for your support.

Some of you may not want to have to learn how to set up your own 3 Pillar Success System. We would be glad to set it up for you. We do all of the technical part of creating your system. If you want to have us set up the system for you then please submit your name and phone number in the form below and I will contact you shortly to begin working on your custom system.

Once again, If you are reading this and you don’t know what the “3 Pillar Success System” is or you don’t understand it yet then make sure you register for my LIVE webinars and then watch the replays of my past webinars. You can register for free at http://www.LagoaMedia.com/dotcomify/webinar

I told her about how I help small business dotcomify. In other words I help local business take their business online. It’s like internet marketing but customized to the small business owner.

She said, “We’re satisfied with our website the way it is.”

The tone of voice that she used was saying, “we don’t need what you do because we already have a website.” I was floored by this comment. I thought, “Is that your idea of web marketing? Is that what you think it means to dotcomify your business?”

The scary thing is that 95% of business owners and marketing professionals think that marketing a business online means to throw up a website. Another 4% think that you throw up a website and then pay for google adwords.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Less than 1% of business owners really know what it takes to successfully market a small business online.

The fundamental chest pass.

In basketball one of the first things you learn is the fundamental chest pass. It is the base of everything you will do on the court.

Most small business owners and marketers don’t know how to correctly execute the the fundamental chest pass of internet marketing.

So here is the fundamental chest pass of marketing your small business online and offline.

1. Expose

2. Involve

3. Upgrade

If you are going to successfully dotcomify your small business. If you are going to increase revenues during a time when everyone else is downsizing you must learn to market your business online.

You have to develop a system that allows you to first expose, then involve and then upgrade your prospects to paying customers.

I call this system the 3 Pillar success System.

I teach my 3 Pillar Success System in detail in my weekly webinars.

You can view part of one of my webinars here.

To view the full webinar about the 3 Pillar Success System and to attend future Dotcomify My Small Business Webinars register at go to http://www.LagoaMedia.com/dotcomify/webinar

I once saw an article title “Social Not-Working” and it had a twitter badge that said “Come Waste Time With Me on Twitter.”

That was clever, I thought, since I often feel that way as I hang out on twitter, facebook, cafemom and others.

So is Social Media Marketing a waste of time?

I some times feel it is. I am constantly looking for quality training on how to use the social networks effectively.

A while ago I came across this video by Perry Belcher. I thought that it was a good video to help a person get the overall picture of what their mindset and strategy should be when approaching social networks as a marketing channel.

If you have not yet seen Perry’s video then watch it now and then continue reading.

Where’s the Nuts and Bolts?

I’m constantly looking for the nuts and bolts. I don’t feel that I have found it all, but I am finding bits and pieces of it and will gladly share what I can.

This video you just watch is great from a broad overview of how we should approach social media as marketers, but we sometimes need the nitty gritty. We sometimes need to be taken by the hand and told, here’s what works and here’s what doesn’t.

I’m still in search of good training on this so feel free to recommend resources to me.

Twitter, Here’s my system.

I’m going to share with you my twitter system now. All I ask is that you share some of what you have learned and what is working for you in the comments section.

Now, this system is constantly changing, but I try to use twitter consistantly, but not for long periods of time. I recommend using twitter every day for between 15 to 30 minutes. Some times you will use it for more than that depending on what you need to get done.

I recommend using it every day because consistancy over time is where you will see results. I recommend using twitter for short periods of time because it is easy to waste a lot of time on Twitter.

Here are a few things I try to do everyday on twitter.

1. I try to find like minded individuals and I follow them.

2. I try to interact with them by commenting on their tweets. I try to network with those individuals.

3. I research what is hot in my industries and niches and sometimes blog about that or create training and or marketing materials around those topics.

4. I post tweets with links to my sites, landing pages, special offers etc. This is my advertising.

5. I ask a lot of questions. I try to create interaction between me and my followers.

Here is a great tool for scheduling tweets to tweet at different times and to tweet multiple times if they are important. There is a free version and a paid version. I recommend at least using the free version. Click on this link to try it out http://www.tweetlater.com/86792.html

So what tips and resources are you willing to share?

Well, there’s a little bit about how I use twitter. So please share your twitter tips and advice for any other social media site in the comments. Also be sure to post questions that you have about the nitty gritty on specific social sites and I will try to answer them or find answers.

This is the first of what will be a series of posts on this topic.
Don’t forget to register for our next LIVE Webinar and receive special bonuses. Register at http://www.DotcomifyMyBusiness.com/webinar