I fell of my chair the other day when a client told me this:

“We have a newsletter mailing list, I think it has about 3000 names on it.”

What were they doing with this list? Nothing…they had STOPPED sending out an email newsletter. Quite frankly, I don’t blame them…when I saw the newsletter, it was full of ads. In fact it had 6 large ads for about 4 small pieces of useful content.

So they’d basically killed the list anyway. This left me lying on the ground crying because of all that precious money they’d just set on fire…and because I’d just fallen off a chair and it hurt.

You must keep communicating with your audience.

Why

These people have decided you’re worth talking to. Imagine you’re standing at a party. You start telling one of your best stories, I mean it’s just amazing. As the people around you start laughing at the story, others become interested and start listening. So soon you have a large group of people around you, hanging on your every word…

And then you walk away. That’s right, mid sentence, you get bored and walk off.

How do you think that makes the people feel? Do you think they’re want to listen to you again?

So start telling great stories…and never stop mid sentence!

How

If you have their email address, email them. If you have other contact details, use them. Just make sure you’re sending them something of value…and then keep sending it.

Wow…that was a complicated business strategy. You might want to go and reread that a few times to fully grasp it…

Homework

Umm…work out what your audience wants and start talking to them.

Oh…and make sure you sit properly in your chair. Safety first kids!

With visitors zipping about all over the Internet, it’s hard to get anyone to slow down and chat. From webpage to webpage they surf, instantly forgetting what they’ve just seen.

So if you want a visitor to return, you need to help them out a little. You need to get a visitor to commit to staying in touch with you, whichever way they want.

Why

If you don’t capture a visitor’s attention long enough to get their contact details, you’ve lost them forever. Sure, some might return on their own steam, but the percentages rank against it. How many times have you tried to remember some great website you found information on…but the name escapes you.

Internet Marketers have all sorts of tricks to capture email addresses and then sell, sell, sell to that list. But that’s not we’re about. If you’re lucky enough to be entrusted with a visitor’s email address, you should treat it like your own. Always offer the visitor value, never try to sell them to death!

How

The obvious one is an email capture box for a newsletter but there are other ways to stay in touch with your visitors. For example, they can subscribe to your RSS feed of your blog. This way the always get the latest information you’re publishing through your website.

[Note For those of you who don't know what a RSS feed is, click on the orange square in the top right, then use Google Feedreader to subscribe to this blog for free. Have a play around and save yourself hours visiting your favourite blogs each day.]

And don’t forget the power of social media to stay in touch with visitors. Have them sign up to your Facebook Profile and Pages, Twitter, and other profiles around the web.

Homework

Think about how you communicate with visitors and capture their information. What other ways could you do it? Remember to give your visitors as many options as possible.

Ok, it’s finally time to admit the truth. I’ve been giving you all these tips to improve your business and marketing online but I’ve been leaving something out.

You see, there’s a bigger reason that myself and my clients have obtained success in our respective industries. It has nothing to do with search engines or social media. It has nothing to do with branding or being different.

The secret is: Being Evil.

You can find out more here: The Evil Genius Guide To Business

I deeply apologise for misleading you all, I hope I can one day regain your trust…

We’re all busy, on-the-go, rushed off our feet business people with little time on our hands for ‘wasting time.’ At least that’s what we like to pretend I guess.

Introducing my friend Dean, who can give you a little break from working hard on this Friday afternoon. Not only will he provide you the “How dumb are you?” quiz, but he’ll teach you something while he’s at it.

You see, for those who don’t know Dean, he’s the leading expert in Buzz Marketing. And this little “Dumb Quiz” has been netting him over 1500 hits per day.

So for those who want to get more traffic, Dean will tell you how. For those that just want some entertainment to share with their friends, it’s there for you too.

How dumb are you? quiz, Stumble Upon results, and the latest chapter with sitepoint success.

If you’re looking to market your website, you’ve probably heard a lot about Social Media and Social Marketing lately. For those that haven’t, we’re talking about using popular social media websites to promote your business.

For example, Facebook and MySpace are social networking websites. People come together to keep in touch with friends and people that share similar interests to them.

HubPages and Squidoo are two content sharing websites. Here, you can post articles and and users can comment and rate your articles.

Digg and Del.icio.us are social bookmarking websites. People put links to websites they think are worthy and their popularity increases as other people vote on them.

If you haven’t heard of some of these websites before, I’d recommend checking them out. BUT NOT AS A MARKETER. I can not stress how important it is not to become a marketer on these websites. If you’ve been following anything I wrote on marketing over the past 6 months, you’ll know that conventional marketing is dead.

Building relationships is where the future lies and the websites above let you do that. For now, it’s best to just get a feel for it and explore. It’ll be worth your time soon, I promise.

To see some examples of my pages, check out:

What makes a great business website?

The best way to become a millionaire in five years or less

Website optimization is more than just search engines

The 5 biggest secrets your web designer doesn’t know about the Internet

Also, make some time to watch this video created by StomperNet about what Social Marketing can do for your business. It includes lots of free hints and tips so have a pen ready.

Going Natural 2.0: Social Marketing

 

 The future of marketing: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

What is the future of marketing? I’ve posted before about my beliefs that internet advertising is dead and marketing as we know it will soon be going the same way.

The problem is what people think of when they think of marketing. Marketing is usually linked directly to advertising, to newspaper, tv, or radio ads, and these methods are definitely in trouble. The concept of marketing as pushing product information at your customer is dead. With the internet, the entire paradigm is shifting, and many businesses will be left behind.

If you look at marketing courses in university, or the huge majority of marketing books out there, you’ll see all the traditional forms of marketing and how to put them into practice. The problem is, they don’t work anymore!

These days, advertising is everywhere, and every corner we turn, someone is trying to sell us something. We’re being marketed to constantly and have taught ourselves just to switch off.

As business owners, what do we do about this? Marketing is one of the key aspects of a successful business and if the traditional methods aren’t working, aren’t we all in a lot of trouble?

No. People like us aren’t in trouble, we’re in a position to benefit the most from these changes! The people that aren’t prepared to change, to seek out new ideas, to constantly improve…they are the ones in trouble.

So get excited, we’re going to start talking about the new form of marketing, that has been named ‘Social Marketing’ by the experts. I have faith that you’re probably doing some of this marketing already. You just may not be aware of it, or just not taking full advantage of it yet.

It’s time to start creating the future of marketing ourselves, and take our businesses to the next level.