We hear them saying people just aren’t spending on services, or people are’t going on holidays, or people aren’t buying new products, etc etc.

I find the term ‘global marketing crisis‘ more of an excuse for business failure, than the truth.

If an economic crisis is truly the case then why are some of the major retail players such as Apple, JB Hi-Fi and others posting record profits in the past 2 quarters?

The answer is ‘simple’ – The employ simple marketing strategies!

By using simple, and often free, marketing tools and strategies you will blow off the excuse of a ‘global marketing crisis’ and your business will boom, no matter what the media is saying!

Here are a few handy tips to help:

1. USING THE WEB…

Your website is a great point of presence and reaches a wider audience than most other advertising and promotional mediums. And the best thing about it is that web hosting only costs around $95 a year. Thats value for global marketing!

Make sure all you website content is up to date and the site looks fresh and professional. People are more likely to deal with someone with a professional looking website. You wouldn’t paint your own signage, or build your own office building, so don’t build your own website! Get a professional!

Make sure you have the main basic contact details so people can contact you easily. Add a contact form to your website and collect additional information, such as how did they hear about you, would they like to join your mailing list, etc. This information can be used for future promotions.

Make sure your website is well search engine optimised. If you aren’t on the first page of Google you are out of the running. And believe it or not, a first page listing on Google is easily achievable if correctly optimized. If you’re not on that first page, go have a quiet talk to your web developer! SEO should be part of the standard service provided with any website. Without it, it is like buying a car without an engine…you won’t go far.

Embrace the many free Google Webmaster tools to promote your business, like the free Google Business listing, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Keyword Tool, Blogger, Google Trends, etc. Google have made it so easy to be found online, and they charge nothing!

Invest in SEO Tools such as WebCEO – It’s a great tool for reviewing your website’s SEO (and your competitiors, and fine tuning and submitting your website yourself. It really makes the difference.

Use online Social Networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace to promote your business and services. Your listing on any of these also gets found easily on the search engines. Using Twitter alone, one of my businesses profitability has jumped 180% in the past 3 months. Free marketing works wonders!

Create and write a regular blog. Blogs such as WordPress and Blogger provide free software, and they get picked up on Google within minutes. They can also be lined directly to you Twitter account or LinkedIn accounts so your post automatically reaches an even larger crowd.

Submit your website to as many free directories online as possible. The more sites you are directly linked to the better your pagerank, and in turn the better your listing chances on the search engines. Plus you reach a much wider audience from people that use the directories.
For starters, you can add a free listing to our own directory, BusinessBrisbane.com. It currently ranks as one of the best directories in Brisbane and we don’t charge a cent to list! Go on..sign up! www.BusinessBrisbane.com (for Brisbane regional businesses only).

Employ email marketing tools, and send regular enewsletters to your customers. Many customers will usually send to a friend if it is interesting, so your potential customer base rapidly expands.

2. BRANDING…

Ensure your branding and advertising is professional. The use of an effective logo and brand elements such as a slogan can be a very simple yet powerful marketing tool. Look at McDonald’s for example..they probably don’t make the world’s best tasting burgers, but they are still the world’s largest hamburger seller! Their iconic logo and simple catchy adverts is the real success. If you don’t have a nice little logo, it is worth the small investment.

Ensure your branding remains consistent. Make sure your logo is always the same colour, your advertising templates remain consistent, and print work is always in tune.

3. SELF PROMOTION & NETWORKING…

People like to deal with people they know and trust. Find your local business networking clubs and sign up. Many invite you as a guest to your first meeting to get a feel for it. Within no time you will be meeting business referrals that will be needing your services!
Make you go to each meeting well equipped with the basic marketing tools including a few brochures and nice business cards. Spend the extra few dollars and go for the nice feeling matt celloglazed finish full colour business cards. You can usually purchase 1000 for around $140, which is a great first impression investment!

For more tips on how to market your business on a budget, visit our website blog: www.devision.com.au/blog

Article by Chris Bourke from Devision Design Australia

E-marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to promote your business or services on a budget.

The advantages of emarketing over conventional promotional marketing material are huge -

• Cost effective – no need to purchase stamps, stationery/envelopes.
• Less time to prepare and send
• Successfully track reader response.
• Cross promote products
• Make extra money with affiliate marketing (which I will mention shortly!)

But before you decide to rushing toward your computer (although you are probably already there to read this!) and start planning your email to send, there are a few things you need to consider….

First up, DON’T ever send a mass email marketing campaign through Outlook or another email program! There are certain laws against spamming, and one of the main laws is that your email must be ‘permission’ based and must have an automatic Opt-out link, so the person is removed from your database immediately if requested. Outlook cannot do this. Furthermore, sending a bulk email out can clog your mailserver leading to your email being removed from the mailserver and nothing gets delivered.

There are a number of great online systems to send law-abiding email marketing to your clients, such as Vision6 or Constant Contact, both of which require very little internet related knowledge to send great looking emails allowing you to send and track the response. The only downside is that they charge you for sending bulk emails, and if you have a large group or send regularly, while still reasonably cheap, you do have to pay.

But if you already own your own website you can download a program called Pommo, which is a free professional email marketing system which you upload to your own web server, and set up in about 5 to 10 minutes. And there is no cost whatsoever!

If you don’t own your own hosting, then for a tiny sum of around $7.95 a month you can purchase a hosting plan from WebCrowd.com.au and we will install the software for you for nothing! This works out much cheaper than what you would be paying for the other systems mentioned, and Webcrowd also give you a free domain name and unlimited email accounts as part of the standard yearly hosting fee!

Now that you have your email system up and running, lets get down to business!….

You don’t need a degree in rocket science to know that to get people to read your enews it needs to be:

• Short and sweet – people will trash it instantly if they see a days worth of reading.
• Informative and interesting – Don’t just drone on about yourself or your products, include some interesting facts, some fun stuff, a thought of the day…add things people want to share with others..this is a great way to viral market yourself.
* Add incentives for signing up and reading your enews, like subscriber-only discounts or specials. This always works!

Now, how about if I was to tell you about a way you can make an income from e-marketing, with no products!?

No I am not joking, and yes, it is very easy…

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make extra cash every day, even every hour. Investing a couple of hours a week on email marketing can very easily reward you with a full time income. I’ll share with you the basics of how it’s done once you have your hosting and email marketing system in place…

Step A - Find yourself a few affiliate marketing programs.They are free to join. My favourites are Clickbank, DGM Pro, Commission Monster and Commission Junction. the process is simple – You sign up, you pick the products you wish to promote and they provide you with a script that you cut and paste into your enews. When someone click on the product link and makes a purchase you are rewarded with a commission. This commission could be anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. All you have to do is have that link in your email and attract them to click it and make a sale.

Step B – Join up with Google Adsense. Adsense is the other half of Google Adwords. The way Google Adwords works is people pay Google to promote their business or products, but for Google to get those ads out there they rely on affiliates that are willing to promote them, so they developed Adsense. Adsense lets you join up for free and you simply add the google code into your enewsletter and the Google script will automatically find ads that match your content of your enews. When someone click on the Google Ad while reading your enews you are rewarded. On average it doesn’t pay as well as Affiliate programs but you can easily make $10 or more on Adsense.

Step C – Work out a calendar to keep your marketing consistent and regular. Don’t send them too often or people will get annoyed, but don’t leave it too long either.

If you’d like to see how easy it really is to turn a few hours a week into an income, contact Devision and we will be happy to teach you the secrets to e-marketing success!

Article by Chris Bourke of Devision Design
Devision are the Sunshine Coast’s leading graphic design and e-marketing specialists.

So you’ve set up your Twitter account and followed my notes from ‘Making an Income from Twitter‘ and you are now hopefully building a continuously growing base of followers to your Twitter account.

But how do you catch up to the Twitterers that have thousands, even tens of thousands of followers quickly?

Well, I would like to share a few of my favourite Twitter Tools and online Twitter directories that you can add your Twitter account to, attracting many new followers faster than you can say Tweet!

My first and favourite Twitter directory is Twellow. Twellow is a Twitter Directory which is free to join and grabs your details from your existing TWitter accounts, so getting started on it is easy and set up in a couple of minutes. Twellow is basically a Yellow Pages of TWitter, allowing you to search for users with similar interests or similar products, or may be located around you. Twellow is the perfect companion if you use Twitter for online marketing.

Just Tweet It is another great easy to use Twitter directory service which helps you find other users just like you. This directory is great for business as it has a huge selection of pre-categorized sections to add your business, or to search from.

Another very popular Twitter directory on the rise is We Follow. We follow breaks the categories up into the most popular Tags (eg, Celebrities, TV, SocialMedia, News, Music), and then sub-categorizes into the most popular of each section. Once you add yourself to We Follow you will quickly see arise in followers, plus it is easy to search for other people you would also like to follow. You will have thousands of followers in no time!

GeoFollow is a Twitter directory with a difference. Geofollow is a location-based Twitter directory, allowing you to search by City and State, as well as the usual Tags, Username and Keyword. Another very easy to join and use directory service, and quickly gathering momentum as one of the most popular Twitter Directories

Remember, you don’t have to understand the Twitter phenomenon, but you have to be part of it! Adding your Twitter account to these directories is a great start to really benefit from Twitter.

Next week I will be chatting about Mashable Tweets.
It might sound tasty, but it’s not..but it is very interesting!

Author: Chris Bourke from Devision.
Chris is a graphic design/ web developer specializing in search engine optimization & online affiliate marketing. Chris is also co-mananager of Devision Design based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.

Edward Lear must have had some precognition about what was in store for us all with the development of the internet when he wrote this nonsensical poem.

Many people do feel at sea after they launch their website and attempt to navigate the sometimes confusing channels of the internet. They wonder why their website doesn’t get more traffic and why their inbox is not filling up with emails from people clamoring to buy their products or services.

It seems that the rules change as often as Oprah changes her clothes and who could ever hope to keep up with that!

Price quotes for search engine optimization are all over the map; the process seems never-ending and expensive.

How is it that some people seem to have great success on the web without spending a huge amount of money? Is it unrealistic to think that you can make a living working on the web?

When faced with a seemingly overwhelming challenge it helps to break things down into bite-sized pieces.

Effective websites should include the following:
1. Your website needs to focus on a specific niche.

2. You need to do keyword research and although Google no longer gives weight to Meta keywords some of the other major search engines still do.

3. Your website should have the main keyword used throughout and each page should be written around 5-10 keywords that are tightly focused on that particular page’s topic.

4. Content is still King. Well written, focused content is crucial.

5. Meta titles need to include your keywords.

6. Organization of content should include headings and subtitles to make it easy for readers to scan the pages. Be sure to include your keywords in these headings as well.

7. Most people on the web are looking for information. If you don’t give them anything of value or entertain them, they will be gone, probably for good.

8. Use keywords in links whereever possible.

9. Include a call to action and,if possible, offer a Free trial. You have to build trust before you can make a sale.

10. Check your website in various browsers (FireFox, Internet Explorer, etc.) to make sure it displays equally well in all.

11. Your personality is what attracts people to you so why would you create a generic website with all of the excitement of a flat glass of pop. Keep the content fresh so it has Fizz!

12. Most importantly, have realistic expectations of what you want to achieve with your website. With all the hype about overnight successes on the internet it’s difficult to put your results into perspective. If you expect instant success and it isn’t happening, it’s easy to become demoralized and quit before you reach your goal.

Some Other Important Web Marketing Tips

Google page rank counts! The higher your page rank number the higher you will rank in user searches. How do you find out your page rank? Download the Google toolbar here for Internet Explorer http://toolbar.google.com/T4/ or here for FireFox http://tools.google.com/firefox/toolbar/install.html.

Improve your page rank by encouraging other highly ranked websites in complementary businesses to link to yours and by developing content with a niche focus. Page rank is also affected by traffic numbers. A couple of ways you can boost traffic are pay-per-click advertising and posting articles on the web.

Your web image is at least as important as your personal image. You wouldn’t go out to meet a prospective client wearing a mishmash of styles and colours but many businesses have websites with tools that don’t work, tables and text that are out of alignment, old information, dated colours, and confusing navigation. Those things are bad enough but when an experienced web developer looks at the code on a website they often find a website that looks good but is not built to encourage search traffic.

Be prepared like the wise owl and make the job of marketing your business as easy as possible with a website that enhances your brand image and is technically sound and purrrr your way to success.

About The Author
Nancy Fraser of Nota Bene Consulting has been helping clients get better results with their marketing and advertising for over 20 years. Sign up for Notable News and get free marketing tips at www.notable-marketing.com.

Devision will print you 1000 business cards on 420gsm quality art board stock printed in full colour and matt celloglaze both sides for $140 +gst (art and delivery not included).

For those of you unfamiliar with stock weights, 420gsm is just about as think as you can go through a standard printing press. It is certainly no flimsy and will not crease or fold easily. Devision will even ship your cards to Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane or anywhere else in Australia.

If you don’t have your own artwork, Devision can design a card just for you, using your logo and corporate colours, to make sure your stationery fits nicely with your company brand.

Visit the devision website, www.devision.com.au, or call them today on Brisbane: 07 3348 8156, or Sunshine Coast: 5451 0937

The bad thing about this statement is to assume that there is no other purpose of building links. But there is lot more to it than just SEO. If you don’t know the ultimate goal of building links then you won’t know how either.

So, there are the other benefits that can be attributed by building links:-

Brand Exposure: Brand exposure is what every marketer is keen to get in their respective field. For brand exposure, you must have to put emphasis on your brand name. Buy banner ads in highly visible sections on top sites in your niche, use a familiar logo in all banner ad creative, and place your brand name in link anchor text.
Authority site has itself a big brand value. Usually, people have more trust on authority sites what they are recommending. Thus text links on high authority sites will be especially valuable for this cause.

Direct Traffic: If you are aiming to get traffic to your website, not only rankings can drive traffic, but your links can directly send visitors to your site. However, you have to engage with social media and forums as these are the sources where you can put your content/comments or share your views which ignite others to visit your site by clicking your link.
Links for direct traffic usually need to use descriptive anchor text that explains your content and uses a call-to-action. The more alluring your link, the better result you get.

Lead Generation: Almost all the efforts we put in website promotion is intended to get business. There are marketers, who think that more traffic on site means more conversion. Not true, however. For lead generation, you must have to target classified customers rather than SEO professionals or SEO gurus. And you have to take a different approach than branding exposure.
The best way to target your customers is to post classifieds, distribute press release and get backlinks from thematically relevant sites.

Now, treat your every link as your currency on the web and use this currency to get multiple benefits from it. Knowing the benefits will facilitate the link building process.