This excerpt from Wikipedia outlines the incredibly rich life of Aristotle.  His profound saying, “We are what we repeatedly do!”  So true!  This not only applies to one’s life, but to the world of business and marketing!

So why is Aristotle one of the original marketing geniuses?  Because as marketers, we are what we repeatedly do!  That’s why!  If you are repeatedly marketing, you will repeatedly get desired results.  On the other hand, if you are not repeatedly marketing, you will not get those desired results.  So…if you are not working on your business, not thinking about marketing your business, not thinking about how to reach new customers, not thinking about how to satisfy existing customers, not creating and developing new products and services for your target markets, not utilizing the latest technology for efficient marketing…then you will REPEATEDLY not achieve the desired results to grow your business.

It is imperative that as a Small Business Owner, you create a marketing system…what do we mean? Very simply stated, a series of marketing activities that are completed by the minute, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or annually (whichever timeframe is most appropriate for the activity).  Definable, REPEATABLE systems create on-going predictable, desired  results!

Marketing is simply about educating…it is imperative to continue to educate your prospects, customers, and clients on a consistent basis.
You…and your business ARE WHAT YOU AND YOUR BUSINESS REPEATEDLY DO!   Our apologies to Aristotle and yet, thank you, for your insight a long, long time ago.

By the way, if you have a minute, go back to Wikipedia and submit Aristotle’s marketing genius into his biography…

JEFFREY G BISHOP, Certified Duct Tape Marketing Coach, resides in Naperville, IL.  He is a “wannabe” Greek philosopher. He can be reached at jeffreygbishop@gmail.com or 630.305.0609 or  www.jeffreygbishop.com

Ms. Brodigan details how to design a lead generation page to effectively engage your potential customer’s interest and direct them to your site or collect useful information. Using both dating and Internet gaming industries as examples, she illustrates what works well in getting leads to potential customers. She also gives handy testing guidelines and plenty of examples.

She concludes with some key design elements that can be used by almost anyone selling products and services online, for example:

• Maintain consistency with the original [site] design elements
• Determine restrictions of stock imagery & develop an A/B test plan
• Incorporate authentic imagery

Lead generating pages can convert casual shoppers into paying customers. However, they can easily be taken for spam if poorly designed.

Is this because business has a presence on social networks, or is it because people are recommending deals/sites/stores to their friends? Likely it is a bit of both. Hitwise did find that many users were seeking info on specific retailers.

As an example, we ran a custom analysis of internal searches on Facebook to look for retail brands during the holiday season. . . . During the holidays over 2% of the traffic to Facebook (the 2nd ranked website in the US) visited a website in the Retail 500 immediately after. Retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, and Bath & Body Works (and others) all appeared within the internal searches taking place on Facebook signifying that consumers were actively seeking their content and offerings.

With search engines and social networking continuing to grow, having your customers talk about you and talk with you is quickly becoming as important as standard passive advertising.

Refer your clients to people you trust

Your clients count on you to deliver an outstanding product or service that meets their needs, suits their vision, and matches their personality. Extend this trust past your existing relationship and refer them to members of your network you would stake your reputation on. By removing yet another headache for them – that of searching around for a service provider they can trust – you’re further demonstrating your value. You’re also making life a little easier for your partners that get referred!

Marketing networks strengthen all members

Being part of your marketing network doesn’t just benefit your graphic design partner, your social media partner or your SEO partner – it benefits all of them. Building a network of experts affords all partners the opportunity to learn from and be referred by each other.

Your marketing network can be a built-in idea source

You value your partners because you trust them, get along with them and respect their opinions. No matter how different your approaches or personalities may be, there is probably something about the way their brains work that you like. Use these brains to give you a fresh perspective on plans and ideas you’re working on for your business.

By creating a marketing network, you’re providing your clients with a strong team of talented experts who step in to provide the services you may not be able to offer. This positions you as an invaluable resource for your client, capable of satisfying their needs even after their time with you is over.

Fiona Friesen is an authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach located in Calgary, AB, Canada. Find out more at www.gluehq.com.

One tool most businesses use to draw attention to their booth is having a draw for a prize. Here’s how to use your ‘enter to win’ for generating qualified leads; not just gathering names:

• Place the draw box at the back of your booth
• Put a sign-up sheet beside the box for a newsletter or FREE report (collect names and email addresses)
• Limit the draw to those who sign-up for the newsletter for FREE report (post a sign stating how the draw works)
• Engage prospects and ask questions that help qualify them as an ideal client
• Lead them to the draw; let them know how it works and ask them to participate (sign up today and have a chance to win)
• Set sales and lead generation goals for the show (need a target so you know what you are working towards)
• Prep your staff (or friends and family) for working your booth and generating leads with the ‘enter to win’
• Input leads into your database within a few days of the show
• Send an email to leads within a week of the show and thank them for visiting your booth and provide the FREE report or let them know when to expect the first newsletter
• Continue to market to them on a frequent and regular basis (it takes 7 – 9 touches for someone to get to know, like and trust you enough to do business with you)

You don’t need hundreds of names to prove you had a successful show; what you want are some sales and a few qualified leads. So how do you generate qualified leads (and turn those leads into sales after the show)? The first thing you need to do is narrow your focus and stop trying to be all things to all people. You must identify your ‘ideal client’. Not knowing who your ideal client is will result in your marketing to the masses and that takes lots of time and lots of money and produces little or no results.

Here’s a hint “your ideal client is not ANYBODY who needs a widget or mortgage or massage; it’s SOMEONE who wants and values you and what you offer and is willing to pay for it”.

So the question remains: quality versus quantity? Collect hundreds of names (that will probably end up in the garbage) or collect a few qualified leads. It’s your choice so choose wisely!

Written by: Brenda Mahoney, Critical Edge Marketing, Duct Tape Marketing Coach
www.criticaledgemarketing.com or brenda@criticaledgemarketing.com

Now that you know how you are different, let’s market differently.  We’ve all heard the phrase “think outside the box”.  Thinking outside the box is certainly a step in the right direction but I would encourage you to be even bolder and “think outside your industry”.  Caution:  this is not for everyone.  If you are afraid of what others will think or the attention you will attract by being different, then don’t try this at home.

If, however, you are someone who is not afraid of attention, wants to attract more qualified leads, convert more sales and build a strong brand and profitable business then listen up.  The best way to stand out from the crowd is to stop following the crowd.  In other words stop doing what your competitors are doing to market your business.  If you are a real estate agent; stop advertising like all the other real estate agents.  If you are an engineering firm; stop advertising like all the other engineering firms.  You get the idea!

Look outside your industry for ideas that appeal to you and start using them to market your products and services.  Here are five things you can do to stand out from the crowd:

1. Start a swipe file.  Start collecting marketing pieces from all different industries and different media and use them as a guide for creating something fresh for your business.
2. Create non-traditional partnerships.  Partner with someone outside your industry who serves the same market as you.
3. Choose a advertising medium unrelated to your industry
4. Find new ways of saying the same old things like “Free Consultation”.
5. Stop using industry templates for things such as newsletters.

Mixing up your marketing and making it stand out takes a certain level of confidence and that comes from knowing your market.  It’s wise to test your ideas with your clients so you can see what you can get away with before you go too crazy.

Imagine the attention and the sales if you starting marketing like no one else in your industry.  Luc De Clapiers said it best when he said “Action makes more fortune than caution.”

Brenda Mahoney is a Duct Tape Marketing Coach located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  Find out more at www.criticaledgemarketing.com

In the search engine optimization (SEO) industry, this is called “duplicate content.”  I don’t think I’ve ever seen any aspect of SEO so shrouded in haze.  Everywhere you look you find misinformation and advice that’s just plain wrong.

Without straying too far off course, suffice it to say that duplicate content is not the rankings killer most people have made it out to be.

In June 2002, Google filed a patent that detailed parts of how its search engine identifies and deals with the same, exact content on several different web pages.  These might be pages on a single site that use the same content or they could be pages of different websites that use the same content.

It all came about (in part) as a measure to control spamming and content theft.  It also aimed to boost Google’s relevancy and quality of search results.  After all, how aggravating is it to search for [don'ts for SEO copywriting] and find that nine out of the top 10 entries point to the same article?

In this particular instance, I don’t mind because the article happens to be mine.  But others might want another SEO copywriter’s point of view.  This same practice would occur in many different instances, not just with articles, such as ecommerce sites that all use the same, exact descriptions.

Avoid Canned Copy if Possible

We have to look at this logically.  Using copy provided by product manufacturers may seem like the best way to go.  After all, you get professionally written copy with no muss and no fuss. However, there are two major drawbacks associated with this approach that you might not have thought about.

First, you lose most of your ability to differentiate yourself from every other website that sells the same products.  If a person does a search on a particular model of Oster blender, for example, she’ll likely find most websites have the same product copy that was provided by Oster.

The product is the same and the copy is the same.  That leaves only a few options for proving to visitors why they should buy from you as opposed to any of the thousands of other sites that carry this blender.

The second drawback is that using duplicate content can cause a negative result in your search engine rankings.  No, I’m not talking about the infamous duplicate content penalty.  I’m talking about how Google and other engines react when so many pages use the same copy.

What Happens when Canned Content Takes Over?

When virtually all pages use the same, canned copy, Google ranks pages based on other factors.  Basically, you have wasted a prime opportunity to potentially boost your site above the competition because you’ve sacrificed unique, relevant content for repetitious, robotic product copy.  That means you have to come up with other ways to massage the page text.

Real-World Example:

I went to the Le Creuset website (manufacturer of bake ware and cookware).  As a test, I copied a line of text from the page and headed over to Google to conduct a search.  When I entered “Le Creuset’s Stoneware Oval Dish is truly an All-in-One Dish” I found over 600 web pages that used this exact product description.

Why does that matter?  Let’s find out.

What happens if we type in a search query the same way an online shopper might do?  We’ll use “Le Creuset stoneware oval dish” as our keyphrase without the quotes this time since most surfers don’t put quotation marks around their searches.

I went through and visited each page in the top 10.  Most of them had the same pricing or prices that were very close to one another.  But, as I clicked through each of the listings in the top 10, I noticed something that I’ve seen countless times before.  The majority of the sites coming out on top have additional content on their product pages.  Besides the canned description from the manufacturer, they also incorporated original copy, consumer-driven reviews, snippets from blog posts or other content that isn’t replicated all across the Internet.

They’ve found ways to make their pages unique.  Since Google and other engines are all about unique, relevant content, this effort gave these sites a leg up.  Yes, getting a page to rank high is about more than just copy and, as with everything SEO, there’s more than one factor at play.  However, the commonalities between the pages that rank high and the amount of unique content aren’t easily ignored.

When you use custom-created copy, you’ll have the opportunity to entice searchers and show them why your store is the best choice.  But even if you elect to use canned copy from the manufacturer, you can still produce original, relevant content that ranks high and converts well with just a little extra effort.

Canned copy may be faster, but fresh is always best!

Karon Thackston is President of Marketing Words, a copywriting agency specializing in SEO copywriting. For additional information about copywriting services, visit www.MarketingWords.com.

Once you have learned the ground rules of social networking, look at the overall goals of your business and figure out how to utilize social networking to achieve these goals. Social Media is a process. You need to:

1. Listen and learn
2. Evaluate
3. Create a strategic plan
4. Develop your social media system
5. Implement

Always analyze your results. Don’t only define success by number of Twitter followers or Facebook friends. Are you building new mutually beneficial relationships? Have you been generating additional traffic to your blog and website? Are you gaining new information, if your goal is to listen and learn what your competitors are doing? If you are using social networking for your company’s reputation management, do you know what people are saying about you? Social media can even change how your company operates by creating new platforms for communication.

Be cautious of negative aspects of social networking as well. Unwanted negative buzz spreads like wildfire, therefore you need to carefully consider your messages. Don’t fall victim to identity theft or viruses. Avoid con-artists. Use common sense and develop your social media marketing plan.

About Varju Luceno:  Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach and the owner of Global Office Partners – a marketing firm that focuses on the needs of professional service businesses.  Varju is also a global marketer, blogger and writer on small business and technology related topics

Well-placed businesses have put some strategic tools in place long ago, such as a robust lead-generating infrastructure and products and services that prospects can easily recognize as different from the run-of-the-mill.
If you are not in this happy position, there are steps you can take today that will work for you. Here they are:

1. Pull your customer records for the past three years. Sort sales by customer in order of total annual value. Identify your top 20% by volume – how many of them are there – three? 600? somewhere in between?

Now, find the ones with a) average or above average profit; b) receivables at 60 days or less; c) orders in the pipeline for the next 3 months. Now you have a list of Ideal Customers.

One of our clients had 899 customers. Ten of them provided 30% of his business. Now he can focus on keeping and growing those ten while an associate manages the other 889.

2. Look at your Ideal Customer list. What do you see they have in common? It could be a similar problem you help solves, a particular vertical market or geography, business size and ownership, or a particular attitude to how business should be run.

Most importantly, look for why they do business with you: what do each of your Ideal Customers celebrate in you? Ask them, “What is the one word that describes your biggest frustration with our industry?” Solving the biggest frustration will give you a focus for your actions that will give you better results and save you time and money.

A large training company found their clients loved the over-the-top service they got compared to other suppliers. A manufacturer discovered it was faster delivery. An advertising studio found it was cooler designs. A software consulting firm was lauded for its creative problem solving.

3. Check your web site, sales presentations and any other tool that you can change cheaply, including how you answer your phone. Does every single word reflect your ability to solve your clients’ biggest frustration? If not, you change these elements to deliver that one message: We are the (category of business) that helps solve (the biggest frustration).

4. Pull a report on your advertising and lead generation expenses for the past three years. Include everything: directory listings, trade publications, signs, newspaper ads, ads in the local soccer program, radio ads, golf sponsorships, client lunches, Christmas gifts, and donations.

Add it up. Ask, “For every dollar I have spent, how much business can I honestly say I have gotten back?” Immediately, cancel any spending that has not led to more phone calls, more web traffic or more requests for information.

A home improvement company we worked with had been spending $10,000 a year on radio for the past five years. He realized that he had no idea whether the ads worked. He did know his phone didn’t ring any more often when his ads ran. He canceled the radio and saw no difference in his business.

A home heating company had run ads in several phone directories for years at a total of $500 a month. He cancelled with no impact on his business.

A group of local companies partnered on a door-to-door flier that cost each of them $500 a month. It didn’t work, they canceled, and saved $6,000 a year.

5. Total the funds you have been able to free up and divide it up as follows: 30%, Ideal Customers; 30%, Referrals; 30% lead generation. Now you have a new business budget.

6. Write a personal note to every person you deal with and every one of your Ideal Customers, thanking them for their business. In this note, present a customized overview of how you are going to focus on the frustration you solve (remember, they identified it for you). You should offer very specific new ways you are going to do this.

The training company with the over-the-top service revamped their client service team, added to the most-wanted courses, and offered shorter (and cheaper) programs.

The manufacturer with the faster delivery offered a delivery guarantee no-one could match.

The software consulting firm let some marginal performers go and beefed up their senior group, produced a “how to” manual showing how their solutions could be implemented faster and easier and initiated a program to help clients get out of legacy commitments they didn’t need any more.

Having an opt-in mailing list may be an efficient way to gather contact information from customers who are willing to talk with you about your company and their needs.

7. Mention your Referral Program to your Ideal Customers. Say,“We ask ourselves every day, what can we do today to get XYZ Company to recommend us? Would the improvements we have presented to you today convince you to recommend us to other companies who need this approach?”

When they say “Yes” (and they will), say, “In that case, we have are delighted to offer a Referral Price to you: at the end of our fiscal year, we will rebate 2% of the value of all revenue directly attributable to your referrals and introductions.”

If you have a better idea, go ahead and offer it.

This Referral plan will not run itself. You will need to assign someone to getting case studies and written recommendations, following up every month to remind people about the program (a combination of phone calls, e-newsletter, and personal communication).

Ask for introductions to colleagues at trade events or fund-raisers. Ask to be invited to club meetings. Ask to be invited to join organizations you need to be sponsored for. If you get a referral, make sure you let your referral source know you contacted the referral and what resulted.

Our favorite referral event for a home improvement company is the open house that the home-owners host to show friends and neighbors their new space.

A technology consulting firm assigned an account executive to manage their partnerships with big software vendors, like Microsoft, and tripled their leads.

8. Create a “How To” document prospects can download from your web site, get in the mail or find lying around in your referral partners’ office lobby. It should be practical, easy to read and completely focused on solving the frustration your Ideal Client has.

9. Take the 30% you have allocated to lead generation and buy the smallest ad you can get in the one publication that is most widely read by your Ideal Customers, whether newspaper, trade journal or magazine. Create the ad to say “Free report. How To (do whatever it is you have written in Step 8).” Add your company name, phone number, and web address.

Run the ad six times; if you have not received any document requests, change the title of the document and run the ad six more times. Do not change the content of the report. Keep doing this until you find a name people respond to; then sit back and count your leads as they pour in.

That’s it – nine steps you can take right away to refocus your efforts where they will do the most good.

Good luck, and good business.

Elizabeth Walker is a partner in Marketing Masters and a Certified Duct Tape Marketing Coach located near Toronto, Ontario. Find out more at  www.marketingmasters.ca

So, if you aren’t writing a press release for the media, who are you writing it for?  You should be writing it for the “public” in public relations.  Increasingly, press releases you release online are picked up by Google, which aggregates the information and lets you talk about you- just do it in a reporter’s “factual” manner, rather than a salesman’s elevator pitch.

A website with some great sample press releases to emulate is:
PR Newswire’s PR Toolkit

You will soon notice in reading the good and the great press releases that great press releases almost never feature the story of the business, they feature the story that the business just happens to play a part in.  So NEVER make the story only about your business.  Talk more about how your business is changing your community, region, country or world, and less about how great your customer service is.  For example: A good press release would talk about how your self-storage company is organizing a coat drive for underprivileged people, and spend less time (none is fine) about why people might want to store their coat at the self storage facility instead.

There is an established format for writing a press release, and a great tool for that is John Jantch’s  Instant Press Release writer. It will get all the formatting and structure down for you automatically.

Now that you have your press release written, we need folks who are looking for it to receive it.

If you think your press release is very topical and has broad importance, you might still want to release a mass press release to the media- PRWeb.com is a good premium solution for doing so.  But I would only suggest doing so if you think that at least 50 reporters around the country are likely to search their in-boxes for your exact topic.  Ergo, I don’t suggest this for economic reasons for most press releases.

In general, you are best off finding the local reporters who cover a beat similar to yours and Mailing (yes, no E- I mean postal) them an individualized pitch letter on why your news is “news-worthy.”  Try to make it as relevant to the reporter as possible, and a useful best practice is to ghost write the story for them.  Make sure your letter has a link to the electronic version of your press release, and try to E-mail them the letter a day after you Postal mail the story pitch.  In your pitch, do remember that most journalists don’t care one bit about your business, so do NOT make that your primary pitch.

As for releasing your press release to Google:  PRLog is a free site worth using, though there are many other free and nearly free sites that Google scans.

More great information:
Read David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Public Relations E-Book

Randy Aimone is a Duct Tape Marketing Coach in the Hudson Valley region of New York, You can visit his web site at www.AimOneMarketing.com, E-mail him at Randy@AimOneMarketing.com, and follow his tweets @RandyAimone. His marketing specialization includes technology firms and businesses with fewer than 10 employees.