Dream Systems Media Blog

I’m preparing to teach a group of authors, both newly published, and veterans, about the importance of effective online marketing.

As I’ve mapped out some of the different topics I’ll be covering, the one that continues to come to mind is about the importance of defining WHO you’re marketing to.

Having worked with lots of internet start-ups, I’ve realized that defining your target audience is probably the hardest and most overlooked aspect of online marketing.

It really doesn’t matter WHAT you sell. What matters most is the “WHO”.

The cool thing is, if you know a clearly defined target audience well, you can sell them lots and lots of different products and services because they’ll see value in what you’re offering over and over again. Plus, as you help solve their problems, you’re building a business relationship – and that’s what successful business is all about.

Entrepreneur, Sales and Marketing

Announcement:

Retiring the position preference setting

In early May, we’ll be removing the option to set position preferences. Learn more about what this means for your campaigns.

Google, Industry News, PPC, Sales and Marketing Google, pest control guy, PPC

Have you ever had this problem?

In your head you’re saying “No, No, No!!!” But then you say “Yes” anyway? Me too, me too…

I’ve been self-employed now for almost six full months.

I’ve found some “Golden Clients”, and I’ve dealt with some that have come close to making we want to go back to “Corporate America” (not really).

I’ve come to the conclusion that some clients are just not worth it. Sure, they may be paying you pretty good money to work for them. Sure, they may have respect for what you’re doing (sort of). But at the end of the day, due to their unrealistic expectations and/or their lack of understanding about what they purchased, they demand more and more for less and less, and they will probably not end up being one of those clients who refers you to all their contacts.

Sales and Marketing, SEO

I’ve talked to clients a lot in the past about one key question:

What have you done TODAY to make a sale?

I’m going to take it a step further today and ask another simple question:

What have you done TODAY to find a new client?

Some might ask at this point, “Isn’t making a sale and finding a new client the same thing?”

In the past, my answer was yeah, sure. However, as I’ve thought about it more, I realize that I can make one sale today but then never, ever see that customer again. On the other hand, if my goal is to find CLIENTS, I’m really not only looking for a “sale”, but I’m also looking for a long-term business relationship that I can develop, leading to sale after sale after sale to the same client.

Entrepreneur, Sales and Marketing

My approach to press releases is different than traditional PR. Most of the press releases I write are less about getting press coverage for my news, and more about getting quality backlinks to my site. However, it is possible to do both. It starts with a good story and added to that, online distribution.

Many people believe it’s enough to blog about their news. For some high traffic blogs (thought leaders) this might be true. For most blogs there isn’t the distribution. You want to reach outside of your community for greater exposure.

Here’s an IM conversation I had recently about the importance of press release distribution:

Clogon: i guess i just put my “press releases” in the form of blog posts

Me: yes and your reach is pretty limited compared to a distribution site that sends it to thousands of people

Sales and Marketing, Search Marketing, SEO online PR, press releases

Many of you have probably read the book “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, but for those of you who haven’t… the book is based on the premise that there is always a tipping point (aka significant momentum shift) in the life cycle of a message that becomies a wide spread epidemic, and that the “tipping point” can always be traced back to small numbers of people who start behaving differently.

I really found the case studies highlighting different business’s tipping points to be the most interesting part of the book. It was intriguing to contrast the tipping points, which were not really a direct result of any specific action taken by the business, against those tipping points that were a direct result of a specific action taken by the business. Generally, when the business is directly responsible for bringing about the tipping point you will find that the catalyst to be a new marketing angle taken by the company.

David Mink, Sales and Marketing marketing angle, marketing tactic

I have been pretty impressed at the sheer quality of the testimonials generated by the retail arm of DSM over the last few weeks. So, I decided to write a blog post encapsulating 5 steps any business can take to receive killer testimonials.

Step 1 – It all starts with a great product or service. Obviously. So the real question is: what can you do to improve your products or services? Here are a few things we try to do religiously: attend trade shows, ask customers for feedback, read industry-relevant publications, continually and consistently analyze our service procedures so that we are pro-actively looking for ways to improve.

Sales and Marketing how to get testimonials

Free shipping has been the most popular promotional offer among online shoppers. According to 2007 Forrester Research, 61% of online shoppers preferred to shop with a retailer that offered free shipping than one that didn’t. High demand encouraged most online retailers to win customers’ hearts by offering free shipping – either on minimum purchase or without conditions.

Because of the fast approaching economic crisis and rising gas prices (and hence increasing shipping rates), some experts believed most merchants would fail to offer free shipping this year:

…rising fuel costs will make free shipping much more expensive for online retailers this holiday season and will likely limit the amount of offers or lead to an increase in the dollar threshold level.

The dilemma looks as follows: the demand is growing (nearly 80% of online shoppers wanted to be offered free shipping this year versus 60% in 2007) while the profit is declining.

Sales and Marketing free shipping, free shipping day, free shipping ebook

Tuesday morning I had the opportunity to meet with a company regarding providing search engine optimization services to them. This is a company that is on the verge of being an Inc. 500 company and I was meeting with the CEO, VP of Marketing, and VP of Development. About 45 min. into the meeting the CEO said, “So how do we get this going?” and my reply to him was something along the lines of, “If we begin working together we will start with, etc. etc.” and went on to explain our process to him. Roughly 10 min. later the CEO stood up and basically said,

I have to get running, so you guys take care of the details and lets move forward, but I have one piece of advice for you, say “when” we begin working with you instead of “if” we begin working with you. We then shook hands and he left the board room.

General, Google, Sales and Marketing, Twitter Motivation, Persuasion, Sales and Marketing

Click Click Click

I had an interesting chat with a family member about something the company they works for had recently done with a website redesign.  First of all – I was blown away when I was told what they paid for the site (over 100k).  My designers could have build a much better site for 1/3 of what they paid, but that is not the issue here.  They created a site without talking to any marketers, or sales guys or people who do online marketing for a living.  His company left it into the hands and discretion of web designers.  I do not want to get into the debate about web designers not being Internet marketers on this post, but these guys had really taken this company for a ride.   You do not see me telling my designers how to code something, so please stick to what you are good at.

Sales and Marketing conversion rate, sticky website, website conversion