Marketing Strategy: How to Write the Perfect Testimonial

If I tell you that I’m great at what I do, unless you already know, like, and trust me, most likely you’ll be skeptical. However, if an unbiased third-party tells you that I’m great at what I do, you’ll tend to be a little more open to that possibility. In other words, people tend to give more credence to what someone else says about you rather than what you say about yourself – hence the power of a third-party endorsement or as we’ll refer to it here, the testimonial.

Being how powerful a well-crafted testimonial can be, I highly recommend that you use every opportunity to get testimonials about you, your team, your product, your service, or your business in general. Collecting and effectively using testimonials should become a key marketing strategy for your business – regardless o the business you’re in. Simply put, they should be collected regularly and weaved throughout all of your marketing.

Another key note for your consideration is that I’m a firm believer in what goes around, comes around – bottom line, if you want testimonials; you have to be willing to give testimonials.

So with that in mind, my intention here is to empower you to create the perfect testimonial by sharing with you what I consider the 4 key components. Here goes:

Component #1: The "Before" State

This is where you expose the state of where you once were prior to getting help from the recipient of your testimonial; the more commonplace and/or uncomfortable your state of being, the more effective the testimonial tends to be.

Some possible phrases for your consideration might be:

• I was clueless about…
• I wasted countless hours…
• I burned thousands of dollars...

Component #2: The "After" State

This surmises what you got out of… the consulting, the coaching, the book, the seminar, the workshop, the home study program, or whatever help you received… kind of a bottom line value statement. A key point to keep in mind here is that it’s typically more effective when you monetize your results.

For example:

• In less than 3 months from participating in your workshop, I have grossed an additional $60,000 in revenue over the same period last year…
• After reading your book on time management, I was able to recoup more than 10 hours of billable time per week – that has equated to a $30,000 increase in revenue over the past 3 months…

Component #3: What’s Now Possible

This component addresses what other new possibilities the future may hold for you – Where do you see yourself going from here?

Some questions you can ask yourself to bring about ideas might be:

• What doors have opened up because of your newfound results?
• What revenue streams have been created or enhanced?
• What competitive advantages now exist and how will they impact your future?

Component #4: Call to Action

It may come as a surprise to you but most people secretly want to be led. They want to be told what they should do next. They also have a distinct desire to fit in – following suit with the status quo. A proper call to action can accomplish these objectives and more, and become a very powerful weapon for you.

Some possible calls to action might be:

• For anyone reading this, do your business a favor and hire John Doe Consulting today!
• You’d have to be crazy not to take this seminar! Call to sign up today!
• You too can have all the perfect clients you could ever want by hiring Dean as your marketing coach immediately!

So in closing, depending on the type of business you are writing the testimonial for, you may not need all 4 components that I’ve outlined for you here. Just use your judgment and craft the most powerful one you can muster up. And here’s a power tip for you, share this article with anyone who has shown interest in writing you a testimonial – you’ll be glad you did.

© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Want to use this article in your e-zine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Liked this article? – Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog ‘The Motivational Marketer’s Journal’. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter, the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.

Technorati Tags: Testimonials, Marketing Strategy

Choosing a Domain Name Strategy That Gets Results

Part 2: Using a Multiple Domain Name Strategy

In part 1 of this article, I shared a couple of do’s and don’ts to help you choose domain names that get results. In part 2, we’ll dig a bit deeper into the strategy of how to use multiple domain names for your business. Additionally, as promised, I will share with you part of my own domain name strategy to give you a glimpse into how I play the domain name game.

So here goes…

I’m a firm believer in using a multiple domain name strategy for a whole host of reasons but let me just share with you five of my core ones:

1. To create an overall better experience for my target market
2. To create a strong brand for myself and my business
3. To protect my brand and online identity that I’ve worked so hard to create
4. For search engine marketing and optimization purposes
5. To gain a competitive advantage in my marketplace

With that being said, let me share with you what I feel are some possible domain names you should consider owning:

• Your name
• Your business’s name
• Your major product names
• Catch phrases, monikers, or tag lines commonly associated with you, your business, or your industry
• Trademarked words or phrases – so long as you are the owner of the trademark
• Major benefits your business provides
• Major problems your business solves
• Key words or key word phrases that your target market would use when searching for what you do

Now do you need all of these? – Probably not. However for many small businesses and independent professionals, using some combination of a few of these properly could prove very rewarding.

As for my business Online Marketing Muscle, I own and actively use several domain names. As part of my strategy, instead of having my target market try to remember and type a long cumbersome URL of a page buried deep on my web site, I like to use shorter, more memorable, keyword-rich ones – hence my core concept of creating a better experience for my target market from the get-go. Then I simply use the free domain forwarding service provided by my domain registrar to automatically forward visitors to the actual page on my business’s main web site.

Let me explain a bit further:

I use www.DeanMercado.com as a shortcut to the “about me” page of my business’s main web site. This is a way for me as an independent professional to strengthen my personal brand as well as make it easier for people who may know me by name but not by my business’s name to find me easier.

At a minimum, I highly recommend that all independent professionals use a similar approach. It definitely serves as a differentiator between you and someone else who does what you do. So instead of having one of those long, complicated URLs that the company you represent assigns you, use your name dot com and place that on all of your marketing materials.

One word of caution here, if your company has a compliance department, run your plans by them to ensure you’re not breaking any company policy – I wouldn’t want to get you fired over this.

I use www.MotivationalMarketer.com as a shortcut to my blog hosted on my business’s main web site. The “Motivational Marketer” is a moniker I use for myself. Notice also that it gives people a fairly good idea of what type of content to expect on my blog, motivational marketing advice.

I use www.PumpedUpNetworking.com as a shortcut to the sales page of one of my main information products hosted on my business’s main web site. Notice also that besides being the name of my product, it also happens to contain the keyword “Networking” in it.

And I can go on and on and on here however, I hope you’re starting to get the gist of what I’m sharing.

I would also like to point out that if your core focus for your domain name strategy is search engine marketing, then you might want to consider taking things up a notch and by hosting each of your domain names as separate web sites using different web hosting services. You’ll most likely see better results with search engine placement with that approach.

So in closing, we’ve only just scratched the surface here. There’s much more to choosing a domain name than meets the eye – And having an overall domain name strategy that helps you choose which domain names you’ll buy, how you intend to use them, and why, if implemented correctly can lead to big-time results.

© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Want to use this article in your e-zine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Liked this article? – Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog ‘The Motivational Marketer’s Journal’. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter, the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.

Technorati Tags: domain names, search engine marketing

Choosing a Domain Name Strategy That Gets Results

Part 1: The Do’s and Don’ts of Picking Domain Names

Just in case you weren’t already aware, the Internet is typically the first place people look when they’re searching for information on what you do. Additionally, the Internet is typically one of the first places people look when they want to find out about you or your business – or as we say in the online world, they Google you.

That being said, you can probably surmise just how important it is to not only have the people you want to find you, find you, but also to have them find the information you want them to find both quickly and easily – And having great domain names is a critical step in making that happen.

Now over the years I’ve coached a number of small businesses as well as independent professionals such as authors, real estate agents, network marketers, and sales representatives of larger corporations, and I’ve seen them choose and/or use all kinds of effective as well as ineffective domain names – most of the time, not really being aware of how important and powerful a properly chosen domain name can be.

So here a couple of do’s and don’ts to help you choose domain names that get results:

Do’s

• Learn what keywords people search for when looking for what you do and look to use those in your domain names.
• At less than $10 a pop per year for most domain names, allow yourself to buy more than 1.
• Choose domain names that are memorable.
• Choose domain names that make it easier to find you online.
• Use specific domain names for specific promotions or ad campaigns.
• Shorter is not always better but in many cases it is – I know I don’t like typing long URLs – do you?
• Buy common misspellings of your domain name.
• If possible, to avoid confusing your target market, spell the domain name exactly how it sounds.
• Even though alternatives are available (e.g. “.net”, “.info”, “.org”, etc.), buy “.com” addresses whenever possible – this is still the commonly assumed domain name extension of the masses.

Don’ts

• Unless you’re a big company with a recognizable brand such as an IBM or EDS, using an acronym for your domain name is probably not a wise choice.
• Stay away from hyphen and underscore characters between words in a multiple word domain name – it just complicates communicating your web site address as well as making it more difficult to find.
• Be careful when substituting numbers for the actual spelled out version of the word (e.g. using the number “4” instead of spelling out the word “four” or “for”). Again, it just complicates communicating your web site address as well as making it more difficult to find.

So in closing, in part 2 of this article, I will share with you part of my domain name strategy to give you a glimpse into how I play the domain name game.

© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.Want to use this article in your e-zine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links) 

Liked this article? – Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog ‘The Motivational Marketer’s Journal’. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter, the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.

Technorati Tags: domain names, search engine marketing

Is Your Marketing Lacking This Core Concept?

"I'm a believer in momentum." – Lance Armstrong (7-time Tour de France champion)

Let’s face it, in business it’s out of sight, out of mind; out of mind, and you’re quickly out of business. So ta-da! Marketing to the rescue! It’s the job of marketing to make sure you stay top-of-mind and in business with your target market.

Now marketing is a process that must remain in motion in order to produce more consistent results. Unfortunately, this is where so many small businesses fall down. They create a marketing piece once, run it once, and sit back and wonder why no one’s knocking down their door frantically looking to buy. Or another common scenario is they market like crazy, create some marketing momentum, get some clients and then stop marketing – losing all the marketing momentum they worked so hard and spent so much money to build. While this may create some growth spurts, it certainly creates dry spells as well. For small businesses, nothing hurts more than dry spells.

And how do you avoid dry spells? – With a consistent dose of marketing – more specifically, with ‘marketing momentum’.

So how can you create marketing momentum for your business? Well:

• Publishing a weekly newsletter creates marketing momentum.
• Posting to your blog several times a week creates marketing momentum.
• Running an ad in at least 4 consecutive issues of a publication creates marketing momentum.

The key here is maintaining consistent visibility with your target market – stay in front of them. The common notion amongst marketers is that it takes anywhere from 4 to 7 touches just for your target market to acknowledge your existence – let alone buy from you.

So you want marketing momentum? – Then think of marketing as an ongoing process not a single event. As a matter of fact, bundle your marketing into campaigns of multiple marketing events – at least 4 to 7 to begin creating top-of-mind awareness – many more if you want more consistent results.

So in closing, I’m with Lance… I'm a believer in momentum as well… marketing momentum that is… how about you?


© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Want to use this article in your e-zine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Liked this article? - Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog 'The Motivational Marketer’s Journal'. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter, the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.


Technorati Tags: Marketing Strategy