Page rank is a way that Google ranks the authority or importance of your site. The higher your page rank, the more of an ‘authority’ you are.  And when you have a high authority site, you will get search engine rankings more easily… In fact, you actually have priority over other sites.

I’ve had many top marketers and SEO (search engine optimization) experts ask me how I was able to get such a high page rank in such a short period of time (It usually takes a few months for Google to even ‘register’ you and getting to a PR of 5 is not something that most sites ever achieve).  So… I decided to make this free training tutorial today to share with YOU exactly how I was able to do this… And of course, how you can, too!

Enjoy!”

Could agree more with this from Katie Freiling from Online Marketing.

As a small business consultant I work with many small businesses that for so long have either had a random approach to their marketing effort, where they don’t know what actually worked, or they have gone for the silver bullet and put all their resources into Internet advertising. Neither approach works. The funny thing is a simple organised approach to marketing is the best and most effective and it doesn’t have to cost the earth or be too time consuming.

I have developed an online free system for small businesses to get a jump-start on their marketing for the next financial year. This system I am happy to give away for a limited time to help me gather feedback before I make it a paid online resource. As I see it, it is a win-win for both parties. The small business owner gets some tools, templates and resources to help create a simple marketing approach and I get feedback on how to make the system even more effective. Go to The Simple Marketing System to download your free tools today!

Here is one of the models.

1)    Surprise Them!: I order my shirts from Paul Frederick and they aren’t cheap. Every now and again, without warning, they will include a tie with my shirt order. I hate to admit this, but I’m like a little kid who just got the free prize from collecting cereal box tops! Gold star Paul Frederick! I’m a frequent guest at the Omni Hotel and they have the surprise thing down pretty well. One evening they sent fresh fruit up to my room, one morning it was some orange juice and bottled water. Here’s the point, it doesn’t have to be a million dollar, give away the store thing, just get in the habit of surprising your clients. It is the element of surprise that is so delightful here. It is beyond your expectations. Arrive to your clients with a box of donnuts for morning tea.

2)    Find A Way to “Wow” Them When You Screw Up: Everything you ever heard about Disney is true! I should know, I stayed there for 10 days with my family back in 2006. We went to a dinner show one night and the waitress was visibly hustling from table to table. Somewhere in the mix, she forgot my son’s lemonade. When she returned to our table, my son very respectfully called it to her attention. She immediately apologized (doesn’t that have a way of immediately diffusing a situation?) and said “Wait until you see how we fix things when we make mistakes at Disney” What happened next blew my mind. She returned with an entire pitcher of lemonade (complete with a very cool straw and glow cubes). So let me see if I get this. What was once a mistake has now turned into a “Wow”? Here’s the best part, I figure that between telling that story to everyone I’ve trained since then and mentioning it in my blog (twice) this story has reached over 15,000 people. I can see the Mastercard commercial now . . . Price for the lemonade: $2.00, Way Cool Straw & Glow Cubes: $2.00 Wowing a disappointed customer and getting word of mouth advertising from his blogaholic Dad . . . Priceless Baby! Everyone makes mistakes. Take away 1. Admit it. Be genuine. Turn around a bad situation and you could win a client and fans for life.

3)    Make Your Client Look Like A Rock Star To Their Boss: Think about it. Who doesn’t need some good press these days?  One of the best ways for you to do this is to proactively go to your client with ideas and resources. By the way, ideas and resources shouldn’t always require payment. This is one of the many ways you and I provide this thing everyone keeps regurgitating called “value”. Now if you are amongst the clueless who think everyone is already doing this, then make it a habit of asking this question in your Needs Analysis: “When was the last time your sales rep came to you (proactively) with an idea?” Get ready for a head tilt as they try to remember. One way you stay fresh with ideas is to carve out weekly thinking time to, well, think about your client’s business. Talking to the brainstorming queen, love it when I can give my clients extra value in terms of ideas.

4)    Be A Breath Of Fresh Air!: File this one under “I’m just sayin” but business folk can be wound way too tight these days. At times its just way too freakin serious. We’ve forgotten to put “laugh and lighten up” on our  To Do lists! Assignment: Go down to the card store and pick out a few funny greeting cards that you are going to send your clients. If you can’t find one, then at least pick up a cool thank you card and simply thank them for being your client. How about putting together a rock star kit for them complete with cool shades, a cd, an all access pass to your business along with a card that reads “You’re always a rock star to us!”

Sales Managers: Have a sales meeting in the near future and brainstorm ways for everyone to be that “Breath of Fresh Air” to your clients. Oh, and if you can’t think of anything, your competitor probably will.

Love the idea of thanking clients!

5)    Better Relationships Require Better Communication: Ridiculously obvious sales advice in 3,2,1 . . . The key to better communication is in asking better questions. Most sales reps make it through the Needs Analysis part of the process with barely a passing grade and then they stop asking thought provoking questions as if they are saying “But dude I already did that step” You have to continually ask the questions nobody else asks. Harvey Mackay has a cool questionnaire he calls “The Mackay 66”. It’s 66 questions that you should be able to answer about each one of your clients. Now, I admit that some of these questions might seem a bit much, but the point is to know your client better than anyone else. Love them. know them, surprise and delight them. Go the extra mile.

Customers want value first and welcome the ability to ’test drive’ your product first – your website is where they can see and do this. It is also the best place to develop a strong business relationship. A ‘must’ is to

1.Provide customers with free stuff - i.e relevant articles, links, offer free advice etc.The purpose of the free stuff is to entice them to give you their contact email address.Golden rule : You must get their ‘permission’ to use their email address in order to make future contact.The free stuff helps to do this !
2.Build rapport. Send regular personalised email …Dear John/ Mary…focusing your messages on benefits of doing business with YOU. Provide ‘did you know’ type advice. In essence – Build TRUST
3. Statistically it is proven that if a customer sees benefit in your product / service then after 5 contacts they tend to buy.
4. Always focus on benefits, offer product guarantees i.e ‘if you don’t like , full refund guaranteed’.

e- marketing and emails is powerful, cheap and direct. It will take a long time to build this type of rapport with a customer solely attending network events to get customers”

Could agree more with this from Matthew Geraghty from Linkedin Small business Online community.

1. It can rank highly in google and other search engines

2. This can increase links to your site and website visibility.

Keys to remember in optimising your press release:

1. Identify the press release target audience and goal. This will help focus the key words.

2. Know your audience’s pain points will boost your changes of getting found on search queries

3. Do your key word research. You can use Google key word research tool for this.

4. Use these key words in the heading, subject summary and throughout the article

5.Don’t over do it so it sounds unnatural.

6.Add keyword rich links and a landing page to your site.

7.Add relevant multimedia as this increases click through rates

8. Use the social book marketing ie twitter, faceboook to increase the drive to your release 9. Keep your release easy to read and brief

10. Submit it to PRwire and other pr services online.

Laura Lake marketing guru had a great post inviting small businesses to share their stories about how they started their businesses. Thought it was a really good idea.

Here is mine. Why not share your ideas?

What is a brand?

The collections of perceptions about your company.

Brand is not just a packaging, tag-line and logo. Brand is every interaction with your customers. The perceptions your customers have about your brand, influences whether they choose you over a competitor.

Brand is more than a logo

Do you have brand recognition or awareness or just a corporate identity with a logo. Many small businesses spend a lot of time on their logo or website without considering the messaging to the target audience to see if it will resonate and any time promoting their communications. A brand is not just visual, it is behavioural. Are you listening to your customers?

I bought an Apple Mac computer this week. Until then I had a Dell and had been very happy. The support was fantastic, they were proactive with their sales calls and not pushy. Despite enjoying my Dell laptop it did get viruses and I didn’t feel as cool as I might. I even stuck on a Apple logo on my Dell saying to clients ” I want to be an Apple computer”. So you get the picture. So the time had come and I ventured into their Chadstone store.

The store the atmosphere and the branding everywhere made you feel like you were somewhere special. The uniform of the staff being hip and the furniture and layout super cool. Then  I met a salesperson called Clay. He was helpful but not energetic like I imagined a Apple person to be. I felt like I got the right technical advise but the service  left me feeling ripped off. First I asked Clay if there was anything else I needed (perfect up-sell opportunity). I thought at the end of the conversation I had everything only to discover when I got home I didn’t. I didn’t have the extra software I asked for and I didn’t have a mouse which I think is key. What’s more the 1 to 1 registration that we did for extra support in the store had locked me out on my new computer at home. All of this I could live with but then I experienced more dissatisfaction when I went back into the store for the second time in 2 hours. This time Igor told me I had to bring in my old laptop with my new laptop so they could see how long the appointment time would be for support which I then had to book! Holy cow, totally rubbish support and not only that, apparently wrong. I spoke with another salesperson when getting my wireless mouse and he (Chris) said I could book the support/ lesson on line. Come on Apple what is going on. I tell this story because Apple have nailed their physical brand. The logo, tag, store and salespeople appearance, but it all is devalued the moment you experience less than satisfactory customer service. Someone needs to start training these geeks in customer service fast!!! Interesting also is there is no where on the Apple website to make a customer compliant. Not at all promoting the right image in assisting customers.

Brand attributes: for a brand to do its job well it should have the following benefits.

• Recognition/ awareness: Does the market know you exist? Have you heard of x company?
• Top of mind awareness: memorised your brand
• Brand preference: choose you over others, they need what you do.  They like you.
• Differentiation: they believe you are different to the other choices.

Remember the famous McGraw Hill ad from about 30 years ago? The one with the grumpy, old man saying, “I don’t know you. I don’t know your company. I don’t know what you stand for. Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?”

Brand can help give you sell you service by providing a level of trust and comfort in the eyes of the customer.

What does branding do?

1.Branding – draws clients to you and gives you opportunity to meet face to face with customers.

2.Brands pulls everything together in a cohesive package which gives the your business a visual identity.

3.Brand can make price less of a consideration in the buying cycle.

4.Brands increase sales effectiveness. Brands help generate leads. It makes lead generation programs work better.

5. Brands helps you beat the competition.

6. Brands facilitate repeat purchases as customers prefer to buy from you.

7. Brands attract the best candidates.

8. Brands increase value of a company.

Brands have many long term financial benefits. So as a small business think about brand as more than the physical elements and put as much effort or more into the messaging about what you stand for and delivering the brand promise to your customers.

Insight taken from Professional Service Marketing by Mike Schultz and John Doerr

The book has some good ideas and tips, however I would have liked to see more practical ideas.  I really like the way they have been generous by quoting others and don’t proclaim to know everything.It shows that they are eating their own dog food! I think the most insightful section is when they talk about the overall platform of social media rather than the tactics of twitter, face-book or alike.  The landscape is changing so quickly and so their advice as Trust Agents will stand the test of this shifting space.

For small business the key take aways:

1. Join the conversation with your audience

2. Add value, be authentic, don’t try and hard sell. Give away your best stuff, remember abundance!

3. Leverage your networks online to create insights and opportunities fro your business.

4.Be human. Realise that on the net it is a 2 way conversation . Be respectful, humble and show appreciation. If this is part of your nature you are one of the lucky ones because social media can build your brand and reputation and earn trust faster than any other medium.

5. Download the book on audible. Great benefit the two authors are reading the book and it is really nice to hear the sentiment behind the text with their narration, plus it is totally portable on your ipod and we have got to love that!

Two thumbs up from me.

Well I believe it has something to do with the customer experience you provide.  The Dijuluisgroup is a company that focuses their efforts on creating world class customer service organisations.

Let’s face it; there is so much choice with products. Just look at the supermarket shelf and the choice of different sorts of bread, milk, yoghurt or tea. Everything has become commoditised. The real last point of differentiation is your service or more so the customer experience that you deliver to your customers in a consistent delightful way.

Everyone will say that they have great customer service but interestingly as John DiJuluis points out that is an internal view point and when you ask your customers you might be surprised about how they rate your service. Most people however only notice your customer service when it is bad. If you screw something up, believe me it is memorable! Customer insight is a key. dijuliusgroup

Customer experience speaks more to this secret sauce. It is about your companies culture and focus on delighting the customer at every touch point. How do we personalise their experience. How do you deliver your experience to the customer currently? If you are not sure how you stack up why not take some of the surveys on the dijulusgroup site. They have one for the organisations customer experience aptitude and one for theindividual. If nothing else it will make you think.

Two key questions to keep in mind.

1. You can make price irrelevant. John tells the story on Jay EhretPower to the small business of two hairdressers. One had a sign in his window “HAIRCUT ONLY $10”. The salon across from them was a totally different salon and had an average haircut cost of $50. The suggestion was to put a sign in the opposite window saying “We fix $10 haircuts”. The challenge to make price irrelevant is to create a haircut and an experience that is so different is like taking a 60 minute holiday.
2. Create a fantastic customer experience everytime. Imagine instead of charging $100 per hour for a consultation you charged $1000. Now note down what you would do differently and do it. Make the experience exceptional.

Look at how I create an exceptional experience.

Dan’s Quick tips:

Use the customer and your name a few times when on the phone.

Add some value by doing your homework before you meet a potential client, the web is an awesome tool for this

Ask your customers for feedback every chance you can and act on it, own it, improve it.