Word of Mouth Marketing vs Referral Systems

At first glance, Word of Mouth Marketing and having a Referral System in place appears to be similar. but in truth, one is haphazard and the other is proactive and managed. 

Most small businesses rely solely on Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) to generate new business. As a result, the struggle with:

• Inconsistent deal flow (up one month, down the next)
• The "feast or famine" roller coaster of booms and depressions
• Worrying where your next deal is going to come from

By virtue of organization, referral systems allow you to:

• Build a steady, consistent, reliable flow of new business
• Predict and control your income (like turning on a faucet)
• Sleep like a baby (with peace of mind), knowing your revenue is rock solid

Doesn't that sound a whole lot better that leaving your family's livelihood and future in the hands of chance?

Referral Systems Are The Answer

By definition, a system is, " A set of detailed methods, procedures and routines created to carry out a specific activity, perform a duty, or solve a problem." - BusinessDictionary.com

These systems can be simple or complex. For any small business person, these can be a couple of actions that are carried out as a routine. These can be:

• Having customers check in on Facebook or Yelp when they visit. Give discounts or awards when they do so.
• Asking for referrals at the point of sale.
• Creating individualized content for your clients, such as Snapchat or a YouTube video that would inspire a share or referral.
• Drip feeding all your past clients with informative emails that can be shared on social media.
• Offering referrals cards which look like credit cards. There is a great company that offers these types of cards, VivaConcepts.com.

Referrals Must Be Measured 

"What gets measured, gets managed." - Peter Drucker

Having built and managed referrals systems for all of my sales and marketing career, you must measure the referral system. For without measurement, we devolve back to word of mouth marketing. Measuring assures accountability. 

I suggest you keep weekly or monthly statistics. Now must begin to document the systems, regardless how simple or easy they may seem to be. Documentation with checklists and lists of resources and "how to" ensures that the systems can be taught and replicated in the actions of others. 

Here is the sequence:

• Develop a system.
• Measure and manage it consistently.
• Document it so that others can implement these actions as a routine.
• Continue to develop and perfect it over time, and with experience.
• Repeat.

Systems are the solution to building a business with a high level of profitable customers being developed and serviced. 

Lead Generation with YouTube Video Marketing

Acquiring a new customer can cost up to thirty times more than retaining and reselling to an existing one. While the cost of acquiring new customers is high, one must take into account the lifetime value of a new customer.

A new coffee house may only generate $3.00 on the first sale of a new customer. But if he or she is delighted, that customer could spend $3.00 per day for many years to come. The lifetime value of one new customer may be worth thousands of dollars, not to mention the many referrals that can be generated over the lifespan of that customer.

The Best Type of Marketing Content

The best type of marketing content is “Evergreen Video.” Evergreen video is content that is produced once, but works for the brand 24/7. Once a great video is uploaded and optimized on YouTube, that video is working for that brand around the clock.

For example, I created this video for my Executive Coaching services. I made it almost three years ago, yet it still generates new leads and top clients for me almost every month.

By 2020, 80% of content consumed online will be video. Video marketing is the future of online marketing, and must be a part of any robust marketing program for any ambitious brand.

A Proven Lead Gen System: Premier Expert

The heart and soul of my "Premier Expert" video marketing service is to generate top-quality leads. The total cost of my program is $7,500.00 (plus travel expenses if extensive) for 12 unique YouTube videos. Each video is about 2-3 minutes long. Included in that complete video marketing package is:

1. A written video marketing strategy, based on your goals and resources. This would include how to leverage each and every video within: Email, social media, blogs, press releases, and any and all web properties.
2. A full interview with the principal(s) to understand what topics and/or questions we should be featuring in those videos. We want our topics to be the ones that are popular and the most requested by your target audience.
3. Conducting extensive keyword research so that your YouTube video topics MATCH consumer search behavior.
4. Two camera on-sight shoot for a complete pro presentation. Only Hollywood quality video and audio equipment is used.
5. Full SEO optimization of each and every video, so that they rank at the top of search within YouTube and Google.
6. Each video will come with custom and branded "intro" and "outro" sections to give your videos a distinctive look and feel that aligns with your branding.
7. Full support to pull off a complete hit with your video branding.

How Much Does This Cost?

Story boarding and keyword research begins upon payment of half of the program ($3,750.00). Then we arrange a one-day shoot where all 12 videos are then shot along our story board. Within 30 days, the videos are sent to you and uploaded to your YouTube channel, fully optimized. The second half of the payment is due on the day of the shoot, at the end of that day. Feel free if you have any other questions or needs.

You can contact me at edwindearborn@me.com

Local Search Engine Marketing

SEO Best Practices 2016 | Local Search Engine Marketing Optimization 

http://gobuttonmarketing.blogspot.com...

The best SEO practices for 2016 and beyond will require a strategic mindset, as well as a detailed plan on how to leverage what I am about to share in this post. In theory, the best SEO practices are quite simple and straightforward. Yet, the deployment will be complex, as well as require persistence and organization. 

"It is a little-known secret that Google and other search engines are making a shift from traditional SEO to a focus on quality and authoritative content. While it is still important to optimize your meta data and remain on top of relevant keywords, it can no longer be denied that when it comes to generating organic search results, quality content with a strong focus on authority is now leading the pack." - Entrepreneur (Jan 6, 2015) 

Best SEO Practices Checklist:

1. Discovering and targeting additional verticals.
2. Conducting thorough keyword research for those verticals.
3. Creating high-quality content for each keyword. This would include in-depth copywriting.
4. Distributing this content on a continually basis. (Email, social media, PPC, native advertising, etc.)

While this is a simple list, each one can require an extensive amount of time, effort, and resources. Fortunately, these four actions are scalable for any business, including a solopreneur with practically no budget. 

There is no such thing as SEO without content. You need words, articles, substance, keywords, verbiage. It’s true: Content is king. We don’t argue about that anymore. It’s a truism of the SEO industry. Content content content.

And what is content marketing all about? It’s about content. The practical application of SEO (content) is the very substance of content marketing.

Business Planning for Startups

Writing and following a business plan is crucial to success. No business plan is set in stone. It should be subject to many iterations as time, experience, feedback, and growth (or lack of it) develop. 

If your business plan is too complex or overwhelming, then you need to scale it back. Having a list of your goals and objectives is a great place to begin. While this may not be the business plan you submit to the bank or potential investors, having a written plan of any type is better than nothing. 

The Difference Between A Goal And An Objective

Goal: "The object toward which an endeavor is directed; an end. A goal is something rewarding or fulfilling that inspires a sustained endeavor." - American Heritage Dictionary

Objective: "A specific result that a person or system aims to achieve within a time frame and with available resources. In general, objectives are more specific and easier to measure than goals. Objectives are basic tools that underlie all planning and strategic activities. They serve as the basis for creating policy and evaluating performance. Some examples of business objectives include minimizing expenses, expanding internationally, or making a profit." - BusinessDictionary.com

To reach your rewarding goal in business, you must remain inspired to achieve key objectives.  You must do this with available resources and within a specified time frame.  The two definitions are important enough to commit to memory as these concepts apply as much to branding as they do to any aspect of business.

One can have the goal of becoming a successful business owner or a published author.  But as you may already know, there are many objectives that one must achieve before one enjoys the satisfaction of having reached the goal.

“Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't." - Peter Drucker

It can be clearly observed and stated that many individuals never attain their goals because they never set required objectives and then make those objectives occur, come hell or high water.  Power Brands distinguish themselves by having definitive goals and articulated, specific, written objectives.  

The end-game of achieved objectives and attained goals makes branding much more strategic than most people have realized.

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Edwin Dearborn is the bestselling author of Power Branding Secrets

Marketing With Video: 21 Amazing Stats

You can spend weeks creating amazing content but how much of your content is actually being consumed? But is your target audience actually listening to your message?

Check out these 21 amazing stats about marketing with video:

1. Consumers give up on an online video if it doesn’t load in two seconds. (University of Massachusetts Amherst and Akamai Technologies)
2. 80% of online video ads are abandoned within the first half of the ad. (VINDICO)
3. Videos that are 15 seconds or shorter are shared 37% more often than those that last between 30 seconds and 1 minute. (Jun Group)52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. (Invodo)
4. According to the Online Publishers Association, 80% of Internet users recall watching a video ad on a website they visited in the past 30 days. It gets even better. Of that 80%, 46% took some action after viewing the ad.
5. 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. (ComScore)
6. The average internet user spends 88% more time on a website with video than without.
7. According to NIELSEN Wire, 36% of online consumers trust video ads.
8. 93% of marketers use video for online marketing, sales or communication. (Brain Shark)
9. 76 percent of marketers plan to add video to their sites, making it a higher priority than Facebook, Twitter and blog integration. (Social Media Examiner)
10. 65% of executives have visited a vendor’s site after watching a video. (Forbes)
11. 59% of senior executives prefer to watch video instead of reading text, if both are available on the same page. (Forbes Insight)
12. Blog posts incorporating video attract three times as many inbound links as blog posts without video. (Source: SEOmoz)
13. Your website is 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of a search engine results page if it includes video. (Digital Sherpa)
14. Video in email can boost open rates by 20% and increase click-through rates 2X. (Brain Shark)
15. Using the word “video” in email subject lines boosts open rates 19%, click-through rates by 65%, and reduces unsubscribes by 26%. (Brain Shark)
16. 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. (YouTube)
17. Five tweets per second contain a Vine link. (7th Chamber)
18. Instagram videos are creating two-times more engagement than Instagram photos. (Simply Measured)
19. In 2016, online video traffic will be 55% of all consumer Internet traffic. (Cisco)
20. In 2017, 74% of all internet traffic will be video.
21. It is predicted it will take an individual over 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2018. (Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2013–2018)

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Check out the most powerful marketing with video platform:Premier Expert

Effective Actions To Promote Your Brand & Blog | Premier Realtor

Go to this link for a full description: http://gobuttonmarketing.blogspot.com/2015/12/premier-realtors-10-effective-actions.html

Contact me at edwindearborn@me.com if you have any questions. Call me at 714-300-9566.

This is an overview to show our Premier Realtor members of how to promote your blog on social media and email. As well, I will share some basic SEO actions that Premier Realtor members can initiate to help improve their rankings in local search results.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/edwindearborn

Grant Cardone on Coaching

“Edwin is at the TOP of the game. You can trust him to always show up 100% and bring the energy!” – Grant Cardone, New York Times bestselling author

As an Executive and Business coach, I offer the personalized services to CEO's, CMO's, small business owners and entrepreneurs that are based on planning and accountability. Key services and programs that I offer are:

- Business Executive Coaching

- Small Business Coaching

- Business entrepreneur training 

- Small business coaching

- Small business marketing ideas

- Leadership training programs

- Marketing strategies

- Content marketing

- Lead generation techniques

- Online reputation management 

- Change management