Radiance Road Marketing Blog

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Today, I attended my first Lakeland Area Chamber of Commerce Schmooze a’Palooza and I am so glad I did! This “power networking” event, held at Florida Southern College in the Eleanor Searle Drawing Room, brought together about 50 of Lakeland’s shakers and movers to promote our businesses – to “sell the sizzle” – and enjoy lunch together.

We gathered in the elegant drawing room on the architecturally-awesome FSC campus about 11:30 this morning where a buffet of salad, grilled chicken, roast beef, pasta and steamed veggies awaited us. I started building my power for the event with some cheese and crackers while meeting some of my fellow Lakeland Chamber members and staff – many for the first time since I am a fairly new member. The Chamber of Commerce’s Vice-president for Membership Development Terry Ottinger and Communications VP Aaron Bates, along with our host – Account Executive Amy Wiggins (reach her at 688-8551 ext. 229) – greeted me and made me feel right at home.

Jessica Gutowski, standing-in for AllSolar’s Dillon Daniels, joined me at my table since we already knew each other from another event. Jessica is a real talented, young up-and-comer in the Lakeland biz world – a recent FSC Public Relations grad working on the Gow Field campaign for mayor.  Sitting to my right was Adam Baust of the Welborn Companies’ Adminstrative Service Offerings, who is opening a new branch here in Lakeland to help local businesses with their accounting, payroll and tax matters. Keiser University‘s Director of Student Services Ryan Reis joined us, as well, and we got got to talk about helping students develop practical business experience through intership and portfolio development with Lakeland companies. I taught at [then] Keiser College in Melbourne, FL and am really excited about mentoring local students. After a nice lunch to power-up for our presentations, the ever-effervescent Amy Wiggins got things sizzling.

At the Schooze a’ Palooza, each attendee gets to stand up and give a 30-second “elevator-pitch” for their business to the crowd. It’s a great way to hone your presentation skills! I enjoyed watching my fellow Chamber members give their pitches. The event gave me a chance to hear local enterprises’ marketing messages and get to know some of the people that are active in the business community. Its a real whirl to go through almost 50 marketing pitches in less than an hour and ‘where the rubber meets the raod’ in marketing. In the marketing world, you are competing against so many messages for attention and to gain interest in about half a minute. YOU GOTTA MAKE IT SIZZLE!

As a local internet marketing consultant, I analyze marketing messages for a living. As a prospective consumer, I want to know what’s in it for me as quickly as possible. This was a wonderful way to take a look at what I do – and how I present my business to prospects. After all, my job is to get your BEST prospects to visit your website and BUY your products and services. I better be able to deliver a clear, compelling message myself!

I recommend that local business join the Lakeland Chamber of Commerce for opportunities like this. If you are a member, I recommend attending the next Schmooze a’ Palooza. In the meantime, if you’d like a few tips you can use to develop or hone your 30-second elevator pitch email me and I’ll get those out to you. It really is a vital skill for anyone who needs to explain what your business does. I’ll be working on my elevator pitch to make the best impression – to make it sizzle – at ALL of the events and encounters here in Lakeland this year.

OK, so you decided to start your blog as part of your internet marketing campaign. You’ve installed WordPress, chosen a theme and started blogging away. You are marketing online and ready to increase your profits. Good for you!

How, you want your best prospects to visit your blog on your website, look around, comment on your blog, sign up for your website newsletter and, eventually, become a customer – RIGHT? That’s alot to ask, but not unreasonable. What’s unreasonable is expecting it all to happen right away. And, it requires a systematic approach. First things first.

The BEST thing you can do to your website blog is to PING! Pinging is basically sending a signal to blog directories and other websites to let them know you’ve posted new content on your blog. Sending pings is a great way to get your website blog indexed in search engines and spread the word so that your potential customers can find your content. It’s really the fastest and easiest place to start promoting your blog, your products and services and your small business. Best part about it is that it doesn’t COST you anything to do.

However, you must do this the right way or you can end up hurting your website and blog presence in the ever-growing-and-becoming-much-more-important blogosphere.

WordPress comes with built-in ping features. However, they don’t really work that well as the default and you really need to optimize your blog ping system. The best tool you can get (and one of the few plug-ins I use here) is MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. It’s easy to install and use and really makes a BIG difference in getting the results you want from your blog. (If you need help with this, just ask me by email or call me direct at (863) 668-1086)

Your pings can get you:

Indexed right away in search engines

Traffic coming immediately to your website

Listed in blog directories so SEEKERS can find your website

Get other blogs to find your blog and mention your posts

Get good links that add to your Google Page Rank and bump you up in the search results

How, once you’ve got it installed and activated, you’ll want to add some ping sites to your list. Here’s the first twenty I have on my list:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://api.moreover.com/ping

Getting your BEST customers to visit your website and Buy your products and services is the goal of an internet marketing campaign. Your Lakeland business can use more customers, right? So what are you waiting for? This is your invitation to maximize your blog by using ping optimizer. It’s easy, fast and no cost other than a few minutes of your precious time. It’s definitely worth your investment!

This is a great start. You can discover more by searching the web or you can just email me and ASK for a list of more ping sites I use. I add new ones all the time and am glad to share them with you!

A true professional continues to learn and to grow. Developing our sales skills translates into more $$$. In this economic environment increasing lead conversions is vital to growth. The most productive part of my professional development has been reading books and applying new strategies and tactics in the field. Although I have read a lot of books on sales, I keep rereading a few key works because they still provide valuable guidance. Over the next few months, I’m going to share these classics with you. Here is my favorite (read that as most valuable) classic:

How I Turned Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger

Frank Bettger’s book, How I Turned Failure to Success in Selling, describes in detail his rise from getting fired from his job as a baseball player for being ‘lazy’ to traveling the lecture circuit with Dale Carnegie as one of America’s top sales coaches. Along the way, he adopted proven techniques developed by business leaders from Ben Franklin to Brian Tracy to improve his performance. His story is not only inspirational – it serves as a practical guide to systematically increasing your income.

After getting sent down to the bush league for appearing lazy, Bettger decided to start acting enthusiastic on the baseball field and soon found himself playing for the St. Louis Cardinals with virtually no other changes in his performance. Although a broken arm ended his sports career, he learned to apply some key principles he learned on the diamond to build a highly successful sales career.

Although Bettger’s career spanned the early part of the 20^th Century, this is still considered one of the top sales manuals today because people don’t change. He lays out systems for tracking the efficiency of sales contacts and planning techniques that are easily adapted to a computerized world. But most of his strategies still prove effective without any alteration.

At one time, my sales manager suggested that I read this book. As I began to try some of the methods, my sales increased. Some of the ideas seemed outrageous, but I gave them a try. My own successful experience lead me to share this book and demonstrate the methods to agents in the field. One new agent used this guide to rack up the second-best record in our county her first year, beating out several seasoned pros.

Frank Bettger taught me how to connect with people, discover their motivations, uncover and answer their true objections, then close the deal and get referrals. While it was somewhat uncomfortable trying new ideas, I never had to compromise my moral principles to make a sale. As a matter of fact, doing the right thing for the right reason helped to increase my confidence and personal satisfaction along the way.

I’ve learned to turn my failures into success by reading and rereading this book. If you are interested in earning more money and willing to follow some simple suggestions, then this is the one book you want to read this month. You can find this 192-page, easy to read paperback on my marketing books webpage for about ten bucks. And if it could net you ten extra sales during the next few months, wouldn’t that be worth your time?

It’s time to take a step backward and gain perspective on this whole “business” idea.

I examine several companies in Lakeland every day to evaluate their position in our economic community. Some are wildly successful in their field and very profitable. Some are struggling. And some have recently gone out of business. As a resident of Lakeland and a small business owner myself, I depend on the success of our community in order to survive and thrive personally and professionally. As a matter of fact, it’s Polk County and the State of Florida, too.

Cypress Gardens just went out of business. Closed. No more visitors. No tourists to spend their money along Cypress Gardens Boulevard shops and restaurants. More jobs gone. More county and state taxes gone. The Butterfly effect will ripple through Winter Haven to Auburndale to Lake Wales to Bartow to Lakeland and beyond.

The problem with Cypress Gardens, as with so many businesses here, is perspective. What is important to YOUR business? Go ahead – make a list. I’ll wait.

Ask most business owners this fundamental question and you’ll usually get these responses: location, product or service, management, cash-flow, traffic, the economy, employees, customer satisfaction, overhead, pricing and market share. Sure, all those things are important to achieving business success. There is a crucial factor that most of us don’t really consider and it may be the MOST basic and important reason business succeed or fail: communication.

A basic college degree generally requires a communication class and I have taught many, many classes. I always start off with a simple definition of the communication process.

Communication requires a sender to form a message and deliver it through a channel to a receiver who must provide a response. Think about it. Does any business get done unless that happens? You can’t get a location or employees or a bank account or a loan or customers or market share or profits without communication. It doesn’t matter if you are a plumber or air conditioning company or a dentist or an attorney or Wal-Mart. How and what and when and to whom you communicate will determine your business success on a very basic level. What is important to your business?

Your business depends on your ability to send the right message to the right audience at the right time in the right way to get them to take the action you want. Who is going to be more successful in business: an owner who communicates well or one who does not? How well you communicate is going to determine your sales and your profits (or losses). If you’re not satisfied with your profits (I’m not), then maybe you need to take a look at that.

Easy question: What is the fastest growing means of communication in human history? You’re right – the internet. How important is THAT to your business? Is your competition taking advantage of internet marketing? Are YOU? Are you getting the response you want from your website? What can you do today to communicate better to improve your business?

I’d be glad to take a look at your website and offer three ideas for improvement at no charge. No strings. The only condition is that your business has to be headquartered in Polk County. Email me at info@radianceroadmarketing.com or call me right now at (863) 668-1086. You may not qualify to be a client, since I only work with a few, select companies, but your business is important to all of us here in Lakeland. I want to help you to succeed.

Lakeland Internet Marketing