A little chuckle for the holidays…

Can’t sell in January. Between the terrible weather and everyone coming back from vacation, how can you expect someone to focus on buying now? I’ll pound the pavement next month.

Can’t sell in February. More snow and more vacation. Way to go, Washington and Lincoln; thanks for President’s Day! It’s such a short month. No one can make a decision in such a short month. Next month is going to be better.

Can’t sell in March. No one is going to make a decision on this with more holidays around the corner. Good time to shop for summer clothes. I’ll just borrow money because I’ll make huge commissions later to pay it back.

Can’t sell in April. Who wants to focus on buying with Spring in the air? And hey, my kid’s birthday is this month. I’m sure my prospects are working on their taxes anyway. Next month will be better for sure.

Can’t sell in May. Great weather in May, and I hear that my prospect may be thinking about being acquired. No problem. I’ll look for better ones next month. There’s tons of opportunity out there.

Can’t sell in June. Kids are getting out of school. Wow! I almost forgot Flag Day. No one buys in this weather. Besides, July is a better month for sales anyway.

Can’t sell in July. Great time of year to be at the beach and enjoying the outdoors. I think all of my contacts are on vacation…together! Nope, can’t sell this month.

Can’t sell in August. Too hot! Besides, I’m taking my vacation. They probably are taking theirs too. No selling to be done now. Next month, for sure.

Can’t sell in September. Between the three-day Labor Day weekend and a new fiscal year kicking in, no one is buying anything. I’m feeling good about next month.

Can’t sell in October. Columbus’ birthday; what should I get him this year? I almost forgot Halloween! I’m going to focus on selling hard over the next two months. I’ll finish the year strong.

Can’t sell in November. Thanksgiving, ya know. Very short month. I don’t think any of my contacts have their budget yet. Can’t buy without a budget. Man, December is going to rock!

Can’t sell in December. Everyone is on vacation in December. I know I am! Who can focus on buying with the end of the year so close? What should I do for Festivus this year?

Oh well, maybe next year will be better for sales. Luckily, no one is buying anything from anyone this year.

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Stop for a moment and ask yourself this question. “What is the purpose of any Business?”

Most individuals would say, “To Make a Profit.” Personally, I feel that is the wrong answer. It’s part of the answer, but not the answer. Profits are a result or an outcome of what we do and they only tell us if our business strategy and execution are viable.

Peter Drucker stated that, “concentrating on the belief that creating profits as a purpose was not only wrong, it could very well be harmful. “ He felt that it causes a business to make bad decisions and lose sight of those things that delight customers. He also said, “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

The ultimate objective of a business is to satisfy customer needs and wants at a sustainable profit. The sustainable profit part is critical.

Customers are the ultimate asset for any profit making company. They really provide all of a company’s real value. Unfortunately, customers are one of the few aspects of a business that are not managed as an investment. We must always keep in mind that we must profitably provide a better solution for our customers than our competition.

There is an old saying, “A good salesman can sell anything once. The trick is getting them to buy again and again.” The reason I say this is because marketing gets translated most of the time into simply persuading someone to try something for the first time. Companies are constantly trying to change someone’s attitudes or behaviors.

Today’s customers buy competing products from multiple companies with seemingly no real loyalty. Therefore, the most important element in profits is designing ways to have your customers allocate a larger share of their wallets to you. In my Marketing Tips of the Week, and also this blog, I try to help you accomplish that.

So, in essence, the primary goal of marketing must be the creation of loyal, long-term customers out of first-time or occasional buyers. Accomplishing this requires a clear and precise understanding of what makes customers want to be loyal. Gathering and understanding customer needs is the job of marketing. Review the issues in my Marketing Tips of the Week that help you to accomplish this.

If you have any additional ideas to build loyalty, please comment.

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Technorati Tags: business purpose, customer, customer creation, customer loyalty, Customer Retention, lifeling customers, profit, profits

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote down some personal objectives for 2010. I originally resolved to read 20 books in 2010. At the time, it seemed like a reasonable goal. I figured that if I read two books a month and gave myself a little wiggle room I would come in at about 20 books for the new year.

In the process, I searched the new SSD on my laptop (check out my latest blog post on SSDs) and found my old 2009 reading list. I reviewed the list and updated it to include books that I read last year that I didn’t have on my original list. It turns out the final count for 2009 was 33 books! Wow! I was really surprised! Also, it is clear to me that I had better up my 2010 goal to at least match the 2009 number.

What follows below is a list of the books I read in 2009. I wanted to share this with you because I think they address some of the most common business challenges we all face. This collection of books has truly helped me (and Infusionsoft) quite a bit and I hope it will do the same for you.

Books I’ve Read in 2009:

1. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant After reading this again in 2009, I’m still not sure there is such a thing as true blue ocean.
2. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful Turned out to be different than what I initially thought it would be about. Loved it.
3. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable Patrick Lencioni is one of my favorite authors. This was also a reread.
4. How To Win Friends and Influence People I read this once a year.
5. The Art of War by Sun Tzu Classic.
6. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
7. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies Also a reread. This is mandatory reading at Infusionsoft.
8. Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies As an In the Dreaming Room with Michael Gerber alumni, I can fully endorse this book as one of Gerber’s best!
9. The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable Another one from Lencioni.
10. Seven Years in Hanoi: A POW Tells His Story Written by my uncle, retired USAF Lt. Col. Larry Chesley, describing his seven years as a prisoner of war in the infamous Hanoi Hilton POW camp. Amazing story, amazing man and true hero.
11. Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business Another Lencioni book.
12. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
13. Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors Also a Lencioni book.
14. Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results
15. Gung Ho! Turn On the People in Any Organization Gift of the goose!
16. The 48 Laws of Power Sort of creepy, in a Machiavellian kind of way… WaaaHaaHaaaHa (in my best ruthless villain voice).
17. The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228
18. The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident
19. Down Range: Navy SEALs in the War on Terrorism The Warrior Elite, The Finishing School and Down Range are all written by former Navy SEAL Dick Couch. Each book is a fascinating look into the different stages of training and preparation of a US Navy SEAL. Also, Dick is a super nice guy. I emailed him with a question and he wrote back with a nice response the next day. Classy.
20. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
21. Tom Clancy’s EndWar Rods from Gods.
22. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction Book 4 in the 5 book series! Loved it.
23. Kill Zone: A Sniper Novel By Jack Coughlin.
24. Dead Shot Also by Jack Coughlin. If you like Tom Clancy novels, you will love Jack Coughlin books.
25. Mavericks at Work
26. Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm Did John D. Rockefeller know about Scrum development???
27. Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box Alright already, enough with the box! Great book, but enough with the box…
28. How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In One of my favorite reads all year.
29. Agile Software Development with Scrum The best software development methodology ever (when combined with Agile principles).
30. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity Some good nuggets of organizational wisdom.
31. Now, Discover Your Strengths Explores why you should be strengthening what you are already good at, rather than focusing on weaknesses.
32. Think and Grow Rich!: The Original Version, Restored and Revised Another classic.
33. Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage Recommended to me by my good friend Dave Lee. Fantastic book!

I’m still working on my list for 2010. Given my tally from 2009, I’d better shoot for at least 35 books in 2010. Got any suggestions? Let me know in the comments!

Happy reading!

–Marc

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Search Engine Optimization or “SEO” is the practice of optimizing your Web content for ideal visibility within search engines. While SEO is different from other outbound marketing strategies, the goal is still the same – increase traffic, prospects and sales to your Website. SEO is an important aspect of doing business online — you really can’t leave on a to-do list anymore.

Have you struggled to show up in the search engines? This comprehensive guide will give you 17 bulletproof ideas to establish your SEO strategy, get better rankings and attract more visitors to your Website.

There’s no question about it — generating traffic to your website is important for growing your business. It is so important in fact that sometimes, we take it for granted and neglect to optimize it to ensure we’re only getting the best, qualified inbound traffic. Admittedly, traffic will only get you so much business. Doing business online also involves quality content creation, SEO, lead capture, nurture and the ability to close those leads. This entry is about the optimization of your website so you can attract more traffic, more leads and more customers.

I must warn you though, good SEO is not an easy or quick thing to implement. It requires patience and careful modification to your website and a willingness to try new things. This entry will be a lengthy (and relatively geeky) because I want to have a thorough guide you can refer to when optimizing your site. I’ll prioritize this post with the most relevant items first, and other “nice to haves” toward the bottom.

17 SEO Tips for Small Businesses & Entrepreneurs

1. Short but Effective Titles

   Top search engines rank results for the words shown in their title tag. The title is often referred to as the most important element of SEO, but that’s only true if it matches the content. A good title should contain your item of interest, followed by your website or business name, making sure it is fewer than 10 words.

2. Keyword Selection & Density

   Selecting the right keywords for your website is an important part of the SEO process. The most successful keywords are two to four word phrases that people might realistically type into a search engine. Though it should not be a huge concern, the ideal keyword density is about 7% throughout your content. Simply write your content and include keywords meant for human consumption. Keywords are important because they will dictate the overall focus of the page itself.

3. Detailed Meta Description Tags

   While ‘Meta Keyword’ tags are a topic of debate in the SEO world, what has remained is the frequent use of something called a “Meta Description” tag. This tag should contain an overview of what the visitor will experience on your specific page. This tag should be no longer than a couple of sentences. Omitting the “Meta Description” tag will result in the search engine quoting unintended parts of the page in the search engine results page.

4. Proper Header Tags

   Within your page, you should limit your use of fake-headers by changing the fonts. Instead, choose header tags (<h1> to <h6>). These tags carry more weight for the content within them. Ideally, there should be only one <h1> tag, two <h2> tags and so on. These tags are intended to act as headlines throughout your page. To customize these tags, use CSS to format their display until you are happy with the look of the page. (You can learn more about CSS from w3schools free; it’s ideal for formatting Web content.)

5. Clean, Human-Readable Addresses

   By using a human-readable address (URL), dubbed “Search Engine Friendly URLs,” you will gain additional visibility and ranking when the keywords in the address match the search phrase. Generally, the shorter and simpler the URL, the better it is. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket and load up a URL with keywords – there is little benefit in the long-term. Modern website software can auto-generate these clean URLs for you without a big hassle.

6. Content Freshness & Age

   You wouldn’t turn on the TV if it was just the same old programming, would you? Search engines don’t really care for websites that aren’t frequently updated with fresh content. Publishing unique and interesting content is a great way to rank your site well. Old content isn’t bad, but keep making additions so that search engines know to keep coming back. As an added benefit, search engines frequently test fresh content on the first page of results and get you more traffic. To keep your content fresh, consider implementing a blog or server-generated rotating content, just don’t forget to keep the end-user in mind.

7. Logical Navigation Structure

   Most Web surfers read content in an F-shaped format, left to right. It’s important to consider linking your website content in order of importance from left-to-right and top-to-bottom. Ideally, you want to have less than 9 links — saving less important links for the bottom of your pages. Keep your navigation consistent and well organized this will help when search engines want to look for what to index as they crawl your website.

8. Use of ALT text on Images

   ALT or (Alternate) attribute tags on images make your website more accessible and help search engines index your images. While image searches usually result in people hotlinking your images, it’s also a great way for users to engage with your content. It’s a good idea to ensure the text is readable if the image is never loaded, by including a descriptor like: “This is a picture of John Doe climbing Mt. Everest.”

9. Nofollow usage for PageRank Sculpting

   In the SEO industry, there are rumors that Google has plans to kill PageRank. I have my doubts – Google’s search algorithm has to support some means to rank content and limit abuse of user-generated content. Nofollow is the attribute that “neutralizes” links and prevents the PageRank of the page from bleeding when linking off your website. I recommend using Nofollow on links to non-essential pages – that is, Legal, Contact, Privacy Policy, etc. PageRank sculpting via Nofollow is a legitimate and necessary process that instructs search engines to focus on the most prominent parts of your website.

10. Attracting and Building Powerful Backlinks

    It’s good practice to get more links for your website out there – but don’t pay for it. Paying for backlinks is a short-term solution when you need a long-term strategy. You can earn backlinks by producing great content, people will share it naturally. Try to engage in real conversation with other content producers out there and ask if they could link to you. Remember, consider the value to their audience in linking, too.

11. Deep Linking Strategy

    The primary goal in establishing backlinks should be to link back to your homepage. However, it is important to consider the value in linking to different pages throughout your website. These links are known as Deep links and give search engines insight into which parts of your site carry more weight than other less-linked areas.

12. Preventing the Indexing of Duplicate & Premium Content

    Search engines have a tendency to index duplicate content and penalize the site itself for it. Also, a concern among marketers is the availability of their premium content, like PDF files, being indexed. This can be solved by using a robots.txt file, which will instruct the search engines to exclude specific directories or filetypes. However, note that a robots.txt file itself is public, so consider that someone even marginally determined could see what you’re trying to restrict. To limit duplicate content from your CMS like Joomla or WordPress, do a quick Google search – there are plenty of suggested robots.txt templates for you to use. Google has a nifty service which lets you test and confirm the implementation of your robots.txt, too.

13. Proper Use of Ordered and Unordered Lists

    While not of major importance, listing items with the appropriate ordered or unordered lists instructs search engines to take each item and treat it as a related asset. By properly displaying items in a list format, you will also promote healthy Web standards. Not only will it look better, it’ll behave like a list should when you want to add or remove items.

14. Redirecting Properly

    Are you still using a Meta Refresh redirect? No, no no… Use a proper server redirect known as a 301 Redirect. These redirects instruct search engines to keep indexing the content, update the URL to the new one and pass along any relevance to the new URL. This is important if you’re switching to a new domain, changing folders of a page or if you want to send visitors along to a new Web address. Alternatively, using a 302 Redirect is a temporary redirect and should be used when you want to keep the original URL relevant regardless of where you’re redirecting.

15. Website Performance Matters

    I like to say, “A website is only as good as how quickly it loads for visitors.” This is also true for search engines – they love to index content that loads quickly and will tend to crawl your website at very fast rates if your server can support it. Be sure to lean your website down by eliminating bulky graphics and implementing high-performance Web caching techniques. To get insight on your website performance, check out this free tool made by Yahoo!; it makes optimizing your site performance a simple process. (Google has a similar tool called Page Speed, but is slightly more technical to use.)

16. CMS Platforms & SEO

    Many CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal (among others) all have plugins or tutorials on how to best optimize your content for search engine purposes. They all function in similar ways – trim the junk and auto-generate Meta tags, define canonical URLs, include Meta Robots data and so forth. Using a simple Google search of your platform and “SEO” will significantly help you with a free or inexpensive solution.

17. What Hurts SEO?

    It’s important to be aware of what hurts SEO. For one, using “blog blasting” or other Free-For-All link services are poison for your reputation – don’t use them. As I mentioned earlier, don’t purchase backlinks- search engines are known to blacklist entire networks of purchased backlinks. Also, doing anything deceptive or tricky (Black Hat) in anyway will result in your site becoming penalized, or worse, banned from the search engines entirely. Having pages with weak or minimal amounts of content also hurts the overall equity and value of the website. Every page should be valuable and interesting to the visitors who see it. We’ve also learned (from experience in the late 90’s) that keyword stuffing doesn’t help either – keep it legit and real and you’ll get real results.

Along with these tips, I need to explain why SEO, is necessary and why search engines make it difficult to rank number one: The goal of a search engine is to provide relevant results, all the time. If every website utilized proper SEO, the algorithms would need to be tweaked quite a bit to account for many weak sites out there. In the end, the goal of SEO is to make the visitors happy – not necessarily the website creator. It’s OK if you can’t hit the number one spot. If you’re in the top five for a number of search terms, that will yield a higher pay off than a number one spot for one term.

I can’t emphasize enough that you can actually improve your own SEO with these pointers for free. You don’t have to consult with a SEO firm if you don’t want to. The main benefit SEO firms provide is their expertise at using a handful of tools to make educated decisions. I asked a reputable search engine optimization consultant, Chuck Reynolds, about what he recommends when choosing a SEO firm. He advises, “Research them a lot – from checking their Twitter, blog, website and recommendations from their clients. Check your relevant business community for recommendations and they will weed out the snake oil SEOs. [A lot of SEO firms] out there blog the same stuff over and over – it doesn’t make them an SEO if they don’t deliver results.”

My list of tips and pointers on SEO are intended to be a helpful and thorough guide for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Search engine optimization is only one element of many in the process of doing successful business online. All the SEO and traffic in the world won’t give you a dime of business if you can’t follow up with them. Using a powerful email marketing solution, you can capitalize on your traffic and SEO relevance quite easily.

If you have questions on SEO, don’t hesitate to ask it in the comments. You have an entire small business marketing team standing by to help. If you found this helpful, why not go ahead and share it?

[Photo credits: rkimpeljr, Marshall Astor, Cambodia4Kids, Danny Sullivan, Editor B, Yomi955, Rosenfeld Media, Andrew Currie, essepuntato, mahalie, Kunstee, Joel Telling, Jayel Aheram, Phillie Casablanca, YsteJam Photography, koka sexton, tom.arthur on Flickr, CC license]

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I thought I was excited about logging four days of skiing with my family during the holidays… but I’m really excited about InfusionCon coming up in just a couple of months!  As of today, we have over 800 registrants for InfusionCon 2010 (March 10-12) and I’m STOKED! Why? I get to hang with hundreds of really bright, successful, optimistic entrepreneurs for a few days and watch them learn, network and create.

It gives me a chance to meet face-to-face with our customers and partners, hear their success stories and learn how we can improve. It also gives me an opportunity to raise awareness for micro-credit lending and help entrepreneurs worldwide. It’s something I’m a huge fan of (see one of my previous entries on micro-credit lending).

Last year, with over 600 attendees, we maxed out the ballroom at the Scottsdale Plaza. This year, we changed venues to handle the 1200-1500 attendees we’ll have. Let me tell you… the new venue rocks!

Just before the holidays, Clate Mask, our CEO, invited the executive team and our spouses to a Christmas dinner at the same resort we’re hosting InfusionCon at: The Montelucia Resort & Spa.  As my wife and I walked around the grounds, I was struck by the architecture and views so I whipped out my iPhone and snapped a few spy-shots. There are tons of places to huddle, network and relax throughout the property. Best of all, we’ll have the entire resort all to ourselves – so only Infusionsoft customers, partners, staff, and friends will be hanging out at the hotel.

Click the images to view them larger.

Heads up: The hotel only has 282 rooms – so if you want to stay at the venue itself, you’ve got to book now. Otherwise, you’ll need to stay at the Camelback Inn or the Double Tree just down the street.

It only takes a few moments to register and we absolutely need to have the correct number of attendees so we can ensure everyone has a great time. Register for InfusionCon today! (Once you’re registered, let the world know you’re coming to InfusionCon on Twitter.)

This is an exciting time for entrepreneurs and it’s going to be a blast coming together at InfusionCon. Like @aliciamarie112 tweeted the other day, “I’m going!.”

See you there!

–Dave

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