Marketing Your Service

Since the advent of the information technology, the Internet had been a valuable commodity to most people. Here, they find ways on how to generate more sales even without having to spend more capital on building a business. Nowadays, many business people are realizing the importance of email marketing. Through emails, a service business can market their service directly through their customers.

Generally, the main purpose of email marketing is to reach their target prospects as quickly and as direct as possible. They need to reach their target market so as to promote their services that would benefit their customers.

However, some businesses use email marketing in order to maintain their contact and relationship with their customers.

The reason why email marketing has grown in such unprecedented rate is based on the fact that people in the new economy are always hungry for information. They subscribe to information that they are interested in. On the other hand, not all people are willing to subscribe to such information. They may be interested on your services once but may no longer be interested to buy again. Moreover, when you continue to send those emails that do not have their permissions, you can be accused of spamming.

Today, spamming is a serious offense especially in the world of information technology. Because the Internet is such a wild place, most authorities regard the privacy of each person as valuable and they continue to uphold this thinking even on the Internet. With this, the creation of opt in list had gained tremendous acceptance. Because of its viability and feasibility to most businesses, a lot of people have realized how important opt in lists are in email marketing.

Basically, opt in list refers to the list of email addresses of people who have agreed to subscribe to your mailing list. In this way, you can freely send emails that entail promotions, brochures, new service/ productannouncements, and every aspect of your marketing campaign.

When you build an opt in list, you do not only increase the probability of being successful in email marketing but also boost your sales and profits as well. This is because building an opt in list will give you the chance to stay in contact with your customers by getting their email address.

In this manner, you can continue to promote your services in which they are interested in because they have opted to subscribe in your mailing list. Hence, whatever it is that you feed them, chances are, they will most likely respond positively.

In reality, building an opt in list is actually letting the people realize the charisma and magic of email marketing. In this way, spams will be avoided, if not eliminated, and will not ruin the positive image of email marketing. With spamming, email marketing becomes a disgraceful activity in the Internet. But with opt in list, businesses can continue to boost their businesses through email marketing without having to worry about being accused of spamming.

In building opt in list, there are two types to be considered. The first one is the single opt-in and the other one is the double opt-in or the confirmed opt-in.

In building single opt-in list, businesses would simply use a “sign-up tag” in their web sites so that every time a person visits their website, he or she can opt to subscribe in the business’ email list.

On the other hand, a confirmed opt-in list or double opt-in entails a confirmation message after the customer had subscribed to the particular web site’s email list. Usually, the confirmation takes place by replying on a system-generated message that asks for a confirmation of the subscription or by clicking on a link that entails the confirmation of the customer.

Whatever type of opt in list you would prefer, each has its own pros and cons when it comes to email marketing. But nevertheless, both are designed to give your business the best solution possible in order to generate emails and permissions without having to get into trouble.

Indeed, email marketing is such a profitable business in the Internet. But it would not be complete and will never succeed without the help of the opt-in lists. These two must always go hand-in-hand in order to be successful in the virtual world of Internet marketing.

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If you are marketing your service business to corporates or in the B2B (Business-to-Business) sector then the following post is very important for you.

“This essay is a joint effort by IMD’s Business Marketing team to offer ideas about how firms can effectively manage these pressing issues – ways to make these trends work for you, rather than against you. Below, we relate the trends to the real-world approaches managers are using to succeed in the complex B2B marketplace, looking at four different areas: innovation, distribution, customer data, and strategy.

1) Innovation: From products to services

Nimble challengers, particularly from emerging countries, are showing manufacturers how easy it is to commoditise even sophisticated products. However, services, with the expertise of the team as the differentiator, are often harder to copy, and easier to innovate. Which explains why many product producers have been able to do well augmenting their business with a service component. Service revenue might consist of replacement or spare parts, service contracts to regularly maintain equipment or products, or consulting on how to best use products.

The experience of three global Finnish companies in similar types of industries shows the importance of services to total corporate sales.

Kone Elevator has been able to ramp up its services business, so that it they now comprise 60 percent of revenue. Equally interestingly, Wartsila, a global leader in diesel engines for ships and power stations, has increased its service business to 50 percent over an 8-year period. A third company, Metso, which is active in the paper and mining industry, has been able to maintain profitability by lifting its sales of services to 40 percent of the total.

Although none of these firms publicly divulge the profitability of their service units, services are generally thought to produce better margins than new product businesses, and thus are an important factor in sales revenue, growth, and overall profitability. Each firm managed to remain competitive in industries that have seen fierce competition develop recently.

Building a service mindset

Are there any particular managerial lessons to be learned from those companies?

Comparing the efforts of the leaders with the laggards indicates that leaders engage in a much more deliberate effort to build their service business. They have a senior executive in charge of the service business, who has equal stature with the rest of the product business units. These firms combine the service activities of many business units to build genuine service platforms for maximum impact. They take a broad view of “service”, moving from aftermarket spare parts, to full lifecycle management of the customer’s equipment. They offer many types of service and develop separate service brands. They create service technologies and processes, and even service competitive equipment. And, last but not least, they have aggressive M&A track records, integrating smaller service-only businesses into their overall effort. Many B2B companies will need to emulate the service leaders’ concepts and strategies if they want to keep up with the best in their industries.”

You may read the article here or download the pdf file here.

You can see that the trend of product producer changing to provide more value added service provider. So, if you are already a service provider, what does this means to you? Is this trend going to be a threat or opportunities for your service business?

From what I see, it will have more opportunities for us, the service business owner, because we are the expert in providing our niche service and this will give us the opportunities to work with the big product companies to provide service for their clients. You must start looking at our target market and what kind of product do they buy so that you can know which product companies that you can tied up with and then think innovatively to create a service that you can help the product company promote their product to their clients and at the same time provide value to their clients too.

Even though, this is not an online marketing strategies but I strongly believe that this new trend will give us the service business owner a great opportunities to market our service to more people. Tell me what do you think about this new trend. By the way, I highly recommend you to read the whole articles because there are more about the B2B business trends in the article.

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A domain name is like your brand name or your own name so it is important to find a Great name to start off. One of the key to selecting your domain name is to have your service niche keywords in it. So, sometimes domain selection can be a headache because there are too many factors to consider.

Now, good news is that there are lots of tools that can help you to search for a good domain name.

Another GREAT TRICK that I learn is to but deleted or expired domain name and some of these domain already have previous presence in the internet or it may already indexed by the search engines. So, you may want to consider this when you are looking to register for your new domain.

Check out this website that provide you with keyword suggestions while looking through the recent expired domain name: www.expireddomains.com

Please do leave a comment if you feel that this resource can help you or if you have other resources that can help in this area.

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Since search engines are the first stop for people on the Internet looking for goods or services, the position your website appears in search results is an important factor. If your URL shows up far down the results list, the chances of the consumer never finding you increase incrementally. Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is essential that you make sure you maintain the high ranking you have worked so hard to achieve.

This means you must come up with a strategy to monitor your search engines positions. This strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your online portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be ruled by chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your stocks so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the way you must consider your search engines positions.

Be aware that at first, after you have launched your search engine campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings, you will most likely see a continual upward climb. What you need to be on the lookout for is the moment that upward climb reaches a plateau. When this happens, your search engine position campaign moves into stage two, the monitoring and protecting stage.

In stage two, do not be concerned about the short-term fluctuations in your positions. These are similar to the subtle rising and falling of stocks in a portfolio. Short-term movement is an integral part of the whole
process. It’s the long-term changes that you must watch for and prepare to act on immediately.

Analyzing the long-term trends of search engines positions is imperative. The way in which search engines rank websites may change at the drop of hat. If you are unaware of these changes - many of which are subtle yet can be deadly to your ranking - your position may drop to the bottom of the list before you can get your bearings. To prevent this kind of precipitous drop, you must create a system to monitor your positions on a monthly basis. Devise a chart to keep tabs on your top ranking positions or your top pages, and make sure to watch “the market” closely.

Each search engine uses a formula to compute website rankings. When a search engine changes this formula in any way, it may raise or lower your ranking. Some search engines use a number of different formulas, rotating them so that a formula doesn’t become overused or outdated. Depending on which formula is being applied, your search engine position may suddenly drop or rise in rank significantly. Therefore, you must check your positions frequently in order to catch when a search engine changes formulas and what effect it has on your positions.

You must also deal with your competition - a crucial factor you must always be vigilant about. Your competitor’s position may suddenly rise, automatically lowering your position. Or their position may drop, pushing your position higher. Each month, expect position changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your competitor’s position, and be prepared to adjust your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these fluctuations will also give you vital information about how
to improve your website to increase your position in search results.

Of course, you must discern what the most popular search engines are in order for your monitoring efforts to be effective. Right now, there are ten popular search engines that direct most of Internet traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that these top ten may change from month to month.

This means that your must not only monitor your search engine positions, but you must also keep track of the ranking popularity of the search engines you are monitoring. Find out which search engines people use most frequently every month and be sure to live in the present! People are fickle about their favorite search engines, and it takes constant vigilance to follow their dalliances. The search engines they loved when you first launched your campaign may be old news in the next few months. You must adjust your list of engines according to the whims of the Internet users. Check out http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html for a current list of website favorites.

Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden drop of your positions in all search engines. This is not the same as monthly fluctuations - this is a neon red warning sign! It could mean a number of different things.

It all your search engine positions have plummeted, it may indicate that search engines spiders - those sneaky programs that seek out your site and rank their positions - have found some type of problem with your website. If you have recently changed the code, for instance, the spider may become utterly confused and consequently drop your positions disastrously. If a spider creeps up on your website when it is down for adjustments or changes, you may actually disappear from a search engine index entirely. Or a search engine may drastically change its formula, and suddenly all of your website come up as irrelevant. If that search engine is a current favorite, it may create a domino effect, causing all of your position to drop in all search
engines.

Some search engines rely on the results from other search engines, and it is vital that you know which engines these are and keep track of all the engines they influence. The biggest problem here is that search engines will sometimes change affiliations, and this can create a major shift in the geography of the Internet. For example, recently Yahoo decided to display only results gleaned from Google. So you
must not only monitor your own positions, but you must keep abreast of seismic shifts in the landscape of the Internet as a whole.

Finally, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the foundation bricks of the entire search engine system, and they demand individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts. If you have found that a number of your positions have plummeted, it may mean that a page of your website has become invisible or inaccessible to search engine spiders. Or the competition for that particular keyword or phrase
has recently rocketed into outer space. In either case, you must act quickly and efficiently to regain lost ground.

Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. If costs you time and money on a continual basis. Protect this investment as diligently as you would your financial portfolio. In the same way, track your positions from an objective perspective, and monitor your positions on a regular basis. Make sure your time and effort reap rewards by keeping your eye on the big picture - your long-term marketing campaign.

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A lot of business owners spending a lot time and money to create an impressive website but my question to you is that WHY do you want to create a website?

You don’t create a website for the sake of creating it, right?

The purpose is not to show off to the world that you have a website but to be able to market your company or your service to the world, and to your prospects. So then, we must measure the success of our website as a marketing tools. Always begin with an end in mind. How do you consider a website to be a GREAT website? We need to set a goal, right? Just like when you hire a sales personnel, you give them target to hit so you must treat your website like your sales personnel. Set a goal for your website such as 30 leads per month or your website traffic like 100 visitors per day.

I will talk on how to measure all these indicators but I guarantee you that there are lots of tools that you can use to help you to track this indicator automatically. And, another good news is that most of them are FREE of charge.

So, first step is to set a goal for your website. And, if you engage someone to create the website for you is to ask them that how many leads or traffic that you can get after building your website. If they can’t tell you then you may want to find someone else that can help you on that. The most important part of internet marketing is not about building a website and leave it there. We must set a goal and come up with marketing strategies to achieve the goal.

Note: if you are new to how to create your own website, check out the following video.

If you like this post, please do leave me your comments and questions so that I can make this blog as interesting and useful as possible.

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