3 Strategies To Increase Engagement Ring Traffic To Your Store

Here is my first video! Watch it and post your questions or comments below.

How "Response Branding" Grew Sales By 46%

A New 2-Step Process That Works

The Debate

The very old debate of whether to use branding or direct response marketing is one of the most important discussions for a small business owner. Most advertising you'll see is branding (or as one of my mentors Jay Abraham would call it "tombstone advertising"). With budgets so big it would cause mild angina for any small business owner to even ponder writing cheques for, it can be plausible for a Fortune 500 Company to deploy. But for us mere mortals, we really have to consider how every dollar we spend is going to affect our bottom line.

I'm not writing this to bash branding or direct response marketing. Actually, I wanted to share with you some interesting finds. I'm fortunate that I was taught the importance of direct response earlier on in my career from guys like Jim Ackerman, Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy and so on. It alone has allowed me to enjoy the success stories of our clients, especially in the earlier years. But as I grew in experience, and while working with my business partner, it was difficult to deny the effects that branding can have on a small business - within a strategy.

Why Branding Is Needed In Small Business - In Doses

First of all branding MUST be considered when deploying any marketing strategy, even if it is primarily direct response in nature. Every interaction someone has with your business (face to face, advertisement, phone etc.) is imprinted in their mind in a unique way that communicates many things to the person - many of them being feelings. Ensure that you're communicating the proper feelings with every message. Check out the book Spent by author Geoffrey Miller. It's an evolutionary perspective on why we buy things - definitely a huge paradigm shift.

Introducing "RESPONSE BRANDING"

We know branding is important but how do we use it to increase revenue? We've discovered a method that we like to call "Response Branding". We've tested it several times and it has proven to be very successful. It involves a 2-step process.

• Step 1: Gain the attention of your audience in a fun interactive way. This could be through a contest, a charitable cause or anything that adds to the reputation of your company BUT does not ask for a sale. 

• Step 2: Shortly after this "branding" campaign run a direct response campaign that asks for the audience to take action.

This 2 step process gets your company "top of mind" and then strategically monetizes your efforts with a direct response campaign.

Small businesses can't afford to be simply "top of mind" all year long. But with some creativity you can be "top of mind" for a short period. Just make sure you're capitalizing on those efforts with Step 2.

We've tested this numerous times with long standing events, such as the holiday season and an annual sale, which have added tens of thousands of dollars to our clients bottom line.


Derek Viveiros
www.jamesandvalentine.com

Derek helps you increase your revenues using marketing principles. He has studied under the continents top small business minds forming a proven, unique approach that helps you save time, stop worrying and start growing your business.

How Important is the #1 Position in Search Results? Newest Stats Reveal...

Many wonder how important it is to be at the top of the search results for a specific keyword. It's important to know what type of positioning you should strive for. Common questions I hear are...

"What's the difference if we pop up 3rd or 1st?"
"Will it really make that much of a difference?"
"We're already on the first page of the search results, that's most of the battle."

Be careful assuming. Listen to what the statistics are telling us.

There's been some interesting studies by icrossing (See article here) in which they studied the click through rates (CTR) of non-branded keywords (keywords that did not include brand names, such as Rolex, Scott Kay).

Nearly 400% more traffic

According to the icrossing study which examined approximately 1 million impressions, the number 1 position earned a 38% CTR vs. 11% for the 3rd spot.


This is a significant find. It proves how important it is to own the number one position for your keywords.

What would it mean to you if you could quadruple the amount of visits to your site?


Stay focused on creating pages with great content and keyword rich title tags and building relevant backlinks.




Image provided by www.icrossing.com 







Derek Viveiros
www.jamesandvalentine.com

5 Ideas in Efficiency: How Organizing and Managing Your Goals Can Save You

I’ve developed a habit of asking business owners a simple yet very powerful question – “What are your biggest current challenges?”. There are less then a handful of different answers I get.  One thing I hear is the difficulty of staying focused and organized.

If you’re not dealing with this issue now, you’ve likely been through it before (in fact, it’s usually an ongoing effort to stay on top of). You know all of the things you need to do to get to where you want to go. You’ve even written it all down. Weeks and months go by and you still haven’t completed what you promised yourself. It’s happened to all of us.

Keeping a daily reminder of why you’re doing everything you do is a great way to keep the fire burning. Remind yourself of the people you’re doing what you do for, the rewards you’re looking for mentally, financially, spiritually, in time – whatever it may be.

Once you know your reason why, you have to learn what makes you stick to your guns. There are many approaches, but what I’ve seen work is having a project management system. This will keep all of your projects in one place, along with all the information that goes with it.

But how do you personally stay as efficient as possible?

1. Gain back your control! Block out times in your day where you can’t be reached. Turn off your cell phone during these times (consider turning off your sound notifications on your phone completely - this has become horrible interruption in our work and relationships. Try it and see how it feels). Close all programs and browsers and any distractions. Save these times for high impact activities like marketing or system building. Only check your emails once or twice a day – and not in between.

2. Automatic reply email: In the automatic reply email, state that you only check your email once a day and to expect a response within 24-48 hours. Also have your voice mail say something to that effect. I found this has helped people respect my time a little better.

3. Plan out your day in detail the day before. I mean plan out every hour. Schedule mini breaks every 60 or 90 minutes. This keeps you fresh. It also gives you a better appreciation of your time. Try using an alarm for each time slot to remind you.

4. Create habits. Think about how your perfectly efficiently day would look. Then work at making each element a habit. One way to do this is to make a chart with all the habits and mark off each habit for each day as you do them. After a week you’ll see where you need to improve and continue the tally.

5. Inevitability thinking: What would make it inevitable for you to reach your goals or to do what you need to do? This is a great concept. I’ve thought about this concept all my life. Here’s a clip of a guy named Eben Pagan talking about the idea…

Skip to the 4:20 mark for Inevitability Thinking

I hope this has helped inspire you to be all you can be. Please share your thoughts!!

Derek Viveiros
www.jamesandvalentine.com