Any business owner will smile when a new customer walks in the door. The smart ones smile even bigger when the old customers arrive.

Apart from a few tourism-oriented ventures, few businesses can survive without repeat business from loyal customers. It’s these clients that trust us, spreading the word to others about quality products and service.

Maintaining a high standard of excellence is the first and foremost key to running a successful business, but plenty of simple “extra credit” ideas can sweeten the deal. Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or a veteran business owner, these ideas will guarantee that your customers keep coming back.

1. Stay in Touch

Ever noticed how any appliance or electronic device comes with a product registration? That’s because a customer’s contact info is highly prized.

You’ve already won them over. The task now is to ensure that you’re the first call when they need your product or service again. Collect emails on your website or at your cash register, and give them an incentive to sign up, like...

2. Shower Them With Gifts

Customer loyalty programs work, whether it’s a “Buy 5 get 1 free”card or simple discounts for  return shoppers. If you’ve been collecting emails and phone numbers, send out a monthly newsletter or weekly text with an exclusive deal.

Just make sure it’s something great – 10 and even 20 percent off no longer cut it in the age of 50 percent off Groupon deals. People will rave about the free or half price deal you gave them, and their friends will rush to sign up as well.

3. Wine and Dine

Cocktails and finger food are universal. Whether you run a pet supply store or a web hosting company, treat your local customers to an occasional party.

It doesn’t cost much for a few appetizer trays and bottles of wine. Advertise your social hour far in advance, building buzz. People appreciate small gestures, and it creates a subconscious obligation to return the favor.

4. Take Their Advice

Whether it’s a comment box by the door or simply asking customers for ideas on improving your business, giving advice empowers people. If you take their suggestions into account, they’ll feel a sense of ownership and pride, steering more people toward your business.

5. Stay True to Yourself

Unfortunately, you simply can’t please everyone. Always keep a firm grasp on your ideals and why you started your business in the first place.

Don’t adapt just to join the crowd or keep up with a new competitor, or you’ll lose what makes you stand out and unique in the market. If you’re honest in your motivations, loyal patrons will appreciate it and remain true.

6. Say Thank You

Simply saying thank you is still the number one way to build customer loyalty. If it’s a client on the phone, a genuine, “You know, we really appreciate your doing business with us,” will work wonders for building lasting relationships.

If it’s appropriate for your business, consider occasionally sending out handwritten thank you notes. It’s a relic from the past that will impress and be remembered.

Gratitude is a cornerstone of building customer loyalty. Offer a reliable, quality product and show appreciation, and customers will continue to flock back in droves.

These are just a few ideas for creatively saying ‘thank you.’ What other methods have you used at your business to inspire customer loyalty?

The other day, I was sitting at a quiet window-front table in the coffee shop, sipping a latte and working on my laptop, when the thing every writer dreads happened: just behind me, at a large corner table, one loud and assertive voice started dominating the entire room. And with every off-color joke and obnoxious laugh he made everyone nearby listen to, I grew more sure of one thing: I wished he would just shut up already.

This sort of thing doesn’t only happen in the world of coffee shops and restaurants. According to the 2010 Cone Consumer New Media Study, over half of social media users will stop following you if you talk too much and/or if the information you provide isn’t relevant to them.

When you come across as an online loudmouth, you lose your credibility and scope of influence.

That’s why, sometimes, the most important thing you can do for your online reputation is one of the most overlooked: stop talking.

There are all kinds of ways people lose followers by overcommunicating on social media, and they’re about much more than too many Tweets. Here are some examples—could any of these describe your brand?

Not Speaking Your Audience’s Language

You know how it is when you’re talking to someone and he doesn’t pick up on any normal social cues? You said you weren’t really interested in politics, but he keeps quoting pundits. You crossed your arms when he asked about your family, but he keeps probing. Well, that’s exactly what it’s like when you post, Tweet or blog in a way that doesn’t consider and connect with your followers.

Understanding your audience is key to being able to reach them. What does they care about? What are their desires, fears, hopes? What are they saying?

Once you know these things, find a way to translate that knowledge into helpful, friendly dialogue that is a real conversation between you and them, in the style and tone they’re used to. Otherwise, you’d be better off not saying anything.

Doing All the Talking

It’s as true on social media as it is in real life: to build relationships, you must learn to listen. In the online world, your responses matter just as much (sometimes more!) as what you say because when followers get the sense that you only want a monologue, that’s one of the fastest roads to unfollows.

Listening well online means saying less, as well as making it a practice to skim your feeds on Twitter, Facebook and blogs and, when something interests you or your industry, respond in a thoughtful, authentic way.

Beating the Same Drum—Over and Over Again

Too many brands turn their feeds into boring, repetitive posts always about their company. While in theory, any social media presence is good, here’s the thing with posting the same kind of self-promoting content day in and day out—at some point, any reader is going to look at it and ask that crucial online question: what’s in it for me?

Always talk-talk-talking about your company makes you as guilty as that man in my coffee shop, and pretty soon, no one will care what you have to say. Better to vary your content and post about yourself less, opting for quality over quantity in promoting your brand.

What do you think? Are these descriptions true to your own experience in social media, either as a follower or as the one followed? Do they matter? What other ways have you seen people talk too much online?

One blog post, by Jonathan Fields, starts with a quote from Danielle herself, presumably an explanation of her success:

“I decided to stop selling and start radiating.”

It sounds good. After all, who doesn’t want to radiate? But Danielle is one of the hardest working marketers I know. She has a blog. An email newsletter. A YouTube channel and a sexy new book trailer.

Maybe she doesn’t call this selling. And that’s fine. But it is marketing. Darn good marketing, actually.

I had a similar experience earlier this week, when I stumbled across the blog of a writer who creates charming stop-motion videos. I was surprised to see he had only a few hundred followers on Twitter. When I mentioned it, he responded:

“Thanks for the kind words, Kelly! Perhaps my anti-marketing marketing campaign is just too slow a method.”

Anti-marketing campaign? This guy has a well-written site, an active Twitter feed, and 19 awesome videos on his writing process. He’s a marketing success. But he obviously doesn’t feel comfortable describing himself that way. And that’s a shame.

I don’t say that to criticize him. Nor do I fault Danielle LaPorte for embracing radiance over selling. I encourage all business owners who hate the words “marketing” and “selling” to swap them with something more empowering.

But it does make me sad to think that marketing and selling still feel slimy to so many people. Why? Because that feeling makes it harder for many talented, creative people to thrive in business.

So I invite you to be the change: embrace marketing as an opportunity to share your gifts with others. An opportunity to connect with new friends and change the world for the better.

And while we’re at it, let’s call a spade a spade: it IS marketing. And sometimes, it can be pretty darn sweet.

QR codes are everywhere now – those funny looking, black and white squares made up of smaller square shapes. You may have seen them outside of stores in the mall, on business cards, and even on coupons and wondered, “What is that?”

QR codes are being used in marketing in creative ways. If you hope to use QR codes for your business, this list outlines some great ideas.

Putting “Like” Button QR Codes on Your Products

Chances are, your customers “like” you on Facebook, and that’s great for marketing. The problem is, every brand has a Facebook like page, and you need to step it up to impress your customers over the competition.

Diesel was quick to identify QR codes as a way to get more visibility on the Facebook walls of their customers with the “I LIKE DIESEL” campaign. The company put QR codes next to each of their products in the store, and when users scanned the code, it prompted them to “like” the product on Facebook, allowing them to share a link to the product online with all of their friends.

This is an easy strategy that can be used by just about any business with a storefront. Even if you don’t have a storefront, you could put these codes on your shipping boxes or on the tags of the products themselves.

Make a QR Code Out of Your Product

This video shows how a marketing company hired by LEGO built a QR code campaign by putting QR Codes made of LEGOs on kiosks.

Your product doesn’t have to be meant for building to create a QR code with it. You can make a QR code out of basically anything: food, cars, photos, clothes, even people! Any company can make a QR code that is more interesting than just a bunch of black and white squares.

Prize Promotions with QR Codes

SCA Promotions does a lot of interactive promotions for their clients. One of the services they offer is QR code prize promotions. Basically, all they do is set up a QR code to put in your store or on a flier that leads to a website with a contact form. Customers fill out the form, and they are told if they won a prize.

This may be difficult to do by yourself if you don’t have web development skills or a web design team, but there are a lot of companies, like SCA, that will build these campaigns for you.

Do Something Crazy with a QR Code

As marketers, we all know that crazy stuff goes viral, and QR code marketing is no exception. Last week, Facebook proved this when they painted a huge QR code on the top of their building.

But it’s not just huge media companies like Facebook getting attention from their QR code campaigns. Other companies including shampoo makers and tattoo artists are making some pretty crazy QR code promotions that are getting them a lot of attention.

Check out this video where a tattoo artist makes the first ever animated tattoo using a QR code. The video got almost 3 million views and had users all over the world watching live.

How to Get Started Using QR Codes

Now that you’ve seen these creative examples of how to use QR codes for marketing, you might be wondering how to make a QR code. It’s really easy! All you have to do is find a QR code generator, put in the URL you want the code to link to, and then you can use that code anywhere you want.

A few great examples of QR generators:

•   Kaywa
•   QR Stuff
•   Go QR

Using QR codes can be a great way to lead users to your website, gain more brand visibility, and possibly even go viral, but you can do any of these things if you don’t get started! So start thinking about a QR code campaign today.

What’s the coolest QR code you’ve seen lately? Let us know in the comments below!

Did you know that one new blog is created every second?

In the old days of journalism, there were few channels: newspapers, magazines and  local newsletters. But when the internet hit the world in the 1990s,  everyone and their grandmas started producing content for the world to read.

The emergence of online blogs is a boon in many ways, but it did being with it one major drawback: information overload. Coupled with an increasingly time-poor population, it’s no wonder that your blog is largely ignored – even if your content is undoubtedly engaging and useful.

So how do you break through the clutter and get your posts read? By paying attention to five triggers.

1. Format

The appearance of your blog plays a critical role in getting people to read your posts. If your blog is overloaded with extensive lists of links, readers will be overwhelmed, and will most likely click off of your page.

Instead, keep your blog layout simple and your writing, simpler still. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. And feel free to use lists and blockquotes. All these things makes your post less intimidating.

Remember, today’s blog readers have limited time, and they want to read blogs as quickly as possible. By making your blogger friendly to skimmers, you actually increase the chances that your content gets read.

2. Design

You see a lot of blogs these days with confusing designs and images. Images are great when you use it correctly, but more often than not, bloggers use images just for the sake of using them.

What they didn’t know, of course, is that images draw attention. And if it is drawing attention away from your message, then you can be sure that people will click right off your site after glancing it.

This is why images need to be relevant to your post, because when it’s relevant, the image is drawing attention FOR the post, not away from it.

3. Social Proof

Social media is a great marketing tool for those who want to get their blog posts read. If you have a decent following – and I’m talking just a couple of hundred – you can use that as social proof.

Social proof is a great trigger. If someone lands on your blog and see 700 people “like” you on Facebook, you can be sure they’ll at least to check out what you wrote.

4. Original Ideas

Many blogs simply regurgitate others’ content. If you want your blog to be read, make sure you have one of two things: an original idea.

This is not as difficult as you think it is. Your personal experience, for example, is always original. Or, you can combine two seemingly unrelated topics to make your point – like “What Batman Can Teach You About Great Copywriting.”

5. The Slippery Slope

A great headline can capture reader’s attention. Once you’ve crafted a great headline, however, it’s crucial to keep the reader on a slippery slope down to your last words.

To do this, your post shouldn’t be a chronological description of what happened. You need to start with the most attention grabbing facts first. And once you have their attention, you can then start to dig deeper with examples, etc.

Those are my five triggers to get your blog posts read: format, design, social proof, original ideas and the slippery slope. Did I miss crucial triggers? What are you experiences with these?

Princess Jones is the evil genius behind P.S. Jones Communications, a boutique communications firm that helps you speak to your audience in a language they understand. Photo courtesy kevin dooley.

Batman is my hero. He’s not a superhero. He’s just a rich guy with mad fighting skills, a bad ass car, and a drive to right wrongs. But that’s enough for me.

I look up the Dark Knight and I often model my life after his teachings. Batman has even helped me fine tune my copywriting skills.

There’s an art to writing great copy – the persuasive wording on marketing and communications materials. Copy is supposed to connect the dots between a problem or need for the reader and get him to walk through the door where the client’s product or service waits.

I have a lot of copywriting heroes but when I’m in a very tough spot, I put on my cape and think: “What would Batman do?”

Lesson #1: Less is More.

Batman is a man of few words. He doesn’t have long conversations where he he tells you his super secret plan. He leaves that to the bad guys. Instead, he tells you just what you need to know.

Great copy is the same way. If you can say it in a simpler way or with less words, do it. The audience will respond to it in a way that significantly affects your success.

Lesson #2: A call to action is the most important part.

Batman doesn’t respond to text messages or tweets. If you want to reach him fast, it’s the bat signal all the way. Similarly, subtlety has its place but copywriting isn’t it.

A call to action – a line or group of lines that urge the reader to do something – is the most important part of your message. It must be persuasive and hit home with the reader. Without it, the reader walks away with some nice information or even some strong feelings but no direction on what to do with it.

Lesson #3: Focus on the ones you can save.

I’ve never seen Batman try to convince The Joker’s henchmen to take off that clown paint, go get their GEDs, and start going to church. That’s not his target market. Great copy is persuasive but it’s focused, too.

Let’s say the product is a pimped out car that turns into a boat, shoots fire out of the tail pipe and only fits two. I’m not going to persuade to anyone in the market for a minivan to seriously consider it. That’s OK because I’m not talking to them. I’m talking to a specific set of prospects and that’s how I get conversions.

Lesson #4: It’s not about you. It’s about them.

This is the best thing about Batman, actually. He could spend a lot of time whining about how hard it is to do his job, how his suit is riding up on him, or how cold the bat cave is. Instead, he makes it about keeping Gotham City safe.

A great copywriter makes it about the reader. She gets inside his head. She uses “you” more than “I” or “we.” She takes features of the product or service and flips them into benefits to the reader so that the focus stays where it should.

For more talk about copywriting, Batman, and how to parallel park the Batmobile, follow Princess Jones on Twitter as @iampsjones.

What’s your secret to superhero-style copywriting? Let us know in the comments section below!

Defining a specific target market for your business can direct your marketing efforts and can even help you develop new products and services that really sell. But maybe you’ve already defined a target market and aren’t getting the results you think you should be getting.

A recent article on Inc.com lists several different ways to find your target market, including looking at the competition, checking out your current customer base, analyzing your products or services, and ensuring that your target market is as specific as possible.

But what if you already have a target market? Here are five signs that it’s time to reevaluate.

1. You Don’t Have a Specific Target Market

Your target market should be as specific as possible. That doesn’t mean that you’ll exclude people who aren’t a part of that market, but it means you’ll tailor your marketing efforts to the people who are most likely to buy your products or use your services.

Inc.com notes that your market should define things like age, income, and lifestyle habits of your potential market. If you don’t have all of those things defined, it’s time to re-evaluate your market and make it more specific.

2. You Change Your Products

If you make big changes to your business, such as releasing new products or making significant changes to your products, you should re-evaluate your target market.

Sometimes your product changes will be geared towards targeting your current market more specifically, and in these cases, you don’t need to do a re-evaluation. But if you’re just following your own intuition or letting your creativity give you new product ideas, you may need to re-evaluate who is most likely to be using your products or services.

3. Your Advertising Isn’t Working

It’s vital that with every advertising campaign, you track the results as closely as possible so that you can make sure your campaign is working. If your advertising campaign isn’t bringing in reasonable results, you may be targeting the wrong market. In this case, re-evaluating your target market might help you see how you can better market your products and services for a more effective advertising campaign.

4. Your Customer Base Changes

As a business owner, it’s also vital that you track your actual current customer base – whether it’s through Google Analytics, a CRM tool or good old-fashioned surveys.

See who is buying your products or using your services. If your current customer base starts to shift, that might tell you that your products are beginning to appeal to a new target market. If this happens, it’s time to re-evaluate your target market so that it more closely aligns with the people who are currently buying from you.

5. You Encounter Too Much Competition

One way to boost your business is to target your business to a niche that isn’t targeted by your competition. If you encounter lots of competitors who are selling products and services like your own to the same target market, re-evaluate your market. Try to find a new customer niche with people who fit a demographic but who might use your products and services for different reasons.

Re-evaluating your target market can take time, and doing it well requires a certain expertise. You might want to pay for a consultant to do some of the research work for you.

However you do it, if you notice one or a combination of these five signs in your business, it’s time to re-evaluate your target audience. Having a well-defined target audience that suits your business’s goals will help you make better marketing choices and boost your business’s sales.

Has your target market shifted over the years? Let me know in the comments section below.

So many factors come into play: Appetite appeal. Product packaging. Pricing and nutrition information. Ratings and reviews.

How do you display all the relevant details – plus a convincing sales pitch – without cluttering the design?

Adagio Teas strikes a nice balance. I stumbled across the site during my research and fell in love with its intuitive navigation and its wide breadth of features.

Right from the homepage, I get a strong sense of the Adagio brand and what it has to offer. The tea icons make me want to brew a cup of my own. When you click on a different section, they’re replaced by new subcategories with clever little descriptors.

But the website is much more than just good navigation and immersive photography. Dive down deeper, and you’ll find a slideshow of pictures from their manufacturing process. Or create a custom blend of tea, and upload a Facebook photo directly to the bag.

Check out Adagio Teas or more fun features and web design inspiration. What’s been inspiring your  marketing lately? Let me know in the comments section below!

In October, an online promotional products company let me go through their internet marketing and SEO internship program. Working with computers, graphics and the Internet was something I always dreamed of doing, but marketing? SEO? I hardly knew what those words meant.

I knew marketing and advertising went hand and hand, but I had to run home and Google the meaning of SEO.  Wikipedia gave a brief overview of Search Engine Optimization:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural,” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”), search results.

In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users.

I wondered: how hard could it be? I had Googled my name in the past, and everything related to me on the Internet came up immediately on the first page. 

I was in for a rude awakening.  On my first day of work, a coworker explained that we had more than 250 keywords to rank for, with competitors trying to do the same thing.  It definitely wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.

But in three months’ time I was able to secure a full-time position with Blue Soda Promo on their internet marketing team. How did I go from knowing almost nothing about internet marketing to becoming an expert?

 1. Study, Study, Study

I took the same approach as I did in college. You can only learn so much from your teacher in the classroom, so if you don’t do the suggested reading and finish your homework, the final exam is going to be a challenge. I was only in the office for 20 hours a week and to make it a point to take my work home with me.

For the first month or so, I dedicated as much time as possible to reading and studying everything I could on Search Engine Optimization. Blogs from SEOMoz, SEO Journal, and HOBO do a terrific job of gathering articles from some of the industry’s best.

I asked a ton of questions, not only to my coworkers, but also online. I joined some great SEO forums and posted questions. I also spent time reading others questions, their responses and trying to answer them myself.

In that time I was able to familiarize myself with the language, the DO’s and DO NOT’s, and a variety of approaches to take my next step into the SEO world.

 2. Experiment

When I felt comfortable moving forward, I asked to take a little more control. I gave suggestions to what I felt could improve our rankings and also proposed some of the strategies I read online. I was given the freedom to experiment however I liked. I began to reach out to people in our field and growing relationships to start link building.

I took control of our social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, even creating our own Google+ page. Sharing information, provoking questions and encouraging comments were great ways to grow our brand.

3. Make Adjustments

Coming up with new and original content can be frustrating when you don’t see immediate results. Instead of getting discouraged however, I continued to read and made adjustments to my writing and thinking about SEO.  I continued to ask questions to my coworkers and my online community, listening to their advice and pushing forward.

The biggest lesson I learned from this whole experience was it takes time. I have been doing this for around five months now and still have plenty to learn. No one has the exact right answer, as SEO is always changing. It also takes time to see change.

You will be extremely lucky to see something you’ve worked so hard on to come up first in a search query within a few days.  But if your content it good, able to market it well and establish a good group of followers, your work will speak for itself.

What have you learned about search engine optimization — and internet marketing — over the years? Let us know in the comments section below.

Guest post provided by Matt Puettmann, Content Manager at the nation’s leading provider of VA mortgage loans, Veterans United Home Loans.

Google+ still lags behind Twitter and Facebook in social media traffic and users, but it’s becoming an increasingly important piece of search engine optimization. After all, Google is still the king of search, holding 66 percent of search engine market share.

So it makes sense that Google is trying to boost its social networking site by incorporating content into its search results. Google+ directly affects search results and page rank. Although many people have stuck to Twitter and Facebook for personal profiles, G+ offers small businesses a wealth of opportunity to increase both social engagement and search promotion.

So how do you use Google+ to your benefit?

Name it properly

According to the experts at Blind Five Year Old, Google gives “enormous weight” to names on pages. What does your company do? If you’re a bakery with an abstract name, you’d better incorporate “Bakery” your page name.

If your audience is big enough, verify your brand.

Verification proves the identity of your brand and ensures you haven’t hijacked a brand name. Google has set up a process to verify your brand, but there’s a catch: 1,000 people have to add you into their circles. If you’re a local coffee shop in a town of 500, this isn’t your ballgame. If 1,000 followers is a possibility, verification can help search results immensely.

So how do you do this? Google explains on its support site. I’ll paraphrase:

- You must link to your website from your+ page and vice versa
- You must have the 1,000 people in your circles
- You must submit your page to Google

And what do you get out of this? A check mark beside your page name – and better search results.

Content is Still King

Publish smart, pointed content that is easily shareable and inspires comments/ clicks of the Plus button. Schedule hangouts and be sure to comment on other user’s posts that relate to your brand. Don’t just re-post what was on your Facebook wall yesterday.

Manage Your Circles

One of the best concepts of Google+ is its Circles feature. Google+ allows you to group who you follow/ share with into segments called Circles. Use this. You can group customers, business partners, and other businesses in your field.

Google has built this feature in to allow you to interact and share only what matters with those groups. By sending content that consistently applies to a Circle’s interest, you will increase engagement and ensure an audience more active with your content.

Follow your Metrics

Google built custom analytics into G+ to give users an easy way to track brand engagement and how social affects page views, etc. Become familiar with the interface and make sure you pay attention to what works when you experiment with new content.

Have you used Google+ to market your small business online? Let us know in the comments section below.