Q: How do you maintain your clients' trust while managing a crisis?
A: The best approach, of course, is to avoid the crisis in the first place. But in the real world (e.g., Enron, BP, News Corp., et al.), that's not always possible.
If a crisis hits your firm, says Jonathan Bernstein, who founded Sierra Madre, Calif.-based Bernstein Crisis Management 17 years ago, take the lead in making your case to the public. And he's not talking about just covering your you-know-what. Be frank about your problems by providing answers even before your critics start asking questions.
Every month, on average, 550K people globally and 49.5K people in the U.S. use Google to ask "how to blog for business". Clearly there are a lot of people looking into this, but I suppose the more important question is why should you create and keep up a blog for business? After all, as a business owner you have a lot of things you have to do already and blogging takes time.
Entering the year 2012, it is a suitable time to take a step back and look at the top trends in online marketing that will affect your business over the next year.
The online marketing industry is continuously evolving. With more and more business marketers demanding results from web-based advertising, it is no wonder that trends in the online marketing industry are getting harder to predict as the mediums to draw customers keep changing.
In spite of this, however, online marketing has become a very popular method for marketing businesses. As a marketer, you have to expect changes and innovation and anticipate fresh new ideas for your business.
Here are the top 5 trends in online marketing:
1. Using mobile marketing
The ever growing popularity of smart phones has made it possible for many businesses to reach their customers practically anywhere. Nowadays, ads can be seen immediately by any customer, no matter where they are.
2. Social Media Marketing
Popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook are presently the biggest opportunities for business owners. These social networking sites also help reduce marketing expenses. Research has shown that a lot of companies, big and small, are now creating Facebook pages in order to attract their targeted audience through social media.
3. Viral Video Marketing
Utilizing videos for marketing has become common; web videos have become an important marketing factor for many online businesses. Business marketers can now easily and quickly advertise their products and services by placing web-based ads on their site or on popular video sharing sites.
4. Real-Time Updates
It's already a given fact that online marketing is fast-paced, and there's obviously no turning back with it. With the popular microblogging site Twitter, businesses can take advantage of real-time updates and communication. Other popular social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn also update in real-time. Real-time updates have put new demands on many small businesses and big companies. This function is a sustainable process that allows business owners to have a reliable, constant, and real-time influence in the online marketing industry.
5. Local-Based Marketing
Location is also relevant in online marketing. Even the popular search engine Google has started mixing local results and maps with other related searches. Add your business to local-based marketing by claiming your own spot on Google Places. Aside from that, don't forget to make your site more mobile-friendly for your customers' convenience.
Sheila Holifield serves Coaches, Consultants, Entrepreneurs, and service businesses by offering digital marketing support services; such as social media management, local marketing, web development and mobile marketing services.
When you start a home based business, it is essential to gain an edge over other competitors offering same products or services in your market. In order to attract customers to your site you will have to promote your site through advertisements. Even if the quality of the product or service you offer is the best, it will not gain attention from the customers. Without advertisement, there will be no sales and no revenue.
Steps
Pay attention to the market. Currently, there is a trend towards digitalization. You can create a domain with an attractive dot com and file your site to free web directories. This can add great value to the products and services you are offering.
Try shared advertising on the internet. Here you need to find people who are also in need of product exposure at least expenditure, and merge your advertisement along with their product. This method gives definite benefits as long as you differentiate your product well from the others. It can also be less expensive. Any surfer that comes to visit the other product or service will definitely have a look at yours. Shared advertisement is very common on the internet. The more advertisers you share with, the greater the exposure of your product.
Use banners with good designs can prove effective. Well-designed banners can attract more attention from the customers and provide credibility to the product.
Advertise through ezines, classified ads, and blogs. This can also attract the attention of the customers to a great extent.
Link up with partners who sell a different product or even the same product. You pull advertising dollars and you will rotate each others sites on your prospective sites. For example: John will rotate Willie's and Bob's website on his site and they will do the same for Willie, this will increase each members exposure to a broader audience. This technique could also be used for classified ads, solo ads, and any other promotion technique you could ever dream about.
Barter/Trade. If you have a website with a high page rank, you could negotiate with another webmaster/ezine owner. You could trade links for an advertisement. The possibilities are endless with this technique.
Add your url to search engines and directories.
Preferably, your website advertises itself through its design. Make sure everything is in place so that you may have returning visitors to improve traffic and revenues. Run an inspection on your website to make sure that all tags and links are in place. This will help you optimize your website and improve any design flaws. Also submit a sitemap.xml file to search engines to boost your website on search lists - this is usually generated for free. There is more information available on the net.
Tips
Whichever method you follow, it is essential to see that the advertisements are clear and impressive. It should state all the qualities of the product in a clear and crisp manner to attract the attention of the customers.
A lot of the information mentioned above can be done for free. Just type these suggestions into your google search engine.
The internet is moving extremely fast these days, and Social Networking is an extremely effective way to get a great deal of traffic in a short amount of time, which leads to more sales, which means more money in your bank account. You may also consider grassroot advertisement. Simple by creating flyers and passing them out or creating business cards to leave at place of businesses or places where you know many people hang out at.
I am proficient in helping individual start new business; as a certified consultant, I have also helped a lot of private companies and individuals close new business deals. You are welcome to this blog
