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19th
APR

How to Thank Your Administrative Professional

Posted by cgseo under Social Media

How to Thank Your Administrative Professional This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Read to the end because I’m offering a way for you to win $100 AMEX gift card for an administrative professional in your life. I bet you didn’t even know that this week, April 18-24 is Administrative Professionals Week . Well, frankly I didn’t either until I ran across a virtual thank you card site at www.ForEverythingYouDo.com that American Express put together. It’s a way a to create a “Thank You” heard around the nation for an assistant (virtual or otherwise), an office coordinator, a scheduler, and others—those people who keep the workplace running. Everyone who participates – besides expressing their gratitude – will also be entered to win a $50 American Express Gift Card as part of the “For Everything You Do” sweepstakes. (Two winners will be chosen at random every day, now through April 21st.) To spread the appreciation, American Express also asked me to give my readers an opportunity to win a $100 American Express Gift Card each business day of Administrative Professionals Week (Monday 4/19 – Friday 4/23). All you have to do to enter is write leave a comment about why the administrative professional or support staffer in your work life deserves a BIG thank you. Tell us who they are and how great they are and I’ll pick one winner from each day. Don’t wait, do it today and you’ll have more shots at a winner! Disclosure: American Express Open is a business partner of Duct Tape Marketing Related Posts: The Plum Card from American Express OPEN Personalized Cash Always Fits What Does American Express Hope to Accomplish? Chillin with Blue Man Group in NYC Speaking of Kate Spade Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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15th
APR

Come Meet Me on the Road

Posted by cgseo under Social Media

Come Meet Me on the Road This content from: Duct Tape Marketing I read Jack Kerouac’s On The Road back in high school and I like it so much I’ve got a copy on my Kindle, er, iPad, just so I can grab a few pages any time I get a hankering for the road. I’ve got quite a few live, public and on the road events coming up over the next few months so I thought I would share some here in hopes that I can meet a few of my readers. (Some of the attendees at these events are getting advance copies of my new book The Referral Engine , out May 13th, but don’t tell anyone.) April 27th – Vancouver BC – Duct Tape Marketing Coach Live Discovery Session – http://bit.ly/dtmvancouver April 29th – Seattle WA – Master Builder’s Association Marketing Bootcamp – http://www.dtmwashington.com May 5th – Austin TX – Moxie Marketing and St Edward’s U – http://www.smallbizmarketingpro.com/ May 6th – Online – Marketing Profs – Social Goes Local Seminar – http://www.marketingprofs.com/marketing/online-seminars May 6th – Dallas TX – Social Media Club of Dallas – http://smcdallas08.eventbrite.com/ May 7th – Dallas TX – Duct Tape Marketing Coach Live Discover Session – http://bit.ly/dtmdallas May 8th – Dallas TX – eBay on Location – http://www.ebayonlocationevents.com/events/dallas “The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.” – Jack Kerouac, On the Road Related Posts: Duct Tape Road Trips Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Coach Ranks Grow Again Is eBay a Small Business Marketing Tool? On the Road with Duct Tape Marketing Free Random Twitter Follower Winner Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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31st
MAR

I Am Giving Away 250 Copies of My New Book for My 50th

Posted by cgseo under Social Media

I Am Giving Away 250 Copies of My New Book for My 50th This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Want to help me celebrate my 50th birthday? As you may know, I have a new book coming out in May. The title of my new book is The Referral Engine – Teaching Your Business To Market Itself and it’s officially on pre-sale today. I wrote this book because the power of advertising and elaborate marketing campaigns is on the wane; word- of-mouth referrals are what drive business today. People trust the recommendation of a friend, family member, colleague, or even stranger with similar tastes over anything thrust at them by a faceless company. As a Duct Tape Marketing reader and follower I want to let you in on my special 50th birthday celebration. (I know that’s pretty lame, but I thought why not, you only turn 50 once.) Here’s the deal. The first 250 people that pre-order a copy of my new book will get a second copy, perhaps to refer to a friend, free. And, you’ll get that copy about two weeks before anyone else can buy it. So, you give me a gift by purchasing a book and I give you a gift in return. Let’s call it a party! All you have to do to join the party is: a) Visit The Referral Engine web site at http://referralenginebook.com and choose your favorite online retailer and pre-order the book. (free book can only be shipped to US addresses and does not include Kindle orders.) You can buy your book directly from one of the following retailers – Barnes & Noble , Amazon , 800-CEO-READ or Indie Bound b) Send a copy of your receipt to – ReferralEngineBook@gmail.com c) Once you do you will receive a URL to fill in the shipping details for your free book (Should arrive around April 30th or so) d) Feel free to spread the word to friends, colleagues, Facebook fans and Twitter followers The early reviews for the book are very positive (I have a free chapter on the site if you would like to review before pre-ordering) and I think this topic is timeless and very important for marketers and birthday partiers alike! “Who knew that there’s a science to referrals? Not I–but now that I know, I want you to benefit from John’s expertise. In a sense, a cover blurb is the ultimate referral, and I’m here to blurb this book because it will help you succeed in business.” Guy Kawasaki co-founder Alltop Thanks for all of your past and future support Related Posts: Duct Tape Book Review - Shipping Now Free Friday Follow Giveaway #dtmfff Random Twitter Follower to Get Book and T-shirt The Referral Multiplier Effect A Couple of Random Referral Ideas Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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15th
MAR

Use Your Neighbors and Partners to Build Your List

Posted by cgseo under Social Media

Use Your Neighbors and Partners to Build Your List This content from: Duct Tape Marketing From the WikiPedia: Referral marketing is a structured and systematic process that maximizes word of mouth potential. Referral marketing does this by encouraging, informing, promoting and rewarding customers and contacts to think and talk as much as possible about their supplier, their company, product and service and the value and benefit the supplier brings to them and people they know. So referral marketing is really all about relationships you foster with people, and how those people remember you when they talk to anyone that might need your products or services. If you’ve got a storefront or business that serves a certain location (even if you don’t, read on this applies to you as well), your number one goal is to get traffic to that location, right? And hopefully you’ve built good relationships with the business owners around you, or are willing to. So today, I’m going to talk about how your neighboring businesses can use their email list to refer business to you, and how you can do the same for them. Here is a great example of how 4 local businesses can collectively refer customers to each other : You have a retail business in a neighborhood where there are other retailers, service businesses or restaurants where people visit. In this case a restaurant called Nova Bar. The product or service that you sell has complementary (maybe even competitive) products offered by other businesses in the area. In this example this particular restaurant also included another restaurant in their email campaign. You can’t eat at the same restaurant every day, right? You’ve been collecting email addresses and communicating to your recipients on a regular basis. Here’s one way to make it happen: Step 1. Approach your neighboring businesses and tell them that you’ve got an idea that will collectively help all of you get more business. Step 2. Find out how many email addresses each business has. You’ll want them to be close to the same because if one is 10x bigger than the others everyone else will benefit from the big guy but they might not benefit in the same way. That said, if this does happen, maybe the businesses with smaller lists can make up for it by mailing a few more times. Step 3. Create separate email campaigns where the FROM LABEL is from each list owner. If you are doing the mailing to your list it should come FROM your business, if your neighbor is doing the mailing to her list it should come FROM her business. Step 4. Your message should include a paragraph explaining why you’re sending this email. For example: “The merchants of South Beach all got together and decided that you need to know about everything that’s going on. So opt-in to all of these lists and be the first to know. Try giving an incentive or coupon to any new people who signed up to each list to motivate them even more to join! Step 5. In this example you can see that there are links to each of the business’s opt-in forms. Avoid sending them directly to a home page unless the opt-in form is easy to spot. Make sure you also tell your recipients what new registrants can expect, like weekly specials or “email only” discounts. Also include an image or logo for each business. Other ideas for using email marketing as a referral tool: If you don’t want to use this as a “list building” tool and each local business just wants to give a great offer, go for it! Make sure you send them directly to a page where the offer is displayed prominently. If you’re business isn’t “locally oriented” but you have complementary business partners, you can still follow the same general steps. Partner up with them and send emails to your respective email lists about your partners, ask them to do the same. You can also use the page that you send people after they opt-in to your list, and include your partners/neighbors offers or links, and they can do the same for you. Bottom line: keep each other honest. Join each other’s lists and make sure all of you are participating. Agreeing to help businesses build their lists is going to help traffic to everyone’s business. And that’s what referral marketing is all about in the long run. Janine Popick is the CEO and co-founder of VerticalResponse (Inc. 5000 2006-2009). She also is VerticalResponse’s CEB ( Chief Executive Blogger ) and won the 2006 ClickZ Best Marketing Blog Award, the 2007 Stevie Award for Best Blog, a 2008 SIIA Codie Finalist for best blog and 2009 Stevie Finalist for Best Blog. Related Posts: Track Your Email Marketing Efforts with Swiftpage The right list is a big piece of the puzzle Email Marketing Still a Great Small Business Tool How to Boost Your Customer Referrals in 7 Simple Steps Vertical Response adds multi channel tool Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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15th

What is Make A Referral Monday?

Posted by cgseo under Social Media

Share What is Make A Referral Monday? This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Last week’s Make a Referral Week , an event designed to generate over 1000 referrals for 1000 small businesses, was a big success in terms of bringing a focus on the act of making referrals, but why stop at a week. Making referrals is a great practice all year long. Please join me in kicking off something I call Make a Referral Monday . The idea is to bring the practice of making referrals into focus every week, all year long. One of the ways to keep this idea alive and top of mind is to use the awesome reach of Twitter as a weekly reminder and accountability tool. If you participate on Twitter you are probably aware of something called Follow Friday. Follow Friday asks folks to share the names of people on Twitter that they like to follow, with the idea that other might as well. Follow Friday participants use what’s called a hashtag to designate their Follow Friday listing – #FF ( More on Twitter hashtag use here ) To participate in Make a Referral Monday (#marm) I would like ask you to a) make a referral and b) tell the Twitter world about it using #marm as a hashtag each and every Monday. Something like: I just referred @AcmePrinting to my BFFs at @ZetaGraphics both do awesome work #marm I think we have the ability to create a bit of a movement out of the act of making referrals. Spread the word, retweet this post and make those referrals! Related Posts: It Is Make a Referral Week! Making Referrals As a Job Creation Engine Rosy Monday is Strategic Planning Day Have You Made Your Referral? Free Friday Follow Winner 2-20 Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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