This isn’t a trick question but one that most businesses must consider.

Typical businesses focus on lead generation and spend the most money in this area of marketing. While lead generation is great to focus on in order to increase your sales and profits, many people don’t have a system or strategy to follow once they’ve acquired the new lead.

The other less utilized and often forgotten area of marketing is client retention. Along with lead generation, this is a fantastic profit opportunity.

However, what both have in common in most businesses is not having a system of follow up and engagement that turn a greater percentage of leads and past clients into paying clients once again.

Luckily, there’s still hope.

I want to focus the solution on an underutilized tool that can help in either situation, and I’ll mention to you why it is perhaps the ultimate tool to generating more sales in the most efficient manner.

The solution that I’m talking about is doing teleseminars and/or webinars. For those who don’t understand this technology, a teleseminar or webinar is a way to get many people to connect with you at one time to listen to what you have to offer, both intellectually and your business’ offerings.

The difference between them is that teleseminars are more of a conference call to the multitudes while a webinar adds video to the mix using visual presentations.

So, why do I say this may be the ultimate tool to accomplish deeper relationships with leads and past clients? Because you can address them both at the same time.

Let me paint the picture for you.

Let’s say you do a monthly (or weekly, you decide the schedule that works best for you) teleseminar or webinar and invite all your news leads AS WELL as your current and past clients. This will be on a subject matter that your clients and prospects are interested in including updates to what they’re already familiar with.

The value for your new leads is that you’re offering free training (or paid, but that’s for another time) that is helping them become more educated about what you offer and how it helps them solve their problems. You’re building trust by giving something to them with no strings attached unlike the typical sales call that other businesses do.

The value to your existing and past clients is that you’re adding additional value to them after the sale, staying in contact with them, and further ingraining yourself as an expert in their minds.

Here’s the amazing part about this strategy that very few, if any, marketing methods offer to everyone involved; SOCIAL PROOF!

Since you have both new leads and past clients on the teleseminar or webinar, you can open it up at the end for a Q & A session where they’ll all here each other on the call. New leads will hear past clients talk about their experiences with your service or products which further develops trust.

If your past client John is on the call, he may say something like this “Alex, the email marketing strategy that you implemented for me is generating tons of new sales and it’s only been about 5 weeks. How can I use this new strategy to do the same?”

Do you see the power of this? Your past clients are giving you testimonials live while new leads are listening in. There’s absolutely no better way to accomplish this.

There you have it, a killer way to keep your clients engaged and add amazing value to your new leads without much effort at all. The only drawback that I see to this is you may become addicted to it!

I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas of how you can start capitalizing one this fantastic opportunity using teleseminars and webinars. They work for virtually every business.

Feel free to contact us for a free consultation where I’ll show you how this strategy can work for you.

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The website is called Foursquare and in a nutshell, it allows you to use your cell phone to “Check In” and share where you are with your friends. This is done easily via apps for iPhones, Android phones, Blackberry or a phone’s internet browser.

The benefit to this is to let people know where you’re eating, the businesses you shop at, and even local places like parks and museums you visit. You can even leave a quick review when you “Check In”.

Who knows, your friends may be near and end up getting together with you.

However, the power of Foursquare for you business is where it really gets interesting. You see, you can link up your Foursquare account to Twitter and Facebook and get your Check In broadcasted to your friends and everyone following you on both of those other platforms. So, if I check into your local barber shop, there may be thousands of people who will view that I went there and gives you exposure to all of my friends, Facebook pals, and Twitter followers.

Can you start seeing how powerful it is?

Now for the real secret to cashing in using Foursquare. They have a status called Mayor for whoever Checks In to a particular place the most. So, if I go to a restaurant called Frank’s Hot Dogs and Lobster (believe me, I probably wouldn’t) and I have the most check ins from their, I become the Mayor of Frank’s Hot Dogs and Lobster.

Wouldn’t it be grand if Frank’s Hot Dog and Lobster awarded the me, the Mayor, with a free order of fries and drink or something like that. What this means is that I would have put their name out more than anyone else using Foursquare and they’re simply showing me some love for it. It’ll cost them less than $3 to hook me up while they’re getting $1000′s in free exposure.

Although this new method of getting repeat business can work for any type of business, there are specific types that it lends itself too exceptionally well.

Stay tuned in the next few days since I’ll be posting three types of businesses that can drastically increase their sales by simply using the power of Foursquare.

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The challenge was being able to engage the audience in two way communication where they’d be able to comment and share their ideas on every article and content piece being shared. We used a more robust and user friendly interface which allows Violet Revolution to easily add articles, images, and even video content to the website within a few minutes.

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Time was placed on creating helpful content and a consumer friendly layout and navigation which makes it easy for prospects to find exactly what they’re looking for.

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While many so-called gurus will tell you that there’s hundreds of ways to get more clients and make more money, there are only three methods you should be concerned with.

In essence, all strategic business growth comes down to these 3 things. Once you’ve learned them, you’ll quickly discover that all other marketing strategies and tactics fall into one of these (or possibly all of them).

By now, you’re probably wondering, “What Are They?”

Without further ado, here you have them:

1. Client Acquisition or Attraction – this pillar focuses on getting new prospects and clients. Many businesses put most of their money and efforts in this category which is quite a shame. Although it is always smart to bring in the prospects into your business, this should be the very last option since this is where the most time and money are required. Besides the time and money, you’ll get the lowest results in this category when it comes to your marketing plan.
2. Client Purchase Conversion – this is a great place to instantly see immediate income boosts. The reason is simple. This is the point when a buyer has already made the decision to give you their money so why not give them other complimentary products or services to buy. This works utilizing upsell, downsell, and cross sell strategies as well as monthly consumable items like monthly dog food, term insurance, spa treatments… You get the idea.
3. Client Retention – so your clients have already given you money. They’re satisfied with their experience with your business. Now what? The client retention pillar is an absolute must for every business, however, most miss the boat BIG TIME! This is the least expensive strategy and it focuses on deepening the relationship with those who’ve already given you money and the best part is A BUYER IS A BUYER, IS A BUYER, IS A BUYER. They keep buying. The question is, will it be with you?

There you have it, the 3 pillars of business growth. Use one of them and you’ll increase your profits almost immediately. Use all of them, and your transform your business forever. This isn’t hype but real business strategies that work.

At eMarketing Chicago, we offer a complete business analysis to identify your greatest business needs and develop an easy to implement plan of attack. Best of all, with just the first few clients, you’ll get more than your money’s worth.

Oh yeah, did I mention that we offer our WORLD FAMOUS (hey, somebody’s gotta say it) Complete Business Analysis absolutely FREE. Be sure to contact us right away. Your business could depend on it!

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Because times have changed, and the way people get information has changed, too.  Radically.  Ten years ago, a local company could get by without a website.  Back then, the Internet was new, and not every family had a computer hooked up to the worldwide web.  And, for many of those people who were online, the Internet was sort of exotic – it was something of a hobby.  They would spend their online time in chat rooms talking to new friends all over the world, or looking for Beanie Babies on eBay, or downloading the latest cool game.

But somewhere along the way, three things happened –

1.High Speed Internet Access got cheaper, and replaced dial up for the majority of users.
2.Almost every home in America is now connected to the Internet.
3.Google became THE dominant search engine

What does a High Speed Internet connection have to do with anything?  A lot.  Ten years ago, most people had dial up connections over a standard phone line.  That meant that most of the time they weren’t hooked up to the Internet, and connecting usually took several minutes. And surfing was slow.

In other words, if they needed to look up the phone number of a local company, it was much easier and faster to just grab the Yellow Pages.  Besides, back then, few local companies had their own website.  But these days, in most homes, there are several computers hooked up to the Internet 24/7, with a high speed DSL connection.  Tens of millions of people in America spend several hours a day in front of their computer, using the Internet   Almost every home in America is now online, and the vast majority of them are using high speed Internet connections.  That’s the first two radical changes.

So what does Google have to do with anything?  Well, in a word, everything.  Ten years ago, there were lots of search engines – Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Netscape, AOL, and scores of others.  And there still are dozens of search engines.  But hardly anyone uses them.

Google came along around 1999, and they just completely took over the search engine business, practically overnight, because they were so much better than the others.  Probably 85-90 percent of all searches these days are Google searches.  And Google lists everything, including local businesses.

Are you starting to see the big picture?  Ten years ago, most people still weren’t on the Internet, and now they are.  And today, instead of being an expensive, slow moving toy, the Internet has become an integral part of their lives.  Now, with a click of their mouse and a few keystrokes, they can find any information they need in about 5 seconds.   Why get up, hunt down the Yellow Pages, dig through its hundreds of pages until they find “muffler shop”, when they can just type in “their city muffler shop” and have all the information they need without leaving their chair?

Well, most people won’t leave their chair.  They’ll just go to Google.  Which means that the Yellow Pages are yesterday’s news, and if you don’t have a website for your business online, you are missing out on huge numbers of leads and customers.

Any local business that doesn’t have a website has got two choices – get a website, and get one soon, or plan to eventually go out of business. It’s just that simple.  What’s next?  Check out part two of our report: Why Your Website MUST Rank Highly In Google!

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