Market To The Nose

Are you thinking of a new way to market to your clients? So far we have been inundated with visual marketing. However, with the advent of ipods and TiVos marketeers are having to find new ways of marketing to the public. There is the Internet marketing, like we do: building custom websites, eNewsletters, Blogs, optimizing websites with advanced Search Engine Optimization. All this is excellent techniques if you want to grow your online business, but what if you have a retail store, what are you going to do besides the must have Online Marketing? Yes, create brochures and mailers, but have you thought of the other sensory organ? No, not the ear. How about your proboscis? Yes, the good old nose!

Have you ever stopped and wondered how much smells effect you? Well, apparently it can effect your bottom line as well. Thanks to an excellent post by one of our clients, Ready To Evolve
we came upon this article in the LA TIMES "Sniff and Spend". Read on to see what experts have to say!

eNewsletters that Get Read!

eNewsletters have become an Internet Marketing tool that almost all small business owners take advantage of: they're cheap to produce, you can track your results, you can easily direct readers to buy something at the click of a button, and it's easy. So, why is it so hard not to have an eNewsletter that won't be deleted or marked as Spam? Well, below I've given some quick tips on how to by-pass the Junk Mail folder, and go straight to the "Must Read" folder.

-First, make it interesting with color and photos.
-Second, make it easy to read with bullet points, headlines and small paragraphs
-Third, don't just write about you, but give some information that your readers care about. For instance, if you're a photographer, have a link to a short video on how to hold your camera correctly.
-Fourth, pay attention to subject lines. Announce who you are, and what the reader can expect to find in the eNewsletter. An example would be "Blaze Interactive :: Make eNewsletters Stand Out!"
-Lastly, make it short. We don't have a lot of time these days to read emails, as often our email box is full. If at first glance it looks like a novel, often people will just ignore it; yet if it's too short, it will look like spam and the email program will automatically send it to the Junk Mail box. In order to avoid this, have more text than there are pictures, and use the feature in your email database prgram to check the email for your possible score on the Spam chart.

So, remember, keep it short, sweet and pretty and you'll have it made.
If you need help in creating your eNewsletter, or don't want the hassle finding pictures or upkeeping your database, give me a call (949.249.4952) and we can help you out!

To Your Internet Marketing Small Business Success!
Rachel Pradhan
Blaze Interactive
Start your eNewsletter campaign with iContact.com, the email database program with so much more to offer!

What is an RSS Feed?

Think of RSS as Microsoft Outlook where all the emails that you need to receive comes pouring in one program (Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express). RSS system is just like that. If you want to read news or blogs or other things on the web (even listen to podcasts), instead of going to 100's of news websites or blogs, you just receive it in one program. This program is called a "Feed Reader," or "Aggregator." Once you download this program to your computer, you just tell it which news website or blog you want to subscribe to and then the feed reader will go to work. It will put on it's make up and high heels and go out to get those blogs and news articles for you!

Now, you must be wondering how does the feed reader know where to go? Well, the blog or any website or podcast that you want to subscribe to, will have a little button that will look like the above image, or say "RSS." You click on this button and it will give you a link like this: http://rachelindra.audioacrobat.com/rss/indras_voice.xml (this is the RSS link for our podcasts). Give this link to your feedreader to make her happy-this is all she needs to know where to go and who to talk to. The feedreader I prefer is http://www.google.com/reader.