I will start with my sad tale….

I have a great database that I really like (www.clpsuite.com) which has served me well for a couple of years. Lately I have had a burning desire to have online credit card ordering capabilities so I started using www.1shoppingcart.com for my credit card processing AND they offered email capabilities. I thought GREAT! I can have my database, my credit card processing AND my database all in one. NOPE. They do a great job at credit card processing but as a database not at all (it is almost impossible to get your people to “opt-in” which means you can no longer communicate with them – a REAL problem!).

So now I have a database with email capabilities and a online credit card processing system. Two is not bad. I guess. RATS!

So for everyone else, what are my database recommendations?

General Databases – You can put your clients in, send a reasonable amount of emails and set up auto-responders or activity plans

• Microsoft Outlook – already on most computers
• Act – I like the sales funnel reports you can get in Act
• Wise Agent – BEST Database for Realtors
• Top Producer – Widely Used Realtor Database

Email Marketing Programs – If you get over about 400 people in your database I highly recommend that you start having your people in a “real” email program. If I had it to do all over again, I would have started with this as I have about a thousand people and getting them all to opt-in has been a nightmare!

• Aweber – This is the one that I (and the internet business mastery guys recommend – see below). Aweber has great email and autoresponder capabilities!
• Constant Contact – This is a friendly email program that is great for beginners

I should have listened to the Internet Business Mastery Guys! They have a great podcast on iTunes and I belong to their Internet Business Mastery Academy which tells you start to finish what to do for each aspect of your internet business. They said that Aweber was for email and 1shoppingcart.com was for credit cards. Lesson learned – I will listen to their advice from now on!!

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First, who the heck are they? And second, they are right about telling other people!

This week I went on a crusade to get my Mega Chick mastermind group to do some Web 2.0 things (adding their profiles to LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. One fabulous realtor (Lori Crawford) was game but did not know how to do it. She was frustrated and so I wrote a post over on Marketing Artfully on how to do it. It took me a little while BUT it will work for lots of my readers.

I also sat down last week with a great company called Ragged Edge which sells bags made of sailcloth. They were focusing on the fact that their products were made of sailcloth, instead of focusing on the fact that their stuff is wicked cool and practical. If you were looking for a gift, would you search for “cool stocking stuffers” or would would you be searching for “sailcloth wallets”? The hour or so that I spent talking to the owners may have changed their business – they just didn’t know HOW TO do something that I knew.

So how does this apply to your business? And if you tell people how to do stuff, won’t they do it themselves and not buy your product?

First off – tell them how to do things that are RELATED to your product or service! I tell people how to post blogs because I don’t do it for anyone else. My business partner Mary Dado over at Business Writing, Ink tells people how to do marketing. BUT she writes blogs for people and if anyone asks me, I just refer them to her and visa-versa.

Second off – tell them EXACTLY how to do it! I love reading how tos and frequently feel that I can do ANYTHING myself – tra la! Then I try it and realize that it is not as easy as it looks! I also find that I can purchase the product, service or the person’s expertise for MUCH less than I can produce it myself. That is called a SALE!

So, if you know how to do something TELL PEOPLE! Don’t hoard your knowledge or hide your light under a bushel (Mary will be SO happy I have two cheesy metaphors in one sentence!)

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I am going to go over the things you can do to get in front of your customers. The VERY first thing you need to do is know WHO your customers are and get them in a database! My database is my lifeline to my clients and prospects. I do not look up their phone numbers there, I am terrible about making notes in the database (I am blessed to have someone to do that for me), but almost everyone who I come in contact with goes in there.

Standard Fare

I use my database to contact my clients all at once. I send emails to everybody every month. I separate whether they are current Thrive clients or not. The non-Thrive clients get an informational sales pitch (more information than sales pitch) and the clients get great info and extra tips and tricks.

To let you know how non-salesy they are, many people thank me for sending out my newsletter – it is that full of information that I think is interesting and marketing related – PLUS my sales pitch. (If you are not currently on my “newsletter” list and would like to receive it, please send me a message on the Sign Up Now page!)

I also send my sphere, target clients and prospects a piece by mail each month. It is generally related to whatever email I sent out. If you do not know what to send, you might want to consider using the Thrive System!!!

Online Ideas

If you are looking for a bang online, you can’t do better than a blog! The search engines love the HTML pages that blogs develop. They are full of words that search engines can reference and are continually updated. They are also affordable. I pay $10.20 a YEAR for this blog as I have most of my websites under the umbrella of one hosting plan. If you would like to find out how it is doing over the first month, please visit Marketing Artfully, my main site.

Another way to get great coverage online is write Ezine articles. I am getting ready to blast out some really good content on Small Business Marketing over there. The nice thing about Ezines is that the company spends LOTS of time and money on the back end to get them referenced in the search engines (especially google).

The final online way to get traffic to you site or blog is to make comments on another site! I get LOTS of traffic from a comment on the high cost of “Rogue” beer. The key was that the rogue beer site owner is a marketing aware guy. This means that his readers are probably marketing aware. Try to find a site that is similar to you but does NOT compete with your site.

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She was thinking that she should start sending something out too (you think?) BUT she did not have her people in a database. In addition to that she did not know what email program to use. I suggested a couple to her and she said that she would have to wait until she had her people in some kind of order. 

SIGH

If this is your thought you will NEVER have everything ready in order to start. You will never take 3 days of your life to data-entry all your contacts into a program. You will never look up all the emails from all those business cards. You will never start!

So what should you do? Start with what you have! If you use Gmail or Outlook or many other programs, just by typing a letter you will get a list of people by that name that you can email to. When I am sending out “special” emails to my internet friends I use this method. When I am just trying to hit my personal contacts I use this method. The glorious part of it is that all those people are my friends! They never yell at me for sending them anything – sometimes they may delete me without looking at it – but they never scream spammer at me!

The next best thing is to start with an excel or database program (here is a good post to read – What Is A Small Business Database?). Enter 5 people every day. At first it will be easy because you will have a backlog of people, but soon you will have to actually TRY to find people to enter into it! Make it a game to figure out who should be in there – your doctor, vet, lawyer, hairdresser, the mailman, your family, friends, networking contacts, co-workers, even old flames!

Can I make a suggestion? Start with The Thrive Contact System even though you are not ready. Try it and see if you get more business – the majority of our clients do! Make enough money off the people that you DO have in it to hire someone to do your data entry. Stop figuring out why you can’t do lead generating and just start! TODAY!

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Excel Spreadsheet – If you do not have your contacts in any order yet, an excel spreadsheet can be a god-send! All you need to do is start collecting names, addresses, emails and maybe even have a field for notes. The benefit of an Excel Spreadsheet is that it is easy, you can cut and paste email addresses into almost any email client and it is super easy to make labels from! The drawback to an Excel spreadsheet is that it is hard to set up times to call people or schedule emails to automatically go out. Click here to download a sample contact spreadsheet!

Outlook – Most computers come with Outlook. It is great for mananging your contacts, exporting mailing lists and sending emails. You can schedule tasks for yourself and there are many add on systems for Outlook out there. Here is a list of some neat add ons (here is a Google Search for Outlook Add Ons).

Databases – A full blown database that you are committed to will change your life! It will tell who you to call, when to call them, who to email, when to send out your letters and so much more. You can set up “campaigns” or “plans” that will send out periodical emails or set up tasks for you to do. Many times these are called CRM or Customer Relation Management.

There are MANY different databases that cost NOTHING (EssentialPIM and FreeCRM are two).

There are great mass market databases like ACT, Goldmine, and Wise Agent for Realtors (my personal recommendation – even for non-realtors!) They generally charge a per month fee and are online. That is great since you can access your clients from anywhere – not so great if your internet is down.

The database I use is CLP – it is a relational database that does LOTS of things but you have to set it up yourself! It has MANY features like HTML emails, project plans, sales force automation and multiple users. It is NOT cheap and it is hard to use sometimes BUT everyone asks so I thought I would tell you!!

Whatever you use, remember that you want to make sure that you can export your contacts out of it in case you want to change vendors. Also – it does you no good if you don’t put your people in it!!!!

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I do A LOT of public speaking and many people ask me “how do I make money from giving free classes?” I spend time with friends (who are sometimes clients) doing favors and masterminds and sometimes wonder myself how that makes me money. I help people via email who ask me stray and random questions and who think I may have some special knowledge that could help out.

EVERYONE you meet is a potential client or referral source! I have gotten the most opportunities and advancement in my life from talking to someone who I did not think was “important” – I just thought that they were interesting. 

I sometimes think that everyone is connected to someone that can help you, if you just take the time to be interested in them! Who do you know that you haven’t talked to lately? Who does something interesting that you have been wondering about? Every person you meet is a potential lead – so get out there and make some new friends!

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