8 FREE ways to Build your Business

There are a number of methods that you can use to build your business. Many of these methods may already be in use but they are rarely used as part of a total marketing system so they are not used consistently.

When you begin using any marketing strategy as part of a system, then it becomes a positive source for the growth of your business.

Most businesses have methods of marketing; however, most do not pay close attention to the results and frequency of implementation. The key to remember is that when something is part of a system, then it is repetitive therefore multiplying the effectiveness and guaranteeing significantly better results.

The best way to implement your marketing strategy is to use this guide and make sure that you answer the questions that are part of each concept.

The goal of you answering the questions is simple. If you take the time to answer the question, even if it is just in your head, you will take yourself to a higher level of awareness of how you are working in your business.

MARKETING WEAPONS

1. Business Cards – Your business card should have key contact information and must be distributed to everyone you meet. The goal of giving your card to everyone is placing you in the subconscious mind of everyone you meet.
Q: Do you give your card to everyone you meet or just people that ask you about your business?

2. Ask For Referrals – Everyone you develop rapport with both inside and outside your business should know what you do and be able to refer someone to you. The best way to get a referral is to give one first. It will pay major dividends for you.
Q: How many people you know who are in business that would appreciate a referral? What goes around comes around!!!

3. Have a Clearly Defined Message – Make sure that everything you do has a message about who you are and/or what you do. Hone your Elevator Pitch!!
Q: What is your message? What do you specialise in? Who is your target market and what are your services? What problems do you solve?

4. Voice Mail Marketing – Make sure your voice mail has special marketing statements. It is very important to place some type of reminder for the listener to ask you about something specific about you or your products.  An example of a voice mail marketing system is at the end of your greeting, you add the statement “Don’t forget to ask me about….!”
Q: How do I get people to ask me about my competitive advantage?

5. E-mail Marketing – This is very similar to voice mail marketing. Every e-mail you send must have as part of your signature, a special offer or a marketing message!
Q: What does your e-mail signature look like?

6. Testimonials – It is a must for you to get testimonials from your clients and referral sources. Your website and marketing material should contain a customer quote. These quotes give customers sub-conscious references to your services and the quality of them.
Q: How many testimonials do you have and are they from different types of sources so you can attach them to the appropriate marketing piece?

7) Community Involvement – Get involved with your community and increase your exposure. Individuals that participate in community activities tend to be compelled to want to help other members of the activity because of the common bond that is shared.
Q: What organization could you join that would surround you with the type of people that either could use your services or refer you to people that could benefit from your services while simultaneously giving something valuable back to your community?

8). Accessibility – Make sure you are easily reachable. Make clear to your clients the best way to reach you along with the best times to reach you. Add on your voice mail message specific times that you will be returning phone calls so clients know when to expect to hear back from you. When you return clients messages when you say you will, your credibility grows and so do the quality of your referrals.
Q: How much time do you need to answer your messages and when would be the best time of the day to answer your messages and return client calls? Do this daily.

Implement each one of these simple marketing weapons and “Build Your Business” in 2012.

Donald Robichaud
President
FloodLight Consulting - Build Your Business - 1-888-768-9415
http://www.floodlight.ca/
http://donaldrobichaud.blogspot.com/

Floodlight Expands Across Canada

Floodlight Business Solutions Group of Kelowna, BC, is growing. With the addition of more experts in a variety of business disciplines, Floodlight offers a wider range of products and services for its clients in the Okanagan Valley and now across Canada.

Floodlight was founded by local entrepreneur Donald Robichaud in the summer of 2005. His vision was to
offer cost effective business coaching, sales training, marketing advice and branding solutions to small and medium sized businesses in Kelowna and surrounding areas.

Robichaud‘s ultimate goal has been to develop the same services for business owners across Canada. That dream is becoming reality
as Floodlight opens for business in Ottawa, Kingston and Toronto.

Robichaud says, “With changes in the global economy there is tremendous pressure on businesses to operate effectively in all facets of their business. They are looking for expert guidance through cost effective coaching and mentoring.”

Floodlight advocate’s a 3-stage process they call Assess, Assemble, and Apply.

“What our clients like best is that we help to identify their key priorities with our free assessment focused on ten key areas of business”, says Robichaud. “This helps us set forth a plan that ultimately improves bottom line results. At the core of our solutions based coaching programs is our ability to help Build Your Business.”

Being a business owner presents a variety of challenges. FloodLight Business Solutions Group offers one-on-one programs to provide the coaching and mentoring necessary for success in today’s ever-increasing competitive market place.

“We found that our clients were using Floodlight as the sounding board to guide them through their many decisions”, says Robichaud. “As a result, we surrounded ourselves with experts in the areas of Sales, Communication, Marketing, Debt Reduction and Profit Strategies, IT and Software Solutions in order to improve our services.”

Among the new products to be launched this fall are Floodlight Corporate Video Production, Corporate Identity Packages, Mobile Web Pages and Digital Signage.

Clients now have the ability to introduce and promote the virtues and benefits of their brand to current and prospective customers by using powerful corporate videos on their websites and in other marketing venues like mobile devices.

On September 20^th 2011, Floodlight is holding a launch party at the Avenue Bar in the Prestige Hotel on Abbott Street. Please
join us from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm, to meet the Kelowna based Floodlight team, including Ted Farr, Andrew Gregson, David Anderson, Jerry Mason, Rudy Jaspers and John Gibson.

RSVP at 250-768-9415

Floodlight Business Solutions Group services clients across Canada with consultants in Kelowna, Ottawa, Kingston and Toronto.

Within the next year, Floodlight plans to expand further with more consultants in other key Canadian markets.

For more information please contact Donald Robichaud at 250-768-9415 and you can visit us on line at www.floodlight.ca.

Social Media Marketing ..Is it for You? Lets get Social!!

Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels such as:

Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels in Kelowna, Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto and throughout Canada.

• Micro blogging (Twitter)
• Business Networking (LinkedIn)
• Social Networking (Facebook, MySpace)
• Photo & Video Sharing (Flickr, YouTube)

This is a powerful strategy that will get you backlinks, attention and a great amounts of traffic.

There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website again and again.

Tradtional marketing like TV, Radio and the Newspaper are having their market share reduced.

If you are selling products/services or just publishing content social media marketing is a potential method that will make your site profitable over time with the appropriate strategy.

Those who ignore the benefits of social media usually fall into three categories;

1. the ones who don’t know much or anything about social media
2. the ones who are interested but don’t know how to use it
3. those who don’t believe in the value that a social media strategy can bring to any site or business.

Which one are you? Let's Get Social!

For more information contact:

Donald Robichaud
President
FloodLight – Build Your Business
250-768-9415
http://www.floodlight.ca/
http://donaldrobichaud.blogspot.com/

Internet Marketing Kelowna Online SEO

Internet Marketing Solutions Kelowna

Kelowna Marketing Support- at Floodlight we can help you through the marketing maze!

We work closely with our clients to identify and action the marketing strategies and opportunities that will grow and improve your business.
■ Create a quarterly marketing plan – Set the following year into four key quarters and then begin to target marketing dollars and resources to achieve your business goals
■Send out monthly Newsletter – Create a strategy to inform, educate and support all products and services to your past present and future clients. This program keeps you top of mind which becomes the branding of your organization.
■Blog Marketing – Re-purpose all relevant information to the blog so that you become the leaders in your field and utilize all the free internet tools made possible on Google to drive down traditional marketing costs.
■Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This includes, the Research of Key words, Develop search strategy, Optimize web content(tweaks), Link Building, Monitor and adjust
■Competitive Analysis- We then determine what your competitors are doing we look at how many links they have, where they are getting those links and the keywords they are optimizing for their websites. This gives us an edge as we can see what is working to get top results for your keywords. This analysis will allow us to implement strategies that should move your site above your competitors in the search engines.
■Localized Search Optimization – Local search sites are primarily supported by SEO for businesses that wish to be prominently featured when users search for specific products and services in specific locations. Local search optimization can be highly effective because it allows your services to be targeted very precisely to the search terms and location provided by the user.
■Analytics – Floodlightcan help you track your efforts and analyze the visitors to your Blog and website, and assist you in making better internet marketing decisions for your business.
■Social Media Optimization – Set up of accounts and tools to push out marketing message • Need a social media strategy that will incorporate Site-Specific Programs •Micro blogging (Twitter)
•Business Networking (LinkedIn)
•Social Networking (Facebook, MySpace)
•Photo & Video Sharing (Flickr, YouTube)
•Submissions to web based Articles Directories

■Link Building – What is your back link Strategy? – High rankings can ensure that your message is viewed first.One of the most important aspects of increasing your Google Page Rank The search engines still believe that back-links are an important factor in assessing your site, so until that changes, we still have to work at generating valuable back-links.
■YouTube Videos - Videos are a great way to promote your products and services. Signature Videos set the tome for your company, Testimonial Videos give you instant credibility with your consumers

Give us a call today to implement your Internet Marketing Plan.

Contact us today and start to Build Your Business!!

Floodlight – Build Your Business
Kelowna – Ottawa – Kingston – Toronto
1-888-768-9415
http://www.floodlight.ca/

New Internet Marketing Trends - Social Marketing

Internet Marketing or Online Marketing is a new way to promote your product and services through the web.
Your core marketing strategy stays the same as you raise your visibility in the target market while increasing sales and profits.

Today, Internet Marketing is considered the fastest and most economical medium for promoting product and business growth.

Internet marketing strategies cover various services such as search engine optimization (SEO), search newsletters, email marketing, copy writing, web development, blog posting, social media sites, pay per click and numerous others.

And now the power of social media, team buying and twitter, have changed the landscape of how people are finding out about local merchants in Kelowna and throughout Canada.

One internet marketing strategy that has caught on quickly is the Groupon and Twongo models, now in operation in Kelowna, Canada. This new marketing avenue harnesses the power of team buying and can truly drive more new business to your door.
These new marketing avenues are essentially an online coupon service with an immediate call to action, providing a platform to coordinate and facilitate group buying by consumers of retail business products.

The consumers are members of the local community who have chosen to join a free subscriber list. The products are provided by local business vendors seeking to increase their sales and to expand their consumer/client base by accessing the larger subscriber list.

Example One:

In one promotion 250 new visitors went to the website of a local pizza retailer and 157 vouchers of $25.00 were purchased by the subscribers within a 24 hour period. In the last two months, 67 of the sold coupons have been redeemed and his business was exposed to people who were not previously aware of his pizza business. At the end of 30 days the he received a cheque from the online services for his portion of the coupons sold.

In a previous marketing tactic, a door knocker promotion was used and 15,000 homes were targeted. In this venture $900.00 dollars of advertising capital was spent and only 18 coupons were redeemed.

In the past three years this pizza merchant has used radio, TV and print. At no time did any of these traditional marketing mediums issue back a cheque to this merchant.

Example Two:

In another case a local shoe merchant used Twitter to tweet out that he was having a 50% off sale and did so at 1:00 pm. By 3:00 pm the same afternoon he had eight people visit his store and 10 pairs of shoes were sold. He is now a frequent user of Twitter to keep his customers in the loop.

The same merchant used Twongo and the power of team buying to sell 230 discounted coupons against the purchase of regular priced shoes.

All money raised by the merchant was donated to the local food bank at Christmas and his store was featured on radio and in print, while donating $2,300 dollars to a great cause.

The marketing power of the internet has grown very fast in a short period of time and there is a whole new generation of shoppers who are looking for great value and great service.

Your job as a retailer in this internet age is to decide how you will market yourself so you can “Build Your Business”.

Donald Robichaud
FloodLight – Build Your Business
Kelowna / Ottawa
Email
1-888-768-9415
http://www.floodlightconsulting.com/

Kelowna Business Coaching Business Consulting: OBRG Networking Event Thursday November 25th – Wo...

Kelowna Business Coaching Business Consulting: OBRG Networking Event Thursday November 25th – Wo...: "We have all heard it before is there such a thing as work life balance? What simple things can you do to grow your business without leave ..."

Are you harnessing the Power of the internet to Market and Brand your business?

An Internet business coach teaches you how to successfully manage your business and then use the Internet to market, brand and promote your business online.

So much information exists today about marketing on the internet that it's difficult to know what to do or whom to trust. If you own any type of business, your search is over -- you've come to the right place!

At FloodLight we bring you the very best, most effective Marketing and Branding strategies that work for any service business and help you Build Your Business.

We help you get found on the Internet with proper copy and then, teach you how to set up your own marketing campaign that will deliver results.

Every single Marketing and Branding strategy discussed has been proven to effectively work for all our clients to help grow their business and increase the traffic to their websites.

Isn't it time you stopped struggling to make money and use the power of the internet to improve and grow your business through proven strategic internet marketing techniques proven to work for businesses just like yours.

For the price of costly Monthly Search Engine Optimization fees you can become a more savvy online business owner.

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Click here to get started today!

- Or call

1-250 -768-9415 Kelowna, Canada, USA, North America

Kelowna Online Marketing

Internet Business Coach / FloodLight