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	<title>Tom Chuong &#187; Marketing</title>
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		<title>Free Advertising Ideas For Small Businesses</title>
		<link>http://www.tomchuong.com/2011/12/08/free-advertising-ideas-for-small-businesses/</link>
		<comments>http://www.tomchuong.com/2011/12/08/free-advertising-ideas-for-small-businesses/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:36:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom Chuong</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.tomchuong.com/?p=1176</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the online world, it is important to &#8220;sell&#8221; your online brand so that it stands out above your competitors. That is where smart Internet marketing comes in handy. This ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In the online world, it is important to &#8220;sell&#8221; your online brand so that it stands out above your competitors. That is where smart Internet marketing comes in handy. This will help visitors find and remember you, which can result in more traffic and more profits. And if you&#8217;re a small business, you need to consider all of your marketing options before spending your hard earned money. Advertising for small business is easy for the experienced business person; however, others may struggle with the concept of using the Internet to market their small business. If you&#8217;re looking for free advertising ideas for small business, follow these tips to make your website stand out above the rest.</p>
<p>When email marketing, test both HTML and text versions of your email message. While you might think that the graphics possible in HTML would offer higher open rates, oftentimes it is the exact opposite. Text-based emails can be a surprisingly strong tool in your arsenal. They are less likely to be marked as spam and they typically feel more authentic to the reader.</p>
<p>Even if you are a one person business, use your website to give the impression that your business is huge. Use professional graphics, an organized layout, and a top of the line ordering system to make your business appear to be a giant of industry, even if it is just you in your home office.</p>
<p>Learn that improvements can always be made. Just because you think your website looks perfect, does not mean that it is. Look at competitor pages to see how and why they are showcasing their products and try to one-up them. There is no such thing as a perfect website and the sooner a website owner recognizes that, the sooner they can make positive changes.</p>
<p>Make sure your review speaks to everybody. Some readers want general information about the product, while some are looking for a very specific feature. Organize your review so that technical details are easy to find. Start off with a very general introduction that explains what the product does and then progress towards the details.</p>
<p>Reaching out to &#8216;influencers&#8217; online is an incredible marketing technique. &#8216;Influencers&#8217; are people whose messages reach a large number of people. They typically contribute to a blog frequently and tend to be involved in many online communities. You can have access to this large number of people and instigate them to action through an &#8216;influencer&#8217; if you can make friends with them, and present your product in a positive light.</p>
<p>Use social media wisely. Remember that social media is mostly word-of-mouth, and if you have a dissatisfied customer, things can quickly spiral out of control. Be prompt and courteous when addressing these issues, and you will gain, or re-gain, the trust of the customers who have been informed of the problem.</p>
<p>No matter what you state in your advertisements, make sure you provide evidence to support it. Many individuals do not trust what they read. If you include testimonials, studies, guarantees or references, you will seem much more credible and are more likely to get a sale. If you simply make statements without any proof, many people will simply dismiss your product and your business.</p>
<p>A very important tip for Internet marketing is to keep track of all site data. You should pay careful attention to all of the visitors for your site. Information such as where the visitors come from, what they do upon visiting the website, and how long they stay on the website are all important and should be analyzed regularly.</p>
<p>If you can offer some sort of consultation to your web visitors before they decide to purchase your product. This is a great internet marketing technique because people can talk directly to you and you can use your closing skills to seal the deal. Offer either a chat session online or provide a phone number where they can speak with you.</p>
<p>As you can see from the previous list of tips, Internet marketing can really make a difference in the strength of your online presence. It takes a lot of work, a lot of networking, and tons of patience, but it is all worth it in the end to have a successful online business.</p>
Tom Chuong is an SEO Expert with over 10 years of online marketing experience. If you have an ecommerce website and you need help with your SEO, SEM, or social media campaign, please contact me. I'll use my 10+ years of online marketing experience to help <a href="http://www.tomchuong.com">increase search engine ranking</a>, <a href="http://www.tomchuong.com/">increase sales with Adwords</a>, and <a href="http://www.tomchuong.com/">increase your brand awareness with Facebook and Twitter</a>. #1
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		<title>Best Way To Spend Less Money</title>
		<link>http://www.tomchuong.com/2011/09/12/best-way-to-spend-less-money/</link>
		<comments>http://www.tomchuong.com/2011/09/12/best-way-to-spend-less-money/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:41:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom Chuong</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.tomchuong.com/?p=542</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sir Francis Bacon once said, &#8220;Knowledge is power.&#8221;. Arguably, the more information you have, the longer it could take you to make a fast decision. Potentially, this delay could also ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Sir Francis Bacon once said, &#8220;Knowledge is power.&#8221;.</p>
<p>Arguably, the more information you have, the longer it could take you to make a fast decision. Potentially, this delay could also cost more money then you had anticipated, which later leads to frustration and irrational decision making.</p>
<p>During this phase of striving to &#8220;catch up&#8221;, you&#8217;re more susceptible to solutions that may or may not help you. Consequently, you&#8217;re now at the mercy of a savvy entrepreneur. He or she could simply initiate a sequence of affirmation, and you are now the proud owner of shiny new Widget A-16 much to your dismay.</p>
<p>For example, all websites regardless of it&#8217;s intended purpose need backlinks. Backlinks are used by Google, and other search engines to help them rank a website. Ideally, the more backlinks you acquire for your website, the higher it will rank in the search engines.</p>
<p>More or less, we all need traffic to our website or blog. To get targeted traffic, we need to build backlinks to our website.</p>
<p>The entrepreneur launched a backlinks building service at $59/month. The website also announced that the monthly fee will increase to $97/month within 30 days. You are not confident that this service is good so you wait.</p>
<p>Some time has passed. You revisit the website to find the monthly fee has increased to $97/month.</p>
<p>Nowadays, most best selling Internet marketing products or services were created on this premise.</p>
<p>These entrepreneurs realized that there are other companies offering similar services so he/she needs to create the most compelling headline, mesmerizing video, or provide the refutable testimonials or else they won&#8217;t get your business.</p>
<p>Assuming that the entrepreneur wants to limit the total number of customers he wants to support, the previously posted price increase may actually encourage the remaining group to buy now at a higher price or alienate them all together.</p>
<p>However, if you had waited until the last minute to buy, you are now paying more for something that you could have used at a lower fee. In theory, it&#8217;s easier and less riskier to buy a product or service at a lower price then to wait and pay more for it later.</p>
<p>In a nutshell and once you&#8217;ve gathered enough information, I advocate the purchase of any product or service that may help you business grow faster. Use it for 30, 60, or 90 days, and if it doesn&#8217;t produced the results you&#8217;re seeking, cancel it immediately. Worse case scenario, you&#8217;ve tried it once so next time you will make a more informed decision.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>How To Leverage Network Marketing</title>
		<link>http://www.tomchuong.com/2011/03/28/how-to-leverage-network-marketing/</link>
		<comments>http://www.tomchuong.com/2011/03/28/how-to-leverage-network-marketing/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Mar 2011 05:58:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom Chuong</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.tomchuong.com/?p=1148</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From finding the right program to receiving the right training, many people shy away from network marketing simply because they believe it&#8217;s too complicated to succeed in. In this article, ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>From finding the right program to receiving the right training, many people shy away from network marketing simply because they believe it&#8217;s too complicated to succeed in. In this article, we&#8217;ll go over a few easy-to-implement and useful tips that will help you out tremendously, in the field of network marketing.</p>
<p>To gain a valuable network for marketing you&#8217;re going to not only need people skills, but to be able to spot valuable clients. If you spend too much time with a client that doesn&#8217;t produce results, you have essentially lost a lot more potential clients. Be smart when marketing and choosing who to place in your network.</p>
<p>Treat yourself at least once a week to something you absolutely adore. If you&#8217;re working hard towards a goal, you will be highly motivated. If that goal will take months or years to get to, it may be hard to stay motivated. Buying something nice every week, even if it&#8217;s just a cup of ice cream, will give you the incentive to keep driving towards your bigger goals.</p>
<p>Let your prospects dominate the conversation for network marketing success. Have them become the star of the conversation, let them tell you about their life, family, hopes, and dreams. You are there to do only one thing, listen. Because while you are listening to them, they are telling you how to recruit them.</p>
<p>Your network marketing telephone calls should never run longer than 15 minutes, no matter what. Let them know that you have to run, but you can give them a call again in a few days when you have a second, or set up a time to meet in person. Make it appear that you are a busy person who has many other leads to speak with.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t forget the phone. Now that everyone is using the Internet for network marketing, you might not be as likely to use the phone. Yet the phone can be an invaluable tool. A warm voice on the other end of the line is persuasive enough to make sales and to make recruits.</p>
<p>An important tip to consider when it comes to network marketing is to make sure that you include LinkedIn as a resource. This is critical because this company is a power player in terms of professional networking these days. Build up a good reputation and a good amount of leads will come your way.</p>
<p>Become obsessed with your own goals to see results in network marketing. It is the type of career that you have to constantly be involved with and thinking of. Networking marketing does not run itself; you have to run your market. Keep your goals always in mind and you will keep working towards them.</p>
<p>Recognize your value-building statements and use them in your presentations. You want to let your prospects know what they are going to get out of this. Keep bringing up the prospect and their family. Phrases like &#8220;Your family will benefit by&#8230;&#8221;, &#8220;What this means for you is&#8230;&#8221;, and &#8220;The value to you is&#8230;&#8221;, will keep people engaged in truly imagining themselves working with your product.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t waste your precious time on prospective team members you don&#8217;t know anything about. Have your team members talk to the applicant to determine whether he is a good candidate for your organization or not. Spend time with the applicants your pre-screening team approves so you can focus most of your time on your business.</p>
<p>Follow up with any prospects. Having a good follow up system is very important. An auto email responder and a phone call will both work great. Set up an auto responder on your email. This will help you to provide follow up and you won&#8217;t have to remember who you actually made contact with.</p>
<p>An important tip to consider when it comes to network marketing is that you need to establish a set amount of time per day to working solely on network marketing and not anything else. This critical because this is not an area of your buisness that you can neglect.</p>
<p>When you decide to go into network marketing, be aggressive in your research about the company. Research the financial reports, the upper management and the product itself. Make sure that you are getting into a company that can sustain itself so that you can have a good chance of succeeding once you start.</p>
<p>An important tip to consider when it comes to network marketing is the fact that you need money to make money. This is important to know because since this type of marketing takes time, you need to have assets that will keep you afloat until the marketing efforts take off.</p>
<p>Find ways to connect with the people you are trying to recruit into your network. If they feel that you are simply looking to build your own business, they are not going to be interested in the opportunity. However, if you show them that you care about making them money by proving to them that it will work for them personally, they are much more likely to say yes to your proposals.</p>
<p>An important tip to consider when it comes to network marketing is the fact that you can compare yourself to others&#8217; success for goal-setting purposes only. Never judge your own success on others, though. This is an important morale builder because you are in your own unique situation with your own personal hurdles.</p>
<p>A great tip that will help you with network marketing is to always read up on the subject and learn as much as you can. The market is always changing so if you want a leg up on your competition, you&#8217;ll want to learn as much as you can.</p>
<p>Now you should see exactly why network marketing can be so lucrative. The tips you&#8217;ve read in this article, shine a light on how simple the process can be for an informed marketer. If you implement them the right way and continue to learn and grow as a marketer, the sky is truly the limit on how far you can go.</p>

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		<title>SEOLinkVine Review</title>
		<link>http://www.tomchuong.com/2010/10/24/seolinkvine-review/</link>
		<comments>http://www.tomchuong.com/2010/10/24/seolinkvine-review/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2010 19:10:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom Chuong</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[article submission]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[grid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[link building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[link building service]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEOLinkVine Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[slider]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.tomchuong.com/?p=429</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s a plethora of semi-automatic link building services on the Internet. Recently, I&#8217;d sign-up for SEOLinkVine and tried it for about three months. During that time, I had submitted 29 ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There&#8217;s a plethora of semi-automatic link building services on the Internet. Recently, I&#8217;d sign-up for SEOLinkVine and tried it for about three months.</p>
<p>During that time, I had submitted 29 articles to SEOLinkVine and SEOLinkVine sent these articles to hundreds of participating blogs.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not going to sugar-coat this software review even though I&#8217;m a big fan of Brad Callen&#8217;s products.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the results of my article submissions if I was a really lazy Internet marketer who&#8217;s looking for a publish and forget it service. This is an actual screen shot from my account.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-436" title="2010-10-24_1425_seolinkvine_v2" src="http://www.tomchuong.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2010-10-24_1425_seolinkvine_v2.jpg" alt="SEOLinkVine" width="320" height="130" /></p>
<p>As you can see from this chart, my articles were submitted to hundreds of blogs and about 16% of them approved my articles. I don&#8217;t think this article submission service is worth the $67/month fee especially if I&#8217;m being approved for about 45 articles per month.</p>
<p>The total cost for this service was about $201. According to my calculations, I&#8217;d received a total of 202 backlinks to my websites. The cost per link is about $1.00. That&#8217;s not such a bad deal if you actually see your webpages elevate because of these backlinks.</p>
<p>Currently, I am still waiting for these targeted webpages to climb Google&#8217;s Top 10. <img src='http://www.tomchuong.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':-)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>In this market, that may be a good deal considering other services may be charging more than $1.00 for a good backlink. Don&#8217;t forget that these backlinks are considered contextual text links because they&#8217;re part of the articles.</p>
<p>Would I recommend it to you? No, I would not recommend it because I think it&#8217;s a waste of money. If you still want to try SEOLinkVine, <a href="http://bit.ly/aNFWqL">click on this link now</a>.</p>
<p>You might even find a better value from <a href="http://bit.ly/9x6jXY" target="_self">ArtitcleRanks</a>. What&#8217;s cool about AR is that they have a monthly plan and a pay as you go package. You can test AR without a long term commitment to see if it&#8217;ll work for you. Keep in mind that past performance is no guarantee of future results and ANY link building system is contingent on the service provider adapting and changing according to the constant changes of the search engines.</p>
<p><a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=sDH3yuyg8bk&amp;subid=0&amp;offerid=101744.1&amp;type=10&amp;tmpid=25&amp;RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.jr.com/microsoft/pe/MSI_B2M_hy_00012/" target="_blank">$24.99 &#8211; Microsoft B2M-00012 Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 </a></p>
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		<title>Are you a mailing list junkie?</title>
		<link>http://www.tomchuong.com/2010/10/15/are-you-a-mailing-list-junkie/</link>
		<comments>http://www.tomchuong.com/2010/10/15/are-you-a-mailing-list-junkie/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Oct 2010 17:45:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom Chuong</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jonathan Leger]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mailing list]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pitching a new product]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pitching a new service]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.tomchuong.com/?p=411</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For once, I would like to see an online marketer do what they preach. Arguably, there&#8217;s no shortage of online marketers who is always preaching about how great some product ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For once, I would like to see an online marketer do what they preach. </p>
<p>Arguably, there&#8217;s no shortage of online marketers who is always preaching about how great some product or service is to his list. These excited promoters are raving and ranting about why the people on the mailing list should sign-up immediately if they want to take advantage of this &#8220;early bird special&#8221;.</p>
<p>Not once have I seen some guy say, &#8220;Hey Guys n&#8217; Gal! I&#8217;ve been using this product/service for over 3 months now and have seen great results. Here&#8217;s some proof. I made X amount of dollars with this product/service and you can also do the same too&#8221;.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, here&#8217;s the typical pitch. &#8220;Mr. X is a great friend of mine (in reality, they started working together about 30 days ago), and he&#8217;s launching a new product/service and I had to wrestled him to give my subscribers an early bird price. If you sign-up through this special link<br />
www.mysubcribersaredumb.com/special_price_for_dumbies, you will get this revolutionary product/service for only $97. Mr. X will be raising his price in the next 7 days to $197 so you must act now! I don&#8217;t know how long I can keep Mr. X from raising his price. I&#8217;ve reserved 100 spots for my subscribers, but you must order before midnight October 31, 2010.&#8221;</p>
<p>Following this initial email, you will be bombarded with an plethora of more emails before the final deadline. In most cases, many subscribers will actually order the product/service in the first email because it&#8217;s something that they need NOW, but may never get to or ever use again.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m willing to bet that these &#8220;early adopters&#8221; or purchasers of these products/services launches may have already accumulated a plethora of products/services, ebooks, DVDs, etc&#8230;that they have bought over the years and it&#8217;s probably collecting computer dust and not being used at all.</p>
<p>They may have tried it for a month or so and have found it too difficult to use or maintain and have decided to ditch the product/service for something new or shinier.</p>
<p>If you think I am talking about you, then maybe you might want to consider changing your buying habits or unsubscribing from these pitch heavy mailing lists.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;m doing. Follow a list owner for 30 days and see if there&#8217;s any true value in the list. A list has true value when you&#8217;re learning new stuff and the list owner is not charging you anything to learn basic stuff that can be research online. Most importantly, a mailing list is really valuable when the author shares his own personal experiences with the list. He/She is  presenting information that is useful and informative enough for you to use or try right away.</p>
<p>One of my all-time favorite blogger/mailing list owner is <a href="http://www.jonathanleger.com/">Jonathan Leger</a>. Jonathan is the only blogger I know that writes about real world experience and provides insight information that you can use immediately. His latest blog posting about a <a href="http://www.jonathanleger.com/business-lessons-from-a-9-year-old/">brilliant 9 year old boy</a> was truly inspirational to me. The young boy&#8217;s story reminds me of my paper route when I was around his age.</p>
<p>If you do nothing else today, I highly suggest that you click on the link above and subscribe to Jonathan Leger&#8217;s blog immediately. I am certain you will learn something very useful within a matter of minutes or I will give you free website hosting as a bonus just for trying. By the way, Jonathan and I are not working on this blog posting. In fact, he probably doesn&#8217;t even know that I am one of his biggest fan. For me, I really enjoying reading and commenting on some of his insightful blog postings and using some of his great products/services.</p>
<p>Stay tune for more on this &#8220;riveting&#8221; topic&#8230;</p>
<p><a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=sDH3yuyg8bk&#038;subid=0&#038;offerid=101744.1&#038;type=10&#038;tmpid=25&#038;RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.jr.com/olympus/pe/OLM_STY6000BLU/" target="_blank">$179.99 &#8211; Olympus STY6000 10 Megapixel Stylus Tough 6000 Digital Camera &#8211; Blue </a></p>
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