Just the other day, I was listening to a recording of a speech by Joe Sugarman* and Joe said, “One good path to success is to learn all the proven rules and meticulously follow them.

Another path is to occasionally break all the rules, because breakthroughs come only from breaking rules.”  Resonates with me; as you know, I wrote a whole book based on breaking rules.

On one hand, I’m cautious about innovation; pioneers usually come home full of arrow; it’s often costly and time consuming…and I am always much more interested in “what works” than a new idea.

However, as Joe said, OCCASIONALLY, or I might say, at carefully chosen time, you have no alternative but to be the pioneer in order to move forward and in order to stand out from the crowd. It is, of course, the minority of times that you successfully innovate that you get noticed for, not the majority of times you successfully follow an already plowed path.

(*In case you don’t know, Joe Sugarman is a mail-order pioneer:  irst to sell electronic calculators via direct-response ads, first to use 800#’s.  You may know him via his infomercials or QVC appearances for Blu-Blockers. But his JS&A ads and catalogs preceded The Sharper Image and led in selling various electronic gadgets.)

I think the best times to innovate are when you are absolutely convinced that the conventional wisdom; the already plowed path; the crowd is wrong.

Just as an example, when I was getting started in the speaking business, everybody seemed to operate under the policy of billing clients for fees and expenses after their engagements (anything else was viewed as impolite and unprofessional), and most speakers who sold product from the platform sort of begged the clients for permission, and often sacrificed that opportunity.

Very early on, I determined that being in the banking and collections business did not serve my purposes very well at all – nor did speaking only for wages. So I insisted on a 50% fee deposit to take a date off the calendar, balance and travel expenses paid on ?site at the speech, and I refused dates where I could not also offer my materials.

At the time, peers criticized me; told companies would never accept such terms; and called ‘unethical’ by agents and bureaus. Today, my payment policies are the norm in the profession.

Another example: at a time when every vendor in a particular niche was offering only very expensive services requiring long-term contracts, I copied their marketing method but used it to sell a substitute product at a very small price (and quickly took in a couple million dollars) – I was convinced they were idiotically leaving a lot of motived but unsatisfied customers behind by not offering a low price option.

An interesting survey of selected, successful, profitable large corporations turned up 74% that said they’d achieve their first big success with either a unique product or a distinctive way of doing business, although this breakthrough may not have come along until they had been in business for many years. Note the word: first.

I also know many companies that are able to subsequently build on that first breakthrough more conservatively, to grow and stabilize their businesses.

The bottom-line, I guess, is that you gotta gamble. You try to gamble only when you must OR when circumstances look so favorable that it is irresistible, but you gotta gamble.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world.

Driving traffic (or “visitors”) to your web site is one of the most critical aspects of having an online presence. You may have a beautifully designed web site but if people do not know who you are or cannot find your business online than it really doesn’t matter.

Unfortunately, many business owners believe that they must invest a lot of money through paid advertising to develop an online presence. However, there are various ways you can drive traffic to your web site without spending a dime.

So, let’s look at three free and easy strategies you can implement to drive traffic to your web site.

Strategy 1:  List Your Business in Google Places

Today, more and more people search for businesses online than anywhere else. So, it is extremely important to list your business in the search engines, especially the king of all search engines, Google.

More and more people use Google to search for local businesses, instead of phone books.  And when you perform a search at Google with a query that includes a city name, there is a good chance that Google will automatically pull some of the Google Places Listings into the search results.

Thus, if you want your business to show up in local searches, you should list your business with Google Places. You can literally create a listing within minutes and it doesn’t cost a thing. You simply log in to your Google account or, if you don’t have one, you can create a new account within seconds.

The first and foremost reason we publish our newsletter twice per week on our blog is so people who visit our web site can see all the great content that we publish to help entrepreneurs. This allows our valuable subscribers (like you) to easily check out any of the past issues at any time.

The second reason, although selfishly, is to help our web site rank higher in the search engines. Google and other search engines often sends us free traffic to those pages on our blog when someone is searching in a search engine for content that is related to the topic of the article.

In other words, if someone enters a search term into a search engine that matches the words contained in one of our articles, then that article may appear in the search results and get visibility. How high it appears in the search results depends on a variety of complex factors that are outside of the scope of this article.

But if you use this strategy, make sure your blog has an opt-in to a free or valuable offer like in the above example from our web site. That will allow you to get the visitor onto your mailing list and build a relationship with them.

Strategy 3:  Article Marketing

Another great way to drive traffic to your web site is through article marketing. This is basically where you write various articles and distribute them through numerous article directories.

The benefits of article marketing are two-fold. First, article marketing not only gets visitors to read your articles, but also provides the reader with an opportunity to go directly to your web site to get more information about your business.

Second, article marketing can also help improve the ranking of your web site from the search engines.

But in order to actually get traffic from article marketing, you will need to list your web site in the author bio at the bottom of the article.

For more details on article marketing, see Issue #21 where Denise shares her favorite strategies for getting lots of free exposure for your business through article marketing.

With these 3 strategies, you can start to drive traffic to your web site today without any cost. You don’t need to have deep pockets, like your competitors may have, if you know how to do it for free. All you have to do is simply get started..

Today I want to talk to you about content. Content is king. Content is everything. I want to drill into your consciousness today that you want to become the master of High Content, High Value. There are so many reasons to offer high content, high value–not only in your marketing, but also in your offerings. One of the reasons is that there is a lot of fluff out there from your competitors.

You see, your prospects have choices and they’re being bombarded with so much information and a lot of it is fluff. A lot of it is not good enough and it doesn’t go really deep. I want you to start positioning yourself as the person who provides the highest value out there, even when you’re giving stuff away for free.

Let me share with you some examples. I offer my How to Attract All the Clients You Need free CD at ClientAttraction.com. It’s a full hour–and it’s 100% free. The shipping is free, the distribution, everything. I pay for it all and I send it to the far reaches of the world. Once I started offering it, I started attracting lots more clients and as a result started building my list very quickly. Why? Because the content was very good. Not only is this an Irresistible Free Offer, but the content was good.

Now imagine if I’d sent this free CD, but it was a massive sales pitch with zero content or even just a little bit of content. What impression do you think I would make on people around the world who were interested in who I was and what I had to offer? Not much of an impression if there was no content in there! But I do the opposite and I welcome you to do the same. Give more content. Give more value, especially in your free stuff. Blow people away.

I want you to plant the seed in your prospect’s minds that, “Wow, if she or he is offering that much high content and high value in her or his FREE stuff, I can’t imagine how much more there is in the paid stuff.” They’re seeing the tip of the iceberg, knowing there’s just so much more underneath if they start working with you. When you give high content and high value, you become irresistible.

I want you to think about a time that you went to see a speaker. Let’s say it was a Tuesday night and you spent time away from your friends and family and you paid money or you schlepped to go see that speaker and you got pitched the whole time or there was so very little content that was applicable. You went home and you were probably like, “Wow, I just can’t believe it. I’ll never work with that person.” Conversely, imagine going to see a speaker who gave and gave above and beyond and you got so much value. Are you not so much more inclined to work with that person?

I know that I am because that person is generous and they have integrity and they have authenticity and they over deliver. I love hiring somebody like that.

We have all heard the stories about people working from home making thousands of dollars weekly selling products online. They may be a neighbor, a friend, a friend of a friend or even a family member.

It may sound too good to be true, or out of your reach. But the good news is that anyone can sell information products, because the technology tools available today make it super-easy to package information into a format that others can benefit from.

In fact, people buy all kinds of information. Information products are some of the best-selling products of all time. Imagine how many people search every day to learn how to do something. It’s endless.

Information products provide the answers that people are looking for, such as how to start or grow a business, how to lose weight, how to get a date, etc. And the best part is that everyone, including you, can turn your experiences, knowledge, or research into a product.

So, let’s look at four strategies you can use to make money selling information products.

Strategy 1: Sell Products In A Physical or Digital Format

An information product can be as simple as a single book or report, or it can be as comprehensive as a training program that includes a book/report, resource links, video, and/or audio files.

For example, you can use a Word processing program such as Microsoft Word, to create reports that can be turned into books. These books can then be printed into a fancy book format like a professionally published book through numerous printing services, including one offered by Lulu.com. The report can also be printed on a nice printer or delivered to your customer digitally. Reports are one of the easiest information products you can create to make money, especially if the information is in high demand.

Generally speaking, you can also increase sales exponentially if you add other items or bonuses to your core product. But don’t feel as if you need to have tons of items or bonuses created to get started. You can start selling information products with just a single report or book, and then add more to it as you improve your product offering.

If you add a bonus, the bonus can be a free report, another one of your products, special coaching, or some other value-added product or service that would compliment the main product.

If you however decide to sell the product in a physical format, you should charge enough to cover the printing costs. And, don’t forget with a physical product, you will also have shipping and handling costs. So, a great way to recoup some of your actual hard costs is to charge a few extra dollars as part of the handling fee.

With a digital product, your costs to produce the product are minimal when compared to a physical product. Your customer simply downloads the file(s) from your web site or from another service for instant access. They can also access the product files from a secure customer web site, if you have created one.

Another strategy you can use to make money selling info products is by using membership sites.

Strategy 2.  Sell Subscriptions To A Membership Site

Selling subscriptions to a membership site is also a great strategy on how you can make money with information products. The customer pays a certain fee each month just to have access to the information in the membership site. If they cancel their membership, they can no longer access the membership site.

Inside the membership site, you can put various products, tools, resources, links to third party products, or pretty much anything that the customer would find valuable on the subject matter.

However, the type of information that you include will need to be something that people would want to refer to over a period of time – otherwise, they would have no incentive to keep coming back and renewing their subscription.

You also have a lot of flexibility in how you structure a membership site. Membership fees can also vary in price, especially if your membership site is set up with different access levels. In other words, if a member wants access to more products or content, then the member pays more money a month for that feature.

The great thing about a membership site is that you can put anything you want in it. You can upload all your products, have an interactive community forum, and even post replays of webinars and/or teleseminars you have conducted.

Strategy 3.  Sell Webinars and/or Teleseminars As A Product

Webinars and/or teleseminars are way for you to build credibility with a targeted audience, as well as an avenue to market and sell your information products.

For example, you can record the webinar for later playback by those who could not participate during the live program. This not only establishes a rapport with your audience but also lends credibility to you as an expert. Then you simply turn the webinar recording into a separate product and sell it.

But what if you don’t have time to do a webinar over and over again? The good news is that you can automate them. There are numerous tools that now allow you to automate webinars so that they appear live. You just set the days and times of the week that you want the webinar to play. You record the webinar one-time and the system does the rest.

The point is that webinars and teleseminars are a way you can create and sell information products. You can also create information products from people that you interview, which is the next strategy.

Strategy 4.  Turn Expert Interviews Into Products

You can make money by turning an interview or a series of interviews with an expert or experts into a product. You can then sell the product in physical or digital form. Great thing about interviews is that you can do them from practically anywhere and at anytime.

For example, you can conduct an interview at a conference, during a webinar or teleseminar, or in your office. You then turn that interview into a product, such as by selling the audio or video of the interview, along with a transcript of the interview. This is a fast and effective way to make money for your business.

So, there you have it! Four strategies on how to make money selling info products. Pick one that sounds good to you and get started.

In Issue #86, Denise and I shared with you Dan Kennedy’s insights on how important it is to test your methods of advertising to grow your business. Testing helps you to determine what advertising campaigns are working and what are not.

Another way though to grow your business is to strengthen the relationship you have with existing customers. People will buy from you because they like what you are selling or because they simply like you. This leads them to want to spend money with you, which in turn leads to sales.

Existing customers are a literal gold mine. In fact, this may surprise you, but existing customers are actually the best source of “new business”.

If you think about this for a minute, it makes perfect sense. Your existing customers already liked you so much that they bought from you once. And it would be so cheap to reach out to them compared to the cost it would be to reach a totally new customer. This means that if you show your existing customers enough appreciation, they will continue to buy from you again and again.

Let’s look at four easy strategies you can implement with your existing customers to increase profits.

Strategy 1:  Mail Special Offers & Discounts

A quick way to increase your profits is to mail discount coupons or other special offers to your existing customers. You can do this as part of their original shipment or at a later date. You should always be looking for opportunities to give them another incentive to buy something else from you.

You can either send a special discount coupon by itself, or you can send the discount along with something else you needed to send to them.

For example, if you are shipping them your product, stick another offer or discount inside the package. If they have purchased your digital product, add another related product or service to your sales process. The point is to look for ways to keep them buying.

You can also include an offer for a related item at the bottom of your customer’s receipt, which is the next strategy.

Strategy 2:  Include An Offer For A Related Item On Customer’s Receipt

Another effective strategy to keep your customers in buy mode is to put an offer of a related product on the bottom of their receipt. Most customers will review their receipt to make sure they are not being over-charged and/or get other information about their order, such as when they will receive it.

So, while you have their attention, why not go ahead and offer them something else that is related to the product or service that they just purchased from you? Make sure you give them a way to accept the offer (on your web site, by calling you, going back in to your business, or whatever makes sense for your offer).

Grocery stores are notorious for this. How many times have you seen a coupon at the bottom of your receipt for a related item you just purchased? I just recently bought a bottle of laundry detergent at Wal-Mart over the weekend and at the bottom of my receipt was a coupon for a $1.00 off fabric softener from the same manufacturer to be redeemed by a specific date. The fabric softener was a related item to the laundry detergent.

You can also double your profits overnight with your existing customers by simply asking them to refer their friends to your business.

Strategy 3:  Refer A Friend (Referrals)

A third strategy, and one of the most overlooked strategies, is to ask your existing customers to refer a friend. Don’t be afraid to ask them to do this for you because many will. You can even reward your customers for their referrals, such as giving them a free gift once they refer a certain number of new customers to you.

Remember, many of your existing customers may not even think about referring business to you, until you ask. Most happy customers will be glad to either tell their friends about you or give you the names of some of their friends that you can contact.

You will be amazed at how many referrals you will get, especially if you make it easy for them to do that doesn’t take a lot of their time. You can do this online or by using a printed form for them to fill out.

You can also offer them a special bonus by entering the contact information of 3-5 of their friends. For example, if you are a dry cleaning business, you can give them $50 off their next purchase if they refer 5 friends.

The same is true for an online business. You can give them another one of your digital products for free or give them an irresistible gift that you know they will surely want. The point is most existing customers will refer business if you simply ask, and even more will give referrals if you offer an incentive.

And, last but not least, don’t forget to reconnect with those customers who may not have ordered from you in a while.

Strategy 4:  Reactivate Dead Customers

Reactivating dead customers is another profit generator that you should not forget about. These are the customers you haven’t seen or even heard from in a while. You should reach out and let them know they have been missed.

They may have simply forgotten about you because they got busy or doing other things. It is not your customer’s job to remember to do business with you. It’s your job to remind them.

For example, you can send them a Thanksgiving card expressing your gratitude with a special offer inside. This can be as simple as a “Thank You Savings Certificate” for them to use within the next few days to receive a discount off a specific item or even a free gift if they act now. This gets them thinking about you again and remembering why they liked your product or service in the first place. They obviously liked your company enough to buy from you once.

So, there you have it. By simply reaching out to your existing customers, you can double your profits with these four simple strategies.

Jynell and I have talked in other newsletters about how video sites like YouTube provide everyone the chance to broadcast their message worldwide…and have shared some strategies on how to best leverage these opportunities to grow your business.

So unless you have been living in a case, you are already well aware of how popular online video has become.  Even young children are posting videos to YouTube and other video sites to share their creativity.

For example, my 6-year-old daughter loves to create videos on her iPod Touch to show off her toys.  She keeps asking me this:  “hey mommy, can we post my video to YouTube?”.

I have not posted her videos to YouTube for my own privacy reasons.  But my point is that even my 6-year-old daughter recognizes the power of YouTube and video sites like it.  That’s pretty profound if you stop and think about it.

But what causes one video to stand out over another one?  Sometimes a particular video becomes popular because the video is funny, creative, or just bizarre.  But for business videos, you can’t always get by with bizarre.

While it is easy to broadcast your message, it is not always easy to deliver that message in a way that your intended audience finds helpful. After all, it is not like
most of us are professional actors from Hollywood, or have ever worked for a local news station to learn the ropes.

In reality, it takes some practice to become persuasive on video, and in person.  But the good news is that there are certain steps you can take to make your videos and live presentations more compelling.  And it is a skill that anyone can learn.

The rest of this article will look at 3 Hollywood tricks that you can use to make your videos and presentations way more compelling.

Hollywood Secret #1 – Don’t Memorize the Script

For starters, you don’t want to memorize the script.  You just need to memorize or review the key points.  You never want to follow the script word for word or you will sound very robotic.  It will sound much more natural if you just go with what you know from a list of key points.

So how can you stay on track without following a script?  Well, you start with writing an outline.  The outline should have enough details that you can remember what points you wanted to make, but where you can say them in your own words.

Practice telling the story from the outline, and if you keep forgetting key points, add them to the outline too.  But again, don’t write down everything verbatim.  Just keep refining the outline until it conveys all the key points at a high level, and where it is super-easy for you to talk from it.

You want to get to a point where your outline is so well done that you can tell the story very efficiently from just those few words jogging your memory.  It is so much easier to talk from your knowledge and experience than it is to read from a script.

And the more comfortable you are with your knowledge base, the more you will let go of the fact that you are on camera.

Thus, once you have an outline that you are happy with, start recording.  Take a deep breath and then get right into what you know. When you start thinking about the camera, it gets into the way of what you know.

Hollywood Secret #2 – Keep A Smile On Your Face

Smiling is so important whether you are appearing on camera, or are just recording your voice by itself. You get warmer in your voice and your overall personality by smiling. A physical smile will change everything in your presentation.

With a long message, you should start with a smile and then fade it away.  You should then smile periodically as you are talking.

If you are reading from a script, after every 3 sentences, you should put a smile back on your face. This keeps a natural tempo in your presentation, as well as keeps the audience engaged.

To make a smile look natural, think of something that makes you smile, such as your child, your pet, etc.  When you put that thought into your head, a smile will naturally come.

If you maintain a real true interest in what you are saying, it will also help you produce a smile.

You may have your own strategies that help you with smiling.  Try those out too.  But it is a known fact in Hollywood and with the TV studios that smiling is a critical ingredient to keeping the audience interested.

In fact, you should watch some news reporters and study how they introduce smiles into their conversations.  They do it in a way that seems natural.  But they always do it, and the reason they do is because it works.

Hollywood Secret #3 – Treat the Camera Like It Is Another Person

Another Hollywood trick is to treat the camera like it is another person in the room and react to it.  You may be tempted to look at the camera man, but try not to.  It takes some practice to learn to treat the camera as a “real” person that is sitting there with you and interact with it.

So if there are multiple people who you are talking with, you should look the other person in the eye when you are talking to them.  But you then need to turn to the camera and look directly at the camera so you are looking into the eyes of the viewers too.

Again, treat the camera lens as another person you are talking with, and rotate who you look at as you have the conversations.

Again, you can watch some TV round table shows for examples on how the news reporters do this.  They make it seem so natural that you don’t even realize what is going on.

If you just put these three strategies into practice in your videos, you will be way ahead of everyone else who is just flying by the seat of their pants.  Give these strategies a try and let us know about your results!

Having a social media presence online is more important than ever…more and more businesses have taken notice of this fact. Businesses, both large and small, are using social media to stay ahead of their competition, to gain exposure, and to increase sales of their products or services.

As a business owner, if you have not embraced and started using social media for your business, then you may be missing out. This is especially true if do not have time in your busy schedule to focus on creating a social media presence for your business.

If this is the case, then you may want to think about hiring a social media manager to do it for you. A social media manager can put together the right kind of portfolio for your business to attract new customers, promote your products or services, and to communicate with others online.

For example, a social media manager can update your web site on a weekly basis with new events, product specials or coupons, can send emails to your customers, can create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other social networking sites, and can participate and interact with others within social communities. In essence, the social media manager becomes the personality for your business.

So, let’s look at three strategies of how a social media manager can create an online social media presence for your business. You can also use these same strategies yourself if you do not want to hire a social media manager for your business. Or, even if you are thinking about becoming a social media manager to make some extra money, then you can also use these same strategies for your clients.

Strategy 1:  Participate in Blogs

Reciprocity is a powerful thing for a business. It can gain exposure for a business and increase sales by doing nothing more than just interacting with people and providing helpful information. A great way to do this is through participating in the online communities that billions of others participate in each and every day.

Blogs are a perfect example of how to use the Internet to drive traffic to your business. Blogs attract like-minded people who get together because they are looking for the same thing. By commenting in blogs, a community of fans can be quickly built up by simply sharing knowledge and ideas.

Blogs also help to increase a web site’s ranking with Google and other search engines by getting tons of free quality inbound links. For example, Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. Then presumably, the more votes that are cast for a page, the more important that page is. Well, this partially true.

The other part of the equation is to look at the authority of the site. The authority of a site is how much value Google gives it. For example, if a web site has inbound links from schools and universities (.edu) or the government (.gov), Google perceives that web site as being more important, since these types of entities already have high page ranks. The same is true with blogs as some blogs have higher page ranks versus others.

In searching for blogs to comment on, it may be useful to install a plugin (such as SEO Quake for Firefox) that indicates the page rank of that particular site. For example, if some sites allow commenting and have a higher page rank than others, then start by commenting on the higher page rank sites first. That will pass along more credibility to your own site.

Then search through these blogs and make relevant comments to what is already being said. If the site allows for anchor text to be included in a signature block, then make sure key words are used that you want your web site to rank for. Then put the URL of your web site behind those key words.

Another way to gain exposure for your business is to participate in forums.

Strategy 2:  Participate In Forums

A certain knowledge is exhibited when you or your social media manager participate in forum discussions by asking questions or answering another user. If the answer contains good information, readers will get interested in learning more about your business. This can lead to more visits to your web site, assuming that your web site link is posted in a signature block or anchor text, if allowed by the forum.

Forum participation can also help your web site get indexed on major search engines. People who are searching for answers to certain topics may come across forums and will encounter posts about your business. In other words, by participating in forums, major search engines may pick up on these posts, which in turn may bring more traffic to your web site.

I have personally participated in several forums over the years for our company and we still receive traffic from those old posts that I did years ago. In fact, Denise and I probably have received thousands of visitors to our web site over the years based upon my participation in forums. But again, please make sure your web site URL is included (and anchor text if allowed) in the signature block.

A third strategy is to comment in Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

Strategy 3:  Post Comments in Facebook and Twitter

We all know, Facebook and Twitter are two of the biggest social networking services today. Millions of users post personal and business information about themselves every day. From chatting with friends, sending birthday wishes, posting events or even announcing a new product, Facebook and Twitter are the social places where people hang out. These are perfect places to gain exposure for your business.

Information, knowledge and ideas can be shared that link to other sites. For example, when someone asks a question on Twitter, a detailed response can be sent in a blog post that is linked to Facebook and vice versa. With the plug-ins and apps available with these social media tools, tons of people can be helped in just one click. You or your social media manager can also use Facebook’s group chat feature to interact in different groups and share with different sets of people.

There you have it, three strategies of how you or your social media manager can create an online social media presence for your business.

While attending a business event last week, I noticed a gentleman walking around with a video camera talking to the attendees. The gentleman was asking a number of people if they would provide a brief testimonial of why they liked working with this business and its quality of service.

The guy then walked up to me and asked that I do the same. Of course, since I have been a patron of this business for a number of years, I was happy to oblige. I then asked the gentleman what the video was for and he replied, “marketing purposes.”

Like this business, videos are a great marketing tool. You can use videos to showcase features and benefits of your products or services, to promote your business, and to attract customers.

Online video marketing is a very cheap alternative to traditional advertising. For example, just one viral video can replace multiple forms of promotions, especially if the video educates and creates an interest among your customers so that they in turn promote your business.

For example, seeing a picture of a treadmill with a description is not nearly as effective as seeing someone on the treadmill in action. That’s why infomercials are so successful. Your customer gets to see exactly what the product can and will do in just a matter of minutes. The customer connects and can imagine how the product could benefit them.

And in today’s mobile world, people spend countless hours watching videos from their mobile devices too. So there has never been a better time to capitalize on the free advertising that videos can provide your business.

So, let’s look at three steps on how your business can use videos as an online marketing tool to attract customers.

Step 1:  Post Videos To Your Web Site

When running a business, it is extremely important to be listed on page one of the top search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. A great way to do this to is upload a video on your web site. This helps your site to be found in more ways than ever before.

Google has introduced a concept of “universal search” where videos will be listed along with the other links on the search results page. For example, if you Google “how to tie a tie,” you will see video thumbnail listings in Google.

Another way to post videos to your web site is to have a video appear as soon as a customer opens your web page. A customer can watch your video every time they come to your web site, especially if you grab their attention with a catchy headline.

Once you have their attention, you can then pitch a product during the video for them to buy or you can simply introduce a product and ask the customer to opt-in to learn more. Once the customer opts-in to request more information, you can follow up with an email, which is the next step.

Step 2:  Send Out Video Emails

If you want to solicit new customers or even strengthen ties with current clients, then include a video link in an email. This allows your customers to connect with a real person, not just words on a page. And, if they haven’t met you, many of them will feel as though they have. This can go a long way to turning a potential customer into a long-term customer.

Just remember that your email still needs links, images and good compelling text. Not everyone will watch your video email. For example, some recipients may be at work and want to be discreet, some may not have a sound card in their computers, and some may simply not be interested. So, be sure that the copy in your email makes up for this.

For those customers who then really connect with video email, you can then ask them to subscribe to a video email group. This can be done through a group announcement mailing or by simply adding a survey to your normal email asking if they would be interested in receiving video emails. If they are interested, they will subscribe, while others won’t.

The key is to get your videos out there for people to watch. This can be done through email or if you want mass exposure, then you may want to use video distribution software. With video distribution software, you can get as much visibility as possible.

Step 3:  Use Video Distribution Software

To have your videos seen everywhere online, you can submit your videos to as many different places as possible. You can do this manually by placing a video on your web site, blog, landing or sales pages, as well as video sharing sites like YouTube, Viddler or Google Video.

However, you can also automate the process with video distribution software. For example, a video distribution software program we have used is “Traffic Geyer.” With Traffic Geyser, you simply upload your video once and the software will do the rest. It automatically distributes your video to hundreds of sites for you.

Whether you upload your video manually to video sharing sites or use video distribution software, it is a good idea to keep a few things in mind.

1.  List key words in the title of your video so that people to find your video under when searching by those key words.

2.  Put your web site URL at the very beginning of the description field with the http:// prefix (example: http:// www.domain.com). Most description fields will be abbreviated so that the viewer can only see the first few characters. So even if the viewer does not expand and read the detailed description, he can still see and click through on your web site URL.

So, there you have it. Three steps on how you can use videos as an online marketing tool to attract customers in your business.

We are know that trying to stay current with the most recent technology in the market can be daunting. This is especially true with recognizing what the hottest and most popular trends are in the market.

Take for example what happened to Borders. Last year Borders, the second- biggest U.S. bookstore, filed for bankruptcy and closed more than 200 stores nationwide. Borders failed to recognize how online shopping, and the advent of e-readers, would change how people would read books.

Instead of visiting a brick and mortar bookstore to purchase printed books, consumers today are opting to purchase digital books online. It is fast, convenient and can be done from anywhere.

Amazon, on the other hand, is a much different story. In 1995, what started as a merger online bookstore selling hardcover and paperback books, Amazon has changed with the times.

Today, as the largest online retailer in the US, Amazon has added movies, music, video, games, electronics, apparel, toys, furniture, hardware, cosmetics and more to its business portfolio. Its seemingly endless array of products crosses dozens of categories, and yet the most common misconception people have about it is that it only sells books.

Sadly, many businesses fall fate to the same circumstances as Borders. They continue to do what they have been doing for years. They sell the same product in the same way year after year. And, fail to recognize the importance to diversify their product offerings similar to what Amazon has done.

A business can learn three key lessons by looking at how Amazon has changed with the times to grow its business.

Lesson 1: Diversify Your Product Offerings

With Amazon, there are multiple ways to offer the same product for sale. For example, if you have a book, you can list the book as a physical product, in digital form as an eBook or even record it and offer it as an audio book. By changing the format, you can re-package and sell your products to millions of buyers every day who are looking for that one click buy. And it literally is a one-click buy since Amazon stores credit card information in a user’s account. So, it’s super easy for a buyer to add a product to his shopping cart.

Just think, in 2007 when Amazon introduced the revolutionary Kindle, a wireless reading device, and began selling Kindle books, I bet Amazon never imagined that consumers would be purchasing more Kindle books today then all printed books — hardcover and paperback – combined.  With over 950,000 eBooks, newspapers, magazines and blogs listed, buyers are flocking to Amazon’s Kindle Store to buy products that can be read on Kindle e-readers, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, PC, Mac, Blackberry and Android-based devices.

Plus, Amazon makes it easy for you. Through Kindle Digital Publishing, if you own the right to publish content that you want to upload for sell in the Kindle store, you can self-publish an eBook in minutes by converting and uploading it from a variety of preferred formats. For every title that is sold, Kindle Digital Publishing pays you a royalty based upon two selected options.

Another advantage to listing one or more of your products with Amazon is that all of your product listings will also rank higher in the search engines based upon the key words in your product name. Since Amazon has such a high page rank and credibility with Google and other search engines, your product page can get ranked faster and often higher than your own web site!

And we all know, ranking higher in Google and other search engines means more people will see you, which means more potential sales. Strategically placing key phrases in your product title will help you rank higher for those key words in Google.

The second lesson a business can learn from Amazon is how to leverage its fulfillment infrastructure for fast and reliable service.

Lesson 2:  Use A Product Fulfillment Service

Amazon allows merchants to access its world-class fulfillment capabilities. Through its Fulfillment by Amazon service, Amazon not only allows you to store inventory in their fulfillment center but they also fulfill your orders.

For example, when a customer places an order, Amazon takes care of the rest. Amazon packages and ships your products to the buyer. A customer can even combine your product with other Amazon items and receive Amazon’s Super Saver shipping rates.

Amazon will also provide customer service so you don’t have to hassle with any overhead. This is a great opportunity for businesses to increase their sales by leveraging Amazon’s fulfillment infrastructure.

Another lesson that a business can learn from Amazon is how to leverage its online web store to reach more buyers.

Lesson 3:  Create An Online Web Store

Amazon also provides a service to quickly create and maintain a web store through Amazon Services. Here you can build an online business through its self-service tool to launch and market promotions across different channels.

Amazon even has built-in optimization where it feeds your products throughout numerous search engines providing an easy way for consumers to buy your products. Plus, you can get started selling your products immediately without any upfront costs for hardware and software as Amazon’s web store technology is hosted in the cloud.

There you have it. Three key lessons a business can learn by looking at how Amazon has changed with the times to grow its business. So, which would you whether be…a business like Amazon or Borders?