July 13-17 is World Who’s Who Week – Want to gain local media attention, exposure for your business and to become the Go-to person in networking? Do what the late Pamela M. Hutchinson of Davie Florida,  the creator of Who’s Who in Black South Florida – a directory of black professionals.  On several occasion, the local newspapers featured her directory and when she died wrote a glowing tribute to her and the service to the community her directory provided.

It was the impetus for my team creating the Who’s Who Among Women in Ecommerce Directory to promote women who do business on the web. You can check it out here: http://www.wecai.org/whoswho.htm  What kind of  Who’s Who Directory could you create featuring of a specific group of people or organizations in your community?  (BTW, I created this holiday because I could not find one that focused on this topic).

July 13th  is Embrace Your Geekness Day – “The future of advertising,” says Charlie Jones, chief marketing officer of RedPeg, an Alexandria, Virginia–based agency, “will be about creating unexpected connections to memorable, real-world experiences in ways that bring brands to life.” So how about electrical outlets in airport terminals? Bradley and Montgomery’s new campaign for Chase Commercial Banking includes ads just above 90 outlets around Indianapolis International Airport. When you plug in your laptop, you see the ad.

Source Quirky Marketing ~ 365 Ways to Grow Your Business Using Zany & Non-traditional Holidays!

Create a tips booklet about your topic area and give it to your clients and patients.  Tips booklets are an excellent informational premium that people do not throw away.  Better yet, ask your clients and patients to give you names of their women friends and offer to send the booklet on their behalf.

Excerpt from the book “Quirky Marketing ~ 365 Ways to Promote Your Business Using Zany & Non-traditional Holidays (the original holiday marketing guide) ~ www.QuirkyOffer.com

For more information on Marketing to Women, check out the Marketing 2 Women Audio Program created by Women in ECommerce at: http://www.wecai.org/marketing2women.htm (8 audios and workbook for only $27!)

To read more visit: http://speakingwithspirit.com/books/romance-on-a-budget/.  To read more about Romance on a Budget Day™ visti Tulips Talk Blog at http://www.tulipstalk.com/today-is-romance-on-a-budget-day/

On this day in 1984 Part of Central Park was named Strawberry Fields in honor of the late John Lennon. In 1983 the only know typo on Time Magazine Cover was discovered.  It was the word Contol (should have been control). Time recalled all magazines!  In 1917 Loretta Walsh became the 1st female U.S. Naval Petty Officer and in 1868 the 1st U.S.professional women’s club called Sorosis was formed in New York City.

For other ideas to market your company, check out Quirky Marketing, 365 Ways to Promote Your Business Using Zany and Non-traditional Holidays at www.QuirkyOffer.com

The Quirky Marketing Greeting Card Contest is officially over!

The “rules” were to “Create a fun, quirky, unusual card message as a promotion for your company, product or service and tell me what you did.   The message should be creative and promote something you want to spread the word about. It can be a product, a new product launch, an event, a celebration, a strategic alliance, does not matter. As long as the message can be expressed on a greeting card or postcard.”

What surprised me is that some people did just that and others sent in cute cards with no purpose in mind. They did not have a clear message nor did they promote their company in any way, shape or form.  Having said that, we did have a few people who followed the directions and sent us some cute and/or quirky cards.  It was a tough decision, in fact so much so,  it took the judges an extra week to decide who to bestow the honors to.

Honorable Mention goes to the following:

Honorable Mention winners receive a half page ad in WE Magazine for women.

Kristine Sheehan of The MerryBird.com for her Valentine Postcard announcing her pen and Ink portraits for your Valentine.

Lisa Moren Bromma of Wise WomenInvestor.com for her postcards announcing her services and invitation to visit her website.

3rd Place winner in the Quirky Marketing Greeting Card Challlenge is Jessica Sellers of Chrysalis Logos.com – her card focused on “Make up Your Own Holiday Day” and offered an economic stimulus incentive (discount on services) to anyone who placed an order on that day. Way to Go, Jessica! Jessica won a One-year Charter Membership in the Women’s eCommerce Association.

2nd Place winner in the Quirky Marketing Greeting Card Challenge is Mr. Jim Barber. Jim promoted his company Tooter Talk (www.TooterTalk.com) with a picture of him on the cover standing in on stage at the IMPROV with the headline “Do You Know What Today is?”  The inside said simply… “Today is the first day of the rest of your new career!” Talk about perfect timing in this economy! Jim won a full page ad in WE Magazine for Women!

1st Place winner in the Quirky Marketing Greeting Card Challlenge is …..drum roll please………………

Racheli Smilovits of WCS Lending!  Racheli didn’t send in the required one entry – she sent in SIX! And each one was clever and unique. The one that cinched the winning was the postcard attached to a bag of peanuts that said “It will be NUTS to Navigate throught the Real Estate Waters without a Professional  Lender.” And her contact info, etc.  The graphic she used was a walnut shell and her beautiful face peeping out of it.  Racheli won a two page article interview in the Spring Issue of WE Magazine, a copy of her choice of one of the fabulous books in our library AND a $25 gift certificate from SendOutCards (choice of Visa Gift Card, Candy, Brownies and more).

Each of the above entrants will also receive a frameable Certificate customized with their names and date of the Quirky Marketing Contest as well as a mention in the accompanying media release announcing the Winners!

Several of the contestants grabbed their free account at SendOutCards.com/Heidi. THANKS!

Look for our next contest in the summer!

And if you haven’t yet picked up your copy of Quirky Marketing, go here: www.QuirkyOffer.com.  More than $2,000 worth of bonuses are waiting for you when you do!

Okay, you are probably wondering what the *Quirky Marketing Greeting Card Contest is, right?

Glad you asked!

In celebration of the launch of my new book Quirky Marketing Calendar – 365 Ways to Use Zany and Non-traditional Holidays to Promote Your Business  we are hosting a contest.

And there are lots of prizes.

Here’s the rules:

Create a fun, quirky, unusual card message as a promotion for your company, product or service and tell me what you did.

The message should be creative and promote something you want to spread the word about. It can be a product, a new product launch, an event, a celebration, a strategic alliance, does not matter. As long as the message can be expressed on a greeting card or postcard.

And you can even test out the card using the place I use to send out cards and that is, you guessed it… SendOutCards.com.  When you click on SendOutCards.com it takes you to my SOC website and you can have a FREE card on me just to try it out!

Send your entry to:

Redhead Marketing Inc.
Attention: Quirky Contest
P.O. Box 550856
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33355-0856

Cards will be judged by a  panel of marketing experts from the Florida Direct Marketing Association.

Contest ends February 28th so you have to hurry! Winners will be announced during Quirky Marketing Month in early March in honor of the launch of Quirky Marketing!

Oh, and the prizes…

Grand Prize winner will receive a two page article interview in the Spring Issue of WE Magazine, a copy of your choice of one of the books listed below AND a $25 gift certificate from SendOutCards (choice of Visa Gift Card, Candy, Brownies and more).

The Prizes:

2-  $25 gift certificates from SOC for brownies, truffles and more!

A dozen Roses delivered anywhere in the US

Several books including:

Power and Wisdom, the New Path for Women by Dr. Priscilla Marotta

Rose Marketing on a Daisy Budget by Heidi Richards

Full page ad in WE Magazine for Women

Half page ad in WE Magazine for Women

A one-year Charter Membership in the Women’s eCommerce Association

and more!

1st, 2nd, 3rd place and Honorable Mention Winners will also receive a frameable Certificate customized with their names and date of the Quirky Marketing Contest as well as a mention in the accompanying media release announcing the Winners!

 Be sure and go to SendOutCards.com/Heidi and sign up for a free account.

And send me your cards!

FYI: Heidi Caswell and I will be hosting a live demonstration of the SendOutCards system on Thursday January 29th at 9 PM EST. You are welcome to join us and see what all the excitement is about and learn how to use Send Out Cards to grow your business.  Call the teleconference bridge line ~ 1-641-715-3840 participant access code is 361467#

Note: Greeting cards or post cards are acceptable entries. And you do not have to use the SOC site, but we hope you do! Multiple entries are also acceptable. All entries must be postmarked by February 5th in order to qualify.

The fine print: If we receive less than 7 entries, contest may be cancelled or postponed due to lack of sufficient samples to “judge.”  In addition, if judges don’t feel entries warrant a first, second or third place honor, no prize will be awarded in those categories.

(*void where prohibited by law).

Host Webinars, teleseminars –  Speaking of Audio and Video, another way to promote your business virtually is to host webinars and/or teleseminars. There are tons of free or nearly free options for teleseminars and inexpensive options for webinars.  We use FreeConference.com for our teleconferences and HotConference.com for our webinars. In fact, members of the Women’s eCommerce Association can use the conference room for free (based upon availability) when they join.

Last week I hosted two teleseminars and one webinar. The topics: How to Live the Good Life on Zero Cash with Simone Kelly-Brown CEO of Own Your Power Communications (10 AM EDT), How to Create a Follow-up System to Save You Time AND Grow Your Business featuring The Follow Up Divas, Heidi Caswell and Heidi Richards Mooney (11 AM EDT) and How to Create an Effective One-page eCommerce Website with Ginger Marks Founder of Documeant Designs (5 PM EDT). 

Look for links to the audio’s coming up in future posts.

Webinars and telesminars are interactive and you meet some great people in real time.  People look forward to your “shows” and you develop a regular following of loyal fans. You have expertise that other people are interested in! You wouldn’t be in business if you didn’t. Why not share that expertise and promote your business at the same time?

Virtual events are a great way to build a reputation, increase credibility and increase your own “circle of influence” in the marketplace.  And there are dozens of ways to do so with little or no investment.  In addition to the FREE services we use InstantTeleseminar.com (free trial). I like the Instant Teleseminar because it has many options to promote, store and save the audio files which works great if you plan to create a series of events and possibly “bundle” and sell them down the line. And there is never any interferance on the lines as there are with many of the FREE services available.

Want more ideas to promote your business on the WEB? Get a FREE copy of the 8-page Special Report Promoting Your Business on the WEB  TODAY!

For my retail flower shop ~ Eden Florist:

We use postcards for new customers as well as those we have not heard from in 6 months or more.

We call those we have not heard from in a year.

We send bi-weekly emails with specials.

We have a quarterly newsletter – Ramblin’ Rose which we send with specials, tips, flowers trivia and more.

We have a florist blog – Tulips Talk filled with decorating and design tips and trends, floral trivia, facts and history and more.

And we send flowers to those customers who are the most frequent purchasers.

We also have a “weekly drawing” of our customer database and send them flowers to say HI.

Once a year we send a holiday CD filled with our specials (late November).

And I randomly go through our list and send thank you notes for our customers’ business once a month.

For the Women’s eCommerce Association, International:

We host a monthly virtual events (teleseminars and webinars) on a variety of topics of interest to our circle. They include marketing, networking, blogging, web design and more.

We have a bi-weekly ezine called eMonday News we send out every other Monday.

We also have quarterly WE Magazine for Women – for the Total Woman – filled with excellent articles about wealth, travel, business, women, balance and relationships… and much more – our last issue was 72 pages. We have a website in development which will enhance our magazine so much more. This goes to our members and subscribers (totalling more than 13,500 people and growing).

We have a monthly event called 1st Fridayz which is an email/webinar/teleseminar event our members participate in which we send info on the week prior to the event.

We also host bi-annual summits on a variety of topics which is a great way to reach out to our members – the last one we hosted was the Grow a Million Dollar Business Summit.  You can read about the topics and speakers at www.GrowAMillionDollarBusiness.com.

And for Redhead Marketing, Inc.:

Although we send emails, use the telephone and offer virtual events to our circle, personalized postcards and greeting cards have been our number one stay in touch method. We have found them to be a great “buzz generator.” The system we use is called SendOutCards and since I have been using it, have had thank you notes for our thank you notes, phone calls thanking me for thinking of them in such a personalized way and everyone so far has said they are “keepers.” It’s amazing to me because you can spend a ton of money on fancy business cards, flyers and brochures and most of the time they linger for nanoseconds before the recipient decides what to do with them. Not so with personalized greeting cards and postcards (my personal favorite).

In fact, every time I speak to someone new either on the phone, from a referral or as a result of a networking opportunity, I immediately input their contact information into my database and send them a postcard. If I have a camera and can take a picture of the two of us, I do that, download to my computer, upload to the program we use, include a personal message and the card is sent for me.  It arrives in just a few short days and we get to connect all over again.  If you don’t have a camera or find that to be awkward, see if it’s okay with the other party for you to go to their website and grab a photo from it or a logo, add it to your greeting card or postcard and send it to them. I think it is almost impossible for someone to toss a postcard that has a picture of her or him on it.

Try it and tell me how it works. We have been doing this with our interview guests (we already have their picture because we asked for it to use as a promotional tool to announce their session) and have had wonderful responses. If you are a graphic designer, you might want to show them variations of their logo – works especially well with brand new business owners. What a great way to showcase your work and increase your bottom line.  Feel free to check it out at SendOutCards.com.

Getting eCommerce Ready…

When it comes to eCommerce, it’s not too early to start thinking about how you are going to prepare for the holiday season. You don’t want to put everything about your whole business and everything you offer on your home page. Have landing pages for separate items. When you give  people too many choices, they become paralized and will leave without buying. Showcase your number one items or best sellers or the one, two or three items you want to move on your home page. Here are 13 more tips to prepare for the holiday rush:

1. Make sure you have precautionary measures in place.  Where does your business get hit the hardest during the holidays?  Is it local deliveries, customer service, shipping? Focus your attention on getting those parts of your system ready for the holidays.

2. Get help.  Taxing your regular help during the madness that can occur during the season, can do more damage than good. Consider outside help to get you through the holidays.

3. Automate anything and everything you can. This reduces labor costs and streamlines processes and in most cases helps the customer get quicker service.

4. Reduce time by auto-processing credit cards.  That includes auto settle and authorizations.

5. Manage Inventory. With the economic uncertainty of the upcoming holiday season, it is good to keep a low stock inventory as long as you can order and get a quick turnaround on products you need when the time comes.

6. Consider drop shipping orders to cut down on inventory. Use softeware that automatically forwards those orders to your vendors for fulfilment.

7. Rely on someone else’s I.T. Staff by using a software service provider.  They have the compliant issues in place and they may be more able to have a quick turnaround if a proble arises.

8. Personalize your marketing offers. Use your cusotmer database to increase revenues by creating a 1, 2, 3 touch approach to remind them you are there to assist their gift-giving needs. That could be a postcard, email and telephone call or any combination of tactics to get them to order from you.

9. Send emails wisely and prudently. Don’t innundate your email database with messages. They will get mad and ask to be removed. Remember everyone is vying for their business right now. Create email templates or edit and reuse those  that have worked in the past. Saves time, and creative talent to work on other high-priority projects.

10. Automate your gift certificates.  Gift certificates have gained in popularity and every year the % of people who buy them increases.  Many people actually prefer receiving them too.  If you don’t offer gift certificates online, think about adding this feature to your website.  Its a new source of revenue and there is nothing to ship.

11. Make use of multiple stores like ebay and Amazon or Yahoo to test products, to sell overstock items and move last season’s inventory.

12. Consider a “membership” program such as a flower of the month or book of the month club program.

13. TEST, TEST, TEST. Make sure your ecommerce site works properly, is easy to understand and seamless. Do pages load quickly or do they take more than 5 seconds?  Do you have lots of flash?  Do they inhibit buying with obtrusive popups or automatic sound? Invite current customers to do a ‘beta’ test, and Offer discounts to them for their feedback.

The best time to think about next year’s holiday season is when this one is over. You can plan better when records are within your reach and everything is fresh in your mind.

Happy Selling!

Staying in touch with your clients and customers should be an integral part of your marketing plan. In fact, it should be one most important activities that you do. In fact, there are several ways you can touch your customers from phone calls, to emails to snail mail campaigns.

Here are the ways we stay in touch with our retail floral customers:

1. We use postcards for those we have not heard from in 6 months or more.

2. We call those we have not heard from in a year.

3. We send bi weekly emails with specials.

4. We have a quarterly newsletter – Ramblin’ Rose which we send with specials, tips, flowers trivia and more.

5. And we send flowers to those customers who are the most frequent purchasers.

6. We also have a “weekly drawing” of our customer database and send them flowers to say HI.

7. Once a year we send a holiday CD filled with our specials (late November).

8. And I randomly go through our list and send thank you notes for our customers’ business once a month.

Here’s what we do to stay in touch with the members of the Women’s eCommerce Association:

1. We host monthly events which are both educational, informational events that our members attend. At the same time, have the opportunity to stick around after the sessions and chat among themselves and very often with the guests we invite to share their success stories.

2. We publish and distribute a bi-weekly ezine called eMonday News.

3. We also publish a digital magazine ~ WE Magazine for Women – for the Total Woman – filled with excellent articles about wealth, travel, business, women, balance and relationships… and much more.

4. We have a network on LinkedIn that we just started where our members can post questions, answer questions, share expertise, and get to know one another.

5. We also host bi-annual summits on a variety of topics which is a great way to reach out to our members – the most recent was “How to Grow a Million Dollar Business” Summit.

How do you stay in touch? Feel free to leave your comments and share your story.