Secrets revealed best practices new ideas for the do it yourself diy marketer

Secrets Revealed, Best Practices & New Ideas for the do-it-yourself “DIY” marketer May 18, 2006 Volume 2.3 By: David Adar editor at EdgeMarketingTools Secrets Revealed, Best Practices & New Ideas for the do-it-yourself “DIY” marketer New generations of do-it-yourself tools are available today that remove the mystery from generating quality leads for your business. DIY Marketing Leads No business or even a not-for-profit organization can flourish without the input of quality new leads and contacts. New clients can come from referrals & natural word-of-mouth leads but to be proactive in today's eCommerce fast pace data environment time is measured in quantum leaps that make dog years seem like snail-scale. DIY Marketing Results Any good marketing team must have a toolbox with a suite of tools that mines the Internet for hard-core results. Data mining today is what the Klondike was to the gold rush. Google alone does not sufficiently serve the requirements of today's data miners. What good are 565,000 search results when what you need are 300 new email addresses that are current, tested to work today, along with their associated url web page addresses so that your team can review & select the most relevant hot prospects for today's marketing campaign. This article outlines for you a step-by-step procedure for getting a 2006 data miner's results as compared to the old style online research dating back to dog-years ago. DIY – EDGE Style Marketing Procedures 1. Carefully select a few (not too many) key words or phrases that will result in your main target of interest for your current data mining effort or campaign. 2. Enter these into your web data miner of choice. Any good web crawler, harvester or spider should get you good results. 3. Export the resulting list to CSV (a comma delimited spreadsheet file) as well as to simple text (file. txt) for various later uses. 4. Review your list of saved email addresses or whatever data you are mining for. Clean up the list & begin working with your newest contacts & leads. 5. Its a good idea to run the new list through a Verifier that checks the DNS of each email & pings the address to discover if the address is currently valid. Many addresses expire & are still published on live web sites. The same verifier program will let you eliminate duplicates, merge lists, & do various other cleanup functions. 6. You are ready to launch into your business development 2006-web-data-mining Edge-style. Tech marketing gurus and builders of "Do It Yourself" marketing software understand the need for generating new leads from the Internet. Many web marketers offer full FREE trials of their program modules. At EdgeMarketingTools visitors can find the most effective introduction to “DIY” marketing with easy ways of obtaining quality leads from the web. This style of software will lessen the burden DIY marketers face when mining the web for potential prospects & new clients. Any time spent testing these free downloads is well invested in your business. Visit each week for the next article in this series where other mysterious aspects of Web Data Mining and Internet Marketing will be explored & demystified. The author, as a professional analyst & systems developer, has been using data mining tools for years of every variety and stripe. This article is part of a series of weekly articles published by EdgeMarketingTools. Volume2.issue3 All rights reserved. Copyright, 2006 David Adar, EdgeMarketingTools Permission is granted for republishing this article online within fair limits as long as the article is published in its entirety including the signature & links. Please observe this good business practice for reciprocal benefits. You are welcome to contact info@EdgeMarketingTools for reciprocal marketing linkage.

Disaster recovery more than meets the eye

As the Vice President of Operations for an online retailer of contact lenses, I am used to the potential problems related to doing business on the World Wide Web. Like any other online retailer, we have a responsibility to our customers to maintain their personal and payment information with the strictest of confidence and within regulatory guidelines mandated by our government. Security is a top priority, as it should be for any business who, by the very nature of the marketplace, exposes itself to the potential hazards of doing business in cyberspace. With so many opportunities for things to go wrong, businesses such as mine must take a proactive approach to avoid falling victim to an ever-increasing variety of threats. Recently, a virus infiltrated our system through a disk brought in by an employee. It worked it's way onto our database in no time at all, and the potential for serious restriction of our ability to maintain functional operational status was obvious. While we have administrative and IT security safeguards to protect us from things of this nature, our precautions were inadequate to avoid this particular problem. Luckily, we had instituted a disaster recovery plan some years earlier that allowed us to rid our databanks of the virus without any loss of data, even the data collected on the day in question. For me, this was an eye opening event. My previous thoughts on disaster recovery were limited to external events that might pose a potential risk. Despite all our efforts to the contrary, we were exposed and vulnerable. It wasn't the things that we worked on daily to maintain security that protected our company, but a plan of action conceived years earlier that had all but been forgotten. I now realize that there is so much more to disaster recovery than I previously thought. We were lucky in this instance, but now I can't help but think of what might have happened had we not been prepared.

Small business credit cards for more successful businesses

Small business credit cards are credit instruments that cater specifically to the needs of small businesses. They are like your normal credit card except for some changes in interest rates and features which are optimized for use by small businesses. They are very useful for small businesses that desire to streamline their finances and access extra credit. The numbers of small businesses that use these cards are ever-growing. A recent report shows that 66% of small businesses use these cards for purchasing and financing. Forty percent of this number use their exclusively use credit cards for their payments. But why should a business apply for one? Are there any benefits that merit application for such a card? There are many advantages. Some of them will be outlined below. For one, these cards allow a business to get hold of good credit. Good credit is the use of borrowed finances to generate more cash. In effect, the act of borrowing actually results in the company earning more. A small business credit card allows for this. The business then is able to keep hold of finances for other reasons: investing for interest, for profit, or other needs the business may have for cold cash. They can pay in easy installments that will not dent the financial capability of the business. They can also pay when they are capable of paying. Another advantage of using small business credit cards is the fact that they help make bookkeeping easier. Instead of keeping a journal of all transactions and receipts, one can have the credit card company send an itemized list of purchases made using their credit card. This allows for better bookkeeping and better accounting. Lost receipts and undocumented expenses can be avoided. This helps the business make more accurate financial reports. Small business credit cards also allow businesses to build up their credit limit. Small businesses will typically need capital for new equipment, or to expand their business. A good credit limit will allow small business to access credit that would otherwise be inaccessible to small businesses. Bigger capital opens up the possibility of greater profits. These cards also offer the option of limiting one business’s spending. This would be very useful for a business that is keeping a tight watch over its finances. Small business cards are quickly becoming an efficient way to increase buying power and capital. With these advantages, it may soon be that small businesses will regard these small business credit cards as a necessity.

An easy way to make your small business more visible for free

No two small businesses are alike, but most want to be like their larger counterparts in some key respects. For example, even if you own a company with only a few really great customers, you want to be visible enough to attract new customers, boost your odds of securing repeat business and do all you can to improve customer satisfaction. The key, according to the U. S. Small Business Administration (SBA), is having a business Web site. The SBA's own Web site notes that the Web "levels the playing field between small business and big business" because it is such a dynamic, inexpensive medium for advertising and customer service. "The Internet is making it possible for small - to medium-sized businesses to compete with the big guys," the SBA said. Conventional wisdom says that any business without a Web presence these days is at a distinct disadvantage, but the latest International Data Corporation (IDC) small-business research exposes a surprising gap. The IDC research found that of the 6.8 million businesses in the United States with fewer than 10 employees, only 3.8 million have a Web site. "That means 3 million U. S. small businesses-or 44 percent of the total-aren't using the Internet to promote themselves online or engage customers and prospects," said Ray Boggs, vice president of Small/ Medium Business and Home Office Research at IDC. "In today's connected world, companies that take that step generally find that having their own Web site can deliver a significant opportunity to grow their business, especially if the site is updated regularly." Clearly, small businesses (and many of their customers) are online, yet more than half aren't exploiting the full power of what the Internet can do to help build their business. That power includes creating a dynamic Web site to attract and retain customers, taking advantage of search engines to heighten awareness of a company in today's global marketplace, and communicating with customers around the clock or at their convenience. What stops small businesses from stepping up to this level? For many, the barriers are cost, complexity and inconvenience. By its nature, a small business typically has a small budget and an equally small staff. Unlike the larger companies it competes with, a small business generally can't afford to spend thousands of dollars to buy a server, create a complicated infrastructure and hire an IT technician to keep it all running smoothly. The good news is that some new offerings are cropping up that allow you to establish a Web presence without heavy-duty in-house technical resources and a big cash outlay. For example, Microsoft Corp. has a new Internet-based service called Microsoft Office Live, which at the most basic level provides a small business with a domain name, e-mail accounts and a Web site for free.* It's one of the quickest and easiest ways today to get your business on the Internet. And, because it's supported by advertising revenue, and the advertising is designed to be unobtrusive and not appear in the customer's public-facing Web sites, the basic offering is free. Yes, it's free, and you can sign up to test-drive the service at officelive. "I need an attractive, easy-to-navigate Web site that I can update frequently and efficiently. With Office Live, I can create a slide show of a sailboat race and have it online before the boats even get back to the dock," said Elizabeth T. Becker, a freelance writer and photographer and owner of Seaport Photography. "That means I get to spend less time in front of my computer and more time behind my camera. It's smooth sailing." Becker's Web site can be seen at seaport photo. With such an all-in-one solution, a small-business Web site really is a no-brainer. Look at it this way: In a day and age when the majority of Americans use the Internet regularly, it's highly likely that a large percentage of your customers do, too.