No matter how great your website is, how many followers you have on Twitter or how well found you are on Google, if visitors fleetingly cross your path and don’t hang around, contact you, buy from you or tell anyone about you, then it’s likely you’ve ignored the basics of marketing.
– Carolyn Tate, Connect Marketing (author of Small Business, Big Brand)

Those of us who have online businesses or rely on website leads are always looking at new ways to boost our reach. This often involves a variety of online efforts to build a following.

But sometimes being a “netpreneur” can have its drawbacks. A friend of mine who owns a couple of online based businesses (successfully drawing 5000 visitors a month), working and writing until the wee hours while her children are in bed, struggles to make a living from her main business. The reason for this struggle, I believe, is the hole in the plan – enough sources of revenue.

While you must take into account all costs, your time is your most precious commodity. If you run around like a headless chook, Twittering, Facebooking, ‘being helpful’ in forums, gaining links, etc, don’t forget to have a solid plan to earn revenue from either your website or your core skill.

If your profits for FY ending 2010 are looking less than great, now is the time to draw up a new kind of Marketing Plan, one that involves AUTOMATING your time, LEVERAGING your ability to create leads/customers, and bringing in new streams of LOW COST INCOME. In addition to using the latest Infusionsoft technology to achieve all this, here are some ideas to get you started:

• Create your own digital products, eBooks, DVDs, audio, white papers (a writer or editor can tidy it up for you),
• Create your own book to sell (you will need expert help here to make it a success, but you can use digital “print on demand” to trial publishing)
• Sell high end coaching (sold from a free educational webinar).
• Sell a new service to a highly targeted audience (from email marketing to a list you have captured with a really focussed offer)

If already successful in the traffic attraction stakes, why not sell appropriate advertising? Or joint venture with a compatible education provider to exchange marketing offers to each other’s lists? You would be surprised how approachable some well-known authors and speakers are.

See more about automating your marketing on InfusionOz.com.au.

I must share with you something that happened on the weekend that has got me thinking… and that has made me realise the ‘social media’ age that we are now living in and how important it is to be a part of it.

Last night I went to the Adam Hills live performance at the Powerhouse in Brisbane, seated just a few rows from the front (I love being up close so I can see expressions and the REAL person!!).  Adam came onto stage to a very excited crowd and within minutes he had discovered a man seated in the front row who looked a little like Santa.  Actually maybe a LOT like Santa! No kidding, and his name was Lex Cush.  Lex went along with Adam’s frivolity of wanting to take a picture of them both together and he then posted it on his blog page via his mobile phone, and then posted a tweet (on Twitter) to see who could come back with the funniest caption.

This might not sound that strange, however it was a live show and Adam was sitting on the edge of the stage with his mobile phone in hand, sending tweets and reading some back.  Not your usual stand-up comedy!  And it wasn’t just the photo of him and Lex that was posted either, as he found humour in some of the audience’s surnames (and admittedly it was VERY funny) so had to ID them and of course take more photos to post off.

After a little while Adam checked his mobile phone for responses and read out some tweets from around the world, with proposed captions for the picture of him and Lex, and we had a laugh.

What struck me as both funny and interesting is that one of the tweet replies came from a guy in the audience… who used his mobile to respond to Adam’s tweet.   As Adam remarked: “how funny that you’re communicating with me via a satellite and we’re about 15 metres apart”.

That is exactly the sign of our times:  tweeting, blog posting, re-tweeting, and using mobile phones to post comments and keep in contact with strangers all around the world, at any time, anywhere.

Not everyone is up with it though… it’s generally seen as a ‘young persons thing’.  Yet here was Adam Hills, an almost-40-yr-old sitting on stage with his blackberry taking photos, posting them and tweeting during his show.  Technology is available and accessible to anyone who wants it, and to anyone who chooses to get on board.

In business circles the traditional marketing channels are slowly being overtaken by our social media and technology advances in marketing automation such as Infusionsoft.  Those people who haven’t yet caught on are either looking in or choosing to let it go by.  I believe, to their detriment.

Regardless of what worked yesterday, we do know that things are always changing.  Traditional marketing of the past won’t bring the same results today or tomorrow, and with social media taking charge of the way we communicate – it’s something that simply can’t be ignored.

So with the memory of last night’s performance and Adam’s versatility with his tweeting and posting, I’m off to go tweeting myself.

Have a great week!

Aveline