Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jan 29, 2012, 2:45 pm
Tweet This is a presentation that I gave at the Yankee Dental Conference. Although the slides use a dentist as an example, the content is applicable to all local businesses trying to drive new customers or patients to their business using local search marketing techniques. (Email subscribers: get t...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jan 22, 2012, 3:13 pm
Tweet Everyone has a personal brand, but not everyone acknowledges it and manages it proactively. Some people don’t like the term “personal brand” as they feel people aren’t brands. Some people think that it is a thinly veiled term for self-promotion, publicity or image management. In fact,...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jan 13, 2012, 3:37 pm
TweetWhy You Need a Powerful Web Presence A successful web presence that attracts your ideal client and makes a great first impression is now much more complex, incorporating not only your website and blog, but also your social media profiles, business directories and review sites. It’s no longe...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Dec 28, 2011, 4:24 pm
Tweet As this is the ninth and final post in the series on Inbound Marketing, it is fitting that it is about creating an inbound marketing system to ensure you remain consistent in your activities. As the final post of the year, it is also good to remind ourselves that success comes in taking little...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Dec 21, 2011, 6:53 pm
Tweet This is post eight in the series on Inbound Marketing, focusing on how to nurture all those quality leads you have generated. Lead nurturing is what it sounds like: continually providing support and nourishment to leads (in this case acquired through your inbound marketing efforts) by anticip...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Dec 6, 2011, 7:33 pm
Tweet This is post seven in the series on Inbound Marketing, focusing on how your inbound marketing activities can help you generate quality leads.  Lead Generation, Inbound Marketing By now you are probably wondering “what’s in it for me” when it comes to inbound marketing. It seems like a...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Nov 25, 2011, 7:00 pm
Tweet Google Apps is a hosted suite of Google applications that uses your branded domain name, giving you an email and collaboration environment that is accessible from any browser. The free version includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites. So you’re probably wondering what ...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Nov 7, 2011, 1:21 pm
Tweet This is post six in a series of posts on Inbound Marketing, focusing on social media marketing and developing your social media outposts to help attract your target audience and build brand recognition for your small business. Inbound Marketing - Social Media Pillar Social media has evolved ...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Oct 21, 2011, 12:17 pm
... Brafton News entitled “Why Content for SEO” provides numerous statistics on the ... quality content creation is essential to SEO success in the current search ... to address – i.e. the SEO title, meta description and use ... content itself. I recommend WordPress SEO by Yoast. In addi...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Oct 6, 2011, 7:30 am
Tweet We interrupt our Inbound Marketing Series to provide a brief recap of the Facebook updates coming to personal profiles and Pages. In my opinion, these changes provide a cleaner look and more control of your content.  Personal profile updates: The New Facebook Timeline Timeline – will rep...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Oct 1, 2011, 4:52 pm
TweetFind ways to syndicate your content for the broadest visibility This is post four in a series of posts on Inbound Marketing, focusing on creating quality content to fuel your content marketing strategy for your small business. Now that you have the who, what, where and when of your content ma...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Sep 18, 2011, 7:53 pm
Tweet This is post three in a series of posts on Inbound Marketing, focusing on developing your content marketing strategy for your small business. Content marketing is creating, publishing and promoting value-based content to attract your target audience, position you as a trusted expert and advis...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Sep 1, 2011, 7:04 pm
Tweet This is the second in a series of posts that will provide a road map on how you can plan and implement Inbound Marketing for your small business. Now that you understand what inbound marketing is and how it can help your small business, it’s time to figure out your inbound marketing strateg...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Aug 24, 2011, 3:53 pm
Tweet This is the first in a series of posts that will provide a road map on how you can plan and implement Inbound Marketing for your small business.  Inbound marketing is something that most small business owners have heard of but few have implemented consistently. But for those who do take the ...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Aug 7, 2011, 11:30 pm
Tweet This is a question I get a lot lately. This feature of WordPress can be confusing, and throw in keywords for search engine optimization and people definitely get that glazed over look. And the more I read other good posts on the topic, the more I realize that there are a lot of opinions on wha...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jul 26, 2011, 11:06 pm
Tweet Small business owners ask me a lot of Facebook marketing questions, so I decided to compile the 10 most often asked questions and answer them in an eBook specifically for small business owners. These most popular questions include: Should my business be on Facebook? What does it mean to mark...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jun 30, 2011, 1:05 pm
TweetHave you come up with a great name for your business or a service you offer? Did you have a great logo designed that is unique and memorable? Did you know that your name and logo are valuable assets of your business? Many businesses don’t understand the value of registering a trademark for yo...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jun 17, 2011, 12:52 pm
Tweet Marketing your business is a process similar to a home renovation: you need a general contractor to call the shots and make everything fit together. I made this statement on my Facebook page and now will explain why this is an important analogy. I come in contact with many small business owne...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - May 31, 2011, 11:29 am
Tweet Creating well-designed, custom Facebook pages to welcome your visitors and create valuable offers is important for making your page stand out and encouraging your visitors to “like” your page. This connection creates a communications channel between your brand and your fans. Since the maj...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - May 17, 2011, 3:00 am
Tweet There are many people who offer online marketing services. There are also many people who call themselves online marketing experts because they know how to: Build a WordPress website Implement search engine optimization (SEO) Set up your Google Places page and other local business listings De...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - May 11, 2011, 10:46 pm
Tweet Engaging your Facebook Fans and growing your community is really important to a small business marketing plan. Many blog posts review all the good things to do to promote your Facebook page and grow your fan base, but there are tactics that can cause a major reduction. According to a study by ...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Apr 29, 2011, 10:22 am
Blogging is hard and a lot of work. I realize that some people make it look easy, but not all of us are naturally talented writers. If we were, we’d be writing the next bestseller. But with all the marketing benefits of blogging, we need to overcome the objections and add regular blogging to our m...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Apr 19, 2011, 3:10 pm
Most small business marketing is done online where first impressions, relevant content and social media integration are key requirements for achieving visibility, which ultimately should result in quality inbound leads. Your website, which is the hub of your online presence, needs to be created on ...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Apr 11, 2011, 8:05 pm
For many of my clients, being found by those searching for local businesses can make a huge difference in the number of inbound leads they receive. If you are a local business (i.e. you service clients within a specific geography or have a store front) and haven’t implemented a local search strate...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Mar 28, 2011, 2:26 pm
For the small business owner, it is always a pleasure to find useful tools that help you better market your business. It’s even more of a pleasure to find one that offers a robust free option. MailChimp is an email marketing and list management service that is simple to use and supports many power...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Mar 23, 2011, 12:00 pm
Just Because You’ve Built It, Doesn’t Mean They Will Come You finally have a powerful website and blog that you are proud to show off, with messages that clearly explain how you help your clients and the value you provide. Now, how do you drive your target audience to your site and generate qua...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Mar 14, 2011, 3:00 am
Tweet Continuing with the theme of email marketing, now that you have started to build a great opt-in email list, what are you going to do with it? How will you engage your readers so they form a community of people interested in what you have to say? A consistent, well-organized, informative or e...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Feb 28, 2011, 7:00 am
Building your email list should be one of your top marketing goals. Having great content that would attract your ideal client is a major component of this email list building process, but even with the best content, some businesses still haven’t built an email list of subscribers that can help the...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Feb 14, 2011, 12:59 pm
On February 10th, Facebook introduced the new Business Page layout that has included many new and often asked for features. Facebook gives you the ability to tour the new design before you have to upgrade, but all pages will be upgraded to the new design by March 10th. If you want to see what the ne...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Feb 1, 2011, 6:00 am
Last October, Google rolled out Google Place Search, a new user interface for local search that organizes information around location. These changes merged the Google Map listings and organic results in a new way that makes it critical to pay attention to your online presence. Gone are the pack of ...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jan 20, 2011, 3:00 pm
Want to increase visitor response on your website? Then give them a reason to do something and connect with you! If your website is simply a brochure for your company products and services, you are missing an opportunity to encourage your visitors to take some action that benefits them and you. Mayb...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jan 12, 2011, 5:12 pm
Focus, focus, focus It’s the mantra of many involved in small business marketing and is important to those of us who need to deliver client projects while continuing to market our businesses. What marketing should your small business consistently execute that will deliver proven results? Here are...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jan 2, 2011, 4:34 pm
This is an off-topic post that I need to write to once again briefly explain my disappearance over the last month. Back in November 2008, I wrote about the loss of my Dad on November 10th. Two years and forty days later on December 20th, my Mom joined my Dad and hopefully spent Christmas with her s...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Dec 11, 2010, 6:43 pm
Content marketing has become one of the most important marketing activities you can do as a small business. Regardless of your industry, people are searching for quality information to help them make decisions, solve problems or keep up with what is happening in the world. Providing valuable informa...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Nov 28, 2010, 5:06 pm
Whenever I go to my Facebook Business Page, I feel like I’m on a treasure hunt looking for new feature gems that suddenly appear. Recently I noticed the new per post insights information on my Page and another time I looked at my fans and noticed a “remove admin” box appear quietly next to my ...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Nov 16, 2010, 11:35 pm
Marketing people love to write about marketing blunders and mistakes and we all have our opinion on what should be included in the top mistakes every small business must avoid. However, even though we continue to make these blunders visible, I still see these mistakes made, costing small businesses ...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Oct 29, 2010, 10:50 am
The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute published a report in June 2010 called Six Dimensions That Characterize Success-Oriented Small Business Owners. The survey is based on analysis of a survey of 1,100 small businesses with between 2 and 99 employees. These 6 dimensions include coll...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Oct 20, 2010, 7:25 pm
The answer, of course, is yes. And even if you don’t have a logo, your business still has a brand. However, few small businesses really understand what a brand is and why it is important to their overall marketing strategy. Brand is the perception the world has of you and communicates your perso...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Oct 7, 2010, 5:37 pm
Any small business that is not developing an expansive Web presence as part of your online marketing activities is missing an opportunity to gain visibility and develop an expert reputation. Think of your online presence as one entity with many customer touch points. Each of those touch points must...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Sep 27, 2010, 4:39 pm
Here’s a great video produced by the Facebook Marketing team with testimonials from Sephora, Levis, M&M Mars and Pedigree. “As other forms of marketing overtime decline in terms of their usage rate and open rate … we look to Facebook as a way to offset that ability to communicate with clients...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Sep 22, 2010, 9:55 am
Here are my top 10 marketing tips for small businesses that will help you gain more visibility with your target customer. Create a vision and set realistic goals for your business. What’s that have to do with marketing, you ask? Knowing your vision will help you make decisions on what types of ac...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Sep 13, 2010, 10:32 pm
In conversations with small business owners, I have realized that my conversation with them takes the following structure. Business owner: I want to add viral marketing / social media / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn (pick your favorite platform) to my marketing efforts. Me: Of course, great idea bu...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Aug 30, 2010, 4:04 pm
Does your website have a signup form that looks like the following? Do you wonder why no one is signing up for your monthly eNewsletter that you work very hard to produce? You are missing an opportunity to build your email list by attracting your ideal client with an offer they can’t refuse. You...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Aug 20, 2010, 4:48 pm
Now that your content strategy for your small business is in place, it’s time to begin writing that great content to attract attention and develop your expert reputation. Develop a List of Post Topics It’s important to have a list of 50 to 100 blog post topics before you start to post. What of...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jul 31, 2010, 10:26 pm
Planning Your Road to Success One of the things I do for my clients is simplify marketing so it eliminates confusion and enables the business owner to focus on what is important. But there is always a part of marketing that stresses many small business owners – i.e. determining their mission, goa...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jul 19, 2010, 8:47 am
I’ve never been a great sales person. Heck I don’t even think I’m a good sales person. As a matter of fact, I hate selling. However this weekend at my golf club, people thought I was a great sales person (which I found rather humorous) because I was easily selling raffle tickets to raise money...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jul 6, 2010, 10:38 pm
For many of us in service based businesses, our knowledge is our main asset. When we write about what we know, in our blog, in an ebook or out on the social web, we share that asset with many people to help them out and to attract them to our businesses. In addition, many of us have spent a lot of t...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jun 27, 2010, 10:43 pm
As many of us get into summer activities, one thing we need to remember is that as a small business owner, we are always creating an impression of our business, affecting our brand and reputation. Whether we are out to dinner with family and friends, socializing at the golf course, tennis courts or ...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jun 13, 2010, 11:03 pm
A consistent flow of content is critical to developing a community of followers that will support your brand and most likely become a customer or client. But one of the most common challenges small business owners face is how to create that compelling and relevant content on a regular basis in order...
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Debra M. posted an article on Masterful Marketing - Jun 1, 2010, 10:54 pm
I was asked an interesting question during one of my coaching sessions: As a small business owner, if you were to focus on only three marketing activities over the next six months, what would they be? That made me stop and think for a bit. Putting the gears in motion and applying the power of thre...
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