So you are a new or an existing business, seeking investors so that you can grow your business? I told a potential client today that they can use Internet Marketing to attract investors. He was lost! But he knew about my strong finance background, so he decided to hear me out!

“So what would an investor …be it a venture capitalist or an angel investor look for, when he/she want to invest in a company? The key would be the answer to.. “Can this business make money and give me good returns in the time-frame of my liking, so that I can make money and exit?” I added “So if you have such a business, then getting more exposure and attracting investors attention is Easy…”

He asked “Well we are such a company, but what has it to do with Internet marketing?!” At the end of the conversation, he had liked what he heard!

So let us start again…. Yes you can attract and connect with investors using Internet Marketing and leveraging the power of social media. How can you do that? Let us get into it.

1)    Get visible with Search Engine Optimisation in your industry and in your local area.

      You got to get ‘found’ by and be visible to the investors and anyone interested in your business, products and services. It will be useful to have a solid presence online, so that people who are interested in investing in your industry can find you as easily as ABC. You can start by running Local Search Engine Optimisation campaigns and then extend it further, depending on the nature of your business.

2)    Use your website effectively to pitch to Investors. Have a section on your website called ‘Growth Investment Opportunity’ or something similar. Optimise those pages. Did you know that keywords such as ‘need capital’ are searched for about 8,000 times, in Australia and globally around 80,000 times in a year? Do you know that the keyword ‘need investment’ is searched around 5,000 times in Australia and globally for about 80,000 in a year? Let us guess who would use them? You guessed it right!..Potential Investors. There are many other useful keywords that you can use to attract investors.

This section can have videos, PowerPoint presentations, and one or two page fact-sheet and other information. You can give out non confidential information there and for more information, you can have an ‘opt-in’ section and interested investors can get more information or contact can be made. No auto-responder here please!

3) Use Pay-Per-Click Marketing to get found. Similar to the Search Engine

     Optimisation, you can use pay-per-click marketing. As you saw, there are many who

     are looking to invest, so get found by any means! It does take to rank high in Search Engines, so starting with a Pay-per-click marketing campaign would be an idea as well.

4)    Find LinkedIn Groups where you get a ton of Investors looking for opportunities. See the screen-shots below. There are hundreds of similar groups that are on LinkedIn, where you can find willing investors. You will be spoiled for choice there. However, remember… on LinkedIn,  you can only be part of 50 groups at a given point of time, so you get into the group, and if you do not find it suitable, you can make some contacts there and move on to other groups.

5)    Connect with Investors  personally! See the screenshot on how can you search for them on LinkedIn… Go to ‘People Search’, put the keyword, select the location where you want your investor to be from and Search for them! Once you find them, you can connect with them and send messages. Once you establish communication, you can get the ball rolling!

See how the Screenshot looks for the results for location ‘Australia’. There are hundreds of Investors and senior Investment Managers from small to large Venture Capital firms as well as all sizes of angel investors on LinkedIn and connecting with them is much easier using social media as compared to do that offline.

6)    Get Noticed with Online Press-Releases. Online press releases are also an excellent way to get noticed. There are paid press releases sites and there are free once. I suggest using both. This creates your online profile. You can use them to highlight achievements and initiatives of your business. When investors are looking for opportunities, your well established online profile will be of help. This will also help you to ‘get found’ by investors and potential customers online. When you use a free press release site, the rule of thumb I use for Online Investor Marketing is to look for sites with Google Page Rank of 5 or above.

7)    Pitch to world wide Angel Investors and Venture Capital Firms using YouTube Videos! You may or may not be aware but, some smart businesses are using YouTube to pitch to investors already? See the examples below.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcj3k5xTW-o

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-24ZKWgcdsg

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d7VmeY4Veg 

     I am not suggesting that they that is how the videos should be made in any way.

     However, what I would like you to notice is the opportunity that exists.  

     YouTube is the 2^nd most popular search engine in the world currently. So why not

     give your pitch there? You may not get appointment or time easily with many venture

     capital firms or angel investors. But hey, what is the probability of  you finding

     them on LinkedIn and sending the link of your YouTube Video and they actually

     looking at it? I would say a little bit higher then getting a meeting or time in person!

     Need to ensure that if you decide to send the videos, they are very short and

     introductory once unless they request you to provide longer presentation. Another

     thing is to ensure is that they should not be sent as spam. They should be only sent

     after establishing communication and checking with them politely - if you can send 

     them a couple of minutes of video for their consideration.

     Additionally, you can optimise the YouTube videos so that they appear in search 

     engines and that will help you to get noticed quickly!

Believe it or not, Online Investor Marketing is going to rapidly evolve. It

is already being used by intelligent businesses to attract investors. Are you up for it?

Marketing Conversions helps with Online Investor Marketing to medium as well as small businesses.

Marketing Conversions also offers Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation,  Website That Work and Small Business Internet Marketing programs. 

Wishing you Success!

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Are you still seating ‘at the fence’ as far as Social Media Marketing is concerned? Here are the top 7 benefits you can achieve using Social Media for your business…. if you implement the social media strategy correctly! I suggest your consider them sooner rather then later.

The idea is to highlight how thousands of businesses are benefiting from Social Media Marketing today…. So let us get into it. So what can social media help you achieve?

      1)   You can Create Publicity without a Huge Investment for your company, products or services. Most social media platforms are free! But you have to commit to the resources and time to leverage them. Social Media has put all businesses on a level playing field when it comes to marketing. Creativity and Strategy are the only limitations. You can easily go head-to-head with top names in your Industry as far as Social Media Marketing is concerned..literally!

      2)  You can boost your Brand Awareness, using Social Media Marketing, which Buy Cialis Online Without Prescription font-size: 12pt">can lead towards brand loyalty. You have an opportunity to engage and create a community around your business, brand, product or services. 

An example is AMEX. American Express actually multiplied its user base 80 times in 11 months using Social Network by building community.

      3)  You can generate a buzz for new products launches , new business or new initiatives launch…..how about at almost zero cost (read low cost!) for the new age PR?

Whether you are a mega business or a one person business, you can generate buzz using Social Media Marketing.

      4) Higher Leads and Higher Revenues.  Social Media will help you to increase traffic on your website or blog. It will engage and attract potential customers and generate interest. This can lead to increased leads and higher revenues for your organization.

Couple of examples are…

MASI bicycles doubled sales in two years using blogging and pod-casting to reach out.

Dell made US$ 1 million using twitter.

Businesses of all sizes are taking the advantage of social media. Are you yet?

B2B companies are benefiting in a huge way with social media as well. Consultants and service companies are finding new leads and new customers much more easily using social media sites such as LinkedIn and others.

      5)   Customer Relationship Management is the name of the game in this new age marketing. Customer relations management is becoming an integrated component of marketing now. Social media can help you to develop one-to-one relation with your customer base, which is really a unique situation. Take a look at some examples below…..

Virgin America and Wholefoods run marketing as well as one-to-one customer service initiatives via Twitter.

COMCAST executive contacted a customer who tweeted about a bad experience in 20 minutes sitting in different corners of the globe.

Mailchip gives response in 10 minutes of putting a comment on their Facebook page!

One to one customer relations management was not the same before.

      6) Enhanced Online Reputation Management with monitoring of what people are saying about your company and about your products/services.

There are millions of blogs online. People are talking about your business, products or services. There are millions of people on social networking sites and people there are also doing the same. In this environment, if you do not actively engage in listening what people are talking about your products and services, you do not get the insights or opportunities to manage negative publicity that will affect your reputation and your revenue and profits.

'Dell Hell' is a huge case study of how a Dell got into negative publicity storm and how they recovered from it using social media. They could do it because they were listening to their customers. However, Sony could not repeat that success for its PS3 because they did not adopt social media for online reputation management. PS3 sales suffered badly after the negative publicity on You Tube by customers and it never recovered after that!

Are you listening to your customers? They are already probably talking about your business, products or services!

      7) Customer focused Product Development. Doing primary research and getting feedback straight from your customers was never so easy and inexpensive, as it is now with social media. It used to be an expensive exercise doing in coordination with market research firms. No more!

Starbucks is developing products based on popular customer ideas using social media. Dell is doing the same. Many other companies are slashing their new product development research costs and developing more relevant products that the customers want.

Social Media Marketing is rapidly changing the way marketing is done. So my friend at the fence, rise and shine! It is time to start thinking how you can leverage social media to your benefit with your own  Social Media Marketing Strategy .

Marketing Conversions, works with B2B as well as B2C firms in developing their Social Media Marketing Strategy and it also provides Social Media Marketing Training that equips clients to start leveraging the Social Media Marketing to their advantage.

Ever wondered why some websites make a ton of leads and some are just place holders on internet? There are websites that work and there are that do not. Websites that work, become assets to the businesses. The Lead Generation websites are laser sharp and result focused websites. They produce continuous leads, generates sales and increase profits for businesses.

Let us talk about some simple yet very powerful 15 Rules of thumb for creating Lead Generation Websites here. There are many other rules too, but these 15 will be provide a good starter.

Let us get straight to them….

1)    Keep the visitors focused on the message. Minimise distractions such as flash based or large images. Words can help you sell, not images of smiling faces from stock photos!

2)    Have less we we-e! Have you not seen websites that go like “..WE started in 1990 and WE are an innovative and leading company doing xyz, WE have done this, WE have done that. WE aim to ……WE, blah, blah blah?” Absolutely positively try to cut the ‘we’ out to minimal! Focus on ‘you’, the customer. What they want to hear and will get benefit from.

3)    Understand who your ideal target customer profile is and prepare the website content for them. Your messages must resonate with them! You want your best and most profitable potential customers as leads and you got to identify who they are and create content for them.

4)    On every single page of the website (starting from the home page itself,) the visitors should get three answers within 3 to 5 seconds of coming onto the page. (1) Where are they on the website?  (2) Why they are there and  (3) What can they do or get from that page. I heard this formally from Avinash Kaushik and just loved it. This is a must if you want to reduce your bounce rate.

5)    Make the Lead Gen forms/opt-in forms simple and easy to fill. A form should not be a multiple choice test of 15 questions! Start with asking minimal required information. You can always get them to fill more information as the leads progress through your marketing funnel. If you must ask more questions, divide your form in two parts and get the ‘optional’ type answers in page two, which will help to qualify lead.

6)    Consider putting Lead Gen forms in multiple pages. In fact putting the lead gen form/s on ALL key pages would be a good choice.

7)    Keep the navigation easy and intuitive. Rule of thumb is – a visitor should be able to reach anywhere on your website within maximum of 3 clicks. My personal preference goes to the drop down menu on the header with links in the footer. They generally work well on all types of websites. Secondary menu on left penal can work well too; if necessary.

8 )    Focus on one product/service at least at the category level on one page rather then detailing all services/produce categories on one page. I have seen hundreds of website making mistakes here. You can effectively convert each of your service/product category pages in a landing page that can help you to generate more traction and leads.

9)    Find out your visitors hot buttons and give them exactly that content! Focus on the benefits that the clients/customers want and they will get - rather then what you want to sell and its features.

10)    Using the content of the website, highlight the positioning and Unique Selling Proposition (USP) in many ways. Super Important!

11)    Build credibility and generate trust using testimonials and/or case studies.

12)    Headlines are absolutely critical part of the important pages and/or sales/landing pages. So use them, test & refine them and make good use of them! Benefits driven headlines are good options generally.

13)     Make your websites search engine and social media friendly. Have a Search Engine Optimisation Consultant or an Internet Marketing Consultant to review it. Alternatively, spend some quality time in learning in ropes!

14)    Ask visitors to do things. Clear cut calls to actions are important. Tell them ‘why’ they should do it as well along with what they should do. Unless you show them benefit of doing something, why would they?

15)  Analyse, Test and optimize! Unless you analyse & test, you will not know what you are doing wrong and what you are doing right. Once you find out what you are doing wrong, stop doing that and keep the doing what you are doing right. Keep improving on that and make your website a super effective lead generation machine!

Marketing Conversions helps its clients to build such high performance business Websites that work and Lead Generation websites. There are small business internet marketing programs as well where you can leave the lead generation on  ‘auto-pilot’ with Marketing Conversions to fill your online marketing funnel.

Wishing you Success!

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