If i could be bothered to log into my digg account I would have certainly ‘digged’ this article posted by Andy Beal in December ‘Five Secret Strategies to Add $1 Million in Revenue to your Interactive Marketing Agency in 2007‘

Five points to get you on the road to success:

1. Stand out from the crowd - ‘Being different, doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel, but does mean singing a tune that a prospective client has not heard a thousand times before’

2. Write articles to establish your agency as a thought-leader - get you business blogging and submit relevant articles to online magazines etc.

3. Step-up to the microphone and be heard - get those seminars and conferences under your belt!

4. Hire a public relations firm - not sure if i d like this one as it is expensive, but hey if you have the money to burn get the professionals in!

5. Know the value of a big-brand client - let those big brand clients raise your profile for you. Small business are usually focused solely on cash flow. If you are a small business you can not compete with larger agencies so win those big brands with a discounted service or heck if they are big enough FREE!

Sometimes you have to think big in a different way, not just focusing on immediate cash flow (we all know its hard not too!)

I am not sure this can add a million to your revenue but its always worth a shot! These strategies don’t really just apply to a marketing company as most small businesses have to market themselves. If you are a business into new technology then these tip will work for you!

One of the most simple and useful articles I have read about marketing a service to fellow businesses is this article from entrepreneur magazine ‘Hit the sweet spot‘ by Kim. T. Gordon. An excerpt from the article reads

‘For many business owners, marketing to fellow entrepreneurs is job one. The challenge is, entrepreneurs are time-strapped multitaskers who are also relatively risk-averse–making them a difficult audience to reach and persuade. Sound familiar?’

This article explores a ‘common sense’ approach to marketing and designing a business to business product or solution.

What do businesses want? According to this article:

• Increased sales - does your solution provide that?
• Safe Choice - do you have a content rich campaign with customer feedback and cases?
• Maximum Convenience - is there a huge amount of work the buyer has to do? Is this included in the solution? If it needs 20 hours work on the clients side is their an alternative?
• Ways to save money - Can you add features? Bundle products together for a ’special price’?
• Do it yourself solutions - businesses love low cost self service solutions but if again time is an issue. Free customer support in the bundle is a great seller!
• Reliability and Performance - What guarantees or warranties does your company offer? If something goes wrong are you their to help?
• Vendors they trust - Special events and networking are great to build trust with a customer.

The finishing line of this article is ‘What matters most is that you create an opportunity to build positive relationships’ Probably the most important statement for businesses I have heard in a long time.

Things are changing at work, mostly not for the better with regards to my job and position. I am being stripped of all my extra projects and just have the daily grind on my plate which is fatally flawed and kinda monotonous. I will be getting a new contract soon and hope that it is fresh and new and I have a career plan. Currently I am invisible. Invisibility is a good attribute in some instances but not at work. I don’t need mountains of praise but when I do something good and helpful the praise is laid elsewhere or I am left out of the credits. Is it malicious? Who knows, they might just forget me everytime. The MD is starting to talk to me more after I mentioned that he doesn’t seem to like me! I can’t get interested in the  futures projects as I will be getting my hopes up of running something exciting for it to then be given to someone else as their ’skills fit the job’ . Its like self torture.

I have my CRM tool up and running though for my new personal project which gave me some silent pride and now I am integrating it within the Joomla CRM tool….some display issues but hey its a work in progress. I did mention it to a college this morning but he wasn’t interested. No one ever is, even though they go on and one about their salesforce integration and stuffs. Many salesforce meetings are had!

My blog seems all doom and gloom recently, because my life is all doom and gloom between 9 and 5.30. I think I need a new job where I can excel and be allowed to excel and provide revenue for a company. The project with Jay is going to be good. I will get alot of CRM and sales experience with the role as well as alot of freedom with the methods and delivery.

Oooh I am also an Avon Lady…

Avon Calling!

I am now getting back into Kickboxing - its hurts but I do love it. I am scared of sparring again as I am so out of practise I am going to have to be beaten to an inch of my life for the first few sessions…..hey wait…..that always happens! Them of course its going to be back to jitsu, my one true love, who never leaves me, never abandones me and never eats all the jaffa cakes while I am not looking!

Jitsu I Love you.

As a support consultant we advise our customers use the Cname function with their channeladvisor store to improve search engine optimisation. This is an example of a Cnamed Channeladvisor store : Bling Bling Online. As you can see by clicking on the categories how the URLs seem to be coming from the domain name and not a channeladvisor storefront URL. The domain name registrar you brought your domain name with governs the process of the DNS changes, and as I come across the different hosts I will post a simple guide on how to cname using this host. My first guide is going to be about 123-reg.co.uk. I always recommend this hosting company as they will also host your emails for around £10 a year ( at the time of going to press) so you can have a fully cnamed store and professional emails.

First log into your control panel:

Scroll down the page and ‘Manage your domain’ Select your domain from the dropdown list and click ‘Modify Domain’

*Please note: On this list if you are trying to Cname a .com or .net you will need to ‘Manage Domain Locking’ on this list before you ‘Manage DNS’

Click on ‘Manage DNS’

Your need to change your www record to Type: Cname and replace the numbers with stores.channeladvisor.com. Please do not change the @ record. This control your emails!

Your DNS record should look like this:

Click ‘Update DNS’ and the changes shall replicate within 72 hours. Please note this will only work if you have NOT changes the nameserver information of the domain ( I.E you brought a hosting package with a company like webfusion.co.uk and they control your emails)