- What is Viral Marketing?
- A Digi-Scrap Viral Marketing Campaign
- Learning More About Viral Marketing

What is Viral Marketing?

I recently did a review of the Butterfly Reports program which is an income opportunity based on viral marketing that you may want to consider adding to your current business. Some digi-scrap business owners may not be familiar with this marketing strategy and how it can help their businesses. So that’s what I’m going to explain in this issue of our Business Report and I’ll share with you an example you can implement right away to help you build your customer base.

Did you know that a satisfied customer tells an average of three people about a product or service that they like, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like? It’s this very natural human behavior that viral marketing is based on. Viral marketing refers to advertising strategies that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. It’s rooted by the same theories of mouth-to-mouth marketing.

Viral Marketing is a method of advertising that practically any market demographic online can use successfully, once you know what is involved. Just like any other marketing campaign you can hire people who specialize in this field and you can wind up putting together a campaign that requires a big budget. However, you can also create an equally successful viral marketing campaign on a small budget without hiring an ad agency.

A Digi-Scrap Viral Marketing Campaign

Here’s a rather simple viral campaign recipe that you can cook up for your business if you are distributing digi-art products. This same model can be applied to other products and services too.

This is not meant to be a full tutorial. It is a general overview of one possibility you can use to promote your digi-art products. To use this strategy you would need an auto-responder or some other method for tracking people on a lead list. The AWEBER auto-responder is the one I recommend. Before I get to the details understand that there are a handful of principles to include for successful viral campaigns. You don’t have to use every principle in every viral campaign. For the campaign I’m sharing with you now I’m using four (of seven) success principles.

Here are the principles I’m using for this campaign:

1. Know your Goal
2. Provide a “viral worthy” product or offer
3. Provide easy transfer to others
4. Scales well from small to large
5. Use existing communication networks

(The two not included this time are: “Exploit Common Motivations” and “Include Honest Scarcity”)

Overview of components:

• Goal: To increase lead list and segment buyers from the list
• Viral Worthy Product(s): Free - Mini-Kit with redistribution rights and Large Kit at super low price with Personal Use Only TOU as an OTO product.
• Easy Transfer: Use Tell-a-Friend script on the landing page/thank you pages.
• Scales Well: Single distribution point that can be duplicated if needed and no additional software or hardware needs
• Communication Networks: Forums, blogs, and social network links

General Description of Viral Campaign:

Set up landing page with product description and “elite customers” list opt-in. Include the freebie product download link on the thank you page with a note about sharing this special deal with their friends. Include the Tell-a-Friend script on this page. Remind them to look for their super special kit info in their mail box. It will arrive after they confirm their email. This step meets the first half of my goal - to increase my lead list.

Customize the verification page with OTO (One-Time-Offer) special sale for the super sized kit info and purchase button. On the thank you and download page include the tell-a-friend script again. This step meets the second half of my goal - to segment buyers from the list.

To launch the campaign, I do four things. 1> Send an email to my current list members telling them about my new “Elite Customers” program and telling them how to join the FREE elite program by going to the landing page. 2> Make “Elite Customers” announcement in several forums where digi-scrap hobbyists hang out focusing on the freebie that’s handed out. 3> Post a blog article on the same subject and if there’s a blog carnival that it would match with, I’d submit the article for the carnival as well. 4> Submit the blog article to the social networking sites I belong to and encourage others to share the posting too.

That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. The launch gets the ball rolling. The “tell-a-friend” script gives your visitors an easy way to start sharing the good news. The opt-in landing pages grow your list. The OTO sale let’s you segment the buyers from the “merely interested”.

Even if you don’t make a profit on the campaign, you’ve still met the goals and have a healthy list of customers to start marketing products to in the future. One lead list of prospective customers (those who took the freebie only) and one list of customers (those who purchased the OTO. Your list is a much stronger asset than any of the income you may generate from the sales! I’ll go into more detail about growing your list, in future business reports and in our community forums too.

Now let me tell you about two other ways this campaign could become even stronger and help you generate more leads and sales:

One: Do a Joint Venture agreement with a fellow digi-scrapper (who also has a lead list in place already). With two artists sending out the offer to their individual lead lists you have a wider distribution of your initial launch message. Offer products from both artists on the landing page to help build each others lists.

Two: Attach the OTO sale to an affiliate program and let others earn money as they spread the word about your Elite Customers program. If a hobbyist can earn extra $$ by telling their friends to join the list, they are more apt to spread the word…. IF they think your program is viral worthy. Tip — Make the affiliate commission enough to equal or exceed their initial purchase if they get 3 others to buy! Great deal for your new affiliate/customer! Better deal for you because you earned 3 sales for the price of one and ended up with 4 new customers on your “Elite Customers-Who Purchase” list…. And you’ve just recruited another affiliate to your personal sales force!

Learning More About Viral Marketing

Recently there were two very successful viral marketing campaigns that were run by Frank Kern (the Mass Control project) and Jeff Walker (the Launch Formula 2.0 program). I happen to have the blue prints for both these campaigns and several others. Let me just add a quick thank you to Frank (and friends) for sharing this with me. Because now I can share these proven methods with you. So I’ll be teaching these strategies to our association members in the DSD-Pro Training Center through a series of Career Advancement Workshops - starting sometime in June.

UPDATE: The workshop mentioned above was presented in 2008 (when this business briefing was originally written/posted). I host digi-scrap business workshops a couple times each year.  I announce them via email to members of our Business Association. If you aren’t a member yet, now’s a good time to join up. Free membership available year round. Executive Level membership available during open enrollment seasons only.

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I hope this issue has helped you understand what viral marketing is and how you can use this type of campaign to help grow your digi-scrap business! Look for more information about viral marketing in our community networking forums - because it will be there soon.

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com

Have you visited our Networking Forum this week?
http://dsd-pro.com/forums
Check in and see what’s happening!

– Get Help from the Pro’s!
– The Power of Extra Brain Cells

Get Help from the Pro’s!

One of the most wonderful ways to improve your digi-scrap business is to enlist the aid of people who have experience in areas where you need help the most. Surrounding yourself with a carefully chosen team of professionals can help strengthen your business and keep you from faltering when the going gets tough.

One person you want to have on your team is a trusted mentor. There are different people in our lives that can serve as a mentor. A mentor is a personal tutor to help guide you in your life. This person will become a confidant and a terrific friend, so choosing your mentors is an important task. This is true whether you are talking about a life-coach, a religious counselor, or a financial advisor. In the case of a business mentor - it’s best if you align yourself with a person who has experience in the same career field as you and one who’s willing to share their knowledge and experience with you on a regular basis.

Finding a great mentor isn’t always the easiest thing to do and if you’ve not had the privilege of tapping into such a relationship you may find it a bit daunting. There are lots of books available at your local library, and information online about how to go about choosing the right mentor and enlisting their services. DSD-Pro has an article about selecting your advisors with care.

If you haven’t already done so, give it a read today! Because, cultivating advice and wisdom from a mentor can boost your business forward faster than most any other relationship. And the big bonus is that usually you don’t pay for the incredibly valuable one-on-one training provided either.

The Power of Extra Brain Cells

Besides having a personal business mentor another great way to increase the potential of your digi-scrap business is to develop or tap into a Mastermind Group. This is a group that consists of four to six people who form a powerful alliance to help in each other’s businesses grow.

This is not a group for people who are casual about their business. It’s a group designed to foster long-lasting relationships through regular “meeting-of-the-minds” sessions. The primary purpose of the group is to establish support for each other emotionally, personally, and professionally. It also provides digi-scrap professionals a unique setting for discussing meaningful topics and everyday challenges - something many work from home entrepreneurs can vouch for being an important component of their business. Here are a few guidelines you might want to consider when developing and participating in a Mastermind Group:

1. Limit your group to about 6 people. Take your time picking just the right people. There’s no rush when building this group.
2. Choose people who are open-minded and goal oriented. Look for peers who are ambitious and create synergy through a positive outlook. Folks who bring a healthy energy to each discussion are the type you are want in your group.
3. There’s a level of commitment required in the group. Members need to be committed to regularly attend meetings and a willingness to participate in each one.
4. Members need to be serious about accepting and making an agreement to keep confidential anything that is shared in the group. The real benefits occur only when there is a high level of trust within the entire group.
5. Decide when, where, how often and for how long you want to meet. Two hours every month is a good rule of thumb. Consider setting rules about cutting off cell phones and limiting interruptions too. This is especially true if your group is internet based and you meet in a chat room online.
6. Elect a chairperson who’s main role is to keep the conversation flowing and allow everyone equal time. Your group may decide to have a formal agenda or a loose one, the main thing is you need to have some structure to your meetings so you don’t let too much time go by on idle chit-chat.
7. How to run your meeting will be up to the group. But you can consider kicking off each meeting with a couple of standard questions. Maybe something like, “What’s happened in your business since we last met?” Go around the room asking each person to answer the questions. Include in your session an opportunity for members to share any personal business concerns or requests from other members for assistance or support. Maybe close up your meeting-of-the-minds by summarizing or wrapping up the discussion of the session and any expectations that should come about before the next session.

Sharing ideas and business knowledge with one another creates a synergy and sometimes even terrific joint venture opportunities for all involved. So take the time to get involved!

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Info for this business report was gathered from the book “The Power of Focus” by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Les Hewitt. You can read reviews and pick up your copy at Amazon.com. I hope this issue has given you the courage to step up and start creating powerful business relationships with folks you feel could help you grow your digi-scrap business!

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com

Have you visited our Networking Community this week?
http://dsd-pro.com/forums Stop in and see what’s happening today!

– Are Bad Habits Getting in Your Way?
– Be Patient with Thy Self
– A Formula for Change
– Back Track to the 1.5 and 3.5 Issues!

Are Bad Habits Getting in Your Way?

Although it may appear differently to you, life doesn’t just happen. The choices you make every day in every situation ultimately determine how your life will play out. The habits you’ve developed over time are a part of how you make choices. This is true whether it’s a habit that is so ingrained in us it’s second nature and we don’t give it much thought, or if it’s a habit we know we have, we consciously think about it as we go about performing it. And these habits play a big role in how your future will unfold.

Some of the habits we give the least amount of thought to are those surrounding how we actually process our thoughts. Do you habitually think negatively or is it more your habit to think of the positive side of things? Do you habitually run tomorrows “to-do lists” through your mind as you lay in bed at night? Do you find your thoughts wonder to specific things when you’re working on a certain types of projects? I let my thoughts work through color schemes when I first sit down to design a project. When I’m brushing my teeth in the morning I’m always internally asking myself if I took my vitamins that day and when I’m brushing before bed I’m asking if I left cloths in the dryer or made sure the
dishwasher is set to run.

These habits actually help me getting my day started on the right foot and end my day with a feeling towards relaxation. These are what I refer to as some of my good habits. But I have some pretty bad habits too.

To me any habit that is working against me or holding me back - keeping me from accomplishing goals or feeling good about things, is considered a bad habit. These are harder for me to recognize sometimes. I have a habit of not getting birthday cards in the mail on time. Socializing too much on line; eating at irregular times throughout the day; talking when I should be listening and procrastinating on pieces of business projects that I don’t find enjoyable - to name just a few.

It’s important to make a point of periodically taking personal inventory of our habits. When I do this, I like to chunk my habits into categories. I look at ‘relationship habits’, which are those that have a direct affect on the relationships in my life. Then there are ‘health habits’ - ones that affect my mental and physical well being. I also look at my ‘business habits’ - anything that relates to my work.

I mark my calendar so that each quarter I do a personal review and check my progress on the habits I’m working to change. What habits do you have that are good for you? Which ones are not? If you haven’t done so recently, now would be a good time to take a moment and identify a few of the good habits you have and some that are holding you back as well.

Be Patient with Thyself

After taking stock of your habits you may decide it’s time to change something. Maybe you’ve identified a habit you want to improve on or one you want to completely do away with. Developing habits take time. It is said that it takes about 21 days to replace one habit with another. Then after 21-30 purposeful experiences with the new habit, it’s actually harder not to do it than to do it. If you are working towards developing a habit that you want to become so ingrained in you, that it is performed almost unconsciously, then you’re really going to need to focus on it for about 3-4 weeks.

Keep in mind that if you have been doing something repeatedly for 20 or more years you may not be able to let go of it in a few short weeks. The fact is that deeply entrenched habits are more difficult to re-mold. But don’t let this discourage you if you have a difficult one you are working on. Imagine if you only changed 2 habits every year. In five years you’d have 10 positive new habits working in your favor and helping you to have a better life.

A Formula for Change

Many of your daily activities are simply routines. From the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed at night, there are many things you do the same way. They involve every area of your life. Your everyday normal behavior has a lot to do with the results in your life and can make a huge difference in how successful you are with meeting your business goals too. If you want to see your digital scrap business realize a positive change, then here’s a formula that may help you:

1. Clearly identify your bad or unproductive business habits. It’s important that you really think about the future consequences of these habits. Write out what the habit is and then state how your business will be affected if you continue this habit.
2. Define the habit you wish to replace the bad one with. Then give a vivid description of the benefits you’ll have as a result of the adopting the new habit. The more vivid you can be with the benefits the more likely you are to action!
3. Create an action plan. Outline at least three things you can do to correct the old and develop the new habit. For example if you want to stop getting side tracked with non-business related chats while your working you may consider, leaving your instant messaging software turned off so you don’t see any live chatter going on or who’s online. Consider setting aside a specific time of day for checking in at bulletin boards and blogs. Look at chat times as a reward for yourself once a project is completed. Set a timer for 20 minutes for your chat sessions so it doesn’t cut into your work related activities.
4. Review your success as often as necessary for the habit you are working on. You may want to do a checks and balance after each work session at your computer. Then again maybe a quick review at the end of the day is sufficient. At a minimum, look at your progress weekly and tweak your action plan as needed to help you accomplish your habit-changing-goals.

The important thing is that you make a decision about a specific habit change you want to make, and then commit to specific actions to help make that change. Check your progress and give yourself the time needed to turn this into a new habit.

Back Track to the 1.5 and 3.5 Issues!

I sneaked a couple extra business reports into my auto-responder series.  If your sign-up time clashed with my updates, you may not have received the notification.  Just in case you missed them, here’s where you can find them online: Issue #1.5  (Info about RSS and why you should offer it) and Issue #3.5 (Information about the STOUI project).

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I hope this issue has given you good food for thought on how to make sure your daily habits are in line with and helping you work towards your business goals!

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com

Have you visited our Networking Forum this week?
http://dsd-pro.com/forums
Check in and see what’s happening!

– Marketing - What is it?
– Permission Marketing
– Relationship Marketing
– Conversation Marketing
– Back Track to the 1.5 and 3.5 Issues

Marketing - What is it?

Marketing is one of the most powerful concepts in business. You experience it every day in one way or another. Most often you’ll find yourself the recipient of marketing as a consumer. Sometimes you’re the marketer while wearing your business owner cap. So naturally, it is a subject that I write about often and it is the focus of this edition of our business brief.

In its most popular usage the term “marketing” refers to the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. Marketing is many time used in a manner that is more customer centered. Products are often developed to meet the desires of groups of customers or even, in some cases, for specific customers. E. Jerome McCarthy divided marketing into four general sets of activities. His theory has become so universally recognized that many business manuals now refer to his four activity sets as “the Four P’s of marketing.”

The four P’s are:
Product: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user’s needs and wants. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.

Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary - it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, psychology or attention. Pricing may be the subject of a JV type exchange.

Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.

Placement: or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing. This fourth P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or services is sold (e.g. online vs. brick and mortar store), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc.

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix, which a marketer can use to craft a marketing plan. The four P’s model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products such as digital art sold to hobbyists.

There are numerous types of marketing campaigns and many times digital scrapbooking professionals find themselves participating in multiple marketing activities at the same time. For example we may be involved in interruption marketing, relationship marketing, conversation marketing, and permission marketing all while we are also heavily engrossed in product promotion.

So it’s the wise entrepreneur who recognizes the many forms of marketing, and when, and how each can benefit them.

Permission Marketing

Permission Marketing is a phrase that was coined and popularized by Seth Godin. It is the opposite of traditional interruption marketing. Instead, permission marketing centers around obtaining customer consent to receive information from a company. Permission marketing has been hailed as a way for marketers to succeed in a world increasingly cluttered with marketing messages. Both RSS and Email lists are used heavily in this form of marketing. That’s because in both cases the prospect customer subscribes to the information source, giving you their permission to market to them. When the lead no longer wishes to participate in the marketing they cancel their subscription to the RSS feed or email promotion.

Relationship Marketing

Relationship Marketing is a philosophy of doing business, a in a manner that focuses on keeping and improving relationships with current customers rather than on acquiring new customers. With this marketing style you use a wide range of marketing, sales, communication, and customer care techniques and processes to identify your named individual customers, then create a relationship between your company and these customers. Building your referral business is part of relationship marketing. You can read about the top two reasons for building your referral business on our blog and get a better understanding of how relationship marketing can benefit your company.

The primary goal of relationship marketing is to build and maintain a base of committed customers who are profitable for theorganization.

Conversation Marketing

Conversation marketing is the presentation you make in a networking situation. It includes the way you make your first impression. It also includes how you look, the message you are delivering, and how you handle yourself in a group situation. We engage in conversation marketing in live networking meetings as well as in online environments, such as on our blogs, in forums, and in chat rooms.

Because conversation marketing involves a great deal of personal branding it is important to learn how to handle yourself when you are in a conversation that may impact a sale in your business.

Back Track to the 1.5 and 3.5 Issues!

I sneaked a couple extra business reports into my auto-responder series.  If your sign-up time clashed with my updates, you may not have received the notification.  Just in case you missed them, here’s where you can find them online: Issue #1.5  (Info about RSS and why you should offer it) and Issue #3.5 (Information about the STOUI project).

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I hope this issue has given you some good food for thought for when you are working on the marketing campaigns for your digi-scrap businesses.

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com

If you are tired of all the confusion over TOU’s and want to help clear the fog, you’re going to want to visit the the Standardized Terms of Use Initiative(STOUI) Web site: http://dsd-professionals.com/stoui/ . The STOUI is a grassroots movement to clean up TOU’s in the digital scrapbooking industry, so they are easier to read/understand and serve to protect all parties involved.

The STOUI came about because there was a lot of grumbling over the confusion and lack of direction in many TOU documents. So our DSD-Pro professionals invested some time in studying the matter further. Our quest was to find out if this was as big an issue as it appeared to be on the surface and if so, then learn exactly what it was people wanted to see changed.

The research results indicated that concerns were not limited to only a few people. There were a lot of scrappers who shared the same concerns and honestly, the problems were rather small and fairly easy to come up with do-able solutions - primarily because every group discussing this had the exact same idea for fixes. The heaviest discussions wrapped around the need for “cleaner” TOU’s. Exact problems were identified. Solutions were developed. Study discussions were held. Changes made to better meet the digital scrapbooking industry needs.

So now it’s time for action!

Go to the STOUI web site at http://dsd-professionals.com/stoui/ read up on the initiative, download the icons, and grab additional tools to help make your TOU’s secure and easy to read. Then pick up a STOUI support tag and support the STOUI further by writing about the program in your community forums and blogs.

Let’s get some momentum going towards standardizing and improving the TOU part of our careers!

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com

– Balancing Work and Life Away from the Computer
– Back Track to Issue 1.5!
– Notes from PaintChip

Balancing Work and Life Away from the Computer

Wendy Piercall an entrepreneur and mom wrote a two-part article about balance work and home life . In the first half of her article she talks about peoples misunderstanding of the time spent working by home workers.

When you mention to people that you are an entrepreneur and work from home in a digi-scrapping business - what’s the response you get? Sometimes people react with envy over the flexibility and freedom they think entrepreneurs enjoy. Well most folks who actually have this lifestyle, know that it can be very difficult to balance between work and non-work time, maybe even more than it is for work-away-from-home employees do. No doubt this is a challenge for many, many people whether they work from home or not. That’s no different for digi-scrap careerists either.

The evidence is strong that the self-employed work longer hours than employees; this has been the case since at least 1987. Statistics state that 33% of self-employed persons work over 50 hours compared with only 5% of employees.

According to the SBA (Small Business Association) 50% of small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail in the first 5 years. That’s some pretty scary numbers, my friend! Common reasons include not enough capital, lack of knowledge, poor planning and insufficient cash flow. Another factor that plays into these numbers is burnout.

Burnout is just as lethal to your business as lack of cash or knowledge. The question isn’t always one of numbers though. Working 50 hours a week isn’t always what causes burnout. It’s really the lack of balance. It a matter of managing our time and energies so we aren’t experiencing exhaustion over and over again.

Finding a happy medium in our lives.

Check out Wendy’s second article for 20 tips to keep from overworking yourself.

I’m like many of you - I work fulltime outside of my home and run my digi-scrap business as well. So I’m an employee and an entrepreneur. You can bet I’ve come up against the problem of burnout. As the saying does… “been there, done that, and got the T-shirt”… and learn my lessons from it too!

There’s no sure fire fix or easy formula that works for everyone. I think that sometimes the only way to know how to balance work and life is to know when you’re unbalanced. To recognize the signs - which again, may be different for you than they are for me. For me one of the first signs is lack of patience. I find myself getting easily agitated with myself and the people around me. Experiencing that “short fuse” syndrome. Another sign is when I’m feeling tired
even after a good night of sleep. If it’s taking me longer to get ready for my day than usual and I have to “push” myself into action - I know that I’m nearing that burnout point.

It’s when I see these traits in myself that I must remind myself to listen to my body and my mind. It’s telling me important information. Mainly that I need to pull myself away from the silly computer, take more time for myself, and put things back into balance. Listening to the voice in my head is the best way to keep from experiencing burnout.

I know this from experience and I’d say you have probably experienced the same in one way or another. Are you listening to your inner voice and taking the breaks you need to avoid burnout?  I sincerely hope you are listening.

Back Track to the 1.5 Issue!

I sneaked an extra business report into my auto-responder series.  If your sign-up time clashed with my update, you may not have received the notification.  If you missed Issue #1.5 you can go back and catch it online.  Included in that issue was information about RSS and why you should offer it project! Check it out now.

Notes from Paint Chip

We are still moving forward at top-speed on preparing to launch the official DSD-Pro Business Association website. The community forums will be an integral part of the association and it’s what we are working on now. It’s where we will be hosting our business tutorials, providing peer coaching, and more services, products and information directed at digital scrapbooking professionals. For more information about our progress, just bounce over to our pre-launch blog:

We’ll make sure you stay in the loop on our progress through this blog. Consider subscribing to the RSS feed if you never want to miss an announcement about the association!

UPDATE: You can now join our forum through the Business Association membership at http://dsd-pro.com/association. I do hope you’ll join us!

That’s it for our 3rd business reports briefing. I do hope this issue gave you something new to think about for your scrappy business!

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com

– Back Track to the 1.5 Issue!
– Structure of a Sales Funnel
– Notes from Paint Chip

Back Track to the 1.5 Issue!

I sneaked an extra business report into my auto-responder series.  If your sign-up time clashed with my update, you may not have received the notification.  If you missed Issue #1.5 you can go back and catch it online.  Included in that issue was information about RSS and why you should offer it! Check it out now.

Structure of a Sales Funnel

The success of many Internet companies is the concept of the sales funnel. The most well known and highest paid web-preneneurs dominate their business niche by developing strong sales funnel marketing programs. Literally everyone has been exposed to and is a part of sales funnels. It’s not a trap or a marketing gimmick. It’s simply a way to identify us as customers and recognize the potential buying position we represent.

Holding a funnel in your hand and pouring something into a funnel works something like this: You see the largest part of the opening is at the top, and you can pour a large amount of something into the funnel from this opening. The middle section of your funnel is slightly smaller and continues to get even smaller as it moves downward. The bottom part of the funnel is narrower and allows only a small portion of your funnel contents to come through and usually at a slower pace. But it’s small enough that you can have much better control over the direction of what flows through it. If you plug the hole at the bottom of the funnel nothing can get through and the funnel fills up and then begins to overflow. If you cap off the top of the funnel, nothing can come into it.

In the business setting, what moves through a sales funnel are the company’s customers. The purpose of a sales funnel is to help the seller attract prospective customers and lead them to take the natural path of becoming a buying customer. The funnel also filters our clients into identifiable groups so we can market products and services to them according to their purchasing practices. It’s the number of people, the choices of products/services, and the cost of those choices in each group that represent the funnel shape.

The top of the funnel is made up of the largest group of people and these are prospective clients whose attention you hope to attract. Marketing to this group involves providing free products and services. Free doesn’t mean low quality. Whatever you are gifting to this group of people is like a calling card or a resume. So if you deliver to them something of no worth or of poor quality, you may have attracted their attention, but you won’t hold it long enough to help them become a buying customer. Examples of attention grabbers I see often in the digital scrapbooking industry include free downloadable digi-art products, free information through public websites (like blogs), or free electronic publications (e-pubs).

The next level of the sales funnel represents our prospective customers who are actively participating by “opting-in” to continued marketing. The term opting-in simply means the person has agreed to let us continue communicating with them. This group of people haven’t actually purchased anything… yet. With online businesses we see this group of prospects as people who have signed up for continued services or products of some sort. In the digital scrapbooking world these folks are the ones who are members of free community forums, subscribers to newsletters, etc.

From this group of participants emerges a smaller group of people who actually begin purchasing products from the seller. This group of customers have already sampled our free offerings and become actively involved in our business by allowing us to continue marketing to them. They saw something they liked or needed that had a price tag on it and agreed to make a purchase. In this portion of our funnel it’s assumed the products and services being sold are low-priced goods and services and are represented by a large variety of offerings. Digi-kits, small scrapping contracts, low-cost software products are examples of what might be sold here.

Moving into the smallest group of customers and the last part of a sales funnel marketing program is where you’ll find the customers who are hyper responsive and are willing to make larger purchases and/or longer, more serious commitments. These people have moved through the funnel and into the most lucrative part of your business. A wise business manager realizes that these customers are responsible for a significant portion of their profits. Your products and services at this level of the funnel must represent a significant value to the customer. If they don’t see your product or service as something of high worth, they won’t be willing to shell out the high dollars to make the purchase.

Sales funnel marketing is very reliable and filled with powerful sales opportunities. In my opinion it’s also one of the strongest ways to gage the success of your product placement strategies, marketing campaigns, and your customers buying habits.

Notes from Paint Chip

Using a sales funnel to generate high-ticket sales is how small businesses turn into large businesses. Its how part-time
entrepreneurs earn a full time salary. Capturing the full potential of a sales funnel isn’t easy. It’s hard work and requires a clear understanding of each type of customer, each type of product or service offered and how to match them up to maximize your earnings.

Want to learn more about marketing your Digi-Scrap business? Check out the marketing articles in our networking forums.   NOTE: forum articles are available to business associates only. If you aren’t a member yet, you can get your free membership at: http://dsd-pro.com/association. See ya on the inside!

I hope that after reading today’s briefing you have gained some knowledge that will help you in your digital scrapbooking business. We are always open to suggestions for future articles as well. If you have certain subjects you would like for us to research and address for you, please drop me a line and let me know what they are.

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. This is a method used to subscribe to a website feed so you don’t have to go visit the website to read the latest content. Instead of going to each of your favorite sites individually you can collect all the RSS feeds of each of these sites, and consolidate them into what’s called a feed reader. Having all this info in one place makes it more efficient for you to take in all your favorite content in less time! This is one of the reasons you want to offer RSS to your customers. To help them make better use of their time.

But there’s another reason why you should be including it on your websites. Because for every feed reader you have… you have a potential customer to advertise to. It’s not hard to find out how many subscribers you have. Many online businesses use a special third party service called FeedBurner that adds extra features to the feed. The most important of which is that it provides these statistics I mentioned as well as some handy tools for you to use when posting your feed on your website - and it’s free of charge too!

Remember, the number of feed subscriptions you have tells you how many people are visiting your website and how often. What a powerful set of data for you to have when testing marketing campaigns, selling advertising on your website, and launching a new product line! Why would you not include your RSS feed on your website?

RSS feeds are not limited to blogs; many webspace owners provide feeds for their website and almost any media content online such as music, video, and audio files have RSS capability too! If you want to know all the techy parts about what’s going on behind the scenes of an RSS feed, simply run a web search using the term “syndication RSS feed”. You will get more information than you can handle in one day.

There are basically two options available to you when it comes to reading feeds. You can purchase software, install it on your computer and read your feeds from there or you can use an online feed reader and then view your information from any computer you are using to connect to the web. My preferred method is this second option because I can quickly skim through my feeds while sitting at an airport or the local coffee shop, while in front of any computer that has access to the internet!

You can learn more about the two feed reader options and how they differ, by clicking over to our RSS information page at DSD-Pro. You can also learn how to subscribe to the DSD-Pro RSS feeds from this same article.

All blogs have this RSS capability. Many of your customers now expect to see it on your website in plain view. If you aren’t
putting in top right corner of your blog - you are missing out on capturing some new potential customers. If you aren’t including it on your website at all - I can guarantee, you are losing some of your readership. I’m not alone when I say I use my RSS feed far more than I click around to the websites I track. If I found your site, but I didn’t find an RSS feed… it’ll be a long time before I return! So make your feed easy to find and very obvious to your readers!

An added note here - RSS feeds are sometimes listed on websites with links titled Atom, or Syndicate, but they all do the same thing.

Remember - busy web surfers use RSS feeds to make their life easier and access the info much quicker. Business-bloggers use them to offer a service to their readers AND to track stats for marketing, etc. If you have a business blog and you aren’t using your RSS feed… well shame on you!

I encourage you to dig up the information on how to set up the RSS on your website so your readers can find it and subscribe right away!

That’s it for today’s business reports briefing. I do hope this issue gave you something new to think about for your scrappy business!

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com

– Providing Training with Slide Shows
– Notes from Paint Chip

Providing Training with Slide Shows

Providing training for your customers is a service well worth investing time and money into. If your customers don’t know how to use your products, they aren’t as likely to purchase them.

There are many ways to provide training. Methods include classes delivered via a chat room, downloadable documents similar to the pdf file you received when you signed up for our business reports, forum and blog entries too. This is not an all inclusive list of the ways to deliver lessons. It’s merely a mini-accounting of the most popular formats I’ve seen in digi-scrap community websites.

One method that I’ve seen used often in the business environment and school settings, rather than in community forums is online slide presentations. These presentations are created using the popular MS Office Power Point software product.

Using this product you can build a tutorial that includes animated text features, slide transitions, screen clips and other graphics, and even voice over audio. Once your presentation is created you can then save it in the appropriate file format, upload it to your own web site servers, or to a public server. Then link your customers to the slide show lesson.

There are several websites offering hosting services for this type of product. Some of the benefits of this type of delivery method include:
– Giving your customers something uniquely different from what other sites are currently offering.
– Visual and audio learning opportunity.
– By using one of the websites that provide this service you can expose your training (and product information) to a wider audience using free server space that also includes built in networking/advertising opportunities through their community and their tagging systems.

I don’t vouch for any of these sites specifically, however here’s a list of the websites I found that offer slide show hosting. Most of them are provided at no or low cost: http://www.slideshare.net/; http://www.authorstream.com/; http://www.screencast.com/

You can make slide presentations with nothing other than what’s included with every version of Windows XP or Vista too. Simply use the Windows Movie Maker package. You can pick up more info on how to do that from: http://www.absoluteppt.com/movie/ppt-to-youtube-moviemaker/index.html

Consider using this same method to build a promotion campaign for your services or products. You can find an example of how one scrapbooker did it listed in our Blog Carnival info article.

Notes from Paint Chip

I wanted to end this first issue of our Business Report with an open invitation to our subscribers. An invite to join the Business Association Pre Launch Announcements List. We are preparing to launch this special project filled with tutorials, peer coaching, tons of information directed at digital scrapbooking professionals. For more information about our progress, just bounce over to our pre-launch blog

UPDATE: You can now join our forum through the Business Association membership at http://dsd-pro.com/association. I do hope you’ll join us!

That’s it for our first business reports briefing. I do hope this issue gave you something new to think about for your scrappy business!

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com