It’s always assumed that having the correct value proposition should be a no brainer. Afterall, what could be so difficult about crafting a 10-word statement that sets you apart from the rest of the competition? But it’s a challenging exercise. How many businesses stick out in your mind with the level of desire you have for the company (products or services they offer); and the exclusivity of what they have to offer?

A quick refresher: What exactly is a value proposition: Value Proposition is the promise of value you deliver by defining the problem you solve and clarifying why you are better than the alternatives. …

Did you know that it costs five times as much to attract a new customer, than to keep an existing one? The first rule of any business is to retain customers and build a loyal relationship with them, and thereby avoid customer acquisition costs. It’s a well-established fact that 44% of companies have a greater focus on customer acquisition vs. 18% that focus on retention. Also, it’s true that only 40% of companies and 30% of agencies have an equal focus on acquisition and retention. Check out our infographic, ‘Customer Acquisition Vs. Retention Costs – Statistics And Trends’ for more …

Considering how crucial they are to ecommerce and lead gen efforts, PPC ads continue to be grossly underestimated and misused.

Unless your SEO is good enough to get you onto the first page of search results, PPC ads are your ticket to putting your company and/or products in front of potential customers at the precise moment they’re looking for you.

Their importance is such that we can’t cover all of the dynamics here. But you can get a good start by breaking them down into three basic elements:

1. The Keyword

Contrary to their primary role in SEO, the main …

Last week, as part of the “Conversion Optimization Tactics in Action” blog post, we made note of how Simply BBQ used customer reviews and customer-generated content.

First, the site features excerpts from customer testimonials throughout. The excerpts are also compiled in a series of testimonials pages, four in all, with entries from a cross-section of Simply BBQ’s customers, including large multinational corporations, local businesses, municipalities and private individuals.

Simply BBQ then shows some innovation in a feature that allows their customers to “Like This Menu” with a total of “likes” listed beside each menu item.

Finally, Simply BBQ offers the …

As I pointed out a couple weeks ago, many old marketing and sales models, particularly AIDA, are open-ended, meaning that once the sales conversion is complete, the model stops and has no means of putting the customer back into the conversion loop, like turning them into brand and/or product advocates.

Creating advocates not only increases the chances of the them returning, but their actions will influence others to become customers too, and so they end up doing your sales and marketing for you. For free.

Let’s look at some of the ways, especially for ecommerce sites, you can create brand …

Since it is the start of the new year, we compiled a list of useful websites that we have been using over the last year. Our goal was to come up with a list of sites that are not well known but we feel should get more attention. The list is includes web applications, project tracking tools, search tools, news sites and multimedia websites.

Note: We extracted the description of each application from its own About us page. No one can describe a product like its inventors , so we decided we would use their own words to …