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What Uniqueness Can Do to a Company - The Benjamin Hotel

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:30:35 +0100

We've all heard about why we should have a point of difference or uniqueness and what it should do for us, but how many businesses have we actually been told about that have been successful because of their point of difference or uniqueness.

Well in this case study we'll be going over The Benjamin Hotel in New York. They are a businessman-orientated hotel and guess what are they well known for. A good nights sleep! You may be thinking why didn't they focus on Internet connection? Why not great food and service during every hour of the day? I bet you could easily make a MASSIVE list of problems The Benjamin Hotel could come up with to solve to create their own uniqueness. They could have chosen to focus on them all, but would that be as effective? The simple answer is no!

The reason why it's a point of difference is to make it DIFFERENT to everyone else's. You should only ever choose one point of difference because it makes it easy to make your business focus on just one point, it makes it easy for customers to be able to quickly recognize why you're different and why you're better than the competitors and also allows your business to revolve around this uniqueness effortlessly.

Here's an actual review The Benjamin Hotel received from the New York Times.

The Benjamin Hotel in Midtown Manhattan helped invent the position of sleep concierge nearly seven years ago when its concierge staff noticed that more and more of their guest questions involved sleep. It is one of only a few hotels to offer the service, with the Fairmont in Washington and the Soho Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto offering similar services.

Steps away from the No. 6 subways train and Lexington Avenue in full havoc, The Benjamin has deployed an array of anti-insomnia weapons.

They include guest rooms that being on the fifth floor, high above street noise, with soundproof windows; luxury sheets; aromatherapy massages; satin sleep masks; tips for "executive" naps; a menu of 11 special pillows, including the "Snore-No-More"; and special sleep inducing foods, like banana bread with peanut butter.

The hotel, at 50th Street and Lexington, has a guarantee, said the sleep concierge, Anya Orlanska, who speaks with a slight Polish accent.

"You must sleep well of you will get your money back," she said.

Jennifer King, a technology consultant originally from Chicago stayed at The Benjamin Hotel last month. She did so because Ms. Orlanska had done a deft job of finding a good hairdresser for Ms. King's Mother when Ms. Orlanska was the converge at the New York Palace Hotel.

Ms. King noticed the pillow menu and other offerings, but she said, "I didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal."

A sufferer of back pain, Ms. King said she had never been able to sleep for more than three hours a night without getting up.

But with a firm mattress and a special pillow with self-molding foam developed by NASA, she was able to sleep for eight hours, she said. "And this was during the United Nation general Assembly and police escorts and traffic and people all around," Ms. King said. "I couldn't believe it."

The article continues but you get the point. The Benjamin Hotel has only had one customer claim the money back guarantee and that was when someone was jack hammering one night. He got his money back but he was the only one out of several hundred that got their money back.

So go now and focus on your point of difference. Make sure there is only one point though.

Not two,

Not three,

Not four,

Just one.

If you don't already have a point of difference but want to be unique, here is an easy way to find your own sense of uniqueness!

Don't think of your current business when you think why it's different. Don't think in the present, think in the future, for example. HOW can my business be different? What do I want to do that could make my business different.

It's easy once you get a big list down, but don't be scared and stick with a general point of difference. If you're a baker, then instead of focusing on, "My bread is fresh." Focus on, "My bread is so fresh, if it is not bought within two hours, then it is thrown out." That's what you should be aiming for! Be as unique and risky as you can!

This is just an example of the kinds of email you'll get in my newsletter. Like it? Sign up quickly then!

If you found this useful, please tell a friend, I'm sure your friend will thank you and so will I!

The Power of the Touch

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:18:17 +0100

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And yet another story from my days in retail, this time it involves the PERSONAL TOUCH.

Personal Touch?

How many times have you gone into a shop and had the same small talk again and again. “How’s your day been?” “Good weather today.” All that generic crap that passes the time for the employee a little bit quicker. Well I found that I could increase sales and up sell so much more if I actually listened to the customer and livened up the talking. For example if we were talking about having a trip on a boat, simply saying when the customer leaves, “hope you get that trip soon.” It will make the customer remember you. I’ve had phone calls from people saying that because of me they don’t shop anywhere else. I’m not being cocky; I’m just trying to help you out. Getting personal will get you remembered. Getting remembered will make you more money.

How can this help you?

There is generally more than one shop that sells the same thing. The same thing goes for internet marketers. There are a plethora of internet marketers trying to sell pretty much the same thing. Because of this, you have to start trying different approaches to gain maximum sales. Using the example from before about me working in the retail shop, because I got personal, I literally took competitors customers. They became loyal to my store and therefore we made more profit. This too can be applied for internet marketing.

GET PERSONAL. GET TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE DEALING WITH. TALK TO THEM! Don’t just try and make the day go quicker.

Do you have any stories because you’ve added the Personal Touch?

Midnight Madness

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 08:15:17 +0100

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What is it? Well back in the days of working in retail, the street I worked on had an event once a year where all the shops were open until midnight. I was laughing to myself when I got told this was happening the first year I was working there. The area around where I worked was an aged area. I expected no one at ALL to come as by 6pm (sometimes we closed at 7pm) sales dropped to zero.

What happened?

I was wrong, as simple as that. The street was a solid stream of people as opposed to the one or two stray customers. The shops were full to the brim, lines spilling out onto the sidewalks. Buskers entertained the pedestrians, and music filled the air, it was really an amazing night. Let's just say sales hit the roof!

Why?

Well I was thinking about it the night after, and the reason why it was really so packed and busy was because it was special. The streets closing times were the standard 5 or 5 30 pm every day for the WHOLE year except this ONE night. The fact that it happened only once a year made it a whole lot more special than if it happened every day. Compare this to the late night Fridays. It happens every week. It gets boring. There’s nothing special to it, because it’s always there. The shopping centres that open late on Fridays find that they don’t get the rush they want because of the late closing hours. The same principle applies for other things as well. Let’s take car manufactures for a minute. Toyota produce cars like no tomorrow, when a new one comes out or when you see one on the road there is no special feeling. No sense of amazement and that you have seen something special. Now let’s compare this to Ferrari. When they release a car, magazines are PACKED full of info about them, if you see one on the road your mouth drops and you wish you had one. By releasing products slower, companies can actually make more of a profit. It’s simple, but it works. The less accessible, the more special.

What other examples can you find?

How A Little Goes A Long Way

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:25:45 +0100

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I’m back guys! Sorry about the long wait everyone. This article is a short but sweet one, it’s more like a life tip so enjoy!

The First Little Tip

We all know that freebies can help make us money, but how much can they help? The main thing we are taught about freebies is that for internet marketers, you can get more people to join your opt in list if you hand out freebies, but there is another level to this! Imagine this, going to a website and getting a FREE eBook with no strings attached. No opt in list requirements or anything. Now THIS is something you would remember. Just think about it in a situation where you get something for free from a shop. This is something you wouldn’t forget too quickly.

The Second Little Tip

A little extra service goes a long way. Last week this happened to me actually, my girlfriend and I went to a nice little Hong Kong restaurant called the Hong Kong Cafe in New Zealand. Now it wasn’t one full of people (which is what I was aiming for), and it was one with plastic tables etc. From one of these restaurants I didn’t expect anything great at all, but the free food they gave us and the service was amazing, better than an upper class restaurant in town. Because of the extra service and the free food I won’t forget their name anytime soon!

That’s it, my two tips for today. Couple the first and the second together, and BAM you will see the effect it would have. Customer loyalty isn’t hard to get, just think about why you become loyal and apply it to others.

Don’t forget to join my opt in list for more great articles

Short Term Leads to Long Term Right? So Why Don't People Follow This in Goal Setting?

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:34:31 +0100

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Hey guys, this post ends the era of generic “can-find-elsewhere-on-Google” posts. I’ve decided to go a new direction, a direction that will lead to MORE success stories and MORE growth for all my followers. I’d also just like to quickly thank everyone for the support so far!

Back to the article! You excited? Well by the title, you should have already figured out what this article is about, and if you guessed that it was about short term and long term goals then YOU WERE CORRECT!!! Everyone knows that long term goals are important, if you don’t then leave a comment because you’ll be the only person I’ve met that hasn’t, but I want to start to talk to you about why setting short term goals to reach the long term goals is so important.

I’m Not Following. Give Me An Example!

Alright then! Quite demanding arntcha. Well one of the goals I set myself when I started marketing was that I was going to make $1 million dollars by the time I was 18. A lot of you may laugh, but this is still achievable (hah my turn to laugh :P). But the reason why this is achievable is because I set short term goals to reach the long term goal! Setting a goal to make 1 mil is a great goal to set, but it’s pretty general. How they hell are you going to make the million is the first question I’d ask. Well I’m in the marketing business, so one of the short term goals I set myself was to start getting 10 visitors a day to my website. Obviously it’s not much but it’s a start. Once I achieved this, I moved on to 50, then 100 etc. By doing this, without knowing it, you are actually working towards achieving your long term goal. Are you getting where I’m going with this? Remember to not only set one short term goal to a long term goal, but as many as you see fit. If you aren’t seeing enough progress towards your goal, then you probably aren’t setting enough short term goals.

Okay... Well How Do I Go About Doing This?

That’s a simple question, just think about your long term goal (which you should have written down everywhere to make sure you remember what you’re trying to achieve). Now start thinking about the steps you will need to achieve to get there. Remember you can’t reach your long term goal, until you’ve done all your short term goals, and there should be more than one short term goal before you have should have achieved your long term goal. This breaks down the long term goal into achievable steps. Walah! You’ve just heard how to achieve your goals. I’m a miracle worker I know :P

Remember to join my opt in list for more great articles

Kick SEO Where the Sun Don't Shine, Promote your Website!

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:58:45 +0100

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Promoting your site has a lot to do with off page search engine optimization strategies. You’re aiming to develop backlinks to your website. By doing this you will create a sense of professionalism and it will also rank you higher in your search engines meaning what guys? More traffic!

1. Submit your website! Why? So you can get traffic through search engines!
You will not automatically be listed on a search engine when you have submitted it. What submitting a website does, it puts it in a list to be crawled. Your website will be placed on the search engine quicker; if more listed sites have backlinks to your website. This is because listed sites constantly get crawled and when crawling, they see your website, and therefore they get linked.
These are the three biggest search engines:

http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

2. Verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools and submit a sitemap
Next step is to do what the title says! Follow the instructions through the links.
Sitemap –
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184
Webmaster Tools –
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34592&hl=en

3. Not a business? Doesn't matter! Submit yorself to Google Business Center!
It’s free so there’s no question whether you should do this or not. If a person is searching site maps, your website/business can appear. Do this by going here;
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fmaps.google.com%2Flocal%2Fadd%2FbusinessCenter%3Fgl%3DUS%26hl%3Den-US&service=lbc&hl=en-US&gl=US

4. Link exchange!!!!!
Why? Well same thing as when trying to obtain backlinks. Backlinks rank you higher on search engines, therefore increasing your traffic and the same thing happens when you link exchange. Keep in mind that search engines prefer if the link is not a reciprocal, but it is hard to create non reciprocal links when starting off.

Some Tools Useful For Generating Keywords

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:26:37 +0100

Keyword selection is extremely important to get high placement on search engines. It is also a key to gain optimum result when running an advertising campaign. In a brief, choosing the right keywords has many beneficials. Getting a higher position on search results means increase the chances that people will visit your webpage. A webpage with a good rank also gives a feeling of security for visitors because it equals high credibility.

Different sites have different goals when it comes to search engine optimization. Some webmasters are prefer to build websites that attract various types of visitors. Directory is an example of a type of website that utilizes broad search optimization strategy.

Other webmasters build websites that target specific audiences. For getting targetted visitors, such webmasters utilize highly specific keywords. Concentrating on related keywords like this can radiate the probability of getting sales and capture quality opt-in subscribers.

Choosing the appropriate keywords is important for advertisers, especially the ones that utilize text link or PPC ads. The process is not simple since they have to understand very well with the machinations of the potential customers. PPC advertisers also have to accomplish further research to know the keywords used by their competitors and then use the data grabbed to overcome the competitors.

One of the most popular keyword selection tools available today is Wordtracker. This keyword selector is very useful to find out keywords that many people have been used as queries for previous 100 days. With Wordtracker, you can also get informed about the number of websites that utilize the same keywords. Besides to grab lateral keywords, this service is also useful to acquire thesaurus.

Google Keyword Tool, another keyword suggestion tool, is useful to uncover niches which has monetary value. In essence, this keyword tool can help you locate profitable products with less competition. If you intend to build websites to Adsense, this tool can tell you how much money you can make with a particular keyword. Just notice how much marketers are bidding.

Similar with WordTracker, using Keyword Discovery you can also find search phrases your prospects have been using and competition for any keywords. The search phrases are collected from various search engines. The period of data is 365 days so this keyword tool is very useful to dig keywords not found on WordTracker. Compared with Google adwords keyword suggestion tool, Keyword Discovery can yield more keywords.

As a webmaster, you should utilize various keyword tools properly. Each has different purposes, from digging long tail keywords to locating trends. There is also keyword analysis tools that will show you the number of times particular keywords are included on your web page and other important information. With various options available, it will not be too difficult to perform good keyword research. Just use the right tools to discover your perfect keywords.

Another thing to keep in mind is because each tool utilizes different databases, it is more likely that they will show varying results. One tool may show a particular search term is good for optimization, while another may suggest a different search volume for the term. The best approach is to utilize more than one tool so that you can examine whether a particular search term is really valuable.

What Is Article Marketing?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:13:14 +0100

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Basically article marketing is when you write and publish an article on the Internet, you encourage people to come to your site in three very specific ways.

First, your readers will hopefully see you as the expert in your field and they will want to come to your website to learn more about you.
Second, your articles have the potential (obviously this is not true is many cases but we dream!) to be published on thousands of different websites so that your chances of having your article seen and read are multiplied by a thousand fold.
After this has been done, you should hopefully start to see some traffic start to flow to your website as readers will start to click on the link embedded throughout the articles!

How Does it work?

It’s very important to keep in mind that many people earn money off the placement of ads on their website. The more traffic they have coming to their website, the more money they make. This is called contextual advertising.

One of the best ways to generate traffic to a website is to load it up with valuable, fresh content in the form of articles. When the search engines see the new content on a busy website, they tend to reward the page with the article on it by presenting it high on their search engine results page, which encourages even more people to visit the site and click on an ad, basically exponential growth takes place.

The problem these website owners run into is finding a large quantity of great articles to put on their sites. Most of them don’t have the money or time to constantly write heaps of articles to keep their website fresh and full of new information, so what they do is the go around to websites which provide articles, and place them on their website. Why people allow them to take their articles is because they place links throughout the text of the article, therefore creating backlinks to their website.

There is a huge demand for nicely written articles, the better you are at writing articles, the more backlinks you will achieve going to your website. The website owners want to earn money on advertising, but in order to get readers to their websites, they need well written articles. It is the perfect symbiotic relationship.

3 Step Process

1. Start by writing an article that is around 750-800 words long. Why 750-800 words? Well this is the amount that has the highest demand. The website owners have discovered that these are the articles that their readers (the readers who click on ads) want to read.

2. Next, create your author block. The author block is the part that appears on the button of the written article. Make sure you add a link leading back to your website using the appropriate keyword rich anchor text. This is the word or phrase your customers would typically use to find you if they did a search on Google for example.

3. Then offer your article to the people who want to post it on their website. You can either do this one site at a time, or you can use an article distribution company, a great free one would be GoArticles.com

Anyone have any other suggestions for article submission sites or information they would like to add?

Three Things to Avoid, Getting You Out of the Group of the 90% of Marketers That Fail

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:57:15 +0100

As I say in a lot more depth in my EBook, SMarketing Online, there are three things you should avoid to get you out of the group of the 90% of the marketers that fail. You will find that everyone needs to learn to overcome these things, and the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

1. The Lack of Patience

Patience is a virtue, and most people forget that internet marketing is just like running a real business. To get anywhere with a business you need to wait for it to grow. You need to put in time and effort to actually see and start reaping the rewards, this is what most people forget and that’s why they give up after 1 week because they don’t see any instant results. This is what annoys me about those “make $45,000 overnight” EBooks, people believe this, buy it, read it and then eventually give up because they realise that to make the $45,000, you already need a very large customers base and already be positioned as a trusted leader in your niche. After they don’t see the results, they give up forever which means they miss out on a big opportunity!

So what do you need to do? Well the answer is be patient! Focus on one or ttwo strategies, not ten or twenty. Make sure you master the strategies by doing them every single day, after you have done this enough then you can start attempting more! Remember that businesses grow slowly, and that is the same with internet marketing, but once it has started growing, be prepared for the exponential growth and more money than you were hoping for!

2. Excuses

It is something that plagues all of us, it doesn’t matter if you are just studying for an exam, thinking if you should take on those extra hours at work every week or... internet marketing and affiliate marketing!

There is something I want you to do right now. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and get ready to write! Write down all the excuses which you often use, such as “I don’t have enough time”. Now what I want you to do is write down a counter argument for each excuse which you write down!
For example if you wrote down I don’t have enough time, then your counter argument could be, I have enough time, I just need to organise my time better and not procrastinate so much.

Once you get over using excuses as a past time hobby, you will start to become more motivated and therefore start making more progress faster!

3. Over Diversifying

This is a pretty easy step to get your head around, how many companies do you/ would of work for? Well the question just sounds silly, one obviously! So why do people attempt to try work for so many internet marketing companies! They think because they can work for many companies at once, they think they will make a lot more money, but simply put, if you can’t make money in one company, then you won’t make money in the rest of your companies. It’ll just be a waste of time, so why not just focus on one and make more money with less time spent!

Hopefully this helped you, got any questions? Please contact me!

http://www.stevenmale.com/contact-me.php

Thanks for reading!
Steven M.

4 Important Sites to Take Advantage of to Boost your Marketing Leads Through the Roof

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:16:18 +0100

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There is a story about a son and father going out fishing. The father bets that he can catch more fish than his son, and being a competitive family the son took up the bet with no hesitation. After a whole day of fishing, the father and son returns, the father caught 50 fish, and the son only caught 28. The son was confused by this, so he asked his father how he did it, the father simply replied, “I always have more than one hook on my line every time I fish, this way I always have a higher chance of catching more than one fish every time I cast my line out”.

Now this father son life lesson can actually be applied to marketing as well! I know so many people who have never actually thought of applying this principle to marketing, internet marketing, affiliate marketing and pretty much anything, but by doing this you can gain so many more leads!

In basic terms the more places you market your website, the more traffic you will gain. You have to remember, not everyone in your market will hang out in the same place, there are many people who visit only one social networking website such as Twitter and not on others such as Facebook, so you need to expand your reach. This is the same case for search engines, people who use Google may never use Yahoo! and vice versa.

These are just four places you should start to market your website.

First of all which most of you should already be marketing on is Facebook

Was originally created for teens and young adults all around the world, but not anymore. Adults and business are taking over the world of Facebook with over 500 million unique accounts and more and more created every day, Facebook is vital for gaining those leads that are hiding from you for internet marketing!

Secondly is Twitter

The blue bird of marketing... Twitter harvests a large potential of leads. Twitter is where you have 140 characters to express yourself and gain the traffic you want, even though Twitter has had such a large growth, even up to 1500% a month sometimes, it has actually in the last month started to level off its growth. This is not to say that it still isn’t a traffic generating machine!

Thirdly we have Google

Google is one of the most well known search engines.... ever! Google gets an intense amount of traffic, and when I say intense, I mean page views in the MILLIONS. Get listen on Google this is very important for gaining for traffic! Google may take a while to list your website, but if there are other sites already linking to your website, then it will take as quick as a day!

Lastly we have Yahoo! and newly we have Bing!

Yahoo! is one that many people actually forget about, being too obsessed with Google which between you and me I’ve done it too! Another quite new search engine you should submit your website too is Bing! You have to remember that many people are loyal to search engines, so you need to reach those who would never think about using Google.

Now you need to do this as soon as you can, don’t wait to submit or talk about your site because it is just wasted time and therefore wasted money! Go do it now, it’ll take about an hour to set up properly but the benefits are to die for.

Start casting those lines, the more lines you have, the more fish you can potentially catch. Remember that people who you’re trying to attract to your niche will not always be waiting in one position. Just like how a fishermen will try different spots most times they go fishing, you need to try different places too! As well as this I’m going to repeat the need for good content, more fish will come the better the bait is.

Any questions? Please don’t hesitate to ask! Just click my contact page and I look forward to hearing from you soon!