Last month's question -

As the Holidays approach, you can count on the chance to see the movie "It's A Wonderful Life" starring Jimmy Stewart. What is the name of the city where this story takes place?

b) Bedford Falls

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This month's question is:

Where is New York City's New Year's celebration held?

A) Battery Park
B) The Meadows
C) Times Square
D) Wall Street

Be the first to call (717) 291-4689 or e-mail Sue Worthing sue@ezsolution.com with the correct answer to win a $20 gift certificate to Isaacs Deli or Amazon.com!

If you're like most business owners, growing your business and being more profitable is always at the top of your business goals. So how are you going to accomplish this?

There is no doubt that the business climate has changed. People are tighter with their cash as the economy struggles in the seemingly never ending recession. A few months ago, I had a commercial banker actually tell me that his bank assumes that all commercial real estate will have NO increased value over the next five years. WOW.

On top of economic issues, how we go to market is also changing rapidly. Marketing trends have shifted away from traditional sources like Yellow Page advertising, Print Media, Radio and TV and have moved toward Internet and social media.

What is traditional media now selling?
The phone books are selling their online solutions in their directory as well as search engine marketing. They have to because very few people use a phone book anymore.

Last month, I had a new client tell me that they just bought radio spots and as part of the package she could select an additional free service. Guess what the list was? That's right, all Internet marketing. She could get free: a Website, Search Engine Marketing, Banner ads, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing or Text Messaging.

So with all this additional hype around Internet marketing, why do so few local businesses make money from their websites?

Should you fire your website? YES or NO
The answer is simple. Your website and Internet marketing are not get rich quick schemes or scenes from the movie Field of Dreams. "If you build it, he will come" worked for Kevin Costner - but it will not work for your business.

The reality is all marketing is hard work. You can't just have one lead source. You need many. This applies to traditional and Internet marketing.

Let's take look at your website.

Whether you want to generate a lead or make a sale, you are asking your website to be a salesperson for your company. Your website needs to have all the same knowledge and skills that your top performing salesperson has.

These include:

1. Rapport Building
   Your website builds rapport by having easy-to-read sales copy. It should read just like your salesperson would speak.

   Good Example: I understand how frustrating it is when your computer system goes down and your IT guy doesn't call you back.

   Bad Example: XYZ company is dedicated to your technology and supporting your growth.

2. Credibility/Believability
   No one buys a product or service that they don't believe will solve their problem. So, your website needs to build the confidence level in the prospect.

   You do this by having:

   • Case studies
   • Testimonials
   • Free reports
   • White papers
   • Awards that you have won
   • Certifications that you have
   • Books that you have published

   Your prospects need to believe that you can help them or they won't buy from you.

3. Product Knowledge
   One of the first things that you teach a new salesperson is information about your products and services. So many websites devote only a page or two to describing their products and services. Then they expect the visitor to read this very limited copy and have a full understanding of how you can help them. How can they be interested if they don't understand what you do and how you help your clients? So many websites are too small to do the job. One of the best ways to communicate your sales and product message is through video. This gives your prospect information and does it in a very personal way.

4. Call to Action
   What do you want the prospect to do when they are on the site? Do you want them to buy? Then it needs to be easy to find and buy the product online.

   Do you want them to contact you or identify themselves as having some level of interest? This can be done in several ways:

   • Free Report (example): The 9 things you must know before hiring a computer guy.
   • Coupons or Coupon sign-ups
   • Free Downloads
   • Free Video Reports
   • Free Webinars
   • Free Teleseminars

5. Sales Leads
   Your salesperson can very knowledgeable but if he doesn't have leads to talk to, he will never close a deal.

   Just because you have a great site doesn't mean that prospects will visit it. It takes an extreme amount of both traditional and Internet marketing to get your website to produce results.

   Here's the reality. The more marketing you do, the more successful your website will be. Aside from all the traditional marketing, here is online marketing that you should consider:

   • Get ranked on the first page of Google (SEO)
   • Buy Google paid Ads
   • Have a Facebook business page
   • Buy Facebook Ads
   • Have a LinkedIn profile
   • Email your clients and prospects every week
   • Have a Mobile version of your site
   • Buy banner ads on other websites
   • Use QR Codes

• A brand new black Apple iPad 2 with Wi-Fi and 3G capability.
• Black Case
• 32GB Flash Memory
• $25.00 iTunes gift card to buy apps
• iPad Cover (grey)

Here's how the contest works:

• Email your referral to
• Call us with your referral at (717) 291-4689
• Fill out form at www.ezsolution.com/ipad

We will call and schedule an appointment.

When we get the appointment we will send you $25.00.

If your friend becomes a client, we will send you a check for $50.00. We will also give your friend a $100 discount off our services.

If you make the most referrals than anyone else, you win a new iPad2.

Contest starts: January 1, 2012 and ends April 15, 2012

-- Mitchell Kapor

Performance Avenues
www.performanceavenues.com

Paul Risk Associates
www.paulrisk.com

Independent Jewelry Appraisers
www.ija-gemologist.com

Apartment Association Of Central Pennsylvania
www.aacpofpa.com

#1: Be More Productive
If improving your time-management skills is one of your New Year's resolutions, this will be a BIG help: Turn off the automatic send and receive for your e-mail (I can almost hear the gasps of horror). Admit it, you're addicted to e-mail and if you're like most people, you're checking it constantly. In fact, there's a good chance it's the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night. If you want to stop the constant temptation to lose focus on your work, simply turn off the automatic send and receive function, forcing you to click on the "Send And Receive" button at set times. If that's too "cold turkey," you could at least turn off the sound and icon popup so you're not distracted by it while working.

#2: Save Time
After e-mail, checking social media sites can be another huge time suck. If you (and possibly your staff) are wasting a lot of time on Facebook, good content filtering software can keep you in check by preventing you from accessing these sites from your work PC. You can also allow certain people in your company access while blocking others; so if you have a web manager or marketing manager who needs to access these sites for work but find it too tempting for YOU, we can configure the system to assist you with that temptation.

#3: Lose Weight
Pearson's Law states that anything measured improves, and anything measured and reported upon improves exponentially; so if you want to lose weight, you might sign up for www.MyNetDiet.com and start tracking everything you eat. This site allows you to set and track your weight loss goals by allowing you to post what you ate and then counting calories for you. If nothing else, it will help you think BEFORE you eat because you need to track the calories!

#4: Get Organized!
If you're like me, you've got a million things going on - from business, family and everything in between, it's easy to get overwhelmed and forget tiny (but important!) details. Using Evernote can help. Evernote allows you to capture and organize any files, notes, websites, audio or hand written notes in one easy-to-learn interface. And with the mobile app, you can capture a to-do item or reminder at any time without the fear of losing it.

Mary makes Lancaster her home.  She enjoys reading and sports.  When she can, Mary likes to travel and learn about other cultures and countries.

Favorite Foods: Pizza and ice cream
Favorite Color: Green
Favorite Car: Anything that runs!
Favorite Sports Team: Any PA team
Favorite Sweet:  I eat anything sweet
Favorite Animal: The ones that don't bite me!
Favorite TV: The News

Our client spotlight for January falls on Popovsky Performing Arts Studio. The studio offers private voice lessons, acting classes, workshops, master classes and performance opportunities to beginners and accomplished performers alike. The studio began in 2007 when Michael Popovsky started offering private voice lessons. Michael's deep love for performance and education led him to expand the studio environment to help train performers in multiple disciplines.

"I came to EZSolution around the time that I launched my company. I met Tom at a Chamber of Commerce event and initially we discussed our shared love of performing and singing. My company already had a stable base of clients and because of the 'word of mouth' advertising in our industry, I didn't see a huge importance to really invest in our website. Business was steady, but on a small scale, and things were fine."

"I decided that to take it to the next level I would invest in a website. Working with EZSolution has been an incredible experience. EZSolution designed the site and worked closely with me to make sure that the design reflected our company's image and that it had a clean, easy-to-use navigation.  They continue to make any edits, changes, and updates we need to do on our website and they take care of all of our requests quickly."

"Because we are a small company without people dedicated to our website, we rely on EZSolution to be there to help us with the small updates as well as major formatting changes. They are always willing to help us out with all the adjustments, large or small. The results have been wonderful.  We find ourselves on the first page of most searches related to our industry."

"Our website has been very instrumental in attracting clients to our company. We have seen a great increase in business since we put up the website. Our clients use the web in many ways to connect to our studio. They can contact us, sign up for programs or just be informed about performing arts in Lancaster County."

"This increase in business has allowed us to move into a location much larger than where we are currently located.  As of Monday, January 2nd, we will be opening our doors in a new performing arts studio at 245 Butler Avenue, near Lancaster Shopping Center. We continue to be Lancaster County's fastest growing performing arts studio thanks to Tom and our friends at EZSolution."

Check out Popovsky Performing Arts Studio at www.popovskystudios.com or call Michael at (717) 517-8543.

Backup
First, data backup simply means a copy of your data is replicated to another device or location. Tape drives, offsite backup and even USB devices provide data backup. Data backup is obviously important.

Disaster Recovery
However, the more important consideration is whether or not your backup solution provides easy disaster recovery or the ability for you to recover all your files, software and functionality quickly, easily and without corruption. For example, if your server died, you wouldn't be able to quickly get back to work if you only had file-level backup. In order for you to start working again, your server would need to be replaced, all software re-installed, data re-installed and then the whole system would need to be configured with your settings and preferences. This process could take hours or even days - and that's if you have all your software licenses and a clean copy of your data.

Business Continuity
Then there's business continuity. This is the ability for your business to continue to operate even after a major disaster. For example, if you ran an accounting firm and your building burned to the ground, you'd be out of business if all your files were on the server only.

At a minimum you need to make sure you have in place the right backup and disaster recovery plan for your tolerance for downtime, and a plan for how your business could continue to operate if you could no longer access your building, server or data. You should review your plan annually. If you want a simple and easy way to get all of this handled, give us a call! We specialize in planning, implementing and managing these projects so you don't have to. Give Brad a call at (717) 291-4689 to start your backup, disaster recovery and business continuity planning.

When your referral becomes a client (and has spent $1000 or more) then we will pay you $50 more. And, we will give your referral $100 off their purchase.