You need an elevator pitch. According to Wikipedia.com, “An elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition. The name ‘elevator pitch’ reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.”

You need an intelligent response. The person who asked could be your next customer, investor, or someone who refers you to a big customer or investor. The response has to be direct, smooth, and sincere. It cannot sound like a sales pitch.

I met some business owners a few years ago who had a practiced and consistent elevator pitch. They owned a company that rented boats. Their customers could call and schedule boat time as if they were scheduling service on a car. Staff would make sure the boat was available, prepare it for use, and clean it afterwards. I asked one of the owners what he did and he replied, “Well, do you golf? We are like a country club for boaters. Our clientele can call us and reserve a boat. We do all the prep work beforehand and cleanup afterward. All you have to do is show up on time.”

I found someone else with a name badge for the same company. I asked her what she did. She recited the same exact elevator pitch. I found two others, asked them what they did, and received the same pitch. Imagine that! Four people had the identical response. I’m impressed that all four had practiced their responses. They gave me enough information to answer my question, but they didn’t drown me with an unwanted sales pitch. Maybe they sat at somebody’s kitchen table and said, “OK, how do we respond when somebody asks what we do?” When you create your elevator pitch, give yourself and your staff permission to vary it. The pitch should always sound fresh.

My current elevator pitch is, “My name is Mark. I use Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services.” It is concise, yet it doesn’t drown people with all the details of what I do. It helps qualify people who may need to hire me. It also helps weed out the ones who probably don’t.

It is your turn. Grab an index card and create your own elevator pitch. Time yourself. You have 30 seconds. Practice, practice, practice.

You can answer these questions:

• What is your name?

• What is your Definite Mission?

• What is the most important thing you do?

• What are you pursuing?

• How long have you been doing it?

If you need more than one index card, your elevator pitch is probably more than 30 seconds long. Write your main points and put them in complete sentences. Start with your name and company name.

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Mark Anthony Germanos uses Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services. Mark uses SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help his clients attract more business. Mark’s Sacramento SEO Gold package includes creating a 6,000 word document with abundant content for your online presence. Sacramento SEO Gold will not produce instant gratification, but Sacramento SEO Gold works and creates long-term benefits. Google Sacramento business revival or Sacramento cloud computing to see Mark’s SEO strategies in action. Mark is available at 530-677-8864 and at http://bit.ly/Jk50ds.

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Mark Anthony Germanos is the President of Cameron Park Computer Services, a premier Sacramento IT company providing IT services, IT solutions and IT support. Cameron Park Computer Services moves clients to the Cloud. “The Cloud is among the best IT solutions we’ve ever offered,” says Germanos, “I’ve been in the IT service and IT support business since 1992. When you run your business in the Cloud, your data is always available, available from anywhere and the cost is usually less. Does your IT company offer IT services, IT support and CloudU certified staff that can provide today’s IT solutions at affordable prices”? Cameron Park Computer Services does.

Businesses Warned Against Social Media Gold Rush Fever: Word of Mouth Experts Caution Social Networking Should Not be Primary Method for Reaching Customers

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/22/4507763/businesses-warned-against-social.html#storylink=cpy

Part of this Gold Rush is the expectation that social media will help you attract prospects, inform them of your product and then close the sale. That works for simple packages like books, shampoo and restaurant coupons.It does not work when you have something that cannot be packaged as easily as a book.

Yes, GM announced it was stopping its Facebook advertising two days before the Facebook IPO. They learned that people apparently don’t want to buy cars from a web browser. How can you create a driving experience, replicate the new car smell or demonstrate the 0-60 speed through a mouse and keyboard? GM learned a hard lesson. They should have dome some smaller testing before spending $4M on their Facebook ads.

For whatever product or service you are selling, make sure you can pull retain customers through the sales funnel and have a realistic call to action. Some products are sellable online while others will require face time. Social media can create miracles, but it is not a one size fits all solution.

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Mark Anthony Germanos uses Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services. Mark uses SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help his clients get on page 1 and attract more business. Mark’s Sacramento SEO Gold package includes creating a 6,000 word document with abundant content for your online presence. Sacramento SEO Gold will not produce instant gratification, but Sacramento SEO Gold works, gets people on page 1 and creates long-term benefits. Google Sacramento business revival or Sacramento cloud computing to see Mark’s SEO strategies in action. Mark is available at 530-677-8864 and at http://bit.ly/Jk50ds.

How to choose the right keywords

Daphne has a dance studio. Daphne offers jazz, swing and waltz dance classes. Her studio is in Cameron Park, California and Daphne knows sign language. Daphne updates her web site and blog with the keywords “dance instruction, jazz, swing, waltz, dance instruction Cameron Park, sign language.” Daphne puts these keywords in her web site’s META keywords tag and also in her online marketing campaigns.

Daphne is pretty comfortable with these keywords. These are keywords found repeatedly in her web site. These are keywords appropriate to the business she runs. These are keywords in her social media profiles. She also feels her ideal customer will type at least one of these keywords in a Google search window. She wants to attract dance students in Cameron Park who want to learn jazz, swing or waltz. She has a niche in her sign language proficiency and wants the world to know that she can accommodate deaf students. Sure enough, the phone starts ringing and web site traffic increases 300%.

Daphne’s campaign will work well. Daphne’s keywords match the service she is selling and the services her target market wants to buy.

How to choose the wrong keywords

Leah runs a home daycare service. She wants to attract parents with preschool age kids but at the same time need to go to work. She lets parents drop off their kids starting at 6:30 AM and lets parents pick up their kids as late as 6:30 PM. Leah has all the necessary certifications and licensing from her city. Leah decides to market her services online.

Leah promotes these keywords: “Facebook IPO, Obama, Brad Pitt.” She waits for the phone to ring. She checks her web page traffic and sees that almost nobody visits and when someone does visit, they leave within 30 seconds. She feels sad, because she chose popular keywords. She did this campaign wrong. Her keywords have nothing to do with her business. When people find her online advertising and visit her page, they find a page that has nothing to do with the link. Remember, they clicked a link for “Obama” and wound up at a home daycare center. No wonder they leave within 30 seconds. Poor fit. Over time, the search engines will assign Leah’s web site a lower ranking for these keywords because the content is not a good match.

Leah’s campaign will fail. She is trying to cheat Google by using popular keywords that have nothing to do with her site.

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Mark Anthony Germanos uses Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services. Mark uses SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help his clients get on page 1 and attract more business. Mark’s Sacramento SEO Gold package includes creating a 6,000 word document with abundant content for your online presence. Sacramento SEO Gold will not produce instant gratification, but Sacramento SEO Gold works, gets people on page 1 and creates long-term benefits. Google Sacramento business revival or Sacramento cloud computing to see Mark’s SEO strategies in action. Mark is available at 530-677-8864 and at http://bit.ly/Jk50ds.

1. Blogs are easier to manage. You can update a blog by sending an e-mail to a private e-mail address. From there, the blog engine will post that message within a few seconds. You won’t have to worry about word wrap changing, line wrap pushing important text below the fold or pictures moving. Those traits are frozen in the template.

2. Blogs allow subscriptions. When you post an update on your blog, your blog’s subscribers will receive a notification that your blog has new content. That notification can appear as an e-mail or as an entry in someone’s RSS Feed reader.

3. You can redirect domains. I am redirecting the domain http://escapethecubicle.net to a page at http://markgermanos.wordpress.com. If you have a web site that is failing you and you want to promote a blog instead, you can update your DNS forwarding like I did.

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Mark Anthony Germanos uses Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services. Mark uses SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help his clients get on page 1 and attract more business. Mark’s Sacramento SEO Gold package includes creating a 6,000 word document with abundant content for your online presence. Sacramento SEO Gold will not produce instant gratification, but Sacramento SEO Gold works, gets people on page 1 and creates long-term benefits. Google Sacramento business revival or Sacramento cloud computing to see Mark’s SEO strategies in action. Mark is available at 530-677-8864 and at http://bit.ly/Jk50ds.

1. Your web site is out of date. Most of the sites I review when people ask me to look at their site and ask me what I think…are old. I’ve seen some that are more than 5 years old and the owners complain that they generate no business. They do not even know how many visitors the site attracts in a given month. I’ve seen some that promote the copyright date. Some of those copyrights were more than 5 years old. Having a 5 year old copyright on your web site is a declaration that you don’t care anymore.

2. Your web site is too tough to manage. When we create web sites, we work immensely to make sure the colors, fonts and graphics are perfect. People spend tremendous amounts of time creating web sites themselves or with an outside contractor. When the site is done, everybody says: “whew, I’m glad that is finally finished.” They try making small changes and find that word wrap, line wrap and picture places gets severely altered. Pictures that used to appear on the right now appear on the left. Text that used to appear above the fold (on the top of the screen without scrolling down the page) now appears somewhere below the fold. The small project has become a mess. I know someone who changed one word and ended up taking his web site home page out of service.

3. Alternatives exist. One of my domains actually points to a blog at wordpress.com. My formatting there isn’t as beautiful as the formatting on my static web site, but I know I can update the blog with a quick e-mail from MS Outlook. I do not have to worry about colors, word wrap, line wrap or pictures moving. Those details are frozen in a template. My task is to write good content and attract readers. Life has become easier.

If you are looking a redoing your web site, ask if you really want to redo it. You can create a blog that will have more currency (newness), be easier to update and cost you much less than a web site redesign.

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Mark Anthony Germanos uses Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services. Mark uses SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help his clients get on page 1 and attract more business. Mark’s Sacramento SEO Gold package includes creating a 6,000 word document with abundant content for your online presence. Sacramento SEO Gold will not produce instant gratification, but Sacramento SEO Gold works, gets people on page 1 and creates long-term benefits. Google Sacramento business revival or Sacramento cloud computing to see Mark’s SEO strategies in action. Mark is available at 530-677-8864 and at http://bit.ly/Jk50ds.

A man walked up to me afterwards, pointed a finger and said” “in 15 words or less, why should I do business with you”? I said” “what”? He repeated the question. I looked like Mr. Stupid and I had a very long drive home from the Bay Area.

That gave me time to think up some good responses. These include:

· I turn your problems into solutions

· I’ve been doing this since ****

· My ideas work for my clients and for my business

This 15 word response will probably take 8 second to recite. Yes, I am asking you to condense your 30 second elevator pitch into 8 seconds. This is not easy. However, 8 seconds may be all the time you have to answer the: “so, what do you do” question. You have to be ready. I find myself at many network events during a given month. I’ve recited a 30-second elevator pitch and felt people tuned out after about 15 seconds. We’ve all heard elevator pitches and have grown tired of them. Listening to a verbal pitch for 30 seconds seems more difficult and unattractive than ever. That’s why 30 seconds is too long and why you need a much shorter response. Your 15 word (8 second) response to the question: “why should I do business with you” is a much more attractive option.

You should also put this in your online profiles. LinkedIn permits a 120 character headline. Assuming the average word has 8 characters, you can squeeze 15 words into a LinkedIn headline. This will work very strongly to your benefit. When someone finds you at LinkedIn, they will see your picture, your name and your headline. When someone Googles your product or service and sees your entry at LinkedIn, they will see your name and headline. Yes, my friends, the LinkedIn headlines are indexed. Creating a powerful and keyword-friendly headline can work to your benefit.

You can borrow one of mine or write a few that a specific to you and/or your profession. Feel free to send them to mark for my review.

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Mark Anthony Germanos uses Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services. Mark uses SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help his clients get on page 1 and attract more business. Mark’s Sacramento SEO Gold package includes creating a 6,000 word document with abundant content for your online presence. Sacramento SEO Gold will not produce instant gratification, but Sacramento SEO Gold works, gets people on page 1 and creates long-term benefits. Google Sacramento business revival or Sacramento cloud computing to see Mark’s SEO strategies in action. Mark is available at 530-677-8864 and at http://bit.ly/Jk50ds.

Activities. What does your ideal customer do in his free time? Does he watch TV, listen to political talk radio or read? This will tell you which vehicles to use when targeting him. I watch TV and I have a DVR. My wife and I double fast-forward through commercials. I have XM Radio in the car and all my presents are for commercial free stations. Trying to reach me via TV or radio advertising…simply will not work. However, I do read Triathlete magazine thoroughly. Placing an ad in Triathlete has a better chance reaching me than any TV or radio ad.

Locality. You have to know where your ideal customer resides. This may be the easiest trait to identify. If you’re buying a list, you can choose your zip codes and then start your campaign. If you’re buying pay-per-click ads on Google, you can target a geographic area. I’m in the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto area. Ads you place in this area have a better chance reaching me than ads you promote in Seattle.

Political Views. Before I go further on this one, let me say you can send that hate mail to mark if I say something you don’t like. If you successfully target your market’s political views, you can be very effective. The opposite is true. I am writing this post three weeks before an election. Every day, I receive postcards for various candidates. I’m afraid to say the marketing folks have not done enough research on my political views. I receive postcards for candidates promoting the “traditional” definition of marriage and candidates promoting a new definition of “two adults in love.” I cannot hold both views. It’s one or the other. I also receive letters for candidates advocating more governmental services while others promote smaller government. Once again, I cannot hold both views. It’s one or the other. You have to know your target market’s political views. I feel there is no grey area here. You have to be right or you will be very wrong.

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Mark Anthony Germanos uses Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services. Mark uses SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help his clients get on page 1 and attract more business. Mark’s Sacramento SEO Gold package includes creating a 6,000 word document with abundant content for your online presence. Sacramento SEO Gold will not produce instant gratification, but Sacramento SEO Gold works, gets people on page 1 and creates long-term benefits. Google Sacramento business revival or Sacramento cloud computing to see Mark’s SEO strategies in action. Mark is available at 530-677-8864 and at http://bit.ly/Jk50ds.

Family. What is your ideal customer’s family status? Is single head of household, parent or caregiver to his/her parents? Someone who has to support parents will spend his money on some things while someone raising a family will spend his money on other things. Someone who lives with his parents is more likely to spend money on concert tickets than someone supporting his parents. Someone supporting his parents is more likely to spend money on good long-term care insurance than he is to spend it on a 3-day weekend in Las Vegas.

Marital Status. Is he married, single or divorced? Married people, especially recently-married people, are more likely to spend money on furniture, appliances and other durable items for their home. The wife may decide that all his furniture, towels and decorations must go, regardless of what he thinks. A single guy will have more disposable cash for concert tickets, sporting events and trips to Las Vegas.

Hobbies. What does your ideal customer do in his free time. This is especially attractive, since hobbies are usually personal and you can get someone to make a purchasing decision without having to convince a committee, spouse or family member. If he is a triathlete, promote athletic gear. If he is a golfer, promote golf accessories. You have to know his hobbies. Your marketing message will be dead-on and very effective, or it will fall flat. I am a cyclist. Marketing messages for cycling and other athletic events are appealing. Marketing materials for golf, a sport I find boring, have no effect. Asking me to buy golf accessories…simply will be a waste of your time. I am not your ideal customer.

You have to know.

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Mark Anthony Germanos uses Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services. Mark uses SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help his clients attract more business. Mark’s Sacramento SEO Gold package includes creating a 6,000 word document with abundant content for your online presence. Sacramento SEO Gold will not produce instant gratification, but Sacramento SEO Gold works and creates long-term benefits. Google Sacramento business revival or Sacramento cloud computing to see Mark’s SEO strategies in action. Mark is available at 530-677-8864 and at http://bit.ly/Jk50ds.

Facebook users are not in buying mode. They go to Facebook and other social media sites to connect with their peers, coworkers, suppliers, industry leaders, coaches, friends and others who they fell can help make life easier. They are looking for networking events, training and fun activities. I’ve won tickets to riverboat cruises and Sacramento Kings games through Facebook.

It is a place where people go to create connections and establish expert status. Some of my closest and most respected friends have 1,000-plus Facebook friends and post often. One of my Facebook friends is a local realtor who also teaches real estate classes at a local community college. She creates connections with her very visible presence and she establishes her expertise by sharing her successes with banks, mortgage companies and nervous sellers.

We do not go to Facebook when we are looking to buy something. We go to Google. That is why Facebook is not a good avenue for asking people to buy your products. Follow General Motors’ lead on this one… I am responding to http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304192704577406394017764460.html

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Mark Anthony Germanos uses Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services. Mark uses SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help his clients get on page 1 and attract more business. Mark’s Sacramento SEO Gold package includes creating a 6,000 word document with abundant content for your online presence. Sacramento SEO Gold will not produce instant gratification, but Sacramento SEO Gold works, gets people on page 1 and creates long-term benefits. Google Sacramento business revival or Sacramento cloud computing to see Mark’s SEO strategies in action. Mark is available at 530-677-8864 and at http://bit.ly/Jk50ds.