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By Team Tempo

 The feds finally made official what most of us felt early last year. Marketing experts wrote about How to run a business in a recession in January 2008. Now, a year later, we are all looking at the world through recession-colored glasses. Marketing budgets are slashed or eliminated. We know; we work in marketing.

Take off the glasses and come out of the fog. Web marketing remains the most cost-efficient tactic you have in your toolbox. Its time to squeeze the most you can out of the web in fact, there is no better time than now. Your clients and customers need to hear from you now, more than ever.

One way to reach out is by adding a blog to your existing web site. Just like this one. A blog can be about any aspect of your business, updated frequently (once a week is ideal), and as fresh as this mornings coffee. A blog gives you the chance to speak personally and directly to your audience about what is going on in any aspect of the world in which you do business. Blog updates also give you an excuse to contact your email-marketing list with a message, which drives traffic to your site.

Plus, a well-crafted blog will help elevate your search-engine rankings. An experienced business blogger will include key words about current topics that your customer base may be searching for. Thats the blog bonus.

Heres one consequence of not keeping in close touch with your clients and customers during a recession. An email recently made the rounds discouraging people from buying gift cards for their holiday giving, listing a number of stores that it claimed were going out of business by the end of 2008. Much of the information in the email was bogus or incomplete in fact, it neglected to clarify that some of those businesses were closing locations while opening others. (Read the email and the Snopes.com report).

Bogus or not, imagine the impact if that email was the only communication your customers had about you during the holidays?

Anytime in the month of January is the appropriate time to post a 2009 message on your own business blog. Remind your customers that you are there for them, recession or not.

Phoenix Arizona ’s Web Design Firm - Tempo Creative

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By Deborah Gallant

 What a new hypnotherapist needs to know about Internet marketing.

If you have recently finished a hypnotherapy program and gotten your certification, you are ready to roll up your sleeves and start helping people. Oops. First you need some clients!

One of the most effective ways to begin marketing your nascent practice is by posting a website. But before you hire a web designer and lay out thousands of dollars, take stock of the situation.

When you take on a new client, you probably ask them to begin with the end in mind. Where do you want to go, what is the goal? I suggest taking the same approach with your web marketing. What can you accomplish?

First, acknowledge that it is unlikely anyone is going to hire you simply because of your website. Prospective clients can find you online and check out your credentials—but they will want to talk to you before they decide. You are not going to “close the deal” over the Internet.

It is also unlikely you will sell anything directly over the Internet, at least at the beginning of your practice. The web gurus who promise instant millions from your website are blowing smoke. You are going to make an income by selling your hours and programs.

Your pragmatic goal for your marketing website must be to motivate people to pick the phone up and call you and ultimately to hire you. All of your web decisions should focus on achieving that goal.

With that realistic goal in mind, you can right-size your website. You need a good enough website and it does not have to cost thousands. Consider using a straightforward content management system that lets you do it yourself. Using a professional template will let you have a polished-looking site with all the appropriate elements: a home page, services, biography, FAQs and contact information. You can collect email addresses of visitors, watch the traffic, optimize your site for search. And you can get a website up this week. Yes, this week.

Since your business is new, one of the most empowering things about having a content-management system you can control yourself is that as your business evolves (and it will!) your website can keep up. Your website will not get out of date because you can change it with a few Internet clicks.

Internet marketing should be part of your new client acquisition program, just keep in mind what it can achieve.

Deborah Gallant is the Business Coach Who Gets the Internet. Her firm, Web Power Tools, provides affordable website design & development tools for service professionals. Visit their website (http://www.WebPowerTools.com) for a free 30-day trial and a free copy of “Five Steps to Finally Getting Started with Internet Marketing”.

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