Online marketing specialists Speedie Consultants have launched a new, dedicated website aimed at helping insurance and finance companies leverage the power of affiliate marketing as part of their online marketing strategy.

Jason Hulott, Director of Speedie Consulting says: “Affiliate marketing has always been a part of larger companies’ online strategies. With barriers of entry coming down, the small to mid-sized businesses can now take advantage of the low risk methods of attracting business that affiliate marketing can offer.”

Our new site (SpeedieAffiliates) aims to help both companies and affiliates connect with each other in order to refer business and build a profitable online income. The site is aimed at companies looking to start a new programme; companies that have a programme that may have stalled; and also affiliates that can be sat on lots of potential business without a home for it.

Hulott concludes: “We have been in this game a long time at each level. Since the beginning of the year, we have been approached more and more by companies that require a low risk solution to increase their own business without a costly dependence on search engine marketing.”

The site currently has a range of tools and guides to help maximise programmes. There is also a broadcast tool to allow programme managers to spread the word about the programmes.

For more information about SpeedieAffiliates visit: http://www.speedieaffiliates.com

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There are several tools available that can help you manage your online “presence”, from tools to manage your Twitter account requests and auto tweet on messages. From those to help you manage your many various social media profiles and those simply there to deal with customer support issues or enquiries.

Getting your website to work harder for you is a great way to maximise efforts while minimising time. Talking with potential clients in the last two weeks has reminded me of the real benefits of running a website using Wordpress. Not only do you get a state of the art, updatable, feature rich content management system (for free), you get a whole raft of plugins which allow you to automate some of the more mundane processes.

Now a quick message from the dark side before we continue. Some of the techniques we will discuss can and have been abused. This is not the goal. The goal is to allow you to produce marketing messages or web content and then consistently syndicate them in the right places, all the while building your business in the long term.

Wordpress for example has plugins that will allow you to upload a huge amount of content or convert data files into blog posts, so you “could” build lots of web pages really quickly and then syndicate that across the web. That is a bad idea. What we suggest you do, is have content prepared and then uploaded it so that the content goes live every few days. Making sure the content is unique and not just a churned spreadsheet. In this way, during a lean period or when you get a bit of time you can prepare content, add it to your site and then forget about it for a while.

Other plugins will take a post and notify your twitter followers as soon as it goes live. This is a great tool as it cuts out the little things you will not do consistently. There are other plugins that will notify Facebook too.

Sitemap plugins will automatically update themselves when new content is added and then send themselves off to the major search engines, plus they can create a useful page on the site for visitors too. These are all automatic.

There are tools to auto submit your content to a random selection of social bookmarking accounts. Again this can and has been abused.

The Wordpress RSS feeds that are automatically created and maintained by the system also have huge potential for syndicating your content across the web. We wrote about some “tricks” with Wordpress RSS feeds here:

http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/a-couple-of-tricks-with-wordpress-rss-feeds/

As you can see, we really rave about Wordpress. For a small business, we can’t think of another system that can do some much for you automatically and consistently.

Another tool you can and should look into, autoresponders. These are great tools that do a lot of your initial customer contact, support and deal with enquiries. We have written about these before:

http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/how-would-you-like-to-have-an-extra-pair-of-hands-to-help-handle-your-incoming-enquiries/
http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/using-autoresponders-in-your-business/
http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/services/autoresponder-courses/

You can also integrate Autoresponders with Wordpress like we do on our websites.

Finally,  we have been trialling Hummingbird for Twitter and Hootsuite.  Hummingbird is a great little tool as you can set it to search the “Twitosphere” looking for tweets and people who have a  common interest and then sends them a follow rewquest, if they follw you back it keeps the link, if not after a while it will remove it.  This is a good way to manage some parts of your twitter account.

Hootsuite has a huge range of tools  but the one we love is the ability to preload a spreadsheet of tweets and set them to go out at a a date in the future.  So you can set up daily or weekly marketing messages to be published on your twitter account.  This is not to replace your normal activity but gives you a way of being consistent.

Hopefully this ramble has given you some food for thought. Want to share a useful tool that does some heavy lifting in your business? Please share…

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The Internet is a big place – a very big place….

According to Kelkoo (a shopping price comparison site) the UK online market grew to £38 billion in 2009. The report, carried out by the Centre for Retail Research, predicts a 12.4% growth in online UK spending in 2010, bringing the total to £42.7 billion.

The research also showed that UK shoppers are increasingly confident about online shopping. The proportion of people prepared to spend £1,000 or more in a single transaction rose from 12% to 25%.

Using this as a back drop, it is easy to see why more and more companies are looking online for their customers. Are you?

While some think marketing online is simply having a website, sadly this is not the end of the story. I in fact it is more like the introduction.

As a way of introduction to internet marketing , online marketing techniques for attracting customers include:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Search Engine Marketing (Pay Per Click)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Media Buying
• Article Marketing
• Blog Marketing
• Forum Marketing

This list goes on and on, as more and more companies create and release technology that allows us to better interact and communicate with potential customers.

Now for a smaller sized company this can appear quite daunting but the fact is that the Internet has been a great leveller of the marketing field, with smaller companies being able to not only compete but dominate certain niches online.

And not because they spend more money than the next guy, but because they understand the best ways to attract customers on a better ROI. Sometimes smaller can be better – as they can move faster and react quicker. Think Speed Boat – not Super Tanker!

Some of the techniques above will return a better ROI than others. Affiliate marketing for example is a great way for companies to attract business on a good ROI and just as important on a low risk model. Set up correctly, marketing costs are “paid for” when the customer has bought the final product.

Even within a single technique such as Affiliate marketing, there are a raft of possible payment models.

• pay per click ;
• pay per visit;
• pay per view;
• cost per action;
• cost per lead;
• cost per acquisition;
• cost per sale.

As you can see there are a wide range of options to attract business to your site and how you pay for it. If you know how well your site performs at converting traffic to sale or enquiry, you may feel comfortable with any number of these options.

If you are new to this but see the benefits it may be best to look at a cost per sale option which means you pay a flat fee or %commission when the product is bought.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to attract business and leverage other company’s expertise to drive you traffic and sales.

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Online marketing specialists Speedie Consultants have teamed up with the Carbon Managers Trees4Business initiative so that each time they take on a new client, a tree is planted.

Stella Hulott, Director at Speedie Consultants said: “We wanted to do something that was a bit more lasting that just sending off a cheque to a charity. With Trees4Business, we really are investing and donating to the future.

“Each time we take on a new client, we will plant a tree on their behalf. In this way, we hope that we will not only grow our ethically operated business but give something back to the environment too. In some small way, we also hope that working with this initiative will be another reason why companies want to do business with us.”

The company have already planted 8 trees to cover new clients taken onboard in 2010 and the plan is to grow this over the coming months.

Stella concludes: “By setting ourselves a ‘different’ type of target of planting trees, we hope that our growing success will lead to far reaching benefits for the environment. We also recommend that other companies look at these types of eco-friendly ways to acknowledge their successes.”

Tree Facts

• One person causes about 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide to be emitted a year. One tree removes about a tonne of CO2 over its lifetime.
• By cooling the air and ground around them, the shade from trees helps cool the Earth’s temperature
• A single mature beech tree can produce enough oxygen for 10 people in a year.
• Trees renew our air supply by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen.
• Shade trees can make buildings up to 20 degrees cooler in the summer.
• Trees lower air temperature by evaporating water in their leaves.
• Tree roots stabilize soil and prevent erosion.
• Trees improve water quality by slowing and filtering rain water, as well as protecting aquifers and watersheds.
• Over one given year; one hectare of mature woodland will absorb the carbon emissions of 100 average family cars.
• It is estimated that the average person in the UK consumes the equivalent of 12 trees a year. This present rate of world consumption is unsustainable and yet trees are vital to our life on earth.

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If you are struggling to get traffic from local listings in Google, Bing and Yahoo, then you really need to start submitting your site to a range of local based directories. Services such as the Google business centre (or center for our US readers) are a great easy way to start getting traffic from some of the local search phrases relevant to your  business. These sites tend to featured highly in local search within Google especially so take out some time and signup with some of the directories listed.

Here is a small list of some of the best local based services your site needs to be featured on, in order to maximise your chances of getting traffic and business from local search. I have broken these down into US and UK as there will be no benefit or in some cases way for UK sites to submit to some of the US sites with out a US postal address.

UK Local Directories

Bing – https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx
BT Tradespace – http://www.bttradespace.com
City Local – http://www.citiylocal.co.uk
Free Index – http://www.freeindex.co.uk
Google Business Center – http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter?hl=en-US&gl=GB
HotfrogUK – http://www.hotfroguk.co.uk/AddYourBusiness.aspx
My Local Services – http://www.mylocalservices.co.uk
The Best of – http://www.thebestof.co.uk
Touch Local – http://www.touchlocal.co.uk
Yahoo- http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php

US Local Directories

CitySearch.com – http://www.citysearch.com
Google Maps – http://maps.google.com
InsiderPages.com – http://www.insiderpages.com
Local.com – http://www.local.com
SuperPages.com – http://www.superpages.com
Yahoo Local – http://local.yahoo.com
Yelp – http://www.yelp.com

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Check out our Second Speed-e-Loans video.  Please share…

If you are interested in low cost video for your business please get in touch…

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Signup today and start maximising your site traffic with a UK payday loans lender.

Speed-e-loans.com is a practical alternative to banks that can no longer help their customers with their short term financial needs. Our mission is to provide instant decisions and two hour money whenever they need it.

Launched in 2009 and privately backed by people who understand our customers, our mission is to provide instant decisions and two hour money whenever they need it.

We are at the cutting edge of modern consumer finance by offering small, short term loans online with real speed and ease. We are flexible and paper free which means you can apply using our easy-to-use website whenever you need cash in a hurry. We have a consumer credit licence from the Office of Fair Trading.

Commission

Earn £10 for every paid out application

Earn £6 for every activated prepaid card

Competition

To welcome you to our affiliate programme we want to give you the opportunity to win a brand new iPod! To enter all you need to do is add links to your site and drive a single sale in the next 4 weeks.

Not only will you receive commission on those sales, you will also get a free entry into a draw to receive an iPod.

One winner will be selected at random on March 31st so make sure you get your links live as soon as possible and make sure your contact details are fully up to date as we will contact the winner through AffiliateWindow.

To sign up and be in with a chance to win an iPod visit:

http://www.awin1.com/signup.php?merchant=2688

and signup.

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Welcome to the February issue of Insights – Online Marketing ideas for Insurance and Mortgage Brokers. In this issue, we will be looking at:

• How to automate and maximise your marketing with email autoresponders
• Earning Opportunities
• Affiliate Consultancy
• Join us on Facebook

How to automate and maximise your marketing with email autoresponders

Educating site visitors with multi part email courses
http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/educating-site-visitors-with-multi-part-email-courses/

Building your Email Contact List
http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/building-your-email-contact-list/

How would you like to have an extra pair of hands to help handle your incoming enquiries?
http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/how-would-you-like-to-have-an-extra-pair-of-hands-to-help-handle-your-incoming-enquiries/

Using Autoresponders in your Business
http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/using-autoresponders-in-your-business/

Why not take a few minutes to have a quick scan through these articles.

Now while you can now see the benefits of running autoresponders, it can be difficult to come up with a course idea and then actually write the thing, and get it out there. We recently released a set of niche insurance 5 day courses delivered in to you in Microsoft Word so you just need to add some bits about your company and away you go. In this way, you get the benefit of having some of the work done for you.

As a way of case studies, one client we run a full service for, i.e. we write, produce and run the whole thing for them, adds around 30 new subscribers a week. Another larger client had over 70,000 people run through their course over the course of a year. And this was done automatically, educated customers and turned them into buyers by sending them information and marketing messages.

You will have already experienced our Autoresponder when you signed up for our newsletter or to see a really powerful one, visit www.insurance-marketing.co.uk where you can sign up for a 52 week course, and it is all delivered automatically. Hopefully this will give you an idea as to the real power of this solution. Stat using autoresponders in your business to put your marketing communication on autopilot

Earning Opportunities
We are working with a number of large clients that are looking for affiliates to help promote their own products and pay you for any sales. We have a range of product offering available including General Insurance, Niche Insurance (such as Gadget Insurance, Home Emergency Cover) and Business Insurance. We also have a loan and prepaid MasterCard offering which is going very well and is a good passive income stream.

Affiliate Consultancy
If you already run an affiliate programme or are looking at starting one then get in touch , we have a range of solutions and expertise then can be brought to bear to really get your programme making the kind of sale it should do. If you are thinking about launching a programme and are in the early development or idea stage then get in touch. We can help explain all the different options available to you.

Join us on Facebook
We have created a small following on Facebook under our Fan Page for Insurance Marketing. Why not stop by and become a fan and share in your offers and also network with other insurance and finance brokers.
Visit: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Internet-Marketing-for-Insurance-Brokers/23334811463

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Please enjoy our first ever Web Video for a client. Speed-e-Loans….

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If you are just starting out with your online marketing efforts and are looking for ways to build an online presence, now is the perfect time to leap frog your competition by using WordPress. Wordpress is simple to use, easy to install and fantastic for automating processes – including marketing. But we will get to that.

WordPress is free to install although initially you may wish to pay someone to install it for you and set it up.

So why should you use Wordpress?

There are two main reasons why this is a good way to go. Firstly, Wordpress is heavily used and supported.  There are a huge number of designers out there that can put together a great looking website for you at a low cost.  Uploading a new design or changing a design is a simple case of uploading files to your web server and that’s it.  One change and it will be implemented across the site.

Secondly, and in our minds more importantly, you can install plugins. Plugins are like small bits of code that carry out tasks on your website.  There are plugins that allow you to have enquiry forms, there are plugins that create sitemaps and submit them to Google for you each time a post or page is added to the site.

This means that you can set up these plugins to take care of a lot of the marketing activities you would normally spend time doing yourself (or rather you would forget to do consistently).

The main marketing plugins we recommend to our clients can:

• Auto Tweet any posts as they go live on your Website
• Bulk upload a whole years’ supply of Content to your website ad have it drip feed for the next 12 months
• Auto post your content to your Facebook Profile or Fan pages
• Auto bookmark your content to a range of social bookmarking sites

Just these 4 plugins alone will save your lots of time and allow you to really maximise the benefits of your website.

There are even plugins that can turn a website into a classified ads site, an article directory, a membership site or even enable you to run your own social networking site.  Investing in a WordPress site and learning how to use it properly will allow you not only to run a single website for your business, but will empower you to run several sites, all out there driving leads to your business.

If you are looking at creating a web presence for your business, now really is the time to look at WordPress. It can be so much more than just a blogging tool.

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