Looking for something new to spruce up your dental practice this spring?  Well, look no further, Sharper’s new May 2011 Dental Catalog is packed with thousands of innovative practice building ideas to help you grow your practice and look good doing it.

Patient communication is definitely the cornerstone to any profitable practice.  Learning how to reach out and connect with your patients are some of the most important things you can do to encourage patient loyalty, generate referrals and acquire new patients.

Let us help you put your best smile forward with some of our unique product offerings.  Our line of Artistic Licenses include the lovable Garfield®, the hilarious cartoon family of Baby Blues®, and the winner of the National Cartoonists Society award for “Best Comic Strip of the Year, Pickles™.  Moreover, we’ve got professionally designed  dental peel & stick appointment cards, standard appointment cards, postcards, folding cards, laser cards and our new referral cards.

Here are some of our most popular dental designs:

Want to see what these products look like with your own personalization?  Simply click on the image, add it to your cart then click on “Personalize Now”.  Our online personalization tool will allow you to instantly personalize a product with your own contact information.  You will be able see what your product will look like (with your own personalization) before you place your order.

We’ve got tonnes of other marketing ideas in our new May 2011 Dental Catalog.  View it online, or click here to request a copy.

Promote your practice and ensure success with great products from Sharper™.

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Healthy vision starts with education and being proactive about your eye health.  In May of 2003, the National Eye Institute declared May as the official month to promote healthy vision.  The institute’s main initiatives for the month of May are to raise awareness for healthy vision and make it a priority for people around the world.

Raising awareness for healthy vision starts with encouraging people to do regular complete eye exams that involves checking the eye pressure to detect certain vision conditions and diseases such Glaucoma, AMD and Amblyopia.

So what can you do this month to protect your vision?  Here are a few things you can do to keep your vision healthy and your eyes in tip-top condition.

• Make an appointment with your optometrist today for a comprehensive eye exam.
• Make an effort to check on your family history – certain eye diseases and conditions may be hereditary.
• The sun’s UV rays can be harmful for your eyes – so be sure to wear sunglasses when going outdoors.
• Smoking  – try to quit or cut down.  This habit is as harmful to your lungs as it is to your eyes.  If you are a non-smoker, but you are exposed to second hand smoke on a regular basis, you’re still at risk.
• Maintain a rich diet in leafy greens, omega-3 fatty acids and carrots.
• If you are a contact lens wearer – make sure your contacts are thoroughly cleaned every day.  Regular hand washing can also help to keep your eyes clean – especially if you have a habit of touching/rubbing your eyes.
• Most important of all – get enough sleep and rest.  Your eyes need as much rest as your body.  This is extremely important if your job requires you to work in front of a computer monitor.

How are you participating in Health Vision Month?  Share with us some of the things you are doing this month to maintain your optimal vision health by leaving a comment below.

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After eight long months of hard work and dedication  – the new and improved e-sharper.com is launched!  Revitalized with a new look and boasting many new features, e-sharper.com now offers a fun and easy shopping experience for all your promotional and communication products.

Redesigned with the customer’s shopping experience in mind, the new look boasts a clean concept that makes it easier to search and view products.  One of our mains goals of the redesign was to provide our customers with an interactive online shopping experience.  We wanted to make marketing and growing your practice or business fun and enjoyable.

Here are a few of the new features you will see when you visit the new e-sharper.com:

• Easier product search and navigation.
• Instant access to our online digital catalogs.
• Easily track your order status and history.
• New editing tool to help you effortlessly create all your personalization online.
• Free instant online proofing.
• Increase exposure of our monthly promotions to help you save money.
• A centralize hub to access all of our most recent blog articles for marketing tips on how to grow your practice or business.
• Easier access to our social media activities to help you stay abreast with industry updates and news.
• Increase awareness of Sharper’s corporate and community activities.

We’re sure you’ll love shopping on our new website as much as we’ve enjoyed designing it for you, so visit our new website, make an order online and will give you 10% off your purchase.  Quote promo code NEWWEB in your shopping cart when making your order.  Hurry, this promotion expires May 31, 2011.

Shop online today and save!

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To help celebrate Save Your Vision Month, the American Optometric Association (AOA) is encouraging everyone to preserve their eye health and prevent vision loss with age-specific tips.

While maintaining your eye health through regular check-ups with your optometrist is important, knowing how to care for your eyes on a daily basis can also help.  According to the AOA, “there are specific tips to follow to preserve eye health and vision based on a patient’s age.”

Here are some age-specific tips (from a recent AOA press release) to help maintain your eye sight and health:

Ages 20s & 30s

- Eat foods rich in six nutrients – antioxidant lutien and  zeaxantin, vitamins C and E, essential fatty acids and the mineral zinc.  Foods that contains these rich nutrients include broccoli, spinach, kale, corn, green beans, peas, oranges and tangerines.

- People who smoke have an increase risk of developing age-related macular degeneration and cataracts due to exposing their eyes to high levels of harmful chemical.

- Protect your eyes from harmful UV radiation by wearing sunglasses.

Ages 40s & 50s

- Exercising regularly will help people in their 40s and 50s maintain overall health and keep their vision in shape.

Ages 60s and beyond

- Regular check-ups with an optometrist to ensure any diseases including macular degeneration, glaucoma and cataracts are detected early and treated appropriately.

How is your practice or business celebrating Save Your Vision Month?  Share with us some of your stories by leaving a comment below this post.

There are only a few days left to get 100 Referral Postcards for FREE!  Referral Postcards make growing your practice or business easy and affordable!

Referral programs are an effective marketing strategy that is low cost and very simple to initiate.  Practices and businesses can utilize a referral program to attain sustainable growth.  Referral programs can vary depending on the objective that you want to achieve, but the main criterion is to grow your patient or client base with the help of your existing patients or clients.  And, the best part is that the referring cycle doesn’t just stop at a referred patient or client – the newly referred patient or client might also become a referrer.

Here are some key benefits of having a patient or client referral program:

• Referred patients or clients are potentially better leads.
• The quality of your service is being marketed for you at very little cost to you.
• Referred patients or clients have a tendency to be less price sensitive because they’ve already got the information ahead of time from their referrer.
• Referral programs can double or even triple your business, if done correctly.
• Word of mouth advertising at its finest!

Give our Customer Service Center a call today at 1-800-561-6677 to find our how our referral products can help you start your new referral program or enhance your existing one.

Click here to find out how you can get receive 100 Referral Postcards for FREE.

Referral programs.  Easy and affordable.  Give it a try!

If you’ve ever had a chance to look through our catalogs, you’ll notice that in every book we have chosen a few special card designs to help you achieve success in your marketing strategies.

Here is a quick glance at a few of our Top Pick to help contemporary health professionals grow their practice or business:

Perfect for patient or client referrals:

Ideal for patient acquisition:

Ideal for increasing patient or client loyalty:

Great for patient or client retention:

Perfect for patient or client reminders:

Looking for more ideas to build your practice or business? Request a copy of our latest Contemporary Health catalog today.  Simply click here or give our customer service center a call at 1-800-561-6677 and one of our product consultants will be happy to assist you.

It’s easy to see why February was chosen as Heart Month…all the promotions and advertising surrounding Valentine’s Day is a constant reminder of the importance of a healthy lifestyle and the impact on the heart.  However, did you ever think about how good oral health impacts the heart? When I first heard about this assertion, I must admit, I was a little skeptical and decided to do a little more research on the topic.  As it turns out, I found several articles referencing the association between oral health and heart heart.  Here’s an excerpt from the Mayo Clinic website*:

Your mouth is normally teeming with bacteria.  Usually you can keep these bacteria under control with good oral health care, such as daily brushing and flossing.  Saliva also is a key defense against bacteria and viruses.  It contains enzymes that destroy bacteria in different ways.  But harmful bacteria can sometimes grow out of control and lead to periodontitis, a serious gum infection.

When your gums are healthy, bacteria in your mouth usually don’t enter your bloodstream. However, gum disease may provide bacteria a port of entry into your bloodstream.  Sometimes invasive dental treatments also can allow bacteria to enter your bloodstream.  And medications or treatments that reduce saliva flow or disrupt the normal balance of bacteria in your mouth also may lead to oral changes, making it easier for bacteria to enter your bloodstream.  Some researchers believe that these bacteria and inflammation from your mouth are linked to other health problems in the rest of your body.

Cardiovascular disease. Research shows that several types of cardiovascular disease may be linked to oral health.  These include heart disease, clogged arteries and stroke.  Although in some research periodontal disease seems to be associated with heart disease, more studies are needed before the link can be confirmed with certainty.

*http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/dental/DE00001

How are you showing your support for Heart Month?  Please share some of your stories by leaving a comment below this post.

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Join  Sharper’s Social Community!

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This February, educate your patients on the importance of good oral health while promoting National Children’s Dental Health Month.  It’s the perfect opportunity to visit schools and connect with the community.  Make it fun by providing kids with personalized Sqwiggly toothbrushes, activity sheets and a tote bag.  You’ll make a memorable impression, and when it comes time for a dental appointment they just have to look at the contact information on the toothbrush you gave them!

Thank you to all the dental professionals who are making a difference in kids lives by participating in National Children’s Dental Health Month!

We would love to hear how your practice is helping to promote children’s oral health this month.  Please share your stories with us by leaving a comment below this post.

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Join  Sharper’s Social Community!

Follow us on Twitter or become a Facebook fan to receive great promotions, news, marketing tips and industry updates that only social media subscribers will receive.

Are you running out of ideas to market your product or services to your patients or clients?  It’s a road block that most often arise when our creative juices stop flowing – and it happens to everyone.  Marketing, in my opinion, is fast changing and competitive.  It’s an industry that feeds on creativity and rewards those who shall we say, “thought of it first”.  Marketers face a never ending battle to be different – to bring forth the next big creative idea and that we all know takes a lot of planning.  However, sometimes creativity is all about looking outside the box and looking for ideas the unconventional way.

A good way to  spark new life into your marketing plans is to do things differently.  Look at what your competitors are doing and try to see how you can do it differently and better.  People are always looking to see and experience something different.  This might take some thinking and researching because it’s risky to do things the unconventional way.  However, look at all the risk takers today – who knew social networking would be such a big thing!  Look at Groupon, a company that started with a simple and different idea is now valued in the billions.

If your practice or business is use to using billboards to advertise your brand then maybe you should consider advertising on social networking sites or popular blogs  to further expose your brand.  Moreover, if you’ve never contacted your patients or clients personally with direct mail advertising then maybe that’s a tactic worth exploring.  Personal contact advertising will help you build lasting patient/client relations.

Try using a holistic approach to develop your marketing ideas.  Marketing doesn’t just affect one part of your practice or business  – most of the time marketing initiatives are implemented company wide.  Be creative by catering an initiative to the strengths of each department while making sure everyone is working to achieve one final goal.

What are you doing differently to boost your marketing efforts?  Please share some of your ideas with us by leaving a comment below this post.

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Follow us on Twitter or become a Facebook fan to receive great promotions, news, marketing tips and industry updates that only social media subscribers will receive.

Creativity and being proactive is the key to growth and longevity of a business or practice – and it’s becoming more prominent in the post recession era.  Many businesses and practices are intuitively thinking of creative ways to grow and secure a loyal client or patient base.  However, creativity doesn’t necessarily mean pulling something new out of a hat all the time.  Many times, being creative with what you already know is the best bet because it will save you time on research and  planning, and  since you’re already familiar with the initiatives, implementing your ideas will be a walk in the park.

Here is what I consider to be the top 3 ways a business or practice can grow by easily looking at the strategies and tactics that work.

1) Create life time loyalty by communicating effectively.

Client loyalty is definitely what all businesses or practices should strive to achieve.  Imagine how great it would be to have overflowing files of loyal clients or patients.  They’re the one you can count on to stay on track with appointments and follow your consultative recommendations.  Moreover, they are also the people who will send you the best referrals.

Client or patient loyalty is not something you stumble upon.  Be proactive, encourage and nurture this relationship with your clients or patients by offering Personalized Giveaways, sending Thank You cards and keeping track of birthdays are all great ways to show clients or patients that you value their business.

2) Encourage referrals by asking for them and expressing your gratitude.

Considered to be the best and most cost effective ways to grow your business or practice, referrals are truly what word-of-mouth advertising is all about.  There is nothing better than your clients or patients  spreading good words about your business or practice – it’s priceless.  Let them know that you welcome new clients or patients especially their friends and family.  Actively seek clients or patients’ recommendations by handing out Referral Slips or Cards at the end of an appointment.

When you receive a new referral, make sure that you express your gratitude to both the new client or patient and the person who referred them.  A good way to keep the referral cycle spinning and to show your appreciation is to send Welcome or Thank You cards, or be creative with a Personalized Giveaway.

3) Attract new clients by actively promoting your practice.

Playing the waiting game is not going to help you grow your business or practice.  Take charge of your success by actively finding new patients or clients.  Exuding a proactive presence in the community will help to enhance your ethos and attract potential patients or clients.

Show that you care about the health and wellness of the community by speaking at events about your profession and how it can benefit everyone as a whole.  Using Personalized Brochures can be a great way to convey your key messages to listeners.  Partnering with local businesses and swap Business Cards, Magnets or Pens is another great way to get your name out there.  Be the business or practice that everyone is talking about and watch your appointment book fill with new clients.

How are you planning to grow your business or practice this year?  Please share with us some of your ideas or opinions by leaving a comment below this post.

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A recent article posted on the website, Get Rich Slowly really brought my attention to the impact that marketing can have on…almost anything!  The article, All Value is Perceived Value by April Dykman, talks about Rory Sutherland’s TED presentation on advertising’s objective to create “perceived value” and why that isn’t such a bad thing, in some cases.

The post argues that putting value to something is all about perception.  Perception has changed the way we view and bring value to things.  We perceive things to have value when it symbolizes meaning to our lives – therefore, causing us to be drawn to tangible things such as expensive luxury cars, big houses and designer clothes.  However, that may not be such a bad thing as perceived value is relative and may not be the same with everyone.

Dykman draws a great example of perceived value when she talks about wine and the value people put on an expensive bottle of wine compared to a “cheap $5 bottle”.  People, other than top wine tasting experts, may put more value on a bottle of wine and think it tastes better if its expensive – but, in reality it may be a cheap brand.

Let’s look at the Yoga fitness industry – within the last 2-3 years marketing has made the industry go from something you can do at home for free to a multi-million dollar industry.  Yoga’s popularity is greatly due to the power of marketing.  Before celebrities like Madonna started endorsing the workout routine, Yoga wasn’t valued as much as it is now.  People started putting value to it once marketing help to change their perception.  Now, we see beautiful Yoga boutiques charging as much as $25 for a one hour session, retail industry catering to Yoga enthusiasts are also growing substantially, and the profession of being a yoga instructor has also grown wide popularity within the last couple of years.

Social media has also grown wide popularity due to the perceived value that people place on it.  What started out as a network to help people stay connected with each other has grown into a multi-billion dollar business – and this couldn’t have happened if marketing wasn’t doing its work behind the scene.  Social networking, says Sutherland, “helps people appreciate what they have because it lets them share news and give “badge value” to every day, trivial activities”.  Marketing has the power to put value on anything – and it’s how you market a product that makes it successful.

So, how do you see marketing playing a role in how we perceive value in our daily lives?  Please share some of your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below this post.

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Let’s get social with Sharper™!

Follow us on Twitter or become a Facebook fan to receive great promotions, news, marketing tips and industry updates that only social media subscribers will receive.

Would you like to receive promotions and updates on the latest Sharper™ products and services?  Our email promotions are specifically catered to give your practice or business the best deals every month so you can market your products and services without putting a dent in your marketing budget.

A good way to watch your budget is to cater your marketing strategies towards our email promotions.  For example, this month is a good time to stocking up on appointment cards – click here for more information.  Our email promotions can help you plan ahead and strategize your marketing plan to suit the needs of your practice or business.  Investing in the right marketing tool is crucial, and we want to ensure that our products are helping your practice or business grow.

For over 26 years, customer service and satisfaction, and fair pricing has always been the mandate at Sharper™.  We pride ourselves in offering our customers the highest quality products for the best price possible – and if you can find a better price anywhere else, we’ll be happy to match it for you.

If you would like to receive monthly email promotions from Sharper™, please visit our website at www.e-sharper.com and kindly complete the sign-up form.  All personal information collected is kept in accordance with our Privacy and Security Policy.

Click here to view our current January promotion.

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Let’s get social with Sharper™!

Follow us on Twitter or become a Facebook fan to receive great promotions, news, marketing tips and industry updates that only social media subscribers will receive.

As marketers begin to strategize their tactics heading into 2011, many will be faced with an increasing demand to seek out creative channels to market their brand while maintaining  a balanced budget.  As the world’s economic arena continues the slow climb up the recovery ladder, many marketers will be faced with a challenge to “do more” with “less”.

Here are my 5 top marketing trends for 2011 that will yield the most return for your dollar.

1) Social Media – it’s free to start and all you need is 30 minutes a day. Social media has become the new buzz word in the marketing industry since its inception in 2004 with Facebook.  Since then, social media has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry and its expected to grow even bigger in 2011.  Many may argue that social media possesses very little ROI that can be measured.  However, the ROI for social media is not in calculated in dollar values but in branding values.  The branding power that social media possesses is incredible and it definitely goes beyond your normal print billboard branding strategy.  The power to connect with your audience on a personal level to build your brand will make social media the top trend to watch for in 2011.

2.) Email Marketing – relatively inexpensive with comprehensive tracking. No business/practice should be without email marketing in 2011.  Email marketing has grown into a powerful tool that leverages analytic tracking to give marketers instant insight into campaign performance and ROI.

3.) Search Engine Optimization – DYO digital marketing (nothing’s cheaper than “do it yourself”). People use search engines everyday.  The fact that we use the term “google” to identify that we will search for something clearly shows the benefits of SEO marketing.  If you know the keywords relating to your business/practice, products or services then you are pretty much set.

4.) Mobile SMS Marketing – it can cost anywhere from $0.02 – $0.05 to send out a text to your customers. SMS texts can be catered to your marketing strategy – most popular are promotions and contests.  If you are interested in trying out mobile text marketing, contact Modisclub – a leading service provider for SMS marketing.

5.)  Personalized Products – branding for as low as $45! Personalized products are great for brand advertising especially when its constantly exposed to your customers.  Personalized products can be anything from pens to environmental and reusable tote bags.

2011 will be a big year for marketers as we start to move towards a trend that requires an increase in customer engagement.  Creativity will be the key factor in using less resources to drive strategies that demand high returns.

Care to share some of your cost effective marketing initiatives?  Please share with us your opinions and comments by leaving a comment below this post.

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Don’t be fooled by SEO (Search Engine Optimization) agencies offering you their services to help increase your website page rank on search engines like Google because sometimes things aren’t always what they seem.  With the rise of digital marketing, search engine marketing has gained tremendous popularity in the past couple of years.  Many e-marketers today are strategically using the power of SEO tactics to improve their marketing plans.  However, these tactics require proper planning and procedures because if implemented poorly, the punishment can be very severe and can damage your business or practice for years.

Google, for example, is always on the watch for search engine spammers – people who employ black hat SEO tricks  to obtain higher page rank results.  A few big companies have already been caught for initiating such tactics and have had their websites partially or completely banned from Google.  Although these companies might have generated high revenues for their SEO spamming efforts – the consequences have definitely proven to be much more costly.

The way search engines scout out for spam is quite complicated if you are not a familiar with computer programming algorithms and coding.  According to Stephen Spencer, co-author of the O’Reilly book, “The Art of SEO”, in a MultiChannel Merchant post, these sophisticated algorithms “look for abnormalities in inbound and outbound linking, in sentence structure, in HTML coding, and so on.”

If your business or practice employs search engine optimizers to help with your SEO efforts then you must carefully review that all their plan of actions to help you increase your search engine ranking doesn’t fall into the black hat category.  Spencer, in his post, also stated many important black hat tricks that you should be aware of.

• Sneaky redirects – redirecting visitors as soon as they enter your site via search engines
• Hidden or tiny text – enabling the text to be invisible by making it the same color as the background; or shrinking the font to a very small size
• Duplicating contents – generating numerous identical web pages
• Pagejacking – taking contents from high ranking pages and putting it into yours – without modifying it into your own words
• Spamglish – keyword rich content that doesn’t make sense
• Keyword stuffing – excessively inputting keywords into your web pages
• Blog comment spamming – posting irrelevant comments to blogs , with links directing to your website
• SEO copy – inputting keyword heavy text links to the very bottom of your web page – where web crawlers usually go

Implementing an SEO strategy into your marketing plan will prove worthwhile if done correctly.  There are many black hat tricks to watch out for, and this can become extremely difficult to spot if you are not familiar with these deceptive tactics.  Take extreme caution when SEO agencies try to sell you their services – the best thing to do is do your research and ask a lot of questions.  Be sure that their SEO techniques are legitimate and safe because the last thing you want to happen is Google “graybarring” your website (total site ban).

Care to share some of your SEO successes and nightmares?  We would love to hear some of your SEO stories.

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2010 was definitely a year to remember – especially when it comes to events unfolding in the international stage.  To help define your 2011 resolutions – let us look back at some of the most memorable moments of 2010. Because sometimes, looking back at our past successes and failures will help us to structure and accomplish our future goals.

Here’s a glimpse of what unfolded in 2010.

Social Media

• Facebook launched its new messaging system – although not much was clarified during the launch in November of 2010, the new system promises to enhance the way people organize their online socializing networks and contents.
• Internet Privacy – companies like Apple Inc. are getting hit with class action lawsuits over user privacy infringement.  More over, Facebook, despite its enormous growth, is still on the hot plate for the way it handles its user profile information.
• Twitter – once considered to be only for the tech savvy social net-workers  – has now grown into the second biggest social networking site today.  It solidified its presence in the social media stage when it announced a $200 million new funding, which ultimately brought the company’s valuation to $3.7 million.

Online/Web

• In 2010 we saw the rise of what most people refer to as cyber warfare.  Companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook continue to forge alliances with other big companies to see who can topple the other and come out on top.
• New computer viruses threaten to create havoc for government agencies – claiming war is no longer fought with guns and tanks.
• WikiLeaks gained tremendous amount of heat and exposure when it leaked classified government documents to the public.  This scandal proved to define the power of the internet and how fast information can travel as technology advances.
• Groupon becomes the next big company to watch out for in 2011 when it rejected Google’s $6 billion dollar acquisition offer.

Economy

• As we move out of the international global economic crisis, many countries are experiencing a slow, but steady recovery.  This is most prominent in countries like Canada, where the Canadian dollar reached parity with its American counterpart on Tuesday, December 28, 2010.
• BP Gulf Oil Spill disaster – named one of the worse environmental disaster of 2010.  The accident proved to be a PR disaster for the oil producing giant  – especially in terms of how its top executives handled the issue.

It is a good idea to reflect on the past and learn from it as we move forward to a new year of goals and resolutions.  Businesses and practices should also use this time of year to look back at what goals were accomplished in 2010 to develop a new plan of action heading into 2011.

Goals and accomplishments are worth telling about – share with us some of your 2010 successes.

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Since the introduction of Facebook‘s new messaging system in November, many practices and businesses, and even myself,  have been wondering: how will the new social media messaging system affect the way we market to our clients?  Will we have to change the way we market our products or services via email to our clients? Or, will the new Facebook platform revolutionize the way we communicate with our clients?  These are just a few of the many questions that many marketers today are pondering as they prepare for the upcoming new year.

So here’s what we know so far:

1) The new Facebook messaging platform is not intended replace email.

2) It’s a platform designed  to streamline all messaging into one inbox – email, instant messaging, SMS and all other types of messages.

3) All conversation history will be gathered in one spot, making it easily accessible to users – regardless of where the original message came from.

4) All Facebook users will be given a Facebook email address like this one: John.Smith@Facebook.com.

5) Currently, it is only available by invitation – hopefully by early next year the platform will be fully introduced.

6) The new messaging platform is not compatible with all email providers yet like GMAIL and AOL.

So, that’s mostly what we know about the new messaging platform, and honestly I am still skeptical about how all this will work.  This new messaging system will definitely possess a challenge for many practices or businesses.  Some of the things that you need to think about are how many of your currently opt-in clients are planning to switch over to the Facebook messaging system – and if they do then your email service provide must have an option for users to change their email addresses, or else you will take the risk of losing your opt-in email subscribers.

Another thing to be aware of is to prepare yourself for changes in the way people want you to communicate with them.  Offering opt-in options to receive communication through Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin mobile and other channels will become very popular as online technology advances.  Providing your clients with choices of different opt-in channels will help to deliver your message to the place where your subscribers are most active.

As for now, the new Facebook messaging system might not be a big concern with most practices or businesses, but being prepare for it would be a good thing to keep in mind.  As we’ve seen, Facebook is growing larger and larger by the day and that means, most likely, some of your subscribers will switch over to the new messaging platform.  Therefore, it’s important to adapt to changes in technology because if you don’t, then it will be harder for you to build up your subscriber list, again.

What do you think about the new Facebook messaging system?  Is your practice or business planning to adapt to the new platform? Share some of your thoughts with us.

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Let’s get social with Sharper™!

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I am pretty sure everyone’s heard of a referral program, but how do you leverage it to incorporate social media into the plan?  For most practices or businesses, social media has become the new marketing trend that continues to raise questions and criticisms, especially when it comes to converting time and efforts into real dollar values.  However, what most people don’t understand is that social media doesn’t have to act alone as a separate entity in your marketing plan.  Social media is most powerful when incorporate its with other marketing strategies.  Something that most businesses or practices don’t realize is that referral programs can be effectively enhanced when its incorporated with social media – this is due to the fact that both strategies rely on word of mouth marketing.

Setting up referral campaigns on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter might take some creativity and time to start, but once implemented the rewards will surely outweigh the efforts.  Here are the steps to starting a online social media referral program:

1.) Create a strategy for your referral program.  This will include what your existing clients will receive as well as what new referred clients will receive upon their first visit.  Most businesses or practices will often give a discount to existing clients and their referrals.

2.) Decide how you will measure a successful referral.  Depending on the type of business or practice that you have, you might decide to measure referrals with the amount of new sales you’ve generated, or the amount of new leads coming to your business or practice through your existing client base.

3.) Plan your tactics carefully.  This step might need some research, especially when it comes to using social media to push sales.  The difficult part about this step is that social media is not designed to sell products.  However, social media is designed to engage people.  This makes it very effective when it comes to word of mouth marketing.

4.) Decide on how you will administer and collect data with your social media referral program.  This is the step where you will consider how your referral program incentives will work for your clients and their referrals, how referral data will be collected and stored, and how you will manage your referral program so that it is  easy for tracking and reporting.

Social media is all about creating a positive buzz for your business or practice.  It has definitely opened a lot of doors for creativity, especially when it comes to generating new ideas to increase sales and new client acquisitions.  Moreover, making sure that your marketing strategies and plans are cohesive and well aligned with the direction of your business or practice will ensure that your campaigns receive far reaching exposure.

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Let’s get social with Sharper™!

Follow us on Twitter or become a Facebook fan to receive great promotions, news, marketing tips and industry updates that only social media subscribers will receive.

The internet is definitely one of the quickest and strongest channel to help a business promote and gain more customers.  Veterinary clinics and pet care businesses should take advantage of this medium as soon as possible – if you haven’t already done so.  Facebook and Twitter are free social networking sites that your practice or business can use to market your brand.  Both sites are extremely influential and currently, are being used by millions of people.  Here, we will explore the many different ways your veterinary practice or pet care business can use Twitter to market your business online.

The whole point to joining a social networking site like Twitter is so that you can increase your network of customers.  Using Twitter to create a brand that clearly identifies your business will be the key to attracting a strong network of followers.  Marketing your promotions is a great way to provide people with an incentive to be your followers.  Currently, about 60% of Twitter users follow a brand to receive deals and promotions.  Furthermore, use hash-tags with keywords related to your promotion to make it easy for your potential customers to search for your tweets.

Twitter can also be used as a channel to deal with customer complaints and to create an environment for cultivating customer loyalty.  Complaints made on Twitter can be dealt with in real time and it’s the easiest and fastest way to receive customer feedback and comments.  Attending to problems as they arise will help smooth the solution process and it will also give your business or practice adequate time to respond.  Moreover, promptly dealing with issues will help you learn and understand more about your customers and their preferences – thus, helping you build brand loyalty and increase peer referrals.

Using Twitter to spread your brand expertise to your followers is a great way to build credentials for your business or practice.  Veterinary and pet care clinics can tweet about specialties related to their business or practice.  For example, if your veterinary practice uses the latest in treatment technology – putting your name beside that certain technology will help boost your ethos and increase your level of expertise to your customers.  Another example would be if your pet grooming clinic offers the most creative grooming services out there – let your potential customers know that through your tweets.

Effectively using Twitter as an online marketing tool will not only help you gain more potential customers, but also help you build lasting business relationships with your current customers.  Think of something that your veterinary practice or pet care business specializes in, create a hash-tag for it and promote it to your followers.  You’ll be surprise how fast words can travel on social networking sites, like Twitter.

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Let’s get social with Sharper™!

Follow us on Twitter or become a Facebook fan to receive great promotions, news, marketing tips and industry updates that only social media subscribers will receive.

As anti-spam laws continue to tighten its grip on email marketers today, many will turn to social media as an alternative way to market their products and services.  Email marketers today are finding it tough to abide to all the new anti-spam riles and regulations.  Moreover, building quality email lists have become tougher and tougher due to a strong competitive post-recession market.  However, professionally trained marketers are taught to be creative – especially in the toughest of times.

The marketing stage today is completely different from what it was 2-3 years ago.  Marketers are equipped with an arsenal of different channels and tools that they can use to get their messages out to their audiences.  Social media is a prime example because it’s a channel that hasn’t been gripped with opt-in and double opt-in rules.

Let us consider Facebook, for instance – it’s a social media channel that allows people to become a fan of a brand.  The fans opt-in, at their own will, to receive updates, news and promotions from that specific brand.  If you think about it, your list of fans can also be your list of opted-in email subscribers.  Your fans have already expressed an interest in receiving regular communications from your brand – so why not give them what they want?  However, when attempting to make contact with your fan list, remember to cater your messages to the interests of your fans – this will help to a build stronger relationship with your fans.

If you are planning on offering your products or services to your fans, then make sure you know which products or services they have subscribed to receive updates on.  For example, fans who opt-in to receive updates on the latest snowboarding gear that your company produces, will not be happy to receive updates on the latest vacuum cleaner that your company also produces.  With today’s marketing trends, whether it is email or social media, segmentation has become the key to drive customer engagement.

The growth of your contact lists will depend on the efforts that you put into your campaigns.  In my opinion, social media fan lists have become much more powerful than email lists.  These fans have taken the time to search for your brand in an attempt to advocate for it.  They’ve made a statement to their network of peers that your brand is worth the time and effort to follow.  So, let’s take a moment and consider how powerful that can be!

Consider social media as a channel  to harvest your opt-in lists.  Incorporate this channel into your email marketing mix and you’ll soon notice a substantial growth in your opt-in lists.  One fan will spread the word to two fans, two fans will spread the word to five fans, and so on, and so on.

As technology advances, marketers will be armed with a wide variety of channels that they can use to market their products and services.  Take advantage of those possibilities because in marketing, if you lag behind, your competitors will surely reap all the benefits.  Start building your fan base today to stay ahead of the competition.

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Let’s get social with Sharper™!

Follow us on Twitter or become a Facebook fan to receive great promotions, news, marketing tips and industry updates that only social media subscribers will receive.

If your business or practice already has an email-marketing campaign, then you’re definitely on the right track.  However, to stay competitive and to make the best use of your email-marketing efforts, staying focus on understanding campaign reports is very crucial to your success.  Moreover, tracking click-through rates in your monthly reporting will help you understand your client or patient’s interests, behaviors and how engaged they are in your campaign.

Email marketing has come a long way since its first inception in the 1990′s, and it has definitely evolved into a powerful business development tool that all businesses and practices should take advantage of.  However, the tool can only be useful if you’ve implemented it correctly and especially, if you’ve translate your links into reports that yield insightful feedback and analytic measurements of your ROI.

Start with investing some time in learning and understanding the full potential of what a web analytic tool can do for your email-marketing campaign.  A web analytic software is very useful for tracking which links in your email have been clicked and it can also track all your e-commerce conversion rates, allowing you to pinpoint which links are bringing in the highest ROI for you.

Making sure all your links lead your customers to the correct landing page is critical if you want to increase your sales margin.  Moreover, grabbing your client or patient’s attention at every contact point and having a compelling landing page with informative information on your products and services will help to entice your customers into making a purchase.

Links are important, but don’t go for the over kill.  If you want your emails to stand out to your clients, then make sure the information that you present is focused and clear – and not a page full of links.  Creating too much links will make your email too busy and not focused on what you are trying to sell – enabling the risk of losing your a chance to close a sale.  Moreover, you will be creating more work for yourself because the more links you have, the more links you have to track.  Having links and tracking them is definitely a good thing, but make sure all the links are relevant to your topic and serves a purpose in the overall aspects of the email campaign.

Another important task is to track all the pages that your clients or patients visit beyond the landing page.  Knowing where your clients go after they’ve visited the landing page will provide you with information that can be used to project future campaign plans.  For example, if you find that most of your clients or patients visit a similar page after viewing the landing page, then maybe having a promotion on that certain page will help to increase engagement or drive sales.

Sometimes it’s the most obvious things that needs directions.  For example, having clear call-to-action links and phrases in your emails and landing pages will help deliver your patients or clients to the key areas that will help you complete the sale.  Call-to-action phrases have grown from just a simple “Click here” to contents that bring forth a higher level interest.

Tracking your links with a good analytic program will give you the best data, but if you want your user engagement and ROI to increase, then consider boosting your efforts up a bit.  A good question to ask yourself every time you create an email campaign is how would you feel and what would you do if you were on the recipient’s side?  Are the links interesting enough for you to invest your valuable time to explore it?  If you take the time to craft links that are enticing, then your clients or patients will not only appreciate your efforts, but also engage in your content regularly.

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Let’s get social with Sharper™!

Follow us on Twitter or become a Facebook fan to receive great promotions, news, marketing tips and industry updates that only social media subscribers will receive.