Author: Quentin Pain
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How To Be Successful In 2012
The new year is nearly upon us as I write this, and it inspired me to share my thoughts on how to be really successful in 2012. Here are 4 things I think are important: Customer Service Honesty Benefits Target Audience All of them are tried and trusted ingredients of a good business, and I…
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What is a hook?
Understanding the Concept of a Hook If you’ve been involved in marketing or journalism, chances are you’ve encountered the term ‘hook’ numerous times. You might have even wondered, what exactly is a hook? At its core, a hook is the element that captures attention and sparks curiosity. It’s the first thing people see or hear,…
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How To Increase Your Signups
As most marketers know, getting people to become advocates for your products or service is vital for your business success, and the best way to do that is to get them on to a marketing list. That list can be for direct mail and more importantly for email campaigns. For the latter you just need…
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How To Promote Your Local Business
[I wrote this piece in 2011, and amazingly, most of the advice is still true today – no one uses print directories anymore of course, and Google Places is now Google Business Profile, backlinking is a thing of the past, but the rest is still good in 2026] Years ago the only way to advertise…
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How To Price A Product
One of the biggest problems I know many businesses encounter is pricing a product. You have a product or service and no idea what it is worth. The simple way to price things is to analyse what the materials cost and how long it took you to make. Now figure out how much you would…
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Is Your Product Or Service Any Good?
You know how it is when you really want something. Your stomach can knot up inside. You start to take shorter breaths (or no breaths at all!). You maybe break out into a sweat as the moment of truth approaches. You start to think about what would happen if it all went disastrously wrong. You…
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How To Find Your Unique Selling Point
You will often here from marketers (especially in retail) that a product needs 3 unique selling points (USP). And that they should be blasted over and over again and everywhere in your marketing campaigns. Like many things in marketing (and life for that matter), once one guru has spoken, everyone else tends to follow. I…
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How Do I Get More People To Open My Email Blasts?
How much spam do you get? Do you recognise it immediately? Which emails do you open on sight? Which do you delete instantly? And the most important question of all… why? And here’s a few more. Why do some emails get through the spam bots? Why are some marked as spam instantly? What is blacklisting?…
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The Secrets of Guest Blogging (and how to get noticed for free)
Guest blogging is the way to get noticed and very targeted visitors. But how on earth do you go about getting some great blogger to let you post on his/her blog? The usual way is write a very polite email saying you love what they are saying and you yourself are an expert in their…
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Leaked Google Doc
Few people (except everyone into IM) realise that you can read the Google search patent publicly. Yes, Google it! Of course the patent (and there is more than one BTW) merely describes the mechanism, NOT how the elements of the algorithm are subtly changed multiple times during an unknown period. So, apart from that being…