Using Google Alerts As A Sales and Marketing Tool
The savvy sales and marketing professional knows that those who are "in-the-know"...win. Knowledge is power on so many levels. Knowledge about your industry. Knowledge about your customers. Knowledge about your competitors. And, even...Knowledge about your own company's market presence. Obtaining that knowledge can be daunting. There are trade magazines, trade shows, networking events, and other ways to obtain the information you need. And, then there is the web...the mother of all data stores. Just keeping up with the information posted to the web every day could be a full time job of searching, searching, and searching some more. Who has the time?
Luckily, Google has a free service..GoogleAlert...and if you aren't already, you need to begin using these automatic alerts as a sales and marketing tool, it's time to get started. Here's how:
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DEFINE WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Some examples include:
Link Monitoring: as you know from our SEO Checklist, generating links back to your own site is critical to your search engine results. Set up a google alert for your URL to get reports on when your website is linked to.
Brand Name Monitoring: Whether it be your company brand, product brands, or both...knowing when, where, and how you're being talked about in forums, blogs, or other online sources is of paramount importance to your brand image maintenance.
Industry, Competitor, and Customer News: Keeping on top of the leading news happening in your industry or with your competitors and customers will give you the edge you need to respond quickly.
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SET UP YOUR GOOGLE ALERTS
First, sign up for your Google account. Then set up an alert for each topic you wish to track and determine your report frequency for each (i.e. whether you want information from each to be sent to you in real-time, daily, etc.).
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MONITOR REPORTS AS YOU GET THEM
Signing up for the alerts is one thing. To be useful, you have to USE the information. So, make sure you set aside time each week or month (depending on your report frequency), to read through your alerts, visit the online links, and absorb the information. Make a determination if the information you receive needs immediate action or long-term monitoring.
Using this tool from Google, will help you have the information you need "pushed-to-you", rather than you having to hunt for it...A HUGE time saver. And, it will not only save you time, it will gain you sales and marketing efforts just the edge they need. Remember, knowledge truly is power!
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The Sales and Marketing Toolkits BUNDLED contains:
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Over 60 sales and marketing templates (DOC, XLS, PPT, and PDFs)
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Loads of "how-to" articles and examples
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8 Training sessions (MP3 audio files) for your computer or iPod
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