Archive for July 2009
Leveraging Social Media Effectively
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
To the small business looking for marketing ideas, larger business’ tactics might seem too expansive or high-cost. To the larger business, small business marketing strategies might seem underwhelming. But no matter what size your business is, everyone can agree that that best marketing is FREE marketing. Here’s a couple of ways all businesses can leverage social media effectively within an internet marketing strategy, concentrating specifically on Twitter and Facebook.
The act of sending a short 160 character message throughout the Twittersphere is known as Tweeting. How in the world do you infuse proven small business marketing techniques with something that sounds as silly as a “Tweet”? Easy. Let’s take the old concept of the coupon, and combine it with a Tweet. Bingo. Have your friends “ReTweet” a link to a web page with a daily/weekly/monthly special. Your very own “Tweetpon” will spread instantly throughout all your customers and followers. It’s perfect for small business who don’t have a large budget for radio, television, or periodical marketing.
If you are a larger company, why not use your economic gravitational pull to your advantage? You will have access to a much larger follower base on Twitter, so see if you can’t breach the infamous trending topics list! Challenge your followers with a juicy offer, maybe 10% off a particular service or product for one day if you can get your business seen on the first page of Twitter’s popular topics. Millions of people visit Twitter.com every day, the exposure would be beyond phenomenal.
Facebook is a bit more dynamic in that you can establish an entire “page” for your business. You can add relevant information, photos, invite people to “events” and even make status updates for your company. Status updates are kind of like Twitter posts, but they consolidate the response messages into one neatly organized thread.
You can post a status update with some information, or a product that you want to advertise. Offer a prize to a randomly selected commenter to quickly build awareness around a specific offer, product, or service. Have fun with the photo feature! (Caveat: This might require a bit heavier moderation on your part) Offer prizes for funny pictures with captions related to your business, or other cool contests that use specific Facebook features.
How would you feel if I told you I could give you the power to turn everyone in the world into an outbound salesperson for your business?
Two Words: Referral Incentives.
Seriously, all you need to do is make a sweet (but sensible) offer, Tweet and Retweet it to high heaven, post it everywhere in your Facebook circle, and watch the money roll in. Everyone likes a freebie or a discount, and if all they need to do is get a friend to use your business, they will remember to mention your company every time they walk out the door.
The Most Important Thing
Like always, keep track of your leads/referrals. See which of your social media marketing endeavors are generating significant ROI (either monetary or in regards to manpower). Remember, social media is perfect for every size of business, but not every type of business. The degree to which you will be able to fit social media into your internet marketing strategy will vary. How can you tell? Carefully analyzing how much money your social media internet marketing brings in, and whether or not it is cost effective.
BadaBing? A look at SEO for Google versus Bing
Friday, July 24, 2009
So the big news is Yahoo! is partnering with Microsoft. Yahoo! is going to use the Bing search engine from now on, bumping up the Microsoft/Yahoo! alliance to a formidable 30% market share. Everyone is wondering if they should revamp their business’ internet marketing strategy.
As it turns out, if your page is well optimized for Google, then it should fare well with Bing as well. However, there are a couple of little differences in the aspects of SEO that Bing sees different than Google. Here are some pointers on sifting out the hype and the confusion surrounding the Bing search engine.
Domain Name Age
It turns out that Bing puts a little more stress on Domain Name age than Google does. So if you’re looking to gain leverage on a certain market via SEO, you might diversify and center part of your Bing specific search engine marketing campaign around an older domain(s).
Does this mean you should ditch your current site and SEO plans and dump your site into an older domain name? No. First of all, Google still has the larger percentage of the search engine market share. Second, the difference is so small, it’d take you longer to totally build up SEO ranking for Bing than it would to make small adjustments that will bump your Bing SEO ranking and not hurt your Google ranking.
On Page vs Off Page SEO
It’s been said that Bing supposedly gives higher search engine ranking to pages focused on content. This means that good quality content with smart, SEO oriented copy, and search engine friendly coding is still an important part of a well optimized site.
What this supposedly means is that a site with good content, but not necessarily as many inbound links has the chance to rank highly in the Bing search engine. This can be good for the person looking for quality information but is not as optimized as a site with less relevant information.
Whereas people previously cast Bing aside as a pretty new thing with no new strides in SEO functionality, the Yahoo! partnership with Microsoft forces it into the limelight with a rough estimate of 30% search engine market share. While it might not be important for everyone, businesses that focus their SEO strategies for their livelihood now have to at least take an interest in Bing and how it differs from Google. Here’s what the Bing team had to say in their whitepaper:
“Ultimately, SEO is still SEO. Bing doesn’t change that. Bing’s new user interface design simply adds new opportunities to searchers to find what the information they want more quickly and easily, and that benefits webmasters who have taken the time to work on the quality of their content and website design.”
This means that you still need quality content and good, keyword-rich, market-specific copy, and well-performing inbound and outbound links. If you haven’t built a solid foundation in that aspect, don’t worry about Bing specifically yet, because any work you do in SEO 101 will boost your ranking in both Bing and Google.
However, if your site is dripping with SEO goodness, and you’re business is ready to sink your teeth into the upcoming Bing market share, then get ready to set up some testing sites (perhaps with an older domain name!) and get a copywriter to crank out some innovative content. Optimized as needed, and watch your site rise to the top of the SERPs on the newest search engine contender. Bada Bing!
Walls Posts, and Bloggers, and Tweets, Oh My!
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
How to handle social networking specifically for your small business
You can’t go two steps in the digital world anymore without hearing buzzwords like web 3.0 or Social Networking. As with any new technologies, business owners have a way of quickly hopping onto bandwagons without much thought as to why they might even need them in the first place. There are huge benefits to be reaped by smart use of social networking, but they are situational. The presence of social networking and the degree of its use are something that must be determined by careful study of your business marketing plan. Here are a couple of points to get you started.
What information are you presenting on your social networks?
The excitement of a new medium of marketing sometimes blinds people to the obvious. You need to keep your Social Networking updates relevant to customers. They should be offering relevant information or something like a coupon, or helpful advice.
Here’s a Good example of a smart marketing Twitter update:
We just finished work on a client’s new roof. Check out pics here. Call us today. Mention Twitter and receive 10% off next project!
Here’s a Twitter update that you might want to avoid:
Sunset wuz beautiful from client’s roof 2day. Really took our breath away, LOL.
Notice in the first one we provide the client with relevant information regarding the business, but also present added marketing value by adding a call to action. The second one also attempts building rapport with an audience, but in a casual tone that could be detrimental to your business goals. This is one of the challenges that social networking brings to small business marketing: The temptation to use a casual medium to build rapport and forgo intelligent marketing decisions. You can still use social networking as a fun alternative to increase marketing exposure for your business, but you can’t do so at the expense of the reputation that your company has previously built.
Do you even need social networking in your marketing strategy?
Just because a technology is new and exciting, doesn’t mean it has a place within your business’s marketing strategy.. Is your target audience even using MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc? This is important to know. It’s always good to have a face of your business available on all mediums of the internet. However, if most of your business is B2B, and your efforts on social networking will go largely unnoticed, then you won’t want to put much effort into your small business social networking beyond setting up a profile and checking it every once in a while to keep it up to date. If you can reach a relevant audience via social networking, then just remember to keep your communications professional and relevant to the audience.
Don’t forget to ask your customers where they’re hearing about you. If your marketing analysis reveals that you are pulling in decent traffic or sales conversions from social networking, then you might even consider going into a heavier social media campaign. The important point for social networking in small businesses is determining ROI. Not so much for financial investment, because most social networks are free to join and use (for right now), but it will let you know how much of your employee’s time should be spent on your business’s social networking to keep your marketing strategy as efficient as possible.
Pitfalls to Avoid When Marketing Your Christian Company
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
A Christian company has a number of issues to take into consideration before it can plan out an effective marketing strategy. The issue of audience becomes even more important for a Christian company. What kind of Christian company are you? Is your target audience specifically Christian? Perhaps your audience is broader, but you still want a Christian overtone to your company. Each of these scenarios holds a challenge that is unique to a Christian company. Let’s look at the two different marketing scenarios and how you can avoid making two huge mistakes that can lose business.
If the majority of your target audience is Christian, then the marketing for your company will be a little more directly addressing the Christian aspect of your business. Your marketing messages, advertising, and other endeavors should include the fact that you are a Christian-based business. This might seem elementary, but the trick is finding a balance. You cannot forget that your services and/or goods still come first in your marketing endeavors. If you strictly push the fact that your business is Christian and avoid important information about your actual business, it will come off as tacky, and you might push away potential customers who feel that you’re waving around the “Christian” label for your business solely to increase sales.
On the other hand, a Christian business with a broader audience has its own marketing challenges. Secular customers and business partners might find your marketing alienating if it contains messages specifically targeted towards Christians. At the same time, if fellow Christians see a very weak portrayal of your company as “Christian”, you might also find yourself in a situation where your marketing comes off as targeting Christians simply for increased market share.
So how do you market your Christian business without alienating secular audiences or disappointing potential Christian customers? The key to success for marketing your Christian business is powerful subtlety. Again, this depends on who your target audience is, but if you want to deliver your business’ message to a broad demographic, the best marketing strategy is to subtlety portray your business in a Christian manner. In reality, it’s the way in which you conduct business as a Christian business owner that will impress people. Remember, you may be the only Bible someone ever reads, and if you uphold your business with Christian values, you don’t necessarily need to overload your marketing with the fact that you are a Christian company. Subtle and powerful reminders can be: mentions on your website’s “Abou Us” page, Christian Themed watermarks on stationary or letterheads, tasteful Christian symbols on mail outs or emails, etc.
As long as you include subtle yet prominent reminders that you are a Christian based business, and conduct your business with Christian principles, planning an effective marketing strategy is as easy as relevant indicators that you are a Christian business. In doing so, your marketing avoids both alienating your secular audience and underwhelming your Christian audience.
CRM and Small Business Marketing
Friday, July 10, 2009
For a small business, creating a loyal customer base can be the key to success. Each of your customers costs a certain amount of money to obtain, because you spend money on marketing in order to attract new customers. If you practice smart and efficient marketing, you can tell whether or not it is better to focus more attention on attracting new customers or spending your marketing budget on resources to keep your current customers returning. If your small business could benefit from building a pool of repeat customers, then you should concentrate on your CRM (Customer Relationship Management).
There are three different areas of CRM, the first of which is called Operational CRM. This includes any time your business makes a direct contact with the customer, such as sales, marketing, or customer support.
The second area of CRM is called Collaborative. Collaborative CRM includes anything that deals with the customer directly contacting your business, which can include services such as customer feedback, issue reporting, and customer suggestions. This can be achieved through a variety of mediums, such as a website (web page), handwritten forms, telephones, or even via text messages.
This is a lot of the Customer Relationships, so where is the management part? That is up to your business to decide. One of the most popular ways to implement CRM for your business is to keep a database of customer information. A central database of customer information can help you streamline your marketing efforts and strengthen the connection with your customers. This way, if your customer calls with an support issue, you can look up all the pertinent information and continue a dialogue with your customer without missing a beat, and it will build instant rapport with them.
What does any of this have to do with small business marketing? Everything, actually. This is where the third facet of CRM comes in: Analytical CRM. By analyzing the customer data in your small business
3 Things Small Business Marketers Can Learn From Michael Jackson
Monday, July 6, 2009
One of the biggest challenges small businesses face is financial constraints on their marketing budget. You should be allotting a certain percentage of your small business’s profits for a marketing budget. Unfortunately, many small businesses have little to no idea that they’re pulling the wool over their own eyes. Forgoing marketing is a very *bad* thing, it’s *human nature* to want to save money when you’re *working day and night*, but you’ll never make out like a *smooth criminal* and steal your small business some market share if you’re marketing budget is *off the wall* or nonexistent. You definitely *wanna be startin’ somethin’ *in that regards. Don’t stop till you get enough. Ok, you probably get the picture. If your marketing budget is less than a thriller, that’s okay, you just have to play it smart.
Why all the Michael Jackson references? Because he performed a legendary dance move called the moonwalk, in which he moved backwards while appearing to move forward. Small businesses everywhere can take this as a blueprint of how NOT to run a marketing campaign. Many businesses simply throw money into fliers, online advertising, SEO, television advertising, radio advertising, or any number of marketing endeavors and think that everything will magically be alright. They think they are moving forward, when in reality they are setting their businesses back. The key is to keep records of everything you do. Ask your customers how they found out about you. Did they hear your radio advertisement, see your television ad, or find your business’s website? Customer Relationship Management is a huge part of a successful marketing campaign. If you keep track of which marketing endeavors are successful for your small business, you will know which ones to continue, and which ones to discontinue. Once you’ve figured out what works for your business, you can then calculate how much each of your customers costs to obtain, and with some smart Customer Relationship Managament techniques, you can figure out whether it’s smarter to focus your marketing funds on SEO and television ads to acquire new customers, or maybe a newsletter to your current customers. Maybe a mix of both. The point is that you will know precisely how to spend your marketing dollars to effectively grow your business.
Is your business moonwalking? Does it appear to be moving forward when it’s really taking big steps backward? If you’re blindly spending money on uninformed and untracked marketing endeavors for your small business, then yes, it is. The difference is when Michael Jackson puts on an illusion it is a cool thing. When your business does the moonwalk, not so much. Do the right thing, practice smart marketing to effectively grow your small business.