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Get your small business marketing into game shape

The economy is forcing many of us in small business to re-focus our efforts in marketing. Having returned perhaps for the first time in years after successfully growing our business by word-of-mouth and the occasional advertisement here and there, we find the landscape vastly changed. We’re not in the shape we once were.

I’d like to suggest that getting your marketing into ‘game shape’ for your small business is all about renewing your information, focus, and action.

Please permit me to use a parallel example for just a moment.

Whether you Golf or not you know who Tiger Woods is. He recently returned to Golf from a much ballyhooed eight month layoff due to a knee injury. He opted to return in a match play event, a format of golf that he’s particularly celebrated in. Tiger was ousted by a much weaker player in the second round of the event despite the fact that he’s won many events after injuries and long layoffs. I was interested to learn about Tiger’s mental state before the match from Wall Street Journal reporter John Paul Newport.

“One can only speculate, of course, but I’m drawn to a comment he made on his Web site the week before the Accenture. He said he was “full-bore” with his practice sessions and faced no restrictions, but didn’t yet have his “golf stamina” back” – John Paul Newport of Wall Street Journal ‘Tiger’s Search for Golf Stamina‘

As small business owners we have much we can take away from this parallel to apply to our own marketing efforts. If we’ve been out of the game we need to study, practice, and most importantly do. For Tiger, that’s a Golf tournament. For small business owners like us it means we need to get marketing.

We can start but cutting out old ineffective advertising, re-evaluate our current marketing message for efficacy, and find the best crop of current tools and methods to reach our customers.

The final stage of doing is typically the most difficult for all of us. It’s when we must face our fear of the unknown and fear of failure. In the past, marketing and advertising has done much to validate this fear because of the high cost of experimenting with different advertising methods. Ads cost a lot of money. Figuring out which ads work and which ones don’t isn’t exactly an easy thing to do when cash and credit is as tight as it is right now.

Today we have many reasons for hope.

No More Gatekeepers

The Internet has removed the gatekeepers to your customers. The gatekeepers of old included media like Newspapers, Yellow Pages, Direct Mail, Radio, TV and others that you had to pay ridiculous amounts of money to in order to reach (or communicate) with your customer. All without any guaranty of performance.

Contrast that with today when you can employ a free online self-publishing tool like WordPress for your small business website, optimize it for local searches (local search engine optimization), and install free services from Google like their analytics package to monitor your visitor’s behavior. These tools are accessible to any small business with a little study and practice.

Even if you pay an expert like us to re-design your website and optimize it for Local SEO that’s only a one-time investment. Even compared to one month’s worth of traditional advertising like Yellow Pages it’s a bargain.

Using free Google tools like Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer you can even mimic a large ad agency and do sophisticated a/b testing on offers to see which offer performs better. Three years ago A/B testing could have cost you five to ten thousand dollars.

Other ways to directly connect with your customer for free

Today, individuals, businesses of all sizes, and even stars like Lance Armstrong and Britney Spears are using social media like Twitter to directly connect with friends, audiences and yes, even buyers. Consumers have realized through blogs that we are no longer reliant on mainstream media for our information or our business. Businesses have cottoned on to blog marketing for its positive impact on both search engine optimization and branding.  Once you have a direct connection with your customer you can build a real relationship in any manner of ways.

If you spend time studying, practicing and doing Internet marketing you’ll soon realize new customers can be found on a shoestring budget. You’ll have to roll up your sleeves if you want to tap into the biggest savings, but that’s better than the past when you had no choice at all.

Once you’ve dialed in your best marketing message you’ll continue to find new efficiencies, insights, and nuances not apparent to you before. The field will open up. You’ll be in game shape. And you won’t be dropping two grand every time you sneeze while you’re trying to figure it out.

Welcome back, it’s good to have you back in the game.

QuickTime, iPhone or iPod Download.

People are already talking about your small business online – learn how to monitor and respond to this opportunity and threat.

Show Summary | 11:57 Run Time

• Primer about Online Reputation Management
• Demo of setting up Google Alerts and BackType
• How to combat bad reviews on sites like Google Local (Google Maps)

In our how-to video today I will give introduce you to online reputation management for small business owners. After we cover some quick basics I show you how to use Google Alerts and BackType.com to scour the Internet for news, comments, reviews, raves and rants about your company, products or services.

I’ll demonstrate how it only takes 5 minutes to set up a Google Alert or BackType account and start monitoring your reputation. Both Google Alerts and BackType.com are free and easy-to-use. When used in concert together, Google Alerts and Backtype catch and report on what people are saying about you and sends that info to you in a daily email.

I’ll conclude today’s session by reviewing a real world example of how to combat negative reviews on Google Local (Google Maps) that might otherwise scare new customers away from buying from you.

Online reputation management gives your small business the opportunity to spot sales leads and market niches you may have been unaware of. Perhaps even more importantly, you’ll learn when something’s gone wrong with a customer who may not have told you directly that they’re dissatisfied with your business but don’t shy away from telling the world about their complaint.

A major benefit of managing your reputation online is the ability to interject your own voice in these online conversations that can transform bad situations into customer service wins. Best of all, your good work will be rewarded when all your responses are cataloged on the Internet for new and future customers to see. Or, not. You can just stick your head in the sand and hope for the best.

Show Links
Google Alerts
BackType.com | Find, Follow and Share Comments
Mashable Article: Top 10 Free Internet Tools for Monitoring your Brand’s Reputation

QuickTime, iPhone or iPod Download.

Julian, ed
Local Internet Marketing for Small Business | LocalNa8ion.com
Where you are is where it’s at

I searched for myself on Google and found nothing.That message was written on a coaster under my delicious golden amber beer at Outback Steakhouse.

Do you find yourself lamenting the same thing about your local business?

With today’s economic crisis it’s become more important to reach new customers. At the same time you need to dramatically cut your spending. I have great news for you.

Today, it’s possible to cut ad spending in traditional local media like print Yellow Pages and Newspapers while still increasing your overall marketing exposure and sales leads.

Wait, did you read that right?

You can cut back on ads and still increase your marketing exposure.

Let’s look at an example scenario.

Local business owner Jane spends $1,000 a month on a Yellow Pages ad. She used to see great results from her ad but over the years, especially in the last five years or so, the ad just isn’t pulling in new calls like it used to. More and more, when Jane asks her clients how they found her, they answer in a one word, two sylable reply.

“Goo-gle”

Jane can take a hint. She invests between $1,000 to $5,000 in a new online marketing strategy and web site. This includes getting a clear picture of who her existing and desired customers are and then building a web site that speaks to that target market with appropriate:

- messaging
- design
- local search engine optimization (local SEO)

Jane’s new site will be her star sales person. It will have all the current information about what Jane sells and why she’s different (and superior) to her competitors.

This new site will let Jane, a typical resourceful business person keep her web site up-to-date with information on specials, sales, new products and services and other useful information.

For Jane, it won’t be any harder to update her new web site than it would be to write an email on today’s web-based email programs like Yahoo! Mail or AOL mail. You open a web browser, you sign in, you type, you format your text (bold, color, etc.) and you click on the ‘Publish’ button just like you’d hit the ‘Send’ button after composing an email.

Along with the relevant content and local search engine optimization on her new web site these frequent updates to Jane’s site (let’s say once every two weeks) will position Jane’s web site ahead of 90% of her competition on search results pages on Google and Yahoo!.

The targeted leads that Jane receives from Google and Yahoo! won’t cost her anything. Once she’s done paying for her new web site with the money she saved from cutting back on her Yellow Pages ad she’ll be way ahead of the game. As time progresses Jane will save more and more.

If Jane hired an experienced online marketing agency or consultant and invested $3,000 in her new web site she could expect to make up the cost of her new online presence in three short months. Over the year of her annual Yellow Pages contract she’ll keep 9 months of what she was spending on her old Yellow Pages ad in the bank. That’s $1,000 a month X 9. Nine grand.

Jane can do a lot with $9,000.

How about you?

For the vast majority of small businesses, the Internet remains a HUGE untapped source of buyers.  These buyers are using Google, Yahoo! and other search engines to find local products and services. To maximize your sales to these buyers your goal is to get your web site listed towards the top of organic search engine rankings.

The Organic, or natural search engine results are the main results for web pages and links after you’ve performed a search.  For local searches on Google, this includes search results that appear on a map, often referred to by search engine marketers like us as the ’10 Pack’ – so called because of the number of local businesses appearing in the map search. We’ll take a look at a picture of this in just a minute.

In the field of search engine marketing we use the terms organic or natural search results (which don’t cost anything) to distinguish from paid search ads that appear along the top and right side of the organic search results. The majority of people using search engines refer to the organic search results.

Here’s a look at where organic and paid search listings appear on Google, and you’ll also notice the 10-Pack Map listings (click on the picture to see a large version).

CLICK PICTURE to see an example of Local Search Results on Google

Your local media rep from the Newspaper and Yellow Pages will tell you that independent studies have proven that businesses of all sizes that cut back on advertising during recessionary times do poorly and fail in greater numbers than businesses that increase their marketing exposure.

If you follow this wisdom you should go buy more ads and make them bigger too! That’s what the old media companies are hoping anyway. But you don’t need to do that. I worked for the largest of these Yellow Pages and Newspaper companies over my 20 year career and their argument doesn’t hold water anymore.

With the options available to you today online it’s now safe to go find your biggest knife and start cutting traditional ads.

Then you’ll take a portion of your savings and invest them in the one-time cost of a modern web site and online marketing plan, along with the training to make your web site your new star sales person. You’ll pocket the rest of the money.

If you’re not the self-help type, then you can hire an expert to perform this work for you – like Local Na8ion. As with any purchase, the informed buyer (that’s you in this case) is the buyer who gets the best deal and the best available product and service.

Help yourself

Perhaps the most important step to maximize savings and local search engine rankings is to make sure your new site is one you can update yourself without technical knowledge. This means you don’t have to pay a programmer every time you want to update your web site, and every update you make to your site means better rankings on search engines.

The web site publishing software your new web site runs on should be mainstream, with tons of people using and supporting it. You should be able to go to your local book store or library and find a selection of books on how to use the software. You should be able to search on Google for the software and find thousands of companies ready to help you. 

Many a nightmare story has been told about small business owners that set up a ‘Free’ Microsoft or Yahoo! web site only to find out that these companies dummy down their offering and rarely update their tools. You don’t get locked into one company with one solution. 

With today’s leading web site publishing technology, specifically using content management systems like the one we recommend, WordPress, your web site updates are as easy to publish as an email. WordPress is mainstream in that it’s used by millions of large institutions, companies, and individuals. You can buy WordPress for Dummies and many other mainstream publications to teach yourself about the application. WordPress has a community of developers and service providers that are expert in its workings and can provide you with services that run the gamut from customization to training. Here at Local Na8ion, we’re just one example.

If you’d like to learn more about why we recommend WordPress for small business, you can watch our video podcast, Local Knowledge.  If you’d like to see what this looks like for yourself tune in here to our upcoming video podcast Local Knowledge and we’ll show you exactly how easy it is to perform an update using WordPress. Stay tuned!

- Julian, ed Local Na8ion