Business tracking tools are everywhere, but most businesses are not using them. Tracking phone numbers if you place ads in newspapers, tracking the open rate of your e-mails, tracking sales to customer contacts. . . .How do you know where to put your money if you don’t know what’s really working?
Some businesses rely on the overall “marketing effect” to drive sales. They track sales dollars versus marketing dollars to determine if the marketing is a success. But what if I took away the Yellow Page completely and your sales stayed the same? That would save $1,500 / year.
What if, instead, I increased the frequency of Craigslist ads and your income increased by 200%? Without tracking you’ll never know what works. What doesn’t work well. And what is clearly a waste of time.
Being a social media for offline business guy, I take special note when anything local businesses are doing online and making visible to the customer. This weekend I had the pleasure of dining at MaggieMoo’s on West End in Nashville and thought I’d share that experience.
MaggieMoo’s is the first place I’ve been where their social media marketing efforts have gone beyond a Facebook sticker on the door. For the first time ever, an employee contributed positively to their efforts (unlike my example at Daily’s Gas Station).
Next to the register they have an 8 x 11 stand-up flyer suggesting customers “like” them on Facebook (as you’re about to do with the button at the bottom of this post :)) – but they didn’t stop there. The employee actually pointed out the sign, suggested that I “like” them on Facebook and added “Do so before March 15th because we’re giving away free ice cream that day”.
Social Media Marketing is about 2 things:
Engagment and Community
Driving Traffic to take action
What a breath of fresh air that was. Promotion, scarcity, likability and a knowledgeable employee. However, social media for offline business is still a leap. With 4 kids in tow, MaggieMoo’s was asking a lot of me to remember to go to Facebook and “like” them the next time I logged in. And since they didn’t gather my contact information, they didn’t have any way to remind me.
So at this point they’re relying on “hope”.
Unfortunately, hope comes into play again with their Facebook strategy as well. Since they haven’t uploaded any special, custom pages – they still don’t have a way to grab your contact information (which is the Gold in marketing). There’s no place to put your e-mail address or anything. And since you can’t message all your fans at the same time on Facebook – they don’t have a real good way to get me back to their FanPage – other than hope.
When you press “like” you’re taken directly to the wall where they pretty much post specials and promotions. I did find mention of the “free ice cream” down the page a bit, but there’s a disconnect immediately without seeing that promotion front and center.
That covers gathering contact information, but I’d also like to see them working to create more of a community on their page. I love that they posted a photo of one of their truffle cakes, but I would like to have seen them “tag” the person whose party it was eaten at. Maybe even start a “tagging” promotion for people who upload their party photos.
I’d love to see discussions about the best ice cream cake stories, or messy kids with their ice cream cones. Perhaps questions like what’s your favorite “mix-in” ice cream flavor, or name this mix-in recipe, or even stories of ice cream cakes that melted before they could get eaten.
Social media is about taking a group of unrelated customers and turning them into a community of fans. But a marketer must recognize the temporary nature of everything on the web. How good is 1,00o friends on MySpace right now? Without moving people from Facebook’s world to your own list – you end up with nothing for your efforts.
At least at MaggieMoo’s – you started out with great ice cream.
No matter how many small businesses we meet with, not everyone will use our services. Some companies really just want the DIY Internet Marketing tools. Others want to hire us but really have a hard time expending any money whether it be marketing dollars or cash register receipt tape.
It’s these companies that we’ve decided to serve better. We’re in the process of creating content for our newest venture http://onlinemarketingedge.com. OME, as we call it, will be a do it yourself site. The goal is to provide the tools to small businesses that they’ll need to turn the internet into a revenue center.
Since some companies are really DIY oriented, our products are going to be easy for them to navigate. For instance we just created a 30 page “how to dominate Google Places” report. It goes through everything from how to find out if a page already exists for your company to -once it is set-up- how to encourage customers to leave great reviews there.
Internet marketing is a whole new world to most small business owners. In fact, marketing for some of these small businesses is getting the fax from the Yellow Pages and initialing it for them to print it. That’s it. Sometimes you’ll find a company that regularly advertises in the local youth baseball stadium Program, or ValPak kit. But most just find everything in the internet world to be foreign and a bit scary.
But that brings us to the importance of what we’re doing, which is why we’re doing it. How many people come into your store, visit your website, call your 800 number, take a free sample, call and ask a question, or any other activity that doesn’t involve them buying something or “becoming a customer”?
And how many of those people do you ever see again?
The bottom line is this . . . those people have already raised their hand and have declared they’re interested in what you do. They might not be in the buying mood – but they’re interested. Some of them want what you’re offering but it just might be too expensive for their state of mind. Does that mean you should dismiss them?
We think not. Despite wanting to serve those customers in our traditional method, we’ve decided it better to be of service period, than nothing at all. So our DIY site is that. It’s our chance to be of service to those who just weren’t ready.
To some extent we do that now with Dan’s Notes, which you can subscribe to here. That’s a collection of internet marketing tips and ideas from my weekly meetings. But it’s not exactly a “how-to” guide. OME will be the how-to. It will be the step-by-step, screen shots, 1-2-3 how-to document that will get them from nothing to nothing less than famous.
In providing this kind of information, we hope the knowledge we provide our new DIY customers will be enough to move the nickel, someday. But if it isn’t – perhaps they’ll appreciate the help. Who doesn’t need prospective future clients who are already – appreciative? But most important of all – there’s no better way to get a prospective customer to come back than to give them what they need . . . now.
Most businesses don’t consider empty tables as marketing strategy mistakes. But with good tracking of your peak hours, a marketing plan can be developed to take advantage of the slow times. For some businesses this lack of marketing strategy can leave them in dust when the unexpected happens.
I used to manage the Stadium View Club Restaurant in Omaha, NE atop Rosenblatt Stadium, home of the College World Series. We had a pretty good business on game nights, and with the game schedule known in advance it was pretty easy to schedule the work.
The only problem that cropped up did so when it rained. Hard driving rain early in the day meant a called off game and likely a double-header the next night. No patrons – No money. And without tips, higher server turnover. If the rain started late in the game, we’d get hundreds of people from the stands coming up to wait out the rain in the restaurant. When that happened we were suddenly under-staffed, out manned and sometimes without enough food. Rain was a problem. Patrons got angry and again, small tips for the waiters.
Bowling alleys do not fear the rain. For the most part rain doesn’t change the numbers. But rodeos, football games and school events do. When something big is happening in town on a Friday night, bowling alleys are libraries. Office clean-up, shoe shining and carpet cleaning are the only things that get done. Since Friday night is the money maker, empty lanes kill profitability.
And we all know about road widening. There’s a coffee shop in my town that’s about to go out of business because the road widening project has taken a lot longer than expected and has made it frustratingly hard to get in and out of the coffee shop. When you rely on drive-by traffic as your marketing strategy, road widening is a death-knell.
The Cure to Marketing Strategy Mistakes
But rodeos, road widening and rain don’t have to be business killers. We’ve said it many times before “hope is not a marketing plan”. In all three of those examples, the only traffic that comes in is the kind you hope for. And in some cases the traffic pattern becomes so regular that you even stop hoping. You just drone on.
Instead of relying on hope, implement some of the many strategies we talk about here. Collect names and e-mail addresses so you can keep in contact with your customers. Give them reasons to come in. Have contests, specials and promotions on slow nights so you no longer have to settle for low profitability.
With e-mail address bowling alleys can reach customers when they hear school has been called off due to snow. With text messaging, coffee shops can send out special discounts on the days that construction has made it the hardest. And the stadium restaurant should clearly e-mail their clientele to let them know that parking for the restaurant will be really easy since the game was called due to rain.
Your business can be run better if you currently rely on hope. And you don’t have to spend money on marketing to get new customers. Start by thanking and giving to your existing customers. Give them a reason to be happy you’re there for them. Whether it’s entertainment, information or products – you can always be helping to improve the lives of your customers.
Hope is not a marketing plan.
Be proactive. Get my weekly notes and start implementing some new strategies today.
It’s true I’m an internet marketing guy who loves and values the proximity Facebook creates – but I’m telling you now, do not “get a page”. Stay away from it like the plague, like the green fuzz on old bread, like the highway during a construction project.
I know you’ve wanted to get a page for a long time and you’re thinking it will be a great place to post your real estate listings, or the status of your most recent client meetings. I know how valuable you think it will be to post photos of the new clothes you just got in stock – and you’re sure if you just do that people will flock to the door.
So if you’re thinking that getting a Facebook page would be a great addition to your company, you’re not even in the ballpark. In fact if “let’s get a Facebook page” is something your company has said, you’re missing the boat.
The biggest challenge I see small companies have with Facebook is they don’t completely understand the utility of it. “Build it and they will come” just isn’t a sound philosophy. In fact, it should probably be reworded to say “Build value and they may come once. Build a valuable community and they’ll be back.”
Facebook is not radio or billboards. It’s not a site to just post stuff. However, it is a great answer when you’re determining your company’s marketing strategy and you’ve reached the “how do we communicate with our customers better” section. Or perhaps answering the question, “how do we engage our cheerleaders and have them work for us?”.
There is a huge difference between “getting a page” and deciding to better communicate with your customers. Facebook pages can be great tools in your efforts to create a client community. However, you’ll hear crickets if you decide to “get a page” just so you can post your stuff for sale.
Once you decide you’re going to build a Facebook community, the challenge becomes content. How do you allocate the time? What content do you post? How do you stay engaged on a daily basis? And how do you determine what your customers really want to hear that keeps them coming back?
That’s a challenge you must undertake internally as a company. To some degree you’ll have to test what works and what doesn’t. As long as you’re treating your customer the way they want to be treated, your testing will come off just fine. Don’t get discouraged if the feedback doesn’t come right away. Engage. Engage. Engage.
To get back to the topic at hand. . . Don’t get a Facebook Page, UNLESS what you really meant to say was “Let’s create a customer community, and utlize the power of Facebook”.
Video marketing is fun and easy. I say it’s fun because rarely does anyone pay $10.50 at the theater to sit and read a magazine for two hours. Nope, people like video.
Did you know that you don’t even need a video camera to start video marketing? I mean you don’t even have to rent one or hire someone or anything like that. You don’t even have to have pictures.
Now, I guarantee you’ll get yourself a video camera after you start doing this, perhaps you’ll even get video editing software. And the only reason that will happen is because video is fun. Once your customers comment that they liked the video you e-mailed them, or saw a video about you on Facebook – there will be no turning back. Video just creates fun positivity.
So how about the easy part? Well, I’ve got some tips for you to make this SUPER easy. If you’re able to be found in Google for your keywords, head over to YouTube’s Search Stories site and make a video of your company. All you need for that is to know which keywords bring up information about you. That’s it. And it’s FREE!
Then, find some marketing photos of your company online, in your camera or elsewhere and load them up to Animoto. Animoto is a service that will turn photos into a video complete with music, a bunch of fun graphics and fancy stuff. Oh yeah, that’s Free, too.
(along that same lines is a service Trip Advisor put together called TripWow. It’s designed for travel videos, but I’ve adapted it to many things. And it’s FREE).
YouTube, of course, is the ultimate video tool. It’s the #2 visited search engine every day. If you don’t have video editing software, that doesn’t mean you’re without options. When you load one of your videos up to YouTube, you get instant access to free tools to edit, add titles, add music, frames, captions and even “Links” to other videos. There’s no cost for that either – and it’s pretty fun at that.
Here’s a great example of a video that links to other videos. What kind of ideas does that put into your mind? You can watch the video from the beginning, but if you just want to see the “magic”, start watching it about 3/4 of the way through.
Now, when you really want to get creative, and I mean creative! – watch these two videos. These are browser based videos and are really going to blow your mind about what is possible. These are “fun”, but not so “easy”.
1. The Tostitos video on Vimeo (a YouTube type site)
2. The Bear Movie on YouTube. There’s a few bad words in this one, so get past that and see what this video can do.
3. Finally, Animal School on RaisingSmallSouls.com. Not only is the video beautiful, but she’s embedded a way for your customers to sign up on your mailing list – right in the video itself. Very creative.
Optimizing marketing videos for small business is not difficult – but we’ll leave that for another lesson. The point is . . . video marketing is fun and easy. Not only can you do it without anything, but with a little time you can create endless opportunity.
When I meet with potential clients for the first time, they often ask how to get customers to their website. I’ve come to realize it’s just not common knowledge for business owners. When you’re thinking about how to get paying customers in the front door – sending them somewhere else just isn’t typical.
But it should be!
So, ask yourself this “why do you want to know?”. That’s the first question. And the answer is ‘because . . . “ Now, replace the elipsis with your reason. You want your customers to go to your website because. . . . what? let’s brainstorm some ideas:
a. you want them to buy more products there
b. you think they’ll use you more if they read your bio
c. you want them to get on your e-mail list
d. you paid money for a website and you want someone to see it.
This is the first step in figuring out how to get your customers to your website. Without a reason, a goal or a purpose in mind – what is your return going to be from that traffic? And without a reason that benefits the customer – who’s going to take the time?
The key from moving them from the chairs in your restaurant to the pages of your website lies entirely on the benefit they are going to receive by doing so. So let’s brainstorm some good reasons why you want customers to your site:
a. they’ll save money when they receive discounts and special offers unavailable elsewhere
b. they’ll save time not waiting in line when they receive “inside information” about upcoming offers before the general public knows.
c. they’ll be able to win free somethings by partaking in the fun contests
d. they’ll get questions answered sooner because of the active forum of employees, customers and fans
e. their next visit will be more enjoyable because of the good response and implementation rate the “web suggestion box” gets.
This list is entirely different from the first list because these are some possible benefits your customers will receive when they get there. The first list, and the one I hear most, is really more about you – not them. Now that your thinking cap is spinning around because this opens up so many ideas, here’s the nitty gritty ways to get it done.
First you now have a message, correct? Let’s start getting the word out about our message. How about adding the language to the bottom of the cash register receipt? Perhaps a business card fish bowl (virtual or real) so you can reply to them with the message? Table Tents? The back of your business card? Billboards? Printed on your check-out bags?
Now that you have a message, do you think it will be hard to interject that into conversation? Add it as your e-mail footer? Put it on your answering machine? Is this message simple enough to send it via postcard? Direct phone calls? On the invoice itself?
What we do with the traffic once it gets to the website – well, that’s another post. And now that you have a message – what we do with the traffic has just become the most important question.
The question of “how do we get our customers to our website”. . . I hope you feel the same way I do – that’s for novices. With a good message your customers appreciate, you’ll be hard-pressed to stop coming up with ideas.
You know what’s interesting about a career in internet marketing? I don’t know anyone who is doing it and is unemployed. Nope, not a single person.
You may have to answer this question for me, because I just don’t know the answer, but back in the late 1980′s were there any C++ programmers who didn’t have jobs? Fortran? Basic? Like internet marketing now, I think there were more jobs open than people looking.
I believe there will be a day when internet marketing is no longer a career, but something as fundamental as knowing how to use QuickBooks, or how to do payroll. It will eventually become a necessity of doing business, successfully.
Despite some notable celebrities declaring the internet to be dead, it’s in fact in its infancy. I believe the iPad is the first application that is taking the internet to a new level. Perhaps that could be said about the iPod – but that was just a new application for your phone. If you know anyone with an iPad, they’ll tell you that they do use the internet differently now.
Some day the internet and your TV will be one thing. You’ll be able to click on Regis Philbin’s tie and buy it directly from the company website that made it. You’ll be able to download Rachel Ray’s recipes directly to your stove top computer. And you’ll be able to access your fridge from the grocery store to make sure you actually do need milk.
The part that really makes internet marketing a good career choice is its ability to create income when you’re not employed. Affiliate marketing, pay per click ads, electronic products and even physical product sales are always at your fingertips.
Since companies hire internet marketing gurus to help increase their sales, the end of those consulting contracts means you just have more time to dedicate to your own websites, products and direct income. It’s a marketable skill you can use for others or yourself.
I don’t think “doing just to do” is the best way to learn the trade however. You can spend a lot of time learning lessons many have learned before you. Teaching yourself how to write effective copy, install autoresponders, build squeeze pages, create affiliate links and read html is a bit daunting. I’d recommend you take a course that teaches you how to do “everything” with one site, so that you can take those lessons and use it for any site.
The one I recommend is the e-Learning course SBI puts out. It does take a little focus and some time, but do you really think you’re going to absorb it all in 3 days anyway? The best part about the e-Learning course is that it includes:
The internet marketing course that is taught at Universities
A Wordtracker Pro Keyword research account
Keyword analysis tools
A domain name of your own
Hosting for your website
Newsletter software
Customer contact capture autoresponder software
Complete integration with Social Marketing tools like Facebook
Forums for in-depth question, case studies and learning
A complete series of how-to’s, like how to make money from your site
And more. . .all in video, audio and written format
It doesn’t get much better. So if you’re looking to make internet marketing a career, a second income or a way to escape your current job . . . PLEASE check out SBI’s e-Learning Course now by clicking this link:
You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll learn more of what works in this short course than in two years training yourself. If you’ve taken the course, please leave a comment and share your experience – otherwise, ask me about it and I’ll tell you more.
You’re on the verge on being inundated by local business internet marketing services.
While you dote methodically on growing your company, internet marketers are planning to visit your company in droves in the near future. Because the need is so great and the experience level so small, small business owners are going to be getting phone calls by the dozens by June of 2011.
And what you’re going to hear is this, “Let us get your site to the top of Google, so you can stop paying for billboards and yellow pages”. They’re going to tell you about the antiquated nature of newspapers, and the inability to track revenue from billboards. And you’re also going to hear that the ability to follow-up with your customers is where the gold is.
Guess what? That’s all it’s going to take to get millions of business owners to sign the dotted line.
But that is exactly what’s going to get those same millions of companies to switch from one local business internet marketing professional to the next, month after month. Because local search marketing is not about getting to the top of Google – and it’s not about following up with your customers.
To acquire customers using the internet, you’re going to have to be found – that’s the part about getting to the top of Google. But being on top doesn’t mean people are taking their credit cards out ready to buy.
Local business owners who are personable on site are going to need to extend that personality to the computer monitor. Products that sell themselves at the register are going to have to be marketed online. Nobody’s buying that last second “Hershey” bar on your site, if they have to wait 7 days for it to arrive.
The bottom line is this: until you’re on the first page of the search results, and until you can both capture and follow-up with your customers – you’re not even in the game. But once you accomplish that – that’s when the game begins.
Realtors for instance get many more leads from Realtor.com, Homes.com and Craigslist than they’ll ever get from their sites alone. So what if you’re at the top of Google for Mayberry Real Estate? If everyone in the town is searching for listings on Homes.com – your hilltop position will be quiet as a mouse. So don’t let a marketer sell you the #1 position for Mayberry Real Estate if all your customers are on Craigslist.
Once you climb the search results to page 1, and get your customers to the front door, then you’re going to have to use your charm, your personality and your guile to meet their every need. You’re going to have to test and restest, to try things and fail, to ultimately become a friend to your customers.
Local Business Internet Marketing isn’t about being on top of the mountain. It’s about getting to the top and then proving to your customers that you deserve to be there. And ultimately to “employ” your customers to help you stay there by blogging about you, tweeting about you and making videos for you.
Internet marketing for small businesses is marketing. It’s not a separate category, or something special some companies do. The internet is part of our lives and with the advent of the iPad, it’s soon to become a larger part.
I find it interesting that most of my “business” clients don’t really do much “marketing”. They do some advertising, but that’s about it. I get the sense that there’s a “build it and they will come” mentality among small business owners. Well, guess what? There is a better mouse trap.
Let’s try this. . . think of the internet as a tool you can use to reach your current customers. That’s it. Don’t think beyond that. What would that allow you to do?
internet marketing for small business
Well, e-mail is an internet utility that is virtually free. If you’re about to introduce a new product, you could tell all your current customers using e-mail – for free. You could invite them to a Grand Opening. You could even help your neighbor and invite them all to his Grand Opening. (If it’s next door, wouldn’t they stop in to say hello?)
Simple enough.
Now, if you can see how efficient that is, and ultimately how successful you could be doing that . . . how do we get more of our customers’ e-mail addresses?
You could have a pad of paper by the cash register. You could have a drawing where people toss their business card into a fishbowl. You could call them all and ask for it. You could even put a form on your website where they type their name and e-mail into it themselves.
So the next question would be how can you get more customers, so you can get more e-mail addresses, so you can send more notices, so you can make more sales?
That’s where it gets personal. For a real estate client we use Craigslist. A buddy of mine uses eBay. My folks use Google. A car dealer may use billboards. And a personal injury lawyer may just find the best tool is the back page of the yellow pages. That’s where you really start to make headway.
My challenge to you is ask your clients how they think they got from not knowing who you were to hiring you. Let’s put together a road map of how someone who’s never heard of you, eventually hears about you, is impressed with you and then hires you.
When we can master that and begin to understand the “ladder of value” we’ve already got in place, then we can start creating a network to find more people who want what you do.
Therein lies the art. the joy. the wonder of internet marketing.
Being a social media for offline business guy, I take special note when anything local businesses are doing online and making visible to the customer. This weekend I had the pleasure of dining at MaggieMoo’s on West End in Nashville and thought I’d share that experience.
verything in the internet world to be foreign and a bit scary.
