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Online Local Business Marketing Tips and Strategies
Marketing hasn’t changed as much as you think over the years. But technology sure has.
One of the keys to success of local business marketing today is to be every place where your customer is. In the past, this was easy. You could put up a website or a blog, announce to your customers where they could find it, and you could have your message in a position to be seen where people who were interested could easily find it.
However, that’s not nearly as easy now, as consumers no longer wait for messages to be sent to them when they need information. They seek to find solutions to their problems, by going to the Internet and using the search engines.
The companies that make sure that their solution is present when a consumer is looking to solve a problem, will have their message heard. The old forms of “announcing” it, are less and less effective (newspapers, Yellow Pages). By the time a consumer is hearing an announcement in the old form, they’ve likely already solved their problem and have little to no use for it.
That means that if you want to market your business effectively. You need to be found in search engines at the same point that consumers are looking for their solution. You want to make sure that your website, is the one they see with the information they are looking for.
This involves a couple of steps. The first one is knowing the keywords that your customers type into the search engines when they are looking to solve their problem. In fact, search engine company Google provides this information to help businesses determine how best to reach their customers. You’ll want to take the information that Google provides and prioritize the keywords that will provide you the most impactful advantage if you were to be visible to consumers that were typing it in.
This then moves you into the second step. You want to make sure that your website is structured properly, so that it will appear in the search engines for the keywords that your customers are typing in. This structuring process is called optimization.
In fact, there is an entire profession and branch of marketing consultants, that focus on nothing but this optimization process. More than likely, if you have competition in your local area, they are being assisted by consultants that know how to structure their website properly so that it appears at the exact moment when consumers are having their problem.
Of course, the third step, is making sure that when consumers actually find your website in the search engines they click through to land on a page where you have the right message that makes them want to take the action that’s favorable to your business. Many times, this will take the form of collecting their contact information. In other cases, it will mean inviting them to purchase one or some of your products and services.
The language that a company uses, is called copywriting. This is the language that is necessary to guide customers toward making the right decision. It is a key part of this process that you’ll want to make sure that you have thought through consistently across your website. Contact us today to get more information on how that process can work for you.
How to Build Consumer Email Lists for Your Business
For a company to effectively manage its online presence, it is a necessary factor for them to be able to make sure that they are actively building and maintaining consumer email lists. This is much easier than it has been in the past, because businesses can easily collect the kind of contact information that most people feel comfortable giving: their e-mail address. Therefore, if you’re going to keep in contact with your customers then you’ll want to make sure that you have an effective e-mail management system.
The first part of the system involves being strategic about collecting names and e-mail addresses. The easiest way to do this is to offer customers who visit your website or social media presence the opportunity to get something that they value.
It’s cost-effective to do this by offering them some kind of information/report that would help them utilize some of the products and services that they will eventually buy from you or that what help them in their everyday life. In most cases, you want to make sure that the information is so helpful to the customer that they do not hesitate in providing you their contact details.
This trade of information for contact details is an important one because you can follow up this process by establishing a working relationship with your customer. Your part in the relationship is to provide timely and helpful information that that demonstrates to them that you know and understand what their problems are. Their part is to provide you feedback in how to solve their problems.
Doing this on a regular basis, provides numerous sales opportunities. While on the one hand, you definitely want to make sure that you are marketing to your customers directly; being their “problem solver” gives you a psychological edge in the relationship. The more that you actually help your customer, you become an authority and trusted advisor instead of just another salesperson. This is important to do, because of all of the noise in the marketplace.
You can bet that your customer or competition will be sending its own set of sales messages. The way that you’ll differentiate yourself is to be the best at solving everyday problems in their lives. You want to turn the traditional business-customer relationship around so that they’re seeking or chasing you. You don’t want to have to chase them in anticipation of strong-arming them to hear your message. Using e-mail in this way helps you to establish yourself in a category as an advisor worthy to be sought out.
Once you have mastered this process of collecting and relating, you’ll want to make sure that every interaction with prospects carries with it an opportunity to join your e-mail list. As you do this in every area of their potential interaction, your database and potential for marketing opportunities grows even as you continue to market your business in order to make sales directly.
Although the process is not impossible for business owners to manage themselves, getting the e-mail opportunity in front of all of your potential customers, takes a knowledge of both customer behavior and the technology that drives the e-mail collection process. Contact us today, if you’re interested in finding out more about how you can grow the number of your e-mail collection points.
photo credit: 14clicksNick cc
Simple Steps to Protect Your Corporate Reputation
Whether your company does business locally or internationally, Managing Your Corporate Reputation is critical. Here’s why:
It’s quite likely that your company has been reviewed online by customers that have received service from you. It is one of the subtle differences that the online world has brought to doing business. While on the one hand, it’s easier to reach new customers with your message; it’s also very easy for those customers to tell others about their experience with your business.
That means that you’ll need to take great care in understanding the review process that customers can engage in about your business. Do you know where your company is being reviewed? When was the last time you went to the Internet and searched for your business to find out what customers were saying about how you deliver the product or service that they purchased? If you haven’t done this for a long time, it’s advisable that you do so on a regular basis.
The reason is simple, consumers are coming to instinctively trust this review process before they make a decision about what purchase to make. That means that the business could be missing the opportunity to meet customers for the first time, if a review that customers see on line is turning them away.
This new way of managing the review process online, is popularly called reputation management. It basically means that what customers say about you publicly is becoming more important than what you say about yourself in your sales message.
If you’re spending a considerable amount of time and resources in getting your message across to your customer, you want to divert some of that same energy to making sure that there are positive reviews to be found when they (customers) begin to research their options.
This involves first understanding where companies like yours are being reviewed. Customers often make the decision to buy from those with whom they feel are the most trustworthy. So you’ll want to do everything that you can to make sure that you appear in those places where companies like yours are being reviewed with a positive reputation.
The second step involves helping those customers that have positive experiences to undertake the review process. You’ll want to make sure that you have a system in place, so that each purchase leads to the customer’s subsequent action to reach out and talk about their experience. What this will do is to ensure that your reputation is visible where ever a consumer might look.
Invariably, there will always be some customer experiences that don’t go the way you want them to go. When you find out about these experiences through the online review process, you want to take action to answer this complaints publicly whenever possible. This demonstrates to those researching companies like yours that you are conscientious, and that your customer’s experience truly matters to you. Contact us today to find out more about how to use this entire process to generate more sales and leads.
Why Mobile SMS Marketing Is So Important To Your Business
Mobile SMS marketing is here to stay… You’ve probably noticed that the people in and around your business often have their attention glued to some handheld electronic device. You may actually also be like your customers in that respect. It’s hard to go anyplace in our society without seeing people openly using a mobile device of some kind. The numbers are staggering (Click On Image to Enlarge):
This mobile ‘revolution’ is no longer a trend to prepare for in business, it’s a present reality. It’s one that your company will need to adapt to quickly to make sure that customers don’t find it more convenient to do their business with competitors.
More than anything else, mobile devices are about convenience for the customer. They no longer need to sit in front of a personal computer to get the information they want. They can socialize using social media on their mobile device. They can entertain themselves by watching online videos on their mobile device. They can communicate and chat, both on their mobile device. In other words, everything that used to depend on consumer sitting someplace stationary in front of a screen, has been turned upside down by the revolution that has taken place with mobile technology.
What this means, is that you’ll need to make sure that your business is available to customers that choose to use their mobile device on a regular basis. This means everything from your website to your social media presence. You’ll need to assume that your customer is accessing the Internet from at-least two places during the course of the day. (Their mobile device and their personal computer)
And if you’re wondering where customers are likely to be spending the most time in the future, the best bet is to assume that this will be taking place on their mobile device. Many statistics confirm the fact that consumers have not only determined that mobile devices are their preference, they’ve also made them a necessary part of their lives. This is evidenced by the fact that those that carry smartphone devices are known to keep them within arm’s length for 24 hours a day.
So here are some questions that you’ll want to be able to answer (hopefully with a yes). First, when customers come to your website using their mobile device can they easily access and find the information that they want? Is it easy for them to get directions to the location? Is it easy for them to find your telephone number and call you? Can they quickly find out whether or not you have the products or services that they want?
You’ll also want to make sure that the lines of communication are open with those customers that choose not to communicate in traditional channels. Mobile devices have opened the number of options that consumers have to be reached with a message. Some will choose to use their social media to communicate with business. Some will use their SMS text messaging system to communicate. Others will want to have the convenience of a mobile application. Have you determined which of these avenues most of your customers prefer to use?
If you’d like to investigate which of these options you need to implement immediately to keep your customers attention, contact us today and we’ll be happy to show you how.
Small Business Blogging Tips to Attract New Customers
Small Business Blogging is an essential, yet often overlooked marketing tactic. With all of the connection points that are seemingly required in order to market your business today, it can get confusing as to which one or two you should focus on. You may be asking whether or not you should focus your attention on the social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. Or you may feel as if you should focus your attention on your company website, making sure that all of the news, and information about your company is available to people who would be seeking it out.
Strategically speaking, it makes the most sense to use your blog as the hub of your marketing, and use social media to grab attention and bring people to your site.
Here are some tips to help you get the best results from your small business blogging:
- Make Your Content Sharable
- Optimize Each Post
- Look for Trending Topics
- Report the News
- Provide Internal and External Links
- Capture Your Visitors and Follow Up With Them
- Create a Content Schedule
Perhaps you’ve heard that it’s time for companies to make good use of video marketing, and so you’re wanting to put energy into creating online videos. And depending on your industry, you may have heard that it will help you to become an author, and so you have been wondering whether or not having a book on Amazon.com would help you in some way.
While all of those methods are viable for you to be able to reach your customer, you do need to have one central location that pulls in all of your online activities. In most cases, this will be your company blog. The blog can serve as a hub for your social media activity, your company activity, your e-mail collection point and even your online videos.
If a person wanted to go straight to the source instead of relying on the sometimes incomplete information they would get through your different interaction points, they should be able to find this information on your company blog.
Many business owners, when told that their blog should be the central hub for their activity, their reply is that they already have a website. They then question the need to have a second website or blog. However, a blog provides advantages that a company website typically cannot do.
While the company website has all formal and official information, including news and press releases, a blog is informal. While it may include official company information, it also includes the personal insights of the business owner, executives and staff.
It can introduce to the public certain products and services that have not yet been completed. It can also be a holding place for visual demonstrations of products, and services as they are in the development process.
Because the communication on a blog is more personal, it attracts people to your business when they are in different stages in the buying process. It allows consumers to get to know you before they consider whether or not your products or services can meet their needs.
It allows them to gain insight on what your company does as it carries out its particular mission. Therefore, it is important for a business to use the social media channels, video channels and even the personal website to publish information from the blog.
If you’re interested in building the kind of website that attracts prospects before they become buyers. by using blogging strategies, contact us today, and we’ll be happy to show you how.