Small Business Internet Marketing - Part 2

In a post called Small Business Marketing on the Internet, I introduced a diagram that outlined the two parallel types of marketing activities using the Internet, and discussed why you should start by developing a solid web presence and managing your identity on the Internet. I will be writing a series of posts taking you through this diagram to help you develop your small business Internet marketing strategy.

Let’s talk about the Internet marketing side of the diagram. Although all types of Internet marketing are valuable, for service professionals, the Internet marketing activities that have a high payback include article marketing, eNewsletters and sponsorship links on relevant web sites. Service professionals need to subtly promote their expertise, and to do that requires that you do a bit of writing. Through your blog, articles and comments, you demonstrate what you know in a non-threatening way. Your words speak for you and help you develop the reputation for being knowledgeable in your specific discipline.

Article marketing promotes your expertise to various target markets, helping you gain visibility while demonstrating your expertise. If you like to write, it is a great way to get your name out into the communities that may be in need of your services. My previous post on article marketing talks about some of the resources out there to help you.

eNewsletters are also a way to build your expert reputation. The hardest part of using an eNewsletter is building your opt-in list. If you have a great publication that is entertaining, you are more likely to get subscribers. If you haven’t built a good list, an eNewsletter is of less value. For a great example of an eNewsletter that you just want to read, subscribe to Blue Penguin Development’s eNewsletter. Every other Friday you get a short, funny newsletter that offers great tips on eNewsletters.

Sponsorship links can help drive traffic to your web site. I personally have gained many new clients because they found my listing on SalesVantage.com. For marketing and sales professionals, SalesVantage.com is a very targeted offering. Business.com is another resource. Both provide visibility as well as valuable relevant links to your web site or blog.

Internet marketing is a low cost way to get your name in front of your prospects. Start building your personal brand using these three tactics. We’ll add more to the marketing strategy later.

Lessons from a Rock Concert

I attended the Coldplay concert last night at the Boston Garden. Throughout the entire show, my focus was on the band, getting into the show and enjoying every moment. The garden was sold out and the crowd responded to the band’s cues. I also attended several U2 concerts during their Vertigo tour and I had the same enjoyment, getting into the music, singing along with the crowd and taking part in the entire experience.

I’m sure you are trying to figure out how this relates to marketing your business.

On my way home, I realized that both Coldplay and U2 share something in common - they put themselves as close to their audience as they safely can. They figure out what drives their fans and keeps them coming back for more. Other rock bands separate themselves up on stage, putting a wall up between them and their audience.

But both U2 and Coldplay are skilled at playing to the crowd. U2 has the catwalk that enables the members to come right out into the audience while staying visible to everyone in the arena. Coldplay extended the stage on either end, allowing them to come out towards the audience and get closer to them as well. In addition, Coldplay came up into the audience on a small stage and sang two songs in the crowd, sharing themselves with everyone.

As business owners, we should take a lesson from U2 and Coldplay and build that “fan” relationship with your customers, prospects and aquaintances. Figure out how to get close to them so you can figure out what drives their business and how you can help them achieve their goals or minimize their challenges. Listen to them when they talk, give them what they want and they will be fans of yours for a long time.

Encore Presentation - Personal Branding Workshop

Due to popular demand, the encore presentation of the “Personal Branding: Promoting Your Expertise using Social Media” Workshop is scheduled for August 19th from 9 a.m. until noon at the Key Executive Offices in Marlborough, MA.

This three hour live workshop is targeted at independent professionals, partners in professional service firms, small business owners and entrepreneurs to help them understand social media and how to use it to develop their personal brand. I am sharing many hours of learning with my audience, helping them bypass the learning curve and get started on their social media strategy quickly.

The details of the workshop are:

August 19, 2008
9 a.m. - 12 noon
Key Executive Offices
33 Boston Post Road West, Suite 270
Marlborough, MA 01752
Registration Fee: $50.00

If you live in the Marlborough area, I’d love to see you there.

Staying on Track with Marketing

Things have gotten really crazy for me lately and some of you may be wondering where I’ve been. Like many of you, as the year progresses, new clients come on, old clients come back and all of a sudden we’re overwhelmed. What happens is we start having trouble staying the course with marketing. 

Since we need to remain visible to our prospects, we have to make sure our marketing doesn’t losing steam. Here are some tips to regroup and get you back on track:

• Concentrate on one marketing tactic at a time rather than bounce from idea to idea. Don’t be tempted to constantly follow the “marketing idea of the day” and ignore a program that is working. Keep evaluating how each tactic is performing, improve it if need be and use it consistently. With your limited marketing resources, stay focused on the plan until you get a result – whether good or bad.
• Schedule a marketing appointment with yourself each day. Whether it is going to a networking event, writing a press release, developing your newsletter or writing a blog post, make time in your calendar to work on your marketing.
• Don’t get overwhelmed with all that you should be doing. Break your marketing into small, doable pieces and take it one step at a time. For example, rather than execute a large direct marketing campaign, break it into pieces and send out several smaller mailings so you have time to follow up. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have time to do it all. Be selective and work on those activities that work for your business.
• Spend some time assessing how your marketing activities are working. How many new clients have you gotten from your activities? Are people finding your web site or blog? Look at the stats on what keywords people are using to find you and make note. If you don’t have the capacity to do this yourself, make sure the people you have hired can provide you this information. Marketing takes time, but you can track your progress if you have the right tools.

Don’t let marketing fade away as the year progresses. Create a one page marketing activity summary and keep it visible. If things have changed and you adjusted your activities, update the summary to keep you moving ahead. Remember, your marketing plan is a living document and adjustments will happen throughout the year. That is not failure. Ignoring marketing is.

Personal Branding - Is it really something new?

I attended a great event last night held by Next Level Executives on personal branding. Dan Schawbel and John Bates spoke of personal branding - John from the basics of identifying your target market, determining your unique differentiator and offering something your ideal client wants to buy (and will pay money for) and Dan from developing your Personal eBrand.

This event got me thinking that developing your reputation is nothing new - but doing so on such a global basis is what brings the overwhelming nature of personal branding to many business owners. Throughout my entire career, I have had to manage my reputation and “brand” from job to job. How many times were we told never to burn bridges because you never know when you will cross paths with that person again?

Now with the Internet and social media, crossing paths with past acquaintances is much easier and of course, much more likely. Finding out about your next boss or employee is as simple as searching for them on Google (or Googling them in the new lingo). The Internet and its social media tools have certainly shrunk the world and have made reputation management a very important part of our business lives. Managing you online and offline reputation today should be as much a part of your marketing plan as keeping your résumé up-to-date was 10 years ago.

But like with everything, getting started may be hard but staying engaged is even tougher.

What should you do to dive into personal branding?

• Determine your goals for developing your personal brand
• Identify which social media tools will work best for you
• Develop a full, professional profile with picture
• Experiment with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other social media tools if they make sense for your business
• Learn the culture of social media
• Listen to what your ideal clients are saying
• Join in the conversation

If this seems like a big challenge, engage the help of someone who can short circuit the learning curve and get you jumpstarted into personal branding for you and your business. But by all means, get started. This stuff is not going to go away anytime soon.

Help Your Web Visitors Take Action

Many web sites I visit are great to look at and have a lot of interesting information. But what is it you really want your visitor to do when they are at your site? Do you want them to sign up for a webcast, download information or ask you to call them? Do you help your visitor make a decision or do you leave them with too much information?

Your web site needs to lead your visitors through the site with the purpose of helping them decide what action to take depending on where they are in the sales cycle. If you let the visitor wander aimlessly without a clear path, you run the risk of them getting confused, frustrated and leaving before they tell you who they are. Web site visitors are amazingly impatient. If they don’t see exactly what they are looking for in a few seconds, they will leave. However, once they find something that interests them (like your blog for example), they will stay for a while and come back for more.

When planning your web site, ask yourself the following questions:

• Why do people visit your site? Can you provide them with what they need so that they are satisfied?
• Are you holding their interest and making them want more?
• Is everything they are looking for easy to find and presented in terms they understand?
• Are you wasting their time with elements on the page that don’t add value?

Asking the Visitor to Take Action

A “call to action” in marketing refers to active copy that compels a user to take action. When developing your web site, think through how you want to weave effective calls to action into its structure. You want to do this because if you don’t, you are leaving it up to chance that they will figure out what they are suppose to do and actually do it. The obvious ones are “register for this seminar”, “subscribe to our newsletter”, “buy now”, or “add to shopping cart”.

Other more subtle or non-invasive calls to action are those used to move the visitor through the site on an information gathering process. Hyperlinks that help the visitor walk through a set of pages, next and back buttons, or hyperlinked phrases such as “read our success story” are all considered calls to action that get your visitor to stay at your site longer.

Use a clear call to action on every page of your web site and interspersed in the copy. Don’t leave the path to success up to the visitor – guide them through the process with a flow that takes them to a decision. Understand the process you use to get new clients and develop your site to mimic the process as best as you can. You still need the great design, clear content and a professional image for your web site, but don’t forget to tell your visitor exactly what you want them to do.

Baby Boomers Not Interested in Social Media

According to a survey of 1800 people in the baby boomer generation (born in 1946 through 1964) by ThirdAge/JWT Boom, people over age 40 participate heavily in word-of-mouth and value personal recommendations and expert opinions, but they have not embraced social networking or blogs despite being heavy users of other online services. Given that this generation is 78 million strong, controls more than 83% of consumer spending and that spending will increase $800 billion to over $4.6 trillion by 2015, I think this survey would be of interest to most marketers.

Being a boomer myself, I have to say I don’t resemble that remark! I’ve always liked being a bit different than the rest - having majored in computer science long before computers were in vogue. And in the social media space, I’m definitely ahead of most of my colleagues and friends. Did I ever mention how much I just love iTunes? 

But the information in this survey comes as no surprise based on my anecdotal observations. Most of them look at me funny when I bring up social media topics, how it relates to marketing and whether they use Twitter, have a Facebook page or do they blog. Actually I never talk about this stuff with with my friends, but my 15 year old niece though her aunt was pretty cool having a Facebook page!

The major findings of the study indicate that Boomers:

Connect and interact with others in their communities around shared interests and common issues, but they use more traditional web communications tools, such as email, to keep in touch.

Participate in trusted online communities and share opinions about brands. They’re also open to traditional marketing and e-marketing, as long as the message is coming from a source or brand they know and trust.

Were most likely to trust a Web site’s content if the site corresponded to a trusted brand or featured credible expertise.

Participate in viral or word-of-mouth marketing as much as or more than younger age groups.

The following chart indicates where the Boomers have no interest in spending their time:

The good news is that this generation can be reached online using the more traditional Internet marketing activities. What this says to me as a marketer is that you need to continue to mix traditional and new media marketing into your marketing plans. Unless your ideal client is firmly entrenched into the 45 year+ crowd (and there are definitely businesses targeting that demographic), your plan must include a multi-channel marketing mix across all traditional and new media. This online marketing mix will guarantee the broadest reach to your set of ideal clients.

Small Business Marketing on the Internet

Getting found on the Internet is one of the most cost effective mechanisms for finding new business, yet many business owners don’t have the time to figure it all out or the budget to hire someone to do it for them. Using the Internet to market your business has its complexities like all marketing strategies, but understanding the basics can go a long way towards having new customers find you when they are in need of your services.

There are two valuable avenues available for marketing on the Internet - Internet marketing and social media marketing. These are two different, but very related and overlapping strategies.

Internet marketing is using online media to execute more traditional marketing techniques such as advertising, direct marketing, and public relations. Social media marketing uses the Internet to create relationships via conversations, networking and word of mouth marketing techniques. One could say that Internet marketing uses “push” marketing and social media marketing uses “pull”.

Using the Internet to Get Clients

To start down the path of Internet marketing for your business, you need to understand what you want to accomplish with marketing on the Internet. Just like all other marketing programs, before you decide that you want to “do” Internet marketing, you need a plan. And, like any marketing program, if not planned properly, you can spend a lot of money with little result. Figure out what you want to accomplish with Internet marketing and if your target audience is using the Web to find the services you offer.

The following simple diagram gives you a roadmap to help you implement these strategies without becoming overwhelmed.

Develop Your Web Presence

The first thing to do is to invest in a good web site or blog optimized for search engines. You may be thinking, “Well duh”, but I still speak with many business owners who really don’t have a web property of any kind. And if they do, their web site was created by a friend and has not been touched for a few years. The following tips will help you get started:

• Regardless of whether you choose a web site or a blog, consider having it created in Wordpress. In the past year, I have been converting the web sites of most of my clients to WordPress. Even if they don’t need a blog right now, they still have a flexible site where they can manage the content for themselves. In a very timely post, Shama Hyder lists the top 10 reasons for using Wordpress for your web site.
• Get a great design that is easy to navigate and consistent with your brand.
• Build your web site and continue to work the content so that it reaches your ideal clients with the precise message that resonates with them.
• Write regularly on your blog with content that appeals to your target audience. A blog without regular posts lose its readers quickly.
• Purchase the domain name for your company name and your personal name. You will take control of your complete online reputation. Both domains can be pointed to the same site or blog initially. Matt Dickman has a post on Owning Your Digital Identity that suggests you not only get your domain name, but secure your ID as soon as possible for all social media sites now.

These are only basic tips to get started. If you are not sure how to proceed, get help from someone who understands this space and can mentor you through the process. In addition, this is only the first in a series of posts about marketing your business using the Internet. There’s a lot more coming in future posts that cover many of the topics in the diagram.

Building Social Media Relationships

I occasionally have conversations with people who debunk the value and power of social media. They seem to think that some people hide behind social media to avoid actually meeting people in person. Although I’m sure there are some who are like that, I believe social media has more pluses than minuses and can benefit your marketing activities immensely.

I spoke about the global connecting, sharing, and learning benefits in my post on the Benefits of Social Media earlier this year. So I thought I would share some of my real experiences.

Social media enables me to:

• Connect with people through common interests (such as marketing, social media, and golf) irrespective of where they live. Through social media, I have connected with folks worldwide because we found something in common that drove the connection. People I have never met and probably would never have had the opportunity to meet if not for social media have introduced themselves to me either after I’ve connected via Twitter, commented on one of their blog posts or referenced a post in one of mine. It’s really just a matter of time before we’re at someplace in common and our paths cross for real.
• Get to “know” the people I interact with because they share information about themselves, including their photo. “Putting a face with a name” makes the person less of a stranger. Last night at the Institute of Management Consultants meeting I attended in Waltham, MA, Scott Monty, Laura Fitton (Pistachio) and Aaron Strout were on a panel to discuss social media (what else!). Other Twitterers such as Mike Langford, Stephen Dill and Dmitri Gunn were in attendance. Our profile pictures enabled us to recognized each other immediately and conversations bypassed the “getting to know you” banter and proceeded quickly to interesting dialog. It was a great evening made more so by not having to walk into a room of strangers. I hope to get many more opportunities to meet folks in person from my social networks as I did last night. It was a great experience.
• Constantly learn. I get updated on a lot of information from very knowledgeable people so I’m not the “last to know”. Between RSS feeds and Twitter posts with URLs to interesting information, I keep up on the pulse of what’s happening. By scanning various feeds, I can pick and choose the information I’m interested in at the time, flag that which I want to read later or share it with others.
• Carry on conversations with people as if I were in the next office. As a person who works from a home office (and loves it!), I can have conversations with people throughout the day and not feel cut off from the world. But just like co-workers who drop into your office and interrupt your concentration, you have to manage your use of social media to ensure you get work done.

For those of you who are still skeptics about social media, you need to try it in order to understand the value it can be to you. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s OK - it may not be the right marketing activity for your business. But if you are considering social media as a marketing strategy, start with the basics - a blog, LinkedIn and Facebook. Once you get these going, then add Twitter. After that, it’s up to you to determine which other tools may be beneficial to you based on your target market and how you want to reach them.

How Not to Get Business

In this era of social media and our ability to effectively connect and build relationships with so many folks around the world, why do some people think that by filling out my contact form, I would ever consider outsourcing client work to them? 

This is a really big pet peeve of mine!

A few times a month, I get several emails similar to the following from people using contact forms on my web site. Some come from freelancers and some from college students looking for work.

This bothers me because it’s:

• Totally impersonal and solicitous, showing no interest in me or my business other than looking for work
• Inappropriate since my contact form is meant for people who may be interested in my services, not the other way around (if I were hiring, I’d have a careers page)!

 (Bob Smith is an alias so sorry any Bob Smith’s out there!):

email: bobsmith@bobsmith.com
first: bob
last: smith
company: bobsmith.com
telephone: 508 555 5555
message: Dear Team Vista, (Really personal greeting)

I am contacting you to offer my services as a Freelance SEO Copywriter.

My name is Bob Smith and I’m based in Boston. You can view a few writing samples on my website here: http://bobsmith.com/

I am very dedicated and available to start work immediately.

I can write any type of SEO article that you may need me to write and I can also include screen shots and images via Flickr’s creative commons in your articles if you so desire.

My rate is US$35/article for any article between 300-1200 words. I also write blog posts of the same length for US$35/blog post. Please feel free to mark my rates up to your clients.

Let me be very clear - this does not build trust or make me want to partner with you. Most business owners are careful about who they select as subcontractors because it reflects on them. I’m sure this person is a very good writer, but it shows no initiative to build a relationship with me.

Before you will ever get people to trust you enough to hire you as a subcontractor, you need to first develop a strong personal brand and make yourself visible to me via social media.

• Find out more about me by visiting my LinkedIn profile (it’s clearly posted on all my web properties).
• Start reading my blogs to understand my areas of expertise to see how you could add value.
• Join my community via MyBlogLog, follow me in Twitter and take an interest in what I do.
• Start writing your own blog and make your knowledge and expertise visible.
• Comment on my blog with intelligence and relevancy.

Develop a relationship with me first and then, maybe if I need a writer for some client work, I will seek YOU out.

Social media makes it so easy to develop relationships with people anywhere in the world who could potentially send business your way. Don’t turn them off by taking this shotgun, impersonal, almost spammy approach. Take the time to learn about that person, what they may need in the way of resources for their clients, engage in a conversation and develop trust and a relationship that will help both of you in the long run.