I spent a lot of time this weekend writing a marketing plan for a client. In doing so, I was searching for various resources and spending some quality time with Google. After a while, I noticed some search results at the bottom of the first page that said:

Results from people in your social circle for search term – BETA – My social circle – My social content

What appeared in those results were blog posts from people I follow on Twitter. When I clicked on the link for My social circle I was given a page that described my network of connections that Google used to identify relevant social search results.

What is Google Social Search?

In early January, Google went beta to English searchers with social search. It uses your Google Profile to establish your online social circle and display publicly-available content from these folks to provide a more personalized experience in your search results.

When I did a Google search for Google Social Search, I got two results: a blog post from Jason Falls and a tweet from Paul Chaney. Both were recent and relevant to my search and because I “know” these guys from their blogs and Twitter, the content and their perspectives on this topic will carry more weight than someone who I haven’t met through my social networks.

Matt Cutts from Google explains “How Google Social Search works” in a 4 minute video. It’s worth the watch.

Why You Should Care

With Google is placing relevance on search results based on people you are connected with, embracing and encouraging the use of social media within your business is critical. It is now more important that you:

• Create a quality Google Profile and include all your important links.
• Stop worrying about personal vs professional connections being mixed together. Connecting with your customers and clients is critical.
• Participate in social networks, engaging people and staying visible.
• Embrace social media – it’s here to stay. Include your social media links in your email signatures and on your marketing materials.
• Consider blogging now! Establish an Internet presence that builds your company’s expert reputation.
• Don’t fall for SEO companies claiming they will get you first page results – the game has changed and first page search results will be different based on who you are, where you are and who you are connected with.

Those businesses who ignore social media will soon be at a competitive disadvantage. My advice: Get involved with social media now and take it seriously. Do you still think social media is not for you?

I got a call from a small business owner yesterday that reminds me why I focus on helping small business owners market their businesses. It disheartens me when someone spends a substantial amount of money with a company for pay-per-click or SEO services that do not get them any results. These companies charge $500 – $3000 per month for these services of which only a percentage of it is applied to your actual campaign. The rest goes into their pockets. They also redirect your website to a copy that they maintain, replace your phone number with one of theirs (to measure phone calls from their services along with clicks) and basically eliminate any ranking you may have in the search engines. They basically hold you hostage.

In most cases, what they actually provide can be done yourself with a little knowledge or with someone who can help you get your advertising off the ground for a lot less. Here is how you get started.

Determining Your Keywords

Finding your keywords are easy to do yourself with tools such as Google AdWords External Keyword Tool or the Google Search-based Keyword Tool. Both enable you to plug in your website and they return keywords that they associate with your website. They provide search volume and competition for the keywords. The Google Search-based Keyword Tool also provides a suggested bid price if you want to set up an AdWords campaign. These keywords can be exported so you can organize them into groups for optimizing your pages of your website or to build your pay-per-click campaigns.

Taking Care of Your Online Marketing

Before you rush into implementing a pay-per-click advertising campaign on any of the search engines, you want to make sure your website is optimized first. I just recently wrote a post on Five Easy Tips to Optimize Your WordPress Website so make sure you’ve implemented those tips and let your website get indexed by all three search engines.

Next, you want to set up your local listings in all three search engines local business centers. To make this effort easier, create a profile that contains the following information: name, address, phone numbers (office and mobile if you want folks to know it), web site address, contact email, hours of operation if relevant, payment methods, description of your business, products, services, brands and specialties, certifications, company logo, and a half dozen photos of your work if relevant. Put the content in a document where you can cut and paste it as necessary and have your images available for uploading. Then create your local business listing in Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Best of the Web. Here are the links to all three:

• Bing Local Listing Center - Log in with a Windows Live ID to create your listing.
• Yahoo! Local Listing – Log in with your Yahoo! ID to create your free listing. Yahoo! also offers enhanced and featured listings, but wait to sign up for those until you get all your free listings established.
• Google Local Business Center – Log in with your Google account to create your free listing. Google provides a dashboard that enables you to manage your listing. It gives you simple analytic data about activity and search queries used when people saw your listing. They also enable you to offer coupons with your business listing and post a message to your place page.
• Best of the Web – Create an account and submit your free listing.

I usually like to get the above done and let the search engines “do their thing” with indexing your site. Give them time to position your site for your major keywords. Then, if you still are looking for more traffic to your website, now consider creating a pay-per-click campaign. Google, Yahoo and Bing all have pay-per-click advertising that enable you to set up your campaign, manage your daily budget and monitor its progress. Setting up your campaign is simple in all cases. I usually recommend that small businesses start with a low budget and watch how the campaign sets itself up by monitoring your analytics information. You can see where your traffic is coming from, how the search engines are delivering visitors to you, which sites are referral sites and how many people come to your site directly.

In many cases, small business owners don’t really want to do this themselves. But if someone calls you with something that sounds too good to be true, most likely it is. Before you spend your money on these types of services, buyer beware – do your homework. Search the web for these businesses, looking for reviews by other small business owners before you give them your money. Better yet, consult with someone you trust to work with you on your online marketing efforts. You won’t be sorry.

Have you received these types of sales calls? How did you handle them?

Is One More Successful than the Other?

I consistently get asked by small business owners if they should be doing social media marketing to help them grow their business. Before I answer their question, I usually ask them if they understand who their ideal client is and where they hang out. Of course I get that “doe in the headlights” look followed by “no but I should be doing social media marketing”.

If you assume you need a Facebook Business Page because you’ve “heard” that you should have one to market your business, you need to step back and understand some marketing fundamentals so that you make the right choices for your business.

For a business to develop a quality marketing communications plan, you need to understand:

• The goal of your campaign (i.e. brand awareness, leads, sales);
• Your target market;
• The message you want to send them;
• The communication channel (the media) that makes the most sense for your particular target audience.

Successful marketing happens when you achieve your goal by sending the right message and reaching the right market using the their communication channel (medium) of choice. Picking the right communication channel for your message will contribute significantly to the success of your message reaching your market and therefore, it is important to understand the various communication channels available.

What is a channel?

The following diagram from Dream Systems Media Blog provides a visual look at the history of marketing communications channels.

A Look at the History of Marketing Channels

Marketing channels, also known as media, are the delivery vehicle for your message. These traditionally have included:

• Publications – newspapers, magazines, journals
• Radio and television
• Billboards
• Telephones
• US Postal Service
• Face to face

New media channels are Internet communication vehicles including:

• Websites / Blogs
• Social media – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube (See Social Media is not (Just) a Marketing Channel)
• Email (See Less is the new more: E-mail marketing is social and Integrating Social and E-mail Marketing: Where to Begin)
• Mobile (See Maximize your Digital-Marketing Mix: 10 Ways to integrate Social, Mobile and Email)
• Search (See Search still a powerhouse marketing channel)
• Videoconferencing

What are your marketing strategies?

Marketing strategies are the types of communication you do to get your message in front of your target market using the most appropriate channel. These include:

• Advertising
• Direct marketing
• Word of mouth
• Events
• Public relations

Each of these strategies can use either the traditional or new media and the choice you make is based on which would better reach your market.

• Advertising in newspapers still works well for some industries and others, not so much. Advertising using pay-per-click in the search engines works extremely well for others. Banner advertising on Websites depends on the message, the website and the audience it reaches.
• A quality public relations person can get you coverage across both traditional and new media channels.
• Events can be held in person, via a teleconference or the Internet using conferencing software, depending on the needs of your market.
• Most businesses benefit from a word of mouth strategy, using in-person networking events and social media.
• The success of direct marketing using postcards, letters, telephone or email will vary from business to business, but controlled postcards and letter campaigns do work for many of my clients to reach homeowners for services that the may forget they need. Email campaigns definitely work for those businesses who take time to build their in-house lists.

Keep in mind that successful marketing campaigns will usually employ multiple strategies across multiple channels to ensure the message reaches your ideal client.

Why is this important to understand?

Knowing where your target market “hangs out” is important to ensuring your message is delivered to them using the appropriate marketing strategies and their preferred communications vehicle. If your target market isn’t on Facebook, then how will a Facebook Business Page help your marketing effort?

Which communication vehicles do you use to successfully to reach your ideal client?

I highly recommend that all small businesses use WordPress for their Website. Even if you have no plans to blog, a WordPress website gives you control of your content so you can keep it fresh and relevant to your target audience. The following are a few tips that will help you get visibility in the search engines.

Make your permalinks pretty

This is an easy setting but one I’ve seen overlooked on many, many WordPress sites. The default setting is http://yourdomain.com/?p=123. How useful is that? If you leave your permalinks set this way, you lose all the value of those keywords that you used in the title of your post or page. Instead, select the custom option and set the format to /%postname%/ or /%category%/%postname%/. Add the category if you have been strategic with naming your categories using your main keywords. Otherwise, use just the post name and make sure you use keywords in their titles.

Set privacy to allow search engines to index the site

By default, WordPress installs with the privacy setting set to disallow search engine indexing. If you look at the source code of your page, you will see <meta name=’robots’ content=’noindex,nofollow’ />. This is a good thing while you are developing the site, but when you go live, make sure you go to “Settings/Privacy” in your WordPress dashboard and set your blog visibility to “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers“. Otherwise, your site won’t get indexed. Also, make sure your robots.txt file isn’t set to block the search engine bots.

Verify your site in Google, Yahoo and Bing

The search engines give you a way to verify site ownership so you can gather useful information. On Google, you use Webmaster Tools. On Yahoo, you use Yahoo Site Explorer. On Bing, you use the Bing Webmaster Center. All three verify your site using a verification metatag in your header file. Once your site is verified you can point all three towards your XML sitemap to help with the indexing. Install the Google (XML) Sitemap plugin and activate it. This plugin generates a sitemap that supports all the major search engines. Once you have set this up, all three of these search engines will provide a wealth of information on your site, such as keywords used to find your site, incoming links to pages, broken links and other information useful to figuring out how you are doing and making your Website more accessible to the search engine bots. This data in combination with Google Analytics should give you enough information to optimize your site.

Add SEO to your Pages

Using WordPress for your website platform also gives you control of your major SEO components: title and description through the All-in-One SEO Pack. You can also set up your keyword metatag specifically for each page for completeness, but most search engines do not use it in its page ranking algorithm so it’s really up to you if you put a few choice keywords on each page. My recommendation is focus on the title, description, content and the anchor text for your links, using the appropriate keywords for each page on your site. Remember that search engines consider each page independently and will index the page based on the content it finds only on that page.

Not sure where to find your best keyword? Try the Google AdWords External Keywood tool or the Google Search-based Keyword Tool. Once you get your big list, select the top 10 keywords for your business and start using them in all of your marketing materials.

Add Relevant Tags your Posts

WordPress enables you to tag your post with focused keyword phrases so that the search engines can index them more effectively. Don’t confuse Tags with categories. Categories are your file cabinet draw where you file a document under one particular topic. Tags allow you to describe your post in more specific terms that help people find your information. By properly tagging your posts with relevant keywords, you help people find and cross reference your post with others. Stick to just a few tags, however, as too many tags will dilute their effect.

Some final tips:

• If you had a website and converted it to WordPress, install the Redirection plugin and map all your old URLs to the new ones in WordPress. Not doing this will mean you lose any page rank that you may have from the old site.
• When you insert images, be sure to write good alt tags for images and think about the names of the files before you upload them to help search engines index your images (note that the search engines now have a specific image search feature).

If you use WordPress, review your site now to be sure you are following these tips and helping your website become more popular. And let me know what SEO techniques you use to help you be found on the web.

I started my career educating customers on technology products for a major computer manufacturer. My pathway into marketing - from educator to technical marketing to product manager to marketing director and now small business marketing coach and mentor – was a natural progression for someone with an educational background. I have always believed that marketing was a multi-faceted education for your prospects:

• How do they go about finding the right solution to their particular need.
• What do they need to know to get the best solution.
• Who should they be working with to get to where they want to go.
• Why there is value in doing business with you.

Whether I was marketing software products, business to business services or consumer services, marketing is more successful when you focus on educating your prospect rather than selling them your products or services.

SYMS – an educated consumer is our best customer™

SYMS – the Off-Price representative of over 200 authentic designer and brand names, is a company that was ahead of its time with its tag line – an educated consumer is our best customer™. Until recently, many companies didn’t want people knowing details about their products and services. But the folks at SYMS made sure the consumer was educated on their merchandise and understood the value and quality they were getting when they shopped there.

In my experience, business owners who try to push themselves on prospects rarely achieve the results they expected and therefore, are never as successful as they would like. Now in today’s Internet economy where people don’t need to identify themselves to find out who you are, what you do and how you can help them, you must become proficient in educating your audience so they come to you when they are ready to buy. But isn’t that a much more rewarding experience?

I’m thrilled when the phone rings and the person on the other end has found me on the Web and likes what I have to say. And I’m doubly excited when my clients get inbound leads that turn into sales making their jobs a little bit easier.

How do you educate rather than sell?

Educating your prospects is answering your audiences burning questions, through writing, presentations or conversations (both online and offline), and enabling them to visualize the solution to their problems. Once your prospect understands how to solve the problem and the associated benefits of getting an expert to help them, the more likely they will seek help with doing so. Knowledge is only power when it is shared. Your future clients will be attracted to you for your candor and expertise.

Does your business educate your audience so they can decide how they will solve their problem? If not, how can you start to change your marketing so that you attract your prospects and they want to work with you?

Striving for perfection is a nice goal, but sometimes waiting for perfection can hold you back.

The beauty of marketing on the Internet is that, in most cases, you can test, change, modify and update your campaigns once they go live. Having everything completely perfect prior to getting out there and being seen is no longer a necessity. It is more important to take action and become visible, even if it’s not perfect, than sit around and wait.

Recently, I’ve noticed this trend of waiting for perfection with some small business owners. The problem with this strategy is:

• The longer you wait, the more chance you give your competition to be found before you, potentially stealing the thunder from something you thought was unique;
• The Web changes too quickly to worry about finding small imperfections that can be fixed quickly once they are discovered;
• Marketing takes time to work and waiting just lengthens the time before you will see results.

Understand that I’m not saying not to strive for excellence in your business. However, there is a difference between striving for excellence as a goal and waiting for everything to be perfect before you take action. I totally agree that you should:

• Review your Web site and blog for spelling, grammar and other flaws that hurt the image of your business;
• Test your forms, landing pages and interactive components to make sure they work the way you want them to;
• Ensure that your brand is consistent and well designed;
• Target the right market, use the right keywords and communicate the right messages in your pay-per-click advertising.

But trying to get everything “right” (whatever that is), whether it’s your Web site, social media profiles, email campaigns or your pay-per-click advertising, is costing you clients, visibility and money.

Waiting to begin marketing on the Internet so everything is perfect is futile. Get it to a point where no one but you knows it’s not “done” and go live. The longer you wait for perfection, the more the world is passing you by!

Are you waiting for perfection before you begin a marketing campaign?

The final post in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get their plan ready to kick off a successful year.

So far in this series we have:

• Identified whether our ideal client has changed over the last year;
• Set our goals for our business;
• Tweaked our product and service offerings to align with our ideal client;
• Determined our differentiator and reviewed our messages to ensure we are communicating it effectively;
• Reviewed our marketing content for consistency and accuracy;
• Evaluated our marketing results to determine what’s worked and what hasn’t;
• Assessed our online reputation to see what is really out there.

Armed with this information, we can now put a marketing action plan in place that will grow your business and achieve the goals that you set for yourself. I want to emphasize the word action because a marketing plan that sits in a drawer will not help grow your business. The marketing action plan sets priorities and dates on all your marketing activities to ensure they get done.

Where Do We Start?

In a previous post, I talked about the strategy / goal / tactic hierarchy where you take each goal you want to achieve and map the marketing strategies you will use, the tactics within each strategy and the associated materials needed. By laying out your plan this way, you can see where strategies and tactics may benefit multiple goals and what resources you may need before you can execute the strategy. To get started, download my marketing plan template at Masterful Marketing or on my Facebook Business Page and use that to help you decide what to put into motion. Start with what has been working and include that. Then look to define new activities that may have an impact on increasing your visibility and attracting your ideal client.

You also need to add the who, when, why and how much information for each activity:

• Who is going to do it? You or can you outsource?
• When does it need to get done?
• Why are you doing this activity? Is this activity relevant?
• How much does it cost in both money and time?

Make Your Plan Actionable

In order to make sure the when happens, lay the activities out in your calendar. If one of your activities is to begin blogging to develop credibility and awareness, decide how often you will write, when you will actually do the writing and create a list of topics that you can draw on when you need get writer’s block. Then schedule your time to accomplish this task. If you are giving a talk, not only schedule the actual time of the event, but also schedule time for you to prepare. If you really need help getting the tasks done, add the tasks to your to do list with a completion dates. I would schedule no more than 3 months at a time as you may need to adjust your activity level based on how your marketing is working. And remember to treat your appointments to market your business as seriously as you would treat a client appointment.

Laying out a calendar has several benefits:

• Seeing the time blocked off will make it easy to see whether you have over committed your time.
• Scheduling the activities in your calendar raises their level of importance.
• Having a schedule makes it far more likely that marketing will become a habit.

The key is to get started now. Remember that it takes time for marketing to work so the longer you wait, the longer it will be before you see any tangible results. Be realistic, be ready to adapt and create a marketing system that works for you so you can consistently market your business for the best results. Remember that your plan doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to happen.

What marketing activities are you putting into action in the next 30 days?

Eight down and one to go in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get ready for a wonderful new year.

Before we plan our marketing activities for the new year, we have one more review  – do you and your business exist online? As a small business owner, how you are perceived when people search and find your information will determine whether they contact you about your products and services. So as hard as it may be to know the truth, we must understand whether:

1. We have an online presence or not;
2. Our online presence consistently projects how we want to be perceived.

Do You Exist?

This may be the easier issue to deal with as you get to start with a clean slate and do it right from the beginning. Make developing your online presence and marketing your business online the major part of your marketing plan this year. If you’re not sure how to go about developing your online presence, it may just be worth it to hire someone to help you make choices. Make sure this person has strong marketing experience in both online and traditional marketing and understands the challenges of small business owners. Make sure this person will guide you through the entire process, from brand and message development through implementation.

Is Your Brand Consistent?

With all the new tools and applications hitting us regularly, it is very common for our brand identity to get out of alignment and become inconsistent from one social network to the next. Maybe you wrote your profiles from scratch each time rather than create one document from which to pull all your information. With profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Business Pages, Google, YouTube, FriendFeed, Technorati and … well you get it, it isn’t uncommon to find old information that never got updated when you updated one. And I bet if you go to your Website, your “about” section may say something different as well. Since you are already online, your marketing effort is to ensure consistency across all online profiles. This effort takes work and regular maintenance, but it is well worth it if you do take control.

What to Review and Tackle

• Start with a “vanity search” – that is search for your name and your business name and observe what comes up. Are you or your business easy to find? What is the first impression?
• Review your company name, logo and color scheme. Does it project what you do and who you are as a business? Does it work with your differentiators that you determined in part 4 of this review? If your brand no longer aligns with who you are, or you simply never had one developed, it is worth the investment to have one done professionally as it will be what people will see and associate with you. Not too long ago, you could manage with just your company name on a well designed business card. Today, marketing yourself online requires a visual identity that has strength and memorability.
• Do you have a Website and blog and are they up do date? If you don’t, get a quality domain name that aligns with your business name or a key differentiator. Have your Website built on WordPress so you can keep your content up to date. Add your blog and provide quality, relevant content that your prospects will appreciate.
• Which social networks are you currently using? Are your profiles consistent in what they project to your friends, followers and connections? Is there online content about you that you were unaware of and need to do something about?
• Once you determine the state of your online brand, update profiles for consistency and provide new content that will get indexed by the search engines. The more people can hear what you can do and how you can help them, the more likely they will think of you when they are ready to buy. Plus fresh, up-to-date content about you and your business is the best way to counter any old, negative information that may be out there.
• Plan to monitor your reputation regularly. Add Google alerts for your name, your business name and your field of expertise. See what people are saying and where your name is showing up.

Online Marketing supports Offline Businesses

Whether your business is a professional service or a local storefront, online marketing, including the use of social media, is a cost effective way to market your products and services. Your online “storefront” is always open for people to find out what you can do for them. And since 69% of people research online before making purchase decisions, your business needs to be online just to be considered. But once you are there, you must be consistent.

What does your online presence say about you and your business?