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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Whoo-hoo! Seven down and two to go in our year end marketing review so we’re ready to hit the ground running! Hope you’ve found these useful so far!

Do you regularly review the results of your marketing efforts? Is your marketing plan a living document that ebbs and flows with what is happening in your business? As a small business owner, you should try to stay aware of how your marketing is working throughout the year so you can make adjustments as the need requires.

How Did You Find Me?

Throughout the year, you should track how you acquired new clients. The easiest question to ask when someone calls you is to find out how they heard about you. If you have not been doing that, add “track marketing activities” to your goals for this year!Make it a habit to ask – you will be glad you did. If you have a contact form on your web site, add some way to capture that same information. Knowing how people found you is an important way to get a feel for how your marketing efforts are working.

Simple way to review your activities

Even if you didn’t ask for how your clients found you this year, you can still determine how your programs are working through a bit of intuition and gut feel. I know most of my clients are through referrals or through online activities. To get a better idea of where you want to put more effort and where you should abandon your efforts and use your resources more effectively, we can do a simple analysis.

Start with a list

List all the marketing activities that you used this year, including those you pay for and those you don’t. Your time is as important as money, maybe even more, so even if you don’t spend money on an activity, if it isn’t producing, you may want to use your time more effectively on something that may work better.

Count your leads

Determine how many leads you got and where they came from. Did they come through your Web site form? Did you get them through a referral? Did you make contact at a speaking opportunity or an outside event you attended?

Count your new clients

How many of your leads turned into new clients? Record all prospects and how they find you even if they don’t become a client. Getting a lead and not converting it into a client can tell you where you may need to adjust your marketing, pricing, packaging or messages to align with your ideal client. An activity that gets a lot of leads but few, if any, turn into clients needs a serious assessment before investing in that activity again. The key is to determine which activity generates quality leads that turn into paying clients.

What did it cost?

Now compare how much you spent for each marketing area with how much revenue you can attribute to it and you will quickly know if there is a return on your investment. If the marketing activity costs time, not money, put your time investment down. Try to place each new client with some marketing activity unless you personally cold call and got the client from a direct sales activity. If the client came to you, assume it came through some marketing activity.

Where should I invest?

Now that you have this information, you can measure which marketing activities produced better results than others, enabling you to continue those that work and reassign the resource (money or time) to new activities that may produce better results. You might be able to trim your marketing budget without hurting your revenue, spend some more time blogging and building relationships on social networks or finally invest in search engine marketing or pay-per-click to drive visitors to your Web site.

Take time now to understand where you should invest your marketing resources next year. You can make intelligent decisions about how to market your business if you understand where your revenue comes from.

How successful was your marketing?

This is post six in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get ready for a wonderful new year.

Most small businesses have a Web site and some marketing materials that most likely were written a few months ago but maybe longer. Keeping your content fresh, whether it is on your Web site pages, blog or printed materials is important to establishing your credibility and a consistent brand.

Remember that your brand is everything you do and say, not just the visual image your business projects. If your marketing tools are inconsistent with what you tell people, that reflects poorly on your brand. Ensuring your content is up-to-date and your message is consistently delivered to your prospects is an important exercise that should be done at least once a quarter. The more often you review your content, the less work it will become. Doing this review once a year most likely means a lot more content needs to change.

Let the Review Begin

We’ve just determined if:

• Our target market has changed;
• Our products and service offerings were aligned with the needs of our target market;
• We know what makes us different;
• Our core marketing message helps your prospects decide why they should do business with you.

Armed with this information, it’s time to review your materials for consistency and accuracy with what you are actually providing your clients. Start with your Web site and make changes there. When you are happy with the content, then you can update your print materials (if you have any) accordingly.

As you review your content, keep the following questions in mind:

• Do I clearly identify on the home page who I work with, what I do for them and how I help them so I get my ideal client’s attention quickly?
• Are the description of my service offerings still something people can buy or have I changed the pricing and packaging and forgot to update the details on the Web site?
• Have I added a great new service or product offering to my lineup but forgot to add it to my Web site?
• Is my profile accurate or do I need to update it? What does my profile look like with respect to the one I have on LinkedIn?
• Do I make it easy for people to connect with me via my social networks?
• Do all the links on my site still work?
• Is this the year I should commit to adding a blog to my site and create a plan for providing my target market great content?

It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day activities of running your business and working on your business usually gets put aside. But your Web site content, marketing materials and consistent brand is too important to put aside and forget. I know I had to revise my Web site content to align what I was actually providing to my clients with what was described on the Web site.

What questions did I miss that we should be asking when reviewing our marketing materials for quality content?

This is post five in the year end marketing review series to help you get ready for the new year.

If you have followed the previous posts in this series, you should know if and how your ideal client profiles have changed, what makes you different and why you delight that ideal client. Now we need to look at our core marketing message that should be woven throughout all of your marketing materials. Is your marketing message the right one for your market, aligning with your ideal client’s needs and telling them why they should do business with you loud and clear?

Your clients are being bombarded with constant noise from your competition about how they will help them eliminate a pain or solve a problem. You need to be heard through all this marketing noise with a captivating message that speaks directly to the needs of your ideal client, enabling you to connect with them.

Remember – It’s What You Do …

Your core message:

• Is a short description of your business that catches your ideal client’s attention;
• Tells them how you can help solve their problem;
• Conveys what value you bring to the relationship, what makes you different and the benefit they will experience by working with you;
• Explains why they should trust you and should do business with you rather than your competition.

… Not How Do You Do It!

Just remember that your ideal clients do not care what you do or how you do it. They only care about what you can do for them and the benefits they will get by investing their money with you. They are looking for solutions such as:

• Solve a problem they are currently experiencing.
• Improve a process that is not working for them.
• Increase sales or cut costs, ultimately leading to a better bottom line.
• Find new clients or open new markets, thereby increasing revenue.
• Eliminate tasks they don’t want or don’t know how to do.

Note that all the solutions involve saving money, making more money, saving time, stop wasting time or helping them feel better about themselves. It’s not about the nifty new feature you offer or how you do something. It’s what can you do for me (or WII-FM – what’s in it for me?).

Focus your Message and Grow Your Business

Speak to your ideal client with a clear message that explains how you solve their problem. Focus on educating and informing them about the benefits of working with you rather than selling and create an image in their minds of life after they engage with you. Once you get their attention, they will listen to what you have to say. The more you understand the needs of your market, the better you can speak to them in a compelling and believable fashion.

Remember your message is the foundation of all of your marketing materials. Delivering a consistent message across all of your communication tools will help you capture the attention of those you want to do business with and help you grow your business.

How can you strengthen your message to attract your ideal client?