1. Create a vision and set realistic goals for your business. What’s that have to do with marketing, you ask? Knowing your vision will help you make decisions on what types of activities you will need to get where you’d like to go. Goals break the process into smaller pieces to allow you to get there one step at a time. Without a vision and a set of goals, you may make some decisions that lead you nowhere.
2. Know what makes you different and make sure you are able to communicate it clearly. Most of the time, it’s not something complicated. In fact, many of us overlook our key strength because it seems too simple to us. Once you identify what it is, clearly communicate why this is of value to your ideal client. Stay focused and develop your expert reputation around this unique skill.
3. Understand your ideal client intimately and know what keeps them awake at night. If you know your ideal client well, you will be able to create the content they need and the services that will attract them to you. This knowledge will also help you avoid tactics that won’t work, wasting time and money with little to no return.
4. Develop your list of keywords and use them strategically throughout all of your online properties. Knowing how people search for what you have to offer is critical to your online visibility. Do your research and make it a habit to use these phrases throughout all of your online profiles to help the search engines index your material more effectively.
5. Create a top notch WordPress website for your business. As the center of your online presence, your website/blog is the most important marketing tool you have. Don’t risk your image with a website that is poorly developed and hard to maintain. A WordPress website enables you to easily add new, relevant content that your audience needs.
6. Be generous with your knowledge. Give away valuable content that will attract prospects to you. Write an ebook, develop a white paper or write in your blog regularly. This content demonstrates your capabilities, builds your reputation as an expert and will help people decide whether you can help them solve their challenges.
7. Be consistent with your brand. Think through what you want all of your web properties to look like before you create them. Start with your Website and then develop your Facebook Business Page with the same look. Create a consistent Twitter background and don’t forget to brand your email newsletter. Try to create a user name that you can use across all social media sites that is relevant to your business.
8. Create a complete local business listing in all the search engines. Add images, a keyword rich profile and point it back to your website or blog. Get happy clients to write reviews as these can be incorporated into the listing. For your Google Local Business Listing, reviews are also compiled from third-party websites. All businesses should create free listings in these local business directories to help increase traffic to your website. There are many others that can be beneficial but start here and add new ones as appropriate.
   • Google Local Business Center
   • Bing Local Business Listing
   • Yahoo! Local
9. Get involved with social media. Start with a blog and post regularly based on what makes sense for you. Then incorporate other social media activities that make sense for your business. If you target market is not on Facebook, don’t immediately set up a Facebook Page. If you want to reach the CFOs of major companies, set up a rich profile on LinkedIn. You can determine what sites will be best for your business based on mastering tip number 3.
10. Don’t be afraid of online marketing. Although it seems overwhelming at times, online marketing is a process that can be planned, tracked and measured. Create a realistic plan (and get help doing so if you need to), put activities into motion and track them to see how they work. Don’t let fear paralyze you from taking action because doing nothing is riskier than doing something not quite right.

Final piece of advice: Take a little time to learn enough about online marketing so you can tell when someone is claiming they can do something that they cannot. Seek help and guidance from someone who can walk you through the steps. However, beware of those who claim to be online experts because they know how to use Facebook or Twitter. Find a true marketing resource with years of marketing experience who is willing to connect what these tools do with how to use them for marketing.

Share your small business online marketing tips. We can all use more inspiration.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

10 Marketing Tips for Gaining Online Visibility is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

One of the things I do for my clients is simplify marketing so it eliminates confusion and enables the business owner to focus on what is important. But there is always a part of marketing that stresses many small business owners – i.e. determining their mission, goals, strategies and tactics. These concepts are important in order to develop a plan that focuses you on what is important to help you succeed.

Mission vs. Vision

Mission (purpose) = defines why you are in business and what you are doing now.

Example:
Masterful Marketing partners with small business owners as their trusted marketing advisor to help them achieve success by learning, incorporating and executing marketing strategies and programs that take their business from mediocre to marvelous.

Vision = defines what you want your business to be or be known for. It’s useful to develop a 1, 3 and 5 year vision to ensure you can progress to where you want to be through well defined measurable steps:

Example:
One year: By December 30, 2010, Masterful Marketing will be offering quality information products in addition to coaching services that make up 20% of the overall revenue for the company.

Three year: By December 30, 2013, Masterful Marketing will be recognized as one of the top three marketing brands for small businesses in the United States.

Goals

Goals are well-defined, targeted statements that give you clarity, direction and focus. It is important for the small business owner to define what you need to do to achieve your vision in measurable and realistic terms. If a marketing goal is to “increase visibility for your Website”, then you need to include by when and specific criteria with which you can measure your results. Ideally, you should have only 2 or 3 goals that you want to work towards in a 3-6 month timeframe. Any more than that, you risk taking on too much and achieving nothing.

A common approach to developing your goals is to use the formula for the five characteristics of well developed goals – S.M.A.R.T.

• Specific -  What exactly are you trying to accomplish? The more specific you can be, the more likely the goal will be accomplished.
• Measurable – How do you know if you are successful? Answer the questions “How much?”, “How Many?”, and “By When?”
• Attainable – Is this realistic based on the resources you have or can acquire to achieve them or a major obstacle to success? The best goals should encourage you to reach, but not so far as to involve unavailable resources or unrealistic expectations.
• Relevant – Will this goal help you reach your vision? Setting goals that do not align themselves with your ultimate outcome will divert your attention from those that help you get where you want to go.
• Timely – What is the deadline for this effort? Without having specific time frames associated with each goal, you most likely will not achieve them because the day to day interruptions will take over.

Example:
By December 2010, create, launch and sell via the Internet 25 copies of an information product that simplifies developing a marketing plan for small businesses.

Strategies and Tactics

Probably the most confusing concept is how to determine strategies verses tactics. Previously, I wrote about Traditional vs. New Media Channels and the five categories of marketing strategies that are available within each channel – advertising, direct marketing, events, public relations and word of mouth.

When determining how you will achieve your goals, your plan should define which strategies you will include on each channel and the activities you need to be doing regularly that will lead you toward those goals.

Example:
Implement Internet marketing activities to launch the product into the market including public relations, advertising, events and word of mouth: The tactics (activities) that will help me achieve my goal include:

• Build my email list by offering a free marketing plan template;
• Develop the pricing and packaging strategy for the new information product;
• Develop a press release to announce the product and submit to the online media outlets;
• Create a blog post describing the new program and feed it to all social media channels;
• Develop an email announcement to send to my list;
• Develop a Facebook Business Page and announce the availability to my fans;
• Offer a free one hour tele-clinic that creates value and introduces the program to your target audience

It’s useful to include your tactics on a calendar with deadlines so you get the activities underway or completed in time to achieve your goals.

Stay Focused

As small business owners, we all want to do many different things believing that more is better. In marketing, you are better off selecting one to three of your most important goals and work towards achieving them. Having too many goals will only set you up for failure and disappointment. Figure out what’s important to you to accomplish in the next 3 to 6 months and go for it. Otherwise, you will be constantly distracted and won’t accomplish anything.

How are you defining your goals, strategies and tactics? What are you trying to achieve by the end of this year?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Mission, Vision, Goals, Strategies and Tactics is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

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?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Don’t Wait for Perfection is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

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?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing Activities – What Worked? is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Hm, thanks for the help.

Then you wonder why small business owners run for the hills when they hear the term “marketing plan” and never really grasp what they need to do to attract new customers and clients and grow their businesses. And although I’d love to give you a magic 5 steps to a winning marketing plan, it just doesn’t work that way.

So what is really important to know?

• Your vision for the business
• Who wants to buy your products or services
• Your competition
• Your differentiator (why should I buy from you?)
• Products and/or services and how you will price and package them
• Your message
• Your brand identity and image

I call this the foundation information – you have to have a good grasp of this for your business. But, if you have this information, you are half way there.

Now you need your goals – specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and timely (S.M.A.R.T.) - to give you a path to success. For every goal, what strategy, tactics and supporting materials do I need to achieve that goal?

The following example shows the hierarchy of the thought process you can go through.

Marketing Plan Goal Strategy Hierarchy

• Goal: Increase the number of qualified inbound opportunities per quarter to 50.
• Strategy: Create an online presence that projects my expertise and helps those searching find my web site.
• Tactics:
  • Begin blogging;
  • Write a monthly article for distribution via the blog, other sites, email newsletter;
  • Build an opt-in email list;
• Tools/activities needed:
  • Develop a WordPress site and blog incorporating my brand identity;
  • Develop a list of articles to be written and write one a month;
  • Create a free tool that your target would appreciate and give it away to encourage people to sign up for your mailing list.

Remember, each goal may have multiple strategies with several tactics that require different materials and tools. Once you’ve laid out all of your goals, strategies, tactics and materials with their associated resources and budget, you can then decide what you can do accomplish each month based on your time and budget.

Want more help? Download my complimentary marketing plan and budget spreadsheet template by signing up for my email list. You can find the signup form in the sidebar of Masterful Marketing or on my Facebook Business Page.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Small Business Marketing Plan is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Slides 3 & 4:

Let’s discuss what marketing is all about. To me, marketing is educating your customer about why they should do business with you. Marketing is helping the customer realize the value you provide by eliminating a problem or satisfying a need.

Good marketing will attract your ideal client, retain existing clients, encourages referrals and helps you avoid price wars.

Marketing is not specifically advertising, sales or public relations. These are strategies that you could select as part of your overall marketing plan. Marketing is also not your Web site or blog, a brochure or a business card. These are tools of marketing to be used to effectively build awareness for your products and services.

Slides 5:

A marketing plan gives you direction and clarity on how you will market your business. By following a plan, you are also more likely to be able to measure your results. You won’t be reactive in your marketing, spending money and not following through. The plan will help you define what you do, why you are the best, who needs what you do and how to attract them. Another key point of the marketing plan is that it will help you determine the overall budget so you can allocate sufficient funds to successfully follow through.

Slides 6 through 15:

The key parts to the plan include:

• Define your vision and goals - What do you want your business to look like in 5 years, 3 years and 1 year? Answering these questions helps you frame your marketing plan to ensure you are moving in the right direction. If you don’t want to build a large firm with multiple crews, your marketing needs to focus on things that drive enough business that you can handle yourself or with a subcontractor if need be. Once you have your vision, your goals are developed to help you reach your 1 year plan.
• Identify your ideal client and how you are different from your competition - Who do you want to work with, who would benefit from working with you and how are you better than others that do what you do? Not all customers will be ideal and understanding why helps you avoid customers that drain you.
• Develop your core message - What problems does your ideal client want fixed or what needs do they wish to fulfilled? Speaking to your customers on how you can help them enables you to develop a relationship that establishes trust. When a customer trusts you, they are more likely to do business with you.
• Create your brand identity - What image do you want to project? Your image should align with your vision, values and goals so it does not send a conflicting message to your customers. Once you have established your brand image and identity, use it consistently throughout all of your marketing efforts.
• Determine your marketing strategy, tactics and budget – What activities will you use to build awareness of your business? Understanding your customer and how they purchase your type of service will help you determine what will work and what won’t. Think about all the ways you can reach your customer, how much it will cost both in terms of money and resources and select those that you know you can implement. If you plan out for 6 months to a year, you can manage your budget more effectively and find the time to work a tactic completely.
• Create sales tools to support the tactics and build your database of prospects and customers - What supporting materials do you need to help you sell your services? Web site, blog, brochures, business cards, signs, promotional items (pens and apparel) and other items can be designed to help you get your message to your customer. Wait until you’ve determined your strategy and tactics to avoid creating sales tools that are not needed, thereby wasting valuable budget.
• Execute, track and measure results – Are the activities you are doing working? Take on only the activities that you can complete and measure. Working a strategy half way only sets you up for failure.

This is a really brief overview of how to develop a marketing plan for your business. I’d love to hear from home services professionals about whether you have a marketing plan and if so, how it works for you. What types of activities are the most successful and which did not work at all.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Contractor Marketing Basics is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

For someone with less knowledge about marketing, this view could be taken too literal. These business owners may believe that social media marketing is the “new marketing” and that other marketing tactics, such as direct mail, advertising, public relations, events and word of mouth no longer work and are getting replaced by this shiny new media.

These beliefs are similar to what I saw earlier in this decade about Web sites. I heard many people talking about the Web site as the end goal rather than the means to an end. I heard business owners say things like “I spent a lot of money on my Web site but it doesn’t work. I haven’t gotten any customers from it.” I saw Web developers creating Web sites in a vacuum, not viewing the site as a marketing tool but as the end product. Everyone who approached their Web site with this view was disappointed in the outcome of their efforts.

I want to ensure that business owners avoid a similar kind of disappointment with social media. If social media marketing is going to help you grow your business, it needs to be a part of your overall marketing plan. Social media is one type of marketing that you can select to market your business. And depending on your business, it may work for you or it may not. But unless you look at all your options, who your target is and how you best reach them, social media may just take up your time and not produce the results you are striving for. Although it will be true that some social media activities will replace other marketing tactics, you need to look at the big picture, make informed decisions and tradeoffs and understand how your marketing will help you achieve the vision you’ve defined for your business.

In your marketing plan, look at all the different marketing strategies available to you:

• Advertising
• Public relations
• Events
• Internet marketing
• Social media marketing
• Direct marketing
• Word of mouth
• Strategic alliances

Within each strategy, review the tactics available that are feasible for your business and budget. Then make a conscious decision on which types of marketing you wish to implement and when.

Social media marketing is a valuable marketing strategy for many businesses due to its reach, cost and effectiveness. However, like all other types of marketing, it is a means to an end. The end better be more visibility and credibility for you, resulting in more clients and revenue for your business. Otherwise why bother?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Social Media Marketing is Part of an Integrated Marketing Plan is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.