It’s the mantra of many involved in small business marketing and is important to those of us who need to deliver client projects while continuing to market our businesses. What marketing should your small business consistently execute that will deliver proven results? Here are my recommendations for where you should focus over the next year.

Online Presence

Make sure your online presence is the best it can be. Don’t take short cuts in this important area as people still judge your business by what they see online. Consider some or all of the following depending on your business and how much time you can spend.

• Build your site using WordPress (on a hosted platform, not WordPress.com) to benefit from the wealth of powerful plugins that make complex features easy to implement.
• Make sure you are in control of all the accounts that make up your web presence, including your domain, your website hosting provider and the owner of your local business listings. Do not let someone create them under their personal accounts. If your relationship with them falters, you will need to start all over again which will affect your business success.
• Provide up-to-date content that appeals to your target audience. If you blog, set a schedule and try to stick with it. If you need help with blogging, check out the Blogging Success Summit 2011 from the Social Media Examiner. There’s an early bird rate that expires soon.
• Create a comment strategy to drive awareness and develop credibility.
• Build your email list with an offer that encourages visitors to join. Having a strong list available when you have some special offer can be the difference in the success of a new program.
• Select your social media platforms based on where your customers hang out. Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter or some combination of the three in conjunction with your blog can create a powerful information network that makes it much easier for you to be found. Not all businesses will benefit from social media, but those who will, should implement a social media strategy.
• Create your local business listings on Google, Yahoo, Bing and on the directories that make sense to your industry. According to a Local Customer Review Survey from BrightLocal.com, 70% of people surveyed have used the Internet to find a local business. When it comes to the directories, research them and ask questions before you spend any money with them. Some are reputable directories, others are not. Unless you feel your time is better spent elsewhere, you do not have to hire someone to set these up for you. But if you do, make sure they are creating these listings under your Google, Yahoo or Microsoft Windows Live accounts, not their own.
• Investigate location based marketing if your business has a storefront. Retail businesses with a brick and mortar location benefit from using location based services like FourSquare, Yelp and Facebook Places for driving consumers to their stores. With the explosion of the adoption of smart phones, many consumers are now interacting with brands via these mobile devices, providing more opportunities for you to connect with them in ways that were previously unavailable.

Customers

Those who already do business with you should be one of your prime focus areas. Communicate with your customers and offer them special deals using social media where appropriate. Provide awesome customer service and quick responses to their questions so they can only brag about how wonderful you are. Happy and satisfied customers who understand the value you offer will not hesitate to refer new customers to you.

Word of Mouth / Referrals / Networking

Every small business should include word of mouth marketing activities as one of their focused areas because it will deliver results in the long run. With so much noise in the market, people don’t trust messages coming from your company directly. Notice how many sites encourage you to review your experiences and in fact, according to that same BrightLocal.com survey, 67% of local consumers have consulted online customer reviews of local businesses, influencing whether they contact your business.

The power of word-of-mouth marketing, both online and offline, is valuable for small businesses because it helps you develop your credibility and expert reputation. Through networking events and social media sites, you can establish a quality reputation by having your happy customers provide reviews and testimonials.

At this point, our online and social media strategies should go beyond the experimentation phase and become the foundation for our marketing action plan. You still need to stay aware of what’s new and test those that appear to be of value to your small business, but these tests should not replace any of your ongoing efforts until they have proven themselves.

Theses are my choices for this year’s marketing plan. Where are you focusing your marketing efforts this year?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Small Business Marketing – Where to Focus? 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+.

As a small business owner, if you were to focus on only three marketing activities over the next six months, what would they be?

That made me stop and think for a bit. Putting the gears in motion and applying the power of threes, I realized that this question and its answer would help other small business owners focus on what is important for them to be found. My recommendation for three marketing activities include:

#1 Building a first-class Web presence to develop your expert reputation

Today’s small business needs to have a solid presence on the Internet to help build your expert reputation. Building a first-class presence includes:

• Building a website and blog on WordPress
• Creating compelling profiles on Google, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Establishing local business listings on Google, Yahoo, Bing and Best of the Web
• Launching a Facebook Business Page
• Setting up a Twitter account with a custom, branded background
• Syndicating your content out to relevant sites

In order for this to all work, all the gears need to be moving in unison in order for all the pieces to create one unified image.

Without a quality web presence, you run the risk of people finding you and quickly eliminating you from their list of potential suppliers. Fair or not, people do judge a book by its cover. When your business success depends on building your expert reputation and proving to your target market that you are the best person for them to work with, you can’t take a chance on mediocre Website, blog, Facebook Page, social media profiles, content and the brand identity it projects. Make this activity a priority.

#2 Incorporating search engine marketing activities

Now that you have your first-class presence established, you need to be sure people who are searching for what you offer are directed your way. Understanding how your target market searches for your products or services, what keywords they use and how to make your website rank higher in the search engines can be the difference between finding your ideal client or having your ideal client find you! These activities include:

• Researching your best keywords
• Optimizing your website
• Writing content that utilizes your keywords and helps with optimization
• Creating a linking strategy
• Using pay-per-click to boost your visibility for specific keywords

For most businesses, keyword research and organic search engine optimization of your site and content will be the most effective part of this marketing activity. However, some local consumer businesses do very well with a budgeted and managed pay-per-click campaign to get more people who are ready to buy to your website.

#3 Identifying your top referral sources and meet as many as you can, both off-line and on-line

Meeting, nurturing and building solid relationships with people who are your best referral sources is a marketing activity that is always top of the list for small business owners. The best clients usually come as a referral and when they are a qualified referral, the work you need to do to turn them into a client is minimal. If you succeed in creating that quality Website with a blog that demonstrates your expertise, referral sources can introduce you to their connections through your Web presence first. If the connection likes what they see, your referral source can then make the introduction.

These activities include:

• Online networking using LinkedIn and Facebook to establish meaningful connections and develop beneficial relationships.
• Joining groups on social networks that are locally focused and network both online and off-line
• Attending one live networking meeting a month
• Joining a referral organization

Developing a solid network of local connections generates more opportunities for your business by developing new, beneficial relationships with people in your geographic location. Depending on your business, you may also benefit from connecting more broadly, but start with your local networks and get out and get noticed.

What are your three picks?

Spending time implementing these marketing activities will create better visibility, establish your expert reputation and introduce you to people who can benefit from what you have to offer.

What would be your three activities of choice for your business?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Power of Three in Marketing 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+.