Archive for Small Business Tough Economy
The Most Important Part of Internet Marketing
Posted by: | CommentsWhen you hear the term “internet marketing“, what do you think of?
For many, that term conjures thoughts of websites or spamming or search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. For others, it’s all about graphical design, writing fancy code or even affiliate programs. All of those answers correct, but the essence of internet marketing is much simpler.
At its core, internet marketing is about these things:
* Understanding the target market to which the product/service/cause you’re marketing will appeal
* Determining exactly how your target market interacts with the internet
* Positioning your content on the internet to attract the attention of your target market
* Collecting information about your target market (also known as “leads”) for follow-up and conversion into sales
* Design of offers or incentives to induce the desired actions from your leads
Since there is insufficient space in this article to give all of these topics adequate attention, let’s focus on just one specific topic with the realm of internet marketing: Email Marketing.
My best payoff has always come by focusing on permission-based email marketing. Permission-based email marketing refers to the practice of collecting information (including email addresses) from website visitors and communicating with them via e-mail with their direct consent. The “permission” aspect of permission-based email marketing is what separates legitimate email marketers from the spammers that everyone despises.
My love of email marketing is strong for one reason: It works very well. Email marketing has been much like a never-ending goldmine: It enables us to produce income on demand simply by sending a good offer to our list. When you have thousands of loyal subscribers – as we do – and you put a strong and compatible offer in front of them, income becomes nearly automatic.
However, the key to successful email marketing is the development of a legitimate trust relationship with your subscribers. If you opt to send your subscribers a request for purchases every single day, they will likely tire of your badgering and cease reading your emails altogether.
Alternatively, if you take the time to provide good content to your readers on a regular and frequent basis, you’ll discover that your readers take all of your emails far more seriously, and as a result your emails will be opened, read and acted upon with greater frequency. Essentially, email marketing is really an exercise in trust.
Even though there are more sides to internet marketing than just email marketing (permission based), email has been the foundation that our business sits on.
Why Are Offline Businesses Failing Online?
Posted by: | CommentsWhy are offline businesses failing on the internet?
Offline businesses take their offline marketing experience and apply it to the internet. Hey it’s just like TV, isn’t it? Well something’s wrong, ’cause it’s not working!
Consumers have millions of advertising messages thrown at them every day;
- Morning radio while eating breakfast.
- Drive to work, radio commercials, and billboards.
- Newspapers and magazines in the lunch room at work.
- Drive home, city buses plastered with huge ads.
- Relaxing at home with the evening newspaper…more ads.
- Favorite TV program interrupted by commercials.
All of this type of advertising can be summed up as “intrusive”. Businesses are intruding on the day to day lives of consumers through their marketing strategies.
In this video, Seth Godin sums up in about 5 words why businesses are failing on the internet in their marketing strategies….you may want to write this down and commit it to memory if you ever want to succeed online.
How Your Small Business Can Win in A Bad Economy!
Posted by: | CommentsI read a blog post by Peter Bergman on the Harvard Business blog recently which describes why small companies have the opportunity to win over large corporates in this down economy.
If you own a small company, this information is gold!
Small Business Marketing in a Tough Economy
Posted by: | CommentsSome inexpensive ways for Small Business to get through a tough economy.
In times of a slow economy, small business owners are faced with some difficult decisions. One of which is what to do with the advertising budget. The natural desire is to slash the budget. But the fact is that it’s times like these that a small business, when managed properly can be set up for greater growth when the economy thrives once again.
We need to also consider that many of our competitors may be doing. Are they trying to save a few bucks in the advertising department? It’s very possible that this could be a great time to reach out to your customers with little competition. But marketing doesn’t need to mean spending a bunch of money.
In 2008 there aren’t many people who are unfamiliar with the internet. Even up to 40% of seniors in Canada frequent activities online. Yes, your customers are on the internet on a regular basis.
Most small business owners however, are not!
Sure, they may have a website, or be listed in an online directory along with all of the competitors in their city, but there are a number of opportunities to improve business that are being sadly missed by most small business owners.
Here are just a few ideas that a small business owner could easily implement to not only survive, but thrive in a poor economy. The cost is ridiculously low when compared to traditional advertising, and the impact can be much larger than higher priced traditional advertising.
Develop an online presence;
Get a Website;
Your customers are on the internet. And they’re searching for products and services that you sell. You need to establish a presence on the internet so that you can reap the benefits. A presence, however, doesn’t just mean getting a website, although that is a good start. It’s important that you make sure that your website gets prominent listings in the search engines. A good web design company can do this for you. And the result of their work can easily be monitored and should be web traffic and customers.
Just check Google for the products and services you sell. If you can’t find your company on the first two pages of a search, that means your site isn’t optimized well, and wasn’t promoted, properly. A web design company should be able to to do these things for you and get you a good ranking in Google which will bring web traffic and business.
Start a Blog;
This is a terrific way to communicate with your customers in a casual fashion. You can provide lots of useful information in your blog related to your products and services. Help your customer and potential customer with good quality content that they’re searching for. If you do this right, you will build a following of readers, many of whom may become customers. Oh, by the way…blogs can be set to “ping”, or send a signal to several search engines, etc. every time you put something new on your blog. What that means is that you write something new on your blog, and it automatically tells the rest of the internet to come and look at your site! The cost of starting a blog is free.
Email Marketing;
Online marketers have understood this strategy for years. If you give your customer, or potential customer a good reason to opt into your newsletter, etc. by providing good content and other incentives, they will allow you to solicit them by email. How good could it be for your business in slow times if you could simply send out an email campaign to 2 or 3,000 people to announce a special sale, etc. Do you think the chance of them reading the email might be better than reading your newspaper advertisement? Aside from ridiculously inexpensive email and newsletter management programs, this marketing strategy is free.
Social Networks;
There was a time when the internet was controlled by only those who had a website. That time has long since passed. Today, people socialize online. They do activities together, discuss issues, hobbies, etc., and they do it in groups of like-minded people, or “tribes” as they are sometimes referred to. The power of the people has never been more evident than it is today on the internet. Can you imagine the impact if a group of hundreds in your market area are talking about how great your company is? Can you imagine if they don’t like your company?
The two largest social networks are Facebook and MySpace. In my area of Canada, (Niagara), alone, there are over 90,000 members of Facebook. The entire population of the Niagara Region is only sighly over 300,000! And that number includes babies, the elderly, and children. The impact of being involved in a social network in a positive way, (not direct selling), can have a huge impact on your buisness regardless of the economy.
In addition, there are several other online opportunities for small business such as; article marketing, podcasting, online t.v., press releases, and several other methods of advertising and communication. Most of it, free, or very inexpensive.
Taking advantage of some, or all of these ideas can raise your online presence, even to a position of recognized expert in your field. Do these things now. Your web traffic will grow, and so will your business. Let your competitors worry about economic conditions. You won’t need to.
