Category: Small Business Marketing

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Online Advertising versus Phone Books Ads

Yellow Pages vs. Online Advertising (“Let Your Fingers Do The Finding”)

• Yellow Pages are difficult to track and have limited tracking options. Online marketing offers extensive tracking options.
• Yellow Pages reach can only go so far and if you advertise in more than one directory it can get very expensive. Online marketing has an unlimited reach and is very cost effective.
• You can only change your advertising message on a yearly basis with Yellow Pages. You can change your message online at any time.
• There are over 13 billion searches on the web/month and growing. Yellow Pages receive an approximate 1 billion references/month and is losing more and more customers that advertise in the Yellow Pages every year.

Don’t forget we can help you with local marketing.

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What to look for when outsourcing small business marketing

Outsourcing marketing efforts has become an essential aspect of business strategies. After all, you should focus on what you are good at and outsource the rest.

Outsourcing allows a company to put more focus on product development and overall operations. Many marketing agencies can often provide the same service as an in-house marketing department, but at half the cost.

By outsourcing you gain the following:

  • Specialized skills and expertise
  • More time- your most valuable asset
  • More implementation
  • Fast results

Every time you hear outsourcing marketing you think about how expensive marketing agencies are. Don’t forget that there are some Marketing companies that specialize in small businesses, just like BuzzBooster.  They are not in the business of selling you on expensive advertising, they focus on other strategies like internet marketing, direct response marketing and social media marketing to bring you more exposure and more results.

Here are a few  questions that should assist you in finding a marketing agency that is right for you.

  • Area of ExpertiseFind out what their expertise is in.  What do they focus on? Here are common areas of expertise:
    • Search Engine Marketing and Optimization
    • Branding
    • Positioning
    • Affiliate Marketing Development and Management
    • Marketing Strategy and Plan Development
    • Internet Marketing Strategy and Plan Development
    • Lead Generation
    • Sales and Marketing Campaign Development
    • Marketing Classes, Seminars, and Workshops

    Figure out what areas you need help in and look for consultants with expertise in those areas.

  • Training/EducationWhat type of training and/or education is important to you. I will tell you that education is important, however experience and hands-on expertise can far out weigh education when it comes down to success in marketing.Ask for case studies, referrals, and experience in the areas that you need assistance in.
  • Company AchievementsWhat are the notable achievements that the marketing consultant has achieved. What work are they most proud of?Ask them to show you examples of campaigns they run for other clients.
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    How to choose a marketing consultant

    With the internet and social media marketing along came a huge line of new marketing consultants. Unfortunately a big chunk still live in their mother’s basement and never made a penny online.  Even worse, they have no business experience.  Getting advice from these people can cause you a lot of headaches and take your business down.

    Here are several tips for securing talent that will save your project time, mistakes and money when choosing a Marketing Consultant:

    – Meet 1 on 1

    – Look at their work product, PR, past strategies, designs

    – Ask about the products they have launched themselves

    – Check the Alexa Rank and Page rank of their websites.

    – Check their presence online.

    – Ask about their revenue models online and check examples given.

    – Have they won or been nominated for  industry awards?

    – References are nice, but really, who gives bad references?

    – What specific, off-the-cuff strategies does the consultant propose?

    – Do the strategies proposed seem cogent, offer fresh perspective?

    – Check if what he/she is offering are real strategies or just a bunch of tactics you could learn from a book.

    – Do they have hands on experience in business?

    – Don’t price shop. Good consultants are not cheap. Here the saying “you get what you pay for” really applies.

    – Listen to your guts.

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    Information Marketing- Turning your Knowledge into products

    Life is not easy for a lot of people out there these days. Unemployment is high and people over 40 years old know that chances of getting a job will be a daunting task. The only way out for many people is to finally start their own business. The selling of franchises is on a all time high and a lot of home based businesses are popping up.

    Starting your own business comes with a lot of challenges and money is always a concern.

    From all the options out there, one that offers low risk and great profit margins is an information marketing business.

    In a nutshell an info-business is when you turn your knowledge into products.

    Information based businesses can have many formats and it is a lot more than just making an e-book.

    The entry point to start an info-marketing business is really low, you can really start with a few hundred bucks. Compare this to a normal $200,000 to buy restaurant equipment for example; money that you will invest with no guarantees of success.

    An information marketing business can be totally automated. There is no need to be face to face with customers and prospects the whole day which buys you back time to do the things you love and create more info-products.

    In most cases you don’t need to have a staff. There are minor things that you can outsource and in some cases you will want to have a fulfillment company doing the fulfillment for you.

    There is no need for a store front or office. An information marketing business can be run from anywhere.

    Let’s not forget the profit margins in an info-business. They are quite tempting. For example, a CD will cost you around a dollar to burn and will be sold for at least $27.

    Besides CDs, e-books, DVDs there are close to 40 different formats of info-businesses out there many offering residual income.

    As long as you are passionate about a subject that other people are interested in, you can start your info-biz.  You don’t need to understand technology, have degrees etc.

    You might be asking yourself that information is available everywhere and anyone can Google anything and will find information about it for free, don’t forget that while this is true, people will always pay for knowledge they can apply right away and see results.

    We are all very busy and researching for information can be quite frustrating. We all save time and money for specific information we can apply.

    In times like this we need to improve our skills or acquire new skills. This is an opportunity for savvy people looking to start their own business.

    If you want to know more about information marketing and how to start your info-business take a look at this: Info-marketing business

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    Different uses for QR codes for small business owners

    We get a lot of questions about our favorite social media tools. Well, most social media tools can be useful in one moment or another and when they help you convert prospects into customers or strengthen the relationship with existing customers, I tend to love them.

    There is one social tool that I think is one of the best things out there for savvy business owners.

    It is the QR code. This simple code does something that every small business owner should dream about every night. It creates a bridge between the printed or offline world to the online world.

    How powerful is that?

    qr codes

    I don’t know about you but when I started my business money was not easily available and every penny spent counted. One thing that annoyed me a lot was going to networking meetings and passing some flyers knowing most of them would end up in the trash really soon. If at that time QR codes were around things would be different.

    QR codes stand for quick response codes. They store a lot of data- around 250 characters. Not enough? Well, it is a lot more than a tweet and people are doing just fine marketing themselves with tweets.

    The QR codes can be scanned with any smart phone and will take the person to a web page, a coupon, a contest, whatever you can imagine. Just think of the possibilities. They are simple to create and very inexpensive. People can check right away and get the offer right away too.

    Authors for example can have QR codes at the end of their book with an offer. Yes, I know you can add a web address to a page but let’s face it, how many times have you gotten a book or a flyer with a web adreesand took to your computer to check the URL? For me, most of the times I make a mental note to check the URL and then just forget.

    I think QR codes can become huge allies for small business owners. Maybe what is missing is just some ideas on how to use the codes, so here is a list I compiled:

    1. linking to full text journals from print journals; making mobile friendly videos available at the point of need; embedding videos & links to extra help online in printed guides.

    2. QR Code on bus stations to allow you to purchase ticket without typing the message.

    1. At bus stations with the schedule

    2. Geo caching adventures

    3. Share presentations

    4. Music Downloads

    5. Apps downloads

    6. Self-branding

    7. Geo-based reviews

    8. Geo-based tours

    9. Green tickets

    10. Fashion

    11. Product details

    12. Offers

    13. Event details

    14. Contests

    15. Competition details

    16. Contact details- we use them in our business cards

    17. Coupons

    18. Random coupons- Starbucks does this very well, each time you scan you get a different offer.

    19. Social media Ids

    20. Links to your videos

    21. how to information in products

    22. How to information in printed materials

    23. Book offers

    24. Authors bio

    25. Use in Billboards

    26. Use in your shop window to entice reviews

    27. Maps

    28. Invitations

    29. Link to your blog

    30. Special offer on flayers

    31. On trade shows

    32. On trade shows where when you scan tells you to go to a specific booth for a freebie. (saw this one done by a company called Print concierge. Very clever!

    Probably there are many more ways to use QR codes, just takes a little imagination and as usual, action.

    Want to master marketing for small businesses? Try Small business marketing mastery program

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    Refining your positioning

    Positioning is not a simple thing. you don’t get done in one day. You need to answer several questions in order to know how to position yourself in the market as a small business owner. You need to know exactly who is your ideal client, in what business you are really in and what is the end result your provide.

    You may get quite close to the perfect positioning but there will be some refining over time either because your business changes or the market changes.

    Have always in mind that there are two main reasons that impact sales conversion: the level of trust people have in your company and how clear is your message to your target audience. Positioning has to do with both of them.

    We try to refine our promise to the market every now and then because we think that although it is ok, was never perfect. We finally think we have something that will resonate well with our audience and makes the message really clear about what we do.

    It is: Your modern marketing GPS.

    I don’t know about you but I love my GPS.  It took  a lot of frustration out of my life and quite a few arguments between my daughter and me. i don’t get lost anymore and I arrive wherever I’m going with no anxiety and on time. We named our GPS Nicky.  We are about to buy another one for our geoaching experiences.

    They are a piece of new technology that don’t invade your life and are extremely useful.

    We believe that what we do as marketing advisors is pretty similar. We provide the kind of knowledge that people can apply and see results. They don’t feel overwhelmed or anxious and can track results. We can guide them to amazing new places in their business and lead them through business breakthroughs.

    So we are quite content with this promise.

    Tell me about yours

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    A little bit on conversion marketing

    Did you know that less than 2% of typical website visitors complete a transaction and also that the average website receives only ten visitors a day?

    This is only 6 transactions a month!

    That is not very exciting!

    It is also clear that if you just put a site out there and don’t take very specific action to convert better, you will never see a good return in sales.

    There are two things that you need to pay a lot of attention and work towards improving:

    1- increase the traffic to your website. This can be done through SEO, Pay per click or social media. Hopefully you will use all of them.
    2- Increase the rate of conversion from visitor to leads to buyers. so, you need to capture some of the visitors and conert them into leads and then into buyers.
    In order to do that you might want to offer an ethical bribe that they give name and e-mail to get it. Those e-mails will go to an auto-responder program where you can do proper follow-up in order to get them to buy.
    You will also make sure that your website is very clear in which path your visitors need to follow. what they need to click next, what they will get and how many clicks it will take them to get waht they want.
    You want as fewer clicks as possible when asking them to buy something and you want to make the purchase process as simple as possible.

    60% of sales are lost in the checkout process. This is a lot! Some of the resons why this happens are: asking for irrelevant or too much information in the checkout, too many screens before transaction is complete, name of product different than what was offered.
    The next thing to improve conversion is to pay attention to your follow-up strategies.

    Leads need to go to an auto-responder system where you have sequential messages increasing credibility and asking for the sale.
    Remember that if people don’t buy from you, usually the main reason is that they don’t trust you. Use messages, newsletters, videos, video testimonials and direct mail to increase the level of trust.

    From moment zero, when you think about your website, think how you will improve conversion into sales.

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    Facts on small business marketing and social media

    1. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
    2. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
    3. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
    4. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the  populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.  Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
    5. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
    6. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
    7. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
    8. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
    9. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
    10. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
    11. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
    12. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
    13. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
    14. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
    15. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
    16. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
    17. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
    18. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
    19. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
    20. Only 14% trust advertisements
    21. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
    22. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
    23. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas

    These are facts from the video social Media Revolution

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    For businesses in Utah

    As many of you know, we run a community site for businesses in Utah called networking in Utah. Besides the services we provide there like networking, event promotion, connection with chambers of commerce and business groups, all for free, we now have the possibility to offer more exposure for local businesses though banner advertising and sponsors for our weekly newsletter. If you are a local business, don’t forget to check this business networking site.

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    Local marketing and mobile marketing

    If you do business locally, I’m afraid to say the Yellow pages is not your best option. I really don’t know many people that use the phone books other than as a door stop or seat booster.

    The search engines are the new phone books, where people go to get the information they want, when they want and wherever they are.

    Local businesses need to wake up and start promoting their businesses online now more than ever and if they think that they just need to wait until things go back to normal, they will never wake up. They will die a slow painful death.

    Due to the economy, people are more resistant to buy and they don’t buy from businesses they don’t know about or don’t trust.

    It is your job to increase the level of trust, be in places they can easily find you, (like on their phones) and promote your business more than ever.

    Today is naive to think one ad in one place will do the trick. You need to do more and on a constant basis and you need to be the marketer in your business like it or not.

    We live in an age where the gold rush is to be found and to get attention and this is your main job.

    You need to be found on search engines, social environments, phone applications if you want to be in business for the next five years.

    You will need just a fraction of whatever you have been spending in advertising and some time.

    You can outsource most tasks or you can learn how to use local marketing and mobile marketing in your business.

    The only thing you cannot do is wait.