Top Thing to Kill Your Local Marketing Efforts

By bstoller on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 | 1 Comment

Let’s just say you have done everything you can for your local marketing efforts for your business. Let’s review what you have done:

1) You’ve now have a well crafted local listing through Google and numerous other search engines. Your local search traffic has expanded tremendously – Great Job!

2) You have videos flooding the internet where both computers and mobile phones can reach – you are being seen!

3) You have updated your website to reflect your business goals and strategies and have included a way to capture customer data – awesome!

4) You have an e-mail marketing system that automatically sends out e-mails to potential customers and you also send out an occasional e-mail “blast” to keep communication to your customers and potential customers – terrific!

5) You have recently added mobile marketing to your printed material that is capable of reaching your entire customer base within 15 minutes – Incredible!!!

6) You have set up a “cardless” customer loyalty program using the exploding trend of mobile phone texting – wonderful!

6) You are now including social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare into your marketing mix – You’re a marketing genius!!

Through all your marketing efforts, incoming traffic has never been better and your advertising budget has actually decreased!! Everything seems to be going better than you could have possibly hoped for.

So Why Are Your Sales Not Increasing?

Simple. Check the people who are interacting with your customers. If you have people who are not properly matched to handle an inflow of customers, you have hit the #1 reason why businesses have a difficult time keeping customers and attracting new ones.

For example, let’s say you have a heating and air conditioning business. You have a service technician, Fred, who has been with the company for 10 years. He is exceptionally knowledgeable and could write a textbook on how to repair any air conditioner or furnace ever made. He’s a wealth of knowledge. Unfortunately, Fred likes to swear all the time and often does so in front of customers. He’s generally rude to people and has no problem telling people what he thinks – including what’s wrong with the customer’s furniture, colors in their house, etc. He’s generally rude and offensive to your customers.

Whether you have a heating and air business, restaurant, hair salon, etc., you as the business owner or manager must be able to identify any people that are potential “time bombs” to your customers. This can be catastrophic to your marketing efforts and can end up costing you your business!

If you believe you have someone, or worse yet, multiple people that fit this description – make a change NOW! You should get that person out of the customers view and re-assign their job duties. If this cannot be done, you may need to make an employment change and hire people who are better suited to handle the public.

The only thing worse than having a rude employee sabotage your efforts to get new customers is PAYING him or her to do it!

Four Square – The Next Twitter for Local Marketing??

By bstoller on Monday, August 16th, 2010 | No Comments

Foursquare: Is This the Next Twitter for Local Business Advertising?

I recently ran across a new social media that calls itself a location based service (LBS) that has the look and feel of Twitter – with a few unique items. I instantly see the potential of this service to local businesses as a great way to get the word out – free of charge!

Mashable.com has touted Four Square “While no service is likely to achieve the same scale as Twitter in the coming months, Foursquare has all the right ingredients to be one of this year’s big hits.

Here’s how Location Based Services work:

Through the use of mobile applications with the i-Phone, Android, Blackberry and a few others, LBS uses the geo technology in your phone (the way your new smartphone uses GPS to guide you on a trip), to hone in on businesses in the area. Of course, businesses are going to need to get on board!

Foursquare is pretty much in the same position as Twitter was a couple of years ago. The big difference is that it is primarily location based and people are starting to use it now. People can “check in” at a local business and then give tips on their favorite dish reviews on their service. The top visitors become “mayors” of that particular business. Businesses should encourage special treatment for the mayor if they want to get good press!

The interesting thing about Foursquare is that it connects to Twitter and Facebook – businesses can get even MORE press. This is good and bad, as this press can be both positive and negative. This is why you want to offer rewards to the mayor!! Keep the good word rolling!!

Besides the “mayor’s influence”, there’s more. With Foursquare, people “check in” to your place of business which actually means something.

Foursquare stats

The stats themselves are also quite interesting. On one level you’re competing against just your immediate circle of Foursquare friends, on another you’re competing against everyone in your city on a weekly basis. The stats reset to zero on Sunday night so everyone, even the noobs, has a fair playing ground come Monday morning.

Tips and To-Dos: This is important for local businesses. As a user, you can add tips to locales to tell your friends and the general public about the key things they need to know about a venue. Say for example the restaurant has a discount every Tuesday night, you’d add that info into Foursquare, and then anyone nearby can see the tip and save it as a to-do to on their personal check list. If you don’t add in the special, however, no one is going to know about it. Saavy business owners can become the first in their community to embrace this and they will reap the rewards and a local following!

Foursquare is in a position to be a windfall for businesses. In the same way that savvy business owners can tap into the Yelp (Yelp) community to promote and encourage reviews, they can tap into Foursquare check-ins to get people talking about their establishment and rewarding them for their patronage. The key for business owners is to embrace and encourage comments.

I encourage all business owners to get signed up on Four Square and to start promoting Foursquare to your customers. If you offer your customers a little incentive, they will sell your business for you!

Click here for the Foursquare site

Internet Marketing Strategies for Small Business

By bstoller on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 | 31 Comments

Business owners often struggle with internet marketing for small business. They especially struggle when trying to reach an audience that distrusts marketing messages. Even tougher when they dislike talking to salespeople.

The solution: Give the prospects the resources and education they need so they can make their own decision. This will allow the prospects to choose when they want to talk to you.

It all starts with knowing the customer – the customer profile

If the business owner or marketing manager must segment the different customers in his/her organization. Each customer group needs to be addressed differently. Some customers are purely impulsive, and will buy when they are presented an idea or product right away. If they don’t buy now, they may never buy. Other customers, as is the case for this example, don’t want to talk to anyone, and they need information before they make their decision to buy.

For this article, we’re going to focus on the difficult prospect who is resistant to marketing. Here are the steps that we should consider for the marketing plan:

1) Design website to mirror the customer profile

You need to find out what makes this customer “tick”. What do they like? Dislike? Do they like “boring information” or do they prefer to be entertained with humorous video?? The website needs to fit the customers, not the business owner.

2) Create web content for different stages of the buying process

Informational Stage – this stage represents the earliest stage of the buying process. People want to research about your product or service, so they need informative articles, blog posts, etc. If they don’t get the information from you, they will continue to search elsewhere until they find someone who DOES give them the information.

The company that controls the information stage is the one who gains the initial loyalty of the prospect and will usually end up with the sale when the customer is ready to buy.

Free Items

This stage progresses the “researcher” to take some form of action that doesn’t involve the prospect to spend any money. Each business is different, of course, but this could merely be some free trial, an e-book on the various types of services that the person can read about right away, a trial membership, etc. There must be a perceived value for this free item. The value needs to be placed on the high side of reality. $500 value for a movie ticket, for example, is outrageous and will counter act the benefit you wish to recieve. A $50 value for a complimentary dinner is more in line. I think you get the idea. Another idea could be to offer a “free” membership into your companies “preferred readers’ program that is limited and has a value of $50 monthly. You could simply give them a password to have access to articles and your newsletter that you would probably have given to them anyways.

Consideration Stage

Once you have the prospects trust and loyalty, you can offer them a free trial for your product or service. Price quotes are also an area where prospects can request from an online form.

3) Drive Traffic to your site through multiple channels

In order to maximize your leads, you want to make sure you have more than one avenue to driver your traffic. If you only utlize one website and hope to have people “find you”, you are only kidding yourself. The saying “If you build it they will come”, does not apply to marketing on the internet. Multiple blogs, press releases, etc. must be done if you are to be successful.

Internet Advertising Predictions

By bstoller on Sunday, June 27th, 2010 | 18 Comments

I ran across this article that will help with internet advertising predictions. Dedicated to bring you the best information available on trends and marketing fundamentals for small and medium sized business, I believe that every business owner and manager should read this, as it is giving you the future of your advertising.

This is our particular goal with all our customers.

Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Geoff Ramsey—CEO, Co-Founder

It’s that time of year again—the season for looking back, reflecting on what transpired over the course of the year, and simultaneously looking forward, to formulate thoughts, and perhaps some hope, for what the coming year will bring.

Like last year, I have seven predictions I’d like to share with our readers, many of which will get underway in 2010 but gather momentum and take on greater importance in subsequent years.

1. During 2010, as US ad budgets crack open just a little, look for an accelerated migration of ad dollars from traditional to digital media. According to Forrester Research, 59% of US marketers plan to increase their budgets for digital by pulling funds from traditional outlets. Other sources support this shift, including a recent survey among Association of National Advertisers members and a separate study from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Next year, while broadcast television, radio, newspaper and magazine spending continue to downsize, though more slowly than in 2009, online ad spending will enjoy a nice bump-up: eMarketer currently forecasts 5.5% growth. And the increase won’t all come from search—banner ads will grow 3.3%, and online video will jump by 40%.

Other researchers and investment banks are even more bullish on digital ad spending next year, with many predicting growth rates exceeding 10% (e.g., JPMorgan, ZenithOptimedia, Forrester, Collins Stewart, Citi Investment Research, Credit Suisse and Oppenheimer). Only one researcher, out of the 23 eMarketer is currently tracking in this area, is forecasting negative growth. The Yankee Group believes online ad spending will take another hit in 2010, dropping 1.5%.

2. Even post-recession, aggregate media dollars will fail to return to former levels. Looked at another way, while total US media spending will decrease by 14.6% this year, the $192 billion spent in 2008 will represent the absolute peak of media spending—at least for the next decade. I don’t believe we will ever return to that historic level, for these four reasons:

The measurement and accountability mandate will intensify demand for lower-cost, more efficient media.
Media fragmentation will force marketers to target their messages to ever smaller niche audiences.
Digital technologies are creating new opportunities for firms to self-market, such as a company’s own Website, online videos, e-mail marketing to existing customers and so forth. These channels end up bypassing paid media such as yellow pages and direct mail.
There will be a continued emphasis on “earned media,” such as on social networks and other consumer-generated community platforms. This will also siphon dollars away from paid media.

For decades, the entire multibillion-dollar media industry has been puffed up beyond its true value because of waste. Marketers paid huge sums to maximize reach, while knowing that thousands or millions of the people seeing their campaigns would never buy their products. Gradually, though, as the financial and housing markets are doing, media will shrink to match the true value it is delivering to marketers. That “true value” is being unearthed by better measurement systems, such as more efficient targeting.

For decades, the entire multibillion-dollar media industry has been puffed up beyond its true value because of waste.

3. While media dollars have imploded, media consumption will continue to explode. Due to increasingly empowered consumers and further advances in technology, look for media to become more:

Distributed—the same content will pop up in multiple locations, formats and channels.
Personalized—media will be tailored to reflect what consumers have watched, read, experienced and shared.
Contextualized—when and where consumers get their information will dictate its content and format, and that, in turn, will shape how they interact with and share it.

Each of these trends will lead to more precise targeting, which will also reinforce trend No. 2, the stagnation of media spending.

4. Advertising will support less and less of the load for content and entertainment. Fueled by the low cost of digital distribution, combined with vast amounts of consumer-generated content in the form of blogs, social networks, photo- and video-sharing sites, and rampant Twitter activity, media choices have exploded. There is no way advertising can pay all the freight for this media tonnage. In addition, marketers are clamoring for more direct contact with consumers, especially to engage with them on social networks, and this will divert ad money and attention away from third-party publishers.

Advertising will by no means go away, but it will play a smaller role as paid content and hybrid models emerge.

5. Advertising on social networks will never attract a large share of marketers’ ad dollars. eMarketer estimates social network advertising will grow only 7% next year to $1.3 billion, accounting for a mere 5.5% of total online ad dollars. And while ad spending on these sites will never represent a significant share of total online ad dollars, spending on non-advertising forms of social marketing will rise significantly next year and beyond.

Marketers are more interested in genuine engagement with consumers on social platforms, and less in opportunities to flood them with banner ads.

Social marketing works best when it’s earned, not paid for.

The spending emphasis is on internal staffing, and building structures and systems for two-way, real-time communications with consumers—and not so much on deploying ads. Social marketing works best when it’s earned, not paid for. It’s a matter of leveraging the inherent trust consumers have in each other.

Eventually, online social activities and connections will be baked into every form of digital content on the Web, from brand Websites and shopping sites to search engines, traditional media sites and entertainment portals.

6. Marketers will be increasingly willing to trade off reach for deeper engagement. This goes right along with the drive toward improved targeting and increasingly efficient media buys.

Rather than try to reach every conceivable person who fits a particular demographic, marketers will be looking for technologies and ad solutions that allow them to reach only the people who—by their past surfing behavior, search queries, online purchases, social connections, Twitter posts and other digital footprints—indicate that they are likely prospects.

The analogy here is to search. The search advertising market has been so successful precisely because it captures consumers’ intentions. When a user types “hotels in Bermuda” into a Google search box, you can be pretty sure they have an intention to reserve a hotel at that destination, and they are therefore likely to click and convert. Marketers wanting to capture intentions higher up the purchase funnel will want to identify people who demonstrate a likely desire to interact with the marketer’s brand, possibly leading to a purchase.

If a marketer is successful at the above—zeroing in on a narrow group of likely prospects—then there is a much better opportunity to engage with those consumers on a deeper, more meaningful basis.

In effect, less is more.

7. The classic interruption/disruption model of advertising, whereby marketers insert unwanted, usually irrelevant ads as a price the consumer must pay to view desired content, will erode, if not fade away. Consumers in the digital age simply have too much control over their media environments these days for marketers to be pushing unwanted banners, buttons or videos. This raises the bar for marketers and their agencies to develop new forms of messages that are not even perceived as ads, but rather as welcome content. The challenge will be twofold:

To better identify likely prospects (as in prediction No. 6 above)
To create communications that are so compelling, entertaining, informative or useful that the consumer is not only happy to receive them, but also motivated to share them with others.

Advertising creative, as well as the targeting technologies needed to identify likely prospects, will have to step up to this challenge.

Whether or not the recession ends, 2010 will bring about monumental change. Are you prepared to capitalize on it?

For a link to the actual article, click here.

Local Internet Marketing For Your Small Business

By bstoller on Sunday, June 27th, 2010 | 84 Comments

Local internet marketing for your small business can be a challenge. There are so many different methods today versus just a couple of years ago. Whether you are using radio, television, billboards, newspaper, internet, etc., you still need to abide by marketing fundamentals.

Business owners often hear that they should be “unique” in their marketing. It’s pretty good advice – you need to be able to “stand out” in an often crowded marketplace if you are to grab attention. Being unique can help you craft a marketing message that will gain the notice of more potential customers.

No one questions this theory – I think everyone understands the principle of “being different”. This differentiation between you and your competitors is a marketing fundamental. But how different should you really be???

While being different is good, sometimes business owners will attempt to be a little “too bold” when it comes to differentiation. If you decide to forge a completely different trail, you may be attempting an experiment that your competitors may have already tried and have failed. There must be a balance of “differentiation” rather than just plain taking risks. Your differentiation must be something that can be communicated to your potential customers. If you can’t explain how the differentiation can be of a benefit to your targeted market group, it is probably destined to fail.

For example – let’s say your business has a “unique process” for helping people lose weight. Your potential customers are probably interested in hearing how it works. If it is so unique that it sounds “fishy”, you probably lose them forever. Your differentiation must make sense and it must be able to be communicated easily so that people can understand. If they can picture themselves being helped by your solution vs. your competitors, you have successfully differentiated and will probably gain that customer.
Being noticeably different from the competition can help you attract customers and close sales. But claiming that you have no competition is naive. Comparisons to a known quantity can help prospective customers understand where your product or service fits in the range of solutions they are considering. If they can’t compare it to anything, it’s doubtful that they will be able to see how your offering could work.
Creating the perception that your product or service is one of a kind can help you capture people’s attention and make them remember you. But you have to be able to identify the people you want to reach and communicate how you can be of service in words they can understand.

Local Internet Advertising – Evolving from Newspapers?

By bstoller on Saturday, June 19th, 2010 | No Comments

Local newspapers have been a staple in our advertising world since our country was established. People would buy the paper to see what was going on in the world and their communities.

So why are so many newspapers filing bankruptcy or just closing their doors for good?? Simple – people are getting their news via the internet. Think about it – every time you sign on your computer you probably have an opening browser page. On that page, you’ll see the top news events in real time. By the time the newspaper comes out the next day, you’ve already heard all the top stories.

I have to admit – we no longer subscribe to our local newspaper. The last few years, we actually used our newspaper for a very important reason….. to make sure our dog had something to go to the bathroom on. We no longer have that dog, so we had no reason to subscribe to our paper – we dropped it totally and get our news from the internet.

At one time I actually spent thousands of dollars with that same newspaper in my real estate business. I now simply use the internet to advertise any vacancies that I now have and I actually get calls within minutes of hitting the “save” button. And – I don’t pay any advertising to do it!

This trend is going on all over. Here is a listing of large newspapers that have shut their doors since 2007:

* Tuscon Citizen

* Rocky Mountain News

* Baltimore Examiner

* Kentucky Post

* Cincinnati Post

* King County Journal

* Union City Register-Tribune

* Albuquerque Tribune

* South Idaho Press

* Honolulu Advertiser

* Seattle Post Intelligencer

Just something to keep in mind when you are doing your advertising. Display ads no longer carry the “punch” they once used to.

Online Advertising Growth Rate – At Least 20% a Year

By bstoller on Sunday, June 13th, 2010 | 1 Comment

According to The Kelsey Group, they predict that advertisers will spend $147 billion by 2012. That’s worldwide advertising and it’s part of their report, “The Kelsey Group’s Annual Forecast (2007-2012): Outlook for Directional and Interactive Advertising.”

The Kelsey Group states that in 2007 the market hit 45 billion, which represents a growth rate of 23.4 percent.

“Interactive advertising, which comprises search (including local search), display advertising, classifieds and other interactive ad products, grew its share of global advertising revenues from 6.1 percent in 2006 to 7.4 percent in 2007. By 2012 Kelsey Group analysts expect the interactive share of global ad spending will reach 21 percent.”

Just focusing on the US, the group predicts that for the years 2007 to 2012, in the United States interactive advertising revenues will grow from $22.5 billion to $62.4 billion (22.6 percent CAGR).

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