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Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Leverage your website to improve your sales

November 2nd, 2011

Maria Helm

Regardless of your industry or the size of your business, you can leverage you website to find more new customers, serve your existing customers and convert more leads to sales. Here are some answers to some of our customers questions that will help you put the web to work for your business.

I’m a local automobile mechanic. My business has done fine for years based on word-of-mouth, but I keep hearing from everyone, “Why don’t you have a website?” Why do I need a website?
Consumers have adopted the Internet as a daily research tool much faster than many experts even predicted. Sure, some of your new customers will continue to find you via word-of-mouth. However, when a potential customer is trying to find mechanics in your area, many of them will turn to the Internet vs. looking in a phone book. If you don’t have a web site and a presence online, those potential customers will find your competitors that do have websites.

I want to maximize any type of e-commerce opportunities out there. Currently, I sell several locally made products on my website, and I have many repeat customers buying my products. What else could I be selling via my site?
Do you have an eye-catching logo or tag phrase for your web business? If so, there’s an easy way for you to sell more. Currently, there are several online services that give you the power to create T-shirts, coffee mugs, and many other items adorned with your logo or tag phrase and sell them on your site. And the best part of services such as Cafepress (www.cafepress.com) is that you don’t have to buy a bunch of T-shirts upfront and hope that they’ll be successful. They’ll print and ship a T-shirt or coffee mug only after you’ve received an order.

Some of my competitors have started blogs, but all they keep writing about is their business. It seems very self serving to me. What’s the value in creating a blog on my website?

Posted in Marketing, Sales

Tags: Customer Service, Entrepreneurship, Small Business, website

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Online Video For Your Small Business

September 14th, 2011

Maria Helm

Online video is a great tool for building brand awareness. It a great tool to reach new customers and increase sales. You can spend a lot of money on a sophisticated video marketing campaign, or you can pick up your camcorder and do it yourself. In fact, an unpretentious and honest-looking video may be more effective than a slickly produced commercial product.

You can place your video on YouTube free or post it on your website. The latter gives you more control and eliminates the possibility that your competitors’ videos and ads will show up next to yours.

What should your online video be about? Will it be easy to do? Businesses can promote themselves via three themes:

Showing what you do. The what-we-do video basically features your company’s elevator pitch – your “about us” page on your website. Introduce yourself, how long you have been in business and the services or types of products you offer. Keep it short – two minutes max. Finally, tell customers how to work with you: online, at your shop or both.

Testimonials: short and sweet. The secret to good testimonials is to keep them concise. Find the three most important reasons a customer loves you and shoot three separate videos. Then do the same with another customer. It is more interesting to have separate customers listing different reasons they recommend you than a series of customers all saying the same thing.

You’re the expert. How-to videos are effective for improving your search results on Google and other search engines. What are the top questions your customers ask? Those should be the subjects of your how-to videos. For example, if you sell gloves, discusss how to select the right size. If you fix washers and dryers, explain how to keep them clean.

Let videos help tell your company’s story. If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how valuable a video could be for your business.

Photo Credit: Torley

Posted in Marketing

Tags: brand, Marketing, Online video, Small Business

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Have You Nudged Someone Lately?

August 3rd, 2011

Maria Helm

As I was getting ready for work one morning about a year or so ago, I was listening to Good Morning America. They did a segment on the book “Nudge”, co-authored by Cass R. Sunstein and Richard Thaler. The book was written in hopes of making small, little behavior changes to help benefit those who have a hard time losing weight. The idea behind the book, according to Richard Thaler, is a nudge which he describes as any small feature of the environment that captures our attention and changes our behavior – tiny and painless cues that can influence people to make better choices

Now, how does nudging relate to marketing? Nothing is more frustrating than sending out a regular email campaign only to find out through your email provider report the number of high unopened emails and low click-throughs. This may be discouraging, but not to worry. Even if your subscribers don’t open your email, its presence in their inbox leads to a solid impact on brand awareness and sales. The act of influencing your audience through the understated impact of unopened emails is called nudging. Here’s how it works:

As the recipient scans her inbox, she decides what needs attention now, what can wait and what she’ll delete without reading.
Even if your recipient doesn’t open your email, seeing your brand name in the “From” line and your pitch in the “Subject” line can influence her buying decisions. So, write powerful subject lines that encourage recipients to take action.

What types of “nudges” will you make with your marketing campaigns?

Photo Credit: mindgraph

Posted in Marketing

Tags: E-mail, Marketing, Nudging, Pitch, Tips

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Thinking of Cutting Prices? Well, don’t!

July 14th, 2011

Maria Helm

If you are contemplating on price cutting hoping to increase sales, don’t! Before you resort to lowering your prices consider these first:

1. Focus on value. Why do your customers do business with you? Do they come to you for discount prices, personalized customer service, cutting-edge offerings, products they can’t find elsewhere, convenience, innovative thinking or what? If lower prices are not your value proposition, then move on.

2. Bundle some of your offerings (this works best for service entrepreneurs) and offer tiered packages priced accordingly. Those who purchase the platinum package get more choices or benefits than those buyers who opt for the gold or silver packages. Or you could simply offer customers a discount in exchange for a long-term contractual commitment. You also might consider adding a new line or service offering-one that you can charge a little less for.

3. Look for other areas in your business where you can shore up your financial situation. Are you current on collecting your receivables? Is your phone plan the best? Are you using energy-efficient lighting and equipment? Can you cut back on travel and entertainment? Negotiate a better deal on rent? Hire interns, part-timers or partner with a virtual assistant?

Price cuts may negatively affect your cash flow. Remember that you want to make sure you have enough cash to maintain (or maybe even increase) your marketing budget. Smart entrepreneurs take advantage of recessions and try to do more than survive. If you hold tight to your pricing strategy and do more to increase your customers’ experiences, you can actually thrive.

Photo Credit: Craig Murphy

Posted in Marketing

Tags: Price Cut, Pricing, virtual assistant

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How to build an online presence without a website

June 10th, 2011

Maria Helm

Well, we’re on the second half of 2011, and if your small business isn’t online for a portion of your marketing you stand a chance of being left behind. Over 90 million American adults are online every day, and over half of that use the web as their primary way to search for local businesses – so if you are not online potential clients will find someone who is.

Don’t have a website yet? Not to worry. Here are three tasks you can do to get your small business online today even if you don’t have a website yet.

Create a free business listing on consumer/business connection sites such as Biznik, Yelp, MerchantCircle, and Local.
Create a free business listing on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Create a free business listing on different online Yellow Pages.

These are easy and cost nothing to setup, but if your time doesn’t permit or you’re not comfortable doing it yourself, have a friend help you or hire a virtual assistant to do them for you.

It doesn’t matter what type of small business you own. You can be a dentist, restaurant owner, chiropractor, hair salon owner, etc. What matters as a small business is having an online presence, even if it’s minimal, in order to remain competitive.

This is just to help you get started today without a website, but ultimately, a website is very important for your small business presence.

Photo Credit: Danard Vincente

Posted in Marketing

Tags: Entrepreneurs, Marketing, Small Business, website

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