Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Ask the Panel

Lasse Ljung, Forever Ljung Photography asked:

1. How do I get more people to visit my website?

Amy: There are many ways to do this…word of mouth from your customers (which means you have to deliver an exceptional experience to all of your customers), talking/blogging about your site, distributing business cards, mailers, banner ads, brochures, promotional products with your web address, etc.

Get your web address out there on social networks…Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Talk about your site on blogs and forums and get other websites/forums/blogs to link to your site.

Another key element is to make your site SEO friendly, which will allow search engines to find it. Getting other relevant websites and blogs to link to your site will help push your site closer to the top of the search engine listings. Register your site with Google and other search engines and use meta keywords & descriptions, title tags, headings, key words within the site and good content.

Then once a potential customer visits your site, make sure it is professional, easy to navigate and find the information they need and/or contact you. You want to make sure your site reflects the image you are trying to convey; that your site delivers the experience they are expecting. It should be clean and organized and designed in a way that reflects your company brand.

Nicole: If you are a local business I love geotargeting on Google’s paid search program. Select what region/city/custom location your services/products are available in and your ad will only appear to searchers in that area. You can also search for forums, blogs and message boards that have discussions that directly relate to your services/products and answer questions along with a plug for your business. (Make sure you’re actually providing relevant content to these sites and not just plugging your business!) Finally, always make sure all of your marketing collateral like business cards, stationery and fliers have your URL. This is often overlooked by businesses and a huge miss!

2. What is the most effective marketing tool? What tool has the most return? Mailers? Web? Door to door handout? Etc…?

Rob: There is no one correct answer to this question. It depends entirely on the business, the customers, and how you as a business owner communicate with them. A lawn service may find door hangers an effective way to reach potential customers and might find less success with web banners. Another thing to consider: it really isn’t the tool that is effective. It’s the message. One company might send out a mailer and do very poorly, while a competitor tries a different message and finds a huge success with the same list of customers. It all comes down to the right (relevant) message, communicated in a way that interests customers.

Nicole: Unfortunately there is no one ‘magic bullet’ for every business. The most effective marketing tool is the one that targets your customers. This could be anything from a targeted direct mail campaign to an ad in a hobby magazine. To find your ‘magic bullet’ you need to first put yourself in the mind of your potential customer. What are they doing when they need the service or product you provide? (Has a wall pipe just burst? Are they happily planning their wedding?) Where would a customer go during this time? (Would they run to the yellow pages for a plumber listing as water is gushing out of their wall? Are they online doing research for wedding photographers, or attending local wedding events?) To better get an idea of your target customers’ behavior, ask new clients where they heard about your business. This will help you understand where you need to be marketing to reach your customers, which will get you well on your way to an effective marketing plan!

3. Also, I am not sure how best to word it, but something along the lines of what are the new innovative ways to market? Facebook? Twitter? Blogs, etc… I just want to know where the new stuff is. I feel like Direct mail is kind of old school and Facebook ads are the new innovative stuff.

Amy: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blogs, forums…these are all very popular marketing tools. Make sure you continually update your content. If your updates are interesting, people will keep coming back. You can’t post something once and expect your customer base to grow…keep it relevant and dynamic and mix it up with multimedia; photos, videos, text, etc.

Nicole: Social marketing is like the wild, wild west of the marketing world. There’s gold out there, we all know it, but where do we look for it and how do we get it out of the ground? Facebook and MySpace are very popular social sites, but most people aren’t comfortable sharing their private photos and life updates with every entity they do business with. A Facebook/MySpace page works best for a brand that has a very loyal following, and there are not many success stories with ads on these sites. A blog is an excellent way to detail out what your business does in both words and photos, and show off your expertise/offering. It has the added benefit of being highly visible to search engines, so make sure your blog has relevant copy on your location, what area you service, detailed product/service offering, and so on. That brings us to Twitter, which can be a great tool in certain situations. Do you have new products or promotions regularly that you want to share? Twitter works well when your business needs to have regular updates with potential customers. You can also use it to see what your customers are saying about you in the Twitter world, and to respond to those comments. With all that said, let’s not overemphasize the importance of social marketing; it should only be one tool in your arsenal of marketing weapons.

Rob: Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and all the other social networking sites are just tools like direct mail, radio advertising, and point of purchase displays. In my opinion, they are way over hyped and are not yet delivering the value that many online “experts” have predicted. A smart business owner will carefully test the effectiveness of any marketing tool before investing a lot of money in the promises to make sure it will pay out in an increase in sales. Just because something is called the next big thing, doesn’t mean it will work for your business.

Posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 12:56 pm and is filed under The Panel: Q & A. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.