How much time do you spend on marketing?
are you getting the message out there?
Last night I gave a presentation to a group of 17 people that are in the process of getting their business ideas off the ground. My talk was about using online media to grow your business.
One of the students asked, “how much time should we spend on marketing?” I think I shattered some dreams when I said about half of your time.
Unless you are a seasoned entrepreneur, most people get into business because
- they don’t want to work for someone else
- they have a product or service that they love and are passionate about it
- they want to make lots of money and
- they want time freedom and flexibility
The reality is, to start and build a business is more about getting your message to the right target market than it is producing a great product or delivering a great service. If you are starting a business where you are doing most of the work you have to be the CEO, the financial controller, the salesperson, the marketer, the customer service person as well as delivering the product or service.
If you don’t have the resources to employer or contract a dedicated marketing person then you are going to have to do it yourself and it will take up half of your time.
If you are offering a service then you have to consider
- employing someone else to provide all of part of that service
- charge a high enough hourly rate, that you can earn a full income from providing that service half the time
- add a product to your service to increase your income for your given output
If you are offering a product then you have to consider
- creating a production team to make the products for you
- outsourcing the production to another company, but make sure you still have lots of margin to make a product
If you really hate marketing or really don’t want to do it, then consider finding a business partner that is strong in marketing and loves doing it so you can spend the time doing what you love.
Create your digital toolbox
When I first started in the digital industry 10 years ago, if you had a website your were using the internet as a marketing tool to it’s maximum and were miles in front of your competitors who didn’t have a website at all.
Now a website of some sort is mandatory for all companies and it’s how it is used in conjunction with an overall digital strategy that is the key factor in your online marketing.
Here are some digital tools that all businesses should have in their toolbox.
Conversion Rates for Online Business
Most online businesses have several conversion rates. On most occasions there are several steps from getting a visitor to click from a email, search engine result, PPC ad, Banner Ad or link to ultimately making the decision to buy your products or services, subscribe to your site, or whatever your end goal is.
In fact every step that brings a prospect one step closer to being a customer is a micro-conversion and looking at each of these micro-conversions is more important than your overall conversion rate. The reason for this is it gives insight into what part of your process is working and where the process stalls.
So what are some of these micro-conversions?
If you look at using an eDM (email campaign) you have the following conversion rates
Opens
The percentage of emails that were open as a percentage of the emails sent.
This is typically 25% – 40% for most campaigns and is effected by the frequency at which your emails are sent, the quality of your database and the subject of the email.
If you send emails at to high a frequency people won’t keep opening them, if you send them at to low a frequency people will forget you are.
If you have a large but poor quality database, many of the people won’t be in your target market and won’t be interested in your message.
If you don’t have a captivating subject relevant to your market, people won’t be interested in what you have to say.
% Action
The percentage of emails where the call to action was clicked on as a percentage of the emails opened.
This can be any percentage and is affected by the message in the email. The more target, captivating and benefits driven this content is, the more people will follow your call to action.
Landing Page Conversion
Once someone clicks through on your call to action they will arrive at a page on your website. More often than not this should be a landing page with specific content following on from the email, not the home page of your website. From this landing page people should have only a couple of options.
Option 1 – take the desired step, be that adding a product to a shopping cart, subscribing to a service, making an enquiry to a sales person, making a phone call.
Option 2 – opting in for further information. If we can’t get them to buy we don’t want to loose them altogether. This could be a newsletter signup, free e-book, obligation free quote or anything that engages the prospect.
Checkout Conversion
In the case of product based eCommerce websites, it’s also important to monitor the how many of the people who have added a product to a shopping cart, actually make it through to checkout. This can give valuable insight into possible problems in the check-out process, that the freight was a lot more than people were expecting or that there was not enough information on delivery times or stock on hand.
Conclusion
Try to identify all of the different micro-conversion in your online sales process, work out how to measure them and then work out what insight the give you.
Grow your business – simple yet effective
How do you grow your business? Have you ever looked at business that have grown and wonder how they do it? Chances are they use a combination of these simple common sense ideas.
- If you have an established client base, most of your marketing money should be spent on re-selling to your existing customers
- It is a lot easier to sell something else to your existing customers than to get a new customer.
- Only sell to people who want what you have and value what you do. Other people will take all your time but not contribute significantly to your bottom line.
- The more information you give in your ads, the more you’ll sell.
- If your ads look like editorial articles you'll get a lot more readership than ads that look like ads.
- Never ever run any advertisement or any promotion without monitoring the response.
- Don’t try to be creative or original. Stick to what works even if it seems boring to you.
- Use benefit headlines in all your ads.
- Client testimonials increase credibility – and sales. Use written, audio and video testimonials.
7 Ways To Build A Successful (And Profitable) Community Website
Online Communities are becoming more and more prevalent and can be found for just about any niche or topic area that you can think of. They are one of the ways to plant the seed of a viral marketing campaign, and if you participate actively and within the spirit of the community (and not just use it's a channel to spam your message) it is one of the fastest ways to build word of mouth referrals.
But what if you can't find a community to participate in that meets your needs? Why not start your own community website?
The Young Entrepreneur website published these 7 ways to build a successful community website that I thought said it all.
1) Pick A Theme
I see so many forums, blogs, and portals that don’t have a specific niche. If you try to be everything to everyone then you’re not going to make a memorable impression and people won’t come back or get involved.
2) Choose Something You’re Passionate About
Just like my advice last week (5 Ways To Know If Your Business Idea Is Any Good), you have to love what you do. Especially in a community driven website if you don’t have an interest in the topic then there is no way you’re going to be successful. You have to live and breathe the subject matter to drive it forward and you’ll have a lot more fun as well being able to share your passions with others. It can be tempting to jump at an opportunity because it looks like a “sure thing” but if you don’t love the topic, don’t do it.
3) Get It Started Yourself
You can’t have the mindset of “if I build it, then will come.” It’s so easy to set up a new blog or forum – the technology makes it extremely simple to get going so anybody can do it. The key is getting it started, putting up interesting content, and continuing to post and add to the site. If you are not heavily involved at the start to get it to critical mass, it won’t succeed.
4) Get Help!
You’re going to have to put in a lot of work to get your website off the ground (see point #3!) but as soon as possible you need to engage people to come out and help you. Get them to comment on your blog, get them to post responses in your forums, get them to moderate different categories and contribute. You can’t do everything yourself and more people become interested in your website if they see that there is a discussion going (not just you talking to yourself). Start with your friends and people you know and then reach out to others who run related websites who might be interested in participating.
5) Post Interesting Topics
People click through, read, and participate in stories that are engaging and interesting. Be controversial, offer practical advice, be a source of inspiration. If you’re just regurgitating news from a Google Alerts feed then people aren’t going to care and come back to your website. A good trick is to look at the homepage of Digg and see what stories consistently come up on the first page. Adjust the topics to fit your niche and get writing!
6) Get Prizes
People love contests and there’s nothing like a great prize to get people talking. If the prize is related and interesting to your target audience and there is a degree of value associated with it then visitors will increase their participation and help drive more traffic for you. The prize doesn’t always have to cost you money either. How about a feature story on your website or a special report or service from a partner who is willing to donate a prize? If you’re going to be an entrepreneur you need to think outside the box – I’ve never paid for any of the prizes I’ve offered on my site – you just need to get creative!
7) Encourage Your Top Users
You will have a top percentage of your users who love your site and visit it daily. Give them encouragement and recognition in the community. Point out how useful some of their contributions are and thank them for their involvement. You can also profile them as community ambassadors. Stay in regular contact with them and get their suggestions for how to make your website even better. Keep your champions happy and they will help you go out and bring more people in!
What would you add to the list of how to build a successful community website?
Viral Marketing Tips
Viral Buzz can build your sales and leads for you. People start talking, a few blogs get posted, a few articles get written. But if you sit back and wait, it can be like watching paint dry. Why not give it a kick along and get proactive.
How to Generate More Buzz
1.Leverage existing online communities
Don’t just think of Facebook and myspace when you think online communities. Look for strong, active communities (both on and offline) that are used by your target market. They might be a group, online forum or social network. Ask for feedback on your products / services and reply proactively to all comments. People will talk about your products and how quickly you responded.
2. Offer an incentive
People often have good intentions to spread the word, but then forget about it as the next important/urgent thing comes up in their daily lives. An incentive, gift or competition keeps them focus on spreading the word.
3. Reach community experts
Experts pervade every group and cross section on any topic. Actively search them out. They often have websites or blogs and are asked (or offer) expert opinion to groups, publications and other media that require interest content. Make them aware of your products and the benefits to their groups. Giving them information on them that isn’t available to everyone else increases their level of expertise and they will only be too please to let everyone know what they know.
4. Talk to customers at the point of sale
Find out where you potential market spends their time. Utilise targeted information based marketing at these places (or websites).
5. Talk to customers in real-world social groups
In regard to point 1, don’t just limit it to the net. Also look for member based organisations, meetings, expos and conferences.
6: Get on the news
Think about what is news worthy about your products. Why do they do for the community that is of interest to everyone. It might not be your product as such, but how an interesting person has been involved with your products or services. (Maybe even a celebrity)
7. Balance with other efforts
Viral and Word-of-mouth is only part of a larger eMarketing strategy. Don’t neglect, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Email Marketing and offline marketing.
8. Watch what works
Use Google Alerts to try and keep up with what is being said about you out in the wide world. It’s amazing who might be talking about you.
These tips were inspired by Sharon Baker from AOL, to read more with examples of how AOL have made Buzz work for them, click here.
Marketing – the saviour for small business
With tumbling shares, global economic uncertainty, a lame duck US president and Kochie doing doom and gloom specials on TV, you’d think the world was going to end. But how bad is it? Should we all go home and give up? Today’s economic uncertainty could be a business opportunity.
It’s pretty simple really. Take a good look at your business, reconnect with your customers, provide the very best products, services and prices – and market as hard as you can.
We’ve been working with clients in the internet marketing space for 10 years now and saw a similar cycle in 2001 when there was a global recession a Tech crash and the slowing effect from the introduction of GST.
Interesting enough the companies that floundered and faltered, cut back on all their spending to try and ride it out, while the ones that prospered and grew and are much more successful 7 years on are the ones that cut back on non essential expenses and reinvested heavily in marketing.
Don’t make survival your sole aim, make it growth.
I was having this discussion with Julian Campbell last week and he had a great analogy. Business is like a shrub or bush. It is constantly growing, but if you let it just grow naturally, it will go wild, it’s growth will slow down and when droughts and storms come, branches will break off and it will be uprooted and die. If you continually trim and prune the bush, the foliage gets thick and lush and the bush grows quickly and strongly. Even during drought and storm the bush may brown a bit but it stays solid and health.
It’s time for us to make sure our businesses are well pruned, that all the dead wood has been trimmed back and we start fertilising it with marketing.
Revisit your marketing goals and promotional strategies.
Marketing goals need to be specific, measurable and focussed on generating enquiries and sales. Brand building in prosperous times of growth is fantastic to the overall business, however short term sales objectives are often more relevant in harder times.
Thus the use of more short-term promotional strategies such as direct marketing, sales promotion or e-marketing may increase as a proportion of your marketing budget.
Customer value for money isn’t always measured in terms of the ’sale price’.
Beware the temptation to compete on price during economic turmoil. Customers will always want value. The concept of value needs to expand beyond just economic value. Value can be created through quality, benefits, information, extra services, customer satisfaction and relationship management.
Remove the risk
In times of worry, people will always be more risk adverse. If you can limit the risk to the customers or remove it altogether you will continue to sell strongly.
Go against the flow
An aggressive marketing strategy doesn’t have to be costly however it does need to be different, creative and stand out from the crowd.
It comes from truly understanding the needs of your clients. What is your competitive advantage and how can you effectively and efficiently communicate it potential clients?
How to keep email marketing personal
E-mail marketing can be one of the most effective marketing strategies for you to communicate with customers, yet as we recieve more and more marketing emails each day, you face the never ending challenge of ensuring that your e-mail campaigns stand out from the crowd and continue to cut through the noise. One of the ways to achieve this is to incorporate personalisation practices to get the attention of your customers.
Every marketing message is competing for our time and email is no different. We receive more emails each day now than ever before and it can be hard to sort through the email mess let alone try to figure out which emails are worth taking the time to read. Taking the time to personalise emails via the subject line, salutation and content is the only way to ensure that your email gets read. Personalising email campaigns lets customers know that you understand their interests and want to offer content that speaks to them. Personalisation also shows customers and prospects that they aren't just another email address added to your mass mailing scheme.
It's important that you use your customer data when personalizing your email campaigns. This data should include geographic, behavioral, demographic and transactional information. If you don't have this data or it is not up to date try asking your customers to fill out a survey or questionnaire. This information is very valuable to the your success. It can be used to better segment your lists in order to more narrowly target customers – offering them relevant content that specifically speaks to their interests.
Luckily automation also can help your personalisation efforts. Although automation doesn't sound like its personal, when used correctly automation processes can allow you to easily follow-up with customers based on consumer behavior – delivering messages at the right time. This keeps your business top-of-mind and helps to keep an on-going dialogue with your customers – further building your relationship. Customers are more likely to do repeat business with companies they trust.
If you take the time and effort to personalise your emails, you will see a great improvement in your email marketing results.
Affiliate Marketing – How do you make it work for you?
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing; also know as Performance Media can be thought of in 2 ways
- it’s like having a team of commission only sales people that are continually putting your business / website in front of prospects
- it’s like having and incentive based word of mouth program, so that people (who might have spread the word anyway) are given an incentive (usually monetary) to let everyone know how good your business is.
The Advantage
- You only pay for results. Like a commission salesperson, you only pay your affiliates if they have driven people to your website/business that has resulted in customers and/or sales. You don't pay for page views or click-throughs: you pay for results.
- It exposes you to a bigger market to sell your product.
- If you are spending a serious amount of money on affiliate marketing then that’s a nice problem to have, because it means you are doing a serious amount of business through your affiliates referrals to your site.
Creating a successful affiliate program
- Make it lucrative – most affiliate programs fail because they try and be too stingy with rewards. Your affiliate needs to be able to make good money from referring people to you, or they are just not going to push your business very hard. They more lucrative you can make it for them, while retaining enough margin for yourself, the more your affiliate referrals will grow and the faster you will grow.
- Give your affiliates the tools they need – Give your affiliates, pdf brochures, youtube videos and other marketing material to help them promote your site. Building a strong relationship with your affiliates is crucial to a successful performance campaign. Look at it as a long-term relationship that you need to work on constantly, which will lead to a mutually successful situation. It is essential to develop a community of reliable affiliates, who are committed to your program and its success.
- Look at your conversion rates – The best performing online businesses have a simple and clear site. Ensure your site is easy to complete the desired conversion action whether that is making an enquiry, joining or registering or buying a product or service.
- Direct traffic to a persuasive and relevant landing page – A link through to your site from an affiliate should go to a page that presents relevant information tailored to the products and services that your prospect is looking to buy. If they are coming from an affiliate they are already qualified, so give them the info they are after.
How to build email lists
A regular, valuable email to your database is usually a core element to any eMarketing strategy. But how do your build your database and how to do you grow it? Following are a couple of ideas that might get you started.
Networking Meetings
From your local chamber of commerce, to specialized industry groups, the meetings of many organizations are great opportunities to make contact with new people. You are exchanging business cards with people, so make sure that keep in touch with these people. Send them a personal email the day after the meeting, recapping your conversation with them, and letting them know that you will be adding them to your monthly email list.
Trade Shows
Whether you have a booth, are one of the presenters, or are simply attending a trade show, you have an excellent potential opportunity similar to networking events, but at a much greater scale. Organizing the follow-ups to people you actually spoke to yourself, and then adding the person to your database is a given.
Seminars
Organizing informational seminars is a great way to build a healthy relationship with prospects and potential referrers. One effective technique is to have advance registration, and to ask permission to send regular emails at that time. (You can use www.stickytickets.com.au/a183 for this). You can also offer to send the material to people who can’t make it, so that even if the person is not able to attend the seminar, you still have an opportunity to stay in touch with them.
Retail Locations
Storefront and retail locations provide many great ways to build your email lists. Adding fishbowls or point of purchase displays are easy ways to take advantage of real-world traffic. (BTW – I always leave my business card in bowls at restaurants and places like that. Partly because I like to be kept informed on special nights they are having, but also because I have a special business card that is a mini advertisement of how my business can help them. Occasionally, as they are adding my card into their database, it catches their eye and they give me a call).
Events
Concerts, parties, art openings, or any other occasion that gathers people together can provides an opportunity to build your email address lists. Having a registration or check in location, or associates with clipboards working the room are just two ways to make contact. In the case of events, it is a good idea to offer some kind of incentive to boost signups. However, make sure that the person can only receive the incentive via email. This way, you will improve the quality and accuracy of the lists you are collecting.
Post Cards/Direct Mail
When a company has an existing database of postal addresses, direct mail may be the best way to get the email addresses for your existing customers and prospects. Again, offering an incentive always helps stimulate a greater response, and is particularly effective when there is a pre-existing relationship. Publish a specific, but simple, web site address on your mailing to direct people to a landing page with the list signup on your site (www.yoursite.com/special), so you can repeat the offer from the direct mail piece. This can help increase the number of people who actually signup.
Phone Calls
Using the telephone to get email addresses can be a time-consuming process, but isn't it time you gave your customers and prospects a call anyhow. In this case the call will both continue to kindle the relationship, as well as helping you establish an email based communication point.
Run and online competition or promotion
If you offer an incentive, people have a reason to give you their email address. A popular way to do this is to run an online competition where a person can enter by submitting their name and email address and possibly their interests. You can multiply the competition response by giving them the opportunity to have additional entries in the draw by sharing the competition with other people. Please note that you may have to register your competition with various state regulatory bodies. (If you need help with this, Redback Solutions, has a competition website that you can use and can also help with legal side of things)
