Category Archives: Small Business Online Marketing Strategies

Marketing your small business online can be an effective way to market your products and services.  It can also be an enormous waste of time and effort, especially if you are using the wrong online marketing strategies

First, your design, writing, and offer all have to work together.  Poor copywriting, bad design, and painful user interfaces can all drive away your hard-won traffic. Using social media to shout at people can also drive people away (instead of drawing them in).

Get tips on the right way to write for the web. It’s different than writing for print and you may have to toss out some of the rules you learned back in school.

Small businesses make plenty of other online marketing mistakes, such as using too much jargon, or concentrating too much on a pretty design, instead of usability. Hard to use designs are just as bad. If visitors can’t use your site, they will leave.

And, of course, there’s landing pages.  Landing pages are your 24/7 sales team.  They’ve got to answer all the questions you can’t answer in person.  If they’re not working, neither are your sales (or your profits).  Learn the most common landing page goofs and how to correct them.

Can Your Site Be Too Easy to Use?

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image of easy buttonI’ve talked a lot about the perils of putting up barriers to your customers (Flash, logins to comment on blogs, complicated contact forms, etc.), but can a site be TOO easy to use?

I have a client who has a listing on Lexis/Nexis’s legal services directory and wanted it updated. (not my usual thing, but he’s “technologically challenged”).

He asked me to update a listing for him on Lexis/Nexis. He told me all I had to do was hit an update button and make the changes. This seemed way too easy (what, no login? no password?). Sure enough, he was right. I filled out an online form (with name, address, etc.) and uploaded the changes.

That’s when the trouble started. There was only a tiny box to put three pages of material, and no way to tell what it would look like “live.” Then, I got a message saying the changes would go live at their next update (no indication of when that would be).

I called and was told that the reason there was no password was because you had to add the name and address in the form (so that would stop fakes). Meanwhile, the name and address were all there in plain sight on the existing listing!

They also said it would take 7-10 days to go live. Why? Because they review each entry individually, retype it, and then upload it!! I asked them to send the changes so I could check that it was OK.

They wanted to fax them! I asked them to email me. They emailed the client (who doesn’t use email). The changes were sent in plain text, so I couldn’t see the formatting.

Then, they sent a second email saying the upload was too long (they had a 300 word limit, and the listing had 682 words). No sign of this on the site anywhere.

So, after three hours of talking to the client, making changes, checking them, several phone calls back and forth, reading emails, and getting strange messages, my client has the same old listing he had before (in which the typist misspelled the client’s name)!

Yes, be accessible, easy-to-use, and friendly, but don’t leave the doors unlocked with a big sign that says, “Steal my Stuff”!

Photo: civilian scrabble

Is Your Web Site User-Friendly or User-Hostile?

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no-no
My dad was trying to reserve a book online the other day. He hit submit on the county library web site and kept getting an error message. Then he did it again, same problem. Finally he looked more closely and saw that underneath the submit button were two check boxes that said, “Select library set”.

After some more puzzling, he realized that the library system is divided into two parts, one with about 5 branches, and then 33 other branches in the other set (no idea why). If you want a book, you have to specify which group to order it from!

Now, dad is an experienced software systems guru (and the former CEO of a small software firm). It took him 15 minutes to figure out how to reserve a book. What chance does an ordinary, non-technical person have with a system like that?

And why should a library patron know (or care) which branch the book comes from, or that there are two sets of libraries? If I want a book, I just want the book (as quickly as possible).

If there’s some reason for the division, why not say so, and in a way that makes sense to the user?

To paraphrase a recent article in MacWorld (June 9, 2009), bad sites are produced by people who know how to write code to make a computer do something, but have no idea how regular people behave and how those people expect to interact with that site.

As MacWorld said, “It really doesn’t matter if it’s a microprocessor or a system of tiny pulleys hauled by gnomes that’s inside that shiny glass and plastic product. It just needs to work the way they want it to.”

Look at your site through your customers’ eyes. Is it intuitive? Do visitors have to sit through a Flash presentation in order to get to the “meat” of your site? Is it easy to find your products and services?

Does your blog require a login in order to comment? Are you helping your customers use your products? Or frustrating them?

What about navigation? Do visitors visit one or two pages and then leave?

A site, or a product, that’s easy to use will encourage more people to use it (and interact with it). If it’s too hard, people will go elsewhere to find what they want.

Photo:keees

5 Things That Drive People Away from Your Web Site

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fleeing1. Autoplay video.

Let your visitors make the decision whether they want to watch or not. The videos can also slow down your site.

2. Pages that load slowly.

Cut the Flash presentations and the splash pages with “enter” buttons; they slow people down. People want information, not commercials. The exception to this is if you’re a filmmaker, film editor, or web video producer. In that case, you’ll need Flash to show off your skills. Just make it a voluntary click (not an auto play), and put it on a clips page (rather than the home page).

3. Sign in forms.

Don’t make it harder for visitors to find information. If you want to keep paid content separate, or need a user login for accounts, that’s fine, but don’t try to capture information from everyone who visits. You’ll drive people away.

4. Hard to find contact information.

If it looks as if you’re hiding, your trust level will go down. Put your address, email, phone number, etc. where people can find it easily.

5. Poor usability.

If visitors have trouble finding what they want, and broken site search, they’ll leave in frustration.

Photo: orin obtiglot

Freebie Friday: SEO Fast Start

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freebie fridayWant to know more about SEO (search engine optimization)?

If you don’t already know, it’s the science (and art) of making your Web site more appealing to search engines. Find the search terms that best describes what your customers are looking for, optimize your site to fit those terms, and you’ll rank higher when people search for products or services like yours. The easier it is to find you, the more traffic, leads, and customers you’ll get.

Today’s Freebie Friday offers some help. It’s an e-book by Dan Theis, with help on mapping out a keyword strategy, optimizing the way your site is constructed, and measuring results.

Update: The 2009 Edition is now live.
Get your copy here.

The $100 Marketing Campaign That Packed the Room

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low budget marketing tactics

As promised on Friday, you don’t need buckets of money to run a successful marketing campaign. The photo on the right represents my entire budget for a marketing campaign several years ago: $100. That’s it.

Here’s how I ran a successful campaign and only spent $75. Yes, I actually had money left over!

Low budget marketing tactics

My assignment in this case was to promote a small breakfast seminar.  It was a new program and they were hoping to get 15 paid attendees.  Since my budget was so tiny, I had to think creatively.

I couldn’t use any of the usual tactics.  Normally, I would do a series of mailings, with a save the date postcard, send emails, even rent lists.  Or, I would buy advertising space in relevant publications and newsletters.

But, with a limit of $100, I couldn’t do any of that.  I couldn’t even pay for printing, let alone postage.

Start with  existing contacts

The first thing to do was look and see how many contacts or relevant prospects I already had in my house list.  Since the seminar was about selling financial services to Hispanics, I sent text emails to people who had attended prior events concerning either Hispanic marketing or financial services marketing. But, that wouldn’t be enough. I also sent a fax marketing sheet (you could do that then); still not enough.

Reach more people without spending any money

I found a way to expand my marketing campaign and get it in front of more people (without spending money I didn’t have).

However, thanks to my previous job at The Economist Intelligence Unit, I knew someone who ran a multi-cultural marketing newsletter which went out to thousands of people, far more than I had on my list. She sold advertising in her newsletter, but at $250 for an ad, or $900 for a solo email it was way over my budget.

Try barter

I couldn’t buy an ad, but I could give her something else she wanted.  The names I already had were potential subscribers to her newsletter and other services.  They were people she wanted to meet and network with.

So, I negotiated a deal. She included the ad in her newsletter, in return for two seats at the table at the seminar.

I sent my emails and my faxes, and she sent her email to her subscribers.

Stop the promotion:  we’re out of space!

The original goal was 15 people. We got 45. We had to start a waiting list. I had to cancel the last wave of promotions and stop marketing! There was no more space in the room, it was becoming a fire hazard.

I can’t share exact results, but attendees paid between $25-$45 to attend, so at 45 people, the ROI on my $75 investment was tremendous.

Partnering can give you greater reach, bring in new business, and save money. More ways to stretch your marketing budget tomorrow.

Photo: kugelfish