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.

7 Step E-Commerce Web Site Checklist

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Photo: myuibe

These seven e-commerce marketing tips will help you increase your web site sales (and they won’t break your budget either).

1) Build informational content (as well as sales content) into your site.

Teach people how to use your product, care for their purchase, or give tips (software shortcuts, decorating ideas, foods best for your pet by age, etc.).

2) Make the site easy to navigate and buy from.

Don’t hide the products. Show two or three on the front page, with clear links to find more. If the site is hard to use, or visitors can’t find what they want, they will leave without buying anything.

3) Customize sections of your site to fit different segments of your audience.

A pet food site could break down sections by dogs, cats, parakeets, and then by specific products for larger dogs, overweight dogs, special types of diet, etc.

4) Use big, noticeable buttons.

Make it obvious that you want people to do something and how to do it. Use language such as “buy now” or “sign up here.” Ask for the order! It’s also important to make sure your buttons look like buttons; in other words something that should be clicked.

5) Add customer reviews or testimonials.

They give clear evidence that others have bought (and benefited from) your products. This also increases involvement. Your visitors will feel more connected to your products. If you can, start a forum and let your customers talk directly to each other and share experiences.

6) Check your site design in different browsers.

Images or design elements (bars, boxes, page breaks) may display differently depending on the combination of browser and operating system that your visitors are using. Test your site for free at browsershots.org

7) Build a landing page or a specific product page based on their keyword searches.

Don’t use your home page for this. Instead develop different campaigns to attract different segments of your customers. If you sell home decorating supplies, you might create a campaign and build a landing page  for window treatments, another for paint, and a third for carpets and flooring.

More tips on how to get more clicks without spending a cent

Why 500 Visitors Beats 5,000 Visitors

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barbieA friend is grumbling that his site gets lots of visitors and traffic but no conversions.  Getting lots of traffic is great, but it doesn’t help if it’s the wrong kind of traffic.
For example, if I write a post called:  Barbie: 50 Years of Greatness and talk about the successful marketing of the doll, I may get lots of traffic.  However, it’s likely to be from 9 year old girls excited about toys.  Since my target market is small businesses, the traffic won’t do me (or the girls) any good.  None of us will get what we want.

Photo: ordinary guy

The One-Minute Marketing Test

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Here’s a quick way to see if your marketing is effective.

Go to your web site home page. Or, even better, check a landing page. If you prefer, pick up a brochure, leave-behind, or any other marketing material you have handy.

Read the first paragraph.

Start counting

See how many times it says, “me”, “I”, or “we”. Then, count how often it says, “you” or “your”. The “you’s” and “yours” should greatly outnumber the “we’s”. If they don’t you’re focusing too much on yourself and not enough on your customers.

Check your competition

Now, go to a competitor’s Web site. Read the first paragraph. Can you plug yours in? Are they significantly different? Does your site say anything special about you? Or, does it use language like “leading edge technology company” or “fostering health education and education activities for Southern Michigan since 1996”? Is the wording interchangeable? Is it clear from the first sentence exactly what your company or organization does?

Now, go back and rewrite the paragraph. Read it out loud. Better yet, read it to someone else (preferably someone who doesn’t work for you). See how much better that sounds?

Five Ways to Increase Web Response Rates

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1. People Will Click Everywhere

Web visitors are like Chicago voters, they click early and often. People will click on buttons, graphics, logos, anything that might be a button. Give them lots of places to click, and track the clicks you get so you can tell which ones are the “hot” spots.

2. Ask for the Sale Repeatedly

Make it as easy to order as possible. You’ll probably get the most clicks from the top few buttons, but add more (especially if you’re using long copy that requires readers to scroll down several times to read all of it). People may be ready to buy 1/4 of the way down, or 3/4 of the way down the page. Don’t make them work to find an order button.

3. Test the Wording on Your Buttons

Submit or Subscribe sound too impersonal and machine-like. Instead, try something that more clearly tells readers what they’re getting: Get Your Marketing Tips.

4. Keep Your Forms Short

Only ask for the information you absolutely need. It should be clear why you need it (such as an e-mail address and a name to send a newsletter, or a shipping address for a product). If you need to qualify leads to pass on to your sales staff, ask questions they’ll need to know. You don’t want them wasting time following up leads that aren’t worth the trouble.

5. Use Big Buttons

Don’t hide the order form or the product photo. Make them clear and obvious. A white paper or newsletter offer in tiny 9 point type won’t get clicked on.

Photo: cheesepicklescheese

The Truth About Internet Marketing

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Someone on LinkedIn said that Internet Marketing is “new”, “there’s never been anything like it.”  It’s true that there are lots of new tools, such as SEO, pay per click, social networking, e-mail, or even e-bay that weren’t available 20 years ago.

However, the basic principles of marketing haven’t changed, only the means and the speed.  Regardless of whether you’re using print or pixels, you still need to reach the right people.  If you sell custom car parts for racing enthusiasts, you have to reach out to people in that particular tribe.

You must then establish a conversation with them.  Talk  to them about their interests, their problems, and their enthusiasm for racing.  Show that you share that enthusiasm.  Gain their trust.

Then offer them something of interest (free newsletter with sources for custom paint jobs, new parts or tools on the market), a discount coupon, etc.

Finally, ask for action (join here, call this number).

Photo: web success diva