The Top 5 Small Business Marketing Tips for Budget-Minded Business Owners

I am fortunate enough to have made great friends in the blogosphere, some of which are the best marketing minds in the business. In particular, Caroline Melberg of the Small Business Mavericks blog has been a regular in my feed reader from almost my first day blogging. I read her posts regularly for all the best insight into small business marketing tactics which also happens to be a primary interest of mine.

So I asked her if she would be interested in guest blogging and she politely accepted. Concerning her expertise in the small business sector I was very interested in what she considered to be the most important small business marketing tips for those who are on a tight budget (which is all of them!) Here is what she had to say:

When it comes to running a successful business, marketing is essential. For a small business, marketing often seems like a daunting task – especially when it comes to marketing your business on the web.

Many times, budget-minded business owners fear that small business marketing needs to be expensive in order to be effective. Fortunately - this isn't true. Here are five simple tips for small business owners who are looking to save dollars, while stil running an effective online marketing campaign.

1. Optimize Your Website

There are three simple steps to take so that you can be sure that your website is working for you.

The first is to use a descriptive title for your site as well as keywords and a description that allows search engines and site visitors alike to know what they will find when they visit your web page. Once that's taken care of, make sure that you are placing keywords appropriately in the text of your website.

Your keywords should be specific to your products and services, and should be chosen with consideration for the terms prospective customers would use when searching with Google or Yahoo or whichever other search engine they use.

Finally, these keywords should also be used in the alt image tags as they relate to the photos and illustrations that you post to your website.

2. Market Your Website with Articles & Distribute Press Releases

Article marketing is an extremely effective way of drawing visitors to your website. By creating an informative short article that relates to your business, your area of expertise and your keywords, you can show readers a bit more of what they'll find from your business – which you can link to in your resource box at the bottom of the article.

Online press releases are another effective marketing tool. Like conventional press releases that let local newswires pick up a story about a new staff member or a new product line, online press release distribution will allow you to get the word out to those who publish online newsletters or who review products and services like those that you offer.

Both articles and press releases published online create valuable, relevant inbound links to your website (via the link to your site in your resource box at the end of each article or press release). Search engines place a great amount of value on the number of inbound links you have to your site, so this is an excellent way of building popularity with the search engines, as well as your human customers.

Both article marketing and distributing press releases will enable you to establish yourself as an expert and your company as a source for products or services. Each is effective, and often, submission to article directories is free – that's right, free marketing for your business, all it takes is a little bit of time.

3. Start a Blog

It's a common statement when it comes to Internet marketing: content is king. A blog – short for a weblog – allows you to create fresh content at regular intervals, driving traffic and search engines to your website.

Like article marketing and press release distribution, having a blog allows you to establish your expertise about the products and services that your small business offers. Unlike article marketing and press release distribution, however, a blog allows you to begin to carry on a dialog with your current and prospective customers.

Your blog works like search engine magic for your website. By linking your blog to your website, you draw the search engines to your website. Your site will rank higher and your customers will have a much easier time finding your site.

4. Commit to a Link Building Campaign and Submit Your Site to Directories and Search Engines

As a small business owner building and promoting your business on the web, having quality inbound links is important. Links allow your site to be found by those who visit similar sites looking for the products and services that your company offers.

Links – like those at the end of your articles and press releases, like those that exist back to individual products or services from within your blog, like those from others who have purchased from you in the past – help to improve your site's search engine rank.

By submitting your business' website to relevant directories and even to industry-specific – niche – search engines, you'll begin to generate additional links. More importantly, however, these niche directories are increasingly used by those looking for very specific sites. Having your listing present will make it even more likely that your prospective customers will find your page; that makes them a particularly valuable marketing tool for your business, and, again, it's often free to submit your site.

5. Look for Joint Ventures with Other Like-Minded Business People

It's not uncommon for small businesses to work together – a movie theater and a restaurant offering coupons for a discount if you spend the evening at both places. In my past life working with large corporations I realized that the largest companies grow by means of joint ventures all the time. However, many small businesses do not look into joint ventures when it comes to marketing their businesses.

Is it always easy to find the right joint venture for marketing your business? No, of course not. But it is possible to find like-minded business owners whose customers could benefit from your products or services just as your customers could benefit from those that they offer.

As a result, both small businesses will be better able to extend their outreach and develop a wider customer base. If you are going to enter into a joint venture, search for companies with similar goals and a similar customer base but a different type of product or service. Stay on the lookout, keep an open mind and you just might find the perfect opportunity to market your business to a new audience.

A perfect example of this principle is a recent joint venture I did with a company who specializes in teaching business credit skills to small business owners. This company markets to the same clients that I wish to add to my customer list, but they offer a completely different service. By working together, we were able to market our services to each other’s mailing lists, resulting in both of us attracting new customers we would not have had otherwise. The great part about this joint venture was that there was no out of pocket cost to either of us – just our time and a little creativity in coming up with suitable promotions to each other’s lists!

Taking your business to the web does not need to be difficult, nor does it need to be expensive. By taking a creative approach, small business owners on a tight marketing budget will be able to find traffic and increase their customer base.

Focus on reaching the search engines: use the right keywords and use them appropriately. Let people know that you have the information they need with articles and be sure to get the word out by distributing press releases. Interact with your customers with a high quality blog, and focus on getting great links. Lastly, take advantage of partnerships with like-minded business owners.

Marketing your small business website may require a lot of hard work, but it doesn't require a lot of money – oftentimes, the best results are derived from the most creative (not the most expensive) solutions.

About the Author
Caroline Melberg is President and CEO of Small Business Mavericks, a division of Melberg Marketing. She has over 20 years of experience creating marketing communications materials and writing copy for some of most successful companies in the world. She publishes the popular eZine, "Small Business Maverick Secrets." Learn insider Maverick Marketing secrets you can use immediately to find new customers and increase your sales. Subscribers also get a FREE copy of her e-Book, "Local Small Business Internet Marketing Secrets." Get your FREE subscription at www.SmallBusinessMavericks.com.

B2B and social media...wheres the love?

Its interesting about how much buzz is given to social media marketing...I must have read ten articles over the weekend about it. But the more I read about marketing on sites like myspace, friendster, facebook, blogs, etc. the more I realize that it is primarily B2C companies taking advantage of this new medium with the B2B crowd staying cautiously out of the fray.

Why is that?

Of course it is inherently easier to mass market a consumer product. You have a much larger pool of potential customers and the marketing is less complex than that of B2B. It will always be easier to go viral talking about the iphone instead of email marketing deliverability rates. And you can market the iphone to millions while an email marketing solution is limited to hundreds of potential clients (maybe thousands if your lucky).

So does it make sense to abstain from social media marketing then?

In a word...no.

The B2B approach to this kind of marketing should not follow that of B2C. You don't need to rely on huge buzz to drive interest in your product so don't feel the need to employ trendy video gimmicks, silly contests, or controversial blog posts in an attempt to "go viral". Its not your style man!

Here are some simple mistakes to avoid.

1. Resist the urge to create a "company" myspace account. This will just make you look silly - especially when no one signs up to be your company's friend.


2. Don't try to accumulate a mass amount of friends. You will look as desperate as the high school geek trying to build a friend empire online.


3. Don't waste your money advertising on myspace. I don't think many high school and college students are in the market to buy your products or services.


4. Like I said before...no cheesy you tube videos. You will never be able to compete against a guy getting hit in the crotch or the cat playing the piano.


5. Don't blog because everyone else is doing it. Alot of people wore a mullet in the 80's too. Know when something makes sense for YOU to do...we can't all be Billy Ray Cyrus.
   

Instead, just simply encourage your employees to use them.

The best way to approach social media in the B2B world is to actually use the social networks that all of your friends, colleagues, and business associates use. Specifically, Linked In is fast becoming the "professional" alternative to sites like myspace, friendster, and xanga. It is a social network site specifically for maintaining business and industry contacts.

But it is not the only resource. If a lot of your contacts are using myspace, get on myspace. In the end you want to stay in touch and be accessible to those people you know and have relationships with. And by using those social networking sites you will find additional contacts...who may even eventually buy something from you.

I'm not saying that there is not a larger marketing opportunity with these sites either. The potential for brand building is great and well thought out strategies exist for making the most out of marketing on them...even if your B2B.

But in the end it's always been about building relationships ...and its no different online.

Converting consumers with multiple impressions.

An interesting study appeared late this week in e-marketer about how varied touch points across multiple websites can lead to increased conversion rates. It also reminded me of a great post by Jeremy Reynolds that explains the importance of understanding this. Getting to know where your customers "hang out" online is important to consider when you decide to start investing in online advertising.

For online marketers who think that the last ad impression (or click) seen is the most likely to lead to a conversion, a look at the Atlas Institute's "How Overlap Impacts Reach, Frequency and Conversions" study may be in order.

The study, conducted in the first quarter of 2007, found that US consumers were more likely to convert after viewing ads on multiple Web sites, suggesting that conversions should be attributed to a full set of impressions and/or clicks, rather than just the single one that preceded the conversion.

Two out of three consumers who eventually bought a product or took a responsive action were reached by ads across multiple portal sites before converting.



Nine in 10 consumers who converted were reached by placements other than the last ad seen. Also, 86.1% of ads which led to a responsive action were seen on multiple placements.



A previous Atlas study called "The Combined Impact of Search and Display Advertising" showed that sponsored search and display advertising together provided a 22% higher conversion rate over search alone.

Source: e-Marketer: Multiple Online Ad Placements Impress

del.ic.io.us links for 2007.06.27

• Marketing Sherpa: How to Quadruple Lead Generation Response With Job Title Segmentation and Targeted Messages
  
  See how one financial tech company developed two separate integrated campaigns -- one that targeted by company size and one that segmented by job function. They're ecstatic that segmentation has quadrupled response rates and boosted conversions 24%. Includes test results and creative samples.


• A List Apart: Human-to-Human Design
  
  Help your audience fall in love with you by moving beyond human-to-computer interfaces and embracing human-to-human design.

And the funny one. This made me laugh out loud!

• SEOmoz: We Add Words to AdWords... Google Subtracts them.
  
  Rand asked me for some help with AdWords content. But I really don't know how to grab someone's attention in two lines. That is, without being really crass. So it got a little PG-13 in our apartment this afternoon, what with the liberal use of words like "Viagra" and "Yo Mama" jokes
  

The B2B Pricing Mystery

There is a great post on Grokdotcom today about the reluctance of B2B companies to list pricing on their website. If you are competing on quality over price...maybe you shouldn't be afraid to say so.

While posting price might not be a good idea or make sense for all companies, it is worth thinking about and reconsidering. Go read the full article and see if it makes sense!

clipped from www.grokdotcom.com It’s usually companies that aren't competing on price who want to keep price a secret. If a company doesn’t compete on price, they're probably competing on quality; customer service or other factors. But why avoid the question? Tell the visitor what your price is and even explain that it’s higher than the competitors–just explain WHY it’s higher. If you don’t compete on price and your visitor is shopping on price, then that visitor isn't your customer. Give him what he came searching for and sell him on your unique value. If that doesn't work, don't shy away from sending him elsewhere. That level of confidence is contagious, and often results in higher conversion, anyway.

6 Marketing Tactics Worth Paying For....

I ran across this article in Forbes.com and wanted to share it with you.

It really sums up some great tacctics that I put into use on a daily basis. If you arent doing at least 3 of these then you're not doing enough.

Make sure that you view the link at the bottom of the article that describes the article in pictures...its a great read.

Google Analytics Desktop Widget for Yahoo

I have been evaluating a cool tool provided by VivAlytics for the Yahoo widgets desktop application.

Its pretty simple to get up and running. You just download the Yahoo Widget Engine and then download the VivAlytics Google Analytics Desktop Widget ...and after customizing the application to view the reports you want regular access to - Voila! You have all of your favorite metrics available to you right from the desktop.

If you dont want to get deluged with scheduled email reports and dont want to have to login to Google Analytics every time you want to recieve your favorite metrics then this little tool may be for you.

I actually found that the Yahoo Widget Engine 4.0 to be a very cool application and have found a number of tools that I am using it for so its worth checking out on its own. There are hundreds of widgets available for it and its increasing every day.If you take VivAlytics for a test drive let us know your experiences here!

Right On Interactive launches new website

Okay, maybe this is a self serving post but it explains why I have been somewhat absent the past week and a half. We have been updating the look and feel of our website as well as adding new information. There is much more to come in the way of content and product offerings in the coming weeks and I look forward to your comments and suggestions as we continue to update it. So stop by, take a look, and let me know your thoughts!

Marketing Tool Review: Crazy Egg

When I first started blogging I came across an analytics tool called Crazy Egg. I saw that it was free and decided to take it on a test drive. It has been almost 2 months now and I have to say that its a pretty neat tool and has some cool features - however because of its simplicity I would not use it as my lone solution for analytics.

Crazy Egg is marketed primarily as a testing tool. This can be misleading for those looking for a real testing solution ala Offermatica or Website Optimizer (Google's free tool). If you are looking for a way to do complex multivariate splits do not turn here - it does not handle content serving.

What Crazy Egg does allow you to do is to set up simple tests within the application where a specified number of visitors are tracked per page. Once that number of visitors is reached the test completes and stats are recorded for the test. The next step is to make a change to the page and run another test - typically with the same visitor count. This is supposed to provide insight as to what is working and what you may wish to change.

So if you want to conduct some simple(and manual) tests this tool will work fine.

Crazy Eggs biggest asset is that it is simple to follow for those who do better understanding visually (I am one of them). Crazy Egg has some unique features... the one that I found to be the most interesting is the heat map. It tracks where in a web page user clicks are being recorded and visually displays the results over the web page itself. This is rather interesting data and could be used to better understand your visitor behavior.

The biggest drawback for me is that you cannot use this tool with a true testing application. If you are using Google Website Optimizer doing concurrent split/multivariate tests then Crazy Egg is not useful. Crazy Egg does its tracking at the page level which gets muddy because it shares split level traffic and inconsistent page elements.

But I still like to use Crazy Egg in addition to other testing and analytics tools because of some of its unique features. And if you are new and interested in web page testing then this tool is a great place to start... it is both easy to implement and simple to understand.

Grade: B

Have your own thoughts or experiences with Crazy Egg? Share them!

Mr. Marketing - Add him to your calendar

Sometimes its the simplest of posts that inspire me to write. This post from Duct Tape Marketing is a great example...

"Many small business owners could benefit from using a marketing calendar as their primary marketing planning tool. The idea is to keep doing something related to marketing, according to plan, month in and month out."

This is simple but extremely important advice - particularly for small businesses who have little to no marketing department. A common mistake made by small businesses is to overcompensate for a lack of marketing strategy by throwing money at something new and seeing if if it sticks. Instead - put that money into a long term approach and make marketing an investment. Start building sound marketing strategies now (no matter how small). You will have a much better chance for success than chasing the next big thing.

It is important to have regularly scheduled meetings with Mr. Marketing - he is an important client that can bring in alot of revenue for your company...add him to your calendar!