Online Marketing for Small Businesses
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Tips for small businesses on how to best use online marketing to grow their biz and build a greater connection with current customers. Created and presented by Amy Black at the to members of the Greater Merrimack Valley CVB at the annual tourism breakfast on June 22, 2010 (Dracut, MA)
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Online Marketing for Small Businesses
- 1. HOW to GROW your business or organization with ONLINE MARKETING Presented by Amy Black - @amyblack Director of Marketing Communications, TimeTrade Merrimack Valley CVB Annual Tourism Breakfast Tuesday, June 22, 2010
- 6. Search Marketing (SEO and PPC)
- 7. Online adsNo longer just MASS communication – ONE to ONE
- 8. Then Web 2.0 – the Social Web
- 9. Now: It’s a CONVERSATION that can grow into more CONVERSATIONS
- 10. What does this mean for small businesses and organizations?
- 11. A great opportunity to grow...
- 13. A 2010 marketing plan
- 14. One thing to ALWAYS keep in MIND
- 15. Your website is… the FACE of your BRAND and the FIRST impression many will have OF your BUSINESS
- 16. What kind of impression are you making? What does your website communicate? Does it match the image you wish to project? FUN! Professional Serious
- 17. Is it easy to navigate? Can visitors quickly and easily find what they are looking for?
- 18. Put yourself in their shoes
- 19. Ask them!
- 20. Do you know what YOU want THEM to DO?
- 21. Hold on to your visitors
- 24. Clear call to action
- 25. Easy to find events
- 27. Optimize your website with content to support
- 28. One main word or phrase for your homepage
- 29. Look for link love
- 30. Use keywords and phrases in H1-H6 (Headlines)
- 31. Make your image names count
- 33. Top pages
- 34. Site overlay
- 35. Sources – where it’s coming from
- 36. Referring sites – who’s linking to you
- 37. Visits from keyword searches
- 39. Why Email Still Matters 1.4 billion email users Projected to increase to 1.9 billion by 2013 57% of adult US Internet users check or send email on a daily basis The State of Retailing Online 2009 survey reported that email was cited most often as a successful tactic
- 40. How to make email marketing work for your biz or org ★ Permission-based High value in emails Get to the point Look awesome (go HTML) Use an email marketing service Measure to know what’s working Learn what your customers are most interested in
- 41. Okay, what about Social Media?
- 43. Opportunity to extend your customer base – through other customers (so easy to share!)
- 44. Best way to listen and gain insight into how your customers and prospects feels about your brand
- 45. Chance to intervene when you need to – crisis management
- 48. Quick and easy way to share what’s going on
- 49. A place to link back to fresh content from social media sites
- 50. Helps you get found if SEO optimized
- 52. Why CARE about 400 MILLION People are active on it They spend over 500 BILLION minutes per month on the site The average user is connected to 60 PAGES, GROUPS & EVENTS More than 25 BILLION pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each month.
- 55. Sharing photos & video(visual
- 57. Awareness of Twitter has exploded from 5% of Americans 12+ in 2008 to 87% in 2010 (Facebook's awareness is 88%) 7% of Americans (17 million persons) actively use Twitter, while 41% maintain a profile page on Facebook. 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks -Edison Research
- 59. Customize the page to match your website
- 60. Look for people to follow using tools liken bytweet.com and Twellow.com
- 61. Follow the people that other businesses and organizations like yours follow
- 62. Promote your twitter account everywhere you can
- 63. Start tweeting (or twittering, whichever you prefer)(More soon on tools to manage your account)
- 66. Great use of verbs and action words
- 68. Monitor so you can jump in to thank them or respond to their concerns
- 70. More Twitter Tools ★
- 72. Videos
- 73. Fun
- 74. Informative
- 76. So much to do, so little time Do what you can – Start small if you need to Where can you make the greatest impact? A little here and there can make a big difference
- 78. Email marketing
- 80. Where you can find me www.AmyBlack.com www.AmyBlackLive.com
Editor's Notes
- No matter what type of marketing you are doing the thing to always keep in mind is what your customers and prospects are asking – What’s In it For Me? It’s not about you? It’s all about them. And the better we can understand that and cater to that in our marketing efforts, the better results we will get. The best world you can ever use in your marketing copy is “You”!
- What are they thinking? What is their motivation for coming to your website?
- They best way to know what people think of your website is to ask them. Pick a few of your customers and ask if they will give you feedback. Ask them specific questions like: What is your overall impression of my website? Do you think it represents my business well? When you go to my website (or one like mine) what are you looking to do? What information is most important to you? Is it easy for you to find what you are looking for? Do you think the information show be somewhere else? Is there anything missing?
- Many times we offer so many choices on our website, but aren’t thinking about the paths that we want visitors to take – part of these is about getting them to what they are looking for – but another piece is what do you want them to do when they are there? Do you want them to by a product, to reach out for you for a consultation, to find out about an event, or simply sign up for an email newsletter. Create “paths” that lead visitors toward these final goals. And create content that supports these goals. Also important – make sure you keep these goals in mind on every page of your website.
- Make sure one of your goals is to make a connection with your visitors This is a great example of how all our your marketing fits together Every homepage should have a “join our email list” and connect with us on FB, Twitter – wherever you are. FRONT and CENTER Maybe they aren’t ready to engage with you in a way that means “business” but they might be soon – don’t miss the chance to connect (Biggest mistake people make)
- Let’s look at a few examples from the region of businesses and organizations who are doing a great job in different areas on their sites. If your site isn’t in this presentation please don’t take offense – I did a quick walk through members and checked out a handful of sites. Firs, there’s the Lowell Spinners – clearly social media is very important to these guys as they have it front and center – no wonder they have some many Facebook fans and Twitter followers!
- Fang Shui is using video on their site – which is an ideal way to quickly engage your visitors. In this case, they’ve got a review from the Phantom Gourmet – excellent way to build credibility.
- The CVB does a great job on all fronts of email marketing – here are a few things that stood out about their website (bullets above).
- It’s all the buzzSome of your are doing it and some are notSome have amazing results, some not so muchMy take: Gotta do it on some level – why you can’t afford not to – the benefitsWhere do you start? Figure out what makes the most sense for your bizWalk through the different options and show the examples
- There are some extremely compelling reason for a business or organization – specifically those in the travel and tourism industry – to get involved in social media.
- Why Facebook? It’s where the people are. if you are going to pick one area to start with social media, pick Facebook – more people are on FB than any other social networking site. And after email marketing, it’s the most effective way to stay connected. It makes it so easy for the people who “like” you to connect with you and each AND when they do everyone I their network sees it – giving a broader audience exposure to your business or organization.
- I’m going to use some local FB pages as examples and talk about the best practices – better to learn from real examples! Let’s start with the DeCordova Museum – these guys are doing a great job with their page. Clearly they’ve promoted it (they have an icon and link on the homepage) – with almost 2,500 followers they have a great reach. They are active posters – every several days they have something new – it’s important to be active, but not too repetitive. It’s okay to communicate about the same things more than once because not everyone is on FB at the same time - many will not see your posts. When you do post about things you’ve covered in the past, look for a new angle – something you didn’t mention before. In the case of events, it’s fine to post a number of reminders leading up to the event – but again, anything you can do to make it interesting for people who have already seen it is great!In this case the museum has also done a great job keeping their events up-to-date. They also upload photos and video – a great way to get attention. People are more likely to pay attention to a post with something visual. They have some much information coming their way – if you can catch their eye with a “shiney object” and quickly get your point across.
- There are so many great examples of Facebook pages in the region – I don’t cover them all here, but you get a sampling.The spinners are active on FB – John will share more details later – they are doing great with almost 3,500 followers. They make sure to let people know what’s going on. They also use Facebook to run some exclusive promotions.Moonstones and Coblestones (same company) have active Facebook pages as well. As does the Colonial Inn, the CVB and the Lowell Folk festival just to name a few. These guys are all doing a great job and are good examples for you to look at as you create and run your own pages.What they are all doing right is making sure people know that they have Facebook pages – inviting them to join and staying active on FB – they know that it can make a difference and therefore are investing time into it.
- Twitter to me is the next in line after FB – the reason it’s number two is there are far fewer people who are active on Twitter. For those who are it’s an excellent way to stay in front of people. If people didn’t follow businesses then it certainly would not be worth your while, but as 51% of users say that they do follow companies, we are in business. The good news about Facebook and Twitter is that it doesn’t require a ton of time to do either – you just need to have a good handle on how to use them and they dedicate a little bit of time each day to do it. There is also they option of getting someone fro outside of your business to work with you and be your social media right hand (Kathleen Pierce is a great example of this!).
- For those who haven’t gotten started yet – here’s some information to get you going.
- Twitter especially makes sense for event driven organizations – people want to know what’s going on and Twitter is a great way to provide updates.
- Twitter is also perfect for retail – specials, new products, contests, promotions and events. The example here is Tutto Benne.Hotels and Inns can get great use out of twitter – I follow Kimpton Hotels a small chain and appreciate knowing when they have specials. I might even plan a trip just because they have something going on.
- One of the biggest mistakes people make when writing is they write too much. Twitter forces everyone to be a better writer by limiting the number of words you can use to 140. You have to saw exactly what you need to, no more. This is why a website is still such an important tool – it’s a place to send followers on Facebook and Twitter for more information. When you write a post for twitter, all the tips of great copywriting apply.
- One of the biggest mistakes people make when writing is they write too much. Twitter forces everyone to be a better writer by limiting the number of words you can use to 140. You have to saw exactly what you need to, no more. This is why a website is still such an important tool – it’s a place to send followers on Facebook and Twitter for more information. When you write a post for twitter, all the tips of great copywriting apply.
- One way of keeping up with Twitter and Facebook is to do it all in one place. There are a number of apps that allowing you to do this but my favorite it TweetDeck. You can even switch back and forth between accounts – for example if you want to use it for two Facebook business accounts and one personal. You can write posts and respond to what others post all within this one application. It also allows you to listen to what people are saying about you. You can create additional columns with search terms like the name of your business and monitor what’s being said. For most of you, sitting in front of your computer all day long isn’t an option. You don’t need to – you can check Tweetdeck several times a day and respond when you do. Another option is a new product by Constant Contact called Nutshell – with this you get updates via email through out the day with any social media activity you need to know about.
- The last type of social media I’m going to cover today is YouTube – not everyone needs a YouTube channel, but it certainly can’t hurt you to have one IF you can come up with interesting and creative content that is worth watching. In many cases, using Facebook and uploading your videos there works great. One reason to have video in YouTube is that Google owns YouTube and searches it – so for each search you do, you will se a few videos come up in the search. As far as creating compelling video goes, I’ll reference Kathleen Pierce again on this one – she is the Flip Camera queen. She always has a camera with her and posts a lot of great video on the site she works with. You want to ask your interviewees questions that help them great right to the point. Video ideally should be under 90 seconds if at all possible. Editing software is available all on basic computers today that is easy to use – but with a flip and some good direction, you can post without editing.