Online promotion is a key marketing method for small businesses. If you’re promoting a new offer, product or service, how can you market it online? One of the key benefits of the Internet is that it creates an even platform – allowing smaller businesses to promote themselves at a relatively low cost. But you still need to understand what is available, and how to best promote yourself using these online tools.
So imagine you have a new offer – promoting 50% of a particular product – what can you do to push this promotion online?
Create special offer page
Explain what the offer is
What are the benefits?
What are exactly are you offering – what can your customers expect to receive?
What is the cost? (free, percentage off, pounds off etc)
How to order?
Include form on the page to register
Then promote this page using various online platforms:
If you are using Google AdWords or any other form of pay per click advertising, create a special campaign with dedicated adverts pointing to your promotion web page.
Create a press release about your offer
Upload it to online newswires
Might be worth paying £45 or so to put it on a paid newswire
Email it to industry journalists and publications (both online and physical)
Promote on all social media sites
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Create a blog post about it
Link to the main landing page
Create an article about it
The benefits of your offer and how it can help your customers
Create an email about it and blast it out to your email marketing list
For previous prospects that maybe didn’t convert in the past, try writing a personalised sales letter to the contact and posting it (old school, but still a good-un!). Explain what the offer is and include a link to the page for people to register for it, and a paper form which they can fax/scan/email back.
Add it to your email signature
Maybe consider buying some banner ads on relevant event marketing websites
When you sell one, try and get a customer testimonial which you can add to the promotional page (and other marketing materials)
See if you can get existing customers to spread the word to their customers/partners etc
So you see, that with a bit of time and effort there really are very effective methods you can use to promote your latest offer.
We’ve previously written a blog post about what Google Alerts are and why you should be using them, but we thought we’d go one step further and show you how to set them up:
If you liked the video, please log into YouTube and rate it and comment – we’d really appreaciate it!
Like always, if you want more information, please get in touch – info@SMEKeting.com. To get email updated from this blog, please register in the box to the right.
Once you’ve created your Twitter account and you’re using it to tweet regular updates, interacting with your followers and generally being a good source of information and conversation…then what? How do you move it on from being a fun and interesting tool, to something that benefits your small business?
It’s easy - measure, measure and measure again! But what do you measure and how, I hear you ask? You need to measure the response you get to each tweet. If you are using Twitter effectively, you will be linking to interesting articles, news reports and to pages on your own website. You should be using a tool that not only shortens those URLs, but also tracks the click through rate; such as bit.ly, zi.ma or cli.gs (among many, bit.ly is SMEketing’s tool of choice). By shortening the URLs you post in your Tweets through one of these services, you can also measure the success of that tweet. These services allow you to track:
The number of clicks
The time/date of clicks
Clicks split by country
Retweets
By tracking and measuring your tweets using one of these services, you can accurately see what subjects and topics are most popular. For example, a recent SMEketing Small Business Blog post titled Five Cost Effective Marketing Strategies for Your Small Business got a huge number of clicks and retweets from Twitter. This information tells me that people are interested in learning how they can market their small business using low cost marketing techniques (which given the state the economy right now, doesn’t surprise me!). I then use this knowledge to ensure my future marketing efforts reflect this demand; I can create new blog posts on a similar thread, expand that blog post into a white paper or in-depth article, put an offer on the SMEketing Email Marketing Tool etc. There are many ways I can use this information to further enhance my own marketing activities.
You can also learn what was not popular. You may have read an interesting piece of industry news that you thought would make a good subject of a future blog post. However, if you posted a tweet linking to that peice of news and it had a very low click through rate, you might want to reconsider writing that blog post.
Many people are using Twitter and now asking – where is the business benefit? Like a lot of new social media applications, it can be difficult to determine the exact ROI. But, by using it as a marketing research tool, it can help you direct your marketing efforts into activites that are most likely to pay off, and ensure you to avoid wasting your time on things that your stakeholders are not interested in.
UPDATE 24.07.09: Twitter today released a new ebook: Twitter 101 For Business. If you are new to Twitter, or just want to learn more about its application for your small business, I would recommend reading it.
You may think that you know enough about your business and the industry you work in, to not have a formal marketing plan or strategy. If you’re lucky enough to not be affected by the recession, and your small business is still performing well, you may take the stance of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ (or from my favourite childhood Disney film Beauty & The Beast ‘If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it’!!).
However, if I may present another (non Disney) chiasmus quote: Fail to plan and you plan to fail. Even if your small business is doing well right now, you never know what’s round the corner. Small business that are successful at marketing always have a marketing plan. Marketing practices are constantly changing and evolving, so it’s best not to plan too far ahead; a 12 month plan should do it. Who knew 12 months ago that Twitter would suddenly explode into a mainstream marketing tool? If you don’t plan and review your marketing activities and continue to only carry out the marketing activities that you’ve always done, you may end up missing out.
You should ensure that your marketing plan is clear and simple – you need to be able to refer back to it easily, and track your progress against your goals and projections.
You can’t miss the doom and gloom of the current economic climate. All businesses, large and small, must carefully spend their marketing budget. Gone are the days of frivolous spending. So I wanted to outline five cost effective ways of spending your small business marketing budget. With online marketing become more and more vital as part of a small business marketing plan, there are many ways which small businesses can promote their business and help drive leads.
1. Blogging: Setting up a blog can be completely free! Yes, we love anything free. But like most freebies, in order for it to be effective you need to plan it well and invest your time into it. Using free blog providers like Wordpress and Google Blogger are great ways of getting involved in the blogging world, without costing you a penny. There are so many different benefits of blogging, one of the biggest benefits is to your websites ranking in the search engines (aka Search Engine Optimisation - SEO): Google loves new and unique content. Blogging is a great way to constantly add new content to your site. Plus your posts will be tagged and full of relevant keyword. Blog well and others in your industry may link to you, increasing the number of valuable inbound links. For more on the benefits of blogging, read this post: Blogging – just for teenagers, or good for your small business?
2. Twitter: Again, another freebie! Twitter is great for promoting what you do and learning about latest industry trends. By joining the conversation and providing useful information, you will soon generate a loyal base of followers. Use Twitter to answer questions relevant to your industry, learn about new goings on, promote your product, events and news (but don’t be pushy). For more information on using Twitter to promote your small business, read these blog posts: Twitter: Small Business Success Stories – Will yours be one of them? and Guide to Getting Your Small Business Started on Twitter
3. Email Marketing: Email marketing can cost as little as 1p per recipient and £5 per mailshot (well, those are the rates for using a self managed SMEketing Email Marketing solution, but we like to think these are pretty competitive!). If you don’t have time to maintain a close working relationship with your customer base, email marketing is a great, cost effective way of keeping them updated with your latest news, products and offers. Email marketing can also be used as a lead generation tool. Send out well targeted mailshots to relevant recipients and you will find visits to your web site go up, and conversion rates increase. For more information on the benefits of email marketing read this blog post: Email Marketing for Small Businesses
4. Google AdWords: These unfortunately are not free (we wish!), but you completely control your budget. If you only have £10 a day to spend, that’s fine! Make sure you get the most from your budget by using relevant keywords, focused adverts with a strong call to action, and a well thought-through landing page. Google AdWords can be a great way of driving relevant traffic to your site, and the results are completely measurable. If something isn’t working, you know straight away. This is why AdWords are one of the most cost effective advertising mediums out there. Add Conversion Tracking to your adverts and you’ll be able to see exactly what ad’s are providing the highest conversion rate once visitors are on your site. Once you know that, you can direct your budget to keywords and adverts that are giving you the highest Return on Investment (ROI).
5. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO):You know I said Google AdWords weren’t free, well there is a way that you can get Google to promote your site FOR FREE! How? Improve your website’s ranking for relevant keywords, and Google will display your site in their search results – free of charge! But again, this is something that will take an investment in your time. Make sure your website is well designed – good navigation, lots of keyword rich content, no broken links, good use of anchor text in your links, etc… Once that is done, you need to boost the number of high quality inbound links. Go to Yahoo and type “linkdomain:yourcompany.com -site:yourcompany.com” to see the number of your inbound links. Do the same for your competitors and see how you compare. Next create a plan to increase the number of incoming links – sign up to relevant directories, promote your blog, create great content on your site that people want to link to. Links should be from high quality sites – link farms are NOT GOOD! The page giving you a link should have few other outgoing links on the same page, and the anchor text should be optimised to promote what you do, not necessarily your business name. An example of a good link to SMEketing would be: “SMEketing is a fantastic source for small business marketing advice and services.” The anchor text here tells Google that the link (www.SMEketing.com) is relevant to “small business marketing”. If the anchor text fell on the business name, it would just tell Google that “SMEketing” is relevant to www.SMEketing.com – which to be fair, it probably had figured out anyway!
Read here for more SEO tips: Top 10 SEO Mistakes Your Small Business Should Avoid
If you want to learn more about any of the above marketing strategies, please get in touch. At SMEketing we’re experienced in all these marketing mediums and have seen first hand the benefits when small businesses employ such tactics.
I’ve been very busy this week – visiting clients and prospects throught the South of England. I’ve been to Guildford, Portsmouth, Southampton and Eastleigh! So I’ve not had a chance to write a proper blog post. The aim of this blog is to provide educational content, to help small businesses understand the various marketing strategies they can use to help make their small business a success.
During my visits to clients and prospects this week, the importance of educating oneself has being hugely reinforced. Unfortunately, more than one person I’ve spoken to this week has told me about an unfortunate experience when outsourcing a marketing function to an marketing agency or consultant (not SMEketing though!!!). This is why it’s so important to educate yourself in the basics of what you want to outsource. If you want to employ a marketing agency or a marketing consultant to manage your search engine optimisation (SEO), Google Adword (PPC), or design a website, you must educate yourself on the foundation prinicples of these marketing activities. Only then are you in a position where you can question the marketing agency; for example, if you don’t know what is involved in creating and managing a small business website, how do you know if you’re being spun a yarn?
Another example is SEO; just type “SEO basics” into Google and millions of entries come up. Even 30 minutes spent browsing these articles is time well spent. That way, when you talk to your marketing agency, you will understand the jargon (although a good agency will not try to confuse you by using terms and jargon that you won’t understand). You’ll also know if the agency or marketing consultant is implementing unethical tactics – something which is vitally important, especially when dealing with SEO.
So this is the lesson for the week – educate, educate, educate. I’m not suggesting you go out and buy loads of books on various marketing strategies or spend hours crawling the internet for information. But by arming yourself with a basic level of knowledge, when you’re talking to an ‘expert’, you’ll be in a better position to decide if they are really an ‘expert’ at all. Outsourcing marketing activies can can be a vital part of your small business strategy, but it can become very expensive if you’re dealing with an agency or consultant who is willing to take your money and run because you don’t know better!
Okay small business owners, I have some questions for you here:
How many of you reading this, know what your logo is? (I’m really hoping you’re nodding along, safe in the knowledge that you know what your logo is! I’ll be scared if you don’t, unless you’re just starting a new business and haven’t had a logo created yet…in which case, get in touch, we’d love to help!)
Great, number 2, how many of you know the difference between your logo and your corporate identity? (From our experience, approximately 60-70% of people reading will know)
And finally, how many of you understand the difference between your corporate identity and your brand? (this is the biggy – and I’m assuming that some of you might not be 100% sure of the answer here…)
It is really is important for your small business, that you understand not only the differences between these key elements, but also how they work together to form the overall impression of who your company (or personal brand) is… So here’s a quick and easy guide to the differences and how they all work together:
Logo: It is rare that a company, even the smallest of small businesses, doesn’t have a logo, even if it’s a simple word, mark or symbol that someone internally has created to serve as your identifier. A logo can be made up of a different parts, which may or may not always be used together; the word mark, a logo symbol, a tagline.
Corporate Identity: These are the elements of your small business’s graphic/identity/visual language, and are usually, but not always, devised from the elements that make up your logo. If you have worked with an marketing agency (such as SMEketing) to develop your corporate identity, you must ensure that they provide you with a manual, commonly known as the Brand Guidelines (also called a brand manual) as part of the package. This will guide you, your team and suppliers, as to how to correctly utilise your corporate identity. It safeguards your investment in your brand and prevents it from being diluted.
Your corporate identity is made up of symbols, textures, colours, images, photography style and fonts. If you’d like to see an example of some brand guidelines get in touch with us and we can send you some examples of ones we’ve created for past clients.
And all of these elements come together visually in your marketing material (business cards, stationery, website, brochures, forms, email marketing, signage, advertisements, vehicles, etc) to express your corporate identity. A strong corporate identity is one that maintains a consistent use of the elements to achieve quick recognition by a potential client when they come in contact with a marketing piece.
Brand: A lot of people will tell you that your brand IS your corporate identity, however it is much much more than that. A Brand is the sum of ALL parts that make up a company. It includes your logo, your corporate identity, and any and all of the follow elements:
your company name
your company culture
what customers have come to expect from an interaction experience with your company
team uniforms
company policies
tone of how your written content is delivered
corporate identity
logo
tagline
word of mouth advertising (how your current clients & suppliers talk about you when they refer you)
partner relationships
sponsorships
the space you work in
and many more..
To summarise, your brand is what people come to expect from your company, whether it be from seeing an advert in a magazine, to ordering a product online, to interacting with a team member over the phone or in person, and so on. And with any great brand these elements are always consistent and congruent.
Developing and maintaining a corporate brand is essential in modern business. SMEketing can work with you and your small business to develop your brand and carry it through all your marketing efforts.
Our small business marketing agency is based in Hampshire and service all of Hampshire, as well as Wiltshire, Dorset and Surrey, Sussex and Berkshire (and of course the Isle of Wight – in fact it’s so lovely over there we’d welcome the excuse to visit!).
Online promotion is a key marketing method for small businesses. If you’re promoting a new offer, product or service, how can you market it online? One of the key benefits of the Internet is that it creates an even platform – allowing smaller businesses to promote themselves at a relatively low cost. But you still need to understand what is available, and how to best promote yourself using these online tools.
Twitter has hit the mainstream, it’s official. It started 2009 with 6 million users, and has now grown to over 16 million users today.
You may think that you know enough about your business and the industry you work in, to not have a formal 
You can’t miss the doom and gloom of the current economic climate. All businesses, large and small, must carefully spend their marketing budget. Gone are the days of frivolous spending. So I wanted to outline five cost effective ways of spending your small business marketing budget. With online marketing become more and more vital as part of a small business marketing plan, there are many ways which small businesses can promote their business and help drive leads.
I’ve been very busy this week – visiting clients and prospects throught the South of England. I’ve been to Guildford, Portsmouth, Southampton and Eastleigh! So I’ve not had a chance to write a proper blog post. The aim of this blog is to provide educational content, to help small businesses understand the various marketing strategies they can use to help make their small business a success.
How many of you reading this, know what your logo is? (I’m really hoping you’re nodding along, safe in the knowledge that you know what your logo is! I’ll be scared if you don’t, unless you’re just starting a new business and haven’t had a logo created yet…in which case, 
