Tag: lead generation
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.
If you need assistance in creating a marketing plan for your small business, get in touch with SMEketing. We can help put together strategies for business with budgets large and small!
July 9, 2009
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.
July 1, 2009
Email marketing is one of the most cost effective tools out there for small businesses.
Why use Email Marketing?
Well, it works. Actually, works is an understatement. Based on research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing is predicted to return an incredible £25 for every pound spent in 2007. To put this in perspective, that’s more than double the average return for other forms of online marketing and more than 6 times the return from print catalogs.
Why does email marketing work?
- It’s cost effective – While the cost of actually designing your email creative can be comparable to direct mail, the big savings start when you consider there are no printing costs and you can get your message delivered for around 2p per recipient.
- It’s immediate – Email generates an immediate response, instead of waiting for a subscriber to visit your site you can get your message to them when it counts. The majority of your recipients will see your message in the first 24-48 hours.
- It’s relevant – Email makes it easy to segment your subscribers using a variety of criteria like demographics and past campaign behaviour (such as clicking a certain link). This way you can ensure your message goes to the individuals most likely to be interested in your offer.
- It’s completely measureable – More than any other form of marketing, email can provide actionable data on the results it generates. Keep track of who opened your email and when, what topics they were interested in, who forwarded it on to a friend, how many sales were generated and much more.
With the SMEketing Email Marketing Tool, we make the process of email marketing very simple while giving you the most advanced features available from any email marketing system.
The SMEketing Email Marketing tool has these features and benefits:
- Personalization: Make it personal by inserting your subscribers name or the last product they purchased.
- Forward to a friend: Let your recipients spread the word virally and track the results.
- Only pay when you send: Simple pricing that means you only pay when you send, no monthly or hidden fees.
- Send at any time: Full control over when your recipients will receive your campaigns.
- Free campaign archive: Add a line of code to your website for a full archive that automatically updates.
- Powerful reports: Track the opens, clicks, forwards, unsubscribes, bounces and more.
- No ugly logos or links: We never insert our own logo or links.
- Top notch deliverability: Authentication, relationships with ISP’s and more ensure your emails are delivered.
Get in touch if you want your business to start reaping the benefits of high quality email marketing campaigns!
June 26, 2009
Small business networking is hugely important for all small businesses. 
Most people recognise that in for small business success, it’s not just about what you know – it’s who you know. One of the best ways of generating new business is through networking. For small businesses the return on your investment (ROI) can be huge. However, it is important that you know how to make the most of networking opportunities.
By having a commitment to constantly improving your network of contacts you can expect benefits such as gaining access to an informal ‘board’ of advisers offering years of business experience, developing valuable business relationships, exchanging your management skills and ideas with peers and picking up valuable hints and tips on avoiding business roadblocks and common mistakes.
If you’ve just received an invitation to attend an event where there will be a lot of networking going on, here are some useful tips that can help you get much greater and longer lasting business value from it.
Have a genuine liking for people
Good networkers are normally people who like reaching out to other people. It is important to have an interest in others and be willing to learn about their business, their industry and the challenges they face.
Get to know the organisers
Every networking event has been organised by somebody who knows the attendees and their backgrounds. Find out who it is and speak to them before the event. They can identify the movers and shakers in the crowd and help you meet them.
Get into groups that make up your target market
The groups you choose to be in (keeping in mind that most business owners or managers can’t afford the time to be in more than two or three groups) need to be lively, vibrant and relevant to you.
Contribute to these groups in practical ways
If you are in a group solely for what you can get out of it, it will become obvious and unappealing to other members. You need to contribute in some way, show that you can get things done efficiently and become an active member of the group.
Go out of your way to help
When you are talking with individuals, and the occasion arises, offer to help. On a particular occasion, the conversation may turn to problems with marketing services; if you happen to know a local marketing agency (hmm…SMEketing?!) who provides outstanding service, offer to provide their contact details. It’s a small act on your part, but it can mean much to both the marketing agency you are referring (SMEketing we hope!) and to whom you are making the referral to.
Look for groups within groups
Most networking events have their groups, people who know each other and meet regularly at these gatherings. It may seem hard to break into one of these groups but think of the advantages – meet one and you’ve met them all! If you know that someone is a member of one of these groups you can have an informal chat and ask them to provide an introduction to the other members.
Have something to say
Be ready with something to say when you’re introduced to someone new. They’ll want to know a bit about your business and how it is performing. Prepare a brief elevator pitch about 30 seconds long, which presents your details and is both informative and interesting. Rehearse it so it sounds natural when you deliver it.
Show interest in others
If you’re talking with a potential customer, try and keep the conversation on them and gather information you can use after the event. Show interest in them and offer to send them some information about your business. Even if they’re not immediately interested they’ll usually accept out of politeness.
Don’t forget your business cards!
One of the most important networking tools is the business card. You literally cannot afford to be without one at these events, so come prepared with a quantity of well designed cards.
Circulate!
Don’t monopolise anyone’s time. After all, they didn’t attend just to meet you. Get to know them and then move on.
Look for the loners
Not everyone is gregarious and outgoing and there will always be people at networking events who look lost. It is a good chance for you to introduce yourself and see if they might want to have a conversation. You can be doubly supportive and introduce them to others you know in the room. Be enthusiastic and you’ll be seen as someone who gets things done.
The follow-up (this is probably the most important parts of networking)
You meet a lot of people at networking events and it is sometimes hard a week later to remember exactly what was said to any particular person. Collect business cards from everyone you meet and if you’ve made a commitment to do something after the event, make a note on that business card as soon as your conversation is over. Never rely on memory alone, and be sure to follow up within a couple of days before the lead gets stale or you’ve been forgotten.
When you meet someone whom you want to develop a relationship with for the first time, follow up soon afterwards. Meet for a coffee or forward a relevant newspaper article that may interest them. Similarly, if you offer to provide information, be sure to follow up. Being reliable and becoming known as reliable is an essential ingredient when developing a network.
If you want to start networking, but aren’t sure where to start, get in touch. We can help put together a list of local events for you as well as an action plan to ensure networking success!
May 1, 2009
Okay, so I hope I’ve managed to convince you of the marketing benefits of getting your small business on Twitter. Now, as promised here is SMEketing’s guide to getting started. It’s extremely simple; however it does come with a warning though – Twitter can be seriously addictive!
Create an account and set up your profile:
The key things here are:
- Your username: which will show as twitter.com/username
- Your bio: to summarise what you do so people know whether or not they will be interested in following you. Do not leave this blank! I rarely follow anyone who doesn’t have a bio
- Your picture: as a rule, if you’re on Twitter as a small business use your corporate logo (this may have to be modified to fit in the small box Twitter provide. If you cannot do this yourself, then get in touch and for a very small fee SMEketing can do this for you. Unless you’re an existing customer, then we’ll provide this service free of charge until the end of June 2009 – get in touch with your SMEketer to receive this freebie). If you do use a logo as your picture, make sure you put your actual name on your profile. For example, our Twitter name is SMEketing, but under our profile the name listed is Victoria Walmsley (me) as I am the one who manages SMEketing’s Twitter account. Twitter, like all social media marketing, is about being transparent. People want to know exactly who they are dealing with
- Your background: this is a good article on branding yourself with a Twitter background
Start following people with similar interests/industries/geographical area are you:
This is important – as a general (ish) rule, when you follow someone, there’s a good chance they’ll follow you back. So you need to follow people who may be interested in your services. Use Twellow and JustTweetIt to find people to follow. You should also look for existing customers and suppliers. Basically anyone who you’d like to network with. This is where personal bio’s come in handy – they’ll help you decide quickly if that person/business is of interest to you. It’s no point following loads of people in New York City if your small business has a customer catchment area in Southampton, Hampshire UK.
Start Tweeting!
Now that you are following people you will be able to see their tweets and so you can now get involved with the conversations. If you see someone tweeting a question, or talking about a subject that you’re a specialist in – get stuck in! Remember though, Twitter is not a direct sales tool – people will quickly remove you from their follow lists if you try the hard sale. Twitter is about conversation and networking. Giving out free advice, tips and relevant links/info to your network will soon help boost your Twitter profile, and in turn, your small business brand.
Make sure you don’t spam tweet. There is nothing worse than logging into your Twitter account, only to find a dozen tweets, all from the same person, all following a similar thread. Tweets such as “Fully manages PPC solutions from SMEketing: http:www.tinyurl.oom/123″ , followed by “Rebranding? Logo design for small businesses: http:www.tinyurl.com/124″ = those kind of tweets, listed in quick succession will irritate people very quickly and you will soon find the number of followers you have dropping (fyi – due to the limited character content, when posting URLs, go to http://bit.ly/ first to shorten it).
You will soon find that you are interacting with a select group of people more than others. This is great – Twitter is about building relationships. So your next move is to take it to the next level – ask for their MSN details/email address/phone number etc, and see if you can arrange to meet up. Anyone who can provide you with new business, or new business referrals are worth their weight in Twitter gold!
Okay, so I don’t want this blog post to get too long – Twitter is a huge topic and I could bang on about it all day.
My last and final Twitter tips are the tools you can use to manage your account. I won’t go into too much depth here – the best thing is to just get stuck in and use them. If you do want more advice as to how to manage your Twitter account to receive maximum return on your (time) investment, get in touch with SMEketing and we’ll happy talk you through it.
- TweetDeck: Use this to give you an overview of what’s happening on Twitter – view all the updates, replies, direct messages, and set up specific keyword related searches to see who’s talking about your interests
- Hashtags: Hashtags (#) enable you to track and follow conversations on Twitter. If SMEketing were to run an event called ‘SMEketer Southampton’ we’d maybe use #SMESo’ton as a hashtag at the end of each tweet that was related to that event.
- MrTweet: Another tool to help you find relevant people to follow
- Twitter Search: If you’re not searching for your keywords via TweetDeck, use Twitter Search
There are hundreds of Twitter tools out there – for more information on these and others, just type ‘Twitter Tools’ into Google and you’ll find 75,500,000 results to look through!!
And finally, now that you’re up and running on Twitter – dont’ forget to follow us at @SMEketing: twitter/SMEketing. Tweet you later!
April 23, 2009
Heard of a little thing called Twitter? I hope so! At SMEketing in Hampshire, not a day goes past where we don’t read some kind of article on it. They’re not always positive articles – like most success stories, there are people who love it, and people who loathe it. But at the end of the day you can no longer ignore it. Twitter is here to stay, and it can help your small business.
How? Well, many of the articles I read surround success stories of Twitter – how it has directly helped businesses gain more customers. And you know what? They’re always small businesses – these are the people who are using Twitter to maximise their product/brand awareness and as a result are generating new businesses and boosting the spend of existing customers.
Here’s a couple of Twitter success stories:
Hubspot, a fantastic source for online marketing, recently wrote about the Kogi Korean BBQ taco truck in LA. They’ve been using social media, and in particular Twitter, with astonishing affect. They identified that their young, techno-savvy customers were using Twitter, so they got involved too. They now have a community of over 14,000 people. They used Twitter to broadcast the locations of their trucks, solicited new names for their trucks and are also designing new company t-shirts via their blog and Twitter. As a result, they now have constant queues of people, lining up to get their hands on one of their tacos. Considering the current state of the economy, that’s a pretty nice position to be in!
Another, well documented Twitter success story is that of CoffeeGroundz, a coffee shop that has credited Twitter with almost doubling their clientele! CoffeeGroundz owner, J.R.Cohen registered with Twitter and started following members of his local Twitterati (definition: the tweet elite, whose feeds attract thousands of followers and whose 140-character spews capture the attention of the rapt who doggedly monitor them) – he soon build up over 1000 followers. One day one of his followers called Sean, sent a direct tweet to Cohen, saying that “I want to pre order a bkfast wrap so I can zip thru drive thru to get back for gas man. C’est possible?”. Cohen replied straight away saying ‘Wi. What do you want on it?”. Ten minutes later Sean had been through the drive-thru and had picked up his breakfast wrap. This simple exchange generated a lot of buzz on Twitter, and was hailed as the first time a to-go order had ever been placed via the medium. Grasping the opportunity with both hands Cohen started taking to-go orders via direct messages from any of his Twitter followers.
CoffeeGroundz has also expanded on their Twitter success by hosting a Tweet-Up – an event where local Twitterers meet up to chat, network and generally get to know people better. Not only did this generate great PR for CoffeeGroundz, but they also kept the 100+ Twitterers well fed and watered – lining their pockets even further!
There are many examples of how small businesses are using Twitter for their advantage. It can be as simple as confirming an appointment, offering some advice, or just commenting on other people’s conversations. The point is that you can’t gain from the benefits if you’re not there. Twitter is perfect for small businesses – it doesn’t cost a penny, and it allows you to reinforce one of your key USPs – your individual character and personal touch to business.
What else can you use Twitter for?
- Understand your customers - by using Twitter polls, you can gain insight on your followers that can be fed back into business
- Form valuable business relationships - it’s not just your customers who are using Twitter. It’s likely that journalists and body representatives are using it too, so use if to build relationships with these key people
- Events and reporting - if you are hosting an event, create buzz about it by broadcasting details via Twitter
- Offer exclusive offers and promotions - offer discounts to Twitterers only
- Reputation management - use Twitter to make followers aware of your service levels, answer customer questions and engage i conversations about your offerings
If you’re still not sure if Twitter is right for your small business, come and talk to us at SMEketing. Based in Southampton, Hampshire, we can help you plan your Social Media Marketing campaigns to ensure you receive best possible results from your investment. Get in touch, even if it’s just for a quick bit of advice! Of course, you can always reach a SMEketer on Twitter – follow us at http://twitter.com/SMEketing
If you’re already using Twitter to great success then let us know. It’s always good to hear from small businesses that are doing well – especially in the current economic climate. Leave a comment at the bottom of the post…
For information and advice on setting up a Twitter account – stay tuned. This will be the subject of the next SMEketing blog post.
April 14, 2009
I was driving back to Southampton on the M3 the other day when I heard an interesting fact on the radio; did you know that 80% of research before purchase is done online. 88.14% of those searches are done using Google.
So if you’re running a small business, your website must be found on Google to have a chance of connecting these targeted, high quality visitors to your website.
There are two ways to get visitors from Google.
These two methods come under the term “Search Engine Marketing” or “Search Marketing.” Google Adwords is a way of sending high quality visitors to your website immediately, by paying for it. SEO will provide a stream of free, high quality visitors to your website but can take up to a while for the best results to come through.
Both types of search marketing can be used to ensure your website reaches the visitors that you want to connect with.
What is Google Adwords? Google Adwords allows you to place small text based advertisements of your website on Google. Here’s how it works: You create text ads and choose keywords you think your customers would use to find you. Those text ads are displayed when someone types in one of your keywords. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad’s link and visits your website.
What is SEO? SEO is a way of ensuring your website is accessible to Google and has the best chance to rank higher than other websites that offer similar products/services. The theory behind SEO is simple: Ensure your website follows the Google webmaster guidelines to make it accessible. Create a website that is the more relevant to what you are offering then your competitors. Think about the keywords your customers would use to find you and use those words in relevant places throughout your website. Make it a high quality website so that other websites will link to you. I recommend that if you have invested in SEO (and I always advise that you do) you should also run a Google Adwords campaign until your SEO results appear.
Ensuring that your website ranks high in the Google results is vital to receiving high quality and quantity leads. You need to make sure your small business website is working as hard for you, as you are for your small business.
Managing a SEO and PPC campaign takes time, patience and a thorough understanding of the process. If you want to take advantage of the benefits of these solutions, but just don’t have the time or skills, contact us at SMEketing. We have experience in running campaigns for a variety of organisation, all who are now reaping the rewards!
April 3, 2009
