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Posts Tagged ‘small business’

Taking Advantage of Location Based Marketing

February 18, 2012 by Blair Stover

Image via Wikipedia

Getting started with location-based marketing is not as difficult as one might think. Your business can take advantage of this type of marketing by utilizing global-positioning technology in order to send specific geographic business marketing to consumers through their mobile devices. This is a huge prospect for businesses of any size. Additionally, this opportunity continues to grow.

Location-based marketing can be implemented through use of apps. However, turning the focus to text messaging, Recent research indicates that the overwhelming majority of text messages are opened and read in three minutes or less. Thus, making it possible to reach many potential clients in a short amount of time.

While experimenting with your business, give customers the chance to opt in. Some people will not want to disclose their personal information. Give the customer a clear understanding of what opting in will mean for them. Be certain it is clearly stated how you will use the personal information they have shared with you. This will put to rest any concerns the may have over privacy issues.

Now that you have gained the trust of your customers, keep it. Do not sell off their personal information to third-party companies. Add more value to your service by keeping it from being advertising-based. In turn, clients will be more agreeable to sharing their personal information with you.

Finally, allow opting out to be easy. Should a customer decide they no longer want to be in your program, it should not be forced upon them. Even through the use of technology, you should aim to keep your customers happy in order to earn their loyalty.

Category Marketing, Social Media | Tags: location based marketing,marketing,small business,Social Media | No Comments
Improving Customer Communication on Your Website

January 28, 2012 by Blair Stover

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The reason you have a website is to gain new customers, right? You might have spent a lot of money on having your website designed and built and you have incorporated SEO and undertaken a campaign to promote the site, but all this is for naught if you don’t make it easy for potential clients to reach you. While web design is crucial – you want good layout, easy to read fonts, etc. — the ability to communicate is as important as is the design.

You don’t need to have a website or business that specializes in ecommerce only. The purpose of your website is to get visitors to convert to clients and buy your goods or services. Many websites offer only one way conversation – look around, see what we have, and buy. You want to have a website that initiates conversation and contact.

Keep in mind that most people do not want to and will not give their names, addresses and phone numbers simply for the privilege of contacting you through your site. Make it easy and give them a reason to leave a contact name and email address. Offer a free downloadable report if they do leave that information.

Make it easy by making your website user-friendly. It might be interesting – to you – to use a tab that says something other than “Contact Us” but this phrase works and customers look for it. Have your company’s contact information easy to find – name, address, phone number and email contact.

Offer an option for instant chat, if possible. Make your contact forms easy to fill out, easy to find, and don’t require your visitors to pre-qualify before they are allowed to contact you. Make a few changes to your existing website and see if your conversion rate soars.

Category Social Media | Tags: business,conversion rate,small business,web design,website | No Comments
5 Great Ways to Bring Social Media to Your Events

December 28, 2011 by Blair Stover

Any company, or individual for that matter, can leverage social media tools to bring more attendees to an event. For at least the last decade, social media tools of all kinds have been employed by small businesses to create buzz, ramp up

Image by the tartanpodcast via Flickr

attendance, and spread the word about company promotions and happenings. While there are countless mini-strategies for using social media, here are five common ways that the process can get you into the mix.

There is no reason why you have to wait until the last minute to create excitement about your event. Allow for pre-registration with web utilities like Eventbrite. A tiny bit of planning will pay big dividends in terms of attendance.

Let the event shape itself by asking registrants what they want to see. Many entertainment companies do this in order to build a show around one headliner. If potential audience members want juggling or dance shows, you can always sub-contract those functions and design an event around what your public desires. Think about using PollDaddy or TwtPoll for taking simple surveys.

One of the trendiest, high tech ways to put on a fantastic presentation is with QR codes. You can create a QR code that smartphone users can scan. If your presentation is on Slideshare, phone users will be able to watch the formal presentation on their screens while you are conducting the outdoor event with no need for audio or visual materials onstage.

Build an image inventory from the event by encouraging attendees to post their photos on Flickr. Consider offering some small reward or freebie to those who allow their personal pictures to be used.

If you are short of seating or formal space for your event, think about allowing virtual attendance. Many large and small events sell virtual tickets to those who cannot attend the live portion of the presentation. There does not need to be a fee, but if you want to charge a nominal amount, try to keep the ticket price very low so as to boost attendance. At least initially, it is all about making connections, not making money on the events themselves.

Category Marketing, Social Media | Tags: digital marketing,small business,Social Media | No Comments
Twitter Tips for Better Marketing

November 15, 2011 by Blair Stover

If you are looking to market like the pros, take these tips when marketing on Twitter. First, improve your tweets. In your own voice, share valuable content with a style which goes along with your brand. Also, provide key words in your tweets. Use words that describe your industry and business best. Include many of these words when creating your 140 word posts.

Image via CrunchBase

Share useful content by providing links. By doing so, you are effectively retaining and growing followers. This is a stronger tactic than actually engaging in a conversation with them. This is due to the fact that growing a fan base requires you to share more links than replies.

Take advantage of customer search orders to learn what consumers want. Once you know what your clients want, you can

work on providing it. Then, engage them in a conversation to about the problem your business can solve.

The most crucial part of a Twitter marketing strategy is to tweet with the right people after connecting with them. Do not just follow anyone. Seek out relevant people who are willing to follow you. Having thousands of followers does you no good if none of them are interested in your content. Local businesses can even do this by finding potential followers who live in your region and have shown interest in your industry.

Use icebreakers to make connections with the strangers who will follow you. Try to find a connection with them. Try sending them an @messaging and detail something that was insightful in their last blog post.

Category Marketing, Social Media | Tags: marketing,marketing tips,small business,Social Media,twitter | No Comments

Small Business and the New Facebook

October 11, 2011 by Blair Stover

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

You may not be surprised to learn that Facebook has changed again. These new changes affect brands and companies that utilize Facebook for marketing more than ever now. So what does this mean for small businesses?

The first change involves privacy settings for sharing. Users now have more control over who is able to see the content they post on their wall, or home page. Facebook defaulted “Public” as a setting rather than “Everyone”. “Public” means that one’s updates, photos and additional user information can be viewed by anyone in the public. This is helpful as this will most likely result in less public-facing citations.

If you were excited about Facebook Deals, you should know it is over. Facebook has discontinued the project. However, the company stated that it is looking into the best way to be of service to local businesses, as it learned much from this project. Another feature which will soon be phased out is location tagging. This is the feature Facebook members use with their cell phone to “check in” when at locations.

Rather than targeting ads by precise interests and keywords, Facebook now allows those who advertise on their media network to target ads based on topic. This will simplify the list of keywords companies were managing. Now, a business can target the interests of their clientele.

Restrictions on types of advertising have been eased by Facebook. So long as ads are properly targeted, Facebook now allows legal gambling operations to be promoted. This includes offline casinos. Furthermore, ads for herbal and dietary supplements are now allowable, as long as they do not include banned ingredients such as, ephedra, anabolic steroids or human growth hormones.

Category Marketing, Social Media | Tags: business,facebook,internet marketing,marketing,small business,Social Media,social networking | No Comments

How Smartphones Affect Employees

September 16, 2011 by Blair Stover

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It has been mentioned before, in the day and age of technology, that we are more accessible than the human being has ever been before. Being unable to reach someone in your time of need is no longer an occurence with everyone owning a portable phone.

An amazing one-third of adults in America own a smartphone. Of these smartphone owners, email or the Internet is used by 87%, 68% of owners go online in a common day, and 25% favor their phone for gaining access to the Internet. How many of these phones are utilized for work purposes each week? This is the question of business owners.

Employees who own smartphones are able to increase productivity. This is due to the ease of accessing work on the go and squeezing in a few things here and there between family life. Employees can check in at work before they arrive to prioritize before they even arrive in the office. Additionally, employees are, more than ever, expected to be reachable at most anytime.

However, this is a two-sided sword. Because the smartphone offers so much, a decrease in productivity is also a consideration employers must make. It is easy for employees to become distracted with personal texting, social networks and leisure reading. These issues can even become problematic during a work-related meeting in the office.

All in all, people become one with their smartphone, it seems. It has been reported that 61% of people have their phone in their bedrooms at night and 41% of those people keep it in arm’s reach while sleeping. Employers even find that they receive quicker responses to work related emails and off hour working with employees who own a smartphone.

Each case is different, however, and employers must ultimately determine if these phones are causing stress or alleviating stress in their employees. So what have you found – does your smartphone help you or hinder you at work?

Category Social Media | Tags: employees,management,small business,smartphones,Social Media,technology | No Comments

Maximising Your YouTube Marketing

August 17, 2011 by Blair Stover

Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

If you are not getting desired results with your YouTubemarketing, take action. According to Nielson, both mobile and Internet viewing have increased 20 to 35 percent over last year while traditional television viewing increased only fractionally over last year. This alone is an important reason to focus on your YouTube marketing. Try the following tips to maximize this marketing.Be aware that each minute, thirty-five hours of new video are uploaded into YouTube. This offers a huge amount of competition. This is exactly why you want to make the most of your YouTube marketing efforts. Firstly, create compelling videos. Your videos should address the needs of your intended audience. Consider what will be compelling, valuable and helpful to your prospective customers. Have your videos focus on slide shows, expert interviews, frequently asked questions, how-to’s, etc.

Next, make your videos easy to find from within YouTube and outside of YouTube. Remember that Google owns YouTube. Videos frequently appear as first page results on search engines. You can essentially skip over your competition to the top of the results of a search page in this way. To make your video findable focus on the title, adding a colon after the initial key words, make your description as keyword-rich and descriptive as possible and tag all and any related keywords in the tags field.

Create a branded experience. You can do this on YouTube without becoming a partner or paying out for a brand channel. By turning your channel into a destination, your YouTube channel can become a second home. Choose background colors that coincide with your branding. Make your layout in “Player View” and set your featured video to autoplay. Add a playlist of the videos that represent your products and services.

Category Uncategorized | Tags: branding,business,business tips,entreprenuers,marketing,marketing strategies,small business,Social Media,video,youtube | No Comments

Twitter Tips for Small Businesses

May 24, 2011 by Blair Stover

Every year Merriam-Webster issues a list of new words they are adding to the English dictionary. One of the words they included on that list for 2010 was the word tweet. Despite the reality that many small business owners want to hide under a rock when it comes to technology, its clear that Twitter is here to stay for awhile. That reality has proven that small business simply cannot afford to be without a Twitter account. By being on Twitter, you are where your consumers are, which helps to increase name recognition within a business and helps open a dialog with you and your customer.

However what many small businesses have found is that Twitter can be confusing, and having one done wrong could be catastrophic to a company’s future. So to save you a headache, we’ve created the top five tips any small business can – and should – take to reap the benefits of the digital age.

1. Get a Twitter Yourself

The first, and probably, most important thing is to have a personal Twitter account where you can build relationships, get followers, and learn how to use the program, all before you put your small business – and possibly your very livelihood – on the cutting block. Find not only friends you know personally, but those who might be interested in you and eventually your small business.

2. Set Up Account, Get Followers (Employees Are A Great Start)

Once your account is set up, the next task, and probably the most important, is building a community who reads your tweets. This means you need to get followers. Those following you as a person can only go so far, so encourage your employees to follow your as well, and to re-tweet your postings so their friends can join too. It’s all about networking here, and building that network cannot be left on your shoulder alone. (Bonus tip: Eye your competitors followers and invite those who have expressed they aren’t satisfied as consumers to also follow you).

3. Be Complete

Not filling out a complete profile is just creepy. You’re a business and in order for people to want to follow you, you need their trust, so you must completely fill out profile. This includes a profile picture!

4. Add the Twitter Account
No point in having an account to get more people interested in your small business if you aren’t going to promote it with those who are already interested. This means add the twitter account to business cards and websites.

5. Use It

Having an account that isn’t updated at least 3-5 times a week, if not everyday, is a waste. Be sure to update often enough to keep your name and logo easily out there. But not too often. Find a balance, and use it wisely – this should come naturally. (Another bonus tip: Don’t be boring while updating, be human. Technology has already decreased face-to-face human interaction, your consumers need to know you’ve got a heart.)

Category Social Media | Tags: small business,Social Media,twitter,twitter tips | No Comments