Like fancy football plays, fancy marketing is exciting when it works!  That Hail Mary play might save the game, but it probably wouldn’t be necessary if you had strong blocking and tackling.  Games and business are primarily won by having sound fundamental strategy, beautifully executed.

Thanks to West Point Public Affairs for the CC photo.

In an effort to stay up with trends in online marketing, sometimes basic website fundamentals are neglected.  You might be popular on Twitter, but without a website designed to attract and capture leads, and boost your position in the search engines, it’s unlikely that your online marketing efforts are going to be successful at driving business.  Whether you meet people on Twitter or at an industry event, people are going to check out your website.

5 Fundamentals of Online Marketing:

1. Get to the top.  Take advantage of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies so you are the first to show up when searched.
2. First impressions are important. Your website should accurately reflect your business at first glance.  It should also be easy to navigate so that a first-timer can easily figure out what you are offering and why he or she wants it.
3. You have to give a little to get a little. To keep your audience coming back, you must continuously supply your audience with something of value to them. If you come across too pushy, your audience may get the idea that you don’t have their best interest at heart.
4. Engage your audience.  Providing information doesn’t need to be a boring wall of text. Make sure to add pictures and videos to better capture your audience.
5. Be available. Make it easy for your audience to contact you and do business with you.  Sometimes it’s not the best provider that wins, but the one that makes it easy.  Today’s buyers are busy!

If you are struggling to attract business through your website, it’s time to get back to basics! 

Any other online marketing fundamentals you’d add to this list?

When beginning a Social Media Marketing campaign, a great goal to have is to build brand loyalty for your product or service. Social Media Marketing Tools can be used very effectively to reinforce to your customers what your brand really stands for. If your customers believe in your mission, in your values, and happen to love your product or service, you will have a customer for life!

Building your brand really comes down to:
1. Giving customers a reason to remain loyal and
2. Monitoring the conversations about your product or service.

Use Social Media Marketing Tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to have real conversations with your customers. True Social Media Management involves real interaction and egagement with your fans and followers. Express your gratitude, congratulate them on a milestone in their lives, and comment on their pictures. Through your posts and updates, reveal your personality and company culture, give people a reason to want to connect to you. For instance, if you have a ‘bring your dog to work day’ and your little pup just did something funny – snap a photo and share it online with your friends and fans! It doesn’t always have to be work related, allowing people to see this other side of your business shows that you really are human and connecting at a personal level!

If someone writes you a great testimonial or mentions how much they love what you have done, make sure to thank them in public and in a timely manner! If your company is all about customer service, make sure to place a large emphasis on it in all of your conversations and really monitor the conversations that are taking place about your company. If you are questioned or given a poor review, respond quickly to your customer in a positive way. This will show people that although you are not perfect, you will respond to them quickly and will do your best to satisfy their needs.

Here are a few ideas that can help you to begin building brand loyalty through your social media networks: start a Facebook or Twitter referral program, begin a contest that rewards your loyal customers such as a monthly raffle, or reward your fans and friends with special “fans only” savings. By placing a greater emphasis on customer service and long-term customer satisfaction, you are really developing the lifetime value of each customer that crosses your path.

The first step to keep in mind when using a social media marketing strategy, is to have a clear plan. Your plan should be very specific, for example: I would like to use Social Media marketing Tools to build brand loyalty and I will focus my efforts on my blog, Twitter and Facebook. From there you can break your plan down into action items that should include day-to-day tasks and goals as well as long term goals.

Begin generating quality content that your target market is interested in. For example, share your answers to the top 3 questions that customers ask you, share interesting news articles (even if you didn’t write them!) that pertain to your industry, and share any bit of information that will capture people’s attention as it pertains to your product or service (including your opinions and critiques).

Post your quality information across your social networks! Based on our previous example, if you are focusing on blogging, Twitter, and Facebook, write a blog post regarding your answer to a specific question you hear again and again. Take your post and share it using a link from your Facebook and Twitter pages back to your blog. Repeat this process anytime you have something to share with your audience! You should also be using Facebook and Twitter daily to share any bits of information you come across.

It is easier to manage your Facebook and Twitter accounts if you use Social Media Management Tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.  These 3rd party applications let you accompish your Social Media Management very quickly by allowing you to update your Twitter and Facebooks accounts simultaneously, or pick and choose which one you want to focus on.  Hootesuite also allows you to schedule your updates for a future date which can really help when planning and implementing a Social Media Management strategy that includes new product rollouts and events.

Through repetition, you will begin to notice more traffic to your webiste, your blog, and even your Facebook page! All of the back links to your website from your blog and the social networking sites will help you drive traffic to your website.  It’s now your chance to take this traffic, these new prospects, and convert them into customers. Leverage the relationship you have created with them in order to sell your product or service.  Social Media is a great way to generate sales from these new prospects who were attracted to you because you discuss things they ultimately want to buy!

You may think that your technical or industry jargon sounds impressive, but more often than not, your prospect will quickly go elsewhere to find a website whose copy they understand and can relate to better, because reading and trying to decipher your copy is WAY too much work and makes them feel like an idiot.  Beware of insulting or confusing the person you want to buy from you.  If your website does not have good web editing software to make changes to “sick” copy, check out this website.

Remember, you don’t have to be a small business marketing expert to know the golden rule in marketing, people buy from people they know, like and trust; and if your website makes you sound like one of those companies, whose executives  live in the ivory tower they bash at parties, they will not trust you, like you or want to get to know you better.  What is worse, is in less than a few seconds they will hit the dreaded “Back” button and whamo, off they will go to a different website where they will happily give their money or a referral to one of your competitors.  So, in case this was not completely clear and you are still wondering if I am talking to you, stay away from technical jargon and complex website “language” unless you have a very good reason for using it.  Remember who your website is really designed for and make sure you have a web development platform that allows you to constantly update and refine your web copy as it is the single MOST important aspect of having an effective website.

If I ask you whether making changes to your website is easy, fast and friendly, would you still rank your website an A+?  If this is where you falter, because you have to:

1) Prepare changes for your developer
2) Get the changes to your developer
3) Wait for your developer to make the changes
4) Proof the changes
5) Wait for the revisions to be made and
6) Pay your developer costing you significant time and money over the course of a year?

If so, you may want to consider a solution that allows you to do web site editing without involving a developer.

An online CMS program can help you make updates to your website quickly, efficiently and cost effectively.  In the same amount of time it takes to e-mail the change to a developer, you can make the change yourself.  If you are comfortable using MS Word, you will be comfortable with most almost any web editing program.

I recommend The Art of Online Marketing’s EZ Website Manager.  It is an online CMS that gives you a CMS backend for your existing website (that you already love and want to be able to maintain yourself).  The beauty of this particular program is that part of the service is the installation and maintenance of the actual online CMS software, so you don’t have to take the time to download, integrate, maintain and troubleshoot the software yourself.  There is a support team that will set it up for you and make any other necessary website changes you may have at the same time.  Then you are off to the races updating text, images, audio and video as often as you want faster than ever before!

It’s fast, easy and inexpensive to get set up and has saved so many people money and needless frustration caused by waiting for changes that they can now make themselves.  Unless you are big enough to have an in-house web developer on your staff, I definitely recommend you check out the web editing program EZ Website Manager at www.instantwebupgrade.com.

Nearly 95% of all websites are suffering from some type of illness. The illnesses can range from a very mild cold to a serious case of the swine flu!  Some websites even need immediate hospitalization, an IV drip and to be admitted for same day surgery! Even a slight web cold can result in lost traffic, less website conversions and ultimately LOST sales!

Before you know what type of medication or homeopathic treatment (otherwise known as editing your website) is needed (we prefer more natural methods) you need to know how to properly diagnose your website’s overall health to pinpoint exactly what is wrong with it so you can bring it back to optimum health.

This blog post is part of a “Web Marketing for Small Business” series that will include 21 different posts discussing a variety of website conditions that range from a mild cold to “call the paramedics!” Now don’t PANIC; if you find your website or web editing software has more than one of these conditions below, you are NOT alone! These symptoms are NOT fatal, unless of course you leave them untreated.

This Small Business Sales and Marketing series is designed to give you some tools for effective web development to help you diagnose and TREAT at least one of the symptoms your website may be suffering from, and just like a “real” illness, without proper treatment, this mild website cold will become serious, resulting in lost opportunities and sales.  So, if that is NOT a big concern of yours and you think just having a website, no matter how sickly it is, is enough, the post that will follow are definitely NOT for you!

If your site needs a “check-up” take our website quiz at: http://www.theartofonlinemarketing.com/index.php/services-2/website-development/portfolio/

To  your website health….

The first class, held March 31st, sold out quickly so if you are interested in learning a social network strategy as a way to stretch your non-profit or small business marketing budget, I encourage you to sign up early.

UW Social Media Training Registration/Information Page

This day-long class is an abbreviated, introductory version of our recorded Social Media Training Series.

The answers are:
Maybe.
YES!
and YES!

One of the goals of your social media marketing campaign strategy should include search engine optimization – being found online!  Increasingly, the search engines are factoring in results from your social media marketing efforts.

If you are using social media for marketing, you are probably generating lots of content that you can control and optimize.   According to a recent Marketing Sherpa report, 69% of marketers are using social media marketing campaigns to improve their organic search engine effectiveness.

Read the full Marketing Sherpa Report here.

Shameless plug:  If you want to begin marketing with social media, but don’t know where to begin, consider hiring us for your social media marketing services.  The program is completely turnkey, you pay one low monthly set price and we take care of the rest.

Optimizing Marketing Results through Nurture Emails
As the saying goes “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”, so it’s important to set your marketing on auto-pilot as much as possible.  One of the easiest ways to begin optimizing marketing and stretch your small business marketing budget is to invest in a decent auto-responder email program, like iContact or Swiftpages .

The Marketing Sherpa Report
Marketing Sherpa agrees with us (or is is us that agrees with them?) that nurture emails are a critical component to optimizing marketing.  Marketing Sherpa recently released their findings which showed a 392% increase in click-throughs when they sent 6 emails over a 3-month period vs. just sending one follow-up email. 

http://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/email-marketing/how-a-6-email-series-increased-unique-key-clickthrough-reach-by-nearly-400-over-a-single-email/

So you you are looking for *almost* free marketing for small business, instead of sending one follow up email when someone responds to an marketing campaign, send out a series of welcoming emails.  Just make sure they are educational, targeted, and expected.

Email marketing is truly one of the best ways you can expand your small business marketing budget! Visit our website to learn about other small business marketing resources.

Would you like to exponentially grow your networking activities and ensuing referrals? If the answer is, “Yes!” You need to actively participate in the world of Social Networking…and you might consider taking some Social Networking Training to get started in the right direction.

Today, we travel to different scheduled networking events hoping to connect and have an initial dialogue with potential referrers, prospects, partners, and possibly friendly competitors. We bring cards with the intent to reconnect with the people that we found might be good contacts for us.

Approach Social Networking the same way, except, from the comfort of your home or office. After all, you don’t have to travel to get there, fit it in to your schedule, and you’re not limited to the amount of people in a specific geography, or that fit into a room. Just go with your virtual business card (a place to send people so that they have all your contact information and can continue their relationship with you – like a blog or a website) and start chatting with people like you would at a live networking event. Focus on learning about them, being a good resource for them, being funny and informative, and memorable (in a good way). Practice the saying, “Give to get.” No one likes to talk to someone who is clearly there only to take and not reciprocate.

Some of the people you will chat with will seem like good people to “friend” or “follow” in the hopes of continuing to deepen the relationship with a phone call, or a face-to-face meeting. If you want an “ice breaker” before talking to strangers you know nothing about, there is plenty of information available in their profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook. And, you can see what they like to talk about easily enough on Twitter. All of the social networking sites have search tools and groups to help you meet people with a common interest. And, like any live conversation, a common interest or “shared reality” usually helps establish instant rapport.

One word of caution: Just like a live networking event, don’t spam people with marketing messages about your products or services. You would not walk up to someone at a live event and thrust your card in their face saying, “Hi, my name is ______, would you like to buy _____________ from me?”   Avoid that approach online, as well.  People will run away from you online as fast as they will at a live event. And, the more people they know (and veteran social networkers know many, many people online) and warn that you are a spammer, the less others will be willing to speak with you, at all!

So, go meet some new people, expand your circle and become the “go-to source” for your area(s) of specialty. Referrers usually generate the most new business for a company. And, in the end, it is a numbers game. The more people you network with in a positive, meaningful way, the more referrers you can generate for your business. As a bonus: You’ll pick up some potential partners and direct customers along the way.

The Art of Online Marketing offers a recorded Social Networking Training Course customized for small business owners. To learn more about this Social Networking Training, go to: www.artofsocialmarketing.com/rc .