SMB Marketing Blog

The days when all you needed for online marketing was a nice website have long passed.  In order to be effectively represented online, you’ll need effective campaigns on several critical platforms.  The platforms vary depending on the type of business you are in, but for those of you still finding your footing; here is a short checklist of platforms you should consider.

Stable Content

• Website: Since its 2010, you should have professional website.  If you don’t have one, get on it.
• Bonus Points Wikipedia Entry: Businesses haven’t fully embraced Wikipedia but it is the authority for information reference.  Having a Wikipedia entry will become increasingly important for online credibility and exposure.

Regularly Updated Content

• Blog: A critical platform for establishing credibility with the online community and search engines.  If your organization doesn’t have a blog, you are missing out on establishing yourself as an online authority in your industry.
• Bonus Points Periodical Press Releases: Press Releases still have their place online, particularly when pushed out with a service like PRWeb.com.  It can do more than just a blog posting or website update as it pushes to many channels, allowing for more exposure and credibility.

Social Networking

• Twitter/Facebook Fan Page: Twitter and Facebook are the kings of social networking and an increasingly important platform to promote dialog between companies and the online community.
• Bonus Points LinkedIn/Foursquare: LinkedIn and Foursquare aren’t for everyone, but depending on the kind of business you do, these maybe valuable platforms to reach potential customers.

Video Media

• YouTube: YouTube continues to be a predominately an entertainment focused community, but its reach is undeniable.  If you have how-to videos, or a business presentation, they are good candidates for YouTube.
• Bonus Points Webinar: Webinars are a great way to interact with customers and the community.  Webinars add great value for any customer base.

Search Engine Marketing

• Google AdWords: This isn’t a must but for those of you who are just starting out, or struggling in competitive markets, pay-per-click campaigns with Google can get you that exposure when you need it.
• Bonus Points Pay-per-click on Facebook/LinkedIn/Yahoo/Bing: Although Google is the most recognized player; pretty much every major platform (Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Bing, etc) has a similar version of the pay-per-click program.  They may present a less competitive and more targeted environment to push marketing efforts.

Depending on your business and goals, the platforms mentioned may not be critical.  Also keep in mind that just because you are represented on these platforms doesn’t necessarily mean you are being represented well on each platform.  However, how to assess your effectiveness on the various online platforms is the topic for another post.

Do you have other platforms that are critical to your business’s online marketing strategy that you feel should be on this list?  Please share it with us in the comments.

Your website’s online exposure is a key component of business life, just like getting healthy and into shape is a vital component of our own personal lives. However, most people never  ‘get into shape’. Many people buy gimmicky workout machines or slim fast drugs only to be tricked out of time and money. Many get confused, frustrated, or give up.

The Online Marketing Athlete
Online marketing is very similar to personal health and fitness, so don’t be tricked by thrills and gimmicks. Think of building and maintaining online exposure like training to become a competitive athlete. It takes planning, time, diligence, and the right combination of exercises.

Get Healthy
Most websites are not fit or robust enough for the internet search environment; many have problems they don’t even know about. Most websites aren’t very healthy, even if they look ‘good’. Fortunately, that means with the right ‘diet and exercise’ of a good online marketing solution, you’ll be ahead of the pack just by improving the health of your website.

Get Fit
Sometimes, just a clean bill of health isn’t enough. If you are in a very competitive environment or are playing in the big leagues, you’ll need to have an online marketing solution to match. You will need a highly regimented solution that is high impact and intensive.

Use a Trainer
Just spending more time or money on your website does not mean you are reaching your goals. The advice and on-going coaching from a good online marketing specialist is an essential guide for success. Lastly and most importantly, you don’t have to do it on your own. A good agency can do most of the heavily lifting to keep your online marketing in tip-top shape. And just like a trainer, it doesn’t require much of their time, and therefore it won’t cost you much.

Especially Important in SEO
This advice can be generalized to most streams of online marketing, but this is particularly important when assessing search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. The process of SEO is a credible and important part of any online marketing effort, however, be aware that SEO is becoming a growing buzz term associated with quick success schemes and effortless automated programs and software which search engines detest. Don’t be fooled.

Conclusion
Employing a physical fitness mentality and approach for online marketing will keep efforts focused, committed, and working in the right direction. It may be hard at the beginning but it won’t be long until you’ll see results. And even easier to keep that way!

The 2010 mediaFresh awards hosted by Digital Alberta are dedicated to the recognition of those Alberta Digital Media Professionals and Post-Secondary students who have created outstanding project and programs between September 2008 and November 2009.

Category: Best Entrepreneur Award for creative/business/technology entries will be judged on

• 40% Marketing Strategy
• 30% Commercial viability
• 30% Uniqueness of technology

Winning entries will be featured in a full color catalogue that will be published and distributed following the awards ceremony. Each winner will receive a complimentary copy of the catalogue for their portfolio. Additional copies of the mediaFresh 2010 will be distributed to promote digital media production in Alberta and around the world.

Fred Yee, CEO of Foundpages/ActiveConversion, is one of the nominees. We think Fred and the product / services fit the ranking criteria very well.

I spoke with a prospect recently who was disappointed with the results they were receiving from the Google advertising they had set up and paying as much as $5 per click with little or no response.  Search advertisers make it very easy for business owners to set up a pay per click account but the costs of setting it incorrectly are not as apparent as they should be.

In today’s blog we look at the top 5 mistakes made when setting up pay per click advertising:

1. Not doing the right keyword research – Search advertisers provide research tools to find keywords to run your advertisements on, but often they suggest the highest searched keywords which have the highest competition.  Selecting these keywords also requires you to bid significantly higher for them in order to have your advertisement show up.  In most cases it is better to select keywords which have a reasonably high search volume, but lower competition, which will help to keep your bids down in the long run.
2. Not defining a daily budget – You can define a daily budget for your advertising where your advertisements stop showing after the budget is reached.  Not doing this may result in your monthly budget being reached within a week or two and your advertisements not showing for the remainder of the month.
3. Not targeting the right audience – You need to define the cities, states or countries that you want your advertising to be shown in. It doesn’t make sense for a local service provider to show advertising across the nation.  It is also important to set the time of day you want your advertisements to show (ex. Not in the middle of the night).
4. Not improving your website or landing page – If you do not get any business off your website currently, then driving more traffic using pay per click advertising does not always mean that will improve.  Your company website needs to be credible and look professional before someone will contact you from it.  Improve your landing page and add the right offers or calls to action to entice your visitor to make contact.
5. Not maintaining the advertisements regularly – There are a lot of moving parts in pay per click advertising that often get overlooked; It’s not easy enough to simply set something up and let it run.  You need to pay attention to things like: bids, keywords, ad copy, click through rate, bounce rate, quality score, etc.  It is worth the effort to run experiments and try different variations on ad copy and landing pages to see what produces the best result.

Search advertising is a very powerful medium to use when it is done right.  It can produce a good amount of business and easily pay for itself.  If you do not have the expertise or time to manage it, we recommend consulting with an expert who can help you to manage and achieve better results.

It is important to note that paid search advertisements are only clicked on by ~30% of search engine users; the large majority of search results are delivered through organic listings, so ensure you have a search engine optimization strategy as well.

The folks at Forrester Research have updated their Interactive Marketing Forecast out to 2014. 

The table of contents has some predictable headlines:

• Interactive Will Cannibalize Traditional Media
• Interactive Marketing Spend Will Near $55 Billion By 2014
• Search Marketing Still Leads Interactive Spend
• Display Advertising Rebounds
• Email Marketing Continues Healthy Growth
• Social Media Fixes Itself In The Interactive Mix
• Mobile Marketing Matters – Post Recession
• WHAT IT MEANS – Interactive Trends Will Redefine Your Business

It’s a very good read, and a few points jumped out for me.

When faced with budget cuts or the need for immediate sales, these marketers find that interactive tools are less expensive, more measurable, and better for direct response than traditional media.

Empowered consumers today expect a customized, interactive brand experience that goes way beyond a 30-second television spot or two-dimensional print ad. Forty-two percent of online adults and 55% of online youth want to engage with their favorite brands through social applications.

And last, even laggard industries feel that they have enough experience and data to prove interactive marketing’s worth. Online display spending by telecom companies in Q1 2009 grew 50% over Q1 2008.

What was also interesting was the the potential for more growth; interactive marketing ad spend is still under represented and laggard compared to how much of sample media time is spend online.

You can sign up for a copy of the full report here, courtesy of  DemandGen Report. Check it out. Your marketing future may depend on it!

At the end of October Google released the latest PageRank (PR) updates. Has your Google PR gone up or down on your website? One of our brand new product websites, ActiveProspects, has gone from PR0 to PR5 in just two months and we are excited about it.

In an earlier post, I described how Google PageRank is based on a link analysis algorithm that is similar to a ballot system. When one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important that page is assumed to be. It is also calculated on the quality of those links. A handful of links from authoritative, trustworthy, relevant pages far outweigh hundreds of links from so-so sites.

Here are my tips on improving your Google PageRank:

1) Create professional and useful content on your website. When people find your content valuable, they will likely link and reference to your web content.

2) Provide client testimonials to your vendors. They will be happy to post your testimonial on their website and link to your website to show that its legitimate and credible (format the testimonial with a link).

3) Post insightful comments on blogs related to your industry (like this one!).  Avoid simply commenting with just “good post” etc. You’ll have to show that you understand the post; in your comment demonstrate a  shared experience or even challenge their idea with relevant sources.  Make sure in your profile your name links back to your website.

4) Your partners and clients are also good sources of relevant inbound links. Work hard at getting links from them.

5) Does your business have other websites. Make sure you create links to your website from your other web properties (but make sure these are not mirror sites).

There are many more ways to get credible inbound links, including outsourcing a link building campaign. Building up Googe PageRank through a link building campaign requires creativity and hard work. The upside is once you’ve earned a good Google PageRank for your website, the payoff is long term.

Inbound marketing is one of the hottest topics for marketers today. Whether it’s referral traffic from blogs, tweets or the king – search engine optimization, it’s obvious that visitors coming to your website on their own accord (or searching for what you do) are usually the best leads.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is key for inbound marketing as it’s how relevant content such as blogs, tweets, videos and websites get found – and how you can get qualified leads – for free!

One of the most important tasks for a marketer is to get the search engines to discover and index all page content of your website.  Search engines generally can find the pages on your website, but  unfortunately there are certain website elements commonly used by web designers that prevent search engine robots from doing their job — discovering the web pages.   I’m going to list some common ones so that you’ll be aware of them and take them into consideration when developing your websites.

1) Flash – I don’t mean not to use flash.  When Flash is used properly,  it can make a web page look very good and attractive.   However, when it’s used in the wrong place, it’ll prevent search engines from finding the content and positioning your website appropriately in the search results.  Generally, I’d advise not to use flash in creating your  navigation menus.

2) Image content – Do you know that even though you can read the text on the web page, the text content can be an image. Most search engines are not able to read the text on the images.  It’s also harder to perform content updates on the page when using image text.  To find out whether the text on the web page is an image or not, you can use your mouse to select and highlight the text. If the text cannot be selected,  it’s likely image text.

3) Javascript link – If  your website is using Javascript links, most search engine robots won’t be able to follow the links to find the other web pages.  Move your mouse over the link.  If you see that it says something that starts with “http:” in the status bar of your browser, you are OK.  If the test in the status bar starts with “javascript” in the status bar, the link is using javascript and is not search engine friendly.

4) Session ID – Websites that require a session ID to track visitors may have problems when ‘visited’ by search engines.  Session ID’s in URLs are the absolute kiss-of-death to search engine accessibility.  You can tell it’s a session ID in the URL adddress, as it will say ‘sessionid=xxxxxx’ where xxxxxx is a lot of numbers.

5) Frames – they don’t usually prevent search engine robots from discovering the web pages.  Content within a frame is not part of the same URL, it is actually another page inside the current page.  As a result, when searchers clicks through the search results, they might be landing on the ‘internal’ page which doesn’t contain the other parts of the original page.  This will also affect the web experience of your visitors.

6) Splash or intro pages – they usually contain a movie which search engines don’t understand and subsequently won’t index.  It’s also a fancy delay tactic that is disliked by most viewers. It also provides only one link for the robot to follow if it can find it.

There are solutions and workarounds to these problems. If you notice your website has the above search engine robot barriers, you will want to address the problem as soon as possible.  Allowing search engine robots to index the content of your web pages will dramatically increase your success on getting leads  from search engines!

Previously I wrote about how SMB can take advantage of Google Local Business listings. The Google Maps team has just launched a new dashboard in its free Local Business Center that will provide you with information on how users interact with your local listing on Google Maps and Google Search.

It will show you stats such as how many times your business comes up as a search result, how often people click through, which queries led customers to the business listing, as well as which zip codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location. All you have to do is claim your listing in the Local Business Center and go through a quick verification process to get access to this information.

For the local business owner who relies on Google in helping customers find the business, you can now measure the impact of search, especially the top search queries that result in your business showing up in the listings.  I’ll bet that once you see these search queries, you’ll wonder how your listing can show up more often in the search.  This will lead you into assessing whether you should move forward and buy the keywords in the Google AdWords campaign.  You’ll also think about optimizing your website to get more inbound traffic from natural search results.

If you are interested in knowing more, you can go to the Office Google Blog to learn more details about the new Local Business Center Dashboard.

In companies of every size,  sales are down and quotas are not being met. “The Meeting” has occurred, the one where sales and marketing heads have asked for ideas on how to increase sales. “Well, we could do more with our website”, is what emerges because everyone in the room knows just how much they themselves use Google to find the products and services they buy. This is where I come in, as they’ve contacted my company. I let them know that the bad news is this is step 1 of 6, but that the good news is the six steps are relatively cheap and easy to implement. Most importantly, for the same cash asked for by traditional advertising, these steps deliver HUGE return on investment and over many years.

1. Update and refurbish the website. Read Seth Godin’s book “The Big Red Fez” and read the previous blog posting.
2. Get search engine optimization (SEO); it’s cheap and easy. You need to get found by Google – 90% of B2B transaction start with a search engine. Focus in on a geographic area, win that and then expand from there.
3. Start online marketing; it’s cheap and easy. Google adwords, link building campaigns, banner ads and Facebook are great places to start.
4. Start email campaigning; it’s cheap and easy. Use Email Service Providors (ESPs) like VerticalResponse, Constant Contact, MailChimp. ESPs will help keep your messages out of spam filters, and keep you from getting labeled as a spammer. Start with the list your company already has, supplement it with data from Jigsaw.
5. Auto-nurture leads generated by your website; it’s a cheap and an easy competitive advantage. Get Marketing Automation software like ActiveConversion so that when your website does generate a lead you can auto deliver more touches to each and everyone one of them.
6. Track desirable activities on your website; it is a cheap and easy competitive advantage. Again, use Marketing Automation software to know which companies or contacts are visiting your site, how they got to your site, which pages they are visiting, if they come back for a second visit, and if they are achieving goal pages or goal clicks.

Do these things because:

The entry price is low – these eMarketing solutions cost a relatively little and very quickly let SMBs punch well above their weight.
Low change risk – these activities don’t replace the relationship selling that SMBs know – it just lets them eliminate the cold calling that uses their time inefficiently.
Low surprise risk – budgets for these activities are fixed, and the ROI feedback is exceptional.
Low time risk – these solutions don’t require a new hire, don’t require information technology infrastructure, don’t require new expertise, and implement in days.
Many others using it – must be the right (safe) choice.
Competitive advantage – the six steps will either give you a competitive advantage over your competitor, or you’ll need them to level the playing field with your competitor