Does Your Small Business Really Need a Website?

Can your small business forgo the resources required to build and maintain a website and, instead, capitalize your social media presence?

The objective, un-biased answer is no, and here are the reasons why.

Marketing reach, brand control, and SEO linking strategies are only three of the 11 main reasons for small businesses to have a website, as described in this article by Outspoken Media. In the article, they describe how social media is powerful, but it is not an effective substitute for a website.

Here is a flavorful quote from the article:

“Building a social media presence without a Web site is like getting people hot and bothered over your product and then being too lazy to open the door when they attempt to come in.  What was the point?”

Read the full article, and contact WBC to find out how our website services can help your business.

How a company can benefit from criticism

A common criticism of social media is the possibility a negative comment will be made about the company or product or service and it will deter future sales. This blog shows how negative criticism can be good for a company based on how it handles these comments made via a social media outlet.

Imagine a fan of your company’s Facebook page posts a negative comment about your company – “Company XYZ has horrible customer service. I called to ask a question and was yelled at by an employee. I’ll never shop here again!” No business owner in their right mind would let this type of comment go without replying.

To begin creating positive feedback from a negative comment, first apologize online by replying to the comment and offer to discuss the manner over the phone. Next, promote ways customers can contact the company to discuss experiences with your company. Promote these options on all social media pages, on the company’s Web site and within enewsletters. Here are examples of how to word your first response to a negative comment on a social media page:

• We are very sorry for your negative experience at our company. Can you call 913-999-999, ask for John Doe and we can figure out how to resolve this? Again, Company XYZ wants to make all customer experiences positive.
• This is Sidney Sue at Company XYZ and I want to apologize for the experience you had with our company. We’d like to make this up to you. Can you call 913-000-0000 and we can discuss the details? We want to correct any wrong we’ve done and look forward to your call.

How current customers can deter negative criticism

According to Dave Balter’s “Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing” criticism can create a backlash of positivity. Balter points out his research with many WOM campaigns has shown people who like a product but who don’t promote the product to others can suddenly become vocal advocates. A product that would incite these people to become vocal must be a positive relationship with the company (think of a close-knit family owned company) or an attachment they feel towards (think about how some people feel towards their cars). “We call these people the quiet advocates, and there are often many more of them for a product than there are passionate evangelists,” said Balter.

The opposite side of the spectrum includes the vocal Apple fans. When the company creates negative criticism, there are thousands more fans who charge to the company’s rescue. Think about it – do fans join a specific social media page to shout their problems with a company? No. They create separate Web sites or social media sites to spout their concerns. If a person did post a negative criticism to a social media page, there will be more positive feedback from the existing hundreds or thousands of fans to come to the company’s rescue.

Other ways criticism can help a company

• Criticism can increase quality of product or service
• Criticism gives a company feedback on how aspects of the company is run, i.e., is there more negative feedback about a product or service? Is there more criticism about a particular aspect of a product (think speed problems with Toyota Prius)

I can write a book about how negative criticism can help a company but, unfortunately, a blog can only be so many words. Do you have an example of how negative feedback helped your company? Leave a comment and share.

Word of Mouth Explained

Dave Balter’s “Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing” is an easy-to-read book that describes various word-of-mouth (WOM) strategies. This book is written for marketers and non-marketers alike so you, as a small business owner, can learn a great deal from the many WOM examples Balter included. But what is WOM mean?

According to Balter, WOM is product storytelling told by anyone and everyone. WOM is when a person like you, a mom, a kid, a business owner – anyone – converses about a product or service to another person. A WOM campaign is a strategy to get people talking about a product or service. Balter has devoted the past decade to this strategy and created his own company called BzzAgent. Not to give away too much of this book, But Balter specified six reasons why people talk about a product or service:

• To help or educate others
• To brag about oneself
• To related to others
• To validate a personal idea to others
• To brag about association with product or service
• To share for social needs

A WOM marketing campaign could be an ideal strategy for attracting local customers to your business. The downside is that this strategy can also be hard to measure. WOM campaigns that can draw criticism may include anything from gorilla marketing tactics (stunts to provoke conversations) to undercover employees who appear in popular places like cafes or malls paid to talk about a company. But there are other more specific WOM campaigns designed to attract a specific target audience.

Word of Mouth Campaign Example

So what type of a WOM strategy can you create that is inexpensive and will generate sales? One idea (I came up with this, not Balter – that would me bragging) is a referral campaign. Create business cards with five lines on each. You hand out a card to a customer after they complete a purchase, write their name on a line and tell them they need to refer another friend. That friend can have his or her name written on the next line and they can hand it off to a third friend, etc. After all lines are filled every person on that card can have a specified discount for their next purchase. Logistics would have to be determined (how will the previous customers know they can cash in on the discount, etc.) but this campaign is designed to attract new customers, increase sales, increase foot traffic into your physical store and promote your company.

Do you have any other WOM strategies? Leave a comment and share!

eNewsletter Best Practices

On average, users spend about 51 seconds scanning an eNewsletter. Those seconds are comprised of scanning the first two words of each headline, looking for information that is relevant to him/her. Your audience is flooded with emails every day, so ensuring that you choose best content is greatly important if you want people to keep subscribing.

Here are some tips to make the most of your audiences’ attention while they are looking at a eNewsletter:

Content-Include articles that are pertinent to your readers’ busy day

• Write eNewsletter exclusive content
• If including older articles, specify that they are from the past and why they are relevant for this eNewsletter
• Articles should be prioritized in terms of relevance to the reader. The most relevant should be the first article listed, and so on.
• Ideal number of articles per issue: 3-5

Link text

• Use actionable words, such as “read more” instead of “click here”

Headlines

• Keep them short
• Keep them literal so the reader knows what the article is about
• Use keywords at the front because readers scan the first two words of each headline

Teasers

• Write a brief lead-in paragraph (200 char, max), then link to your website for the full text. The idea is to grab people’s attention quickly with easily digestible bits of information.

Subject Lines

• Make your subject lines relevant, concise with one single call to action
• Keep subject lines descriptive about the content in the email
• Limit Your Subject Lines to 30-50 Characters or About 6-10 Words
• Avoid spam filter trigger words such as “free”
• Other words that can negatively affect open rates are “reminder, percent off, and help.” They can appear to be spam. For example: “Final reminder for the March 22nd rate…”

eNewsletters are a great way to drive visitors back to your website on a regular basis. They are great for branding purposes and to remind your visitors that your site can provide them with updated information that is relevant to their lives. However, providing stale content in a newsletter or otherwise creating the impression that you are simply trying to market to your audience will quickly turn them off of your eNewsletter and possibly even drive them away from your brand entirely. Keep it simple, keep it short, and keep it relevant.

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More Resources

• Mail Chimp’s Best Practices in Writing Email Subject Lines
• Jakob Nielsen’s Surviving Inbox Congestion

How to attract new customers using today’s inbound marketing tactics

If you’re keeping up with recent marketing strategies you may have heard the terms inbound marketing (pull marketing) and outbound marketing (push marketing). If you haven’t been keeping up, I suggest researching the ‘inbound marketing’ strategies. Practicing inbound marketing tactics can help your company keep up with today’s technology, attract new customers, maintain existing customers and create sales. Here’s the breakdown:

 

 

 

 

 

Think of inbound marketing as a magnet that pulls customers towards your company verses outbound marketing that “hammers” your advertisement messages into the customer’s head.
Today’s inbound marketing tactics allows you to know how to connect with your customer better. Today’s technology allows you to more easily understand your customer’s needs, wants and when they need your help. Communication is still key with inbound marketing because every time a customer comes into contact with your brand, you need to respond and engage them in conversation. This is how new clients are acquired and how you can increase sales.

For example, an inbound marketing strategy can include optimizing your Web site for search engines (SEO) with keywords, purchasing Google AdWords PPC advertisements, writing a daily blog about your store or industry, and promoting your company on social media. Social media and blog posts can allow potential customers to comment about your company. These are optimal ways promote your company and gain new customer relationships.

Think of inbound marketing as a complete strategy that embraces how people find products online. In bound marketing is helpful for small businesses because it’s not based on how much money the business has – it’s based on how helpful the company’s Web site is for the consumer. Just like anything in life, the more time and effort you put into these inbound marketing tactics, the more your company will get out of them.

Using Online Reputation Management for Negative Reviews

Outspoken Media posted an article about how a company should react to a negative review or, ugh, outright attack in search engines and social sites. In the article, Lisa Barrone outlines the situations in which responding to bad online press is necessary and the times in which you should sit back. She also outlines some steps to take when trying to mediate an online reputation disaster. Here are some of those steps:

• Listen
• Be Honest
• Remain Calm
• Speak Like a Person, not a PR campaign
• Promise to do better

Lisa also linked to a great flow chart created by the U.S. Air Force that any company could follow to determine the severity of the attack and  how the company should respond.

Related Article:

Online Reputation Management 101

Brand vs. Reputation

I read an interesting blog post today that drew a distinction between building a brand vs. building a  reputation online. In simple terms, your brand is what you do, and your reputation is how people think (and talk) about what you do. As an analogy, think of search engine results pages. Your brand is your website, and your reputation is the culmination of all social media site links reflecting sentiments about your services.

However, there is another distinction. The act of building your brand involves how you are marketing yourself (social media involvement, blogging, essentially marketing yourself online). But, building your reputation involves evoking a feeling in your customers, which they associate with your brand.

For example, when I think of Johnson and Johnson baby shampoo, I feel “trust” that this product is safe for my toddler. As a result, when I purchase a Johnson and Johnson product, it evokes a safe and trustworthy feeling that I then associate with the brand. Not only has the company built their brand by advertising child safe products, but they have built their reputation by following through on their promise.

“If your brand is the theory that you know what the hell you’re talking about, your reputation is the proof that you do.” (Are You Building Brand Instead of Reputation?).

In online marketing, you can’t merely build your brand and expect your reputation to follow suit. You have to “do” something to create that reputation. Following through on your company’s  mission or promises is a great start to aligning your brand with your reputation and your reputation with your brand.

Here is the blog post that got me thinking about the subject of brand vs. reputation: http://outspokenmedia.com/branding/brand-vs-reputation/.

For more information on how WBC can help build your brand and reputation online, contact us!

Free keyword tools for SEM campaigns

Business owners should become self-sufficient online marketers – this saves money and can result in ample ROI if executed well (this is a key initiative we pride ourselves with at the WBC).   This includes search engine marketing – Google AdWords and AdSense, etc. – and how to research where to post these advertisements. This research includes knowing what keywords or phrases readers would search for within Google.com or Bing.com that would result in more online users seeing your advertisement the most. Below are a few keyword tools you can use for this purpose:

SEO Book Keyword Tool (free, requires a free account): SEO Book is a leading search engine optimization (SEO) WEb site with daily enewsletters and tips for advanced search engine specialists. But even for the beginning SEO person, signing up for this free subscription to have access to this keyword tool can help your SEM campaign. This tool shows you what keyword/phrase would rank in the top search engines.

Google Search-based Keyword Tool (free and paid): Type in your Web site and include a few industry related keywords and you will see how much Google recommends you spend on each online advertisement. For example, you can see how much Google recommends WBC spends on related marketing terms here. It will also tell you how many monthly searches are completed for each term and how competitive that term is (how many other companies want their ads to appear for the same term). Basically, you want the cheapest term for the most amount of searches.

Google AdWords Traffic Estimator (free): This option can do the same as the keyword option above but allows you to specify more options – i.e. country/state/region/city, amount you want to spend per keyword, what language you want your keyword to appear in. It will show you the estimated clicks per day, cost per day, ad position (are you in the top spot or bottom spot) and an estimated search volume for that keyword.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool (free): This tool will help you figure out what keywords to use in your SEM campaign or within your site (think search engine optimization) by either submitting keywords or your Web site URL. If you have a Google AdWords account, you can sign-in and automatically add the resulting keywords to your account. Nifty right?

Microsoft Excel Advertising Plugin (free, requires 7.0): This is a nifty marketing option used within Excel 7.0 but should only be used for advanced marketers. This is a free plug-in for excel that will show (and allow you to save to your desktop via Excel) what keywords you should use for your SEM campaign. According to the description, this pulls keywords for MSN and Bing – not Google! This option is not for the meek and the suggestions above can do the same as this plug-in.

Google Wonder Wheel (free, requires Google account): This option available only by logging into a Gmail account and seen in the left rail after clicking on “Web” is a visual search result. When you find this option, insert any topic and Google will result in related topics or keywords.

SEMRush (free and paid, requires log in):This keyword tool shows keyword options for your AdWords campaign and keywords results your competitors may rank for (hint, you want to be better than your competitors so you want to optimize your site for keywords they would rank well with).

WordTracker (paid): You take your chances paying for a keyword tool when there are many other keyword tools available, but Word Tracker lets you find keywords, save them and manage multiple SEM projects with the account. If you’re organized, you can do this with an Excel sheet too.

Do you have more keyword tool ideas? Leave a comment with the name, URL and what the tool does.

Cheap updates that help a company

If you, as a business owner, don’t have thousands of dollars to re-invent your company’s image then focus on one element. First, you must figure out which element will help your business the most. Depending on the type of business and how established your customer base is, than a Web site redesign may be better than purchasing online advertisements (AdSense). For example:

If you are a start-up business and already have a Web site but are not attracting new customers, than advertising may be the answer. Facebook, LinkedIn and Google AdSense ads (the ads that appear in the right column of your browser) can help you target and attract your niche audience.

If you have an established customer base, have been in business for years and know you need to update your online image, than a Web site may be the answer.

But how can you tell what you need without consulting a professional? And how can you afford a professionals opinion? The wonderful world of WWW will help you find blogs and forums for these answers. Find two forums – one that is related to your company’s niche and another for online marketing. Post your company’s dilemma with as many specifics and in as few words as possible. There are many people that you will receive advice from and many people who will post their company’s information to help you.

Tips before choosing:

1. An advertisement is only as good as the landing page it’s connected to
2. A simple and a small Web site with optimal usability is better than a large Web site with a bad design and slow loading pages (but an e-commerce site with a simple design (good usability) is the best option for a company)
3. A Web site is a must with today’s Web-savvy consumers

What you can update:

• Web site design
• e-commerce options within a Web site
• Logo
• e-newsletter template
• Purchase AdSense ads (don’t do this without professional input. There are SEO strategies to purchasing ads online)

Examples of Company updates:

• Web site redesigns: Non Profit Website Design: Examples and Best Practices (this is written for non-profits but the advise is good for every type of business)
• Logo redesigns: 50 Stunning Examples of a great redesign
• AdSense succes stories: Case studies from Google

Where to find cheap online marketing help

With a little research, you may be surprised at the prices you’ll find to help your online marketing needs. I’m assuming (and yes, I know what this means) that many business owners think thousands of dollars are involved with any professional marketing help. This is true when you’re only contacting larger companies. But don’t forget the freelancers who have full time positions related to their areas of expertise. Freelancers and small agencies can probably reduce the sticker shock.

Freelancers

Networking (cough, cough – LinkedIn anyone?) can help point you in the right directions. Some freelancers are full-time but many have a full-time job. Hiring a freelancer that has a full-time job as a specialist in a field may be the best type of freelancer. These professionals will have more exposure to what is the most up to date technique and technology to complete your request. But this freelancer may not be as professional as a full-time freelancer.

Small Agencies

Many small agencies specialize in specific fields but that doesn’t mean they are cheap enough that a small business can afford them. An excellence example is Stein Communications in Atlanta, GA. They are a small agency (8 people as of December 2009) but specialize in marketing techniques for educational institutions. A small agency doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the correct choice for a small to mid-sized business. Just because you found a small agency doesn’t mean the sticker shock will dissolve.

Other Tactics

• Email a local agency, tell them exactly what you need and the maximum amount of money you can spend. If they can’t help you then ask if they can suggest another agency or a freelancer.
• If you don’t want to specify how much you want to spend then ask the agency how they can cut the total down. A willing agency should be willing to offer services a la carte and tell you what service is the most pertinent change. This allows you, the business owner, to pay for as little as possible and know what you’re first changes should be.
• Post a flyer in a local college or high school for the lowest price.

Feel free to submit your opinions or more tactics as a comment below.

Last comment: You get what you pay for.