Smart and Cheap Marketing Strategies

Our chamber presentation: Five Smart and Cheap  Strategies for Marketing in a Recession is now available on our website:

www.mktondemand.com

Know what 80% of marketing success is?

Woody Allen once said “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”  While he was probably talking about his career in movies, his statement has a lot of marketing wisdom to it, as well.

 

Being at the top of someone’s mind when they’re ready to make a buying decision is what volumes of marketing textbooks are devoted to.  And, for the most part, you can boil it all down into “showing up.”  Maybe your business shows up as a postcard – a TV ad – a email newsletter – a phone call – or by attending a chamber event. 

 

The world of Search Engine Optimization is all about showing up, online.  It’s not plastering your business name everywhere where no one cares — it’s about providing the content your customers want to read, and showing up when your customers are ready to make a decision.  If you attract customers via the web, this is an area you need to know about.  It’s hands-down the most cost-effective web marketing strategy available. 

No-brainer marketing: email newsletters and promotions

You have every intention of sending out an email newsletter.  You know it’s an amazingly inexpensive way to communicate.  You intend to do SOMETHING with all of those customer email addresses, but the process of getting it all together is more than a little overwhelming.

 

If you have a small marketing department, or are a business owner who “does it all,” you may quickly find that any newsletter demands a significant amount of your time and attention.  You have to manage your list, learn a new software program, come up with a design, test it, write articles…and too often, the whole process falls to the bottom of the list.

 

What would it be like to have all that off your plate?  Now, you can find out.  We’ve developed two great new email newsletter programs especially for busy marketing managers that include professional layout, design and editing, along with automatic list management.  All you have to provide is your articles and a file of your email addresses.  We’ll polish it up, edit it, make it look pretty, test it and send the whole thing out for you. Check it out!    http://www.mktondemand.com/services.htm#email

 

How to make spiders love you

How to make spiders love you

 

This may give you the creeps…but if you’re responsible for marketing your company’s website, you need to know how to make yourself more attractive to spiders.

 

No need to run away screaming.  We’re not talking about the eight-legged inhabitants of basement corners.  These spiders, also called robots, are what search engines like Google and Yahoo, “send out” to “crawl” all over the internet, categorizing and ranking websites. 

 

If the spiders and robots like you, they reward you with high rankings in the search engines. 

 

So, why should the savvy marketing manager care about influencing robots and spiders?    

Your customers who know your name or your website address can find you without a problem.  But what about people at their computers, asking themselves…

 

            Where can I buy a new furnace in Oconomowoc?

            Who is the best financial planner in the Waukesha area?

            What banks are near my new house?

            How can I ship my motorcycle to South Dakota?

            What was the name of that great builder?

 

If your name doesn’t immediately come to mind, your customer will open up Google or Yahoo and see what comes up. Try it — put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes, and see what happens.

 

Google and Yahoo want to serve up sites that are fresh, up-to-date and relevant, so you keep coming back.  They display the sites that the spiders like the best, first.

 

If your website hasn’t been updated for years, or is all graphics and pictures, it doesn’t have any delicious text for the spiders to munch on, which makes you pretty much “invisible.” (aka, WAY down on the list for Google.)

 

The cure for invisibility: SEO  

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about arranging and adding to your website in order to make it more attractive to these spiders.  When spiders see your site, they tell their search engines (Google and Yahoo)  “Hey, this site has a lot going on — look here!” Robots and spiders love fresh, relevant, up-to-date content.

 

Where you want to be is high in the “organic” or “natural” listings. For an easy-to-understand explanation of organic vs. paid listings, click here.

 

The good news is that getting started with SEO is affordable for small businesses.  Usually, you DON’T need to redesign your entire website!  Good SEO can often be LESS expensive than traditional advertising, and can open up broader geographic markets.

Our New Secret Weapon

 

Our goal is to bring you marketing ideas and strategies that really make sense for your business.

                  

Traci Chisholm, our new Web Strategy Specialist.  Ever wonder why some businesses seem to get all the attention when it comes to online searches?  It’s not luck — its one part technical know how, two parts savvy strategy and POW — marketing magic.  Tracy has all the chops, and her mission in life (well, at least while she’s at the office) is to make your business show up when potential customers are looking for you online. 

 

She loves this stuff.  Really.  It’s inspiring. 

 

Traci will also be lending her brilliant marketing brain to other projects, but we’re pretty sure she’s going to stay busy!

The Mosquito Theory

Have you ever been driving down the road, when you suddenly spot a mosquito hovering inside your windshield?  Then take your eyes off the road, and go through all kinds of crazy contortions just to try to kill it?

Is it really worth risking your life to smash it into oblivion?

Yes, it’s entirely possible that this ornery sucker will buzz around your head, bite you in the shoulder and cause you an itchy welt for the rest of the week. But it’s probably not worth risking a car accident to deal with it.

Many people deal with a similar situation in their organizations. They may spend their time and energy dealing with annoying, vocal “mosquitoes” (complainers, petty agendas, doom and gloom about the economy, splinter groups), taking time and energy away from important marketing goals.

So how do you keep the mosquitoes at bay? Start by developing and implementing a well-thought-out, goals-based communications plan. In the simplest possible sense, this means identifying your messages, identifying your audience, and deciding when and where you want to reach them.

One of our clients is a public school district with its share of mosquitoes. There is no doubt they have to be dealt with. But because the district has identified their message and planned out their strategy well in advance, their information campaign has a better chance of staying on track. The administration recognizes that they can’t let distractions take attention away from the other 99% of the public they need to reach.

Look at it this way: that mosquito may be the most important thing in the world to you that minute, but the other drivers can’t even see it. All they see is you slapping wildly and veering from side to side.  Invest in good communications (or some powerful bug spray) and keep your message moving on down the road.   

 

How to keep your message OUT of the landfill

On an average day, every US citizen gets six pieces of direct
mail.  You don’t have to be a green fanatic to figure out that’s a
LOT of trees.

I have no problem with honest businesses using
direct mail as a marketing strategy (we use it all the time). It
can be extremely effective if done right.  Sometimes there’s no
better way to reach just the customers you want.

What does bother me is pointless waste, both from a green
perspective AND from a marketing budget perspective.  There are a
LOT of marketing dollars going straight into the landfill, and
that should annoy any business owner.

Consider the 200-page, glossy catalog of high-end printing
supplies I receive every quarter.  Hello? Have you checked your
database lately?  I am NOT a potential customer!

And the credit card offers.  From the SAME company.
Every. Single. Day.  And not even in just a plain envelope.  Now
they occasionally throw in…pointless bubble wrap (to cushion the
paper? Why???)  I’m sure some consultant told them that soft,
squishy envelopes are more likely to be opened.  Personally, it
makes me unlikely to ever want to do business with them, as I feel
they have no respect for their customers — or for the planet.

Changing from a mail strategy to a web-centered strategy can save
postage and printing costs.  Consider recycled papers and soy inks
for your next campaign.  Think about if it’s really necessary to
send your entire customer base a detailed catalog–when a postcard
might just do the trick.

Your customers won’t consider your message “junk mail” if it’s
relevant, timely and gives them information they can use.  So
think about how you might be able to “green up” your marketing. 
Efficient, effective marketing is good for the bottom line…and for
the earth.

Is it time to kill your yellow pages ad?

Is it time to kill your yellow pages ad? 

This morning, I unearthed yet another soggy, unwelcome phone book from the end of my driveway.  It went promptly into the recycling bin.  Which got me to thinking about all the businesses out there who spend big bucks to get their businesses listed there, and if yellow pages advertising is really a thing of the past.

Bill Gates seems to think so.  In a Microsoft address last spring, he predicted “Yellow Page usage among people, say, below 50, will drop to zero—or near zero—over the next five years.” Already, consumers under age 30 are least likely to look in the yellow pages for information.

Phone book advertising is something many of our clients struggle with.  With aggressive sales reps telling them “you HAVE to be there,” you may feel you need to spend a significant portion of your marketing budget on ads.  It’s an especially difficult choice in our area, where businesses are courted by at least three different directories (local, metro area, and county-wide.)  For businesses that have been buying ads for many years, it’s a scary thought to NOT be there.  So how do you decide?  Here are a few tips to help you re-evaluate your yellow pages strategy.

1. Know how your customers found you.  If you don’t want to ask, put a “special yellow pages only offer” in your ad.  When the customer asks for their discount, you’ll know where they found you.  When you get in the habit of asking your customers how they heard about you, you may be surprised to find that recommendations or other advertising sends more customers your way – which should lead you to enhance these marketing strategies instead.

2. Consider your demographics.  Yellow pages usage is strongly age-driven.  If your customers are mostly age 50+, you may want to continue your yellow pages advertising.  Under 35?  Work on that web strategy!

  

3. Consider going smaller.  If you feel you MUST be in the yellow pages, or you just can’t decide, go for the smallest possible listing plus an online directory, like yellowpages.com.

4. Pick the right book.  Take a look at your competitors in each book.  If there are 30 pages of home remodelers, for example, how are you going to stand out?  You’re not, unless you spend a LOT of money.  Consider a smaller book where your ad will actually get noticed.

5. Look at your overall marketing strategy.  With customers turning to the web for information first, there are many things you can do to make your business website appear higher in search engines, and to offer the content your customers want to make a buying decision.  New technology is making this easier and more affordable than ever before.

(if you need some ideas on how to have some fun with your old phone books, watch this YouTube Video! )

Should You Ramp Up or Scale Down Your Marketing in a Shaky Economy?

Everyone is feeling a little edgy these days about the economy, and whether or not it’s going to affect business.  There’s an interesting article on BNET that has an interview with the author on a study on whether or not it pays off to up your marketing in a down economy.  Check it out here:  http://blogs.bnet.com/intercom/?p=1573

The author points to three characteristics of the kind of business that will be successful using this strategy.  Namely, you need a history of a strong marketing culture, the guts to do it, and be willing to spend some money. 

The study looked at big businesses with big budgets, but can smaller businesses apply the same principles?

On developing a culture of marketing, it absolutely applies to small business.  If you’ve been relying on word of mouth and referrals for all your business, and all of a sudden the economy takes a downturn, it can be an expensive and daunting task to build an effective marketing structure from scratch.  But if you’ve been keeping your written materials and website up to date, have a few ads pre-designed, a public relations strategy and a referral program, then you can respond quickly and effectively to build new leads for your business.  This is especially important if you have an expensive, complex product, or one with a long sales cycle.

Guts and cash, are both, of course, also always handy to have on hand.  Bottom line is, if your business is healthy enough, why not use the economic downturn to your advantage?  You know that many of your weaker competitors will be cutting their budgets to the bone…which may give you the opportunity to make your position in the market more solid.  Then when the customers are ready to spend, you’ll be the one they remember. 

Need help making your marketing more effective?  Contact us at christy@mktondemand.com, or get inspired at our website  www.mktondemand.com

Email Marketing: Good or Evil?

Email marketing. 

 

Let’s face it – email marketing has gotten a pretty bad rap.  The bad guys in the industry have made quite a mess for honest marketers to work with, and we’re all pretty leery about doing anything that smacks of spam (aka, unwanted email.)

 

The good news is that people DO want to hear great information from people they want to do business with.  And it is hands-down less expensive to use email versus direct mail, or most other forms of advertising.

 Email is still the cheapest, most efficient way to communicate with potential customers, be it once a week or once a year.  Would your customers appreciate hearing about specials, getting your opinion on economic events, your advice on designing a new home or more information on your area of expertise?  You bet they would! 

START NOW.  If you think you are going to want to do email newsletters in the next year or two, start building your opt-in list today.  If you don’t have a list yet, have your web guru place a “subscribe to our newsletter” link on your home page, sign up for a newsletter mailing service (we like Constant Contact) and start getting your list built today.  Advertise it in your print newsletters, and ask your current customers to subscribe.  Then, build yourself a newsletter or format for advertising specials, and email away.  Don’t go overboard, through — you don’t want to irritate or alienate your customers by clogging their inbox with too much mail.

 

We don’t think small and local businesses are taking enough advantage of the great potential that email marketing provides.  YOU can get a jump on your competition with this easy and manageable strategy!