Marketing Tips

Create a small business marketing plan to identify and capitalize on your strengths and opportunities. Your marketing strategies should also take into account factors such as your weaknesses (and possible remedies), external threats (competition, economic factors, etc.), your marketing mix strategy (products/services, promotional goals, pricing strategy, and distribution decisions), media strategy, sales and expense budgets, target market analysis (know your customers), and readily available marketing tools, as well as marketing strategies and tools that you need to research or acquire.

A web site that speaks to all is better then a site that only speaks to some.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) provides a list of guidelines for how to create web sites that are accessible to as many people (and systems) as possible. Think about your web site - can someone with a visual disability (perhaps even something as simple as color-blindness) still get information about your product or service? If not, how do you feel knowing that you have just excluded a vast segment of the population from accessing your web site?

There are many simple ways that you can ensure your web site is accessible to people with special needs. A group of simple tests for the sites content and design that ensure your product or service is presented to the widest possible audience. The specifics are beyond the scope of this document - but be sure that you check with your designer to ensure that your site design and code is following accessibility guidelines.

Allow your visitors to reprint the content on your Web site. Just ask them to include your resource box and a link to your site in exchange. This will turn your content into a traffic machine and the external links will help increase your ranking in some search engines.

Purchasing is an emotional decision. Instill in your prospects good feelings about your company, your business relationship with them, and how you can improve their lives or solve their problem. Accomplishing that is at least as important in the sales and marketing process as focusing attention on product features and benefits.

February 20, 2013

Directories – Quick, Inexpensive, Market Presence

Directory listings are a vitally important piece of the marketing puzzle for any local business. Getting listed in as many as possible increases your visibility dramatically and with over 50% of local searches being done on mobile devices being in these mobile friendly directories is paramount.
OK, so… who has the time? Setting up a directory listing can take 30 minutes easily and then maintaining it and updating it even more time. Multiply that by dozens and you can spend up to a week getting set up. What is your time worth?  This is where a directory management service can be worth every penny. They save you time, money and lots of frustration. Learn More

January 22, 2013

Work on your Branding

Stated simply: the more ways the public hears about you, the better your chances are for achieving brand recognition, credibility, and greater market share. Effective marketing strategy is partly the result of exposing your target audience to your name and your selling points (unique selling proposition) as often as possible (frequency), in as many ways as possible, and as cost-effectively as possible.
Good marketing is a result of a coordinated effort across multiple marketing channels including: Print, Email, Social Media, Organic traffic, Paid traffic, Radio, Mail, TV, Blogs, and Press Releases.
If you are missing these, and most business owners are, get hold of a marketing consultant and see what you are missing…. your name and website should be everywhere