2012 should be an exciting year for small businesses. With so many low cost and high impact online marketing methods available, you can dramatically boost your business performances if you apply the best practices of these modern marketing methods and strategies.
Just implement the following marketing initiatives and watch your business explode with profits!
(1) Give your website a needed refresh
I still see lots of small business websites with that ugly 90’s design, look and feel. It’s time for a refresh! Seriously! With so much competition, your site needs to look sexy, professional, and attractive to stand out from the crowd. Look, you only have a few seconds to make a strong impression and captivate your visitor’s attention. So make sure you hire a professional designer to design you a professional and attractive looking site. Also, you might want to hire a copy writer too to help you craft stronger marketing messages and more compelling value propositions.
Things you absolutely need on your website:
- Make sure that you clearly convey exactly what your business do, who your target customers are, and your business’s value proposition on the top of the home page. Your ability to craft a compelling value proposition will be key to being able to persuade your visitors to stick around to learn more about your business.
- Have 1 primary “Call to Action” and 1 or 2 secondary “Call to Actions.” You need to have “Call to Actions” to lead the visitors to the next steps. After they land on your site, what exactly do you want them to do? Do you want them to take a tour? Sign up for free trial? Make sure your primary “Call to Action” is prominently shown in a strategic location (somewhere on top of the fold). Use a bright colored button (test orange, red, and green colors) for your primary CTA.
Things to avoid on your website:
- Please refrain from using fancy flash or slideshow. I see so many sites that feature a rotating slideshow with all these images that don’t provide any value or clarity on the value proposition. Instead, they’re just slowing down your site’s loading time and annoying your visitors.
- Refrain from making outlandish claims that are not substantiated. Don’t say you have the best products or the fastest delivery. Use specific numbers and data to substantiate your claim.
Check out my post on “how to create a sticky website” to learn more…
(2) Share Your Knowledge and Expertise with your Audience by Creating Awesome Content
Having awesome content on your site benefits your business in so many ways. For one, great content attracts free targeted traffic to your site. Secondly, it helps you build trust and authority. Having great content also keeps your audience more engaged.
The material in your content should not be full of fluffs or promotional messages though. It should contain material that is well thought out, well researched, and has the power to educate, inspire, or provoke your audience.
Think about the questions, pain points, problems, and desires that your target audience has and then create the necessary content to address each of these points. Be sure to use a keyword research tool and optimize your content accordingly for your keyword phrase.
The content could be in the following formats: blog posts, videos, articles, slides, infographics, white papers, and e-books.
(3) Use Social Media to Build Your Connections and Expand Your Networks
Social media is not just a fad. It is a powerful tool you can use to build your networks and generate massive number of leads for your business. Although the web is populated with gazillions of social networking sites, you should focus your time and energy on these 3:
- Facebook – Facebook is ideal for B2C, although I do see a few B2B success stories. Start by creating a fan page for your business. The key to being successful with facebook is to engage your fans by regularly sharing content, asking them questions, and running contests and promotions.
- Twitter – Twitter can help you generate lots of targeted leads. The key is to follow people that fits your ideal customer profile . You should also follow influential people within your industry. You can use wefollow.com and twellow.com to find relevant people to follow. Once you find these people, you should start engaging with them and be able to drive them back to your website so they can learn more about your business. I recommend that you send them to a resource page where your visitors could sign up to download a free E-book or free report.
- Linkedin – Linkedin is a great lead generation tool for B2B. Start by writing a complete profile. Make sure you include as much keywords that are related to your business as possible. Next, find relevant groups to join, especially groups that your target audience are most likely to spend time in. You can then answer questions posted by other members. You can also post questions or share your content. The idea is to engage with other members and be able to lead them back to your website where they can check out one of your blog posts or videos to learn more about your expertise. Again, don’t try to promote your products or services right away. Instead, promote your expertise and authority by sending them to a resource page or article.
(4) Automate Your Email and Marketing
You can dramatically increase your productivity and serve the customers better by automating your email and marketing. By using an autoresponder or a marketing automation solution, you could do things like automatically send follow-up messages to your prospects and automatically send an email blast to all your customers and more.
(5) Spend more time with your Customers!
Spending time with your customers and listening to your customers could help you uncover valuable business intelligence. First, you should ask for your customers’ feedback. Find out what they like about you, what they don’t like, how you can improve, etc. Pay attention to the exact words and phrases that they use.
Additionally, you should ask them where they spend their time and which websites/blogs they visit the most to get news and information on your industry.
After analyzing the data and information collected, you should be able to craft better copies for your ads and launch more profitable marketing campaigns.
Knowledge is Useless without Actions!
I’ve given you some high impact marketing nuggets that could provide your business with a big boost in 2012. But you need to take actions. Who knows, this might just be your year!
Peter, nice article. I agree with your points. In #1, one more thing I’d add is that often people don’t clearly describe what products or services they offer. Sometimes you can’t figure out what the business is set up to help you with. Thanks for writing!
Thank you Tom for stopping by. I think the problem with most websites is that the the design is left to the web designers. Web designers usually like to add all the flashy features, which end up subdueing the marketing message. I always recommend that the marketing person should be responsible for doing the wireframe design and ensuring that the marketing messages are clearly and prominently conveyed.