SOME FREE / LOW-COST MARKETING IDEAS

This economy sucks for most of us. Sure, there are reports that the "recession" is "coming to and end", but while you’re waiting for hell to freeze over, here are some low cost and free ideas to keep your marketing afloat…

• Update your website :Not only is this a good mental exercise, it helps your search engine interaction. Editing your site content is a good way of taking a fresh look at what your marketing message is and how you’re putting it across. Updating the content lets search engines know that your site is being updated, and to come back and re-index it.
• Update your blog / Start a blog :If you don’t already have a blog, START ONE. They are free. You can link them back to your website, helping your search engine exposure. You do not have to be a best-selling writer. Everyone has an opinion about something in their industry, even if that opinion is the opposite of everyone elses. Share advice and express yourself. Take a few minutes once a week or every couple of weeks, and put the word out.
• Email Signature :Is your email signature up-to-date? Is your website/blog and contact information in it? No? Then what are you waiting for?
• Social Media : Do you have a Facebook page for your business? This is different from your personal FB page – it’s one that is for PROFESSIONAL purposes only. Seriously consider having one of these, even if all your do is post links to your site/blog in it. It’s a good SEO tool and a free marketing tool. Take a look at Twitter and other social media tools. They may not be for you, but taking a look won’t hurt….
• Online Ads : Use free services such as Craiglsist to place free ads, with links to your website. Don’t put contact information in them, just links to your site/blog. In addition to search engine exposure, you can drive traffic to your website. Make the ads eye-catching and interesting. Just keep them honest. If you have products to sell, consider an eBay auction. You can set a reserve price, and put links back to your website, giving you instant access to a global audience.

Coming up with free / low cost marketing ideas can take a little imagination, but they are out there. Your investment won’t necessarily be financial, but you will need to invest something, even if that "something" is a bit of time.

I’d love to hear about any others. Until next time!

WITH WEB DESIGNERS YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

10 Things To Do Before Employing A New Web Designer

As a small business web designer, I have a vested interest in providing quality of service and product to my clients. Referrals account for 90 percent of my business and, as much as we’d like to thing the Internet is a big place, the world is a small one and word gets out.

When I first speak to a potential client, I offer some advice, including a piece that might sound counterproductive. I tell them to speak to at least two more designers. When they ask why I tell them “because when you come back to me, I need you to know you’ve made the right decision”. Perhaps a little self-assured, but you’d be surprised. Here are some of the things I discuss with prospects.

1. SCOPE

What does that “website” include? For example, will it include the design and set up? Will it include the pages that you feel you’ll need or does the price reflect “x number” of pages? When I develop a website, my final price is based on how much work the project will take, not the number of pages. If I’m going to prove a working solution to my client, then why would I say “yes, I can do this but you can only have three pages”?

2. INVOLVEMENT

How involved in the design process are you going to be? Are you expected to pick a design from a collection (template), provide content and that’s it? Many of the lower cost web designers fall into this category, and that’s okay, if you don’t mind working within the confines of a template, or run the risk of looking like others. Just be sure that if there’s something special you need on your site, that it can be included in the template you’re picking.

3. PORTFOLIO

Do you like the designers other sites? It should never be just about finding any old designer and settling. Look at his/her other work.

4. REFERENCES

I am forever amazed that I have to bring this up. You probably wouldn’t hire someone to work in your company without doing a background check, so why hire a web designer without talking to at least one or two previous clients?

5. INTERACTION

How do you feel? If you’re feeling “rushed” or “boxed in”, pressured or worse, being made to feel stupid, is this the person you really want to work with? When the site is built and you need some changes, are you going to get a sigh and an attitude?

6. WHO?

Are you talking to a sales person or the designer? In my case I’m both so you’re dealing with pretty much everyone who you’re going to be involved with, but it does matter. Not to be negative towards sales people, but don’t you want to speak to the designer / programmer so they can “get” what you’re trying to say?

When the site is built and running, is that it? In my case, I always hope that the site is the start of a relationship with a client. Call me a romantic, but if a client has trusted me enough to invest in a good quality product, I intend to be there when they need me.

7. EXTRAS

Other things to ask about are stock photography. This can and does add up. Will you be providing artwork and photographs or will the designer? If he/she does, is that an additional cost? In my case, it is. My cost is simply passed on to the client, I don’t mark it up, but I explain that stock art and photography isn’t free. This can be a tough one, especially if the client wishes to provide their own…home made…the best looking website in the world can be shot to pieces with bad photographs…Conversely, What is NOT included in the price? For example, number of design drafts, or helping you set up a hosting account, integrating your email…the list can go on and on.

8. WARRANTY

Does the site come with a warranty? Yes, I said “warranty”. When any website goes live, no matter how much testing has been done, there is bound to be something that doesn’t work as expected, a combination of clicks that weren’t planned for. Will your designer fix any bugs after “go live” or are these extra?

9. SEO (search engine optimization).

Is this included or extra? It’s one thing to build a site, it’s another to ensure the search engines know about it, and that it’s built properly. I never ever guaranteed “top” placement in Google or any other search engine, but I certainly build and optimize my sites to move up the rankings in an organic and logical way.

10. MARKETING

I design websites for small business for a reason. I see a website as part of a marketing strategy. Part of my role is to help my clients, many of whom are not technical, understand that a website is not a solution unto itself. It is part of a marketing strategy. It’s a tool that needs to be understood and integrated in a marketing plan. This is something I help clients understand and work on. Whether that means helping with social media, blogs, seo or whatever, I see my success as tied into theirs.

Of course my websites aren’t $199. They’re not templates. I don’t outsource to a cheap “production line” company. I do all my own work. It’s always custom. It’s always hands on and it’s always me. Sure, that means it costs a little more, but then again, perhaps you get what you pay for.

POWER OF THREE (part iii)

If you’re seeing this subject for the first time, you can catch up with parts 1 and 2:

• POWER OF THREE (part i)
• POWER OF THREE (part ii)

The topic of today is next next part of “TORCH”, the “R” or “Resources”. Thus far, you should have:

• 3 target audiences (“T”);
• 3 objectives (“O”), 1 for each;

Now we need to determine what resources (time, money etc) that need to be applied in order to achieve the objective for each target.

I call this “reverse engineering”. We know ultimately what we want and who we want it from, but in order to get from here to there, what’s it going to take?

Now is the time to put down what you realistically are going to have to spend to get from here to there. I used the term ”spend” a little loosely. A resource is anything that has to be used in order to achieve a goal. This does not have to be money. It could be time and effort. It could be another person or company.

In order to really understand what resources you’re going to need, you’re probably going to start formulating your plan or “how”. This means jumping around a little between the “R”, “C” (Calendar) and “H” but that’s okay.

WIDGET INC

I’m going to continue to use “WIDGET INC” as my example, but so as not to run on forever, I’ll focus on just one of their three items. If you remember, WIDGET have decided on:

Target: plastic dinosaur factories

Objective: $100,000 in new income

So, they now have to ascertain what it’s going to take to generate $100,000 in new income. They figure that every five leads turns into an actual paying client. The average paying client spends $5,000 in a given year. So, to apply the reverse engineering strategy, this means they would need 20 paying clients (20x$5,000=$100,000) in a year to meet their target.

In order to get 20 paying clients, they’re going to need five times as many prospects (1 in 5 becomes a paying client). So, they’ll need 100 prospects. A “prospect” in WIDGET’s case, means someone who has made contact, whether by phone, email or in person.

WIDGET’s marketing team determines that they’re going to use a three-pronged approach: a mailer, coupled with a blogging campaign and email incentive. They figure that if they can get email addresses then they will have an audience they can marketing to repeatedly. However, in order to get these email addresses, they’ll need to do something a little different, so they’re going to do an old-fashioned mailing to all the plastic dinosaur factories in the US (1,000).

They’re also going to set up a blog to discuss elements of their widgets aimed specifically at plastic dinosaur manufacturing called “AGE OF THE DINOSAURS”.

Money at WIDGET is tight, so they don’t have a lot to spend, but:

• The blog is free to set up, it’s just going to take some time to write the content;
• If they do a clever postcard mailer, they can hopefully grab attention enough to get people to visit their website and sign up;
• The website is already in place, but they’re going to set up a separate page with domain name so they can track respondents to the mailer more accurately.

POWER OF THREE

As you can see, a lot of the “how” is covered in the “resources”, so you’re doing some work ahead of time, but in order to accurately develop a plan, you need to know what’s going into the recipe.

Also, in your case, like that of “WIDGET”, you’re going to have three different plans. Hopefully you can see the benefit of spreading your resources and risk around.

HOMEWORK

The next assignment is to begin developing your plans. If you find that three plans are a little too much, start with one. You can always repeat the exercise for other plans.

What you’ll need at the end is a good idea of how much time, effort and money is going to be needed to achieve the goal.

• Be realistic and honest with yourself. If it takes more than you first thought, at least now is a good time to find out.
• Don’t allow the process or resources intimidate you. You’ve still got to do the “how” in full, and you’ll probably be surprised.
• Consider all resources, paid and otherwise. What “freebies” are there out there?

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Please let me know if I can be of any help.

POWER OF THREE (part ii)

In my last post(part i) I began discussing the “Power of Three” and TORCH, a marketing acronym (Target / Objective / Resources /Calendar / How). I left you with step one homework, selecting three different “T”s or target audiences for your marketing program.

I’m going to use WIDGET INC as my imaginary clients. WIDGET INC makes…you guessed it! They’ve decided they’re going to market to (1)factories, (2)construction companies and (3)janitorial companies. My first question would relate to number 1 – “factories”. That is a potentially vague market segment. After all, there must be thousands of different types of factories. It may very well be that WIDGET INC has a product or service that spans every conceivable industry, but they don’t, so I’m going to ask them to narrow the first item down. The second and third are just fine. So instead of “factories”, they’re going with “Factories that make plastic dinosaurs”.

STEP 2 : OBJECTIVE

The objective has to be measurable. “Making money” is not terribly measurable. How much money? $10? Okay, that’s more measurable. Remember, we’re picking an objective for each of our three targets. Things to consider as measurable objectives might include a certain number of sales, or a monetary return. It should be tangible and achievable. While I’m all for “the sky’s the limit”, I firmly believe that the easiest way to eat an elephant is “one bite at a time”.

WIDGET INC has decided on the following:

Target: plastic dinosaur factories
Objective: $100,000 in new income

Target: construction companies
Objective: 5 new clients (possibly with income)

Target: janitorial companies
Objective: $100,000 in new income

The second objective, “5 new clients” is a big deal for WIDGET. The construction industry is a new one for them, so there’s going to be some learning time. Their goal is 5 new clients in the first 6 months, something that’s realistic to them.

POWER OF THREE

Another reason we pick THREE different targets, clients, plans etc is to allow for backup. If one plan isn’t working as well as it might, we have two others to support us while we sort out the third. Not only is this a matter of spreading risk, it’s helpful (we hope) when it comes to motivation. While one or two plans might be having trouble, we have a third that should be doing at least “okay”.

YOUR MISSION…

…should you choose to accept it, is to now pick three business objectives for your three target companies or industries. These must be measurable goals. If they’re not measurable, how do you know you’re succeeding?

As always, feel free to contact me and I’ll see you for part iii.

POWER OF THREE (part i)

I thought I’d share one of my marketing development programs with you. It’s called “Power of Three” or “P3” for short:

• three markets
• three targets
• three plans

In a nutshell, the idea behind P3 is to pick three very different markets, develop three different goals, and the put a plan together for each.

Why three?

Well, I’m a big believer of not keeping all the proverbial eggs in a single basket. I am also a believer in not trying to do too much.

With P3, you pick three “markets”. These could be demographics, industries or other cross-segment of potential clients. This can be tricky. We all have our comfort zones. That’s why when I work with clients on the P3 program I specifically ask them to pick three unrelated market segments.

When done, pick three targets or “goals”, one for each. A goal (or target) is, in this case, defined as something that is you feel is achievable by you as it relates to the market.

Now, you put a plan together.

TORCH

In order to accomplish all of the above, I use a system called “TORCH” (Target / Objective / Resources / Calendar / How). It’s a process that can help focus your attention and hopefully give you some ideas.

“T” is for TARGET, our intended audience. This could be a certain type of company, an income level or geographic region…depending on your industry, this will vary. But for the P3 program you need to pick 3 different ones.

In part 2, I’ll go into TORCH in more detail. For now, if you’re interested in giving this program a try, I’ll leave you with some homework:

Pick your three target markets. This is easier said than done. You’re looking for three sets of potential clients that you’d like to go after. Consider all options and pick the three that suit you best.

In the meantime, feel free to contact me if you’ve got any questions.

f2p=f4m : A LITTLE PLANNING GOES A LONG WAY

f(2p)=f(4m)

where

f=failure
p=plan
m=motivation

A simple little formula, a variation on the better-known “failure to plan is planning to fail”. Yet many small business owners do just that. As a small business owner, whether you’re a single (self) employee or a small group, you have all the responsibilities of a Fortune 500 company, with a smaller headcount. You still have to consider:

• Human Resources
• Sales & Marketing
• Accounting, Payroll and other “Back Office” functions
• Development and Training
• Business Planning
• Support
• Infrastructure
• Etc

Larger companies have plans and forecasts. You barely have to watch TV to know that such-and-such company’s stock lost value because it didn’t “meet analysts expectations”. But the fact that a huge behemoth of an organization can predict (within a certain target area) how much it’s going to make per share is pretty amazing.

Look a little deeper and you’ll see it’s not magic, it’s just about planning.

I meet different business owners as I ply my trade. Sometimes the conversation goes something like this…

“Hi Joe”
“Hi Dave”
“How’s business?”
“It’s okay. I’m getting by.”
“You sound a little uncertain.”
“Yeah…we’re in a bit of a slump. Somehow this wasn’t quite what I’d planned.”
“Where did you deviate from the plan.”
“Well I didn’t mean an actual plan-”

If there is no actual plan, first of all, how the heck can you deviate from it? Many small business owners make this mistake. They’re intentions are pure and they know they want to build a business, but they set off with a vague notion and little more.

Many of these fail because they didn’t plan. Something doesn’t work out. Money doesn’t come in. Second-guessing begins and it goes down from there.

Your business plan doesn’t have to be elaborate. It doesn’t have to contain lots of words that you’d need a dictionary to look up. It should have a goal or two, a method for getting there and a way to measure success. (See A SIMPLE G-A-M-E PLAN)

It really is that easy.

When setting a goal, make it tangible. “This is where I want / need to be in 12 months.”

Okay, you have a goal. How do you quantify it? Do you have to do a certain amount in sales? Yes? How many? How much? You’ll probably need some clients…yes? Alright, how many prospects can you realistically turn into sales?

You get the idea. With a goal and some simple thoughts, put down in writing, you now have map. Of course, there is more you can do. Budgeting is always a good idea. Ditto marketing ideas. I work with people to help them flesh these things out.

Now, if you’re not happy because you’re not meeting your plan goals, we have something to work with. Where are you deviating from the plan?

You can change a plan. You can’t change “nothing”. You can get back on track.

Failure to plan is the first step towards losing your motivation.