Online Marketing for a Small Business

Using the internet to reach new and potential customers should be a central part of just about any modern business's marketing strategy.

A well designed website

There is more to high quality web design than fancy graphics. Usability, and a well targetted message with a strong call to action will do more to turn readers into buyers than will over the top visual effects. Indeed, sometimes the best design is also the cleanest and most understated.

When building a website it's important to think about who is going to use it, and what for. Is it solely a vehicle to sell to new customers? Or will it also be a way to support your existing customers with help, manuals, advice, technical support, or information? Different businesses have different needs for their websites, and it's important to think about yours.

When getting a new website it's also important to think about how you are going to update it. A good website is a website with fresh and timely content. Are you proficient in HTML and CSS, to the point that you can quickly and easily edit these documents without making mistakes and without even having to think about it? Or would you be happy to pay a web designer to do this for you, even for minor updates? If the answer to both of those things is 'no' - and fair enough if it is - you should have a think about getting a website with a good Content Management System, or CMS. By using a CMS-based website, you will be able to log in and edit and update your content without having to be an expert in the code behind it, or indeed having to think about it.

Another advantage to using a CMS is that they allow the content, the design, and the programming all to be managed seperately. This means that when it comes time to redesign the website, a new design can be added to the site a lot more cheaply and easily, and without disturbing all the great quality web content you have amassed over years of being in business. This is a good thing, as even if your existing website design is already pretty great, it can be a good thing to change the layout and design of your website periodically, to respond to changes in how people use the internet as well as just to let everyone know you're still awake and still making things happen.

Traffic!

The best website in the world will be of limited use if nobody sees it. It's important to think about how people are going to find your site. "Build and pray" is one strategy you may apply. There are better options though.

Some businesses make good use of Search Engine Optimisation, more commonly referred to just as SEO. Ranking highly for relevant keywords on Google, Bing, and Yahoo can be a great way to drive traffic. There is more to good SEO than just high rankings, however. Some keywords attract far more searchers than others, and different keyword phrases are going to vary greatly in their relevance to what your business has to offer.

Social media is also a big driver of traffic, and is always getting bigger.

Banner advertisements and Pay-per-click campaigns can also drive traffic. It's important to manage these campaigns properly, or to engage somebody else who knows what they are doing, as they have the potential to chew up large amounts of money.

There is more to good website traffic than a raw quantity of hits. Don't forget that your objective is ultimately going to be to sell to somebody. If you're selling whitegoods and you're getting thousands of hits from high school kids who live with their parents or from people who live in a country you don't deliver to, you're probably not going to generate many sales. Likewise, if you're only getting people who are bored at work and are more interested in wasting time than buying products or services then you will have similar lack of success. Although it should be said that if you can engage visitors who have at least a passing interest in what your business is about, then even if they aren't ready to buy now, they may do so later.

Blogging

A weblog, or blog is a great addition to most any business's online marketing campaign. Blogs provide a convenient and readable way for businesses to add fresh content to their website and to engage with their audience. Blogs can be updated with announcements, special offers, promotions, and industry news, and also with more general topics such as informational articles or general comments.

Keeping in touch with your customers

Your first sale to a new customer is often the most difficult, and the most expensive to acquire. Indeed, some businesses will deliberately lose money on their first sale to every new customer, so as to build a customer base and profit on all the subsequent sales.

So, after going to all the hard work and expense of acquiring a new customer, why miss out on the opportunity to sell to them again?

Your online marketing should include a strategy for retaining existing customers and reactivating old ones. Email lists and autoresponder sequences are probably the most obvious way for you to stay in touch with your customers.

A good social media strategy can help you stay in touch with your existing customers - the ones that use facebook or twitter anyway. While many businesses do very well out of having an active presence on these platforms, it is good to remember that not everybody uses these websites, and those that do often don't check them regularly. Just about everybody checks their email. Nevertheless, a great many people are heavy users of facebook. Some office workers will spend the entire work day checking it, and then check it in front of the TV when they get home. This can give you an easy way to have repeated points of contact with your customers.

In certain industries, RSS feeds can also be a great way to stay in touch with a customer base. RSS feeds are still a mystery to mainstream internet users, however if your market consists mainly of a particular group that makes heavy use of RSS feeds - such as journalists, bloggers or IT professionals - you may find that many of them are likely to subscribe to your RSS.

However you are getting in touch with your market, is important to be providing interesting, useful, engaging content. There is more to online marketing than simply hammering everyone with sales pitches all the time. It's no good to be sending out emails to 10,000 customers if none of them are opening them.

Don't forget Offline Marketing

Online Marketing is not a replacement for Offline Marketing. For many small businesses, it should only be a part of their marketing strategy. More traditional methods of generating leads and converting them to customers may not be as new or seem as exciting as online methods. That doesn't mean they don't still work.

For businesses with a geographic presence, or those that service a particular local area, good quality signage is crucial. For shopfront busineses with passing vehicle and pedestrian traffic, the importance of good, highly visible, eycatching and professionally designed signage is probably obvious. But other businesses can benefit from signs. Any business with one or more vehicles has a big opportunity to use car signage to advertise and promote themselves. For tradespeople in particular this can be an easy and inexpensive win. Many service businesses can make use of banners and signs - a corporate functions band, for instance, could do well by having a large and very visible banner showing their logo up behind them on their stage, creating name recognition amongst all the guests. Combined with a good, solid, entertaining performance, and reasonable website with enough SEO to rank for the band's name, this could easily lead to further leads amongst the guests, should any of them find themselves in the market for a functions band.

Advertising in print media - in newspapers, magazines, trade journals, phone books, business directories, and other printed media - can be a great way for many businesses to reach their market. Often, for businesses that need to reach a very targetted audience, such as people who all work in a particular industry or pursue a particular hobby, print media advertising can be a great way to ensure that your message is getting in front of people who might actually be interested in what you have to sell. Many magazines and trade journals will often throw in some extra publicity to people who advertise with them, such as an article or review of the business's products or services, or an interview with the owner or manager. Advertising in print does not obviate the need for a good website however. Once upon a time, somebody who had been interested by an advertisement would pick up the telephone to further their enquiries. It has since become far more common for potential customers to go to the internet and look for a website as their next step.

Business cards and letterhead stationery are very inexpensive to get designed and printed, and are an obvious element to most businesses. Certainly, you may even look unprofessional without them.

Direct Mail campaigns can be expensive, but for some businesses they can be a crucial source of new customers. Other businesses can reach new customers by leaflet drops or by advertising in coupon books.

Sometimes new lead generation can be as simple as appealing to the hip pocket nerve. By forming an alliance with an existing business and giving them a chance to earn more money by giving you access to their customer base, you can often get new sales quickly and with a minimum of risk or effort. By offering a commission on new sales, you can give people with a related product or service to yours every incentive to help you succeed.