Believe it or not, everything you think you know about marketing is wrong. That’s right, flat out wrong.
Fortunately, it’s not really your fault. You see, what we today think of as marketing is something that’s been in the works for the past 1/2 century or so. It hasn’t always been this way, but because of the slow hijacking of the idea of what marketing really is, what we now think of as marketing is really nothing more than an attempt to build up name recognition.
Turn on the TV, flip through any magazine, open up most any telephone directory in any city, or drive along any major highway and you’ll see a never ending parade of attempts to simply brand a company. Or in other words, these companies are paying big bucks with the hope that when the time comes for you to buy a product or service they happen to offer that you’ll remember having seen their ad somewhere and decide to spend money with them.
As a small business, investing your hard earned dollars on the simple HOPE that someone remembers you at some time in the future is in my opinion, suicide!
So, if branding is such a bad idea, then how should you market your business?
Well, if we go back to the early days of selling and even up until the mid-1920’s and examine the type of marketing that was being used we’d see that it was all very much about telling a story and building a relationship.
Instead of simply trying to get someone to remember them, companies would paint a picture of life with their product or service in it. They’d go into as much detail as possible about why their product was better than the competition.
Unfortunately, over time as it became more costly to advertise companies started focusing more on branding instead of telling a story, painting a picture, and explaining exactly why someone should purchase their product or service.
In my next post I’ll share with you some videos that show clear cut evidence of how the focus of marketing has changed over the years. It’s a pretty eye-opening piece of evidence and I think you’ll find it interesting.
When it comes to successfully marketing your business online (and in this case, size DEFINITELY doesn’t matter!), one of the critical components is content.
In fact, there’s a saying the says, “Content is King” and online, this is definitely the case.
You see, because the search engines are all about providing THE BEST information relative to what a searcher is looking for, the one that can best provide the most relevant, most useful, and quite frankly, just the most information is the one that will have the most success.
However, creating lots of good quality content is never an easy task. In fact, it can be a pretty daunting challenge to keep up with.
Fortunately, by following a few basic principles that have been used with great success for many, many years in the publishing business, any size business can become a content creation machine, thus positioning themselves as the ‘fount of knowledge’ or more plainly, the one people turn to for answers!
5 Tips for Content Creation Success:
- Find out what your audience wants to hear. First off, you don’t want to be wasting your time creating content that no one cares about but you. To be truly effective at creating content (and marketing your business for that matter!) you need to first understand what moves your target market.Are there hot buttons issues you can talk about? Do they have recurring frustrations you have the solutions to? What are the most common questions you get asked?
Each of these make great starting points around which some quality content can be created.
- Create content sequentially. What this means is allow your content to build off itself. In other words, try not to jump around too much from one topic to the next.Start with an idea and follow it as far as you can go. Dig deep into it and then once you’ve reached a conclusion, use a related idea as your segue into your next topic.
- Use an editorial calendar. This is a tool from the publishing industry that works very well for any size business and in many cases, I would say it’s almost a requirement!When you have an editorial calendar you’re basically planning out the content you’re going to create, what the topic will be, and when it’s due. This essentially gives you a plan that you can follow to ensure you stay on topic and on time with your content creation.
- Engage others in your cause. Creating lots and lots of content (something that unfortunately needs to be done) can be a very lonely road to hoe at times.Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone! There are plenty of resources out there that would be more than willing to help you out, you simply need to do a little investigative research to find them and determine how best to employ them in your content creation efforts.
- Remember to have fun! This is probably the most important. Again, creating lots and lots of content can be an extremely daunting task and if you don’t enjoy doing it chances are it’ll drive you crazy!Fortunately, if you really enjoy what you do than you probably enjoy sharing your knowledge and expertise with others. When you create content, that’s really all you’re doing, sharing your knowledge with others.
Simply find a way to reproduce that knowledge in a way that you enjoy and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a content creation king!
As you work to grow your local business online, keep these 5 tips in mind to help you consistently create profit producing traffic and leads for your business.
What other tips or suggestions do you have when it comes to creating lots of quality content? What’s your favorite method of creating content? What types of content have you found to be the most successful at generating interaction with your target market?
If you’re a local business and the idea of generating tons of new prospects and customers via the Internet seems like an exciting idea, you’re right on track.
However, before you jump in with both feet you want to make sure you’re starting off on the right foot.
As exciting as the Internet can be, it’s also filled with all sorts of pitfalls and stumbling blocks that can lead to headaches, frustrations, and empty promises. Because there are new tools being introduced every day, it’s important to make sure you have (at a minimum) an idea of what it is you want to accomplish online.
You see, without a plan of attack, you’ll quickly find yourself spinning your wheels trying to make tools like your website, a blog, PPC ads, and the many social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, or FourSquare work for you.
So, with so many tools and different methods for marketing your business online, where exactly does one start?
Well, as with anything related to marketing your business, the very first step in the process is to decide what it is you’re trying to accomplish. Without knowing where you want to end up, how will you know which direction to go? Or how to correct course when you get off track? Or even when you’ve arrived?
Chances are you already have a pretty good idea of what you want to accomplish. You know who you’re target market is, you know how your products or services satisfy their wants/needs, and you know what it takes to make sales.
The next is to decide which online tools are best able to help you accomplish those same goals online. To help kickstart the thought process, keep the following questions in mind:
- Which online tools best allow me to effectively reach my target market?
- What information is my target market looking for when they go online looking for the products and services I provide?
- How can I best communicate my unique selling proposition online?
- Can I re-purpose marketing collateral I already have for use online?
- Can I recreate my offline sales process using online tools? Which tools will help me do that?
Remember, marketing your local business online is no different than doing so offline. It’s all a matter of identifying your target market, figuring out where they ‘hang out’, and then presenting them with the information they need to make the decision that you offer the best choice for them.
The Internet provides PLENTY of opportunities and tools to do just that, but without a clear idea of what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s impossible to determine which tools can best help you achieve your objectives!
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I work a lot with local, service based businesses and the more and more people I talk to, the more and more I’m realizing just how mysterious this whole ‘Internet’ thing is. I’d venture a guess that a large majority of these local, service based business owners definitely know what they Internet is, the certainly know it’s an important thing, but when push comes to shove, they really have no clue how to make it work for their business.
What Keywords Would Someone Use To Find Your Business?
In other words, how can they generate qualified leads online, convert them to customers, and then hopefully build a lasting and profitable relationship, all online through their Internet presence.
Whenever someone asks me what the starting point should be in terms of growing your local business through the Internet, my first answer is always, “you’ve got to do the keyword research” to which they usually reply, “what’s keyword research?”
In a nutshell, keyword research is identifying the words or phrases someone would use to search for your business on the Internet. So when they go to Google and type in the words they think will bring them the answer to their query, what are the words that will bring them to you?
Just like you need to pick a niche for your services, you should also pick just a handful of keywords and focus on them as you begin your web marketing efforts.
For example, let’s say you run a lawn care or landscaping business. The very first thing you should do is figure out what words someone would type into a search engine if they were looking for your business.
Would it be ‘lawn care’, ‘lawn care service’, or maybe ‘lawn mowing’? And what if they were looking for someone to do lawn fertilization, they’d might search for ‘lawn care fertilization’ or something of the sorts.
The key is to pick 2-3 primary keywords that you’ll focus the majority of your efforts on. This means you’ll want to sprinkle your keywords throughout the content you create for your site, you’ll need to include them in your title tags and meta tags, and you’ll want to create content (articles, videos, blog posts, etc.) that talks about those keywords.
Remember, doing your keyword research up front is like creating the roadmap for where you want to go. If you don’t know where you want to go, you want know what direction to head, and you’ll certainly never know when you get there.
So before you do anything online, spend some time brainstorming the right keywords because it will make everything you do a whole lot more focused and a whole lot more effective.
As I begin writing the conclusion to this 7 part series of effective marketing secrets, the fact that I haven’t written in a few days probably doesn’t leave a very favorable impression, especially since this last secret is all about consistency.
Consistency in what you say. Consistency in the end results you deliver. But most importantly, consistency in communicating with your marketplace.
Believe it or not, not everyone is going to jump all over your offer (assuming of course you’re presenting an offer EVERY TIME) the first time they see it. People’s lives go through cycles and let’s face it, life gets busy. As a result, it’s silly to expect a prospect to purchase your particular product or service the very first time they encounter it.
You see, there’s something in marketing called the Sales& Marketing Spectrum (see below), which is the idea that people enter your sales or marketing process at various points along a spectrum of ‘readiness’.
At the far left you have people that have just begun the process of thinking about your particular product or service as a solution to their want or need. At the far right you those people that have money in hand and are ready to fork it over.
The problem is, there’s a whole bunch of space that separates those two types of prospects and the time it takes a prospect to move from the far left to the far right could be days, weeks, months, and in some cases years. And it’s in the space between where they entered your sales process and the far right where they finally become a customer that they’re researching and trying to find answers to their questions, concerns, and issues.
So, how can you be sure that your prospects don’t forget about you or your solution during the time it takes them to move from the far left, where they’re just starting to investigate possible solutions, to the far right, where they’re finally ready to buy?
The key is to consistently communicate with them. While this communication is much more effective if it’s a direct communication, that’s not always possible. You certainly don’t want to call Mrs. Prospect every day to tell them about how much better their life would be with your product or service.
However, you DO want to make it possible for Mrs. Prospect to receive this information EVERYDAY if she so chooses.
Fortunately, there are many tools that allow you to communicate with your target market in ways that don’t seem intrusive or over-bearing, and while I could go on and on and on about all the available tools, I’ll save that discussion for another day.
The idea I’d like to convey is that given the time it takes the majority of your prospects to go from just beginning their search to actually forking over their cash, is time you should be using to develop a relationship with your prospects and position yourself as THE EXPERT.
The only way you can do both of those is to be consistent with your communication. In upcoming posts I’ll talk about putting some systems in place to help you be more consistent at communicating, but for now, I challenge you to do a better job at communicating with your target market. Don’t be a stranger. Share your knowledge and expertise. Help them realize that no matter how much they search, research, and study that you truly do offer the BEST answer to their problems, wants, and needs.
