Marketing for Small Businesses that Work

Infusionsoft recently released a small business market research report about sales and marketing. It is quite informative and I highly recommend reading it. I will only focus on a section of it since it would be to lengthy to discuss all of it here.

First a little background so that you know this is a decent report. It was conducted in August 2014, and was focused on small business owners. Over 800 entrepreneurs participated.

I have rarely met a small business that wasn't working with a shoe-string budget. Heck, I still work with a shoe-string budget and I'm always looking for ways for my strategies to do more than one thing. This creates problems like a house built on sand that often falls apart or even worse, does all tasks mediocre. But that is a different story for a different time. The bottom line is that small business owners need every dollar they put into a strategy to yield tangible results. 

The chart above is incredibly telling about what is the most bang for your buck that a small business can do to get results. The first is a no brainer. We all know that customer referrals and word of mouth are always the most effective strategy, but email marketing is number two and many people don't utilize this. Of over 800 respondents, 34% say that this is the most effective way to market for their business. Then 24% say that Social Media is the most effective way to market.

This means that if you as a small business owner will start an email list and email out updates, sales, etc... twice a month and maintain a presence on some sort of social media platform, then you can guarantee an increase in tangible results. This should be music to your ears. Another beautiful thing is that the costs are minimal.

It is worth finding the time to invest into these digital channels. To get you started into email marketing take a look at MailChimp or Constant Contact. These are inexpensive or free depending on the size of your email list and the number of emails per month you want to send. You can even copy and paste code into your website that will allow you to have email signups that will automatically import them into your respected account. One step closer to making it easier to communicate with your customers.

If you have any questions or comments please let me know. I'm always here to help.

David Doughty
Multi-Media Storyteller
daviddoughty.com
@daviddoughty83

Breaking Down Intelligent Content Marketing

So I am going to bet that the most overused phrase in digital marketing in 2015 will be "Intelligent Content." The reason I believe this is because people are already saying it when only barely having a grasp on what it actually means. Most people just quote Ann Rockley who says, "Intelligent content is structurally rich and semantically categorized and therefore automatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable, and adaptable." 

I will be the first to admit that after reading that definition I nodded my head saying "yeah, I need to do that." Then I thought, "what in the world is this talking about and how is it different from regular content that I'm already producing?"

I would like to redefine this statement so everyone can understand without doing further research. Intelligent content is producing content that dynamically fits any screen it's viewed on. It's easily discoverable through thought out tags and titles. It's production is known across company departments allowing it to potentially be reused and adapted to specific audiences. This in return yields a higher return on investment and costs the company less to produce.

If we unpack that a little further we can start to put this into action.

"dynamically fits any screen"
Websites today are mostly all dynamic which means that they resize automatically to fit whatever computer, tablet, or smartphone you are viewing it from. This is extremely important due to the massive amount of people in this world that use mobile devices to use the internet. Therefore the content that you produce to market your company online needs to also be able to adapt and resize with those screens. This can be a problem when you try to distribute your content in formats that are not friendly to adapting. Word documents, pdfs, and other static file formats don't play nice and should not be relied on for sole content distribution. 

Use some sort of blog or microblog to distribute content as your primary vehicle and use static file formats as a sort of carrot for those who signup for your newsletter or complete some other conversion goal.

"easily discoverable through thought out tags"
When tagging posts, whether it is on a blog or on Twitter, it needs to be searchable. Hashtags give you that power on social media and on many blog platforms. When you Tweet something, you always have to think ahead of what you are going to hashtag because you want to give it the best chance to be discovered. In a blog we should do the same thing. Usually their is a place at the bottom to add tags. Put down what your topic is in that tag, but also think about words that people could be searching for that maybe you didn't specifically mention. 

Also, when you finish your content, rewrite your title again. It will always be a better title after you write you blog/article/post.

"potentially be reused and adapted to specific audiences"
Many companies are terrible at communicating across departments. Accounting and sales often don't even like talking to the marketing department, but that could be true with any two departments. When departments are on the same page and know what each other is doing, it allows for creative cross-polination if you will. Content can be adapted into other departments and used to benefit more than just the marketing of the company.

An example of this could be a company who gives good advice in a blog post, but then Joe from IT realizes that that advice could be used on saving them money by using a different software/hardware item that he didn't know existed. Or what if your content is focused on marketing a project and your HR department decides to adapt it and use the same content to recruit. This leads me to the last point.

"higher return on investment and costs the company less"
Intelligent content costs your company less because it can be recyclable and target more than one specific audience. The return on investment is higher as a result and you don't have to put extra time into creating separate content for every aspect of your business. Time is money and therefore saves you money.

In conclusion, don't stress out about intelligent content. Just do a little more preplanning the next time you want to produce content, and share with the rest of the company what you are doing. You never know what form your content might take, and that is truly intelligent content marketing.

 

David Doughty
Multi-Media Storyteller 
daviddoughty.com
@daviddoughty83

What is the Right Social Media for My Small Business?

Let's face it, most small businesses have little to no presence on the web and others barely have a website put together. The most common question I get with small business owners is, "What social media platforms should I be on?" Most think that they have to be on all of them, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Here are three questions you need to ask yourself when it come to figuring out which Social Media platforms your company should be on.

1. Who is MY target audience?

The most important social media platforms that you should be on are the one's where your target audience is. What does that mean? Well, if you're target audience is teenagers then SnapChat might be something you look into. If it's creative young do-it yourself mothers, then Pinterest should be on your radar.

It's important to know your target audience as specifically as possible. If they are men, what kind of men. What are their hobbies, interest, etc.. The better you know your audience, the better you can market to them and know where they go.

2. How much time can I devote to Social Media?

30 min to an hour a day is almost minimum for monitoring and managing your Social Media accounts. Ideally, you should staff a digital marketer who can do all of this for you and more, but many small business can't afford that so there are a few tools you can look into that act as a sort of aggregate to social media. HootSuite is a great one that allows you to login to one place and manage and post to any of your social media sites (well almost any of them). It also measures performance and give you some analytics tools as well.

Some have asked,"Why not just schedule a weeks worth of posts in one day then only check it once a week?" The reason is because you need to monitor what others are saying about your brand. If someone complains about you on your social media site and you don't respond within 24 hours at the latest then it can really make your brand look bad. Here are some examples of what can go wrong (6 examples of social media crisis).

3. How will I utilize the Social Media platforms I join?

So now we know who are target audience is, and where they are. We've joined the two or three social media platforms and are excited about getting started. The problem now is what do I post? This is not uncommon for small businesses to feel this way. This is why you need a plan. 

Decide before hand how many times you will post each week to each social media platform. If you are writing a blog, three original posts a week are stronger than daily regurgitation. Twitter and Facebook can be updated at least 4 to 5 times a week, and more if you find yourself in conversations with customers. 

It is very important that you don't just replicate the same material on all of your social media channels. Make sure each social media platform that you are on has a specific purpose that you are utilizing it for that is different than the other platforms you are on. For example if you are using Facebook for news updates about your company, don't just make yourTwitter account an aggregate for your Facebook feed. It's ok to post links for update to Twitter too, but use your Twitter account as another way for potential customers to contact you with questions, or host monthly Q&A sessions with other professionals in your field.

Just remember that you need to know your audience which will in turn help you know which Social Media platforms you need to be on. But have a plan once you decide where you are going to be and be consistent at executing your plan. And lastly, always ask for feedback so you can constantly be improving your methods. 

-cheers

As always, please ask me any questions on here or on my Twitter account @daviddoughty83