Ten Online Marketing Tips for SMEs and Sole Traders
The most important thing to remember is that online communication is JUST ANOTHER CHANNEL – integrate it and don’t be scared of it. This easily-accessible medium offers cost-effective tactics you can do – to a greater or lesser extent – yourself. Even if you never plan to get involved with your online marketing, a good understanding of the subject will put you in a better position when hiring agencies like ours. It means you can help push us in the right direction and it increases the likelihood that we will understand and meet your expectations.
Below are ten simple ideas you can implement yourself. This is not a “one size fits all” – not all the tactics will work for all occasions/businesses – but what follows is an overview of some of the less obvious tips that will, I hope, be of real value to your and your marketing department.
1. Claim your Google Maps listing
Try searching for yourself by your business name and city name. If you find yourself, click on the “Edit Link” and then click on “Claim Your Business”. Problems often befall smaller businesses that don’t claim their listings. You can make sure visitors can find you and your offices on maps fast and add information about your company, plus a link through to your site. Do the same at Yahoo Local and Microsoft Live Search Maps by following similar steps to above. Yahoo asks “Own This Business?” and Microsoft has a link to “Change Your Business Listing”. We also recommend claiming or editing your listings on Yell and similar sites.
2. Email Marketing
Use a system like ebuild to create, send and measure on brand e-marketing messages. By linking it to content on your website and by carefully monitoring how it is used, you can drive qualified, quality footfall to your product or service. With the right kit you can run it all yourself, or you can tap into the expertise of a company like ours to help you design, build, plan and run your ongoing emarketing campaigns. Have a look at ebuild now, for more information. One tip is to make sure you have lots of different templates. For example a newsletter for monthly communications, a letterhead style for announcements and internal communications, one to keep people in-house up-to-date, one for new releases to send to press and customers, invitation templates for events and a product sales template for etailers. Depending on your area of business, there are more. The trick is to keep asking your customers how much information they want to receive, in what form and keeping it all PERMISSION-BASED.
3. Claim your social media name/profiles
Even if you’re not on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or MySpace, you should create profiles using your company name on these and other top social-networking sites. Even if you never use these profiles, at least you’ll be sure no-one else will be using them. If you do set up an account, it’s vital the information is relevant and of use to people who might find it. This is part of your online identity, so make sure its integrated with how you look offline.
4. Do basic online reputation management
Because bad news can spread more quickly than good news, we recommend you use Google Alerts in order to keep track of what people are saying about your business. You can monitor your own name, your company name and the names of important people in your company. Professionals suggest choosing “comprehensive” alerts and getting them once a day. Also, learn how to use RSS and subscribe to RSS feeds of your company name and key staff names. In addition, you can monitor your own name on Twitter and other services. When someone says something bad, act. When someone says something good, act. BE proactive.
5. Check your foundational links
Make sure you’re listed in Yahoo Directory, Open Directory (which is free), Business.com, and Best of the Web directories. While directory listings aren’t a golden ticket to high search engine visibility, they represent the foundation of a link-building effort. We also recommend reviewing the internal links on your website and making sure you use keywords in anchor text when possible. For example, when links say “Click Here”, change them to describe the content on the page you’re linking to – “Red Widgets” is much better anchor text than “Click Here”.
Free online classifieds and link listing. Don’t get carried away with this but do take advantage of some of the free ad space online. Typically, if you search one of the major search engines for your industry + add link, you can find a few decent sites where you can list your business for free.
6. Get involved with your analytics
Successful companies must have Web Analytics and Google Analytics is more than adequate for smaller businesses. Pay attention to the data. Look at what keywords are sending natural search traffic to your site and look at what other sites are referring traffic to you. Marketing opportunities are to be found in both of those data sets. Use the email function so that Google Analytics sends the data directly to your inbox, rather than attempting to remember to check the analytics regularly.
7. Spend a day health checking your online information
There is no point pushing people to sites if the contact is out of date, wrong or simply no good. Here is a quick check list:
◦ Review your company information
◦ Review your contact information
◦ Review your email routing
◦ Review and test your contact forms
◦ Review your automated outgoing messages
◦ Update your copyright and/or privacy policy statements
◦ Test all outgoing links on your website
◦ Review the hidden sections of your website
◦ Review your domain record
◦ Do an overall review of your website
8. EPR – article submission and PR
There are many online article submission sites. The deal is that you write an article that others can use in their ezines or on their websites. In exchange, they credit you at the end of the article in the form of an “author bio” or credit paragraph. Search for “article submission.” The more closely-related the article is to your industry, the better. And PLEASE triple-check grammar, spelling and logic and sense of your article.
Publicity. This one has been around forever. Write press releases and submit them to the local media and to online press sites. Learn about press releases first if you don’t know how to write them. Press releases must be both newsworthy and properly written. EPR is something that really works in making sure your customers have information about your company from a reputable source – the fact that you supplied that information is neither here nor there.
Forum postings. Posting in forums just to promote your business is considered bad form. However, if your post has value to the discussion, it is usually okay to post your website or company name in your signature line. Be careful not to spam forums or you may find yourself in trouble.
9. Educate your customer
Tip sheets, fact sheets, helpful hints, etc. can do wonders for your business. We typically forget that not everyone knows what we know. You can create tip sheets or how-tos in little or no time to help someone learn more about the product or service you are selling. This is why stores like B&Q offer free classes on how to build things. Their customers learn the skills needed for various projects and are more likely to buy the products there. You can offer free classes, too, or start with something simple such as a house cleaning tip sheet, if you sell cleaning products, for example.
10. Online advertising
Just like offline, you can buy ads online but unlike offline, you can measure and tweak these campaigns quickly and easily. Use Google adwords to kick off with as it’s the most-used search engine for business. You CAN learn how to do this and by getting involved, you will understand your customer profile far better, as you can check the stats and so on. Here’s a little secret. If your spend is £2K a month, Google will do all the hard work for you. If your budget is less but you want the best results, then an organisation like ours will do all the work and report back to you without adding much cost to your ad spend.
SOME EXTRAS ON COMMUNICATING ONLINE
1. Say “thank you” to your customers. This should be blindingly obvious but many businesses do not have a formal process in place, either to say thank you or to show appreciation to their customers. Say it verbally, yourself if possible, send an email, pick up the phone. Let your customers know you don’t take them for granted.
2. Great customer service. This is one of the best marketing tools you’ll ever use. It does create the coveted “word of mouth” advertising we all crave and it is so rare these days that people will talk about it. Be friendly, be professional and do your best to exceed your customers’ expectations. They will come back and they will tell their friends.
3. Ask for referrals and testimonials. If a customer praises your product or service, ask them to refer you to their friends and associates. Ask them to write their opinions down and post those “reviews” in your store, online, in your brochures, etc.
This story has been compiled through a mix of research and our own knowledge. It includes ideas from experts such as Matt McGee, Ed Gould and multiple online resources.
