Online Marketing

Quick post:  Check out this great post from the folks at Splash Media.  What’s stopping you from blogging?  If it’s time, consider outsourcing. I have some good resources I can recommend.

I have the privilege of hosting a group of colleagues from the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant network in Austin this weekend. We shared some of our favorite online marketing and business tools. Some cool stuff here to help you take action, get organized and more!



Universal Business Listing

Great service to get your business listed online. There’s a fee, but look for the fine print on the bottom for the $39 basic package to get started. Might be the best $39 you’ll spend this year to help your business get found online.

Meeting Burner
Host an online webinar to educate clients or generate leads or just hold meetings- free.

KnowEm
KnowEm allows you to check for the use of your brand, product, personal name or username instantly on over 550 popular and emerging social media websites. Grab your name and secure your brand before someone else does.

I have been getting a lot of info about Google+.  For this edition of Stuff with Moxie, I’m posting some info worth checking out if you want to drill down a bit on Google+ for your business — and life.

Good “insider” interview with Google’s Joseph Smarr

What’s New in Google+

An easier way to invite:  Hey Everyone, We’ve heard that you want to invite your friends, but sometimes you don’t know their email addresses… or sometimes its not easy to find it. To address this, we’ll be rolling out a new feature over the next few days that lets you invite others simply by using a link.  Read more.

I came across this interesting article on the Marketing Profs Blog about how to make your business cards do more work to promote your business. Tara Horner offers five great ideas, and I’ll add two more:

1. Be sure to include your social media links – your blog site name and your Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter profile names.
2. Got an offer, a free report or a newsletter sign-up form on your web site? Put a QR code for it on the back of your card. What’s a QR code?  With the rising popularity of smart phones, you’ll be seeing more of these box-shaped squiggly codes in ads and flyers. Similar to a bar code at your grocery store, you point your smart phone camera, enabled with a QR code app, at the QR code box.  Bada bing bada boom! Your mobile web browser goes to the web page you encoded with the QR code. Check out this article in Tech Crunch about how to make a QR code on Bit.ly.

My semi-regular weekend roundup of marketing stuff with Moxie that I came across recently.

Facebook Business Page Upgrades

Mashable’s Vadim Lavrusik posted a good review on the new features Facebook launched last week for “Fan” or business pages.  One of my favorite improvements is the ability to post comments and likes under your business entity, rather than just your personal name.  Read more.

50 Places to Find Images for Every Small Business Need

From Small Business Trends:  ”Your blog posts, your marketing materials and your website all need images. As a small business owner, you probably think that photos come with an expensive price tag, but they don’t have to. In this post, we highlight 50 image sites and services where you can get photographs and types of images for free or a low cost.”  Read more.

Add Skills to Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn has added a beta tool to help you search for people (and list your own) by their skills. More and more, Linked In is getting it right with powerful new features to help you connect and grow you B2B business.  Read more.

A semi-regular Saturday round-up of moxie marketing links, tips and stuff on the web and my feeds.

Have you tried Google Hotpot?

Google keeps adding new ways to get customers to interact with your small business.  All the more reason to make sure your Google Place page is active and has offers to attract and convert customers.  Invite your customers to review you!   It’s not a Yelp-killer…yet.  Here’s a nice post.

Ten Things I Believe About Email

Don’t believe the naysayers that say email marketing is dead.  It is still one of the best ways to build lasting relationships. Here’s a nice post by Dylan Boyd with some classic email tips to help your program thrive.

Cheap Versus Expensive Copywriters – Which Should You Choose?

I’m asked a lot about the importance of good copywriting.  Skimping on copywriting is like filling your high-performance car with regular gas instead of premium.  It’ll get you there, but the ride isn’t as sweet or satisfying, and you might even have a few breakdowns.  Check out the CopySnips blog.

A call to action makeover, why your business should be on facebook, and the best way to grow a business top the weekend edition of Marketing Stuff with Moxie – my semi-weekly compilation of three compelling or noteworthy marketing tips, tools or tactics I’ve come across in the past week.

Five Signs your Call-To-Action Needs a Makeover

Do you even have a call to action on your web site or landing page?  A compelling offer or clickable link for people to get to know like and trust you?  You should.  Hubspot’s Diana Freedman discusses a few ways you can tell that you need to makeover your site’s call-to-action.  Read more.

Eight Reasons Your Business Needs a Facebook Fan Page

If you’re like many small business owners, you’re just not sure about jumping into the social media fray.  A lot of my clients suffer from Facebook Fan Page Fear.  Here are eight compelling reasons from MySEMExperts blogger Harry Huxford that might help you overcome your fear.  Or you could go to your Fear Coach and pay a lot of money. Read more.

The Best Way to Grow A Business?

I’ll bet you could come up with the answer on your own.  Yup, it’s word of mouth, or basically referrals. Think about the favorite, easiest deal you ever closed – the one where the prospect practically said “let’s get started!” before you could even ask for the sale. It was probably a referral. Here’s a nice blog post by WinWeb’s Stefan Töpfer about a recent Linked In survey T-Mobile conducted.  Read more.

A side commentary on that list tip. I read a number of stories this week about the small business bill Congress sent to President Obama.  One congressional critic said, “Small businesses don’t need more credit, they need more customers.” Amen.  Don’t expect Congress to help you get more customers. You’ve got to do that on your own and word-of-mouth is the easiest, cheapest and most effective “small business stimulus plan” ever.

I like to think of things in threes. It seems that my brain more readily learns and retains three things at a time. Three is a mystical number that shows up in the Bible and fairy tales too, so there must be something to it! The following three-step referral process will help you grow a simply amazing business and help other businesses do the same. Note that each step has just three words. I’ll bet you’ll be able to remember them too!

1. Discover your Difference
2. Give to Get
3. Refer and Reward

Discover your Difference

Take some time to discover what truly sets your business apart and identify three things that make your business amazing. Here’s a hint: those things are not your product, service or price. Truly amazing businesses don’t compete on price or their product or service. Customers buy from truly amazing companies because they offer something else. For example, an outrageous guarantee, a unique experience (think Southwest Airlines), an outstanding process, or incredibly friendly people – you get the idea. Are you stumped at how to find that difference? Here are three steps you can take:

1. Ask three employees (it can be more, but start with three) what they think sets you apart or what they see in your industry that could help set you apart. Start with your sales team.
2. Ask three of your ideal customers what they think about doing business with you. Invite them to participate in short survey. Ask them why they hired or bought from you in the first place. Ask them why they refer business to you. Ask them what you could do better.
3. Evaluate three competitors and look for gaps that you can fill. They’re probably competing on price or product in their marketing messages. Look for ways to beat them at their own game. You’ll see some themes emerge from this process. Write them down, and build them into your business or marketing plan. Can’t find three differences? Did you find some gaps or problems? Well, that’s good. You now have some work to do to become an amazing business.

Give to Get

Now that you have three amazing differences in mind, find three other businesses that could be or are amazing. They can be businesses that have the same customer base as you. The idea is to get connected to business that you can refer and they in turn will refer you. Find amazing businesses that your customers or prospects would like, and your customers will in turn think more highly of you for the information. The key here is not to ask them to refer you, but to invite them to educate you on how can to send them referrals . Give to get. Three more steps:

1. Contact three business owners and tell them you’d like to know three amazing things about their business. Explain that you believe you have similar customers or clients that could benefit from knowing about their business.
2. Give them your three amazing differences as an example and explain how you came up with those differences.
3. Invite them to send their three amazing differences back to you so you can begin referring business to them, and encourage them to do the same for you.

Refer and Reward

Follow-up is essential in this process. Now that you know three amazing differences about other businesses, actively refer them. Your final three steps:

1. Think of three current customers or prospects that might be a good match for your three referral partners and actively refer them. Important: this isn’t something you should do passively. Don’t simply write a company’s name down on a scrap of paper and tell your customer or prospect to call them. Introduce them – via email, at lunch, or at an event where everyone is in attendance. Make it personal and communicate your referral partner’s amazing differences.
2. Set up some kind of reward system when your referral partners send business your way. You can offer a cash incentive, a gift certificate, or maybe free services or products from your business. However a reward doesn’t have to be money or free services. An acknowledgement via a hand-written note can go a long way to help your referring partner feel appreciated when they send you a prospect who becomes a customer.
3. Repeat the process. This isn’t something you do once and forget. Always be on the lookout for more referral partners. Ask your new customers what businesses they think are amazing and approach those businesses to be your referral partners. Create a plan. You don’t have to refer everyone all the time (after all, you have to grow and run your business, right?). Do it over three months, and find three ways to introduce them. Feature a “referral partner” once a month on your website, put information about them in a newsletter, or keep their business card handy to share with others you meet in a networking session, and tell them you’ll follow up with a personal introduction.

So put the power of three to work to make your business amazing. I’d love to hear your comments and suggestions – I’ll take at least three!

[Blogger's note: This post first appeared as my submission to the HP SugarTone contest: “Making your business amazing”, sponsored by Hewlett Packard]

VOTE for this post HERE and also Leave a Comment to win great prizes!

While speaking to groups and clients about the value of blogging for business to draw prospects to their web site, there is always a point in the conversation when about half of the audience suddenly gets a look of panic or fear on their face — or their eyes simply begin to glaze over. It's not that they don't get the value of blogging, or understand how to technically get a blog article posted, or realize that search engine spiders love information-packed blogs.  

The yellow blog stripe they feel crawling up their back is being fueled by fear. Fear that they'll never be able to write something that people will actually want to read.  The invisible thought bubbles above their heads are practically shouting, "What will I say? Who will care? I don't have time for that. Can't I pay someone to do that for me?" The answer to that last question is, yes you can.  But if you're the owner or top manager of a small business, you're missing an opportunity to engage your customers in a way that was never possible back in the days before the Internet.  

So, what to do? There are countless articles on how to write effective blog content. It can be daunting just sifting through blog posts about writing blogs. It's a blog world gone crazy. I finally found an article on the Small Business Trends Blog that made sense. But before you click here to read it, consider this: God didn't give everyone the gift of writing. And there is a lot of great content already out there that you can comment on and share with your readers. Just like I just did by including that link. You're an expert in your field. If you're not feeling inspired to write, search other blogs in your industry and post a comment there. Link and comment about them on your blog too. Rave or rant. Start a conversation. Your readers will probably jump right in, and before you know it, you'll have blog post with more than 350 words like I do right now.  There.  See?  I'm done with my blog!

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty | Source: New York TimesSteve Jobs unveiled the much-anticipated iPad today, basically an iPhone on steroids. It's sleek. It's cool and it's not as expensive as some people expected. Woo hoo!

The early reviews from gadget-heads are mixed. Check out this review from Gadget Hound Ben Peterson. While the opinions of techno-prognosticators will matter to Apple and it's marketing efforts, for small business owners the most telling and important "quote of the day" (according to Time Magazine) comes from Apple's Steve Jobs, "It's phenomenal to hold the Internet in your hands."

So whether or not you run out to buy one of these hot new gadgets to run your business, the important takeaway from a marketing perspective is that now more than ever, you need an internet marketing strategy. Think of this device as a Yellow Pages for George Jetson. No more paper. The world will be at your customers' fingertips where ever they go and I expect that the iPad will spawn many competitors.

Need to find a reputable financial planner?  There's an app for that. Looking for advice on how to get approved for a loan?  There's an app for that. Need a plumber?  There's an app for that.

Yes, the digital information age has arrived and what you say about your company on your website matters now more than ever. It's about content. Your website can no longer be a pretty digital brochure with flattering pictures and descriptions of your product or service.  Frankly, no one cares about your product or service. They care about what it does for them or their business. For customer's to find you on the iPad, you'll need dynamic content that targets your niche market and explains what makes your business unique – and a social media strategy to get found – from a blog to Facebook, Twitter and more.

Apple knows this. This product will make people feel smarter, cooler and more productive.  It will entertain them and their friends.  

Are you and your business ready?  Do you have an app for that?