There are many ways to promote your business online, even when your budget is tight. However, the options you pick should be based on your audience’s behavior. From social media and online retail stores, to group buying sites and public relations, make sure you take advantage of most, if not all fifteen opportunities mentioned in this article. But before you begin your online efforts to market your business, focus on your own website, as it is imperative that your website is search-friendly
1. Your Own Website
Your website is your company’s virtual face —
a perfect location to promote your business. It is quite surprising how many
business managers don’t pay much attention to such an important aspect of their
company’s brand. Visitors often react negatively when they see poor quality
content and clutter. A well-designed website provides content with the least
amount of clicks and unnecessary pages. It also motivates visitors to learn
more about what you offer as they navigate through the site. Make sure the
content is relevant, clear, and direct to the point, as customers should be
able to get their answers effortlessly.
Products and
services should have specific landing pages featuring photos, quality
descriptions, and videos. Landing pages should be coded for search, including
keyword-rich copy, header text, title tags, a unique URL, and Meta information
that describes the product.
For more information, read the
article, How to Spring Clean Your Website: Freshen Up Your Site and Bring New
Life and New Customers to Your Online Business, in this issue.
2-8 Social Media and Online
Networks
Social media is an
amazing way to promote your business and receive immediate feedback from
potential customers. It is perfect for small and mid-size companies as it
facilitates your communication with thousands of targeted people easily,
effectively, and quite inexpensively. It is a great investment to dedicate at
least an hour a day to send appropriate messages, ideas, and comments of
interest to your audience. They will get hooked on your postings, opening a key
line of direct dialogue. It is a communication channel that allows you to
develop branding and promotions. Social media applications give merchants
opportunities not only to learn about their customers, but to connect with them
in real time.
Start with social media channels your audience
is likely to use:
2. Facebook
If your customers are composed of direct
consumers, there is a good chance that most of them are Facebook users.
Creating a business page on Facebook is a tremendous opportunity to announce
promotions, product launches, and general information about your products and
services. Research shows that promotions are one of the top reasons why people
become fans of (a.k.a. Like) business pages. It is also a valuable tool to
receive feedback. Because of Facebook’s informal environment, readers tend to
react to postings, and their comments can give very important feedback to your
company. You can manipulate your postings to receive specific insights. It is a
perfect tool to develop relationships with potential customers and business partners.
3. Twitter
Twitter is another excellent channel to
connect with customers and followers, offering quick messages (maximum 140
characters) on product announcements and promotions. It is also ideal to
develop business relationships with your followers and the people that you
follow. What’s more, Twitter allows you to track industry leaders and stay
current with the latest trends.
In addition to creating your
own stream of followers, connecting with social media influencers can be a very
useful strategy. Find them easily by searching key Twitter players in your
industry through applications such as twittergrader.com. Influencers already
have a targeted group of followers that respect their opinions. Developing
relationships with them may land you a recommendation. Actually, even a simple
mention of your product or service may generate high quality exposure to
potential buyers and business partners.
4. LinkedIn
Are you maximizing your profile on LinkedIn?
As a business owner or manager, you can take advantage of LinkedIn for your
personal and business connections. In order to grow your network, search for
people you know. Don’t be shy to ask customers and associates to post
testimonials. It can be very valuable for networking and future connections.
Use LinkedIn as an imaginary trade show. Update your status like you do with
Facebook and Twitter. You may benefit from keeping your network up-to-date on
your business progress. Your new products or services may be a solution for
their personal or business needs. There are several forums and groups posting
questions that your business may help answer. Post your comments and answers to
business needs. Search on LinkedIn for industry-related groups and become a
member to be aware of trends and questions from your business audience. It is
your chance to post answers and promote your business.
For
more information, read the article, LinkedIn Profile Secrets: The #1 Reason Why
Your LinkedIn Profile Fails to Attract More, in this issue.
5. YouTube
YouTube is an exceptional channel to visually
promote your business, and it doesn’t require expensive equipment. A simple
camera will do it, along with well-planned content and production. You can
create several short videos teaching how to fix or build things, or for product
demonstrations. Develop a strategy with objectives. Create a channel with a
series of episodes connected by themes. Viewers should be able to understand
your message by watching just one video, but embed some sort of hook at the end
of each episode to induce the audience to want to watch the next one. It is a
great way to position your brand and build loyalty. If your videos are good
enough on YouTube, viewers most likely will distribute them virally,
multiplying the exposure without any extra cost.
Take
advantage of YouTube’s versatility by posting your videos on websites, blogs,
newsletters, press releases, and social media.
6. Geolocation
Geolocation services are becoming powerful
marketing tools. If you have a physical location for walk-in customers, utilize
geolocation tools like foursquare.com. Offer special deals for your business’s
mayors, and promotions for your best customers. It goes a long way in creating
buzz for your new offerings and locations.
Geolocation
locally engages people by distributing rewards and combining friends and city
guide elements with game mechanics. When they use the application within a few
blocks from your business, a special offer can pop up on their mobile phones.
Location-based services offer customer-relationship tools, rewards programs,
social networks, games, business directories, city guides, and review sites.
Other geolocation services include gowalla.com and loopt.com. Scvngr.com’s
platform offers a quite flexible rewards program allowing you to reward
customers for specific action such as posting a picture, checking in, etc.
Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and Google are developing location-based functions as
well.
7. Blogging
Many businesses can greatly benefit from blogging. You can write
about your industry, your products, and your services. Blogging is a unique
channel for branding, and to personally position you as an industry expert.
Blogs can also be part of your website, giving it a dynamic flare. As visitors
read your postings regularly, they will visit your website more often,
resulting in more exposure to your line of products. There are cleverly
designed free platforms such as blogger.com and wordpress.com available in the
market, and you don’t need any programming skills to use them.
Like
Twitter, some bloggers can be hugely influential. They have thousands of
followers that read their postings every day. Having your product or service
reviewed or mentioned by these bloggers can be very valuable to your brand.
Finding them is very easy by using online search engines such as Google and
Yahoo. Make sure you have a good understanding of their editorial policies,
styles, audience, and content before submitting your product or service. Your
goal is to have them review and make a positive recommendation. Also, pay close
attention to their feedback. It may be very insightful to your product
development team.
8. Online Forums and Industry
News Portals
Forums and portals
are great channels to get your brand and yourself involved in relevant
discussions. You can unlock deals by posting solutions to business managers’
problems. You may also be able to visualize business opportunities or
partnerships. What’s more, by placing your message and links to your website in
comment strings, you will get additional significance in search engine
rankings. Maximize your exposure, but make sure your comments are relevant.
Follow at least the top two or three industry news websites on a daily basis.
9. e-Newsletters
Another direct way to connect with customers
and solidify your brand is through your own electronic newsletter. It is
inexpensive (or even free depending on the size of your database), and you will
be able to present first-hand your new products, service announcements, and a
handful of useful information to your customers. E-mail platforms such as
mailchimp.com and constantcontact.com are very user-friendly.
Consider
offering a sneak peek of your new product or service, exclusive only to e-mail
recipients, or before it is available to non-subscribers. Rewarding your
database will help you add and maintain subscriptions. Distribute your
newsletter issues periodically, but do not spam your subscribers. Make sure
your design is professional, and that your editorial follows some sort of guidelines
with objectives. Your e-newsletter design and content should reflect your brand
personality, which will help build your brand awareness.
10. Press Releases
Issuing press releases is an important
component of any effective communications plan. Embedding multimedia into your
releases will enhance the reader’s brand perception and recall, and increase
your chances to be picked up by mainstream media. There are multiple options of
public relations services available for small and mid-size businesses. You can
hire a service to write and/or distribute it online, or you can write it
yourself and distribute it to your local media. Your distribution choices
should reflect the geography of your audience. If it is a local business,
distributing to your local media is as simple as sending your press releases to
industry reporters’ addresses listed in the publications’ websites, via social
media, and e-mail. Be creative and send journalists to customized landing
pages. Embed YouTube videos with the announcements and demonstrations. The
overall content should be succinct, avoiding wordy and long messages. If your
audience is spread nationwide or internationally, it may make sense to hire a
public relations agency. For text-only and multimedia options, you can use services
such as prnewswire.com, prweb.com, or mindtouch.com. Less expensive services
include freepressrelease.com and prlog.org.
11. Online Advertising
Keyword search programs such as Google Adwords
and other pay-per-click services are valuable tools for promoting products and
services for a wider group of people. These targeted groups are composed of web
users actively looking for your category of products but are not necessarily
familiar or connected to your brand. It is a great tool for brand awareness,
and perfect for small and mid-size businesses due to its flexibility to manage
daily changes with limited budget. Other online advertising services that
should not be overlooked include social media platforms such as Facebook. While
the audience may not be actively looking for a product or service, social media
paid advertising allows you to target users by location, age, gender, and
specific areas of interest.
All online ads should be
clickable and linked to a high-quality landing page on your website or blog.
Landing pages should have specific information about your product offerings,
including description, prices, and instructions for making a purchase. Don’t
expect visitors to navigate many pages of your website to search for
information, because they won’t.
For more information, read
the article, Expand Your Ideas Using Google: Six Steps for New Product or
Service Development, in this issue.
12. Group Buying Sites
People are becoming ever more connected to
group buying sites, attracted by their great deals. They are valuable tools for
brand awareness, or to eliminate extra inventory while promoting your business.
The audience is quite targeted, which means that they opted in to receive daily
deals for a particular location and product category. Users sign up to receive
daily deals. Since group buying sites allow you to target a group by location,
they open up great marketing prospects for brand awareness, and customized
geographical reach. You can benefit by providing aggressive offers to specific
markets while keeping mature regions away from low margin deals. Group buying
websites include groupon.com, dealon.com, and livingsocial.com.
13. Online Retail Sites and
Aggregators
Big online retail
websites offer a range of services that small and mid-size businesses can tap
into. By selling your products through websites such as amazon.com, ebay.com,
and etsy.com, you can reach nationwide customers that are already engaged in
the search and purchase processes. You can also take advantage of their
payment, fulfillment, and shipping programs, and benefit from their popular
customer reviews. When using those services, you are providing peace of mind to
potential customers that already trust these reputable online retailers or
aggregators.
14. Quick Response Codes
Depending on your audience, your company can
hugely benefit from using QR codes in store windows, and product packages,
posters, ads, and displays. A QR code is a matrix bar code with data and/or a
URL encoded. Customers can access information by scanning the code with their
smartphones. This technology opens up a wide range of customized promotional
opportunities for brands. Basically, you can have a sign to guide customers to
scan the code to access coupons, and product or contact information. It will be
linked to a landing page with all promotional or demonstration details.
Because QR codes are fairly new technology, you may need to help
customers understand what they have to do to access them. For example, you can
say something as easy as “Scan this code now using your smartphone to access…”
Customers can download the scanner software for their phones’ cameras at i–nigma.com
and scanlife.com. The software is free, and it only takes a couple of minutes
to download. Since users will read your code’s landing page using their
smartphones, it is important to create a mobile-friendly site.
15. Article Publications
Lastly, as an industry expert, try to build
your professional reputation by publishing articles online. You can indirectly
increase your company’s brand awareness by adding to the credits a link to your
website. Make sure readers can easily contact you to request authorization for
syndication, and to obtain information about your company. Articles are an
efficient way to spread your message and promote your company. Expert articles
may vary from one to three thousand words, depending on hosting requirements
and topic. Try to publish at least three or four articles a year to build your
expert status and increase your company’s search engine rankings. Free portals
include ezinearticles.com and associatedcontent.com. You can also submit
articles to industry magazines. Look for their editorial calendar — your topic
may fit their needs.
Your Core Message
Now that you are aware of the value of many
inexpensive opportunities to maximize your business exposure, it is important
to think about the core message you want to communicate. Elaborate on the
concept and sentiment you want associated with your brand. All communications
through all media channels should reflect that core message. You have to take
the lead on how your brand is perceived. Once you have established your
objectives, you can decide which channels are best suited to your business.
The cyber
world is quite dynamic, so promoting your business online requires daily
maintenance. You must keep your basis fresh by posting content daily, answering
questions, connecting to followers, learning industry trends, and developing
relationships. Don’t just post your content on social networks and walk away.
There are many tools available to help you manage multiple social media such as
hootsuite.com or socialoomph.com.
Your master plan should be
revisited at a minimum once a month. Your competitors change directions periodically,
and you need to be alert to any movement. Realigning your strategies will allow
you to maximize your marketing efforts. HBM
© Lima Lerch Consulting
2006-2011. All Rights Reserved. Renata L. Lerch is a recognized authority on
strategic marketing and communications. She is the founder of Lima Lerch
Consulting, and has worked with strategic marketing for over 18 years. Before
starting Lima Lerch Consulting, she managed marketing and business development
in large multinationals, covering the US, European and Latin American markets.
Renata has developed and executed strategic consumer and trade marketing and
sales plans across multiple channels, including communications, branding,
market research, promotions, social media, online/offline advertising, partnerships
and PR. Renata also has extensive experience with customer service. Lima Lerch
Consulting (www.limalerchconsulting.com)
provides leading marketing consulting services to small and mid-size companies
in the US and Latin America. Contact us at customerservice@limalerchconsulting.com,
or logon to limalerchconsulting.com. Renata’s direct e-mail address is renata@limalerchconsulting.com
