Danielle MacInnis – Marketing Blog for Small Businesses

I have been consulting for some time now and it seems to me that small business are in the driver seat in being able to cherry pick from some of the best systems and tools about there (many free) to drive their marketing.

Here are a list of my top tools and resources that would be useful to invest in today.

1. Build your blog – this is a way to connect with your target audience in an interactive way. It is also a great way to optimise your web by linking your blog in it. The best tool I have found is wordpress because it has the best widgets (applications to enhance your communications). Blogger and typepad are also good but I have a preference for wordpress. It has more functionality.

2. Build your webpage – I think the key thing for small business is to have a web page with a content management system built into it. I use citymax but there are many software programs now that are web based that can give you a basic template and tools to build your website. A word of caution, make sure that the content management system is easy to use, provides all the services you might need, hosting, web optimisation – key words, meta tags and layout formats and will support you as your business grows i.e. shopping carts, pay per click options, search submission, adding extra domains and pages. You can purchase great templates for wordpress and use it as a website which is a low cost way of getting started but unless you host it on your own domain and use your own CSS tools it is hard to get all the functionality of surveys, forms and product sales online.

3. CRM – a basic database that collects your customers information. I use officeautopilot (sendpepper for SMB) for the base for my customer segmentation and I can use it to send campaigns from, and create landing pages. There are many tools out there that will give you this capability for little investment. 4. Autoresponder – I use aweber. Really great tool for setting up a series of emails to subscribed customers. Not a spamming tool. People need to opt in. It gives great tracking capabilities and allows me to launch many campaigns to different segments with ease.

4. Form creation – I am using Wufoo and finding it excellent. I was using surveymonkey but I think Wufoo has surpassed this tool because of its great intergration with paypal and merchant services. Not only can you create a form or survey (great templates) but you can sell using a template.

5. Sell on-line – I have found Paypal to be great and easy to set up but there are many more including shoppingcart. I think you just have to see what works for you best in your country. 6. Tracking tools – Google analytics is the best for me as it tracks information in more detail than some of the other tools but compete is a great one for looking at your competitors. Website grader is also another good one to see how to optimise your website.

Next steps: So if you are not sure how you stack up or the right questions to ask, take my online survey to help you audit your online marketing strategy.

Small businesses often don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing activities, so here are my top 10 suggestions for stretching that budget to get the best ROI. Most are free!

1. Use a word press platform for your website. Why? Because it is free, and it is already search engine friendly. Over 4000 visitors have been to my blog and it has cost me nothing but the time to learn how to use the tool and the time to update it.

2. Install Skype to connect with people all over the world. This helps grow your business (especially if it is serviced based beyond your immediate geography.)

3. Use a tool like Snagit to grab screen images to brighten up your web, blog or visual presentations.

4.Jing is a free software that allows you to record your voice and screen and is great for presentations or podcasts with a visual element.

5. Invest in a database capture system. I am using Microsoft small business CRM that comes with 1 user licence but for others you can even use a excel sheet to start with columns for customer content. Just put it somewhere!

5. Autoresponders. These are tools that allow you to send automated emails to customers. Great tools to build a training program with or touch base with a regular newsletter to customers. I use Aweber but there are heaps out there.

6. You need a survey tool so you can do forms and run surveys. I have tried them all but I think Wufoo is the best. Best reports, easy to use, more flexible and great design.  

7. Vistaprint is a great site to design your business cards, brochures and invitations. It is quick, pretty cheap and easy to use. It also keeps a record of all your creations so you can quickly update or make changes and then get more printed!

8.PRwire is a great tool for doing your own PR. It is free and you can set up your company’s profile quickly and then email blast your release to the relevant media in a short space of time. Also, it works!

9.Use the web. It is great for research. Google yourself and you might be surprised what you find. Or use Bing, another great search engine. There are so many free resources out there!

10. Networking is a big part of marketing and more than ever before you can network effectively from your study or home office. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, blogs. There are so many forums to gather information, test an idea or build a network of possible collaborators and again it is free!

So there you go, my top 10 tools, get going! Another article I did on customer insight has some other good ideas that cost you little and can also help your marketing.

Want to do two things at once? Listen to this article as a podcast. Here are my tips for a small business.

1. GET A WEBSITE

Your Business is Open to Your Marketplace 24/7,  and can be changed at anytime and it presents a professional image. Don’t you search on the web first when you are interested in a product or service?

You can do this by going to a web designer or use one of the content management tools that I use like citymax. Just google web content management systems and you fill find lots of options.  The alternative to this is to use a blogsite like wordpress, blogger or typepad and direct it over to your website address. Register your domain. Find if you can get your company name. You can check out who is or godaddy to check if it is available.

2. MAKE SURE YOU CAN BE FOUND It should be optimised for keyword searches. You want people to find your site, so make sure it shows up in Google searches. Easy way to do this is to create pages. Home page needs to be attention grabbing and should solve the prospect’s problem. It’s not about you. It’s about them. However to optimise the home page make sure you have 400-500 words with key phases and words in the title, intro and end section of your website page. Do this on every page. You can use a  wordtracker or  keyworddiscovery tools in my list of resources on this blog. Ask for links with associations you work or are involved with. You get points from google and increase your visibility. Then add your website url on everything from your email, signage, advertisements, invitations, everything in your offline presence.

3. Create a relationship with your  customers.

Most people don’t buy when they visit your website. They need to be convinced that what you provide will solve their problems.  Create a unique reason to come back to your website. It might be to download a resource like a checklist on my site or a newsletter or a calculator.  We then ask for a small piece of information, their email address and name. You can use several powerful strategies to build a list of customers and keep communicating with them automatically. How many times have you made an enquiry, or done some research online Gone to a blog or tweeted? You need to provide value. Information. Useful stuff they can use right away.  Remember to connect with your customers, create great content and engage and be of value. To do this regular communication with your customers once you have their names is a email follow on or auto-responder campaign and example is aweber software. The average customer will not respond until they have seen the message for at least 7 times. If you are going to do an email, follow-on, make sure it is still adding value, and that they have opted in.

4. Promote Your Area of Expertise

Create an article about your area of expertise on your website and then send it out on a PRwire service to get it picked up by press on line. This will give you more links back to your site (but only if you put the article on your site first). Your website is the perfect place to feature stories and testimonials but be creative, maybe record a testimonial and stream it live or get some footage. Create a project sheet for download. All of this add to promoting you in your area as an expert. Add a question forum or discussion board to your web (much easier if it is set up as a blog) or link your blog to your home page of your web and start a discussion about things your customers want to know. You should create a blog  separate to your website and link them together( if they are not one and the same). This is where you can link to other interesting relevant sources. You then can build some credibility as a expert. Why not start a podcast, which is another way to do the same thing. This should also live on your web and blog.

5. Understand your customers. Online surveys are a fantastic way to find out what your customers want. Use one of the survey free tools listed on my blog . By finding out what your clients want first, you can tailor your service or event to suit them. When you do launch, you’ll have a far better chance of success. You can also do an adwords campaign with google to create a lead generation program. This is easy to do and you can use the keyword tools above to help you as well as googles tools. You want to ensure that you use google analytics tools as this will help when you come to measure your website .

6. Purpose of your website

Is your website just a digital brochure? Well, it could be so much more. Your site should be a lead generator at the very least and ideally it should be a way to close sales either online or after an enquiry. The value of your business is in your list.  You need to measure conversion on your website. If you had a newsletter for download, measure that. Put the code form google into your website page and measure the downloads with google analytics.  Try  this app for google at youcal How many people are downloading, bouncing, how long are they staying and what are they looking at.

7. Listen, watch and inspire If you are going to invest in a website or blog then you have to invest the time to track it and improve it.  It might be a good idea to get a number of people to contribute content and have one owner. Expect to spend 2 hours per week updating your web or blog if you want it to have some traction. Look at the google analytics of your competitors, invent, create and inspire. There has never been a better time to get an online presence. People are searching on line more and more before they buy a product or service. They are having conversations with their friends online. They are making a short-list and then looking for some interaction before they make a decision. Give them a reason to have a conversation with you or you might be overlooked in this growing marketplace.