Danielle MacInnis – Marketing Blog for Small Businesses

Small businesses now get it. They need to capture potential customers that come to their website. They get that they need to have a series of touch points before they convert that lead into a customer. How to capture that lead with relevant content often becomes the stumbling block.

What do I have that I could share? What information, resources or tools can I share?

Here are some good tips in working out what to use as a lead capture tools:

1. Understand what your ‘ideal’ prospects want, and give it to them

Determine what information your prospects are seeking to make a purchase decision, and make that information easily attainable. ( e.g a checklist, free trial, pricing information, comparison chart)

2. Offer something that solves your prospects problem

Solve your prospects problem. Draw an arrow from your prospect’s problem to your solution. (How to choose an architect, How to consolidate your debt in 90 days, Retire at 55 confidently, download our checklist)

3. Offer something that helps prospects make a purchase decision

Paint a picture that enables your prospects to envision themselves experiencing the benefit of your product or service. (competitive chart, education)

4. Don’t sound like everyone else

Get more attention by being different. Have a sense of humour, community, value. (free shipping)

5. Good offers should be enticing

If you can elicit an emotional response in your prospects, and you’re already on the path to creating a relationship with them. (30 day free membership access, free consultation, our key tools)

6. Make your offers easy to share

Use your site traffic to amplify your marketing efforts by making your offer enticing enough that prospects will want to share its benefit with others. (tweet, FB like, download, forward  to a friend)

7. Create value 

If you don’t want it, won’t open it, download it they they probably won’t. We are way past email newsletters.

Most of my followers know I love Hubspot. I have followed their philosophy around inbound marketing for several years and while I am still learning I try and share great ideas and tools from them and others in my website in the Stuff We Are Into section of our site.

Hubspot have a new marketing grader which I think is awesome. Let’s look at this resource in more detail.

1. It is easy to use. Just plug in your website url into the Marketing Grader and it does all the gathering of data to help you improve your online marketing in a number of ways.

The tool looks at the Top of the  Funnel  which includes how you attract potential visitors to your website and uses a number of metrics. These aren’t fool proof but they are a good guide to ensuring you are doing the basics to get your website found and convert as many potential customers as possible.  The top of the funnel as Hubspot explains is about “Creating, optimizing, and promoting content are keys to filling the top of your sales and marketing funnel with more website traffic and leads. The good news is that companies who create, optimize and promote their blogs get 55% more traffic and 70% more leads than those who don’t. ”

After each section Hubspot provide some next steps you can take to improve your grade.

Top 3 Things To Do

1. Add more pages to your website containing unique and useful content, probably by blogging.
2. Get more inbound links to your website.
3. Link to your blog from your homepage.

I have made a big point of blogging over the last 18 months and continually try and encourage my clients to blog and submit those blogs to other sites to get their unique content published on other sites. This gives your site back-links or what Hubspot calls inbound links and gives google a reason to seek you out as a credible authority on your areas of focus. Having your blog on your home page is important as most people visit that rather than your internal pages. Thus they are more likely to click on your blog if it is at linked on the home page. Other good pointers from Hubpot include the search engine optimisation of your blog and website. Naming your pages and even your images so you can be indexed for everything you create and making sure your content is easy to share with social media buttons.

2. The Middle of the Funnel Hubspot describes as  Converting traffic into leads and leads into customers by focusing on the middle of your funnel and using landing pages, conversion forms, email marketing and social media.

Again they give you some top tips to improve your conversion.

Top 3 Things To Do

1. Add a landing page with a conversion form to your website.
2. Add calls to action that link to landing pages to your blog posts.
3. Share links to landing pages with forms on Twitter.

Most clients I take on when I look at their website don’t have a form to capture leads on the home page or know what a landing page is. A landing page is a page that has an offer to capture leads. It doesn’t have to be a new page but at the very least a good offer that will make it likely for the prospect who visits your website to leave their email and name is a must.

3. End of the Funnel hubspot explains is the Analytics  – Knowing what marketing activities are working (or aren’t working) for you by measuring your successes and failures.

Again they give you tips on this section:

1. Attract more website visitors using inbound marketing.

It amazes me how many people still don’t have analytics on their website or for their email campaigns. How can you make them better? How do you know if they are working. Analytics are key to improving your marketing. So if you haven’t already why not add analytics to your website.

Just to let you know I graded my website and got 66 out of 100 so I still have some work to do but at least I have some next best steps. How did you go?  Grade your online website here.

My article on 7 ways to gain or maintain your competitive advantage was just published on Women’s  network Australia. Check it out for some hot marketing tips.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to a Glen Eira Women Business Network event tonight where the key speaker was Ita Buttose, a well known Australian business women, journalist, speaker and dare I say born entrepreneur!

With a restlessness in my body (largely to to Ita stirring up some “big ideas”),  I have decided to share my key take aways from Ita’s talk. Ita shared some really valuable marketing insights that we can all leverage!

1. No one can become a winner without taking risks.I really liked this concept because in marketing you need to think about risks. You need to just try some things so you have some activity happening. The worst that can happen is that you learn something. Two years ago I began approaching councils to see if I could do some presentations to small businesses about marketing, this year I am being paid to presentations. It all started by me making that first phone call.

2. In Ita’s words ” I have always believed in thinking big.” Using this philosophy Ita approached the then prime minister Bob Hawke to help launch her new magazine ITA. Guess what, he said yes and she gained so much publicity that she cancelled the launch advertising campaign to use at a later date. Maybe not in the same league, but it was this thinking big that launched by podcast series which has now been adopted by Flying Solo and made available to over 300,000 small businesses. Got to love that! Reach for the stars!

3.Recognise your uniqueness or  the edge of difference. It is this difference that can set you apart form your competitors. There are lots of marketers, good marketers but no one approaches marketing with the customer centric methodology that I take. This makes me different. How are you or your product and service different?

4.“Don’t be afraid to pinch a great idea. Knock it off.” Love this. Being doing this all my life. I don’t believe in recreation just innovation so I am happy to take an idea and improve it but that doesn’t mean I need to start from scratch! “No one has a copy write on good ideas.”

5.You have to be able to make tough decisions. This means being able to be objective and I find the best way to do this is to get some advice. It is so hard to see the forrest  through the trees when you are emotionally involved in your business. A good coach or mentor, someone you trust and has good business sense can help you make the hard calls so you can navigate your business path successfully. Once you have this insight you need to be able to act. Don’t keep doing something because you have always done it that way.(hint: = insanity). Challenge your thinking.

6. Ask for input about how you improve your business from your customers and staff! I am putting this in red because this is at the heart of customer centric marketing and yet so many small businesses don’t ask for feedback.  Your staff and customers are best placed to help you improve your small business so don’t miss the gift of feedback. The most growth I have seen in a client I have is by introducing a client and staff feedback mechanism. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just ask them.

7. Time to Think!  I really only have understood the value of this point in the last three months after a bout of illness. Isn’t it crazy, right after a holiday you always feel energised and have the best ideas! What if you took a mini break every week. Had your lunch in a park or at the beach. New places, new faces new ideas! As Ita says “Do something that the brain doesn’t know,” and you could open up new possibilities.

8.Keep a list of those people who said if you ever need anything just call me and then call them! It is so nice to give a favour and be asked. It makes you feel good.

9. You are only on this earth for such a short time make it count. Ita asked a compelling question at the start and then in conclusion of her talk. “If you only had 6 months to live would you still do what you are doing today?” If the answer is no then you need to make a change.  I ask myself that very question often and am still happy with my decision about how I spend my time.

10. No-one else can make your dreams come true. The great thing about running your own business is no one can say no to you!

Hope you got some value out of Ita’s great insights!

Happy Marketing!

So many business people are frustrated marketers. They really want to understand how to market their business. What most of them end up doing is a piece meal effect, rather than putting together a planned strategy to build on year after year. Most of my clients now recognise that marketing is a part of the business mix. It is not something that you turn on and off if you want it to have a lasting effect.

To help those who are keen to understand marketing I have put together a course online that walks you through the basics. Whether for yourself or your admin, I think you will find it useful.

Sign up today! It’s free.