Danielle MacInnis – Marketing Blog for Small Businesses

It is Christmas time and so in the spirit of giving here are some we just love and so we want to share this with you. Here also is our download of some great marketing apps  to help you market your small business. Here is the stuff that we use cost it is great, it works and it very affordable.

Freshbooks – really love this software for managing timesheets, accounting and their sense of humor.

MailChimp is our email client of choice. Not only is it easy to use but fun. Also it integrates well with wufoo (form builder) social media, google analytics just to mention a few platforms we need to make your marketing work well!

Aweber – is a great autoresponder and we use this mostly because of its awesome pop up feature but also it is a great “set and forget” auto email campaign manager.

Wufoo – our survey form of choice. Again brilliant integration with other software and really excellent reporting.

Brain Jam is a group of students that Dan likes to mentor so they get the practical skills to get great graduate jobs. Need a student? Ask us how.

Bubbl.us – love this tool for mind mapping

Hubspot Website Grader is a awesome way to work out how your site is going. Take the grade for some excellent insight and tips.

Snagit - awesome for screen grabs

Jing – awesome for recording How toos from your screen

Bloomtools a great platform that we recommend to many of our clients as it is a toolbox of marketing software in one interface. Website Content Management, CRM, forms, SEO, email marketing all in one toolbox.

Seth Godin website is packed with great marketing advice. We love his free stuff. Check out Knock, Knock – how great websites work!

Jotform is a great form creation tool. This is what we have used down the side or at the bottom of this website. Great for quick tools and integrates nicely with most web or email platforms like wordpress. Has a free version.

Gomockingbird is brilliant if you want to do a “mock” of your website as a wireframe so you can plan out how it will work. It can save a lot of time to do this drawing as a starting frame and then work with your web designer.Has a free version too!

Unbounce is a great software for creating landing pages. We used this to create a offsite with a difference for a client based around a James bond theme. Here is one of our pages. It is really easy to use. Sometimes all you need is a landing page.

Animoto allows you to create your own video creations with just a few clicks. We love it! Here is our video. You can make a 30 second video for free.

2desk is a great software that allows you to chat via skype with people on your website or blog. Great for giving or getting instant feedback. You guess it they have a free version.

Visit our website for Stuff we are into and find more apps as we discover them. Love to know what you find useful?

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.

Some people call it an elevator pitch, others call it an audio logo. Why have one? To give a person a shortcut. A snappy sentence that communicates the essence of what you do in a memorable way. My view is that this pitch, comes second to documenting your real authentic warts and all story.

People buy off those they like, know and trust. Part of that is the story behind the person. Their real story, the reason for their business. People want the story. But I don’t mean catchy phases or hyped up jargon. Don’t get me wrong, you still need to have a way to communicate what you do in 30 seconds but I would place more emphasis on your story!

Why?

Well, the second  most visited page on most websites is the About Us page. This is a chance to position at lot of things.

1. Your values through storytelling – which can attract similar sorts of customers because the identify with this .

2. Your reason behind what you do – gives the prospect a level of trust by building understanding

3. Your staff and personality – what you’re going to be like to work with

4. A profile of you ideal customer – to see if they will fit

I have been searching lots of personal stories online and here are some I would love to share with you.

Wufoo is a company I love. Their personality shines on every page, not just the About Us page. From their quirky comments as you create a survey to the great layout of their clean simple software, what is not to love? However, it makes me  feel really great to be supporting a team of young groovy real people (from the hunklebuster designer Chris to the Number Crusher Elanine) in their goal to achieve a truly awesome company! Go get them guys! (Plus I am an IT Geek)

Freshbooks I am equally in love with. Their manifesto provides a great rationale around the pain I was experiencing as a small business. The text has personality while informative.

“We wanted something so we built it .” says it all really. It is really nice that you can meet their team. I can eye ball them (at least on my computer) and see if they are a match for me! Note for Mike McDerment the MD, I talk faster than I write too (sorry about the typos). I too have a million and one balls in the air, so sounds like we would get on! Love freshbooks! What I also love it is I get a sense that your team is really fun. Basically you tick all my boxes and your product is totally awesome.

Modcloth is another such company, that headed by Susan Gregg Koger is showing part of their brand personality with her great story about how she built Modcloth. From collecting from op shops  as  a uni student and spotting that the market for girls who wanted to express their individual style with a  piece of unique apparel, Susan has  built her company to employ over 100 staff.  Even showing her personal style gives me a chance to see if this label is something that I can identify with.

Tom‘s is a fantastic story. It is about Blake Mycoskie, who decided that he would make shoes a social issue by building a community that supports another. When you buy one of Tom’s shoes you are providing another pair to a person in need.

“In 2006, American traveller Blake Mycoskie befriended children in Argentina and found they had no shoes to protect their feet. Wanting to help, he created TOMS Shoes, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need. One for One. Blake returned to Argentina with a group of family, friends and staff later that year with 10,000 pairs of shoes made possible by TOMS customers”. Kind of nice huh. Really makes you want to buy shoes from this online site. Go on! Me too!

Others great company doing a really great job of telling their stories include:

Red balloon

Nudie Juice

Next Steps:

So what is your story? Start to tell it.  I challenge all my clients to write it from the heart. The more authentic the better.(Keep the fluff for the grandkids).

Our story

Relevant other posts: Look on the sidebar under Personal branding tab

Build your business from the inside out

Why blog as a small business?

Tech tip: Look at fiverr.com to get some quick tasks done for $5. Awesome resource for small businesses.