Danielle MacInnis – Marketing Blog for Small Businesses

As a small business you must have noticed the advertising you always depended on to make the phone ring is not working as effectively as it use to. As more and more customers look online for Local businesses it is becoming critical to be where your customers are.

The new mediums to reach customers are:

• Search Engine Optimisation: ensuring your business comes up when potential customers search.To receive traffic from search engines you must be in the top 30 results. This is an ongoing investment to ensure your company is found by your ideal customers and involved Key word research, In-page and  Off page, strategies, Content authority, PR optimisation and Content Management evaluation.
• Pay Per Click Advertising: paying for words on Google and or Facebook so your company is positioning well when people search online. It is driving qualified leads to your site.
• Social Media Marketing: is important for a number of reasons. It assists with local search, it assists sharing of content can build links back to your site, it involves rating and reviews and reputation management. Ultimately it builds a community around your product or service using new tools.
• Local Search is all about finding those local search directories that your industry and customers use and making sure your profile is up to date and optimised.
• Conversion: on your website is a big indicator. If 80% of traffic is leaving before taking action then you have a conversion issue. Looking at how to improve your conversion involves a site assessment.

Make no mistake you still need to leverage traditional marketing if it makes sense for your target market but a online marketing strategy is now more important. The key question you need to ask your self is how do potential customers find my small business? Chances are most Google their problem or service they are seeking. Are you there?

For more on digital marketing services click here.

Small Businesses are always on a tight budget. We need each dollar to really work for us. Here are some ideas to ensure your marketing dollars are working hard for you.

1. Target the right customer. A critical part of your marketing plan is targeting the right customer. For a low-budget high-impact marketing plan to work, find customers who are easy to identify and affordable to reach.

2. Get a piggyback ride. I am sure that there are businesses that work with the same customers and by working together you can do a cross promotion. A gym and naturopath, a builder and interior designer, a marketer and a web designer. Think about who you know and how you might share a database or email campaign to package up something valuable to these customers that you both share.

3. Build inexpensive lead generation programs. You don’t need to spend thousands on Google ad words. In many cases Facebook ads are way more affordable and effective. In any case, you can use other lead generation techniques.  Create a press release and put it on PRwire to bring traffic back to your site. Have a sign up form and offer something of value. Put an offer on your Facebook page if people like you. The ideas are endless. Offer a sample if people sign up on your website.

4. Learn as much as you can about marketing. Leverage the web, u-tube, articles and blogs to pick up tips to save you time and energy and pick up some great ideas. I love hubspot.com, mashable.com to mention a couple of resources. I also have a how too section on my website with videos and templates.

5. Use web tools and apps to increase your marketing ability. There are heaps of great apps that can give you great functionality online. Here are my top apps. To see the stuff I am into visit my website.

6. Some marketing tools. Getting some basic marketing collateral is a must. Website, brochure, business cards. To do this you can outsource to resources like

• guru.com – freelance
• fiver.com – anything for $5
• odesk.com – freelancers
• elance.com – projects
• 99 deigns.com – design freelancers
• Wordy – copywriter freelancers
• grader – grade your own website for SEO

7. Leverage social media to amplify your messages, offers and engagement with customers. You can run giveaways and ask for customer reviews.

8. New customer offers are a great way to create attraction for your business and gives the customer a sample or reason to try you. These don’t have to be big offers. Free blow wave, new toothbrush for a dentist or a new pair of socks as a shoe store. Think about what you can give to delight your new customers.

9. Tell a Friend or referral program can give a boost to your business by leveraging your existing customer base. Just by offering a 2for1 for friends or you both get $10 off could be another reason for customer to come back and try you again and bring a friend! Worth the small investment.

10 List your site on key directories. Listing on google places, local directories is a great way for your customer to find you and most are free. Look for directories that cater for your business niche. Having a profile in all the social media where your customers are is another must have.

The most successful marketers measure what they do and they know how the marketing activities are impacting the revenue. They not only get leads into the funnel, they  nurture them through the journey to become a customer and advocate. Great marketers technologically savvy, creative, analytical and obsessed with tools to better manage inquiries and nurture leads by providing insights into prospects digital footprint.

Here are a list of key competencies you should look for when hiring a marketing consultant:

1. Are they tactical or have a strategic skill-set. Having a sound understanding of how to implement marketing campaigns is an important tactical skill but this skill can be picked up quickly or outsourced easily. Setting up a sound marketing strategy and an active marketing plan is a skill that is more difficult to acquire. Having a marketer that can build a strategy to attract leads and envision how you are going to interact in a digital way with prospects is vital in todays’ landscape. At the end of the day, it is all about attracting and converting leads into profitable customers and every business needs a plan to do this effectively.

2. Do they have business analyst skills? Today marketers needs to have very good business analysis skills. Knowing how to uses tools like – CRM, google analytics, Facebook, lead scoring, social media tools amongst others to drive to a revenue result is critical.  Understanding trends, tweaking campaigns and trying new things is a must and such activities are based on sound measurement and analytic skills.

3. Marketing Technologist – Are they a power user of technology? -  If they are they will look at new ways to do business by optimising your use of technology. Using the marketing automation system, lead scoring, profiling you database. Marketing is going through this incredible transformation. Marketers need to use multi-technologies to run successful campaigns. They need to be able to leverage the technology to meet the needs of your business. Marketing automation systems are powerful and in order to get the most out of them you need to have a technical skill-set. You need to have HTML, CRM skills to mention just two technologies.

4. Are they a nurture specialist? Nurture specialists are obsessed with creating a intimate digital dialog at all phases of the buying cycle and providing qualified leads to the sales team.This role focuses on the long-term digital relationship with prospects and customers and must effectively work with all team members to pull campaigns together.

5. Are they Content Specialist? Content specialist  means they are responsible for all the content associated with a campaign marketing is the fuel for nurture marketing. The key here is using the smallest piece of content that will create an exchange of value that gives the opportunity for the prospect to show behaviour that can be tracked and scored as an intent or level of interest.

Content specialists know that the right message at the right time will keep prospects and customers engaged. They think about the buying cycle and personna types and how will interact in each channel.

6. Are they a creative specialist? Creative specialists want to know how effective is the demand generation. What will perform best. Testing what works. They drive and enhance the communications from the customers’ point of view.

7. Are they brand experts? Branding is all about creating a feeling between the company and the customer. A marketer that is interested in building a brand personna that is consistent and represents value consistently in all its touch points is a very great asset to any team. Someone to hold you accountable for the brand attributes is vital to keeping a brand real.

Questions to ask when interviewing them:

1. Are they recognised by an official Marketing organisation – In Australia that would be Certified Practicing Marketer by the Australian Marketing Institute

2. Do they use a marketing dashboard to measure the results for each client; leads generated, conversions, and cost per lead per program, etc Do they talk about the demand generation as a pipeline?

3. Have they got a good social media profile: LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, u-tube, quota etc

4. What marketing tools do they use for their own marketing: CRM, Blog, Content Management System, advertising, SEO, branding, podcast, articles, tools and resources.

5. Do they have good customer success stories and testimonials? If they do do they talk about real results, leads generated and covered to customers.

The pedowitzgroup have a good video explaining the difference between the traditional marketer and that of a demand generation system marketer or as they call the revenue marketer. You can also listen to a an interview on Rain today about core competencies to look for in a marketer today.

For small business, there are some really great wins to be had based around the concept that the customer now has more influence over whether our businesses succeed or fail. As a small business, we are best placed to deliver that awesome customer experience.

I have just finished reading The Customer Experience Edge, one of the most important books I have read in the last 18 months, if not my entire career as a marketer. Why? Because it focuses on the thing I am most passionate about. The core differentiator that sets you apart for all your competitors, the customer experience. “According to research reports, it is predicted that more than 75% of products and services will be undifferentiated in 10 years.” The Customer Experience Edge pgxxxiv. I am seeing it every day with my clients. most are service and product driven rather than customer centric and are  clearly undifferentiated, Very few have profiled their  ideal customer and none have mapped out the customer touch points. Clearly there is a lot of work we need to do.

The way we engage as customers has changed. The way we communicate, shop, review and share. It is this change, fostered by an information and technology revolution, that has on one hand, turned traditional marketing and sales efforts on it’s head in and on the other, is bringing us back to a strategy that I base my marketing company on, having the customer at the centre of our business.

Business from the customer’s point of view is the new competitive advantage.

The Customer Experience Edge is so timely, as it discusses how technology, culture, strategy and execution are are now being harnessed to create customer centric companies thats pure aim is to delight and “wow” customers interactions with them for life.

1. Total customer experience:

Think of how your customers/clients can engage with you or your service today. Web browsing, smart phone viewing, seeking recommendations via social media, in-store visit, email campaign, SMS, phone call, Facebook stream,  advertising on shopping trolleys the list goes on. It is the sum of all these interactions that shapes your customers experience and most rate it as mediocre according to Bloomberg Business Week Research.

There is such a great opportunity to create a truly awesome customer experiences, but why then are they so rare? I believe it is because most businesses don’t spend the time identifying ideal customers and then mapping out their customer journey with a focus on identifying opportunities to delight them.  I think most companies just let the experience happen. Is it really that hard to create a great customer experience? This is where as a small business we can really have an advantage.

We all remember those little extra efforts that people go to because they are so rare. The nice sample added in with your purchase, the card to say thanks for your referral, the colouring pencils and paper at your local cafe for your 6 year old to keep them entertained while you have a well deserved latte. We all notice these little opportunities to really understand us and how to make us feel looked after. These little efforts to endear us are just not very common.

Getting the focus right on your ideal customers and spending a lot of time identifying with them, talking with them and seeking their feedback is part of the key to finding how to gain a better experience.

It is no longer acceptable to just let the customer experience happen.

2. Technology

Technology is a very powerful and under-used resource for all businesses. Just like the ipad taking off as a new entertainment medium, businesses are seeking to leverage technology to improve their efficiency, marketing and  their customer experience. It is how this technology is used and how it is integrated into a customer intimacy strategy that is the real opportunity for small business. Automated email campaigns I have used have back-fired because I have strayed from my ideal customers needs. Frankly one well constructed useful email is better than 15 random messages.

3. Listening

The best use of technology for a small business is in listening. Seeking out what is being said in forums on google, in all the mediums about your business, your competitors and what your customers want. Better still, is to use these technology tools to ask your customers what they want. There is a novel idea! Survey tools, polls, Facebook insights, can all give you incredible insights about how to improve your customer experience, service and product offering and uncover new leads.

Customers feel empowered to tell you exactly what they want and how they want it. They are looking for the right service or product for them, not just an “anybody”. It is hard to sometimes realign your thinking to this huge shift in focusing on the customer. However, it is this customer centricity that is a competitive advantage that is hard to beat.

4. Ignore at your peril

Ignoring the customer is starting to undo many companies. Not only does it make you vulnerable to the competition, but it could make your business extinct very quickly. Bad experiences spread like wildfire and “going viral” can turn a PR glitch into a global boycott these days.

The Customer Experience Edge talks of four keys to creating a great experience.

5. Table: Four Customer Experience Essentials

Reliability, convenience, responsiveness and relevance. At the core of all of these values is the customer. Keep close to them, understanding them and earning their trust.

Customers don’t need to listen to you; you need to listen to them and incorporate feedback into your customer experience.

6. Employees

If you look at MacInnis Marketings value proposition it is:

We put in place a system that assists you to make better marketing decisions, attracts a regular stream of ideal customers and creates a brand that your employees and customers will love.

Employees are a big part of that strategy.  The lines between work and play has blurred. Employees are big influences of your brand and the culture does shape your value proposition and the customer experience. Employees play a vital part in sharing information and shaping the business. It is their commitment to that customer experience all the way through the customers lifecycle, that makes a business stand out from it’s competitors.

Giving employees a voice, a forum and the tools tools to communicate as well as the road map of what a great customer experience should look like is vital.

7. Leadership

If you don’t feel it I won’t. That passion for the customer has to begin with you the leader of your company. It is a commitment. To create a great culture and a great brand you have to have that burning desire to get it right for your customer. It is something that makes a great receptionist from an average one, that makes a taxi clean and comfortable experience rather than a terrifying one. When that commitment to create a customer experience is lived by the business leader, it has a far greater chance of it being felt by the end customer.

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.