Posted by marlene on December 30, 2011 under General Marketing | 
Small business owners are always looking for quick, easy and inexpensive ways to market their products. If you haven’t yet tried e-mail marketing, here are several compelling reasons why you should consider putting it into your marketing mix.
- Quick and easy to get the word out about a new product or service you are promoting, all you need is current customer list to email it to. If you want to branch out to new areas, you can always use a reputable email marketing provider to build a compliant list and develop eye-catching messages and graphics that are less likely to be deleted.
- Budget friendly and affordable as most email marketing providers offer convenient pay-as-you-go plans or monthly subscriptions to cover the volume you plan using—often without a contract.
- Statistics monitoring marketing efforts through reporting that identifies who is receiving, opening and clicking on your emails. These analytic tools show how much traffic you are getting to your website from your email. You can also compare the performance of multiple emails in order to make appropriate changes to future emails and continue to improve your e-mail marketing.
- Visibility among key audiences such as customers and targeted prospects. Although your customers may not need your product or service right now, they will eventually – and by staying engaged with them on a regular basis, you can ensure they’ll come to you first.
- Track return on investment (ROI) from the emails you’re sending out. Not only can you see how your emails are performing but you can also measure how many sales each email is generating.
- Extended reach through social networks. When sending out an email you not only reach the people on your customer list, but you reach their friends, family and colleagues when they forward your email. New social media has made it easy to communicate to the masses.
As you can see, there are many advantages to setting up an e-mail marketing campaign. The most convincing perhaps is that it actually works. In 2010, The Direct Marketing Association stated that email marketing made on average, $42 for every $1 spent.
If you need some help getting started with email marketing, give the client service specialists at WebSwagger.com a call at 888-772-6400.
Posted by marlene on December 9, 2011 under Just a Thought |
May peace, prosperity, and happiness be yours throughout the holidays and new year.
–Best wishes from the InGroup, Inc. / WebSwagger.com team
Also, please make note of our holiday schedule:
- We will be closing at noon on Friday, December 23 and Friday, December 30.
- Our office will be closed on Monday, December 26 and Monday, January 2.
Posted by marlene on under General Marketing |
New Years Resolutions. Most of us make them and even more of us eventually break them. For 2012, rather than thinking up resolutions for your personal development (we all could lose a few pounds or exercise more) maybe this year you can think of resolutions to help your business. Here are few to get you started.
Improve Your Customer Service
Do you like having to navigate through endless telephone menu options when trying to reach your target? Undoubtedly, your customers don’t either. Why not trying ditching the voice mail during the day and make every effort to answer calls as they come in? Potential customers, and current ones too, will be delighted to speaking with a real, live person. What a novelty!
Create a One-Page Strategic Plan
Ever set out for an unknown destination without consulting a map? Chances are, you know you know if you want to travel East or West. Well, think of the start of 2012 as a trip for your business. Picture where your business is right now, and where you want to be by December 31. Then write a list of actions you need to take in order to reach these goals. Keep this plan handy so you can look at it every day and stay on the route you set for yourself, keeping detours to a minimum.
Re-evaluate Your Vendors
Every business owner should periodically review their vendors and suppliers to make sure that you are getting the best possible price and services. There is no better time to do this than at the beginning of the year when suppliers are looking to finalize their business forecasts. They may be more amenable to cutting special deals in order to ensure that they reach their targets
Learn Something New About Your Business
No matter how long you’ve run your business, there is always something new to learn. Now is a good time to educate yourself about the latest trends or best practices. Read some new blogs in your business area, attend a conference, join an association or your local Chamber of Commerce, take a continuing education course at your community college, go to a bookstore and peruse the business section. Think about some of your weak points, and concentrate on improving in those areas.
Learn to Delegate
Lots of small business owners tend to be fearful about giving up control over some aspects of their work load. While it’s true that no one will complete a task in the same exact way you will, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your way is the only correct way. Think about some tasks that eat up your time but don’t contribute to your bottom line. Train an employee how to accomplish these tasks and let them take ownership of them. If you’re a one-person business, consider hiring a contractor to do the work for you. Think about how much time you spend on billing and calculate if your business would be more profitable if you spent that time making new sales and hired a part-time bookkeeper deal with invoicing and paying the bills.
And there you have it. A few New Years Resolutions to help ensure that your 2012 is on the road to being profitable and efficient.
Posted by marlene on November 21, 2011 under Web & SEO |
More and more small businesses are finding that Facebook is not just a place for friends to share recipes or discuss their weekend plans. Large corporations have tapped into this medium for engaging customers and there’s no reason why you can’t too.
First of all, it’s important to know the difference between a Business Page and a profile. Profile pages are for individuals to connect with friends and family. A Business Page has a different look and feel and can be customized with your business’s name. e.g. http://www.facebook.com/webswagger. If you have a website, your Business Page can link to that, and vice versa. Fans “like” your page and then your updates appear in their newsfeeds.
You can use your logo, a photo of your storefront, or any other attention-grabbing graphic to decorate your page. If you have a brick and mortar business, make sure that you add your location so that customers will know where to find you.
In the Info section, write a short, descriptive blub about your business and the kinds of products and services you offer, contact information and links to resources . Lastly, you can add custom apps that let you stream video, showcase your products, update your RSS feed, run promotions, and much more.
The next step is to get fans. Ask your family and friends to “like” your page and comment on your posts so that you have a sizeable following when you launch your page.
Make sure you post content regularly to keep your page fresh and your fans engaged. You can ask questions, run polls, offer special promotions, etc. Be sure to check your page at least once a day to answer questions or comments customers or potential customers may have.
All it takes is about 10 to 15 minutes a day to boost your presence to the 800 million Facebook users worldwide. And best of all, it’s FREE!!
Posted by marlene on November 1, 2011 under General Marketing |
Do you stare at your marketing budget and wish that you had thousands of dollars to promote your product or service? Do you sometimes feel that, if only you had as much money as a Fortune 500 company, you’d be better able to grow your business? Well, your wish has come true. Many large companies take advantage of free or low-cost solutions to increase their customer base. You can too. All it takes is a little time and know-how. Here are 10 tips to get you started.
1) Get active on Facebook. Creating a Facebook page for your business costs you nothing, and with so many new business-oriented tools available, like location services and other apps that allow you to stream video or live chat with your customers, there’s no reason why you can’t get your name in front of more potential clients.
2) Start a blog. Again, starting a blog can be a no-cost affair. Many platforms, such as Tumblr or Blogspot, offer free hosting. By offering nuggets of information in your area of expertise, you build your credibility and pique the interest of potential clients who may want to know more about what you can offer them.
3) Comment on other blogs. One of the quickest ways to enhance your reputation is to offer your expert advice on other blogs in your niche market. Most bloggers will welcome the traffic to their site, and as long as your comment isn’t a blatant advertisement for your business that may be competition for them, they will more likely than not, approve your comment for posting if it adds to the conversation.
4) Comment on message boards and forums. Another surefire way to enhance your reputation is to become a frequent commenter on forums and message boards devoted to your type of business or service. For example, if you are selling natural herbal remedies, a forum such as My Home Remedies would be a good place to offer advice for treating specific conditions.
5) Register with Google Places. It’s free and effective. Since 97% of consumers search for local businesses online, getting your business listed is a must, especially if you have a bricks and mortar store or you service a designated geographic area.
6) Make sure your customers know that you appreciate them. When was the last time you picked up the phone or sent an email to a customer just to say hello and ask them how they were doing? Chances are, it was a pretty long time ago. Keeping in touch without trying to sell something lets your customers know that you care about them for more reasons than the potential income you gain from their business. It creates goodwill and loyalty.
7) Don’t forget your former customers. Give them a call too. Let them know how much you miss them. Ask them how you can get them back as a customer. If they say “No thanks,” wish them well and then and call them back again in a year. You never know.
8) Give a talk at an event. Let’s say you own a portrait studio. You could give a workshop at a camera club on the most effective lighting techniques. Or, you could give a presentation at a PTA meeting on how to bring out the best in your children on school portrait day. Just make sure to bring lots of business cards or brochures that promote your business. Who knows? The PTA may hire your studio to shoot their next school portraits.
9) Ask your customers for referrals. Word of mouth is the best advertising. If your customers are pleased with your product or service, ask them to recommend you to their friends and family. You can also ask them to write testimonials for your website.
10) Donate to a charity auction. An inexpensive way to generate buzz about your product or service in your community is to donate to a school or sports fundraising activity. Not only do you get more exposure for your business, you become known as a good neighbor, the one most likely to be rewarded for helping others out when the choice comes between you and a competitor who didn’t donate.
And there you have it, 10 easy ways to generate new business without busting your budget. Give them a try and let us know how they worked out for you. That would be fulfilling #3.
Posted by marlene on October 24, 2011 under Web & SEO |
Search marketing, also known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) had become a critical part of the marketing mix. Search marketing aims to increase the visibility of companies’ websites by having them appear at or near the top of a page when a potential client performs a search on Google or Bing. Let’s face it, potential clients are not going to wade through pages and pages of search results to find your company’s website if it appears on page 14 of a search.
So how do you get to the top of a search? There are a lot of different ways to accomplish this. Some marketers devote their entire careers to science of SEO so there is much more to write about the topic than can possibly be covered in a short blog post. But here are four basic concepts to get you thinking about how to get your website to the top of a search.
1) KEYWORDS – When writing content for your website, think about the most relevant words, phrases and terms for the product or service you are selling. For instance, a lawyer whose main practice consists of criminal defense might have the words “criminal law” or “trial” on their homepage. Even more importantly, an attorney will need to have their location indexed in the search engine. There is no sense being number one in a search for trial attorneys inEnglewood,Coloradoif a potential client lives inEnglewood,New Jersey.
2. SATURATION AND POPULARITY – No brainer time: the more web presence you have, the easier it will be for potential customers to find you. The question remains: How to get your website up at the top of page rankings. One important ingredient is to make sure each page of your website is indexed on each search engine. This is known as saturation. Popularity refers to how many times your site is linked to other sites. How do you accomplish this? Again, all of the pages on your website should be indexed with keywords that are important to potential customers. Most search engines include some form of link popularity in their ranking algorithms. There are a number of tools for measuring saturation and popularity. Among the most popular are Google Analytics, Marketleap and Link Popularity.
3. WEB ANYALTIC TOOLS – can help you to understand what is happening to your website and measure your website’s success. They measure hits, unique visitors, page views, bounce rate, visitor information and conversion, just to name a few. Many of these tools are open source and a few of the more popular ones are Google Anaylitics, Piwik, Clicky, Coremetrics and Webtrends.
4. “Who Is” tools – show you who owns and operates various websites and can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues. Who Is tools can be useful when analyzing your competitors’ source code to find out what effective keywords they are using. Useful tools include Who Is Source, SEOmoz Term Extractor, Open Site Explorer, Google AdWords Keyword Tool, SEMRush and Alexa. You can also use the source code and Who Is tools to research legal issues.
Of course, companies can always choose to pay to show up on search engine results. Search engine companies will charge a fee to be included in their search index. These are also known as sponsored listings and they are identified as such on search results. One of the most popular is Google paid searches. Your company will appear at the top of the search page, but the result will be indentified as a paid ad. It’s up to you to decide if this will impact your credibility.
Posted by marlene on October 20, 2011 under General Marketing |
Displaying your business’ best image to potential new clients is vital to increasing your customer base. Customers want to do business with a company they can trust. But if they’ve never heard of you before, how can you gain their trust? The answer: Consistency.
Think about it. How would you feel about using a product or service from a company that was constantly reinventing itself? If the website colors are red-themed with a sans serif typeface and the brochure’s colors are blue with a totally different font, wouldn’t you feel that the company was a bit schizophrenic in its identity? And if they’re inconsistent with their image, what about the quality of their products or service? Will they be inconsistent as well?
When thinking about one’s brand, the first component that comes to mind is the visual: logo, colors, typeface. After going through the time and expense of creating a brand with these specific elements, it’s important to replicate the theme throughout the entire marketing mix including website, e-newsletters, print collateral, even your social networking sites .
One company who totally “gets” the significance of creating a clear and consistent brand is SynergisticIT. Although we worked with them directly to update their logo, develop a brochure, create sell sheets, redesign their website, and provide trade show collateral, we know they know how important their brand is to them– whether they work with us or another vendor to develop their materials.
We give kudos and a shout out to SynergisticIT for understanding how important a consistent image is.
For more information about SynergistIT, please visit their website at http://synergistic-it.com/
Posted by marlene on September 21, 2011 under General Marketing |
Did you know that inbound marketing techniques generate the leads that boost your bottom line? According to a recent study by Hubspot, inbound marketing campaigns—ones that get you customers through various social media channels and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), have become a prominent part of the marketing mix.
How do you know if inbound marketing is right for you? Of the more than 640 marketing professionals surveyed, 57 percent acquired new customers from leads generated directly from their blogs. In fact, businesses that do not blog are now in the minority. From 2009 to 2011, the percentage of businesses with a blog grew from 48 percent to 65 percent. Blogs have become so vital to the marketing mix that 85 percent of respondents rated their company blogs as useful, important or critical.
For B2B, LinkedIn blogs and company blogs currently have more clout than the traditional B2C channel of Facebook. However, that doesn’t mean that businesses in the B2B spectrum shouldn’t have a Facebook presence. In two years, that dynamic could change and Facebook could be as strong for B2B customer acquisition as LinkedIn is today, which currently generates 61 percent of customers. In order to avoid being left behind, it’s important to create and maintain a Facebook presence to avoid playing catch-up in the coming years. Furthermore, Facebook accounts for 41 percent of B2B customer acquisitions, which is a substantial number – in fact, too big to ignore. Twitter a close third with 39 percent of B2B businesses recording customer acquisition through that channel compared to 53 percent for B2C.
It’s not surprising why inbound lead generation is gaining in popularity, especially among smaller businesses (those with fewer than 10 employees). The average cost per lead is much less than more traditional avenues such as running ads or attending trade shows. The average cost for inbound channels was an average $143 per lead. Blogs have the highest instance of being reported as Below Average Cost with 55 percent of blogging companies indicating that this channel was most cost effective. To be effective however, blogs must be updated regularly (see our post about The Importance of Blogging Regularly http://webswagger.com/blog/?p=199). For these reasons, small businesses allocated 49 percent of their lead generation budgets on inbound marketing in 2011 and 89 percent plan on maintaining or increasing their inbound marketing budgets in the future.
Clearly, the digital age has taken hold when it comes to cost-effective marketing techniques to generate qualified leads that translate into new customers, especially for small businesses.
Call the client service specialists at WebSwagger to learn more about small business lead gen options at 888-772-6400.
Posted by marlene on under Web & SEO |
For many businesses large and small, having a website is a crucial part of the marketing mix. Once a website’s design and programming stages are complete, adding updated information becomes the next crucial step. But for many small businesses, updating their websites on a regular basis with fresh content can often be a limiting factor, especially if the owner isn’t particularly tech savvy.
What’s the solution? A web content management system (CMS). A CMS is a software system that allows users to add content to an existing website, including text and images, with relative ease. Using a CMS doesn’t require knowledge of any programming language. It’s as simple to use as copying and pasting into a template.
There are a few different types of CMSs’. WebSwagger has a proprietary system which is very simple to use. Clients appreciate the intuitive page management system that facilitates clients in adding, changing, or deleting information about their own products or services on-demand.
Other CMS software our team programs for clients are open source, such as Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress. These platforms have plug-ins which make a site feature-robust.
Although people often associate WordPress with blogs, WordPress can be customized to look more like a website. One advantage to having a WordPress site is that it has the capability to allow comments. Of course, you have the option of approving comments before they appear to keep spammers out.
If you are a small business with no time to manage your site yourself, WebSwagger CMS clients have the option of using our client services team to maintain their website; 30-minutes of text edits are already included as an available free service to hosted clients.
Remember, WebSwagger/InGroup, Inc. team can help maintain your site even if we didn’t originally build it. Please call a representative at (888) 772-6400 or e-mail
careteam@ingroupinc.com to get your site edits done!
Posted by marlene on September 1, 2011 under General Marketing |
Many businesses large and small dream of the ideal way of bringing in a multitude of qualified leads at a minimal cost. It’s the Shangri-La of marketing – the ideal destination that remains frustratingly elusive.
As with any campaign, it’s important to analyze your return on investment (ROI) not only to track the costs (creating the campaign, building your list, and the manpower to generate an email blast) vs. revenue that campaign generated, but measuring all of these facets will give you the data you need in order to tweak future campaigns to maximize your subsequent results.
For example, let’s say you give people a chance to win $500 if they log into your website and fill out a survey. From monitoring the data, you learn that the campaign generated a 5% response rate with 28% of those responses converting into a sale averaging $200 each.
Now you can tweak the parameters of future campaigns by increasing the incentive to $1,000. Will doubling the incentive translate into doubling your response rate? And if your response rate doubles will the dollar per sale also double? Or do the figures not change much at all and the additional $500 investment seems not to be worth it? You have no way of knowing unless you measure.
How about if you offer a prize instead? Let’s say you own a day spa and you want to offer a free massage, facial, pedicure and manicure as a prize. Does your response rate go up with this incentive to a specific targeted audience? Do these new leads translate into future paying clients? Does the increased revenue from the new clients offset the cost of giving away the service and designing the campaign? Will a different package of giveaways, say an added bikini wax or make-up application, increase the response rate and increase your customer base?
If you have the answers to these questions from analyzing your ROI, you will be able to logically gauge the success or failure of your sweepstakes and be able to make informed decisions about continuing the practice, tweaking the parameters, or ditching the strategy all together. And you’ll have solid numbers to back up any of these decisions taking the guesswork out of answering the question: Was it worth it?
