It’s amazing that as long as the internet has been around that many companies are still asking “Do I really need to be concerned with SEO?”

The answer to that question is a resounding YES! Today more than ever, businesses need an online presence. This is a great way for a business to market their products and services to a whole new market regionally, statewide and even internationally. For the “newbies” who finally now have a website, marketing that site becomes a marketing priority. Having a website doesn’t mean you’re maximizing your businesses exposure. If you don’t market you business website then you are merely at a standstill and going nowhere.

Utilizing the power of SEO is as important as your traditional marketing efforts. While traditional marketing is excellent in it scope, it only works in a very specific area or region. Not to mention it’s expensive to market nationwide or even worldwide. Cost can be a huge factor with traditional marketing however with SEO it’s not only necessary but cheaper as well. Your ROI (Return on Investment) is also higher when utilizing SEO.

A website offers your customers so much information in one location. So with traditional marketing you may have a brochure for one thing, a postcard for another thing and a flyer for something else. With your website you have one main source for all the information your customers will need.

By utilizing the power of SEO, you can optimize your website and make it easier for search engines like Google to find you. SEO uses things like keywords, key phrases as well as meta tags to enhance how search engines find you. It allows your website to easily found by your target customers. In other words, your website is like a bicycle and SEO is the chain that moves it ahead.

At this month’s Round Table, we discussed blogging and how to most effectively use it as a tool to market your business. One of the attendees, Jessica Barna of Kitchens Resolved, wrote and typed up notes that I thought would be good to share. Enjoy!

Topic:  The Art of Blogging – Starting the Conversation

Blogs:

Can’t just be all the wonderful things you do

Must provide some type of useful or entertaining information

Helps develop trust with potential customers

For best results: should use an integrated system of blogs, video, email marketing, etc.

Cannot get the full benefit from a blog without using other social media marketing

Need to use all the tools available to us

Portray yourself through your blog

Get involved in a person’s thinking

Can be demanding, blogs require constant updating

Common practice: Offer services to influential bloggers, hope that bloggers talk about your product/services.

RSS Feed allows you to subscribe to blogs, can create reader accounts and have your selected blogs update your reader page automatically.

Takes 6 Touches to get business – use blogging to start touching clients without much time or money from you per touch.

Don’t be “salsey” in your blog. No one wants to be sold, but everyone likes to buy.

Video Blogs:

Idea: Provide a video “power tip” on You Tube. Post a new tip daily, to keep people coming  back.

Develop your own You Tube Channel

Mike recommends having out more than 100 videos. Start with 20 or 30, and daily update.

With so many blogs nowadays, how do small businesses create a blog that competes with others?

Placement,

Comment on blogs in your field,

Always provide a link to your website,

Make your blog useful every post

Takes time and effort.

Hire Marketing help.

Optimize your blog for people to find you when they search, SEO.

Cross-pollinate with other bloggers to get exposure to their readers (What is right name for this practice?

The Art of Blogging – the four E’s

1. Education
2. Engagement
3. Enrichment
4. Entertainment

Organizing your blog for search-ability: can have keywords for each of your posts, can have a search feature so people can find your writing about any subject you blog about, really good blogs usually have search features.

Blogs used for marketing businesses usually have 1 or more of these 6 goals (adapted from a list by S. Gardner):

1. Inform or educate the public and your current customers
2. Provide customer service, or help to use a product or service
3. Convey a sense of company personality and culture
4. Entertain readers and customers
5. Drive readers to take an action
6. Encourage dialogue with customers

Tools and references:

4 Square – condenses various social media outlets

Alltop.com is a blog directory

Next month topic: Guerilla Marketing

Building your brand has never been more important than now. The economy has taken a slump and now businesses are in pass or fail mode. Your “brand” is the name for your products and services. Your brand is the heart and soul of what you do. It is your representation to the world of who you are.

The business world is very competitive. There are probably a few other businesses that are in the same market as you; selling the same products and services. So what sets you apart from them? That’s simple – Your Brand! While technology is changing; your brand stays the same. While the economy may be fizzing; your brand stays the same. Your brand is the one constant thing you have in the business world. Your brand will have value. For example, Nike is a brand. So while their shoes have value, it’s the name (the brand) everyone knows. It’s the name that has value.

There are three types of brands:

• Primary Brands – This is your main brand; the core of who you are. It’s the umbrella under which other brands can fall.
• Secondary Brands – This is a second line of branding and doesn’t have to have its own brand name. The brand can be an extension of the primary brand. So for example, Johnson and Johnson is the primary brand. Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder is the secondary brand.
• Tertiary Brands – These are brands that don’t really generate revenue the way the primary and secondary brands do. This could be a generic line developed by the company.

Once you have developed a brand you must then think of how to market that brand. However, general marketing will not do. How people perceive the brand is going to make a huge difference to the success of that brand. Take for instance Geico Insurance. While they boast cheaper prices than their competitors, they have marketed wisely and in a way that people perceive them as a truly competitive insurance company. Their slogan “15 minutes can save you 15% or more on car insurance” is catchy and unforgettable. Combine that with the marketing gimmick of the Gecko and you have a brand that is memorable and perceived well by the public.

This is the heart of what branding is and can do for you. If you haven’t developed a brand yet – “what are you waiting for?” Each day that passes is another day in which your company is losing money to the competition. So get started today!

Lisa’s Liquor Barn, a discount wine and liquor store in Rochester, NY, has only been with Score Consulting a few short months and has already seen some pretty impressive results. They came to us with a full e-commerce website already designed and needed to start to expand their market share beyond their local town of Penfield. Score Consulting is currently working with them on optimizing their site to be found in Rochester, Webster and Fairport, as well as Penfield. We are also monitoring and managing their online reputation.

Whalen Organizing and Consulting is led by Professional Organizer Lisa Whalen and provides virtual assistant, lab management and professional organizing services to small business owners in San Diego (President’s note: She’s worked wonders for me already!). After performing an ISWOT Analysis on her Internet presence (with a focus on her website), we decided that optimizing the content on her site and re-purposing her website to focus more on converting visitors would help her business greatly. We also handle the tracking of her website and are currently developing a blog.

Smile San Diego has been working with Score Consulting since we moved the company to San Diego. We started out working with them strictly in a strategic marketing capacity – advising them through their branding change and helping them to develop a stronger Internet presence. We also worked with them to help them manage their brand’s reputation.

Ultimately we created their new logo, redeveloped their website, optimized their website, worked with them on a direct response campaign and continue to advise them on how to best market their dental practice.

Booklet Printing came to us with a need to develop a website that could manage their e-commerce needs affordably and effectively. Score Consulting developed their website, gave them an “SEO Booster” and integrated an e-commerce solution that could integrate with their Google Checkout account.

Invest2Dream is a MLM management company focusing on bringing investment opportunities and MLM guidance to people new in the field. They wanted to put together a website that was searchable for people interested in investing in their future.

We also developed a Twitter following for Invest2Dream to help drive traffic to their site and an auto-response email campaign to help them retain clients and prospect for new leads.

When Dr Shue came to Score Consulting and was looking to drive traffic to his MLM business, we developed this blog-based site for him.

To drive traffic to the site, we also created a Twitter account that developed a following of people interested in getting information on how to develop leads for their businesses.

Some of you may be familiar with the social networking site Meetup and, if you’re not, you really should be. Meetup is a great way to get to know people, to learn more about topics of interest and, more importantly, market your business.

Score Consulting sponsors a couple different Meetup groups, one of which is the San Diego Marketing Round Table. In this particular Meetup, among other things, we host a monthly Round Table discussion (hence the name) on different areas of marketing applicable to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

At this month’s Round Table, we discussed using email to market your business. Email tends to be a pretty large draw to people because it’s so inexpensive and offers such a high return ratio, so we had a good group of people show up and ask questions about how to use email in their businesses. One of the attendees, Jessica Barna of Kitchens Resolved, wrote and typed up notes that I thought would be good to share. Enjoy!

The Six Touch Rule: Using Email to Increase Your Conversion Ratio

Email Marketing – general rule: takes 6 times of contacting/”touching” someone for them to say Yes, or NO to your offer

Companies that help you stay in touch:

• Constant Contact (highest deliverability rates, most restricting rules for emails),
• Rate Point,
• Visistat,

BLOG (next month’s topic!): a way to build a following online. Could send an email with an interesting excerpt from recent blog. It is a good way to show expertise. Try to keep information relevant to your audience.

Business Dilemma: How much information is best to share on our websites? Ideally, give people enough information to get them interested, so they contact you, and you can sell them on products personally. However, too much information in a website might lead people to find a reason to say “no.” People have short attention spans and might not want to read pages and pages about your services.

Video Email Marketing:  $20 per month for 1000 email customers or less

For online marketing to be most effective, we must have a way of tracking results from each method of contact. Can do A and B segmenting to see which version of an email receives the most views, responses, forwards, etc. Can segment different groups within your list, and do more demographic/specialty related email lists occasionally.

Email marketing ideas from individuals:

• Susan gets extra responses to having a “monthly workshop.” Workshop sounds like more of a one-time, in depth thing than a class.
• Michael suggests having a video testimonial of a previous customer so your target audience can SEE how happy your services made someone.

Ideas for gathering an email distribution list:

• friends,
• business contacts,
• website (put a subscriber form in),
• clients,
• Twitter,
• Facebook,
• LinkedIn,
• Meetup.comJ,
• hosting events
• form an alliance with another business, and mail something out on each other’s behalves.
• Give a free service, coupon, written report as a reward for people providing you with their email address

SPAMMING:

Not allowed to: buy list of emails and blindly email people things. If you send too many emails that get sent to the Spam Folder, you could get BLACKLISTED by the Internet, and would probably need to switch domain names)

Things can be sent to the SPAM folder right away, depending on how strict their email provider is, the subject lines, words (“Sale” “free”)

These rules are due to a Can’t Spam Act of 2003