marketing for small business – Page 2

December 24, 2011

Christmas is Coming: How Many of Your Customers Celebrate Christmas?

Christmas is a very special time of the year for many people worldwide but do you know how many of your customers do not celebrate this festive season?

There was an article in ‘The Australian‘ newspaper recently that highlighted the fact that our old assumptions about demographics could be very wrong in relation to the religion of our customers. The newspaper reported that parents at one Montessori School in an inner suburb of Sydney were ‘up in arms’ over the lyrics used in Christmas songs at the school. Apparently, the words, ‘We wish you a happy holiday’ were substituted for ”We wish you a Merry Christmas’.

Some parents were really upset that all reference to Christmas, Santa and the birth of Christ were omitted from the lyrics, despite the children singing five songs.

The Montessori school’s response reiterated the ‘inclusive, co-educational, non-denominational’ nature of the school which includes educating children in multi-cultural awareness.

The Principal explained the shool’s policy in these terms:

Out policy is that we give children keys to the world and we show them many celebrations including Christmas. We look at cultures and the particular ways that people celebrate such as Easter, Christmas and Chanukah.

Apparently, the teacher involved was trying to accommodate the fact that there were Hindus and Jewish children in their classroom.

But it does raise the issue about what assumptions you have about the religious make-up of your customer base. Do you assume that everyone is Christian? Have you accommodated other religions in your marketing?

A Happy Christmas to those who celebrate this Festive Season

A Happy and a Safe Holiday to Everyone

Image Credit: paparutzi

December 23, 2011

Online Tenders: The Lifeblood of Business to Business Marketing

Business to business is a tough arena for small businesses in slow economic times and the online tender process may prove to be the lifeline for many such organizations. Small businesses engaged in consultancy, such as our human resource consultancy business, rely heavily on the business to business market and hence the tender process is critical to their survival.

Business to business (b2b marketing) involves supplying goods and services to other businesses rather than to individuals. In slow economic times, other businesses may limit their purchases of goods and services thus making the business to business market even more competitive than normal. In tight economic times, the tender process can make the difference between survival and going out of business.

So, if your small business is engaged in business to business marketing, what can you do to improve your success with the tender process? Well, the starting point, is to reframe your view of the tender process itself.

The tender process: chore or opportunity?

Having to complete and submit an online tender can become a real chore. If your success rate is low, you will have to do multiple tenders. So the first thing that happens is that you tend to rush the tender process, use generic templates, slap something together and hope for the best – all activities guaranteed to increase your failure rate. There is a parallel here to people who use generic job applications when applying for job after job.

One way to reframe the task of having to complete and submit a tender, is to see it as one of the purest forms of marketing. This is hard to imagine as you work late for many days to complete the multiplicity of forms and answer the endless questions.

However, when we look at the definition of ‘marketing’ (vs selling), we can see that the tender process has a lot to commend itself for small business marketing. One way to look at marketing is to define it as:

Providing a target market (group) with a needs-satisfying offering.

So with a tender, you have a respresentative of your target market (a public or private sector organization) spelling out what their needs are (their requirements), identifying their desired target group and offering you the opportunity to put forward a “needs-satisfying” offering (product or service).

When you think about all the information and resources on market research and the time you spend on trying to identify the needs of your target market, it is hard to acknowledge that a tender gives you all this “on a plate” – it specifies needs and ideal target sub-group and spells out ‘delivery’ expectations.

How, then, can you capitalise on your new mindset that enables you to view a tender proposal as a signifcant small business marketing tool?

How to win that tender – mastering this element of small business marketing

A tender gives you a unique opportunity to present your capabilities and your offering to a really interested party. This could lead to a new client and substantial long-term work. I know this for a fact as one of our successful tenders led to AUD $1.6 Million worth of work over four years.

A tender always takes longer than you expect (even allowing for computer or printer breakdowns at critical points). [I think sometimes even the equipment feels the strain of meeting the tender deadline.] So it is essential to develop a plan of attack for tenders and have appropriate processes in place.

Lessons from managing the development of proposals and submission of tenders

Here are some key lessons we have learnt (and are still trying to implement):

Allow plenty of time for development of the proposal (start when the tender arrives, not a week or two later)
Keep the profiles of staff/consultants up-to-date
Read the Tender Document or Invitation to Offer (ITO) very carefully and highlight signifcant points
Read documents recommended by the Client (e.g. strategic plan) and thoroughly research the Client’s website (for future directions, organizational values and goals and fundamental philosophy).
Identify a proposal coordinator (someone to get information off all parties involved)
Identify a proposal collator (someone to get all the bits and pieces together in the format required by the Tender Document/ITO)
Have a meeting of all involved parties at the outset so that everyone knows what the focus of the proposal is and what information is required, in what format, by when
Collect the routine information while people are writing the more creative bits of the tender proposal (you don’t want to leave this routine stuff to the very end – for example, start collecting copies of qualifications, insurance documents, etc at the outset)
Make sure you address the Ciient’s expressed needs (goes without saying) and carefully craft your statement about “your undersanding of our needs”.
In the proposal, demonstrate the fact that you have read and understood the reommended documents and the information on the organization’s website
Set your subnission deadline to be at least a day ahead of the actual final deadline date and time (to allow for any unforseen circumsatances)
Allow plenty of time for upload of your tender proposal in online tendering situations (eveyone tends to leave it to the last minute so there is often an overload situation) … the dealine time is becoming increasingly immovable and the online tendering system typically closes down immdiately the deadline is passed, thus blocking any further submissions.
Ensure that your website reflects the area(s) of competence that you are tendering for (increases your credibility).

When you come to the tender process, you will appreciate even more the good work you have done in creating a professional website and maintaing a regular schedule of blog posts around your areas of competence and the products/services you are offering.

Tender submission is a critial element in small business marketing in the professional services sector, as this sector often relies heavily on business to business marketing.

December 22, 2011

Leverage Your Blogging: Create a Small Business Ezine

One of the easiest ways to leverage your blogging, is to create your own small business ezine. An ezine is basically an email newsletter where you share articles, news and blog posts with members of your mailing list (customer list). This approach to small business marketing serves multiple purposes and achieves leverage on a number of levels.

Your regular small business ezine enables you to maintain contact with your customers, educate them about your products and services and offer free information and advice. Most email service providers offer ways to further leverage your ezine via RSS feeds and automatic posts to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

If you are blogging regularly, you are creating the content for your ezine. If you blog daily, you will be able to provide a small business ezine of considerable substance.

How to use your blogging in your small business ezine

If you blog regularly, you can easily create an ezine from your blog posts. Since I blog daily, I send a weekly ezine to my mailing list covering a number of posts around a theme, e.g. Squidoo or LinkedIn. You need to decide the frequency of your small business ezine based on the regularity of your blog posts, the nature of your business and the kind of information you are offering.

Most autoresponders will replace the blog links in your email with their own generated links (if you specify that you want open rates and click-through-rates measured).

Another option is to use the URL shortener bitly.com to shorten your blog links. The advantages of this approach are that you can share each individual shortened link automatically with your Facebook and/or Twitter account and you can also get statistics on click-through-rates on the Bitly link. It is a good idea to add a comment (like a status update) before you share your link on Bitly.

Blogging has lots of benefits, not the least of these is that it provides you with content to share with your mailing list via your small business ezine.

December 20, 2011December 20, 2011

Squidoo is a Marketing Platform

Squidoo was designed for marketers by an Internet marketer, Seth Godin. So Seth Godin’s Internet marketing principles are embedded in the Squidoo platform design.

In this post, I’ll explore some of the characteristics of the Squidoo platform design and how you can best make use of these features to further your small business marketing.

[Image Credit: teamstickergiant]

Inbuilt coding for indexing by search engines

If you know any of the technical jargon about guiding the indexing of your website by the search engines (search engine optimisation), then you will have heard of meta tags – basically signposts for the search engine bots that crawl your website for indexing purposes.

These meta tags tell the search engines what your site is about (site description) and what keywords (search terms) you are focusing on. Normally, you have to create these meta tags yourself. However, with Squidoo, they are built into the Squidoo platform. So to take advantage of this you need to do the following:

ensure that the name of your Squidoo lens (lens URL) contains your targeted keyword
include your primary keyword in the lens description
ensure that your primary tag is the same as the keyword in the lens title and description
use your keyword, or variations of it, in your module headings
ensure your keyword features in your introduction
use tags that are clearly relevant to your primary keyword.

Above all, avoid ‘keyword stuffing’ or overuse of keywords to a point where what you write is meaningless. Primary keywords, and related words, should occur naturally throughout your writing.

Each lens is a single web page enabling deep indexing by the search engines

The way the Squidoo platform is structured means that each lens is seen by the search engines as a single page, even if the lens is more than 45 modules long as is my primary Squidoo lens:

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

The net effect of this is that the Google search engine bots can readily engage in deep indexing of Squidoo lenses – which means that your Squidoo lens gets indexed from top to bottom (including comments). Many webmasters and bloggers engage in all kinds of activities to get Google to index beyond the first page of their websites. With Squidoo this activity is unnecessary as the Squidoo site is designed to facilitate deep indexing by Google and the other search engines.

I have written about this deep indexing in an article on the article directory, Ezinearticles.com, and explained how this takes place:

Squidoo and Search Engine Indexing

In a another article, I elaborated further on how to make the best use of the fact that the search engines index the whole of a Squidoo lens (deep indexing):

Top 10 Tips to Encourage Deep Indexing of Squidoo Lenses

Squidoo lenses are indexed for multiple keywords

One of things that I discovered through building many Squidoo lenses (100+) is that Google indexes Squidoo lenses for multiple keywords. One of my lenses on Digital Storytelling was found through more than 300+ search terms (over a 3 month period) on Google’s search results. This means that Google had indexed my Squidoo lens for more than 300 keywords and searchers were able to find my lens through multiple search terms. The net effect of this for small business marketing is that by creating Squidoo lenses you are increasing the chances of people finding your website/blog because of the way Google indexes the lenses.

This whole process is illustrated in a PDF document I produced as one of the bonuses of my Social Media Training Program. This PDF demonstrates how Google indexes Squidoo lenses, shows you how to check your own lenses for indexing by Google and explains how to maximise the chances of your Squidoo lens being found on Google and other search engines. The core strategy in relation to the last point, is the use of ‘long tail keywords’ (keywords containing three or more words). The PDF can be downloaded here (includes a listing of the 300+ keywords for my digital storytelling lens):

http://www.squidooroo.com/Downloads/DeepIndexingofSquidooLenses.pdf

This multiple indexing of Squidoo lenses is not something to be taken lightly. I have subsequently discovered that another of my lenses, Tropical Rainforest Walk, has been found through Google via more than 600 search terms.

Small business marketing can get a real boost from the fundamental design of Squidoo lenses as the Squidoo platform encourages indexing by search engines, facilitates deep indexing and creates the opportunity for indexing of multiple keywords from the one Squidoo lens.

December 19, 2011December 20, 2011

Linking Your Squidoo Lenses

The key benefit of linking your Squidoo lenses is to demonstrate your expertise in a particular topic or niche. Another benefit is that readers are more inclined to follow links to related lenses than to something that does not relate to their search term. Both of these benefits can provide substantial assistance to your small business marketing.

There are a number of ways to link your Squidoo lenses and I want to concentrate on two particular Squidoo modules that make lens linking very easy – the ‘Featured Lenses’ Module and the “My Lenses” Module.

[Image Credit: John-Morgan]

Featuring your lenses and creating a lens chain

The Featured Lenses Module enables you to highlight up to five (5) lenses that are related to the topic of your lens. You can feature your own lenses or those of other Lensmasters. With this module you specify the URL (web address) of the lenses that you want to feature and identify the number of lenses (up to 5) that you want to display. These options are illustrated below (‘Featured Lenses’ Module shown in edit mode):

One way to make good use of the Featured Lenses Module is to create six (6) lenses on a topic and then on each lens add a Featured Lens Module that highlights the other five (5) related lenses. This effectively creates a Squidoo lens chain and is a powerful option for small business marketing. I have used this approach on my Squidoo lenses about Online Learning as illustrated below:

Another linking option you can use with the Featured Lens Module is to link to lenses created by others. You have to make sure, though, that these lenses cover a topic related to your own. This approach can add value to your own lens because it gives readers ready access to further information on the topic of their search . It is also in line with the collaborative marketing ethos of Squidoo and may result in some form of reciprocal link or “liking”.

Using the My Lenses Module for linking your lenses

The ‘My Lenses’ Module differs in operation from the Featured Lenses Module in that you do not specify the URL of the lenses that you want to link to, but rather choose from a number of criteria that Squidoo then uses to list your lenses. This means, in effect, that you have less control over the specific lenses to be displayed in the module. A further difference is that you can display up to 25 of your own lenses. So if you have lots of lenses related to a topic, you might choose to use the My Lenses Module

As explained, this module works from criteria that you specify. You have two choices, (1) choose by Squidoo topic area from the drop-down menu (e.g. education) or (2) choose from the tags (keywords) you have used in creating your lenses. The My Lenses Module is illustrated (in edit mode) below:

Having chosen the basis for selection (topic or tag) of your lenses, you can then specify on what basis they will be displayed. The choices listed at the bottom of the module (in edit mode) are:

Lens rank
Recently created
Recently updated
Alphabetically by Lens Title

One advantage of both the Featured Lenses Module and the My Lenses Module is that Squidoo completes the details of the chosen lenses for you. So these two modules automatically display the Squidoo lens image, lens title (hyperlinked) and a brief description of the lens (as displayed above in the image – ‘Featured Lenses related to online learning’).

The two Squidoo lenses modules that enable easy linking of your lenses are a real boost for your small business marketing because they both add considerable value to your lenses in the eyes of readers and the search engines.