Monthly Archives: February 2024

News

Small Business Websites Need to Evolve

People used to turn to local resources when marketing a small local business. There wasn’t really much point in trying to reach customers that were outside of the local area. But the Internet changed all of that. Now we find that people have completely changed their attitude toward commerce. The word eCommerce was coined to distinguish between online and offline marketing. But that word stands for more than just a change in the marketing medium; it also signifies a whole new dynamic for dealing with customers.

We have had the Internet revolution and it has completely transformed our lives. We have started to take it for granted. So much so that it is easy to forget how much it has impacted our lives. Yet in eCommerce, the impact has been significant enough to actually send some otherwise healthy businesses to the wall. And all because consumers have changed their approach to shopping.

What Role Does the Small Business Website Have?

When businesses first started promoting themselves on the Web, their websites were nothing more than flashy digital brochures. But that kind of site doesn’t hold much interest for the online visitor anymore. The primary reason that people are on the internet is to find information. They are not likely to be wowed by glitz unless the site is very entertaining. What people are looking for is relevant information that is pertinent to whatever they searched for. And that’s what the search engines will dig up for them.

The Changing Face of the Business Website

It isn’t enough anymore for a small business to tell people who they are and what they do. The Internet was never designed as a sales platform to showcase businesses. It was, and still is, about the free exchange of information. So when people come to a small business website, they are usually looking for information. The successful small business is the one that provides that information.

Now it might seem counter-intuitive to suggest that giving away information freely is good for business but that is the fact of the matter. Businesses build trust in their customer base by providing what they want. The business that engages with its customers is the one that they turn to when they are ready to buy.

As small business owners we need to be aware of the changing face of consumerism. We need to find ways to engage and interact with visitors to our websites.

 

News

The Three Biggest Lead Generation Mistakes Small Businesses Make And How To Overcome Them

If you’ve been looking for simple, proven and tested, step-by-step methods for generating more leads for your small business, then this article may just have the answer. Firstly, I want you to stop for a moment and think about all the advertising you’ve seen over the past week.

How many of those actual ads can you name? Researchers estimate that over the past seven days, you have been exposed to as many as 117,000 ads based on national averages. So out of 117,000 ads, how many can you name?

If you’re fairly attentive, you may be able to come up with 3 or 4 specific ads… but I’ll bet that’s because you probably see those ads over and over… week in and week out. Let’s face the facts… repetition works. When you see any advertisement multiple times every day you’re bound to eventually begin to recall the ad. But now answer this question.

What few ads you do remember, how many of their products or services have you bought? Because I have a passion for marketing I tend to go online and research for well accepted ads. Take for example a series of ads from online trading company E*Trade which uses babies to promote their products. These have a massive audience on both TV and YouTube. They even had one during the Superbowl. I think they’re a scream. But… I don’t have an E*Trade account. Never have, never will. Why should I?

What benefits do they offer me as a potential buyer of online trading services that any of the hundreds of other stock trading services offer? See my point? Does a smart-aleck, wise-cracking baby have any relevance to online stock trading whatsoever? Of course not. So why does E*Trade continue to make these commercials? Believe it or not, there is a reason… and by the end of this short presentation, you’ll fully understand what that reason is.

Businesses today are led to believe that all they have to do to build a successful business is create some type of attention-grabbing form of marketing and they will generate leads at will. Nothing could be further from the truth. And that’s just in the area of marketing. What about generating fast cash flow? EVERY small business needs to generate fast cash flow. So how do you do that as a small business owner? What about generating profits? Generating more cash flow is great… but not if you don’t get to put any of it in your pocket at the end of the day. How would you like the answers to all of these problems?

In this article I am going to reveal to you the three biggest lead generation mistakes small business owners make… and outline how you can overcome them.

Here are the three mistakes. Mistake #1… they fail to get professional help. Mistake #2… they don’t know the fundamentals required to successfully market their business and attract as many new clients as their business can handle. And mistake #3… they have no idea how to use their marketing to generate immediate cash flow. Let’s explore these three in depth, and show you how you can easily and systematically overcome each one of them.

Mistake #1… small business owners fail to get professional help. Can you name me just one professional athlete who does NOT have a coach? There aren’t any. Tiger Woods actually has a total of 9 coaches guiding him in everything from his golf game to his financial investments. But do small business owners really need professional help? Remember the TV ads we previously discussed? Those ads are created by “professionals.” Unfortunately, those professionals have no clue what they’re doing. Everything they’re doing in marketing and advertising today is wrong! But let me prove that to you right now.

If you currently use any form of marketing such as a print ad, brochure, postcard, flyer… or for that matter… your company website, take it out and look at it carefully. And if you don’t have any form of marketing right now, take out a sheet of paper and sketch out what you think would make for an effective ad for your business. It doesn’t have to be anything formal or fancy… just create a basic outline of the ad and where you would locate the various elements on the page.

Now that you have your ad… or a mock up of your ad sitting in front of you, let me provide you with the little known secrets that produce more leads than your business can handle. 99% of all marketing professionals DON’T know the lead generation secrets I’m about to reveal to you. This information is so powerful and compelling, it will position you in the top 1% of all lead generation professionals today. This example will show you why every small business owner should acquire our step-by-step roadmap as they start to generate leads for their business.

Here’s what a true marketing professional will know… and help you implement into your marketing. It’s known as the “marketing equation.” This marketing equation will let you quit competing on price… and let you start selling your product or service for what it’s really worth. You will drive in more leads and increase your advertising response by 10 to more than 100 times. You will convert a higher percentage of those leads and dramatically increase your number of sales. You will get a bigger bang for your marketing buck. The bottom line is this you will literally create a profit faucet that you will have TOTAL control over.

First, you MUST understand what marketing is supposed to do. Its purpose is actually three fold. Its first job is to capture the attention of your target market. Second, it must give them the hope that reading or listening to your marketing will give them enough information to help them make the best decision possible when buying whatever you sell. In other words, train and teach them how to recognize the true value of your product or service… and conclude that you… and you alone… offer the best value versus your competition. Marketing’s third job is to lower the risk of taking the next step in the buying process… and if necessary… continue to educate the prospect regarding the value you offer.

Marketing that accomplishes these three objectives will result in your prospects and customers coming to one single conclusion, that they would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but you, regardless of price. It’s estimated that as many as 96% of all small businesses fail within their first 5 years. The main reason for this tremendously high failure rate has to do with the lack of expertise when it comes to generating leads and making the phone ring.

Most small businesses don’t know anything about those three things that marketing is supposed to do. But there’s also an additional problem to consider. Most small business owners use a tactical marketing approach instead of a strategic approach. Let me explain.

Running an ad in the local newspaper… sending out an email or direct mail letter… airing a radio or TV ad on a local media station are all examples of tactical marketing. Now don’t get me wrong… the newspaper, radio or direct mail can be successful marketing channels… If your marketing message is powerful and compelling. But that’s the problem… the message is the strategic side of marketing… and yet, it’s the most neglected.

This distinction between strategic and tactical marketing is huge and one you need to be acutely aware of anytime you start talking about generating more leads. Many companies mistakenly assume that when you talk about lead generation, you’re automatically talking about tactical lead generation… placing ads, sending out mailers, joining a networking group, attending tradeshows, implementing a prospect follow up system and so on.

They fail to realize that the strategic side of the coin, what you say in your marketing and how you say it is almost always more important than the marketing medium where you say it. If you fail to make this distinction, then you risk becoming jaded towards certain forms of marketing and advertising that should be a part of your tactical plan, but you eliminate them from consideration because they haven’t worked for you in the past.

When lead generation results are less than optimal, small business owners tend to almost always blame the marketing medium… like the newspaper the ad ran in or the postcards they sent out. They blame the tactical part of the plan… without any regard for how good or how bad the strategic messaging in that marketing piece was. People often say things like, “we tried radio and it doesn’t work for our kind of business,” or “we sent out 50,000 pieces of direct mail and only generated 3 orders. It just doesn’t work.”

Just because it didn’t work, don’t assume that it won’t work. Most people don’t have the evaluation skills or the know-how to judge whether poor marketing results from poor strategy or poor tactical execution. This is where our step-by-step roadmap can generate more leads than your business can handle.

For example, most small business owners rely heavily on platitudes in their marketing. They say things like – we have the lowest prices… the best service… we’re family owned and operated… we offer convenient hours… the best value… not to mention that we’ve been in business since 1431 B.C. Look at your own marketing that I asked you to acquire or create earlier. How many platitudes did you use in your own marketing?

By the way, this is NOT your fault. Small business owners have been conditioned to think this is the proper way to market their businesses… since most advertising follows this same pathetic marketing formula… including the Fortune 500 types.

As human beings, we’re all after just one thing when we buy something… the best deal! Unfortunately, when you use platitudes in your marketing, there’s absolutely no way to tell who is actually offering the best deal. Everyone says they have the lowest prices, the highest quality and the best rates. So who do you believe? There’s only one way to know… and that’s to research every single business that offers what you want to buy. How many of us have the time or patience to do that?

So most of us just automatically assume that everyone is pretty much the same, and therefore we default to calling on the business that offers us the lowest price. When you can’t communicate the true value your business offers, you’re doomed to forever compete on price. Our marketing equation will change all of that for you forever. It’s going to be the backbone of your strategic marketing plan. It’s the foundation on which everything else we build for you is based. Let me give you a quick overview and then spend some time going through it with you in detail.

A proper marketing equation has four main components. First, it must interrupt your prospects. It must get your qualified prospect to pay attention to your lead generation marketing. Simple enough to say, but a lot more difficult to pull off in real life unless you understand what you’re about to learn here. The interrupt is done through your headline if your marketing is in print… or it’s the first thing you say if your marketing through radio or TV. The second component is engage. Once your prospect is interrupted, it’s critical you give your reader the promise that information is forthcoming that will help the prospect make the best buying decision possible. In other words, it must help facilitate their decision to pick you over anyone else. This is the job of our subheadline.

The interrupt is our headline that highlights a specific problem that your prospects are looking for a solution to… and the engage is our subheadline that promises them that you offer a solution to the problem we mentioned in our headline.

The third component you need to include is ‘educate’. Once you have interrupted and engaged your prospect, you have to give information that allows them to logically understand how and why you solve the problem they’re facing. This is accomplished by giving detailed, quantifiable, specific and revealing information. This is typically done in the body copy of your ad. When you educate, you need to reveal to your prospects the important and relevant information they need to know when making a good decision, and that your business… and yours alone… provides it to them. The interrupt and engage hit the prospects emotional hot buttons. Educate is the logic they need to justify picking up the phone and calling you.

The fourth and final component of the marketing equation is your offer. Now that you have interrupted your prospect based on problems that are important to them… engaged by a promise of the solution… and they’ve examined the educational information that makes your solution real and believable… the last step you need to take is to give them a low risk way to take the next step in your sales process. You do this by offering a free marketing tool, such as a report, brochure, seminar, audio, video or something that will continue to educate them. Your offer will allow your prospect to feel in control of their final decision to call and buy from you.

So your marketing equation is interrupt, engage, educate and offer and together they equal market domination. Now here’s the problem. Most marketing today only contains two of these components. They interrupt by throwing something at you that’s either familiar like Tiger Woods… or unusual like a monkey or talking pets. Sometimes they like to use both, as in the case of the E*Trade baby. Then once they grab your attention, they make you some type of offer such as “call now for whatever.” They have left out the engage and the educate, and marketing seldom succeeds when that happens.

In fact, the only time this type of marketing does succeed is when you can afford to run the ad over and over nonstop for an extended period of time. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz… melts in your mouth, not in your hand… and the burgers are better at… have literally been rammed down our throats by Fortune 500 types. After hearing these slogans thousands of times, of course we’re going to remember them. But how can a small business owner like you that doesn’t have a billion dollar marketing budget successfully market your business. The answer… you can’t… UNLESS you follow the entire marketing equation.

And finally the third biggest mistake small business owners make is that they have no idea how to use their marketing to generate immediate cash flow. When you follow this marketing equation in every form of marketing you do… from your business cards to your company website, the financial results are instantaneous and immediate.

So in conclusion, the three biggest lead generation mistakes small businesses make are #1… they fail to get professional help. #2… they don’t know the fundamentals required to successfully market their business and attract as many new clients as their business can handle. And #3… they have no idea how to use their marketing to generate immediate cash flow.

The above marketing equation contains the fundamental components for instantly making your phone ring and positioning your business as the dominant force in your market. It provides the marketing foundation that will enable you to generate immediate cash flow. And small businesses can use this information as a minimum standard when seeking out professional help for their business.

When you can overcome these three biggest lead generation mistakes, you will generate all the leads your business can handle.

 

News

Why Every Small Business Needs A Website

It’s safe to say that we live in a world where it’s assumed that pretty much anything can be found online. Whether it’s to figure out where you’ve seen a familiar looking actor in a movie, check out the menu of a new restaurant you’re going to or just to find out general information about a company, most of us turn to the web. Let’s face it, many people don’t even a copy of the Yellow Pages anymore and the ones that do aren’t running to find it when they need to find out about a business. These days when someone is looking for something or more like looking for you and your business, they go online.

So does this mean all businesses should absolutely have a website? Yes, whether you own a business, work for yourself in any capacity or provide paid services to the public in some shape or form, you need to have a website.

Common misconceptions determining if a business needs a website

First off, the size of your company doesn’t matter. Regardless if you’re a one-man show or a have hundreds of employees, size truly has no bearing when it comes to the benefits of getting your business online. Many small business owners often think that since majority of their business comes from local clientele, having a website isn’t really necessary. Some of these small, local businesses have been in business for a very long time and have been doing extremely well without a website. In many cases that’s absolutely true and I can’t fault them for thinking that way, but I can only imagine how much even better they could be doing if they actually did have a website.

Another prevailing thought is that it doesn’t make much sense to have a website if your business isn’t actually selling something online. Whether you have an actual tangible product that you plan on selling online or not is irrelevant. These are all huge misconceptions because the bottom line is that it comes down to exposure. Developing a website for your business is the easiest, most efficient and affordable way to get your name out there. Let’s take a look at how having a website for even the smallest business can be beneficial.

Benefits of having a website for your business

For any business, staying relevant among today’s tech-savvy consumers is paramount. Not only does a website help promote your business but it serves as a means for you to be found by customers. Once you have a website you immediately stop being invisible to all the potential customers trying to find you online. And whether you know it or not, being invisible as a business in this on-demand, information age is costing you money.

Here are some key benefits to having a website for your small business:

You create another marketing tool.

Do you have a business card for your company? Obviously that’s a no brainer, of course you do. Just like how you would make sure you get business cards made for your company, creating a website should also be an obvious must-have. A website will be one of your most powerful sales and communication tools for your company, allowing potential clients to quickly and easily find out more about the products and services you have to offer. Think of a website as a brochure for your company that is constantly kept up to date and always available to anyone and everyone.

You create a place for information and communication.

Besides being a sales vehicle, a website is your company’s home turf so to speak for everything having to do with your business. It’s the primary place where people will go for trusted information about your business, to voice concerns and have their questions answered. Whether it’s your current customers, the ones you hope to attract, potential employees or even business partners, a website is your business’s greatest communication tool. Even if it’s two o’clock in the morning, if someone wants to know something about your business, they will look for answers, and your website will be the place they go. Also, any information about your business read directly from your own website is valued more as opposed to information ascertained about it from somewhere else like another website.

You add legitimacy to your business.

Having a website automatically creates legitimacy and validates your business in the mind of clients. To the public this creates confidence that you’re a real, functioning company that is currently doing business. Conversely, if someone looks for your business online and sees you don’t have a website their confidence in your business will wane to say the least. This might imply to the average web user, that you’re not a serious business, can’t afford a website or that your company is old-fashioned.

Allows you to keep up and stay ahead with your competition.

If you’re a small business and you’re competing with other small businesses in your local area, many of them might be in the same boat as you and don’t have a website. That’s all the more reason for you to get one and stay a step ahead. But if any of your competitors do have a website and you don’t, you’re losing business to them plain and simple.

Having a website though can help level the playing field between your business and with the bigger companies that you normally wouldn’t be able to compete with. One of the nice things about the internet is that a potential customer can just as easily find your small business’s website as it can with a website belonging to a huge national chain. Imagine you’re a local hardware business that is a few miles away from a Home Depot. Now, if a local customer searches online where in the area they could purchase a certain home improvement product, wouldn’t you like your chances that they might stumble on your business if you had a website?

Best bang for your buck advertising tool.

A website provides more exposure for your money than any other form of advertising. For the average small business owner, the cost of a local radio or television commercial is just not affordable unless it is aired when vast majority of the targeted audience is sleeping. Local newspaper ads can be reasonably priced, but doesn’t have the reach or impact they once did. Print news is an industry that’s been on the decline since most people are getting their news for free online. With a website, there are no space constraints in detailing and marketing your products, and you are able to interact and truly engage with your customers something that really can’t be done with these other forms of advertising. Also in terms of cost, after the initial investment to design and build the site, the annual expense for hosting and maintenance is a fraction of the outlay many small businesses throw at local advertising throughout the year.

Conclusion

So after all that, does it still mean every website should have a website? And the answer is still yes! But it doesn’t mean that it has to be an expensive undertaking. A website doesn’t need to be big, highly technical, or break the bank in order for it to benefit your company. Even the simplest website that is professionally designed and contains well thought out content can easily benefit any business. But before you can even think about designing your site, you have to take the first step, which is realizing that your business does in fact need one.