Small business owners often overlook their own marketing strategy, planning and implementation because they are overwhelmed with the process, don’t know where to begin, and think it’s going to incur a high cost, so they push it to the way side and wing their business development and marketing, only to see that there are no new business or increased revenue. Business owners should take their marketing serious if they want to grow their business, become known as an expert in their field, and attract new clients, and it will take an investment of time and money in order to learn how to leverage social media and online marketing tactics to attract and retain new clients, share your expertise across multiple channels, and get the search engines to index your website.
Don’t worry if you feel intimidated by all the verbiage around social media marketing, and SEO, but you and your business need to get the ball rolling in the right direction.
Here are a few things you need to assess immediately:
- Website
- branding
- Is it time for an overhaul? when was the last time you updated your website? Consider new fonts, color, header and logo
- What is your value proposition, is it time to reframe your positioning, strengths?
- Is the language targeting your ideal customers? does it resonate with them, draw them in, and help them know,like, and trust you?
- message
- Does your website address your ideal customer’s pain points?
- Does every page (tab) offer insightful tips, resources, (to enable the “know like and trust” factor)
- are people (visitors) clear about who you are, what you offer and how you can help them?
- Call to action (what do you want your visitor to do once they are on your site: sign up for newsletter? Download a giveaway that gives them a taste of who you are and your expertise? Sign up for a free 30 minute consultation?
- List building tactics: (using text or newsletter to stay in touch with visitors) Your visitors are your potential clients. You want to continue to “touch” them on a regular basis by offering timely, relevant information they can use immediately. The more often they “see” you, the more chances they are getting to know you, and will eventually do business with you. There are tactics to employ if you are using a newsletter to educate, inform and add value to your prospects – that will drive them back to your website and social sites. That is why having a strong website, a newsletter or text messaging system, and social media all offer ways to connect and foster relationships with people who end up becoming a raving fan,endorser, a referral partner, and client!
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – this is where it can get tricky. You don’t really want to do this yourself unless you have been aptly trained and understand how you can optimize your website on the back end (for the search engines) as well as applying tactics on the front end (website content, blogging, newsletter, utilizing videos and social media)
- Keyword searches help you know what people are looking for online, this can give you ideas on what content to write about, adding appropriate headlines and keywords within your blog post
- Keyword searches also tell you what words are highly searched for, and depending on saturation, what words are better to use and what words won’t work so well.
These are some of the things you should do first if you want to grow your business, attract ideal customers and be seen as an expert in your field. Sometimes having a fresh pair of eyes to look over your website, offer recommendations, will save you a ton of time, even money, because there are alternatives and viable options that can get you up to speed fairly quickly and taking your game up a notch.
You don’t have to wait to get your self all together to attract your ideal customers and build up your business; having a smart social media strategy and making it easy for people to connect with you such as “seeing and hearing you” via tweets, Facebook posts, blog commenting and engaging within LinkedIn groups and Quora will definitely show your value and expertise to others (even if your website isn’t perfect) but you want to make a way to capture your visitors, stay connected to them via text messaging or newsletters, and cross-pollinating all your online activities so your website gets indexed by the search engines, so people can share your information within their network via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, there by growing your network, creating a buzz around you and your business, and growing your list. It all counts and it will all pay off, just start with getting your website up and running with the right tools in place, then get a strategy in place, know what platforms to be on, tools to use to manage and measure, and have fun!
2012 is going to be a great year, commit to that thought and make it happen.
Hire a business marketing consultant who can help you plan your steps and keep you on track so that 2012 will be prosperous for you.
