Best Ways To Market Your Business

"How can I drive people to my website without getting charged per click, like Google? Facebook ads are also per click. I just don't have funding for per click search engines."

I’m going to input the importance of local listings (Google Places) and the - watch this word - free sites where you can put listings about your business, on every search engine, and on every business networking group that you can join. The time it will take for a "share" on Facebook to blossom is years if ever. Search engine results, backlinks to your website, business networking sites such as merchantcircle, kudzu, manta, linkedin, itex, (just add .com to those words) and anything but Facebook/twitter- these are the long lived, tried and true vehicles for online commerce. Online selling requires perpetual, diligent maintenance. You don’t just set up a website and wait for phone calls. When we went to school, you shouldn't have passed if you sat back and did nothing. You read read read and read some more. Spend one tenth of your time typing and most of it reading so that when you do type something into either a business networking site, your blog or a social media site, it will lend that air of expertise that you also want to convey with the products/services that you sell for a living.

Next, which should have been first probably; today internet commerce is not what it was even twelve months ago. Here's the new rule of thumb. Just as in real estate (location, location, location) our new anthem for internet commerce is reviews, reviews, reviews. Beg... if you have to, for your customers to leave reviews anywhere on the net. A Facebook mention will fall off the front page and not be read after about twenty posts about how cute a kitten is in a photo. A review will float around and populate the internet indefinitely, assuming Google never runs out of server space.

I don’t agree with the platitudes: with a little hard work you will do fine. I spend twenty hours a week on SEO marketing, social media marketing, website design, etc.; all things related to internet commerce and the continued existence of my business on the internet- which is my continued existence, period. I would phrase it to you: bite the bullet and either pay big bucks for a talented marketing consultant who specializes in internet commerce and who has good reviews or commit to be fit and do it yourself for absolutely free with you yourself doing 18 hours a week reading online, and two hours a week typing.

I agree with the post above but still think FB is a passing fad and FB ads are the equivalent of wiping with US currency- ditto for Google PPC, etc. With a little self education, you can do mountains of good for yourself/your business for- the magic word: free. If anyone has any questions for me, get ahold of me- Ill be glad to help. I’m on every social networking and almost all business to business networking sites- for a reason, and I answer for free.

The worst ways to market your business:
1. Any method printed on paper. This includes printed coupons, direct mail, phone books, and flyers. With one notable exception: the business card. Still the timeless number one marketing device when used correctly, that is, a smile, a thirty second introduction about yourself by yourself, and the correct card (eye catching, heavy weight, glossy, no free vistaprint logo on the back, just enough and not too much information on it, etc.).
2. PPC, banner ads, targeted traffic (fancy PPC), Google AdWords or whatever new name they call it… basically paying anyone for better search engine rankings. All the good things in internet marketing are free (well… a little elbow grease is required).
3. Bad press is not always good press: respond to bad reviews and take a sober look at your business and products. The customer is always right. Even when they are wrong, they still have the money. Pay off your customers to leave good reviews. What I mean is- entice them with a free coupon or future discount to leave a review after your services are rendered.
4. The double edged coupon: be careful. Coupons/specials/sales and similar tactics result in more attention, but can also backfire. Consumers are easily convinced that your price was too high to begin with and on all other items, at other times, etc. Avoid the coupon scenario and use instead the customer loyalty and rewards idea. Discounts and offers based on customer retention are safer than as a tactic for new clients.
5. Don’t fall victim to charity. Charities are like vultures: they smell a dying business from miles away and assure that it will perish. I know several of my readers just gasped. Let me console you. I believe charity is the backbone of life, not just business. I am so anti-corporate and pro-small business that I think charity is one of the important things that differentiate us from big corporate America (the United States of Walmart). But charity starts at home as the saying goes. Adapt this principle to your marketing plan: give back to the organizations that contain customers. If an .org wants your charity, does that .org have any employees who do business with you? Consider only donation requests that originate from a personal customer who works for that charity. And to turn this item from the list of marketing don’ts to marketing do’s, here’s the key: your own presence at the event that you are contributing to. Your presence with your product/donation is essential to a donation becoming a marketing tool. If you think enough to donate to a charitable event, make sure your donation is reciprocated with tickets and not a printed thank you in the program (useless).
6. Facebook- the new Satan and it’s Beast, Twitter. How many times do you get on FB to see what people are saying about the new computer that just came out because you want to buy one? Most people realize that their friends opinions are like… well… and after a cute picture of someone’s new kitten that everyone just has to comment on, any link to you or well thought out prose will become second then third page. Much like newspapers, 90% of the people seeing it will not go past the first page of anything. In business, unlike friend’s opinions of your dating life, we want to get peoples attention to sell products or services. FB is to internet commerce what the National Enquirer is to journalism. You know why all these internet SEO gurus keep chanting FB FB FB as a mantra? It’s because they think that their golden bull that they pray to, who goes by the name of the Google, is picking up on all these FB mentions of a business. The Google just rewrote the book this year on how they generate those search results for businesses. They recognize FB just for just what it is and give it very little weight when it comes to the new googlebot algorithm (the thing responsible for why business come up where and how often that they do when someone searches). The old steak and potato standards still rule the empire here: good content on your website, good reviews, accurate local listings, backlinks from other quality sites, etc. What FB does do well: name branding. But my article is answering how to start; branding is something a business does after it is established.
7. When I started in business, I received some useful advice from a mentor: buy the best business cards that you can afford from someone who does it for a living, i.e. a printer. You think you need boxes of business cards, but what is more important is who you pass them to, under what circumstances, and adding the smiling face and brief three sentence introduction of yourself.
At the county fair, you can hand out 50,000 cards easily in a weekend. 49,786 of them will be swept up by the g-men afterwards. 200 of them are used to make a collage of Jimi Hendrix by an art school student.
By contrast, print twenty really nice cards with the last bucks in your wallet, go attend a free chamber of commerce monthly get together, introduce yourself twenty times and you have eighteen new customers who will shop at your website over the next year.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, that was a parable. I wasn’t talking about your business cards. I was talking about your website. Actually, I was talking about your business cards, too. But it just so happens, the same advice I was given twenty years ago is still true today. Spend time developing your site, if you bake cakes and website design just doesn’t interest you, fine. Spend some money and hire someone who does get his jollies from JavaScript and flash. You want your website to look and operate as nice as you do at your cousin’s wedding. Your website should be a shining example of your products and services. There is way too much competition now on the net. And you need someone who knows the ins and outs like a tax preparer. We have rules like don’t wear white after Labor Day. Except we say, don’t hijack your viewer’s attention with too many JavaScripts.
8. Do not compete. No one starts a business to compete with similar businesses. We simply cannot afford it. Not too many screaming late TV used car salesmen are still in business. No matter what you sell, products or services, you cannot compete in the new era of the United States of Walmart. The people who stay alive now believe in the holy trinity: a power greater than themselves, themselves, and what they do and/or sell. You see what went out of business? Slim line phones (phones with cords- for those under 30), printed books, and the second generation family businesses. The floodgate of future technologies has released its torrent upon the consumers and to stay afloat you need your own originality, fortitude, openness to change, and to make your name visible (your company name, your product name, your reputation). Don’t sit back and expect your customers to come seeking you or your products. Get out there anywhere and everywhere you can and show off. This is easy on the internet. Anywhere you post your name and your product picture and a few keywords that in some way tie back to your website or a local listing. Make over your company’s image into a unique one. Don’t compete on price. Make your company known for its customer service.

Here’s our company’s secret family recipe of herbs and spices. We sell flowers. So do grocery stores. In fact, they grow out in fields, too. Our materials aren’t noteworthy. Beer commercials insult the viewer that Bavarian grown hops harvested during the month of November on odd numbered years make better beer than those from US farms. What we really sell, and how we make a name for ourselves is our customer service. It’s our attention to detail. It’s coming up with just the right ideas for the occasion. Our company motto is: It’s not just flowers; it’s a Design by Doe™. We sell feelings conveyed in exactly the right vehicle at that moment. Sometimes red roses say just what you need to say- especially given to her at work in front of all of her friends and co-workers and the boss who forgot her birthday. A talented floral artist makes just the right floral tribute for the services to celebrate the life of the deceased. We don’t decorate a coffin. We celebrate what that person did with their time on earth in a floral arrangement that has meaning for those attending and sometimes to substitute for a friend who cannot be present. On another occasion, we take time to spend minutes with an elderly person honoring their birthday and making them feel special to receive lovely flowers on this day from a distant relative who cannot be present. Flowers are a gift, but our company specializes in making memorable moments and flowers are a part of the service that we provide.

Have I made you consider sending someone flowers soon? That is exactly what your business, your website, every networking site that you have a listing on, need to say about you. Express your originality, don’t compete. And if you lack the skills to make yourself visible on the internet, sub-contract someone who can. Invest your money wisely, not in advertising. The number of hits you get on your site is not important. Weeds have flowers and yet when you look at a field full of weeds, what you notice is the rose bush that popped up in the middle of the weeds and bloomed. Stand apart from similar businesses and bloom.

Business Website: www.designsbydoe.com
Rating: Five Stars
Review: "My husband had been in the dog house for a while and to my surprise, and after 19 years of marriage, he had these beautiful roses delivered to my job. The arrangement was spectacular and it looked beautiful on my desk. The service was wonderful and Designs by Doe made my otherwise uncreative spouse the King of Creativity! Thank you and please keep up the great work!"
From: Regina of Columbus, OH on July 29, 2011