Five Marketing Focal Points for Small Businesses

Are you a small business that is just starting out and needs to know what to focus on most? Of course with opening your own business, you know that there are many important things that you need to put your energy toward. I do not personally own a small business, but I've worked with many small business owners and based off of my own experiences, below are my personal top five marketing focal points for small businesses.

1) Social media platforms

Social media platforms are great; they are free and they are easy. They work well in trying to get out your message in an effective and engaging way. Social media platforms are growing in users and variety and really can cater to any kind of business.

Social media comes with its challenges, however. Although the platforms are free to use, they are not free to run when you take into account your time and effort that goes into them. And yes the platforms are easy, but you must learn the difference between how to run a personal account and how to run a business account!

2) Networking events

Networking events are a great way to market your business and yourself as a business owner. Many events have a networking portion where you go around the room to hand out your business card and collect others in exchange. There are also events hosted that are purely for networking; at these events people are asking to be told about your business and how it can help them. Be sure to prep your elevator speech and bring plenty of business cards.

Networking does take time, effort, and a little bit of money, but can pay off quickly when you meet that client that can help take your business off the ground!

3) Purchase a good website

You are going to want to pay a little more to get a website that is fully functional for your business needs, is mobile optimized, and has great SEO. Of course you want to live within your means when purchasing a website, but you want remember to create a website that is easy to use and provides your customers with valuable information. In this day and age, you need to make sure that your website is mobile capable if not mobile optimized. Many customers now access their information on a phone versus a computer—you want to make sure you aren't stopping your customers from doing so! And finally you want to spend at least a little time on SEO for your site. You need to make sure customers can find you via search queries and that you have a high page rank.

Websites can get expensive quickly, so make sure to be prepared for a large total if you are looking to build a large website with all the bells and whistles.

4) Blog

Blogs do many great things for your business and your website. It provides your customers with valuable information in addition to providing a reason for them to keep coming back to your site! If you are consistent on the timing of your blog as well as providing great content, you will attract subscribers and in turn, customers. An extra benefit of having a blog is that it keeps your site active and shows Google you are making updates to your site often, proving that you are a business that does real business!

Blogging does take time and effort to do correctly. You need to post consistently and constantly come up with new topic ideas that you think will interest your customer enough to make them subscribe.

5) Business cards

Spend a little extra money and get custom-designed, high-quality business cards. Having these from the start help you to establish your brand and your credibility. Business cards can be used at networking events as well as your place of business; they help to remind your customers you exist!

They can be expensive to get designed, but your business will thank you later.

See Do we Still Need Business Cards in this Digital Age?

Of course the marketing tips for small businesses are truly unlimited. Do you own a small business? What marketing tips do you have for potential entrepreneurs? 

Until next time!

~Melissa

"Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salons, hardware stores - these didn't come out of nowhere." ~Paul Ryan

The Importance of Google-ing your Business

Have you ever thought of the importance of looking into what people say about your business online?  Not just on social media where you can see it, but on blogs, customer review sites, and even in the media; your business is being mentioned whether you like it or not!

I just started a new job at a large company in Lansing, Michigan.  Part of my daily tasks are to google the business and see what comes up.  Never thought to do that?  You'd be surprised what comes up!  Besides the simple knowledge of knowing what is on the internet, it is important to correct information or inform your customers of the correct information.  Let's say it's as simple as having the wrong operating on hours up on a website that advertises local businesses.  This is a very simple but quite important correction to make!  But incorrect information can be so much worse than that; articles like this state that a customer that had a bad experience is twice as likely to talk about it than someone that had a good experience; whether their facts are right or not.

When doing research about your company on the web, these websites are key:
1. Google.com and google.com/news
2. Bing.com
3. Your local newspaper's website
4. Wikipedia
5. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and all other social media sites

Although you cannot remove or change all information about your company, good or bad, it is important to address the issues that you can. You want to ensure that you handle it in the best and most well thought out way you can.  There are some important things to remember as you respond to customers on the web:

1. Always be friendly!  Whether you are responding to a good or bad comment, you want to treat the customer well because once it is online, it is out there for all to see.  The old mantra that "the customer is always right" will apply 99% of the time and can backfire easily if not handled correctly.

2.  Always follow up if you say you are going to follow up.  If you respond to a tweet or facebook post with "I have to check with the manager, but will get back to you", it is important to follow up!  The concern that they were addressing will only be amplified if you do not follow through with your word.  

3.  Remember that traffic and mentions are good! So try to avoid deleting things other people have written (unless you have to of course) and instead redirect them to your website, social media sites, or give them the correct information.  

It is a good thing for people to be mentioning your business online, it's just important to keep tabs on who says what and that the information is as accurate as possible!  Hopefully these simple tips have shown you where to look and what to do with what you find, please let me know if you have any additional suggestions about google-ing your business.  Also feel free to share stories about what you have found and how you handled it!

Thanks everyone, until next time!

~Melissa

"The only thing Google has failed to do, so far, is fail" ~ John Battelle

Cash Mobs: long term benefit or short term boom?

The idea of a cash mob is fairly simple:  a locally owned small business sets a date and time where they try to get as many people as they can to come into their store and spend at least $20 a person within that time period.  Usually it is on a week night and lasts about three hours.  

My question today is whether or not events like these have a long term benefit or if they give a small business a boost in sales for just that one day.  To look into this further, I spoke with Derek Drushel from Joey’s Pet Outfitters in Williamston, MI.  Their business just held a cash mob a few weeks ago and I asked him a few questions about the success of the event.

I wanted to analyze the long and short term benefits of doing a cash mob.  First I asked him how successful he thought the event was.  “It went well,” said Derek, “It definitely was a significant portion of our sales that day, and I think it helped our average ticket sale even with people who weren't part of the event because it created a more positive buzz in the store." He followed up by saying, “anytime you can up the overall energy level in the store it's a good thing.”  His answers followed much of the research that I conducted about the short term benefits of cash mobs.  On average, a cash mob will double or even triple a store’s normal sales for the day; it makes sense that an event such as this could have such a positive effect on a small business for that one particular day.

But I wanted to know what he thought of the long term effects of the event.  I asked if he thought he gained any lifetime customers from the event and if he found that many of the people that came to the store that night were new customers. “Unfortunately I don't think it was really a longtime business builder for the majority of folks who came in…it had more of a one-time feel than you would hope,” said Derek.  In the articles that I found online, there was little mention of the long term effects of a cash mob.  I personally believe that most of the people that attend the event would tend to be current customers as they probably will want to support a business they are already familiar with.  It is difficult to get the news out to new potential customers as the way most cash mobs are promoted is usually through social media.  Derek did follow up by saying, “we did add some business, however, from those people that knew about our store, but maybe didn't realize all we had to offer.” So even though their store may not have gained new life long customers, they may have turned occasional shoppers into life time customers through this event. 

So in conclusion, it is really hard to say what kind of benefits-short or long term-a business will have from a cash mob event.  There are things you can do to improve your odds of a good turn out however.  

1) Promote your event via social media, print media, and your local chamber of commerce.  Use as many avenues as you can to promote the event if you want to attract new customers.

2) Promote your event as a “Shop Local” event.  This is a huge trend right now and will be sure to attract at least a few more customers for the event.

3) Don’t forget about your current customers!  These customers are the ones that will most likely become life time shoppers as they already do business with you, so make sure to send them a personal invite to attend.

Best of luck to all of you with this new business trend! Please comment if you have any tips and tricks from your business’s experience with cash mobs.

-Melissa

Thank you to Derek Drushel from Joey’s Pet Fitters for your insight for this blog!  To learn more about Joey’s Pet Outfitters, check them out on Facebook and also on their website.

 “The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” – Nolan Bushnell