When people do business on the web, they often lose sight of the competitive environment they live in simply by existing as a website. This is an important fact for business owners and how they relate to their online consumer.

Say you have a website that sells hats. Now, imagine the website as a brick and mortar that sits in a strip mall full of stores that sell hats. To your left is a hat store and to your right is another hat store. Next to those stores are more hat stores and so forth. Online, this is exactly what your potential customers see.

If I am a customer walking in this strip mall, why would I want to choose your store? Does your store invite me to shop? Does it stand out from the other shops or does it get lost in the clutter? This is how customers view websites. Imagine they are walking down this row of shops deciding which one to enter. They may enter your shop simply because you are the store closest to their car. If your store is far away, there better be something that catches their attention and encourages them to take the trip to your store.

Once a person decides to enter your store, what will they see once they arrive? Is your store well organized so that your customer can find exactly what they are looking for? Or is the store a disheveled mess?

When designing a website, it is imperative that you think of your site in this way.  Good usability makes it easy, convenient and pleasant for someone to shop online or else they’ll simply walk out of your store and move on to the next. After all, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of stores selling the exact same thing.

Users want to be able to find things quickly and with as little distraction as possible. They do not want to have to sift through unnecessary clutter. If your site appears this way, they can move on in just a couple of clicks.

Website Design, Website Usability Content, Online Content, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Small Business

Your website is out there representing your business 24/7 and can be a great resource in generating leads for your sales team. Below are a few simple things you can do to increase the quality and quantity of leads your site generates:

1) Write it so they can read it. Write your content for users who are scanning, not reading. Making it easy for them to find the information they need on your site makes it more likely they’ll contact you and not your competition.

2) If you have a “contact us” form, remove the phone number as a required field. Users fill out forms rather than calling so as not to have to speak with sales people. Removing the phone number as a requirement lets them know you understand this.

3) Add your physical address to your site. It gives users a sense of comfort that they are going to be dealing with a real company.

4) Provide valuable information users researching your products or services may need. The more you become a resource, the more they feel they can trust doing business with you.

5) Make it as easy as possible for them to experience your product or service on a temporary basis. If you sell a product, can they try it free for 30 days, or see a demo on your site?

And remember, the point of your website isn’t to tell them every minute detail of your business. The site content needs to move a potential customer or client to put your business on their “short list” of companies they need to consider prior to signing with anyone.

Your website should get you on that list. Your sales people should close the deal.

Digital Marketing, Search Engine Marketing Content, Lead Generation, Leads, Online Content, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Small Business, Website Usability

For companies are looking for ways to cut advertising budgets without jeopardizing reach, social networking groups provide some great opportunities.

Anyone with a Facebook or LinkedIn account has seen these groups built around hobbies, professional experience, or even location. They exist on large social networking sites as well as on a myriad of smaller, niche online communities. These groups are similar to the clubs that we belonged to in high school and/or college (i.e. chess club, ski club), and are where likeminded people can exchange information, ideas and ask questions. What social networking has done however is allow us to join groups on a large scale.

Why do people join groups? Mostly, people join groups as a way to express themselves. For example, I belong to multiple “online marketing groups” on LinkedIn, for two reasons:
1. To show anyone that looks at my profile that this is my passion and
2. Because I want to connect to likeminded people who are at the forefront of the industry, and I am interested in what they have to say.

For marketers, this provides an opportunity to communicate to a mass audience of people interested in their products or services without huge media expenditures. That doesn’t mean that targeting social networking groups is free. Successful, well thought out, focused social media campaigns take time and strategic thinking. When done well, they can provide businesses a great outlet to engage potential customers and reinforce their relationship with existing customers.

Not convinced? Let’s say your company manufactures ski equipment and you are holding a ski demo at Stowe Mountain in Vermont (for those who don’t know what a ski demo is, it’s where a ski manufacture provides free ski’s to customers for a day so they can try them out). If your company had groups on existing social networks, it’s easy to let them know about your demo. But beyond letting your own groups know, you can find other groups, related to Vermont Skiing and Skiing, and notify them of the promotion as well. It’s targeted messaging to exactly the group that would most want to hear your message.

Social Media Marketing, Online Marketing, Small Business, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Networks

I was at a trade show visiting a friend about a month ago. She has a small and steadily growing business. Her booth sat at an interesting point on the trade show floor, near where the smaller businesses gave way to the behemoths, the brand names we all know.

Of course my friend, a veteran of the larger trade show circuit, has by now come to know many of the other trade show warriors. Her relationship with them gave me an incredible opportunity to peek into the mind of the small business owner who manufactures or sells products into the thousands of specialty and chain stores in this country. What I found was fascinating, if not a little disturbing.

The facts are this:
• To a person, all of the business owners I spoke with have been in business for less than 6 years. Meaning they all created their business after the internet became a household name.
• They spend tens of thousands of dollars on these shows every year, year in and year out.
• Those expenditures don’t account for the lost productivity. For small businesses, every day spent on a trade show floor is a day where other business cannot get done.
• None of the businesses owners I spoke with spent more than $3,000 annually updating, maintaining, or marketing their sites. They had friends, or friends of friends around who would update pictures or add new press to the site.

What was fascinating was that all of them sold their products wholesale to retailers who sold their products online. So, although others had created a business out of marketing and selling their products online, they still didn’t take it seriously.

Bring your business into today’s age, and take your future into your own hands.

They were all doing business like it was 1995. Back then, trade shows and selling wholesale was the only way, the only option manufacturers had, to get their products out to the public. But in 2009, that is decidedly not so.

Consumers use the internet every single day to shop for what they need. Consumers do not have to know your brand name to buy your product online, any more than they do offline.

By not making your internet presence the backbone of your marketing mix, you leave the fate of your business in the hands of retail shops, hoping that they are able to drive in enough foot traffic to sell your products.

What a huge mistake.

I am not suggesting cutting out trade shows altogether, but the emphasis is backwards. Tradeshows play a supporting role to your online presence.

Make your website your priority. Create it to sell your products at retail pricing 24/7. It is not a look book. It is not a place where family and friends shop to support you. It is your most important store, and your best salesperson. Treat it that way.

Take 50-60% of your trade show budget and reallocate it to your web presence. Hire a professional. I know I’m biased but if you try and do this yourself you won’t see the kind of ROI you need. You hire a professional to take your catalog pictures. You hire a professional for your graphic design work. You hire a professional for product design help. Hire one for your web marketing too.

As your online sales pick up, budget 15-25% of your sales every month to advertising online the next month. So, if you did $10,000 in online sales in January, your budget for online ads in February is $2,000.

Then, pick only one or two trade shows to go to every year to get your products out into stores.

Marketing Ecommerce, Marketing, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Small Business, Website Design