WHAT IS MARKETING FOR A SMALL BUSINESS?
Marketing is essentially anything you do to promote your business, or make money. Whether it’s just gathering awareness and interest via PR and Social Media, Getting more salespeople out there to acquire more clients directly, or using any of the standard online strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising, or growing and cultivating an E-Mail List, all of these are different forms of marketing. So, basically, marketing is anything you’re doing to get more awareness and attention for your business, get more clients and customers, and ultimately make more money.

HOW MUCH DOES MARKETING COST?
Knowing that, we have to establish what should be a good marketing budget. On average, you should expect to allocate anywhere from 1-5% of your total annual revenue to marketing efforts. When you’re first starting out, you’ll have to allocate obviously a lot more. If you’re largely successful, however, you can stick to this range and even the lower end of this range.

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOUR MARKETING IS WORKING?
How do you know sales aren’t just going up temporarily? You have to be able to track your efforts. Every single thing you do should have a way of tracking results, or don’t do it these days. For example, it’s better to do online advertising with Pay-Per-Click Ads than it is to do a magazine advertisement, because each view, click, and subsequent action can be tracked and analyzed.

Likewise, building an e-mail list through an e-mail marketing service like MailChimp, Constant Contact, or AWeber enables you to see who opened your e-mails, who clicked on the links, and which of your customers consume more of your information than others.

Putting Google Analytics on every page of your website will help you track your visitors, where they come from, how long they stay, what their actions are, and what page they leave from…just to name the basics of Google Analytics. Make sure you put the Google Analytics code on every single page of your website, including all pages throughout the entire shopping cart and check-out process if you sell products on your website, so you can see if there are any “drop off” points which need correcting.

Knowing what marketing is, and understanding how to track success, will help you fix what’s wrong in your marketing strategy and efforts, and help you become more efficient in your marketing expenditures. After all isn’t a dollar saved a dollar earned? Contact Us and we can help you create a specific strategy for your business, and get you going in the right direction of making more money and growing your small business.

Joel Metzer of the L.A. Business Spotlight Podcast sat down recently with Circle Marketing’s Louis Tanguay to discuss some tips and hints for Small Business Marketing success. Their interview can be heard below, and you can subscribe to the L.A. Business Spotlight Podcast through their iTunes page.

(Note: to listen below, please make sure you allow QuickTime to work and give it a second or two to load…then enjoy!)

In the interview, they go over the Biggest Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses make with their websites and social media; the correct way to go about placing online advertisements; and the important of e-mail marketing. There’s also a bonus segment discussing how The Circle of Marketing keeps all phases of your marketing outreach finely tuned, aligned, and constantly spinning for bigger and bigger revenue! This interview is definitely a must-hear! Enjoy, and please comment below!

This has to be one of the best advertisements of all time. It’s the rare and perfect example of the right ad for the right response with the right placement. The stars align only so often, and for this situation they aligned perfectly for BMW.

Right here in Los Angeles, Audi threw down the advertising gauntlet and challenged BMW to respond to the all new Audi A4. Audi claimed that it was a step up from BMW. “Your move, BMW,” read the billboard on the Sunset Strip, and featured an all black Audi A4 against a clean white background. Oh, yeah. It was on now. S#!t just got real up in here…as the kids say.

One of the local BMW dealerships saw the billboard and responded perfectly and with finality. Santa Monica BMW secured billboard space near the Audi billboard and placed an all white BMW against a jet black background and simply put the word, “Checkmate.”

Indeed. Game Over.

Half the lights went out in the New Orleans Superdome, where the game was being hosted. Finally there was something exciting. Something different. While the network scrambled to get a grip of what was going on, a room full of smart advertising professionals and corporate executives had a brainstorm.

60% of people who watch TV multi-task with a mobile device in their hands. Either a phone or a tablet, most TV “watchers” are only half paying attention. Knowing this, and knowing with the network unable to execute exciting material during the prolonged blackout, Oreo executives were in the same room with a small team at their digital marketing agency 360i.

While GoDaddy was grossing people out with their Super Bowl ad, and Budweiser was making people cry with their “man loves his horse just a little too much perhaps” commercial, Orea released the Tweet which didn’t cost them millions and won the day…

This simple ad’s perfection was in it’s rapid release and timeliness. The ad was ReTweeted over 14,000 times, and the same image on Facebook received over 20,000 Likes. People then took to blogs to speak of it’s brilliance (hmm…like this one?) further enhancing the free word of mouth and buzz surrounding this free social media marketing “ad.”

Technically, no, the ad was not “free” because Oreo had a staff on call, and they were paying the digital agency to release posts during the Super Bowl, but when compared with the ad buys for the big TV ads, one would say Oreo was not only the big positive buzz winner of the day, but definitely won with the most efficient brand marketing, hands … er … cookies down.

What was your favorite Super Bowl ad this year? Comment below and let us know what you thought of this post and all the ads. Want an intelligent social media marketing campaign for your company? Contact us now, and let’s talk about how to get started!

Many people have paid hundreds of dollars for webinars like this, but Circle Marketing and Broadcast Louder figured putting together this free 2-hour class would help Small Business owners kick off the new year on the right foot!

Click here to watch the webinar, but get a notepad ready because there’s a TON of information to help your business grow!

For those who want to move at their own pace, and prefer to have PDF’s instead of watch videos, please feel free to download the supplemental ebook by joining our email list below:

1. Understand How It All Works Together
I was going to make this one the last one and tie everything up nicely, but people are impatient nowadays, so let me give you the most important one first, then randomly spread the other ideas around.

You need to understand how all of the different elements of your business work together to create one finely-tuned machine. You have your branding and messaging, your sales staff, your website, your social media, and your advertising. You also have your products and your e-mail list and your employees. Let’s quickly work this out, and in a later blog post we can get more detail focused, or just contact an expert marketing strategist for some friendly advice.

Your branding and messaging must be clear and aspirational to your target marketing and customers. Those customers need to see that messaging in your advertisements, social media marketing, and read it on your website blog.

Your website must be able to capture customer information (i.e. sign them up to an email list), direct them to your social network pages, and provide them with a clear path to find the information and products they’re looking for on your site.

Your social media pages should have a very clear and easy way to send your traffic back to your lead-capturing website, and the source of all this great content: your blog.

Your advertising should speak with your brand voice, attract customers to a landing page on your website or social network page, and capture their information into the same list as your website’s standard lead generation strategy does.

Start with your website, because you own that and it’s not going away unless you go away. Your website should be the main hub of all information, and everything should be directing traffic, leads, and customers into your website.

2. Repeat Business…Keep Them Coming Back
Your customers are your best friends. They put the roof over your head, and keep the lights on. Why wouldn’t you want to see your best friends more often, right? Once you have a customer, do everything you can to get their information. You’re not going to spam them or annoy them (at least I hope not!). Rather, you’re going to occasionally keep in touch with them, check in on them, and remind them that you would love to see them again soon.

Let’s say you’re the owner of a restaurant, then you can offer them social media only specials of the day, or leave comment cards with the bill, or offer them a free desert on their birthday. Or, maybe you own (or work for) a car dealership. You can call on your customers to see how they’re loving the car you sold them and remind them about the great benefits of keeping the car maintained. Remind them how your staff knows that car inside and out and would love to help keep it on the road and never break down on them.

Whatever your business is, there are things you can do to reach out in a helpful and friendly way. Make sure you do this from a purely helpful frame of reference and not as an up-sell. The up-sell will take care of itself when your customers know for a fact you’re taking care of them and their needs.

3. Referrals, Referrals Referrals
Now we have our best friends, aka customers and clients, coming back more often. Let’s ask them to do some free advertising for us. Ask them to post on Facebook or tweet on Twitter about how much they enjoyed your business or service. Incentivize them if you like. Maybe offer whomever spreads the word a free desert, free standard oil change, whatever you can offer that would be cheaper than an ad and more effective.

Why is this more effective? Because people will believe other people’s word over any advertisement they hear or see. Social Proof is what it’s called, and it’s one of the most effective (and cheapest!) forms of marketing.

What if you’re a realtor? Then referrals are an absolute must in your field as you most likely already know. In real estate, 99% customers won’t buy more than once every 5-10 years, so your referrals are your life-line to a great percentage of your sales opportunities.

Also, on your blog, have social sharing buttons so those who found your blog post interesting can share it on their social networks and/or with their friends and colleague.

Hey, look at that, at the bottom of this blog right here are a few social sharing buttons! Maybe you should give it a shot, click a few, and kindly share this post with some of your friends and colleagues. We would really appreciate it, and it’ll make you look really smart for directing other business owners to the valuable information you’re getting right now.

4. Keep the Mindset Which Got You Here
When you first started your business, you knew the risks and the challenges. That didn’t deter you, though, did it? You forged forward against all odds, put in the extra work and did everything it took, and more, to get the job done and grow your company.

Then, you start getting busier in the day-to-day, and you start to get used to the sales and the money that you’re now counting on to maintain your standard of living. You now have a different mindset. While you would love to still keep growing, the fear of losing what you’ve built up forces you to reverse your thinking and you suddenly stop taking the risks and doing many of the things which worked for you in the beginning.

Then, your business starts to level off, plateau, and eventually (if it hasn’t already at this point) start to wane and slide. Why?

Because you stopped taking risks. You have the experience now of what worked and what didn’t work. You can’t afford to take risks, you say? Well, with competition and technology constantly improving, and customer desires constantly changing, you simply can’t afford not to take risks. Risks, well I should say calculated risks, are just a part of the nature of being in business. If you’re afraid of calculated risks and trying things out to keep the company growing and remain competitive, then close up shop and work for someone else.

Reverse that reversed thinking and start thinking of strategic ways to get your profits growing.

5. Create an Efficient Pay Per Click (PPC) Ad Campaign
So, let’s finish up with a calculated risk option that is far less risky than you might think. We are going to quickly go over creating an efficient Pay Per Click (PPC) Ad campaign. Circle Marketing has a blog on split-testing PPC Ads, so please see that as we won’t cover it here, due to space.

First thing to do is keyword research. Use Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, and find the best combination of volume and relevancy to pick the best ones. This is more of an expert’s job, so just contact us, and we can help you get this optimized.

Next, create aspirational copy and an image for the ad (unless it’s a text-only ad) that is very targeted. Create a few different versions of the ads, and do the split-testing model for very little money up-front until you find the ad or ads which have a far superior click-through rate.

Next, create a couple different landing pages. A great landing page delivers on the promise the ad made, and gives more information, incentive to order right then and there (or at least the very least capture the potential customers’ information), and have a very clear and appealing call-to-action to encourage the conversion into either a lead or customer (depending on your offer).

Once you found the best ads with the best click-through rates, and used analytics to find out which landing page was converting the highest numbers, we now know what is working and what isn’t. Here’s where we spend our money knowing what our educated projected ROI will be.

Instead of spending hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on a campaign you hope will work, you now have spend a coupe hundred to test the PPC ad and now can spend the large balance of the Ad Campaign’s budget on what you know for a fact works.

Of course, all of these are very broad strokes kind of advice, and every business and strategy needs to be honed and developed with your specific business in mind for maximum effect and ROI. If you have any questions, please comment below and we’d love to answer every single one of them! Talk soon, and enjoy growing your business!

Say you’re selling an eBook about Investing. One ad might read something like “Learn the Secrets of Investing” whereas another ad might read, “Retire Rich? We’ll Show You How!” You might want to tweak your messaging and reach of the ad to hit different demographics, highlight different products, or even two versions of the same exact thing. See which one performs better.

If you have three versions of your ad out for a couple days, and one converts into sales at a rate of 10%, but the other two are converting at 2% and .2%, then you know what to drop immediately before you waste money on an ineffective ad. It’ll probably surprise you which ads perform better. Usually it’s the ones you don’t expect, so try all a wide variety of approaches and see which ones best resonate with your customers.

Action Item: What kind of audience will benefit from what you are selling? What copy lines can you write which will appeal directly to their need? In what ways could you split test a few ads to track the results?