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.

1. No Clear Call-To-Action on Web Pages

The first step is what happens when someone comes to your Home Page. This is one of the biggest issues, and creates an incredibly high Bounce Rate (people come to your site and leave immediately without doing anything). High Bounce Rates = Bad Website. Most visitors will leave a site if they become confused or can’t easily find what they are looking for. Let’s fix this.

You’ll need a clear Call-To-Action (CTA) on every page, especially the Home Page. A Call-To-Action is a main element, picture, box, messaging, etc which instructs the visitor what you want them to do above all other options. Whether it’s a slider on the home page, or an email sign-up form, or your blog posts, you must have a clear and clean instruction for what you want the visitor to do now that they’re on your website. If you’re selling shoes, then put some pictures for shoes on the home page and a few links and pictures to purchase your shoes. Make it obvious and the main thing that sticks out on the page. It’s preferable to have two Calls-To-Action, but don’t make them both the same size and importance. There should be a main CTA, and a secondary one.

This goes for your interior pages, as well. Nowadays, with blogs and search engines pulling up the most relevant information for any and every search query, not every user will come to your site through your Home Page. This is important to know that you will need a main Call-To-Action on the interior pages as well. Maybe your Blog’s CTA is the blog article itself, but the secondary CTA is your e-mail sign-up form, for example.

2. Website Isn’t Properly Optimized for Search Engine Rankings

In today’s world of Search Engines dominating the world we live in, have a website that’s not properly optimized for maximum Search Engine rankings is a huge mistake. If you can’t be found, then you’ll either have to buy traffic to your website, or you won’t have any traffic at all, because you won’t exist in the eyes of the search world.

For a longer list of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips & Tricks, please read our article on that subject, but here’s a quick over view so you know what you’re looking for. You want to make sure you know which KeyWords you want to rank for, how much competition there is for those KeyWords, and also place those KeyWords throughout your pages, page titles, web page addresses, and in the ALT Tags of your images. Don’t over-do it. Just follow the best practices guidelines and you’ll be rising in the rankings in no time (if you constantly keep doing it, of course).

Also, make sure that you create an XML Site Map and submit that Site Map to Google and Bing through each of their Web Master Tools Accounts.

3. No Social Media integration

Much like Search Engines, Social Networks are also ubiquitous these days, and offer a great deal of visibility opportunity for your business. It’s very easy to put in a free WordPress plugin (if you’re using WordPress), which will automatically place Social Media sharing buttons at the end of every Blog post on your website. You can also enter in a line of code to allow visitors to Like your Facebook page or Follow you on Twitter without ever leaving your website! This is great functionality, and the combined possibility of allowing sharing and capturing social fans is immensely powerful.

Another great idea is to replace your default commenting area in your blog articles with a 3rd Party platform which can help encourage sharing. For example, Facebook Comments will allow the poster of the comment to allow that comment to be visible on their Facebook Profile and in their News Feed so their friends can see that they’ve commented on your Blog article. This increases the opportunity to connect with others without having to do anything (and for FREE, too).

4. Not Tracking/Analyzing results/progress

If you didn’t know how many visitors were coming to your site, how would you know if you had increased traffic? If you didn’t know where they were coming from, how would you know which off-site efforts were working? If you didn’t know what pages on your website your visitors were viewing, how long they were viewing each page, and which page they left on, then how would you be able to know how well your website is working, what’s working, and where you need improvement? You wouldn’t be able to fix anything.

Good news. Google Analytics does all that…and then some. The best part? It’s way more than most websites will ever need, and it’s all free! Install Google Analytics on every single page of your website, especially your shopping cart and all pages throughout the entire checkout process (if you sell online). Now, you’ll be able to see which pages get the most views, which pages people your site leave on, and even how much money you’re making! It’s truly one of the most helpful tools available on all of the Internet that will help your business.

5. Not Having Strong Lead Generation Element (aka E-Mail List Sign-Up)

When a visitor comes to your website, they are most likely a potential customer. They are on your website looking for something. Imagine you have a brick-and-mortar (aka “real life”) store front, and you could capture most of the personal contact information of everyone who walks in the store. Would that be helpful to you? You better believe it. Yet, many many websites don’t have a clear and inviting way for these visitors to sign-up for your email list. Instead, they make the visitor not only work to find the sign-up form, but don’t convince them that it’s a good move.

Instead of just having a “Sign Up for our Email List” form, incentivize them with giving them something for signing up. This also helps you know what kind of people are signing up for your list. Also, you’re making the sign-up form more obvious. Maybe give away an E-Book when they sign up. Something of value that they would want, and by the nature of your offer you’ll know what the person is looking for, because that offer was valuable enough to them to sign up.

Finally, telling them what they can get from signing up goes a long way to them actually signing up. For example, a travel website with the form reading, “Sign Up for our Weekly Travel Tips and Suggested Destinations” will get way way more sign-ups to their E-Mail List then just the plain, vague and boring request in the above paragraph.

E-Mail is one of the best forms of communication with your customers and potential customers. Reason being is because these days the user has to go through a double-opt-in process. hey fill out the form, and then have to click a link in their e-mail to confirm they want to be on your E-Mail List. The person who goes through that process really is interested in hearing what you have to say and doesn’t mind you telling them about it periodically. So, treat them with the respect they deserve as your best prospects and those who are ready to find out more about your company, products, and services.

There you have it. If you notice that you are making one or two of these mistakes, they are easy fixes. If you notice you are making all of these mistakes, then thank goodness you found out now before it’s too late! We offer a Marketing Course which is done online and will give you all kinds of immensely valuable information like the tips above. If you’re making more than one of these mistakes, you might be making mistakes in other areas of your business, too, which could be inhibiting you from attaining your desired business goals and success. Call us if you have more questions, or just comment below and let us know what you think! As always, thanks for sharing this and for your comments!