Where and How To Market Your Small Business
You got into business to make the world a better place. You saw something not quite right, and you could do something about it. You wanted to make a true difference and help your customers. You know it wouldn’t be easy, and the outcome uncertain. BUT, it would be worth it IF you could pull it off. Odds are you’re good at a certain thing, like welding, accounting, or baking and you want to make a better product to serve more people. This is the normal entrepreneur’s journey, well detailed in The E-Myth Revisited.
You’re outstanding at what you do, but you likely didn’t anticipate all the different areas you’d have to be good at to make your business run well. Especially true if you’re a sole proprietor. You’ve submitted to the maze of business ownership you’re looking for a guide to make your marketing simpler. We’re here to help.
- Website
The world has gone digital, and it’s not going back. This means your internet presence is very important. There was a time not long ago…a few well placed Yellow Pages ads would make the phone ring. That ship has sailed. The front door to your business now starts with WWW.
They have glossy ads and make things seem simple, but avoid site builders like WIX and SquareSpace. They may make it easier on the front end, but you WILL pay for their convenience in the long run. There are many things you can’t do in those platforms and will limit you in the future as your business and knowledge grows. In fact, there was an issue not long ago with Google routinely de-indexing WIX sites due to a technical issue.
Build a site telling your prospective customers about your business, what makes you different than your competition (your USP) and what you want them to do to take the next step. Do you want them to call, fill out a form, or come into your store? Let them know.
Jason’s Take: buy a domain through GoDaddy or similar registrar, buy hosting through WPEngine or HostGator if you’re a beginner. Media Temple is good hosting if you’re a touch more advanced. Install WordPress and get a solid theme like Genesis or Thesis and make it your own.
Tools: WordPress (Roughly 25% of the entire Internet runs on it for a good reason.) GoDaddy for registering websites. WPEngine, MediaTemple, and HostGator for hosting your website. Google Analytics. CrazyEgg.
2. SEO/LSEO
Search Engine Optimization is a four letter word in certain circles. Google seems to hate it and has been trying to stamp out this industry for a decade. Why is this so? Bad actors manipulate results to rank sites that should in no way be the best result for searches. Those bad actors are known as “black hat.”
General or “national SEO” has many facets but can be broken down into 3 main areas: on-page, off-page, and technical. On page SEO deals with page content and elements. Off page SEO deals with links to your site from other sites and mentions without links from other sites. Technical SEO deals with things like site load times, being mobile friendly, proper site code readability and markup.
Local SEO deals with your physical location, your reviews in Google and sites like Yelp, and local content. Positive or negative reviews in Google tend to directly impact your local visibility in Google in my experience. One of the best things you can do to enhance your local presence is to make sure you’re listed on top local directories and all of your information matches. If Google sees several phone numbers, or busienss addresses it will cast doubt on what the truth is, and your rankings will drop.
Jason’s Take: In nearly every metro area there are digital marketing associations. Use these to find a qualified professional to help you. SEO tends to be a fast moving industry with a lot of moving parts. A professional will know these.
Here is a great video on how to hire a true professional. If you want to know what to put on your site, here is a summary of the Google Quality Rater Guidelines. If you need further assistance, I currently work for WrightIMC. Give me a holler, and I’ll help as best I can.
Tools: Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Moz Open Site Explorer, WebPageTest, Raven Tools Site Auditor, Moz Local, Whitespark, Get 5 Stars, AWR Cloud.
3. PPC/Digital Ads
Pay per click ads have been around for more than a decade and are a fantastic direct method. There’s an old marketing joke: “I’m wasting half my marketing budget, and I don’t know which half.” With PPC ads, such waste is largely in the past. You can know which ad copy works, what time of day it works, what searches people are performing to see your ads. PPC brought a revolution to marketing.
The flipside for this amazing targeting ability and information is a TON of moving parts in Adwords and Facebook ads. It can be hard to get right, and easy to break things if you don’t know what your doing. If you get it right you have a continual targeted stream of qualified customers coming to your website or store, and you know exactly how much each customer cost to get in the door. Even better, if calls are more important, you can run Click to Call campaigns where they can call your business directly from their mobile phone. How awesome is that?
Jason’s Take: Like SEO above, a qualified professional will have answers to things you don’t even have questions for yet. There are arguably more moving parts in PPC than SEO. Hire a pro who separates out their management fee from the actual ad spend. This gives you transparency in what your spending, and to whom. Google and Facebook ads will likely be your primary avenues, with Bing in the mix if you have a budget of at least 2K a month in ad spend.
Tools: Google Adwords Editor, Bing Ads Editor, Facebook Power Editor, SEM Rush
4. Email
A wise person once said “There’s money in the list.” They were right. We’ve seen social media become the hot new thing, and fade someone as companies organic reach was curtailed over the past 2 years. Everyone piled into the platforms using them as a “free” customer acquisition tool. As it goes, things bring abused eventually get taken away.
This leaves us with some of the old ways of marketing. Email got pushed aside by many in favor of social media. Guess what? Email’s back baby!
The biggest argument in favor of email is this: you don’t control Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You DO control your email list. You can email your list whatever and whenever you like. Even better if your email list is over 1,000 “matched” addresses, you can actually upload the list to Google and Facebook to remarket to them there. AND…you can even create “lookalike” audiences similar in demographics to the known data of your current list that haven’t heard of you. Powerful stuff.
Jason’s Take: if you’re using WordPress, use Optin Monster, or BuzzSumo to capture emails. These are premium plugins but are worth the cost. Aweber starts at $19–29 a month as is well worth it. MailChimp is free to get started.
Tools: Aweber and MailChimp are 2 of my favorites for smaller lists and businesses. The big boys use Infusionsoft. It’s serious software and priced accordingly.
5. Partnerships
The thing I personally love about partnerships is you have a third party vouching for you being a solid solution to your customer’s problem. This is the difference between approaching a stranger and asking them out, and a mutual friend introducing you. The second option gets you already halfway there.
When you partner with a charity or feature someone else’s work you get what’s known as a “network effect.” You use their network as well as yours and this gets you much further faster.
Jason’s Take: Who are other similar businesses in your space you’re friendly with? Are there others near your physical location you can do a cross promotion with? Are there local charities you can benefit? Who are the influencers in your industry?
Tools: None. Just your imagination and a willingness to reach out to people and ask. And coffee. Always coffee. And maybe bacon.
Discussion: What are some of the cool and unique ways you’ve marketed your small business?
