Lions, and Tigers, And Bears -- Oh My!

"Lions and Tigers and Bears - Oh My!"

Dorothy in the Land of Oz

"The Web, Social and Email Marketing -Oh My!"

Today's Business Owners

 

I know it seems overwhelming and downright scary, but for your marketing to start working you have to embrace and connect with prospects and customers on their terms. And today that is changing fast.

You have to make a decision that you need professional help. The cost of updating and maintaining your marketing programs will need to include this professional in the future.

In the past, (and maybe now) we spent money on Yellow Pages, direct mail, advertising firms, etc. What was the return on your Yellow Page costs? Now we have to budget some of that money on the professional web development companies to maximize our return on our marketing investment.

Website

Having a website doesn't cut it anymore. That's simply "table stakes". Your Website must :

1. Quickly communicate your Value Proposition and contain "Offers" that will get prospects to "raise their hands and ask for it". Inbound Marketing will provide prospects you can nurture over time.
2. Be Mobile formatted - 50% of adults own smart phones and your customers and prospects are using them for search and emails more and more every day. By 2014, mobile will be the "first screen" (i.e. overtake PC's as the vehicle to work online).
3. Search Engine Optimization - SEO - a must to maximize your exposure and drive people to your site and offers.
4. Local searches - Google Places and others that have set up websites for you but need to be populated, reviews and SEO performed to get you at the top of the lists.

Social Media

1. Facebook, YouTube, Linked In - you need to establish a presence and work these sites and to have a dialogue with your customers and build a "tribe". They also need to be part of your Website.  

Email Marketing, Blogging

1. Set up an account with an email marketing site like Constant Contact and begin to nurture both leads and customers with good non-selling information (content). You need to be sending out these short informational/educational TIPS (text and /or video) on a regular basis to build trust and be in prospects minds when they finally make a decision to buy. Mobile-formatted, of course.
2. Auto Responder - a site like Aweber can be used to take all new prospects/leads and put them automatically into a database and send out your TIPS in sequence to these new leads as they come on board.

I know you are saying "I don't know how to do all of this and I don't have the time to learn". It can't be done all at once. It has to be done a few hours every week and I really think you need to retain a professional web company that understands all of the above to do the heavy lifting.

You need to start with profiling your Ideal Customer/Prospect and writing down your Value Proposition. Then you can bring the content and messaging to the table and make sure you are delivering it in a way that maximizes your reach. (Click here for the recorded Webinar Marketing 2.0.)

Simple Facts about the world we live in:  

(An Excerpt from "The Professional Tradesman") 

• Mobile will be the "first screen" for all Web usage sometime between 2013-2015 (Gartner/Morgan Stanley) - which means mobile devices will finally overtake PCs
• 5.3 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide (ITU) - more than the combined penetration of PCs, landlines and TVs
• 50% of American adults own a smartphone as of February 2012 (CTIA)
• 29% of US adults own a tablet/eReader as of January 2012 (Pew Research Center)

There also continues to be tremendous growth in pretty much all aspects of mobile marketing tactics:

• Revenues from mobile apps will reach $46B by 2016 (ABI Research)
• Mobile video views increased 958% from Q2 2011 to Q1 2012 (Millennial Media Study)
• 20 million QR code scans were recorded alone in Q3 2011 - a 440% increases year-over-year (ScanLife)
• Almost 40 million US mobile users access social media sites daily (comScore)

Here are two simple steps to help get you started with mobile marketing:

1. Optimize for Mobile - make sure all of your Web content is "optimized" for the mobile environment; look-and-feel for smaller size requirements (e.g. easy to read text; no Flash; images that load quickly); but you also have to make sure your content is transformed into: quick answers, bite-sized units (e.g. 100-200 words) and easy-to-digest formats (e.g. audio podcasts and/or video)
2. Integrate - before you run out and develop a completely separate mobile marketing strategy and plan, take a look at your existing marketing programs and determine how you can start integrating mobile components; such as QR codes on print or collateral pieces or optimized e-newsletters so they are legible on mobile devices

I think it is fair to say that "mobile" is certainly here to stay, so make sure it is part of your overall marketing program moving forward.