Chapter 16
ONLINE MARKETING AND SOCIAL MEDIA

IN This Chapter
Customer engagement online
Social media marketing
Online advertising
Search engine optimization

As with every other marketing activity, understanding your customers and their needs is the first and most important step in online marketing.
You should already have some idea of your customers’ online habits. Now, you will need to dig a little deeper and find tools and techniques that are appropriate to them. Once you’ve done this, you can describe your online objectives, strategies and tactics in your marketing plan.
Customer Engagement ONLINE
Customers who show a high level of engagement with your brand are more likely to view and share marketing communications, and more likely to be loyal buyers and brand ambassadors. That’s why so many businesses are trying to build brand-based communities online.
Customer engagement strategies start with knowing who your customers are and where they spend time online. In Chapter 2, you created a customer profile. If you have not already done so, you should update it to reflect anything you know—or can learn—about your target customers’ online behavior, needs, preferences and concept of value. Online marketers call this a buyer persona, and they design online products, features, benefits and strategies with that persona in mind.
Who are you targeting (existing customers, prospects)?
Which social media do they use?
What are they looking for online? Do they want information and help, coupons and deals, or entertainment?
What types of content do they prefer (text, audio, video, images)?
What are your key performance indicators (KPIs) for customer engagement? Referrals? Sales? Sharing content? Time spent on your site?
Here are some basic techniques that encourage customer engagement:
Encourage user-generated content. Customers should be able to post reviews, rate services and site features, answer each other’s questions, create wish lists, and suggest improvements.
Allow consumers to interact with one another. For instance, you might make it easy for them to comment, chat, send messages, and post videos or photos.
Reward loyalty. Customers who engage with your business should be rewarded. Although free gifts and discounts are obvious choices, don’t overlook little things like indicators of online status. Many sites allow users to earn some sort of symbol—like the colored stars used by eBay—to signify their level of involvement with the online community (e.g., the number of comments posted or rated as “very helpful” by other users). You should also offer discounts or other rewards for referrals.
Content Marketing
Content marketing means publishing text, graphics, audio or video online in order to attract, serve and retain customers. By presenting helpful, entertaining or informative content on a regular basis, you can drive traffic to your site, build customer loyalty and increase revenues.
That’s the theory, at any rate. In the real world, creating compelling content requires skills that relatively few people have—like writing ability—and resources that many entrepreneurs lack, like time. If you doubt that writing thoughtful, original copy is hard, just look at the number of self-styled online marketing “gurus” who endlessly repeat worn-out phrases like “content is king” while offering content-free advice like “think outside the box.”
Few business owners would expect customers to respond well to stale bread or flat soda. And yet, many businesses that wouldn’t dream of selling stale bread or flat soda seem to have no problem filling their websites with stale, flat, outdated content.
The fact is, content is a product, and products must provide benefits. Creating beneficial content requires knowing who your customers are and what sort of problems they need to solve. Content should be personalized (it relates directly to your customer) or professionalized (it relates directly to your industry).
If you’re an expert on a given topic, you may be able to find links and articles that your customers will value. In these days of information overload, having a trusted source to weed through new findings and studies can be of great value.
If you repair guitar amps, you could offer troubleshooting guides, instructions on dating vintage amps and an “Ask the Expert” column.
If you run a graphic design business, you could regularly post interesting graphics from your personal collection. This can build a following for your site while also communicating your aesthetic sense to prospective clients.
Flow charts that guide people through a complex process, troubleshooting tips, clever shortcuts and workarounds, “10 best” or “10 worst” lists, well-designed infographics, year-end predictions, book reviews and interviews also stand a good chance of generating a buzz online.
Here’s some basic advice:
Have a specific need in mind. What will your content do for or give to people? Will they be entertained, inspired or informed? Will they use it to compare product features, or to get a better experience out of something they already own? Do they need a last-minute reason to buy, or do they need troubleshooting advice?
Stick to what you know. Avoid opining on subjects outside your area of expertise. If you install security systems, people will be interested in your take on security technology and maybe even on crime trends. They will be less interested in your take on foreign policy, climate science or alternative medicine.
Proofread your content (or better yet, have a professional do it). Frequent mistakes in grammar, syntax and spelling reflect poorly on your business and will result in fewer sales and incoming links.
Don’t post content the minute you finish it. Take a break and come back to it. Read your text out loud, or have someone else read it to you. This will help you catch typos, missing words, and awkward phrasing.
Think twice before posting or sharing content online. Everything that makes the Internet a viral marketer’s dream makes it a nightmare for people who post something that makes them look silly, rude or incompetent. Remember: Online content will effectively be available to everyone, everywhere, forever! Choose your words, tone and images carefully.
The best content is sharable content. There are countless tools for sharing content online. Your job is to motivate people to use them. Entertaining and informative content may be enough to drive engagement, but you may also need to incentivize users (e.g., by giving them a discount or entering them in a prize drawing in return for sharing).
Avoid self-promotion. You’re much more likely to drive traffic to your site if you participate in groups and networks, comment on and recommend other people’s content, and so on. It’s a good idea to follow the 4-1-1 rule devised by online marketing expert Andrew Davis: Out of six pieces of content, four should be informative or entertaining content from other sources, one should be your own informative or entertaining content, and one should promote your business. When in doubt, err on the side of providing commercial-free content.
Tell a story. Good stories engage readers and keep them hooked. You might talk about how you launched your business, how you learned from a mistake, how you helped a client or how a client helped you. Humility, a good sense of humor, and a readiness to give credit where it’s due will usually increase the appeal of your stories.
Stay fresh. If visitors see that your last update was a year ago, they will go elsewhere. A steady supply of fresh content will boost your standing with readers and search engines.
Stay current. Most social media track trending topics. By taking note of what topics are grabbing people’s attention, you can come up with tailored content. (Note, though, that this should be tasteful and appropriate; a number of businesses have received very negative attention for “honoring” the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks with a special sales promotion).
…
I’ll bet I was the last business in town to get a website. My nephew mows lawns in the summer. He had a business site up before I did, and he’s only 12.
Judith Butler runs Butler’s Pantry, a small bakery in Bloomington, Indiana. About a year ago, her granddaughter Mary urged her to build a website, but Judith saw no point.
“Bloomington’s not that big a town,” she said. “And I’ve been here a long time. People know how to find me. Why would I need a website?”
Mary was persistent. Bloomington is a college town, she reasoned, with students from all over the country. Suppose a parent in Pittsburgh wanted to send his daughter a birthday cake? Suppose he typed “Bloomington bakery” into Google, and Judith’s bakery was at the top of the list?
When Mary explained it that way, Judith started to get interested.
I had a computer, of course. I used it mostly to send emails and shop for things I couldn’t find in town. But I didn’t know the first thing about launching my own site. Mary had to show me how to set everything up. Not just the site itself, but a Facebook business page as well.
She even got a friend of hers to take professional pictures of my cakes. I wanted to pay him, but he just took a couple of pastries for his time.
Mary used a free site builder to create the site, using simple drag-and-drop elements. Within a week, Judith’s site was up and running.
…
Crowdsourced Content
Crowdsourced content can reduce the burden of content creation, drive user engagement, and provide new product or marketing ideas. Some firms specifically request consumer help with ad campaigns and product development. For example, Dell Inc.’s IdeaStorm site lets users make comments and suggestions, which are then rated by other users. In this way, ideas that most users do not find helpful are weeded out. (Note: Questions of ownership may arise when you crowdsource product ideas, improvements or promotions, so consult a lawyer before launching such programs.)
Other firms have found that consumer comments and reviews can identify unforeseen uses, features or benefits of products, and have been able to update their marketing materials accordingly.
Here are some good options for gathering crowdsourced content:
Online reviews can provide highly credible marketing messages, build community and drive traffic. Allowing users to rate reviewers can help to keep content useful, trustworthy and focused. Although you do run the risk of negative reviews, the rewards you reap from engagement and transparency will probably outweigh them. If a product has a very large number of negative reviews, the problem is probably not with the reviewers!
Contests that require content. You might ask customers to take pictures, make videos, design T-shirts or write brief essays, and then let users vote and comment on the best ones.
Personalized features. Allowing users to create personal profiles, favorites, wish lists, and recommendation lists can boost engagement as well as content.
Q & As. Many businesses offer regular, live question-and-answer sessions on social media or chat software.
Regular features. A monthly or weekly feature—such as user-submitted pet photos or a Best Comment of the Week—can increase likes and shares and keep users coming back for more.
Social Media Marketing
Although they vary in their purpose, design, audience, content and policies, social media share these basic features:
They offer user-generated content.
They let users make connections and build communities.
They encourage dialogue, sharing and collaboration.
For small businesses, social media can be an inexpensive way to communicate with customers, employees, partners, suppliers and fellow entrepreneurs. You can use it for networking, keeping tabs on competitors, and identifying sales leads. And once customers opt in, you can tell them about new products, answer questions and offer promotional coupons.
“Opt in” is the operative phrase. Social media users prefer to decide when and where to pay attention to marketing messages. Business owners who join an online community for no other reason than to bombard it with advertising messages will make people angry and may even get banned. You need to be part of the conversation, rather than an interruption.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to social media marketing. Each business needs to take stock of its strengths, its budget and its customer needs.
Don’t get into social media simply because everyone else is doing it. Instead, treat it like any other business activity. First, ask yourself these questions:
What skills and resources do I need?
Does my business have them? If not, can it develop them?
Is social media marketing the best way to use these skills and resources?
Then, consider these questions:
Which services do your customers use?
Are you marketing to businesses, organizations, government or individuals? Note that each may use social media in different ways.
Which media do your customers favor? Do they simply want information, or do they want to participate in a dialogue?
What sort of content do you have the time and skill to produce? Can you create videos, podcasts and webinars? Or do you need to stick to text and photos?
How much time and patience do you have for online interaction? Can you hold up your end of multiple conversations? Can you maintain an even temper if users insist on being wrong? How much freedom of speech can you live with?
Social Media Channels
Most social media channels are free or low-cost. However, social media can be time-consuming, so consider your capabilities before you get too deeply involved.
In all the excitement over social media, businesses often overlook basic marketing questions such as “Does my customer use this service?” If your customers aren’t on Twitter, and have no idea what Pinterest is, there’s not much point in targeting them through these channels.
Also, remember that different social media channels have different cultures and etiquette. In fact, most social media have two sets of rules: One set relates to the platform itself (e.g., the capabilities, limitations and typical uses of Twitter), and the other relates to norms that emerge organically as users interact.
Spend plenty of time visiting and reading social media sites before you attempt to contribute, and plenty of time contributing before you mention your business. Take note of tone, slang and acronyms. Pay close attention to posting etiquette, community moderation and other standards.
Monitoring social media can also provide insight into other places where your prospects spend time. For example, if your target customers often tweet links to a specific site, that site may be another good place to interact with them.
Blogs
Blogs are online journals devoted to a particular subject or point of view. Popular platforms include WordPress and Blogger. A company blog can:
Keep customers and partners informed about your business
Drive traffic to your site
Establish or enhance credibility, trust and goodwill for you and your business
Encourage viral marketing
Generate sales leads
That said, blogging is a serious commitment. It takes time and talent to come up with interesting, original content on a daily or even weekly basis. Although it’s true that an engaging, informative blog can do wonders for your business, it’s also true that a pointless, shallow, arrogant or poorly written one can hurt it.
Here are some tips for business bloggers:
Check for comments, and respond promptly. Commenters can be an invaluable source of information, insight, advice and market data, so it pays to engage with them as thoughtfully and helpfully as you’d like them to engage with you.
Strike the right tone and attitude. Draw on the facet of your personality that matches customer expectations for your type of business, and use it to form a personal connection.
Create regular features. Having a weekly feature is a good way to build up a following. On Fridays, you might offer unusual news stories, before-and-after pictures from a repair job, or photos of your pet. This can allow you to do some content production up front, and schedule posts weeks in advance. Another option is to offer 10 tips on a specific topic, and schedule one of them per week. That way, you’ll have reliable content for one day each week, which will give you more time to blog on other topics (and to participate in conversations about them).
Guest Blogging
Writing guest posts for an established blog can increase your visibility and solidify your reputation as an expert. You will usually need to have a strong reputation as a blogger before anyone will invite you to join or guest at an established blog. However, if you’re a good writer with real expertise and an interesting perspective, you may want to approach a webmaster directly.
If you guest on a blog, be respectful of the commenting community, even—or especially—if they offer criticism. Polite, reasoned debate will earn you respect; having a short fuse or a thin skin will not.
…
We kept searching for “Bloomington bakery,” but I wasn’t on the front page. It made me kind of mad when I saw bakeries that opened long after mine outranking me, I thought, “Hey, that’s my spot!”
Clearly, Judith’s site needed to be optimized. Mary knew just enough to realize that she couldn’t tackle it herself, so she posted an “SEO help wanted” ad on Craigslist. She got a number of applicants, checked their references, and finally settled on Evan Peirce, a computer science student at Ivy Tech Community College.
When Evan looked over our site, the first thing he said was “It’s taking a really long time to load.” It turned out our picture files were huge, and we had a lot of them. He also found some problems with the organization of the site. Evan said that made it hard for the search engines to know what each page was about.
After poking around for a while, he said he could fix our site for $300 and a dark chocolate almond cake.
The first thing Evan did was redesign the site structure. He created one page for breads, one for cookies, one for cakes, and one for homemade chocolates. He came up with unique title and description tags, so that search engines would know what each page was about. He also compressed the photos and added alternative text tags.
He added basic e-commerce capabilities through PayPal, and he also created a blog that Judith could use to post announcements, recipes and photos.
…
Facebook
With roughly 1.5 billion active users, Facebook is the world’s largest social network. Originally designed to help college classmates stay in touch, Facebook can also connect businesses and customers.
Common business uses of Facebook include sending out mass announcements, organizing events, getting feedback and ideas from polls and comments, and alerting fans to fresh content. In addition, Facebook’s advertising tools allow you to create ads and track conversions, and you can even sell directly by setting up a Facebook store.
To create a business page, you must first have a personal account. You can find steps and tutorials at www.facebook.com/business. Once you’ve registered your business, you will be able to:
Add contact information, hours, address, parking and public transit options, as well as a description of your business.
Create an online store, or add an existing online store to your Facebook page.
Use built-in tools to promote your website and engage your audience.
Adjust comment settings (e.g., to block profanity).
Create ad campaigns and target them by demographic, psychographic and geographic segment.
Set administrative permissions for employees (e.g., moderating comments versus producing or editing content).
After you acquire 25 fans, Facebook allows you to choose a “username,” or personalized URL (e.g., www.facebook.com/your-company). Your username must closely match your actual business name. You can’t change it once you submit it, so choose carefully and doublecheck your spelling.
Before inviting people to your page, it’s a good idea to post some interesting content, like a video introduction to your business, or an announcement of a new product or special event. Here are some additional tips for marketing on Facebook:
Don’t be pushy. Aggressive marketing is one of the major reasons Facebook users “unlike” business pages.
Include your Facebook address in all communications. If you have an email list or newsletter subscribers, invite them to become Facebook fans.
Link to interesting news and stories about your product or industry. Include videos and photos where possible, but be respectful of copyrighted material.
Offer a discount to all fans when the number of fans reaches a specified milestone. For instance, when you get 2,500 fans, everyone on your fan list gets 25 percent off. (Note: Facebook has posted strict rules on promotions at www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php.)
Spotlight company accomplishments and milestones. The might include opening a new office, reaching a one-year anniversary, or completing a big job.
FourSquare
Foursquare and its sibling app Swarm are geosocial networking platforms that connect users with local people, sites and interests. As users travel, their mobile devices automatically notify friends, contacts and businesses of their location. Retailers can offer “Specials” that users receive when they check in at that location. In addition to attracting new customers and rewarding loyal ones, this lets you track visitors to your business. To learn more, visit business.foursquare.com.
Foursquare also lets users upload photos and reviews of businesses. More than perhaps any other recent trend, geosocial networking underscores the importance of consistently delivering excellent customer service. Previously, an unhappy customer might complain to a few friends, family members and coworkers. Today, he can not only communicate with dozens, hundreds or thousands of followers at the push of a button, but may also have more online trust and authority than the business in question.
Instagram
Owned by Facebook, Instagram is a mobile image-sharing app. Photos and short videos are tagged with keywords, and the ability to “like” and comment on pictures fosters connections. You can use Instagram to highlight products, events and employees, and you can also invite users to submit their own content. Instagram has hundreds of millions of users, so photographic skill—or at least a good eye—will be very helpful in standing out from the crowd. instagram.com
Pinterest
Pinterest allows users to post and share images and video (“pins”) on virtual bulletin boards. You can create an unlimited number of these boards for different fields of interest and tag them with keywords. Demographically, Pinterest users tend to be female, and popular topics include crafts, fashion, food and fitness.
Business users can enhance their pins with product specifications, prices, ordering info and so forth. In addition to facilitating sales, this allows customers to create and share product wish lists. Pinterest also allows advertising through their “Promoted Pins” option. business.pinterest.com
Skillshare
Skillshare is a social learning platform that allows experts in various fields to present pre-recorded online classes and tutorials. Depending on your area of expertise, this could be a great way to attract users, increase your authority and build your brand.
Skillshare classes are geared toward completing a specific project. For example, you might show users how to design a font or how to build a pinhole camera. www.skillshare.com
You can also deliver classes through similar platforms like Udemy (teach.udemy.com) and Skillfeed (www.skillfeed.com).
SlideShare
SlideShare allows you to upload and share PowerPoint, KeyNote and PDF content. This makes it a good way to share business presentations, product brochures, technical manuals, tutorials and other content that will establish your authority, demonstrate your expertise and drive traffic to your site. Here are some tips:
Include your name, your company name, brand name, and relevant keywords in presentation titles and descriptions.
Keep presentations clean and uncluttered. Strong visuals and minimal text are usually best.
If you’re marketing your own expertise, include a “Bio” slide that features your picture, credentials and accomplishments.
End with a clickable call to action, such as “Subscribe to our newsletter” or “If you liked this presentation, please share it.” Always include a clickable URL for your website.
When designing presentations for SlideShare, remember that you’re not creating a commercial. Always lead with useful information, and let the quality and integrity of your presentation communicate the quality and integrity of your business. As with any other social media channel, what matters is not what you claim, but what you can deliver. www.slideshare.net
Tumblr
Tumblr is a microblogging platform that allows users to post and share text, links, audio, quotes, images and video. You can also create sponsored posts for ad content. Tumblr users tend to be young and creative, and they tend to favor unusual, irreverent, humorous, artistic and (often) edgy content.
Perhaps even more than other social media, it’s important to understand and respect the culture, etiquette and norms of Tumblr. If you don’t fit in, you may not get much benefit. But if you’re targeting consumers 25 and under, and are good at communicating with and engaging them, Tumblr could be a good bet. www.tumblr.com
Twitter
Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows users to share text, video, images and links through short posts known as tweets, which have a maximum of 140 characters.
You can use Twitter to alert customers to sale items, promotions, contests and special events. This can be especially helpful for food carts and popup retail businesses; if you’ll be selling at a particular spot next Saturday, you can tweet about it to all your customers at once and offer them a coupon or other incentive to visit.
Another good use of Twitter is to answer customer questions quickly. You’ve probably seen supermarket bulletin boards that post the store’s responses to consumer questions and suggestions. Twitter streamlines this process, making it easier to resolve customer problems; a quick response (i.e., an hour or less) to complaints and questions on Twitter may prevent a customer from giving your business a bad review elsewhere.
Twitter can also be a great market research tool. For example, you might ask a “question of the week” in order to get data you need. Don’t simply send promotional messages and ask questions, though. You should also provide useful information, interesting links and anything else your customers will value.
Although plenty of “experts” will tell you how to gain a huge Twitter following (for a fee), there are really only a few reliable ways to attract and retain followers:
Include a “Follow me on Twitter” link on your website and other channels.
Follow other people and post interesting responses to them.
Provide interesting or helpful content that other people will retweet.
Retweet interesting or helpful content that other people provide.
Monitor your “@Mentions” list for people who respond to you or mention you, and tweet back to them.
Tweet chats are scheduled online discussions. They can be one-time or regular events, and can be used to answer customer questions, survey customer opinions, discuss issues or just for fun. This can be an especially good option for B2B sellers, who can use tweet chats to discuss industry trends and needs.
You can also advertise on Twitter. To learn more, visit business.twitter.com.
Vine
Created by Twitter, the Vine app allows you to create, post and share six-second video loops. Possible business uses include contests (the best clip submitted by a customer using your product), teasers (brief glimpses of a new product) and promotional videos (a landscaping job you recently completed for a client, scenes from a charity event you sponsored, or a snippet of film showing how your product is made). vine.co
YouTube
YouTube’s wide selection of videos and music has made it the most searched site on the Internet among 14- to 27-year-olds, and the second most popular search engine in the world. The ability to upload videos and create a branded channel makes YouTube an ideal tool for businesses. Options include:
Introducing product features and benefits.
Providing how-to demonstrations. If you run a landscaping business, you might show viewers how to prune a rose bush. If you run a men’s clothing store, you might show different ways to knot ties.
Promoting activities such as charity fundraisers, contests, outreach events and lectures.
Introducing employees or providing virtual tours of your business
Entertaining or inspiring viewers with curated content from other sources. If you sell bicycle parts, you might share interesting historical footage relating to bicycles.
To create your own channel, simply register under your business name, and then create a new channel. Be sure to customize your channel with your business logo and a branded banner, so that visitors understand they’re visiting your official site.
Promotional videos should be short (one to five minutes), upbeat, and informative or entertaining. Above all, they should inspire people to visit your site and learn more. Once you’ve uploaded your content, you can embed it or link to it from other channels.
With millions of videos online, standing out from the pack takes talent, effort and persistence. Video marketing is only as good as you can make it. You don’t need to have Hollywood production values, but images should be in focus, the camera should be steady and the audio should be clear.
If you want to add music to your video, all the warnings from our section on copyright apply. Buying a CD or downloading a song doesn’t mean you can use it to promote your business. Violating copyright may cause YouTube to delete your video.
If your video is largely verbal (e.g., instructions, an interview or a lecture), consider including a full transcript. This can be very helpful for people who want to download, cite or share your content.
…
Judith’s site was unassuming and down to earth. It had a short biography, nice pictures, a list of ingredients and a couple of recipes. If you wanted to place a custom order or ask a question, you could use the “Contact Us” form. Not many people did, though. Most of Judith’s customers visited the bakery regularly to shop and chat.
Her blog wasn’t very active, either. At first, she used it to alert people to daily specials. But Facebook seemed to work much better for that, so she eventually gave up. It wasn’t like anyone had been commenting anyway.
We were disappointed. There was no denying the site worked faster and looked better. It was much easier to find what you were looking for. And we did get some Facebook fans. Mary was in charge of that, and she created a promotion where all our fans got a free cupcake once we made it to 1,000. That got us some attention.
So overhauling the site was definitely worth it. But still…we were disappointed. I guess I was still really focused on that Google ranking for “Bloomington bakery.” I asked Evan what else we could do, and he said if we wanted to stand out online, we needed to stand out offline too. We needed to offer something special first, and then draw people’s attention to it online.
We couldn’t think of anything at first, but then we found a few reviews on Urbanspoon, which mentioned that we had amazing gluten-free breads and cakes. Someone from Michigan even said she wished we had a baking mix.
Mary is one of many Americans who are allergic to wheat gluten, and Judith had been making gluten-free treats for her since she was a little girl. Butler’s Pantry offered a small daily selection of gluten-free goods for a handful of loyal customers, but Judith didn’t consider this to be an important part of her business. In fact, she’d told Evan to leave gluten-free options off the website. Now, she wondered if she’d been too hasty.
The more I thought about selling a baking mix, the more sensible it seemed. It wasn’t like I needed to do anything drastically different. I’d just have to make a little more of my wheat-free flour blend, measure it out into bags and attach a label with ingredients and instructions.
Judith decided to start with a test batch of 25 bags. That would be an inexpensive way to test the market. If sales were good, she could always make more!
Once everything was in place, Judith notified her Facebook fans and Mary posted an announcement on the blog.
At first, there was little response. But a couple of weeks later, Judith checked her inbox and was astonished to find that she had 578 orders for her baking mix.
…
Choosing Channels
If you haven’t yet claimed your brand on the major social media channels, you have two problems. First, you’re not taking advantage of a powerful tool for marketing, sales and customer service. Second, you’re giving someone else the chance to take your name.
The solution? Visit each of the major sites, and set up an account for your business. Even if you’re not ready to use a specific channel, the time to stake your claim is now. The longer you wait, the more likely it is that the name you want will be taken.
Your name should be consistent across all channels, including your primary website:
www.collective-memory.com
www.facebook.com/collective-memory
collective-memory.blogspot.com
youtube.com/user/collective-memory
Before attempting to sign up, research the availability of preferred names with Namechk (namechk.com). In case your preferred name is unavailable on a particular channel, list at least three alternatives.
Next, write up a standardized business description that you can use on each channel. Different social media have different character limits, so keep your description short and concise.
You can register your name on multiple social media channels at once through services like Claim.io and KnowEm.com. It’s not cheap, but it can save a lot of time and help you maintain a consistent identity.
Next, make a list of the channels you wish to use. Consider which channels your customers use and what kind of content is most appropriate for them. Also, consider what channels your competitors are using.
If all these choices are making your head spin, keep things simple by focusing on a single activity that suits your personal strengths. It’s better to have a strong, consistent presence on one channel than to try unsuccessfully to juggle too many.
Once you’ve identified the channels that are appropriate for your business, your content and your customers, you can create an online identity for each channel. At a minimum, you should choose an instantly identifiable color scheme. You should also take advantage of all other customizing options, with an eye to creating a consistent brand. Whenever possible, use the same text, logo, imagery, avatars, icons, color palette and other elements in each account.
Last, make a list of your social media URLs so that you can cross-promote them. For example, your Facebook page should promote your website, blog, Twitter feed, YouTube channel and so forth. Use this information on all online channels and print materials.
Earning Trust
Earning trust is perhaps the most important thing a business can do online. All your decisions should revolve around this central question: Will this action build trust or erode it?
There are many ways of earning trust on social media, from using your real name and highlighting your expertise, to getting links from credible people or sites, to consistently sharing valuable content, links and comments.
The most important element in trust-building is sincere participation. This doesn’t mean showing up on a blog’s comment thread once a day to promote your product; it means consistent, ongoing, conversational engagement with a community. This is not something you can fake; marketing goals must be secondary to a sincere desire to participate.
Again, always spend plenty of time visiting and reading social media sites before you contribute, and plenty of time contributing before you mention your business.
Never overlook the “social” in social media. Just as you should respond to comments and questions promptly and helpfully, you should also regularly comment on, share and “like” other people’s content.
Scheduling Content
It’s common for social media beginners to bite off more than they can chew. They start out with 10 blog posts a day, but three weeks later, they’re updating once a week or have given up entirely.
To avoid this problem, pace yourself. Commit to a small number of posts that you know you can handle. If you can produce more later, great. If not, at least you can maintain the pace you started with.
Each form of social media has its own rhythm. Twitter and Facebook tend to favor frequent, short posts each day. Blogs are more flexible; they may have one short post each day or longer posts every few days. Podcasts tend to appear less often, but on a regular schedule (e.g., monthly). More ambitious undertakings, like webinars, videos and e-books, may be more intermittent (i.e., one or two per quarter).
You should also consider how your content production will tie in with larger marketing issues like seasonality, sales and events, competitive pressures, new product launches, and industry trends.
Whichever channel you choose, the same advice applies: Consider what’s involved in creating the content, and don’t commit to more than you can handle.
Online Civility
Ask the average social media expert how to present yourself online, and she’ll probably tell you to “be authentic.” That’s great advice, as far as it goes. But it’s equally important to know when not to be yourself. In public situations, most of us have a sense of decorum that prevents us from discussing certain topics or voicing certain opinions. Online, that basic civility often goes out the window. It shouldn’t need to be said, but it does: Some topics are off-limits online.
Don’t share sensitive details about your private life. Oversharing about personal or traumatic events in your life can make people edge away from you online, just as they would if you were at a party. This is especially important when there’s a legal aspect to your personal details (e.g., a lawsuit or divorce). Always remember that things said in haste or anger may come back to haunt you.
Avoid political and religious disputes. Depending on the type of business you’re in, and who your customers are, it may be appropriate to take a stand on a particular issue. However, it’s important to understand the difference between making your values clear and attacking opponents. For example, it’s usually better to say “We believe in equal rights” rather than “We despise bigots.”
Stay calm and avoid drama. No matter how gently you express an opinion online, you may find someone attacking you. Don’t get sucked in! Often, the goal of online attackers isn’t to have a serious debate but to push your buttons for fun. Always take the high road in a dispute, and know when to walk away.
Train your employees. Make it clear that when they’re online, they’re representing your business. Caution them against oversharing personal or company information, and set a zero-tolerance policy for online aggression, namecalling and disrespect. If you operate under specific privacy or confidentiality regulations, make sure they understand how to comply. You can find best practices for creating a social media policy at socialmediagovernance.com, as well as a database of actual policies from hundreds of businesses.
…
I opened my email that morning and it was just one order after another. People wanted two bags, three bags. They wanted them two-day air, overnight, you name it. And it’s silly, but my first thought was,“I don’t have time for this. I have a business to run!”
It turned out that the product had gotten a glowing review from a gluten-free blogger with a large following.
Unfortunately, when Judith called her local suppliers, she found that they were out of a couple of specialty flours. In the end, she had to contact a distributor in Chicago and have the flour sent overnight.
As she struggled to fill these orders, more kept coming in. Finally, she had to list the mix as “Out of Stock.” Judith had just learned an important lesson: If you’re trying to boost your sales, you need to prepare a sales forecast!
We eventually got all the orders out. But it was stressful, and service at the bakery suffered. We were robbing Peter to pay Paul…taking ingredients from the store’s gluten-free items to get the baking mixes out. Which meant that our local people came in to get their gluten-free pastry and the cupboard was bare. That whole week, it was just one problem after another, like dominoes falling. The baking mix was the most successful new product I’d offered, but it turned absolutely everything upside down.
…
Managing Comments
Social media comments and responses can be a very valuable resource for customers and business owners, but only if they’re handled correctly. An unmoderated comment section can easily become a snake pit of spammers and emotionally unstable attention-seekers. An overmoderated section can chase users away and make your company seem insufficiently transparent.
How much time can you or an employee devote to striking the proper balance, given all your other responsibilities?
If you decide to let users comment, chat or review your products on your site, set strict commenting guidelines. This is much easier than trying to deal with offensive comments
as they come up. Also, commenters may get upset if you try to enforce rules on a case-by-case basis. If you make your policy clear from the start, commenters will usually help you enforce it.
Don’t roll out these features until you’re ready. And be sure to prepare yourself mentally and emotionally for negative comments and constructive criticism.
When you get negative comments, don’t delete them. Instead, follow the steps outlined in Chapter 14 Customer Management: Apologize, thank the user for commenting, gather details and offer a solution. A fast, conscientious response will be more beneficial to your business than trying to sweep problems under the rug. If comments are unpleasant or threatening, take screenshots and save them in case the situation escalates.
Unfortunately, some people on social media enjoy stirring up trouble. The standard approach to online trolls is to deny them the attention they crave. If you must engage—to address a serious falsehood, for instance—don’t sink to the troll’s level; stay calm, respectful and upbeat. Remember: The whole point of trolling is to make people angry. Never take the bait!
Having a strict but fair commenting policy in place will make it easier to ban consistently disruptive users.
Managing Promotions
Discounts, coupons and other promotions are good ways to reward attention on social media. Different channels have different rules for promotions, contests and giveaways, so make sure your tactics comply. Above all, don’t overdo it. Pushing too hard is likely to drive users away.
Each promotion should be unique to the social media platform. This allows you to compare the response rate between channels and improve your strategies.
Online Advertising
Businesses are constantly devising new strategies for online advertising, but there’s not much agreement about what works and what doesn’t. In fact, some experts believe that the ubiquity of online reviews, social media commentary and other consumer-generated content has weakened the already faint signal of traditional Web advertising, leaving businesses with a limited amount of control over how they’re perceived online.
Although clicks and sales can be counted and compared, it’s not always easy to know if there’s a connection between the two. The fact that you view an ad and then buy a product does not mean you bought the product because you viewed the ad.
That’s always been true, but it’s even more significant in an era when Web-based tracking has allowed ads to target people with ads based on online behavior. The flaw in this logic is easy to see; if you repeatedly visit sites about golf, you will get more ads relating to golf. However, your interest clearly predated those ads.
In addition, roughly a third of ad clicks may be fraudulent. And even when they aren’t, not all ads work on different devices, so “impressions” may not represent viewable content. Between technical problems and the use of ad-blocking software, some studies suggest that as much as 50 percent of paid online ads are never seen. Due to these concerns, marketers are increasingly demanding accountability; new standards for distinguishing between legitimate and fraudulent or unviewed ad revenues are underway.
This doesn’t mean that online ads don’t work. In fact, studies suggest they can work well for smaller companies offering niche products. But they do require careful, skeptical attention to cost and profitability. It’s usually best to set a modest test budget, do your homework and learn as you go.
Types of Advertising
Most online ads are based on contextual advertising, which serves consumers with targeted messages based on site content or search terms. If you’re looking at a hiking site, the system might deliver ads for camping gear. The ads that appear when you do a Google search are the classic example.
In-text advertising matches site content with contextually related advertising. These ads might appear as boxes next to the content, popups or keyword links within the content itself.
In-image advertising delivers contextual ads based on images that appear on a website. Visitors who move the cursor over an image will see an ad, which usually covers only a portion of the image. Clicking on this link directs the user to more detailed ad content.
Display ads often feature animations and other eyecatching graphics. Ads may target specific customers through behavioral targeting based on past browsing behavior, but they can also appear contextually on specific sites (e.g., ads for golf balls on a golfing site) or by geographic location.
Video ads are the fastest-growing form of online ad. Although many of them follow a similar format to traditional television ads, others focus on useful content or entertainment. Google’s TrueView system allows viewers to buy products directly from video ads.
There are three basic ways of buying ads:
Pay per click (PPC). Advertisers place a link on a host site and pay only when users click on it. The advertiser’s cost per click (CPC) can be a flat rate, or it can be the result of a bidding process for relevant keywords such as “camping gear.” The CPC for search engines is almost always set by a bidding process. Your CPC depends on your maximum bid, the amount of competition for the keywords and the relevance of your page. Google AdWords is the best-known platform for PPC ads.
Cost per impression (CPI). Advertisers pay to expose their message to a specific audience. An “impression” occurs every time an advertisement loads onto the user’s screen. CPI costs are usually calculated per 1,000 impressions. Thus, they are often referred to as CPM (where “M” signifies 1,000).
Pay per action (PPA). Advertisers get paid when the user completes a given action, which might range from watching a video, to requesting a brochure, to actually buying the product. The benefit of this method over PPC is that you’re paying for a specific outcome.
…
The success of the baking mix meant we had more people asking for help and advice. There was no way we could get to all of them. So Mary made a list of all the support groups, info pages and medical sites that had helped her, and she posted it on our blog.
It turned out to be a great resource. Everyone was linking to it and sharing it. As word got around, people would add more advice and links. We saw there could be a real purpose and value to the blog, so Mary kept on posting content and responding to comments.
Most of the comments were wonderful. But sometimes, people had misconceptions about gluten-free baking. They didn’t know what it was all about or why we were doing it. When people don’t know, they guess. And what they guess is not always accurate, to say the least.
So I sat down and wrote a post describing what it was like when Mary was growing up with this allergy. I wrote about how frustrating it was, and how we learned to adapt and cope.
One thing that was really hard for both of us was when she’d come home from school and the kids had teased her because she couldn’t eat something they were eating, or she had food they thought was “weird.” That was what made me decide that Mary was going to have better treats than they did. They’d envy her, instead of her envying them for eating some store-bought cookie. And that’s just what happened.
Even though it was a simple story—or maybe because it was simple—it got a lot of response. People shared it, bookmarked it, commented on it. A lot of people had been through the same thing. They could relate to what I said, and I like to think they trusted me. They trusted that this was an actual labor of love.
Anyway, that was the biggest response we got to anything we ever put online, and it wasn’t even intended as a marketing tactic. It was just a story, a true story.
…
Landing Pages
To measure and improve your marketing efforts, you need a dedicated landing page for each marketing method. That way, you’ll be able to see where your traffic is coming from, and you’ll also be able to provide targeted messaging and functionality for each class of visitor.
If you have one landing page for a paid search results campaign, and one for a social media campaign, you can analyze the stats for each landing page to see which campaign is generating more traffic, inquiries and conversions.
The landing page for a given ad should include a clear, obvious and easy call to action. The page’s layout should match or complement the ad users clicked on, and it should also reference any special offers or selling points mentioned in that ad.
Google AdWords assigns a Quality Score to your ads based on how relevant your landing page is to your ad and keywords. The more relevant it is, the higher your Quality Score will be.
Quality Score can also affect where your ads are eligible to run and their ranking in paid listings. Higher-scoring ads will appear more often and closer to the top. You can find guidelines on improving ad quality through the AdWords Help Center.
Clickthrough and Conversion
Clickthrough rate refers to the number of people who clicked an ad. Here’s how to calculate it:
If 500 people viewed your ad, and eight people clicked on it, the clickthrough rate would be 1.5 percent.
Clicks
Impressions
x 100
Clickthrough rate isn’t positive unless a healthy percentage of those clicks convert to sales. To calculate your conversion rate, you can divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors to your landing page. Thus, if your ad attracts 2,500 people to your landing page, and 25 of them buy, your conversion rate would be:
25 ÷ 2,500 = 0.001
0.001 x 100 = 0.1, or 1 percent
This means that to generate one sale, you’d need to pay for 100 clicks.
Suppose you need to earn $24 per sale to break even, and your conversion rate is 1 percent. To find the maximum affordable CPC, you’d divide the break-even amount by the number of clicks required to make one sale, like this:
$24.00 ÷ 100 = .24, or 24 cents
If you pay for 2,500 clicks at 24 cents each, you will spend $600. If you sell 25 items at $24 each, you will earn $600. To earn a profit, you must lower your CPC, increase your conversion rate or raise your price.
Making these decisions is easier than it sounds, because all major search engines offer tools that help advertisers track conversions. Google’s Conversion Optimizer is a well-known example.
One of the best ways to experiment is to create ad groups with variations on a specific set of keywords. You might create one ad that says “caps for sale,” one that says “buy our caps,” and one that says “men’s cashmere caps 25% off.” This way, you can find out what works and what doesn’t, and improve the targeting in your next ad buy.
Retargeting
Retargeting delivers repeated, relevant ad content to prospects as they visit different sites. Simply put, a prospect who visits your website would be tagged with a cookie based on the pages or products the user viewed. When the prospect visits other sites, ad servers will display ads for your product, prompting her to return and complete the transaction. Used correctly, this approach delivers a higher conversion rate than standard PPC campaigns.
Geotargeting
Geotargeting delivers relevant ads to prospects based on their location. In many cases, it uses location data from the prospect’s IP address. Alternatively, it can target smartphone users through cell tower, satellite or wi-fi data. As an example, smartphone users in a mall might receive ads or promotions based on their proximity to a retailer. These capabilities raise privacy concerns for many consumers; opt-in is usually required, and offers must be attractive enough to make the prospect consent to personal tracking.
Alternatively, PPC ads that target residents of a specific city, state or neighborhood are a great way to increase conversions and make your ad budget go further. In Google AdWords, you can do this by picking a state or city, entering a ZIP code or specifying a radius from your store or office. AdWords tutorials can help you select options that make sense for your region and customers.
Email Marketing
As we mentioned in Chapter 11, offering special coupons and incentives, or a regular feature such as an online newsletter, is a common way of building an email list. This enables you to reach thousands of current and prospective customers at a fraction of the cost of direct mailing while abiding by the terms of the CAN-SPAM Act (see Chapter 7 Laws Regulations and Taxes).
Although someone who signs up for your newsletter on your website has effectively opted in, it’s best to use a double opt-in method, such as sending each new subscriber an email that contains a link they can click to confirm their subscription. This will reduce the likelihood of spam complaints, and it will also ensure that your recipient was the person who signed up.
Good emails will usually have a compelling subject line; relevant, valued content; a nice balance of attractive graphics and sparse, easy to read text; and a clear call to action.
If you intend to engage in email marketing, it’s smart to keep track of your Sender Score. The lower your score is, the more likely your email will wind up in a spam folder. You can check your score by entering your email IP address or domain name at SenderScore.org.
Email marketing tools like MailChimp allow you to segment customers and track sent emails so that you can see if users received and opened them. If a contact keeps deleting emails without opening them and clicking the links, stop sending them!
…
Six months later, Butler’s Pantry was selling roughly 2,000 bags of gluten-free baking mix per month. This was a huge and totally unexpected expansion of her business.
She’d gotten orders from 35 states and most of the larger Canadian cities, and orders were also trickling in from Europe and Australia. She even made it onto the first page of Google, finally—although she was so busy shipping orders that it took her a while to notice.
Judith taught herself to use Google Analytics, and soon became fascinated with watching the ebb and flow of her traffic. She even set up a chart in Excel to track her data. She also kept a close eye on her internal searches. In spring of 2011, she noticed an uptick in searches for “dairy-free,” “egg-free” and “vegan.”
It seemed like people were assuming that if I had one allergy-friendly product, I’d have others. And I thought, well, why shouldn’t I? Why not have something for everyone, especially if no one else in town is doing it?
But this time, I wanted to be better prepared. So I called Evan, and he told me I’d better go and talk to someone at the SBDC.
…
Mobile Marketing
Once, online marketing was primarily geared to desktop computers. Today, mobile computing is far more relevant to the average consumer. Most Internet searches are conducted on mobile devices, as are most social media and email conversations.
Although many of the same basic rules apply to mobile marketing, the smaller screens and different operating systems on mobile devices mean that presentation must be different. Content marketing may be all-important in building your brand, but 1,000 words on a desktop screen may be received very differently from 1,000 words on a smartphone screen.
What works and what doesn’t will vary by consumer, meaning that you need to have some insight into your target customer’s use of various technologies to know how to appeal to them. For example, some consumers are happy to read a book on their smartphone while commuting, while others have no interest in doing so. Often, age is a factor; younger eyes and greater familiarity with mobile technology may make reading on a smartphone more attractive.
Consider the following questions:
How many of your customers use mobile devices to visit your site? Which devices are they using?
What are they doing on your site? Are they looking for directions, seeking customer service, tracking packages, comparing prices, placing orders, following you on Twitter? How does that usage compare to the habits of desktop users?
Do the pages they visit tend to have more text or more images?
Look at the headlines on heavily visited pages. Can you see a common theme? What is grabbing people’s attention?
Once you have a sense of how mobile users are interacting with your site, you’ll have a better sense of how to create and deliver targeted, user-friendly content and ads. The Mobile Marketing Association maintains guidelines, codes of conduct and best practices for mobile marketing at mmaglobal.com/policies.
The evolution of mobile marketing is fast, disruptive and unpredictable. As of this writing, a number of mobile carriers are threatening to block mobile ads from their networks. Further, ad blocking software is now under development for the most popular mobile devices. Research these and related issues carefully before planning a mobile ad campaign.
Text Message Marketing
Mobile marketing often uses short message service (SMS) or multimedia messaging service (MMS) capabilities to deliver ads and promotions. The difference is that SMS is limited to 160 words of plain text, while MMS allows large text messages as well as video, photos and other media.
Like email marketing, this requires an opt-in from the consumer as well as clear and effective opt-out methods. The fines for violating these rules can be extremely high.
Text marketers often create promotions and services that require users to text a code word or number to unlock a deal, enter a contest or get valuable information (e.g., a notification when an item is in stock).
SMS/MMS promotions should usually be valuable, exclusive and time-sensitive. For example, you might offer a 25-percent discount code for subscribers who buy today. In some cases, such offers will also be geotargeted. Again, review legal restrictions carefully before planning such campaigns.
Online Coupons
Online coupons can be bought online or—in the case of mobile coupons—redeemed at the point of purchase by using a smartphone. To use this service, businesses sign up with a provider such as Groupon or LivingSocial and make offers to subscribers (e.g., 50 percent off on dinner). Subscribers usually have a short time to accept the offer.
Various online coupon companies offer daily specials to subscribers. These specials can be bought online or—in the case of mobile coupons—redeemed at the point of purchase by using a smartphone. To use this service, businesses sign up with a provider such as Groupon or LivingSocial and make offers to subscribers (e.g., 50 percent off on dinner). Subscribers usually have a short time to accept the offer.
This can be a great way to lure new customers to your business or reward existing customers for their loyalty. However, it’s important not to offer more than you can afford to give. Always limit coupons to an amount you know is manageable given your existing workload, equipment and staff.
Here are the main things to consider when planning an online coupon campaign:
Does your business have the capacity to meet the spike in demand? Can you meet this new demand without compromising on quality or customer service?
Can you afford the discount you’re offering? Not only will you be asking for less money per sale, but you may also have to pay 50 percent of each sale to the coupon company. If you only get 25 percent of the coupon price, will you still make enough to cover your costs?
Another important point: Don’t offer online coupons too often. If you’re constantly offering deep discounts, customers may start thinking your regular price is too high, which could end up hurting sales.
DATA & ANALYTICS
Many site hosts offer built-in Web analytics features, as do most social media channels. Alternatively, you can choose from a wide variety of free and commercial programs, the most popular of which is Google Analytics. Google is in the process of replacing this product with its more powerful Universal Analytics operating standard, which allows the tracking of data across devices. www.google.com/analytics
Analytics tools can chart data by day, week, month and year. This allows you to identify seasonal traffic patterns and to see whether key metrics are increasing or decreasing.
To identify trends, you must allow adequate time to eliminate day-to-day “noise.” Monthly statistics provide a clearer picture than daily ones, and annual statistics provide a clearer picture than monthly ones.
Gathering online data is relatively easy. Interpretation is much harder and often varies by business. As a result, it’s beyond the scope of this book. However, we will introduce a few basic concepts here.
Setting Baselines and Goals
By using an analytics tool to create a baseline report before undertaking a new marketing campaign, you’ll be able to see what is and isn’t working.
Although businesses have different needs, most of them will track these statistics:
Organic traffic, broken down by search engine
Keyword use and relevance
Incoming links
Conversions
Ideally, you should gather at least three months of data to set a baseline. But even a week’s worth of data is better than nothing.
Next, set goals for specific objectives. Suppose you want 35 percent of customers to sign up for your newsletter. If you’re using Google Analytics, you can set this up as an conversion goal and the tool will track it. You can also assign a value to each goal in order to track return on ad spend (ROAS). The Google Analytics tutorial pages explain this process in detail.
An effective promotional campaign will produce results that can’t be tracked online, such as calls, referrals and offline sales. Therefore, you should also establish baselines for these forms of contact.
Last, create a calendar that includes the description, launch date, purpose and duration of each of your online marketing efforts. This will help you to pinpoint and interpret relevant analytics data.
Site Statistics
In the following pages, we’ll briefly discuss common site statistics and what they may be telling you about your site.
Conversion Rates
Conversion rates are usually the most important measuring tool, because they represent desired actions taken by your customers. Although sales are the primary concern for most businesses, other important forms of conversion include:
Form completion (e.g., mailing list signup, quote request)
Podcast or e-book downloads
Comment or rating submissions
Subscription to newsletter, or following of social media site
Social media likes or shares
Visitors
Most analytics software distinguishes between unique visitors and total visitors. “Total visitors” include every visit to your site, even if many of those visits come from one person. “Unique visitors” are visitors from a single IP address, who are usually counted once within a specific amount of time (e.g., 24 hours).
Unique visitors. An increase could indicate a successful ad campaign or a favorable review. A decline might indicate a lower search ranking, a strong new competitor or a technical problem.
New visitors. How many visitors are visiting your site for the first time? Where did they come from?
Visit duration. How much time did each visitor spend on your site, on average? Generally, a longer visit indicates greater interest, so it’s a good idea to see where these visitors are coming from (e.g., a particular ad or social media campaign).
Traffic sources. Traffic to a site can come from search engine results, ads, email or text links, direct URL entry or bookmarks, social media, or referring sites (e.g., a link from a blogger). Comparing traffic sources, amounts and behaviors can help you decide where to focus your marketing efforts.
Page views per visitor. How many pages did the average visitor view? A high number may indicate user engagement, but it could also indicate that visitors are wandering the site looking for hard-to-find information.
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who leave your landing page without converting or visiting other pages. If a page has a high bounce rate (e.g., 40 to 50 percent), it could mean your ads or keywords are misleading, or that visitors see the landing page itself as confusing or unappealing.
Click path. This is the path a user takes from an entry page to an exit page. If users consistently abandon your site at a specific page, it could indicate a problem with the page content (e.g., a Flash animation or slow-loading image), or with a required action (e.g., providing personal information).
Location. Are most of your visitors local, regional, national or international? What are the top regions for each class of visitor? Is there evidence of interest or demand in an untapped market?
Internal search. Did the visitor use your internal search function? If so, data from this search could indicate unmet needs, suggest new keywords, provide insight into visitor intent, or identify navigation and site structure problems.
Popular Pages and Content
Which pages are the most popular and what kind of content do they offer? If visitors are routinely spending time on your Tech Tip pages, but tend to ignore your audio diary about learning to play the accordion, this suggests that you should focus on creating more Tech Tips.
If people are flocking to one product page and avoiding another, you may need to improve the keywords, content or advertising strategy for the underperforming page. You should also consider adding calls to action or relevant sales links to the popular page.
…
Judith made an appointment with SBDC counselor Peter Howe. With his help, she prepared a marketing plan and a sales forecast. She decided to roll her new products out in September, when school was just starting and the holidays were near.
Judith experimented with a number of approaches to market research and promotion. She used her Facebook page to conduct surveys of people who were dairy-free for health and ethical reasons. She invited her commenting community to suggest products and flavors. She even held local, after-hours tasting parties for each promising new recipe she created.
By late July, she had settled on a handful of solid recipes, so she sent out samples to several high-profile bloggers in the dairy-allergic and vegan communities. These tactics earned her a considerable amount of buzz on social media channels.
Once I got my sales forecast down, I worked on sourcing and ordering every ingredient I’d need. I also tracked down some local backup sources in case the others fell through. I had no intention of running out of supplies again!
Peter suggested creating a couple of dedicated prep areas for the gluten-free and dairy-free products. We were already very conscientious, but accidents can always happen, so I was happy to take his advice. It wasn’t a huge expense, and it helped to build trust. We blogged about that, of course!
When she rolled out her new baking mix, she did better than she’d expected, but not better than she’d planned for. In the first two weeks, she sold about 980 bags. That was slightly higher than her sales forecast, but not so high that she couldn’t fill her orders on time.
…
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO means improving the ranking and visibility of your site in search engine results. The following design features can increase your site’s chances of being placed among the top 20 sites by search engines, which can dramatically increase visibility and sales.
More important, they will improve your user’s experience. Designing your site with customer needs, safety and convenience in mind is the best SEO tactic. Instead of trying to game the system by looking for SEO “secrets,” use that time and energy to deliver a faster, smoother, more fulfilling experience for everyone who visits your site.
Intuitive navigation. Clear links, useful page elements and clear site structure increase usability, which can in turn increase page rank.
Fast loading time. Pages that load slowly are hard for search engines to index and frustrating for human users, so they tend to get a lower page rank. To test your site, visit developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed.
Mobile device optimization. Because most searches are conducted on mobile devices, sites that aren’t mobile-friendly may get a lower ranking.
Quality content. This generally means high-quality, frequently updated content with correct spelling and proper grammar. You may get bonus points for trustworthy, factual, balanced and original content.
Security. SSL encryption can have a positive effect on your site ranking.
Descriptive title tags. Title tags provide the text that appears at the top of the browser window and in search engine results. The tag for each page should be brief, accurate, distinct and relate directly to the page content. If you wanted to emphasize your products and location, you might use this title: Organic Alpaca Yarn | Brook Farm | Melville, New York.
Sitemaps help search engines find content throughout your pages. Many shopping cart providers offer sitemap coding that can optimize this data.
Links from reputable sites. If you consistently provide good content and build strong relationships with reputable and influential people, you will naturally earn valuable links.
Search engines keep their algorithms secret, but they do provide guidelines and updates for webmasters. You can learn more at:
Google Webmasters www.google.com/webmasters
Yahoo Content Quality Guidelines help.yahoo.com
Bing SEO Analyzer www.bing.com/toolbox/seo-analyzer
…
Today, Butler’s Pantry still isn’t the top-ranked site for “Bloomington bakery.” But Judith doesn’t really care. It’s on the front page, and it also ranks very highly for the keywords that bring in most of her online business. Besides, she has a strong presence on Facebook, as well as on local and food-oriented business directories.
During the holiday months, Judith sells more online than she does in her shop. She gets orders from all 50 states, and international sales have picked up too.
When I think about how we got from where we were to where we are now, there were three big issues. First, there were the gluten-free options. Suddenly, people who were passing through the area had a reason to stop at our place. That’s still amazing to me, that people are driving from, say, Cincinnati to Chicago and they will get off the Interstate and come here just for us.
The baking mix also put us on specialized business directories like Gluten Freeville, which are basically closed to our local competition. I know other bakeries in town might try to imitate us one day, but I also know they aren’t going to get 18 years of gluten-free baking experience overnight.
Second, there was the blog and the community that formed around it. Facebook has been very useful, but I feel like the blog made a deeper connection with people. It’s more thoughtful—more of a dialogue—and I feel like it’s built trust on both sides. Our commenters meet us and say they feel like they already know us.
Last, there were the dairy-free mixes and baked goods. Again, that put us on a lot of people’s radar. But in this case, they were younger people who were more into social media and geosocial apps. We get a lot of college kids who find us on Yelp or Urbanspoon. They’re excited to have vegan cupcakes in their backyard.
It’s funny, because some people think of us as a niche business, even though what I’m actually doing is catering to everyone. That’s probably the most frequent comment I see in reviews: “There’s something for everyone here.” It’s certainly the comment I take the most pride in.
…
CONCLUSION
No matter what kind of business you run, online marketing and social media will be crucial to everything from product design to customer service in the coming years. Even if you don’t plan to use a specific tool, you still need to understand its potential benefits to your customers and competitors.
There’s no way to cover online marketing adequately in a single chapter. Indeed, a full-length text on online marketing would only scratch the surface of this important topic. Worse, it would likely be outdated within a matter of months! The important takeaway from this chapter is that you must stay on top of new developments and—where necessary—incorporate them into your business planning.

Apis ma quo verum que maios aut volo con et aut fugia doluptaspedi tem ipid quam liquatatesto et, qui disquametus ipsus, num alique

Social Media Tips Keep your content fresh and current. Post regularly, even if it’s just a link to an article. Link to sites that are credible, authoritative and well maintained. Remember: You’ll be judged by the company you keep. Don’t launch a specific channel until you’ve developed content and created a realistic posting schedule. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Never use content and features as a tease unless they’re actually ready to launch. Don’t introduce rating or voting features until you have at least 50 regular visitors. Aim for quality, not quantity. It’s more important to have an active, engaged community than a huge one. Respect online property. If you wouldn’t erect a billboard on your neighbor’s lawn without permission, you shouldn’t clutter other people’s sites with self-serving links. Be consistent. Each online communication channel should link to the others and reinforce your brand and message. Be nice! Friendliness, humility, an even temper and a sense of humor are great assets in social media, just as they are offline. If they don’t come naturally to you, practice them. Have fun! The more you enjoy what you’re doing, the more likely you are to earn loyal friends and followers.

| NxLeveL® TECH TIP BUSINESS RESOURCES AND THE WEB
Local Business Directories Local business directories are examples of vertical search engines, which limit their results to a specific topic, location or form of content. They’re crucial for marketing partly because consumers who use them are usually in the area and ready to buy, and partly because they allow users to rate and review listed businesses. Here are some of the most popular: Google My Business lets you give customers instant access to a wide variety of business information, including driving directions, hours of operation and coupons. You can also connect face-to-face with customers through Google Hangouts. Listing your business here will also ensure that it appears on Google Maps. www.google.com/business Bing Places lets you publish and manage your business info, making it more visible to online customers through Bing search and Bing maps. www.bingplaces.com Yahoo Local “is a comprehensive local business directory complete with ratings and reviews, maps, events, and more.” smallbusiness.yahoo.com/local-listings Yelp is a consumer-generated business review site with about 150 million monthly visitors. www.yelp.com MerchantCircle combines “social networking features with customizable Web listings that allow local merchants to attract new customers” www.merchantcircle.com You can create and manage multiple local business directory listings at once through Moz Local. moz.com/local