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Make Your Web Pages Local Friendly

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Search engines have become one of the primary ways that people find local products and services. This is becoming just as true for services, as it is finding a local hardware store.

If your business doesn’t show up on page one or in the first handful of local results delivered when people type “their city name + something they want” into their chosen search engine your business simply can’t compete. And with more people conducting these types of searches on the smart phones, they don’t even have to type in “their city name” because the search engines are assuming mobile searchers are looking for local results.

There are many ways to build a stronger local search presence. In this post I’ll share some suggestions for improving your local search rankings by adding local content.

There are many ways to make your web site content more localized; here are a few steps to consider:

Add your physical address to every page .
Add city names in navigation: e.g. “Kansas City Estate Planning Attorney” .
Add your suburb and/or the name of your neighborhood into your content in natural ways.
Add a local event blog and list festivals and non-profit events .
Find and exchange links with relevant local bloggers using a tool like placeblogger.

Put these items on your marketing calendar today and start winning the local search game.

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Categories : Marketing

Tags : local-search, marketing calendar, seo

Marketing Got You Frustrated? It’s Time For A System.

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)

Friday, January 27th, 2012

Marketing your small business or service firm can be frustrating – particularly if you don’t have a marketing system in place. This brief video outlines how you can get rid of that frustration and systematically attract your ideal customers.

(Click here if you don’t see the video in your reader)

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Categories : Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Small Business Marketing

Tags : duct tape marketing, marketing system

Build Your List With Pippity

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

If you are anything like me, even though you’ve heard popup forms can help you grow your e-mail list, you’ve resisted using them because we hate being interrupted by them right when we are trying to figure out if a site has useful information or not. Now there is a plugin that can help you build your list without aggravating your website visitors.

The Pippity WordPress plugin not only makes it super easy to create great looking popup forms, it also give you tons of control over how that popup behaves.

Creating a popup form is dead simple. You pick a template, customize it by following the steps in the wizard, hook it up to your email list provider and you’re good to go. While it’s simple to get up and running, you can still get fairly sophisticated with your design.

Pippity has built in support for the following email list providers:

Aweber
Madmimi
MailChimp
Constant Contact
1ShoppingCart
Get Response
Campaign Monitor
Graphic Mail
iContact

Is your email provider not on the list? Not to worry, you can cut an paste your sign up form html into Pippity and it will take care of the rest (this is method I used to set up Pippity to work with Infusionsoft).

Once you create your form you can control when it displays. You can specify the time before it appears, whether you want to wait until someone gets finishes reading an article, and how many pages someone views before they see the popup. You can set filters to exclude the popup from certain pages. You can also control whether a popup shows depending on the page or post category.

Pippity also track analytics so you can see how well your popup form (or forms, you can create as many as you like) are performing. If you create more than one popup you can compare analytics between any two forms. You can even to A/B testing with Pippity forms.

Pippity’s pricing is incredibly affordable, starting at $49 for a single site. You can get a 5 site license for $87, and if you are a developer you can get an umlimited license for $164

You can learn more about Pippity by viewing the 30 second video on the homepage of their website.

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Categories : Marketing

Tags : email marketing, web site, wordpress

Press Release Tools for Small Business

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Small business marketers used to pay little attention to the press release as a marketing tool – it was a tool for the big boys who had the budgets to hire public relations firms.

Like everything else these days, the web has changed that. Small business owners and marketers can now put their news directly in front of their customers and prospects with online press release creation and distribution tools. Below are some of my favorite tools for creating and distributing press releases.

Instant Press Release – this tool from Duct Tape Marketing gives you a guided template for creating and formatting your press release properly.

Once you create your press release, it’s time to distribute it. New sites and services for distributing press releases are popping up every day. Here are a few of my favorites:

PRWeb – distributes your release to every major news site and search engine on the Web.PRWeb has a variety of pricing plans to meet your needs.

PRLog – a nice, free, press release distribution site. I experienced good search engine results with press releases I’ve posted on prlog.

PitchEngine – Combine the press release with images, video, and social networking tools and instead of a press release you have a one-page website to tell your story.

Pressitt – Another social media news release tool. Nice free way to distribute press releases that get picked up on social sites.

Use these tools to get your message out, get links back to your website, and earn trust – and more PR!

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Categories : Marketing

Tags : PR, press release

Get More Referrals With This Free E-Course

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

Did you resolve to generate more business from referrals this year? If so, you will want to grab this free e-course, 5 Tips For Successful Referral Marketing.

The e-course consists of five lessons, delivered via email, that will show you some proven techniques for generating high quality referrals on a consistent basis.

Here is a quick outline of what you will learn:

How to get referrals even if you are just starting out or when you are trying to break into a new market or industry
How to increase referrals while providing value to your community
The six components of a fully functioning referral marketing system
5 real life examples of successful referral systems
One referral tactic that could become your core point of differentiation

The course is completely free. I’m not going to try to sell you anything at the end of the course. I’m not even going to automatically add you to a mailing list (I will invite you to my newsletter, but it will be up to you).

So go grab your 5 Tips For Successful Referral Marketing and start generating more business today.

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Categories : Marketing, Referral Marketing

Tags : Referral Marketing, referrals

Marketing Between the Sale and Delivery

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

easybutton Last week I participated in a conversation on Facebook about a topic that I that I think a lot of business owners face, so I thought I would share it here.

The gist of the conversation had to do with the fact no matter how clearly we try to spell out the terms and conditions of our services, most people don’t read them before finalizing their purchase. The frustration comes when something happens that surprises the customer causing them to complain, even though it was clearly outlined in the terms and conditions.

While we can’t please everyone 100% of the time, I think marketing can help reduce this frustration and improve the overall buying experience with something I’ll call, for lack of a better term, marketing between the sale and delivery.

When we think of marketing as a synonym for selling, then marketing between the sale and delivery may seem inappropriate for addressing this situation – particularly in a B2B setting.

If we think of marketing as education, communication, and expectation setting, then I believe marketing has a lot to offer in addressing the issue outlined above. We worked hard to create expectations via marketing before the sale; we need to continue setting and managing expectations after the sale.

“But I already outlined exactly what will happen and what they should expect.” you say. I’m sure you have, but just like other forms of marketing, communication, and education, you message is more effective when delivered more than once and using different media.

It is important to remember that when someone buys your product or service, they have a lot of other things going on in their life. I’m sure you are a busy person – let me ask you a question. Would you rather have another project put on your plate or have 2 items added to your action list for today? Most people that I know would opt for the 2 action items; they don’t have time for another “project”, even if they don’t know that that entails.

Are you giving your new customer a project? If you give me a 3 page document of terms and conditions, you’ve given me a project. I need to ready it, figure out what I need to do, figure out what order to do them in, schedule them, and complete them.

Regular readers here know that I like to talk about the difference between being efficient and effective. Documenting a list or terms and conditions and including them in an information packet that is given to the customer at the time of the sale is an example of being efficient. Taking the time, before, during, and after the sale to make sure the customer knows exactly what to expect and what is expected of them is being effective. Being effective will get you more repeat businesses and more referrals.

You can still be efficient. Many of the marketing technologies you used to make the sale (i.e. email marketing, mobile marketing, direct mail, etc.) can also be used after the sale. Use these tools to deliver information in small, bite-sized chunks of information that people can quickly consume and act upon. Rather than giving me a project, give me a task, complete with a deadline and the resources I need to complete the task. Wow, you made it super easy for me to get that done, thank you.

In Duct Tape Marketing, we are fond of saying that if you want to get business from referrals you need a referable business. Use the time between the sale and delivery to separate yourself from your competitors and become a business that people love to refer.

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Categories : Marketing, Referral Marketing

Tags : Referral Marketing

2 Tips That Guarantee Success In Blogging

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

Success in blogging The blogosphere is chock full of advice on how to blog, what to blog about, and how to make sure you blog is successful. Heck, I’ve created several of those types of posts here, here, here, and here, just to point out a few.

Everyone will have different reasons for blogging and therefore will have their own ideas of what constitutes a successful blog. After writing on this blog for 6 years and helping other small business owners get their blogs up and running, I believe that following 2 pieces of advice will guarantee that your business will benefit from your blog and you will never run out of things to write about. Those two pieces of advice are:

Make a commitment to continuous learning and improvement
Teach (share) what you learn with others

Commit to continuous learning\improvement

“What if I run out of things to write about?” is a concern I often hear from small business owners. However, I’ve yet to run into anyone who is worried that they will soon run out of new things to learn. Use your blog as an excuse to carve out time to learn something new each and every week.

Share what you learn with others

One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else. When you know you will teach something, it often makes you ask questions and study things in more depth, increasing your learning. Teaching helps you commit things to your long term memory. It increases your knowledge. Sharing what you learn through your blog can also provide great conversation starters at networking events or meeting with prospects and customers.

Even if no one ever reads your blog (don’t worry, they will) you will greatly benefit from your blog if you follow these two pieces of advice.

Question – How would your business be different if you learn 52 new things this year?

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Categories : Marketing

Tags : blogging

Marketing Momentum

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

In sports and business, we like to talk about momentum or the “Big Mo”, the idea that once we get things moving in the right direction it is easier to keep moving, move faster, and do so with less effort.

How do we create momentum in our marketing? The key to building momentum is consistency. One of the best ways to build consistency is to live by a marketing calendar. By sticking to a planned routine of regularly scheduled marketing activities (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) you can build a marketing system that grows your business and leaves your inconsistent competitors behind.

What does the opposite of momentum look like? Let’s look at referrals as an example. Many business owners will begin a new year by resolving to attend more networking events in the hopes of receiving more business from referrals. They often start out with a flurry of activity – joining new groups, scheduling lots of appointments, going to lunches and after hour events, etc.

By the middle or end of the first quarter, it is very common for one of two scenarios to arise that breaks our marketing momentum and sabotages our marketing success.

Sometimes we experience success relatively early out of the gate. We get some business from referrals and then we stop our networking activities to “do the work”.

In the second scenario, success doesn’t come immediately, so we quit right before our efforts are ready to pan out. We don’t meet anyone at the first few networking events so we stop attending – only to decide to “try again” months later.

This stop and start progress kills progress in any endeavor, not just marketing. When we break our marketing rhythm, we kill our momentum. Reviving that momentum takes an enormous amount of energy and time. Worse yet, we are spending that time and effort just to get back to where we were rather than making further progress.

Plan, Do, Review, Improve

Once you have set your goals use your calendar to plan the marketing behaviors that will help you attain them. Write these behaviors on you calendar as action items and do them. Use your calendar as a review tool in order to make sure you stay on track and hold yourself accountable. Don’t use your calendar to beat yourself up by highlighting your failures, commit to continuous improvement – track what you need to do, hold yourself accountable, measure the results and adjust (improve) accordingly.

Consistency Over Quantity

Pick a few marketing activities, do them well, and do them consistently, and watch your business grow in 2012.

photo credit: Emil Manolov via Flickr

Comments (0)

Categories : Marketing, Marketing Plan

Tags : marketing calendar

LinkedIn – Why I Want To Talk Before I Link To You

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (5)

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

LinkedIn is the first online social networking site that I joined and it is still my favorite. I have met a lot of great people on LinkedIn and worked on some interesting (and paying) projects because of the relationships that started on LinkedIn.

Today I thought I would share some thoughts on how I approach making new connections on LinkedIn. One quick note – I’m not trying to say that my way is the “right way”, this is just that I use. It has evolved over time and is effective for me – your mileage may vary.

I want to talk to people before I connect with them on LinkedIn. I guess I’ve always assumed that if you are on LinkedIn, you have something you would like to accomplish by being there. I’d like to know how I can help you accomplish that goal.

This has pretty much been my “policy” ever since I joined LinkedIn back in March of 2004. It used to be that in the beginning, I was an early adopter, so I was the one inviting my contacts to LinkedIn (and explaining what it was). As LinkedIn has become more popular, I have received more invitations from people I don’t know.

When someone I’ve never met invites me to connect on LinkedIn, I send them a note that looks like this:

Thank you for the invitation to connect. I make an effort to know my LinkedIn connections so I can do a better job referring them, would you be open to having a brief phone call sometime in the next 2 weeks to chat?

Afternoons typically work best, but you can see my schedule and set up a time here – https://tungle.me/billbrelsford

If you send me your number, I’ll be happy to call you.

Bill Brelsford
913.962.9261

To be clear, I like meeting “strangers” on LinkedIn. I am always open to meeting new people, I just want to know 1) how I can help them and 2) how they may be able to help other people in my network.

I want to have a conversation for a number of reasons. First, I’m not particularly good at remembering names, companies, or titles without any context. I am very good at remembering conversations and stories. If I can’t remember you, I can’t refer you or refer people to you.

On a similar note, if we have a conversation, I put notes about that conversation into my CRM system. After I think “I talked to someone about 6 months ago who I think may be able to help you” I go to my CRM to find the name. I then go to LinkedIn to see if anything has changed in that persons professional life before I make an introduction.

Again, if I don’t know much about you, I can’t help you. Not only can I not help you, I’m doing a a disservice to the people that I do know. How many times have you asked someone for an introduction to one of their LinkedIn connections only to hear “Oh, I don’t really know that person, we’re just connected on LinkedIn.”? If I have to give that answer, I feel like not only have I wasted that person’s time, but I have probably discouraged them from asking me for help again – when I would be able to help them.

Of course, I haven’t had the opportunity to do business or personally experience the service of everyone that I am connected to in LinkedIn. That’s not any different from the connections I have in “real life” – people I know from chambers of commerce and other networking groups.

But if I talk to someone, I try to learn about what they do and how they really help their customers. I get a sense of what type of a person they are – would I want to work with them? These are things I would share with you if you asked me if I knew someone or not – whether I had met them online or offline.

And if I invite you to meet and you don’t respond, or you miss our appointment and don’t follow up, well I’ve still learned something, haven’t I?

That’s what works for me when it comes to managing LinkedIn connection requests – what works for you?

P.S. – Feel free to connect with me – www.linkedin.com/in/billbrelsford

Comments (5)

Categories : Marketing, social media marketing

Tags : LinkedIn, social media

Archive for Marketing

Make Your Web Pages Local Friendly

Marketing Got You Frustrated? It’s Time For A System.

Build Your List With Pippity

Press Release Tools for Small Business

Get More Referrals With This Free E-Course

Marketing Between the Sale and Delivery

2 Tips That Guarantee Success In Blogging

Commit to continuous learning\improvement

Share what you learn with others

Marketing Momentum

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