Authors: Inc The Staff of Entrepreneur Media

Start Your Own Business (94 page)

BOOK: Start Your Own Business

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Going above and beyond doesn’t always mean offering deep discounts or giving away products. With a little ingenuity and effort, you can show customers they are important at any time. Suppose you’ve just received the newest samples and colors for your home furnishings line. Why not invite your best customers to a private showing, complete with music, appetizers and a coupon good for one free hour of consultation?

AHA!

Create external incentives to keep customers coming back. Offer customers free merchandise or services after they buy a certain amount. This gets them in the habit of buying again and again.

Emergency orders and last-minute changes should be accommodated when possible, especially for important occasions such as a wedding or a big trade show. Customers remember these events ... and they will remember your flexibility and prompt response to their needs, too.

Being accessible also wins loyalty. One entrepreneur who runs a computer chip company has installed a customer service line on every employee’s telephone, from the mail room clerk on up. This means every caller gets through to a real person who can help him or her, instead of getting lost in a voice-mail maze.

Customer loyalty is hard to win and easy to lose. But by going above and beyond with your customer service, you’ll soon see your sales going above and beyond those of your competitors.

part 7

ENGAGE

chapter 34

NET SALES

Online Advertising and Marketing

Y
our website is up and you have promoted it on everything from business cards to T-shirts. Your shopping cart program is primed for action. There’s only one problem—nobody shows up.

The net is littered with tens of thousands of dead sites, abandoned because no one visited. You can always tell a dead site—it was last updated on its launch date. So how can you make yours successful?

Throw some money at it—judiciously. “It’s a good idea to stick with low-cost, grass-roots techniques,” says Jim Daniels, president of JDD Publishing in Smithfield, Rhode Island. Daniels has written several books about internet marketing and publishes the
Bizweb eGazette
newsletter, which has more than 150,000 subscribers worldwide and is accessible at
bizweb2000.com
.

TIP

Before you publicize your site, make sure you have an opt-in box on the home page and throughout your site by using e-mail capture software, also called an auto responder system. This is a great way to develop customers and build your e-mail list so you can send them valuable offers, tips and resources. For more details on setting up e-mail captures, visit
aweber.com
and check out the opt-in tutorial. Click on “Support” then “Videos.”

Also, if you can afford one, hire a PR firm. In general, raising your firm’s visibility through media exposure lets you talk about your website to a broad range of potential customers.

A Marketing Tool

Think of your website as a marketing tool like the others you use to promote your business. Because its return is hard to gauge, your job is to learn how to get the most from the web. “Why would someone want to visit my site?” That’s your key question. If your site talks only about your company and how great you are, chances are, no one will come back. Attracting visitors requires magnets: things that excite people and make them return for more.

Savvy marketers master permission marketing, which provides incentives for customers to learn more about your product or service. Let’s say you run the Clicks and Bricks Bed and Breakfast in Vermont. Spring and fall are your off-seasons. You’d like to reach out to former visitors and those who have sent e-mails inquiring about the Clicks and Bricks B&B.

Using the principles of permission marketing, you can:

• Use your database of customer and prospect e-mails to build an audience for a promotional campaign.

• Recognize that those consumers have indicated a willingness to talk to you. So find something to say to them. You could offer them a “three nights for the price of two” promotion or run a contest for a free two-night midweek stay. It’s offers like these that keep customers and prospects engaged.

• Encourage a learning relationship with your customers. Send e-mails or print brochures about upcoming local events such as the annual Fuzzy Worm Festival, or offer two-for-one coupons for an upcoming art show. Remind them of Vermont’s allure in the spring and fall.

• Deepen your communication as site visitors become customers and first-timers become return visitors. Send birthday or anniversary cards. Reward them with a glossy national B&B directory. Show them that you value their patronage.

Attracting Visitors to Your Site

The number of websites is well over the million mark and crossing into the billions. According to the 2009
Domain Name Industry Brief,
published by VeriSign, the internet boasted more than 183 million domain names, over 25 billion pages, and well over 109 million websites. With millions of websites out there, getting visitors to your individual site is often the biggest challenge. Your strategies for doing so may include search engines, paid search services and affiliates. Let’s consider them one at a time.

TIP

Using search engines is a matter of personal preference. Try some engines listed in this chapter to discover which return the most “hits,” or matches, with your keywords.

Search Engines

Search engines have become a ubiquitous part of American culture. Every day millions of Americans go online to search the internet or “Google” something or someone. According to a 2009 report from the Pew Internet & American Life project—which produces reports that explore the impact of the internet—74 percent of American adults use the internet, 88 percent use search engines, and 81 percent look online for information about a service or product they’re thinking of buying.

Perhaps the most important—and inexpensive—strategy in getting people to your website is to rank high for your preferred keywords on the main search engines in “organic” or “natural” searches (as opposed to paid ads, also known as “sponsored links,” which are often found on the right side of search pages or clearly marked as a “sponsored link”). In general, achieving a high rank is based on three criteria: competition, relevancy and content.

Think of “competition” like popularity. The more popular (talked about, linked to and clicked on) your offer or website is, the more competitive you are. “Relevancy” is based on how well your offer or site matches the keywords. Your site should include the keyword, or be as close as possible to the keyword that’s being searched. Finally, your “content” should address the question being asked. Your goal is to answer the query as directly as possible. You want the end user to say “Yes, this is the answer I’m looking for.” The sooner you master these three criteria, the higher rank you’ll be able to achieve in search results. Mastering the art of search is not impossible; it just takes practice and time. Take the time to think about what your potential customers are really asking and how your offer or website answers their questions. Be persistent and consistent, work through the learning curve, and you’ll find yourself with a high rank in the search engines.

TIP

Adding widgets to your website and staying active on social sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, helps increase organic SEO rankings. What’s a widget? It’s a live stream of updates from your social sites that feed directly into your website. For more information on embedding widgets, type in “widgets” in the search box on each social site.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is also a rapidly growing and profitable segment of the internet. According to a 2008 study from Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, conducted in partnership with Radar Research, SEM expenditures will reach $26 billion in 2013, which is close to 10 percent of total U.S. advertising spending projected for 2013. Increasingly, ad budgets are being shifted away from offline marketing, such as print, direct mail and TV advertising, and directed toward online marketing.

While there are many search engines out there, and they all differ in structure, search strategy and efficiency. According to a recent report from online internet research firm Hitwise, most searches take place on the following sites: