Top 5 Local Marketing Mistakes [SB#016] – Although you don’t really notice it, local marketing is all around you. Every time you open a telephone directory, turn on the radio or even go to your kid’s football game, local marketing is there. If you are like most people, you really don’t notice it. This is because local marketing tends to be really, really bad. Those little guys have all these advantages over larger corporations, but they just don’t know how to take them. If you are one of these little guys, avoid making the following mistakes.

Top 5 Local Marketing Mistakes Video

‘Local’ is the new black—or at least the new green. Many modern people are eager to support their communities and help the environment by buying local. This can be a boon for small business owners, but only if you market your small business brand as a local option.

One of the big challenges in developing and marketing your small business brand is that the cheapest and most available marketing methods are online. This means that you must adopt a hybrid approach that combines your local brand with online marketing strategies. Here are a few tools to help you get started.

How To Market Your Local Business Online Video

Experimental marketing is one of those topics that many people talk about, but few can define. While it is one of the entrepreneurial buzzwords of the new decade, many business owners have no idea what it really means, much less how to apply the concept to their own enterprises. Here is a short primer on the topic, and a few ways that you can make this type of marketing part of your own business success formula.

Experimental Marketing Featuring iWearYourShirt

What is experimental marketing?

Experimental marketing is basically marketing outside of the box. The definition is constantly changing, because methods are only experimental until they become common. Facebook and Twitter were once sites for experimental marketing; now, they are proven strategies that are firmly in the mainstream.  New social media models such as Groupon and LivingSocial are still considered experimental.

However, what is normal in one industry might not be such in another. If you are using marketing methods that are not common in your industry, you could consider yourself a participant in experimental marketing. The key elements are originality and risk.

A good example of experimental marketing might be IWearYourShirt.com. For a fee, site owner Jason Sadler will wear your company logo on a t-shirt and interact with your brand on film. Sadler and his small team of four put videos on YouTube and also tweet regularly about their experiences. This method of marketing is highly unorthodox, but it has also been very successful. It costs very little compared to most conventional methods and it gets customers attention.

How can you use experimental marketing as an entrepreneur?

There are certain businesses that stand to win from experimental marketing. The first and most obvious group is that of businesses that are suffering from a lack of publicity and public awareness. Most experimental marketing campaigns get attention; this, in fact, is what they seem to do best. People are used to seeing typical forms of marketing and many filter them out as they go about their daily lives. Experimental marketing makes it past the filter because it is new and different.

When you are trying to come up with experimental marketing strategies, you must do a lot of brainstorming. The basic model is simple:

• Identify the brand personality that you want to promote. This is probably one of the most difficult steps. What kind of brand are you trying to present to your customer base? Are you warm and welcoming, or stylish and sophisticated? Are you wild and wacky or do you have a more conservative persona? The nature of your experimental marketing will be determined by the type of personality that will appeal to your customers. When developing a brand personality, make sure it is one that your customers will respect and be interested in.
• Identify a time and place where your target market is present. If you are marketing to a local community, this could be a town event. If your business has a large online component, then you may want to consider YouTube, Facebook, or another social media option. If your experimental marketing event has a defined time, plan this around the typical schedule of your target consumer base. For instance, if your market works full time outside the home, you need to plan for an evening or weekend for best results.
• Identify a method of getting the market’s attention in a positive way. Here is where you plan the actual event. This can be very easy or very difficult depending on your level of creativity and the types of constraints that your market presents. You may want to look at the experimental marketing from companies similar to yours for inspiration. In some cases, you may be able to borrow someone else’s experimental marketing ideas, although this rather defeats the purpose.
• Publicize ahead of time. If there is a temporal element to your event, you should make sure that as many people as possible witness it. Send out press releases and place notifications on your website, blog and any other internet presences. This can work best if you make sure there is an element of surprise involved. Make people want to tune in to see what happens next.
• Execute your plan. This step should be the easiest thanks to all of the good planning you have performed! Make sure you plan for all of the little roadblocks that seem to arise. Don’t let anything stand between you and your marketing plan!
• Make a record. Often you can get maximum mileage out of an event by placing pictures or video on the internet. This will allow a wider audience to experience the experimental marketing. If you have really thought outside the box in planning, you have increased your chances of going viral.

What are the risks?

We mentioned earlier that experimental marketing can involve a certain element of risk. First, these methods are by definition not tried and true. You simply don’t know whether or how your audience will react, although you can certainly make some educated guesses. In addition, these marketing strategies can take a lot of time in the planning stages. If they are not effective, then all this time has been wasted. If you do not know your market as well as you assumed, you may actually alienate customers. Last, there is always the risk of looking foolish. Although this is a small matter, it seems to be the one that holds many entrepreneurs back from trying experimental marketing measures.

Conclusion:

The major reason that experimental marketing is effective is that it gets the customer’s attention. We live in a world in which people are surrounded by marketing in most of their daily lives. At a certain point, people simply start ignoring it. In some cases, we actually become annoyed with the companies that are filling our lives with advertising. Customer attention and goodwill are limited resources, and companies are competing heavily for them. The more unique and unusual you can make your marketing, the higher the chance that it will reach your markets.

We write a lot about marketing and branding, as it is the only way to ensure small business success. However, many people get so mired in the details that they forget the core strategies that lay the foundation for a great small business brand. We are getting ‘back to basics’ today with a look at the core elements of successful small business marketing.

• Be visual. Customers won’t ‘get’ your brand at first glance, and few will take the time it takes to get to you without good reason. For these reasons, you need to make a stunning first impression through visual means. Develop a small business brand with a solid visual identity and logo design. Keep your locations pristine and invest in professional web design if you have a website. ‘Seeing is believing’ in the world of small business.
• Be social. We have said over and over that social networking is the branding and marketing wave of the future, and here we will say it again. No modern business can be without this valuable method of getting to know your customers and letting them get to know your logo design and brand. Social networking also allows you to show the human side of your business, which brings us to our next tip.
• Be human. What we mean by this is to be a likeable human that your customers can identify with. Whatever you are selling, people will buy more of it if they genuinely like you. Don’t be afraid to form a small business brand based on your own personality; it will feel authentic to customers and be easier for you to maintain in the long run. Also, feel free to insert little bits o humor or personal anecdotes into your business, whether it is in a blog or when dealing in face-to-face interactions. These should never interfere with your business, but in the right amount they can greatly enrich it.
• Be omnipresent. This may seem impossible, but new technology has made it essential. People have busy lives and can’t always make to your business in the traditional 9-5 workday. How can you reach out to your customers 24/7? A website is one way of doing this. With a well-designed website, you can make sales and communicate your brand to your market in any place and at any time. Good SEO will ensure that you are present in search engine results as well.
• Be consistent. We talk a lot about first impressions, but consistency is just as important. Whether you are running an email marketing campaign or developing a new product, is essential that your customers interact with the same brand every time they visit your business or website. When people know what to expect, they are more likely to return. Further, a consistently good brand will eventually woo many reluctant shoppers into giving you a try.

These tips can seem confusing and at times conflicting to a less experienced small business owner, but they are essential in marketing your small business brand. Talk to a consultant if you are having trouble finding just the right formula.

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Once you have a professionally designed small business website, brand and logo design, you probably want for your potential customers to take notice. Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done. Building online presence takes time, but small business owners need results as soon as possible. Here are five ways to promote your business without spending a dime.

Submit your website to the major search engines. All that time invested in having a website designed and search engine optimized will only pay off if you let the search engines know about it. Don’t wait for the crawlers to stumble upon your website; sign up for a webmaster account with the major search engines and submit your sitemap so they can index your information. Every time you change your website, resubmit it so the search engines know that you are constantly updating and changing information. Search engines are a valuable means of gaining interested traffic, so time spent wooing them will almost certainly pay off.

Become an authority. There are several ways of doing this. Call the media in your area and see if you can be their next filler story for a slow news day. Write articles and submit them to popular content sites. You probably know a lot about your field, so put this information to work. Be sure your web address is included in these and any other publications that feature your company.

Exchange links. Often there are businesses in the exact same boat as you are. Find these businesses and offer to exchange links with them. Make sure you aren’t dealing with direct competitors, however; you don’t want to lose the traffic you are working so hard to gain! Find businesses in related but not identical fields and approach them about link exchanges.

Make your social networks part of your brand. You probably have a Facebook or other social media account. Make sure your small business brand and an easy-to-follow link are front and center in each page. Social networking will only help your business if it is easy to get from your networks to your website and vice-versa.

Join a banner exchange. There are many banner exchanges out there that allow you to submit a banner that will be shown if you place other business’s banners on your own website. However, be careful with this technique. Sometimes having other companies’ banners may interfere with your own branding efforts and compete for attention with your logo design. There is also the danger that a competitor will end up advertising on your website. However, banner exchanges can be great sources of free advertising, so at least look into whether they will work for you.

Marketing your small business brand doesn’t have to be expensive; often, the free and creative ways of gaining publicity are even more effective than paid advertising. Don’t let a nonexistent marketing budget hold you back from getting the attention and site traffic that you need to succeed.

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It’s a common scenario. You have a great idea for a small business, invest time and money in getting the right supply chain, open a website or a physical location, and then… nothing happens. You know that people are looking for products and services like yours, but they never seem to find you. Increasing your business’s findability can be a ‘make or break’ solution that changes your company’s destiny. Here are a few ways to ensure that your company can be found by the people who are seeking it.

1. Claim your name.

   Your website name should be yourbusinessname.com. This is what people looking for you will type into their address bar, after all. In addition to claiming your name as a URL, you should claim your business name on social networking websites and business review sites as well as offline directories like the telephone book. This prevents having customers look for you and end up finding one of your competitors. It also will make you look like a more established small business.

2. Use search engine optimization to drive traffic your way.

   Good content is the key to SEO, and you should ensure that your website is full of it. Include keyword-rich content in your text, titles, and tags. In fact, almost every word on your website and social media pages should be a keyword of some sort. If you are unsure about what keywords are right for you, use Google’s Keyword Tool or hire a professional SEO consultant.

3. Ask for feedback, reviews, and other ‘buzz’.

   As a wise man once said: a happy customer tells one friend; an unhappy customer tells ten. Ouch. That means that you need to proactively seek positive reviews to counteract the occasional bad one. People are going to Yelp and other review sites to talk about businesses that they love and hate, and you need to ensure that these websites are filled with positive experiences with your small business. Ask customers to rate you honestly. Many businesses even offer a small incentive, such as a coupon, for referrals or other positive buzz.

4. Get the media involved.

   If you think you are too small for a major area newspaper or other media source to cover you, think again. Reporters are always looking for a way to fill the space on slow news days. Think of an angle. Do you do anything noteworthy or different? Figure out what sets you apart from the competition and then use it as a way to build your brand and gain exposure for your company and logo design. Which brings us to the last tip…

5. Be noteworthy.

   The best way to be found is to get people talking. The best way to get people talking is to give them something to talk about. Not only will this help relevant customers find you, it will give them a good reason to return. If you make a unique and enticing brand promise and then fulfill it, you will build customer loyalty and build your small business image at the same time.

Every small business needs a marketing plan, but this is often easier said than done. It is difficult to decide on a single plan and even more difficult to put these plans into writing. Here are the different steps of writing a marketing plan.

• Compile your information. Before you write your marketing plan, you should be aware of your company’s financial situation at that moment and how your sales are trending. You also need to know every product or service currently being offered. An overview of similar companies with similar services in your area can also help because it will help you figure out what differentiates your business. Many business owners find that an organization table helps, as it will aid you in assigning different marketing tasks to different people. Last, you will need to know who your target customer is and why they are choosing you.
• Part One: Market Situation. This is the first section of many marketing plans. You will need to describe the state of your industry in your area and how you fit into the big picture. Here is where you describe your customer in more detail and give firm numbers as to your geographic area, sales structure, and the success of different product lines.
• Part Two: Opportunities and Threats. In many ways this is a continuation of the market situation section, but it focuses specifically on what your business has going for it… and against it.  What market trends are affecting your business right now, and how will these change in the near future? Is success in the current market possible, or will you need to modify your approach in order to succeed? This is the part of your marketing plan where you get real, and look critically at your chances of success.
• Part Three: Marketing Objectives. These are concrete, easily trackable goals that you want to achieve within your company. This is the place to think hard about how you want for your business to be in a year, two years, and so on. You will need to break each goal into smaller tasks, place these on a rough time frame, and then assign responsibility for them to a specific person. For instance, if you want to set up a Facebook site that brings in so many customers per month, you will need to include information about who will be responsible for this task and how they will accomplish it. Your goals are basically a realistic dream of where you would like to be in a reasonable but challenging time frame, but they include the how and who information as well.

Once you have a draft of a marketing plan, your next step is to have other people critique it. This could include employees and fellow business owners. Get feedback, consider it carefully, and change your plan if necessary. Because your market is changing from day to day, your marketing plan will also need to change in order to be successful.

http://www.logodesignworks.com/blog/is-direct-marketing-right-for-you

With the internet a ubiquitous part of life and countless nontraditional marketing methods available, many business owners focus on marketing through nontraditional means. 

We have all heard the saying that is the title of today’s blog, but many small business owners don’t seem to take it to heart. It is important when communicating with your potential customers to use the right language—language that will make them love your company, and language that will make them buy your products or services. Here are a few key concepts that your words need to convey.

1. New. Who likes to have the latest thing? Just about everyone, that’s who. Calling your product new, improved, or otherwise changed from its original version will make consumers more likely to give you a try. Maybe they will wonder if they need an upgrade. Maybe they have tried a product like yours before and were unhappy, but are willing to try out a new version.
2. Easy. This comes in a variety of forms: simple, painless, etc. But all of these have one meaning. In a world where everything seems a little too complicated, using language that implies ease will assure potential customers that you intend to be a problem solver in their lives, not a problem causer.
3. Speed. Although we complain about people being impatient, this is a character trait that most people deal with. People want to know that your products or services will be fast. Exactly what constitutes ‘fast’ may vary according to your occupation—a fast surgeon, after all, is operating under a very different time frame than a fast grocery checker—but the concept is the same. No one wants to do business with someone who will waste their time.
4. Guarantee. This is especially important if you are offering a service on the internet or are new to a community. When people are deciding whether to trust you, giving them a guarantee or other promise of satisfaction will achieve two different things. First, it will remove risk from the proposal, making them feel that they have nothing to lose by patronizing your business. Second, a promise or guarantee will assure them that you are legitimate and indeed intend to follow through on your claims. If you can back this guarantee up with testimonials from satisfied customers, it will be even more effective.
5. Discount. This word also comes in several forms, such as sale or even free. Most people are willing to spend a lot of money to save a little. We love to feel like we are getting just a little more for our money than other people. More important, we love to feel that we are paying a little less. If we can get it for no cost at all, all the better. In this economy especially, people need to feel that they are getting the best possible deal.

If you want to attract customers, using these five words (or some version of them) will help your cause. In any case, these words are probably not dishonest, but a simpler, more direct version of what you really intend. Just remember to say what you mean (using these words) and follow your words up with actions.

No longer associated with revolution, guerilla marketing is a legitimate part of the small business landscape. However, as with all forms of marketing, this effective method of getting your brand into the public eye is constantly changing. The following four trends are gathering momentum at this very moment and sure to become a huge part of the branding and marketing landscape in the coming year.

1. Guerilla goes digital. As customers become desensitized even to the most innovative guerilla techniques, smart brands up the ante. With technologies become more sophisticated, this opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Companies are already reaching out to customers via blogs, Youtube, and social networking. Who could have predicted the immense growth of Twitter and Facebook before 2010? One key to guerilla marketing for business success in 2011 will be identifying the next big thing and getting in on the ground floor.
2. Guerilla gives back. Company-run charity programs are not a new idea, but the way they are presented has changed immensely and is likely to do so in 2010. Companies now give special thought to giving back as a part of their brand. Rather than choosing a popular charity, many now purposefully choose on that is congruent with their image, such as a men’s suit store donating career clothing to people looking to re-enter the workforce. Moreover, companies are increasingly tooting their own horn in this area, making sure the public associates the charitable act with both the company and the logo design. Because this strategy has been so effective among guerilla marketers, it is one trend we will likely see more of in the year to come.
3. Guerilla gets honest. While many companies use marketing to put their best foot (and their logo design) forward, others are taking quite the opposite approach. Domino’s Pizza recently released a marketing campaign in which they basically admitted that their pizza tastes like cardboard. The punch line? That they have heard the customer outcry and modified their recipe to be more flavorful. While few companies feel they have much to benefit from publicly declaring their weaknesses on a national level, this campaign has been so successful, inspiring customers to give the business a second chance, that self deprecating marketing is likely to become this year’s hot and completely unforeseen trend.
4. Guerilla goes outside. This can mean going outside the box, which after all is the definition of this form of marketing. However, it can also mean going into the actual outdoors. With so many hours spent on the computer, modern consumers love an occasional breath of fresh air. Whether you decide to step outside the box and the building by taking part in local festivals or by having a mural based on your logo design painted on the side of an abandoned warehouse, having your business associated with the great outdoors can add a whole new aspect to your brand, especially if you are trying to market your business as the greener, more natural option.

As you can see, guerilla marketing is a dynamic field that is constantly changing. These trends are poised to become red hot in the next year, but there is still time for you to make your mark. Guerilla marketing presents an invaluable opportunity to get your brand and your logo design in the public eye, one that few business owners can afford to pass up.