Get a Free Website

Every small business should have a website. It's just what's expected now. But worse than not having a website, is having a poor website.

The Challenges:

1. You don't have enough money - Getting a visually appealing, functional website costs a little bit of money. I usually recommend my clients to anticipate spending about a $1000 for a good website using a professional website designer.
2. You can't reserve the domain name you want - All the ones with your business name are taken.
3. You don't know where to start, you don't know what to do - Who do you hire? You need time to research and figure things out.
4. You don't want your website to look cheesy - Services like Go Daddy offer website builders for a fee, but they don't look very good, nor are they functional.
5. You want something now - Building a good website can take 4-6 weeks (no matter what the developer says).

One Solution:
Squidoo is a service that invites you to build a "lens" and share your knowledge with the world. I think it's a great source for you to put up a free, interim website.

I put up this "lens" for my company: The Marketing Spot

It took me less than an hour, but it might take you a little longer, because I already had much of the content on my main company website.

The biggest benefit is that when you add your lens, you get a unique URL, which in effect, makes it a website. Notice that my lens domain name is www.squidoo.com/themarketingspot. I can direct people directly to my Squidoo lens with this URL. It's now my website.

With my site you will notice that I added pictures, videos, description of my services and my blog content. You can definitely get creative with your content to promote your business. Here's one of my favorite lenses: http://www.squidoo.com/laptopbag/

Squidoo has some limitations, such as color scheme and layout flexibility. You also have to endure Google ads and Squidoo offers. But hey, it's free and it's quick.

Try it out, but hurry so you can get the lens name you want. Now you have no more excuses to get a website.

DISCLAIMER: I was neither compensated nor approached by Squidoo for this post.

For small business marketing lessons and advice, see my other blog: The Marketing Spot

Send Emails to Your Customers

If you have a retail business and a healthy customer list you should consider sending out emails to your customers. Email marketing is often touted as giving one of the best ROI's of any marketing activity.


Why do email marketing?

1. Remind your customers to do business with you. Sometimes customers just need a little prodding. Whenever I get a personal email from one of my favorite wineries asking if I want to order anything, I almost always say yes.
2. Keep them involved with your business. Maybe you have the type of business where customers purchase infrequently. Remind them who you are between purchases.
3. Create word of mouth opportunities. When you send out important information to your customers, it gives them the opportunity to forward the email on to their friends.
4. Introduce promotions, new products or services. Get people excited if this month is "Bring a Friend Free" month.
5. Keep your customers informed. Let them know if you are now open Saturday mornings, or that you've hired a key individual. My wife recently called to confirm her appointment for her annual check up and they told her, "we're glad you called, because we've moved." Luckily she called.
6. It's cost effective. If you had to personally call all your customers or send a letter, how much would that cost?

Use a web-based system to send your emails. There are several great on-line services that allow you to send out colorful, spiffy-looking emails while only requiring you to know how to click a mouse and string some sentences together. You'll be able to send out the same email to hundreds of customers, yet it will also be personalized. Using a web-based email service also prevents you from clogging up your own computer or losing everything if your system crashes.

Which should you use? Check out this list here: Email Service Providers. I have used Constant Contact in the past, but there are cheaper services. Your cost will be determined by the number of emails you send out per month. Most services will offer you a free trial period. Pick a couple and test them out.

For some basics of email marketing, see this reference list.

Have you had success with email marketing? Share your story.

For small business marketing lessons and advice, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot
For more about our company, see our website: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

Branding a Law Practice

Case Study: Kenneth Alan Forman PA, Immigration Attorney in North Miami Beach, Florida

Challenge: Re-brand a law practice that has recently expanded and has a vision of national influence.

Idea Wanted: A brand that will increase business from immigrants facing deportation, coupled with an image that carries weight across the entire country.

The Background: Ken Forman, the principal of the practice, has been in operation for more than 18 years and has just added his daughter to the practice. The goal is to expand the business to become the go-to practice defending deportation from immigration courts on a national scale.

His business values: Competence, Honesty, Protection
His Mission: To help immigrants who deserve to be here fight against the immigration courts trying to deport them.

Advice: Think through they eyes of the potential client and think big! Forman's clients are immigrants facing deportation and the firm has the vision of national reach.

To market to this specialized client you have to identify their key concerns and fears. Forman's clients are washed in fear and uncertainty. The objective is to communicate comfort, security and hope.

Our Ideas:

1. First develop the brand promise and use it as the foundation of all future marketing. We suggest the brand promise: "Safety, Security, Peace of Mind in America."
   
2. Next develop a signature that can be used in all future marketing materials. A signature is not a slogan or a tagline, because it is personal and has meaning. We suggest: "Stop Deportation, Stay in America" or "Stop Deportation, Go with Forman"
   
3. Brands need key, central visuals to reinforce the brand promise and the signature. Our recommendation for the Forman key visual is a large red, white and blue image of America with the texture of a big brick wall. In the wall their is a door open with a deportation sign above it. The two principals of the practice are blocking the front of the exit with their arms crossed. The signature is underneath the visual.
   
4. Change name and use big, important sounding titles. Adding significant staff is the perfect time to change the name of the business, especially if you want to change your target market. Because of Forman's desire to go national, we suggest an authoritative name such as the Forman and Lugo National Immigrant Rights Center, or Forman Immigrants Protection Center. Create initiatives such as the National Initiative to stop unjust deportation and publish a document backing it up.


5. Get a website. Forman currently has no website. Luckily some their large national competitors have weak websites and it would be easy to make an impact. We suggest a new website with a splash page that contains the key graphic and the signature in multiple languages. Then beneath the key visual, have a "Choose Your Language" option that includes English and the top three languages served by the practice. Don't clutter the website up with confusing options.: make it simple. Publish a document in multiple languages that chronicles a typical time line and lists immigrants rights. Then convert it to a pdf and make it easily downloadable.


6. Open satellite offices. Forman wants national reach and needs an appearance of national accessibility. Open small "storefront" offices in key immigration court cities like Los Angeles and New York. Staff them with a receptionist or use an answering service to save costs. Use a VOIP Internet phone service and obtain local Los Angeles and New York phone numbers that ring in the North Miami Beach office.

The Lesson:
When branding your business, start with your values and then develop a brand promise that clarifies what you promise to deliver beyond the stuff you happen to sell. After you have your brand promise, develop your signature; a slogan with teeth.

Always develop a vision statement of what you want your business to look like when your mission is completed. If you know what the future will look like, then you can craft your image and a brand that rings true. In Forman's example, you cannot have a vision of influence on a national scale and portray a country lawyer image, or try to maintain a personal brand.

Brand your business in orderly steps, starting with values, a mission, a vision, and then a brand promise. When you do, the big imaging ideas begin to flow more easily.

If you would like to get free marketing ideas for your business, fill out our idea spot form by clicking here.

Get more small business marketing lessons and advice at our other blog: The Marketing Spot

Learn more about our company at our website: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

Conduct a Survey

There are so many positives that come from surveying your customers. Every business should do it at least once per year. It may be the most inexpensive marketing tool for small businesses.

The Benefits
First, it creates a dialog with your customers. Your customers have a chance to say something to you other than "fine" when you ask them how things are going.
Second, surveys give you great feedback and let's you know how you are doing (yes, you really want to know).
Third, it creates word of mouth because customers talk and they will ask others.
Fourth, it tells customers you care.
Fifth, you will get some great ideas!

What Should I ask?
Sometimes businesses struggle with the right questions to ask. There is no need to get clever or creative, simply ask these questions in this manner:

1. What is the most positive aspect of your experience with our business?
2. What is the most negative aspect of your experience with our business?
3. What would you improve about your experience with us?
4. Please share any thoughts you have about how we can improve our services to you?
5. Is their a product or service you would like to see us add?
6. Would you like for us to contact you to follow up?

That's it.

You will be pleasantly surprised with your responses. Most of your feedback will be positive. You will receive compliments in areas that you didn't expect. These compliments will provide ammunition for future marketing programs.

One of your intelligent customers will make a money making suggestion to you. When they do, use it! Then reward them with a gift and let everyone know you are making a change/addition because of a customer suggestion.

How to Implement
Don't just put a stack of surveys on a table and a suggestion box next to them. Use your customer data base and mail the survey with a return envelope. If you have a large customer base, mail one-fourth of your customers each quarter.

Add a Map to Your Website

Give your potential customers more than just a address or static map. Google allows you to place an interactive map of your business on your website or your blog. Below is a map of the known center of the small business marketing universe:

View Larger Map

Google also allows you to add a description and photo to the map if you want. Whether you use Google's map description or your own, a photo of the front of your building should be included. (I have not included one because I did not want to fall in one of the pot holes of our parking lot while taking the picture).

To add your map, watch the video and then build your Google Map here.

Make it easy for your customers to do business with you, and that means making it easy for them to find you. Add a map and a picture to your website.

Salon Experience

Case Study: Pepper's Salon, Puyallup, Washington
Challenge: Improve website and increase traffic flow of new clients to the salon by October 2008.
Idea Wanted: Get more out business from the website, and create a customer experience that draws more new clients.

The Background: Owner Sally Flink has a reasonably successful salon, which has been operating for 20 years. They have a small advertising budget and a website that is doing okay, but not great. The website is two years old.

Pepper's has already added several magic spots to their customer experience, but these need to be tied together in a cohesive theme.

Advice: First develop your theme. Then design your customer experience around that theme.

In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, brothers Chip and Dan Heath tell us that if you want to make your experience sticky, step outside of standard operating procedure:

"The most basic way to get someone's attention is this: break a pattern."

Themes allow you to break the normal business pattern for a customer and create stickiness. Themes give you permission to create a different world within your business, surprising your customers with something sticky and out of the ordinary.

Pepper's has chosen Style as their theme.

Our Ideas:

1. Extend the Style theme to the website: Add pictures of famous hairstyles from which your clients can choose, for example Victoria Beckham's, and then add a link to "send to a friend."


2. On the website, post comparison pictures of styles that you've done for clients next to the model style or famous person's style. Again, add a "send to a friend" link.


3. When customers enter the waiting area, rather than offering coffee, tea or a water, offer an upscale stylish beverage; such as Brazilian Blend Coffee, Chai, or Voss bottled water.


4. Team up with a local, upscale fashion retailer and have live models showing the latest fashions during your busiest hours.


5. At the time of checkout, take a digital photo of the client's perfect style, load it into a database, then include it in a follow-up email to the client.


6. Advertise your hours. Pepper's is open at 7:30 in the morning until 9:30 in the evening on some days. Use the advertising budget that you do have to run a television or radio spot at 7:30am to say that Pepper's, The Salon With Style, is open right now.

The Lesson:
The Customer Experience is so vital to a business' success for two reasons:

The first reason is that it creates customer loyalty. Shaun Smith, co-author of See, Feel, Think, Do: The Power of Instinct in Business, says that merely satisfied customers are not loyal customers. Customers who are satisfied at level four on a scale of five have only a 25% intent of loyalty, but customers satisfied at a level of 5 out of 5 have a 90% or greater intent of loyalty.

The second reason is that when you establish loyalty, the customer experience then serves as the launching pad for word of mouth marketing. Once you have earned their loyalty, they give you their advocacy. You must design the customer experience with magic spots to give your customers talking points when they give you referrals.

For more small business marketing lessons and advice, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot
Our company website is: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

Change Your Name

Marketing Idea Category: Word of Mouth

Want to create some talk about your business? Change your name. Seriously.

Read this example of how Rouge, a Seattle women’s clothing boutique , changed their name and leveraged some great publicity, including this additional article (and our blog).

People love new things and new places to shop and this idea can gain you new attention. Obviously, this is not the tactic for every business but here are the standards under which you might consider changing your business name:

1. You have very little brand equity: Your name recognition in the community is low and people generally don't know who you are or what you do.


2. Your name has no personality or is generic: "The Clothing Corner" "The Coffee House"


3. Your market has shifted: As in the Rouge example above, they began appealing to a younger demographic and carrying different brands.


4. Your business name has a bad connotation in the community: You received some bad publicity from the misdeeds of an employee or previous owner.

Changing your name may not be cheap to do, so consider the costs involved in changing your name. After you do change your name, make sure you leverage your new name to get some well-deserved publicity.

1. Send out press releases and contact your local media personally.


2. Have a ribbon cutting with your local chamber of commerce.


3. Have a "Grand Unveiling" event. Use your mailing list and email list send an invitation to all your previous customers.


4. Invite a local celebrity to cut the ribbon on your store and be the very first customer of your newly named business.

We followed up with Stephanie Duryea, who says the change was worth it, but it was a lot of hard work. She offers this advice if you decide to take the big leap:

"Make sure it's what you want to do and be committed. Make sure it fits."

Word of warning: Good marketing cannot save a bad business. If you have internal problems and operational deficiencies, a name change will not be of help. But, if your business simply has the blues, this may be a way to get the music playing again.

Coming tomorrow: Case study in The Customer Experience
For more marketing advice and lessons: The Marketing Spot
Our company website: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

Free Restaurant Advertising

Every sit-down restaurant should have a website. However, if you can't yet afford one, or you are "working on one," here is a temporary option. Post your menu online free at this website: Menu Elephant.

The site allows diners to search by city, state, business name and cuisine type. Once you post your menu, it receives a URL address which you can then use on your business cards as your own website address. The site also maps your location.

Click here to post your menu free.

For small business marketing advice and lessons, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot

For more about our company, see our website: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

Advertising a Travel Agency

Case Study: Baumann Travel, Lake Peekskill, New York
Challenge: Get more business on a small marketing budget.
Idea Wanted: Identify the most effective way to advertise to a particular demographic with a limited budget.
The Background: Roger Baumann is an adjunct associate professor at College of Mount Saint Vincent. He is also an artist.

Baumann Travel offers fully escorted cultural and art exploration trips to Japan and Southeast Asia. His clients are primarily upscale females who are either retired or semi-retired.

Current advertising is minimal, primarily using flyers and brochures distributed at museums and through occasional mailings.

Advice: It's not all about advertising in the right place; it's first about what you advertise and how you are perceived. Your image needs to be finely tuned before advertising. A business needs an articulated brand promise, an effective signature (business slogan), and an enticing pick-up line to use in the ad.

Baumann has a hurdle right at the beginning of the sales process with an outdated website. It subconsciously tells the customer that some of the small things don’t get taken care of. This is important if you are going to ask someone to travel several thousand miles with you and pay thousands of dollars to do it.

Baumann Travel's first task is to polish up the presentation a little bit, which will maximize the return on their advertising investment.

Our Ideas:

1. Update website - The first order of business is to update the website, before a single dollar is spent on advertising. If it will be difficult to make future updates, remove all time specific references. Instead of actual upcoming itineraries, create “sample itineraries.” If possible, include photos and/or videos of past journeys.
2. Develop a signature and a pick up line – Many businesses have a slogan. More effective than a slogan is a signature, because it’s personal and it says something meaningful. A pick up line is the message you use in the advertisement to get customers involved with you. An example for Baumann’s signature might be something like, “More than a tour, it's an experience.”
3. Magazine ads – The target demographic is retired or semi-retired upper-income females. Special interest local, or regional magazines, are probably the best choice. Direct mail would be a close second, if you can find a reliable list. The ad should feature an invitation to the website or to a special reception (see idea below).
4. Museum publications – Work with New York or other major metropolitan museums such as Rubin Museum of Art and see if there is an opportunity to place an ad in a newsletter or other publication.
5. Working with museums – See if you can obtain the mailing list from some major metropolitan museums (you will have to pay for the list) and send an invitation to learn more through the website or a reception (see #6).
6. Host a reception - Give a taste of the journey before going on the trip. Host a tea or wine reception and show videos, pictures and pieces of art that can be expected on the trip. The clientele is upscale so pamper them and let them know how they will be treated on the trip.

The Lesson:
Everyone wants to spend as little money as possible on advertising. Don't we all? To Maximize the money you do spend, you must buff up your image and your message before advertising. Doing this increases the effectiveness of each ad you do run, and consequently saves you money over time.

Advertising is courtship, not a sales pitch. This is especially true for an upscale service such as Baumann Travel. All your advertising should communicate your brand promise and lead potential customers to the next step. Baumann Travel’s advertising should not try to make the sale, instead it should invite the customer to become more involved in learning about the travel experience.

Before you advertise, make sure you have an image that has been polished and ready for the spotlight. When you do advertise, involve the customer, don’t sell.

If you have more advice, please comment below.
Want your free marketing idea? Fill out this form and submit.For more small business marketing advice, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot.
Our website is: http://www.themarketingspot.com/