The five experts you meet in digital marketing heaven
Although it originated in an African proverb, Hillary Clinton can be credited with popularizing the phrase, “It takes a village,” when she published a book by that name back in the ’90s. But not only does it apply to raising children, in today’s complicated business environment, it applies to marketing and specifically digital marketing. It takes a “village” or team of experts in five areas to do a thorough job of marketing your business in the digital world. Is your team complete? Do you have any slots you need to fill? Review the lineup below and judge where you are. I fully understand that most small business owners can’t have all of these individuals on their full-time staff, so I offer some advice on how to fill those positions on an “as-needed basis.” Designer Digital media are visual media and you need a good designer for web pages and for other digital promotional materials. A mistake many small business owners make with design is to think it’s a “one and done” process. They believe that once they have a website up, they are set for life. Just as big city stores keep their window displays fresh, you need to occasionally freshen up your website. Also, web design aesthetics change over time; don’t let your site look “dated” – unless you’re going for a retro look that is “on trend” again, like the ’90s-style sites Steven Melendez talks about in this article, Oh Snap! ’90s Web Design is Hot Again. But here’s the kicker: While you need to keep things fresh, you also need to keep your look somewhat consistent and this conundrum creates a challenge for small business owners. If you could keep one designer on staff all the time, you could more safely assume that brand consistency would be maintained. However, small business owners will usually be giving the designer job to various freelancers or agencies over time. This means you need to create a style guide that defines colors, fonts, logo placement, and other graphic design elements that are important to maintaining the digital look and feel of your brand. If you use a good WordPress template for your website, some of these elements will be standardized. Copywriter In marketing, words and pictures go together like peanut butter and chocolate, so you need a wordsmith to work with your designer and with the other members of your digital marketing team. Even if you did well in high school and college English classes, don’t think that you can write marketing copy for your business. In fact, good school writing usually makes the worst marketing copy. I can’t tell you how many times business owners have sent guest posts to me that they would like me to publish and when I’ve read them, they sound like a high school English class theme. They might merit an “A” in school, but they would never hold an online reader’s attention. You can find experienced freelancers who are able to take your thoughts or the points you want to make and put them into words that will entertain, inform, and motivate your audience. As with your visual design, consider a style guide. You can also tell writers to use AP style and then add a couple of things to it, such as...
read moreTry this ‘secret’ strategy to build your email list
Over the years, we’ve gone into great depth on email list building. Of course, the use of popups and similar strategies continue to be the fundamental ways to build your list. There are other places you can encourage email list signups that are often overlooked by your competitors. They probably won’t tally as many signups as the more conventional strategies, but they have other advantages. I want you to consider encouraging email list signups on virtually all of your email correspondence. You should be using your branding graphics on your correspondence, but why not add something that directs people to an email signup landing page? Let me give you a few examples. If you do ecommerce and allow for guests to make purchases without registering, include something like this at the bottom of your confirmation email: Do you want to get advance notice on sales or Internet-only coupons? Sign up here! When your sales department receives inquiries, the questions probably give you great clues to the kinds of products and services they are interested in. Something like this would be good: Are you interested in underwater widgets? Get instantly notified when a new one is released or we have special limited-time offers available. Even general correspondence to your business can be an opportunity to establish or strengthen a relationship. How about something like this: Keep up with all the Widget-Co corporate news! Each “hook” like these can be linked to special landing pages designed to match the specific interest of the person. Further – and this is the important part – people who sign up on these landing pages should be immediately segmented or tagged for the area of interest they have ascribed to. Don’t spam these people with general interest emails. Take the time to create correspondence that specifically relates to the interests they...
read more3 brainstorming tactics for viral content inspiration
Eyeballs. Eyeballs are the most valuable commodity on the Internet. The only reason you can get free apps is because people are willing to give you the app in exchange for access to your eyeballs. Everyone is looking to get their social media posts and advertisements in front of as many eyeballs as possible. There’s only one thing that modifies this: When you’re in business, you want to get your content in front of as many of the right sets of eyeballs as possible. The dream is to create viral content – stick with me, I’m going to tweak that statement in a minute – and that is a hard dream to realize. Whenever I see a post that purports to tell you the secret to creating viral content, I skip it because there is no secret method that will allow you to automatically create viral content. I tried to avoid that in the title I gave this article. I want to show you a few ways to brainstorm for inspiration. I also want to point you in the right general direction – or at least away from some dead ends – regarding the type of content you need to create if you have your sights set on creating some viral content…and let’s start there. What gets shared Steve Rayson has written a lot about viral content over on Buzzsumo. One of his articles on “Lessons from the most shared content” is loaded with data-driven insights. For our purposes I want to pull out three important facts. Most of the “most-shared” content is: Emotional, Visual, and On topics of general interest: trending, health/fitness, cats/dogs, babies, longevity, and love. For content marketers who aspire to creating viral posts, this is generally bad news. A guy with a house cleaning service in Duluth is going to have a hard time hitting all of those targets. But all is not lost (and here’s the tweak I mentioned above): While you may not create truly viral content, the brainstorming tactics I’ll suggest for viral content inspiration will give you the power to make your content more shareable. In other words, you may not get a million hits, but maybe you can go from 10 shares to 75 shares on a given piece of content. A boost like that is no small thing, so let’s get down to the brainstorming tactics. Brainstorming tactic #1: Stay on top of trending topics Check Twitter each day to find trending topics. I’m writing this on a Wednesday and I see that #WednesdayWisdom is a trending Twitter hashtag. It may be too late to pull together something great for today, but there are plenty of Wednesdays coming up! I also see that there’s a new movie that’s trending. For example, an Entrepreneur article I wrote, What Small Business Can Learn from the Force of the Star Wars Marketing Blitz, received a good number of shares. Brainstorming tactic #2: Uncover viral content in your niche Don’t always be trying to reinvent the wheel. A wise king once said that “There is nothing new under the sun,” and he wrote that some 3,000 years ago. Virtually everything we create is at best a variation on something that has come before. The secret is to put enough of your own “secret sauce” on...
read moreThis week in small business: Power naps, superpowers, browser extensions, and more!
If you need a nap, you’ll find good justification for taking one every day in this week’s collection of curated content. Also, women entrepreneurs get a lot of coverage on both the challenges they face and the contributions they are making. Leadership, management, and productivity Because women-owned businesses tend to be small, JR Thorpe makes the case that they will be losers if net neutrality rules change. Do you know what “design thinking” is? Jessica Sweet explains the concept and how it can contribute to career success. I’m heartened by the fact that “get enough sleep” and “take a nap” are among Deep Patel’s 10 daily habits of the most productive leaders. In other good news: Jamie Mercer suggests you can increase your productivity by working fewer hours each day. (Testing these notions, starting now! Zzzzz…) If you’re productive enough, but could use an extra dose of happiness, then you need to check out Cathy Caprino’s five pieces of advice. Much is being written today about retail. Jennifer Schulties’ article suggests that department store woes may be tied to a sort of identity crisis. Marketing and sales With so many of us using the Google Chrome browser today, the five social media marketing extensions in Arachika Kapoor’s list are sure to get a lot of use. Don’t overlook the power of direct mail. In this interview with Advantage Travel Partnership’s Carolyn Hardy, Abra Dunsby describes its advantages. Ellie Roddy gives you 10 questions to ask yourself designed to find out if you’re doing social media right. With the increased adoption of ad blockers, the time is right for this article by Lewis Gersh: The 7 rules of respectful marketing. Bob McKay gives us six of the most effective social media metrics to understand your campaign’s success in his Forbes article. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Writing for the Financial Times, Andy Bounds chronicles how a surge in female entrepreneurs is narrowing the UK’s gender gap. No doubt the 20 “Wonder Woman Traits” described in this piece by Patti Fletcher are helping this women in the UK. (Hey, if you have superpowers, use ’em!) There’s no shortage of excellent articles on the topic of women entrepreneurs this week. I think you’ll also appreciate Gabrielle Healy’s Women In Tech On Funding, Harassment And Building A Business. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Francis J. Greene and Christian Hopp share research that shows how writing a business plan increases the likelihood of success for your startup. While Muhammad Siddiqui admits that there is no fixed formula for entrepreneurial success, he offers five tips that will serve founders in every industry...
read moreThis week in small business: All about funding!
We have some solid advice on small business funding this week and it tends to focus on the dangers of debt – both personal and from a small business loan. Be sure you read them before you sign on the dotted line or pull out your personal credit card. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Going into personal debt to fund your entrepreneurial vision is dangerous. But if you follow the five rules Jayson Demers describes here, you reduce the danger. Also check out the two important principles I offer in When is it okay to fund your startup with credit cards? And while we’re on the subject, Nathan Hamilton outlines one reason to avoid a small business loan in his Motley Fool article. Somehow I think a lot of women with good ideas are going to like this one: Five Tips For The Female Entrepreneur With No Cash To Spare, by Rachel Feldman. Elain Pofeldt tells the story of Michael Ward, a father whose life changed when his daughter was diagnosed with cancer. She’s doing well today and as he rebuilt his business after her health scare subsided, Ward discovered the potential of selling on Amazon. Leadership, management, and productivity In this edition of Laura Emily Dunn’s Women in business Q&A she talks to Patti Clark, Vice President of Product Development at Lakeshore Learning. Barbara Thau gives us five signs that stores – not e-commerce – are the future of retail. (Yes, you read that right.) Small business owners face a lot of challenges. Andrew DePietro profiles the top four in his Forbes article. Vigilance and readily available security tools can keep credit card fraud losses to a minimum, according to John Rampton. Marketing and sales Go for depth rather than breadth. That’s the first of the three ways your company can better engage Millennials via your marketing, says Daniel Rounds. UX isn’t something from Area 51. It stands for “user experience” and Sheila Kloefkorn explains its importance for SEO. There are right and wrong ways to win new customers and in this article, John Nemo discusses the “worst type of marketing.” Politics, government, and the economy When it was reported that the economy created 222,000 new jobs in June, Brookings Institution analyst Aaron Klein said the economy “has room to run.” Get Klein’s outlook in this article by Michael Sheetz. And maybe to get it running, leaders should read Anthony B. Kim and Patrick Tyrrell’s column on how to restore optimism and verve to the U.S....
read more