Survey says Online Marketing is Key to Success

Written by Resources for Entrepreneurs Staff – www.gaebler.com

Published: 11/18/2009

SMBs plan to increase use of internet marketing in 2010.

It may not come as surprising news for small business owners that most entrepreneurs report internet marketing will dominate future sales campaigns. A new survey from Vertical Response reveals that 74.1 percent of SMB owners plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2010.

The low-cost social media and online marketing is proving its worth to small businesses in these economic times as 96.2 percent of respondents say they will be using internet marketing in 2010. SMBs will increasingly rely on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing next year as 86.2 percent will continue to use or implement search engine marketing.

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Job Vacancy: Marketing & Communications Executive

The London Internet Exchange (LINX) is a mutually owned membership association for operators of Internet Protocol networks. It provides a neutral interconnection facility and peering platform, known as an Internet Exchange Point (IXP), and represent the interests of its members on matters of public policy.

LINX currently has a vacancy for a Marketing & Communications Executive. This position offers the opportunity to work at the heart of the Internet Industry in a dynamic team-motivated environment. LINX can offer you – in addition to an attractive remuneration package with benefits that include private health cover – life insurance, pension and income protection.

For more information please visit: https://www.linx.net/job/markcom.html

Please note: No agencies! Unsolicited emails or phone calls are not welcome.

Businesses that blog get 55% more visitors

From FurlongPR

Based on a survey in August of 1500 businesses by Hubspot, those that blogged had 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages.

Most businesses accept, even if they don’t anticipate these sort of figures, that a blog will revolutionise their static corporate website, but trying to get momentum for that internally can be a trying business. Who’s going to write it, what will it look like, who’s going to build it.

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Price Testing and the Entrepreneur Channel

While skipping through some TV channels yesterday I put on the Entrprenneur Channel (Sky 682). At the moment I tuned in they were advertising a DVD product of a live event called Millionaire Marketing. One particular concept is worth repeating and that of price testing. You may think cheaper will get more sales but it aint necessarily so. People attach value to price and there was a fantastic, if extreme example, of how this works.

If you needed brain surgery would you go to someone who offered a $99 weekend special or the expert who charged $25,000?

Personally, I’d have more confidence in the latter!

What to name your Facebook Business Fan Page

by Mark Ijlal

Malik asked a question about naming Facebook Business Pages:

1. Name it after your business. For a local business and especially a location based business like a restaurant / attorney / CPA / retail stores – this is more than adequate after all their name is what is known and how people find them. Yeah I know it is the old Yellow Pages approach but for millions of businesses who you and I both know will use a Facebook Business Fan Page as a business card to put their name, address, phone number, 4 pictures, products or service information, some half hearted coupons and update it once a month – this is more than enough. Maisano’s Italian Restaurant, Aaron’s Auto Repair Shop, Attorney Scott Yaldo and Great Lakes Real Estate Property Managers all will work for their respective businesses.
2. Name it after your website. For Threadless, Zappos, Salesforce and millions of businesses that run entirely on the web and that is where their customers are found – the name of the LLC that owns the business is unimportant; there is no physical location where customers are walking in; the only name that is known to their customers and prospects is their website. So name it after your website that makes the sale.
3. Name it after your brand. Starbucks. Nike. Detroit Pistons. A hit HBO show like True Blood. People know and love your brand. Why not erect a Fan page where they can all hang out and share their love of your brand with each other? Brands know it and they are busy doing it.
4. For firms that sell the invisible: services, advice, consulting, coaching, PR, B2B with long sales cycles: Name it,  so it means SOMETHING to the people who matter the most: your past, present and future customers. And yes that means that you will be active in building this Fan Page as your hub for your business on Facebook.

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Article source: http://bx.businessweek.com

Turn Web Traffic Into Foot Traffic

By Justin Kitch

A solid web presence is essential–even for the smallest brick-and-mortar businesses.

“Call, click or visit” has been a common call to action in small-business advertising for most of the past decade. The underlying assumption, of course, is that a small business has a telephone number, a place of business open to the public and a website. While a phone is probably a given, a brick-and-mortar store may or may not exist. And odds are that a small business does not have a website.

For years I’ve quoted an old survey that said 60 percent of small business don’t have a website. But lately I began wondering if that number was still accurate. I was shocked to see that it has held steady through the first decade of this century. An April 2009 survey by The Discover Small Business Watch found that only 38 percent of small businesses with five or fewer employees even have a website. A full 62 percent remain “non adopters.” And that number has decreased only three percent since 2007, when 65 percent of small businesses were not on the web.

It continues to baffle me why any small business wouldn’t use the internet as an essential sales, marketing and customer relations tool. Establishing and maintaining a web presence is incredibly cheap and easy these days. And web advertising is much more powerful than most traditional print or broadcast advertising in that it enables the business owner to engage customers in a two-way conversation and gain valuable feedback on their products and services.

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Article source: www.entrepreneur.com

Promoting your business for free

If you or your organisation has something to say getting your message across is very important but in financially difficult times many are taking the decision that the cost of distributing that message is too great. This is understandable if you stick only to traditional methods of promotion such as PR agencies but more and more ways of promoting a business are available now than ever before for little or no cost.

20 years in design, marketing and PR and finally getting certified

This Friday represents the 20th anniversary since I became a graphic designer or to be more precise, a Desktop Publishing Operator. Back in those days it was fairly low-level stuff where most of my work was done using drawing boards and camera ready artwork using spray mount and overlays and only sporadic use of a Mac Plus computer. It is still amazes me how we ever got anything done back then. We even needed the printers to send out someone out to collect the artwork – none of this uploading and downloading and the web? That was just a spot in the corner of the office that none of the cleaners could reach.

Just to give you a bit of background, in the summer of 1989 I was in a menial office job counting travellers’ cheques for Thomas Cook. Basically I had to make sure that the cheques returned from branches around the UK matched in value to that listed on the branch remittance. Not exactly challenging unless you were working in Japanese Yen with multiple noughts but an OK job for a while. It wasn’t what I set out to do but that’s where I’d ended up.

To tweet or not to tweet?

From Marketing Week

By Simon Clift

Last week Brits crashed Twitter in their effort to defend the NHS from US critics, but is that power really of any use to brands?

Last week, I heard all the reports that the microblogging service, Twitter, shut down because so many people were “tweeting” their support of the NHS after former USA vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin called it “evil”.  This was on top of countless other stories that have been reported over the last few months showing the impact of twitter.

But I was still sceptical about its real value. So I called in my vice president of communications planning, Babs Rangaiah who seems unhealthily obsessed by it and my head of global media, Laura Klauberg who sees some of the benefits, but is also not sold on its practical daily application.  Is it the “real deal”, why is it important and how should we be using it…so here’s the transcript of those conversations! On Twitter, obviously.

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Marketing, Social Media Increasingly Important For Business Development

Written by Resources for Entrepreneurs Staff

A recent survey from The Creative Group found that marketing and advertising departments have greater influence over business decisions than they did three years ago.

It may be due to the heightened need to acquire new clients and retain existing ones, or perhaps it is because of the attention garnered by the social media revolution, but marketing has become an increasingly important aspect of business development in recent years, according to a study from The Creative Group.

The national study found that 61 percent of marketing and advertising executives believe marketing teams now have a greater influence over business decisions than they did three years ago – 18 percent believe the influence has increased significantly, and 43 percent believe it increased somewhat.

Read full story: www.gaebler.com