Customer and Prospect Surveys
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What better way to get to know what your customer or prospect is thinking than to ask them? A good customer survey program can do just that. There are many side benefits of starting a customer survey program, too!
A customer survey may take any of several forms. Some companies, like Taco Bell, seems to always have a $1,000 drawing for those who respond to a 1 minute telephone survey. Other restaurants will ask you to complete a ’satisfaction card’ at the end of the meal where you can tell about the quality and/or service.
Why stop there? You can use surveys to glean information about your customer and their habits and tastes and you can provide them the opportunity to let you know their opinions and ideas about your business. No matter what they say, the fact that they complete the survey denotes an interest they have in your business. A good survey can help endear the customer to you and your business, if properly done.
There are many online tools to assist you in developing a good customer survey. From word processing templates from Microsoft and others to complete online survey tools, like Survey Monkey, there is plenty of help available.
No matter how you do your survey, pl;ease consider two important things. Do not overdo the surveying of your customers – don’t be a pest. Once a quarter or so should be sufficient and not overbearing. Secondly, you should always try to capture the customer’s email address each time you contact them for a survey. As you know, your small business email marketing program will provide the basis of a great marketing program in the future.
For more information on doing great customer surveys, please get your copyof “Powerful Small Business Internet Strategies” today.
Business Metrics Explained
No aircraft pilot would be able to fly his/her plane for very long without observing the airspeed, heading, wind speed, fuel consumption, and horizon indicators on the dashboard of the plane. While there are many, many more things that go into keeping an aircraft in the air, these few “Critical Performance Measures” are critical to a successful flight.
Likewise, in operating your small business, you also need to constantly monitor the Critical Performance Measures of your business. Each and every business has them and there is not a standard set of metrics that applies to all businesses. Just as every small business is different from the other, so are the metrics! As you create and implement your small business Internet Marketing Plan, be sure to capture the metrics that are important to your business!
This is why chain and franchise companies have been so incredibly successful. They have developed a set of measurement tools and metrics with which to successfully operate that particular business. They know, for example, what the cost of each cup, ice and soda is and whenever those costs get out of line, they know where to look for a solution to the problem. In most cases, these companies have refined their metrics so well that their success is ensured!
You can do the same in your small business. If you depend on prospects calling in to your business, for example, you can measure the number of calls and the relationship of that number to the marketing and advertising expense that you pay to attract those calls. From there, you might measure the number of appointments that your phone people are able to make per 100 calls and how much you expend on training the operators on closing skills. The more closely you can measure these kind of things that are critical to you business, the more success you will enjoy!
For more information on business metrics, be sure to get your copy of “Powerful Small Business Internet Strategies” today!
Double Opt-In Process Avoids SPAMming
When you first take your local business onto the Internet, you will likely be interested in purchasing various email lead lists from which to do some local marketing. Beware of doing this as you can quickly get your company into serious trouble ont he Internet if you do not adhere to the CAN SPAM rules and regulations.
You don’t ever want to be accused of sending out unsolicited emails to the general public! That sounds harsh and there is a great temptation to use purchased lists to get your message in front of as many people as possible. It sounds like purchasing a traditional mail list from which you send mailers to people of a certain area or demographic class.
The only such lists that you should consider are what is called a “Double Opt-In” list. This meals that the person at that email address has voluntarily allowed their email address to be used by the vendor and that they have verified that request by their affirmative action. This usually means that the person have provided their email address in exchange for some entry or information and then the company has sent them a verification to which they have responded.
It is not easy to build a double opt-in email list and therefore, such lists are usually treasured by their owner and are not casually sold or rented. Your best bet is to build your own list of targeted prospects and customers using a double opt-in process. It is not necessarily expensive to accomplish this, but it will likely take some time to build it.
Once you have constructed your list, you can them freely send your marketing messages, newsletters, special events, coupons, etc to your various lists whenever you deem it good and your prospects and customers will likely come to love it – and be more closely endeared to your business.
For more information on building your own double opt-in prospect an dcustomer lists, be sure to get your copy of “Powerful Small Business Internet Strategies”.
Beware of Bright Shiny Objects!
As you begin to work on expanding the marketing plan for your small business to include the Internet, you will naturally appear on the radar of many aggressive Internet marketers. Most of them have a product or service to sell and some are very good at selling them! Until you become familair with the many avenues and strategies of Internet Marketing, you should probably treat most of these offers that you receive as “Bright, Shiny Objects”.
While many of these products and services are really quite good and some may, if fact, be helpful to your business, you must first become acquainted with the basics of Internet marketing and then you will have an understanding from which to make the decision to purchase such a product. Many of these information products and services will appear so important to your business that you simply have to have them! The people marketing them are very, very good at making their products appear so critical that you cannot do without them. Don’t be fooled.
Almost evey one of such product offers include a time or quantity limited offer like “Buy by midnight tonight” or “Only 120 of these left”. Don’t be fooled.
Remember that salespeople are the easiest people to sell! You are likely a “salesperson” if you run a small business.
You should only purchase a product or service when you have a good grasp of the subject matter being discussed, consider the seller a “respected source”, and have waited at least 48 hours before making your purchase.
Personally, I keep a little file folder entitled “Bright Shiny Objects” into which I insert the sales page of any item gaining my attention. When I get around the needing that type of product, I go back to my folder and, if the product remains important to me and it is still in the market, I can usually buy it cheaper! I have wasted many thousands of dollars on products that have distracted me from my plans. These have been terrible for my business!
Please be wary of Bright, Shiny Objects and keep them in your rear-view mirror!
Basic Keyword Research Is Crucial
A dedicated and complete effort at keyword research is a critical component that must be included in the internet marketing plan for your small business. No matter whether you plan to use Search Engine Optimization,Pay-Per-Click, Local Search, or simply want your company to rise in search engine rankings, you must be using the appropriate keywords to be successful.
Everybody seems to assume that they know the best keyword for their specific niche. While that may be true, what they fail to understand is the competition that they are likely to face online using the broad word or phrase that they select. That’s right, on the internet, a “keyword” is a word, a group of words, or a phrase that describes an item, industry, hobby, business, or whatever. For example, under the “Business” category, you will also find “Small Business Internet Marketing Plan”, which is a five word phrase that describes a very specific part of the category. That is a keyword.
Most single word keywords will have loads of sites and pages on the Internet which will be competing with you for the attention of your target market. You can quickly see how broad that competition is by doing a Google search on the keyword and then checking out how many “results” are at the top of the page. For, example, when searching on the keyword “business”, we get 1,600,000,000 places on the Internet where the term is used. Surely, you will agree, that it will be very difficult to get anyone’s attention when your entre’ on the Internet is one of a billion, six hundred million!
When searching on “small business Internet marketing plan”, however, there are only a mere 28,100,000 results. While that still seems like this is still a big universe (and it is), this keyword is far more likely to provide a market in which, as an individual, I can gain some recognition and presence. You can certainly get “ranked” on the search engine using either keyword. All submissions get ranked. Under the “business” keyword, an article or video or blog or website might appear several thousand pages deep in the search results. Chances are, nobody will ever see it. By using a coordinated effort, though, my site or blog or article can appear in the top ten search results for “small business Internet Marketing Plan”
There are many very good tools available on the Internet with which to research keywords. Most are free and some can be pretty expensive. When you are just starting out and trying to research your first keywords, you would be smart to use the Keyword Tool provided free of charge by Google. Simply search Google on the term “Keyword Tool” and the first result showing will be their free keyword tool. Using this neat tool, you can enter a keyword (word or phrase) and Google will return to you the monthly volume of searches based on that keyword as well as an indicator of how competitive the word is. It will also provide many, many derivatives and permutations of you word or phrase and their relative results. This is a virtual wealth of information for you!
You can easily provide for a way to research these words by downloading the results list to a comma separated value or CSV file that you can then open in Excel. Pick certain words or phrases that particularly fit your target niche or sub-niche and perform your own Google searches on those words to glean more about your competition.
To kick off any sort of venture on the Internet without thoroughly doing your keyword research in advance, will surely meet with frustration and a waste of your time, money and energy. Good keyword research need not take an tremendous amount of time, but it will greatly enhance the success of your small business Internet marketing plan.
Getting Started on Your Internet Marketing Plan
If you are just now developing your small business Internet marketing plan, there are a few things that you should do to gain some rudimentary experience and understanding of the Internet market.
Are you looking for an easy starting point at which to begin your quest to take your small business onto the Internet? Weel, this article will provide an easy point at which you are likely familiar, at which to kick things off!
Almost everybody can perform a simple search on Google, Yahoo or Bing. It has pretty much become a standard tool that we use to find information on any kind of topic. So, this is is a good starting point.
Go to Google and enter a term describing the industry in which your business functions. When you get the results page, take a close look at the top of the search results to see how many search results there are for your term. The more results, the bigger your industry is and if there are only a few thousand results, yours is not really a very competitive niche. After you do this a few times, you will see that, the more narrowly you can define your business, the fewer the search results.
If you are in the furniture business, for example, and you simply search on “furniture”, you will see more than 190 million results. However, when searching on “baby furniture”, only about 40 million results are found. If your business were to specialize in baby crib mattresses and you searched on that term, you will find only about 1 million results! You can see how quickly we were able to “zero in” on a specific sub-niche. That is what you will have to do in order to compete favorably on the Internet. Compete in several smaller, specific sub-niches.
Your Internet marketing plan, then must define the areas in which you will compete online and must develop a strategy for attracting customers and winning business in each of your specialty sub-niches. This is really pretty simple and need not be overwhelming at all.
Another interesting thing that you can gain from this exercise is a pretty good feel for how competitive a market exists for your company’s products and services in the online world. As you look at the search results that appear on your various searches, be sure to observe the number of “Pay-Per-Click” ads that appear on the rightmost column of the search results page. These little 4 line text ads were placed there by companies in your niche who are advertising for online business using the Pay-Per-Click advertising program provided by the search engine company (Google, Yahoo, or Bing, for example). In such a program, you too can have your ad appear whenever a specific term, or “Keyword” is searched upon. Whenever a person clicks on that ad, two things happen. The site visitor is sent directly to your website and you are charged a small fee (usually 25 cents to 1 dollar). The advertiser pays nothing unless their ad is clicked upon.
While this may be an interesting marketing approach for you, keep that in your mind for later use when you are more familiar with the process. (If you embark on this too early and without sufficient background, it can be very expensive and ineffective.) For now, simply note how many ads appear on the right column for each of your searches. If there are only one or two ads on the right column, an online market for that niche has not yet matured on the Internet, but if there are hundreds of advertisers, you can bet that lots of people are making money using this approach in your market. It will simply give you a little more knowledge about aspects your market with which you may not have been familiar.
Like all areas of market research, take good notes of what you find in your searches. You can certainly gain tremendous knowledge about your market that will help you once you develop your Internet marketing plan.
Basic Business Plan
It has been said that “He who fails to plan is planning to fail!”
When considering the basics of a business plan, in this day and age you simply MUST INCLUDE you online marketing strategy as a critical component. Many small businessmen seem to think that “the Internet is only for the big guys” or “the Internet won’t work for local companies like mine”. Such thinking is to bury your head in the sand.
If you fail to embrace an effective web presence and program for your business, you will likely go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers of the 1900’s. You simply HAVE TO give your business a nice presence on the Internet and you must find ways to use the power of the World Wide Web to attract new customers to your business.
Your basic business plan need not be real formal or presented in a very fancy way. Most business plans are seldom, if ever, seen outside the walls of your business. Instead, they become an ‘operational worksheet’ that everybody in the business can focus upon to carry out the plan to fruition.
Traditionally, business plans consisted of the “4 P’s” that were originally published in the Harvard Business Review back in the 1960’s. Those are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion and they remain the foundation of most business plans in existence today. Many people have promoted variations of this idea, but they still apply very well to most small business enterprises.
Now, however, the basics of a business plan for your business must take things one step farther. In your consideration of the 4 P’s, you must examine them with the Internet in mind. Your Product definition might need to include some ideas that incorporate using the Web for distribution, feedback, or support. Your Pricing may be impacted by your use of the Internet, also.
The most critical ways that your usage of the power of the Internet are in the areas of Place and Promotion. By developing an Internet strategy, you might find ways to expand your marketPlace exponentially, extending your little company’s reach far out of your local area. Alternatively, you will surely be able to improve your local presence by using techniques that will deepen your penetration in your local market.
In the area of Promotion, you can likely find many, many ways to use your Internet presence and thus use this very inexpensive media to get the word out about your business. If you are not operating an effective email program for your customers and prospects, you can bet that your competitor is! Your promotional strategy should include some local, regional and national advertising for your business as well as a customer newsletter or blog to help keep your image high on the mind of your customer audience.
Examine the basic business plan of your business and view it to ensure that you are utilizing the amazing power of the Internet to grow and prosper your business. For more information on creating a working business plan for your small business, be sure to pick up a copy of the new ebook entitled “Powerful Small Business Internet Strategies” You can have it in a few minutes by clicking here.
Easy Email Marketing
Almost everybody uses email today, for one reason or another. We all hate to get unsolicited emails form unknown people or businesses, but don’t mind getting them from respected sources. This is especially true when they contain information of perceived value to us.
To do effective email marketing campaigns, you will need to first get your prospect or customer’s ‘permission’ to send them email. We do this by encouraging them to sign up for our newsletter, ‘tips & techniques’, or mini-course in which they will get something of value for just giving up their email address. When encouraging them to sign up, you want to be sure to let them know that you will not sell, trade, exchange or lease their personal email address to anybody. (Then make sure you live up to that promise).
Autoresponder
Those signing up for your list will also want to know that they can easily unsubscribe from your list at any time they wish and that there is no obligation to signing up. The best way to accomplish all of these things and more is to use a third party Autoresponder service. Among the best of these services is from AWeber.com. We have used their services, without a glitch, for more than 7 years. Their service only costs about $20 per month, but it is really a bargain!
Among the things that a good autoresponder service does is to force the situation that your email list is a ‘double opt-in’ list. This means that, after the person gives you their email address, they will get a verification email from Aweber to verify their information. Emails sent to ‘double opt-in’ lists historically get through >95% of the time, while single op-tin emails have less than a 70% rate of open.
7 Message Marketing
Statistics have shown that, on average, people don’t purchase anything until they have seen 7 marketing messages or company mentions. In this day of 300 cable channels and a flurry of buzz always in the air, it just takes a few exposures before people will make a commitment.
Within the Autoresponder system, you can setup a series of marketing messages that you want each new person signing up to get in a specific order and at a pre-determined interval. For example, your marketing message #1 will normally get sent as soon as the person signs up to your list. Your next message, #2, may be sent to them 2 days later. #3, then might go out 3 days after that.
In such a way, you can provide a steady stream of hopefully valuable and useful information on your topic. Don’t send and email just to be sending something – that could irritate your prospect. Make sure that you always provide valuable information about the topic of mutual interest – along with a ‘call to action’ of some sort. In other words, ask them to take some sort of action; whether it’s answering a survey, clipping a coupon, visiting your business, etc.
Till They Buy or Die
Using a tool such as an Autoresponder, you can set up a continual stream of your marketing communications and you can even do unplanned broadcasts to your list of special events or sales, etc., as they occur. As long as those on your list appreciate the value of the information that you provide them, they will not unsubscribe and you can continue to market to them until the “Buy or Die”!
Once you get this whole email marketing campaign working and prospects turn into customers, you can automatically move them to a ‘customer email list’ to send them a whole different set of marketing messages to inform them about your products and services, upcoming events, sales, etc, etc, etc.
Just having your business name constantly “Dripped’ on their head will tend to endear them to your business and will make them a much better customer!
For more specific information about setting up a cost effective email campaign in your business, be sure to get a copy of “Powerful Small Business Internet Strategies“!
Understanding Google Search
Before you can really understand how to effectively use the power of the Internet to attract new customers to your business, it would pay for you to have a basic understanding of just how the Google search engine really works.
Google’s Index Database
At the foundation of Google, is a massive database that contains an index of all sorts of terms known to man, where those terms are used on the internet, how frequently they are used and which sites draw the most visitors looking for information on those terms. This databse is constructed through Google’s use of “Spider” programs which chrun around the Internet at all hours, 24/7, following links and recording information about each page they find and the content of each page. This index is rolled up into a concise directory of terms.
A Google Search
Whenever a person on the Internet exercises a Google search for information on a specific topic, Google’s search engine looks into it’s database to locate the most relevant and authoritative information on that term. Then the results are sorted into order by relevance and then those results are presented to the person searching. These results are called ‘organic’ results as they are determined by a relevance formula that has been proven quite effective. (This is what distinguishes Google vs Yahoo vs Bing, etc).
Google Adwords
At the same time and on the same page as Google presents it ‘organic’ search results (down the middle of the page), it also displays 4 line textual advertisements that are keyword directed on the topic searched. They are displayed down the right-hand column of the page. In the event that one of these ads appeals to the person searching and they click on it, they are take to the website of a vendor who placed the ad. At that point, the vendor would normally pay Google a “Cost-Per-Click” fee of 25 cents to $1 to send the visitor to their website.
How You Can Use Google
You can get listed on Google’s Search Results page for a specific topic, term or keyword in a couple of ways. Cheapest, but most difficult to achieve, is to provide the most relevant information about the topic in as many places on the Internet as possible with lots of other sites that link to it. This can be done, depending on the popularity of the term or topic and through an effective publication strategy – over time.
Alternatively, you can easily create a keyword targeted Google Adwords ad and pay Google a small fee whenever they send a visitor to your website. A word of caution here: These small fees ad up quickly, so target your ads very specifically and locally and be sure to have an effective way of getting the visitor to take your desired action once they get to your site. Adwords campaigns can be very effective, if used properly.
For more information on Google Search and other marketing topics, pick up your copy of “Powerful Small Business Internet Strategies“ today!
Identifying Your Ideal Customer
Do you have some customers that you simply can never please? Sure, we all do! Of course, offsetting those few people are the many customers who are pleased with your products and services, continually come back for more – and tell their friends about your business.
Something for Nothing
Every business has those customers who always want everything ‘on the cheap’. You probably can identify with that, eh? There are those who seem to squeeze every nickel and are always squeezing you to give them more while they pay less. And, no matter what you do to accommodate them, they never quite seem to be pleased – much less tell others about how great your business is. What would you business be like if these were the only customers that you had to depend upon?
Thrilled and Enthusiastic
Thankfully, there are the other kind of customers. You know, the ones who are happy with your products and services as well as the value they receive at your business. Sometimes, even when you fail to serve them properly, these customers will remain smiling and loyal – no matter what. They never seem to quibble about the cost of the products and services and, while they expect a good level of service and support, they rarely are very demanding. These customers seem to be your best salespeople, too! They will ‘tell the world’ about their experience with your business and, coming from them, such references are really worth something special.
Which do You Want?
If you could have a steady stream of one of these customer type of another, it would be pretty easy to choose, wouldn’t it? The good news is that YOU CAN!!! If you can identify the characteristics of your “Ideal Customer”, as well as their specific demographic profile, there are many ways to target your marketing to attract more and more of your “Ideal Customers”! If you can accomplish the goal of attracting these type of prospects to your business, it will become easier and easier to grow your business and to maintain good gross margins.
Methods of Identifying Ideal Customers
Sure, you can sit down and make a list of your best existing customers and then try to determine what their ’story’ is. Where do they live, what is their occupation, age, gender, marital status, education level, etc. What value house do they own and what car to they drive. All of these elements will help you to zero in on your perfect customer profile.
Another way to learn about your Ideal Customer is to simply ask them. Just make a list of them, design a survey to have them fill out and send it out. They will tend to tell you more about themselves than you might imagine. You don’t know who they are? You don’t know their address? Shame on you! These people represent the lifeblood of your business. In a retail establishment, like a restaurant, you may have to do a little homework through credit card receipts and then Internet searches, but you can make a list of these critical folks. However you do it, begin a project now to identify the best of the best.
Target Marketing to the Ideal Customers
You have completed the most difficult part of this project: Identifying your Ideal Customer. With that profile in mind, you can set about on the Internet to locate and attract more people that match your profile and then educate them about your business. While this will require a little creativity, it is very achievable. Choose locally targeted Internet keywords to use in advertising specifically to your I C’s (Ideal Customers).
For example, if you found that your typical IC is a tennis playing 45-50 year old female who drives a Mercedes, why not craft a small local ad (text or graphic) on Google that will only be placed in front of people matching these criteria. Sure, if they click on your ad, it may cost you 10 cents to 25 cents, but you will only be paying for people of that certain profile who are responsive to your ad. What could be more cost effective? You may entice them into your business with some sort of special product or service or, depending on your business, you might provide them with a ‘white paper’ concerning something interesting to your specialty.
There are many other ways to locate and to market to your Ideal Customer. These are expanded upon in our new book, “Powerful Small Business Internet Strategies“. You will certainly enjoy the roadmap provided therein to target market to your Ideal Customer.
A little bit of homework in this area will pay off in Revenues and Margins for your business!
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