How well does your local business leverage what customers are saying about it? If it was fairly easy and inexpensive, would you take the time to uncover and leverage these gems?
While you may already encourage word-of-mouth referrals and testimonials, what if your customer’s experience was only a click away, or easy enough to make so?
What I am referring to are the millions of customer reviews for local businesses already on the Internet, and how they can impact your business results. Let us take a look at recent survey results showing how prospective customers regard the experiences customers write about local businesses.
While most U.S. small businesses still depend on word-of-mouth referrals as a way for new shoppers to find them, whether or not you like it, the Internet is close behind, according to a survey by American Express OPEN.
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One of the worst strategic mistakes any large or small business can make is focusing on the wrong target. Most CEOs and business owners know they should focus on serving their customers, but that does not mean it always happens, despite being a most effective marketing strategy.
How to Respond to Competition
When a successful new competitor seemingly arises out of nowhere, the trounced executives naturally feel their confidence wane, causing fear or panic at some level to take hold. What happens next is important because this is where the mistakes begin.
- Do its executives start dissecting the competitor, its successes, strategies and tactics?
- Does the company establish new strategies, goals and actions focused on matching or exceeding their competitor’s gains?
- Or, does the company renew its focus on serving its customers? (Best!)
Yahoo is a tired example of a business that lost their vision and focus, and now they are struggling to sell or revamp businesses that Google vanquished. The Board of Directors at Yahoo has also failed, and is now disassembling.
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Many marketers dream about creating buzz during a launch of their new product, service or business. Businesses that experience strong buzz often receive outsized results, amplifying their budget and revenues.
The hope is that a creative message matched with complementary media can propel an exciting, fresh, fun or celebrity-associated promotion into a winner. If successful, it might rapidly spread through word-of-mouth or, when using digital media, instantaneously ripple into social chatter on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Who wouldn’t desire such effective marketing?
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I spotted two postcards under the windshield washer blades on the passenger side, just as my husband Mark and I jumped inside our car. We were hungry and wanted a tasty meal.
Reaching outside and grabbing the postcards, I quickly scanned them to see if worth keeping. One postcard was advertising a Mexican restaurant, a favorite cuisine of mine. I opened my lips, ready to suggest my great new dining idea, but quickly stopped.
This postcard got 95% of its marketing right, but ultimately failed.
Can you guess their mistake? What would make it a more effective marketing tool?
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If looking for ways to boost online lead generation for your small business, consider where the innovators are heading. A recent survey, reveals how some businesses are realizing 61% lower cost per lead by targeting inbound marketing channels. Responses from these leading small businesses recount their Internet marketing strategies and techniques that bring new customers.
According to the Hubspot survey report*:
“Traditional outbound marketing techniques – including direct mail, print advertising and telemarketing – are becoming less effective. Buyers are not only finding ways to tune these messages out, but more importantly, they now have the capability to evaluate the products and services they need on their own.
As a result, businesses are transforming their marketing efforts to focus more on inbound programs that allow customers to find them.” . . .
“Given the digital nature of inbound marketing, the marginal cost per customer acquisition is typically close to zero, meaning that as buyers continue to shift how they make purchases, the cost per lead for a given business will continue to decrease.”
The average cost of $346 per lead was reported by companies spending 50% or more on outbound marketing channels, as compared to $135 per lead by businesses using predominately inbound marketing channels. Company blogs, other social media, and organic search (search engine optimization) are the inbound marketing channels yielding this efficiency. [Continue reading…]
Many entrepreneurs wonder whether to keep a new idea a secret, as they develop a new business or product, and begin discovering effective marketing strategies for it. The number one reason that small businesses fail is not because of a lack of good ideas, it is because they run out of capital before delivering a product or service that customers crave. To forage a more direct path, focus on your market and learn what and why customers will buy.
While starting one of my businesses, a fundamental error was keeping the product a secret, so it would not be mimicked by competitors. Too much time was spent perfecting the product and its options that were suppose to attract more customers. Our efforts were spread thin while not understanding the salient features and core design that turns customers into fans. The outcome was lost time and bloated expenses.
According to Chris Dixon, entrepreneur and investor:
A frequent question entrepreneurs have when they are just starting their company is: how secretive should I be about my idea? My answer: you should talk about it to almost anyone who will listen. This includes investors, entrepreneurs, people who work in similar areas, friends, people on the street, the bartender, etc.
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How do visitors to your website react to its design and content? If you knew what visitors think about your website, would it change your approach to local business marketing? Discover insights into these important issues that may alter your Internet marketing strategies and techniques.
A recent survey queried consumers about their experiences with local business websites. It sought answers from 1,790 local consumers, of both genders, and yielded 1,212 responses from a mixture of ages and locations in the United States.
The interesting two questions, to me, were what factors might encourage or discourage visitors from contacting a local business while visiting its website. In marketing parlance, it impacts ‘conversion’ of suspects into prospects, and hopefully into customers. Let’s take a closer look at these two survey results for converting local consumers (published January, 2012).
How to Encourage Visitors to Contact a Local Business
Which of the following is most likely to encourage you to contact and use a local business?
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Many small business and local business owners are not sure how to raise their online visibility, and which Internet marketing strategies and techniques work best. Experts brag about a plethora of successful methods, ranging from small business SEO service, social media marketing, advertising, blogging and more – but, which ones are really effective?
A good approach is to first determine the current stage of exposure your business receives, and then follow proven strategies and techniques that will raise it to the next level.
This series of posts will describe the three stages, and show which Internet marketing strategies and techniques work at each stage:
- Getting started
- Broadening your presence and visibility, and
- Dominating your niche.
A post will be dedicated to each one; this one kicks it off by outlining the first stage.
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How can small businesses attract customers with new products or services that customers love? A taxi drive in Chicago that seems to have stumbled upon a winning approach.
According to a technology blog, Ars Technica:
“Honestly, I never looked at it as marketing nor I had that in mind when I started @ChicagoCabbie account,” Temuri told Ars. “I started Twitter thinking I’ll talk to people about taxi industry of Chicago. I feel there is a gap between taxi drivers and customers and there are lots of misunderstandings. They both are in such a defensive mode. They both feel like they have to protect themselves from the other and it’s just so wrong. I joined Twitter to eliminate the gap between a taxi customer and taxi driver.”
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With 2 billions Internet users, and an incredible 5 billion mobile devices world wide, small business mobile marketing programs will be profitable, the only questions are when and how. Should your small business be an early adopter, or push the pause button? The answer largely depends on your business, audience and goals.
Sizing the Mobile Opportunity
In the U.S., one out of three mobile searches have local intent, and mobile searches have been growing at 400% over the last year, according to Google. Restaurants receive the highest number of mobile searches, almost 30% of queries are from mobile devices. Other industries, like insurance and finance, personal and beauty, consumer electronics and automobile, receive about 15% of queries from mobile users.
How does this compare to the traffic your website attracts? It is easy to discover how many mobile visitors your business receives, the answers are in your Google Analytics or webmaster tool accounts. (If not already set up, both are free services that reports website data, or contact a small business SEO services company.)
According to The Kelsey Group, Google User Behavior Study 2010:
After looking up a local business on their smart phone,
61% of users called the business and 59% visited.
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