Eddie the Erroneous E-MarketerWritten by Jason OConnor
Poor Eddie e-marketer has been plagued by errors in judgment all his life. From always picking longest line at toll booth to buying lots of dot com stocks right before bubble burst, he constantly struggles with making right choices. From disagreeing that a car really needs oil changes every three thousand miles to insisting that eight-track is going to make a comeback, Eddie bumbles through life perplexed. One area that particularly suffers is his e-marketing efforts.You see, Eddie recently got himself a new website for his business. Unfortunately, he’s been trying in vain to turn it into a vehicle for getting leads and making sales. He’s confused. He’s dazed. He thrashes about lost in a maze. Although he at least understands importance of e-marketing for driving traffic to his site, he’s like a hamster running on a wheel, wasting energy and getting nowhere. Let’s take a look at a few of more typical e-marketing errors Eddie regularly makes. Treat Web as a different medium The other day his business partner, Betty, showed Eddie a recent half-page ad they ran in one of their industry’s magazines. Eddie, excited at how pretty pictures were, wanted it up on their website pronto. Did he alter it in any way before they posted it to site? Did he add a specific call to action hyperlink in it? Did he optimize large print graphics so they would download fast in people’s browsers? Nope. He just took ad, as is, and posted it. Eddie has never been able to grasp idea that traditional marketing and e-marketing, while related, are not same thing. What works in print doesn’t always work online. Why? Different mediums require different approaches. Look for Eddie’s static magazine ad in his first TV commercial, just motionless ad on screen for thirty seconds. Riveting. The Web is interactive. Site visitors can click buttons, fill out forms, or post immediate comments in forums or blogs. When Eddie was having his site built, he really just wanted to have a way to talk about his business. He wanted to tell world how great his company was and exciting history of its formation. This is called brochure-ware. It’s just taking a company brochure, posting it online and adding a few links. To say that Eddie is underutilizing Web is like saying ocean is mildly wet. The Web is extremely powerful and businesses have a choice of taking advantage of its power, or just scratching surface with simple brochure-ware. It’s similar to buying a tank, climbing in and lifting hatch only to shoot spit balls at enemy. If you have that kind of power, use it. Ask your customers what they want Since Eddie doesn’t really grasp interactive nature of Web he guesses what his potential customers want and need. One day in a meeting Eddie was scratching his head, staring up at ceiling and saying, “Gee, if there was only a way to figure out what our customers want, a way we could get in their heads, and a way to reach enough of them to get a really clear picture, hmm . . . ?” Thankfully, a timid but sharp junior associate raised her hand and suggested that they just ask their customers their opinions and needs directly, and do it online where they could ask a whole bunch of them. Eddie jumped at idea. Finally he was going make right choice, albeit aided by a junior associate, but right e-marketing choice nonetheless. They created an html form with forty of most important questions he could think of and posted a link on their homepage called “Customer Survey”. Offer incentives Only three people ever filled survey out, and that was it. Eddie was dumfounded. What went wrong? He was hoping for hundreds. The problem was that Web users are not patient and generally don’t like to fill out forms, especially long ones. Even more importantly, they don’t like to do something for nothing.
| | Four Marketing MustsWritten by Matt McGovern
One of your most important jobs as a solo professional or small business owner is to generate interest in and demand for your products or services. But if you're like many entrepreneurs, you discover finding time for marketing to be elusive. Much of what you could be doing remains undone--and without some form of marketing your business growth stalls.To help get you untracked, here are my four marketing "musts" for small business owners. Integrate these four fundamentals and you're sure to feel more confident going forward . . . and more able to plan a bigger "bang" for your time and efforts. 1. MAKE MARKETING YOUR MINDSET Make marketing a subconscious element of all that you do. This doesn't mean you should be in "hard sell" mode all time, but it does mean you need to develop a mindset where you view every interaction with someone--planned or otherwise--by phone, by email or in-person as a marketing opportunity. 2. MAKE YOUR MARKETING SUSTAINABLE For marketing to work, you need to be able to sustain your efforts over time. You might develop most effective plan, but if you can't implement that plan because it's too costly, too complicated, or you simply don't have time to commit to it, then your efforts will fail. Plan your marketing in phases. Start with low-hanging fruit. Get a couple of small victories under your belt. Note what worked, what didn't work, what felt most "right" for you . . . and keep moving forward. 3. MAKE IT ROUTINE Without structure or routine built around your marketing efforts, you're likely to lose focus and get distracted--something that's all too easy for solo professionals and self-employed to do. One easy way to add structure is to create an overall marketing plan that outlines for you exactly what you hope to accomplish and when. You can then supplement this with shorter-term, action-oriented "to-do" lists aimed at reaching your marketing goals.
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