First, get your website up to date and in good marketing order!   Most people pay less than $100 per months for their website, most of our clients pay less than $25!  Maybe the low price lessens the value so businesses put up a website and then ignore it.  There is NO BETTER, MORE COST EFFECTIVE marketing tool!! 

1. Look at your website design.  At first glance, does it look like your business?  Is it easily recognized as a part of your bsuiness?  If not, fix it.  You have 7 seconds to catch a visitor’s interest before they surf away.  Be sure they know that they are at the right place.
2. Is the content up to date?  Be sure there are no leftover sales or announcements that are out of date.  Fresh content helps attract search engines and visitors.
3. Do you have new features that attract attention – a blog, a video clip from YouTube, an audio clip informing visitors of your business, a picture of yourself, your store or office?   Something that makes a connection.
4. Has your site been optimized for search engines?  If it hasn’t been done in the last 6-12 months, the answer is “no” by today’s search engine strategies.
5. Do you have a “Call to Action” on at least the home page?  Do you offer a free report, free quote, newsletter or any other offer to entice your visitor to give up one of their most valuable possessions; their email address? 

These are quick ways to see if your website is working hard for you. 

Consider this: Take 10 minutes tomorrow morning and give your website the “once over.”  If you need help in getting your site in “Guerrilla” shape, give us a call.

When putting on any kind of event, planning for the number that might attend is the most nerve racking – would we have enough food, or too much; would we have enough beer (is there ever too much beer?) would we have enough door prizes or would the staff be getting early Christmas presents?  All these things ran through our minds on Monday and Tuesday when only a handful of people had responded to our mailed postcard.

Then, David sent out an audio postcard, our first try with this marketing tool and the RSVPs flew in!  Even those people who had responded before felt compelled to respond!  What a great marketing tool!  We plan to use it again and to offer it to our clients.  We can easily record messages here in out video studio and then send them out to our client’s mailing list.

Our next experiment will be with a video postcard.  David will be our first client in the new Video Studio and we’ll let you know how it works out!

Consider this:Do something unexpected in your marketing and see if you get unexpected results.  We did and we were happily surprised!

What’s made it easier is that I think of the blog as an email being written rather than a formal article to be published.  When I recommend to my clients that they blog, I suggest that they make it casual and friendly rather than strictly business.  The popularity of blogging, in part, comes from their ability to interact with the business by giving it more approachability.

I recently watch a seminar on Hubspot about Blogging For Business.  To access this webinar yourself, you simply have to log into to http://www.hubspot.com/internet-marketing-webinars-download and you’re able to download the entire hour long presentation.  These folks even have a blog monitoring program in their tools that they offer.  We’re clients of Hubspot ourselves to monitor our search engine standings, etc.

I’ll let you know how we are doing as we see the reports come through and what changes we are making for improvement.

Consider this: Let me suggest that you start blogging.  It’s great for the search engines and it gives you a “friendlier” line of open communication with your customers.  If you don’t have a blog set up, give us a call and we’ll set one up and get you started for only $100.

I “hopped” a little, both forward and backwards. 
“There goes our summer!”
“It will be great – I’ll have a much bigger office to meet with clients!”
“We have to do so much work to get it ready!”
“It will be a great, new space for our whole team!”
“Everyone has their own window!”

So, my forward “hops” were greater than the backward “hops” and we are now in our beautiful, spacious new offices.  We still have more finishing touches to do and a new service to get started – a video studio for our web clients.  It’s a big goal and we are excited about it.

David and I listen to CDs, or read about marketing our business constantly.  It’s something that we learned from our “mentor” Dr. Barry Brodil.  I’ll write more about this man who has made such a big difference in my life in a later blog.  

A recent interview that we heard with Scott Ginsberg brought me to his website and his seemingly endless lists.  Scott’s story is that he went to a seminar when he was in college and  decided not to take off his “Hello My Name Is Scott” nametag.  He has worn a “Hello My Name Is Scott” nametage every day ever since.  As of taday, that’s 2865 days and it has changed his life, given him a terrific, exciting business (No, not selling nametags – he’s an author, blogger and motivational speaker.)

Check out his website http://www.hellomynameisscott.com and sign in to read his articles.  It’s the most simple log in ever – just your email address – no password, no questionaire, no invasive anything!  Here are some of the title:
65 Things I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me When I First Started My Company
99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One
123 Questions Every Marketer Must Ask
20 Ways to Make Customers Feel Comfortable
52 Random Insights to Grow Your Business

As I said, the list is endless!  I’ve printed a few of these and read through them together for ideas.  We’ve got a new office and one of our new goasl is to market ourselves in new and better ways.

Consider this:  Go to Scott’s website and pick one list.  Read through it and follow through on one action.  I picked 38 Ways to Make Your Customers Gasp!  I’ll let you know which idea I take to action. 

For almost 2 years we have been advising our web design clients that they need to blog to help them in the search engines and to give their customers and clients a reason to stop back to their website often.  Updated content keeps the customer thinking about you and possibly referring their family and friends to you and we all know that personal referrals make the very best customers – they already know about you, they are already at least half sold on your products and or services and you can spend all your energy on making them happy.

I am now taking my own good advice.  I spend a lot of time learning and studying marketing for small businesses and I’d like to pass along what I find to anyone who visits my blog.  It may be a website, book, magazine article, DVD or course that I’ve found that I think will interest and hopefully help you.

And, I’m always interested in what other people have found that works or doesn’t work and why so please feel free to write in and pass along your good advice.

I look forward to using this blog to help my clients and friends, to chatting with you and to learning from you too!

Talk to you soon,

~P