by Chris Barnard | Dec 21, 2011 | Digital Marketing
Technology is merging with user habits, allowing us to instantly connect with local businesses and even see what others have to say about their specific purchasing experience, patronizing every place from the local pub to the neighborhood apothecary.
In our ongoing efforts to promote effective social, local, and mobile San Diego small business digital marketing, we’re going highlight a couple specific examples of mainstream television advertising that can have a significant impact on local business, no matter the industry, product, or service. (more…)
by Chris Barnard | Jun 22, 2011 | Digital Marketing
The economy is in the tank, unemployment is stagnant at critical levels, and profits for the average Carlsbad small business are enveloped in a seemingly accelerated downward spiral.
If this is something your local business has experienced over the past couple few years, we don’t have any answers for you.
But we do have some questions.
How locally visible is your small business on the Internet?
This one goes without saying, but we’ll go ahead and repeat the social local mobile digital marketing connectivity come small business communications mantra as long as there are clueless businesses still out there in Carlsbad.
We’re reaching here, but we suppose the primary responsibility of any local business is to provide a product or service to the community.
But how does your local community learn about your location, your services, products, or what your loyal customers say?
In a word (or two), the Internet.
What motivates your customers?
Some people are motivated by cost, others by convenience, and others by exclusivity and elegance.
Do you know what motivates your customers?
If you don’t know the answers, then you haven’t been doing a very good job of communicating with the very people responsible for the fiscal health of your small business.
Motivation can come in different forms; from a no sales-tax day, to sponsoring a local little league team, to a simple financial incentive, the smart Carlsbad small businesses are already diversifying. The businesses we’re talking about are taking advantage of new opportunities rather than remaining complacent in a losing situation.
Whether these new opportunities for local small business communications involve super heroes, super submarine sandwiches, or super stoked happy hours; is up to you to decide. Local economic factors, geographic interests, and community involvement will dictate your success.
One thing will dictate your failure…not properly motivating your customers.
How do your prices & products compare to your competitors?
We know, that’s classified.
Too bad the general public has taken to figuring it out themselves, without the help of wikileaks.
Despite your best efforts to keep your prices secret (by not having your products available online), we can still determine the cost – and even the value – by seeing what people say about their experience with your products, prices, and personnel.
We can see all of this digital word of mouth with s few simple keystrokes of your products, services, or actual business name.
With service businesses like home remodeling for instance, what’s more important than your rate or estimates is how well you communicate the effort, expertise, and effects of the very services you provide.
If people are shopping strictly on price, you’re done anyway – there’s always someone out there that will do the work for less money. But is it really the same work?
In the case of a new bathroom for instance, it is up to you to communicate your craftsman expertise and quality of materials to your customers. Maybe you offer one day dental crowns or single visit appointments. Or on the other hand, maybe your dental crowns are finely precision-tuned specific smile solutions custom fit to each different dental patient.
Whatever it is, the responsibility is yours.
You need to communicate with the local community, let us know why your Carlsbad small business should be the only choice for our hard-earned dollars.
by 1localbusiness.com | Apr 26, 2011 | Digital Marketing
We don’t mean how much you know about digital marketing, rather how much you know you know.
Get it?
Got it?
Good.
Now onto more pressing tweets about local sandwich crafters, and rifling through all those doggie photos!
OK, done. Let’s explore the digital marketing intelligence quotient of your Carlsbad small business. According to the ubiquitous Wikipedia, Digital marketing is the promoting of brands using all forms of digital advertising channels to reach consumers. This now includes Television, Radio, Internet, mobile, social media marketing and any other form of digital media.
Which Carlsbad digital marketing avenues are you using to promote your local retail business?
For those Carlsbad businesses out there that already use TV or radio as part of their retail marketing plan, they’ve most likely already integrated some forms of digital marketing into the mix. What’s a TV commercial without a Facebook and Twitter mention these days?
For the rest of us, we’ll concentrate on Internet, mobile, and social media as the main pillars of our local retail business digital marketing scheme. And we’ll look to identify value and return on investment as our major indicators of success.
But how do we measure that success?
First we need to understand the environment we will be using to communicate our products and services. Secondly, we need to set attainable goals for our retail digital marketing. Lastly, we must track the results and actively participate in the success of our digital marketing, or suffer the consequences.
Understanding the environment will up your digital intelligence IQ immediately.
- How do local people use Facebook or Twitter to communicate?
- Do they share buying experiences of local businesses?
- If you ask people to share their consumer experience with your business, where could you direct them?
- Would an increased knowledge of who your customers are, and why they choose your business allow you to better serve the surrounding community…sell more product or services?
Some easily attainable digital marketing goals for the average Carlsbad retail business could be:
- Build a website. (Kill three birds and get a no cost mobile website app for your small business when you confirm your Bing Local listing here!)
- Use e-commerce solutions to sell your products and services while you’re sleeping – or working.
- Initiate a Facebook Business Page and Twitter account for your retail business.
- Generate 100 (or 1000) Facebook ‘Likes’ and Twitter ‘Followers’ in the span of one year.
- Connect your Facebook and Twitter profiles with your business website.
- Start sending customers an email newsletter – you choose the frequency (monthly, bi-monthly, semi-annual…etc.).
When it comes to digital marketing for the average Carlsbad retail business, the research necessary to understand the environment, and the goal-setting needed to gauge success are the easy and fun parts of owning your digital identity. Tracking your results and actually participating in the success of your localized retail digital marketing is a bit more difficult. Don’t make the mistake of playing around on Facebook all day or waiting for Charlie Sheen’s next tweet. Devote time to all three pillars of your Carlsbad digital marketing plan.
Be sure to track your results and participate in your own local digital marketing success.
If we set goals for using social media and local search to acquire more new local customers, we need to know when we’ve achieved those goals. This means using such things as tracking codes, mobile downloads, referral codes, local phone numbers, or even handwritten notes in a marble notebook.
Whatever your DIY method is, make sure you know what you know about your digital marketing efforts.
We’ve also previously mentioned some low to no cost digital marketing tools to help you calculate success in this old blog post.
- How many Facebook and Twitter connections resulted in actual feet in the door?
- How often do your social connections interact with your business online?
- Have you seen an increase in online visibility of your business across multiple online channels?
- Did that press release result in any check-ins to your business Foursquare profile?
- What is the value of your ‘Likes’ and ‘Followers’? (What are your goals for building a group of fans and followers?)
Here’s what eMarketer says about that last one:
How would you calculate the value of your local Facebook Fan?
by 1localbusiness.com | Apr 6, 2011 | Digital Marketing
When it comes to retail small business advertising and marketing, it’s almost like a virtual desert. You can do a search for something like, “carlsbad dry cleaners” and come up with exactly one actual local business website. Sure there are a few Yelp listings or Citysearch results to weed through, and several directories that require further clicking, but as far as an actual business location having a presence on the first page for the associated keyword search?
One. Out of how many oh-so-coveted spots on the top search engine results pages?
If those listing were parking spaces, would those business owners be able to find their car?
The search was done with Google, but none of the Google Places listings was an actual confirmed listing for a dry cleaning business in Carlsbad. That’s pretty much a desert. Sure, how many searches are there every day for dry cleaners in Carlsbad, probably not too many – relatively speaking. But is that any reason for a local business to not control and profit from having a highly visible online presence?
A Yahoo search for the same keywords did not result in much better. Again, we’re talking about better in terms of business owner input these listings appear to lack. None of the top five listings appeared to be confirmed and controlled by the actual business.
This blind approach just doesn’t work in the digital age; there are way too many avenues of local exposure out there to not be identifiable and accountable when it comes to online visibility for your retail business. The best part is with a little research and lots of time, you can get started right away without breaking the bank. You’d be surprised how much online visibility you can gain for your local retail business for free. As technology improves, what was once a complex task, is now commonplace – ask a travel agent or digital video editor.
The days of zero dollars in the ad budget, and relying on your customer word of mouth to give your business neighborhood prominence are not completely over, it’s just going to require some change in thinking and some adjustment in execution. For the average retail business owner in Carlsbad, digital marketing and social media are not at the top of the to-do list. Will we be saying the same thing 5 years from now, or will every local business have some type of beneficial online presence?
Will the virtual desert materialize into a local online retail oasis?
When you’re looking for a local service or product, where do you begin your search?
Most of us go right to the Internet, some right on our mobile phones. According to web info company, Alexa, the majority of us search Google when we go online to search. Some ask friends and family, and others go the old fashioned route of checking the phone book. Do you think the new Facebook Questions functionality will take off when we consider local shopping?
Whatever the answer is, the important point to remember is people are looking for your products or services every single day, in your immediate area. Doesn’t it make sense to have your business represented within the most popular modes of information gathering?
We think so.
Here we will present a super simple formula toward gaining online visibility for your Carlsbad retail business. Five easy steps you can take toward securing online visibility for your local retail business.
1. Develop a Website
If you haven’t taken the plunge already, develop a website for your retail business. That thing called the world wide webternet is not just a passing fad, actual commerce happens there. Get involved; build a website to showcase your products and services. $500 can get you started on the right foot, and $5000 can prepare your business to deal with whatever changes in virtual landscape we experience – or is it vice versa? These days it need not be expensive (maybe free if you’re tech savvy and DIY inclined), or expansive. Our feeble attention spans couldn’t handle it anyway, just give us the goods and let us buy them – online. That’s good enough. When in doubt, keep it simple.
2. Start a Blog
No, you don’t have to produce the next great American blog. The stay at home Moms out there have you beat anyway. Just get involved in your industry, and let the surrounding community know how much you’re involved. A blog is a great way to keep fresh and relevant content flowing to your website. Some may say blogs are a thing of the past (short attention spans again), but use your blog to keep us up to date on your products, services, industry news, community efforts, and even customer experiences. Keep it simple take two.
3. Build a Facebook Page for your Business
Easy-peasy, go to Facebook and give your local business some social street cred. You’re nowhere these days unless your dry cleaning business is on Facebook. Own a Laundromat? Facebook is a perfect place for you to connect with your patrons and offer them some free soap as a thank you for their continued loyalty. Not in the dry cleaning or laundry biz…then start reading between the lines!
4. Explore Other Online Options
Alliteration aside; Angieslist, Foursquare, MerchantCircle, HotFrog, Superpages, Citysearch, Facebook Places, Foursquare, Groupon…the list goes on, and it will keep fluctuating and changing. Get started with the research now if you haven’t already, click around on some of these sites and see how your business could benefit from a listing. Some are free, some appear to be, and some are not. There are probably another few hundred sites out there to list your business; these are only the most popular.
5. Get Local on the Search Tip
The first two screenshots on this blog post were representative of Google Places and Yahoo Local, respectively. In the interest of utmost fairness…Bing has their own too; yep you guessed it – Bing Local. For a definition on local search from Wikipedia, click here. Basically when we say local search, we mean online representation for your retail business in these highly visible localized search engine environments. And we’ll concentrate on those three – Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local. Go search for your business right now on each of those search engines, then just follow directions to confirm or verify your business listing. By doing so you are at least taking the first step in securing your online business presence with respect to these localized search engine results pages. Be careful, take your time, and do some sniffing around to make sure you don’t have any duplicate listings or any other associated virtual malady.
The aforementioned plan is a simple five step sample plan to gaining online visibility for your local retail business. Does it end there?
Nope…in fact, after proofreading this fifty times we’ve come to realize that perhaps an entire series should be dedicated to tactics as much as strategy when implementing a plan to begin building local online identity for your Carlsbad retail business.
We have a lot of work to do.
by 1localbusiness.com | Mar 29, 2011 | Social Media
Facebook sounds like it would be a great new way to amplify online customer word of mouth, and Twitter seems like an ideal place to broadcast your new shipment of jock straps or fresh catch of Chilean Sea Bass – but how do you know if your efforts are a waste of time, or a new and cost-effective way to maintain communication with your customers and surrounding local community when they are not actually shopping in your place of business?
Tracking and measuring your progress is key to any digital marketing campaign, social media is just another avenue of exposure to not only showcase your products and services, but also simulcast how the surrounding local community feels about them too!
Even if you are only at the inception point of your small business social media sojourn, tracking should be a primary concern. Don’t make the mistake of planning for success without be able to measure what success amounts to when it comes to your Carlsbad retail business. If you list your business in the Yellowpages, or advertise in the Pennysaver, or even maintain a website and blog, you want to know how effective the marketing communication medium is, and how much did it benefit your bottom line?
Here are some normal benefits you should realize from your small business social media plan:
- Increased new customer volume
- Reinforced return customer percentage
- Decreased negative word of mouth
- Elevated online local business visibility
- Amplified (digital) positive word of mouth
The key to making sure your efforts do not go unrewarded is effective tracking. If you know how much is going out the door, doesn’t it make sense to understand how much return on investment is being generated by these efforts?
If you may ‘X’ for a Pennysaver Ad, you want to know exactly how much business that ad generated.
How to measure your social media return on investment?
With social media for the Carlsbad retail small business, the tracking issue is relatively simple – and will continue to evolve. Technology makes it possible for the average small business to conveniently organize social media efforts to maximize return on investment while minimizing time spent managing your marketing portfolio.
Here are some easy ways for you begin tracking your small business social media efforts:
Facebook Analytics
Facebook makes it very easy to see how your page is performing. Simply login to your business Facebook page, and click the ‘View Insights’ link located on the upper right-hand side of your page. This tracking section is split into two sections; Users and Interactions. The Users section gives you all the basic page information; such as fans or likes, active users, and even age and gender info on page viewers. The Interactions section gives you information on specific page activity – say what wall post was most popular for example.
Facebook makes it easy to track how your connections interact with the page, and what content you place on the page is most popular to them. By understanding even the simplest of tracking metrics you can continually dial-in effective topics of local social media discussion, beneficial promotional offers, and engagement tactics that result in new viewers and content sharing about your business, products, and services.
Trackur
With Trackur, you sign up for a free account and enter the keywords you wish to track. Start with things like, your name or “your town + your business.” You can easily refine the results with some simple search filters, then just sit back and let Trackur scour the web for your chosen keywords. You’ll be able to see at a glance; the date published, source, title, and summary of each item discovered by Trackur. You can then tag discovered items with a positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. This enables you to keep track of who’s saying positive things about you and who’s attacking your online reputation.
Topsy
What Google is to the Internet, Topsy is to social search on Twitter. Ok, maybe that’s a reach, but you can use topsy.com to track your Carlsbad business social media plan performance. See how many of your followers retweeted (shared) your content, and easily filter by hour, day, week, month…you get the picture. A real-time Twitter search engine, for lack of a better term. Think Twitter is a waste of time; prove it by tracking your business tweets via topsy.
There you have the beginnings of an efficient tracking and measurement platform from which to judge your Carlsbad small business social media plan performance. These tools are simple to use and will cost you nothing – at least in terms of entering the social media fray. You’ll soon find with all this information at your fingertips, your thirst for more needs quenching. That usually involves more time, participation, and financial investment. Not to mention more tracking and measurement tools…
