Yellow Page Advertising – Does It Still Work For Small Businesses?
How long have you used yellow page advertising to market your small business? Why do you keep using it?
If you’ve been considering or using yellow page advertising, it might be time to ask yourself several questions:
- Is your client using the yellow pages to find services?
- Can you find similar or better quality clients in other ways?
- Is this the best use of your marketing dollar for future growth?
Many service businesses advertise in the yellow pages because they always have, and they still get calls from their ad. But how much are you making from these clients? Is it enough to cover your monthly phone bill? And is your client list growing or shrinking by using this form of marketing?
In many households across the country, the phonebooks move from the front doorstep to the recycle bin, without even opening the bag they come in. (I’ve been doing that for more than 10 years now.) If I can’t perform a search and find you in Google, then you aren’t the business for me.
Overall, an online customer is more affluent, better educated, and more savvy in finding the perfect business to suit their needs. They are willing to build a relationship with a company that can provide the service they are looking for.
Online marketing is:
- Less expensive – many tools are available at no or low cost
- Permanent – it’s not pay or delete like the yellow pages – once you implement a technique, it exists online forever
- The way of the future – if someone has a problem or needs a service, they search online and Google it. And with mobile technology growing in leaps and bounds, being findable and mobile ready is just as important.
It’s not about doing what you’ve always done. It’s about going where your clients are. And where you can build a strong, lucrative future.
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5 Ways To Market Your Business With Video
With all the advances in technology, and the ease of using a video camera to capture anything, anywhere, how do you go about using video to market your business? Here are 5 ideas to get you going.
1. Have a video introduction on the main page of your site.
Why not place a video to greet people when they visit the first time? Place it along the side or in your header, and make it clickable for people to watch if and when they prefer. Always give people the option to watch a video – if they’ve visited your site before, they may have a specific purpose for being back. Making them watch a video, or hunt for a way to turn it off can be frustrating. If people desire to watch it, they will find a way.
2. Add video testimonials to your sales pages.
Reading a testimonial is the first step to finding a new client. From there, give your testimonials more authority. Including a photograph and a link to a corresponding website will offer a stronger believability factor. And by taking the next step and actually recording a client giving a testimonial gives you the highest recommendation. If someone is willing to talk directly to you about a company – that’s believability.
3. Give away free video tutorials.
Do you have a product where training is a part of your service? Why not build a few video tutorials to show how easy your product is to use. The great thing about building a few promotional video tutorials is you can use them in many ways. Share them on YouTube, and they may go viral. Put them on your blog and they become a permanent part of your content.
4. Interview an expert.
Who is an expert in your industry? It may be someone in your company, yourself or your spouse, or a mentor you’ve been following for years. What can they add to your site to give your product or service more credibility, and make people want to do business with you? Remember, you don’t have make this a sales pitch – just information that your readers will find useful. A wedding photographer could interview the editor of a local wedding magazine, and get 10 tips to creating a beautiful wedding. It builds up your credibility because you personally had contact with another expert. And it adds to your content by showcasing ideas for weddings in a great way.
5. Create a video with how to advice, tips, or information.
These are the easiest to do. Head to a quiet room in your home or office. Set up your Flip Video or Bloggie Camera on a tripod and start shooting. Remember to keep it short and to the point. YouTube videos can be no longer than 10 minutes, and anything longer than that would lose interest anyway. Have a few ideas in mind, be sincere, and start sharing.
What Does It Take To Get 100 Million Views On YouTube?
Putting video to use on the Internet doesn’t require sophisticated equipment, a full production staff, or several actors. The more natural, the more fun you have with it, the more you make it stand out – have a reason for it to go viral – the better your chance.
YouTube announced the most popular videos of 2009. The top 5 had a combined total of over 250 million views this year, with the top video taking almost half of that.
Number One – Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent
(The original video that achieved over 120 million views did not allow embedding – this is one from the finals.)
The Importance Of An Ebook
A blog without an ebook is like a retail store without a front door.
It’s pretty easy to understand that if you open up a retail store, you have to place it in a location that will attract customers. You have to make it warm and inviting, giving people a reason to step through your front door. You also have to have many forms of advertising to move people from their cars into the parking lot, and into your store.
What’s not so easy is understanding the same philosophy works online as well. Your blog is your “store”. People may window shop – look at various posts and read what you have to say. But in order for them to eventually become “customers”, you have to push them off the fence and help them decide to take the next step.
And that’s where ebooks come into play.
An ebook is simply an electronic book. It doesn’t cost you anything out of pocket to produce (unless you have someone create it for you); just your time to write up the ebook. But the power of your ebook can help increase your business tenfold if you create the right ebook.
Let’s look at five things you need to create a dynamic ebook.
1. An eye-catching headline.
People like things that are intriguing; something that makes them take a step back and start wondering if they truly know the answer. A title of, “How To Make Cupcakes” isn’t very appealing. Anyone can make cupcakes if given half the chance. But what about, “Ten Tips That Can Make Your Cupcakes Lighter, Fluffier, And More Beautiful Than A Professional Cake Decorator”. Hmmm… All of a sudden you took a common topic, and made it a whole lot more interesting. You also raised awareness and intrigue, and gave people a reason to want the information.
2. Relevant content.
If people sign up for your ebook, they want the information you promised. If they signed up for, “Ten Tips That Can Make Your Cupcakes Lighter, Fluffier, And More Beautiful Than A Professional Cake Decorator”, they want ten tips that will help them improve the taste and look of their cupcakes. Don’t fill it with information that’s off topic, or worse, a sales pitch for products and services. You want this initial contact to be pleasant for the reader. You want to build trust. If you deliver what you promise, they will be back.
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Think Businesses Are Marketing In Traditional Ways? Think Again
If the bad economy did anything for businesses, it made them become more efficient in the way they market. No longer do they simply spend because they’ve always done so. They’re looking at what they spend on, and how well it works at attracting new clients.
According to B to B’s 2010 Outlook survey, 87 percent of all businesses will be keeping their current marketing budgets steady or increasing them in the coming year. But where they will be spending that money will vary greatly.
The highest area of decreased spending is in the print category and in attending events, both at 63 percent.
The highest area of increased spending is in the online category, with over 80 percent anticipating increasing within this category.
So where are the best places to increase spending online? Email campaigns, search campaigns, social media and website development were the top categories – pretty much as expected.
We all know the struggle traditional media sources are having right now. Just today we went hunting for a story on a local media site, and found it as a current release. However when we did a Google search for the same story, we found it in online sources from several days ago.
You can’t stay in traditional sources because you’ve always been there. If your clients are moving on, you need to as well.
Shifts happen quickly now. Where it took years for new technology to penetrate the main population even a few short years ago, now technology can affect the majority in a matter of months.
If you’re not learning something new, it will have an impact on your business.
3 Limiting Beliefs Holding You Back From Business Success
I recently met with a potential client that has seen his business shrink every month over the past year. He’s marketing in the same way he always has. And every time he contacts a potential customer through one of his old methods, he is finding they’ve been contacted by many of his competitors, or simply aren’t interested in what he has to offer anymore.
So I proceeded to spend an hour with him educating him on the benefits of using a strong online presence. We talked about social networking, blogging, and offering a free report for lead generation.
I told him this isn’t a “get rich quick” formula. It does take time to set up and get it into place. But if you plan on being in business five years from now, why wouldn’t you implement a new method that will help grow your business into the future?
He almost became a client on the spot – but he wanted to check in with his business partner first. His business partner had doubts, and they decided to put the whole thing on hold, and continue doing what they’ve always done.
I’ve seen this happen many times before. In fact I’ve gained many clients over the years who come back several months later because their business continues to decrease, and they finally reach the point where they have no choice – either shut it down or try something new.
When it comes to believing in building up your online presence, I’ve found there are 3 limiting beliefs that hold most people back from business success.
1. It’s just the economy, it will come back around.
Have you ever read the book “Who Moved My Cheese?” I love that parody. It spins a tale about two different types of mice: one who will stand by the old way no matter what, believing things will eventually return to normal; and one who understands things change, and sometimes you need to move on and look for other ways of doing things.
Sure the economy has completely changed things over the past couple of years. But its not just the economy. Its also about doing business differently. People simply don’t accept old ways of marketing. They have found ways of avoiding television and radio commercials with things like Satellite radio and Tivo. The more advertising surrounds us, the more we ignore it. Read more
3 Reasons To Stop Sending Email
It’s costing more to send out brochures and postcards, so when you’re on the hunt for new business, just email. Right?
Not so fast. As tempting as it is to use your email to send out ads for new business, email is not your best choice. In fact it may be the quickest way to damage your brand, and cause you to lose more business than you’ll ever gain.
Here are 3 reasons to think about the email you are sending, and change your patterns for the future:
Quick Buck versus Lifetime Relationship
Think about your own email patterns. How many emails do you get in every day? This morning when I opened up my own email account, I had over 360 new emails waiting for me. Add in the non-stop email that comes in throughout the day, and I’m pretty sure I receive in excess of 500 emails per day.
Yes, I’m pretty good with the delete key. If you don’t make a great impression in your subject line, or I don’t recognize your name, I hit the delete button. I could easily spend all day with my email if I didn’t. So for me, nothing is more frustrating than opening up an email, only to find it’s a blatant sales pitch, trying to get me to buy something. Not only would I never do business with someone like this, I’m also more apt to tell about the experience as well.
Can you pick up business like this? Of course. But will it allow you to be in business five years from now?
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