Tag Archives: traditional marketing

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social media marketing for small business

Social Media Marketing for Small Business: Half Are Losing Out

I was surprised when I read a recent research report done by Clutch. They surveyed small businesses about their usage of Social Media marketing. The data indicate that around half of them are ignoring prospective customers by not using Social Media marketing for small business. And more than half are not investing in work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

According to the Clutch study of small businesses:

  • <20% of marketing budgets are spent on Digital Marketing
  • only 53% do some work on Social Media
  • only 45% do some work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • only 25% do work on online advertising

Small businesses are slow to invest in digital marketing to acquire new customers and expand relationships with existing ones. But Social Media marketing is about inviting people to get to know your business and for you to get to know them.

Why are many small businesses reluctant to do Social Media marketing?

I have heard various reasons from small business people I have spoken with, including:

  • I tried Facebook or Twitter a little while, but I didn’t get any sales from them.
  • I asked my customers if they use Social Media and they said no or not much.
  • I don’t know where to start – there are so many social networks and I can’t cover all of them.
  • I think I have to have a website, but I don’t have time or money to spend on Social Media.
  • Isn’t Social Media primarily for young people?
  • If I were to advertise on Social Media, wouldn’t Pay Per Click (PPC) ads be very expensive?

Why is Social Media marketing for your business important?

  • Increase your brand awareness
  • Drive more traffic to your website
  • Get new leads
  • Leverage the trust that Social Media users have in their friends, family, and people they follow
  • Extend your message with Likes, Comments, and Shares faster and cheaper than word of mouth
  • Reach new prospects for your products and services that may not otherwise find you
  • Provide additional differentiating information about your company, products, and services
  • Put a human face on your business and let people get to know your people
  • Find new connections of suppliers and partners in addition to reaching new prospective customers
  • Target very specific audiences in ads based on interests, behaviors, job titles, locations, etc.
  • Try out marketing ideas fast and with very low cost to see what works or doesn’t work
  • Contribute to your search ranking with strong social signals that you are a valuable brand (this is likely to increase in weight over time)

As I’ve blogged before, the way people are making their purchase decisions is changing. They rely much more on online reviews and referrals. When was the last time you booked travel without looking at online reviews? They often research products and services online before they have any contact with your company. They may interact with your online information multiple times during their purchase decision as they advance through their process.

Some small businesses drop social media marketing if they don’t see any immediate increase in sales. But social media marketing is not a short-term investment. You are building a timeless presence on the Internet. You are increasing awareness and starting to build relationships that will likely pay off sometime in the future. Short-term promotions on social media with contests, coupons, and specials can drive a short-term uptick in sales depending on your organic reach or ad budget.

You may not realize that half of the world’s population has grown up with the Internet and Social Media. Yes, that’s right! 50% of the world’s population is under 30 years old. They are connected, they use less and less of traditional media, and they are technology savvy. They are not kids anymore. And those in their 20s and 30s have tremendous purchasing power.

Social media ads are still an under-utilized marketing element by the majority of small businesses. With traditional advertising you are broadcasting to a very wide audience in order to reach the subset that is your target audience. Social media advertising enables you to specifically target individuals in your target audience and to only pay when the target clicks through your ad for more information. Since there is no publication or broadcasting overhead, the cost of social media ads is way less than traditional advertising. It’s also less costly than Google Adwords ads that are only based on keywords on search result pages. And how many people are like me who ignore the display ads in newspapers and on web pages. What better place to get attention on your ad than in someone’s News Feed between photos and videos of their friends and families?

How can you get started economically?

  • Focus on one or two Social Media platforms that have members of your target market. You don’t need to boil the ocean and get onto every Social Media platform. As I’ve blogged before each one has a slightly different audience with different interests and demographics.
  • Set your marketing objectives and strategy. Are your top objectives to increase awareness, generate leads, cross-sell existing customers, or ….? For each of the top 2-3 objectives, outline your strategy to use social media to support that objective.
  • Engage a Marketing agency, consultant, or coach. If you can’t train and dedicate an employee to Digital Marketing or Social Media Marketing, then look at hiring a marketing agency or consultant to be an adviser, a doer, and an extension of your staff part-time. Depending on how much staff time you can dedicate to Social Media marketing, you might only want a consultant to be on retainer to be your coach one or more times per month. An agency, consultant, or coach will also keep you up to date on the latest trends and where to invest time and effort for your business objectives.
  • Get Marketing training for yourself or your staff. If you allocate an internal staff person for social media marketing, make sure they are trained on Marketing. While almost any younger person knows how to post on some Social Media platforms, they don’t necessarily know how to do that effectively for business marketing purposes.
  • Look at your Digital Marketing mix holistically. Determine how much to invest in Web Design, Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, Blogs, Podcasts, video channels, eBooks, Social Media marketing, and traditional marketing. Speak with an agency or consultant if you need assistance.
  • Augment with Social Media advertising. Social Media organic reach is shrinking. Your posts will only reach 2-6% of your followers. Social Media is now pay to play for businesses. Different platforms will enable you to boost posts or insert ads into the News Feeds of the types of people and interests that you specify.

Let me know your thoughts and experience. Have you seen other obstacles to overcome? Are there other tips you would suggest for Social Media marketing for small business?

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digital marketing strategy

7 Advantages of Digital Marketing Strategy over Traditional

You’re a business owner or executive looking for ways to grow your business.  How do you come up with an effective marketing strategy?  What is the role of advertising as part of your marketing strategy?  Should it be traditional marketing?  Should it be online, digital marketing?  Or should it be some combination of the two?

The Modern Customer Purchase Funnel

The purpose of marketing is to enable and drive sales.  In my many years of experience as a marketing executive, I believe effective marketing starts with an understanding of your target customer’s buying behavior.  Market research and feedback helps you to refine this.  But there are some useful customer purchase models to help organize your thinking and idenitify where you may need to gather further information or do testing.  A classic customer purchase model was the AIDA one:

  • Awareness
  • Interest
  • Desire
  • Action

But the Internet has changed that.  It is no longer sufficient.  A modern customer purchase model that I find useful is:

  • Awareness
  • Research and familiarity
  • Opinion and Shortlist
  • Consideration
  • Purchasing
  • Champion/Repurchase OR Defect/Detract

Think about this with regard to your own buying behavior for different products and services.  For example, I am planning to build a house and need kitchen appliances.  I have some general awareness of appliance brands, but I have become aware of newer ones through ads and web sites and store visits.  I started to research the brands and how they will meet our needs.  I asked people in stores.  They offered a little insight, but I found a lot more insight and information on the Web.  This is a major purchase that we will live with for a long time so I want to make sure we get it right.  On the Web, I can also see customer reviews and lab tests of products to understand what other people have experienced.  I can see video demos of the products being used.  We have formed some opinions and narrowed down the list of brands we are interested in.  Now we’re drilling down on those two brands to consider features, pricing, reliability, style, etc. to decide which ones we will purchase.  Once we purchase and begin to use those products, we will either be satisfied customers who will champion them to others online and offline and eventually repurchase OR we will be dissatisfied customers who will make that known and detract from the brand.

Traditional vs. Digital Marketing

Customer buying behavior has shifted and so should your marketing mix.  Should it be all traditional or all online?  It depends on your business and your customers.  For many businesses the answer may be somewhere in the middle.  But the 4 Ps (product, price, place, promotion) are no longer sufficient.

What are the advantages of online, digital marketing strategy over traditional marketing?

  1. Lower costs –Traditional marketing is expensive.  It takes a lot of people, lead time, and materials.  Trade shows, direct mail, TV or radio ads are all costly.  Digital marketing is much less expensive.  The cost to create and maintain a web site is much lower.  The cost to write a blog or send an email newsletter is minimal. The cost to run PPC ads on Google or Facebook is much less.  The cost to make changes is dramatically less.
  2. Target your message –  Your targeting is limited with traditional marketing.  Many of your tools are broadcast to a wide audience rather than narrowcast to someone getting ready to make a purchase decision.  You can target the right message to the right person and based on where they are in the customer purchase decision process.
  3. Measure ROI – In traditional marketing you are often guessing which marketing elements contributed to return on investment because it would cost too much to find out.  With digital marketing feedback is immediate and measurable.  Analytics give us data on the performance and conversions associated by different online marketing activities.
  4. Change or refine strategy easily – It’s difficult and time consuming to make changes to traditional marketing elements.  Re-designing and re-printing a brochure takes time.  Re-shooting a television ad takes time.  Digital marketing is much faster to test and refine.  You can do A/B testing and get immediate feedback.  You can see where you are spending money with results and without results.  You can stop and/or change things with less effort and shorter lead times.  Real-time feedback and analytics tell you when and how to change your strategy.
  5. Engage prospects longer – Nobody reads a long brochure.  A TV or radio ad is usually 30 seconds.  A trade show may yield a brief conversation.  But online marketing can grab and hold attention.  It can help to start building a relationship with a prospect or reinforce a relationship with an existing customer.  Online, digital marketing is informative.  It is not just PPC ads.  It is educating and informing your audience so they can take the next step in their purchase decision process.  They can interact with your business via text, images, video, chat.  They can see what others have experienced with your business.  They can learn more about the values of your business or how you work behind the scenes.
  6. Be available 24/7 – If I wake up in the middle of the night I can still engage with your business as part of my purchase decision process.  I don’t have to wait for a store to open or a sales person to call.  And the content is long lasting.  A blog post I write this year may be just as valuable to new prospects next year.   Or it can easily be updated to be always accessible over time.
  7. Be less intrusive – Most of us don’t want to be sold on something.  We want to come to our own conclusions.  We value advice and a small set of alternatives that are tailored to our particular needs and wants.  But we don’t like people pushing something to us based on features and functions that we may or may not need.  Online, digital marketing is available when I want it.  It is informative.  It helps me move through my decision process at my pace.

On the island of Kauai we have many businesses that are targeted to visitors.  One of those businesses is selling activities to enjoy while on vacation (ziplines, fishing trips, snorkeling, etc.)  It used to be that visitors almost always arrived and then met in person with a concierge at a hotel or a shop to be told what the offers and recommendations are and to make their purchase decisions.  But that business model has been shifting rapidly.  Now a large proportion of visitors arrive on the island having already researched activities online, reviewed customer reviews, shopped for discounts and promotions, and made a purchase before they ever got here.

Is the answer today all traditional marketing or all digital marketing?  For a startup business in particular industries all digital may be the right answer.  For some more traditional industries, traditional marketing may still dominate overall marketing investment.  But for many businesses the shift is occurring between the two.  You may still need traditional elements for that face to face connection via trade shows and an outside sales force.  It depends on your product/service and your target customers’ buying behaviors.  But chances are your marketing mix will need to shift increasingly toward online, digital marketing.

What do you think?  Have you shifted your marketing mix or is it all traditional or all digital?  Have you seen customer buying behavior changing in your business?  Please share for the benefit of others working on their marketing strategies.

 

 

Web Design Top 10 Trends

Web Design Top 10 Trends for 2015

Why should you care about web design trends for 2015 if you are not a web designer?  If you have a website that has not been updated for a few years, you not only may look stodgy and out of date but also may be poorly positioned by Google in search results.

If you don’t already have a website, you have a couple of options.  You can use a service for a “free” website (see There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Website) or a website generator and be locked into their design choices for you.  Or if you are considering a custom web design these are important items to discuss with your web designer.

Good design is a reflection of your business.  A well designed website can help to differentiate you and engage your audience on an emotional level as well as based on content.  A poorly designed site can cause your prospective customers to move on to your competitor.

I have looked at a lot of web sites and predictions of trends by people in the web design business.  In this blog I boil it down to the top ten that you as a business owner should pay attention to in 2015.

1. Responsive, Mobile First – More than half of all email is now read on mobile devices.  Your mobile web traffic may be a lower percentage for now, but I bet it is increasing every month.  It won’t be long before mobile web access exceeds desktop web access.  If your site is not already using responsive web design to appear on mobile devices, you need to make that a priority now.  In addition, some web sites are now adopting mobile techniques such as hidden or sliding side menus across all devices including desktops.  Mobile will drive more design trends in the future as that becomes the majority of web views.

2. Performance and Speed – If your site takes too long to load on a mobile or desktop device you may lose a prospective customer or annoy an existing one.  Even more importantly performance and speed is part of how Google ranks your site for display in search results.  If your site has not been optimized for performance and speed your page rank may be slipping relative to competitors.  Make sure your web design pays attention to performance and speed.

3. Larger images and less text – We are bombarded with information.  We skim most of the emails we receive and the web sites we visit.  We are scanning for the important points and maybe stopping to read when something catches our eye.  Large images are one way to communicate and to cause the eye to stop.  It really is true that a picture is worth a thousand words!  An image with text or information overplayed may give you a big bang impact.  At a minimum it may draw the readers’ attention to read more.  Less text in your web design, more bullets and lists, and more graphics and infographics are ways to capture attention and transfer information quickly.

4. Video – Video is a powerful medium that is becoming more prevalent on web sites.  Videos can be very effective to tell a story or evoke an emotion.  They are very useful for instructions and training.  They are a way to show a product in three dimensions or a way to provide a demonstration of a product or service.  Think about how a video may be able to communicate more effectively than words or pictures.

5. Flat design and material design – Flat design has been around for a long time in general, but became important in the digital world in the past several years.  Apple’s IOS 7 release in 2013 prompted a lot of attention to flat design.  Flat design is simple web design.  It doesn’t try to make things three dimensional.  It is easy to scale across devices.  It uses simple elements, typography and flat colors.  Material design was announced by Google in 2014.  It is widely used in Android and other Google applications.  It includes increased use of grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, and depth effects such as lighting and shadows.

6. Big typography – Along with simplicity, flat design, and larger images is also the trend toward big typography.  It’s another way to stop the reader’s eye and grab attention.  It screams out “look at me” and “this is important.”  It’s like the old days of skimming a newspaper for the headlines.  It’s simple, clear, to the point, and attention grabbing.

7. Pinterest style cards – Another key trend in web design is a way of making it easy to scan a lot of information quickly primarily using images and “cards.”  Your eye can quickly scan across the cards and titles to see if something catches your eye to stop, click, and drill down.  This is the format on the growing Pinterest social media site.  The blog page on our site is also an example of this trend.

8. Scrolling, not clicking – Users on mobile devices prefer to scroll rather than click to find more information.  As a result websites are increasingly using long pages with scrolling rather than menus and navigation to click through.  Apple’s web page for the iPad Air 2 is an example of this trend (plus others).  Lots of navigation and clicking in web design is out.  Minimal navigation and scrolling are in.

9. Storytelling and emotion – One way to differentiate your company to prospects and to encourage ongoing customer relationships is to tell stories and to create emotional connections.  The testimonial or reference account has always been an important part of the traditional marketing mix.  Customer reviews are another important part of many commerce and travel sites.  Telling stories related to your company helps to create an emotional response in the reader of your site.  The story may be executed with images and text or may be most effective with video in your web design.

10. Modular instead of pages – Related to trend 7, modern web design is also shifting to be more modular rather than going through pages.  Cards are an example of this.  Masonry or tiled layouts are examples of modular web design.  Instead of navigation you are scanning through tiles of images with text overlays to determine where you want to stop and drill down further.  Line25.com compiled a useful post of 25 Web Designs with Modular Content Block Layouts.  My personal blog at kauaiguys.com is another example that uses the Booklet theme for WordPress and is designed to be modular.

Wondering if your site is up to date and effective for your target audience?  When was the last time you updated the format?  Updated the content?  

For a free web site review click here to contact us.

Aulii Luau dancers at Kauai Chamber of Commerce

Kauai Chamber of Commerce Case Study

I was honored last evening to be featured as a new member at the Kauai Chamber of Commerce Annual General Membership Meeting.  I am so pleased to be a part of these talented business professionals, to get acquainted, and to become part of the community.  There is so much entrepreneurial spirit here across a number of industries.

As a new member I had a display table to do some traditional event marketing with other local businesses.  It was great to meet new people and to learn about their business ventures.  I was in between the dancers from ‘Auli’i Lu’au and the Westin Princeville Ocean Resort Villas.  While I focus now on digital, online marketing, I have also done a lot of traditional marketing in my prior roles in technology and consulting companies.  You may have a business where you can rely solely on digital marketing, but many businesses still need a mix of both.  As a business and marketing professional, I would not hesitate to recommend a mix if it were the right fit.  There is still a huge value to connect with others in your own industry as well as in others and to form those relationships both in person and online.

One of the things that I love about being located on the island of Kauai is the common view that we are all in this canoe together.  The canoe is such an important part of Hawaiian history and culture.  It is such a powerful symbol to me that when we row and steer in a common direction we all reach our destination faster and safer.  This is part of the culture and values of Kauai that drew me to locate here.  For the canoe to move forward, we need to work together.  All as one.  One canoe, one ohana, one community. And I believe it is a strong value to guide our business interactions.

KaiKini Case Study of Traditional and Digital Marketing

In learning about the business ventures of others based here, I was especially struck by the story of the founder and CEO of KaiKini Bikinis.  She shared with me how she started with an idea and vision and acquired the skills she needed along the way.  She envisioned designing and making bikinis in her unique style and optimized for wear while being active.  She did not know how to sew, but she bought some commercial sewing machines, experimented, and taught herself to not only design but also to manufacture the pieces.  She used traditional marketing and selling to get some local stores to carry her pieces as part of starting her business.  She also focused on digital marketing and began social media marketing to engage her customers and to gain further visibility.  She got additional retailers on other islands to stock her products.  As the business started to grow, she hired others to train to sew.  And she taught herself to set up a website.  She now has several employees and continues to grow her business as a manufacturer and wholesaler while also selling directly worldwide via her ecommerce website at kaikini.com.  She uses blogs and social media marketing as well as Google Adwords PPC ads in her digital marketing mix.  A consultant manages her PPC ads for her so she can devote her time to other business initiatives.  She uses BigCommerce as her web hosting and tools provider.  What an inspiration that she has built a business to market and sell Hawaiian-made products all over the world.  And the digital marketing and sales are a key growth area of her business!

What a great evening with the Kauai Chamber of Commerce!

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