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Alissa Janiece - Owner-Greater Light Media

I have many small businesses approach me on a regular basis wanting a website. Great!

Having a website is the single most important marketing tool and THE BEST investment of  your marketing dollars.

However, I am just as regularly told by these clients that business is slow and they are going to have to push the project of launching a website until business improves.

When your business is slow and the economy is slow you should be ramping up your marketing not cutting back. Here are some convincing reason why you should go ahead a make that leap and spring for a professional website:

1. Much more versatile and cheaper than print advertising.

The Internet offers a dynamic space to post your services, information about your business and build brand awareness. The information about your company remains visible for far longer than any print ad would and with proper SEO you can reach a larger audience. The content on your website can be easily update at any time either by yourself using a Content Management System or by hiring a web designer to do it for you. I have many clients that hire me to do small edits to their websites at affordable rates.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t engage in print advertising at all but your printed messages should drive your customers and potential customers to your website for engagement and conversion.

2. Convenience for your customers

Your web site acts as a self serving agent for your customers and potential customers.

64% of consumers have made a first purchase from a brand because of a digital experience such as a web site, microsite, mobile coupon, or email. No other medium has so impacted—or altered—the traditional marketing funnel in this way. (Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Study, 2009).

If your web site in non existent or does not provide adequate information about your brand, services or products, the chances of gaining new business is slim.

Providing convenience by means of information, tools, tips, advice and general interest content via your website adds instant value and a higher level of customer satisfaction which will instill your brand in the minds as a go to resource and expert in your industry. Check out these useful insights into Buyer Purchase Decisions.

3.   Inexpensive Useful Marketing Data

Visitor polls, online surveys, customer feedback forms, and web analytics can give you instant information on what your customers want or how they feel or view various aspects of your business. You can also collect important data on your target demographic. Think you know who your target audience is? A peek at your analytics might reveal some surprises!

Running analytics is essential as analytics will tell you things such as how many visitors come to your site for specific time frame, what geographic location visits your site the most and what content they are viewing or not viewing. This data can assist you in tailoring your messaging and being more cost effective with your marketing dollars by identifying the richest pool of potential new business.

4. Instant Measurable Results

If you are still engaging in printed direct mail pieces such as fliers and postcard or letters you might want to consider spending some of those marketing dollars investing in a lead generation tool on your website such as an email sign up or email collection strategy.

The costs of printing your pieces  is expensive enough. Add in the postage and the hassle of  making your collateral Postal compliant and its hardly worth the cost.  This is NOT to say you should eliminate direct mail completely but online marketing is far more effective than mass mailing and hoping for the best.

How many of the thousands of pieces you mailed out actually resulted in new business or new contacts? How many of your intended audience actually looked at your marketing message and how many ended up in the trash?  There is really NO EFFECTIVE way to measure the success or impact of direct mail pieces.

On the Internet however utilizing direct EMAIL services and using your email list you can get instant feedback on a particular campaign by viewing your reports thru your direct email service company. You will easily be able to see who opened your message, what time and time of day it was opened and if they click thru to your website or not.  You can use this information to tailor your message and delivery.

• Part 1 is a cogged wheel showing 50 tasks broken down by discipline. If you print it out you can tear off each cog or mark the little check boxes as you complete each task.
• Part 2 is a six month course to teach you how to become an internet marketer whether you’ve done it before or not. Compress the timeline if you’re a workaholic. It also contains a traffic timeline showing the effect certain actions will have on your inbound traffic growth.

Original Post Here

Unbounce – The DIY Landing Page Platform

1. Describable
2. Memorable
3. Effective without colour
4. Scalable i.e. work when just an inch in size
5. Relevant to the industry in question

The first two are related to each other. Your overall goal is to be remembered. If your logo cant be described it is less likely to be remembered. A simple logo is best.  Complex design makes a logo easy to forget.

Color is an important part of your logo however, every business will need to display their logo in only one color at some point in time. A good logo will be noticeable and memorable even without color.

Your logo should be designed with a vector program such as Illustrator. Vector images allow you to scale your logo without losing clarity. Business card often require that your logo be a re sized to fit the medium. It is wise to consider any swag or give aways you may use in the future. Your logo should be scalable to one inch and still be clear and recognizable.

Make your logo relevant to your industry. Stay away from personal preferences in your logo unless they relate to your business. For example, don’t use your favorite animal or color in your logo if it has nothing to do with your business. This will cause brand confusion and you will not be remembered.

Here are some examples of highly thought out and extremely effective logos

Why Social Media?

1. It’s Free – It cost you absolutely nothing to set up a Facebook Fan page, You Tube Channel, or a Twitter account.

2. Instant Gratification – Planning, building and launching an effective website takes a considerable amount of time and planning. With Social Media you can set up a profile, account or channel, load it with content and start attracting visitors immediately. For this reason it is an excellent way to draw attention to a recently launched website or blog.

3.  Traffic Generator – Having one or multiple Social Media presences provides more pointers or paths to your virtual location – your domain – thereby increase the back links to your site which in turn  helps your SEO. Additionally, SEO efforts can take quite a bit of time before you are reaping the rewards of your efforts. If you are not top ranked in Google providing other avenues of brand discovery is just plain smart.

4. It’s Flexible – There are hundreds of  Social Media sites out there. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter may garner the lion’s share of user base but rest assured you can find a niche for your brand.

5. Brand Management – Instead of wondering what people are saying about you brand, ask them! Social Media is all about generating conversation and engaging your customer base. A Social Media platform allows you to respond directly to consumer complaints, comments and questions.

Here are some examples of small businesses that have successfully used SocialMedia Marketing

Naked Pizza – New Orleans, LA

Emerson Hair Salon – Seattle, WA – 75% of their business comes from Facebook

Feather Your Nest – Specialty Shop – Arkansas – “Small businesses with shoestring marketing budgets should never underestimate the power of word of mouth generated by media.” – well said.

The same is true for the domain name you choose for your online presence. A domain is the cyberspace equivalent of your location.

So…. what makes for a great domain?

1. Keep It Short

Very few people bookmark sites these days. Instead they type in the domain they want to go to directly into their browser or in a search engine. Therefore it is essential to keep your domain name as short and memorable as possible. Having said that you should also be aware that as of December 2009 there were 234 million sites on the Internet¹ and that number is growing exponentially everyday. Most of the four and five letter domains are already taken but don’t be discouraged. Generally speaking if you keep your domain name between 10-15 characters you should be ok.

2. Make it Relevant to Your Business

Your domain name should include the name of your business or at the very least the name of your product or service whenever possible. Again, you want it to be memorable and easy for your customers to recall. Additionally, including the name of your business or products will greatly help your Search Engine rankings if you include your main keyword search term in your domain name. However, be very very careful that you know how your domain will look without punctuation and spaces!

3. Spaces and Symbols -NOT ALLOWED!

Domain names can only be letters, numbers, or dashes and are NOT case sensitive. This is very important to make note of. While having your business name as part of your domain is generally  ideal, make sure to look at your domain with out capitalization, spaces or punctuation so you don’t accidentally embarrass yourself . As a general rule I would stay away from dashes as well.

Here are some examples of poorly thought out domain names:

A holiday rentals company in Spain is called Choose Spain. While in theory the name they choose would be ideal, they neglected to realize when punctuation and spacing was taken out they ended up with a not so pleasant name.
www.choosespain.com

Here is a company called Pen Island that sells ink pens. While their domain contains their company name without punctuation and spacing it sends an entirely different message!  www.penisland.net

4. Dot what?

There are numerous extension out there that you can choose from but you really need to choose one that is right for your type of business. A dot com (.com) is Usually the best choice for any business. It is the most used extension in the world and is universally recognizable and stands for “commercial”. Most people, when typing in a domain will type www.adomainname.com simply out of habit.

However, if you are a small business and want to target local or regional customers ONLY than you should also purchase the location oriented version of your domain such as www.mysite.us.com or www.mysite.uk.com – this is especially important if your hosting company resides outside the country you are doing business in.

The extension .net is generally reserved for tech companies and .org for Organizations. The .mobi extension is reserved for website that are designed to display on Mobile Devices and they are going fast! If you have not purchased at least ONE  dot mobi domain I highly suggest you do as soon as possible !!! Mobile search is booming and you definitely need a presence not his platform.

Here is a list of all extensions available and their meaning and applications

5. Purchase multiple domains

Multiple domains are a good idea but you need to take care in how you use those domains so that you don’t end up being penalized buy the search engines (more on that in a later blog) Domains are pointers to your site and are relatively inexpensive at around $12. Below are two very simple strategies for multiple domains that I highly suggest you consider:

• Buy both the singular and plural spellings of your domain name – this makes it that much easier for your customers to find you. They wont have to remember if you are ABC Widget or ABC Widget(s). Either spelling will get them to your page.
• Purchase common misspellings of your domain name. – again make it super easy for your user to find you.

The simplest way to set up your multiple domains is to have your dot com your main site that hosts your content and redirect all other domains to that oprimary location.