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When you are a small business, your marketing is one of the toughest things you will have to tackle. When every dollar you spend on marketing comes directly out of your pocket, decisions can be tough to make. You have to maximize your return on investment or at the very least be able to track your spend. Traditional advertising outside of using traceable 800 numbers offers very little tracking. Taking out a billboard, a newspaper ad, or yellow pages ad makes it very difficult to trace impressions, and in our world becomes known as “spray and pray” marketing (since you just shoot something out and pray for results). Internet marketing was traditionally thought of as something for big businesses and pure online companies.

The fact of the matter is that Google and other search engines are amazing when it comes to local type searches, and there is a shift in the way people are looking for businesses from traditional sources like phone books to online. Having a good mix of search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, a great website and email marketing is now a necessity.

Search Engine Optimization

For most local businesses, we serve a strong push for roughly 12 months, and continued upkeep can keep your business outranking your competition on your choice of keywords providing they use a local identifier like “plumber Chicago.” We have found that, in most market niches, competition is limited to just a few players (except in highly competitive areas like personal injury law, where the competition is a little stiffer). Still, most competitors in these markets will be overtaken in time.

It is important that your current and potential clients find your business in the organic search results. This instantly provides a feeling of authoritativeness and trust. It says, “Google says my site is the most relevant,” and these customers will be typically more likely to do business with you. It takes time to rise in the organic search results, but if you go about it the right way your rankings will be fortified against your competition.

Pay Per Click Advertising

This is typically known as the ads that appear on the right hand side bar of the search results. They often appear on the top as well. For small businesses, this can be a pesky thing to handle. You will really need someone to work with you and make sure you have landing pages, tracking 800 numbers and conversion tracking working properly.

That said, even the smallest business in the smallest town should be running pay per click advertising. It is literally the one form of advertising that is 100% traceable and attaches directly to the bottom line. Bidding on terms related to your business, your business name and even the name of your top competitors will all drive significant traffic to your website and eventually to your office.

Email Marketing & Website Design

These are two areas local businesses sorely lack. From our experiences, we think the reason is that too many crummy vendors wanting to charge $10,000 for a website. The fact is that most website we build look very professional, do everything they need to do and are built for under 3K. With that said, there are good web design companies out there that aren’t trying to rip people off. We are not trying to make a living selling websites, and we are not trying to turn this into a sales pitch.

Businesses will spend tons of money on a nice showroom or billboard, but they let their website look terrible. Your website is your business. It is what people will associate with you. If you have a professional, clean looking website with loads of information, customers will be much more likely to do business with you and spend more money.

As far as email marketing goes, it’s just a small thing, but it helps build value with your current and prospective clients. Don’t just blast them with sales and buy now offers. The key is to add value, show them you care and earn their trust. As small business owners, you already know how important trust is and know how much easier a sale is when you have this key element.

The point is that small businesses, no matter how small, don’t have to be the little guy (nor should they act that way). The internet is the great equalizer, a place where you can compete with the national chains and big box stores by showing your potential clients a first class experience on the web.

Even for a beginner there is a lot to know about email marketing. Knowing what to say in your emails, how to avoid spam filters, and even how often you should email your customers. This post will address just three of the many things you need to know about email marketing for your business, but covers the basics you will need to get headed in the right direction.

What To Say In Your Emails:

If you are just sending an email to a few clients or sending it out to a list of 70,000 people the message is the most important thing to consider. Spend time before hand really thinking about what you plan to say, have several people read it before you send it, and make sure you get the message across. Avoid being to promotional, and focus on being informational. People do not want to spend 30 minutes reading your email so be short, concise, and clear. Avoid having to send follow up emails or answer obvious questions by planning ahead of time every time you email anyone. If you practice this with your marketing emails, take it to your everyday emails too. You will be surprised how much more effective your communication is. It is easy to get informal with emails or to use slang, fight this urge, write professional, and succeed no matter the size of your email list.

How To Avoid Spam Filters:
This is a very important step to any email marketing campaign. Make sure and avoid obviously spammy words like “limited time offer” or “buy now”. Also avoid using too much bold or including too many images. Many spammers use images to hide their promotional language, and you can too just practice it in moderation. Below I will list a couple of words commonly flagged for spam. Obviously, many of them may seem strange to you, or outside something you would normally write but keep it in mind anyway. The bolded words are big no no’s. Click here to view the list.

How Often To Email Your List:
There are a lot of opinions on this topic and we generally choose to err on the side of caution. The last thing you want to do is have your potential or current customers start to see your emails as noise. The first step is tracking your emails key statistics, your open rate, your spam filter levels and your read times. This will tell you how many of your people are reading the message you spent hours writing. Don’t put too much weight on any one mailer that you send out rather keep the whole picture in mind. Watch your spam filter numbers because almost nobody is going to dig into their spam folder looking for your email. When to email your customers sort of depends on them. If they are at their computers during the day, email them then. If they don’t log on to the web until the evening send it then. The main point here is that you should always track the emails you send as to maximize the effectiveness of each email you send.