Archive for the ‘Online Marketing’ Category

Calgary Marketing for Small Business

February 27th, 2010

Dear Fellow Dream Builder;

Calgary marketing for small business can be a little different than what you are used to. Small businesses are not necessarily looking for the same outcomes as large businesses or conglomerates. With this in mind, I’ve decided to share some strategies that small businesses can use to grow and prosper. Especially in these difficult times.

The suggestion today for small business marketing is Twitter. There are some great opportunities to reach your audience and customers through the social media of Twitter. Now not all small business owners will benefit from Twitter so I’ll try and make some suggestions as to the kinds of businesses that will be able to make the most of a Twitter profile.

Twitter is a social media platform used to update your followers about any important happenings going on in your business. It’s also a great way to keep the conversation going on between you and your customers. One of the best tips I can offer is to not make your tweets all about sales offers. You need to engage your customers with lots of great and valuable information. But also more than that, it’s important to allow your customers to get a flavour for your personality. So many small business owners think that by being professional and stiff that they are doing their business a service. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Your customers are eager and hungry to know you in a real and intimate way. You won’t please everyone, but you don’t need to. And you don’t need to be worried about that. Your customers will love you more, be more loyal and devoted if you build that intimate relationship with them.

As far as your tweets. Make sure that you are tweeting quality more often than quantity. Twitter is an immediate/live social platform. So use it with that in mind. A great example is if you have any type of service business. For a Calgary marketing small business example, let’s say you own a local coffee shop. Offer a tweet late in the afternoon for a free coffee with a pastry purchase that is good for the following day only. Maybe you are a auto service shop. How about a 10% coupon valid on any oil service within the next week. These are more successful the more followers you have. But it is more important to have interested followers rather than a large disinterested audience.

Hope this helps. If you’d like more information on making Twitter work for your business, give me a call 403 836 2640 or contact me.

Seeing YOUR big picture,

Jason

CHEEP CHEEP Ways to Fly Your Business to New Heights

January 3rd, 2010

Dear Fellow Dream Builder;

Use the New Year to launch your business into the stratosphere with online tools. I’m talking about Twitter. Twitter is gaining popular fast. Has been for a couple of years now. As a business builder you can reach new heights with your business through these online Web 2.0 properties, one of which is Twitter.

There are incidences of offline businesses relying solely on Twitter to drive traffic to their offline store. An example is one business in Houston who doubled their clientelle through the use of Twitter. You can read the rest of the story here: http://blog.mrtweet.net/twitter-to-go-how-one-local-coffee-shop-used-twitter-to-double-his-clientele

This same success can be yours regardless of the type of business that you are engaged in. Twitter is a great way to start a conversation with your customer and develop trust. Trust is crucial in gaining supportive and loyal, long term customers. This is especially true of reaching an online audience. If it takes 7 contacts with your customer before they feel comfortable buying from you, then this is doubly important with your online customer where you can’t often build that face to face intimacy as you can offline.

There are a couple of important tips on etiquette when engaging your client on Twitter. It is most common to follow back those who follow you. This is common courtesy, though of course as with all rules, sometimes they need to be broken. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed a lot of spammers springing up on Twitter. These vultures are spamming with gambling and pornography. So before you follow back anyone, be sure that they are not a spammer.

Another thing to bear in mind when using Twitter is to avail yourself of common courtesies just as one would in the offline world. What I’m talking about here is being thankful. Take a moment to send a thank you tweet to your followers just after they’ve followed you.

In fact, I’d like to suggest that being thankful is the first step to success in any business. If you conduct yourself in your business with a heart of gratitude, it will never lead you astray and your customers will flock to you. They will flock to you because they will trust you. They will trust you because you will fist seek to give to them freely and from that you will receive abundantly.

Twitter is just a great and terrific tool to start that sharing. Start learning to tweet your heart out. Heartfelt tweets will always bring you loyal customers. And loyal customers will always bring you profits.

Seeing YOUR big picture,

Jason

Search Engine Consulting – Why You Should Do It

December 15th, 2009

Dear Fellow Dream Builder,

Why should you decide to get to some search engine consulting for your online business? Well, there are a number of very good reasons why you should. As a business owner you have likely spent countless hours and maybe even years developing your business or product. You have a vast reservoir of knowledge with regards to your niche and a unique skill-set all your own. You know that you can’t be an expert in everything and that there are only so many hours in the day. Trying to learn additional skills that don’t relate directly to your business or product only takes away from your valuable time that would be much better spent developing new product or niche strategies or enhancing your offerings. By finding an expert who offers search engine consulting, you are leveraging someone else’s time and skill-sets to your best advantage. Smart business people know the power of leverage.

Search engine consulting is a dynamic field that evolves with the search engines themselves. For a business owner whose time is constantly in demand, the last thing you need is to have to take on a whole new pile of work and spend dozens of hours learning new skills. Search engine consulting can help accelerate your website’s profitability exponentially by exposing it to its widest possible customer base by increasing web traffic to your site. That simply will not happen on its own, the internet is far too vast and there are too many competitors out there who know what they are doing and use every competitive advantage. You need to compete on that level – period. This is a ground up, multi-pronged approach and something that needs to be maintained over time. However, you can spend all the time in the world doing it, but if you didn’t take the correct approach and do a thorough analysis in the beginning, it will all be for nothing. This is where getting expert search engine consulting is incredibly important.

Once your online business has been appropriately and fully optimized, you will soon see your site climbing up the search engine ladders. The goal is to be featured prominently when potential customers enter keywords that relate to what you have to offer. The more people that are exposed to your site through relevant searches the more sales you will see. It’s a direct and powerful correlation.

Don’t let your business under-perform. Seek out the expertise your business needs through search engine consulting and get it working for you. Leverage is a very powerful business tool and is essential if you want to make the big leaps in market share and profitability. Your business deserves nothing less.

Seeing YOUR big picture,

Jason