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Creating an effective web presence for your small business

By Marcia Ming on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 | 6 Comments

Announcing a special series in February:

.com symbol - creating an effective web presence for your small business

Having your own .com is critical to creating an effective web presence for your small business

If your business is in the real world – sometimes referred to as offline – it’s vitally important these days for you to have an effective web presence.

Let’s face it, unless most of your customers are seniors, your yellow page ad probably is not pulling its weight. I live in a college town where most of the residents don’t even bother to carry the yellow pages into their homes.

Instead, they (your prospects) comparison shop the websites of major retailers before they set foot in a retail store. By the time they do, they know exactly which brand they want and who is offering the best features for the lowest price.

In short, your business will not survive long without a web presence. But creating one that helps your prospects find what you are selling is a big challenge. It takes considerable marketing savvy and the right tools.

So, Savvy Marketing Secret’s blog will launch a series of posts to help you build a web presence that works.

In February, we’ll talk about building a website if you don’t already have one. Even if you already have a website, you’re sure to benefit from the topics we have planned. Here’s our current lineup of topics:

Should you build a static website or a blog? – Google loves blogs because it lets your site visitors participate in your online conversation.
Should you hire someone to build your website? – And if so, who do you hire, how much will it cost, and what will you get for your money? What challenges will that pose for maintaining your website?
We will tell you how to setup a simple website and blog using the WordPress blog platform.
If you go with a blog, should you pay for a custom blog theme? If you are trying to brand your business to set it apart from the competition, you may want a theme that reflects that unique branding.
What are blog plugins and should you use them? What are the most helpful ones and the most popular?
What pages should your website include? Some web pages – like the ones about your business and how to contact you are not optional. New FTC rules make it important to include privacy statements, terms of service and other disclaimers. You don’t want to miss this post.
We will also explain why content is so important to your website? If you are going to attract traffic to your new website you will need content relevant to your business and lots of it.
Finally, we’ll talk a little bit about selecting the keywords you should put in your content if you want your site to be found – by search engines and your business’ prospective customers.

It would be impossible to cover everything you need to know about keywords in one blog post which is why in March, we’re planning a full series about generating traffic to your website, including how to optimize your website with keywords for search engines and humans.

If no one knows it exists, your new website will be practically useless, so bookmark this blog or signup for our newsletter now, to make sure you don’t miss a single post. If you have a specific question or problem along these lines, leave a comment so we can include your concerns in our post. Here’s to your small business’ success in 2010.

Marcia Ming,
Publisher

With Affiliate Marketing, Start With Your Passion

By Marcia Ming on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 | 13 Comments

When trying to pick a niche for affiliate marketing, experts encourage you to go with your passion. Why? You have to do a lot of research and develop a great deal of content on the topic. You don’t want to pick something that bores you to tears.

In internet marketing it's important to find your passion - things that tug at your heart.

The heart is a symbol of passion which can make a difference in perseverence in internet marketing.

Well, I’ve been struggling with the issue of passion. Back in the nineties, I worked with a nonprofit agency to bring a brand new program to Delaware where I lived at the time.

It was a microloan program called Working Capital that provided business training and very small loans to tiny companies. Based on the Nobel Prize Winning Grameen Bank model created by Muhammad Yunus, Working Capital was supposed to do for America’s inner cities and rural areas what the international loan program had done for India and some African nations.

I can’t remember a time when I felt more passion than those many evenings I spent meeting with groups of small business owners explaining the program and helping them form loan groups. Once groups were formed, members discussed their business plans and sought the group’s approval for loans.

I was a woman on a mission. I really believed in free enterprise and its potential to transform communities.

What made the whole experience so powerful was the atmosphere we created. We held networking events, brought in special speakers and formed a lot of business loan groups. The energy in our building was so powerful you could feel the excitement. During the five or six years the program ran, hundreds of entrepreneurs joined Working Capital.

Our Delaware program was so successful that we won a Presidential Award and were invited to help form loan groups for street vendors before the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Thinking back, I realized that I poured so much of my heart and soul into that program that something inside me died with the program. I had a vision of little businesses transforming Wilmington in a similar way as successful minority owned companies changed the landscape of Memphis’ historic Beale Street. My hope died hard.

I created Savvy Marketing Secrets hoping to rekindle some of the passion I felt with Working Capital. By helping very small businesses harness the power of the Internet, I hoped to relight that spark.

Of course it’s not as easy to feel passion sitting in front of a computer screen as it was when I was meeting with real business owners. But tapping into that experience helped me remember my passion.

Many of the smallest businesses are not even on the Internet. But the net holds tremendous promise for business growth for those who take advantage of the various marketing tools. So my passion now is to use this blog to connect the dots to help businesses similar to the ones I worked with in Delaware.

I would love to hear your stories about your passion and how you are shaping it into your small business. Please leave a comment below.

Savvy Issues a Toot Toot to Jeff Fisher, Owner of Logomotives

By Marcia Ming on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 | 3 Comments

Graphic Designer is one of Startup Nation’s Top 100 Small Businesses

Savvy Marketing Secrets recognizes a truly Savvy Marketer — Home Based Graphic Designer Jeff Fisher.

First I must acknowledge that I totally missed this one. I didn’t realize that Jeff Fisher won 6th place in the “Most Slacker Friendly” category of small, home based businesses in the US in 2008, until I received a Google Alert recently.

Jeff Fisher's Logomotives Graphic Design Firm Wins

I knew Jeff Fisher was a savvy marketer when I interviewed him in 2008, but it was only after the Interview, that I learned how a truly savvy marketer works.

I have gotten more traffic and more site visitors from that one interview because Jeff really knows how to toot his own accomplishments. In the news business, you always try to keep a great story going — you don’t let it die. The recent coverage of Michael Jackson’s death is a great example.

Well Jeff knows how to work all of the social marketing tools to keep his name in the news. So it should come as no surprise that he was recognized by Startup Nation, the place where I first got to know Jeff.

Portland, OR Graphic Designer Jeff Fisher

Jeff is a genius at finding the news in any situation. He was able to win in this category by playing up the home business benefit of being able to work anywhere, wearing whatever you please.

“Fisher proudly shares that he often works from his garden in a T-shirt and boxer shorts,” Startup Nation reported when describing his selection. “In fact, he once gave a presentation in his underwear to hundreds of designers at the international HOW Design Conference.”

I’m not quite sure how Jeff pulled that one off, but you have to admit that this is an excellent example of savvy marketing, something that might even earn the respect of Jay Conrad Levinson of “Guerilla Marketing Fame.”

So Savvy Marketers, take a page from Jeff Fisher’s book and find a unique way to get the word out about your business. And Jeff Fisher, Congratulations!

Marcia Ming, Publisher
Savvy Marketing Secrets

Read our intial interview with Jeff Fisher
Visit Startup Nation

With Internet Marketing, It’s Vital to Know Your Audience

By Marcia Ming on Friday, June 12th, 2009 | 7 Comments

It pays to understand your Internet audience's preferences.

Everyday I get new insights on Internet marketing. Recently, I have learned a lot about the importance of knowing your audience. In the past I followed the advice of some of the top Internet marketers — mostly men, without question. Not anymore.

Many of my readers are women. And I am learning with fascination that women don’t use the Internet in the same way that men do. Men focus on the money. They want to get your information quickly and bombard you with messages — many promotional. A lot of women don’t respond well to that style.

Women want to get to know you first. They want to receive great information and build trust before they give you their name and email address. Sometimes they detest the mechanisms we have put in place to enhance or automate our marketing.

I spoke recently with a woman who was very put off by the requirement to sign in to a website that she visits almost daily. She visits the site because she loves the information.

Determining how our site or blog visitors feel about the way we present our information is never easy. People sometimes ignore surveys. You ask for reactions, but rarely get them. Still, people will tell others everything they hate about what you are doing wrong.

So my goal here is to open a dialogue and get you to tell me what you like or dislike about current practices on websites and blogs.

How do you feel about those pesky little sign-in forms? What about optin or squeeze pages that require you to sign in to get the free stuff?

How often do you like to get information or newsletters sent to your email box?

How do you feel about endless promotions for products in which you may or may not be interested?

Please let me know so I can share the information with other small business owners who are struggling to get it right. I’d like to thank you upfront for any comments you leave.

Marcia Ming

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