Posts from — September 2009

For small businesses, email marketing has many advantages.

First, it gives you an easy, cost-effective way to contact your customers and potential customers. You can use this to encourage up-selling, repeat ordering, events, new product offerings… the possibilities are endless.

Secondly, you have the ability to use email marketing to push your leads through the buying process. Rather than depending on a sales staff to make the necessary follow ups, you can schedule the appropriate email follow ups to be sent out automatically – never having to worry that a lead will go cold because they weren’t “touched” often enough.

These are just two reasons small businesses should invest in email marketing. If you’re ready to get started with your small business email marketing plan, or are looking to expand your current email marketing, call The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing at 800.441.1319.

Right now? Absolutely nothing.

If you’re a technology geek like us at The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing, you’ll be excited to see if it works like they’re promising and to see how it can be integrated into your current marketing and business plans. If you’re not, then once it’s open to the public, you can consider integrating it into your marketing plan or in your business as a project management tool.

Google Wave, for those who don’t know, is a “real-time communication platform.” It combines the online media you are currently using: email, wikis, web chats (instant messaging), social networking, and project management into one browser to help you manage everything. It has a ton of features that, if speculations prove to be correct, will change the way we use the web. For more information, read this article from Mashable.

A note for small business owners: the Google Wave release is not a reason to stop your social media marketing campaigns or to postpone implementing social media marketing. Because it has not yet been released to the public, in fact, it will be released to 100,000 testers tomorrow, 9/30/09, you should continue on as normal with your current social media campaigns. There is still a lot of testing to be done before the general public can adopt the product.

We at The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing want you to know that right now is a great time to see what’s coming up in the future and make plans on how you will test this channel and integrate it into your marketing campaigns.

It’s important to know your best demographic. If you’re trying to market to teenagers your marketing will differ greatly from marketing to 30-something stay-at-home moms.  Nielsen Claritas, part of the well known Nielsen Company, has just reported a new finding: about half of the U.S. visited a social networking website last year. And, not only is this number consistently growing, these social networking users are growing more engaged.

What does this mean for small businesses?

According to Wils Corrigan, AVP, Research & Development at Nielsen Claritas, “The rising popularity of these sites and the deep engagement consumers have with them has advertisers and marketers asking for more and more detail as to which lifestyles should be targeted for their online advertising and promotions.”

As a small business owner, get ready to jump into social media marketing. It’s no longer considered a temporary phase. Interested in what the Nielsen report found? Check out this link to read more on the report.

If you’re ready to start your social media marketing campaign, or are in need of additional help, contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing. We can review what you’re currently doing and focus the efforts to reach your best customers.

Some Arizona small businesses recently found success supporting a nationwide cause, Portraits of Love, to give overseas soldiers professional portraits of their families. So far, 20 Arizona photographers have joined the cause – and already have a story written about them, and their support of our troops, in the Arizona Republic.

Sarah Kerkian at Cone, a brand strategy and communications agency, supports the point of cause marketing for small businesses. Her research shows that 85% of consumers find cause marketing to be acceptable – you don’t need to be humble about doing good for your community.

“American consumers continue to have high expectations of companies to support important causes, even amid the recession, and they are quite supportive of cause marketing…It’s the time to build authentic and lasting relationships with important organizations and causes and to engage consumers and employees in your efforts.”

As a small business owner, your biggest hurdle is building trust and respect for your business: through the community and your employees. Cause marketing is an easy way to build immediate trust and respect and generate a huge amount of word-of-mouth buzz.

Here are a few tips for a small business ready to start cause marketing.

• Find a cause. It should be one you are passionate about and that fits well into your business and customer base. Consider examples like General Mills and their “Boxtops for Education” or TOMS Shoes and their shoe donation for every purchase.
• Be authentic. Only use cause marketing if you truly want to help support a cause. Your customers will know if you’re trying to be “fake.”
• Give it support. Once you’ve determined to go forward, make sure you give this campaign the time and money to make it successful. This is still a marketing campaign, treat it as such to keep it successful.

Cause marketing can be a successful avenue for small business owners… and it really helps your local (or global) community. If you’re ready to start cause marketing and need some help, contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing.

It’s all over the web: Facebook made a couple announcements yesterday that are great news for small businesses looking to invest in social media marketing.

1. Facebook now has 300 million users worldwide. In just two months they have been able to increase their subscriber base by 50 million users.
2. Facebook is now cash flow positive: a goal they were hoping to hit by 2010. “This important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.” Facebook plans to stay an independent service and not to sell to Google, Yahoo! or any other major player.

This is great news for small businesses who want to know that the money and time they invest in building up their fan pages and communities on Facebook won’t change… and Facebook is doing everything they can to continue to grow and be an independent service.

If you are ready to start a social branding campaign on networks like Facebook, or would like to take your campaign to the next level, contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing. We will put together a strategy that will help you build your business goals.

Social media is the new big thing of online marketing. Businesses are reaching out to get on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more. That’s great. As a marketer, I’m excited to see businesses embrace the new technology when there is such great potential. With over 100 million active Facebook users and over 8 million tweets daily, these are channels businesses should be active on.

However, I have noticed that many companies will chase the new “shiny object” and leave their other channels on auto-pilot. These businesses that have caught ’shiny object syndrome’ are missing valuable contacts with their customer base, and in some instances, can be abusing their customer relationships.

Does your business have shiny object syndrome? Here are some questions to ask:

• How much time do you spend on your “new” marketing channel?
• How much time do you spend on your old marketing channels?
• What is the trend of your old marketing channels since you implemented the “new” marketing channel?

These questions work for any type of new marketing channel, not just social media. Any time a new marketing channel is implemented, it is expected that it will take up more time than any other channel because it is new. And, if you’re working with the same amount of manpower, it’s going to eat into the time you originally spent on your old channels.

But, if your old channels are starting to trend down because they’re not getting the TLC they need, it’s time to reevaluate your situation. Here are some solutions to get out of ’shiny object syndrome’.

• Review each channel performance on a regular basis. When you start noticing a slight difference, immediately look into that channel.
• Reevaluate your department’s responsibilities. See if you can restructure responsibilities to better handle all the channels.
• Hire a new employee. This should only be done if you know the work level will increase.
• Consider hiring an outside firm to handle the start-up phase of the new channel or some of the old channels until the new channel is up and running.

If you need help implementing a new marketing channel or are looking for a new marketing strategy, contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing. We specialize in helping small businesses build and revise their marketing strategies to work with their target customers in their local communities.

I joined the Arizona Business and Professional Women today for their Networking Lunch Roundtable at the Fish Market in Phoenix. If you are looking for a networking group in Phoenix, this is a group of fantastic business people. And, a little known fact, men can also join!

Networking events are a great way for small business owners to connect and develop relationships with people at their level, discuss what problems they may be facing and where they have had success, and potentially get referrals.

If you choose the right networking events, you have the ability to learn about a new product, service, or new sales and marketing strategies. You also have the opportunity to discuss your business and what you’re looking for at greater length.

For example, today Maggi Heiser, an independent Fashion Consultant, spoke about how to “Dress to Express” and feeling comfortable in what you wear to further your success. She’s a great example of a small business owner who used the tools she has available to grow her business.

Are you looking to grow your business in your local market? Contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing, and we can develop local marketing strategies to help you meet your business goals.

Starting next week you’ll be able to come to The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing every week for a quick, 1 minute video on anything marketing related. We currently have over 80 topics we’ll be discussing.

This isn’t your typical marketing advice that’s really technical and you have to have experience and knowledge in the industry. Give us 1 minute a week and we’ll explain the basics of online marketing, traditional marketing, and the current trends: what it is, what it can do for your business, and what implementation strategies you should consider.

If you have a topic you would like us to discuss, leave a comment below and we’ll put it on our list.

You can improve your marketing and increase your market share economically. You don’t need to compete with the “big guys” and do expensive TV commercials or radio ads to create a brand. Those channels may be an eventual part of your marketing strategy, but as a local company, you have some unique ways to market your business. Here are two ways you can utilize the conversations people have about you to increase your client base.

Social Media

Don’t worry about branding yourself through TV or radio. People are spending more and more time online, which, understandably is taking away from traditional media. By putting a focus on social branding, a less expensive alternative, you can build up a brand locally for less than it would take with traditional advertising. By starting these conversations, you can also create more loyalty with your current customer base bringing in repeat business without too much additional effort.

Press Releases

You’re a local business – you can attract local clients by getting your name out there and having newspapers, talk radio, and newscasters talk about you. If you have consistent, relevant press releases and make them interactive with video, social media, and photos, you can get something that’s even better than a TV commercial – your local news authority figures discussing you at a very low cost.

Give your local community something to talk about. Start putting yourself out there – online with social media channels and in the press with press releases and start building your company up with local marketing techniques.

Don’t know where to start? Call The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing and we can put together a localized marketing strategy that will put you in front of your local community and will build up your brand without the traditional media the “big guys” rely on.

Video is a medium that is still not used much by small businesses. There are some that are using it with a lot of success, and others who haven’t seen much from the traffic. Video can be a great help to your business: you can get more traffic, educate and engage your website visitors, convert your visitors better, and gain more press coverage. Here are some examples for what video can do for you:

Get More Traffic

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave in the last few years, you’ve seen at least one YouTube video. If you create something extremely viral you can get a huge amount of traffic from YouTube. These are typically few and far between. For example, within one week, top YouTube videos can reach over 4 million views. Now, it’s significantly smaller for most videos, but using YouTube does bring qualified, interested traffic to your site. You just need to make sure your videos are engaging and targeted and you will get traffic from YouTube.

Educate and Engage Visitors

Video can be used on your site to educate your visitors and better engage their attention. Rather than just read about your product, they can see it in action and really get a feel for how your product or service can help them. Video can be used for products and services, you just have to get creative.

Convert Your Visitors Better

Implementing video on specific landing pages can help you quickly engage your visitors and push them through your process. Rather than relying on their attention span to get them through your sales copy, you can have them listen and watch a sales pitch. These can even be interactive!

Gain More Press Coverage

If you’re sending out a press release, you can incorporate video with it. This allows you to be covered not only online and in print, but also on TV. While your press release may have been picked up by a TV station before, providing your own video gives them the ability to not just talk about it but show it.

Video marketing can help your company surpass the competition. Embrace the video marketing trend and see how it can help your company grow.

If you are interested in seeing how video can help your business, contact The Envision Agency, Small Business Marketing. We can develop and implement your video marketing strategies to help grow your business in this visual age.