In content delivery be the tortoise, not the hare.

Welcome to the last installment in a three-part blog series about how to ensure you’re reaching all members of your target audience, taking their content processing preferences into consideration. (Click here for the first installment and here for the second.)

Last Thursday I gave you some ideas of ways you can diversify the content you create for your business, in an effort to reach more members of your target audience and today I have some more suggestions for you.

To say that your business should encompass ALL of the above and suggestions I offered last week  might be a stretch…or is it? You’re not expected to create all of these forms of distribution in a day…a week…or even a month. Can it be done? Sure, but it isn’t necessary. Remember the Tortoise & the Hare? Slow and steady wins the race, and if you can begin incorporating just one new form of content distribution each month, or every other month, then you have a powerful, viral mechanism to grow your business, increase your subscribers, and build a following.

Diversifying the Content you Create

On Tuesday we talked about the importance of keeping the content processing preference of your target audience in mind and how, for example, you are essentially blocking out those who don’t like ezines when that’s the only type of marketing you do. (Catch up by clicking here.)

Today I’m going to go over some different types of content you can create to connect and communicate with all of the different types of people who make up your target audience:

Now, in a perfect demonstration of how shorter entries are just fine, I’m going to leave you hanging here and you can come back on Tuesday for some more ideas. Really, do you have time to read anymore at my little old blog today anyway?

Didn’t think so! See you next week.

Start spreadin’ the news (better)

Newsletters are one of the most popular marketing tools used to market small businesses today. Whether you’re sending a printed newsletter via snail mail or an electronic newsletter via email, it’s a win-win for everyone. For the subscriber, they benefit from receiving up-to-date information about your business; helpful articles, promotions and giveaways. For your small business, this is your opportunity to stay in touch with your audience. The beauty of the whole thing is, they’ve given you their permission to market to them!

In this post, we’re gonna focus on electronic newsletters, also known as the sophisticated and sleek-sounding “eZine” or the regular old email newsletter.

An eZine is a really great tool for many reasons:

  1. It’s cheap. No commercial printing with a hefty price tag involved.
  2. You can send one out almost instantly. You don’t have to wait 7-10 days for it to be printed, then another 3 days to prepare the mailing, then another 7-10 days for the recipient to receive it via snail mail depending on whether you mailed it 1st class or bulk mail, and again, no postage required.
  3. It works. It’s the ideal opportunity to keep in touch, gain feedback from your subscribers, customers, and potential customers, and to gain new subscribers…a new audience for your business.

Now just hold on a second. Before you decide to jump on the newsletter bandwagon, there are a few crucial elements to consider. Even if you already have a newsletter, you should be following these tips so consider this a refresher and if you’re not doing the following, then make it a point to rework your publication so your readers get the most value.

Tips to be the best you can be-Zine:

Last but not least, you need a good distribution company to deliver your newsletter and so you can track your subscribers as well as who is opening what messages and clicking on what links.

We’ll talk about that in detail another time. Until then, I hope you’ll take what I’ve given you today and apply it in your own newslettering!

Ciao ‘til Thursday!

Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth

After doing some research and gathering referrals, you’ve finally decided on the expert you want to take over the design/web development/email campaigns/social media/SEO/marketing aspect of your business.

Good call! But keep in mind why you did this in the first place.

Most likely it’s because you know this area is not your forte and you’ve been muddling through it for long enough. You’ve been spending your “spare” time reading everything you can get your hands on regarding the subject and you’ve tried to emulate others’ success, but it just isn’t working for you.

Or maybe it did for a while, but we all know the only thing about technology that stays the same is that it’s always changing and it’s just too darn hard to keep up with those changes on top of everything else you do.

If you’re going to go through the trouble of hiring an expert to take something over for you then please listen to the suggestions and recommendations offered by the person you’ve hired to give you advice.

Don’t pretend you know everything and tell this person how you want things done when you’ve hired them for their expertise. You’re paying for that expert’s authority in her field for a reason so don’t jeopardize your end result by micromanaging and being overbearing. In a few months when you don’t see any results, you blame the service provider, and then move on to the next one…only to repeat your same mistakes over and over.

Don’t make this your story! This has happened to me time and time again when someone has contacted me with a horror story from their experience with a different service provider. I mean, I really have heard it all…from the high school or college students who couldn’t get the client’s website to work the way it should, to their 6-week web project that is now in month 10 of development, to the SEO expert who couldn’t get them anywhere near the top 10 on Google in a month, etc.

The thing is that while some stories I hear are legitimate, many of them are a product of having too many cooks in the kitchen. The head chef, with years of schooling and experience in top rated restaurants is working alongside the self-proclaimed chef whose family and friends always brag about their macaroni & cheese casserole. How do you think it goes over when this self-proclaimed chef is spewing out cooking tips to that head chef?

Your expert is an expert because they’ve been performing and perfecting their methods for a long time. They get results and they come highly recommended. So why waste time and money telling them the way you want something done – in many cases the same way you’ve been doing all along and getting nowhere? You’re pretty much setting yourself up for failure, aren’t you?

Do your business a favor. Listen to your expert and their recommendations. Have trust in them. Let them map out a new plan of action and then sit back and let them do all the work. Monitor their progress of course, but don’t interfere. Ask questions, ask why they’re doing something this way…go ahead, ask away, but let them do their thing. See where you are after a month and unless something is just horribly wrong, you must give it at least a couple of months to measure the success.

If you’re tired of the broth you keep ending up with, trust the person you hire to make it better and stay out of the kitchen.

Why Your Marketing Efforts Are Failing

j0387302Have you ever heard the phrase, “It goes in one ear and out the other?” well, besides referring to my 4 year old daughter, I secretly think this of my clients or potential customers at times. In this case I’m referring to your marketing plan…you know that somewhat seemingly great plan you drafted when you first began your business. Or maybe you meant to or, as one client tells me, it’s all in her head. Well, in her head it will stay unless she actually puts the plan in writing and puts it in motion. (She’s heard this all before by the way)

So where is your marketing plan? There is no other way to say this, but marketing is constant. It is a process that never ends. It is not a one-time project. When you stop marketing, people WILL forget about you, or never know you exist. Keep your name and message in front of them and it doesn’t matter if you’ve done business with them before or not, the next time they are in need of your service or product, they will think of you first. Why? Because you’re consistent and have established a relationship with them. If they only hear from you once or twice a year, chances are you’re not going to hear from them.

One of the biggest mistakes a business can make is maintaining this mentality of only marketing when they need the business. Not only is this a very dangerous road to follow, but it is ineffective, time consuming, and this will not solve your problem. Sure it might get you one or two customers, but then there you are again a few months later wondering where you’re going to get your next client from to pay the bills.

If you’re like the client I mentioned earlier, then you might be thinking, “I don’t have the funds to market all the time.” I’m not sure why business owners discount marketing as a way to save money. I’m going to throw another well-known phrase at you now, “you have to spend money to make money.” Now where this phrase is somewhat true, it is not entirely accurate as I’m pretty sure it was coined before the Internet existed.

The fact is you can do a whole lot of marketing, direct or indirect, that costs you absolutely nothing, and almost all of them are using the Internet. A few examples are:

These are just a few ideas to get you going. If your marketing efforts are failing, then it’s time to reevaluate your methods. Of course there are plenty of ways to market using paid avenues. But that’s another post for another day and the point to this one is there are plenty of ways to market your business without paying a dime.

As a side note and to give you a perfect example using 2 of the above methods, I follow a local restaurant called Sal & Mookies on Twitter. A few weeks ago I saw a Twitter message from them – they were giving away 2 $100 gift cards to their restaurant. To enter all you had to do was to re-tweet their message using Twitter or leave a message on their FaceBook page. I of course sent a tweet out and then left a message on their FaceBook page…not expecting to win because I NEVER win anything. Guess what? I was one of the winners! Hubby and I loaded the girls up last weekend and headed over to Sal & Mookies for dinner. What they didn’t know was that we have never been to Sal & Mookies prior to this visit and all because I won a gift card. We’ve heard of them of course, we see their name all over town…they’re kind of famous around here, but we had just never been in all our years here. The point to all of this is that they will have a customer for life. Not because we won a gift card, but because they got us into their establishment, we had fantastic service, and the food was OMG good!

So be creative and don’t drop the ball on your marketing plan. Oh, and if you don’t have one, then now’s the time to draft one out and start implementing it immediately. You don’t have to do everything at once. Start small and work your way up to bigger things.

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