What's your #1 reason?

Day265
Following is from an article my husband wrote for a local newspaper. I think it helpful to online business owners.

The following is a collection of key reasons, based on experience of other business owners, to getting a firm handle on the use of the internet for your business. You might find at least one in particular that bubbles to the surface as an opportunity missed up to this point for your business, and provide just the tool you need to open up a bottleneck currently holding you back from greater success.

Increase Reach – The entire world is your oyster. Not only is the communication network open to the ends of the earth, but today’s translation tables all but totally remove language as a barrier! Transportation companies such as FedX, DHL and others have created global footprints and the ability to ship your product to the far corners of the earth right from your doorstep.

Decrease Costs – Printing, postage, design/layout, time, and inventory are all key components of any print-based project. Cutting any one of these can save substantial sums of money, but with the exception of design/layout which we’ll call equal, the others can ALL be cut substantially using the power of the internet as a distribution channel for brochures, specifications sheets, manuals, procedures, you name it. This alone can save hundreds, or even thousands of dollars for the typical small business.

Increase Speed – In addition to the time savings noted above, the internet can provide the nimbleness you need to respond quickly to changing conditions. New products or services can be explained, viewed and transactions can occur to include delivery in fraction of the time that the traditional development, production and marketing support package took to complete. Products can be introduced and decommissioned instantly as well as featured or put on sale. The cost of mistakes is greatly reduced as well.

Increase Automation – Although I have always remained suspicious of the claim that computers don’t make mistakes, it is tough to argue that automation as part of the sales and fulfillment process is rock-steady compared to the proliferation of human errors related to order entry and shipment. Add to this the ability to receive and process orders while you are sleeping, it’s an experience not to be missed! Labor, accuracy and convenience for your customer lead to increased profits.

Get more for less from your Marketing efforts – Track buyer behavior. See what they look at, in what order, for how long and the various patterns associated with their online experience that is nearly impossible to accomplish in a traditional brick and mortar environment. Money spent for marketing can have an enormous effect on your profitability but whether the effect is positive or negative depends on its effectiveness. Traditionally marketing has been more or less a black box into which you throw money, and then wait to see what comes out. The wait can sometimes take months or even years and it is difficult to understand what to change if the results are not as you expected. With today’s online marketing tools, you can measure marketing effectiveness instantly and, using real-time feedback, make adjustments on the fly. Forget to ask where a customer heard about you? The internet can track online behavior and report it for you in relevant terms that you can act on. Put your marketing money where it works most efficiently and reduce your overall costs proportionately.

The internet certainly doesn’t solve all our problems, provide world-peace, or even let us totally put our businesses on auto-pilot, but take it from those who know from experience, it can greatly enhance our success and ultimately our quality of life when used effectively according to our own specific needs. Now that is worth passing along.

John Geiger, owner of Webmasters ICE, has over five years experience helping small and medium-sized companies and organizations capitalize on the power of the internet through consulting, education, and supporting products and services. His focus and passion is the use of the internet in providing more effective overall marketing strategies and highly measurable levels of marketing success. http://www.webmastersice.com/

10 ways to market your site

Day183
This article by my internet consultant husband strikes home a little because I feel like I haven’t been putting as much time into my business this summer!

10 Ways to Market Your Site and Keep Your Business Cooking This Summer

During this season with the kids home, vacations to take, cookouts to have or attend, and all the other good things going on, it’s easy to put some of our more important business routines on hold, to include marketing. We continue to deliver our goods and services, pay our bills, and collect our due, but things like marketing, well it can wait…or so the temptation exists. Well here are 10 things you can do which don’t take much time, and cost little to nothing to accomplish that will help keep your business visible even if you take it easy a little this summer.

Luckily the internet doesn’t sleep. If you have a website, it is out there and visible 24/7. Lets look at a few simple ways to use that to your advantage.

Make sure your site is registered with the major search engines. This can be done for free at Google, Yahoo and MSN as well as other specialty directories. Typing in “Suggest Site” or “Suggest URL” in your browser search bar will get you to the right places. Submit to each independently rather than to a so-called listing agent who does mass submissions. Include dmoz.org.
Review your affiliations with trade/industry organizations, and go to their sites or your membership information and see what internet linking services they provide you as part of your association with them. These are excellent ways to gain exposure and credibility, but be conscious of the fact many will be listing your competitors as well so approach this with thought.
Look through your website and make sure it is saying what you want it to say. Is it current? Is it aimed at the audience you wish to have for customers? Do you include words and phrases that are focused on what it is you are trying to get across? Make a list of these words and phrases, and then use them in your content as well as website metatags. (talk to a website professional regarding effective integration of these into your site for search engine use)
Set a schedule on your calendar for refreshing your website content to ensure it stays fresh. When visitors return to a site and see nothing new, statistics say that it will be very likely be their last time to visit, and they will go on to another site offering similar products, services, or information.
Set up a formal system for collecting customer contact information and USE IT. Front desk registration, web form, telephone question, giveaway registration, there are many simple ways to gather data. Include e-mail address so you can keep in touch in a variety of simple and even automatic ways for virtually free. Making telephone calls one by one can be a daunting task, and direct mail expensive, but e-mail is quick, easy and cost effective.
Say thanks! Send a card, send an e-mail, put a note on your invoices; just make sure you thank your customers for their business. They have a choice and want to feel appreciated, don’t you?
Stay in touch. Don’t let final payment end your relationship. It costs several times the amount to acquire a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. Let them know what you are up to, that you enjoy what you do, that you are good at it and stand ready to help them at any time in the future. Remind them of why they chose you in the past. Reinforce their good judgment!
Do something new once in a while. Don’t lose sight of your niche, but refresh your business in your customer’s eyes once in a while and let them know about it.
Most of us have at least thought about submitting a press release to the local newspaper when we have something worthy to mention, but you may not know about the various facilities online to do the same. A simple notice of a new product or service can be easily submitted to any number of online agencies such as PRWeb, PR Leap, and others for free release all over the country or specific locations. Free classified ads can be placed as well on sites such as Craigslist.
Organize a simple e-mail marketing strategy and periodically let folks know what you are up to. Yes there are spam filters, black lists, white lists, and all sorts of tools to keep unsolicited e-mail from bothering the recipient, but if you provide something of value, and follow simple rules of courtesy, your e-mail marketing can be quite effective, not to mention traceable, measurable, and essentially free.

In response to a recent marketing survey, 52% of over 220 manufacturing company
executives consider their website to be their most valuable marketing tool. Considering just the small sampling of easy to implement tips above, it’s no wonder.

Yes, the hazy lazy days of summer are here, but the internet can provide ways our business can enjoy sustained marketing presence even while we kick back a bit and have our minds occasionally somewhere else.

John Geiger, owner of Webmasters ICE, has over five years experience helping small and medium-sized companies and organizations capitalize on the power of the internet through consulting, education, and supporting products and services. His focus and passion is the use of the internet in providing more effective overall marketing strategies and highly measurable levels of marketing success. http://www.webmastersice.com/

Searching online

Day171
I'm sharing an article by my favorite webdesigner/internet consultant again.

What Are We Searching For?

Just face it - the internet is part of our lives. Yes, there are some of us that do not have an e-mail address, and there are some that have never been online at all, but those folks are getting harder and harder to find. For the rest of us, the internet is getting to be pretty routine stuff…but what are we doing while we gaze into that rectangular piece of glass or plastic and type or scroll, or click, or wheel, or point?

A recent survey of over 2000 adults produced some interesting statistics in answer to that very question. Playing Texas Holdem? Buying new cars? Hooking up with a long lost sweetheart or a new one? We (you) may not be doing just what you (we) thought. No, real life is not what the headlines might portray, and with a quarter of us spending more than 22 hours online every week that’s a good thing.

Not surprisingly, the single most common use of the internet for most of us is connecting to each other though e-mail. Full 87% of us send/receive e-mail most/every time we go online. And guess which gender does the most of that? Yes, the ladies are in the lead when it comes to communicating on the internet just like all mediums throughout history. Interestingly, no other internet activity was skewed significantly to one gender or the other except for e-mail usage. The next most frequent reason that we go online is to wander aimlessly it seems. Over 55% of us surf with no specific motive in mind most/every time we go online. Don’t know about you, I found that quite surprising. Good thing we don’t drive with the same lack of intention, especially with the price of gas. The next most common online activity was search, and that is the primary subject of this column. It’s important at this point, to differentiate search from surf. The 55% number above represents those folks who just click on the first thing that catches their interest of the moment, and they’ve begun a journey winding through whatever links and connections present themselves. But let’s look closer at searchers who we’ll define as those who input a word, term, or phrase in a search engine in order to be presented with information specific to that input. Specific mission in mind; goal; interest…you get the idea.

So what are we all looking for? #1 is research (88% of those polled). The topics vary of course (the internet is infinite you know), but think research, education, knowledge. Most common research topics in order: Hobbies, Health/Medical, followed by job/career search; not headline material, but very respectable stuff. The #2 online activity is obtaining maps and directions at 75% (yes even men, though to a slightly lesser extent than women of course). 3rd is news/current events and further details of the study showed it is primarily to get differing viewpoints on issues. A surprising 54% use the internet instead of a phonebook to look up people and/or businesses, and a majority of that for local as opposed to non-local businesses. Business owners, make sure you have an online presence! Shopping made the list at #6 with roughly half looking for local retail where they can buy the product.

What about the search engines? Who is using what? According to comScore’s most recent data, Google handles 42% of our searches vs. 28% for Yahoo and 13.2% for MSN leaving the rest to the several hundred others combined. But…those polled showed surprisingly little loyalty with only 13% claiming to use Google exclusively, 11% for AOL, 10% for MSN, and 7% for Yahoo. In other words, most of us are comfortable using a variety of search engines depending on circumstances, and what we are looking for.

One last set of results caught my attention, and that is that a surprising 56% of online users said they do not know the difference between sponsored (paid) and natural (unpaid) listings and fully one half of the ones that do understand the difference either don’t care, or actually prefer the paid listings to the natural. So for the time being, advertisers can enjoy a preferred position with 75% of the online population.

Well, the internet is settling down into a pretty mundane part of our being just 20 years into its existence; useful and respectable. Don’t confuse that with stagnation though. It is changing and moving faster than oil through a goose, and there is nothing mundane about that!

*Survey done in April 2005 by Harris Interactive for icrossing. Complete report available on request.

John Geiger, owner of Webmasters ICE, has over five years experience helping small and medium-sized companies and organizations capitalize on the power of the internet through consulting, education, and supporting products and services. His focus and passion is the use of the internet in providing more effective overall marketing strategies and highly measurable levels of marketing success. http://www.webmastersice.com/

Top 3 myths about internet marketing

Day104
I’m lucky to have a husband who is an internet business consultant! I use his tips all the time!

Top 3 Myths About Internet Marketing by John Geiger

Lack of understanding and old thinking has long cost small business owners their competitive edge and despite a steady stream of research proving the effectiveness of Internet marketing, yet again, it has mostly been larger firms taking advantage of this new advertising medium. According to projections by eMarketer.com, online ad spending in 2005 grew by more than 30%, surpassing the $10 billion mark for the first time. But many small and medium-size business owners (SMEs) are still wary of introducing Internet marketing to their business plans. If you listen to their reasoning, the Internet might be considered as the fax machine once was: unnecessary, unproven and not cost effective. Well, today ignoring the benefits of an Internet marketing strategy can cost them far more in lost profits than choosing postal mail over faxes. Recently a study was done to determine the top 3 reasons small businesses have been reluctant to fully embrace the increasingly relevant Internet in their marketing plans. The results showed similar misconceptions on both sides of the Atlantic as to what Internet marketing is, and what it can do for their business. Myth #1: "My business doesn't need Internet marketing" Lack of perceived need was the most common reason offered up by the focus group participants, but few successful business owners would ever say that their business doesn't need to advertise. Internet search engine giant Yahoo!, whose advertising network reaches 80% of active Internet users (Nielsen/NetRatings, 2004) has hundreds of business categories in its directory right down to the smallest niche businesses. The reality is that if you have a product or service to sell, prospects are looking for it online, even if the actual purchase is made offline. The objective is that your website (or ad) be found when someone is looking to buy, and today's local search algorithms bring those local searches to you, the local business.
Myth #2: "Internet marketing is too expensive" It's well documented that small business owners are cost sensitive, but it's a misconception that Internet marketing is expensive. In fact, Internet marketing solutions are in many cases considerably less expensive than most traditional advertising media that business owners are more familiar with. For example, a modest display ad in a yellow page phone directory can cost a company thousands of dollars per year while offering virtually no way to target specific customers or track the quality of leads produced (if any). With that kind of budget--or in most cases considerably less--a Pay-for-Performance search engine marketing campaign can deliver precisely targeted (they are interested or they wouldn't click) leads to a business' website, while documenting which ads produce which sales, and even directly tying specific activities such as telephone calls, e-mails, and/or online forms directly to a specific ad for real-time analysis and action. Direct mail and print advertising can be replaced or supplemented with email marketing and online promotions for pennies on the dollar, again offering better customer targeting and performance tracking capability. And because Internet marketing solutions can be deployed far more quickly than other forms of advertising, business owners are better able to respond to changes in the marketplace and adjust on-the-fly.
Myth #3: "I don't know where to start" For those small business owners that do see the value in Internet marketing, not having an Internet marketing strategy comes down to a matter of choice--or too many choices. Unfamiliar with the topic, getting help can be quite daunting. They can't afford to make the wrong decision, so sometimes they play it safe and stay out of the game altogether. But that decision is shortsighted, and limits their potential in today's market. The best advice is to approach the situation the way you would when seeking out help in any other area: Ask around, get referrals from friends or acquaintances; don't make a decision based solely on price, and beware of offers that sound too good to be true. Ask questions about the company and their experience, and read through their own website. Find out how long they've been in business and ask for client testimonials and/or case studies. Also think about whether they are locally based - it is much easier to get help if they are close by and willing to visit your place of business.
As in the past, it's important that business owners become proactive and not let old thinking stifle their growth. The internet has been called the great equalizer, and in many respects epitomizes the very fabric of our free-market society. Companies who continue to ignore Internet marketing opportunities risk being left behind by competitors that have looked past the myths and discovered that sometimes changing the way things are done can be quite a profitable move.
John Geiger, owner of Webmasters ICE, has over five years experience helping small and medium-sized companies and organizations capitalize on the power of the internet through consulting, education, and supporting products and services. His focus and passion is the use of the internet in providing more effective overall marketing strategies and highly measurable levels of marketing success. http://www.webmastersice.com/

Are you afraid of email?

Day93
I wanted to share an article my husband just wrote for a local paper (he does a monthly internet column.)
Online shop owners are, of course, small business owners, and we are always looking for ways to get our information out without spending an arm and a leg. Email is a great tool.

Are You Afraid of Email?

Since the days of telephone party lines, it has been a fact of life that some communicators have tended to cause others of us frustration. Teenagers tying up the family’s only telephone line for hours on end; then the computer tying up the line for hours on end. Our mailboxes have been so over-stuffed with junk that it is truly a joy to find an honest to goodness letter or card amongst the ads, flyers, and other uninvited materials. Countless family dinners have been interrupted by telephone selling campaigns. One by one, technology and/or legislation address the annoyances, or we flee to the next thing, and today we find ourselves with more personal communications choices than ever. Individual mobile phones for voice, text, and video; we have not only cut the phone cord, but in many cases the computer cord as well. More laptops are sold than desktops as of last year, and for businesses the increasingly popular Personal Digital Assistant/Mobile Phone combination devices are becoming a norm.

Unfortunately with all these conveniences and choices have come new opportunities for abuse, arguably the most widely annoying form of which today, is email abuse. Email abuse takes on many forms with common terms such as spam, phishing, and the spreading of viruses all of which decrease the overall efficiency of, confidence in, and perhaps even use of this valuable communications tool. Yet the attractiveness of e-mail as a marketing tool is unshakeable. Quick, reliable, targeted, multi-media-capable, and virtually free, it is hard to dismiss email as a valuable way to communicate, and market your business. So, is it a practical idea to consider email as an effective marketing tool in today’s environment? Consider the following simple guidelines and I think you will agree the answer is a resounding YES!

Comply with the Federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2004. This legislation simply requires sender to: a) provide recipients with an ability to opt-out of receiving more email, b) identify the email as commercial (no misleading subject lines, or e-mail addresses in the “from” field), and c) include sender’s actual physical address in the email. Although as in any Federal Legislation there is a lot of fine print, this is the crux of the requirements and not difficult to comply with. Visit www.ftc.gov/bcp/online/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm for additional information.
Once you are comfortable with CAN-SPAM compliance, the next step is to make sure your intended recipients can receive your mail. Some users today apply filters, which block incoming mail unless it has been pre-cleared as desirable. This is normally done via an “accepted email list” or using the recipients contact list, so make sure you are on their acceptable address lists. There are many ways to do this off-line, or you can use an opt-in registration through your website for example. Provide something useful to our recipient for adding you to their list and it is a win-win. The idea is that the recipient wants to receive your mail, not that you are forcing it on them.
Build a good list over time, monitor the results and provide relevant and useful content. Coupons, special offers, and probably most important good, information will keep your recipients loyal to your list. Don’t over-send correspondence. Frequency will depend on your objectives and the value to your targeted audience. Solicit and heed feedback.

Due to a rapidly developing market for providers of Email Marketing and Campaign Management, spending on email marketing is expected to reach $1.1 billion in the next 4 years according to Jupiter Research but the good news is you can do it yourself with a minimum of effort and expense. Oh, and one more piece of good news…spam emails are forecasted to decline about 13% per year from an estimated 3,253 per year in 2005 to 1,640 or around half.

When done well, e-mail marketing provides cost-efficient, targeted results and helps reduce the amount of communication annoyance. Don’t be afraid to use it to your advantage.

John Geiger, owner of Webmasters ICE, has over five years experience helping small and medium-sized companies and organizations capitalize on the power of the internet through consulting, education, and supporting products and services. His focus and passion is the use of the internet in providing more effective overall marketing strategies and highly measurable levels of marketing success. http://www.webmastersice.com/

Internet Marketing Effectiveness

Day66

I wanted to share an article my husband wrote for a local newspaper about internet marketing. He is an Internet Business Consultant and has been loads of help to me.

Internet Marketing Effectiveness

With most small businesses, money is tight, and spent with the utmost thought and care. As in other areas of our business, marketing can either swallow up hard earned resources with little effect or can propel a business farther than imagined, depending on the execution. Marketing your business on the internet is in many ways simpler and arguably much less expensive than more traditional marketing media, but has its own set of considerations. In a recent article we briefly discussed Search Engine Optimization and Linking. Some of the other more popular ways to market on the internet include: Paid Inclusion, Directory Listing, Affiliate Programs, and Email Campaigns all of which have particular strengths and limitations. The bottom line for marketing of any persuasion is cost effectiveness; and measuring, interpreting and acting on the results most often make the difference between a successful marketing effort and a wasted expenditure or cost overrun.

Fortunately, measuring marketing effectiveness is very easy to tackle in the internet space. Site statistics reports are readily available on-line and virtually real-time, providing information such as: actual number of mouse clicks, unique visitors, and/or repeat visitors, geographic location, time of day, visitor's previous website (referral page), internet service provider, operating system...(you get the idea} all effortlessly collected, compiled and presented so that you can know exactly who/where/when/how often, and even how long your potential customers are visiting each portion of your site. Such site statistics packages are available through your developer or can be found by on-line search and usually a small subscription fee.

Simply increasing the number of visitors to your website is usually not the final objective however. If you have a walk-in store, you probably have a rough idea (at least seat of the pants) as to what percentage of your shoppers actually buys something. If you accept credit cards, you also know what your average ticket is in dollars, and how many transactions you ring up in any given period of time. This information, and more, can be easily gathered from your website and used to track not only how many more people your marketing effort has attracted to visit your website, but the actual increment in sales as well. Understanding both the site visitor demographics and the incremental transaction detail those visitors are bringing you is the holy grail of marketing and too often overlooked due to expense or difficulty of accomplishment with more traditional marketing methods. The ratio of transactions to visitors is commonly called the "conversion rate" and is critical to understanding the results of any marketing initiatives you undergo on the web.

Armed with this information you can make changes to your site, to your product or services offered, or to your marketing focus and immediately see where it is taking you. The entire process of transaction, data collection, and resulting action can take place virtually real-time. One of our clients began receiving orders within hours of launching their site with a Paid Inclusion campaign and could immediately see the who, where and when of the customer transactions as well as other data collected in the ordering process allowing them to adjust their strategies from day one as they saw fit. Internet marketing is relatively simple and can be a highly cost effective way to grow your business.

John Geiger, owner of Webmasters ICE, has over five years experience helping small and medium-sized companies and organizations capitalize on the power of the internet through consulting, education, and supporting products and services. His focus and passion is the use of the internet in providing more effective overall marketing strategies and highly measurable levels of marketing success. http://www.webmastersice.com/