Website Purchasing Information Small Business Needs to Understand

If there’s one thing we understand about Small Business, it’s that money is usually tight, and your marketing dollars are precious. There is nothing more infuriating to us than finding that a new client has been hood winked or sold a bill of goods by a web developer.  Your website is no joke; it is usually your company’s face to the world.  People don’t look you up in the phone book anymore, they Google you and/or your services.  The single most important thing is that you show up.  The second is that your website is easy to use and immediately tells your visitor how you will help them. But it’s not that simple getting there.  To help you avoid costly mistakes, here’s our list of what you need to do.

1.  Buy your own domain.  Your website needs a domain – think of it as your online address.  You can purchase domains at Blue Host or Godaddy if you must (we are not fans of their advertising so we avoid them).  There are any number of domain registrants out there, just make sure that YOU own the domain, no matter how much you love your website developer.  Relationships end and businesses close down. It is very difficult to get control of your domain if the company that owns it won’t cooperate.  If you don’t renew your domain yearly you can actually lose control of it if someone else purchases it.  So, register it for at least 3 years and make sure that your registrant has your current email address at all times.
2. Pay for a decent hosting service.  Your website needs somewhere to sit, which is where your host comes into play.  We strongly advise that you host it with a company you trust that has customer service you can rely on. At Ariel Marketing Group we like to host our client’s sites because it means that we have full access when they want to make changes or have issues. If you have no technical knowledge of web development we highly recommend you do your homework finding the right host.  Expect to pay $25 or more per month for this service, depending on the size of your site. 
3. Buy a WordPress site.   Yes, we know tons of great programmers who build in php and other excellent languages, and you can buy a beautiful site built on a lot of different languages or platforms, but for small business we think there is no better alternative than WordPress unless you have an ecommerce site with thousands of products on it. WordPress gives you a professional design, built in SEO (we’ll get to what that is in a minute) and you can do most of the updating to your site yourself. That means you don’t have to wait a week to put up a new event or change the wording of a page.  In addition, there are thousands of WordPress designers out there if you have a falling out with whomever built your site.
4. Maintenance Fees.  Once your website is live it’s not finished. It’s NEVER finished.  Your website is a living, breathing part of your business, and it needs to reflect that.  New events, new products, and yes, blog posts that provide your visitors with valuable information will need to be updated regularly.  If you’ve purchased a WordPress site then you can do a lot of it yourself, but if you want design and layout changes you’ll probably need a programmer.  Hopefully you’ll be using the same developer who built your site, but regardless of whom is making the changes, expect to pay them for it.  We don’t recommend regular maintenance contracts, but expect to pay at least $60/hour for maintenance on your site.
5. Ranking on Google. Yes, there are other Search Engines out there such as Bing and Yahoo, but Google makes up the huge majority of search traffic.   Just because you have a beautiful website does not mean you’ll show up on any of them when someone searches for you or your product. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and basically means that Google understands what you do and thinks your site is valuable enough when compared to your competitors.  It’s a complex but very important issue.  Hiring a web development company that understands SEO gives you a huge headstart.  If not, you can hire an SEO professional to audit your site and provide you with organic SEO.  Expect to pay $5,000+ for an audit on a fairly large site – less for smaller sites.  The audit helps the SEO expert determine what is wrong with your site, but also what your competitors are doing.  Then, plan on at least $1,000/month for 4 – 6 months minimum to get you up to fairly high ranking, and of course a lot depends upon where you start.   Then you’ll have to pay a maintenance fee to remain in a strong position.  If you’re not on the first page, your site is invisible.

There is a lot to take in, and a lot to pay if you add it all up.  Of course many businesses start without doing all of the above, but if you’re serious about your website and your online presence, you need to understand the costs and the strategy.  We hope that helps you avoid an expensive mistake.

Yes, You DO need a web expert.

The bulk of my clients are small businesses with less than 10 employees, and very few of them have a dedicated marketing professional on staff – that’s why they need me.  My job is to maximize every marketing dollar my small businesses spend, because money is always tight.  In general, they trust me and together we get results.

The one area where I get tremendous push back or simply a deer-in-the-headlights look is on website development and SEO.  If you own a small business and don’t know what SEO is, you’re not alone. It’s Search Engine Optimization – if done well you’ll rank high when someone Googles your product or service.  If not done well, you won’t be on the first page of Google and your website is basically invisible unless someone searches for it specifically.

My clients don’t ignore SEO because they’re not bright, they usually shy away from it because they don’t understand it and it seems too difficult.  But it isn’t, and it’s essential.  SEO done well is the GREAT EQUALIZER.  You may not be able to rank #1, but if there are only a few companies doing it really well you can get up to #3 or #4 – all you need to do is get ‘above the fold;’  be visible on that first page without making the user scroll.

Can you do it yourself?  Probably not; not without dedicating inordinate amounts of time to becoming an SEO expert. Which I don’t advise; heck, I”m not even one.  But I have SEO experts on my team who can help you get to that very important ranking.

This post isn’t about selling me, or Ariel Marketing Group per see, although if you need us we’re here. This post is about easing the fear and clearing up misconceptions that hold small businesses back.  If you’ve been looking the other way when it comes to your online potential, stop.  Speak to an expert who can tell you what you need and what it will take in plain English.   It’s not as overwhelming or tricky as you might think.

5 Online Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Should Avoid

“Everything has changed for small business marketing.” 

If you’ve heard that once, you’ve heard it a hundred times; even on this blog.  And it’s true.  The internet, and then
social media, have profoundly changed the possibility for small business to reach more people.   If you don’t embrace the changes, what does it really mean to your business?

I’ve been working with small business for over 20 years.  I have had thousands of marketing conversations with small business owners. It is a profound pleasure to help a hard working small business grow and thrive by altering or creating a new marketing strategy and sticking with it, watching the new found revenue literally change people’s lives.  The owner/manager can stop worrying and start brainstorming, and often entire organizations are transformed by the stability that more revenue can create.  It’s what makes me get up every morning; the opportunity to help people and organizations grow.

I have also had the opposite experience too many times to count; discussing what is possible, and often necessary, with the decision maker only to watch them hold back on essential pieces of a plan, knowing they will fail because I’ve seen it too many times.  Half efforts leading businesses back to the same failed marketing strategies they’ve implemented for years.  This is doubly true for online marketing, an arena that so many small business owners still don’t fully understand.

If you want to avoid failing with your online marketing efforts, beware of these 5 pitfalls:

1. Your website is your platform:    Don’t build your community on property you don’t own.  Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or any other online forum or network is not your community, it is a channel to communicate with them.  Bring them back to your website, your blog, your property.
2. Your website design is essential:  I do NOT mean that your website needs to be slick and visually cutting edge, I mean that it needs to immediately tell the visitor how you will help or inspire them, or where they can buy what they came for. Navigation is king.  You have 15 seconds to make them want to stay.  Extra tip: your nephew, or uncle, or college roommate may not be the best choice for building this most precious piece of your online real estate.
3. SEO cannot be ignored:  SEO is what determines where you show up on Google; too many small business owners still don’t understand that their website is invisible without SEO work, and SEO is not free. Are there cases where it isn’t important? Sure.  Example:  A custom home builder who only does 15 homes a year and is booked, perpetually, through referrals.  A website for a client like this is simply an online catalog.  But for the great majority of small business owners, SEO is the un-plundered goldmine of internet leads.  Do your homework. Talk to a lot of people. Educate yourself. There are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there, but you need expert help in this area; it is constantly changing.
4. PPC is over rated: PPC, or Pay Per Click advertising, gets you into the first 3 or so links that show up in the top, colored box on Google, or in the columns. They are paid advertisements, and each time you click on them you cost the advertising business money; thus, Pay Per Click.  It is the quickest way to get your business to show up online, and, for temporary SEO it can be a boost.  However, it’s a short term fix; organic SEO is where you should be putting most of your efforts because the results are long lasting.  Once you quit paying for PCC, you disappear from that 1st page. Again, educate yourself and hire someone who really understands SEO.
5. Commitment is essential: This is probably the single most frustrating part of my job, for both on and offline marketing; the client gets excited, commits to change… and then wearies, or becomes afraid, or starts to cut the budget.  They sabotage their marketing plan and then blame it ON the plan when it fails.  Your online marketing efforts won’t be successful if you only work on it in spurts.  There are smart plans that work, but you must stick to them.

The one thing my 20 years has taught me is profound respect for the scrappy small businesses that fight, every day, to exist.  I understand that the key players in these organizations work an insane amount of hours and wear so many hats it’s hard to think straight.  I know time is their most over stressed resource.

I also know how to make their lives easier, their businesses more successful, their company prosper.   None of it is done without planning and commitment to a strategy.  When it’s built and worked properly, it is a tremendously beautiful thing.

Featured image courtesy of www.sxc.hu.

Community Managers Know how to Roll the Dice

Today’s guest post is by the inimitable Susan Silver.  If you don’t follow her already, I strongly recommend it.

Yes, I am using the metaphor of Dungeons & Dragons to teach you all about what it takes to helm the leadership of a brand through social media.

As a long time D&D player I can tell you all about dice. Take for example the stability of a d4, its pyramid shape makes it difficult to knock over. Perhaps the glorious achievement of rolling a d20 to hit a foe and succeeding is the more thrilling example. Neither truly fit the community manager role. Nope, we are the DMs crafting a narrative where our followers are free to go on adventures.

3 Traits Community Managers and DMs share

1. They know when to let things be.  You have to let players talk and speculate during the adventure. Similarly, you cannot control how people talk about your brand. Community managers monitor chatter so they can give encouragement, connect with community, resolve conflicts and respond to customer crises.
2. They give community motivation  In RPGs motives are everything and there are often conflicts even among party members. Community managers need to give incentives to share, comment, and be involved with the brand. They must also understand the diversity that exists in their community and engage in appropriate ways with members.
3. They fill many roles You can store the hats community managers wear in a bag of holding. At various times we are called upon perform the following activities: marketing, PR, customer service, event planning, statistics, analysis, writing, editing, and leadership. Do you feel overwhelmed yet?

The main thing to highlight is the importance of crafting a narrative for your brand that will resonate with customers. We are living in an era where emotional and compelling stories are taking center stage. Ultimately when there is little difference between two companies, customers will buy a product based on which they feel is promoting values similar to their own. This makes the community manager’s job essential to sales even if we cannot directly tie the two together statistically.

Your proposal must tell a great story.

Recently I had the opportunity to craft a proposal for a company I have known for many years.  Creating the proposal was in some ways effortless – similar to the penning a blog post that you feel so fervently about, it just pours out of you.

Of course there were many rewrites and brain storming sessions with my team, but it was easy for me to put my finger on the many steps that together would create a symphony of a marketing strategy. Think that’s highfalutin talk for a marketer?  Well, maybe it is… but I mean it.

One of my team members said upon reading that proposal:  “It reads like a great story.”

Being the analytic sort that I am, my next question was: “Why aren’t they all like that.”

The answer: because, too often, I’ve been lazy.

In order to know, deeply, what your client should do, you must do the research.  And yes, that means hours upon hours of studying up on their past marketing successes and failures.  It means asking a lot of questions to grasp whether their internal culture is hurting or hindering them. It means immersing yourself in who they are, and sometimes veering over the line into the realm of management consulting; your great plans won’t work if they don’t have the infrastructure to implement them.

The issue, naturally, is that we don’t always have TIME to do that kind of research for every Request for Proposal that comes our way.

But enough TIME is not really the issue; how you use your time is.

My answer is: stop writing proposals for every opportunity that comes along, and focus your time and energy on the ones you are most suited for.  That does NOT mean the ones you’d most like to get.  When you walk into a meeting 110% confident that you are the right fit for the client, and that your plan is the right fit for them as well, it’s almost impossible for them to say no; the presentation will FEEL as if it’s necessary for them to move their business ahead.

Conversely, when you walk in the room and the primary energy you’re sending out is hope and admiration for the client, the confidence is missing, and usually the proposed strategy is weaker.

I know this, from experience.  Anyone who has been selling for any length of time can tell you the difference in the two types of meetings.

Approach your proposals as if you are writing a great historical novel; gather the facts and consider and brain storm until you know the company thoroughly – THEN write the proposal.

If you need help it just so happens that the brilliant Gini Dietrich penned this amazing post while I was in the middle of writing mine.  Great minds I tell you.

Vulgar language has no place in your marketing

There are 2 writers I admire deeply who litter their prose with foul language. One is the great James Kelman; if you don’t understand Glaswegian dialect, don’t even bother reading, but trust me, he’s brilliant.  The other is a well known blogger who shall remain nameless because I do not want this to be a defense/attack on said blogger.  As I stated, I admire them; they, however, are the singular exception I make for accepting vulgarity in online writing.

I swear a lot in real life; the honest-to-God truth is that my father was a truck driver.  And I spent more than a decade in the carpet industry, where to swear was to speak.  I am not offended in the slightest by cursing in everyday language.  James Kelman’s use of cursing lends a gritty realism that is necessary for his subject matter. The blogger I admire often shocks the reader with their color.  I understand the reason both utilize vulgarity, but before you do, think long and hard.

Here are two reasons I strongly advocate that you refrain from cursing in your blog or marketing materials:

1. The digital world is anything but private; simply ask Randi Zuckerberg or the Storify Co-Founder who is having his online lunch handed to him for the recently discovered practice of publishing private Facebook posts.  Do you want future clients and/or employers coming across your crassness?
2. The written curse word usually comes across as lazy and unimaginative.

This image of the incredible Maggie Smith was floating around Facebook this week:

Violet is, as always, correct.

Cursing is not clever or witty, and it doesn’t make your brand hip or cool.  Your marketing language needs to communicate your message clearly, tell the reader how you will benefit them, pull their heartstrings, or whatever the goal of your campaign is.  Great copywriters can use language to communicate and stir emotions; they do not have to rely upon vulgarity to do so.

The chance that you will offend using crass language is so much greater than anything positive that may come of it… even in your conversational and relaxed blog space.

Song Stuck Friday – It will get you moving.

This week I give you a reprieve from old-school annoying, or just plain annoying.

This is my 5 year old’s favorite song, and I have to admit, it makes me happy.

So, Happy Friday to you all!

Communication: More important than ANYTHING

I would have put this post up yesterday, but I couldn’t because I spent the entire day waiting for Verizon to come and install my internet and phone line in my new office. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t set me up for disappointment by setting the appointment time between 8 am and 12 noon.

Steam may not have been rising out of my ears at noon if they’d call to tell me that their technician was tied up on a previous call.

My voice may not have sounded so strained if, before they missed the second deadline of 2 pm, they called to tell me that they were pushing it until 5 pm, and if the employee arrives at 4:59 pm I’m to wait until he’s finished.

I wouldn’t be thoroughly disgusted with them right now if ANY communication about their poor scheduling was initiated by them instead of me. Or, if I hadn’t waited on hold for over 30 minutes calling them each time.

This post isn’t simply to rag on Verizon, although God knows they deserve it. Sadly, bad communications happen all the time. The result is always an angry, possibly former customer.

And it is almost always avoidable.

Most people are kind, patient and understanding… but they aren’t when you treat them with disdain. Not communicating is always interpreted by the customer as your company not caring. Contacting them as soon as you know of an issue avoids a lot of the negative experience issues they’ll have if you don’t.

Think about it this way: for every single dollar you spend on marketing and positive PR, one bad episode of non-communication can repay that, times 10, with negative publicity. Think about it, what do you do when you’ve been mistreated by a company? For one, you probably blast them on your social media network, more than likely complain about them when you get together with your friends. If you have a blog & you’re a marketer like me, you probably craft a post based on your bad experience.

That’s a whole lot of organic negative pr going on about a company for simply blowing the communication.

Even if my high-speed internet is rip-roaring fast and never a problem, I’ll have a sour taste in my mouth for how lousy I was treated from the outset. Your customers are no different. You may deliver the greatest product in your industry, but if you blow the communications and make you customer feel like you don’t care about them, their network will hear all about it.

Song Stuck Friday – You know you secretly like it.

Here we are – it’s Friday thank goodness… and that means I give you a ‘catchy’ tune you can’t get out of your head.

I don’t usually make dedications, but this song that will be in your head all day and possibly all weekend is dedicated to the one and only Danny Brown.  Oh, he LOVES Nickelback, and like most Canadians (even though he’s a transplant), he is oh-so proud of them.

I, of course, love to rag on Nickelback too, but I like this song, and I really love this video.

This one’s for you Danny – Happy Friday!

Your company must make them FEEL something.

If  you’ve read my blog for any length of time you know that I have a huge Business Crush on Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks.  Dino Dogan would tell you that ‘we all do,’ and he’s probably right.  What Howard, or more correctly, what Starbucks does to illicit these emotions from customers is that they prompt them, continually.

I’ve written repeatedly that “It’s not about the coffee.”  I don’t even drink coffee; I’m a hard core tea addict.  Starbucks has decent tea and a great Chai, but even that’s not why I keep coming back.  It’s the entire customer experience that keeps me loyal.

In my past life when I supervised 18 Sales Reps. spread out across the Eastern half of the US, Starbucks-Everywhere was my office.  We could sit for hours in a pleasant environment , use the free wireless, and never ever feel rushed.  Not only did I spend thousands of dollars a year at the chain, I became a brand loyalist and incredibly grateful for their hospitality.

And they keep on doing things that make me feel passionately about the brand.  Last year it was the Indivisible campaign; I wear my bracelet and drink from my Indivisible mug every morning.

Recently, Starbucks began offering reusable $1 mugs to cut down on waste.  Of course I bought one, because I care about the environment and feel like I’m part of the Starbucks mission.  Now, my reusable cup )pictured here) already has my favorite drink permanently written on it.  Most of the time I don’t even need to tell my local Baristas what I want, because they know me … another customer service moment that connects me to the brand.

Perhaps you too have a major Starbucks connection, or perhaps you’re a contrarian who swears by Dunkin Donuts.  The point is, the brands that you are passionate about have done something to trigger that passion.  What is it that makes you want to evangelize for a brand?

The next, logical question is: What do you do to create that same loyalty and zeal in your own customers?  Because you know, it doesn’t happen by accident.