A business wouldn’t be a business if it were not out to make money.  Yet when it comes to marketing, many business owners forget this.  They either do as little marketing as they can get away with, or they spend a lot of time on the marketing itself but little on the necessary research.  In both cases, they’re probably not getting a very good return on their investment.  In fact, they may even be losing money.

Tracking Your Marketing Results

The first step in determining whether your marketing is making you money is to track its results.  This means finding out where paying customers are finding you.  It may sound difficult, but there are ways to do it.

Tracking your customers is actually pretty easy if you’re doing business online.  You can add tracking codes to your URLs to signify where each customer came from.  Or you can create separate pages for each of your campaigns.  Then you can simply view your web stats and see which customers came from where.

In the offline world, finding out how your customers found you can be a little trickier.  You can always ask if you see them in person, but if you have other people serving customers for you, they may neglect to do so.  You can also ask how customers found out about your business on mail order forms, but they may or may not answer.  Still, it’s important to make the effort.  If you ask every customer, you should get enough answers for it to be useful.

Crunching the Numbers

Once you have determined how much you’ve made from a campaign and how many customers you have versus how many prospects, you can start analyzing your data.  The most important figure when determining how much money your marketing is bringing in is return on investment, or ROI.  This is calculated by dividing your net profit by the amount of money you’ve spent on marketing.  This will give you a percentage.  If it is greater than 1, then you’re making money, and the higher the percentage, the better.

Another figure that is important to know is your conversion rate for each marketing campaign.  This is figured by dividing the number of paying customers by the number of prospects.  While this doesn’t give you a monetary figure, it is useful in determining whether a campaign is converting well enough to continue with it.

One of the biggest mistakes a business can make in marketing is not tracking its effectiveness.  This can result in money wasted unnecessarily.  Don’t leave your marketing to chance.  Run the numbers and make sure it’s making you money.

One thing that all businesses have in common is a need for marketing. It doesn’t matter if a business was started yesterday or several years ago, the business owner needs to make sure they are being exposed to potential customers, and being remembered to old customers.

Start-up businesses, however, have special marketing needs. Many start-up business owners find marketing an essential task. Once a business has established itself, the owner will find they are receiving repeat business and may not need to spend as much time on marketing. But in the beginning, marketing will be a key ingredient to success.

Of course, start-up businesses are usually on a tight budget, which can make it harder to make a marketing splash. The following are a few marketing tools that every start-up business should have, and the best part is that they are also very budget friendly.

A website is your virtual storefront and it can welcome customers from around the world, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Every website should contain at least some basic information about the business, including an “about us” page and a “contact us” page.

A blog is another essential tool that some business owners often overlook. They may feel that if they have a website, they don’t need a blog. That is not true. A blog and a website have very different purposes. A website is there to greet customers, provide information about the business, and, depending on the business, it is quite possibly the way a person can buy things from the business.

A blog, on the other hand, is there to communicate with the public and develop relationships. Blogs let potential customers see a more personable side of a business. People want to do business with people they feel they know and like. A blog can help a business establish that kind of connection with a person who lives hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Business cards are important, even if a business owner plans on doing business solely online. There will still be people in your local market that need your services, as well as people who know others who are in need of them. If passing around a few business cards can help bring an extra couple hundred dollars in sales, why not do it?

Social networking is huge, and taking part in it can help a start-up business gain a lot of publicity fast. There are many networks to choose from, including Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. The point is to find one that suits your needs and start establishing some relationships.

Marketing can be a very fun activity for any business. Since start-up businesses need to spend so much time on this activity, it’s important to relax and get creative with it. Remember – it should be fun.

]]> http://indiebizchicks.com/wp/marketing-tool/feed/ 0 http://indiebizchicks.com/wp/sepaudio/ http://indiebizchicks.com/wp/sepaudio/#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:50:28 +0000 Crissy Herron http://indiebizchicks.com/wp/?p=206 When it comes to marketing, one of the best things that can happen to you is finding your business listed in the top of the search engines.

When your business is placed in the top of the search engine results, you will have much more traffic – which will increase your sales and profits!

There are two ways to do this – Search Engine Optimization (also known as SEO) and Search Engine Placement (also known as SEP).

To help you understand the difference between the two and how SEP can help you quickly (and cost-effectively) reach the top of the search engines, I asked Dyer Vest of Northwest Pheonix to share his expertise. He’s a search engine marketing specialist and he knows what he’s talking about!

If you have specific questions for Dyer, feel free to email him: dyer {at} northwestpheonix {dot} com

So how do you respond to the question, “What are you doing?” and make it about your business?  How do you respond and make it interesting, something your target audience will respond to?

Here are some options to use Twitter to market your business:

Drive traffic to your blog.  Post a question on Twitter and include a link to your blog.  For example.  If you’re a pet trainer or sell pet products you could write a blog post on how to train your dog.  Using twitter you could post the following question –  ”How do you get your dog to stop jumping on visitors?”  Follow the question with a link to your blog and then track the traffic to your blog post.

Another way to drive traffic to your blog is to write a twitter post using some of the more interesting or unique comments to blog posts you’ve written.  These can start very interesting conversations and drive traffic to your blog and company website.

Announce contests – with a link to your website where the contest details are offered OR post a question and challenge someone to be the first response.  Give them something related to your business for answering the question correctly first.  Again, using the pet store example, you could give away a pet food bowl or training book.

Share personal adventures which relate to your business.  If you’re having a company picnic, share a picture or post a funny or thought provoking quote the CEO just made during a speech.  Anything that helps build your brand, company philosophy, and marketing strategy is worthy of posting.

Post interesting or thought provoking statistics, quotes, or headlines and start a conversation.  During the conversation, when appropriate, it may be possible to link to your company website.

Make an announcement.  Have a new wonderful product or service to share with the world?  Use twitter to make an announcement – amplify the power of the announcement and post a code to give the first 5,10, or 50 customers.  Make it an event.

Like any social marketing tool the key is to market subtly.  No one wants to read an advertisement for your business – however it can still be a valuable marketing tool.  Be creative.  There are a wide variety of ways to make Twitter more than just a fun social tool, use it to build your business.

Let’s look at eBooks first.  An eBook is a book that is available on the Internet.  It is sent to the recipient electronically.  They can download it to their computer and keep it on their hard drive or they can store it on a CD or disk to be looked at whenever they want to.

EBooks are convenient to create.  If you have Adobe Acrobat, you can use their compiler to put your book together.  There are other tools available to design the cover and assist with various aspects of the book.  The total cost to you is minimal if you write the book yourself and do a lot of the design work.

Creating eBooks is similar to self-publishing a hard copy book.  You are in charge of the promotion and you set the price.  The price of an eBook is directly in line with the going rate for a book of that type on a bookstore.  People may pay more for the convenience of an eBook but probably not double the price.

Special reports are different from eBooks in many ways.  First of all, they usually don’t follow the design of a book.  A book has a table of contents, a title page, and then the book starts.  For a special report, there is a title page but not necessarily a table of contents.

A report of this type usually deals with information concerning a certain topic of expertise.  For example, you may have a special report on the reasons to hire a virtual assistant or how to create crocheted items.  The information deals with that subject and is like a how-to.  Anyone reading that special report will know how to do something or how to deal with a specific situation when they are through.

Special reports are shorter than books.  They can run anywhere from five to thirty pages thereabouts.  If your business is sewing, you can create a special report on various aspects of sewing or making certain products.  With an eBook, these would all be rolled into one book that covered many topics.

A special report can be sold for a greater profit than an eBook.  Because it is quality information on a topic of expertise, people will pay for the secrets it holds.  It is short so there won’t be a lot of reading to do.  A five or ten page special report sold for $9.99 will increase profits quickly with less effort than an eBook.

Both eBooks and special reports have merits for business.  Depending on your business, you may benefit from either or both.

Want to learn more about creating information products? Join The Members Center and get access to the guide “The IndieBizChicks.com Guide To: Making Money With Information Products.” You’ll also have access to lots of other guides, exclusive articles, a forum, and more. Click Here to join now.

Networking is a powerful tool in the business world, but can it be powerful enough to jumpstart a slow moving business?

Absolutely! There are times it is definitely when “who you know” is more important than “what you know.”  An important rule to remember is that the most important people in your business are your customers.  Use slow periods to reconnect with them.

What do most people like to hear?  They like to hear appreciation.  When it comes from a business that they have patronized, it means something.  Saying thank you for being a loyal customer is one way to use networking to your advantage.

With fluctuations in the economy, people hold tight to their hard-earned money at certain times and spend more at others.  These types of trends are apparent in all industries.  Whichever industry you represent, your business is no different.  The thing to do now is to court those customers so that they will return when the economy takes an upturn.

Going through your invoices and/or mailing lists will reveal the repeat customers.  What makes them continue to return and buy from you?  If you don’t know exactly, now is a perfect time to find out.  Send each one of these customers a link to an online survey on your website.  Offer discounts on their next purchase or an entry for a chance to win a freebie when they complete the survey.

The results will be twofold.  You will find out what your customers are looking for in your business and also encourage them to return whenever they feel the time is right.  Letting customers know that you appreciate their business is one way to bring them back.

Networking also involves potential customers.  Maybe there are some companies whose business you have hoped to snag.  All of these names are also present in your files.  You may have kept their information for future follow-ups.  Well, with business moving slowly, there is no time like the present to do something about it.

Create a business letter to send to these potential clients.  The basics of the letter can be generalized such as, “I appreciate you giving our business a look for your needs.”  To be sure that the potential client knows that you remember them, add information about when you first made contact and what their interest or concern was about your operation.  If they were looking for a business that offered more diverse services and you have since added that component, let them know that in the letter.

Networking is a way to build business relationships.  Keeping contact with customers and “the one that got away” can mean future profits during the busy season.

Want more info on this topic? Join The IndieBizChicks.com Members Center and you’ll have access to the guide “Handling Slow Periods In Your Business.” It has lots of solutions for how to get your business moving in the right direction.  You’ll also have access to lots of other guides, exclusive articles, a forum, and more. Click Here to sign up.

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The 2008 Indie Biz Chicks Holiday Gift Guide is a great way to get in front of gift-buyers. It isn’t just a gift guide – it’s a “holiday guide” filled with recipes, craft ideas, and articles. People will be referencing it for years to come – and every time they do, they’ll see your ad!

The guide is distributed for free to thousands of people. Use the form below to request more information on how to get listed in the guide!

(P.S. you can still sign up if you have a service based business, such as virtual assistance, graphic or web design. One of the other people reading the guide could totally need your services and ask for it as a gift from her friends or family!)

This was a free guide that I used to generate some buzz about the launch of the website, and I gave it away to my first 100 subscribers.

I used the same techniques I wrote about in the guide to promote my own website and since launching the site – less than a year ago, I’ve received some amazing results.

And that leads me to the point of this whole email. I’m now working on “Power Publicity! Version 2.0″

This new, updated, bigger, better version will have all the stuff the first one had, PLUS some! In addition to the extra info, I’ll be sharing my own experiences throughout the past year.

I’m still putting the finishing touches on the new version, but in the meantime, I put together this free 5 day ecourse which will definitely get you started on your publicity journey!

You can grab it here: http://www.indiebizpublicity.com/ecourse.html

I’ll keep you updated and let you know as soon as Version 2.0 is ready!