Google Analytics

One of the best free resources a marketer can use is Google Analytics. It has it's drawbacks, but for the cost ($0), it's an ideal tool to really drill down and understand how visitors are interacting with the content on the site.

The process to install Google Analytics is fairly simple and straight forward, but can vary depending on the setup of your site. If you need help with this, let me know!

Here's a great slideshow I came across that shares 10 things you need to know about reading the data in your Google Analytics account.

Google Analytics: 10 Game-Changers You Need To Know from Amber Horsburgh

Increasing the Prices Charged

I've had some questions about this recently... "How can I charge more without upsetting my customers?"

This is definitely a legitimate concern. Once consumers get used to a price, they are not thrilled about a price increase. The easiest solution I see, is to create more value at the higher price point. Give them a little bit more, so it's easier to justify paying more.

This works in other situations too... Let's say you are considering offering a Groupon type promotion, but you're not thrilled with discounting your product or service so deeply and giving part of what you do make to Groupon. Create a "VIP package" which has a higher price point, but also gives the customer something extra. It's great if the something extra doesn't cost you a lot... an extra 15 minutes of private lesson time with a topic authority, a free seat in a future seminar/webinar, free downloadable materials offering tips/tricks/how-to tutorials, signed or autographed merchandise or memorabilia... you get the idea. Give them something that is valuable and worth it.

Keep the original priced option, but start to phase it out. You want to train the customers to look for stuff that is more valuable, and choose this on their own, rather than being forced into paying more just because you decided to raise your prices. Happy customers lead to happy businesses!

Researching Competition... with FREE resources

No matter what your business, you have competition. Non-profits are competing with other non-profits, fighting for volunteers/participants/support. Businesses are competing with other businesses that sell similar products, or alternatives that customers may choose instead.

Even if you are a totally unique business, and there's no one out there that does anything similar, you still have competition. Someone is getting your customers' attention. Maybe they offer a product or service that wasn't intended to fill that specific customer need, but they have found a way to "make it work." Maybe it's something the customer chooses to spend their money on instead because it fits the basic need (this is especially common with restaurants and entertainment--a movie may fit the need of entertainment in lieu of a sold-out concert).

First it is important to determine who you are competing against. Make a list--you might be surprised! Then you can use some simple tools to research your competition's marketing efforts. Since knowledge is power, you'll then be able to boost your own marketing and steal back those customers!

Here are some free tools to research your competition:

• Keyword Density Checker: Research the density of keywords on a website.
• SEMRush.com: Research keywords used in Organic (regular search results) and Inorganic (sponsored ads) Searches, as well as examples of Paid Search Ads (inorganic search).
• Moat.com: Research examples of display ads a brand is running.
• Wildfire App: Compare Facebook pages or Twitter profiles.
• Icerocket or Social Mention: Monitor internet buzz... What are people saying about your brand on social media?
• Mobile Phone Emulator: See how a site looks on a mobile screen. Consumers and web visitors are mobile--is the website compatible for these folks?

Keep tabs on your competitors and those in your industry. It will pay off in the long run!

QR Codes for Nonprofits and Small Businesses

By now you have probably seen a QR Code or two scattered around random places (there was even one on my Pepto Bismal bottle lid the other day...). You may have even scanned one before (if not, not to worry--they are still catching on and not everyone has experience with these clever little bar codes). If you're new to interacting with these, download a QR Code reader app (my suggestions: QR Droid for Android devices, and QR Reader for iPhone), and give it a shot.

If you're not new to QR Codes, you may be wondering how to make these things work for your organization. I like to encourage non-profits and small businesses to specifically think about incorporating these little marvels. They are free to create and can save a lot in reprinting costs (when placed correctly). The key to QR Codes is that they are for driving mobile traffic. Where do you want visitors to go on their mobile devices?

Here are some ideas:

1. As part of a viral t-shirt campaign, created just for Orange County 4-H, we placed QR Codes on the shirt sleeves. These codes direct visitors to the social media profiles for Orange County 4-H, as well as the main website. It's like an interactive billboard, that's walking down the streets, through the school hallways, and showing up at events.
2. Use QR Codes on brochures and posters, linking to information that has a tendency to change in between printing runs. This also helps cut down on the word clutter, and makes for an opportunity to bring the printed materials to life--link to a video or audio file.
3. Allow preregistration for events and fundraisers by scanning the codes. This can help increase early registrations, and makes it easy and convenient to register.

As always, I'm happy to help your organization create QR Code magic. Scan the code above to email me. :)

Who has time to do Search Engine Optimization?

There are so many tools and techniques for marketing these days. Sometimes I think it would be a lot easier if we had stayed in the traditional marketing phase--by its very nature, traditional marketing requires things to happen more slowly. New billboards, TV ads, radio spots and printed materials could only be created so quickly. We've moved beyond a traditional marketing only world though, and keeping up can be tough. Your days are filled with many responsibilities, and marketing may only garner a fraction of your time. I wrote about patience and diligence when it comes to digital marketing, which is important for success, however, so is working smarter, not harder.

Search Engine Optimization is no doubt one of the most important parts of marketing in the digital age. If you aren't showing up in search engines, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to be found by a new audience. We all have questions and sought after information, and most of us find the answers in search results.

SEO is complicated and requires an understanding of your target audience. You have to be tuned in enough to know what they might be searching for, if they were looking for a site like yours. It's kind of a trial and error process, and it does take time for the efforts to really pay off. Again, I realize you have a lot of other stuff going on, so I wanted to share an article with three easy steps that you can use to work smarter, and not harder, on SEO.

Bare Minimum SEO: 3 Things You Must Do

If you could do only three things for SEO, what would they be? This is a question encountered by many smaller businesses, and even somewhat larger companies, either due to not having enough people (time) and/or dollars available to invest in a big way.

Here are three minimal SEO tasks you must do:

1. Check your indexing status.

2. Focus site on target keywords.

3. Go get links.

How to Do Email Marketing Effectively, Part 3

Segmenting an email marketing list is essential to email marketing best practices. Customization and personalization on a mass level is one of the great benefits of using email marketing (in fact, it's the only digital marketing channel that allows for personalization on such a large scale). Consumers want personalization, and this is a fabulous way for you to offer it, without a lot of fuss. It pays off for you too--your readers will be more engaged, unsubscribes will be fewer, and your efforts will lead to more conversions.  When email recipients know they are only receiving communications with information that is relevant to their likes, tastes and interests, they are much more likely to pay attention. Think about regular mail--you're much more excited to see a card from Grandma than a piece of junk mail trying to sell you auto insurance you don't need.

A recent post from the Bronto Blog couldn't have explained email segmentation better. I'd like to share their post below. ;)

Keys to Creating More Relevant Emails with 4 Simple Segmentation Tactics

The Democratic and Republican National Conventions recently came to a close. Imagine if instead of having the Democrats attend the DNC and the Republicans attend the RNC they instead randomly assigned people to attend one or the other. Of course some people would find the convention relevant to them, but others would not. This wouldn’t make much sense, right? Well, this is exactly what you do when you send batch-and-blast emails to your subscribers.

Email marketers and politicians both know the value of sending people messages most relevant to them. Relevant emails generate higher open rates, higher click rates and, most importantly, higher conversions.

Although it all sounds great and you want to do it, what if you simply don’t have all the traditional RFM data at your fingertips? What if your company is smaller in size and/or your resources are limited? The good news is there are still ways to begin to create more relevant emails and increase revenue without a complex email marketing infrastructure. Your subscribers are handing over valuable information explicity (through a sign-up form, preference center) and implicity (through behavior within an email). For more ways to explore how to continue to grow that data bank, check out "Segmentation: What they tell you explicitly - Preferences 101"

Visit the Bronto Blog to look at some ways you can use simple segmentation data without being overwhelmed.

Building Fans, Increasing Followers, Getting to 1Million Viewers -- Why is it taking soooo long?!

Social media success doesn't happen over night.

We are not a patient species. We may have been at one time, but then McDonald's spoiled us with the drive through window, the internet dumped dial-up connections, and Apple started creating leaner, meaner, faster cell phones. No one waits for anything anymore, so it's only fitting, that I remind all of you one more time, social media success doesn't happen over night.

Some things still take time. Even with short cuts and insights, there is only so much cheating that Father Time will allow. When you bake a cake, if you rush it, you will be eating soggy cake (personally, I find chocolate in any state delightful, but soggy cake and sloppy social media are two different things).

Here is what I suggest for those that want social media success to happen for you right now:

• Reread the bolded sentence above.
• Create a plan for your social media efforts. What social sites will you use and how will you use them? What do you want to share on each? (Remember, social media isn't about you telling people stuff. It's also about you listening. And actually, the less you try to tell them, and the more you listen instead, the better it will work.)
• Set some time aside each week to develop your social media efforts. You can't write one tweet and call it good. It's ongoing. Like any good relationship, it takes work.
• Think of social media like dating. You have to court the girl for a while before you bring her home to meet the family. Then you spend more time getting to know each other before you pop the question. You can expand your business and increase sales with social media, but you have to take the time to "court" your customers. 
• Be patient. With persistance and dedication, it will happen.

I enjoyed a recent post by the Social Media Examiner on using social media for customer research. They shared some great ideas for finding customers that are talking about things relevant to your business. Find these conversations and join them. Don't try to seal the deal immediately--court the customer and develop the relationship first. First comes like, then comes love, and then comes marriage. 

How to Do Email Marketing Effectively, Part 2

So you are gaining permission from your fans to market to them through emails. Your list of people who have "opted-in", or signed up, is growing. Now what...? Find an email marketing service.

There are numerous email marketing services that exist now, for a variety of prices, including free. Constant Contact is one of the most well known, and their subscription plans are favorable for small businesses. My favorite is Mail Chimp, which has a "forever free" option, allowing you to send up to 12,000 emails per month (this is a considerable amount for a small business, and it will likely take you a while to grow beyond this number). iContact is another familiar competitor, and the list goes on and on.

Picking one really boils down to usability, dependability, and pricing. You want an email marketing service that will be user-friendly, allowing you to easily create beautifully branded emails. You also want one with decent support in case you have questions or issues, and you want to know your emails are going to be delivered on time to the right people. Whichever service you choose, you will want one that works with your budget.

So why would you go to all this trouble to create an account on one of these platforms, pick a subscription plan, setup the service, etc., when you could just send emails from a regular 'ol email client? There are actually a number of reasons:

• First, and most importantly I think, is that it gives your emails a professional, seamlessly branded appearance. Your messages look like they are legitimate and not mistaken for SPAM. By incorporating brand elements into the messages, you can build brand awareness and recognition for your business's logo, color palette and tagline.
• Second, using the email marketing service helps you follow many of the CAN-SPAM Act Rules. Once you set up the account, much of the information will default to settings that are required for the email campaigns to be in compliance. This isn't something you want to mess around with--the fines are steep, and creating your own emails in a regular email format (such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, or AOL) makes it easy to violate the rules. 
• Third, the email marketing services will generate reports showing the success of the campaign. This is invaluable information for evaluating your email strategy. You will be able to easily see who opened the emails, forwarded them, unsubscribed from future communications, and on which links they clicked inside the message. 
• Fourth, well-designed email campaigns encourage engagement and drive traffic to other places on the internet. If you are driving traffic from your emails to your website, blog, or social media sites, this is good for your search engine optimization, the popularity of your sites, and your overall exposure. The longer you can keep people clicking around and hanging out on one of your webpages, the better.

Give an email marketing service a whirl--I think you'll be happy with the results, especially the return on your efforts. If you need help, I'm here and happy to help you get started, or manage your campaigns from start to finish.

How to Do Email Marketing, Effectively - Part 1

Email is not dead. As digital marketing technologies evolve, die off, and reinvent themselves, email remains a steady constant. It's not changed much over the years, with the exception of some minor additions to editing capabilities and formatting style options. It remains a useful medium for communication and information dissemination. It's also a strong method to drive visitors to other places on the internet.

I receive more and more emails from businesses. Some of them ones I have subscribed to (or "opted-in") and some are ones that mysteriously appear in my inbox. As a small business running an email marketing campaign, this is major no-no number one. Do not email anyone who has not opted-in, or agreed/subscribed/signed up in some fashion, to receive communication from your business. Blasting everyone in your address book is a quick way to kill your email marketing efforts. The people who are receiving emails from your business should be receiving them because they are interested, engaged, and willing. They should make the decision, not you.

Think about it--your personal email address is exactly that: personal. Your cell phone number, social security number, email address, snail mail address, etc. are not bits of information you want everyone to have--you guard these close to you and likely prefer the right to choose who and which organizations have them at any given time.

An effective email marketing campaign begins with the opt-in. This means you have to allow people to say, "Yes, I want to receive emails from your business." If they are opting-in, they likely have some familiarity with your business and an interest to learn more. Receiving emails from you out of the blue can be confusing, misleading, and ineffective. For instance, if you were to purchase a list of email addresses and then proceed to market to each of those people through their email addresses, you would be approaching them cold. It is no different than walking up to a stranger on the sidewalk and handing them a stack of literature on your business, bombarding them with information for something they know nothing about. The stranger would likely escape as quickly as possible and dump the literature in the nearest trash receptacle. Give people a change to know you and allow the development of a relationship by respecting their privacy. If they desire more information, let them tell you by giving their permission.

If you are a small business looking for assistance with your email marketing efforts, please feel free to contact me. I am happy to assist in the creation of email marketing strategy, campaign development, or management of campaigns. Don't dive into the deep end without a guide! :)

Market to a 9-Year-Old

I just came across an Inc. article about simplifying the sales message. Beyond just the sales message, this is important for everyone that's in marketing. We have gotten to fancy, fru-fru, and complicated.

I read so many business plan concepts and statements of competitive advantage, and I still don't know what it is the business is selling. If I can't figure it out from a business description, I likely won't be able to figure it out from the marketing messaging. It's a bit of an identity crisis on the business owner's part--who are you and what do you sell, in plain, simple, digestible words.

You know very well what you do--your business is your heart and soul. I don't know though, and big words with extra fluff aren't going to make it any more clear for me. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

What a 9-Year-Old Can Teach You About Selling [or Marketing in general]

Digital Marketing

Maybe it's my "old age," or just the decrease in excitement the internet brings to my life, but I'm really finding it to be a necessary evil. There used to be a time when I thought the vast amount of information and content on the world wide web was valuable, usable and consumable. Now it just feels so massively large, it's dauntingly scary to think about consuming even a portion of the information available.

Perhaps you are in the same boat, or maybe the value of the internet has never been clear to you. Social media seems like a vacuum that steals precious time, and search engine optimization seems unconquerable. Fortunately, none of this is true, even if it may seem like a gospel truth at brief periods of time.

It's easy to become paralyzed by the sheer size and reach of the internet. You want your business to be successful, but the thought of outrageous success is almost as scary as total failure. I get it. But, somewhere in the middle of doubt, the feelings of being overwhelmed, the unwillingness to evolve with the times, and the fears of success and failure, there's an unstoppable pocket of "let's do this!" Harness that pocket and use it for good.

Don't think you have to tackle all your marketing efforts all at once on fifteen different websites. Start small, plan big, and execute in digestible steps. The first step to really managing your expectations and feelings, as well as your digital marketing efforts, is to define your strategy. How do you want this to work? It's not any different than building a house, starting a company, or painting a picture--most people don't just dive, they have a plan. The architect designs the plans, the entrepreneur structures the company, and the painter draws out a rough sketch.

Create a roadmap. If you need help, I'm here to lend a hand. We can curse the internet together, while making it work for us to do good.

Picking and Choosing

It's easy to believe, as a small business, you should not ever turn down business, or turn away a customer. Revenue is money, and business is business.

I wish to disagree with this belief. Not all customers are good customers for your business. There's a point where you are working harder to obtain/retain a bad customer than the customer is returning in value. This is why it is so important to define who your ideal customer is, and work towards obtaining those specific customers--not just any customer.

A business shouldn't be afraid to say this person is not right for my business. They want more than we can provide, they are ultra critical about our work, or the products/services we offer don't exactly address their needs (making it difficult for us to ever exceed their expectations). You're further ahead to cut the "square pegs." Not to mention, you're doing them a favor by allowing them to find a business that does meet their needs.

Think about who you are as an organization, and who you want to serve. Who can really benefit from your products or services. Draw an ideal customer, right down to the clothes they wear and the car they drive--put this picture on your wall and compare each customer that walks through your door to the picture. Are they a match? If yes, proceed with the razzle-dazzle. If no, point them in a direction in which they are more apt to find what they seek.

Marketing and Small Businesses

Some people say marketing efforts and small businesses mix about as well as oil and water. The small business customer is often the least desired client--budgets are small, the probability to get stiffed as a consultant is high, and there's a fear of trying new marketing techniques. 


I beg to differ (but not too loudly because I don't want every other marketing consultant trying to encroach on my space!)--I love the challenge of marketing small businesses. I believe limited amounts of money and a lack of a long chain of command make for the perfect conditions for real creativity to happen. Too many "cooks in the kitchen" and an unlimited budget stifle the inspiration to dream big. I've always been an innovator, problem solver, and a creativepreneur--I don't really feel alive until faced with a impossible challenge.


Walk with me and discover what others have been too quick to rule out.