Buy Ads on the Big Sites

The mega-big sites like Google and Facebook are bigger than ever. They have hundreds of millions of users and that includes most of your customers and future customers. If you’ve never advertised on Google or Facebook, 2012 is definitely the time to start. Here’s my recommendation:

• Set aside a small portion of your marketing budget to perform a few test campaigns.
• Buy some targeted ads on Facebook or Google Adwords.
• Adjust the targeting to find out what will drive the most traffic to your site.
• Find a good mix and do MORE of it.

Go Guerrilla on the Smaller Sites

2012 is the perfect time to get personal on the smaller social networks, blogs, and social apps. There is less competition for people’s attention on smaller or newer sites. Just be sure to be real and contribute to the community (don’t just spam people).

Collect More Information About Your Customers Than Ever Before

In the information age, data is basically the same as cash. Have you been collecting customer email addresses? (you should have been if you’re a regular visitor to this blog) Start reaching out to customers on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social networks. If you’ve got a great brand, people will WANT to connect with you.

Time to Get Serious About Content Creation

The day is rapidly approaching where you will be totally irrelevant online if you’re not creating useful and interesting online content. Believe me… your competitors will be doing it soon. Your customers have questions and needs. It’s time to create content that addresses those needs. Start with text content and then move on to video, podcasts, apps or anything else you can think of.

Combine Online and Offline

Most of your customers is currently carrying a laptop, tablet, or smartphone on their person. Why not take advantage of this? When customers come to your retail location, have them spread the word online. Offer discounts or other incentives for customers who ‘like’ your page on Facebook or ‘check in’ to your location on Foursquare (or other services).

Think Mobile

It’s amazing to me that there are still a lot of high-profile brands that don’t have mobile versions of their websites. In 2012 if you have a website, then you MUST have a mobile version as well. Once you HAVE a mobile website, then you should definitely start using QR codes and other forms of mobile marketing.

Think Local

If you thought local was a big trend in 2011, then that’s NOTHING compared to what it will be in 2012. Basic stuff like updating your Google Places page and having your local locations on your Facebook pages is not enough. Everyone’s doing that! You’ve got to be actively soliciting reviews from customers, participate in local networking, and solicit links from local media.

Ditch The Stuff That’s Not Working

Okay people, it’s 2012. Why are you still placing ads in places that aren’t trackable? If advertising in print publications, the yellow pages, or billboards is actually working, then by all means keep doing it! But, at LEAST use some sort of tracking like a unique URL that people can go to, or a trackable phone # so that you can tell what’s working and what is not. 2012 might be a great year to drop the marketing initiatives that AREN’T WORKING!

Get Crazy with Customer Engagement

Your customers are online doing… stuff. Why aren’t they doing YOUR stuff? Why aren’t you providing interactive things for your customers to do on your website? Why aren’t you soliciting their opinions with surveys? Why aren’t you offering cool contests for them to participate in? Why aren’t you listening for feedback on Twitter and Facebook?

 Measure Like You’ve Never Measured Before

In 2012 there are more marketing options than ever before. How are you going to know which ones to keep pursuing if you don’t measure? You should be checking your website traffic early and often, adjusting your tactics to take advantage of what’s really working, and always be trying new things, because the thing that’s working now probably won’t be the thing that works in 2013.

It doesn’t have to be this way! Today’s websites are typically built using a Content Management System (CMS) which allows website owners to easily add and change pages, engage visitors and search engines, and keep the website alive and vibrant. WordPress, which is the CMS that we use for all of our clients’ websites, because it has the largest development community, is flexible and secure, and is extremely efficient and easy to deploy websites on the platform.

This list is not WordPress specific. Most content management systems will allow you to perform the marketing functions listed here. However, if you don’t have a website that is built using a CMS, you can always contact us and we can get you all fixed up.

Okay, enough chatter. On to the list ->

1. Add Pages for ALL Your Services

Lots of websites have a ‘services’ page. It lists everything the company does, and for an average website this is totally fine. But, if you want to have an above average or GREAT website, you should create a page for each service you provide.

Why you ask? Having unique pages for each service is great for your visitors and for your SEO (search engine optimization). If someone is searching for someone to perform a specific service for them, a long list of services is fine and dandy, but a page specialized for EXACTLY what they need is much much better.

2. Start a Blog

The key to maintaining an active user base on your website is to be constantly creating new and interesting content. The best way to organize lots and lots of content is through a blog. Blogging creates tons of high quality content that engages visitors and search engines. Blog content can also be repurposed for email marketing, print media, ebooks…

3. Create Landing Pages

What is a landing page? definition via wikipedia

In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on an advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link.

How about a real world example… You own a company that does professional floor cleaning in Bloomington, Indiana. You buy an add on Google adwords that displays whenever someone searches “Professional Floor Cleaning Bloomington Indiana”. When someone sees the ad and clicks on it, they’re taken to a specially designed ‘landing page’ on your website. You’ve optimized this page to sell your services to the customer so it is likely that you will convert them to a customer.

4. Market Your Site via Social Media

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have millions of users. These users are constantly sharing links and discussing brands. Isn’t it time you got some skin in the game?

The first way to start getting visitors from social media sites is to build up your own following and share links with that following, but that’s not exactly scalable. The next thing to do is to include sharing buttons like the ‘Facebook Like’ and ‘Tweet’ buttons that are prevalent on the web. These buttons allow your visitors to share the pages on your site with their followers, then some of their followers will visit your page and share with their followers. Creating feedback loops like this can be a powerful source of traffic to your site… so why not do it?

5. Perform Some Simple Search Engine Optimization

Search engines are complicated. They’re basically designed by mathematicians and computer scientists. However, properly optimizing your website is NOT rocket science.

If you’re serious about marketing your business, you need to be serious about marketing on the internet, and if you’re serious about marketing on the internet you need to get serious about search.

Today’s content management systems provide tons of tools that help you adjust content, title tags, keywords, internal links, and all the other things that effect how search engines rate your site. There are also tons of SEO blogs that tell you exactly what to do to get traffic.

This is a list of some of the top SEO blogs on the web. I found it by doing a simple Google search. Everything you need to know is on these blogs. Don’t have time to learn SEO? Hire Tribeswell to do it you.

6. Post Videos

2 ways to leverage video on your website:

The easy way: Repost cool videos that you find on the web (like on Youtube) on your blog or website and write your own commentary. Your visitors will appreciate that you found something cool for them.

The hard way: Either learn to create and edit video (and trust me with today’s technology it could not be easier) or pay a video production company to help you create videos for your website.

7. Create Photo Galleries

A picture is worth a thousand words. Therefore a gallery with 10 pictures is worth 10,000 words. There are tons of great-looking photo gallery tools that can display galleries on websites. Most cell phones now take great pictures. Put the two together and you’ve got a great compelling reason for people to visit your website.

8. Let Fans Connect With You via Social Media

Every visitor is a chance to connect with a future customer. However chances are they won’t buy from you the first time they’re exposed to your brand. But, they might fan your business on Facebook or follow your company on Twitter.

Your website should make it EASY for visitors to become fans and followers so that down the line they are more likely to become customers.

9. Run Surveys

Want to give your customers an incentive to visit your website? Why not ask their opinion? You’ll get people to come to your site, you’ll get valuable information about how your business is performing (in the eyes of your customers), AND they might even share your site with some friends via social media.

There are great tools available to do this including: Simple form-building tools like Form Assembly, form building WordPress plugins, or purpose-built solutions like Survey Monkey.

10. Convert Visitors to eMail Subscribers

The #1 fastest cheapest and most effective way to build traffic to a website is email marketing. But, are you making it easy for people to get on your mailing list? Are you providing incentives so that people actually WANT to join?

The great thing about having a website that’s built on a CMS is that you can do cool things like offer eBooks or other downloads in exchange for signing up for your email distribution list. You’ll keep your email list growing and vibrant and your visitor will receive the added value of premium content.

If you do it right, it looks like this…

What do you think? What types of things would be good to add to this list? Have you tried any of these strategies? Are they working?

The fact is… with today’s technology, almost ANY small retailer should be able to EASILY compete with the big box stores. The other fact is… a lot of small retailers simply choose not to use social media, ecommerce, or location services to effectively acquire new customers.

I love small business. Most of my clients are small businesses. I am a small business. However, we all need to face the realities of the world. There are big companies out there that have huge buying power, huge marketing budgets, thousands of stores… they have a lot of advantages over us.

But… we are faster, we can execute new ideas more rapidly. So, here are 10 strategies that the average small business can adopt to start being more profitable right away.

1. Get to Know Your Customers – Start using a CRM & Email Marketing

If you are a small retailer, then you have a lot fewer customers than a big box store. That means that in order to be really competitive you need optimize the relationship you have with each and every customer. Then you can send targeted marketing messages via email (which is an extremely inexpensive way to send marketing messages), and sell more to each customer.

High tech email marketing software (like Mailchimp, which is what I use), can help you organize your contacts, monitor who is responding the most to your marketing messages, and optimize your campaigns and lists for continued success.

Best of all, it is super-easy to get started. Go to your locally-owned dime store (if your town still has one), and buy a notebook. When customers come in, ask for their name and email address and write it down. Tell them you’ll send them a coupon just for signing up for your super-exclusive gold-star customer program.

2. Become a Master of Ecommerce

The cost of running an Ecommerce site has dropped pretty substantially. A lot of small retailers could drastically increase their business by having a good website built that can also sell products.

There are a few pretty obvious advantages to selling online.

1. The location of your customer is irrelevant, you can sell to anyone anywhere.
2. It’s always open. If your customer wants to shop at 3 in the morning they can.
3. You can suggest related products, offer free shipping at a certain order size, or any number of other tactics to increase the number of products each customer buys from you.

3. Sell Your Products on Amazon

Last year, like many other men out there who don’t like shopping, I did the majority of my Christmas shopping online. Particularly on Amazon. Instead of driving around in the freezing cold for hours and going from store to store, I kept a tidy list and bought everything all at once from Amazon in the comfort of my home office. It was heavenly.

One thing I noticed was that most of the items I bought were not shipped directly from Amazon, but from smaller merchants.

Amazon is a great equalizer. If you get good at selling there then you can let Amazon do the marketing for you and simply ship product whenever orders come in.

This post explains how to get started selling on Amazon.

4. Master Location Services like Foursquare or Facebook Places

Millions of people regularly ‘check-in’ at the places they visit. If you can get more people to ‘check-in’ at your business, you can greatly raise your brand awareness, and get more customers in the door.

The key is to create incentives for customers to ‘check-in’ at your location. You can offer discounts, or put customers who check in into a drawing for a gift certificate. Use your imagination, and if that doesn’t work, go on Google and type “foursquare small business promotion ideas”… there are 279,000 pages of results. I’m sure you’ll find some great ideas.

5. Create Information Products

If you own a small retail business, you probably have a TON of knowledge about the stuff you sell that the average person would find useful. If you create an eBook with this knowledge, you can sell it to make some extra money, or give it away in exchange for people’s email addresses and you can then add them to your email marketing software and sell them products down the road from your online store (some of these ideas work better if used in conjunction with each other). Here are some ideas:

• If you own a furniture store, create a home decorating guide.
• If you own an archery shop, create an ebook full of bow-hunting tips.
• If you own a record shop, create an ebook with information about turntables and vinyl maintenance tips.
• If you sell cameras, create a comprehensive guide to taking great pictures.

6. Feature Your Best Customers

If you feature a customer and tell their story in a blog post or on Facebook or in your Email marketing (ask their permission of course), they will share it with their online friends. It is likely that their friends will share their interests and some of them will likely become customers.

Here’s how I recommend executing this strategy. First, get a website that has blogging functionality. Then write the stories of your best customers (with their permission). Having this content on a website that you OWN will help you get more search engine traffic.

Then share links to the story on Facebook and Twitter and include a short excerpt in your email newsletter with a link to the main article. Internet marketing works best when your website is the hub of your marketing system with all other sources driving traffic there.

7. Become a Total Social Media Ninja

Get good at social media. Connect with your customers on Facebook and Twitter. Post cool and useful links. Post your ideas.

Social media websites are free. Using them effectively is not brain surgery. Start with Facebook and Twitter. Just don’t talk about your own company too much. Be real. Be normal. Don’t be a marketer on social media. Just be a person.

If you have a large following online (with high-quality followers), marketing your business will be a whole lot easier.

8. Make an Online Documentary About Yourself

Online video is not just the wave of the future… it’s also the wave of the present. You can buy a pretty decent video camera for 500 bucks, a Mac (for video editing) for $1200, and you can take a video editing class as well or just look for free tutorials online. Basically you can get up and running with a full video production setup for less than it would cost to do a commercial on your local cable station.

Today’s video tools are really good, really cheap, and really easy to use. If you get really good at creating video content (also it would help to become a total Social Media Ninja), you can get a ton of traffic to your website, tons of exposure for your brand, and lots of new customers.

9. Become an Early Adopter

I noticed a trend when Twitter came out, and I’m noticing it again with Google+… If you are an early adopter of an online social network, you will have a lot of influence, because it is less crowded.

Keep your eyes open for new technologies and social websites. Don’t be afraid to jump on the bandwagon and try something that isn’t proven. The fact is… once it’s been proven, it will be crowded and thus, more difficult to get exposure.

10. Become a Photojournalist for Your Business

You can buy a really nice professional camera (preferably a DSLR) for $500 – $1000. Use it to take pictures of everything your business does. Post pics on your website, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or anywhere else online that your customers might see them.

You can also get really good at taking product pics for your online store or Amazon store (or Etsy store or Ebay store, they didn’t make this list, but those are two more great places to sell your products online).

DSLR cameras also take awesome video, so you can use one camera for both still shots and video. The key to getting good is to practice, read online tutorials, or take a class at your local jr. college.

Some Final Thoughts

None of the ideas on this list are free. They all take money or time or both. The real question is whether or not your business can afford to NOT take these ideas seriously.

The world has changed. Those who choose not to adapt will likely go out of business, or at the very least see their profitability diminish.

You can either use the Internet as the most powerful small business marketing tool that has ever existed (which it is), or you can ignore it and let the big box stores roll over you like a steam roller.

The choice is yours.

WordPress

I wouldn’t have a business without wordpress. World class CMS, thousands of amazing plugins that do almost anything, a massive development community… WordPress just keeps getting better and better. At this point there are few websites that make sense on any other platform.

Mailchimp

Eight words… Free accounts for lists up to 2000 people. This is the killer app for email marketing. It is beautifully designed. It has tons of unique and useful features. It’s actually fun to use. Beautiful templates. I can’t say enough good things.

Facebook

Have you heard of it? There are amazing things that you can do with Facebook pages these days, and amazing ways to integrate Facebook into your website for marketing. Facebook continues to be a great source of traffic for this site and all of our client’s sites.

Youtube

If Youtube were JUST a place where you could upload HD videos (in an incredibly intuitive way), and embed them on your website, it would still make this list… But, it also has an awesome social community, it’s the world’s second biggest search engine, and is supported by every major mobile device. For me it is the only solution for online video.

Google Analytics

There are a lot of ways to track your website traffic, but few that are this good, and NONE that are this good and this FREE. There are very few sites that need more features than you get for free with this product.

Hubspot Website Grader

Need a quick snapshot of how effective your website is at any given moment? Go to www.websitegrader.com. I use this tool every time I start working with a new client. It pulls data from all over the web to let you know exactly what you need to do to start increasing your marketing effectiveness.

iStockPhoto

If you’re going to be doing a lot of Internet marketing, you’re going to need a steady supply of quality stock photography and artwork. iStockphoto is the biggest and the most cost effective.

I’ve continued to rely on simple and cheap (or free) web apps for most of my business needs. Here’s my list of my top 10 productivity apps that I couldn’t live without.

Dropbox

Dropbox is absolutely the most convenient way to share files with your team and with yourself. You can upload files to Dropbox and then access them from the Internet or from any of your Dropbox-enabled devices (like phones or tablets). You can also share documents with members of your team, clients, or anyone else. There are a lot of pricing options as well from the 2 gigabyte free plan to large plans for groups.

YouSendIt

Ever wanted to send someone a file that was too large for email? YouSendIt is the answer. It allows you to upload a file, then the email address of the person you want to send it to and it sends them a link where they can download the file. Absolutely indispensable. Free and premium plans available.

Zendesk

Tribeswell RUNS on Zendesk. Zendesk is a hosted customer service app that allows us to track client requests and fix problems faster. We also use it to track sales processes, and manage larger projects (which it isn’t really designed to do, but it actually works awesome). Plans start at $10 per user per month. Totally worth it.

Google Docs

While our whole organization runs on Google Apps, I thought I would single Google Docs out, because we use it more than most of other features. Great for sharing and collaborating on documents, saving docs in the cloud, and backing up info so that it’s available anywhere. We use the free version.

Kashoo

This $10 per month hosted accounting software does almost everything you can do with Quickbooks and does it much better than Quickbooks online. It allows us to track expenses, prepare monthly financial reports, forecast revenues, and it’s available from any Internet-enabled device.

Gmail

I use Gmail more than any other app. In my opinion it is far better than any other email system on the planet. They keep adding awesome features that make it better and better. If I type in an email that I’ve attached a file and I forget to attach it, Gmail reminds me. If I send an email to one member of my team, it recommends other people that I might want to include. The search functionality is flawless. It allows me to send emails from all my email addresses. What else can I say. It’s awesome and it keeps getting awesomer all the time. Also free.

Free RSS Reader iPhone App

Without this app I would probably never have time to read the news. It’s a simple RSS feed reader for iOS devices. You enter the URL for the site you want to follow and it updates every time you load the app. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Mailchimp

This app would also be on my top 10 marketing apps list, but it also helps me communicate with clients more effectively. Whenever I need to communicate with all my clients at once I use Mailchimp… especially if it’s important. Mailchimp gives you data about who opened your email, so you know 100% if someone is missing important announcements. Free version handles up to 2000 contacts.

LinkedIn

Now we’re getting to the heavy hitters. I can’t even imagine how much time and energy LinkedIn has saved me over the years. LinkedIn basically means that you have to do very little if any work managing your business contacts, because each contact manages their own profile so you don’t have to. Sure there are robust CRM systems that can do more functions, but I don’t have that kind of time. LinkedIn frees my time for the work that really matters keeping me lean and efficient.

Facebook

Relationships are the life-blood of any business. In the history of the world, there has never been a more efficient relationship-building tool than Facebook. It takes all the friction out of relationships (screw you time and space, you’re not going to hinder my relationships). I still think most people don’t fully realize how much more efficient we can be at building relationships using Facebook.

What do you think? What apps could you not live without?

Brand Building

Brand building is is where all your marketing begins. It’s where you tell the world who you are and what problems you solve and why people would want to buy from you. You can (and should) do this in lots of ways.

On a basic ‘branding’ level you need to establish the visual iconography of your brand. What are your colors, what are your fonts, what images do you want people to associate with you? What is your logo. While these things are very VERY important, this is not what I mean by ‘Brand Building’.

Brand Building is where you consciously make a name for your company in the business landscape. Traditionally this involves…

• Advertising your company and products on TV, radio, in print periodicals, on billboards, having an attractive storefront, etc.
• Going to trade shows and networking events to promote your company.
• Hiring salespeople to call on customers.
• Getting shirts, business cards, cups, hats, pens, etc. with your logo on them.

Power on the Internet

Power on the Internet is 100% about content and connections. Your company must have a strategy for creating content on an ongoing basis, and a strategy for connecting with individual fans, users, visitors, etc.

You must create lots and lots of content to sell your products. Creating a lot of great content serves several purposes.

• It helps you with search engines… and these days if you’re not winning a lot of searches then you’re pretty much invisible to a large segment of the population.
• It provides you with a lot of content to share on social networks. Shared content is a great way to connect with people who like your brand and for them to share it with their friends.
• Lots of content that is regularly updates gives people a reason to keep coming back to your website or blog, creates demand for new products, and increases the amount of trust people have in your brand.
• Your online content can also be used to increase the effectiveness of certain brand building activities (i.e. a print add that says ‘go to our website to watch a video about this product’ or even a QR code that takes the viewer right there).

Direct Marketing

So far you’ve built a brand that people love and want to share, and you’ve started building some assets online. Now it’s time to get organized. It’s time to organize all the data you have about your customers, fans, potential customers, website visitors, etc. so that you can sell them more!

There are a ton of inexpensive relationship management tools that vary in their level of complexity and functionality. I would recommend starting with a simple email marketing program and moving on from there. Here’s how it works…

• Gather all your contacts into two spreadsheets. One will be for customers and past customers, and the other will be for everyone else. Import both lists into whatever email marketing software you like (I like Mailchimp, but there are dozens of other options as well).
• Use what you know about your customers and past customers to develop direct response campaigns to convince them to buy more products from you. You want to get them in the same frame of mind that they were in when they bought from you the first time.
• Use the other list to promote all your other online content, offer specific specials or incentives, or announce new products.

However, today I happened to open this email saying that I could get an advanced look at their upcoming weekly ad. Here’s a tip for all you email marketers out there…

People do not care about your ads. They care about what you can do for them. Use your email marketing to send out targeted specials, or helpful content, or other things that can endear the user to your brand. Inboxes are cluttered enough without you sending out things that no one really cares about.

Here are some things that they could have done to make it better…

1. They know that I bought ink and what kind of ink I bought and also when I bought it. They could offer me discounts  on future ink purchases (not in a crappy coupon way like on this email, something more relevant to me personally). They could also sell paper or send me tips on how to conserve ink or get better performance out of my printer.
2. They could also send me helpful content about which office supplies are best and which ones I might need.
3. In this email they have a pictures of tablets on the front of the ad. Tablets are going to be huge over the next few years, but right now most people don’t really understand the real value. They should be sending out content explaining the value of tablets, which ones are the best right now, and what to expect in the future.
4. Actually they should be doing this with all their products. Send me content that helps me make navigate my future buying decisions. Technology is getting fragmented and there’s going to be a lot to think about.

Help me figure things out and I will buy from you. Send me crappy ads and I will (and did) unsubscribe.

1. Post a link to one of your blog articles on Facebook and/or Twitter. Dig through your archives and find an old gem that’s worth highlighting.
2. Send a short email to a past client that you haven’t talked to in a while.
3. Write a recommendation on LinkedIn.
4. Invite your friends to become fans of your business on Facebook.
5. Pin your Business card up on a public bulletin board. You never know who might see it.
6. Post a cool picture of something in your office on Facebook (use your mobile phone to get it up in under 60 seconds).
7. Post something intelligent on your Facebook or Twitter page.
8. Spend 60 seconds looking for long-lost friends, colleagues, or relatives on Facebook.
9. Check in to your business location on Facebook, Foursquare, or Gowalla.
10. Write a quick thank you note and drop it in the mail.

Got an idea to add to this list? Leave it in the comments below.

The Next Step is a personal training and fitness company owned by Jeff Sidwell with locations in northwest Indianapolis and Carmel, Indiana. Jeff contacted me after seeing some of our previous work, and we put together a plan of action to create a website to showcase his brand, drive new customer acquisition, and provide value for his existing clients.

Branding, Colors, & Typography

The Next Step worked with a graphic designer to create a logo and branding package for the business, and we really wanted to extend that brand to the web and create an online atmosphere that suggested motion and fitness.

After studying several fitness sites on the web, we decided to use a dark background composed of black and dark gray areas. We also chose to use light typography for the page headers and menu items to give it a sense of motion and lightness (the visitors presumable want to lose weight, so light typography subtly emphasizes this).

I also chose to carry the light orange color from the logo into the sidebar headers and used white and light gray for the page text.

It is common on websites to see Serif fonts used as headers and Sans-serif fonts used for body text. I decided that Sans-serif fonts (with the lighter font-weight) would work well for headers to provide a sense of lightness and motion, and to provide contrast I used a serif font for the body text (so I basically reversed what you would commonly see).

The Homepage

For the homepage, we used the same page style as all the standard pages on the site, but added an unusually fast-moving (3 second) slide show.  We carefully crafted the copy and chose images that would tell the story of The Next Step (primarily that through planning, goalsetting, and the right help you can reach your fitness goals).

We also added some copy under the slider to help guide the user to other areas of the website as well as to balance out the design.

Interior Pages

For the interior pages we chose a pretty standard ‘right-sidebar’ orientation with clean lines and defined boundaries. Most of the pages use the standard ‘light-weight’ headers found throughout the site and standard paragraph text, however on the ‘testimonials’ page we used the <blockquote> attribute to create clear divisions between the various client stories, and on the ‘resources’ page we used the blog functionality from the wordpress software that the site is built on.

The Sidebar

For the sidebar we decided to offer a few posts from the ‘resources’ section, a client satisfaction survey, and a sign-up for an email newsletter. The resources area is powered by a standard wordpress ‘recent posts’ widget. The client satisfaction survey is a PDF document designed by Tribeswell to look great on screen and in print. The eNews signup was created in Mailchimp and feeds to a ‘leads’ list within the Mailchimp software.

Contact Form

For the contact form, I used FormAssembly and their wp-formassembly plugin. This is a great formbuilding service that I frequently use for websites, because it is extremely flexible and easy to use, and it allows me to easily and quickly insert forms into client websites and it automatically backs up any form responses so if you need a list of everyone who has filled out your forms it is super-easy to do a simple export.

What do you think?

Here’s what Jeff had to say…

“‘Wow, you do great work with the little money you invest in marketing.’ my client observed the other day. I clued her in to the fact that it was my web designer more than myself. It has been fun to see Colin’s mind brainstorm countless ideas for my company. More refined in marketing than myself, I simply had to convey my thought, and he processed it in a way that reaches the masses effectively and succinctly. As a small business, I’m very grateful to find someone passionate in his field at an affordable rate. Thanks Colin, for building credibility in my company through a great website!”

This has been a great project to work on and we’re really excited about how it turned out. Let me know your thoughts in the comments area, and if you want us to do an awesome website for you, just contact us.

If you’re one of those people who are sick of watching their email newsletter stats decline, then you are probably in the majority.  With the proliferation of cheap and free email marketing tools, almost everyone seems to be spamming their way to irrelevance.  I think I might have some advice for you.

Decrease Frequency

Most people send out mass emails too often.  This is an efficient way to reach a lot of people… the problem is people don’t like to be treated with efficiency.  People like being treated like people.  Send more personal emails and stop spamming everyone on your list.

Send out fewer mass emails per month and your open rates will generally go up.  Use the time you save to do more interesting things on Facebook and Twitter where people are accustomed to seeing you post more frequently.

Increase Quality

I have a client that I do email marketing for who has never had below a 60% click-through rate.  Is this because I’m God’s gift to email marketing?  NO!  It’s because once a month this client spends several hours compiling a report that gives the people on their list extremely valuable information.  The people who receive this email value it so much that if we’re even a few days late getting the email out we get calls asking where it is.

When was the last time you got a phone call from a subscriber because YOUR email newsletter went out a few days late?

Build Around a Strong Core

Find one thing that you can offer once a month that will be irresistible to your subscribers.  This one thing should be difficult and time consuming for you to create.  If it were easy then it would be easy for your competitors to copy.

Think of something that your subscribers would find irresistible and go ALL OUT.  This is your gift to your subscribers.  And finally…

Advertise with Subtlety

You wouldn’t be sending out your newsletter if you weren’t interested in getting a return on the time and money you’ve invested, so you obviously need to advertise yourself in your emails, but remember that the content is the STAR of the show.  Let it shine through.  Use sidebars and footers to show modest sized ads for your products or services.

Send People to Your Website

One of my strongest recommendations is to get the user OUT of their inbox and IN to your website as quickly as possible.  If you’ve got a lot of content to deliver, post it on your website and have users click through to see it there.  Once they’re in YOUR world you can can effectively market to them with your well-designed and user-centric website.