How to Master Online Marketing

In today's world, where consumers live on their laptops and mobile devices, most small businesses know the importance of online marketing—a valuable and often cheaper way to reach customers.
"When done well, online marketing can save failing businesses, create profitable new opportunities, and find talent for both small businesses and nonprofits," says says Geri Stengel, a marketing expert and founder of Ventureneer.com, a firm that provides advice to "socially-responsible" small businesses and nonprofits.
But while many small businesses dabble in the area—by taking out an odd ad here and there or starting a company Facebook account—few are using it effectively, says Stengel.
"Much of the skepticism about online marketing seems to come from a lack of training in using tactics effectively and from not understanding and using metrics in a way that guides good decision-making," she said. "Power-users—those who devote more than 25 hours per week to social media—have done their homework and are confident that their investment of time reaps benefits."
So how can your firm become an effective "power-user" of online marketing tools? Stengel cited these five questions to help guide the way.
Who do you want to reach?
This is important. Are you hoping to hone in on a small local audience or are you hoping to attract customers from farther away? Is your target audience young or old? Male or female? Web saavy or not so much? Different target audiences will be best reached through different methods so its very important to first know your target audience.
What are your goals and objectives?
Do you want to generate new business? Retain current customers? These goals will likely be best served by different tools and methods like knowing you're target audience—figure out this first.
Which platform or medium is best suited to your goals and market?

Once you have determined your goals and target market, now think about the best way to reach them. Social media can be a smart way to target young people or promote customer service, while you would likely be best using e-mail to reach a more elderly audience.
How will you evaluate your campaign for continuous improvement?
Metrics, metrics, metrics. If you don't track your success (or lack thereof), you will have no way to know if your investment is working.

How much do you want to spend?
The cost of online marketing tools vary significantly so this is a big one. While one company may benefit from spending to advertise on a major news website, other companies may want to stick to smaller, cheaper methods.
Hiring people with the know-all for more complicated online marketing tools can also be a big investment.
Most importantly, don't be afraid to start small, taking one type of online marketing at a time, says Stengel.
"Small businesses have been using e-mail longer than other online marketing categories and rate themselves more effective at using it," she said. "It's easier to learn to do e-mail well compared to social media, search engine optimization or social networking advertising."
Photo credit: Ventureneer.com

4 Big Business Secrets for Finding New Customers

Let’s face it: most big companies aren't known for being trendsetters. But they are pioneers when it comes to finding new customers. Because large companies operate on such a large scale, mistakes can be very costly. This forces them to carefully choose, refine and innovate to find the best sales techniques. Here are four big business tactics you should put to work.
1. Go mobile
People everywhere have adopted the mobile phone as their device of choice. There are more than 6 billion mobile connections in the world, compared to under 2 billion PCs. Big companies have seen the light and are scrambling to take advantage of mobile’s potential. Small businesses can do the same.
Consider creating a mobile-friendly website if you haven’t done so. More businesses and consumers are looking for products and services on mobile phones, and websites designed for PCs typically don’t work well on small screens. You may want to develop a mobile app to make interactions with customers and prospects easier. Also investigate mobile barcodes—known as QR codes. People are increasingly using these codes, which can provide an instant link to businesses and their offerings.
2. Research your market
A big company tends to be detached from its customers, so it must go the extra mile to learn what makes them tick. It must continually investigate its market and learn how customers perceive it, how it compares to competitors and how it can expand its products or services.
Small businesses are closer to their customers, so they frequently underestimate the importance of research. It’s easy to take customers for granted and not delve into information that could dramatically improve your offerings or reveal how to find new customers.
Try to take advantage of every personal encounter to gather information, and consider organizing events that can increase that interaction. For example, an auto dealer might host a customer appreciation day several times a year. Also take advantage of social media like Facebook, Twitter and online directories to learn what customers have to say about your business.
3. Go digital
Industry researchers continue to predict dramatic increases in spending on online marketing—via e-mail, desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets and other devices. Online ad spending in the United States is expected to grow 23 percent to nearly $40 billion in 2012, according to research firm eMarketer. Big businesses have found that online marketing allows them to offer easy purchasing through e-commerce, forge deeper customer relationships and reach consumers and businesses all over the globe.
To help ensure you make the most of online marketing, take a closer look at your company’s website. Can users search for your products and understand your services easily? If you engage in e-commerce, is the buying process smooth and intuitive? Do you regularly refresh the site with new information and special offers?
Also, are you taking advantage of interactive tools to establish a dialogue with prospects and customers? For example, are you using banner and search engine advertising to get the word out, and are you using e-mail to promote marketing offers? Finally, are you making your company and its products or services easy to find by posting business listings on online directories?
4. Plan and track
Planning and tracking may sound antithetical to innovative marketing, but it is key to hitting the mark and closing sales. You’ve probably heard the saying attributed to merchandising king John Wanamaker: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted—I just don’t know which half.” Well, now you can. Analytics tools allow you to track responses to your online marketing, and fortunately many of them are free or relatively inexpensive.
You can help get the best results from your online advertising by tracking the click-through rate. Test different ads and adjust your efforts to focus on what works best. Also look at performance data for your website, mobile messaging and social media activities. Metrics to examine include:

• Who’s visiting and what they do
• Who’s buying and what they buy
• Who clicked on an invitation or offer
• How much time they spend on your site
• What they say about your products or services

AT&T offers a number of tools and services to help your small business adopt these and other big business tactics. In particular, consider AT&T’s mobile marketing, interactive and Web hosting services.
Alice Bredin is an internationally renowned small business expert. She is founder and president of Bredin Inc., a marketing consultancy that helps Fortune 500 firms develop profitable, long-term relationships with small and medium businesses. She has advised millions of business owners over the last 20 years through her books, syndicated newspaper column, radio commentary and forums.
Photo credit: iStock

5 Components of a Successful Marketing Plan

What makes a good marketing plan? You can measure it by the decisions that follow, the business it generates and how well it's implemented. A brilliant marketing plan that is not executed is worth much less than a mediocre marketing plan that's carried out.
The plan's value is in the success of the business.
Within this general framework, successful marketing plans have several key elements. I’ll use examples from the restaurant business because it's familiar to most people.
1. Market focus
“I don’t know the secret to success, but I do know that the secret to failure is trying to please everybody,” said Bill Cosby. Good marketing plans define target markets narrowly. A restaurant’s target market might be families, couples, baby boomers, teenagers, children, date nights, busy and rushed working people, or some combination.
You won’t find a restaurant that works for a baby boomer couple’s night out also working for families with small children. Choose. Divide and conquer.
2. Product focus
Product focus matches market focus. If you want baby boomers’ date nights, then serve good food. If you want families with kids, then serve food quickly, make the menu items relatively cheap and, of course, the food has to be safe.
Sushi doesn’t sell on price. Drive-through windows don’t deliver fast food.
3. Concrete, measurable specifics
A good marketing plan is full of dates and details. Strategy probably drives a good plan, but tactics, programs and details make the difference. As much as possible, the plan has to tie results back to activities and come up with hard numbers to measure those results.
A restaurant cannot have vague goals like having the best-tasting food. It needs specifics that are related to marketing message, insertions, posts, tweets, dinners served, return visits, members of the e-mail list, reviews, stars and so forth.
The key is to take a plan and think ahead about how you’ll know whether it was implemented. Will you be able to tell?
4. Responsibility and accountability
Groups and committees get little done. Assign every part of a marketing plan to a specific person. Measure the results of every task and be sure a person is responsible for it. Peer pressure is important: The people executing the plan have to be accountable for measurable results. Failure has to hurt, and achievement has to be rewarded.
An old joke: How do you see involvement vs. commitment in a bacon-and-egg breakfast? Answer: The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. A good marketing plan needs commitment, not just involvement.
5. Reviews and revisions
Every successful marketing plan is actually a planning process, not just a plan. Things change too fast for static plans. A good marketing plan is part of a process that involves setting goals, measuring results and tracking performance. It entails regular review and revision.
If the group running the marketing plan isn’t meeting once a month to compare the plan with actual results and make course corrections, there is no marketing plan.
Photo credit: iStockphoto

5 Clever Social Media Campaigns to Learn From

You don't have to be in the market for a Super Bowl ad to learn who the world's biggest marketers are. In fact, as a quick visit to Facebook illustrates, social media has a leveling effect: Whether you're Coca-Cola or Jones Soda, your Facebook page looks pretty much the same. Coke's billions won't buy a dedicated wing on Twitter, either.
With this in mind, the following social media campaigns from marketers big and small are designed to be idea generators. This isn't a ranking of the most effective social media campaigns of the year, but rather the ones that have the most to offer a small-business owner with big ideas and a not-so-big marketing budget.
1. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese's Jinx
Last March, the venerable Kraft brand launched an interesting campaign on Twitter: Whenever two people individually used the phrase "mac & cheese" in a tweet, Kraft sent both a link pointing out the "Mac & Jinx" (as in the childhood game Jinx.) The first one to reply back got five free boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese and a t-shirt.
What you can learn from this: This is a very low-cost way to track down potential fans on Twitter. All you have to do is search a given term and identify two people who tweet the same phrase at (roughly) the same time. In return, you'll gain goodwill, a likely follower and probably some good word-of-mouth buzz on the social network.
2. Ingo's Face Logo
When Swedish ad agencies Grey Stockholm and Ogilvy Stockholm merged last year, they wanted to get social media fans involved. The two agencies asked fans to participate by signing into Facebook to see the new name. Every time new people logged on to the dedicated site, the logo added their profile picture. With every picture, the logo got a little bigger, until 2,890 fan photos comprised the full name, Ingo, over a four-hour period.
What you can learn from this: This is another inexpensive way to get fans literally enmeshed with the brand. Another alternative is to create a real-life mosaic based on pictures of your Facebook fans, a project that Mashable recently completed in its headquarters.
3. BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota's Human Doing
What better way to illustrate the plight of the common man than an actual common man? That was the thinking behind a BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota program last year that put Scott Jorgenson, a St. Paul resident, in a glass apartment in the Mall of America for a month. To demonstrate the recuperative effects of exercise, Jorgenson was put on a workout routine for the month that compelled him to exercise three to five times a day, in 10-minute spurts. In a social media twist, Twitter and Facebook followers dictated the type of exercise for each session.
What you can learn from this: Creating an event, especially one that involves social media fans, is an alternative to launching an ad campaign. Humanizing a problem for which your company provides a solution is also a good idea.
4. GranataPet's Foursquare-Enabled Billboard
Pet food brand GranataPet earned worldwide attention last year for its billboard in Agenta, Germany. This wasn't just any billboard, though. It was rigged so that if a consumer checked in on Foursquare, the billboard would dispense some of the company's dog food. Someone from Granata's ad agency filmed the billboard in action, and the video now has more than 50,000 views on YouTube (in various iterations).
What you can learn from this: In the social media age, a single ad or a single billboard can generate images, press and videos, but only if it's clever enough.
5. Reinert Sausages's Wurst-Face App
Another German brand, Reinert Sausages, transcended its roots with a clever Facebook app that lets users upload their photo and receive a "Wurst Face," a graven image of themselves in cold cuts. The name "Wurst Face" comes from the extra piece of sausage that kids get for free at the butcher.
What you can learn from this: If you can create an app that's social, fun and brand-appropriate, it will function more effectively than even a high-budget ad campaign.

The Wrong Way to Market Social Media

Entrepreneur Kevin Ready tells a sadly humorous social media story in his book StartUp: An Insider's Guide to Launching and Running a Business. The airport parking company that he uses has a shuttle bus that runs from the lot to the airport terminal. Plastered on the bus windows are posters that say: “Like us on Facebook. Plus us on Google. Follow us on Twitter.”
"This makes sense doesn’t it?" asks Kevin. "Not. Let’s break it down.
A. Somebody at the parking company has been tasked with the job of handling social media.
B. Second, that person’s boss has probably established some sense of the metrics in the space: likes, plusses, and follows.
C. Since this is what the social media person is being measured on, he or she creates the sign as described and posts it in the bus.
D. The irony is that they've 'missed the bus' with the marketing collateral that she just made."
Sadly, this is how many small businesses are marketing their social media in an attempt to build an engaged following. So what’s wrong with it?
"Simple," says Kevin. "They're telling customers what the company wants. Why would any customer ever care what the company or someone's boss wants? Why, why, why? I would not be surprised if out of 50,000 customers per month in those busses nationwide, not a single one ever responds to this poster as it is written."
Every company needs to compose messages that get customers to do what the company needs done. But you shouldn't confuse your need with the customer's.
So what should the company have done? Kevin offers a three-point strategy:
1. Start with “why.” Under what circumstances would customers ever want to interact with messaging from her brand? What do they need? What are they interested in?
2. After identifying possible whys, evaluate your resources and see how you can provide a solution to one or more of them. This is the process of building a value proposition around that why. The mantra here is, “Provide value. Provide value.”
3. Finally, follow up by attaching the desired actions (in this case, like, plus, and follow) to that value proposition.
How about these?
“Get one free day of parking! Just ‘like’ us on Facebook to receive your coupon.” (Value plus desired action)
“Love Hawaii? So do we! We are sending two lucky families to Oahu—just follow us on Twitter and we will enter you to win!” (Value plus desired action)
“A lizard in a suitcase? The funniest travel stories ever told—only on our Facebook page.” (Value plus desired action)
By providing value, and arranging the message in such a way that customers who are interested in the value do what you are asking them to do, you greatly increase your chances of getting customer buy-in.