The main elements of inbound marketing for small business

On the internet today, marketing has become more and more challenging to overcome. Most small business drops the SEO for more interaction with their followers. But Google says that SEO is not dead though we still need to think like human rather than robots. Search algorithm Hummingbird is an advanced search tool which will also benefit marketers as well as searchers.

Know the elements of inbound marketing

 

1.       Email Marketing – Good email marketing can be the solid ground for your business. Most business deals are negotiated through email not social media

Email platforms to use

·         Exact Target

·         MailChimp

·         iContact

·         Mailgen

·         Active campaign

2.       SEO – Search engine optimization can give life to your website in form of organic traffic. A website cannot survive without SEO. SEO include:

·         Content Marketing

·         On-page Optimization

·         Off-page optimization

·         Keyword Research

·         Competitive analysis

Tools to use:

·         Google Analytics

·         SEOmoz

·         Ravertools

3.       Social media – is a tool that can spread your message well to your community and beyond, if your message is valuable and informative. Target audience will spread your messages in their network and so on, this will give you online credibility and online presence.

Platforms:

·         Facebook

·         Twitter

·         Google+

·         LinkedIn

·         Pinterest

·         Instagram

·         Foursquare

·         YouTube

·         Slideshare

Tools to manage your social media platforms are:

·         Hootesuite

·         Tweetdeck

·         Wildfire

·         Sproutsocial

4.       Content – Content brings life to the internet marketing efforts, without content you will not gain the brand awareness you are aiming for. No one will know about your business without spreading contents across multiple platforms.

Types of content for your marketing campaign

·         White Paper

·         Press Release

·         Blogging

·         Videos

·         Presentations

·         Infographic

·         Video/ online tutorials

·         Webinars

·         Ebooks

5.       Design – design is what binds all your marketing effort into one. A good website design with great user experience is one of the most fundamental elements of your overall business marketing. All your marketing campaign leads back to your website and it affects your overall conversions.

Website needs:

·         Branding/awareness

·         Website design

·         Mobile website version

·         Interface design

·         Responsive design

·         Business information

·         Blog

·         Images

·         Graphics

Tools to use to improve your website:

·         Wordpress

·         Drupal

·         Social media buttons

·         Photoshop

Inbound marketing plan should include these 5 important panels

1.       Identity

Buyer stage needs to have identify stage, whereof the customers permission to sell your products is earned

2.       Exploration

Use blog to publish valuable content and promote it on social media, invite more users to share your content across their network

3.       Decision making

One of the most important thing you can do for your inbound marketing is to help your clients make the decision through easy and quick solutions or informative content

4.       Take action

When your article meets the readers need, show them what benefit it has for them to choose your product and repeat the process.

5.       Advocacy

Turn your customers into your supporters and turn your fans into your clients

What to consider for your marketing mix

 

·         Social media marketing

52% of small business owners have found customers through Facebook, 67% companies who blogs have generated more leads than those who don’t, 43% of small business owners found customers on Linkedin through their professional Linkedin Profile. These statistics tells you that it is worth to mix your marketing campaign and learn the different platforms benefits as well as weaknesses

·         Content Marketing

Adding content with relevant keywords to your website will increase your page rank, having new valuable contents increases interactions with your potential customers. By creating interesting content can give you something to post on your social media sites. New content also means another reason to contact your customers through email content, which will be offered through presentation, white papers or Press release.

·         Video Marketing

Video marketing offers the same level of audience engagement, but more effective than content alone, in fact by year 2016 online video will be the largest single generator of internet consumer. Everyday 75 Million Internet users in USA watch online videos, from Advertisements, to DIY, How tos and Online tutorial videos. Video and marketing will be the perfect pairing, it also improve consumer engagement and increase your small business trustworthiness.

Final words

Make the most out of your inbound marketing by adding and mixing up different marketing campaign to suit all your target audience.

Roderick Hunnicutt

Socratic SBC | Small Business Consulting

2 Wisconsin Circle Suite 700 Chevy Chase, MD 20815
Office: (410) 929-6395  
Fax: (202) 318-0689   
admin@socraticsbc.com

Internet is everything, think differently!

Marketers fear today the loss of SEO after the recent Google update, so what does the SEO really look like in the upcoming year? How much of your marketing effort as a small business owner will be? If you have been a smart marketer today, using strategic marketing plan, you have no worries of the future trending marketing strategies. Let us take a look at below how you can build online presence and enhance your marketing campaign, to be ready to face 2014.

Mobile marketing, balance and flexibility

Marketers, developers and small business owners have worked together to create the best customer mobile

website experience, which will increase their traffic. But how effective is this change?

To be successful in Mobile Marketing you need these tips below:

1.       Mobile friendly websites that allows any type of mobile device to view your blog/business website.

2.       Mobile App and HTML 5 – create your mobile app today to make purchase level easier for your customers

3.       Cloud access – cloud will be the center of digital era, for apps, contents and preferences. Make sure you let your customers know you have cloud access and they can too.

4.       Mobile internet – key technologies should include embedded sensors and image recognition.

5.       Actionable analytics – Make sure you have access to your analytics through your mobile device, so you can take action right away.

Internet will be everything in the future

Forget about the old fashion way to build business branding/presence, internet will be the main interest in the future. All you need will be a click away, and taking this into your small business advantage, you must build your online presence today to be able to build the right and solid foundation for your business.

Everything will be purchased through internet, Explore the possibilities for your small business. Here are four basic models for your small business:

1.       Manage

2.       Monetize

3.       Extend

4.       Operate

These can be applied to business information online, target audience, products and services.

 

Apps for your small business and clients

Create an app that allows you to handle and manage your small business through Virtual assistant that will also guide your client best way possible to get the best experience in customer service.

Final Words

Some of these considerations have been research from the most trusted online marketer, to help small business prepare them for the internet and technology era coming up. Arrange a meeting with your developer and together you can create a magnificent website that allows you to interact with your customers at the same time gain the sales you want. You may also need to update your marketing plan to fit in with your new marketing techniques. 

Socratic SBC | Small Business Consulting

2 Wisconsin Circle Suite 700 Chevy Chase, MD 20815
Office: (410) 929-6395  
Fax: (202) 318-0689   
admin@socraticsbc.com

http://www.socraticsbc.com

Why small businesses need mentors to achieve their business goals

It is easy to get caught up with marketing your business and preparing a business plan and actually getting it done, the questions is: What if you can avoid the common failures when starting a small business rather than going through them yourselves? Wouldn't that be convenient? When you are busy finding new customers, you might lose time to market your business online, therefore a proper business plan is needed for you to organize the different tasks your business need.

Why you need a business consultant

You are not the only one having a battle of managing a small business, there aren't enough hours in a day to do all the things you need to do. Sometimes there is no time left to monitor your business life, such as the marketing status of your business, the financial issues, bills to pay etc. getting an experienced mentor is an investment, efficient activities might just save you 10 hours of dead end initiatives. Do you want to know why?

1.       Business mentors especially experts in the market field and how it works, you can avoid lots of mistakes by thorough research that your mentor can do for you.

2.       The best ideas comes from mentors who already know how to work a small business, with your ideas and your mentors research you can create well planned marketing campaign.

A good mentor needs these characteristics

·         Good listener – most mentors listen to your business needs and take action to what needs to be done.

·         Provocative questions – most mentors needs to ask these provocative questions only to find out what risks you can handle when it comes to your business and how well you perform with the challenges you have yet to meet.

·         Giving feedback – a mentor should give a clear feedback of where your business stand now and how it can work out well in the future

·         Wealth knowledge – most mentors especially experienced ones, have been around to see businesses fail and businesses succeed. Therefore they have clearer ideas on what to suggest to you when it comes to your revenue and investments.

·         Market knowledge – professional business consultants know the market very well, not only to the fact that this is their profession but they have been around to see how small business like yours move towards reaching their goals and some failed to end their business ventures.

Evaluate your business with your mentor

Do your homework

Before you open doors for your mentor, you need to do your home work, where do you need help the most and how can you give the solutions. Research your competitors and audience as well as your target market.

Understand your cash flow challenge

List down your business expenses and income for your mentor to review, make a weekly target of your revenue and how you can come close to that goal.

You business records must be accurate

You may want to use accounting software such as XERO, to keep track of all your expenses and revenues. These records will come in handy in the future. For a better financial reconciliation, you might want to invest on a savvy accountant, which could also give you understanding on your basic tax obligations.

Learn your business law and regulation

If you have a lawyer you might want to invite him/her to lunch and learn more about your business structure, legal and financial liability. You may also want to get your employment contract, legal compliance obligations and other business records that might come in handy for you.

Conclusion

Companies are different and therefore a proper review and research about your business and the goals you want to achieve can only done by you but with a proper guide from an experienced mentor you will have the success you want in due time. Everything takes time and hard work, when you make a decision to be different you make your business remarkable and target audience will soon notice your expertise and hard work.

Competitive Analysis Plan for starting a small business

For small business it can sometimes be difficult to find the time and dedication to advertise your products online and offline.  People can sometimes have a hard time understanding how a product can ultimately solve their needs.  With proper guide to competitive analysis, your consumers can be convinced that they need your product more than anything else.

Building business structure

Introduce your products/services to your target audience with clear and direct message, describe how your products and services can overcome the challenge they are facing. Include relevant details how effective your products and services are; make sure to outline the problem and resolution, giving the client the idea that your service is using real time solution to solve their real life problems.

Your business website delivers your marketing campaign

With the high technology today there is no way to avoid making a business website for your company that may serve as your marketing campaign. With proper contents, description of products and nevertheless a viewer friendly website could increase your business visibility and gain you more customers in the long run.

Business website should include the following:

• ·         Own Domain name
• ·         Creative template design
• ·         Your business name, slogan and logo
• ·         Your business information, such as where to locate you and when it is the best time to reach you
• ·         Your “about us” page, giving your audience a quick view of what your business is about and what the purpose of your business and why you started the business in the first place.
• ·         Your field of expertise, could also be included in the about us page,
• ·         Your products and description – you need to categorize your products and give them a short and clear description of what these products are for and why your audience should choose your products
• ·         Your blog - blog should always have new informative and valuable contents that are relevant to your company.
• ·         Connecting and socializing – include your social media accounts or add social media icons so that the audience can easily locate you on social media platforms

Marketing of your business using strategic planning

A competitive analysis is vital for your small business marketing plan; you need to establish your products and services in a unique way to be able to attract your target audience. Competitive analysis starts by placing your strategic groups according to how directly they compete. You need to look at your competitors current and past marketing strategies, to learn from their success as well as their mistakes. What are the things you need to research?

• ·         What products and services do they sell?
• ·         What are their past strategies?
• ·         What are their current strategies
• ·         How many clients do they have?
• ·         What are the potential threats do your competitors pose?
• ·         What are the potential opportunities do they make available for you?
• ·         What media marketing are they using

Competitive strategies

Once you have established the assets and skills necessary to succeed in your small business and have gained your competitive advantage, you need to plan your strategic marketing, which usually falls into these categories

1. 1.       Product
2. 2.       Promotion
3. 3.       Pricing
4. 4.       Distribution
5. 5.       Advertising

Conclusion

Many of these factors mentioned above, can be discussed with your marketer, so can agree on a marketing plan template that works well with your goals. Your analysis plan will also help your products pricing threshold, without turning away customers.

Are you ready to choose your products and set your prices?

Contact us today for competitive analysis plan for starting a small business. Socratic Investments will take current market trends and use them to predict the direction of your company

Socratic SBC | Small Business Consulting

2 Wisconsin Circle Suite 700 Chevy Chase, MD 20815

Office: (410) 929-6395  

Fax: (202) 318-0689        

admin@socraticsbc.com