Marketing – Page 2

Hyperlocal Marketing: The New Buzzword On the Map

May 13, 2016 Beth Devine

What’s with all the hype over hyperlocal marketing? It’s nothing new to small businesses. Don’t you perform hyperlocal marketing every time you attend or sponsor a community event?

This old-fashioned component to hyperlocal marketing, dating back to the first shop that opened its doors to Main Street, continues to be very valuable. But there’s a lot more to it in our Internet Age of WiFi and GPS.

The term hyperlocal made its debut back in 1991 in a Washington Post article about local television news. Today, hyperlocal is the term being used to describe digital marketing targeting a specific geographic area. It can be focused on a town or a county, although that’s a large area. Hyperlocal marketing often targets a segment of the population that’s more defined, such as shoppers in a mall or consumers anywhere within a mile from your place of business.

There are a variety of ways to employ hyperlocal marketing, such as using news items, the weather, or apps. The most common application is – you guessed it – mobile phones. The built-in GPS and WiFi allows companies to connect with customers based on their particular neighborhood, zip code, or shopping location.

Thanks to Google and the search function, local online directories, and social media, this ability to connect is at an all-time high. Our digital world gives companies without big name recognition the opportunity to be found at a local level like never before.

So even though it’s a new buzzword for an old idea, hyperlocal marketing is here for the long haul. Here are a few things to be sure you’re doing with hyperlocal marketing as a small business.

Claim Your Local Business Page

By signing up with Google My Business, your business gets on Google Maps and your local search rankings increase. Customers can easily find your location as well as your business hours, updates, and reviews.

Make sure your business name, address, and phone number match what you have on your website. If you have more than one location, each business should have its own listing.

Optimize for “Near Me” Searches

Google said that ”near me” searches doubled in 2015, indicating that this is a trend that’s not leaving anytime soon. With “near me” searches, Google’s algorithm increases how important distance is from the searcher’s location.

To help optimize for this, make sure your business name, address, and phone number are prominently and frequently displayed on your website. Get someone who’s tech-savvy to provide local business information to Google by doing a structured data markup for your site.

Respond To Any Negative Reviews

Google and Yelp, the two top consumer review platforms, give businesses the option to respond to customer reviews. Your attention to consumer comments can be a great way to demonstrate your excellent customer service.

Anytime your business site is mentioned in reviews online, it’s counted by ranking algorithms used by search engines. Getting a lot of positive reviews is helpful with your local map rankings, so aim high.

Mobile-Friendly Location Pages

Mobile marketing is an important focus as mobile use continues to grow — with 62 percent of digital media time spent on mobile, the next frontier in digital marketing is here. It’s important to have a mobile-friendly website, and in particular, mobile-friendly location pages.

Avoid giving users a frustrating experience when they try to get to your location. Because these pages are often the most viewed, and more than half of all web activity is on mobile devices, it’s critical to get your site’s location pages optimized for mobile.

Like so many old ideas in marketing, hyperlocal marketing has been reinvented with new dynamics. Get your hyperlocal on and into your marketing plan.

Have Fun With GIFs In Your Marketing

April 15, 2016 Beth Devine

It all started with emoticons. Then it was online memes. Today, GIFs are more than corny banner ads or headache-inducing social avatars. The animated GIF is a common staple seen across social media, blogs, and websites.

Like video, GIFs are visual eye candy that will grab your audience’s attention, but their format is short and sweet, only about five to fifteen seconds long. They can be a series of still images or a short video clip that plays over and over again.

They don’t (usually) have audio, giving GIF’s a retro appeal with their silent film feel. Besides, there’s something annoying about repeatedly hearing the same sound, whereas we can watch something many times over without the same aversion.

Images invoke emotional responses, break language barriers, explain complicated ideas, and prompt imagination — all at a glance. Make them come alive with GIFs and you’ve got a riveting story in motion.

Marketers have jumped on the official GIF bandwagon with new ways to use them for stand-out content that delivers its message fast. Why use words alone when a GIF can – literally – stand up and do a jig for you?

5 Ways To Use GIFs In Your Marketing

1. Social Media

Facebook joined the ranks of platforms that support GIFs, along with with Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, and Google+. Because images generate more likes, reactions, and shares than plain text, posting GIFs makes your content more clickable and increases engagement.

So what are you waiting for? Now that you can easily add a GIF to social media updates, the internet relies even less on words. Why say anything with words when a moving image says it so much better?

2. Blog posts

Why settle for static images when you can boost your blog with GIF-appeal? Follow suit with sites like BuzzFeed and Unbounce and make your posts jump off the page with an occasional GIF.

GIFs give your audience an immediate message. Compared to asking your audience to click on a link or watch a video (which they might not even do), a well-timed GIF doesn’t require asking for anything.

3. Free Ebooks and Whitepapers

Creative use of GIFs can change boring static ebook images into looping graphics of relevant text, charts, and quotes. Spice up your offerings with captivating GIFs instead of settling for the same old inert images.

4. Announce New Features

Anytime you have something new to shout about, whether it’s new software, a new service, or a new product, GIFs are a way to call attention from the rooftops of your corner of the internet. Their instantaneous nature make them effective attention-grabbers.

Attach them to your newsletter, send in an email, or include them on a landing page, in your “About Us” page, or on your home page. They take up less place than posting a series of single static images.

5. Describe How To Do Things

Have you ever tried to explain something in text but were unable to keep it short and simple with just words? Try making a GIF to describe how you did it.

Whether it’s how you manage your files, a step in your software solution, how to do a quick install, or any quick fix. Think of ways to highlight a key function or feature, such as a series of GIFs demonstrating a short tutorial or illustrating the steps to a process. The sky’s the limit with what you can record into a GIF.

Look for how to make GIFs in the next post.

How To Persuade People With the Ugly Green Drink

March 22, 2016 Beth Devine

Persuading people to agree with you and do what you’re asking them to do is difficult. Whether you want them to buy your product or service, vote in a particular way, or make different lifestyle choices, it involves understanding the Ugly Green Drink.

For my son, drinking smoothies is all about flavor. Imitating Starbuck’s new smoothie glamour or pushing veggie health won’t convince him to drink the Ugly Green Drink. I tried that.

It has to taste good, and if it’s green, then that’s just not possible according to the Book of Hungry Teen Boys. Despite being ugly and green, it’s just as good as purple or red smoothies, but try telling that to a green-phobic youth.

He helped me earn my badge in the art of persuasion. Now it’s your turn to learn the Ugly Green Drink technique and get the help you need to persuade people.

Say What You Have To Say

How you say something is as important as what you say. If you say something with anger or resentment, your listener will put up automatic defenses. If you say something with drama and self-judgment, it will be received as dramatic and worthy of judgment.

When I said the Ugly Green Drink was better for him than fruit-only smoothies, and if he couldn’t see past the green then he wasn’t trying to be an adult, I was the know-it-all mother. And he held fast to his question-mom-in-everything thinking.

Like the story in Seth Godin’s Poke the Box when the 1860s Hungarian doctor realized washing hands would save lives. No one listened to him. Can you guess why? Because he knew it all and didn’t bother to pretend otherwise. He was a pompous jerk.

Say what you have to say by taking into account how you say it so your audience will think you have something worth listening to.

Frame Your Story So It Fits Their World View

People suffer from what can be called a “moral empathy gap.” This inability to comprehend moral world views that are different from our own renders us incapable of persuading others to adopt our position.

In other words, you can’t persuade someone to take a different course of action or buy a product you want them to buy when you use your own system of belief. Without empathy, your attempts at persuasion will fall flat.

The Ugly Green Drink didn’t need to be healthy or a status symbol. Unlike Mikey of the Life cereal ad, persuading my son to like it was not as simple as shoving a bowl in front of him. I needed to use empathy and step inside his shoes.

“This is the ugliest drink you’re ever going to try; it’s as disgusting looking as the bottom of your backpack.” However, if I can persuade him that green doesn’t mean it tastes like cooked spinach, I’ve won. But first I have to get on his plane of thinking.

They’re Not Wrong

It’s close to impossible to persuade people that they are wrong and then have them do something differently. You can convince them with facts and figures by appealing to their intellect, but you can persuade them by “appeals made to the will, moral sense, or emotions.”

Godin reminds us that marketers don’t convince, they persuade. Moms serving Ugly Green Drinks must also learn the fine art of appealing to the passions, fears, and fancies of their target teens. Forget the brain and go for the heart.

Unless it’s brains you’re eating. “It’s so gross! If you drink it, you’ll be drinking monkey brains!” That was enough of a challenge for Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes to eat his smelly dinner. It warrants a try.

Help persuade your audience to make a change or a new decision instead of admit they’re wrong. Arnold Schwarzenegger shows us how with his bold, four-asterisk word in an appeal to our future.

Use Placebos To Surround What You’ve Built

Godin’s Placebos begins with a story illustrating how placebos work. A guy walks into a health food store with a nasty cold and asks for the strongest placebo they’ve got. Unfortunately, that particular store didn’t carry any.

“A placebo is a story we tell ourselves that changes the way our brain and body work,” Godin says. You have to first make something terrific that works, and then you have to build a story around it to break through all the noise and competition.

This is emotion again, the appeal to the heart and soul of your audience by going beyond the obvious features and benefits. “With the Ugly Green Drink you can forget about having to fork up boring vegetables. And you’ll be chugging down added protein you want for sports. All in mere seconds!”

I’m thinking Popeye the Sailor Man. He’s probably thinking The Expendables. Whatever works. Build a story around your great idea, product, or service, and let the placebo effect kick in.

Make Metaphors Happen

The Ugly Green Drink is my metaphor. It gives you imagery, helps you to understand the idea, and makes it easier to communicate it with others.

Put your metaphors at the beginning of your story. This way your audience doesn’t have to work so hard to understand your argument. The metaphor is the lens that focuses them in on your idea and helps to persuade them to think and act differently.

When you get others to drink the Ugly Green Drink, you’re persuading them to do something they might not want to do otherwise.

Pay It Forward

Simple reciprocity is a great persuasive device. Give someone an unexpected gift and you will create a need to reciprocate. Like the notion of pay it forward, people like to return favors as a way of showing their gratefulness. Think of how in your personal life you’re more inclined to ask someone for a favor if you’ve done a favor for them.

Businesses are applying this principle every day by offering free ebooks, free trial memberships, free samples, etc. The feeling of gratefulness for the free information creates a tendency to feel obligated to return the favor and make a purchase or a recommend to a friend.

Make sure you understand your audience and what they want before using reciprocity to influence their choices. Persuasion is most effective when the right favor is granted.

Offering my son a bowl of tortilla chips to go with the Ugly Green Drink will be far more persuasive than a dish of crunchy kale. Maybe I’ll work on kale chips next since I’m on a green roll.

7 Deadly Sins and Heavenly Virtues of Social Media Marketing

March 11, 2016 Beth Devine

Unless you’ve hired a divine saint to sit before the keyboard, your brand is not immune to the seven deadly sins. Like the temptations in our daily lives, social media marketing falls prey to the same vices.

The concept of seven deadly sins and their contrasting virtues are centuries old, handed down to us from the middle ages from an epic poem, Psychomachia, or Battle of Souls, written by Prudentius. It’s an allegory that describes defeating the seven sins through the opposite seven heavenly, or contrary, virtues.

To overcome the vices that can bog down your brand, you can use the seven virtues of generosity, temperance, kindness, patience, humility, diligence, and chastity. Breaking the bonds of the vices of greed, gluttony, envy, anger, pride, sloth, and lust means working the seven virtues as they apply to social media marketing.

So grab your halos and get some divine inspiration to see how you can battle these social media evils. And don’t forget to bring your sense of humor along.

Practice Kindness, Not Envy: Don’t Bore People

There is no greater sin in social media than boring your audience. When you defeat boredom, you are prevented from falling prey to all sorts of other lesser vices, such as ineffectiveness and irrelevance.

In turn, you will stir up the envy you want your competition to experience when they visit your social media pages. Put an end to boredom and spread around the best of your brand with helpful social media posts.

Keep your articles and images not only interesting and informative, but surprise your audience with some tasteful humor. Sometimes people just want to be entertained.

Be Generous: It’s Not All About You and Your Brand

The opposite of generosity is greed, and being greedy on social media is when you make it all about you. Your audience might want to learn more about you, but only in ways that are going to give them something in return.

For example, when posting about a new product, service, or recent work, find a way to relate it to your audience. Always ask, what’s in it for them? When it’s about you, it’s still got to be about them, your audience.

Have you been to the center of the universe? I guarantee your brand’s not there.

Practice Patience: Don’t Annoy Your Followers

It’s easy to be patient when everything is going well. When things get ugly, however, how well do you react? Do you stay calm or do you give the troublemakers something to be sorry for?

Patience is the virtue that counters anger, and it comes in handy when followers make rude or untrue comments meant to incite your brand’s wrath or cause you harm.

In other words, no matter what happens, don’t annoy, irritate, or otherwise anger your audience. When it comes to best practices, deviating from this virtue will swiftly turn the tide against you. Whereas it’s expected that followers can be angry and impatient, your social media posts and comments have to reflect the very best behavior.

There are only so many times you can blame your lapses in judgement on autocorrect.

Be Diligent: Share Content Every Day

Being diligent means fulfilling your duties, cultivating a strong work ethic, and developing your talents. Diligence is the virtue that counters the sin of sloth and being lazy instead of having a zealous attitude.

Your social media marketing can reflect either a virtue of diligence or it can be wrapped up in the vice of sloth. Which attitude do you present in your social media campaigns?

When you share content on social media, be sure to include original content as well, such as your own blog posts or other articles. The opposite extreme to posting daily content is overindulging and dominating your followers’ feed, as the next vice, gluttony, describes.

In other words, diligence goes rogue.

Practice Temperance: Don’t Waste Time

With social media, the inverse of efficiency is true. The more time you spend on social media marketing, the less efficient you are. The more you practice temperance instead of its opposite, gluttony, the less you will fall into the trap of overindulgence and lack of moderation.

Being successful means engaging with your audience – but not wasting your valuable time by overdoing it. Social media is a valuable means of communication, giving brands and people a way to spread the word. There is so much more to content marketing, so don’t waste time with hours spent posting when it’s just one crucial component.

This has me wondering. What do Facebook employees do to waste time while at work?

Be Humble: Care About What You Share (and With Whom You Share It)

“Pride and excess bring disaster for man” because the secret to pridefulness is the disregard for everything and everyone else. Before pride causes your brand to crumble, remember that you owe everything to everyone.

Without your customers and followers, you wouldn’t have anyone to engage with in social media. Self-promotion is allowable and even expected as long as your ultimate goal is centered around your followers’ interests.

An over-appreciation for your brand’s self-worth is unattractive, unless you’re a peacock. Then strutting your stuff is expected.

Chastity: Pure in Style and Conduct

Most brands understand the value of a simple and modest presentation. If you know how to use it, sex sells, and has been since its earliest known use in 1871 by Pearl Tobacco.

If, however, you’re content to practice a more restrained approach in your social media marketing, then find a style that has decency, modesty, and is free of embellishment.

Are there safe ways to be chaste and sexy at the same time? Unsexy brands are finding a unique way to be attractive despite their blahness. See “How to turn something as unsexy as car rental into a social media hit“ and decide what works for you.

Good luck practicing the seven heavenly virtues on social media with your brand. Remember, as W. H. Auden said, “We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don’t know.”

One thing’s for sure, they’re here, and so are you, so let’s make it good.

Pay-Per-Click – What is it, Do I Need it and Can I do it Myself?

February 26, 2016 Beth Devine

Pay-per-Click or Adwords is a paid program that buys you ranking for your website. Most often referred to as Google Adwords, a good pay-per-click program can be effective across multiple search engines like Bing and Yahoo. This is an advertising campaign where you only pay if someone clicks on your ad.

If your industry is highly competitive, you don’t add content to your website frequently or are a fairly new company, getting on the first page of Google can be a challenge. Although we recommend investing in an overall content marketing program, it can take time for the search engines to rank your site. Pay-per-click allows you to have a strong on-line presence while you wait for your natural ranking to improve.

Can you manage your own campaign? Yes and No. Pay-per-Click programs give you the tools to create your own campaign however, unless you have a great deal of time to commit to becoming an expert, I would not recommend managing it. Search engines change their algorithms frequently. To run a truly effective campaign you need to have an thorough understanding of these changes.

We have worked with clients that have managed their own programs and once transferred to a company that does this alone have seen results that are twice as effective for half the cost. Managing a campaign is a combination of art and science and requires constant education to stay on top of it.

Please contact us at 860-432-8756 for help with your Pay-Per-Clicks (Adwords) Campaign.

How to Get Found on the Internet: Nobody Cares What I had for Breakfast

February 24, 2016 Beth Devine

Whenever we approach the subject of blogging with our manufacturing clients we get the same push back…

Nobody cares what we had for breakfast, or
Our customers already know that

We’d like to address these two misconceptions.

First, a company blog has nothing to do with what one consumes for the first meal of the day. The concept of blogging is often confused with a teenager tweeting or posting their mundane life updates on Facebook. When in reality, blogging is simply a way to add content to your website. Blogs can be presented in various formats from a written piece to a video blog. All formats can be useful as long as the information presented is educational and written with the audiences needs in mind.

Second, as far as “our customer already knows this”, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they know you do it. We can say with almost 100% certainty that every manufacturing client we’ve worked with for the past 20+ years has told us at one time or another, “I can’t believe my customer didn’t know I did this”. The reason they didn’t know was that the one time they shared with the customer all their capabilities, the customer only had the one need, so they didn’t retain information about the other services/products. Blogging helps to keep all your capabilities in front of them at all times.

Blogging is essential for several reasons…

Your search engine optimization depends on frequent updates to your site. The most recent content gets ranked higher and therefore, sites that publish more frequently get better ranking.
Adding content to your site helps to ensure you can be found on a search. If you don’t have the right keyword terms on your site, how are people to find you when searching those terms?
A good blog helps to establish you/your company as experts in the field. People are more interested in having a conversation with someone who obviously knows what they’re doing.
Blogs can be used to help you to stay in front of your customers and prospects on a consistent basis (can be used to as content for an e-newsletter).

Many of our manufacturing clients are concerned with SEO (search engine optimization) as they want to be found on searches that apply to their business. These days SEO is all about content. Therefore, content creation is critical and blogging is the way to go.

Please contact us at 860-432-8756 for help with your content creation (aka blog).

Also from our Blog: 5 Reasons to Blog for Your Business: Blogging Resistance Beware

So Much Money, So Little Time

November 20, 2015 Beth Devine

CCAT, CT Innovations, DECD, NETAAC, SBDC, STEP, etc., etc., etc. When it comes to marketing dollars for manufacturers, there’s no shortage of options. Each day, the manufacturers we work with receive emails informing them of opportunities. This is a good thing. However, understanding which program to use can be a bit overwhelming.

Some programs offer free money, some have a 50/50 match, others are low interest loans. There’s also the question of qualifying. Some money needs to be used towards international marketing, and in other cases, funding is based upon the size of your business or your business situation (work lost to an overseas competitor).

Then there’s the time involved in looking into the options. In fact, from state and federally run operations to manufacturing associations and other resources, there are more than 20 organizations with multiple programs to assist manufacturers in CT. The confusion lies in the myriad of choices as each one of these organizations has up to 3 different programs to choose from.

Save yourself time and access the most money by investigating all options. Contact Web Savvy Marketers to discuss your marketing needs and determine which funding program would work for you.

Why Marketing Is Essential To Your Recruitment

September 25, 2015 Beth Devine

The key component to advancing your capabilities and capacity is successful recruitment. While this pertains to all industries, it is especially true for manufacturers. How do manufacturers succeed when fighting against the raging tide of a generational skills gap that is only going to get wider as the manufacturing workforce shortage continues to increase?

It is predicted that the impact of the shortage will be felt up to 2025 and beyond. The manufacturing industry is creating new jobs from a natural expansion following the recession. Data indicates there could be 400,000 new jobs by 2020, and up to 700,000 by 2025.

The challenges that manufacturers face are:

Baby Boomers are retiring, with nearly three million workers expected to retire between 2015 and 2025.
Millennials, who are expected to assume 75% of the manufacturing workforce by 2025, aren’t interested in manufacturing work.
The incoming workers are deficient in technology, as well as basic technical and problem-solving skills.

Marketing To Millennials

Successful manufacturing recruitment involves targeting today’s Millennials (aged 19 to 33 years). Three things are important to this generation of workers:

Social Consciousness

This generation wants to see their career prospects concerned with making the world a better place. By highlighting your community service, environmental awareness, and sustainability development, you add value by increasing your firm’s attractiveness.

Your website, company branding, and social media presence are all important in your recruitment process. An outdated site, unattractive branding, and missing the mark on social media will work against you.

Advanced and Innovative Technology

Marketing to millenials Dispel the old image of manufacturing as “dirty, dumb, dangerous, and disappearing.” Show how work environments and skills have changed to incorporate highly advanced machines and processes requiring computer-savvy workers with multiple talents.

Develop your firm’s image by posting new product lines on your blog or publishing articles in trade magazines on new processes. Ramp up your marketing to reveal how manufacturing has evolved into a “cool” place to be.

Part of a Team Environment

Enhance your desirability in this area by marketing your organization’s need for multi-taskers with advanced skill sets. Clearly display career path information on your website and write blog posts that feature employees’ development or production breakthroughs and accomplishments.

Help your prospective employees to understand the impact and value of their work. Share the culture of your open and collaborative work environment through social media and benchmarking publications.

There are currently six out of ten skilled production positions unfilled, and by the end of 2015, there will be 9,300 manufacturing job openings statewide in fourteen job categories. In order to compete for the available workforce, demonstrate your desirability as a company to work for through marketing that reaches out to a generation in a manner that is socially conscious and technologically up to date.

The principals of Web Savvy Marketers have been assisting CT manufacturers with their business development and marketing needs for more than 25 years. Give us a call at 860-432-8756 to see if we can help you with your on-line and off-line presence.

Why Your Small Business Needs a Website

July 1, 2015 Beth Devine

small businesses need a website — “Smart cat” by Lori, used under CC BY / Modified from original

Your small business needs an online presence to survive. Without a website, people won’t be able to find you. I mean that literally. We live in a world where we Google before we shop, before we get in our car and drive anywhere new.

Gone are the days of phone book white pages and oversized Rand McNally road maps. When you’re looking for a place to buy the world’s best cat litter, you don’t search in outdated formats. You’re going to ask Google, use your GPS, and set course to the best deal in town.

To Beat Your Competition

So what happens if people don’t find what they’re looking for online? They’ll go to the competition, that’s what. Not having an online presence means you’re not being found, which means you’re losing out on business opportunities.

Having a website shows you’re a legitimate business. Having a professional, updated, easy-to-navigate website shows you’re the type of business who cares about your product or service. Who would you be more likely to buy from, a sloppy, outdated website, or one that reflects a business with a progressive website?

To help promote your business, make sure your business site is connected to all the relevant sites: the three top search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing; and other online directories such as Yelp, Merchant Circle, Yellow Pages, Trip Advisor, and BBB. Depending on your business, there are a variety of online sites who will list you for free.

Business discovery sites like these are what help you get found. Without a website, there is no information for indexing programs to share with potential customers who are searching online. Your first impression is often your website, so don’t give the wrong one with an unavailable URL.

Here are three good reasons why your small business needs a website:

To Give Your Customers Convenience

People shop differently in today’s digital age. Window shopping is occurring online more and more, competing with an afternoon stroll down Main Street. And when customers are ready to buy, they’re more likely to research their next purchase through the help of Yelp or Google or Shopzilla.

According to comScore’s quarterly State Of Retail report, online shopping reached a total of $61.6 billion in Q2 2014, up 13%, accounting for 11.6% of consumers’ spending for both mobile and desktop.

People want to use the internet to research, compare, and buy. And it’s not just individual customers who are doing this. The 2014 State of B2B Procurement Study shows that 94 percent of businesses are doing some type of online research as well.

It’s never been more convenient to shop when the digital world of products and services is no further away than your keyboard. Without a website, your small business isn’t providing customers with the convenience of easy shopping.

Before they can shop online, they have to find you. We already know how that’s going to work out if you don’t have a URL address. Give your customers an online printable map option, embed a Google map, and make sure you provide a street address as well as email and phone number on your website.

Think of your website as your digital business card, complete with a full-color brochure attached. Can you imagine someone showing up to your business and not handing them one or both of these? Even when a customer forgets your business card, they can find you online. You’ll never run out or misplace it, the information can be easily updated, and the content can exceed any printed format.

To Build Relationships With Your Followers

Having a Facebook page is a great way to help build relationships with your followers. But without a website to link to, you’re sending the message that you’re not that interested.

Through a website, your small business can send regular e-newsletters and stay in touch with blog posts. Sending emails is a great way to offer discounts and specials on your services or products. By establishing a relationship through these channels via your website, you can develop a relationship of trust.

One reason e-commerce won’t replace brick-and-mortar stores is due to the trust that’s forged from a perceived sense of permanence, reliability, and familiarity. In order to convey a similar degree of security to your website visitors, your website must be designed to show that you’re thinking like your customer. Studies continue to show, for example, that free shipping and speed of delivery increases online sales, not low prices alone.

Substituting online for what you can’t give tangibly in order to create a relationship involves using all the tools available, from a site designed to meet your customer’s needs, to using social media, to answering common questions with blogs and helpful site content. Don’t forget to include testimonials in strategic locations that demonstrate your customer loyalty and satisfaction.

You Need a Team of One

Your small business website needs to appear as if you have a team of professionals who are working to keep your online presence active and available. This appearance is achieved far more easily than keeping your physical storefront polished and inviting. The only team you need is you, and your web hosting company for any additional website work.

You don’t need to update your website everyday, or even every week. New content management systems like WordPress make it a quick job to stay on top of things. With the support of your web hosting company, you can present a professional and engaging website with minimal maintenance.

5 Reasons You Can’t Do Without Online Newsletters

May 19, 2015 Beth Devine

The online newsletter continues to confound and perform after decades of relentless community building and information sharing. It has been called the cockroach of the Internet, the goose that laid the golden egg, tried-and-true, a direct line of communication, old-school artifact, the workhorse of nonprofits, and, perhaps most eloquently, “hand-curated pipes for mainlining quality Internet directly into our veins.” (Thank you for that, The Kernel.)

As a vein-clogging, direct line into our email inboxes, the online newsletter is a tool that will build your business and develop your brand image. Despite the Snapchatters and Whatsappers and Instagrammers out there, there is a time and a place where emailing your online newsletter is without rival.

Here are five reasons you can’t do without an online newsletter:

1. It’s easy to personalize and customize as part of your marketing plan.

Competing with Facebook isn’t so hard with a personalized newsletter. When you customize your newsletter so it contains personalized recommendations, the reader’s name, and reader-designated content, you’re more likely to keep your audience’s attention.

Newsletters tend to come before everything else in terms of self-interest. As David Carr writes in The New York Times, “It makes sense. My personal digital hierarchy, which I assume is fairly common, goes like this: email first, because it is for and about me; social media next, because it is for and about me, my friends and professional peers; and finally, there is the anarchy of the web, which is about, well, everything.”

As an addition to Facebook and other social media, the online newsletter is a way to personally connect with your audience and be an important part of your larger marketing plan.

2. It keeps your audience informed (and entertained).

Your newsletters are designed to do more than keep your readers connected. Your audience is reading to learn more and receive something valuable. Whether it’s helpful information, up-to-date news on your brand, or a discount or reward, your newsletter is an effective way to continue the relationship with ongoing communication.

By continuing to offer your audience something useful, you’re showing them that the’re valuable and haven’t been forgotten. You already know that your readers are interested because they’ve signed up for your newsletters, so be sure to give them something useful.

3. It’s a low-cost way to reach a large number of subscribers.

Small businesses and nonprofits can’t dispute the low-cost, pennies per message advantage to online newsletters. When you have a marketing budget, newsletters are the lost-cost choice over other marketing channels like direct mail and search engine advertising.

You can easily send out a new edition of your newsletter to a target audience of thousands of people, whenever you choose and as frequently as you want.

4. It’s a simple way to be mobile-friendly.

Without having to invest in new technology, you are instantly mobile-friendly with online newsletters. Email allows you to reach your audience on all types of mobile devices in an increasingly mobile-centric society.

A Forrester Research study shows that “on average, 42% of retailers’ email opens now happen on smartphones, up from 28% in 2013, while email open rates on tablets grew from 16% to 17%.”

When seeking mobile-friendly communication, texts are the competing alternative. But email newsletters are free to your audience where texts can incur a charge, and email gives much more space for your message in comparison to texts.

5. It’s the best way to grab your audience’s attention.

So what’s worth paying attention to when there is a never-ending supply of information? Most people are lazy when it comes to searching out content that interests them. By having it show up in their inboxes, reading content that your audience selected just got a lot easier.

No need to go looking for what they might like. Newsletters make sifting through the endless stream of online information easier for your readers. When your newsletter arrives, they recognize the sender, know you as a trusted source, and are confident that this is content they’re seeking.

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