Develop your simple online marketing plan (Part 1)

Intuit is providing a series of articles for the Biznik community during the month of April.  We are pulling together the best articles that we can find from within the company that we think might help you.

Article By Becky McCray, Retail Store Owner

Intro

Online marketing feels like a moving target. Just as soon as you get a website, the experts say you need a blog. Then it's pay-per-click ads, then it's something else. How are you supposed to keep up with this? That feeling of being always behind is why I want to simplify online marketing. Let's break it down into a simplified plan, and explore the tools you can use to market your business.

Here's the number one principle to simplify your online marketing. Focus on having an active online presence where customers can find you, and then engage your customers in conversations online. We are going to talk about websites, alternatives to websites, and many more tools that help your business be "present" online.

Having an active online presence is 90% of online marketing

A website is just one type of presence. Are the alternatives to having your own website any good at reaching customers? Yes! Either a blog or a site profile may better fit your business than a traditional website.

Blog

A blog is just a special website made up of stories or articles, kind of like a newsletter. It also gives customers and readers a chance to comment on stories, building conversations. Special services like Blogger and WordPress offer a platform for your own blog. The platform includes all the behind the scenes software that does the work. That lets you focus on writing stories, which works about like writing an email. Feeling brave? A blog can also be made up of audio or video clips, not just text.  This is what I use for my liquor store's website. It provides all the basic contact info, plus I can update with new product announcements, articles about wines, and drink recipes. You probably already teach customers about your product every day, so you could easily add that info to a blog and share it with your new potential customers.

Site Profile

If you fill in your business information, you can let your user profile on services like Biznik (!), JumpUp.com, or LinkedIn serve as a website. They are designed for business, so these profiles give you room to include your contact information such as phone and email, details about your line of business, even hours or directions. You want customers to find your profile, so also check the privacy settings to make your profile public.

Important Tips

To make sure that customers searching for you can find you, include the right keywords in all your online presence. Your keywords are your name, your business name, your line of work or brands you carry, and your hometown or service area. Think of the words a customer would be thinking right before they search for a business or solution like yours. Post and share information your customers want. Don't emphasize your business, when you could freely share tips, how-to's and other stuff relevant to your line of work. Avoid the sales pitch.

You can do much more than a website!

Right now, lots of your potential and current customers are online, but they aren't hanging out at your site. Going beyond a website means reaching those potential customers where they already are online. You want to go where they go and build your presence there. Then you can engage them in conversations. Meaningful conversations are the goal. How do you find out what sites they use? Ask them! Ask about their interests related to your line of business, like maybe photography or cooking. If they like to post photos, they may be at Flickr. Ask them. Then you can investigate those tools to decide which help you reach them and fit best for your business.

In order to do this, you will need to budget time daily or at least weekly to build your presence. The good news is that you can have some help. Right now, you have loyal customers who would gladly promote your business, link to you, write positive reviews and generally drive some awareness and traffic to you. All you have to do is ask them.

Part 2 will be posted tomorrow

Article from JumpUp.com,  a free website and community from Intuit that helps new businesses get up and running successfully.