Small Businesses, Stop Listening To the Insanity!

Okay..that’s it! I’m mad! Damn mad! I’m listening to prospective and existing clients alike vent about the garbage fed to them daily by marketing vendors who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about! In this economy (or any for that matter), you cannot waste a dime on ineffective and inefficient marketing! On or offline, more vendors than not will take your money and waste it! The key to any marketing campaign is conversions! Conversions! Conversions! Meaning, actual leads that turn into sales. Clicks don’t matter. Page ranks don’t matter. What matters is the effort spent results into sales.

I have a client who called me the other day concerned that their traffic to their website was less than they expected. Ironically, of the traffic they were getting (they’re a highly specific medical practice), they were seeing a 46% conversion rate! Meaning 46% of those who did come to the site as a result of our online marketing campaign turned into a legitimate lead! I had them go back and cross analyze those leads to sales (patients in this case). 20% turned into new patients!

The reason they called me? Another vendor was in to see them and sold them a load of crap with regards to page rank and traffic to their site! Once I showed them the actual - IMPORTANT - numbers, they were floored. I asked them to contact that vendor and challenge them with questions regarding their conversion tracking methodology. As suspected….they lied and said those numbers are not important.

I guess this entry is more for the lame vendors out there who got into this business because they saw their share of marketing budgets go toward online marketing but who have NO CLUE about marketing….learn marketing 101, and this space will be a nice place to compete! It will also be much more pleasant for small businesses in the Greater Philadelphia area. The less garbage they hear, the less insanity in the market place!

Small businesses, tell me about your marketing vendor experiences. Let’s hear the good, the bad, the ugly! You are in power now. It’s a nice position to be in! Use it…let’s hear from you! Comment on this posting!

Until next time, this is Meg Ferguson from Vision House Marketing, LLC saying have an effective and efficient day!

Don’t Forget About Your Website. Make it Work!

I circulated a survey last week to my friends, colleagues, and clients asking their uses for social media. With all the hype about social media (and well deserved hype might I add), I wanted to gauge whether people were shifting their behaviors with regards to online fact finding. While most of the responses were no surprise, one question brought the most interesting results. When asked "Where do you go online to find out more about a company?," 100% of the respondents said "their website."

Okay, so these results didn’t split the atom and certainly don’t reflect the views of more than about 100 people but I found it most interesting. I fear that companies are starting to invest disproportionate amounts of time and money diving into the social networking world and neglecting their mainstay - their website. Don’t get me wrong, social networking is here to stay and should be a part of your marketing strategy but your website is still very important and it is still the "front door" to your business. It has to be maintained, updated, studied for visitor trends, and reflective at all times of your company’s products and/or services. But most of all, it has to work!

So what does that mean? A website that "works" means it compels people enough to take some sort of action whether it be they pick up the phone and call or fill out your contact us form or request a quote or sign up for your e-newsletter and/or coupons. A website that works is not static. It is not purely informative with pleasing colors and graphics. A website does not have to sell (unless you’re selling product directly from the site). A website is dynamic. It is engaging. It answers the question "why would I do business with this company as opposed to their competitor?" It provides just enough information to the visitor to prompt the visitor to act!

Listen, you’ve invested a lot of time and money not only into your site but into driving traffic to your site via all of your marketing efforts. Make sure your website "works!" It’s still the first place a potential customer/client will go to find out about you.

Only after you’ve created a website that works should you consider using tags, social networking bookmarks and ratings, blogs, and other forms of social networking along side your website. Hire a vendor that understands how all of these forms of marketing work together and you can’t lose!

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Until next week, this is Meg Ferguson from Vision House Marketing saying have an effective and efficient day!