Is There A Right And Wrong To Social Marketing on Social Media?

Can you do Social Marketing wrong?  Can anyone do it right?  Is Social Media a must for small business?

These are three big and related questions that have some long answers and short answers.  In marketing, metrics are everything, or at least that is what the big companies want you to think.

The only metric that matters is Sales Per Marketing Dollar spent.  The rest is marketing smoke and mirrors to get more money out of your pocket.  

So how does social media and social marketing fit into this mix?  Basically your only expense is your time unless you hire someone to do it for you.  My company used to offer the service, but the evolution of social media has made it ineffective for a third party to take over social media marketing.  

What we do now is monitor your marketing and send reminders to someone inside your company.  If the information doesn't come from within your business it lacks the authenticity that social media requires.  We can start a program and coach you through it, and that is about it.

Why hire a coach?  Reminders and accountability.  90% of the time people just need to be accountable to someone.

Social media and Social Marketing isn't any different.  

Recently I took a class from someone who nailed all of the rules, and didn't follow a one of them.  It was great because her lack of traction said it all.

Some simple keys? 

First, make sure you know your customer.   Think about your best customers.  The top 1% in total dollars and the top 1% in profitability.  When you write a tweet or Facebook post, write to them.  Don't write to everyone.

Second make sure you post.  Some good minimum rules, One blog post per month, One Facebook per week, three tweets per week.  If you have nothing new, find something that helps them even if it isn't related to your business but something they trust you with.

Third, Listen and learn from them.  See what they like and what they skip.  Post more of what people like.

That is all you need to do.  If you want a little more, try my book, "The Easy Guide To Internet Marketing"

Are You Spending Right For Your Business?

Spending right for your business is a tougher challenge than most people can imagine.  If everyone could do it, then we would all be in business for ourselves.   I have to admit this bit of wisdom was passed on to me by a friend and mentor, it isn't something I understood on my own.

Business itself is a very different animal.  Owning one takes a special person who is willing to sacrifice everything in order to serve someone else's wants and needs.  Let's face it, building a business that only serves the owner is a waste of time and money.  Regrettably, I know this because I did it and ate my lunch and seven figures doing it.

One of my "success keys" is to "Be careful who you listen to."   I seek out people who make at least twice as much money, or have twice as big a home or at least appear to make at least twice as much money as I do.  Why?  Simply put, why do I want to take financial advice from someone who makes less money, business advice from someone with a smaller business or real estate advice from someone with less property?   If I am doing better than they are I should advise them shouldn't I?

My friend owns a company that is well over ten times the size of my business.  We were living about three streets apart at the time we had the conversation.  He lived in a stunning golf course mansion, and I lived on a huge lot with a Sears Craftsman catalog home a few blocks over.  We met through a neighbor at a party.

Sitting on his back patio enjoying a beer, he turns and says, "Scott, I think you can appreciate my day today.  Today is a great example of how I make all of my money.  Margins are so thin nowadays that you have to guard every penny with your life."  Keep in mind this is a guy running a business easily 10 times bigger than mine in employee count and income.

He recounted his day covering everything from an employee that wanted an undeserved pay raise to a truck dealer trying to hit him up for a $1000 repair bill.  He talked about how he showed the employee how much they needed to do to earn what they were asking for, and continued with the story of the truck dealer who tried to charge $1000 for a transmission that was just three days out of warranty.  His company had over 100 employees and 20 trucks at that time.

When he added up all of the money he was able to not save for the day it was nearly $2500.  He says do that 3 days a week, and spend the other two on the shop floor, and you are saving well over your salary.   I did the math, 50 weeks at $7500 a week is $375,000.  I can't verify his salary, but that looks like a number that would pay for his house.

In my personal blog, I have discussed the problems with IT overselling you on solutions.  You have to know your business and what it really needs, otherwise you will just spend money without knowing where or why it is going somewhere else.

When you look at the financials of a successful business, the owner is taking home just a small percentage of the gross income, usually 5% or so.  Think about that carefully.  On a business doing $1,000,000 a year in sales the owner is really making only $50,000 for their investment.  Anything else is income from the labor just like an employee.  If they spend too much time in the business working on the job, they miss the opportunity to keep an eye on where the money is going.

That difference of just 2 or 3% can be the difference between success and failure.  That fine line can make or break a small business.  Building a business to sell creates an even bigger challenge when it comes to watching the outflow of cash.  Buyers like money coming in, not going out.

Do you spend the time each month to understand where all of your money goes?  How about each week?  Where can you save that critical few hundred dollars each week?

What is your customer really worth?

Lately I have had more than one discussion on the lifetime value of a customer.  While there a few businesses that are one shot programs like wrongful death attorney’s, most other businesses have a long term value and benefit if they can maintain a customer relationship.  

Every owner I talked to wanted more customers, and agreed that the customers they have are the most profitable.  So when I wanted to add a customer relationship program to the mix, why do they hesitate?

It is a very interesting phenomenon and attitude among business owners.  All of them will track how many customers are added to their “list” but they rarely track how many leave.  Online marketing is an interesting field because the total list is always a moving target.  If we forget about the existing customers for even a minute, they fall off the list faster than we can hit the refresh key.

So why is it that an owner will spend a small fortune on online advertising and not a penny to engage the existing list and make sure they don’t go anywhere else?  I don’t know.  The Harvard Business School has a pretty cool calculator to estimate the lifetime value of a customer. 

Who Are You Marketing Too?

Marketing to the right customer is critical to your success.  If you own a cupcake store, and don't have sugar free or gluten free, marketing to diabetics and people with celiac disease is a waste of time and money isn't it?

So who are you marketing too?

Jeff Walker taught me a great little exercise.  It is a two part exercise that I do every time I create an ad or copy for a client.  First I define the business and then I define the customers.  I only write to the things that overlap the two.

Within that overlapping area is the image of the perfect customer.  I grab a photo from the internet of someone who I might or might not know, and imagine they fit this profile.  I then start writing. I write as if we are talking to each other at my desk.

For each customer I have two phrases or keywords.  For GetTheBugOut.com I have Termite Tenting and Termite Repair.  As I write for them I look at the article or ad and ask, "Does this help the you (the person in the picture) decide on a Termite Tenting or Termite Repair company?

If not, I keep writing, until it does.

The picture is the perfect customer, the who of your ad and your marketing.  The keywords are your why.  If there isn't a who and a why there isn't anything to market.

Figure out your who and why before you write or buy any advertising, and you'll find your returns are a lot better.

Put Your Website To Work In 2013

Is your website doing the job you expect of it?  Is it being the dutiful sales tool you paid for and helping your build your business?  If not don’t feel bad, most websites are sitting out there and nobody but the owners has ever see them.  Once in a while, you read about a website with millions of visitors.  That is such a small percentage of the internet world, it has created and industry of thousands of businesses like the Bourquin Group where I work.

Last week I was referred to a business by a current client.  Since the business was local, I stopped in.  Not something I normally do, the owner didn't know who I was and asked what I did.  I explained that I ran an online marketing company.  The response was clear that he didn’t understand.  I said we do SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  Still a blank look.

Then I said, I help people find your website when they are looking for your kind of business, and he got it.  Every day there are 300,000 new websites added to the internet.  Most of them will get less than 1000 visitors in the next year.  Many will get less than 100 unique visitors.  Why would a business spend the time and money to build a website that nobody sees?  It happens more often than not.   In most cases the website becomes an expensive digital brochure and nothing more.

If you are going to spend the time and money to build a decent website, why not spend the time and money to market it?  Don’t you want to get more potential customers to find it online?  So how is your traffic?  Do you know?  I am amazed at how many business owners I talk to have no idea.  They just see the site out there.  Some look at Google Analytics, and know their traffic, but have no idea how to influence it.

Recently I offered to double the monthly unique visitors for a businesses website for $1500 a month.   The owner had no idea that was only 12 people.  We ended up growing the site 100% per week for 8 weeks straight.  Now he has 200 unique visitors each week, many of them are potential new customers and call for information.  He pays $875 per month, not the $1500 I initially presented.  It is still growing double digits each month.  Just one new customer from that group pays my bill, and the rest is gravy.

When you started your business, why did you do it?  Freedom, Happiness and Income are the three biggest reasons I hear when I interview new potential customers.  And yet most of them tell me they feel trapped by their business, and more importantly trapped by their online marketing efforts.  One guy was spending six hours each day on his website, social media and e mail marketing.  How can you run a business doing that?

Before you go out and hire an online marketing company spend $15 and take a look at our books.  Even if you don't choose to do it yourself, you will know the right questions to ask.  Any or them or all of them will help you better understand what companies like mine do.  It will help you make better choices when hiring a company or deciding to do it yourself.

Build it and they will come doesn’t happen online.  You have to reach out and make sure you are in front of them where ever they are and lead them to your site.   Don’t let them get away.

Internet Marketing 101

Internet Marketing is something that every person I meet wants to know more about.  Or at least they say they do.  When I start asking questions, or trying to help their eyes usually roll up and they check out of the conversation.

Every business owner I meet, every real estate agent I work with and every salesperson I talk to wants to increase their business using the internet, and so far not one has had an idea how to do it.  Have you been buying those internet marketing courses only to find they make no sense at all.  Do you feel like some kid is taking your money and telling you to give up your life so you can make money online?

I want to change all of that.

If you are new to this blog, I run an SEO.  My company helps websites get to page one in "organic search".  That alone is a daunting task, and depending on your competition can cost several thousand dollars each month.  So how is a small company going to compete with the people handing me several thousand per month?  Can it even be done?

The answer is, Yes, it can be done and in less time than you think.  The secret is focus, and knowing your customer.  As much as I want to have every small business in American be my client, I know that isn't a reality.  So, in order to fulfill my personal mission of helping business owners break the handcuffs of their business and achieve freedom, I have made some changes to my business.

The first major change is letting go of a few of our closely held internal secrets.  Like most secrets, they really aren't "secrets" at all.  They are just simple common sense actions that we all overlook because we are so "busy" running our businesses.

After years of frustration, failure and wasted effort, I used my brothers logic (patented by the way) and found a way to effectively market my clients business in less than one fifth the time I had been spending previously.  Not one of my clients complained when their invoice dropped 75% in a twelve month period and their results were still improving.

In order to help more people I took the major parts of our "secret sauce" and put it into a book that you can get for under $12.  It just might be the best $12 you spend on marketing your business all year.

Internet Presence is your position on the internet.  It is the combined result of your online marketing efforts, digital PR, your website and social media efforts.  More importantly, included in your Internet Presence is your customers online opinion of your business. Many owner feel like this is totally out of their control.  My experience tells me the opposite is true.  You can change the online opinion of your business with very little effort.  You just need the right effort.

If you want to start 2013 off on the right foot, pick up a copy of The Easy Guide To Internet Marketing today.  You will quickly learn how to position your business and build your online presence in just a few hours each week.  Don't let the competition get ahead of you, get your internet presence plan in place today.

Are You Marketing On Facebook For Free?

Facebook is clearly the king of Social Media.  Just having a solid Social Media Foundation on Facebook can bring your real customers.  I don't mean the kids that spend eight or ten hours a day on Facebook, I mean real paying customers.  Recently I have learned that several of my high level power friends only will respond to me on Facebook.  Like me, they have someone else that reads their email because there is just too much spam.  Facebook and LinkedIn have become to the high level communications platforms for the power players and high rollers.

As a small business or a local business, it is entirely possible to have your entire online marketing platform on Facebook for FREE and keep busy.  My dog groomer is just such a business.  I would like to sell her some marketing, but she is booked solid, and has no current desire to grow.  Her only marketing avenue?  An incorrectly placed Facebook Profile for her business.  Currently using a profile for a business is against the rules, so she will have to change it.  Her customers have already started the process for her, building a place page and a fan base.  Now all she has to do is claim it, and keep the customers happy.

The funny thing is her competitor just three blocks over doesn't get it and won't hire my team to do the same thing for her business.  The competitor "has a guy" that built them a website which does nothing for them.  

Clearly Facebook is the king of Social Media, and these days, it is really a better starting point than a website.  The best part about Facebook for a small business owner is the price, FREE.

Facebook is probably the best starting point to build a foundation for Social Media Marketing.  It depends on the kind of business you have where you’ll go next, but just like building a good house, the longevity aspect starts with a good foundation.

Start by learning how to build your Facebook foundation correctly the first time. Once you have a foundation, you can market on Facebook for free with just a few hours each week.  Free marketing on Facebook is pretty straightforward but there are some big mistakes you can make early that can cost you.  While your kid might be on Facebook for eight hours a day, Facebook marketing isn’t a place to let anything go.

Once you have a foundation on Facebook properly built, then you can use your marketing strategy to build your plan for Social Media Marketing beginning with Facebook.  In order to make sure you get it right, I wrote a book with a step by step guide to get your foundation built correctly.  Included in How To Market On Facebook For Free is several strategies that you can tailor to your business, along with a few things not to do on Facebook or anywhere online.

Currently you can get How To Market On Facebook For Free at Amazon only on the kindle.  The paperback should follow shortly.  If you get it before the five days are up you can check it out for free too.  After that, it will be under $5 for the kindle version and under $15 for the paperback.  It will be money well spent.