Marketing Help From Reliable Sources

Yesterday, my office mailbox included a copy of Small Business Impact: The Magazine for Businesses from the USPS. Use the link to subscribe to your own copy, unless viewing the news online is a better option.

One of the magazine’s columns featured a link to the Small Business Administration’s podcasts. You can view and hear them here.

Another page on the SBA site is all about marketing. There are never too many resources on this topic.

What a time saver it is for small and solo business owners to learn about business planning, financing, marketing, and more from the comfort of their offices.

Technorati Tags: small business marketing, solo business marketing, Small Business Impact, Small Business Administration, podcast

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January 30, 2007 | Filed Under Marketing News, Recent Entries | Leave a Comment

More Choices to Write and Sell Books

If writing a book elevates your expertise, does giving the book away for free make you a great marketer?

DMNews reports in their January 22nd issue that Google is convinced of this. The Google Books project, discussed at a conference held on January 18th at the New York Public Library, was centered around this subject.

The Unbound conference focused on the marketing potential of offering free books online and the benefits of the online channel to target the segmented industry that makes up book publishing.

Google believes that their project will boost book sales overall. Part of the discussion cited how Seth Godin gave away 2 million copies of his book, Small Is the New Big, on the Web, while the hard copy remained in the top 5 on Amazon.com.

There are pros and cons to marketing with books, free or otherwise. Some authors will no doubt swear by Google and applaud this project, while others will swear at them, believing that free books will undermine sales and marketing strategies.

I’m the author of several books, two which are the No. 1 and 2 in its industry. I don’t believe that the Seth Godin example should be a blanket indication that all authors will benefit in the same manner. If every book were available free of charge, would that allow all authors to break into the top 10 on Amazon.com? That’s statistically impossible.

While traditional authors are at the mercy of their publishers’ decision to sell books in whatever format they choose, they can join the ranks of small and solo business owners who’ve decided to publish their own books. From there, marketing is your decision and yours alone.

When you are author and publisher, you can market through distribution via PDF downloads and introductory teasers on Web sites. Printing bound copies to sell to thousands of individuals who prefer to hold a book in their hands rather than the arduous task of reading on a computer screen is a more-affordable option than in past years.

I think that Google’s actions alert us to the opportunities we control. When I read this type of story, I ask myself, “How can I capitalize on what the big boys do? How can I spin their idea into my own gold?”

Write a book if you believe you’ve amassed enough information to share your expertise with others. Publish it, whether by approaching traditional publishers or going it alone. In either case, your words will provide you with another avenue to market your message and elevate your sales.

Technorati Tags: small business marketing, solo business marketing, solo entrepreneur, DMNews, Google Books, book publishing, Seth Godin, marketing with books

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January 22, 2007 | Filed Under Marketing News, Offline Ideas, Online Ideas, Recent Entries | 2 Comments

Marketing with 404 Pages

While checking my site’s visibility through a search engine, I was horrified by some of the links. They were outdated, pages I discarded that now led potential visitors to a dead end rather than to my site.

My assumption, as a Web site creator, was that once I deemed a page to be useless, I could simply press a button to delete the page from the Web host’s server, and all would be right with the world. But it doesn’t work that way on the Internet.

The page is still “out there,” bookmarked in computers and cyberspace. Don’t ask me how or why regarding the latter. It’s difficult for small and solo business owners to keep their heads above water. Understanding the Internet’s complexities is a course in itself and a subject too broad for this space.

When someone attempts to access a page that’s no longer online, they see a 404 page message. We’re familiar with this. It’s a message stating that the page no longer exists. It’s also a lost opportunity to capture Web visitors, because the page does not provide a link to your site’s home page. What’s a solo business owner to do?

Entrepreneur Magazine’s February issue includes a short article by Catherine Seda on the subject. She suggests that you create a duplicate home page of that soon-to-be discarded page.

By incorporating your site’s look and feel, as well as site navigation, visitors are quickly reassured that they’ve got the right company.

Rather than turning the page into a hard sell that repels the potential buyer, add links to your newsletter and content, which creates a comfortable environment that naturally convinces the person to explore and consider buying.

That’s what I’ve done to my discarded pages. I reclaimed the deleted URLs (just create a page in your software with the dead URL address), copied and pasted my home page’s content, and uploaded the pages. The difference on these pages is a sentence at the top of each stating something similar to:

“Welcome to the site. Although you’ve reached a page that no long exists, you’ll find informative materials on this subject. Review and click links in the left column, subscribe to our newsletter, and bookmark this site to return for updates and ideas.”

Re-routing potential buyers is an important marketing task, so reviewing your site with search engine help is a project to consider ASAP.

Marketing dilemmas never end. Thank goodness this solution is easier than most.

Technorati Tags: small business marketing, solo business marketing, solo entrepreneur, 404 pages

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January 19, 2007 | Filed Under Online Ideas, Problems & Solutions, Recent Entries | 2 Comments

Buttons that Recommend Your Site

This week, a friend forwarded me an Email she received touting the marketing benefits of adding a Send-A-Friend button on a Web site.

A Send-A-Friend button is known by different names depending on that site that makes the tool available, names such as “Tell a Friend” or “Refer this Site.” The button allows a Web visitor to contact another person via Email, directly from your site, to share knowledge about your products and services or, at the least, your site’s existence. As a default, I’ll call this a site recommendation button.

Newsletters I’ve received in the past have recommended promoting with this icon, and every one of those recommenders, including the one sent by my friend, neglect to provide a link to at least one company that makes the button available.

Why recommend something without providing a source? I agree that small and solo business owners should do their own research to find Web resources and tools. However, providing one link won’t hurt. In fact, it makes you, the person who is recommending a marketing tool, look like you know what you’re talking about.

I decided to research Send-A-Friend buttons to learn how easy or difficult it is to find one. I admit that it wasn’t easy. In fact, the first one I found included two sets of HTML code. I consider myself a good amateur, a fearless person who will add and delete code at will to achieve the best results. These instructions, however, were unintelligible.

Then I remembered my membership with Bravenet.com. Bravenet makes promotional tools available for Web sites and provides a host of other products. There’s a list of available tools on the home page, and one of those tools is called Tell-A-Friend.

I’m not sure if you must sign up for a free subscription/membership to read more about Tell-A-Friend, but try it for yourself. Otherwise, subscribing to Bravenet is a requirement for access to the HTML code.

This tool was quick and easy for me to add to one of my sites, and I’ll soon apply it to others. I did play with the coding a bit, because when I added the button, two buttons appeared. One was the Tell-A-Friend button, and the other promoted Bravenet (”free” comes at a price). If you know what you’re doing, you can also edit the code. But be careful. Some of the editing disables the button’s function.

A subscription to Bravenet’s premium membership will remove all of the advertising within the Tell-A-Friend button. You’ll see the advertising when you test the button as you place it on your site.

Here’s where I’m testing a Tell-A-Friend button. It’s in the right column at the top.

Look in your Web host’s tools section to see if they make this button available. I checked my Web host; they don’t.

Now you know where to find a site recommendation button.

Technorati Tags: small business marketing, solo business marketing, Tell A Friend, Send A Friend, Refer This Site, Bravenet.com, Web tools, marketing, promotion

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January 18, 2007 | Filed Under Customer Connections, Marketing News, Online Ideas, Recent Entries | Leave a Comment