Archive for: June 2008

Most of us have heard the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” all of our lives – we’ve heard it so much that it’s become a cliché. Cliché or not, it happens to be especially true when it comes to small business marketing.

Most of the time, you want your business to be on the minds of your customers and prospects. So don’t let your business stay “out of sight” for too long! Keeping your company name and message in front of customers on a regular basis can help trigger buy events and increase customer mindshare, which ultimately helps drive sales. Here are some ideas for keeping your business in-sight and in-mind so your sales continue to in-crease!

• E-Newsletters – Monthly E-newsletters are one of the most effective marketing tools available to small businesses today. They are typically inexpensive to send (especially when compared with their printed counterparts), and E-newsletter campaign results are completely measurable (e.g., how many clicks, opens, bounces, etc.). It’s also a great way to make sure that customers see your company name in their inboxes each month, reminding them that your business has the products/services that they need.
•  Press Releases – Whether you’re announcing a new product, an employee promotion, or a client win, press releases are always useful in getting your company’s name (and links!) out there. You can use a traditional wire service distribution, or try some of the press release outlets on the web – many are low-cost or no-cost to use.
• Advertisements – A marketing stand-by since the beginning of marketing, advertising can be an effective way of getting attention for your business. To help keep costs down, look for web advertising opportunities, try smaller, local publications, or find creative ideas that can offer lots of exposure at a reasonable price (like magnetic signs for your car).
• Sponsorships – Another great way of staying in the spotlight is to sponsor an event or organization. Most sponsorship opportunities are designed to give you exposure in the community (e.g., your logo on signage, links to your web site, publicity opportunities, etc.). And sponsorships give you the added benefit of having your business associated with an event or organization that is beyond your own four walls.
• Search Engine Rankings – This is one tactic that helps build your business in lots of ways. Most of us know the benefits of good search engine rankings for driving web traffic and boosting sales, but being on the first page of Google can give your company exposure millions of times per day, every day! Just be sure you have properly optimized your site so that when your business comes up in a search, your company name and description are visible in the results.

To be successful, a small business web site should lead visitors toward taking action – whether it’s purchasing a product, signing up for a newsletter, or clicking on a specific link – the site should provide a clear pathway for visitors to accomplish a goal. But sometimes, moving your visitors toward that action is harder than it has to be because of hurdles (however unintentional) that can block their path. To keep your visitors following the intended path to action, make sure your site isn’t an online obstacle course.

Natural Scan Patterns

The goal of your web pages is of course to give visitors the information they are seeking, but at the same time, the page must also be attractive and inviting. Using images is a great way to add interest to a page, but be careful. Images can sometimes get in the way of a visitor’s natural scan pattern and distract them from accomplishing the action you want them to take.

Notice Me

Users are so accustomed to skipping over display ads that they can sometimes skip right over an image on your web page – even if that image contains important information. This means that if you have a critical page element, like a call to action or conversion trigger, don’t bury it in an image. Instead, put it at the end of the user’s natural scanning pattern and make it stand out.

Image Placement

The placement of images on the page is also an important consideration. Page elements or content that is buried under the fold (content that a user has to scroll down to see) runs the risk of being outside the user’s natural flow and may be missed altogether. If your call to action is at the very end of your page, move it higher or make sure it is at least repeated somewhere in the top half of the page or in the navigation system.

Obstacle Free

The same is true for video and other page elements that could potentially interrupt the flow of information that leads users to the desired action. Provide visitors with a direct route that follows established scanning patterns, and avoid adding barriers that could distract them from taking action or accomplishing their goals on your site. Your business has something unique to offer, so make sure your visitors have an obstacle-free path to finding it.

If you’re like most people, you are probably inundated with email messages filling up your inbox all day long. As a small business, you also probably know that sending out email marketing campaigns is one of the most effective, inexpensive marketing methods available today. So what’s the secret to getting your e-mail campaigns to stand out in the inboxes of your customers and prospects?

There are three key components to any email campaign, and knowing what they are and how to use them can really improve your results. The three components are:

1. The “from” name. This is the most important component recipients use to decide whether they will open an email message or not. If they don’t recognize the “from” name, chances are the message will be deleted or marked as sp@m. Make sure that recipients can recognize your company or product in the “from” name so that they feel confident about reading the email message.
2. The subject line. A good subject line can spark interest and motivate a recipient to open the message immediately. Too often the subject line is an after thought and created at the last minute, often right before the campaign is launched. The subject line should be written as part of the campaign to ensure it is compelling and introduces the email appropriately. Try to keep the subject line short and specific; typically around 50 characters. Long subject lines can be truncated when displayed in an inbox, and typically do not perform as well as short subject lines.
3. The preview pane. In addition to the “from” name and the subject line, most users can also see the top portion of the email in the preview pane of their email utility. The size of the preview can vary among different email services and settings, but users can usually see the beginning of the email even without clicking on anything. Take advantage of this feature by making your e-campaigns attention-grabbing and attractive, even with the images turned off. Also, keep the most important information above the fold so recipients can immediately see your offer even if they don’t scroll through the rest of the message.

Email marketing is quickly becoming a standard part of small business marketing, but it can be successful only when recipients are motivated to read the content of the message. By using these three components effectively, you can help your e-campaign stand out in the crowd of messages that arrive in your customers’ inbox every day.

How many types of “anchors” can you name? I can think of News Anchors who bring us the headlines on TV each day, those wall-anchor thingies that you hammer into a wall before hanging a heavy shelf, and of course my summer favorite – boat anchors. But the most valuable type of anchors for most small businesses is of course the anchor text that is used in the links on its web site.

What Is Anchor Text?

First, let’s be clear about what anchor text really is. Anchor text is the clickable part of a text link on a web page – it’s the text that is usually blue and underlined. As it turns out, the text you use in your link is hugely important to the search engines, especially to Google. The logic behind this is that if certain text is important enough to be used in a link, then that text MUST be something important, right? Well, apparently that’s what the search engine spiders think.

Choose Carefully

So it makes sense that you should choose the anchor text for your links very carefully, making sure to use your keywords and phrases as anchor text as much as you can. You may need to adjust your content a bit in order for the keywords to make sense as anchor text, but the benefits are typically worth it. Also, don’t waste the power of anchor text on generic terms like “click here” or “more.” Instead, be specific and descriptive with your anchor text, and weave in keywords and other meaningful text to take full advantage of the importance that the search engines place on anchor text.

For example, on the Five Sparrows web site we have a page that describes our web support & maintenance plans. (And yes, the link you just read is an example of anchor text, too!) Since this is a natural extension of new web site development, the first paragraph on that page has a link that takes users to our web site development services page. We used the anchor text “web site development” (which is also blue and underlined) because it not only describes the page where users will go if they click the link, it is also one of the keyword phrases that Five Sparrows targets on the page.

Hey Google, Listen Up

When you select text on your web page and turn it into a link, you are telling the search engines that the text is important. You’re giving Google a clue that the anchor text you selected is relevant to the content on your site, and that your site should be listed in the search results when users search for that text. You’re communicating with the search engines in a language they can understand!

So while boat anchors might be my personal summer-time favorite (well, the boat part anyway!), there’s not an anchor I can think of that has more impact on your small business marketing than the anchor text used in a web link. The search engines are paying close attention to the anchor text you choose for your links, so make sure that you are paying attention too.