Fuzion Web Blog

Many small business owners know keeping in touch with their contacts is an important part of their marketing plan. However, all too often, keeping in touch is a sporadic effort. Sending birthday cards or an e-mail newsletter is something that can be done “later.” The problem is “later” never comes. 

Small business owners need to build a marketing calendar that includes when and how each person (or group of people) is going to be contacted.  The best way small business owners can keep on top of their contact efforts is to have some type of system in place.  The system should be as easy and as automatic as possible. 
   
There are many software tools you can use to organize your contacts.  Microsoft Outlook and Excel are great programs.  With either of these, you can merge with Microsoft Word to create phone lists, mailing labels and personalized letters. More sophisticated contact management programs you can purchase include ACT! and Goldmine.   
  
Marketing Tools for Keeping in Touch 
  
There are a variety of different marketing tools small business owners can use to keep in touch. Here are just a few ideas. 
  
E-mail newsletters are a great way to communicate with a large group of people. There are a number of great on-line resources available for e-mail newsletter creation and management. Use e-mail newsletters to provide product information, announce sales, and promote special events.  
  
Real greeting cards (the kind that come in an envelope with a stamp) are great marketing tools to use at Christmas, birthdays and other times of the year.  In fact, the best time a small business owner can send a greeting card is when there is no real reason to send a card! A card sent in August will be remembered much more than one sent in December.

Savvy business owners know that phone calls, personal visits and lunches are always appreciated. The key there is to remember the marketing message when scheduling those calls or visits. Yes, having coffee with a long-term client is great. But be sure to let the client know that you have a great new product that can dramatically help him or her. Too often business owners get wrapped up in the social aspect of personal visits and forget to ask for more business!

The most important part of any system is using it regularly.  If you are very busy, or have a hard time working with schedules, you are better off delegating or outsourcing.  If you have an assistant, that person can print letters, write e-mails, even sign Christmas cards for you.  That leaves you free to work on other areas of your business.

If you don’t have any help in your office, outsourcing is the answer. There are a number of local and on-line services that help business owners with their marketing. Or, try using a virtual assistant.  The marketing money you spend to outsource these routine tasks will be repaid many time over with the new business you get.

Remember — the key to a successful system is to have it automated as much as possible. The less work you have to do, the more likely it is to be done on time, and the more likely you are to get referrals!

1. A logo is the very first impression people get of your company - 
   Before a potential client even walks through your door, your logo is a representation of your company. It can make a company appear large, small (whether it really is or not) fun, serious, professional…
2. A logo needs longevity
   Once a logo is designed it will represent your company for many years.
3. A logo needs to be original
   A logo should be designed specifically for your company. A cheap “generic logo” may not reflect your company’s values. A cheap logo may also use clip art which could end up being used by another company.
4. A logo should look professional
   You wouldn’t take a potential new client to Mac Donalds for lunch, in effect this is what is being done with a cheap logo. A logo should give your company a professional image, appropriate to its needs.
5. A logo should reflect the time and thought gone in to designing it
   One of the problems here is that people don’t always realise the amount work that goes into a professionally designed logo:
   • The research - even if the budget is quite small I would expect at the very least to find out who the company’s main competitors are and how they present themselves
   • The brainstorming of ideas
   • The rough sketches
   • The 3 or 4 logo options worked up on the computer
   • The amends, tweaking and further amends
      
6. A logo is the starting point of your whole corporate image
   The colours typography and style of a logo will often dictate the corporate look of the rest of a company’s literature. 

    

Marketing strategy should follow through to your website and a website could, and indeed should be a major part of your marketing mix. If a large portion of your marketing is conducted through the distribution of company brochures for instance, there is no reason why these cannot be ordered through your website, or indeed in today’s age, customers are more than used to downloading a PDF brochure online. One major plus being that a PDF is virtually free for you to distribute by comparison to a printed brochure, and friendlier to the environment to boot.

But don’t stop there, the Internet offers the business owner a huge range of possibilities when it comes to their website … use the Internet to offer your customers real interaction with your brand and what it stands for; blogs, podcasts, forums, live online support, networks and more.

What exactly is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is designing, writing, and coding (in HTML) your entire web site so that there is a good chance that your web pages will appear at the top of search engine queries for your selected keywords and key phrases.

The majority of the search engine optimization specialist’s time should be spent targeting the search engines that will give you the most traffic. The following search engines and directories are:

The best time to request search engine optimization is before you design your web site. As your web site designer creates page templates for you to approve, you can have a search engine optimization specialist take a look at them and tell you which layout is best for optimum indexing. Once you have selected the best layout for your web site, then the search engine optimization specialist can tell your designer when and where to place your keywords and key phrases within your HTML tags.

How can you tell a quality search engine optimization specialist from a scam artist? A search engine optimization specialist should be able to get your site indexed well for Google, Inktomi, and Yahoo. The 2 search engines and 1 directory differ in the way they index sites. Google does not use meta-tag content for relevancy. Inktomi currently uses meta-tags. And Yahoo is a directory. Ask how your site will be designed and tagged for each of these. If you don’t get 3 different answers, then you should move on to a more experienced search engine optimization professional.

If your web site has already been designed, a professional search engine optimization specialist will often recommend layout and design changes. He/She is not telling you that you have a bad-looking web site. He/She is telling you that the site’s layout will not get indexed well for your targeted keywords and key phrases. For example, a site that has a triple frameset (on the top and on the side) is extremely difficult to get indexed well on search engines, even with a gateway page. However, a simple frameset can get indexed well in search engines, with or without a gateway page. A search engine optimization specialist can design or tell your web site designer how to lay out a simple frameset to get the best results. Search engine optimization is a means of helping your potential customers find your web site. It is a highly specialized marketing tool.