Author: cfriedenberg

8 Ideas To Include In 2016 Marketing Plans

 

Are you off to a busy start for the new year?  Is 2016 going to be your best year ever?

We are as optimistic as you.  Let’s make this year ‘the one’ to surpass your business goals. Show your team how you’re going full steam ahead with all of the ideas you have in your head but were too busy to implement or execute last year.

But first you need a plan.

What should the plan entail?

Here are the 8 goals to shoot for and how reach them with the 2016 technology/marketing tools available to you:

  1. Increase likes on my Facebook business page.
    Share your page with your Facebook friends.  Find Influencers on Facebook who will share your page within their network. An influencer is someone who has an active following and can move their followers to take action. Read more about Influencer Marketing here.
  2. Network like crazy on LinkedIn.
    Join groups, interact, add a blog on Pulse, ask questions in a post and follow up with responses and stay engaged.  The more engaged you become within LinkedIn (and any other social network), the wider you broaden your sphere of influence and connections.
  3. Get found on Google Search.
    If you haven’t done so, sign up for Google My Business.  It’s a newer platform (free) to crawl your business higher in Google Searches.
  4. Segment Your Business Email Newsletter
    Do you send one generic email newsletter to all of your clients, vendors and employees?  Each one of these market segments does not need the same information from a general email.  For example, you could send employees work anniversary announcements to make them feel important, send vendors business ideas and news articles in your industry and send your clients emails about your services and how you stand above the competition.
    Are there other email lists you should create?  Sure!  Think about who you come into contact with throughout your business day.
  5. Tweak your Mobile-Friendly Website.
    Last year was the time to become mobile-friendly.  Take a look at your mobile website and compare it with your competition.  What are they doing that you are not doing?  Is there an item from your wish-list you would like to add?  Call your web/mobile developer to see how your business website and mobile-friendly website may be improved.  If you are not sure about how mobile-friendly your site currently is, test it with this Google Tool.
  6. Search Your Business.
    Is your website search engine optimized?  Test it yourself!  Search for keywords which describe your business and your location.  i.e.  Are you a Realtor in Lansdale, PA.  Search for ‘Realtor in Lansdale, PA.’  Try other ways to search for the same thing.  For instance, using the Realtor example, search ‘buying a house in Lansdale, PA’ or ‘residential real estate Lansdale, PA.’
    If your business does not show up as one of the top 3 options, call your website builder (or call me!).
  7. Keep The Blog Current. 
    Look at your most recent blog posting.  Is it dated within the past 2-4 (and 4 weeks is way too long!) weeks?  How about the blog prior to that?
    It’s probably time to add a new blog.  If you cannot keep up with your blogging, it’s either the right moment to abandon the blog page altogether (delete the page) OR get help.  A writer or social media marketer will take care of blogging for you and/or help you create content.
  8. Add Video to your Posts and Website.
    Video and live streaming are the fads this year.  By not using video, you put your business at a disadvantage.  Take short 10-20 second clips of happenings around your company, including visitors utilizing your products, employees working hard and salespeople attending industry conferences.  Not only will your post views exponentially increase, your ‘cool’ factor will grow with it!

For more business marketing goals for 2016, contact cheryl@highkeyimpact.com.

Cheryl Friedenberg
President, www.highkeyimpact.com, High Key Impact LLC

The Best Marketing Tip You Will Hear

With my marketing consulting company, High Key Impact, LLC, I am meeting or speaking with new clients on an almost-daily basis. One of the questions which comes up in almost every conversation is about the small business website.

The questions I ask myself (and eventually share the answers with my clients) when looking at the website are the following:

Is the website easily found?
Is it listed towards the top of Google searches? (and I do several searches for various aspects of the business)
Is the website mobile-friendly (as we know mobile is where most of our customers will find us in 2016)?
What does the website look like?
Is the message simple and the text clean?
Can I tell from the home page what the company does?

Small businesses spend on average $5,640 – $11,400 hosting, designing, building and launching a website. Small business owners hope the investment takes care of, at the least,  the basic elements entrusted to a website guru.

Sometimes, one of the missing marketing elements during a website launch, is the simplest of all, Google My Business.
Google My Business is a free platform, supported by Google search, which finds a small business website. It allows the business owner to add crucial information including logo, photos, location (via Google maps), phone number and website to the google algorithm for getting found.
Google My Business is simple to set up, takes only a few days to verify (they snail mail a verification code to your business address) and provides instant seek-and-find capabilities.
If your business is not listed on Google My Business, the competition will show up above you during a location and industry basic Google search.

Test it yourself. Search for Italian restaurants in your town. Try to figure out which restaurants are listed via Google My Business.

Then test your small business. Search for your industry in your town. Does your business show up in the same capacity as your competition? If it does not, do you want to sign up for Google My Business?

Feel free to contact me at cheryl@highkeyimpact.com and I’ll walk you through the process!

Beginning-of-Month Social Media Checklist

 

With the start of each month, your small business marketing plans should gear up with a plan of attack, with a goal of getting noticed and in front of your customers-to-be.
The following to-do’s tackle a checklist every business owner should be managing:

Newsletter

If you send a weekly or monthly newsletter, organize your content now for the following cycle so you don’t get stuck with content or writer’s block. Your newsletter could include topics such as what’s trending on social media in your industry, where you’ve gone out in the field (presentations, business card exchanges, conferences), personal stories related to your industry or testimonials, expert advice, etc. Don’t forget visuals –high quality photos which keep your newsletter interesting and help illustrate the associated text. And keep the newsletter clean, with minimal copy, short and sweet. It should be 90% educational and 10% promotional (about your business).

Blog

The best advice I have about blogging is to write blogs when a topic comes to mind. I have an eternal Word document just for blogs. When a blog idea is in my head, I’ll type in the idea and a couple of key points, and then revisit it to fill in the blanks when I have the time. The more blog ideas you have written down, the less cumbersome blogging becomes. Whatever you do, keep your blog updated at least 2x/month with current posts. When a potential customer visits your site in February and sees a blog from Thanksgiving, what does that say about your business? Are you going to deliver your services on time and pay attention to detail? Think about the message you send to customers with your online social media all of the time!

Analytics

Take a look at your Google Analytics, Twitter analytics and other social media insights and numbers. For example, if your Facebook page has 1500 people reached this month, shoot for 1750 next month. Or are you going to focus on increasing followers and likes this month? Is this the month to increase your newsletter subscribers? The analytics goals you set will dictate many of your posts in the month ahead. Check your numbers frequently and always look for growth trends. If you notice a downward plunge which cannot be justified (i.e. a holiday break or down time in your industry), pay attention and rectify the situation with some though provoking posts.

Posts

If business is weighing you down with a checklist of its own, then spend only an hour or two at the beginning of the month scheduling your posts. I don’t recommend scheduling them past the next two weeks as you want content to stay current. Otherwise, check google alerts for industry-related content and trends to post on-the-fly.
For example, several of my real estate clients need content.   I signed them up for Google Alerts within their field. “Residential Real Estate in Southeastern PA” or “Home Décor Trends” are different ways to get articles sent to their inboxes. These are perfect for Real Estate Agents to share on social media posts!

As your small business grows and you continue to spread the word both digitally and face-to-face , keeping up with your marketing activities are the key to making a high key impact and bringing in new clients!
Cheryl Friedenberg

President, High Key Impact LLC
www.highkeyimpact.com

Feel free to email us at cheryl@highkeyimpact.com with your questions or insights!

10 Steps to a Simple Digital Marketing Plan

For small businesses, keeping up with day-to-day phone calls, sales, orders, problem-solving, staffing issues and everything else coming your way takes up numerous hours per day. Who has the time for social media, website management and email marketing?

High Key Impact, LLC has created a ‘Just Enough’ Digital Marketing Plan for small business owners. The idea is to take 10-15 minutes/day and choose 1-2 items below each day to jump start your company’s online footprint.

Small business owners can do this in 10 simple steps:

  1. Sit quietly and write out 5-10 posts to space out over the next several days. Include photos of product or people and various happenings at your company from the past week.
  2. Use a social media post scheduling tool such as Buffer or Hootsuite to publicize these posts on Twitter and Facebook posts over the next several days.
  3. Engage on your company’s Facebook.com page with those who like or comment your company’s posts.
  4. Re-Tweet others’ posts, follow more users and thank those accounts engaged on your Twitter.com feed.
  5. Do a Google Search for your company. Is your Search Engine Optimization working correctly? Make a note of what is not working so your web guru can help with a fix.
  6. Search your keywords. Is your competitor listed before your business on Google? If so, find a way to link your website to other websites. The more web pages you can arrange which link back to your company website, the better the boost in search engine capabilities for your product or brand.
  7. Are there engaging and intriguing reviews for your product and service on the web? Search reviews for your business. If the average review amounts to 3 stars or less, ask more customers to rate your business online. The end goal is to have at least 4-5 stars.
  8. Is your website mobile-friendly? If not or if you do not know what that means, contact your web guru.
  9. Not able to get to any business card exchanges or networking groups? Are you on Linkedin? If not, start a profile and connect with others. What a great tool to keep in touch with business people from varying industries. It’s a simple way to connect with others and share experiences.
  10. Email and call clients on a routine basis to keep your name in front of them. Word of mouth advertising from an existing customer base is the most powerful tool for outbound marketing.  Ask for testimonials!

 

by Cheryl Friedenberg, Cheryl@highkeyimpact.com