“You can’t buy attention, you have to earn it.The little smart business is going to be able to out run and our compete and out run the big dump business.” Sonia Simone, Copyblogger

Content marketing is build on the idea of creating great content as a method of pull marketing. That is; to pull people to your product or service. However, the question around is it worth the time, effort and creative energy to create this content in its many varied forms?

Well to answer this question Copyblogger Sonia Simone wrote a great blog and also did a podcast. Let me summarise her take and mine on this topical subject.

I guess my take is is content marketing worth it compared to what?

Compared to spending money on print advertising, the yellow pages, trying to trick google, groupon,signage  I say yes. Simone explains this “buy or die”  hit and miss approach of sending people to a sales page is less and less effective. The ad world have recognised this and now ads are sending people are back to a content experience like email responders so that customer get a greater taste of you before they buy. “No body owes you any attention”.

It is worth it because it allows you to “call your own shots” as Sonia explains. It allows you to do your own lead generation and more important to build your own reputation by pulling your ideal customers to you by creating really valuable content that means something to your audience.

It doesn’t matter what business you are in. Coaching, consulting, technology, bricks and mortar store, hairdresser, architects, real estate and any small business this is a great way to do your own marketing to build your business. Especially for new businesses with out that referral business, there is one big problem. You need to create awareness!

Content marketing is one aspect of marketing. It is just getting started. Make no mistake it is a hard work. You need to create content that is high value. This takes creative insight and listening and customer understanding. Your content strategy needs to be consistent. After all you are building a following of people that like, know and trust you. However, what could be better than that? People who want to listen. An okay it is time consuming, but as a small business you can make a lot of profit from a content strategy that is well done. The costs can be very low if you are doing the content yourself, however even outsourcing some of the copy creation can still be a very profitable model.

Content Marketing  System

Create compelling content to attract customers to you.

It is easier for a small business to be creative, think on our feet, be responsive to our customers. This is our time to take on big business. Our customers want it. They don’t want to be interrupted, they want to be educated, to be entertained and have real relationships. Content Marketing allows you to do this. The content mediums have exploded. u-tube, blog, articles, podcasting, webinars, email marketing etc. Choose the medium that works for you  and  your audience but I would start with a blog. Keep your audience in mind, keep your focus clear and write in an education, informative and entertaining way. By being out there and capturing the audience attention with your relevant content you will be the “go to” broker, architect, graphic designer, garden or dentist in your community!
There is a new way  of doing marketing and if you choose to you can take your cost of marketing down by doing content/ online marketing. You can get people in the door without spending all of your profit on expensive marketing campaigns like you might have done 5, 10 years ago.

“The days when businesses could get our attention by paying for it, that clock is ticking.” Sonia Simone

Use these communication tools. It is run on communication, engagement creative and customer insight. As small businesses we have better access to our customers, we can be nibble and lean and we generally know what our customers want. By providing some insights and learning we can really make that marriage between our ideal customer and our service or product a logical choice. Still notconvinced? Well I have spent less than $200 on advertising and my content strategy has me run off my feet with clients. It can work for you too!

You should be on LinkedIn if:

1. You want to build a network especially for business to businesses. Remember the rules. Give to gain. Be generous and don’t spam! There are over 70 Million users, chances are you customers are there if you are a professional service based business.

2. If you want to build your personal brand and be the “go to person” for your area of expertise. Update your profile and give potential collaborators, prospects and employees some great information about you and what you do.Use the Q&A to share your knowledge and answer some questions.

3. Leverage a social media channel that can connect you with key influencers and collaborators. You can have a paid or free account to connect with others. I use LinkedIn to search for people who I am going to meet so I can see their profile.

4. If your competitors are there. LinkedIn is a great research tool and gives you insights into who is doing what in your market.

Hubspot's stats on LinkedIn

5. If you want to use their groups to share information and learn about others. The great thing about LinkedIn is you can search for groups that you serve. Be it small businesses, women entrepreneurs or  accountants. Once you find them you can enter the conversation. What a great way to prospect!

6. To recruit potential employees. I have recruited key staff from LinkedIn. You can list a job and get candidates replying to your account.

7. If you want to do some research. I used one of the women in business forums to do some research for a client for a new product for this segment. I got an awesome response.

8. If you plan to make real connections. Like all social media the “show up and throw up”(thanks Sue Barrett for that quote) sort of people are those that people steer clear of. Making real connections, just like in face to face relationships takes effort so only join if you are prepared to put in and use the tool.

9.Use the tool to share content. You can leverage the content created on these forums in your blog, twitter, article syndication and Facebook identities to share conversations that might be relevant to your customers.

10. Build a powerful online thought-leader reputation. This tool allows your to change opinions, lead conversations and build a reputation. Be careful, it can bite! You need to be true to yourself and be polite and authentic. Try to be someone you are not and you will be dumped like a hot potato.

acey Voyce the Director of Bloomtools is all about educating business owners about getting real results online. In my podcast with Tracey she covers the following areas about being successful online.

First I asked Tracey what Bloomtools mission is?

“ Bloomtools is about working with the small business and what they want to achieve online. Your website should be accessible, and you should have a strategy behind your web presence so you get some results.” Tracey said.

Tracey shared with us some of her tips for building a successful online presence. She called it the:
P’s of a web presence/ online presence.

1. Purpose: What is the purpose? It is no longer just about lead generation. How can I get my existing clients buying more etc.

2.Promotion:How are you going to get people to visit? What tools are you going to use?

3. Persuasion: What do you want your ideal customer to do when they visit? You want your visitors to take action. They need to know who you are what you do and what is the next step? Call, fill out form, download etc

4. Presence online: Build the relationship.

Website building – Tracey shares her advice

1. Find someone that will work on the strategy so you know that the site is going to work and get results.

2. Look for tools that will work with the site as your business grows. You need a system that has the flexibility to grow with you.

3. Understand how much work is involved in choosing updating and maintaining your site, ie WordPress(needs some IT background to maintain) vs  Bloomtools (more manageable for small businesses and less hands on).

4. Small businesses now can leverage CRM, Database marketing, SEO and content management system.

How to Build a website for engagement with Bloomtools?

Tracey explained the process of building and online presence with Bloomtools.

1. Initial consultation – understand where you are and where you need to go. What do you need and what is your budget.

2. Creative brief – then the designers can come up with three unique designs.

3. Final Design – is produced.

4. Populate site with your content. Optimise pages in your site for SEO

This whole process can be as quick of 4-6 weeks from start to finish.

Bloomtools have a free trial version
You can listen to this podcast in itunes also.
Happy Marketing!

Dan

A simple question. Here is the answer. It should if:

• You want to build a community around your brand or service
• You are willing to update it and provide great content
• If you want another channel to sell through
• You know that your salon is referred by word of mouse!

The answer is for most yes you should have your business on Facebook. Now the question is how do we start? Well the starting point is to get some training. This you don’t have to pay for. You can go to lynda.com and get some initial training for free or go to my how too section of my website and look for Facebook and you will see some videos that will assist you understand this social medium.

Quick tips.

1. You need to set up a personal page (to manage the account) and a Fan Page where you run your business from.

2. The aim of the game is to get more than 25 likes so you can own your url name. We just did this forFacebook.com/beautybizmarketing. This makes it nice for your as it creates a url that has your brand on it rather than a group of numbers.

3. You can advertise to your ideal customers on Facebook for a very low cost and profile your audience down to the suburb they live in, their age, income and likes. You can even advertise your page to get your likes and send visitors to your fan page or website. They have a great video on advertising on Facebook you can watch

4. You need to provide good content and deals and you need to have someone look at the site each day to make sure that no-one is posting content you don’t want to be there.

5. Set up your privacy settings so you control the view your customer gets

6. Look into the apps as you can add-on lots of tabs to your site including u-tube, your blog, your twitter account etc

7. Get some help if you get stuck or it is not your thing! If you need help, please let us know. We have a social media pack that will make it very affordable for you to get up an

8. Use the Like Us button where ever you can as it sends likes to your Fan Page and publishes your site on their Facebook page, making you message reach more people! To do this go to the developer page in Facebook or let us know and we will help you!

9. Remember Facebook is just another communication tool. If you don’t have the time to manage it, plan it properly and use if as a communication medium then maybe you should hold off. If you want to leverage it as a tool then get some help and it can be a great lead generation tool for your small business.

10. Here is a site with some free facebook icons that you can link your url too.

Hope you enjoy this interview.Click here to listen

Visit Eric at Design Damage.

1. You have got to have a compelling head line. If you can personalise it even better.  Remember you customer or prospect gets heaps of these emails each day so what is going to make them click on yours? How toos, best practices, offers and interesting people, even linking it to interesting events are all good practices.

2. You need to build a list that is based on permission marketing. No spamming. This means people need to opt in to your communications. If they don’t then there is really no point sending the email is there?

3. Make the content compelling. Would you read it? This is the key. You need to know what your audience wants.3. Always have a call to action. There should be a way for people to take the next step with you. Find out more, buy and offer or receive some more of what you have to offer.

4. Send your emails at the right times. Not to frequently or you will find the opt outs skyrocketing! Too infrequently and you won’t seem credible. Sending at the right time of day so that your information will be read. Weekends seem to work for my audiences.

5. Test, test, test. You need to measure what is working and tweek. If you use Aweber, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact or similar these metrics can be set up. Even just doing a survey and asking your customers is worth doing

7. Be the authority and build that credibility as the “go to person” by providing lots of types of touch-points outside of email. Podcasting, article writing, speaking and webinars can all build your brand so people want to opt in to what you are saying.

8. Break your content down into nice chunks. Too long, well that’s okay if it is well set out.

9. Use images it makes for more enjoyable experience while you are reading

10. Think portable. Set you email up so it can be read on a iphone or similar so that it can be read from anywhere.

For more great marketing tips join my Marketing Minute Newsletter here

Why did you start your own small business?

Chances are when you went into business for yourself it was prompted by the feeling that you wanted to follow your passion or area of expertise. You were probably working for someone else doing some sort of work where you were the expert.

No doubt you thought you had the expertise to go into business for yourself. Life coach, accountant, dog walker, osteo, Beauty Salon owner or whatever. Once that idea got into your head, you where bit by the bug. You had to start your own business.  As the E-Myth a must read book explains, most small businesses that fail make this mistake or assumption.

The party is over!

That assumption is ” if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work.” There is so much more to a business that actually getting the work done. When this realisation hits, you as the business owner can do a couple of things. 1. Work incredibility long hours trying to do all the things to make your business work and become enslaved to the business. 2. Fold up the business because it all becomes to hard and you can’t cashflow the business.

“Every year, over 500,000 people start a business of some sort. By the end of the first year, at least 40% of them will be out of business. Within 5 years, more than 80% of them—400,000 people—will have failed!” E-Myth Revisited

And, if your business has managed to survive for 5 years or more, don’t breathe a sigh of relief. More than 80% of the enterprises that survive the first 5 years will fail in the second 5 years.

3. Work out a system that allows you to work on the business as much as in the business so you can direct and control the life-cycle of your small business and grow in a strategic way.

Work on your business not in it!

Are you doing the wrong work in your business? Are you still the expert providing all the service and not navigating your business being that entrepreneur that thinks about how to get things done better, faster, in a more predictable way that will delight and even surprise customers?

How to balance the three jobs we have as small business owners.

You need to learn how to get the work done, how to run the business not do the work. This is a mind shift. The E-Myth Revisited talks about the three personalities we have when running a business and that when in balance we have a business that is sustainable, profitable and enjoyable.

The Entrepreneur

The Entrepreneur is the visionary part of our personality as a business owner. It is the part that is happiest in the future. Planning what our ultimate business will be. I spend a lot of time here. It is where I am happiest. I see lots of possibilities and am constantly looking of new ways to do things in my small business. My love of technology is often the catalyst.

The Manager

The Manager is the practical part of our personality as a business owner. Order, planning and predictability is a managers goal. Living in the past, looking for order and systems to improve processes.

The Technician or Expert

The Expert is the doer of the business. Living in the here and now executing things.

According to E-Myth the average business  owner has a make up of  ”10% Entrepreneur, 20% Manager and 70% Technician.” You can see the problem with this mix.

Creating what E-Myth calls a “Turn Key System” or a Franchise blueprint is important but it is important in terms of being able to:

1. Run your business more efficiently and effectively

2. To free you up to work on your business and not in it

3. To set up an effective framework for growth

The missing piece of this “Turn Key System” is the big part of attracting customers in a consistent reliable way. This is often small businesses sticking point. Now with the advent of social media and the web the mediums have increased and so it becomes even more confusing about what strategy to use to attract customers.

The Simple Marketing System and the consulting helps small business with this greatest challenge. We provide a systematic approach to marketing your business. It is a strategic approach that gives you control over the lead generation so that you can concentrate on the other parts of running your business.

Sound good? To find out more click here.

Ready to know more….

THE SIMPLE MARKETING IN A BOX OPTIONS (click here)