Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of deals on TV and all over the Internet advertising a quick and easy website for small businesses to get started online. Let me give you my personal experience with a lot of these websites – they are pieces of crap. Buying into the quick set-up, low cost model of Web Development & Marketing, is like buying a stationary bicycle – sure, you’ll be able to exercise but you’ll never be able to go anywhere with it.

At our company we take the time to ask all the necessary questions about the company, I want to understand as much as possible about the industry that they work in, who their target market is, what there short and long term goals are. In my mind (and in our development work) these are essential to the end product. When you’re buying a website from Espire Marketing you’re not buying a website customized to make sure that when we launch, you have all the right tools in place to reach your end goals – and to be effective in your market.

In this industry there are many options, sometimes it’s overwhelming to my potential clients because they simply don’t understand many of the things that I’m talking about. As a small business developer and marketer, I feel that it’s important that I educate my clients on the tactics that I’m using and why they will be beneficial. We have no secrets with our clients – the tactics that we put to use are put in place to make sure that our clients have the absolute best chance to compete and excel in their market.

Here is the real difference between what we do, and what the other guys do – when you get a website from us – every single aspect of every page – every keyword, link, button, and picture – is put in it’s place to maximize the usability and marketability of your website. I would rather lose money on a project than give my customers a product that doesn’t meet our high quality standards.

The entire reason that I started this business was because I really CARE about small businesses. My family’s company paid a lot of their hard earned money for a website from a company that was a grade A piece of crap. When I was hired to come in and clean up the mess – it took us almost a full year (and a few thousand dollars) to clean up all of the mess that the previous development company left for us to clean up. That – is unacceptable to me.

We build custom websites for our clients using the absolute best technology available that is not only beneficial to them now, but will carry their business into the future. If our clients are successful using our products, then it means that we did our jobs. No two businesses are the same – while they may sell similar products – each small business has it’s own character, special offers, and story to tell. There is no ticky tack solution in the world that can capture the imagination and entrepreneurial spirit that your business has to offer. Why settle for a pre-packaged, poorly planned, and terribly executed website – when you can build a custom website with us that will take your company into the future? For my company – and hopefully for yours as well – we don’t settle for just okay – we expect the best. And that is why we build custom websites for our clients. Thanks for reading.

Small Business New Years Resolutions

• Lose the Budget – this one might be hard for a lot of small businesses to think about doing, especially if you’re business is having some cash flow problems. However, Internet Marketing tactics should be judged solely on their Return on Investment. If your campaigns are achieving a positive ROI – why cut the campaign short? Perhaps starting out with a test budget might set your minds at ease – then you can take a look at the numbers and decide whether you’d like to continue or not.
• Start your own Network – While it is important for a company to have it’s own social marketing campaigns going, it is just as important for the main players in a business to be well versed in the ways of social networking. Get the sales team, President, VP, and head of marketing all involved in social campaigns. This will give your company the chance to be an authority in your field on the Internet and will allow you to secure more business for your company.
• Take a look at your staff – Hiring the right staff is the most important thing a company can do – and your company is only as strong as it’s weakest link. Take a look around the office and determine if your company is working with all the right people. If you the year prior brought some unpleasantry to your company from a few of your employees, maybe it’s time to move on. It’s never fun to let go of someone – but it could be the most important move you’ve ever made.
• Set monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals – and STICK TO THEM. Set them for yourself, your sales team, your entire staff, and company wide – and let your employees know what they are. Communication and transparency inside of your business are important. It makes everyone feel like they’re a part of the team and it gives everyone something to try to reach and set rewards for reaching goals. Also, dont’ set them too high – If you set goals that are unrealistic then your employees won’t ever take them seriously.
• Read about new technologies – The most important game changer in your field may be the new technologies arising. Don’t rely on your IT department to tell you what technologies you need – sometimes you’ll hire a proactive IT department but in most cases they are more concerned with self preservation and security. Get creative and try some new things this year – don’t be afraid to have some fun with it.

So those are some ideas for your business this new year. Take my advice, or create some solid resolutions for your company. No matter what you decide to do – take some time to reflect and improve upon the things that your company does well. Happy New Year!

In this second edition of What I learned Wednesday I’m going to talk to all of you about something that I personally struggle with. My father has told me my entire life that “Patience is a virture my son.” And he is right – even if he did tell me the line after he’d just cursed the slow person in the fast food drive thru!

Patience, in today’s society – it’s has become less of a necessity – technology has turned us into a society driven by the idea of instant gratification. If you can find a way to give your clients that instant gratification at a good price – then you’ll likely find yourself sipping margaritas in the Caribbean.

Today’s lesson derives from a personal encounter that I’ve faced where I was striving to offer that instant gratification to our customers – but found in the end that I was sacrificing the very values that have helped build the company into the success it’s realized over the last 30 years.

Monday morning I received a call from a client looking for on of our digitally printed items that are of an extremely high quality. It is because of this high quality that we have been able to survive as a company with a longer turn around time then today’s society would demand. This client wanted them by Friday and called on Monday.

Normally we can make that happen (for a rush fee) but this week we were particularly backed up. I decided to look around to find places where we could meet this clients time constraints. I looked high and low – all around the country trying to find someone who could make it happen for our client.

After searching for a few hours I was able to find a vendor who could meet the clients needs. Naturally I decided to place an order. Excited that I had done a great thing I naturally called our client back and shared the good news….

A few days later the product arrived. As I opened the box up to bask in my glory – I was a bit surprised to find a less than stellar product. The fabric was complete junk – the print looked washed out upon arrival – and the hardware looked as if it would rust out or break with any wind at all.

With the clients deadline swiftly approaching I had two options – either sell the client the product and sacrifice the companies moral fiber or inform my client that I could no longer meet their deadline. For those of you who are regular readers – you know that I harp on consistency throughout your message and staying true to both your company and your customer. The decision was easy – I had to tell the client I couldn’t meet their deadline.

After I informed the client about the perdiciment they were slightly disappointed. However, I was upfront and honest with them about what had occured and was able to save the client – while they missed their deadline – they were much happier with the product in the end and their bosses were extremely happy with the final product.

The moral of the story is that I spent hours of time chasing something that wasn’t every really going to fully satisfy the needs of both the client and our company. So I guess I have to admit it that sometimes my Dad does know what he’s talking about and patience really is a virtue.

Event Details:

• Neighborhood tailgate party
• College Mascot Attending – Autographs, photos, general fun
• Tailgate Food and Beverage – Thanks to all those who donated!
• Big Customer Appreciation Sale inside the store (on select items)

So those are the details – we brought in all sorts of collegiate apparel, gift items, and we have our own line of special products for this university as well. On top of this we ran advertisements on the companies Facebook Page, three major radio stations, and posted to every event forum in the city.

The event had all the prep and marketing put together and we were expecting great numbers. We had tents all prepared and even did a dry run for how we would set everything up on the big day. The focus for us as a company was to increase brand awareness, bring a lot of foot traffic to the area, and finally sell product.

The selling of the product was obviously going to be tertiary to the primary goal of increasing brand awareness. However, we brought in all sorts of collegiate apparel for this event in hopes of selling it. The company held a sale on everything BUT this collegiate apparel. 25% off on all sorts of items that weren’t in season and even higher.

This is where consistency is key. We had a collegiate event, and tons of collegiate sporting fans, coming to our store with tons of brand new collegiate apparel as well as our own branded products – but we decided to put everything BUT the collegiate items on sale. This strategy might have worked if collegiate apparel and gift items were the driving force behind the event. However, since it was not – the sales numbers for the event were down.

The moral of the story is that being consistent with your marketing message, sales tactics, and being true to your customers wants (over your wants) is always going to serve you better in the short and long run.

I leave you all with this video lesson from South Park as I feel it’s very pertinent to our shortcomings with our last event. It is important to note that just because this event wasn’t a complete success – it was still very successful in achieving the primary goals. Cheers – Enjoy the video!

Some will search for you by name, some will search for you by product type, and some will search for businesses who sell products like yours locally. The constant is that they will search. Direct traffic doesn’t often come from print ads, radio spots, or any other form of traditional advertising. So for those of you not focusing on search get ready – I’m about to show you how to Dominate your competition through search.

As stated above there are three types of searches that people will do that either will or will not lead to them finding you. These three ways are – Brand Searches, Product Searches, and Local Searches. now it does get a little more complex than that but as Michael Scott says it’s better to “Keep it simple stupid.” I am going to first define each of these searching types and then tell you how to target them specifically.

Types of Searches

Brand Searches
Brand searches are any search query that a consumer enters into Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. that search for a specific brand name. Your brand name is your company, big boy examples are Coke, Facebook, McDonalds. Now if your small business is uniquely named you shouldn’t have too much of a problem ranking number 1 for these search queries – however, there are many small businesses that have at least a few competitors out there with the same or similar brand name – for instance we have a “Chevy Guy” in Columbus – but so does just about every other major big city in the country. So if you want to outrank the opponent – you’ll have to do some competitive research to determine how to outclass them for that brand name.
Product Searches
These are going to be the most competitive style of search that you’ll have to deal with. Unless you selling something completely unique you’ve got others who sell the same exact product for you. As a small business selling auto parts and others – you’re probably not going to be able to compete with the likes of Advance Auto Parts and Napa for the broad searches. however, you may be able to compete at the local level with some of these people. More than likely your best bet is to try to corner your online market with specific products that maybe the big boys don’t have, or you beat their price. Do some competitive research to see where your pricing and product offering stand with the rest in your field.

What to Focus On

• Product Offering – look for unique products that you sell and try to leverage your online presence with those first
• Price Point – where are you outdoing your competition on price. With shopping engines and the ability to comparison shop more and more – focusing your efforts on these products will serve you well
• Be Unique – especially if you’re business has a lot of competition look for ways to stand out from the rest of the field and highlight them and focus on them through search and on your landing pages.

Local Searches
There are two major types of local searches and they are derivatives of the above mentioned. Branded local search and product local search. There are various opportunities for your company to stand out in local search. First and foremost make sure that if local is the way you want to go that you’re targeting your area as a keyword on your major pages. Homepage, category pages, product pages. This will help people who are located in your area find you easier.

Where to leverage Local Search

• Google Places First and foremost you have to have a strong Google Place page. Google indexes these pages regularly and places HUGE amount of weight on local search for products and brand names that have strong, keyword targeted, and relevant Google Place pages. Add as much relevant information as possible, hours of operation, closest intersections, products you sell, pictures of your store, and even video. They will bring people in.
• Yelp Yelp is a heck of a good place for you to create a page for your business. They focus on neighborhoods and cities and allow people to review and comment on stores. This will also help your Google Place page rank well and give people even more relevant reviews and information on your company.
• Local Chamber Websites being apart of your local chamber of commerce will give you a link and directly tie you to a specific area. These links are high value links that Google will place great weight on towards ranking you highly in the search engines.

The key to dominating your competitors through search is leverage. You have to find the places where you are unique, figure out what they’re doing, and get ahead of them. Figuring out which products and types of searches that your customers are more likely to do is important – use the Google Traffic Estimator to figure out which of your products your customers are searching for and figure out how stiff the competition is. If you believe that you’ve got what it takes to compete then target those keywords. The key is to target the areas that will bring you the most amount of traffic.

Now – I do this for a living, and do it on a daily basis for clients. If you’re interested in a competitive search analysis for your business Contact Me, tweet me, or just hit up the contact form on the website. You stay classy now readers. Have a good one.

”Hello,

We recently announced upcoming changes to the maximum number of users for Google Apps. We want to let you know that, as a current customer, the changes will not affect you.

As of May 10, any organization that signs up for a new account will be required to use the paid Google Apps for Business product in order to create more than 10 users. We honor our commitment to all existing customers and will allow you to add more than 10 users to your account for flagladyusa.com at no additional charge, based on the limit in place when you joined us.

Sincerely,

Google Business Apps Team”

Jump on it.

Thanks to my buddy Chris “Yeeples” Welsh for pointing this one out to me. Also, thanks to the orginail posters of this info graphic.

Technology for small businesses is sometimes a tricky subject. Many small businesses are apprehensive to technological changes because of the immense training and learning curve that is perceived to come along with technology changes.

More often then not, a small business owner doesn’t have the time to keep up with all of the latest technological changes that occur on a daily basis. It is my opinion that the further behind a company gets in the technological side of business, the bigger the edge could be for their competitors. While it may seem like a daunting task to update some software here, or update your collaboration services there, it is in the business owner’s best interest to work with the changes.

With this most recent economic downturn that we’re coming out of, most businesses looked towards their internal inefficiencies and decided to cut off the fat. What that does for employment numbers isn’t always good, but what it creates is a more efficient and well rounded business that will be able to expand more effectively when the economic turmoil subsides.

Some businesses will choose to look even further into the companies numbers and determine which of their current technological assets are inefficient and remedy the situation. It is important to note that technology is designed to make human interaction less painful and more efficient. It should be dually noted that technology will do the same for your business.

There are many amazing collaboration tools, devices, and software programs for your company to consider when you’re trying to “cut off the fat” from your productivity levels. I currently am working with the family business to switch our current mail services over to google because of the additional productivity and organizational tools that it will afford the business moving into the future.

The VP of the company (also my mother) is ready to embrace these changes, because she understands what needs to be done to get us working as efficiently as possible, but she still is a bit apprehensive because of the additional training it will involve for the rest of the company. Completely understandable.

As a young 20 something male whose been exposed to an entire life of technology I have trouble understanding that. When I have a question I turn to my favorite search engine and start typing. Generally it only takes me about 2 or 3 searches to find the precise information that I’m looking for. However, I do understand that not everyone was raised in that environment and it can be extremely overwhelming. The good news is, that the internet and the companies that have created these new technologies have multiple resources for you to find whatever information you’re looking for.

I guess my point is through all of this is to not be afraid to take that leap into the technological world. Once you’ve settled in on something that will work for your business and get working with the newer technology, you’ll find that the rewards will be astronomical. Time is money – and new technology saves a whole lot of it.

What is Product Feed Syndication?
Product feed syndication is an idea that I’m not sure has truly been defined yet but I aim to do so right here. Syndication from a business standpoint usually refers to the supplying of information or content to others usually by means of a subscription. Product feed syndication would be the allowing of customers, affiliates, to download your product feed and distribute it throughout the web.

How it can be used
From a supplier standpoint product feed syndication can be astronomically effective at aiding your clients in the sales process. Create a feed that is completely optimized for the search engines, has beautiful product images, and has effective copy in the description for sales. Many suppliers will give their clients access to bits of information in order for them to help sell their products, but not the whole package. Why? Beats me.

Why Product Feed Syndication?
As a supplier to small businesses, your customers (the small businesses) do not have the time or the resources to create beautifully optimized product descriptions, take all of the images, and then upload them one-by-one to their own databases. It can take them weeks, months, or even years to perfect it. With the creation of a product feed for your products and delivering it to your clients you give them the opportunity to sell your products effectively right away. More sales for them will certainly equate into more sales for you.

Small Business Product Feed Syndication
The same way that your suppliers should offer you product feed syndication, is the same way that you should offer it to your sales team. Creating a product feed from your entire database is a smart idea for a few reasons.

1. It can be used and distributed by your affiliates in your affiliate program to achieve higher sales goals
2. You can distribute it to shopping sites like Amazon and eBay
3. You can distribute it to search engines and other shopping engines
4. You can distribute your products to people on social media sites like Facebook

The Bottom Line
The bottom line when it comes to product feed syndication and distribution is that it is a time saver for your sales people to sell your products. It also allows for your products to be distributed to more areas of the internet. It’s just like it works in the real world. The more sales tools and people you have out there selling your product, the more opportunities you’ll have to increase sales.

How To Get Started

Getting started with product feed syndication is as easy as creating a product feed. There are two ways to go about doing that, you can make the feed yourself product-by-product or you can hire a web developer to create the feed for you. Recently we launched the product feed building service for our other small business clients. We saw that it was in high demand with our clients and we couldn’t find anyone else who offered the service. Automation of your feed and product feed creation can be an extremely useful tool. Whether you decide to build the feed yourself, or hire someone else to do it for you. You should get started on it today, you won’t be sorry when you see the sales coming in after the project’s completion.

Visit the small business resources section and you will see some of the resources that I’ve already added to the section. Our hope is to make this section of our website fully alive and constantly updating. We want this section to be a one stop shop for all of your small business marketing needs.

The interent houses a lot of information, but unless you know what to search for, you’ll never find it all. Visit the Small Business Resource Center today

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