Just like you, we’re constantly on the lookout for ways to work smarter, not harder. Sometimes … okay most of the time … that means something needs to change; and today’s change is how we do the Inside Line.

Strategy by HikingArtist.com on flickr

In addition to the Inside Line, each of our team members has an active online presence for their unique business. We have unique blogs, Facebook business pages, online portfolios and videos. We’re walking the talk – doing the things we advise you to do everyday – because these things work. Of course, and thankfully, we’re also busy with client work.

Here’s where the working smarter part comes in: Rather than writing (or attempting to) write an additional two posts per week on Inside Line, what if we called attention to this mountain of content we’re producing elsewhere? Inside Line will still focus on small business marketing tips, but now you’ll see more from the design, photography, and copywriting perspective unique to each of our businesses.

If you read this blog in an RSS feed reader, you’ll notice more frequent updates – hopefully now on a daily basis. But if you’ve subscribed via our newsletter sign-up form to receive updates by email, you’ll receive updates only once per week. We’ll compile four or five articles before sending it via email.

This idea dovetails nicely with the topic of the latest post on The Richardson Copywriter, by Zero To Sixty Marketing team member, Susan Hamilton. She calls attention to the difference between the online presence of your website and a website marketing strategy. Read more on The Richardson Copywriter.

When was the last time you updated your small business website? This week? this month? this year? If it wasn’t this week, it’s been too long and it’s time to give your website a little attention.

Every small business website needs attention in five distinct areas:

1. Is your website working properly? Check to be sure that all your pages load and that your links send visitors to the pages you intended. If you link to Flickr images or YouTube videos, realize that these media may be removed at any time and without warning, leaving you with broken links.
2. How’s your website design? Does it need to be refreshed? Most websites begin to show their age after about two years. This doesn’t automatically mean that a complete redesign is necessary. Many times a simple change to one or two elements on your site is enough to give it a fresh, new look.
3. When was your last content update? By ‘content,’ I’m referring to high quality information shared through blog posts, articles, FAQ’s, video or audio messages. If you’re an artist, when was your last image shared with your viewers?
4. Frequent content updates are important for three reasons:
   • It gives your viewers a reason to return to and engage with you on your website.
   • Frequently updated content is indexed more often by Google, meaning that it helps you attain better placement on the search engine results page.
   • It makes it easier for your customers and other website visitors to refer you.
5. Can your updated content be easily shared? Links are the currency of today’s online marketplace. Make it easy for your viewers to share a link to your content with their friends and neighbors. This can be as simple as adding a ’share this’ plugin to your blog or a Facebook badge to any page of your website.
6. Is your site secure? Websites can be hacked and links inserted that will direct your viewers to unsavory sites. This topic deserves an entire post of its own, but for now, I’ll direct your attention to an excellent resource: the Securi blog, where you can learn more than you ever wanted to know about threats and solutions to your website’s security.

Related Off-Site Article: Google indexing and high quality content

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More and more business is handled over phone lines and screen-share. Well planned, these are brilliant ways to do business. If you miss important details, however, it can really take away from the experience. Those details have a way of seeming insignificant when two or more parties who haven’t met in person try to become conversational without facial cues. It can get awkward real fast. Don’t you just love it when someone tries to break the tension with a really poor joke or comment? That helps, right? Not.

Time may be a luxury you’re not used to taking, but the truth of the matter is that preparation is going to take a little time. Time is a necessary component. Without taking those minutes to think about objectives, roles and time frames, it can be too easy to have a misunderstanding between teammates or even between your company and your client.

Our company uses a screen sharing and phone conferencing tool that has just a little lag time between voices. It isn’t much, but that small delay occasionally causes a misunderstanding about who was talking and who had a comment they thought it was time to share. A little humor can lighten the situation, but we’ve learned that in addition, it is imperative to have an agenda and clear understanding of the team roles in the conversation.

I suggest taking these precautions and preparations before scheduling or participating in a phone conference:

• Write down the things you absolutely must discuss. Leave room between topics for additional notes once the conference has begun.
• Put topics in order of importance and natural conversation flow.
• Talk with your teammates and decide who will handle each aspect of the conversation.
• Decide on verbal cues to alert team members to a change of presenter.
• Decide who will play a more supportive role.
• Discuss how you all will be addressed, and whether the tone should lean toward jovial or serious.
• Visualize all participants. Visualize them satisfied and willing to discuss possible concerns.
• Plan to be a good listener.
• Acknowledge that it’s easy for two people to begin speaking at the same time and decide how you will deal with it.

These nine things are going to help you make the most out of your phone conferencing experiences. Whether video conferencing or phone conferencing, it is still a good idea to have a handle on things you plan to discuss. They won’t solve all the issues related to this type of communication, but they will make your call effective and interactive.

Reading a good book involves a certain amount of tension. You want to get to the next page, but not miss anything along the way. Okay, usually this refers to fiction, but it’s also applicable to John Jantsch’s new book, The Referral Engine. Now that I’ve finished reading it, I’m going to buy a copy for each of our team members – then read through it again, workshop fashion. I expect it will transform the way we do business. It’s already transformed the way I think about our business.

What is a referral engine? At its core is a business doing what it’s good at and doing it well. But just as important, it’s a business that has set up systems to stay top-of-mind and makes it easy for happy customers to do what comes naturally – share their experience with others who may also need your help.

Three ideas stood out for me above the rest

1. If you are shy about asking for referrals, you need a paradigm shift. We’re hard-wired to make referrals. It shouldn’t be like pulling teeth to ask for them.
2. Without a system (more than just a strategy), you’re bound to miss great opportunities to market your business. The questions asked throughout this book will help you develop both a strategy and a system.
3. The secret sauce – “This is how we do it here.” Your own process for excellence, your proven delivery systems, must be communicated during the selling process and demonstrated throughout the project.

The Referral Engine is an interesting and thought-provoking read. To expand on it further, I’ll need to read it again (as planned). Two words of advice: Order your copy of The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself (yes, that’s an affiliate link). And don’t try to read it in an afternoon or rush through it in a week. Take time to think about what’s being said and work through the questions. I guarantee you’ll gain perspective on what it will take to transform your business into a referral engine.

Timeless Treasures Pt 2

In my last back-to-basics post, I challenged you to carefully define your market – to market effectively and be COST effective, we need to know exactly who’s attention we’re trying to gain. But there’s far more to it than that. It’s also important that we figure out the markets or projects that aren’t a good fit for us. Yes, there’s a lot to be said for learning what you DON’T want.

For instance, our service offering includes custom Web site development. We’ve been drifting away from building static HTML sites for some time now for a number of reasons, but recently it’s occurred to me that we need to remove the static HTML site from our service offering altogether.

Why? In a nutshell – freedom. I personally code the majority of our HTML sites. When a client site needs an update, it’s up to me to get it done using my computer and Dreamweaver. But when I build a business Web site using WordPress and a professional business theme, the whole team can get involved immediately. Our copywriter can upload text directly to the site, even while I’m building the layout. Design elements can be added and tweaked at the same time … and none of us are stepping on the other. It’s more efficient and far more portable. And when complete, and the client asks … as they ALWAYS do, “How can I update the site myself?” we can give them login credentials or simply hand over the keys. It’s truly a win-win for us and our small to mid-sized business clientele.

Note: We use and highly recommend the Builder theme by iThemes for hosted WordPress business Web sites. It’s completely customizable, easy to work with, unbelievably simple to upgrade and keep up-to-date, and is backed up by the best customer support I’ve ever seen.

Have you identified markets, products or services that might be a great fit for your competitor, but they just don’t interest you?

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Timeless Marketing Principles – Part 1

It’s fun to focus on the new and different, but it’s important not to forget the tried and true. Small businesses have established themselves and grown in the marketplace since the dawn of capitalism, not just since the birth of Facebook. Along the way, what works and what doesn’t work has been studied and written about. Effective marketing has been dissected and diagrammed. It’s true that HOW we get the job done has changed, but the timeless principles relating to market, message and media are still the foundation for success.

With that in mind, today’s post begins a new series. We’re going to look at those timeless principles and relate them to how we market today. What nuggets of wisdom can we glean from the advertising giants of the past? What can we learn from today’s experts? Note that I didn’t say “from today’s self-proclaimed Internet marketing ‘gurus’ who like to brag about working from home in their pajamas.”

We have real-world businesses, whether they be home-based or brick and mortar. We have families, employees or independent contractors who count on us, and customers who depend on us to get the job done right the first time. Somewhere along the line, we know that to grow we HAVE to make time to market our businesses. In other words, we don’t need hype. We need to spend our limited time doing those things that have been proven to work. Even as a virtual marketing firm, where our specialty is to help YOU market your business, we struggle to find time to market ourselves consistently.

Today’s question strips away any assumptions. It’s as basic as you can get.

Have you identified your target market? You may feel that everyone has a need for your product or service, but that’s not the same thing. To market effectively and be COST effective, we need to know exactly who’s attention we’re trying to gain. Take a few moments to write down everything you can think of about your target customer group, including: age, gender, location, health, profession, interests and affiliations. Seriously, do this little exercise today. Next Monday, we’ll start with that very important data and move onto our next timeless marketing tip.

What is your biggest marketing challenge? We’d love to hear from you in the comments, below:

Photo Credit: Lin Pernille on flickr

Recently we shared a client’s Web site makeover, and suggested you step back to look at your Web site with fresh eyes. If you did that and realized your site is looking a bit dated, what’s the first step toward a redesign?

It may surprise you to learn that the first steps to creating your new design have nothing to do with the look of your site. That’s right, although it’s the first thing we see, it’s actually a secondary consideration. So, what should we consider?

1. How’s your current site working for you? Is your information presented in a way that’s easy to find? What’s the purpose of your current site?
2. Which pages on your current site receive the most traffic? Why? Are these the pages that you want to receive the most traffic?
3. Are you happy with your search engine ranking?
4. What size browsers do most of your visitors use? (from Google Analytics)
5. What’s the purpose of your current site?

Now let’s begin talking about your new site:

1. What new information (content) will be added to your site? Do you need or anticipate needing e-commerce capabilities? Will your new site’s purpose remain the same? Describe your target customer / viewer.
2. How frequently do you plan to update your new site? Do you want to maintain your own Web site or have the developer perform all updates? Depending on the answer to these last questions, we’ll direct you toward either a static HTML Web site or a content management system (CMS). We use, love, and recommend WordPress for clients who want to update their sites themselves.
3. With those questions out of the way, we can now plan the basic architecture of your site – what content can be re-used from your old site, what needs to be added and where, and how the navigation should work.
4. Finally, we arrive at the starting point for the actual design (the look and feel) of your site. Describe any ideas you have for your site’s design. Think about colors, images, and text, but also consider how video might fit into the mix and what elements would help your site be more socially interactive.

Overall, take the time to fully evaluate your current site and to carefully think through your new site’s architecture before beginning the design process. The end result will be a well-planned site that clearly communicates your message in a logical, useful format. Then turn your attention to its design to bring your content to life.

Part of our service offering is affordable business Web site design and hosting. The screen shots below show our most recent Web site makeover for our client, GrassWay Organics. This site is built on the WordPress blog platform and uses a customized premium theme. This is a combination public / membership site, meaning that several pages are only accessible through membership in their association.

Grassway Organics Before

Grassway Organics After

In the market for a Web site makeover? Contact us today for a free, no obligation Web site review.

Here’s another example of the design process … Web site design, this time. We’ve just rolled out a new Web site home page design for Sprue Brothers Model LLC. Sprue Brothers is an online hobby retailer for scale model builders. The “sprue” in the business name is significant. All plastic scale modelling parts arrive on a frame called a sprue. The store’s logo reflects this and now so does the Web site.

Before and after screenshots are below:

Before Website Redesign

New Home Page Design

My husband (and team member), Gerald, came up with the idea of sprue borders. Our graphic artist, Scott, took the concept and ran with it. I put it together as a working Web site. Despite a few technical glitches, this was a fun project that came together quickly. It’s also one that will continue to improve over time. Gordon, we hope your new landing page serves you well.

Have you looked at your Web site lately?

Is your Web site in need of a face lift? Believe it or not, most Web sites would benefit from a makeover every couple of years. It’s not only the look of a site that can become quickly dated, but also the technology running the site. If you’re doing your own Web site coding in Dreamweaver or FrontPage, and you’re not a code geek, your site is also likely accumulating excess bits of code … stuff that doesn’t really seem to cause any problems now, but give it time … it will.

So take a few minutes this week to review your Web site from the eyes of a first time visitor. Does it portray your business the way you’d like it to? If you’re using a blog rather than a static Web site, is your blog installation up-to-date? Do your links all work? And if you know what you’re doing, take a look under the hood and check your HTML coding. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask me.

Another Reason to Subscribe by Email to Inside Line

We’ll have a free gift for email subscribers to Inside Line this week. Mum’s the word … can’t tell you what it is until it’s ready to go, but I will say that it’s NOT some bonus offer for buying some guru’s Internet marketing course. In fact, it’s not even educational … just something to use and enjoy, and the only string attached is that you must be a current email subscriber to Inside Line. Are you an email subscriber yet?

No doubt, you’re being bombarded right now by every sales call imaginable, most of them trying to sell you either search engine optimization (SEO) services or advertising space. Since the second week of January, our phone has rung daily with someone selling one or the other.

Since, like most of us, you’re probably considering your next purchase of ad space, let’s focus on advertising today. Yes, it’s a HUGE topic, so we’re going to take it back to its most basic premise: Advertising is Salesmanship.

Let us emphasize the point. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales. It is not for general effect. It is not to keep your name before the people. It is not primarily to aid your other salesmen.

“Treat it as a salesman. Force it to justify itself. Compare it with other salesman. Figure its cost and result. Accept no excuses which good salesman do not make. Then you will not go far wrong.” ~ Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising

This is an especially important point for the small business owner to remember. We can’t afford to waste dollars with advertising campaigns meant to spread awareness of our businesses. Before we consider any advertising campaign, we’d better be reasonably sure that we’re making a good investment, one that will make the cash register ring repeatedly.

Mr. Hopkins goes on to say, “There is one simple way to answer many advertising questions. Ask yourself, ‘Would it help a salesman sell the goods?’ ‘Would it help me sell them if I met a buyer in person?’”

Remember that when a salesperson calls on a prospect, he or she is speaking to one individual. Do the same in your advertising … focus on one typical buyer, not the mass of people you hope will buy your product or service. When composing your ad, speak to the one man or woman who is likely to want what you sell.

Dan Kennedy lists 10 rules for advertising in his book, “No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-direct Marketing Businesses.” (Don’t you love that title?) I have them taped to the wall directly above my monitor and I refer to them often. I won’t repeat them all here, but I’ll give you a preview:

• Rule 1. There will always be an offer or offers.
• Rule 4. There will be tracking and measurement.
• Rule 5. Whatever brand building occurs will be a happy by-product, not bought.
• Rule 9. Results rule, period.

For Further Reading:

• Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins (free e-book download, provided courtesy of The Copywriter’s Roundtable)
• No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-direct Marketing Businesses

Did you know that small businesses are responsible for the majority of new jobs created in the United States? Small businesses, including micro-businesses, make a huge impact on our local economy. We hear much more about big business, but where would we be without the small business owner striving for excellence in our local community? So today’s post is dedicated to the small business owner … all of you, whether you’re the only employee or you employ many. Thank you! We (collectively) couldn’t do it without you! If you feel the same way, take a few minutes to encourage and thank a hard-working, small business owner this week!

Our team at Zero To Sixty Marketing is dedicated to helping you, the small to medium-size business get results from your marketing efforts. We’re not out to win the next “Addy” or any other award, for that matter. Our award is your success. It’s the RESULTS that we’re after. And we’re not afraid of taking an unconventional route to get there.

If you’re not already a subscriber to Inside Line, now is the time to sign up! Upcoming article topics from our team include: building your brand (it’s about far more than your logo and marketing materials), using e-mail marketing effectively, direct response advertising, social media marketing that works (specifically for the small business owner), and more about how to create a variety of effective leave-behind pieces.

What small business marketing topics would be most helpful to you? What are you struggling with? Either comment below or respond privately via our contact form. We appreciate your feedback! Thank you!

Photo Credit: Budding entrepreneur by Robert S. Donovan on flickr

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