What is everyone talking about? Being involved in social media marketing, doesn’t mean you should be talking about what you ate for lunch. After all, this is an important marketing tool for your business. Leave the personal stuff for your personal pages or accounts.

1. Things that are compelling or interesting enough to make people want to check back and see what you post next.
2. Important information that attracts people to your store, blog, or website.
3. Call-to-action items that gets people to vote, buy or tell their friends.

Some examples:

Photos: Try pictures of new products in your business, new items on your menu or even a new customer giving your business a thumbs-up.

Video: Think short videos. People aren’t looking for long instructional videos on social media, so save those for your website. Instead, post a cool announcement from the owner or a short testimonial from a satisfied customer.

Contests: Everyone loves a contest! Announce a contest you’re holding and don’t forget to keep the contestants updated with the results.

Surveys & Polls: Asking a simple question can engage your followers and fans. You can even ask about a specific service or product in your business to get their feedback. Make sure you post the results!

Announcements: Let your followers know about any new products or services, menu items, partnerships, events, sales or even milestones you’re proud of!

How much time have you wasted going round and round on solutions that just didn’t work? Or what about a mix and match business strategy? Where you do a little bit of this and little bit of that, does it really work out in the end?  I mean for a business, or any dream for that matter, to work we can’t just care a little bit, we have to go all in. Likewise, we can’t manage a little bit or market a little bit – we have to go all in. They’re fundamental to our business.

Here are some quick marketing lessons learned the hard way that could same you real time and real money. And you know what they say about time . . .

Lesson #1: Do the work and then do it again. 

You have to do the work to create a great product. And then you have to turn around and do the work again to create a smart marketing strategy and management solutions. Having a great product doesn’t excuse poor management or weak marketing.

Lesson #2: Website strategy shouldn’t be an afterthought. 

Every website is not the same. Some are like brochures; they just lay there until someone stumbles across it and picks it up. But others are like the energizer bunny; they just keep going and going and going. The owner creates new and relevant content and marketing campaigns that go out gets attention and visits. The energizer bunny website goes to work (just like you).

Lesson #3: Make my website simple please.

You don’t have to design your own website. You can put your energy into something else while you pay an expert to create it for you.  But in the end you still want something with a login, so that you or a member of your team can change the text, plus add a few videos when you want to. Beware of designer hijacked websites.

Lesson #4: One time around the marketing block is never enough. 

Just like we all want more than one client, then we have to market more than one time. Consistent marketing is a about a systematic approach, not a random collection of hodge-podge solutions.

It’s hard to implement 15 marketing ideas at once, especially when you’re learning at the same time. It’s difficult to remember what everybody told you. But it’s easy to choose one strategy, study it, implement it and then start another.

The key to growing a healthy business in a tough economy is to have a base of repeat customers providing a steady stream of revenues. As a small business owner, having a loyalty program can set your company apart from the competition.  Below are several strategies you can initiate to foster more customer loyalty.  (Remember, good old-fashioned customer service is what can differentiate your business from the big guys.)

Offer a cash discount. Credit card processing fees can eat into your profits. Let your customers know that if they pay with cash, you will pass the savings on to them. Gas stations have routinely done this, typically offering discounts such as 10 cents less per gallon. Now, restaurants, dry cleaners and other service businesses are getting in on the action, offering flat or percentage-based discounts.   (If you offer a cash incentive, make sure to note it in marketing materials and on your website and social media profiles.)

Get your game on. There’s a new factor in mobile loyalty programs: fun. “Gamification” is the latest wave in customer retention, allowing businesses to extend their reach and to better monetize their websites.  Location-based social media platform Foursquare gives merchants the chance to reward frequent customers who “check in” via the service to become “mayors.” Other mobile gaming programs, such as SCVNGR, allow consumers to win prizes at participating locations by completing challenges, such as posting a photo of their meal to Facebook. Prizes may include free goods or discount codes.

These games do more than foster loyalty; they encourage user engagement and social media activity—essential for building your brand. The word of mouth on your company’s fun-factor alone can help drive more sales and repeat business.

Implement a card-based loyalty program. One of the simplest and cheapest ways to reward your customers is to print up a punch card offering a free gift after a certain number of purchases. Coffee, sandwich and frozen-yogurt shops; nail salons; car washes; and recreational businesses all use such enticements.

Go digital. Punch cards too retro? Consider digital loyalty programs. These not only reward your customers, they help you by automatically keeping track of sales information and offering insight into spending patterns.

New mobile services are integrating loyalty programs with QR codes. Some companies provide customers with a personal QR code, tied to a credit card account, that they can scan to make payments at participating merchants, receiving credit dollars that can be applied to future purchases. With other services, QR codes are printed on receipts and can be scanned by consumers using a free app, enrolling them in loyalty programs. QR codes allow customers to interact with their rewards accounts and engage with your brand online, and they allow you to create customized rewards based on consumer preferences.

Support your community. Box-store weary consumers are now more eager to patronize their local small businesses. Do your part by utilizing local vendors and products. You may want to institute a reciprocal program with a nearby business to use each other’s goods or services and to note the relationship in advertising, signage or marketing materials—letting customers know that their purchase supports not just your business, but the community at large.

Follow up with a call. A follow-up phone call after a service visit or major purchase will always be appreciated; it lets your customers know that they remain a priority even after the work is completed and the bill is paid. Thank them for their business, inquire if your work or product met with their satisfaction and ask if they have questions or if there’s anything else they need. Just think of the minute or two you spend on the phone as an investment in future sales.

Send a note. Luxury retailers have been doing it for years: sending handwritten thank-you notes to regular clients. It’s an effort that makes customers feel special and will keep them coming back to you. A personal email may work, but a handwritten note has more impact.

The little things matter. Ask for your customers’ mailing address or email when you see them, add an email sign-up link to your website, or put out a bowl for business cards, offering some small prize in return. You might also ask customers to fill out a form with contact information, product preferences and date of birth. Send a note after a significant purchase and on major holidays and birthdays. Just remember: Your customers have entrusted you with their personal information—don’t abuse the privilege. Keep your correspondence significant and to a minimum, and make it clear that you won’t resell names or data.

Starr Hall posted her blog on February 6th, 2012.  Read more here.

As Facebook continues to enhance its fan page options, businesses are not only struggling to keep up with the changes, but they also are still trying to figure out how to brand and market their pages. Because of some of the changes, strategies you used just last month to increase your “likes” and interactions with fans may not be as effective.

Here are a few quick branding fixes that will make it easier for prospects to find you, as well as some tips on getting more fans–or what I prefer to call interested prospects.

No.1 – Brand the URL. If your fan page URL is still set with a bunch of numbers, you are making it harder for prospects to find you and missing out on a branding opportunity. Facebook recently lifted the requirement that you get 25 “likes” before you can name your fan page URL. Now, all you need to do is go to www.facebook.com/username and set your name in the URL, which is great for branding purposes and easy link referrals. For example, instead of www.facebook.com/1283743hreu818, my link is now www.Facebook.com/StarrHalldotcom.

Related: New Tools to Create a Facebook Fan Page

No.2 – Name your page appropriately. Once you reach 100 friends, you cannot change the title of your page, so make sure you choose wisely from the start. Your brand name is the ideal title to make it easy for people to find your page when they search. You still can change the title if you have less than 100 likes by going to edit page, selecting Basic Information from the menu at left, changing the text in the Name field, and saving your edits.

No. 3 – Take prospects to a welcome tab, not your wall. When you send people to your fan page and have them land on your Wall, your posts probably won’t be enough to entice them to “like” you. Posts are just you talking. Even if you’re giving valuable information, prospects need a reason to be your fan. Instead of having them land on your Wall, set up a welcome tab. A welcome tab can include a greeting and an enticement, such as an e-book or video series, to encourage visitors to become fans. Such sites as woobox.com offer free trials and step-by-step tutorials to help you customize your page, including tabs.

Related: Understanding the Value of a Facebook Fan

No. 4 – Engage potential fans. You need to offer something that will engage people. For instance, you can use Facebook applications to create a poll or launch a game. These can be located on your welcome tab. Wildfireapp.com, for instance, provides a free trial so you can navigate its engagement applications. If you decide to use its programs, services start at $5 and go up from there, depending on which tools you use. SocialUps, a company that specializes in creating games for fan pages, starts at $300. One of SocialUps’ most recent game apps was launched at www.facebook.com/vitalyte, a fan page for Vitalyte Nutrition Products that was started three months ago and now has nearly 100,000 followers. The downside of some gaming applications is that they can gain access to your page and randomly post messages.

Related: Is Facebook Advertising for You?

No. 5 – Check market insights. Is Facebook Advertising for You? Recent enhancements to fan page analytics make it easier to know your prospects, including their sex, age and where they live. Also, you can see which posts they like best and follow a viral report showing if they did something on your page that their friends could see. Such viral activity extends your reach to friends of friends. However, this option only allows you to see that your fans are talking about you to other people; it doesn’t share information about whom they’re sharing with.

Facebook fan pages are quickly turning into Facebook websites and interactive business tools. With access to millions of prospects, it’s important to brand your page well, make it easy to find and keep the content up-to-date and engaging.

Starr Hall

Starr Hall is an international speaker, author, publicist and social networking expert. She’s the CEO of StarrHall.com, a consulting and training company based in Avila Beach, Calif.

It’s not about one marketing piece, it’s about the whole thing. To be effective, your business needs a presence both offline and online. It needs to use print and digital marketing tools. It needs both advertising (paid) and publicity (free). It’s the marketing mix that gets and keeps your company message “out there” in front of your target audience.

Here are five marketing mix tips to seriously consider and implement:

1. Brochures & Business Cards
Print marketing items are not dead yet. Sometimes our technology doesn’t work like it should, and having that business card and brochure as a backup could save your marketing opportunity. Besides, there are a lot of people who just need to have something in their hands in order to remember you, so give it to them. Have your calling card ready.

2. LinkedIn
Use this business social network as an extended business card. As people hear your name around the Web and at conferences, there is a good chance that they will check you out on LinkedIn So fill out that profile and link it back to your website.

3. Website & Blog
Your website is your digital home, so make it count. Let them know who you are, what you do, and how it could benefit them. And then solve a problem for free by answering a question that your target audience would care about. You could turn that answer into a little ebook or white paper for download, or make it a blog post. Just make sure it’s something that truly helps, because you’re building a relationship, and “fluff and foolishness” is not good for business.

4. Press Releases
Use press releases to let the local media know about your business and upcoming campaigns. Your company probably has some awesome events, but nobody cares if they don’t have a chance to know about it.

5. Email
It’s about the relationship, and email is one of the most enduring ways to build that relationship, so take the time to grow your list. For a beginner most of the initial work is in getting the code and placing it on your Web pages. But the email service that you use should have a guide or “how to” page showing you what to do. Once the code for your email subscription form is in place on your site, then you can begin to focus on what to send your subscribers each week or month. Remember, it’s disciplined and consistent marketing and marketing messages that makes the difference.

Just remember, it’s about consistency and the total marketing package. It’s up to you to believe in your business—and to get the message out.

We have all heard the old adage that half of all advertising dollars are wasted; the problem lies in figuring out which half. The numbers become even more interesting (or alarming) when one examines the typical response rates for conventional (and unconventional) media.

Most direct marketers are happy to achieve a response rate of 1 percent to 2 percent — or 2 percent to 4 percent if they include a telemarketing component. That means the recipients discard 98 percent to 99 percent of their materials without a second thought. The results for brand marketing or advertising bring even more frustration to marketers and business owners alike, mainly because consumers’ perceptions about brands are so difficult to quantify. Yet, every business, especially a startup, needs marketing to survive and thrive. So what can an entrepreneur do?

- Focus on generating leads over building a brand. Leads bring customers to your door. Then their experience of your product or service, as well as the reputation you develop for customer service and delivery, will build your brand.

- Create materials that properly sell your product or service and allow you to track responses. The difference between response-driven marketing and branding-oriented marketing is that you can track, test and measure the first type and adjust it until it is right for your business.

Why is it so important to track, test, and measure? You need to establish baseline performance numbers for your business in your particular category of business and then to try to improve upon them. This is very difficult to do. Even professional marketers find it hard to “move the needle” when it comes to measuring customer response. If you focus, though, on two metrics that most others do not, you can work your marketing and advertising in new and more profitable ways.

- Figure out a lifetime value for every new customer. That is, how much the average customer will spend at your company over the course of the business relationship.

- Calculate the customer acquisition cost: the amount you spend to acquire a new client for your company. You never want to pay more for a new customer than you absolutely must; and you are striving for this person to eventually spend more than the initial acquisition cost so that your marketing is profitable.

For lifetime value, simply come up with a guesstimate for the value of a typical sale to a customer (say, $200). Multiply it by the number of times annually he or she will buy products (say, three times) and multiply that by the number of years the typical customer does business with you (say, three years).
The result (in the above example, $200 X 3 X 3 = $1,800) gives you an indication of the importance of setting up a repeat-business program that not only raises the amount that a person buys and the number of shopping occasions, but also extends the length of time he or she remains a customer.

For the acquisition cost, if you spend $1,000 on an ad and pull 100 people in the door, you are paying $10 for each lead. But if only 10 people make purchases, you are shelling out $100 for each sale (10 X $10=$100).

The above example demonstrates the value of boosting the rate of converting leads into actual sales, as well as targeting a level of return (at least $100) so that your campaign breaks even — or brings in more so that your efforts truly profit.

What’s key is to use actual numbers from your own company’s experience and business category to help you make better decisions about spending your precious marketing resources.
Here are five additional tips to help you focus your thinking to generate a better response from your marketing and more return on your investment:

1. Define marketing differently. One of the simplest interpretations is to consider it communication and education. You are communicating to customers or prospects on a regular basis with actionable, sales-oriented information about your business, product, or service.

2. Adopt the mindset that you’re not advertising; you’re buying customers. Consider your efforts a way to purchase for your business the best customers possible – just like Billy Beane did in Moneyball. That means you always market and advertise with the expectation of realizing a return in the form of new leads. If this is not your result, end your campaign and move on. But if the new leads materialize and customers purchase your products, then you have the basis for a winning campaign.

3. Realize nothing has really happened until a sale occurs. You might have a great logo, a slick business card, exceptional letterhead, a killer website, and all the other props of a company, but you don’t have a real business until you net customers and sales. So orient everything you do to realizing leads, sales, and repeat business — especially the latter, which is where your profits and growth will lie over time.

4. Rely on the formula: “Target, Offer, and Copy.” Define your ideal, perfect customer. Then target that customer again and again with benefits-oriented offers (“what’s in it for them”) and marketing work that supports your sales message. Then measure the results. Profiling your ideal customer (through demographics and psychographics) and discovering the media to best target that client will keep your focus laser-like. This process alone will help you eliminate most media or at least limit your choices. Or if you plan to purchase radio or TV ads, you will be able to weed out the stations or programs inappropriate for your target.

5. Test any new marketing medium first. I have seen some startups set aside $50,000 or $100,000 for an ad budget and then fork it all out for a single media campaign. It’s better to take $5,000 or $10,000 and experiment first. That way, you will have enough resources left in a contingency fund to try something else if the first effort does not work. Plus, your company will be able to survive an ineffective campaign.

You’re ready to launch your next big direct marketing campaign.  The offer is set, the creative piece is ready, now you need to determine who to send it to.  You’ve put in a tremendous effort to create an attractive direct marketing piece with a great offer.  Effective marketing is all about getting the right message, to the right prospect, at the right time.  When it comes to getting your message to the right prospect, the quality of the data in your list has a direct influence on the success of your campaign.

The Importance of Coverage

Depth of coverage is a critical measuring stick for evaluating the overall penetration and effectiveness of a direct-marketing campaign. The greater the coverage, the more likely a campaign will be successful in reaching an optimal number of prospective customers. With larger contact quantities, more sales conversions are possible. While you may not be interested in a national campaign, greater coverage also means that more individuals and households are available within your local market, ensuring that you reach as many people in your marketable area as possible.

Modeled vs. Actual Data

A common question we receive from businesses purchasing lists is, “How do we know the specific demographics of the prospect?”  List providers compile data from a variety of sources.  In some cases, customers provide actual data. It is also common practice for data suppliers to develop predictive models to fill in data elements where the information is unavailable or unknown.  Modeled data is not necessarily bad and enables you to reach a larger audience.  However, many suppliers do not indicate if the data provided is based on known information or if it is an estimate from a model. Having the ability to differentiate between known versus inferred data is often important to the success of your campaign. For example, if your marketing campaign is specifically tied to prospects of a certain age, then it’s important that you select prospects with known age data rather than modeled.  If however, your campaign targets a broader age range, then you may have greater coverage by including known and modeled data.  What’s important is knowing the kind of data that is available in order to make the best match to your campaign.

Don’t Be Fooled by Higher Counts

It is often said that direct marketing follows the law of large numbers. You need to get your message to as many people as possible.  While there is some truth to this approach, with limited budgets, small business marketers need to use each dollar wisely. Spending limited funds on bad data can seriously impact the effectiveness of your campaigns. Some list providers will include records in their data files that may not be the most accurate, such as unoccupied, deceased, commercial, or households that have moved, resulting in significantly inflated counts.   You may think that you are getting a much larger list of prospects, but often it is more important to have a smaller, but highly clean, prospect list, rather than one that may be full of irrelevant or bad data.

The Bottom Line

In the world of direct marketing, not all marketing lists are created equal.  Selecting the right list will enable you to accurately target and segment your prospects which will help to improve both your customer experience and your bottom line.

With online retail in particular, trust is a critical element in building sales. Here’s how to demonstrate your company’s reliability.

Any selling relationship has a lot to do with trust. A salesperson needs to be able to listen, to understand the buyer’s situation, and to know his or her product; vendor name and experience also help break down barriers to doing business. In online sales, trust can be even more important—because a buyer isn’t touching a product, or looking a salesperson in the face. People go through a lot of stress when they buy online doing research, confirming with friends, etc. Especially as the price point of the item/services grows larger. So trust is what relieves the stress of purchasing decisions.

One of the most effective ways we are able to add comfort and trust to the customer’s experience is by constantly talking to our customers–not only before and after a purchase is made, but after the delivery is made as well. What can you do? Call and ask whether customers received what they ordered, and whether they were pleased. By engaging your customers one on one, you not only leave the customer feeling confident about their purchase and your company, you also learn about your business–and some things you may be able to improve on.

Here are a few strategies to build trust online.

Be Available

Make sure you’re there to answer the phone–and if you don’t answer the phone, respond within an hour of the call or email. For instance, if you are open 9 to 6, Monday through Saturday try testing out this protocol. For anybody who calls or emails during those hours guarantee an hour response time for any message left. Remember, there is a lot of competition for your business nowadays. Make sure these customers come back, refer other people and feel secure with their decision. A number of your competitors do have large sites up–but they don’t have a dedicated person there to answer the phone.

Be the Experts

Make sure all of our customer service representatives who answer the phone are expertly versed in what you sell, so they have the expertise to answer the customers’ questions. This allows the customer to feel comfortable with the decision: knowing that your customer service people have the knowledge to answer any question they have.

Be Accommodating

Give the customer an option to return the product within 30 days for any reason. For example, if [something is] damaged [and] they call and report that within two days, they can return it.

Take away: a quick response, industry product knowledge and a strong return policy are critical for building trust–and having happy customers come back.

How often do you, as a business owner look at your company’s website?  No, seriously – do you recall the last time you looked at every page, clicked every link and read every word on it?

If it’s been a while, it’s probably time to refresh both your site’s content and its look. Here 7 easy things you can do to give your site a tune-up.

Get Back To Basics And Simplify.  Look at each page of your site and ask yourself what one action you’d like visitors to take — sign up on your email list? Pick up the phone and call you? Whatever it is, make that the only action to take on that page. Too many choices cause confusion and make prospects leave.
 

Check Each Page. If you’ve updated your website from time to time, you may start to notice that elements in the site design tend to get a bit “wonky.” One page uses a different color or font. Another has different margins or a different template. Links get broken. Your customers and prospects are sure to notice that the whole site looks chaotic or sloppy. Take the time to check each page, smooth out the bumps and make sure information is accurate and links are working.
 

Consider A Redesign. If your site hasn’t gotten a new look in several years, it’s probably starting to look dated. Customers may become bored and feel nothing new is happening at your company. Consider a redesign that reflects your company’s current direction and attitude.
 

Press Releases Are Your Friend. Want some free media coverage? Start putting out press releases and posting them on your site. When reporters visit, they’ll scan those and get the sense that your business has a lot going on. Each of those releases might spark media interest on their own, too. 

Don’t Neglect Your “About” Page. Your About page is usually the second-most visited page of any site, which means it’s an important page that needs to put a friendly ‘face’ on the company. Rewrite it to include fresh company news — awards won, new products introduced, offices opened or new team members who’ve joined.
Blog Or Don’t – Just Decide.  Blogs can drive new prospects to your site, but a dusty, dated blog doesn’t send a good message. Make a decision to either kick that blog back into gear — posting at least once a week — or get rid of it.
 

Pay Attention To The Small Stuff. Check your site to see if your vital info can be easily found – the phone number, address, contact names, product prices and hours of operation, etc. Get those contacts in bigger fonts, up higher, and visible on every page of your site, not hidden under a ‘contact’ tab.

If you’d like a professional review of your site along with tips to make it perform better, click here.

If you want more of the right kind of customers for your business…

If you want to increase sales and customer loyalty…

Check out this video now!