Archives for March 2017

March 28, 2017 by RonTester Leave a Comment

Location, Location, Internet Location

Flagstaff AZ Are You Easy for Your Customers to Find?

I am road tripping this week with one of my kiddos (from my home in Texas, out to San Diego, then up to Portland, OR), and I wanted to talk to you today about making sure your business gets found.

In the old (pre-Internet) days, when I would drive across the country, I would have to plan ahead, get my maps printed by The Automobile Association of America, go to the library and find phone books (usually yellow pages) to find the hotels I wanted to stay at, call ahead and make reservations, etc., then stick with that plan. No flexibility.

Last night, as we were traveling along the highway, we decided that we could probably make it to Flagstaff. So I pulled up the hotels.com app and the HotelTonight app. I checked availability and prices. Super Easy. A couple hours later, we decided we would definitely stop in Flagstaff. I got out my iPhone again and booked a room for the night. I didn’t have to call information and ask for the number, call the hotel and ask about availability or rates, etc. I clicked a few times and we were booked. An almost frictionless transaction.

Do you have something similar in your business? Is there a place on the internet where your audience/potential customers are looking for your service?

If so, are you there?

In one of my marketing classes at the University of Texas, I learned about the 4P’s of marketing: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. Everyone talks about “location, location, location” as the key to success in business, and it often is, but have you considered that “place” is also where you can be found on the internet? On my road trip, the physical location of the hotel was important only after I found it on the internet.

It would have been irrelevant if I hadn’t first found the hotel on the internet.

If someone was looking on the internet for any company that could meet their needs (e.g. “hotel in Flagstaff” instead of “Embassy Suites Flagstaff”), would they find your company?

Action for today: Go search for your industry or type of business (not your company name) on the Internet. Are there directories, aggregator sites, etc. where you could be found? If so, are you being found there? And if not, send an email or make a call today to see what it would take to get your company on that website.

If you have other specific ideas or strategies about how to get found on the Internet, please comment and share.

March 27, 2017 by RonTester 1 Comment

How to Be More Human: Personality in Your Content

Ron and James You know how sometimes you read a blog and it sounds professional bordering on uptight? I’m afraid my blog sounds like that too often. I like James Altucher’s blog better than mine. Here’s an excerpt from his March 27 post. Just under a picture of him with Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, you read:

I don’t think Craig wanted to talk to me. For one thing, I smelled.

I woke up late and rushed out to get to the “Women Entrepreneurs” breakfast where Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist was speaking.

There were about 40 women there, Craig, and then me. I crashed the breakfast.

I had some questions for him. But he kept angling away from me. Don’t think I can’t read the body language, Craig!

I’ve seen James speak at a conference. He’s rambling and personable. I am not always crazy about the rambling, but I love the personable. I aspire to the personable.

When creating content for your online products, services, and marketing materials it can be easy for us to become stale, boring, and out of touch with your audience (or mine) — to the point that they can no longer relate to you (or me). I hate that. So here are some ideas we can use to be more human in our content (or let our humanity shine).

Tell Your Story

Starting from your customer’s perspective, tell your story with them in mind. You can speak to them from the voice of a customer yourself. After all, why did you create the products or services that you did? Did you do it because you needed them yourself? How did you discover the need for your product or service? Why you? Stay in the perspective of the customer during the story and they will relate to your offerings better.

Don’t Be Pretentious

Instead of using jargon and “corporate” speak, talk to your audience members as if they’re your equals and you’ll become more human to them. You should do this because they are your equals, even if they don’t know as much about your product of service as you do. It will also give you a chance to show your personality to them. While you do want to be a thought leader and a teacher, you don’t want to appear as a know-it-all and boring.

Be Relevant

Stay up-to-date on your industry so that you can remain relevant. Don’t stick to the old ways of doing things long after it’s not being done any longer. Pay attention to what’s coming down the pike and you’ll always stay on top of your niche and be relevant to your audience.

Use Plain Language

Speak to your audience as if you’re talking to a good friend. Write how you talk. No need to use bigger words than you would normally use. If it helps, get some voice to text software and talk your blog posts and content. I write on a Mac and if you double tap the fn key, a mic will pop up and you can dictate. It works pretty darn well. Not perfect, but…

RANT: I’ve used the Dragon software, both PC and Mac versions, for years, and they consistently disappoint. Editing the transcript can take long as dictating. And each iteration they’ll advertise something like “30% more accurate than before.” That may be true, but they’re still below the minimal acceptable threshold for accuracy. This is true if you buy the most expensive versions or the cheap ones. I’ve tried several versions of both.

Focus on Your Audience

No matter what you are writing, blogging, vlogging, and doing, it’s always supposed to be about your audience. They need to know what’s in it for them, and to keep the focus on them over yourself. Instead of seeking to glamorize yourself and put yourself above them, put them on a pedestal and make it all about them at all times.

Make Each Word Count

Once you finish writing a piece of content, edit it for extraneous words. Pare it down so that your writing is concise and to the point. Try writing shorter sentences instead of long-winded sentences. In addition, don’t make paragraphs too long and keep each blog post to one narrow focus. This is such a struggle for me. I have a degree in English literature and went to graduate school in English lit. The writing’s not better, it’s just different, and I fall back into old habits. My WordPress plugin is always telling me to shorten my sentences, stop using big words. I do what I can.

Keep One Voice across Channels

Regardless of which channel you’re promoting your content on, it’s important that you know what your voice is. The tone, voice, and feeling of what you put out to the world should feel the same whether they read it on your blog or read it on LinkedIn. You need to be mindful of context, of course, but you want to sound like the same person. In literature, if the text tone/language is too different, we assume that someone else wrote it. You don’t want to sound like someone else is writing for you.

Include Appropriate Images/Imagery

With any content, you can get your point across easier if you use images. Sometimes a concept is just easier to express with an image and other times the image just helps set the mood and tone for the entire post.

You can incorporate more humanity and personality into your content by remembering who your audience is and who you are. Seek to be yourself, while also delivering great content to your audience. If you have other suggestions for keeping it helpful and simultaneously keeping it real, please comment and share.

March 26, 2017 by RonTester Leave a Comment

Seven Awesome Things About Marketing for Small Business

Marketing for Small Business Can Change Your Life (It Changed Mine)

When I started my first business, I honestly thought we would succeed because word about how awesome we were would magically get out. We were providing far-superior service, crushing our competition in terms of the outcomes we provided. Who wouldn’t choose us? Turns out, if people don’t know about you, they don’t choose you.

We built a better mousetrap and the world didn’t beat a path to our door. Eventually, I realized that if we were going to make it, marketing would be the lifeblood of our business. So I learned, tried things, failed, learned and tried some more. And along the way, I grew to love marketing.

Taking my own advice from this blog post—Nine Content Ideas for Any Niche—I thought I would share Seven Awesome Things About Marketing for Small Business. Here’ what I love about Marketing for Small Business, and what you might love, too.

Marketing for Small Business allows you to express your vision for the world, or at least your vision for your business and it’s impact on the world. When I started my first business, I had a huge vision. I wanted to change my community, to make a significant impact my part of the world. I built the systems to make that impact, but it wouldn’t have changed anything without marketing which helped people to know and choose us.
Marketing for Small Business allows you to have peace of mind. The single most stressful thing I have ever done in my life is start a business. I went from working to feed my family to building a company that would hopefully meet my goals and also my employees’ goals. I often thought about the fact that I was ultimately responsible for bringing in the business that would feed my colleagues’ families. Of course, the people I was working with could get other jobs to feed their families, but they trusted me and I didn’t want to let them down. By marketing my small business, I had the peace of mind of knowing that I was getting the word out, people were choosing us, and families were being fed.
Marketing for Small Business allows you to stand for something (or against something). I started my company because I was angry. I was angry with the way companies in my industry were taking advantage of unsuspecting customers, customers who didn’t know enough to demand better. As part of our marketing efforts, we educated the consumers, helping them to raise their standards and expectations for excellent service in our industry. So even if people didn’t choose us, they had a better chance of getting what they deserve because we’ve stood for something and raised the standard.
Marketing for Small Business allows you to grow, learn and use what you learn. If you ask anyone who knows me, they’ll tell you that I love to learn. I read books and blogs constantly, listen to audiobooks and podcasts voraciously. But if all I ever did was consume information without applying it, life would be significantly less interesting. It’s in the doing that I really grow, use what I learn, and learn some more. It’s a virtuous cycle that’s constantly changing what I know and do.
Marketing for Small Business allows you to help your family and friends. My mission in life is to make the world a better place, and the way I know how to do that best is by helping people who share that mission make a bigger impact. I have so many friends and family members that want to make a difference in the world, and I can use marketing to help them grow their audience and impact.
Marketing for Small Business allows you to minimize risk. Whenever you want to introduce a new product or service into the marketplace, there’s an element of risk. You could invest a fortune in a new widget or a new line of service, only to find out that no one wants it. But once you learn some of the fundamentals of Small Business Marketing, you’ll make better choices on the front end because you’ll know your customers better, their wants and needs (Pro Tip: virtually all purchases are based on customer wants, so appeal to them. We buy very few things because we actually need them). And once you make those choices and develop the product or service, you’ll be able to get the word out so more people choose them.
Marketing for Small Business allows you to make an additional (side) income if you choose. Our economy is changing. We are in a “gig” economy where people freelance and business owners hire people on contract to accomplish specific business functions. If you get good at Marketing for Small Business, you can earn a nice income from helping other small business owners market their products or services. I teach a course with Connie Ragen Green called “How to Market for Small Business.” And even though the primary goal is to help small business owners market for their own businesses, people who take the course can easily learn to market for other small businesses. Even though it’s not the main thing I do, I have enjoyed helping a variety of small business owners over the years while making a good income from it.

There are lots of other reasons why Marketing for Small Business is awesome—I’ve barely scratched the surface. If you would like more information about how to market for small business, where to start or how to get good at it, please email me for a no-cost, no-obligation consultation.