DO - Start Email Marketing to your current customers - carefully.

If you have had the foresight to begin collecting email addresses for use in invoicing, etc., then you should definitely connect with these customers because they are likely to be interested in other products or add ons to products that they have already bought.  Rather than just adding these customers to a list, however, it is a good practice to send them an initial email, preferably through an e-mail service (such as Constant Contact) that will allow them to "opt in" and continue receive your emails.  If they do not "opt-in", respect their choices and do not continually contact them.

DO - Place an "opt in" box on your website. 

Rather than "fishing" for email addresses, it is smarter and less time consuming to give them a way to add themselves when they feel comfortable doing it.  Some email marketing companies will integrate this for you, and typically it is as easy as placing a small amount of HTML code into your site.  Alternatively, you can design a check box next to whatever "contact us" form you have now, which will allow people to opt in, but it is always important to be very clear about what people should expect.

DO - Create an incentive.

Your process of building an email list can be sped up significantly if you tie a reward to the "opt in" process, and this can take the form of a valuable coupon or a contest drawing.  Once again, you should be very clear to the people providing these addresses about how you intend to use their information.

DON'T - Buy e-mail lists. 

Some e-mail list vendors seem professional, and some seem like back alley peddlers (check your e-mail spam folder and you are more than likely to see an offer in there next to the rest of your junk mail).  The reality is, directly marketing to people via e-mail without their consent can lead to many problems.  First of all, often times these lists are gathered by robotic programs that scour the web for e-mail addresses.  Not only are these going to have questionable value as far as targeting, but sometimes people can be outright resentful for the unsolicited intrusion.  Also, because of standards that have been set to thwart spam, the worst case scenario is that you could have your business email stem (@yourbusiness.com) labeled as a spam address by the major email hosts, such as GMail, Yahoo! Mail, and Hotmail, which means that you can be blacklisted from having ANY of your important business emails get through to ANY people that use these systems.

DON'T - Skimp on the planning.

If you start with good practices at the beginning of a email marketing campaign, as you will thank yourself later.  No matter where you get your email addresses from, make sure that you have some system of filing them and tagging them so that you can target mailings at a later date.  Thinking as future-forward as possible will allow you to save time later.  Some possible categories could be based on geography, what customers have ordered in the past, or how customers tie into other marketing (like following up on direct mail, for example).  When you send your initial "opt in" emails, it is a smart idea to let people indicate what their interests are, which you can easily use to classify them.

For more information about email marketing strategies, feel free to contact the author or visit our blog at http://www.smartroiconsulting.com/smartroi-blog/.

One of the easiest and least expensive ways that you can keep your clients involved with your business and to make more money in 2010 is to start an e-mail marketing campaign.  Many small business owners immediately respond: “but we don’t have any news”.  The truth is, anything can be news, whether it is something as simple as a new product, the hiring of a new sales rep, community awards, or the announcement of a new blog entry.  Whether you are in the retail or service industry, email marketing is crucial, especially if you have customers that make recurring purchases.  They will benefit when you update them on special pricing and seasonal offerings, and many very wise retail businesses will use targeted and timely email campaigns to reduce inventories of surplus or expiring goods.  Think about including a special coupon with an expiration date that your customers can print out which will motivate them to take action.  A direct mail piece with a similar coupon could cost hundreds of dollars.

For retail businesses who don’t have recurring purchases (real estate agents, for example), email marketing is a great way to follow up with your customers after the sale and give them updates about their purchases.  The customer will feel great knowing that you are still around and standing behind your product, and this will dramatically increase the amount of satisfaction and referrals that you can expect.

Though it is tempting to send out emails from your own email address in one big batch, it is not a wise thing to do.  It can look unprofessional, especially if you not take steps to shield your client’s email addresses from others reading the email.  Also, there are very little tracking options to make sure that your clients are receiving and opening the emails.  In the worst case scenario, your day-to-day business email address can be flagged as spam!

There are several services available that are internet based and allow you to manage your regular emails along with your mailing lists from any computer with just a login.  Managing your mailing lists and designing your email design can take some time, but it is a simple process to learn.  You will want to look for a provider that adheres to the best principles of the major anti-spam industry groups.  These providers will also be able to tell you if and when your email was opened, and this can help you realize if you are targeting the right people with the right message.

SmartROI Consulting manages email campaigns for clients using their business partner Constant Contact, which is the industry leading online email marketing provider.  For any questions regarding SmartROI Consulting’s email marketing services, or any other internet marketing services, please visit www.smartroiconsulting.com or send us an email.

NEXT BLOG TOPIC:  “What are the best methods for building an email marketing list?”

In the first person interview SmartROI Consulting discusses free tools on how to run a small business and how we communicate with each other on a day to day basis. This is a quick note to thank Inc. Magazine for the opportunity to discuss our business in their publication. 

Keywords are the words or short phrases that businesses embarking on a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION campaign choose because they want to come up at the top of the natural search results when a potential customer types the phrase in to their search engine.  Starting a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION campaign without first finding the correct keywords is like starting a journey to somewhere that you have never been without using a map.  How do you know that you are going starting out in the right direction?  More importantly, how would you ever know if you arrived at the right place?

 Thorough keyword research is essential for small businesses who are investing resources into making sure that their website appears in the search engine results for potential customers that are interested in buying their products or services.  Though it sounds intuitive, my experience has taught me that people often make mistakes in choosing the right keywords, and sometimes these mistakes are critical and require time and even more resources to correct.

The most common mistakes that small businesses make when selecting their keywords are those having to do with keyword search TRAFFIC.  First, most businesses (and, unfortunately, some SEO companies) do not take the time to use available tools to find out if keywords actually have any search traffic coming to them.   There are tools (some free, some at a nominal cost) that can tell you how many searches there are each month for any combination of keyword phrases.

For those businesses that do look at the raw search volume numbers, there is a temptation to optimize the website for only those keywords which show massive amounts of monthly searches, and not necessarily those that have modest search volume but are most RELEVANT.  Remember, you cannot make your site valuable to someone who has absolutely no interest in buying your product or service.   Be specific when you start your campaign and start with the very low hanging fruit – for those people specifically looking for your exact product or service.  One is far more likely to have a conversion rate of over 90% of consumers looking for your exact model (“Fender American Vintage Stratocaster ’57) than even 1% of consumers searching for a large broad category term (“electric guitars”).

Also, very broad terms tend to be extremely competitive.  If the level of COMPETITION is too high for a broad term, a very good professional search engine optimization program could make you number one in those search results, but it may take a very large investment in an SEO program and certainly a lot of time.  Many of the same tools that measure search term traffic also measure the competition level for keyword phrases.  A good approach is to keep those broad search terms in mind, but focus on achievable rankings on well trafficked, targeted and relevant keywords in the short term, and this will make it easier to rank high for highly competitive broad terms in the long term.

The best approach is to balance the TRAFFIC, the RELEVANCE, and the COMPETITION in order to find a set of keywords that will work best for YOUR business.  By doing the right amount of research at the beginning of the search engine optimization process, you can save lots of time, money, and frustration later.

DOMAIN

Think of your domain as your license plate.  You can move it from car to car (or in this case, from site to site), and as long as it is registered correctly, it will tell people where they can find your site.  Commonly, sites will start with “www.”, followed by a business name or easy to remember phrase, and ending with a “.com”, “.net”, “.org”, or similar identification.  Domains are registered online at sites like GoDaddy.com, and if the one that you want is unique enough that you do not have to compete with others for it, it should only be a few dollars per year to register.  It is smart to register your site as early as possible, as hundreds of thousands of sites are registered every day.  Many registered domains can all point to the same website, so if you register your site as “yoursite.com”, it is a good idea to register “yoursite.net” and other similar derivations, just to avoid confusion and the possibility that your competitors might take advantage of your success.

DESIGN

Now that your site has a name, you need to come up with a website design.  A website design is simply computer code giving directions to your web browser on how to put a site together so that you can see and understand it.  In most browsers, you can find an option called “view source” that will allow you to see the website in its coded form.  This comes in the form of words that you may have heard of, such as HTML, Javascript, and Flash, but for the average person, reading this coding is like reading a foreign language.  Programs like Dreamweaver can give you a visual “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) design platform, but many content management design platforms (like Squarespace, used by SmartROI Consulting) allow you to build a site and make changes without buying expensive software.

In my experience, a very poor website can actually hurt a small business more than not having one at all.  Volumes can be written on what makes a website “good” or “bad”, but the main thing that you should consider is that your customers are coming in for information about your service or products, so put those at the forefront and keep it simple.  Decide what you want people to do with your site, and make that easy to do.  Do you want them to pick up the phone and call?  Put the phone number at the top right corner on each page.  Remember, people are coming to your page because they are looking for information, so make sure that you include things like your address, hours, menu, prices, etc.

If your domain is your license plate, then your site design is your car.  It can be flashy and expensive, but if it doesn’t get you from point “A” to point “B”, it is not a good investment.  Professional website design is always a good idea, but don’t get oversold by bells and whistles.  Your “car” needs maintenance to run smoothly, so occasionally check to make sure that all of the information is correct and that the links to all of the pages work the way that they should.

HOSTING

If your site design is your car, then hosting is your parking space.  The coding needs to have a place to sit and wait for someone to find and decode it in their web browser, and unless you have an adequate server at your place of business, you will have to rely on a hosting company to keep this for you.  There are thousands of options for your “parking space”, but it really boils down to cost and reliability.

Most hosting options will depend on how much storage you need for things on your site, like pictures or video, as well as how many times that this information is accessed.  Hosting for basic informational sites can be around $10 per month.  Reliability is often expressed as “uptime”, simply meaning that someone trying to find the site will be able to find it without running into any errors at the hosting site.  Frequently, hosting companies will boast “99% uptime”, which is important, because you don’t want someone to type in your site only to come to a dead end.

You can “park” your website code, along with pictures and video for your site, in your hosting company’s “parking spot” by using a File Transfer Protocol, or FTP.  Most hosting companies have greatly simplified this mechanism, allowing very easy uploads with very little technical knowledge.  As long as the process is followed correctly, your site should appear immediately after it is uploaded.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Once you have a good looking site, registered correctly, and on a hosting platform that you feel comfortable with – Congratulations!  You now have a website!

Don’t stop there!  Businesses often have a “build it and they will come” attitude about their websites, but just like a storefront, if nobody knows how to find it, it is not going to work for you.  Make sure that you are constantly updating and marketing your site so that you can get a great return on your investment.

Are the analytical results telling me that I am targeting the right geographic area?

If your product or service is sold online locally, regionally, nationally, or even worldwide, you will want to make sure that all of your time, effort, and resources go into bringing in customers who you can actually reach and serve.

How many of my visitors are “unique”, and how many visitors are returning to my site?

It is important to measure “unique visitors” (different IP, or computer addresses) to get a sense of traffic and trends, especially if you are heavily relying on completely new visitors for your business model.  For other types of business models, measuring customer loyalty or an interest in new content from previous visitors is more important.

What are they doing when they get to my site, and how long are they staying?

“Bounce Rate” refers to the ratio of the amount of people who leave after viewing just one page vs. the total amount of visitors.  This number is relative, but it is a good indicator that visitors are finding your home page interesting enough to browse the content.  If you have an e-commerce site, a poor Bounce Rate can be a big red flag, because visitors might be looking at your storefront but not shopping.

What are traffic sources of my visitors?  How are they finding me?

If you are doing any type of paid search marketing (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), e-mail marketing, or social media marketing, you will want to measure the value of the campaign so that you can get an accurate value for your return on investment (ROI).  There has never been an advertising medium in history that allows business owners to so precisely measure their ROI.

What have I defined as “success”, and how many of my visitors are doing what I want them to do?

First, you need to define a “conversion”.  Is it a sale?  A donation?  An expression of interest?  A lead for a sales team?  Once a conversion is defined, you need to measure how many conversions are coming in from your efforts.  A “Conversion Rate” is the ratio of the number of conversions vs. your total unique visitors.  This number is relative to your business model and industry, but it is valuable to benchmark and compare to your competitors and your own previously collected data.  Businesses create goals based on Conversion Rates and watch mid to long term trends to get a true idea of a website’s success.

There are several ways that business owners can find the analytical data that they need.  There are some professional consulting companies that work exclusively with medium to large sized organizations and specialize in analytics and web strategy.  For most small to medium sized businesses, however, free applications like Google Analytics can provide a wealth of information.  Many times this wealth of information can be like having a map when you are lost at sea, so it is best to get advice and opinions from colleagues in your industry before making decisions based on short term trends or questionable data.  Some marketing companies that serve the small to medium sized business market, like SmartROI Consulting, can also help implement free analytics packages and help interpret the results.

 Without some sort of measurement, you would have no idea how your website is working towards your goals.  It is speaking to you loud and clear.

Are you listening?

You have a new partner at the firm. You are offering a new service or special. You have moved and need to change your address. These are all common scenarios which require immediate updates to the information on your website. If this information is not accurate, it could result in a significant loss of business and revenue. As a small business or non-profit, these changes are most likely made by putting in a call to the webmaster (or “web designer guy”), even for a simple change.

The days of calling your webmaster and having them charge you $100/hour to be at their mercy are coming to an end. Websites are still extremely complex in their structure and take a seasoned developer to create, but making regular updates is as easy as changing a word document.

An unscientific poll that we ran asked if how many small and medium sized companies still have a traditional coded website vs. content managed websites, and the responses were overwhelming in the favor of a traditional website.  Many respondents commented that they had heard that content management systems were very expensive and time consuming.

Converting to a Content Managed website will actually save most small to medium sized businesses both time and money. The turnaround time in which a webmaster returns your call, listens to your problem, and actually implements the change can often take several weeks. Most web designers are more interested in taking on profitable new projects rather than spending their time updating your text.  Billing often starts at an hourly threshold, so many organizations find themselves “saving up” their web changes until they can justify paying the designer to make bulk changes.

Companies such as www.squarespace.com (of which SmartROI Consulting is an exclusive user), make things extremely easy for companies to manage their own site without CSS or HTML knowledge. WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) Editors allow graphics based text, font, and image changes, all with a few familiar buttons and the ability to see your updates as they happen. Major advancements with content managed websites are also including simple plug-ins such as ecommerce, social media, “contact us” forms, blogs, flash elements, photo galleries, and so on. This means is that when your company is ready to add new features and technological advances to your site, a total redesign is not necessary.

So next time you pick up the phone to call your webmaster when you need that simple change on your website, remember that you could be making these changes yourself in a matter of minutes with a content managed site. 

Start with the “Average Lifetime Value” of a customer. How much is a customer is worth over the period of time that you work with them?  Do they make a one-time purchase, or will they be a loyal customer that may spend money with you every month of every year? For this example let’s take an average lifetime amount of someone who places an order with you every month, of which you earn $200 in revenue. If the average customer is with you for 5 years before they move or change needs, then this customer is worth $12,000 to your bottom line!

$200 x 12 months x 5 years = $12,000

If we want a 50% Return on our Investment, then we want to spend $10 to earn $15, or $100 to earn $150. In the previous example, if we spent $8000 to earn this customer, then we make $12,000 from them, which is a 50% return on investment.

How much would you like your website to earn?

The “Conversion Rate” of the site is a very important thing to measure. In order to find this, you need to use tracking and analytical data to source how many visitors are coming to your site, and how many of those are turning into paying customers. If you have 100 visitors to your site and 5 of them ‘convert’ into customers, then that is a 5% “conversion rate”.

If your goal is to bring in 10 new customers per month and your conversion rate is 5%, then you would need to attract 200 visitors to your site in order to turn 10 into paying customers.

How much do you need to spend on pay-per-click in order to bring in these 10 customers in? If we continue with the example above and each customer brings in $200 of revenue per month but is a customer for an average of 5 years, 10 customers are worth $120,000!

If a modest pay-per-click budget of $2,000 is spent per month to bring in $120,000, the Return on Investment is 6,000%!!!

There is no magic number or ratio to get your desired ROI, but search marketing including SEO and PPC has the lowest cost per lead than other popular forms of advertising. A study by Piper Jaffray shows Search marketing had a rate of $0.45 per lead followed by email at $0.55, Yellowpages at $1.18, banner ads at $2.00 and Direct Mail an astounding $9.94 per lead.

-EL