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Most of us went to high schools where having the right kind of look, not to mention a good circle of friends, was an important part of fitting in. Now, with the popularity of social media marketing – which seems a lot like high school in many ways – these are important considerations again.

One question you need to ask yourself is: will the other kids laugh at your social media campaign?

Specifically, what we’re getting at is having a custom look that fits the style of your company. It’s not difficult to get custom pages for Twitter or Facebook that match your business perfectly, and they are well worth the expense, since they help you stand out from the competition and make your company more “popular” than it would be with default social media settings.

A good business web design or online marketing partner will point you in the right direction and come up with social media pages that get you noticed for all the right reasons. If you don’t already have someone looking out for you over the Internet, get in touch with us today and find out how easy it is to get started.

The decision to redesign your business website might not always be an easy one, but once you make it, you’re bound to want to have your new pages online as quickly as possible. Although lots of clients tend to think the layout and web design process takes a long time, the reality is that they often hold up the launch of their new sites unintentionally.

Here are two issues that frequently stop a business website from going online as quickly as it could:

Waiting for client feedback. It’s understandable that you might want a few days to consider a new layout, but take too much longer than that – or worse, lose weeks showing it to friends and colleagues – and you could be looking at a long string of delays.

Content creation. You know your business better than anyone else. Take the time to get that information written out. The content can always be revised to better suit search engine purpose later. The main goal is to capture your knowledge as quickly as possible rather than putting it off and holding up the design process.

You probably want your new business website up as fast as possible, so make sure you don’t unintentionally hold things up with these delays.

When you’re trying to run a successful business, having lots of sales and special prices can be a tricky thing. In the short term, they can help you move products, open new accounts, and increase your revenue. Hold sales too often, however, and customers learn to wait for them. Why should they pay full price, when they know another discount will be coming around soon?

While this can make pricing strategies tough in a retail store, offering web-only discounts gives you a lot of the same benefits while taking away those important drawbacks.

There are two big reasons why.

1. Special Internet pricing gives buyers a good reason to come back to your website again and again. That, in time, should also lead them to sign up for e-mail newsletters, check out your latest products, and otherwise visit your company more often. Since finding good, long-term customers is the name of the game – online or off – this can only help your bottom line.
2. The other reason is that Internet sales tend to be more profitable than orders placed elsewhere. Because there isn’t usually a salesperson involved, or retail store, print ads, and other fixed costs associated with so many businesses, the margin on web orders tends to be a lot higher. And so, even if you are discounting your products and services, there’s probably a good chance that you are still making more money off of them than you would a customer who came in the front door.

Even if that isn’t true for your particular situation, then it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Internet orders would cost you more than others would, or that building a steady flow of traffic from good customers to your website would be a bad thing.

If you’re looking for a great way to grow your sales, but without having to resort to endless discounts from your store, consider running Internet-only specials for a while. It’s easy to stop them if they aren’t working, and there are good reasons to think they can help you be more profitable.

Trying to find customers over Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can be something of a Catch-22: you can’t make any progress without pouring in a fairly big effort, but it’s tough to see exactly how much progress you are making when it can take a long time to turn friends and fans into buyers.

Since you don’t want to spend a lot of time or money on something that isn’t working out, and don’t want to undermine your social media marketing efforts by not giving them enough attention, where does that leave you? What can small business owners and managers do to make sure they’re getting the right results from social networking sites?

The solution is to not focus on sales results in the short term, and instead devote your attention to the things you can easily track from week to week and month to month. Here are a couple of handy indicators to keep an eye on:

The number of Facebook fans your business has. While there’s a big difference between a fan and a good customer, having someone who’s interested enough to publicly share that they like your company and will hear about your news and specials is always a good thing.

How many LinkedIn connections you’re making. If you have the kind of business or industry that relies on personal connections, then a strong LinkedIn network can be a wonderful asset. Not only can those relationships introduce you to potential buyers, but can also open the door for referrals from all your contacts later.

The number of followers and re-tweets you’re getting. In the same way that it’s great to have Facebook fans for your business, gathering a crowd of Twitter followers gives you a big platform to work with. Plus, if you can write short, compelling messages, they can be shared with thousands of other users after they are re-tweeted.

Notice that none of these necessarily translate into dollars-and-cents figures, but they can all be watched closely in the short term. Get social media marketing right, and it won’t be long before you’ll have plenty of fans, followers, and connections. After that, it’s only a matter of time before your sales will follow.

A lot of big words and overused phrases get tossed around when it comes to online marketing trends, and social media is certainly no exception. In fact, it seems like everywhere you turn, there is one expert or another waiting to explain that social network marketing – the use of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to find new customers – represents a “revolution” in marketing.

But is that hype, or is there a bona fide revolution taking place?

Believe it or not, social media marketing really is a revolution. That’s because it’s not just changing the way customers and companies communicate with one another, but also because it’s shifting the balance of power between the biggest companies and the smallest. Since social media marketing relies on knowing your customers, rather than brute force repetitive marketing, it’s not always the biggest players who win, but often the smaller, craftier, more-determined businesses.

Small businesses, and their employees, have the kind of personal relationships, connections, and commitment to form strong bonds with customers. What’s more, they can come up with really interesting content, rather than relying on focus groups in big-budget agencies that tend to move slowly. The result is that they are able to make connections with buyers on sites like Facebook and Twitter that are more personal, and lead to brand loyalty. Many of the Fortune 500s, on the other hand, need to accumulate huge lists of people looking for price discounts to keep their social media marketing campaigns moving.

Assuming that you’re running a smaller business, and aren’t at the helm of a multinational conglomerate, what should you do with this information? How can you best ride the wave of the revolution that is taking place? The answer lies in embracing simplicity. Let customers get to know your company, its employees, and its culture. Try to get up close with buyers in a way that the bigger brands can’t match, and get to know their needs and wants inside and out.

Social media marketing is about commitments, not enormous advertising budgets, which is why smaller businesses can gain an advantage. Are you making the most of the opportunity?

For all the buzz and excitement about mobile business websites – and when they’re done well, they are pretty amazing – they still leave business owners and managers with a common problem to all business websites: how to best attract buyers to the new site.

Luckily, it’s usually easier to get traffic to your mobile business website than it would be a traditional business website. Why? Because customers use smart phones everywhere, and so it’s easier to convince shoppers at your retail locations to click over.

Here are three quick and subtle ways to drive traffic to mobile business website:

1. Put a QR code in your front window, and on sales literature. This is a popular tactic right now, but that’s because it works. Having people be able to reach your site instantly, and while they are in front of your business, is a great thing.
2. Ask customers if they have their mobile coupon. By mentioning a mobile business website coupon offhand, you create a sense of expectation. This naturally leads to questions about what the mobile coupon is, what it does, etc. – all of which make customers want to visit your mobile business website.
3. Offer a free gift or slight discount to sign up for an e-mail newsletter on your mobile business website. What sort of free gift could you offer? They could be a link to a free app, a onetime coupon, somewhere to fill in a survey and enter a drawing, or virtually any other marketing tool. The point, however, is that you want to create reasons for them to come back to your mobile website later.

The wonderful thing about each of these strategies is that they are quick and easy. None of them should take you a lot of time, or cost much money, and they’ll help you to get the most out of your new mobile business website quickly. Give them a try and see if you can’t attract more customers today.

In the world of law enforcement, “profiling” has become something of a hot topic… and a dirty word. Most of us, with good reason, feel a little bit uncomfortable about casting suspicion on one another because of race, gender, religion, etc.

But while profiling might be under fire for government agencies, it’s just plain good advice for your business.

Here’s why: There is a certain type of person who represents the perfect customer for your company. They are the ones that place bigger orders, love what you sell, and take up less of your time. And the more of them you can find, the more you can have. The only way to find more of them, however, is to know a bit more about the ones you have now, where they come from, and what they want. In other words, you have to get better at profiling them.

So how can you go about profiling your best customers? Here are a few easy, low-cost ways to get started:

One-on-one interviews. Obviously, this doesn’t have a lot to do with web marketing, but if you can convince a few of your best customers to spend some time with you, in person or over the phone, what you’ll learn could be priceless.

Online surveys. Although this is less personal, it’s easier to implement on a bigger scale. Offering a discount for each completed survey is a great way to find out what buyers think, although you have to be aware that certain types of customers are more likely to fill out surveys.

Advanced web metrics. One of the best ways to get to know your customers is by seeing how they act. Installing advanced web metrics, and studying results and trends, can tell you a great deal about the way customers react to your site. In fact, it can even give you more accurate information than buyers could provide on their own since you don’t have to ask any leading questions.

Lots of testing. Sometimes, the only way to tell what’s going to work is by testing a few alternatives. It’s as easy as setting up a few different pages, messages, or products, and then seeing which ones buyers prefer.

Profiling might sound like something nefarious, but it can be a great way to grow your business online and find out what your best customers really want from your site.

Suppose you had an employee – a really great guy or gal that everyone loved – who was a pleasure to be around, but wasn’t actually doing all that well in his or her job. How would you feel about signing their paycheck every two weeks? Now, imagine that they were constantly asking for a raise, and you could see similar employees at other businesses making a real impact.

You might already see where we’re going with this, but a website that looks fantastic, but isn’t helping you improve your profit picture in any way, isn’t really doing everything you need it to. That’s especially true today, when competition online is getting more intense than ever, and there are so many ways to profit from a good business website.

If your business website isn’t doing its most important job – helping you be more profitable – then here are some steps you can take to put it back on track:

1. Find your online profit center. What do you really want your website to do? Should it be registering online sales, gathering leads, or supporting a team of producers in the field? Figure out the most obvious ways for your company to profit from the site, and then see what sort of changes you can make to help with that goal.
2. Generate more traffic. Sadly, it’s not unusual to see a really well put-together site that isn’t getting any traffic simply because the business owner or web design team didn’t have a good marketing strategy in place. If you haven’t devoted any thought to things like search engine optimization, then that could be the issue holding your business website back.
3. Create a sales and marketing focus. This is a nice way of saying, “Make sure your business website is appealing to your best customers.” If the buyers you really want to attract aren’t seeing anything on your pages that interests them, then everything else is wasted.
4. Pay more attention to the metrics. Sometimes, the reason for a business website’s poor performance isn’t immediately obvious by glancing at the pages. Often, though, a quick look through the metrics (the numbers that tell you how many people visit your site, where they come from, which pages they visit, and so on) can reveal hidden trends.

If your website isn’t helping your company’s bottom line, then it’s an expensive toy rather than an effective business tool. To get the most out of it, take a look at each of these issues and see if you have areas for obvious improvement.

Given that Apple, Verizon, and others are selling tens of millions of web-ready mobile devices every quarter, this might seem like a ridiculous question. But, it’s the very popularity of smart phones that is a danger to mobile business websites.

Why? Because pretty soon, web-ready mobile devices will actually outnumber traditional desktops and laptops. At that point, will there be “mobile business websites” or will all websites just be mobile-friendly? Will we even need to make a distinction anymore?

There isn’t a set answer in the long run, and it could take years for that kind of transition to take place. Either way, however, it’s clear that we are quickly reaching a sort of “tipping point” when it comes to mobile devices, and the writing on the wall is clear: One way or another, your company has to be thinking about the millions of potential customers that are either using smart phones, or will be in the future.

In other words, although the term “mobile business website” may eventually go away, it’s far more likely that traditional (or non mobile-friendly) websites or going to be the ones going extinct… right along with the companies that rely on them.

If your company is the kind that relies on the Internet for new customers and leads, or just as a customer service and support center of your business, then don’t wait any longer to add or upgrade your mobile web presence. It’s just too important to ignore.

Conversely, if your business isn’t a leader on the Internet yet, but you’d like to change that in the near future, then consider making mobile web marketing a centerpiece of your strategy. The numbers clearly show that the web is already headed strongly in that direction, and so there is a good chance for you to get a head start on some of your competitors.

You never know what the future is going to bring in any industry, and especially not one that changes as quickly as Internet business. One thing that seems clear, however, is that more and more of your customers are going to be using mobile web-ready devices in the coming years. Are you going to be ready for them?

Ask any veteran copywriter online marketer, and they will tell you that the hardest part about business blogging – and online marketing in general – isn’t always in putting the writing and messages together, but generating topics in the first place.

With that in mind, and because your company’s blog can be such a powerful marketing tool if you add content to it regularly, here are seven great blog topics that customers love, and that most business owners and marketers can finish with very little hassle:

1. Any FAQ. By definition, frequently asked questions are things your customers want to know about. Write a post that answers one, and you’ll be rewarded with traffic to your blog and sales on your website.
2. New products and industry news. People love things that are new, so be sure to add updates as they come to your company or industry. Or, if you have commentary on recent developments that can help your customers better understand something, share that, too.
3. New hires or staff changes. Not only does this make your company seem more personable, but it gives buyers a subtle reminder that you’re always growing and changing. Those are both great things to shoot for in your company blog.
4. Discounts. This is probably the easiest topic to add a post about, and you don’t want to do it too often, but throwing coupon codes and discounts on your company blog is a great way to keep readers coming back.
5. Positive customer feedback or reviews. It’s always great to spread good news about your company, and even better if it’s coming from someone who isn’t on your payroll, so be sure to spread the good word when you get some kudos.
6. Links to a news article about your company. For the same reason, any positive press attention is probably worth mentioning on your company blog.
7. A customer spotlight or case study. Showing how you are able to help one person or company is a great way to find another one. The more specific you can be, the more impressed you’ll leave readers.