Is It Easy & Affordable to Market Businesses on the Internet?

Maybe you are a local business that’s doing pretty well by all accounts. Revenues are steady or slightly growing and that’s great news considering 2009 saw unemployment rise and most everyone tightening their belts.

Or maybe you are a local business that has yet to stick a toe into the Internet Marketing waters. You’re familiar with other types of marketing…print, radio and maybe some email marketing too. And they seem to do OK (but it’s hard to tell exactly).

But what’s your plan for 2010+ to grow revenues and reach new customers without creating a big marketing budget?

Consider what The Kitchen Table Bistro of Richmond, VT is doing. Their focus is creating a casual dining experience for friends and family by featuring amazing dishes using local products in a cozy, comfortable setting. And they do this very well. That’s their passion. Though it leaves little extra time for subjects like Internet Marketing, they’re smart enough to know its important.

In less than 4 weeks, duddyEIGHT consulting helped TKTB create and implement a digital marketing plan that puts them on the map and sets the stage for increased brand exposure, communication and client interaction.

Examples

• Their site has been optimized so the search engines like Google better display who they are
• They are registered with food and dining sites (e.g. Yelp!, TripAdvisor, 7Nights) with updated content
• They have a new Facebook business page that easily showcases their culinary creations and warm dining atmosphere while communicating to fans specials and events
• And they are about to start Tweeting.

They now have a digital marketing plan, they’re getting educated, and it didn’t take a lot of effort to make it all happen.

Do People Use the Internet Regularly?

According to a recent Harris Interactive poll, Internet users are now spending an average of 13 hours a week online. And the coveted age group of 25-49 years old spend about 17 hours online–the most of any group (Note: this time does not include time using email).

Why is this significant?

• The amount of time using the Internet has grown significantly–almost a 100% since 2002.
• Use at home is increasing faster than at work.
• Internet usage is cutting into other forms (TV, print, radio) of media.

Harris Interactive concluded that the increase in the number of hours spent online in the last two years compared with all previous years is noteworthy and likely reflects a growing accessibility and ability to use the Internet, as well as an increase in desirable websites.

For those Vermont businesses that have not yet embraced Internet branding and advertising, let me ask you this: Do you think local Vermonters are listening to the radio or reading a newspaper for 13-17 hours?

About the poll: This Harris Poll was conducted by telephone within the US July 7-12 and October 13-18, 2009 among 2,029 adults (ages 18+). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region, number of adults in the household, number of phone lines in the household were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population.

Why is Local Blogging Gaining so Much Interest?

Just read Time Warner’s announcement that they are investing in Outside.in too. Outside.in has created a system whereby they aggregate neighborhood bloggers so they can be added to other websites (e.g. TV stations and newspapers). An example may be a the athletic director for a local high school that blogs about the school’s sports teams. Using Outside.in, that blog’s headlines can be auto-fed into a local newspaper’s web site.

What's happening. Where you are. Right now.

This move by Time Warner tells me there is increasing interest and awareness on local content and its use. The days of content only originating from the paid staff of media outlets is over. Not just because anyone can create and write a blog, because tools are being created to assemble and distribute the content to the people who are most interested in the content.

If you are a blogger, is your content reaching its intended audience?

What’s Next for Display Advertising?

I’m sure I’ll end up talking a lot about online display advertising here, but I must point out a significant move by Google yesterday. They announced the acquisition of Teracent, a technology company that efficiently creates display ads customized to the specific consumer and web site. Sound familiar? It’s the visual version of Google’s AdWords (their search advertising product that has helped create their multi-billion dollar market value).

So why is this important to note? It’s yet another sign that display ads will be the dominant advertising form in the near future. Consumers are visually stimulated. Take that and the ability to customize the display ad’s message based on the viewer’s interest, location, and behaviors and you have visually contextual advertising.

Are you promoting your business online with display ads?

How Do You Measure Your Marketing Effectiveness?

Don’t feel bad. Many of the largest companies in the world are still trying to figure this out. But you do need to try and build a plan around your marketing efforts to test, evaluate and optimize. And you do that by measuring the performance of the online ad, radio spot, or email campaign. Unless you like driving blind or spending marketing dollars for fun, you need to ask the question, “what’s my desired and actual return on my marketing investments?” Some, like Google’s manager for Canada, will recommend a post-grad math major crunching the numbers to find the answer.

How about a simpler approach (example):

1. What’s the desired outcome?

Courtesy of Niki Brown

• More traffic into my store
• New customers
• Increase the awareness of my brand
• Build traffic to my website

2. Who am I trying to reach?

• Young adults
• Adults with children
• Adults without children
• Women, Men or both

Are Vanity URL’s Important?

In the 1990’s, one of the big stories during the rapid use of the web was whether the rightful owner secured their domain name (e.g. www.ford.com). Some had to learn a hard lesson that waiting (regardless of the reason) caused customer confusion if not legal battles to obtain the rights.

Don’t we learn from others (or our own) mistakes. Evidently, not all of us do.

Today, most everyone knows to grab that domain for a new business, product, or even your soon to be born child (really, it’s being done). But as social media tools like Facebook and Twitter become a common method of connecting with customers, not everyone (even the big brand names) is remembering the 90’s and securing their vanity URL (e.g. www.facebook.com/SeventhGeneration) for these important tools .

Why’s this important? Even if you are not ready to enter into social media, you want to have these vanity URLs under your control to limit customer confusion. And when you are ready, having a URL www.twitter.com/myorganization’sname is easier for your customers to remember and reinforces your brand.

So how are local businesses in Vermont doing? Let’s take a look at three (as of this post date):

Facebook Page

Vermont Teddy Bear

• Yes, have a FB page
• No, do not have a vanity URL (still available)

Smuggler’s Notch Family Resort

• Yes, have a FB page
• Yes, have a vanity URL

Bolton Valley Resort

• Yes, have a FB page
• No, do not have a vanity URL (still available)

Twitter Account

Vermont Teddy Bear

What Does Advertising Mean to You?

It’s one of those things that seems so obvious, but ask 10 business owners this question and you will get 10 varying answers. One of the things I’ve always consider advertising was to:

Reach the intended audience (the client) with the right message (the pitch) at the right time (the state of mind).

Simple, right? Not so fast. I see too many examples to mention of businesses not applying this simple but critical principle. Wasted dollars and bad experiences are the result. The digital world was supposed to make advertising (as described above) fix all of this. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

But there are some great Burlington, Vt examples to consider, here’s two:

Davis Studio – advertises on FindandGoSeek their seasonal art camps for kids. They reach local parents (the client) with the right message (kid art camps) at the right time (parents use FindandGoSeek to find things to

Davis Studio Online Ad

do for their kids).

August First – uses Twitter to promote lunch time specials. They reach locals (the client) with the right message (tasty lunch menu items) at the right time (tweeting begins at 10:30Am).

Dig into this further by reading a whitepaper from Dynamic Logic.

Why are consumers using social media to following everyday businesses?

Do you really love Pizza Hut enough be a Facebook fan or download its iPhone app? Well, over 1M folks do. But what’s the real reason? Some think it has something to do with deals and discounts…like Pizza Hut’s 20% discount on iPhone orders. I think they’re on to something. Is your restaurant using social media?