2010 Small Business Marketing Tips

Here are some small business web design and B2B marketing tips & trends for Small Businesses to grow in 2010:

Inbound Marketing

You are probably most familiar with the outbound marketing approach. This is the traditional method of interrupting a potential client with a sales message about your products or services you want to sell them. Distribution examples of outbound marketing are telemarketing, trade shows, email blasts, print ads, TV/radio ads and mass-market direct mail.

Inbound marketing strategies and techniques draw appropriate prospects and clients towards a business and its products/services without “hounding” a prospective client. Because most buyers today are skeptical and untrusting of just about everything, outbound marketing is becoming less effective. Buyers today are not going to trust you just because you say so, (reference Enron, Wall Street collapse, and Tiger Woods).

This is quickly making Inbound marketing a preferred marketing approach to traditional Outbound marketing because it more closely matches the way buyers want to make purchasing decisions. Buyers today are well-informed purchasers because they scour the Internet to learn about the products and services they intend to buy first.

Obtain Free Search Engine Results

Organic search engine results, the clicks to your website you do not pay for represent 75% of all clicks from search engines. Pay per Click, (PPC) advertising only generates 25% of all clicks. Moreover, research has shown that organic traffic is smarter and your organic listings last longer than PPC that only lasts as long as you keep spending money. The choice is easy develop more organic search engine traffic.

SEO Press Release Marketing

Not your father’s press releases of yesterday, today’s small businesses should develop press releases that are search engine optimized (SEO) friendly. This means press release specifically written for the Web. One SEO press release a month can be worth its weight in gold to small businesses looking to drive more targeted potential customers to their site and it is a fraction of the cost of paid search advertising.

Video Marketing

According to Forrester Research, 63% of respondents accessed online videos at least once a week, from a study of 5,300 business and IT professionals globally. Website videos are capturing the attention of more viewers online and with the same impact as television. Sound and motion are more compelling than the printed word. Now producing videos and getting them on your website is easier than ever.

B2B Selling in 2010

Today because of the Internet, most of your buyers are finding you and learning about you before you find them. Therefore, you need to be actively involved in shaping the messages and reputation of your business online. The best way to do this is with SEO Press Releases, Video marketing, a customer centric website, some social networking and implementing inbound customer centric marketing (http://www.mymarketingdept.com/CustomerCentricMarketing.htm)and sales techniques.

Customer centric sales and marketing produces face-to-face sales meetings on a small business budget. How, simple it builds trust because your focus is on helping your prospective customers first, before you begin to sell them anything. Selling becomes effortless because there is no sales pitch. You simply put first the needs of your customer first in helping them become more successful and by doing so you benefit too.

ROI

Do not forget why we do marketing in the first place, to make money. Do not be preoccupied with trying to figure out if your latest marketing program is getting “great advertising metrics”: like hits, impressions, clicks, leads, newsletter sign-ups, and so on. The only real measure of successful marketing is qualified closing opportunities and the only measure of sales success is actual sales.

While there are many things you can control the economy is not one of them. Avoid the typical marketing roller coaster that takes many small businesses and their money for a ride. Develop a plan to succeed and the determination to market your products and services consistently. Implement some or all of the marketing tips above for increasing your business success in the New Year.

06:54 - 2010-Jan-3