If your business is following the current trend, it’s likely that your sales are holding their own or declining. This may leave less money to spend on traditional marketing via advertisements, trade shows, and email blasts to paid lists. Rather than looking for short term sales increases that stop working when you stop paying, invest brain-power, time, and money into the long-term viability of your business by creating content for distribution online. This is called “inbound marketing.” The tools of the new inbound marketing techniques are blogs, social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and more) and the time and brain power of your staff.

As defined by Hubspot, a creator of web site marketing tools, Inbound marketing is “marketing focused on getting found by customers.” This is contrasted with older forms of “outbound marketing” that focus on finding customers through advertising and other forms of paid prospecting.

Where Should I Start with Inbound Marketing?

Your ideal goal is to build a large volume of engaging, useful information that meets the needs of your potential clients while demonstrating your expertise. This content ultimately should be hosted on your main web site domain for search engine optimization purposes, but if resources are limited, you can begin with a free blog from WordPress.com. Just get started creating content and when you have the extra resources, you can hire a web developer to develop a blog on your own domain.

I recommend that you start engaging with social media by setting up a Twitter account and publishing excerpts of your blog articles along with a link to the full text of the article. However, don’t just use your Twitter account to publish links to your own content. Also do the following:

• Follow other users of interest to you and your customers
• Retweet any tweets that are interesting and relevant
• Search for keywords related to your industry and respond to those tweets with helpful information

You can also set up a Facebook page with relatively little work, but I’d recommend that as a second step after you are using Twitter effectively. Also consider using Delicious bookmarks to share what you’re reading with others.  There are more techniques for engaging potential customers via social media than I can cover here. My goal is to just get you started without overwhelming you.

Inbound Marketing Is More Than Social Media

Social media engagement means you take part in a conversation that’s going on in recognized meeting places online. This is valuable, but you also want to become a destination for people who are searching for what you have to offer. To do this, you must first develop content as described above and present it in a search engine friendly manner.

You also will want to use Search Engine Optimization techniques such as keyword research to identify possible phrases potential customers use when they attempt to find your business online. There are many resources on the web for this kind of training if you’re inclined to do it yourself.

Eventually, you may want to retain a web developer who is savvy about Search Engine Optimization at some point to take your site to the next level. That said, it is amazing at how far some basic keyword research and content creation can go in marketing your business online.

In conclusion, first get started blogging as a way of creating content, next set up a Twitter account to engage potential customers and extend the reach of your blog. If you’re cash strapped, use a free service like WordPress.com to begin blogging (you can export content later to a blog on your own web site). If you have more resources, you may want to hire a WordPress developer who can integrate WordPress into your web site. I would be happy to talk to you about that.

Related Articles

• Concept to Content: Writing for the Small Business Web Site
• Put Your Customers First: Writing for the Small Business Web Site
• How To Start Getting Visitors from Search Engines

Rule #1 – Don’t advertise a product that is not profitable. As a rule of thumb, I don’t use Adwords to promote products with less than an $80 margin between cost and retail price. This rules out many small e-commerce operations where an average order is $30 and much of that goes to cover wholesale costs. While advertising on Adwords can boost sales and be very profitable, it is not cheap.

Rule #2 – Keep headlines simple and obvious. I have tried almost every variation for Adwords headlines that I can conceive, and few of them worked any better than simply describing the product clearly and succinctly.

Rule #3 – Use your ad body to describe key selling features. Again, avoid subtlety. Be obvious.

Rule #4 – If at all possible match the ad headline and the landing page headline. Keep the ad and landing page tightly integrated. However, I don’t recommend multiple landing pages for small businesses. Make your home page the Adwords campaign’s landing page. Focus the content on your home page and Adwords ads on your key selling points.

Rule #5 – Capitalize your Display URLs appropriately. Instead of typing “www.aboundmarketing.com,” use “www.AboundMarketing.com.” Yes, this makes a difference.

Rule #6 – Avoid clutter and reduce clicks required to respond to your advertised offer. Keep content on your landing page simple and easy to scan with a very easily spotted call to action (like a button that proclaims “Request your free trial”).

Rule #7 – Use a web form as a response mechanism for your campaign. Require only the absolute minimum amount of data to submit the form. People aren’t trusting, and they do not have time to provide any extra information. Keep it simple.

So there you have it. Keep it simple. Keep it obvious.

This approach works. No other “sophisticated” strategies work.

A key way in which small businesses are better than their corporate counterparts is their ability to specialize. Most small businesses are natural specialists:

• Since they are often cash poor, they cannot market themselves broadly. Specialization allows a strategic marketing approach.
• Since they are often short on manpower, it is more feasible to optimize the capabilities of a small staff rather than hiring a large number of employees.
• Since they are “small” no one will believe them if they claim to do a large number of things well (even if it is true).

It is possible to add new services and even to move into new business ventures with an existing small business, but unless you maintain the distinctive nature of your business you will lose customers. Why?

• Your business doesn’t have the resources to develop effective marketing messages that underpin each of your offerings. As a result, you begin to look more and more like a commodity whose only differentiation is price.
• Your work quality will slip because you lose control by outsourcing or spread your employees (and your own) capabilities too far.
• You won’t be able to convince anyone of your expertise in the new area if your expertise and service in the old area slips. (And it probably will.)

If you feel pressure to expand or diversify your business, perhaps you should first focus in on what differentiates your business currently. What works? By focusing on that and sharpening focus your business may actually find a way to grow, even in a competitive market.

So how does this concept apply to your small business web site? Communicate your core business clearly. Find ways to demonstrate why what you do currently is worth buying. Don’t get lost in the clutter of new innovations. If you expand into new areas, use your existing expertise to provide credibility for your new venture.

Questions to consider:

• What is my most popular product or service?
• Why do people prefer me over the competition for this offering?
• Can I improve on this point of differentiation?
• Can I take this point of difference into a new market? It’s possible you can, but it is always a risk. Be sure of yourself before you leap and be ready to correct course.

Related Resources:

• Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition
• Differentiate Your Business or Die

Mitch does an excellent job of breaking the online marketing task into chapters that provide actionable information. And, though Mitch focuses heavily on information products, he also offers tips that work well in any context.

I especially appreciate the early chapters on the importance of an entrepreneurial mindset and strategic thinking. Those chapters are worth the price of the book.

Mastering Online Marketing also covers how to select and sell products and services, web design dos and don’ts, writing for the web, traffic conversion (turning visitors into customers), automation, social media, and more.

Since online lead generation campaigns generally use a pay-per-click model, you’ll want to make the best possible use of the visits you purchase. This is where landing page optimization enters the picture. Using a combination of testing page designs and content, along with various advertising messages, your campaign manager should work to improve your return on investment.

So, is online lead generation right for your business? If your business has a profitable product that meets the needs of a well defined customer group, you should be able to generate leads affordably online. However, if you are in a low margin business or a crowded market, don’t expect online lead generation to solve all your problems. In that case, however, you can use pay-per-click advertising to test new marketing messages and attempt to re-position your product as a leader within a market niche.

Using the web to generate sales leads is superior to offline advertising in that your ad spend is easy to track. In fact, Google Adwords has integrated its free and powerful Google Analytics program along with built in conversion tracking. With these tools, you can easily monitor which ads perform best and which key phrases work well to generate leads.

Are you using search marketing, especially pay-per-click advertising, to generate sales leads online? What lessons have you learned?

Research

As I mentioned recently, your prospective customers are looking for you. It pays to use the web to investigate questions that your potential customers are asking. If all else fails, you can ask your customers for advice on article topics.

Create Buyer Personas

Buyer persona creation is a complex topic. For the purpose of this article, I’ll keep it simple. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. If possible spend time to create a composite ideal customer and speak directly to this “person” as you write. If time is at a premium, picture one of your current customers, and write as if you were personally addressing that person.

Solve Your Customer’s Problems

What does your persona complain about? What are struggles that are common to most of your customers? For my customers, it is a challenge to create relevant content for their blogs and websites. That, of course, is why I am writing this! Use your customers’ challenges as your opportunity to demonstrate relevance and expertise.

Content Presentation

Do your customers have time to read? Are they technical, unsophisticated, traditional? Present your content authentically to your customers. Try to match your style and vocabulary to your persona.

In addition, your persona may dictate that you choose to use video or audio rather than writing a blog post or article. In his book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, David Meerman Smith lists the following content presentation choices:

• White Papers -  Technical documents that define a business problem and present your company’s solution
• E-Books – An informal downloadable document, often a PDF, that presents a business challenge and solution
• Email Newsletters
• Webinars
• Wikis
• Research and survey reports
• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Video

Since my target client is continually learning and growing through reading, I choose to focus on articles. Who knows? One day I may experiment with audio or video. For now, this works!

Keep Content Simple

Most of us are extremely busy. When we visit a web page for information, we want to find the main point quickly.

Here are some easy ways to keep things simple:

• Use bulleted lists for related ideas
• State your main point in the opening paragraph and use the rest of the post to elaborate

Most importantly, just get started writing!

Research Your Potential Customers’ Interests

Check Out the Answer Services:
Your potential customers are looking for you. In fact, it’s likely that they are already on the Internet asking questions related to your product or service. Services like LinkedIn Answers, Google Answers (now defunct, but good for research) and Yahoo! Answers are effective ways to discover what your potential customers are curious about. Start with your content idea and search the answer base to see what questions have been asked and what answers offered. Perhaps you’ll identify a gap you can fill with an answer via that service, a web page on your own site, a video, or a blog post. There is no better way to understand what people are thinking than by reviewing the questions they ask.

Use the Alert Services:

Google Alerts and Twitter tools like TweetDeck allow you to set up notifications for phrases that interest you. If you think a certain subject may be of interest, set up alerts for phrases related to your topic of interest. Google and Twitter will notify you as new information on those topics is published. (Thanks to Paul Boag for his excellent interview of Mel Kirk for expanding my understanding of how to use alerts for marketing.)

Browse Groups:

Troll Google and Yahoo! Groups to find people who have already identified themselves as being interested in your topic of choice. Don’t forget to also check out Facebook’s fast growing groups as well.

Read Blogs and Forums:
If your potential customers are a well-defined professional group, it’s likely that they have easy-to-find gathering places on the Web. Search them out and watch what your customers discuss on forums and blogs. Also read the articles that are produced by the professional organizations that are the nucleus of your customers’ professional world.

If your customers are not grouped by profession, it’s likely that they share a hobby, or other interest. Using the same tactics as above, target the interest groups that you believe best mesh with your business offering and search out the blogs, forums, and content websites that are most authoritative.

Read and participate in discussion to learn about what interests your potential customers.

Survey Your Readers:
You can also use polls to discover what topics are of interest to your current website visitors. This is less effective than searching the answer services I have mentioned above because it doesn’t reach beyond your current visitors. However, you can play with surveys at little or no cost using these free tools:

• Survey Monkey
• Zoomerang

Enable Content Ratings:
Let your current website visitors rate your pages and blog posts. Their ratings will tell you what interests them. Based on those interests, you can plan content. There are usually free rating tools available for content management systems like Drupal and WordPress.

Just Ask:
Want to know what your customers are interested in hearing from you? Call. Email. Visit. And ask. You’ll be surprised at what you learn!

With your writing topics in hand, you can approach the task of creating relevant and valuable content with confidence.

What tools do you use to find your customers’ interests? Please comment!

SEO Rules of Thumb for Small Business Success

On-Page Factors

• Think about your website from the perspective of your visitor.
  • Avoid adding text just for search engines unless it makes your visitor’s experience better
  • Avoid linking to websites that don’t add value for your visitors
  • Do create content that will thrill your readers with relevant and engaging information
  • Do keyword research to discover how your product or service is being described by prospective visitors
• The search engines want their users to find relevant content.
  • Make it easy for Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, and others to understand your page or post’s content by:
    • Using relevant and unambiguous titles
    • Including relevant keywords in your content
    • Breaking content apart with lists and appropriate headings
  • Remember that all parts of your page are not equal in importance. Here are some of the most important parts of your page:
    • The page title is likely the most important place to include keywords
    • HTML headings (h1, h2, h3, h4)
    • Link text
    • Body text
    • Everything else is probably less important than the title, headings, link text and body text – this includes your meta tags (keywords, description, etc.). Focus on these elements after taking care of the basics.
• Create your website using standards compliant HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). If your HTML validates, search engines will be more likely to consider it authoritative.

Off-Page Factors

Even if you set up your website’s content perfectly, you still may not rise above your competition in the search engine results pages. Why? One of the major ways search engines decide if your site is relevant to a specific search query is by looking at the number of links pointing at your site. Below are some handy pointers on how to get relevant incoming web links:

• Publish information that is timely and relevant enough to attract readers who share your articles with friends via social media tools like Delicious, Twitter, and Facebook.
• Take advantage of RSS to notify interested readers when you post new content.
• Get listed on respected website directories like Yahoo! and the Open Directory as well as industry-specific business directories and local chamber of commerce websites.
• Create a listing on Google Local, Yahoo! Local, and Live Search Maps.
• Become a “lurker” on key industry blogs and active forums and add value by providing relevant comments and answers to questions (create a profile with a link back to your website).
• Do not trade or buy links (unless, I suppose, you can make a strong case that this benefits your visitors).
  • Remember that link building isn’t only about quantity. Search engines care about quality as well. If you receive incoming links from websites known to sell links, it may not have a positive impact on your website.
• Always be ready to try new things. There are thousands of ways to attract visitors by creating innovative content. Try your ideas and measure the results!

Remember to listen to more than one search engine optimization expert. Read what search engines, especially Google, have to say about search engine optimization. Google has also published videos regarding how to use the Google Webmaster Tools.

In summary, create meaningful content based on your prospective customers’ interests. Build links by participating on industry blogs and forums and getting listed on respected business directories.

After making mistakes, I discovered a third option, finding thought leaders within the world of web development and learning from them. I read books by Eric Meyer , Molly E. Holzschlag, Dan Cederholm, Jeffrey Zeldman, and more. These were the thought leaders in the web development market. They helped me understand and define my role as a web developer.

Fastforward to 2009. It’s become clear over the intervening six years that web design and development, as important as they are simply do not lead to success in small business marketing on their own. I’m sure this comes as no shock to anyone else, but it took me a long time to re-orient myself and my business around this point.

So where are the thought leaders in this domain? A few years ago, I began reading books by Robert Scoble, Seth Godin, and Jeremy Wright. All these authors are excellent and definitely worth a read, repeatedly.

Through reading and experience, it didn’t take long to learn that people visit websites for content, not interface design. But creating content that attracts visitors and also contributes to the bottom line of a business is not so simple. The critical missing link is to create content by starting with the needs of our customers, not our own perceptions.

As David Meerman Scott says in the book that inspired this article, “What works is a focus on your buyers and their problems. What fails is an egocentric display of your products and services.”

But how can we do this? I pulled these points from The New Rules of Marketing & PR:

1. Identify your organizational goals
2. Build one or more buyer personas
3. Research words or phrases your personas use to talk search for your products and services
4. Think about how you want to position your product. What do you want your customer to think about your product?
5. Develop an editorial plan to reach your buyers with focused content in the media (text, video, audio) they prefer

The main point of The New Rules of Marketing and PR is that with the proper research, you can create content that leads prospective customers into your buying process naturally.

Scott covers the following media as tools that can be used to reach prospective customers with relevant content:

• Blogs
• News Releases
• Audio Content Delivery through Podcasting
• Forums & Wikis

Scott discusses how to use these tools, and others to reach potential customers and create a viral marketing response. He then gives an overview of search engine marketing and search engine optimization that is well grounded. In other words, he doesn’t offer quick ways to get on the first page of Google (usually these tactics involve smoke & mirrors).  He wraps up the chapter on search engine marketing by saying, “The best search engine marketing comes from paying attention to and understanding your buyers, not from manipulating or tricking them.”

I recommend this book to my small business clients regularly. It is written in an engaging and authentic voice with a balance between big picture analysis and practical advice. I think it’s the most engaging and practical resource available about small business marketing.

Related Resources

• The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly (New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs,)
• David Meerman Scott Author & Lon Safko The Social Media Bible Interview