Category Archives: Internet Marketing

I recently wrote about how fear of rejection in my tips for graphics designers starting out article on my personal blog, but it was only after reading Dr. Ivan Misner’s article on Fear of Rejection that it really started to sink in.

Dr. Misner is the founder of BNI and an prolific author. His latest book is entitled, Business Networking and Sex: Not What You Think.

In his article on Success Net Online, Dr. Misner shares his story of how scared he was of asking a local bookstore to buy his book. “I wasn’t sure that they would be willing to carry a book from an unknown author. I sat there too embarrassed to make any moves toward the entrance,” he wrote.

He rationalized to himself that there were really only two options, of which only one that would result in success. This made the decision, which just a moment prior had seemed so frightening he couldn’t force himself to get out of the car, to being the most logical decision.

Do I struggle with a fear of rejection? While it pains me to admit I’m deficient at something, asking something for someone when there is a chance they will say no is terrifying to me. But I know that tenacity is a key tenet of a successful business person and so it’s something I’m working to conquer.

This is a guest post by Leslie Bailey, a freelance writer in Indianapolis.

As a blogger and freelance writer, I receive dozens and dozens of press releases a week. About 98% of those are deleted…and that’s on a good day.

Despite what old-school public relations professionals might say, press releases are no longer the only way to get the attention of the media. Social media and modern marketing are far too strong of a driving force in this sector to ignore.

That’s not to say however, that press releases are a lost cause – if you handle them correctly.

Here are a few tips from my personal experience that will help you get the most out of your press release. Note: these tips may not apply in every situation; consider each case on an individual basis.

The easiest way to do this is by checking of the ‘Five Ws’ – Who, What, Where, When, W…and I don’t mean within the copy of your press release.

WHO

If you’re targeting a specific audience – what’s that? You’re just sending out mass emails? Let’s start over.

To get the most value out of a press release, consider reaching out to your subject in a personalized manner. No one wants to feel like they’re part of a cattle call. Unless a publicity email addresses me by name, I don’t read it.

Blogger, Madam, “Hi there” or my favorite yesterday, “Hi lovey!,” don’t count. Find out the person’s name and address them by such (be sure to spell it correctly!)

WHAT

What does the person who you’re contacting cover? If you are trying to pitch the latest and greatest diaper, you should probably note that I don’t have children and have never written anything related to babies. Look at media contact’s previous or recent work to see what topics they usually write about.

WHERE

Where are you sending this press release? Make sure it’s the subjects preferred method of communication. I’ve had people contact me through Facebook, Twitter, and other various platforms to ask for my email address. If they’d take a few minutes, they’d see it’s listed very clearly in several places.

WHEN

Timing is everything. If your media blast is concerning something Christmas related, it’s as effective to send it in July, as it would be to send it on Christmas Eve. As a blogger, I like a six-week lead but when it comes to print publications, the time varies. For a newspaper story, I need about four-weeks notice while something pointed for magazine, two and a half months. Each publication is different though so be sure to consider the timing of your release.

WHY

This is key not only within your content but also when considering your recipient. Why does this person care what you have to say? Referring back to the matter of ‘what’, a food writer isn’t going to care about the latest in fall fashions just as a fashion writer doesn’t care about the best place to create a Fantasy Sports Team.

IN CONCLUSION…

You’ll notice that all of these suggestions take TIME. Sure, you’re a busy person and you’re trying to get a message out to the greatest number of people possible but if you can’t take a moment to find out someone’s name, why do they want to spend hours covering your news? They won’t.

Do your research, make a friendly and personalized introduction and see how much further it takes you.

You can follow Leslie @Lesalina.

Indianapolis marketing firm, Watershawl, offers web design, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, online advertising services to help you get more exposure, gain new customers, and grow your business.

Watershawl is in the business of helping your business and Erich Stauffer will help you every step of the way. He’s helped businesses from startups to established businesses grow using the multiplying power of the Internet.

We believe that sharing, transparency, and engagement with current and potential clients is one of the best ways to reduce barriers to using your products and services. We use web technology to get your message across to those seeking it.

While the Internet is an open playing field, you may be unfamiliar with the terms or all of the new sites, techniques, or jargon. That’s okay. We keep up with that stuff and can explain it all to you when you’re ready. We’re nice like that.

We know how to market businesses online in Indianapolis. We’ve got clients who rank highly on Google in some of the most competitive categories including dentists, landscapers, and retail. If you’re a local business in Indianapolis, Watershawl can help.

Our Process

If you’re interested in learning how Watershawl can help use the power of the Internet to grow your business in the Indianapolis market, call or email us to setup a time to discuss your goals. The first hour of consultation is free at which time we’ll be able to provide a no-obligation, up-front quote on what we believe it would take to achieve your goals.

Indianapolis marketing projects start at $200 and vary according to your needs. If you’re looking for an outsourced marketing team member who can help you get organized and move in the path of growth, Erich Stauffer is a nice guy who’s been there. He’s led successful projects of varying sizes and would love to help you get started with your project soon.

Four ways to react to client insights

So, if you have read any business journal, blog, or magazine in the last year you’ve heard ad-naseum about the power of Big Data. Combing through the digital exhaust that all consumers produce to better understand their preferences and habits can produce big dividends to big companies who have big data (notice the trend here?). But what if you are a small shop? You can’t pay MBAs and Quants to comb through your data to produce insights and most likely – you don’t have the mountains of data to pore through anyway. But, I’m here to say that Big Data is simply a way for a large company to feel like a small one. Your small business has the advantage!

Big Data is simply about responding to client behavior. It’s just that the huge companies have to hire those big guns to get down to knowing the client behavior before they respond to it. But your small business can gain that client knowledge without the technical know-how and the sterility that can come from a numbers-only approach like Target recently used to predict when their shoppers are pregnant.

So, ask what your clients think about you. Then be flexible, and most importantly, do something about what you hear! Here are four ways to how to ask clients what they would like more of:

• Add comment boxes on order forms (both online and offline). If you’ve got the space, add some open ended prompts to get them writing. Be creative and write like a human because you are one (and so are your readers!).
• Ask your best clients what it would take for them to leave you for your competition. That will show your their sensitivity points and give you some target areas to focus on.
• Write thank you notes for business are simple and effective. Send a thank you note with a brief survey with plenty of open-ended questions and offer a thank you gift when they return it.
• Engage with your clients via Twitter. This is a no-brainer to get with your most influential clients and just have a conversation with them on why they are your brand champions.

A company who views their client as a number has nothing on a small business owner who truly cares about his or her clients. There is no better way to show that you care than to heed their desires and innovate new products and services to meet their needs inside of the relationship they already have with your business.

This is a guest post by Jason Cobb. Contact Jason today to boost your brand and grow your sales via effective social and web marketing.

Pages for Google+

Different people are interested in different parts of your business. Whether it’s breaking news, updates, promotions, links, photos – even talking face-to-face with groups via easy-to-use video chat – Google+ lets you easily share the right things with the right customers. And unlike Facebook, Pages for Google+ can actually help your SEO efforts.

Google advocates putting the +1 button anywhere you’d like people to be able to recommend your business, products or services to friends and contacts all across the web. Google+ makes it easy to learn more about how your followers’ interactions on your page affect your brand, and your business.

We’ve been testing Pages for Google+ for a couple of months now. We ran into one instance where we couldn’t add more pages for our customers, but we found that we were just in a waiting period before being able to add more. This is probably a built-in protection against spamming.

Need help setting up your Google+ Page for your business? We can help.

About Google+

Google+, the search giant’s new social network and answer to Facebook features a new friend list function called “circles”, which has been very positive overall. Users have commented that it’s the easiest system on the market for putting friends into groups, making it easier to share posts with just your business colleagues or your family. We are really interested in the circles option, but it needs more people on there so it doesn’t die like Google Buzz. We like the idea of circles and the integrated video chat/hangout function. They’re not really inventing anything new, just putting things like Facebook groups and Skype-like chat front and center. It becomes a more cozy place to hang out online. Facebook will start to look more stuck up and sterile over time, the same way MySpace started to look more trashy.

We have noticed there are less people requesting to be friends and less friend requests being answered. We think Facebook peaked in 2009 and started to decline after that. But even though numbers are down, they are still number one, for now. It has to do with elasticity, which used in this context means peoples ability to want and except change. In the beginning, when things are new, people are more lenient and will try new things, but over time, ideas harden and change becomes harder. It works with friendships, departments, new businesses, and even social networks. We’ve got high hopes for Google’s inventiveness. The on-demand video chat feature called “Hangouts” is a great idea. Considering it’s 2011, We’re suprised that’s not a feature that we take for granted already.

We did a small test to see what were some of the biggest problems business owners had and what we found was the biggest problem was “How to Get More Customers“

We know that in order to get more customers you must first figure out what your customers pain points are – find out what are the things they are complaining about that you can fix – and then determine if they are both able and willing to pay for them. The first part of that question is called a customer interview.

Here’s an example: a business owner complains of having too much spam in their email. You respond by creating or finding a product that helps the client reduce their spam and then asking the customer if they would be willing to pay to have their spam reduced. This is called a solution interview.

Customer and Solution Interviews are part of the Lean Startup methodology, which combines Customer Development and Agile Development to create a more sound Business Model that values learning. Agile and Lean both use iterative processes and the Scientific Method to hypothesize, test, and learn in order to create a product that customers actually want before building it. Once they have this “product/market fit” they built it as fast as possible. Erich Stauffer talks more about this cycle here.

If you’re solving clients problems you won’t have to do much marketing at all – the customers will seek you out. If they aren’t seeking you out, you might not be solving their problems.

How do you identify what your customers pain points are?

The simplest answer is to ask your target client or existing client base what things are bothering them most and when you start to see a trend, you can start to ask if they’d be willing to pay for it to get fixed.

A less effective, but quicker route is to find out where your customers are complaining or seeking out solutions online. A good way to do this is by using Google Discussion Search to search for problems people are sharing on forums and other discussion groups.

We did a test search with the term “my business” and this is what we found:

• My business keeps disappearing from Google Places
• I need a slogan for my business
• I need a logo for my Business and possibly a website
• I need help getting payments to my business
• What is the best CRM software for my business?
• Anyone using Dropbox for business file storage?
• I need a really good name for my business
• I need help with my business card
• A client owes my business money… what to do?
• Can I request to remove my business from Yelp / Qype?
• I need help getting my business off the ground
• How to promote a new site?
• How many of you have tried Offline Marketing ?
• What’s your most effective marketing method?
• What is the most important points of business?
• How to get more customers?

Once we started noticing a trend, we started recording things we could blog about, solutions for problems like which CRM is best, how to use Dropbox for your business, and how to promote a new website. Our first post is this post, which addresses the last question

How to Get More Customers?

1. Identify a need by asking or searching.
2. Find a solution for that need.
3. Ask potential clients if they would pay for that solution.
4. If so, write about it. If not, find a different problem or solution.
5. Once you’ve written about it, promote it using SEO.

Essentially you start out with Lean methodologies, then do content marketing, then finish with SEO. So the key to getting more customers is not SEO, it’s knowing you have a product that solves a problem AND people are willing and able to pay for and then writing up content about it on your “home base” and only then doing search engine optimization.

As recent as the late 90′s just having an IT department set you apart from your competition and gave your company an edge, but by the early 2000′s it wasn’t enough anymore. Every business worth its salt had bought computers, built networks, and setup servers. IT had gone from a luxury to an appliance.

In the late 2000′s the same sort of shift occurred in web design. First, just having a website gave you an edge, then it was SEO that put you on top, now it’s social media, community involvement, being human and transparent, or content marketing. Web design and SEO are now standards – it’s what else you do that sets you apart.

How to Set Yourself Apart from Your Competition

If having a great website and search engine optimization are now the new baseline, then how will your company stand out against the competition? The smartest people in the room are saying three things:

• Humanize your business.
• Consider your community.
• Create great content.

Humanize Your Business

Mimi Henderlong of Threadless says, “Staying human creates loyalty,” and part of being human is making mistakes, “Mistakes are OK! Even can bee good.” International advertising firm, gyro, says that people don’t buy from businesses, they buy from people. Consider telling a story about someone who works at your company and make your customer the hero. Be as transparent as possible. Share what your company believes in and why the employees do the things they do. You may have heard that people don’t care about what you know until they know how much you care, but as Simon Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Start with why.

Consider Your Community

Threadless is a community-powered ecommerce website that is highly engaged with it’s community, partly because of Mimi’s work, who believes there are four core values of a healthy community:

• Benefit – What is the benefit to the community? Why does someone join a community?
• Influence – Do users have influence? Do they know what to do?
• Belonging – Do they feel like they belong? Do they know what to do?
• Empowerment – Ambassador programs, elevate members, badges, camps, events

Create Great Content

“I don’t care about what you care about, but you should,” said Merlin Mann of 43 Folders when talking about priority. Merlin is passionate about helping people do more with their lives by doing less things that don’t matter and focusing on doing things that are great. If you focused less on the email that comes in every 4 minutes to the project you’ve been trying to complete for the last 4 months, do you think you could complete it faster? Is the project really a priority if you keep checking your email? Does the project even matter? Merlin Mann says, “If you say ‘yes’ to everything there’s no time to make something great.” And great content is one of the primary things that will set your company and yourself apart from your competition.

We believe that businesses are a vital part of their community and should be listed on as many directories as possible to help the members of those communities have the most information to make the best decisions and find the right company for their needs. We believe that adding your local business to this local directories list is not only to earn your business more exposure, but will help you better understand what your customers are looking for so that if there is something not already listed on your website, that you might add it when editing your web design. Examples of information collected included: hours of operation, pictures and/or video of your business, payment methods accepted, parking information, coupons, services, and products. Some local directory web sites may ask how long you’ve been in business or whether or not you’re licensed. Some are free and others cost a fee.

Here is the complete list of local business directories we use to market your business online: Read more

This is a list of sites I use to backlink from for myself and my web design, SEO, and social media marketing clients:

Social Bookmarking Sites

• BibSonomy
• BlinkList
• Connotea
• Delicious
• Digg
• Diigo
• Fark - moderated
• Folkd
• Mister Wong
• Mixx – currently undergoing some changes
• Netvouz
• Reddit - moderated, but very effective
• StumbleUpon - can be very effective
• Tagza

I just got a little scare when I clicked, “Sign out,” at Twitter and got the message, “Your account will be deactivated, Bye!” I logged back in successfully, but am still unsure of what is going on. Hopefully it’s just a glitch at Twitter and will be fixed soon.