Today’s BUZZ BUILDER has to do with musicians promoting themselves. When promoting a show hit up Craigslist and blow up the COMMUNITY page and post your show under the MUSICIAN or EVENTS headings. It is estimated that Craigslist has more than 30 billion page views per month! http://www.craigslist.org/about/factsheet Remember anything you can do to bring attention to your cause will produce positive results for what you are trying to achieve….and that is to generate buzz!
Have a great weekend!
Recently I have been reading about professional athletes that are going broke after their playing careers are over. Specifically, two articles were of relevance…the first was in the February issue of Entrepreneur Magazine @entmagazine where Jason Daley talks about the staggering statistics of the number of NBA and NFL players that suffer financial hardships after they retire. In Daley’s article, he writes, “Roughly 60 percent of NBA players find themselves bankrupt five years after retiring, while 78 percent of NFL players are in financial trouble two years after taking off the pads, according to the NBA Players Association and Sports Illustrate, respectively.” Another article on CBS NEWS.com tells how former NBA great, Allen Iverson has reportedly gone broke. At one time Mr. Iverson was said to have made over $154 million dollars during his playing career. WOW!
These two articles really were the stepping stones for Buzz Revolution to start our athlete promo division. We will be focusing on helping athletes brand themselves outside of the sporting arena so that when they are ready to retire they have alternative endeavors to fall back on.
So for our first ever DAILY BUZZ BUILDER we are focusing on professional athletes and one small thing they can incorporate into their life that will help brand them outside of sports.
DAILY BUZZ BUILDER 2/16/2012 – Become a fixture on your local sports radio talk show. This will help “humanize” you to the public and let them see your personal side and take on varying topics. If you are engaging and personable it could lead to future work on radio or television after you retire. A great example of this is can be found on 104.3 THE DRIVE in Denver @1043thefan where former Denver Broncos defensive player Alfred William’s lends his witty and charming take on various sports topic every afternoon.
John Herrigel – www.MyMaineProperty.com I am a real estate agent and get literally 75% or more of my business off ofSEO work I have done for my site www.mymaineproperty.com
My site averages about 6000 unique visitors a months and Google organic accounts for about 40% of this, then Google Pay Per Click about 15% and then 10% for each Yahoo and Bing Organic.
Try typing into Google “Portland Maine real estate”.. I come up number.
Nick Rosener – www.technicktips.com I would like to share my #1 SEO strategy: Blogging. You can optimize your site by using keywords, adding alt tags, etc. This is definitely important. But, I can tell you that blogging with a self-hosted WordPress blog on your site is the single best way to elevate your site’s SEO.
When writing blog posts, try to write articles to answer “question traffic.” These articles answer popular questions that people would enter into search engines. For example, if you offer web marketing services you would want to write articles about “How to set up a Facebook Page for Your Business,” and “How to Write a Business Blog Article.” With consistent blogging, you will have traffic from several different queries being sent to your site.
Donny McIver – www.techknowligence.com I own a small IT services business, where we manage / administer / secure networks, servers and computers for small businesses of 5 – 35 employees in the Dallas, TX area. I have found several things effective on SEO efforts– and learned by burning through a lot of money on what not to do.
*Successful approach:*
– Google Ad Words – by far the best reporting and most functional as compared to several other equally priced alternatives
– Beyond the obvious no-brainer items like picking good key words and using realistic bids I have found narrowing your focus helps – make sure the ad (and target / landing page) correlates to the keywords being used. Make several campaigns accordingly.
– Use a geo-minded focus — so you limit the ad display by target audience zip code / city location / etc
– I have also limited the time of day display to correlate when I expect my target audience to be on-line and searching for my services instead of 24-hours / day
*Unsuccessful approach:*
– set it and forget it — you need to check in at least weekly to adjust your bids, keywords and targets
– be very careful about the “other display networks” — all the ad engines have their own flavor, but speaking to Google… once they purchased AdMob (mobile advertising on smart phones)
– if you weren’t careful on your target placement, you’d find out how quick you can burn your ad budget by a bunch of accidental click-throughs from smart phones.
Kathryn Kardos – www.travelenvogue.com We have implemented SEO at Travel En Vogue (www.travelenvogue.com), a luxury vacation rentals company in the following ways:
- Company Blog
- Keyword analysis, implementation in Web Copy and meta information
- Image Optimization
- Implementing Javascript and removing Flash
- Link Building
- Article writing/guest blogging/submission to free article sites
- Facebook, Twitter
- Google Places
(Almost) All of these methods have greatly boosted our traffic from 30 unique visits per month to 10,000 per month during peak rental season, and 6000 per month during slow season. The biggest help by far was the company blog and keyword distribution throughout our web cop and back end meta information.
The biggest failure was Google Places. As an agency that represents properties in several locations, we do not want to be found where our office is located, which is in Los Angeles. An SEO company we hired to implement some basic SEO strategies created our Places listing in LA with the keywords “Los Angeles vacation rentals”. We do not have any rentals in Los Angeles, so this has driven lots of useless traffic our way. The majority of our properties are located in Colorado, and although we tried to change our listing, Google refuses to accept it and does not provide customer service. We received a random phone call from a Google rep, and when we disclosed our situation to her she just removed our listing. We still have not been able to successfully create a listing.
The Google Places listing should have been handled differently, as well as creating an SEO friendly website from the beginning. It took an entire re-design to bring the site up to SEO speed and it would have been more cost effective if we had known what to do from the beginning!
Jeffrey Stewart – www.creativecapitalgroup.biz Successful campaigns are developed only after carefully understanding a businesses target audience. Most business owners think they know their customers, but in reality, they are merely scratching the surface. After thorough demographic and behavioral analysis using studies from major outlets, we carefully analyze the data to see what online (or mobile) attributes are most prevalent. We want to understand how they use search engines, the times of day, what engines, what they are searching for etc. The more knowledgeable we are about the audience, the more targeted our organic and paid search campaigns are for our clients. We highly recommend a three month organic SEO campaign with a deep target audience review. We have seen great success in getting first page and top rankings organically, which will generate significantly higher traffic than paid, while building an infrastructure that will help grow their business for years to come.
Izzy Goodman – www.ccs-digital.com In my experience, SEO is the single most important marketing method for a web site. My site, www.ccs-digital.com was started as a sideline while I held a full-time job. I tried pay-per-click with Google Adwords, LinkedIn and Facebook. I paid a marketing company to increase my visitors. Nothing worked.
Two years ago I was laid off from my job. Among the things I did to bring in income was study SEO and apply it to my site. Within a few months it was at the top of the search engines and sales increased to the point where it is now my full-time occupation and a family business.
Advertising is expensive and the results disappear the second you stop paying. SEO can be inexpensive if you do it yourself or hire an honest company, and the results can last for years. OldBlueRugby.com had been around for years and were not even within the first 8 pages of a Google search for “NY Rugby.” They paid me $500 to revamp their SEO and were on page one within weeks. With no
additional expense, they have remained there for two years.
What works in SEO? Following the guidelines specified by Google concerning use of keywords and careful link building. What doesn’t work? Using the “tricks” suggested by those selling fake SEO “secrets” such as keyword stuffing, creating fake pages to fool the spiders, using hidden text, joining link farms for the purpose of inflating inbound links. Not only do they not work, using them can get the site blackballed from the engines entirely.
What would I have done differently? Paid attention to SEO from the inception of my site instead of going back to take care of it 5 years
later. There was a lot of revamping I had to do. I would also have chosen a better site name. But to do so now would be to start all over again.
Michael Kaiser-Nyman – www.impactdialing.com We’re pretty early on in our SEO work, but we’ve had some great success already. I spent a lot of time teaching myself from the SEOmoz.org website – they have some great resources at http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo, especially their Beginner’s Guide to SEO at http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo. I then subscribed to their Pro tool to help me with my keyword research and on-page optimization. Once I had my keywords targeted and my website optimized, though, I wasn’t having much luck generating backlinks to my blog. So I hired Distilled.net, an SEO consulting firm, to help me figure out how to get more backlinks. They spent a lot of time researching my industry and learning about what we do, and produced a report with several recommendations that have been really helpful in getting backlinks. I’ve gone from not ranking in the top 50 on Google to being on page 1 for a couple terms and page 2 for two of my best keywords! The only thing I’d do differently is start earlier – it takes a long time to build links.
Shai Atanelov – www.bigtimewireless.com SEO has played a very important role in my business’s success at
www.bigtimewireless.com. We found that getting backlinks from trustworthy sites helps more than just creating hundreds of backlinks from irrelevant or spammy sites where everyone is just placing comments. One link on a relevant and reliable website is worth lots more than regular links.
Guest posting and interviews on popular blogs has also proven to boost our rankings and traffic many times. However, today I wish we were more involved in social media and social networks. We are working on this aspect and look forward to really connecting with our customers and potential customers to find out what they really want and be able to offer them real quality service and products. I believe that now social media and SEO are intertwined and both are needed to really leverage the potential of running a business online.
Recently I asked a few entrepreneurs about buzz marketing, and here are some of their responses.
Lori Corso – www.twincakesbakery.com I am owner of a bakery with my twin sister called Twin Cakes Bakery, and for us Buzz Marketing is seeing your product discuss on twitter, Facebook and shown on many, many blogs. We understand the power of blogs these days, and if you can create a Buzz in the blog world than you know you have made it! Buzz marketing strategies that we use at our company is Facebook Ads to help create Buzz and more exposure to our site. And we send samples of our products to blogs we feel have an audience our products will click with. Buzz marketing strategy we use is setting time a day to tweet or say something on Facebook. We try to aim for morning, lunch, and evening saying a few things at each time because each time has different people on. We feel that allows us to get in front of more potential customers.
Brandon L. Griffin – www.fyebye.com I believe buzz marketing is creating excitement about or around your business. Social media allows small businesses to do this better and it’s much more affordable than ever. However, with social media the buzz does not have to be around your business. It can be buzz about any other topic, celebrity, or current event and as long as you make your business relevant to the conversation – you can be integrated into the buzz that was generated from another source.
Buzz marketing is a viral marketing technique that attempts to make each encounter with a consumer appear to be a unique, spontaneous personal exchange of information instead of a calculated marketing pitch choreographed by a professional advertiser. Historically, buzz marketing campaigns have been designed to be very theatrical in nature. The advertiser reveals information about the product or service to only a few “knowing” people in the target audience. By purposely seeking out one-on-one conversations with those who heavily influence their peers, buzz marketers create a sophisticated word-of-mouth campaign where consumers are flattered to be included in the elite group of those “in the know” and willingly spread the word to their friends and colleagues.
Jacqueline Gikow – http://chelsearainbow.com/ Although buzz marketing is not new, Internet technology has changed the way its being used. Buzz campaigns are now being initiated in chat rooms, where marketing representatives assume an identity appropriate to their target audience and pitch their product. Personal Web logs (blogs) are another popular media for electronic buzz marketing campaigns; advertisers seek out authors of the “right kind of blog” and trade product or currency for promotion. Instant messaging (IM) applications are also being looked at as a vehicle for carrying out buzz marketing campaigns with either humans or IM bots doing the pitching. As with all buzz campaigns, the power of the IM model relies on the influence an individual has in an established small network — in this case, his buddy list. As technology continues to facilitate the delivery of a electronic buzz marketing message easier, and software applications make message deliveries easier to quantify, some advertising experts predict that electronic buzz marketing techniques will become a standard component in all cross-media advertising campaigns. Others warn that abuse of this potentially powerful electronic marketing technique will be its downfall.
I recently asked a group of entrepreneurs what their inspiration was for starting their businesses….here are some of their answers.
Cindy Pawlak – www.gunthersgrades.com In my case, a significant emotional event is what inspired me to start my business. Gunther’s Grades is a web community for seniors and caregivers – our goal is to provide knowledge that will enable better decisions about long-term care and aging. There is a daily news section, a forum, and a place to rate long-term care experiences, and more. It is named after my father, Gunther, who had a horrible experience in a long-term care facility, despite our families involvement and best efforts to make good decisions on his behalf —- my vivid memory of him on a ventilator, mouthing the words “thank you” and squeezing my hands when I said we were moving him out of the long-term care facility back to the hospital where they knew how to take care of him is a memory that inspired me to try to help others so they do not have to experience the kind of lack of care that we did.
Saideh Browne – www.impactagencyny.com My inspiration was my overwhelming desire to create a source of income that will last as long as I do. I decided to become an author and speaker which is something I can do into my 90s. Since I have been successful marketing myself, I was convinced by others to start an agency and market other speakers and authors.
Next month Impact will celebrate our 6th birthday and I couldn’t be happier! I can’t be fired from something I love to do. I hope my tip helps your readers.
Laura Miranti – www.boardbookalbums.com I am a mother of 4 who started a business offering a special product line of board book photo albums (patent pending) that I designed to benefit my daughter’s speech development. As they say, “Necessity is
the Mother of Invention”. I’ve attached details about our story and products. Sharing our story
and products with others will truly make a difference in their lives. My story shows how I turned my daughter’s developmental challenges into an idea for a successful business that will greatly enhance the speech development of other children.
Hayward Majors – www.collegesolved.com We get asked a lot about what our motivation was for starting the business. For us, it was simple. We looked back at our college admissions experience. One co-founder went to a southern public school and the other went to a private school out West, but the frustration was the same. Our counselors did not have the time to focus on either of us or provide any guidance when it came to applying to college. With the advent of VOIP and other technology, we realized that it was easier than ever to connect the experts with today’s high school students – whether this is an independent educational consultant on the other side of the country or a student who works on the newspaper at a small liberal arts school, we wanted to provide access to the hidden gems.
That being said, we worked nights and weekends for about two years on the business idea. It was a passion and a ton of fun (and work), as you can imagine. We finally went full time last fall. It was not because we hated our jobs but because we both got bit by the entrepreneurship bug. We knew we wanted to start a business. We were methodical and analytical – which is different than most founders. Nonetheless, we are loving our business and are happy to tell you more about us too.
Sheryl Checkman – www.lifeisbalance.com One day, I had an idea for a design that represented the scuba diver in me. I was looking at the simple symmetry of a yin yang symbol and I saw a scuba design. In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang (heaven and earth) represent two opposing yet complementary forces, or energies, that are said to be found in nature. One cannot exist without the other. They create balance.
In each curved half of the symbol, I saw the shape of a fish… really! I added a diagonal white stripe representing the universal symbol for a dive flag, and my first Life is Balance® design was born!
After showing my design to a few of my diving friends, and getting some pretty awesome feedback, I decided to extend the concept to all of the different sports and activities that make people feel good.
Life is Balance® is a new line of branded apparel designed to celebrate the balance we add to our lives through sports and activities that make us smile. I launched my website in January with 4 of my t-shirt designs available for purchase. I also have sold them at Craft Fairs and Flea Markets in New York City and NJ. I am about to bring out another 10 designs. I am hoping to get them into retail stores as well.
Kristen Brown – www.KristenKBrown.com I started my businesses after my husband died unexpectedly at the age of 30 of a heart attack when our daughter was just an infant followed just weeks later by a difficult situation at work and the crash of the economy. I experienced major stress both personally and professionally, but I discovered healthy ways to manage it without going on prescription drugs. So I decided to start a business helping others manage their own stress and change – and today I am a multiple award-nominated entrepreneur, speaker, radio host and author of the book, “The Best Worst Thing” that will be released on Tuesday, May 24th, 2011!
Matties Stevenson – www.ABEventPlanners.com I decided to officially start my business because of my former boss. She’s younger than I am and because of her success and determination to be successful she inspired me to start my own business. I have always dabbled into entrepreneurship, but never stepped out the way I have now. She let me go in 2009 and I have been running my business ever since. I am no longer an employee! and I absolutely love it. I love what I do and very passionate about what I do. So I look forward to the day I say THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME GO!
Tom Armour – www.HighReturnSelection.com After a long career in Fortune 50 companies I realized that small and midsize businesses are the engine of job creation as well as the support within their local communities. I was in a situation where I no longer needed to work for a living but wanted to make a contribution, especially if it helps build employment opportunities for others. With some colleagues we have been providing small and midsize businesses with the very best tools used within the Fortune 500 but we provide these in a manner that is sized to smaller companies. That is that we introduce only the tools that actually work and we introduce them in a way that is fast, easily digestible and does not require overhead. We also provide mentoring for small and midsize business leaders who are looking for guidance or sounding boards in order to build their own capability.
We get a great deal of reward from helping small and midsize business leaders implement good practices. In addition helping those who are looking for good careers and employment stability is also a privilege.
Sally Vickers – www.teampoweredsuccess.com I was working with a networking company out of Jacksonville, FL. They asked me to join a Strategic Planning Committee to set up a game plan to help teams and independent team member’s move forward. We pulled together the tools, set up the system, and saw it work with the various teams. The company changed its focus and decided not to focus on teams, so a couple of us left and refined what we had learned. These are the tools that we use in our business to help business teams. We use this approach because we have seen it work and make a difference for the individual team members. There is lots and lots in the library about business teams, but few books give you the tools to solve the problem. That’s why I’m passionate about using my business to help business teams. I’ve seen what a difference it can make for the individual team members.
Erin Meagher – www.kelapo.com I am 27 years old and a former high school business teacher. I founded Kelapo coconut oil products in 2009. We import and manufacture organic coconut oil for cooking and baking. The oil is imported from Sri Lanka, bottled in the states, and then sold through our website and wholesale to retail stores. For the first 8 months, I worked from home. Then we moved into an office park in combined use space, part office, part warehouse. We now have three full time employees (including myself), and are in the process of hiring more employees over the next two months. We’ve had great success with our products as we are carried in natural health food stores across the country, and also in Canada and Puerto Rico.
I was driven to the path of entrepreneur because there was something lacking as I was teaching my students about business from a textbook. I wanted something more and I wanted it to be a greater challenge with greater reward opportunities. The first step is having the courage to make the initial leap into owning your own business and facing the fear that you might fail. I’ve never doubted myself as to whether or not this company will succeed because we have a GREAT product and it’s the right time in the right space to launch such a product. Then you have to be able to assume the risk of putting your money or other’s money on the line as you start to build. This is especially hard for a product based business because you have to sink a lot of money into inventory before you can even start selling. You’ll be a pro at writing checks! The key is to find the sales to cover all your expenses. Then you have to be a great problem solver. You must find a way to correct something when it goes wrong, and trust me, there will be mistakes and wrongdoings! Sometimes you solve one problem just in time to solve another problem. Also, you have to be a blind decision maker without “buyer’s remorse”. Meaning that, you often have very little information and have to make an informed decision that vastly effects your future business model. You have to make those tough decisions and don’t second guess yourself. This is one of my biggest challenges. And to bring it all together, you have to be enthusiastic, and have a company culture that is just as enthusiastic as you. As we continue to grow, it is hard work and taxing on all employees, so being enthusiastic and energetic makes our environment a fun and inviting place to work.
I recently asked a group of small business owners and social networking experts how they got their Facebook “likes” up and just how they went about doing it, here are some of their answers.
Cynthia Onyejiji – www.arjuni.com My name is Cynthia Onyejiji and I am the Director of Media at Arjuni International, Ltd, a socially conscious human hair supplier based in Cambodia. This year, we’ve made it our goal to strengthen client relations by increasing our presence in the social media arena. We kicked things off on Twitter and YouTube, and have most recently decided to tap in to the power of Facebook.
We joined Facebook in March of 2011 and have since gathered a following that is 1,165 “Likes” strong! What is our strategy? Pure originality! While many of our competitors stick to the basics, we at Arjuni like to push the envelope. We recently released a contest on Facebook, which gave men the opportunity to win complimentary hair extensions for the special women in their lives. This was the first contest where the prize was virgin hair extensions and the contestants were men! A big risk was certainly taken. However ideas like this one, help us stand out in the crowd and thus increase our likeability.
As mentioned previously, we also have a strong presence on YouTube and Twitter. The former is replete with original content, from comedic hair care skits to yearlong growth oath challenges. Whatever we do, we make certain to apply to it, our signature touch of creativity. Our Twitter account, run by the CEO of Arjuni, is just as unique. We share candid photos of our staff members in Cambodia and provide links to articles that we think our followers would enjoy.
We’ve just begun to make a name for ourselves in the social media world. However, with the right amount of creativity and planning, we’ll become the company that everyone will “like” to love.
Mari Luangrath – www.foiledcupcakes.com I own Foiled Cupcakes, Chicago land’s only exclusive online cupcake order and personal delivery service.
I took a huge risk relying on social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, and word of mouth as our main branch of advertising and have experienced great success. A year ago, no one had heard of us and we have spent $0 on advertising or brand awareness campaigns. We’ve surpassed our initial revenue target numbers by over 600 percent.
How do I build up my Facebook likes? I get more “Likes” (and followers on Twitter) by interacting with other people and businesses on their pages. Go Like and Follow things that you’re interested in and other people will connect back with you as well. You can also use your social media platforms together—link them up—so no matter what platform someone is comfortable with, they are finding out about your business.
Being able to build both personal and professional business relationships helps our business immensely. By using social media, we are able to get word out about our business through our friends, family, and satisfied customers. I would be happy to talk to you about social media marketing for small businesses.
Taylor Flanery – www.household-management-101.com I actually write website content, and make money from the traffic through selling ads, google adsense, affiliate products, product reviews, etc. My business Facebook page for one of my sites, Household-Management-101.com was not doing well, and floundered around 300 likes for a long time. About 6 months ago I decided I needed to get more fans, and decided to give away a free e product whenever someone became a fan. I wrote a 40 page cleaning checklists eBook, and advertised it on my site. Here is a link to my website landing page giving away the free ebook.http://www.household-management-101.com/house-cleaning-list.html. Over the course of the last 6 months I now have over 4,000 fans, all for free. My Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/householdmanagement101.
Besides promoting the free eBook on my site, I sent about 60 emails to the top bloggers in my niche sharing the link to my free eBook, and several of them shared it with their readers as a quality free resource. Periodically someone discovers the free eBook even now, and posts something about it on their own site, and I get a new flurry of fans. To keep the fans engaged and active on the site I post at least one question or link each day and try to drum up discussion. Sometimes, when I get some lively discussion I also get more fans that way.
I am also on Twitter, but I find that is more to network with other bloggers, to get links and mentions, and not so much to interact directly with readers. My readers seem to prefer to interact with Facebook instead.
Kathleen Berzon – www.thefreshdiet.com We use a combo of… 1. Paid facebook ads 2. Engaging our fans and building our community outreach on our FB page 3. Cross promotions with our other FB pages 4. social media plug ins on our home page and blog drive traffic 5. Emails, direct mail and collateral materials. 6. Contests, contests and more engagement, by treating our fans with respect and a real voice
Taryn Smith – www.kcrlegal.com Regarding Facebook, we decided that we did not want to “pollute” the most social of all social networks with a bunch of lawyer ads, but rather we decided to dedicate our page to community efforts. So each month we donate a sum of money per “like” to a specific charity (up to a specified amount) and then post updates throughout the month about the organization, their upcoming events and other ways to support the organization and our community at large. Since November 2010, when we started this promotion, we’ve generated over 1800 new Facebook fans and have donated over $9,000. to organizations such as the Sacramento Food Bank, California Brain Injury Association, Sierra Forever Families Foster Children Services, Northern California Legal Services for the underserved, a local high school’s safe & sober grad night, and two other organizations dedicated to serving homeless youth in our area.
I recently asked a group of business owners how much time they spend marketing their products and services and what their prefered marketing methods are. Here are some of their answers:
Megan Dougherty – www.ecoutrement.com I am a small business owner who until recently did EVERYTHING myself that needed to be done for my business. My business is an online boutique called Ecoutrement (www.ecoutrement.com), and I specialize in selling eco-friendly accessories for men, women, children, and dogs. I feel that without marketing there is no business, so leaving time to market yourself is priority number 1! I found that by spending so much time on marketing I wasn’t spending enough time on the day to day operations of my business, so I recently hired a marketing expert. I still personally update my company’s Facebook page daily, blog 2-3 times per week, and tweet every day, but I finally decided that passing off a bit of my marketing to someone who really knows what they are doing will be my best business decision yet.
Melissa Cenker www.melissadoan.com - For years I ran (and still do but no longer exclusively) my business “Melissa Doan Fine Sterling Silver” on a pretty much full time basis. While we could nearly ignore marketing and still be successful prior to 2008, when the economy turned, marketing became pretty essential.
The amount of time I had to spend on marketing this business became exponentially higher as social media gained more prominence, more social media sites came into play, and the economy continued to stay stagnant. In 2010, I probably spent about 4-5 hours a day marketing my business personally, much of the time, through social media, blogs, and in person meet and greets at events. With a previous background in marketing, it wasn’t a problem to do it myself in general, but the time it started to take really made me rethink my life and business. Rather than hire people to fulfill my own marketing needs, I took a turn in a different direction.
I took a turn away from my product based business for a while and went back into business doing marketing consulting and media relations for other companies. Most of my clients require at least 10-20 hours per week of marketing services, and could, if they had the budget, honestly use much more as things only become more complicated and competitive. Each have a different marketing plan depending on their specific business, but today, most require many hours online monitoring online brand presence and social media. I find that when done consistently well all the hour’s spent marketing can not only have the desirable impact on sales, but in today’s competitive environment are also crucial for brand survival!
Angela Martin – www.definingsuccesscoaching.com Combining my marketing efforts, I spend 10 percent of my time marketing my coaching business. At least once a week, I send out a marketing message via my social networks, e-newsletter, or by writing articles. My media kits position me as the expert that I am in career coaching and marketing, so I am top of mind for interviews. Speaking publicly gets me the exposure I need in the networking arena, and I also rely on word of mouth which is the best marketing by far. Being the sole owner and operator of Defining Success Coaching, I am the sole marketer as well (which I find fulfilling).
Bill Corbett Jr. – www.corbettpr.com Studies have shown that effective networkers spend more than 6 hours per week marketing (networking). Unproductive or unsuccessful ones spend 2.5 hours or less. This was published; I will have to get the source if you are interested. I can provide you with my tips and info on this but also connect you with real estate professionals, a dynamic payroll industry entrepreneur, and owner of one of the top franchise printing companies in the country, an author of successful networking books, and others who can provide their success stories.
Ian Aronovich – www.governmentauctions.org We are GovernmentAuctions.org, a site that compiles information about government auctions of seized and surplus merchandise from all over the country.
We market our business every single day. Marketing is a big priority in our office. As without marketing, not much else would be possible here.
The strategies that we use to market our business consist of:
We currently have a staff of three people on our team that help us handle the daily workload of marketing. We are constantly marketing our business–that includes every person that works at our company (except the technical staff). In fact, more than 50% of each person’s workload is dedicated to marketing. Besides the founders of the business, there are three additional people that comprise our team.
Ted Jordan- www.funutation.com I have 4 virtual assistants that help with websites, brochures, snail & emailing. Also 3 to 4 times a month I attend my local BNI meeting (www.bni.com) a referral based marketing organization to help give my offerings visibility. We also touch base with Community Education departments nationwide torun our summer programs. This takes 30-40% of our time. In the summer this drops heavily is that’s when we reap the rewards of our marketing efforts.
Corinne Vielle – www.vielleandfrances.com I spend about 65% of my day marketing on twitter, Facebook, Google, and calling up bloggers, press, sending out press releases and also I design all of the ads and verbiage in the ads and on the social networking sites. The other 40% of my day is spent fulfilling orders, giving interior design advice to customers who need it and often write in with what chair or sofa goes great with their decor. I’m also the buyer for the products so I attend trade shows, meet with sales reps and manufactures and select products that will sell well. My day usually starts at 5am and ends about 3am or later.
Melissa Jester – www.alyciakaback.com My daily focus is primarily implementing PR/ marketing strategies to build Alycia’s brand. Alycia Kaback is a rising female producer and entrepreneur. She is founder and CEO of the “IT” Factor Productions and VIP Talent Connect, LLC, an entertainment networking company. Alycia also serves as investor and advisor to Colby Models, a recognized boutique fashion agency in NYC, and recently opened a commercial/print division called Kaback Model Management. She is currently producing two reality shows; I upload preproduction clips onto vimeo and youtube– we already have viewers in 20 different countries. To market Alycia’s endeavors, I have a blog dedicated to each of her projects, as well as several Twitter and Facebook accounts; all of these outlets are updated daily, often several times. I also send out email blasts to our list of 25,000. The rest of my time is spent organizing events to generate publicity. Currently I am organizing the NYC Women’s Empowerment Summit, the proceeds of which are being donated to the Make a Wish Foundation®. This summit will honor 15 of the most powerful women in New York, including entrepreneurs, A-list celebrities, producers, an Oscar winning filmmaker, an Emmy winning journalist, and more. These women have millions of followers and are now spreading the word about Alycia. Here is the website for the summit: http://www.alyciakaback.com/womens-empowerment-summit.
Jennifer A. Chiongbian – www.buyandsellmanhattan.com I market every single day, 7 days a week–no fail! I will continue to do so until I decide to close the doors to my real estate business. I truly enjoy, and am passionate about this creative freedom in being able to market myself and my business.
Undoubtedly, it can get burdensome when there are the mundane aspects of the business that get in the way. But I make it a point to never forget or be lazy about marketing my business. It is easily prioritized because I actually enjoy it!
I suggest to people who are not as passionate in marketing as much as I am, to find certain activities in the marketing aspect that they actually enjoy doing; so it is easier for them to be able to stick to it.
I make sure to get at least 1-3 marketing items a day off my desk. When I have slow periods, I think of what else I can do for my business. It doesn’t matter if it is one blog that is posted to my website, a real estate blog community and to my Facebook. That will count as 3 items. If I am not out showing or dealing with client questions or concerns, you can bet your bottom dollar that I am marketing.
Hands down, I love doing it myself because I know it is up to the standard of what I expect in terms of the quality of my brand image.
Mary Cornell – www.marshmerries.com Although it takes discipline I try to spend at least 10 hours a week marketing. How much I market directly effects my sales so it is critical that I don’t neglect it. I believe marketing it so important that I do it myself, I would rather pay someone to help me with other tasks so that I can find time for marketing. Marketing tactics::
* Facebook ads
* Facebook
* Email campaigns
* Reaching out via email and phone to wedding and event planners
* Reaching out to bloggers
* Checking HARO everyday = )
* Commenting on food/event blog sites
* Sending samples to food writers, bloggers, event planners, office administrators
* Supplying products for charity events – door prizes, silent auctions
* Setting up and table and sampling at local community events
* Carrying Marshmerries wherever I go and giving samples to people I meet – hairdressers, bankers, new acquaintances
Fredrick Nijm – www.addoway.com I don’t think there is a time of the day where we are not marketing our business especially as a small business startup. I am the CEO and I spend 99% of my time marketing our business. With little to no funding for marketing right now, I spend most of my time on Facebook, Twitter, blogging, forums etc trying to reach out to the community. We have attracted ambassadors since we launched 1 year ago and we have noticed them sharing the existence of Addoway with everyone they meet.
The goal is to make sure that every question is answered; every thank you is commented on and every single person feels that we are there for them. We don’t have any staff for this, so this is my duty. I use Hootsuite to monitor different channels and to make sure I am not missing any conversations. I also have Google alerts for Addoway keywords, so if someone is mentioning us in a blog or forum I will know about it and can visit and comment etc. Its very time consuming, but its all we have. Time can be your friend and it can also be your enemy. If you want to succeed, then you have to have patience and know that its going to be hard work, but in the end you will be successful. No one achieved greatness in their life because it was easy.
Donna McDonald – www.donnamcdonaldauthor.com As a newly published Indie author of three contemporary romance ebooks, I found your query interesting. I know little about this part of business and am currently training myself in marketing. This is my second entrepreneurial business, but the first one where I’ve had to put so much into selling myself and my product. My distributer, Smashwords, provided a marketing guide with tips that I have been reading and following. I am reading everything I can from every online expert I can find. As a recent start-up, my budget for advertising is $0, so everything I do has to be both free and able to be done by myself. I spend an average of 40 min to an hour a day doing social media work and answering emails. Once a week, I spend an hour or two trying to add more links back to my work and ebook retailers.
Since the launch of Dating A Cougar (Book One of Never Too Late Series) on March 12, 2011, I have seen over 4600 downloads at Smashwords and have received 10 reviews. I priced this first book as “free” to garner this level of attention. Sales of Books 2 & 3 continue to rise. I have plans to launch additional for sale books this month and next. I don’t think the largest percentages of people finding my work are “accidental hits”. Instead, I think they are driven to my work by seeing me in various places. For example, my cover artist featured my book covers on her blog and several readers found me through her. Marketing for me is about making good links and trails for those who might be interested. This takes a lot of work and it is certainly not as fun as the writing itself. However, I will continue to do the daily online marketing tasks hoping that ultimately they will pay off with sales and more downloads.
Morgan Padway – www.ipsjobs.com Marketing is a key piece of our business. We have been around for 40 years, but face fierce competition in our marketplace. We are a recruiting firm that specializes exclusively in the insurance industry. I would say that I spend a minimum of 30% of my time marketing my business. We recently overhauled our website and included a new careers page. We also send out a quarterly newsletter, and semi-yearly surveys. In addition, we advertise our open positions on multiple internet sites and through my professional association. We maintain Facebook and twitter pages, and aim to update content 3 times per week.
I attend at least one networking event per month, usually hosted through the professional association that I belong to or a handful of others in the area. We also attend trade shows. This year we will participate in 4. I do all of the face to face marketing personally, although sometimes I will bring along an additional staff member.
The only work we send “out of house” is the SEO for our website. Our SEO team builds links for us and is working on optimizing our website content. I am currently partnering with them to get a blog going.
With all of these different channels covered, plus 40 years in business, we have managed to build name recognition and weather the recession which forced 2/3 of our industry out of business.
Michael Y. Brenner – www.ideagency.net As a leadership consultant running a one-man operation, marketing my services and products is absolutely the life blood of my business. As such, I spend several hours a day promoting my services. Of course, it has always been imperative to market one’s business in a way that makes it stand out from the crowd. In today’s crowded marketplace, however, I find that doing so is even more critical – thanks largely to social media’s ability to connect huge numbers of people faster and more efficiently than ever before. Traditional marketing methods, while not entirely irrelevant, are becoming increasingly obsolete in a world of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. While I only use one of those technologies to promote my business (LinkedIn), I make ample use of other avenues. I use the Google search function to uncover speaking and article-writing opportunities. I solicit queries from reporters and bloggers looking for subject matter experts. I even send out personalized letters (yes, by mail!) to people I’ve identified as potential clients. It’s a lot of hard work and it’s easy to get discouraged. The key is to utilize a variety of promotional avenues, set yourself a daily goal regarding time spent marketing, and keep your chin up!
Rebecca Berneck – www.officeheads.com I realize the importance of marketing, but agree that it is a tough task to carve out time to focus on it. I started my company by building a strong brand image through a great name, logo, collateral, and a professional website. Outside of the launch, I focus on word-of-mouth and social media marketing. Regarding social media, I outsource to the folks who provide the same exact service to my Officeheads clients. They create the social media calendar, interview me regarding the messages I want to communicate, and draft the communications pieces. Once done, they forward the content for me to edit and approve which takes me about an hour every two weeks. Lastly, they schedule the posts to adhere to the marketing calendar. BRILLIANT! I get to reply to the responses to my posts and my keen writers do the rest. The replies and the interviews take an additional 4 hours per month. I have found that in the 5 months we’ve been implementing a social media campaign, we’ve broadened our reach from our extremely local focus through word-of-mouth.
Regarding word of mouth, I am a member of one chamber of commerce, one entrepreneurial think tank, and one business owners strategy group. I devote 7-10 hours per month with the Chamber of Commerce primarily due to also being on the board of directors. Again, my reach has broadened to much different companies and more importantly, the levels within those companies compared to those who simply attend the networking events. An added bonus is being closer to the pulse of my community, Evanston, IL. I’m more involved and now play a stronger role in the community in which I live. I devote 2 hours per month or so to the entrepreneurial think tank, and get to help aspiring business owners make it through the struggles of growing a business. This is also what I do in my business, but rather than hard sell, I use this opportunity to build relationships and keep sharp on my skills. With that intent, I’ve gained the type of clients I love to work with; smart and passionate entrepreneurs who will do what it takes to succeed. Lastly, I devote 3 hours per month in my business owners strategy group. I bounce my ideas of growing my organization off of them, and they keep me honest by assigning goals that I need to accomplish outside of the group. Another nice soft sell opportunity that has increased my business while making it stronger.
Casey Halloran – www.vacationscostarica.com I am the Chief Marketing Officer for an online travel agency in Costa Rica. We offer high end, customized vacations and I’m tasked with our everyday marketing. The business began as a 2-person start up, founded by two recent grads (me and by buddy Tony) who moved to Costa Rica in 1999 and met as
roommates. Today we are now the largest agency in Costa Rica, with over 50 staffers and annual sales of $12MM. One of the major reasons for our success is the fact that even as we’ve grown, I remain
obsessed with our marketing.
As a small biz owner and former consultant, I know how easy it is for an entrepreneur to be distracted by the gazillion other urgent needs of a small business. Despite those pressures, I make it a point to
carve out time to review our key marketing stats every single day. Because we are an Internet company, that means employing SEO, Cost Per Click, Email Newsletters, Blogs and other guerrilla tactics to attract
customers. No marketing = no customers = nothing else matters.
Mari Luangrath – www.foiledcupcakes.com I own Foiled Cupcakes, Chicagoland’s only exclusive online cupcake order and personal delivery service.
I took a huge risk relying on social media, especially Twitter, and word of mouth as our main marketing strategy and have experienced great success. I tweet…a lot (40 times a day sometimes). I say hello, I thank people. I tweet about events and introduce people. I ask questions and actually read other people’s tweets. I use Twitter to meet real live people.
In today’s business climate, communication is the most important factor in success or failure. If your communication is not timely and responsive, interactive and fun, your business will not be able to compete.
