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Welcome to the The Marketing Source e-newsletter! Our goal is to provide
you with real-world marketing tips.If you have any ideas for articles,
please send them along.
Digital media: Danger zone for small business marketers
It's a small business marketers' dream world. Digital
media gives us immediate access to customers and
prospects. We can e-mail, podcast, Facebook and
RSS them. Now we can Twitter and Plurk them. (If you
need an explanation for those two, it's at the bottom of
the article!)
But from a marketing standpoint, there's a dark side.
Just because the technology is available (and fun and
cool), doesn't mean it is right for your company. Far
too many businesses are using digital media tools
without thinking through the strategy behind
them.
Equally alarming, many businesses overlook or
ignore the basics in favor of adding more digital
media capabilities. Three clients we met with recently
have Web sites that are woefully out of date. They have
no organized way of reviewing and updating, and even
worse, no one in house or outsourced who is set up
to quickly and efficiently make updates.
We're not saying you shouldn't use new media, just
that you need to use it with the same thought and
carefully analysis you would use with any other
marketing tools. Here's how.
Start with your Web site
Your Web site is the first - and sometimes only -
impression people have of your company. If you have
outdated information, a messy appearance and
navigation that makes it hard for your customers,
that's what they think of your company. If you aren't
happy with your Web site, you have no business
monkeying around with any other technology until you
get your site where it should be. Here are the must
do's - the bare minimum - for keeping your site at its
best.
Upgrade your design if you need to. Investing precious
digital marketing dollars into an interactive and well
designed Web site is one of your best bets. And you
can expect your site to need design modifications or a
redesign every three to four years.
Choose one or two people responsible reviewing
every page and every link on your site at least once
every three to six months.
Plan the site with your tech person to include an
internal content management system (CMS) that will
allow you to make changes quickly in house. If your IT
department manages changes and it takes six
months to get them posted, that won't work.
Make sure your navigation works. If people can't find it
on your site quickly and easily, they'll move on to
another site. If customers purchase from your web
site, make it easy and give them an option for service.
Nothing is worse than a 10-screen purchase
transaction with no way to ask a question if you get
stuck.
Write for the Web. Whatever you put on the Web needs
to be even shorter and easier to read than what you
put into print.
Develop a plan and some strategy
Your goals and target audiences be driving how much
time, money and energy you spend on various
marketing and media strategies. Are you trying to get
new customers? Keep in touch with old ones?
Expand your product line? If you are marketing to
senior citizens, is getting a bunch of podcasts up on
your site a real priority? If you are marketing to the
post-college crowd, you may want to look at more
digital media to reach them effectively.
Only commit to what you can really do
Don't promise an e-newsletter, blog or anything else
digital that you don't have the time and money to
produce in a quality way. The Internet is littered with
the corpses of well-meaning bloggers. Too many
people just jumped on the blogging bandwagon
without understanding that a great blog requires a
purpose, constant updating and innovative content.
Analyze your options
Here are a few questions you should ask before you
jump on new media options.
Which of our marketing goals does this support?
Who is the target audience?
How much will it cost from start to finish? What do we
expect the return on investment to be?
How much set up time will this project require and
how much time on a weekly/monthly basis?
Who on our staff will handle it?
If it's not meaningful it's just junk mail
People's inboxes, computers and cell phones
are overloaded in the same way our mailboxes were
with junk mail. Even when someone subscribes to
your emails, enews, blogs, feeds or other services,
it's a challenge to keep content fresh enough to keep
them reading. On blogs and social networking sites,
you have to have more than a blatant commercial
message. And that takes time, careful thinking and an
understanding of what your audiences want to
know.
So get digital - and be smart
Digital media is like other marketing tools: if you don't
have a reason and a strategy for using it, you won't
see much of a payoff. Be smart enough to recognize
what pushes your marketing ahead and what is just a
fun way of putting off that big report you have to
write.
Here are a few links to help you check out the latest in
digital media.
Words of wisdom from our web guru Rich
Brooks
Micropersuasion -A blog
that looks at new media and marketing
trendsbr
Technorati -
Index of blogs and info and news about
blogging
Need help putting the latest technology to work in a
strategic way? We can
help.
GLOSSERY
Twitter: a tool that lets you connect with other
people in short messages that can appear on your
home page or mobile device. Might be used for
business by: restaurant to advertise daily special,
realtor to let people know of new listing, etc.
Plurk: similar to Twitter, but uses a graphic
timeline to let you post information about your
activities, connect with friends, etc. Might be used for
business by: hard to say! It's still new, so we'll have to
keep watching to find business uses.
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