Word of Mouth Marketing? Trust But Verify…

Many small businesses don’t advertise at all – they rely on word of mouth advertising. But more and more people are turning to the Internet to verify recommendations from even friends and family.

As I mentioned in an earlier post (Where Do Moms Go For Advice Online?) many women get product recommendations from mom bloggers online.

According to  new research from Cone consumers are even turning to the web to investigate product recommendations from family and friends.

Before deciding whether to purchase recommended products or services, more than four-out-of-five consumers (81%) will go online to verify those recommendations, specifically through
researching product/service information (61%), reading user reviews (55%) or searching ratings websites (43%).

Of those who go online to check out a product’s reputation, 77% say that they are more likely to purchase products or services when they can find additional recommendations about them.

And these aren’t just high-cost products, either. While 82% go online to check out cars, 72% will check out recommendations for a movie or a restaurant on the web and the numbers are even higher for the 25-34 age group.

What they find there, either good or bad, highly influences their decision on whether to purchase.

What this means for small business is that, just like the big guys, you need to get your product or service to social networks, bloggers, review sites, etc. prior to a major advertising campaign so potential buyers have someone else’s word for it rather than your own..
————————
HOSB RSS Feed

Results of Search Engine Marketing Survey

The results of their yearly Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Survey have just been released by MarketingSherpa with some interesting findings. This year, the SEM field was getting so big that they broke their survey down into two parts, SEO and PPC. This survey report deals with SEO.

In the results of over 2,000 responses  from B2B and B2C marketers, the first thing that hit me was only a third of businesses use a formal SEO process. Almost half use what they call  ‘informal processes’ and 20% have no SEO plan at all!

Also, two twists in modern search engine marketing are ‘personalized’ search (which means different people get different search results depending on their search history) which screws up the metrics of your SEO program, and the advent of social media results showing up on search engine results pages (SERPS). Read more.
————————
HOSB RSS Feed

How To Successfully Compete In Your Market

A client asked me a question the other day about competing in a highly competitive market, what she called a “saturated market”. It reminded me of a story I heard while up in Alaska…

Two guys were sitting around a campfire out in the woods when a bear came crashing through the trees. One guy reached out and quickly began putting on his sneakers. The other guy looked at him and said “Are you crazy? You can’t outrun a bear!” The first man responded, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.”

For a small business to compete in a niche market, you don’t have to be the best ever, you just have to be a little better than your competition. That means studying your competition, copy what they are doing right and adding a little more to top them.

There are some handy tools for monitoring your business competitors to see what they are doing. They are also great for initial market research. Read more.
————————
HOSB RSS Feed

Survey Shows Where To Advertise Local Business

If you are a local business owner and are running a special on one of your products, should you advertise in the local paper or on the web?

According to the latest AdWeek Media/Harris Poll it depends on your target market. The specific question the survey asked was “When you are looking for a bargain, which of the following types of advertising, if any, do you believe is most likely to help you find one?”

Of the over 2,000 adults surveyed 23% say the best bargains are in newspapers and magazines, 18% say the Internet is best and 34% say it makes no difference.

But, when you break it down by age groups…

When looking for the best bargains, different age groups have different ideas of where to look. Those 18-34 are more likely to say online ads (22%) and television commercials (17%) are the best places to go while those 35-44 years old go online (26%). The older one is, the more likely they are to use newspaper and magazine advertisements, as 24% of those 44-54 and one-third of those 55 and older (33%) say those are media most likely to help them find the best bargain.

In other words, if your product is slanted at a younger age group, you’ll get a better response with online ads. If you are targeting an older group your newspaper ad may get a better response.

Females had a slightly higher bias toward newspapers/magazines/catalogs, men had a higher preference for online ads.

29% of college graduates chose online ads for bargains while only 12% of high-school grads did.

So it pays to know your target market. While the difference isn’t all that much, you should gear your print ads toward products for older women and online ads for younger, college-educated males..
————————
HOSB RSS Feed

Going Green – In More Ways Than One

I just came across a study on so-called “green marketing”. The complete study costs $479 but there is an executive summary that has some interesting findings.

33% of respondents said green marketing was more effective than normal, 7% said it was less effective, and 60% said it made no difference or they didn’t know.

DIDN’T KNOW? What percentage didn’t know whether the money they spent on advertising was effective? If you can’t track the results, don’t spend the money – a rant I’ll save for another post.

Smaller companies with advertising budgets less than $250,000 spent over 26% on green marketing, larger companies (> $50 million ad budget) spent just 6% on green marketing. Read more.
————————
HOSB RSS Feed

Is Google Being Evil? – Part 2

In Is Google Being Evil? – Part 1 I stressed the importance of business owners protecting their brand. But first, you have to know where information is being written about your business.

Well, Google has come up with a way to post comments about your web site, on your web site, without your knowledge or consent.

It’s called Sidewiki. It’s part of the Google Toolbar and it opens up a separate window above your web pages for people to post and read comments from other visitors. You won’t even know about it unless you install Google’s Toolbar and use it on ALL of your web pages, loading page after page, to see what’s being written. To do this you must enable the ‘enhanced’ version of the toolbar, which means Google then tracks your web surfing. Read more.
————————
HOSB RSS Feed

Is Google Being Evil? – Part 1

“Don’t be evil.”  Unofficial Google motto/slogan

If you own or run a business one of your major concerns is your “brand” or reputation. If someone is slamming your business online you need to know about it and respond.

But what if you can’t respond? What if there’s no way of telling who’s saying negative things about your business? What if it’s a disgruntled customer? What if it’s your competition?

This is the problem with Google now that they are including Twitter in their real time search results. Read more.
————————
HOSB RSS Feed

From Small Business To Big Business – One Man’s Story

A lot of clients ask us “how do I get started with an online business?” Thomas Heath, a columnist for the Washington post, just wrote a column about one man’s rise from small sales on eBay to a 5 million dollar a year company.

Find your niche. The man in question is a U.S. Marine named Jeffrey Morin. He started in the niche of “challenge coins”, memorabilia coins that commemorate service in a military unit or exercise. He saw them on eBay selling for around $10 – $15 and knew he could buy them for around $5. A small business was born.

Grow your sales. After about six months he got an email asking if he could he find a coin dedicated to mothers with sons in the Marine Corps. No, but he could sure make one! Read more.
————————
HOSB RSS Feed

Next Page »