Small Business Design Resources

Double Up: Online and Offline Marketing Techniques

We all know how important marketing strategies are to our small business design. Many of us are still learning the best ways to market our businesses without draining our bank accounts. Online marketing has been one of the best ways to get businesses out into the public eye. This is your website, your blog and all your social network accounts that drive that traffic towards your website. It’s fast, cheap and easy to change when necessary. But what about offline marketing techniques? Offline marketing often gets pushed to the back burner because of time constraints, lack of funding or just not knowing what to do. Let’s talk about some offline marketing strategies that are easy on time and finances.

Business Cards are the simplest offline marketing tools you can have for your business. You can get a lot of cards for very little cash. Make them unique and hand them out often. If you frequent a business, ask them if you can leave a couple on their counter and offer to take a few of their cards as well. Consider making your card double as a coupon. The backs of business cards are usually blank, but you can have a coupon for your services printed so the space goes un-wasted. You can also affix a magnet to the back and behold—people will see your logo every time they go to the refrigerator.

Local Fairs can be a great way to meet new clients. If your business is a good fit, consider renting a booth and spend a few hours marketing your small business to people in your community. You’ll get the chance to meet people that may have never known about your business and in return, you might find people providing services you could use as well. You can even talk to others who own small businesses and trade services, while helping promote each other.

Be a walking advertisement. Put your logo on everything. Make company shirts and wear them in public. Get large magnetic bumper stickers with your company information and website address and stick it to your car. Get pens with your company information and website and leave them when you sign in at the gym, sign credit card receipts or fill out paperwork at the doctor’s office. People will always use pens and love to get freebees, so carry a few on you at all times.

Online marketing and offline marketing are equally important for gaining new clients. So, make sure you log onto your social network sites, update your blog and get out there and physically promote your company within your community. Including a healthy mix of marketing strategies into your small business design will bring about the results you’ve been looking for.

The Wrong Website Can Kill Your Business

First impressions are important – I’m sure you’ll agree. And your website is the first impression that people get about your business. The wrong website design can essentially kill your business by driving your web visitors away, causing them to immediately bounce back and go directly to your competition.

Better make a good first impression! But how? Here are a few small business website design tips.

1. Avoid clutter. A cluttered website is confusing to users, who don’t know where to click or what to do and so they tend to click away. This could be good if your goal is to make money from ads on your site, because the path out of a site is often through clicking on an ad, but if your goal is to encourage your visitors to stay and browse, aim for a clean, simple design and make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site.

2. What is your website about? What do you offer? If a visitor can’t answer this question immediately, they will click away. Ask friends and family members to take an objective look at your website and to tell you if they can tell right away what it’s about.

3. Make it fast. A slow-loading website is painful for users. It’s one of the main reasons users give up on a site. Make sure your website doesn’t contain heavy elements that would slow it down, and use a third-party tool to test load time for your site. The fact that it loads fast for you doesn’t necessarily reflect other users’ experience.

4. Content IS king. Yes, this old cliché is true. Your website content needs to offer value to readers. It needs to be well written, free of typos and engaging. Even if your site loads fast and is clean and professional looking, users WILL bounce off if they discover that your content does not offer them any value.

5. Avoid anything that could be annoying or distracting to users, including flash, auto-loading sound or blinking text. Even if you’re trying to make people click on ads, remember that being assaulted by blinking, moving, loud ads will most likely cause people to close the page rather than click on those annoying ads. Ads actually work best if they blend into your content and offer value to your readers, just like your main content does.

6. Minimize clicking. Make navigating your site and getting to the important pages easy. If people have to click through 6 pages to get to what they were looking for, they will likely just abandon your site.

7. Make it readable. Even if your text is great, people won’t read it unless it’s easy to read. Make sure your font is large enough, web-friendly, and space your lines. It’s also important to keep your lines short and to avoid using dark text on a dark background, or light text on a light background.

8. Link correctly: include internal links whenever they’re relevant, so visitors can discover more parts of your site. Make sure internal links, unlike external links, open in the same browser window – users will resent having several browser windows open, all of them from your site. When you link to other sites, do make sure they open in a new window.

If you’re not sure how user friendly your site is, it’s always a good idea to ask friends and family members to take a look and give you an honest feedback. If you’re planning, or hoping to earn money from your site, using the services of a professional web designer is one of the most important investments you will ever make in your business.

Bloggers for Hire: When to Let Others do the Writing for You

When you add a blog to your website, you’re not just giving people additional information. A well-made blog increases your search engine potential. Sometimes, business owners may not feel they have the time or the skills to create and maintain a blog for their company. That’s perfectly acceptable, as there are plenty of writers out there who are more than happy to help you.

You can always find a willing writer over the internet to help you out. There are several reputable websites available that can help put you in touch with a writer that has blogging experience. Try websites like iFreelance.com or eLance.com. You can work with these people through the writing website or just hire them direct. If you’re worried about the financial aspect of hiring a writer, know that blogging is usually a reasonably-priced task. The more years experience the writer has, the more you will likely pay per blog. You can usually get away with writer that has only a year or two of experience though, as blogging is a pretty straight forward assignment.

When you hire out for your blogging needs, make sure you make your content wishes known. You can place the blog on the website yourself after you’ve proofed it, or you can request that the writer posts the blogs for you. It all depends on your comfort level for giving a writer your password to access the website. Give your writer a list of keywords and topics to write about. That way, they’ll include a few of those keywords in each blog and even do some linking for Search Engine Optimization. If you’re unfamiliar with that terminology, it would be a great idea to hire a writer with SEO experience to help walk you through making your blog more than just an informative article.

There is no shame in feeling unable to maintain a blog. If your small business design doesn’t include a blog, consider starting one. Blogs are one of the easiest things you can apply to your website to increase your web traffic. Hire a freelance writer who has blogging experience to help you with this extra effort to maximize your website’s appeal.

Get iPod Users Interested in Your Small Business

As the world becomes more and more reliable on technical gadgets, almost everybody you know has an iPod or iPhone or some tool to listen to their music or keep them on the web while on the go. More and more people are accessing the internet and your website with these devices. It’s not a bad idea to learn ways to keep this group of people interested in what you have to offer by catering to their choice of electronic devices.

Get Apps
Everybody who owns these iDevices crave apps! Applications are what make iPod users continue using these gadgets for more than just simple music, photo and media enjoyment. You can actually create an application yourself, or you could outsource if you feel you’re incapable. Either way, you can include an app in your small business design that allows visitors to download the application to access your website easily, with just the click of a button. You can also get very creative with apps. They don’t need to lead users to your website alone; they can also include some form of game to engage them. Free apps for your visitors are definitely a great choice for your website. You can search for tutorials to make your own applications or check out a variety of helpful videos on YouTube.

Podcasts
If you have something to say, say it with a podcast. It could be a great attribute to your small business. You could make one weekly, monthly or anytime you’d like. The great thing about a podcast is that it’s incredibly easy to create and requires very little equipment. If you have a computer, a microphone and a website, you’re set. Consider publishing your podcast to your website’s blog. When you’re done creating it, list it in the iTunes Directory and search engines like Yahoo! Audio Search. You may be surprised just how many listeners you have. You can also do video podcasts. These would be great if you want to create a “Vodcast” for new products you may be showcasing on your site.
According to Apple, 220 million iPods have been sold worldwide. That’s a lot of potential clients. By applying the techniques to your small business, your business will become more accommodating to those who wish to use their iPods to access information that you have to share.

Small Business Website: Should You Use Your Own Name And Photo?

When working on your small business website design, one of the main questions you will need to answer is the question of your website’s identity. Assuming you are a small business, maybe even a one-person-shop, do you disclose this on your site, or do you pretend to be a bigger business than you really are?

This is one area where there are no hard and fast rules, and where either approach can work, so each business should do what feels right to them.

The “Human” Route

Establishing yourself as a small, family-owned business, for example, can have a big advantage when it comes to giving you credibility – especially in social media (which should be an integral part of your marketing campaign). Social media participants typically expect to have conversations – the last thing they want when they access their Twitter account is to find that the people and businesses they follow are trying to sell them stuff.

Now, of course you ARE trying to sell them stuff! You’re a business after all. But the more subtle you are about it, the more you humanize your online presence, the more receptive social media participants will be to accepting you into their networks. The more forthcoming you are about “hey, I’m here to sell,” the less people will be inclined to follow – unless your product is truly one of a kind, awesome and everyone wants it (in which case you’ve made it! Congratulations).

In the above scenario, using your name and photo on your website and in your social media accounts and emphasizing the human side of your business can be a very smart move. One of my clients, for example, chose to say on their website’s “About” page and in their Twitter bio “we are a small, woman-owned business.” This humanizes them and makes it easier for people, and especially for other women, to connect with them.

Of course, you shouldn’t lie about your true identity! If you’re not a woman, then you can’t say “woman-owned” and if you’re not a family-owned business, then you shouldn’t use that line either. But whatever your identity, you can find an angle that would humanize you and make it easier for people to connect with you.

The “Corporate” Route

Another option for small businesses who are trying to establish their online identity is to go corporate – to establish themselves as large (larger than they are), highly professional businesses and to mask the fact that they are in fact small. This approach can and does work, because the risk with the first approach is that people will not take you seriously, while the second approach – if done right – can make it easier for people to trust you as a business, even if they can’t connect with you on a more personal level.

If you choose the second approach, you should avoid using your name and photo on your site and on your social media accounts – use a professionally designed logo instead – and always use the plural form, rather than singular, when talking about yourself.

Conclusion

So, which approach should you choose for your own small business? As I said above, this is completely up to you, since both approaches can work. I would say it probably depends on your space – is your business in a space where being personal and human would result in higher levels of trust, or would a glossy, corporate look and feel create more trust?

Finally, you can certainly combine both approaches, going with a glossy, professional “corporate” look and feel for your website, but humanizing your business by using a name and a real photo on your blog and on your social media accounts.