Yelp How-To Guide From Spork Marketing

I can’t help but crack a smile when someone compliments the work my company performs. Call it pride or call it vanity, but I love it. Compliments energize me and the people I work with, and the benefits don’t stop there. Compliments from satisfied customers also help us sell our services. So, when we get a good compliment, we really like to publicize it on our website.

But like everything else, praise needs to be transparent to be truly effective. While we can publish all our great compliments on our website, how can we expect to trust all the nice compliments they find on our website?

That’s where Yelp.com comes in. Read More

5 Internet Marketing Myths Plus 1 More

I was recently invited to begin blogging on a bi-monthly basis for a company called Resource Nation, which specializes in providing advice and information to small and medium-sized business owners. Since small and medium businesses are my client base, and since I’m a self-regarded know it all, I jumped at the opportunity!

Here are the myths I outlined in my Resource Nation blog post: Read More

Is it a Venti or is it a Large? Five Small Branding Ideas For Small Business

As we all know, “branding” is about cultivating positive feelings towards your product or service. “Branding” can come in many different forms, and that makes it hard to quantify. Consider your local Starbucks. When I order a coffee, the sizes I request are called “small,” “medium,” or “large.” However, when the barista repeats my order back to me, the sizes are transformed into “tall,” “grande,” or “venti.” Since I’m not visiting Starbucks locations in France or Italy, these names aren’t correct. Yet every time I order a “large” at my local Starbucks, I am inevitably corrected.

Image copyright Flickr user powerbooktrance.

While some crotchety types (like me) undoubtedly find this annoying, it’s a safe bet that this practice is good for business. After all, many independent coffee shops have adopted this same naming structure despite the fact that it bears little resemblance to the native language. It must be working.

The point here is that even a small thing, like calling a “large” a “venti,” is a part of building a successful brand.

Here are some small things you can do to build your small business brand:

1) If you don’t have one already, get a professionally designed logo. The emphasis here is on professionally designed. If your logo wasn’t designed by a professional, it’s time to pony-up the money and get it done. Consumers (especially website visitors) perceive a logo as a trust symbol – they’ve learned not to trust businesses with cheap looking logos. NOTE: Don’t spend a fortune on this. $200-$250 MAX will get you a very nice logo. In fact, most professional graphics designers will give you half a dozen logo ideas at that price and at least a couple of revisions on your favorite design.

2) Put your logo on everything. From your company vehicles to your employees to your pens to your website, put your logo everywhere you can. When customers learn to identify your business from nothing more than your logo, you’ve achieved something. The best part of this strategy: it’s very inexpensive. You can get custom printing on most items for a nominal fee, and custom decals for your vehicle are surprisingly affordable.

3) Align your business with another brand. One of the best ways to grow your own brand is to identify yourself with a stronger brand. While it’s usually best to stay away from polarizing brands (such as political and religious affiliations), there’s no reason not to support a charity or organization that you feel strongly about. Donating $500 to the local woman’s shelter (for example) is a great way to show the caring and nurturing side of you, your business, and your brand (not to mention helping some people out). Just make sure that you’re making an honest and sincere effort before you start advertising your affiliation. It’s not good for your brand if you advertise how much you support the local chapter of the Sierra Club when your company doesn’t recycle.

4) Blog. We’ve written extensively about the benefits of blogging for the small business owner. The short version – blogging boosts your brand’s authenticity, builds and strengthens personal relationships, and builds trust. Read our business blogging basics and how to create a business blog for more information.

5) Event marketing. “Events” don’t have to be huge get-together’s for thousands of people. Events can be attending a chamber of commerce meeting, bringing snacks to a customer’s office, or providing a space for a local group to meet. The key to a successful event is to make sure that you or your company has some sort of impact. Did you provide free food for the group? Did you ask the speaker some great questions? Did you offer to send everyone something of value in an email? The event is successful when everyone takes note of you or your company in a positive light.

Each of these ideas can be implemented for no more than a few hundred dollars each (if not much less), and in that sense they’re very “small.” But don’t let their small cost fool you – the largest brands in the world implement these same techniques.

AMEX Online Marketing Tips Flash Cards

As an American Express card holder, I just received a stylish little package of “Online Marketing Tips” flash cards. Intrigued, I carefully reviewed each. While the information was incredibly basic, most of it was accurate and useful. Unfortunately, there are a couple of recommendations made by AMEX that I have to disagree with.

My free online marketing advice flash cards from American Express.

First, the highlights:

• AMEX did a great job of emphasizing useful website design. It’s something I’ve harped on before, but good websites aren’t necessarily flashy or pretty. In the words of AMEX “good websites are “interesting and of value to customers” and “simple to understand and easy to navigate.” Good advice.
• They also emphasized the importance of joining social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook . These sites are becoming increasingly business oriented, and for good reason – they’re a great way to network with a lot of people.
• AMEX members can save 5% on Yahoo search marketing (placing pay-per-click ads on Yahoo.com) and small business services (like web-hosting and domain registration). Not too shabby.

The low points:

• The worst piece of advice by far was the recommendation to start blogging using “sites such as Typepad and Blogspot.” Bad idea. Both of these sites suffer from tremendous amounts of spam blog posts (especially Blogspot) which devalue and undermine both systems. Conversely, self-hosted blogs deliver search engine traffic and customers directly to your website and guarantee credibility. Self-hosted blogs are the only way to go.
• The “natural” search marketing advice was very vague and not terribly useful. Granted, it’s very difficult to explain search engine marketing on a 5-by-7 flash card. The card recommends that you can optimize your website by starting “with a broad list of 50 words that describe your product or service” and then narrowing your keyword list down by being specific and using free keyword research tools. As great as it is that AMEX is trying to explain search engine optimization (SEO), I think it would have been better to direct people to read more information. After all, what decent explanation of SEO fails to include info about title tags, anchor text, directory submission, website structure, etc?

In defense of AMEX, each of the cards recommend that you visit openforum.com . There’s an “online marketing” PDF that you can download, but it’s not very good. Half of the SEO discussion is devoted to putting 10-15 keywords in your website’s META tags. Talk about bad advice. Not only are META tags 90% useless from an SEO standpoint, but they should never be flooded with 10-15 keywords. One or two META tag keywords per page is a good rule of thumb. There are some good points here and there, and considering how much it costs, it’s worth a read if you know absolutely nothing about online marketing. Still, there’s an old expression that comes to mind: “Free advice is worth the price. “