GoHuman Blog

One of my favorite activities as a kid growing up in Alaska was fishing with my family. We fished to put food on the table – mostly halibut, salmon and trout. But, there was something exciting about throwing your line in the water and waiting for that first nibble. Sometimes you got bites if the fish were hungry and you had the right bait, and more often than not a fish would get snagged on the hook as it tried to swim upstream because the hook was too big.  We threw the snagged fish back in the water but when you landed that beautiful, biting, fighting fish on land, it was all worth it!

Do you ever feel like you’re fishing for customers? Sometimes they bite because they’re actually looking for your services, and other times you snag ‘em through the power of suggestion — a.k.a. advertising.

Let’s take a look at two main categories in online advertising: direct response and branding.  Knowing which one to use in your business can mean the difference between a client ready to buy/purchase (direct response = hungry fish) and one who is only aware of your business (branding = snagging fish).

As a small business owner (or perhaps not-so-small), it is self-evident that technology provides endless methods for improving your business. That is, if it just wasn’t so difficult! 

GoHuman is an ardent champion of “the little guy.” We believe that the strength of a nation comes from the strength of its communities, and the strength of those communities comes from its relationships — including the many small businesses providing local services and local employment. But how can small businesses compete with huge corporations? 

What would it would be like to try and build a house without a blueprint.

Put a few bricks over there.  And a window on that side.  No, maybe a door…

It would never work.  It’s certainly not a house you’d want to live in.  No proper structure.  No trustworthy foundation.

So, when it comes to your business’s foundation, why would you invest in marketing without a plan?  Without a marketing plan, you’re chances of realizing a strong ROI from your marketing investment decrease significantly while the likelihood of wasting valuable resources increases.  Here are 3 reasons why you’ll be more successful with a Marketing Plan.

Provides Focus
A Marketing Plan provides focus for your organization.   As a result, you are less likely to jump onto the latest trend just because “everyone’s doing it.”  If you develop a reasonable plan that aligns with your sales and budgetary objectives, you can keep your organization focused on the initiatives that will achieve these goals, as opposed to those that seem interesting, but don’t really relate to your business.

Provides a Checklist
A Marketing Plan provides a checklist you can use to ensure you’re executing all your planned initiatives.  Having that record allows you to plan and budget more effectively as well as ensures you have stayed the course per the Plan.

Saves Money
A Marketing Plan will save you money by ensuring you systematically try and evaluate your marketing initiatives.  Each investment in direct mail, email campaigns, public relations, etc., should come with an expected ROI.  Measuring that ROI will allow you to determine which campaigns are the most cost effective.   More importantly, an effective measurement structure (as part of your Plan) will allow you to eliminate those initiatives that do NOT meet your expectations.

1. Decide the role your website will play in supporting your sales and marketing process. Do you want the site to be used by prospects just to learn more about your product or service or do you want the site to generate leads and even process sales?
2. Map out the pages you need and any “functionality”, such as forms you want visitors to fill out, “contact us” email forms, video or audio elements.
3. Write your content for each page, include a page name, page title and a brief description of the page for SEO (search engine optimization). When you are writing your copy for each page think of how you can incorporate keywords or phrases that people might be searching for related to the page topic and your company. This will help you increase the ranking and visibility of your site.
4. Decide who will host your site. You can use www.redspotdomains.com to set up a basic hosting package and register your site. Or you may want to use a service that has complete content management built in so you can make changes and get analytics from your site.
5. Register your domain name. Choose one that is as simple and obviously connected to your company or product as possible. In order to get your website online you need a domain name and hosting. 
These are two separate items but it makes things easier if you register your domain and hosting at the same place.
6. Always make sure you register and pay for your domain name yourself. DO NOT allow a web designer or marketing company to register it for you.  If they do, they legally own the domain name. Register your domain for as long as you can (you can choose annual or multi-year registrations).  Search engines look upon long term registrants favorably. Register as many extensions (.com, .net, .uk, etc.) as you feel you may need for the long term as well. You may want to expand your company and may need to own these domains, so no one else registers them.
7. Hire a web designer or developer or marketing company to help you build the site. Web design is a field where you can pay as little as $20 per hour or $100s per hour. You need to match your budget with your design needs. Depending on your business, product or service, and the type of business or consumer you are selling to, design is often not as important as content (the information and options for response) that you have on your site.
8. We advise clients to work first, and hardest, on the content of your site, rather than spend thousands on expensive design. Ask the designer you select what they will charge you to make updates to the site. Also consider a simple Content Management System so you or your marketing team can make basic updates and add pages yourself.
9. Have your site built and have a demo site put online for you to test. Go through and make sure all your links and forms are functioning correctly before you “go live”.
10. Once your site is live, make sure all your staff, suppliers, partners and clients are aware of it. Do a promotion and send them links to instantly get connected. Start working on how to generate more traffic, so you will be moved up in the rankings on search engines (Google®, Yahoo®, etc).

Learn your fear of raising prices and stand up to it. Don’t allow the fear you have about money and prices to be the decision maker. Acknowledge the fear, set it aside, and then get creative and make a non-emotional decision, regarding your prices.

When you’re having a conversation with a customer, whether in person or via advertising, focus on “the value” of the product/service you offer. People love to hear stories about other happy customers who have experienced the joy of doing business with you. Talk more about value and less about the price. Being enthusiastic and passionate about what you do is viral. Customers want you to believe in yourself and your business. They want to buy from someone who is proud, passionate and confident about what they do.

When you raise your prices, you’ll have more money to gain more, and better customers. The additional income allows you to market, advertise and promote your business in ways you couldn’t afford to before.

Operating a small business is vastly different than running a corporate giant. Small businesses can be more creative and opportunities to succeed are greater. Very few principles can be taken from a corporate giant and applied to a small business with similar results. Your advantages in a small business are the complete opposite of theirs. They have mass volume, distribution and leveraging advantages.  You don’t. Don’t be misguided by the pricing war behavior they engage in because thankfully, it doesn’t apply to you!

One falsehood many people fall for is that by lowering their price, they’ll “make it up in volume.” Here’s a great example…..a guy buys a boat load of money change-making machines and someone says, “How will you make a profit? People put a dollar in and you give them four quarters. How in the world can you possibly make any money on that deal?” The guy responds by saying, “I’ll make it up in volume.” Really?

Much of the fear of raising prices comes from the whole small business self esteem factor that says, “I’m not worth it and would feel guilty raising prices because my customers trust me for this price and therefore, if I raise them, I’m taking advantage of them.” Really?

Take yourself back to the state of mind you had when you first started your business. Remember all that energy you had? You were so excited that you stayed up all night researching and writing down all the limitless possibilities you could create? Never lose that game element because it’s what keeps every business’s energy and creativity flowing.

There will never be a shortage of opportunity for you to raise your prices, when you are continually raising the value of the buying experience. You won’t lose customers, you’ll gain them.

Twitter is a micro blogging website that allows users to post  very short (up to 140 character) updates, comments, thoughts and links  to other websites.

Once you have an account with Twitter you can find other Twitter  users who could be anyone from your sister to companies, or to  celebrities such as Larry King . Once you follow these other users their Twitter updates will become visible in your Twitter “feed”.

How To Create Your Twitter Identity

1. Go to www.twitter.com click on the “Sign Up
2. Create your personal or company account, you only have 15 characters so you may need to get creative with your name.
3. There is not a limit to how many accounts you can sign up.
4. If you have unique or special products or services it is worth registering an account for these also.
5. Personalize your profile by adding a photo, brand your background  add your location, link to your website, and write a short bio.
6. Start using Twitter. Use the “Find people” option to find someone you know on twitter and follow them.
7. Use the reply function to talk to a friend.
8. Send a direct message to someone.
9. Re-tweet a message you found useful that someone posted.

So if you would like more info feel free to email me at jon@redspotmarketing.com

Developing a Marketing Plan will keep your marketing efforts focused, more effective and more cost effective.  Each business’s Marketing Plan should be unique to that business’s market, goals and competitive environment.  However, the most effective Marketing Plans will include a number of critical elements:

1. Value Proposition
Your value proposition, simply stated, tells your market why they should buy from you.  In other words:  What makes you the best option for them?  Are you less expensive than their other options?  Will they get better customer service?  Do you offer more for the money?  Are you a local business versus a national chain?, etc.   Your value proposition must be articulated in simple language that gives a clear picture of why your prospects should do business with you.

A good rule is to keep it to 25 words or less.  Here are some examples for a variety of businesses:

“We sell office supplies for less than any national chain.”

“Every bicycle we sell is backed by a 2 year end-to-end warranty.”

“We have the world’s largest selection of hard-to-find parts for every foreign car on the road.”

“We guarantee on-time arrival of our repair technicians or your repair is free.”

GoHuman.com celebrates the small business owners helping us build a powerful new kind of Marketplace for the 21st Century.   We know you depend on us to help you grow and expand your business, the marketing guidance you so sorely need in today’s world.

To further our mutual goals, GoHuman.com is proud to add a noted marketing professional, author and successful small business owner/manager as a regular contributor to our Blog.  Starting this week, Jon Johnson, CEO and President of Red Spot Marketing will be providing invaluable advice in a “Monday is for Marketing” blog series.

Jon has marketed hundreds of small businesses in over 10 countries, including Australia, UK, Canada, USA and Thailand.

His success lies in bringing a simple approach to each company’s marketing and helping them implement more elements of the marketing mix to get better results.

“Blended” is Jon’s first book and draws upon his experience from marketing vastly different types of companies worldwide and seeing the challenges they all face.

Jon holds a BA Hons Degree in Marketing from Bournemouth University in England, and lives in Ontario, Canada with his wife Dr. Joyce Johnson and their two daughters, Olivia and Charlotte.