Set Up Your Business Software on the Cheap

Money’s tight right now.  But you can still put together a full suite of office software using free downloads and web based software without having to pay the nasty license fees of shrinkwrapped software.  Over on Small Biz Survival, Becky McRay lays out some of her favorite free downloads and web apps for small business.  What are yours?

You Are In Charge Of Cleaning Up This Mess

The economy is tanking.  Big businesses are laying people off right and left.  Credit is dried up.  People are losing their homes.  Who’s going to save us from this mess?

You are.

Yes, you, Mr. or Ms. Small Business Person are going to single handedly save this economy.  By yourself.

It was the big guys that got us into this mess, but it’s always been the little guys that have gotten us out.  So now is the time to double down, to refocus, to figure out what you need to do to keep your business growing and creating new jobs.  Because in a recession, the growth to lead us out of it comes from small businesses.

If you only read one thing on the internet today, go read this post at Small Biz Survival to find out just how important you are.

Then quit futzing around on the internet and get back to work and clean up this mess.

Three Things Small Businesses Should Do In November

I’m a bit of a purist.  I don’t think that the Christmas season should start until the day after Thanksgiving at the earliest.  But about a week ago, I got my first Christmas season coupon–from Chevy’s of all places!  Because nothing says happy holidays like a chimichanga or a sizzling plate of fajitas.

The first Christmas coupon of the year got me thinking about what small businesses do to prepare for the holiday shopping season, especially now that the economy is in the tank.  So I’ve put together a list of three things that every small business should do in November to get ready for the Christmas shopping season.

1. Define your holiday value proposition.  Are you a quick and convenient place to buy last minute gifts?  Do you sell unique gifts that they’ll always remember?  Do you sell hard to find things that everyone wants?  Are you a one stop shop with something for everyone?  Do you have a personal touch that makes for a great shopping experience?  Your customers need to know the ONE BEST REASON why they should come to you rather than any of your competitors.  And when you think about your holiday marketing, this value proposition should be the lead for everything you do.
2. Plan your search engine strategy.  You should start November by doing an evaluation of how you rank in the search engines for the terms that your customers are most likely to use to find you.  Are you on the first page for your most important terms?  If you’re not, good luck getting visitors to your website–and to your business.  You’ll probably have some terms that you’ll be able to improve your natural position on, others you might want to think about buying ads against.  You can target ads specifically at the geographic region where you do business.  Your goal should be to show up as high as possible for the top 20 terms you think your customers would search on to find you.
3. Develop a couponing strategy.  Face it, the economy is in bad shape this holiday season.  People aren’t going to be spending as much as they have in years past.  This will have an especially hard impact on small local businesses.  But the upside of this is that people are doing more searches for coupons.  This gives you a great opportunity to leverage some of this traffic.  Determine what items you have high margins on, or where you have excess inventory you need to clear, or if you have “hot” items that everyone will be looking for, and figure out how you can offer discounts on these items for bargain shoppers.  Make sure that you include these offers in your online materials and optimize your search engine strategy around them.

It’s critical to get your holiday strategy in place now so you’re not caught off guard in a month.  Or worse yet, watch your competition get the jump on you and start pulling in your potential customers.  What are you doing to get your business primed for the holiday shopping season?

Small Business Blogging Makes Happier Customers

Jennifer Leggio has a post up on ZDNet today about small business and social media.  In a report issued by SurePayroll, they found that “36% of online users think more positively about companies that have blogs. In the SurePayroll survey, 85% of business owners participating in social media for business are doing so by way of blogging online.”

Think about why blogging might have such an impact on how customers view a company.  Blogging does three things for you:

1. Let’s your customers know that you know what you’re talking about.  When you blog, you have the opportunity to share your expertise with people who are looking for that expertise.  If you own a book store and you blog about books, you have the chance to demonstrate your knowledge of the market, share your thoughts on new releases, and make recommendations that come from experience.
2. Let’s your customers interact with you.  Imagine two scenarios…First, I come up to you and start talking at you but never stop to let you get in a word and when I’m done talking I turn and walk away.  Now imagine that I come up to you and tell you something interesting, then ask you a question, then listen to your response, then engage you in conversation.  Which is more compelling to you as a customer?  Traditional websites are the first scenario, blogging is the second.
3. Allows you stay stay relevant and up to date.  How long does it take you to update your website?  Can you do it in 10 minutes?  A day?  A week?  With a blog, you can get real time information posted about your business to provide the most relevance for your customers.  Nobody wants to know what happened three weeks ago, they want to know what’s happening now.

When you look at these things holistically, it’s no wonder that customers think more positively about businesses that blog.  Are you blogging yet?  If you are feel free to share your experiences and any lessons learned in the comments.

Searches For San Jose Real Estate Are Going Through The Roof

Over on Square Feet, the San Jose Merc’s Real Estate Blog, Sue McAllister reports that searches for San Jose Real Estate are up 73.7% compared to September of last year.  Sue does a good job analyzing what that means for local real estate, but there’s an important lesson here for realtors as well.

When someone searches for San Jose Real Estate, will they find you?  Not unless you’re Don Orason.

Don Orason

Don Orason is the only local realtor who shows up by name on the first page of the listings for a Google search for “San Jose Real Estate“.  The rest are for Yahoo, Trulia, Realtor.com, Yelp, SanJose.com, etc.  As a realtor, if you’re not on the first page here, you’re missing a tremendous opportunity for finding new clients.

So since you don’t show up on this page, unless of course you’re Don Orason (Hi, Don!), what can you do to improve how you rank?  First, write about San Jose Real Estate!  There are lot of real estate blogs out there, but just having a blog isn’t enough.  You need to know how to link, what to write about, what to title your posts, and how to generate links back to your site.  You need to make sure that you’re listed in the right places and that your content is getting cited by other people.  You also need to know what people who are looking for you might likely be searching for.

Especially in a down market, people increasingly turn to the web to find information.  It’s critical not just for realtors, but for all small businesses to make sure that they are optimizing for how people find local information.  If the internet doesn’t seem to be driving much business for you, it’s not the internets fault.  It’s probably time to look at your web presence and figure out what you can improve to make sure your customers can find you.

In related news, I just linked to Don.  Which will help his website’s Google mojo even more.  You’re welcome, Don.

What is a Local Marketing Coach?

It seems that there is a coach for everything these days.  You’ve got life coaches, financial coaches, executive coaches, soccer coaches (which I’m proud to be), and even Facebook coaches.  Coaches help teach people how to be better at the things that are important to them that they’re not already good at or that they think they could use some objective help with.

Small business owners are experts at their crafts–whether that be plumbing, antiques, italian food, real estate, gardening, auto repair, or whatever.  But being a small business owner requires being multi-faceted.  You need to manage your books, take care of your customers, market your business, do your taxes, comply with permits and licensing, and you typically end up spending an inordinate amount of time doing all of those things that you’re not an expert at.  One solution is to pay someone to do those things for you.  Hire an accountant.  Hire an assistant.  Hire a consultant.  Hire a website developer.  However, things are tight for small businesses and the resources to outsource those functions don’t always exist.

A local marketing coach is someone who can help you learn how to reach your local customer base, help you increase exposure for your business, and control costs at the same time.  Most small business owners focus their marketing on things that are easy and that they are familiar with like local newspaper or yellow pages advertising.  Unfortunately, these mediums are increasingly being marginalized by consumers going online to find information.  61% of consumers start their searches for local information on line (Google, internet yellow pages, review sites, etc.).  If they can’t find you, they won’t go out of their way to look for you.  Worse, if they CAN find your competition, you lose.

Online marketing can be very cost effective for small businesses.  You can pay for performance.  You can do a lot of things yourself to improve how you rank on the search engines.  You can create unique content about what you know best that helps people discover who you are and how you can help them.  And you can developer deeper relationships with your best customers.

I help small local businesses learn how all of these things work.  By understanding how search engines look for your business, how blogs help you communicate and connect with your customers, and how social media can help you create relationships with your friends and customers, there are lots of easy things that you can do that cost very little money but show tangible benefits for your business.  And by working together, we can come up with strategies on how to prioritize these things to meet your goals within the time and money restrictions that you have.  My goal as a local marketing coach is to make it so that you don’t need me anymore.

On this blog, I’ll be sharing my thoughts, opinions, and ideas on local marketing, social media, blogging, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and small business marketing that can help you understand how these things all work together to create opportunities to grow your local business.

If you’re a small business owner who would like to learn more about creating a blog, using social media, or understanding where you show up in Google (and why), I’d love to talk to you.  Feel free to email me with any questions or just leave comments here on this blog.

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens and hopefully help some people out along the way.

-Ryan