In today’s business climate, business’ are increasingly expected to have an online presence.  An increasing number of business owners are incorporating online marketing when they allocate dollars for marketing efforts.  The possibilities for online marketing are constantly evolving and can be highly effective in attracting prospects and promoting a brand.  In many cases, small businesses are putting more marketing dollars towards online marketing campaigns that incorporate social media, pay-per-click campaigns and website overhauls than more traditional advertising mediums. Read the rest of this entry »

The New Year is finally here and, I don’t know what it is, but something just feels different about 2010. Everyone at Revenflo is super excited about 2010 and the possibilities that exist. I wanted to start the new year off right with a new small business-focused approach to creating content – one that addresses the core questions and opportunities about marketing on the web. I plan to make this a weekly series about marketing and the web, so if there are specific topics you want me to cover, leave a comment and I will put it in the queue.

There has been a major shift in web marketing during the past three years, brought on largely by three factors:

• Search Engines – Whether it’s Google, Bing or whatever comes next, let’s face it – most people think of that box with a blinking cursor in the middle of their screen AS THE INTERNET.

• Content Creation – Businesses are now pumping out blog posts, email newsletters, video, tweets and such for a new connected world

• Social Media – Facebook has blown up the world, and it only gets bigger from here…WAY BIGGER.

These three factors quantify How, Why, and Where people are spending their time online, and should also define – wait for it – HOW YOU SPEND YOUR MONTHLY MARKETING BUDGET.

But how do you do that? I’d like to present the six most effective tools to spend your marketing budget on, and give you an idea what percentage of that monthly total each tool should consume. It’s a sliding scale, and the precise percentage will vary between business model. But hese numbers will give you a rough idea of the cost and/or importance of each tool.

Here, then, are 6 real-world, start-tomorrow suggestions on HOW TO SPEND YOUR MONEY.

#1 Get a NEW Website…

listen, before you go any farther…make sure you are in a fully scalable system that allows you to publish content and alter your site on the fly. If not, it will take much longer for you to respond to changing factors in your industry…making the whole endeavor that much harder. It you are using a Content Management System (CMS,) then go to step 2.

#2 SEO – search engine marketing

In the plain terms that I like to talk about with tactics, there is no other place to start the conversation, because its where everyone else is starting – at least for the near term. In the coming years this will start to change, as businesses begin to receive rankings and referrals from social media, but for now SEO is the top of the heap, and the best bang for your buck. Think about it, if you don’t show up on the first 3 pages of Google, Yahoo or Bing then your website has no chance – and I do mean zero – of producing for you. Spend 40% of your money here.

#3 Blog Posts, Press Releases, Written Content for your site

This goes hand in hand with the first two recommendations. We can do so much with written content and the search engines love it. Google ranks you on many factors and almost all of them revolve around written content creation. So here is what you should do, from the very beginning: hire a company that can help you get this process under control. It would be great if you could take some time to write. It really isn’t that hard and the process can be quite relaxing after you get the hang of it. But, ask yourself, will you actually take the time to do it? Likely about half as often as your best intentions. But that’s not bad if you have a company taking up your slack when you have an important golf trip or need a mental health day at the beach. You see, Google doesn’t care about your golf trip…just that your website is producing regular content. Spend 20-25% of your money here.

#4  Automated Email follow-up

This is a fairly new concept, and it differs from just pushing out an email newsletter. It is client-specific, client-tracking, client-metrics, client-strategy, and it has just recently come down to an affordable price. Don’t contract with a vendor, pay thousands of dollars to license software, and then pay a butt-ton of monthly fees – there is a better way!

Monthly services like Infusionsoft are affordable and downright easy to integrate into your daily workflow. Get this, you set up campaigns and not only can your track the campaigns but also THE CLIENT or PROSPECT! How amazing is that? But you must strategically work through the process: creating the content, capturing your client education and buying process, and constructing a campaign. That is where you are going to spend the most money…after it is created then you will just need small tweaks and updates and an administrator can perform. Spend 10% of your money here.

#5 Social Media

In 2009, many well-known brands and large businesses stepped up to the plate, spending significant money on social media. Small businesses are just starting to get their feet wet with this form of media. One big thing to consider here is the message you are promoting. To really make a dent in social media you need a strategy and some tried and tested methods that will produce the type of conversation that works in social media. So keep your spending moderate until you are able to hammer out the details and the framework of your campaigns. The great thing about this medium is that with a little time and budget its a very meaningful way to connect with your sphere of connections. Spend 10% of your money here.

#6 Video

Video is changing how we interact with the web. Youtube is the second largest search engine. Video hardware is getting better and cheaper. More consumers are migrating to high-speed internet connections, and those speeds keep increasing. All of this is leading us into a time when business will use video to communicate regularly with clients, be it training, demonstrations, interviews, product reviews, promotion, and so on. Revenflo is delving into this area as we speak. We have an appointment later this month with our Revenflo videographer for an interview style session. Our approach will be to produce regularly scheduled, informal 3-5 minute segments of video interviews (during one video session) with the owner of Revenflo, Jason Broadwater. Spend 10-20% here.

We want to know what you think and what questions you have. Take a moment and let us know.

Common Web Writing “Sins” That Should Never Happen on Your Website

Some clients treat professional web copywriting services as an afterthought in the web design process. For many clients, the skills required to create riveting web graphics, or to program intuitive functionality seem like magic, or brain surgery, or magic brain surgery. But Writing? Everybody can write! So, that’s the area where they try to save a few hundred bucks. You end up with a beautiful, functional site that reads like a service manual, and contains a laundry list of web copy sins. Sins like:

Web Writing Sin #1: Rehashing Existing Copy

Why pay for fresh web writing when you have all of these brochures lying around? Well, because web writing is just different. It is meant to be more concise and more quickly absorbed, because we read web copy differently than print.

Imagine your customer holding your brochure in one hand. Maybe he has your competitor’s brochure in the other hand. There might be a third on the table in front of him. Contrast that with the MILLIONS of choices available to your customer in the web.

The more choices he has, the less time he will spend studying each one. So, if you are halfway down the web page, and you’re just getting to the part when Dad took over the company from Grandpa Bob…your typical web reader is long gone.

Web Writing Sin #2: Selling Your Awesomeness Instead of the Product:

This is a mistake of content and tone that seems to only happen to very successful businesses. Once they come to dominate the entire tri-county widget market, they tend to lapse into a kind of marketing shorthand. Without explaining the benefits, or even bothering to pitch to the potential customer, their web messaging tends to come across as “we’re awesome…join our team.”

Instead of assuming that the reasons for your success are obvious, and that the customer is dying for an invitation to bask in your glow, take a step back. Reflect on the components of your past success; most likely, the ways you serve the customer better than the other guy. Then present those ideas as the benefits the customer will enjoy when THEY invite YOU to be their vendor.

Web Writing Sin #3: Selling Features Instead of Benefits

This is closely related to the previous notion. Your patented process is 20% more awesome than your competitor’s? Congratulations…but what does it mean to the customer? Definitely tout your features, but never assume that the benefits are obvious to the reader. If it means more value for the dollar, a quicker return on investment, or it simply tastes great and is less filling, make sure to clearly state the benefits in terms that matter to the potential customer.

Web Writing Sin #4: Choosing English over Keywords

Keyword frequency is a necessary evil in web writing, and sometimes it takes a professional to inflict the linguistic damage necessary for good SEO.

SEO has altered the way information is presented on the page. To a language purist devoted to the Queen’s English, the results aren’t necessarily positive. In the real world, we use pronouns…in the web world, we don’t. Words like us, we and our become Tri-State Industrial Widget Company. You find yourself placing “industrial widget” in front of commonly abbreviated concepts like market, manufacturer, customer, sales and service, and so on. Henry David Thoreau said to “Simplify, simplify.” Thoreau also wrote crappy web copy.

Web Writing Sin #5: Not Going Pro!

Whether it’s in helping you see your value to the customer in a new way, asking the stupid questions others are afraid to ask, or in, you know, just writing real good, a professional web copywriter can add real value to your web presence. Truly, it’s a corner you don’t want to cut!

Every small business owner knows that having a robust web presence is key to expanding their reach to customers outside their local market area. Having a blog is also part of that robust build-out.

Read the rest of this entry »

It appears as though social media has truly reached the tipping point for mainstream America.  The innovators that have been blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, YouTubing and using various other social media outlets have a lot more company these days.  For those of you familiar with the Innovation Curve, the late majority has arrived!  A large part of the growth of social media pivots around the realization that businesses can achieve greater exposure via social media.  Read the rest of this entry »

JAN-PRO of the South Carolina Coast joins with RevenFlo to develop a website in the open source content management system Wordpress. The organizational goals include stronger online presence as more reflective of their market-leading strength; better facility to use their website in a meaningful way for publishing and managing of content; and improved communications, marketing, and sales. Read the rest of this entry »

Presence | Sphere | Relationships

Any small to mid-sized business has these goals and objectives:

• Grow Presence
• Inspire Prospective Contacts
• Facilitate and Strengthen Relationships

What do these objectives look like on the web?

The most important factor to the success on the Web is your overall approach. You cannot buy success on the web. You have to achieve it and maintain it. So what is it? What does success from the Web look like?

Presence

• professional interactive up-to-date website presenting quality information to your prospective audience, making their lives easier or more fulfilled
• search presence
• social media presence

Prospective Contacts

• Growing network community
• Facilitating referrals and cross-referencing
• Generating leads

Relationships

• Using tools such as email, rss, and podcasting to stay in touch with contacts
• Using CRM tools online (SaaS)
• Managing social media
• Providing “logged-in”online experiences for your customers
• Using content to provide continuing value to your clients

What does implementation look like?

Tools

• Website
• Blog
• Social Media Spaces
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Others as they emerge
• Search Engines
  • Paid
    • Google Ad Words
    • Bing
    • Others?
  • Organic
    • Website
    • Blog
    • Social Media
    • Directories

Activities

• Posting content
• Managing content
• Creating content
• Design
• Development
• Search optimization
• Analytics tracking
• A/B testing
• Conversion tracking and analysis
• Linking
• Connecting
• Researching
• Emailing
• Systemizing
• Automating

Examples of Metrics

• Presence in Search Engines
• Presence and Network in Social Media
• Website Traffic and Visitor Behavior
• Content Interaction
• Web-based Conversions

Team

• Account Manager
• Consultant
• Project Manager
• Knowledge Workers
  • Designer
  • Developer
  • Writer
  • SEO Manager
  • PPC Manager

Cut to the chase

Budget

Our programs are based on strategic scheduled activity planned and budgeted per month or per quarter. The implementation of new technologies before beginning a program is common and may necessitate a project (as defined by having a beginning and end) on the front end of your program (as defined by its cyclical nature). All work is billed by the hour, managed through budgets, timelines, and deliverables.

Return

Return must be seen as overall business growth (revenue, brand equity, communications improvement, infrastructure improvement, leads, contacts, network, etc.). THIS IS NOT A LEAD GENERATION PROGRAM and would be unsuccessful if measured solely by that metric. These programs will grow your overall market presence and your overall business endeavor. These programs also inevitably help organizations improve processes and messaging, just by being put to task on these things in specific ways.

Mantra

Think it through.  Open it up.  Do and Measure.

Contact us to set a meeting and discuss!

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