Red Hot Marketing Strategies from NSBS!

Australia’s political leaders, the nation’s top public servants, a Fortune 100 heavy weight and a TV celebrity were some of the speakers at the National Small Business Summit in Brisbane last week.

Speaking in amongst Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan, Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott, Channel 7 Sunrise host David “Kochie” Koch &  Dell’s US social media expert Richard Binhammer were some humble business owners as well!

I was honoured to speak on the Red Hot Sales, Marketing & Social Media Strategy panel.

The Red Hot Sales, Marketing & Social Media Strategy panel. Richard Binhammer, Valerie Khoo, Linda Hailey, Adam Franklin & Ciaran McGuigan

Here is a (rough) transcript of what I spoke about.

Now more than ever huge opportunities exist for small businesses not only to compete with but beat bigger businesses.   And it’s all thanks to the web!

WEB HAS CHANGED MARKETING in 2 fundamental ways.

1. INFORMATION STAYS ONLINE FOREVER.
   Traditionally, when you’ve run adverts on TV, radio, billboards or press once your campaign has finished, the next day it’s gone.But online, information stays archived forever, allowing you to build up your online profile over time.
2. THE USER IS NOW IN CONTROL
   Imagine if every TV ad, radio ad, billboard ad or direct mail ad had an <unsubscribe> <unfollow> or <report as spam> button on it?  And if someone hit that button, you could never contact that person again?

   Imagine how much that would change what you said in your marketing?

Of course on the web, this is case.  You can easily unsubscribe from emails, un-follow people on Twitter, un-like facebook pages & click past terrible websites.

THE SCARY THING IS: You usually only get one chance.

So the onus really is on us as small business owners, to market ourselves in a way that people like & on terms that they want.

Adam Franklin at National Small Business Summit

Which brings me to the most common question we get asked by web strategy clients at Bluewire Media…  And that is:

People buy from you because you solve a problem for them. These days, the successful companies are the ones  creating information that helps solve people’s problems.

Think for a second what you’ve done when faced with a problem… With a show of hands, in the last 2 weeks,

• Who’s put a feeler out to friends and got a response via email, facebook or twitter?  [about 30% of the room]
• Who’s googled something? [about 99% of the room]

We are already very active online.

• Statistics show that only 14% or people trust ads yet 78% trust recommendations from other people.People search for information they want and ignore all other interruptions (usually adverts).

So my rhetorical questions is: Are you attracting people or interrupting people with your marketing?  Or as Richard described before, “are you a rude waiter?”

The biggest misconception is that your ‘website is everything’ but I’ll explain why this is wrong in a second.  Your website is certainly very important as it’s the central commercial hub of all your web activity. Your website is where you sell and generate commercial outcomes.

Let’s have a look at this Web Marketing Diagram, which is a free download at www.BluewireMedia.com.au.  Click One Page Web Strategy Plan.

Web Marketing Diagram - click to enlarge

Your website is the centrepiece of your web marketing and there are 4 outcomes from a good website (you can see these on the right hand side):

People can:

1. enquire
2. purchase
3. download
4. participate

But everything else you do on the web is based around attracting people to your website by EARNING TRUST & CREDIBILITY off-site. This is why happens off your website, is just as important as want happens on it.

After all, YOU control your website:

• so people may take what you say with a grain of salt.
• But what’s happens off your site is out of your control!
• What people say about you is much more believable & authentic simply for the fact it hasn’t come out of your mouth!

And the second most common question we get asked by web strategy clients at Bluewire… is:
“How to we attract people to website and get found?”

The answer again comes back to creating information that solves people’s problem.

You can certainly influence what happens off your site, by creating remarkable content.  And if it’s TRULY REMARKABLE, people will do just that & REMARK.

• People will blog about you,
• People will link to you
• People talk about you on social networks too!

THE GOOD NEWS for SMALL BUSINESS

• is back links can’t be bought,
• Google results can’t be faked
• You can’t force people share your content.

The better your information is, the more it is shared on social media, the more back links you attract and it’s these back links that help propel you up Google.

AND THIS IS HOW YOU BEAT THE BIG BOYS!

The web has levelled the playing field.  We can no longer be outspent by big corporations with massive marketing budgets.  It is now the quality of our content that is the key factor, not how deep our pockets are.

Please think about your CONTENT as deposits into a BANK, earning COMPOUND INTEREST. Forever!

Because once your remarkable content is online, it will continue to pay dividends for years.  The dividend comes from those commercial outcomes on your website. AND PEOPLE BUYING FROM YOU.

A good web strategy makes it very hard for a competitor to out-market or out-sell you.  But of course, if you don’t act now, you may forfeit this opportunity & a competitor will leap frog you!

If you are still using old-fashioned pre-web marketing strategies… My take home message is:

1. Start creating remarkable online content to get HEAD START in your industry
2. Turn that HEAD START into a GENUINE LEAD by consistently creating remarkable information.
3. Then make your LEAD UNASSAILABLE by always creating the very best information in your industry!!

Thank you.

[END OF SPEECH]

Our panel discussion was also featured in The Age: Modern day wooing: marketing tips from social media gurus.

Web Stratgey Speaker:  If you’d like a jargon-free web strategy speaker, please call Bluewire Media on 1300 258 394.

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