Gaining Customers and Creating Traction

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Gaining customers and creating traction in a down economy, written by guest blogger Wendy Bryant.

Like many of you I’ve been told to do more with less. Whether you’re a marketer or business owner we have smaller budgets and need to gain more traction. The landscape of how to communicate your business to the public has changed and shifted so much in the last five years. I find myself reading, tweeting, and learning. I love it. There is an amazing opportunity now to ramp up your companies’ presence online for very little spend. So, I thought I would share my results and what has been working for me lately.

  • Get your website up to snuff. Whether you use Drupal or WordPress, do something. The platform doesn’t really matter. Get a good designer to help you make a splash but develop your site on a platform in which YOU can make edits, upload new images, change copy when you need to. You’ll look like a superstar—it will take minutes out of your day to upload that latest press release, news coverage, or new image. Plus you’re saving your company money by executing these small changes yourself. For me WordPress is what I use for my art website and Drupal is my company’s platform. If implemented correctly both platforms are easy to maintain and update.
  • Advertising – If you want to skip print media for now try Google AdWords. It’s inexpensive but you will need to check and fine tune your key words. It will take some time to find the right ad content for your business so start out slow with a small spend per day.
    • SEO – I am no SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert but I’ve done the following to help my companies’ ranking and also employed the same techniques for other businesses:
      • Google Map Profile – It’s free—just go to Google and create a Gmail account for your business and a map profile. This helps index your site and elevate organic searches for your business.
      • Google Analytics – Also free—set it up on Google by copying the code they give you onto your website. You really be able to see who is visiting your site, where they are coming from, what pages they are visiting—the reporting is very detailed and you can cut and paste this onto any report for presentations.
      • Web copy – Writing the actual copy for your website does take a lot of time. Key words and repetition within the site is what Google and other search engines look for. Spend time thinking about what key words are revelent to your business and then see how you can weave these into your overall copy.
      • Website updates – It’s important that you update your website as often as possible. Whether you’re posting a news coverage, sending out a new update on Twitter, LinkedIn or posting to your blog this tells Google that your website is relevant and an active business.
      • Social Media. We’ve all been hearing about it. It’s not free and takes up a lot of human capital. Start out small and slowly. For me I’m a one person show so I symphathize with many of you who are operating with limited staff. I started by creating our Linkedin profile initially and just recently started Twitter. Think about social media as platforms that work together. Twitter is your platform to send links to the world and short reminders. Blogs are where you should be posting longer richer content.
  • Create your company’s Linkedin profile. It does matter—whether you’re an individual business owner or a large company—this is the online hub to “record” yourself to the world. If you’re an individual business owner—this is your online resume and fact sheet. It’s really the same for any size company. If you work for a larger organization rally employees to create profiles on Linkedin. Get HR to post that next job opening. This one is easy for you to maintain—once your profile is created you’re just editing and maintaining. Linkedin is a very standard profile all companies should have.
  • Create a Twitter profile. Keep it simple. Don’t overwhelm yourself. For me it’s literally just me supporting Twitter so I sent out a tweet once a week. I also “build” content in the background and try to send out more content when I can. Take advantage of these platforms—they’re free and just require your time. This is another platform that you can get your subject matter experts within the company involved. Collaborate with your business experts and sales to create short, content subjects that your clients care about. It’s not about how great your company is. Put yourself in the seat of the customer—what do they want to know? What criteria or search is involved in reaching your company, your product, or your service? What’s your view on the your industry? This type of content will create traction and get those followers!
  • Blogs. Do you need to post to your blog daily? If you can but try starting by posting once a week. Remember this is your platform to post longer content—at least 300 words. Test out different types of content you’ll find what will work for your industry. Keep it fun—post something that isn’t too time intensive on your part every now and then.
  • Video. Many of us don’t have the budget to hire a professional video expert. Buy a video camera and tripod and start recording—for my company’s website it’s about our business process and value proposition so maybe we’ll record projects, brown bag seminars, public speaking events and even a quarterly “tv” spot to our customers–you get the idea. Post to YouTube and get it on your website.

Here are some great companies and sites to visit for services:

See Wendy’s Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/wenbryant.

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