Inbound Marketing The New Old Fashioned Service

In the olden days a small business would open a shop or a factory and put a sign out the front and get ready to do business with the passing customers. Some entrepreneurial businesses would go to the customer and deliver goods to their door to aid in convenience for the customer, and improve the chances of making regular sales to those customers who might go somewhere else to get their goods. 

In the old days the shopkeeper or maker might put an advertisement in the newspaper and advertise their specials. In these olden days, men went to work and women stayed at home and did the laundry and kept house and raised the children, cooked and baked and made pies or bread for the family. 

In the old days, customers would go to the store and see what was on offer and the salesman would inform the customer about the product features and benefits and the customer would make a decisions about what to buy. 

Now the way people make purchase decisions has changed. A recent study by Google shows that in practice the ways that people move from considering a purchase to making the decision to purchase happens in a whole new way. Now they do their research, learn about the benefits and features, know what the price is and what the other products that compare to that product is like and move from consideration to decision before they leave home. 

Be the business of choice when customers are ready to buy

Small businesses that want to be involved in that decision process, or be the place that the customer chooses to buy from depends on the activities of the small business or large business (it doesn't matter online how big or small you are), to win the attention of the customer and show that you have what they want and are easy to do business with. 

Get your website in order first

You website is the first place to start with ensuring you get found online. Your website should carry the important details about where you are how to find you, how to contact you, what you sell, what's special about your business and be appealing to visitors as your shop or factory would be.

Connected to your online shopfront, are your social platforms where you can engage with customers and their friends and new people who  have not yet visited your business but would like to. Facebook, Twitter, many platforms could be used, some would be more of a fit than others, depending on your business, but also the profile of the clients you serve and their habits and where they get  together online to chat and hang out.

Activate inbound marketing strategies and develop relationships online 

Understanding the right social media platforms for you takes some research and some testing. What we do ourselves is no indicator of what our customers' habits online are like. The only way to know is to ask, and to test.

Test not just one approach, but test many and keep testing, not just where but the type of content we are posting. Just like in your business, 'rotating your stock and facing up your shelves' is as important online as it is in Main Street in your business. Customers want you to take notice of the things they want when buying.

Stay positive! 

It can seem daunting for small businesses to attempt to begin online marketing. The rules change all the time but a well thought out strategy is the key to keeping focus and your business afloat in this new environment.

Basically, to customers, if you are not online - you don't exist. If you are online and demonstrating you have no clue - they will assume you don't know your market very well and are out of touch with your customers.

Learn new skills for the sake of your business

But your expertise is in running your business the way you have always done it and has worked for you. Now you need to learn new skills and that's not a problem, you learned everything you already know, but you can't afford to learn this stuff as you go along.

Get help, get the right help and save yourself from wasting time that could be building business, and putting yourself into situations that are bad for business. This is the time to invest in your business and you own education and reap the benefits in future sales and improved placement online.
Five levels of 'being online' for business.

Not everything has changed

In learning about the changes in the marketplace it is worth remembering that some things don't change. Some things you do well now will be part of what you do with your online marketing.

Caring about customers doesn't change.
Providing good service, doesn't change.
Taking care of all the sections of your business that need to be managed, doesn't change.

Your expenses can change ... and bring more value

Some things you can do very effectively now for very little money.

Some things that once cost your business a lot of money - like Yellow Pages advertising, you don't need to pay now at all.

You can now do more with less and do things to promote your business that only a big business once could do.

The range of customers who can now buy from you has expanded way beyond just the people who once walked past your door on a whim.

We live busy lives now. Families are juggling jobs and commitments now and have different constraints on their time.  We are not at home with the kids and baking pies, we are working and trying to pay that mortgage and every spare moment of time is precious.

But we still like to support local business and while the milkman may not call, we are doing a lot of shopping from home and seeing the delivery man or woman with our purchases is just part of our day now. Inbound marketing for business, is conventient and easy to shop for customers.

Will those parcels be coming from your business?

Related posts:
Many hands make lighter work of social media for local businesses
Here's how to save time and get good content for your business online
Inbound marketing the new old fashioned way to do business
Financial planners: Social Marketing the key to keeping business on the books
Business writing not just on the social media wall
What every business should know about social media


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How Your Business Just Became An Online Publisher And Why It Is A Productivity Issue

Like It Or Not - Your Business Is Now In Publishing.  

The channel you create to engage with people who can be your customer is the new face of what circulation numbers once were for the newspapers.

Content is King on search engines and now you can add to that Context. Well, it should always have been part of the equation, but now it is official.

 “Without relevant content, how will our customers trust that we know how to solve their issues?  They won’t and we know that.  As marketers, we must facilitate discussions that add value and build trust over time.”  Dominic Pontrelli, Sr. VP of Marketing at Ricoh America

Kevin Jorgensen describes Context in marketing in this way -

“Context marketing is a set of best practices designed to amplify the value of your content to your prospects and customers. More specifically it’s about using known qualities of your prospect to either present your content in a frame of reference so that its presence makes it natural, noteworthy and useful or to juxtapose your content so that it creates dissonance." 

Cognitive dissonance is that feeling you get when you see something that is 'just not right' with the picture in front of you.

So what does this mean to you in your business? Well it means that you cannot think that your advertising and pushing promotions is the way to use social media and promote your business to customers any more.

It means you need some things you may have but never used before. Here are just some of the new jobs that need to be happening in your business...

Identifying and understanding of your ideal customer demographic and psychographic profile.  It might seem that we know all we need to know about customers but the reality is there is rarely a business that has objectively analyzed their customers to determine their characteristics in detail.

Stories. You need stories and a way to tell your stories in a way that prospective customers will find valuable.

Honesty. Your customers don’t want to be lied to and they can find out very fast if you have misled them and treated them like mugs.  Don’t be That Guy.

A Publishing Space.  You want to get your message out then you need to build a following of people who are prepared to receive information from you and your business.  Search can help people find your products but your publishing will help them to find you.  Those who find you, you want to be able to continue to engage with and have them return to you and be open to your information over time. Building your following is a new job to be done.

Content. Creating packages of your stories and information means getting the stories out in different formats and different ways to gain attention and retention of your message.

Context. Tying your stories to real situations that your target prospects can easily relate to in their lives and that helps them join the dots from their problem to your solution.

Think of this as building your own personal channel to present to people who are or will be able to be your customer.  

This can become your business’s media hub and interface to engage and communicate with customers. So important is this that it could be the only interaction that you have with some customers who may choose to buy from you without ever meeting you in person.  It may be your source of new employees, new joint venture partners, new suppliers and new business partners, or even a buyer for your business as well as new customers. This could be your major source of new business in the years to come.

This can look like a lot of work that doesn’t relate to what your core business is about. 

If you are thinking that, you’re wrong. 

This is directly related to your core business and your ability to generate sales. Your ability to create your own channel through which you can be visible, credible and accessible as you engage with your customer segment is what will show your business to be relevant and important to those who will become your customers, and give confirmation to your existing customers that they made a good choice and your business is worth buying from. 

This is a business productivity issue. Your business needs to get this right. So you have to make it happen.

And there is no more time to waste.

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