Are you projecting your ideas or taking the time to discover and listen to your customers’ wants and needs? In order to achieve success in marketing, it is critical that your image and message are based on what your customers are looking for from the outside looking in, not what a company wants to project from the inside out.

The first step in synchronizing your brand with your customers’ buying habits is to take a hard look at what your business is all about.

Face the inside reality

Your business’s inside reality is what your business is really all about: what you do well, what you don’t do well. It includes all benefits, obstacles, problems, etc. You can change your inside reality by improving processes, training employees, hiring employees, diversifying your services, improving your support and employing numerous other enhancements. Why is this important? Because if you don’t match the outside perception to your inside reality, you will wind up with unhappy customers.

Build or rebuild your brand image

…in accordance with your “inside reality” and your customers’ wants and needs.

The following elements are used to create brand impressions, build value, raise awareness, attract customers and promote services. They are the essence of your brand image:

• Your logo and tag line
• Your Web presence
• Your messaging (critical in conversions, must get attention, build value and trust)
• Your blog (so important it deserves its own bullet!)
• Ongoing marketing and advertising (e-mail, SEO, PPC, Social Media, PR, etc.)

So how do you synchronize these components with your customers’ buying habits?

First, you take the time to find out what your customers really want, rather than making assumptions about what you think they want. A good way to do this is by conducting interviews and organizing focus groups. Once you know for certain what your customers want, expect and need from your business, you will then be ready to develop the above media and campaigns in alignment with your customers’ expectations.

For example, if a customer’s primary goal is to set a meeting with a company that they feel can provide the services they require, they would need a few things to happen first:

• They need a clear and easy-to-find explanation of the desired services they are seeking.
• The messaging they read must build up substantial interest in order to provoke a response.
• They must be easily led to THEIR desired call to action…which in this case is the ability to set up a meeting.

Now let’s take it a step further. What if you have a Web form to set up a meeting, but the customer is more “old school” and prefers to pick up the phone and call you? You will need to make sure they can easily find your phone number at the exact time they have decided to convert. If they have to look for it, you will likely lose them.

So, in summary,

• Evaluate your inside reality. Don’t guess…be honest.
• Discover and define your customers’ wants and needs and how they prefer to do business.
• Write down all of your customers’ desired goals, from a low-level conversion such as an e-mail string up to your primary conversion.
• Create or update your branding material and marketing campaigns so that they build value and trust and are infused with calls to action aligned with your customers’ goals.

Looking for a new marketing direction, request a quote for services from Sparkhouse!

Constant Contact harnesses the power of social media for your business, so that your message can get social, fast. Here’s how it works:

Before reading any further, note: this blog post is not directed at anyone or any website in particular. It does not apply to everyone. The sole purpose of this post is to educate and make recommendations to website and business owners who aren’t properly optimizing their website, capturing leads, or appealing to potential clients.

It’s no secret that most businesses have websites. It’s also no secret that a lot of these websites stink. Whether it’s because of poor design or poor on-page elements, there are always things that can be done better (this blog is no exception).  Modifications or updates are always beneficial.  But when does redesigning your website become the necessary alternative to continual changes?

In a recent blog post that I read (I can’t remember the source), the author states that one will rarely see complete overhauls on branded-business websites with heavier traffic. Rather than complete redesigns or overhauls, these websites stick to constant tweaks, minor design changes, and other small revisions. This method works (and works great) if your company is well-known and recognized and is a go-to for content, videos, photos, and other things.  Clients / visitors are going to navigate these sites regardless because they know what they want, have trust in the business / website, they know specific services / content exist, and they know it will be provided regardless of the site’s design (even if it means they need to click through a couple extra pages to get to what they want).

This does not work for everyone though. If you run a smaller business and do not have a sizeable following, wowing your site’s visitor with a unique design, capturing on-page elements, and EXCEPTIONAL SEO can mean the difference between an immediate bounce and a conversion (inquiry, sale, contact). Most small businesses do not have the resources or the knowledge to do this on their own, which is why their website and its SEO (for the sake of this blog post) SUCK.

In today’s age of online marketing, there are educated professionals who can take a business’ online presence from nothing to something with methods that have proven beneficial.  If your website design and online marketing strategy fail to deliver results, you are doing something wrong. Why not let a seasoned professional work their magic on your website and give your business a better online presence? At the pace the ecommerce world and the online world are moving, it is smarter to address this sooner rather than later. There are new technologies and marketing platforms introduced almost daily so it is nearly impossible for a business owner to keep up with this and their business (it’s even tough for marketing professionals).

Does your website and SEO strategy need help?

I think about SEO all day and night. Occasionally I have dreams about SEO. Over the weekend, I began thinking about how time consuming and difficult SEO is (I am aware that this is nothing new, I just never stop thinking about it).

In addition to all of this, I began thinking about how hard it is to blog about SEO. There’s an abundance of awesome SEO bloggers out there as there are in most other industries. The question is how can you overcome these challenges and make yourself stand out? Many of the ideas I am going to share are fairly broad but will help in your everyday SEO tasks (link building, on-page stuff, blogging, etc.).

I am personally responsible for my company’s SEO (we rank on the first page of Google under “SEO” – boom!), paid search campaigns, social media (to an extent), content marketing and a list of other tasks. I have been personally responsible for overseeing the redesign of my company’s website, improving organic rankings under highly competitive SEO phrases (SEO, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, etc. and improving our social presence on the web.

In addition to this, I enjoy being involved in client projects as this keeps me on my toes and thinking more outside the box than I would normally have to.

So all of this got me thinking, what are some of my biggest day-to-day SEO challenges?

• Coming up with new ideas is one of my biggest challenges. With so much out there, it is hard to set yourself apart from others in your industry.

• Being creative – being creative is one of my hardest tasks to overcome while performing SEO. Luckily for me, I have access to an extremely creative team of designers, SEOs and copywriters.

• Staying on track – it is so easy to get sidetracked when doing anything, especially SEO. Given the amount of tasks you are responsible for, how do you stay focused?

• Staying organized – similar to staying on track; organization is huge in SEO and in every other industry for that matter. Do you have any organization tips or tricks?

• Bridging the gap between SEOs, designers, developers, copywriters and upper management – this is by far one of my biggest challenges and is something I face on a day-to-day basis.

How do I (and how can you) overcome these challenges?

The broadest answer I can give you to all of your challenges is to be creative. Don’t just be creative, stay creative. Focus on your competitors but try to put more time into focusing on what they are doing well and not just everything they are doing. When you see something that is working, ask yourself – “how can I make this better?” Think of new ways to set the bar instead of constantly following.

• Don’t give up. If something doesn’t work the first time, don’t just throw in the towel. As an SEO, you have to do a lot of testing and if everything worked on the first attempt without failure, many of us would be out of jobs. Apply this to your business as well. Don’t be afraid to do A/B testing and don’t forget to measure results. If you were to ask any of my colleagues, they would tell you that I constantly forget to set benchmark statistics when performing tests. If you don’t benchmark, it makes it that much harder to gauge your improvements.

• COMMUNICATE – the easiest way to bridge the gap between SEOs, copywriters, designers and upper management is to communicate. Don’t just communicate though, communicate in a way that people will understand. Don’t just explain the “what” explain the “why”. Communicate in a way that is easy to follow as this will more likely get you the results you are looking for.

• Stay organized in new and exciting ways. Organization and exciting probably don’t belong in the same sentence but give it a try. I took away an idea from an SEO conference I attended a few months ago. It is basically a board of movable post-it notes. Each post-it represents a task and each employee has their own column of tasks. This has improved organization and has helped get things done within my department. If you aren’t getting things done, what are you doing?

How do you overcome these challenges?

Outside of SEO, if you are a business owner and feel like you are presented with similar challenges; do you overcome some of them in the same manner? Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas!

Small Business Marketing with Facebook Search is so much more than a “chat session” as one of my clients recently described it. Facebook marketing has become an excellent tool for getting your content in front of millions of web surfers and for driving traffic to your website.

In fact, according to comScore’s recent data, there were 621 million Facebook search queries preformed in June 2010. That’s a 63% increase from the number of FB search queries performed in January 2010, and it’s almost half the searches performed on Bing. Facebook users are actively searching for specific content and information; why not make sure your content is presented?

There are more than a half billion registered FB users around the world, which presents an obvious opportunity for spreading your small business marketing message. And, with just a little bit of effort, the information you present on Facebook can actually appear on the “real” search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Ready to add this marvelous (and growing) tool to your small business marketing arsenal? Here are a few tips for optimizing your Facebook efforts for the best possible search results:

1. Choose your page name carefully. When creating a Facebook fan page or business page, put some serious thought into your page name and URL. Remember all that keyword research you did for your website? Well now is the time to pull out that file folder and review the words that are relevant to your target audience and your service offerings. You’ll want to incorporate these keywords into your About Me box and the Overview section of your page.

2. FBML. By utilizing the relatively new Facebook Markup Language (also known as FBML) you’ll be able to add your own images, graphics, and text that also make use of your targeted keywords. (Not familiar with FBML? This might be a job you want to pass on to your web master.)

3. Keep your list of targeted keywords handy. You’ll want to refer to these every time you add photos, create a discussion topic, even write status updates. And when linking to your FB updates from off-site pages, you’ll want to incorporate these keywords into your anchor text.

4. Be sure to review the new Facebook Questions feature. Here’s another chance to rank well in FB search for your chosen keywords, as well as present yourself as an expert (which, after all, should be part of your small business marketing plan). Popular questions are ranked more highly, so put some thought into the questions you create; make them alluring and engaging. And remember, there’s no rule against answering your own question; just be sure to use your keywords.

5. Get Listed. Want to get your “regular” website listed in the FB search results? Make sure you’re listed well in Bing since the Bing search engine powers Facebook search. Don’t forget to add the Facebook LIKE button to your website; early indications show that this technique does affect your Facebook search results.

6. External Links. And remember, it’s OK to link to your Facebook page from external sites. Be sure to use relevant anchor text, and give off-site users a reason to take the extra step of visiting Facebook to see what you have to offer. Keep in mind, for many web surfers, having to log into FB with a username and password may be a drudgery that just isn’t worth it at the moment, so be sure your linking efforts are extremely enticing.

Optimizing your Facebook efforts for better search performance is very similar to optimizing your website for better search engine rankings. It takes a little time, a little know-how, and a little work, but in the long run your efforts will surely pay off.