This may seem obvious, but it needs to be said:  customers will not just flock to your site without any effort.  I am always amazed at the mentality of business owners when it comes to marketing.  For some reason (and I think it has to do with cash flow, budgeting and $$), many small business owners participate in the following pointless activities:

1.  Spends money creating a web site but then won’t spend any money to work on the marketing of that site … so the site doesn’t make them any money or bring any significant leads

2.  Spends money creating a web store and then complains that the store isn’t making any money, with no additional marketing money or time spent on the store or effort to drive traffic to the store.

3.  Has a web site and store with no traffic but won’t spend the time or money to build traffic to the site.

These are not good web marketing strategies and I don’t recommend them.  Before you decide to depend/hope/plan for your web site to bring you revenue, make sure you are budgeting the proper marketing dollars to make that happen, just like in any physical location.  As a business owner, you either need to devote your time to marketing or devote your money to marketing.  This is a non-negotiable condition for success.

About The Author

 Are you looking for Web Marketing Experts to help your small business with it’s online marketing?   Someone to help you create and implement your social media strategy?  I know what you are up against.  You need to find the right fit that is within your budget and trust that person to know what he/she is doing and to get it done.  You want someone to market your business online.  You want to end each day knowing your online marketing strategy is successful and expanding.  You want to give that worry to someone and spend time on the parts of your business that you enjoy.  You want to tell other internet marketing experts, “thank you, but I already have an amazing internet marketing system in place that is bringing me all the business and money that I need.”

My name is Alison Elliott and I help small businesses succeed online.  You can read more about me, my internet marketing system and how I use social media strategy and web marketing expertise to create, implement and manage your online marketing and presence, on my local internet marketing experts web site. 

To help move you in a positive direction, I am offering you a free thirty minute consultation to see if my services are the right fit for you.  If nothing else, you will leave the consultation with a clearer idea of what you are wanting and how to attain it.

I love this article about the importance of branding.  I feel like branding was an over used and not fully understood term tossed around the small business marketing world for a good part of the past decade.  The problem is that many small business owners think that branding means expensive (and in some sense they are right).  Branding is really saying “this is who I am” and then making sure that everything you print, everything you write, everything you say, everything you video and everything that you do reinforces this thing that you say you are.

Small businesses often mess this up when they change messages, cut corners to save money by designing their own flyers or marketing materials, self printing business cards or flyers, advertising in a magazine or on a site that is not in line with their brand or not understanding what their brand is actually saying to potential customers.  Here is a great article that talks about just this issue. 

My internet marketing advice for small business:  Know Who You Are.  Know Who You Are Selling To.  Know Who Loves Your Products.  Stick To Those Truths in All Your Endeavors:

Creating a strong brand is one of the key marketing methods to pursue business growth. And if you thought that branding is just for big businesses with mega advertising budgets, think again. Marketing experts note that a strong brand can help small companies stand out and grow.

“Consumers choose specific brands of cola, toothpaste and burgers, and this same approach can create loyal small business customers,” says David Wilton, director of small business banking at Scotiabank.

” Un f o r t u n at e l y, many entrepreneurs don’t put enough emphasis on their brand because they don’t realize how it can help them stand out from competitors.”

Mr. Wilton defines a brand as your value promise to customers, including the service, price and quality they will experience. You can likely identify your brand by going back to your business plan, in which you spelled out your unique offering and how you will serve prospective customers.

For example, you may pledge to be “the friendliest organic bakery that helps customers choose healthy alternatives.”

Read more here

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

Create a Promotional Coupon with TwtQpon

Small business ecommerce sites will find the Twitter coupon generator, TwtQpon, useful for promoting Web store deals on Twitter. You can also create special reward coupons for your own loyal Twitter followers.

When you visit the TwtQpon site, click on the “Create a Coupon” button and enter the following information in the Web form:

• Your Twitter account name
• The coupon title
• The coupon details (in 140 characters or less)
• Upload a 700 x 300 pixel image
• Specify a coupon code (if blank the coupon will show “no code required” on it)
• Add a redirect URL (your promotion landing page or ecommerce site URL)
• The expiration date of the coupon

This information is all you need to create your free Twitter coupon.  Your Twitter followers will see a Tweet, which is the text you enter in TwtQpon Web form. Customers who click the link are directed to the image-enabled version of the coupon page (on TwtQpon.com) and are then redirected to the URL you specified when they click to redeem.  What we like about this Twitter tool is that you can create and publish your Twitter coupon in seconds.

You do have an upgrade option to add personal branding, which is shown on the image-enabled version hosted at TwtQpon.com.  The website doesn’t specify a fixed price for the upgrade but suggests you enter a price at check-out based on what you think the upgrade is worth.  On its website TwtQpon says that the branding service is a way of supporting hosting and development costs.

Schedule Tweets with FutureTweets

FutureTweets by SolidFlux or Twaitter is another useful tool for busy small business ecommerce sites. If you often forget to update your Twitter status or you have difficulties working in regular tweet time this is a good tool to use.

The Web-based service lets you schedule a number of tweets and specify the time you want the tweets to be published on Twitter.  You could pick one or two days a week to add multiple tweets that you set to publish at different times.  The scheduling aspect will not be noticed by your followers and it will appear as if you Tweet on a more regular basis.

To use FutureTweets you need to give permission for the application to access your Twitter account. Once the connection between Twitter and FutureTweets has been made, you’ll find yourself looking at a very simple form on the FutureTweets website.  

All you need to do is type in your Twitter message and then select a publish date. You can enter the publish date manually in the form field (e.g. 2010-09-14 15:25) or you can choose the date on a calendar button and select the time by dragging the hands on the clock widget beside the message box on the form.

After scheduling your Tweets you’ll see a list of all scheduled tweets you have written with a star noting the ones that have been published. From this single Web page you can also edit or delete any Tweet you set using the tool.

What we liked best about FutureTweets is that it offers a simple interface with everything you need on one page so you can go in and schedule future tweets quickly. 

HootSuite Social Media Dashboard

HootSuite is a social application that you can use to manage a number of social media tasks in an efficient way from one Web-based interface.  The service supports a number of social platforms in addition to Twitter — like Facebook, WordPress and others.

HootSuite offers several tools that will help small business ecommerce site owners to better manage their Twitter and social media marketing tactics. Some of the tools let you schedule updates across one or more social media sites, and you can also collaborate and manage multiple social accounts that are spread amongst your marketing team.

Small business ecommerce site owners will also like two of the more business-focused tools in HootSuite. The first is the “Monitor Mentions” tool. This is used to track and gather mentions of your company or brand across multiple social sites.  Another business tool in HootSuite is used to review statistics and reports on individual status messages tweets you publish.

HootSuite is a more professional Twitter tool with a focus on the needs of a business user. We like that it offers multiple tools for multiple social media sites in a single Web-based interface.

HootSuite offers a free ad-supported version that lets you monitor and post to five social networks, use 2 RSS feeds, and caps your statistics history to the first 30-days of use.  The full unlimited version with all features and one team member for collaboration is $5.99 per month. Additional team members can be added for $10 per month per person.

Read full article here

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.