Marketing Category

The local Yellow Pages is running a radio campaign to promote advertising in the Yellow Pages. In one spot they use a business owner to talk about how successful his Yellow Pages ad is. In it he states that over 80% of his traffic comes from his Yellow Pages ad. 80%! Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

I’m sure the Yellow Pages loves this figure but as a business owner I’d be worried if such a large percentage of my enquiries came from the one source. It’s the same argument you’ll read online about relying on Google for all your traffic.

When marketing your business you should be focusing on promoting your business in a variety of ways both online and off. This will ensure that your referrals come from many sources including search engines, word of mouth, newsletter promotions, Yellow Pages and so forth. Apart from widening your net this ensures that should you receive a drop in traffic from one source you’ll take comfort knowing you have plenty of others to keep those referrals coming in. If you don’t you’ll like that Yellow Pages campaign from a while ago “Not Happy Jan“.

I was reading an article on the pitfalls of using stock photography recently. Basically a Chicago based online pet business bought a stock photo of a pet to use on their website only to discover:

I bought a stock photo of a dog for my website and it has become our unofficial mascot. Recently, I discovered that another pet site is using the same photo. Can I stop the site from using it?

Unfortunately unless you have an exclusive license or have contracted a photographer to take the photo for you you have no exclusivity to it and anyone can use it. And therein lies the rub. What may seem like a cheap option (stock photos can be bought from as little as $1) can end up being an expensive lesson.

More and more businesses, including large corporates, are going down the stock photography path and are being embarrassed by finding images they’ve used in campaigns being used by competitors, making it difficult for consumers to tell brands apart.

When using photographs in your website or marketing materials it often pays to spend a little money and have them done by a professional photographer. Not only will they look better, you are guaranteed that all the hard work you’ve spent in building and promoting your brand can’t be undone by a competitor simply buying the same image/s and muddying the water.

Uniqueness is important in business - don’t drop the ball by making it easy for others to copy you.

The lovely Liana Evans of Search Marketing Gurus has interviewed me for her latest Women of Internet Marketing series.

Many of my clients are starting to pay attention to blogs and wondering if perhaps they should be blogging themselves. My answer is always a resounding yes!

Running a business blog has many benefits. Here are just a few:

• Blogging is a great way to communicate with clients, customers and prospects. Whether it be talking about new products or services, company news or resolving an issue, you can communicate on a level not seen before.
• A blog give you a voice which in turn gives readers an idea of who you and your business are. Your goal is to then engage them enough to want to do business with you.
• Blogging can help position you as an expert in your industry.
• Blogs attracts links and can help you in your search engine rankings.

There you have it, just a few reasons why a blog can benefit your business. I’m sure there are many more so feel free to post yours in the comments.

My husband’s family traditionally celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. As part of that tradition the Christmas meal is continental frankfurters and potato salad. We’ve taken on that tradition and now host a Christmas Eve gathering for all our friends and family.

Invariably the potato salad making is left to me, and I always make two. One with bacon, sour cream and mustard and one with beetroot, boiled eggs and mayonnaise. They both always turn out perfectly (yup I’m a great cook ) and both are delicious, but each year everyone raves about the beetroot one, and requests the recipe, and nothing is said about the bacon and sour cream version.

This year, while cleaning up I was commenting on this fact to my husband. I wondered if my bacon and sour cream potato salad was no good. He assured me it was fine but the beetroot one was just brilliant. I had one of those zen moments: it’s all about being remarkable!

For those in the know, being remarkable was the phrase, and concept, coined by Seth Godin in his brilliant book Purple Cow. Seth’s premise is in order to succeed in business today you’re either remarkable or invisible.

My beetroot potato salad is remarkable. My bacon and sour cream potato salad is invisible.

If you’ve not read Purple Cow I cannot recommend it highly enough.