Narrowing your marketing efforts is a great way for small businesses to save some money while getting better results for the effort. A general campaign might work, but it rarely brings in the amount of clients that a properly targeted marketing campaign would.

You probably have a pretty good idea of what your market is. Whether you`re selling to teens, single moms or corporate males in their 40`s, you should know at least the basics of your target market. However, if you can narrow it down, you`ll find that you have a far more focused marketing strategy that yields better results.

Do you know everything about your target market? If not, then you will need to do a little market research to ensure that you are aiming your marketing at them the right way. For example, if you write an ad aimed at single mothers, referencing staying at home, you`ve just lost a huge part of your market, since most single mothers work.

While you can still have a wider audience, it often helps to aim your ads and split your email lists into more targeted groups so you can speak specifically to them. You`ll notice a marked improvement once you are marketing to specific groups, rather than a general audience.

Linking out is a tough question to ask. You always have to ask yourself before linking to another website, “What will my site visitors gain from this link?”

Keep in mind that any link out of your website has strong potential to send visitors elsewhere. You really want to keep them on your website, right? Well, yes, but there are times when you might want to link out to other sites. But when and where?

First, never link to another site from your home page. Home page real estate is such valuable real estate that you don’t want the first thing your site visitors see is a link to another website. That’s like an invitation to leave. Don’t open the doors for them.

When you do link from your site to another website, make sure that it’s for the right reasons. You don’t want to link out if it provides no value to your users. You’ll also want to think twice before linking to your competition. That seems intuitive, but some new webmasters will do it because they heard that linking out can give you more authority. You have to really think about who you will link to, and why.

Before you start building outbound links from your website to others, consider these questions:

• Is this link valuable to my site visitors?
• Am I sending site visitors to the competition (even third-party sites can be a careful disguise for the competition; check to see who sponsors it)
• Is there a way I can gain an inbound link, or reciprocal link, from this exchange?
• Would it hurt my business if this link is clicked on a lot?
• Who, ultimately, does this link benefit?

There are two extremes with regard to outbound linking that you should stay away from: Excessive outbound linking and no outbound linking whatsoever. There are times when you’ll want to and shouldn’t, times when you don’t want to and should, and times when it is crystal clear that you shouldn’t. But you should always give due consideration to your motives for linking out and consider who it stands to benefit.

Blame it on Google. They went Chrome.

Yes, Google is introducing its own browser, but that’s not the subject of this blog post. Instead, I’d like to discuss how they are marketing it - through an online comic book. How innovative!

Yes, this is a great concept and it’s the kind of online marketing that companies need to be thinking about doing these days. It’s creative, it’s informative, it creates a buzz. My guess is that Google’s online comic book marketing their new browser, aptly titled “Chrome”, will get a lot of inbound links. Not just because it’s Google, but because it’s good marketing. The comic book is well laid out, well thought out, provides lots of useful information, and breaks down technical jargon into everyday language. If your company isn’t doing this kind of marketing online then you need to study Google’s playbook.

by Diane Autey

One of the most effective marketing tools for speakers, authors and service providers is a 1-2 page “sell sheet” or “one-sheet.” Printed in full-color on 8 ½” x 11” coated paper, it stands out in pocket folders and at trade shows and professional association meetings. It’s a great conversation-starter when you hand it out in person or at networking events.

The Trick? Say it Quick
It is best to write in “sound bites” – brief statements and lists of key benefits. Direct your messages to your target audience. Tell them, “What’s in it for me?” Include a combination of paragraphs, statements, bulleted lists and credibility-building testimonials and/or credentials.

Well-written sell sheets include:

• Attention-grabbing headline
• Company logo and name
• List of services or key features
• Client testimonials with company logos
• Photos and graphics
• Biography or company description
• Contact information

If you’re an author, include your book cover(s). If you’ve been published, include a list of publications, article titles and dates. If you’re a speaker, list the topics you address.

Have it Professionally Designed
Effective use of graphics, text, images and colors will make it or break it. Graphic designers think visually and can make your words come to life. A professional, graphically appealing presentation is well worth the investment.

Print it Digitally
If you’re printing less than 1,000, digital is the way to go. The quality of digital printing is so good nowadays that only the experts can tell if a piece is printed digitally or conventionally. Unless they’re in the industry, your customer’s can’t. The price has also become quite reasonable as the technology has improved.

Use your Sell Sheet to Open Doors
The sell sheet won’t make the sale for you, but it’s a powerful door-opener and conversation starter. It boosts your professionalism and credibility in the eyes of your prospects. Along with your business card, use it at every opportunity and you will generate more business.

Diane Autey, President of Projects Done Write, specializes in projects with depth and complexity that impact a company’s bottom line. Diane can be reached at diane@projectsdonewrite.com or 612-716-7642.

Michael Martine says generalists are better than specialists, and makes a convincing case. Has this ever happened to you?

Take SEO (search engine optimization) and web design, for example. You hire an SEO specialist after you hired a web designer who you thought knew everything about web design. In your mind, you lumped in a bunch of stuff in with “web design” that your web designer was clueless about.

After all, a web design specialist does not study SEO. He or she studies web design, and that’s it. You later find out you have zero SEO, and you’re ticked off. Now you hire yet another specialist who is going to do all kinds of changes to your site and other things you don’t understand. if this stuff had been done as part of the original design, you would have saved thousands of dollars.

Of course, he’s making a sales case for himself, but his point is right on. There are many times when it is good to hire a specialist and that’s exactly what you need. But if you are just starting out in business, or you are just making your first foray into Internet marketing, which is new territory for many small business owners, then what you really need is a guide, a generalist who knows how to get around in the field. There is more than one reason for this.

Michael pointed out of the reasons, which is the ignorance of specialists regarding other specialists specialties. But sometimes it’s not even ignorance. It could be differences of opinion.

You’ll run into some specialists who do things one way and another specialist who does things another way. Neither way is wrong, they’re just different, but they don’t go well together. You need someone who can reconcile the differences, someone who can analyze your situation and determine which direction is the best way to go - and sometimes that direction is between the paths of the two specialists.

What it all boils down to is directorship. Who’s going to run the program? Can you? Do you know enough about the different specialties of online marketing to direct the show and not end up lost? Most small business owners can’t do that. That’s why they need someone who can communicate across specialties to steer their business in the right direction. A director can tell the web designer not to include certain code, or to place it in an external file when it needs to be, based on the SEOs recommendation. Then she can convince the SEO not to be so adamant about the use of image files like Flash because in small doses and appropriate optimization techniques those elements can be implemented successfully. Your director doesn’t have to do the work; she just has to know how it should be done so that she can direct those who will do it. And if that’s the kind of expertise you need to steer your business in the right direction as you make the transition online, well then I’m your girl. And the best part is, I’m knowledgeable of online marketing and traditional marketing so I can help you integrate the two. Ready?

Just about every retail company with a website online is publishing product descriptions. How will you sell without them?

To be sure, product descriptions are necessary, but product reviews sell more. Think about, would you rather buy a product from a company that told you their widgets were the best and the brightest widgets on the market or from a company who has one satisfied customer proclaiming, “I plugged in the widget and it immediately started glowing like a lighthouse in the dark; not only could I find my way home, but I got there more quickly than I ever had before.”

Personal testimonials always sell. People like to hear from real people and that’s what product reviews are. They are real people telling about their real experiences and you should include them in your sales copy.

Google Trends has been useful tool for some now. You could compare two competitors to see which one was getting the most traffic to their website and use the information you find to make your own website more competitive. Google’s newest tool, which can be even better, is Google Insight.

Google Insight allows you to analyze keyword data by region and time. In other words, you can see search trends by month, quarter, year, or across multiple years. You can also analyze search trends by region, which is very helpful for looking at the competitive landscape for your niche at the local level, a limitation of Google Trends.

Let’s say you want to start a state-wide auction site similar to eBay that allows farmers to buy and sell farm equipment within your state. You can see how many searches for farm equipment within your state or region have been conducted in the last 90 days or even the last year. You can also see which search terms related to farm equipment have been the most popular.

Just for grins, I decided to see what the data for farm equipment would look like in Michigan over the last 90 days. Here’s what I found: On June 29, the search volume for farm equipment in Michigan was high. By mid-July, it had dropped to almost half. And by the end of July just tapered off altogether.

Now I’m not altogether sure that those end-of-July figures are 100% accurate, but if I look at the trend over the past year then I can see that the most number of searches for farm equipment in Michigan took place at the beginning of May. Again, I see a huge dip toward the end of July. This makes sense since I know that farmers usually start plowing fields and working their crops in early summer/late spring and by the end of the summer the need for farm equipment goes down. But suppose I want to compare that data for the states of Michigan and illinois? I find that the trend in Illinois is similar to the trend in Michigan, but there have been more overall searches for farm equipment in Illinois.

This is the kind of drill down research you can do with Google Insight. It’s a very helpful tool, to be sure, and can be used to narrow a niche or broaden one that is too small BEFORE you commit yourself to your business model.

Your small business CEO decided it’s time to update your company brochure. But you have a tight budget. Your options are a bi-fold, tri-fold, or hypertext brochure. What do you do?

First, let’s define what these are:

• Bi-Fold - Traditional four-sided brochure. One fold, an inside and an outside. Simple and straightforward, but not a lot of space so you have say the right things and say them fast. But your options are more than simple. Will you use graphics? If so, what kind. Glossy paper? Fancy fonts? What will you do to get the customer’s attention?
• Tri-Fold - A little more space than the bi-fold brochure. Two extra space blocks. Two folds. You can say more, but the options are still the same. Glossy, graphics, etc. Is it a real option?
• Hypertext - This is a website. No space limitations, but because of your limited budget you can’t build a full-fledged website. Limited functionality with an unlimited page space.

There really is no comparison between a brochure website and a print brochure. You might as well get it out of your head that they are the same. Both target different audiences, they’re capable of different results, and instead of thinking of them as either/or options you’re better off thing of them as both/and compliments. In other words, don’t use all of your budget on one and forget the other.

Secondly, if you’re going to bother with a hypertext brochure, or a website of any kind, then I highly recommend ditching the brochure concept and just building a full-fledged website. The expense is not that much greater, but the benefits are. A brochure site is one page. A real website can have as many pages as you think you need. So if your brochure site has 6 “pages” within the one-page that acts as a frame then you can spend just a few more dollars get a 6-page website. Your benefits will far outweigh the cost and you should see more than 600% return versus the hypertext brochure format.

If at all possible, you might try to expand your budget a little and think about building a real website with print marketing collateral that includes a brochure. If you need to scale back some, build the website now and put off the print brochure until the next budgeting cycle unless you are completely out of print brochures. In that case, go ahead and replenish your supply of brochures and work extra hard to put the website into your next budget.

When you perform SEO for your website, are you targeting a particular search engine or do you just do general SEO and see what happens? Either way is fine, I guess, but it’s nice to know what the search engines look for. It appears to me that if you want to rank highly in Google and stay there then you need a strong back link plan. With MSN Live, you can do much better with lean HTML code and strong meta tags. MSN Live seems to be happier with tables than CSS. Yahoo! is somewhere in between Google and MSN; meta tags are much less important, back links are somewhat important, and CSS seems to be favored. Have you noticed any of this?

Some people are under the impression that you can’t build a solid business around search results at just one search engine, unless it’s Google. I’d like to dispel that myth. I think you can. But you have to have a specific target in mind and you have to go after your target market aggressively. You can’t just sit by and passively wait for them to come to you. Profile your target customer and reach that customer where he or she hangs out. You’ll be a lot more successful that way.

I found a great article on SiteProNews that discusses how marketers can use meta search engines to increase their customer base. The article focused on two aspects of meta search: Ranking and research.

I’ve never actually given this much thought, but it makes a lot of sense. You can do keyword research and research on your topic using the meta search engines. The author, Bill Platt, recommends two meta search engines, Dogpile and Widow.com. Dogpile is perhaps the most well known of the meta search engines, but searching Dogpile is really like searching Google, Yahoo!, and MSN and compiling the results. There are thousands of search engines out there to choose, some niche and some meta. You should expand the scope of your research to include those and not just stick to the big 3.