Succeeding Today

The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Plan

Just because you are a small business doesn’t mean you have to market like one. Today’s technology allows businesses of all sizes to market directly to customers through custom publishing initiatives without costing an arm and a leg.

Here is a very simple, yet strategic plan to get and keep more customers through the use of valuable, relevant content. This will form the basis for your custom publishing/content marketing media plan.

1. Simple Market Research

You’ve come this far because you understand your customer and prospect base. By conducting some simple, online market research, you can not only create a competitive advantage, but use the data to construct and develop relevant messaging to your customers.

• Questions - create mostly “multiple-choice” questions that deal directly with the challenges you think your customers are facing in the industry. Once the questionnaire is complete, run it by some of your best customers. Make sure that it takes 10 minutes or less to complete the survey. Include at least one open-ended question that asks them what their biggest challenge is. You can use this for white paper topics (to be discussed later).
• Database - leverage the customer names you have email addresses for. The idea would be to get at least 100 responses. At an average 3% complete rate (which could be much higher depending on how you position the survey), you’d need a universe of about 3,000 names. If that seems impossible, survey tools such as Zoomerang offer services to get you a number of defined completes of your target functions and titles for a set price.
• Survey Tool - Tools like Zoomerang or SurveyMonkey are very reasonable and have enough functionality to give you the results you need. Each also gives a free trial membership for lower survey quantities.
• Incentive - Starbucks cards or Amazon gift certificates seem to be the flavor of the day. Set up the survey so that the first 50 or 100 to complete the survey get a $5 or $10 certificate. Amazon’s gift certificate tool makes it easy to upload multiple emails and send out to winners. Takes about 5 minutes.

Once the research is complete, you’ll have the information you need to create a content marketing plan that makes sense. As a bonus, you can construct a research report that can be used as a free download to draw prospects to your Web site, or deliver the custom report as a special gift to customers.

2. Web site

Is your Web site all about products and services? If so, you’ve got a problem. Today’s savvy buyer yearns for great content, and they will look just about anywhere for content that helps them do their job better.

Instead of relying on media outlets, or worse, your competitors, to give them the content, create the mindset of a publisher. With a publisher’s mindset, your goal is to give your readers content that is valuable, relevant and timely.

If you are not already doing so, here are the adjustments to make on your Web site:

• At least 50% of the content on your home page should be NOT be product or service related. Fill your home page with content that makes the prospect/customer more intelligent. We’ll talk more about how to do that in a second.
• Create a blog. Starting a blog may be the key to your custom publishing/content marketing program. TypePad or WordPress are virtually free, and both are easy to use. Tie it in with your Web page, or even make it your home page. If you tie it in to your home page, be sure that blog posts are clearly visible. Post at least twice a week and talk about what is going on in your industry. Writing consistently will be challenging at first, but once you get started, you’ll enjoy seeing the additional traffic coming to your site from all over the globe.If you have any questions about setting up the blog, check out Patrick Schaber’s post on “The Beginner’s Guide To Setting Up A First Blog Site”.
• Use Feedburner to create automatic email feeds to those subscribed to your blog. You can also add “email this” functionality within each blog post.

3. White Papers

A white paper is a 3,000 to 5,000 word document that centers around a key issue. I recommend creating a quarterly white paper series around your industry issues. Be sure to use the research from your online survey to generate the white paper topics.

If you can’t write it yourself, hire a freelancer that is close to your industry to write one for you. Depending on the industry, you can probably get someone to do it for 50 cents to $1 per word. If possible, try a bartering arrangement to cut down on your costs.

Create an abstract on your home page promoting a white paper download. This will be a free download to prospects/customers…but they do need to give you their name, company and email address. You can also add a few other qualifying questions, but know that you’ll get 20% or more drop off with each question. Might be better to get the name first and qualify later.

4. Search Engine Marketing

To drive people to download your white paper, create a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign using Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing. Target key words that you uncovered with your research survey to drive people to download your white paper.

Be sure to test first and start out with just a few dollars in budget per day. Once you see the conversion results (which you can set up in AdWords), you can decide if you want to budget more per day.

5. Develop a Print Newsletter

Print is still very important to the overall marketing mix. The difference today is that you need to use the content from your print initiative throughout your marketing vehicles.

A short four-to-eight page custom publishing newsletter should do. Work with a local designer to create a clean, fresh look for your newsletter. B2B Marketing Trends, produced by Penton Custom Media, does a nice job with their 16-page newsletter (click here for a link to the media kit to see the design).

Remember, this is not a sales update, it’s an initiative to help make your customers and prospects smarter. Start with a quarterly frequency, or even bi-annual if it’s too much to bear. Do the following:

• Create a name that positions the content of your newsletter within your industry. Be sure to check for any trademark issues before you move forward.
• Develop an editorial outline. Short, quick-hitting editorial should be the focus in the print version. All stories should drive the reader back to their online location for the “complete” story.
• Promote your quarterly white paper within each issue. This could possibly be your feature story. Create a shorter 500 to 750 word article that ends with a link back to the download URL to the white paper.
• Content is content. Ads are Ads. Keep all content areas informative and valuable. If you want to promote your services individually, outside of the context of a case study or feature article, separate those messages out so it is clearly marked.

An Integrated Custom Publishing Program

By doing the above five steps, you’ve just created a simple, yet effective content marketing/custom publishing program. Be sure to track your ROI/measurement of the program through:

• Blog Feeds
• Blog Subscriptions
• White Paper Downloads
• SEM conversions
• URLs from Print Newsletter

Ultimately, you can set this up to directly tie back to your sales. Use unique URLs and Toll-Free numbers on each initiative so you can track what leads are coming from where.

The best part of all - you are taking a true leadership position in your industry. You are developing relevant and valuable information on a consistent basis for your customers. They will begin to look to you for your industry knowledge and will ask you for your help to be their solutions provider.

Not a bad place to be when customers actually want to read your branded content!

For more on Joe’s commentary, check out the Junta42 blog or find content articles from around the web at Junta42.