Displaying items by tag: marketing

Email marketing can be a tough gig.

To successfully reach their goal (you do have goals for your marketing campaigns, right?) the savvy marketer needs to reduce the effect of multiple barriers to entry. Think of it as a big funnel that gradually reduces the volume of visitors at every stage:

Does the content bypass spam filters and work reasonably consistently across most email apps? Did it get opened? Did it get read? Did viewers click through to the website? Did they perform the action you desired?

At every point you need to maximise the number of viewers making it through to the next stage in the funnel.

The first part of our series on getting the most from AdWords focused on the basics of creating more clickable advertising. Part two looks at where to send your traffic what to do with it once it arrives!

Create relevant landing pages

How many times have you clicked on an ad, only to arrive at a generic page that seemingly has nothing to do with the search you performed?

You hate it. I hate it - everyone who uses Google hates clicking through to irrelevant pages.

Guess what? Google hates it too.

One of the biggest failings many small businesses fall into with Search Engine Marketing is overestimating their name recognition, what could be called 'brand awareness'.

If you have a small business (let's call it "Tom's Bike Parts") in an area with even a reasonable-size population, you can rest assured that no-one knows who you are. That's not to say you won't have a loyal group of customers - you will. That's not to say that the regular foot traffic won't be aware that there's a bike store along their daily route - they might be.

But, except for that group of loyal customers, no-one knows your name.

So why are all your marketing efforts directed at people who are already your customers?

Following up on my last post, I was lucky enough to get a chance to exchange a few emails with Andrew Wilkins, the proprietor of St Pete Brasserie, the restaurant 'saved by social media'.

An affable restauranteur, he was very forthcoming via email, more than willing to share a few of the secrets that brought his business back from the brink.

If you're a small business owner, this advice goes to the core of social media engagement.

This is the kind of story we like to hear.

Andrew Wilkins, the owner of a Florida restaurant has credited Twitter with saving his business.

According to this 13 News story, Wilkins posted on the business' Facebook page that the restaurant was in trouble. Not only did the ensuing patronage allow Wilkins to continue operating, but he needed to reopen a long disused dining room to cope with the influx.

It's a fantastic story, Social Media saves the day. What makes this tale special, however, is that it's not the norm. Businesses all over the globe are attempting to use social media to grow their business without this level of success.

So what did Wilkins do right?