Thursday 25 September 2008

Small business marketing

DIY marketing – SEO and Fax

Consider DIY marketing through SEO and fax marketing! Cost effective option without spending a small fortune.

Within your marketing strategy do you concentrate on the traditional marketing methods like advertising in magazines, or on other high ranking websites etc? Have you considered, or do you invest in other areas that are more cost effective and bring a better return? Are you or your business missing out on valuable areas that could mean the difference between success and failure? Let me outline some cost effective and efficient strategies that may help you to achieve your aim of increased leads without paying for expensive advertising in magazines. In fact some of the methods described here can be carried out by you or your company / employees! Advertising in magazines and yellow directories costs your company a small fortune. There are other less expensive options that should be considered, that can gain you as much if not more custom.

Firstly I would like to explain how a fax marketing campaign can gain you more custom than an expensive advert in a monthly magazine Secondly, how to get your small business to the top 10 in a Google search for your key phrases.
Fax marketing

Most companies hate receiving unsolicited faxes – fact. It is annoying on a regular basis; the sender is using up all of your paper and line time! Scoundrels!! I must agree that I too hate these fax marketing techniques and get pretty upset every time the machine indicates another, more annoying than junk emails!
However, occasionally one prints’ that advertise a service that I am interested in, this fax is often filed away for future correspondence as the said companies’ services are interesting to my business. Most of the faxes I receive are irrelevant to my marketing strategy; however there are some that I do contact. These are normally those faxes sent from reputable marketing companies, occasionally I do ring and adopt the advertised services; the remainder go in file 13 (also known as the bin).

Let’s analyse that? On average it costs several hundred pounds to employ a professional fax marketing company to send out 20,000 – 30,000 faxes. If you’re chosen fax marketing company is targeting the right business audience (as a reliable company should do with its extensive database) you are sending faxes to people/companies that are more likely to adopt your services.

Stats suggest that when you target the right audience you will have a lead rate of 1 in 100; on average 1 company/person will contact you in 100 faxes sent. This equates to possible sales of your service to 200 new customers if 20,000 faxes were sent! For example your company offers ‘web design’ and the average price for your service is £1000 (average for 20 page static site) then you have a potential 200 new business leads equating to £200,000! It is cost effective and efficient marketing that often brings more custom than advertising in traditional media.

Although you will receive leads the downside is that a certain percentage of those receiving your fax may complain and a very small percentage will contact you and request that they receive no more or words to that effect!

Overall fax marketing is an extremely cost effective and an efficient means of delivering your services to a niche target audience.
DIY Search engine optimisation

Marketing comes in many forms, as explained above fax marketing is cost effective and one of the least used strategies, don’t let everyone know this or all will be adopting the method! Another area that is often seen as black art is search engine optimisation also known as SEO. Most small companies cannot afford to employ SEO companies to conduct their internet marketing due to the initial and monthly costs. You may think this is a black art that is best left to the pros? After reading this introduction and the other articles within my site you will soon realise that its not a difficult process only time consuming.

SEO facts in laymans terms

1. Secrets of SEO are based on what the search engine algorithms require to place your site high for a key phrase
2. You must have your key phrase within your meta tags, alt image tags and within the headlines and main text of your web page in the right density.
3. Once you have a site that conforms with Google guidelines then it is ready to promote.
4. Promotion comes in many forms including submission to search engines and gaining links through various means.
5. Links are amongst the most important factor, if for example you have submitted your website to a few hundred directories and swapped links with web sites of a similar content and carry on gaining links over a period of time your position in Google will increase until you gain a top 10 position i.e. on page one. It therefore stands to reason that you will get more custom, the whole process will not happen overnight but costs nothing but a little bit of time and effort on a bi-daily basis.

Promoting your company through fax marketing or DIY search engine optimisation is not rocket science, but methods that are cost effective and efficient within your marketing campaign.

I work for a company with a turnover of over £3,0000 and the only person employed for marketing, I have saved the said company over £500,000 in marketing revenue through conducting a marketing campaign on its behalf. You too can save money through some thought and appreciation of the strategies that are available to you.
If you enjoyed this article feel free to copy and paste it into your website retaining the links.

For more small business SEO search engine optimisation information visit small business SEOMore of my articles can be found within my web design Trowbridge bath warminster