A recent small business survey found that over 90 percent of companies rate their website as their most valuable marketing tool. The survey noted that the design and management of the company website, as well as keeping it optimized for the major search engines, was the single most effective marketing strategy currently being used.

Another interesting point revealed by the survey was the fact that businesses find social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are excellent sources for driving website traffic.

I know you’re probably thinking “yeah, so what, I’ve known that for years.” But the survey went on to find that, while companies recognize that their websites are their most important marketing tool, and they realize social media is a great way to drive traffic, they’re still not quite sure how to turn that website traffic into solid sales leads. Which is kind of ironic, because the majority of businesses surveyed also said that generating good, productive leads was their number one marketing concern.

So, the use of social networking is seen as an excellent method for creating and then developing sales relationships. The immediacy of the internet as a communication platform allows for prompt interaction with prospects that turns web traffic into potential sales leads. And, while the businesses being surveyed couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact number of leads that came through their social media efforts, they still weren’t ready to abandon social media and website traffic generation.

After all, even a small increase in leads that are generated through the company website can have a big impact on the balance sheet. Even if these leads are entirely anecdotal.

Most businesses acknowledge that, with the proliferation of mobile devices, the trend for doing business online can only increase into the future, making web marketing strategies the most vital aspect to a company’s marketing. Not to mention that it is also one of the least expensive media for advertising that is available. Because websites are able to be updated easily and as regularly as is needed, the internet has an obvious advantage over the more traditional media.

So it seems that many small businesses are embracing the web and social media as a crucial marketing tool, and they realize the importance of having a web presence, even though their results are not definitive.

Does any of this sound familiar? You know your website is critical, you know you need to maintain a social media presence to get traffic to that website, and even though you can’t exactly account for the ROI, you just know you “need to be there”?

If that sounds like you, it might be time to create an online marketing strategy. There are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind when developing your strategy.

Most important is to focus on the customers and to make doing business as simple as possible for them. Make sure that you clearly demonstrate the value that your product or service has for potential customers and use the content of the website to generate leads by directing buyers straight to the information that they are interested in.

A good strategy will continue to adapt and evolve with its marketplace, making it vitally important to keep up with the latest internet trends and networking sites. Consider your typical sales cycle when planning to convert web traffic into actual sales and create a strategy that will move online prospects through that cycle on an automatic basis.

Finally, if developing marketing strategies and web design aren’t your strong points then don’t be afraid to get specialist help so that you can be sure that your company’s website and internet marketing is as effective as it can be. (Please feel free to contact us if you’d like to discuss how we can help.)

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If you’re using a Facebook fan page (also known as a business page) as part of your small business marketing plan, you’re probably trying to figuring out how to grow your fan base. “If you build it, they will come” might make clever movie magic, but it’s a bomb on Facebook’s marquee. The idea of social media is the creation of a mecca for friends and, today, a gathering place for fans. Promoting your fan page and actively increasing your fan base without alienating friends is a lot like fishing. It requires finesse, patience and a lure.

Etiquette is a dying art, which makes its application a powerful tool for standing out in a crowd.  It’s politically incorrect to create a Facebook fan page that touts your business by starting out high-pressuring your personal friends to “Become a Fan” using the “Suggest to Friends” Facebook feature. It is self-defeating and runs opposite of all that “social” implies.

Lures that Reel ‘Em in

Emily Post would approve of using your email list of subscribers for sending an invitation to the party at your place. Let your subscribers know they are important by welcoming their participation on your fan page, beginning with an informative description of your place. Let them know what’s in it for them, and what they will gain and/or learn by becoming a fan.  Encourage them to join your endeavor with an incentive.

Make your fan page “you” by dressing up the lure with your own tone of voice and phraseology. Try things like “Write on our Facebook Wall” as opposed to the standard verbiage “Join our Fan Page” that’s normally expected. While you won’t be able to edit the standard Facebook buttons, you can definitely design your own fan gate page that matches the look and feel of your own personal branding.

Add a link to your fan page in your email signature rather than the standard self-promotional link that most small business owners use. Add wording to the link that would encourage interactivity and drum up excitement in joining the group.

Casting your Line

If you have a number of regular “friends” (friends don’t have to be fans and fans don’t have to be friends) who might be interested in becoming fans, but you don’t want to be overly promotional.

In the event you want to engage the support of your Facebook friends on your fan page, incorporate a brief, friendly, informative “mini bio” in the field beneath your profile picture. Adding a link is a good idea that requires the logistics of formatting the URL with http:// for clickable access. A limitation on the character count requires brevity and foregoing the www’s.

Print media is a powerful business tool. Make sure every item of your print media, including business cards, letterhead and newsletters display your Facebook fan page link and logo, loud and clear.

The ever-present Facebook Share Button offers easy accessibility for connecting via your personal profile. Go to your fan page, and click “Share plus” spot at the bottom left column. Keep in touch by adding newsworthy commentary on your fan page related to exciting updates, changes and incentives. Use this opportunity to invite friends to join.

Hook, Line & Sinker

By linking your Twitter account with your Facebook fan page, your fan page content will automatically be posted to Twitter. You have control over postings through the ability to edit, selecting from Events, Notes, Status Updates, Links and Photos.

If your business has physical headquarters, promote your presence on Facebook with a highly visible plaque, up-close and personal, in your store. Don’t be stingy with instant rewards for joiners.

Using the @ tag fosters connecting through communication via your personal profile wall. The process is simple when you’re a fan of your own fan page. Take the opportunity to connect with friends with a friendly update that includes an @ tag for creating a subtle hyperlink in which your friends have the option to click and engage.

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In today’s world of social media marketing, small business owners might assume that email marketing is no longer relevant. But the truth is, email marketing allows business owners to create an open, direct line of communication with potential customers that is so vital to business growth. Email marketing is still a potent form of getting the word out about your business, your products, and your services.

Whether you’re just starting your new business, or attempting to expand a well-established business into more markets, email marketing could be a game changer. Aside from being a very green form of marking, (no paper wasted on your part), it’s also extremely cost effective and easy to track and measure.

It’s probably obvious that without an acceptable number of email subscribers, the range and circulation you might be wanting for your marketing message will be out of reach. So here are a few tips to help maximize your email subscriber database.

Understand the Importance of Belonging

Understanding the importance of a human being’s need to belong to a group is the first key element in building a subscriber list. People want to see that others have become committed to your website, blog, etc., so they get that warm fuzzy feeling when they decide to hand over their email address. There are several ways to can use the “need to belong” phenomenon in growing your email list:

• Display subscriber testimonials on your subscription page
• Display post comments of other subscribers
• Display number of times visited, twitter followings, etc.,
• Make subscribers feel as they are subscribing to a specific community

Be Direct

If you’re anything like me, then you hate when people waste your time by beating around the bush. So be direct. Much like making an executive decision, speak in the active voice rather than the passive.

Don’t ask or demand people to subscribe, rather find a direct middle ground, such as: “Enter your email now to get started.” A trick to this is start the request with a definitive verb/command like, “Download your free e-book now”, rather than inanimate phrase, “Free E-book inside.”

Don’t Make Subscribers Regret Subscribing

Realize that your subscribers are a special asset; don’t take them for granted and don’t confound their in-boxes with emails that aren’t at all what they originally signed up for. Even without an actual purchase, this can still conjure up feelings of buyer’s remorse, and is also a good way to lose subscribers.

So keep the content of the email as close to the original promise. Keep the amount of emails minimal; people don’t like seeing fifteen emails from the same person in a two hour span. And always give the option to unsubscribe. It comforts people to know they could always opt out, and it keeps you compliant with Can-Spam regulations.

Understanding your readers on an emotional and psychological level will always make you prepared for moments when that subscribers list is thinning out and it’s time to recharge. More importantly, subscribers find it imperative to subscribe to a good product and this is what they are looking for when they decide to hand over email addresses. So be sincere and good luck.

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If you’re like most of our small business marketing clients, one of your goals for 2012 is to increase sales. And if you’re like a lot of the prospects we’ve been talking to lately, there’s a good chance you’re concocting some lavish marketing campaigns in order to reach that goal.

If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed at the thought, the good news is that you don’t have to get fancy and extravagant with your marketing and advertising materials in order for them to be effective. In fact, some of the most successful marketing is often a bit “dull”.  So, rather than trying to get overly lavish, just keep these few tips in mind:

Focus On Only One Point

Many small business owners try to get more bang for their buck from their marketing campaigns, so they try to cram in as much as possible. They try to sell multiple items in one campaign, or speak to several different audiences in the same message.

But your marketing campaign will be more effective – and actually easier to create – if you focus on only one point at a time. That doesn’t mean you’re limited to selling only one product or service to each customer.  In fact, after the first sale, you should definitely start marketing the next product or service to your new customer. Just do it one product at a time.

Present your Message in Alternative Places

You don’t have to get extravagant and blanket the entire universe with your message in order to reach the limited few who might be interested. Instead, go to where the limited few are.

Sure, if you place your billboard on the side of a bus, it’s going to get seen by a lot of people. But how many of those people are going to care about what you have to offer? And do you really want to spend the money reaching those people who don’t care?

Instead of macro, start thinking about micro-messaging. Break your target audience into small segments and present your message to these micro-populations instead.  Do you have a client segment that are avid knitters? Start posting in the Knitting and Needle Work community forum. If you notice a segment of your clients all go to the same church, place an ad in the church bulletin. By creating many smaller segments, you can still reach a large number of prospects, but you’ll be doing it on a micro-scale – and spending micro-money. Adding up the expense to micro-advertise in multiple places will still be less expensive than one big bulletin board on the city bus. And it will be more effective because it will allow you to create a more targeted message.

And speaking of targeted message, that brings us to our third point…

Make the Conversation a 2-Way Street

When creating extravagant marketing campaigns, most businesses spend the majority of time and budget trying to get the presentation right. The photographer is high-end, the lighting has to be perfect, the copywriter is top-notch and on and on. They get so wrapped up in presenting their own voice, they forget about the customer’s voice.

But today it’s so easy to create an open dialogue between yourself and your prospects, and it doesn’t have to be lavish or expensive. Social media allows for two-way interaction before, during and after the sale. Your website can include a Q&A forum. Webinars and on-line presentations are even available now to fit within an entrepreneur’s  budget. These channels are all relatively easy and inexpensive, and they speed up the “know, like, and trust” timeframe.

So when you start thinking about your 2012 sales goals, don’t get overwhelmed thinking about the over-the-top marketing campaigns you’ll need to create. Instead, scale back your message, micro-size your segments, and develop an open dialogue, and you’ll be amazed at the results you get within a much smaller budget.

Photo by Independent We Stand

Permission-based email marketing is extremely effective, but the truth is that it can also be very hard work. Anybody who has tried to build an email list of any size and significance will know this. And so you can imagine a situation where, after all your hard work and investment to build a list of highly targeted recipients, you suddenly notice that only a small fraction of the emails you are sending out are actually reaching their targets.

Chances are that you will have been blocked by some internet service provider (ISP) which makes it virtually impossible for you to send any email message to certain addresses. At this point it hardly matters whether the recipient in question is one of your longest serving customers or not, as long as his ISP has blocked you, your emails will not reach him. This can have a huge negative impact on your business and so the first question we have to ask is how people who are not spammers end up being blocked by an ISP.

Actually there are two main causes of email deliverability problems that you need to worry about. These are spam traps and spam complaints. If your email ends up in a spam trap you will almost certainly get blocked.

But what is a spam trap? This is a special email address used by ISPs and other receivers to catch SPAMMERS. Usually the email address will be one that is not used or accessed by any human and so clearly there is no way you will have received any permission to send email messages to that particular address. And so this will be conclusive evidence that you are a spammer and the ISP will promptly block all your emails.

Sometimes ISPs will use email accounts that have been abandoned to identify spammers to block. This is where you will get caught if you do not look after your list on a regular basis and go for long periods without sending out any communication to your list.

Either way these spam traps serve the same purpose;  and the result will be that you will be completely blocked by that particular ISP from sending any emails in their direction. So if a large percentage of your opt-in email list uses that particular ISP, an equally large percentage of your emails will not be delivered.

The only way out would be for you to remove the offending email addresses. This is not very easy to do because ISPs will never reveal their spam traps.

The other cause of email deliverability problems are persistent spam complaints against you. While no ISP will block you just because of a single spam complaint, that they will take action if they feel that they are too many spam complaints against you. How many is too many? Each ISP has their own standards and criteria but mostly it will be one spam complaint for every 1,000 emails you send out. In most cases they will start off with a temporary punishment like blocking you for a short period, say 72 hours. However if the spam complaints are persistent then there is a chance that they will take the drastic step of blocking your ip address on a long-term basis.

One key thing you can do to minimize your chances of ever ending up in a spam trap is to avoid purchasing email lists. While not all email lists being sold out there are bad the truth is that many of them will usually have outdated email addresses thus dramatically increasing the chances of your email address ending up on somebody’s black list which will greatly harm your email marketing efforts. Build your own lists and make sure that they are all double opt-in.

The other precaution you can take is to ensure that the email lists you build are in constant use and that you do not stay for more than 3 months without communication with your subscribers. Actually, the more regular your emails, the lesser the chances of you ending up in trouble with ISPs. Regular would usually be weekly or every two weeks.

You should also remember that when you stay for long periods of time without sending emails to your lists and then you suddenly resume, chances are high that some of your subscribers will have forgotten about you and will be quick to file spam complaints.

Always remember that your sender reputation is key to the success of your email marketing campaigns and so it makes sense to take every possible precaution to maintain an impeccable reputation and to stay away from the deadly wrath of ISPs.

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I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you have not written a marketing plan for your small business. Many entrepreneurs optimistically enter the business world confident that their product or service will sell itself. They presume that with good products or services word of mouth will be all the advertising they need. If only it were that simple! After all, without any form of marketing, how will your prospective customers know anything about your product?

This is where PR, or public relations, comes into play. You use PR to create a relationship with the public in regards to your small business. Public relations are vital to the success of your business. Businesses that have no PR tend to go unnoticed and ignored until the lack of profits drive them into ground. PR campaigns are often compelling because of the implied “social proof”. It’s easy and cost-effective, so don’t let your competitors be the only ones using PR tactics.

Reaching Your Target Market

With PR, you have various choices for spreading your message to your prospective target market. One of the best ways to get started with PR is by creating an email newsletter. Email newsletters are simple to prepare and they extend a continual form of communication with your clients and prospects. They can work right beside social media which, since it allows for direct communication with the public, can also be labeled as a method of PR. An email newsletter is really one of the most fantastic tactics for creating efficient PR. Two things you want to consider when planning your newsletter are consistency and quality.

Besides newsletters there are many more traditional strategies that will help your business get noticed. Distributing a press release is probably the most widely-used method of PR. Like email newsletters, press releases are inexpensive as well as effective. Local newspapers are constantly on the lookout for local news stories. There are sections in every local paper, such as the lifestyle section, that are always interested in showcasing local small businesses.

TV coverage is another method of public relations. Local news crews are known for working with small business on their campaigns. Stories that would entertain a wide audience have a better chance of getting television coverage. Try to think of ways you can tweak your story to have a wider appeal, or to tie into current events.

Another great tactic to add to your PR campaign is radio coverage. Just as local television news stations are always looking for small snippets to fill the morning run, so are local radio stations. Radio stations are often easier to target than television shows since their audience generally fits a particular demographic.

Writing Your PR Release

A media release is basically a write up, sent to media outlets, in order to announce your news. Simply sending your media release is not a guarantee of press coverage; but without one, you are certainly guaranteed no coverage!

Your media release can be constructed in similar fashion, no matter what type of coverage you’re trying to get. First and foremost, it’s imperative that your story is news and not a sales pitch in disguise. Keep in mind, you’re trying to connect with your audience through the use of a human interest story, not by directly selling your products or services. Your story should have wide appeal, or should be specifically targeted for the media outlet that you’re sending it to. Your story should be factual rather emotional, but still appealing and interesting. If you think creatively, you should be able to find a news angle for many of your regular business activities. If you can tie your media release into a current event – even if the event is not directly related to your story – you will have a better chance of getting the story picked up.

Public relations is a great tactic to add to your small business marketing plan. It is easy and inexpensive, and one of the quickest ways to get information about your business, your product or your services out to the general public.

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After running a small business marketing blog for several years now, I’ve become acutely aware of the need to optimize my blog (and my website in general) for both search engines and user experience. Now that everyone who is capable of turning on a computer and hammering out a few phrases can haphazardly throw a blog together, it is extremely important to make sure your site stands out above the rest of the millions of blogs that are currently on line.

Photo by lisaclarkeOptimization is one of those things that website owners constantly hear about, but most don’t take the time to really understand it. Website optimization seems too technical and too confusing, so it can be easy to ignore the essential steps of optimizing your blog.

However, poorly designed and maintained websites drive away repeat readers, and low rankings in Google and other search engines ensure that few new readers find your articles. Since most small business owners start blogs in hopes that prospects and potential customers find their posts helpful or enjoyable, a lack of traffic almost always ends in the blog fading into the black abyss of cyberspace. In other words, no readers, no point in continuing to write your blog. Which is a shame, because a blog is truly an awesome small business marketing tool.

The good news is, there are some quick and easy things you can do to optimize your blog, encourage continued readership, and increase your search engine rankings:

I’m assuming your blog runs off a standard platform like WordPress or Blogger; but that doesn’t mean you’re limited to the standard, over-used templates. Make your site stand out by hiring a web designer or finding a customizable template. With a little bit of research, it is quite easy to tweak design elements and color schemes. Make sure the look and feel of your blog match the branding of your business. And always keep user experience in mind when you pick your font, color scheme and other design elements. While you want your site to be custom, you also want it to be user friendly and professional. There are a lot of sites out there, and if your blog is not easy to read and navigate, finicky readers will look elsewhere. Also, make sure important links, like your RSS feed, are easy to find on the main page.

Also, I recommend buying your own domain name. By doing all of this, you are making sure your site is unique-that it’s not, “Just another WordPress blog.”

Once your site is set up, start in on content. Content is what continues to bring in readers. It is important to user proper grammar, spelling, and paragraph breaks. This is especially important if you are cutting and pasting your posts from other source, such as Microsoft Word. When you copy your posts from other software, you can end up with strange paragraph spacing and odd characters. Always use the “preview post” feature before publishing your article.

It is also important to post new material regularly. Set up a schedule that works for you, and use the “Publish Later feature that is built in to most blogging platforms. This will allow you to set up several posts ahead of time and have them “drip published” to your blog at regular intervals. Readers like dependable blogs with regularly published articles, and the search engines do too.

Once you have a well-written post, make sure you use descriptive tags and proper categories. If you include pictures, give them descriptive names, as people also use search engines to look for images. Once you’re happy with the entry, ping sites, such as Technorati, to let them know you have new material available.

In order to optimize your posts for search engines, use permalinks that include your post title. The default permalink setup for many blogs includes generic numbers, such as /?p=123. This tells search engines nothing about the content of your article. Also, always manage your spam and trackbacks. If you have a bunch of low quality links on your website, it will negatively affect your search engine ranking. Plug-ins like Akismet helps tremendously.

Now that you have the basics down, keep following these simple guidelines, and your site ranking will continue to increase over time. The more you do to ensure optimization for both your readers and the search engines, the faster your blog will pick up new subscribers and better rankings.

If you’re a small business owner trying to optimize your website for the best search traffic possible, you’re probably listening to all sorts of advice and trying to learn as much as you can whenever you can. Unfortunately, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions floating around out there can wreck havoc on all your hard efforts.

If you fall prey to these myths, you might be spending lots of time, lots of effort, and lots of money that is literally going wasted. Here are four myths that might be sabotaging your SEO efforts.

Myth #1 – I must get a #1 ranking

Sure, a #1 ranking is great. But it’s also time consuming and expensive. And in some instances, it’s just not possible. After all, how can a small business possibly hope to out-position YouTube or Wikipedia? In many cases, these information laden sites often dominate for your prized keywords.

If you can achieve a number one raking for your keywords, that’s fantastic. But if not, I don’t believe it’s the end of the world. Instead of racking your brains and breaking your budget trying to get that #1 spot, why not let just your visitors do their research at Wikipedia and YouTube? As long as they’re coming back to your site to make their actual purchases, it doesn’t matter that you’re not number one. Ranking fourth or fifth is still extremely beneficial, and it’s much easier on the pocketbook. And it leaves you more time to spend on other efforts, such as site optimization and user experience.

Myth #2 – I must get tons and tons of traffic to my website

Again, lots of traffic is great. But I see many small business owners spending too much time focusing solely on getting traffic. They tweak their title tags and rewrite their meta descriptions in the hopes of luring visitors to their web page. They make changes on a daily basis and they live and breath based on their traffic stats.

But then what? What good is all this traffic if it isn’t converting into paying customers? If you’re spending hours upon hours driving traffic without paying attention to what you want that traffic to do, you’re wasting time.

So before you spend any more time driving any more visitors to your site, take a look at your conversion rate. It is true that conversion rates vary by industry, but a good rule of thumb is to expect a 2% conversion rate. That means if your web page is selling widgets, for every 100 visitors to your page, you should have 2 sales.

If you’re not achieving a 2% conversion rate, your time would be better spent fixing the problem(s) than driving more traffic. Maybe your meta description is misleading – is your traffic expecting something else at your page? Maybe your body copy is insufficient – do you need the help of a professional copywriter?

Remember, traffic that doesn’t convert is useless. It’s much better to have a 4% conversion of 50 visitors than a 1% conversion of 100 visitors.

Myth #3 – I must get my SEO efforts perfect

There is no such thing as perfect SEO. Optimizing your website is a little bit art and a little bit science. There are many differing opinions and trials and errors involved. There are trade offs between what the robots want and what your site visitors want. If you’re trying to get all this perfect, then you’re really wasting your time, and after all, time is money.

But the biggest problem I see with the “perfect SEO” myth is the expectation that one day I will get my SEO perfect and then I can just sit back and rest on my laurels. If you’re striving for perfection in order to “finish” your SEO project, that is a dangerous line of thinking. Because your SEO project will never be done. There will always be new keywords that need to be researched. There will be new pages to add to your site. There will be headlines that need to be tweaked and partners that need to be linked to.

And to make matters worse, the search engines are constantly changing. What was perfect last month won’t be perfect next month. So if you’re aiming for perfection in order to be finished, or not rolling out your changes until they are perfect, I urge you to be an end to the notion of perfection and get on with your never-ending SEO project.

Myth #4 – If I don’t see an improvement quickly, I must have done something wrong

Optimizing your web site and noticing significant ranking improvements can be a very time consuming process.  Success does not happen overnight. And if your site is a new one or has had very little traffic in the past, chances are you’ll have to wait even longer to see the improvements.

While there are a myriad of reasons why it might take some time to notice significant improvements, one of the factors I’d like to mention is your website crawl rate. The crawl rate is simply how often Google (or the other search engines) comes by to spider through your website. There are many things that affect your site’s crawl rate, such as:

• the number of sites linking into your site
• the authority of the sites linking into your site
• the amount of fresh content you add to your site
• your internal linking structure
• your sitemap and your robots.txt file
• your website server resources

If your site is new or if you don’t have many sites linking into your, your crawl rate might be slower. Which can cause a serious problem if you’re expecting immediate improvements from your optimization efforts. You see, the changes that you made might indeed lead to an improvement in your ranking. But Google hasn’t crawled your site yet, so they aren’t aware of your changes. If you don’t see an immediate improvement, and you go and make even more changes, you might be undoing all the great work you did that Google just hasn’t discovered yet. You’d be much better off to be patient and realize that search engine optimization takes time. If you work too fast, you might just be throwing your work down the drain.

In the past few weeks, we’ve been contacted by several different prospects who wanted to hire us to handle their email marketing. That’s not unusual in and of itself, but the fact that these prospects all had the same story set off an “aha moment” for me.

You see, each of these prospects used to do email marketing on a regular basis. And they each considered their email marketing programs to have been successful. And yet they each stopped doing email marketing.

They started hearing the rumors that email marketing “was dead”. So, even though their own open rates had not declined, and their own click-through rates had remained steady, and, in two cases, the web traffic that was attributed to email marketing had actually increased, they still decided to put their efforts into other marketing tactics.

But here it was, months later, and they were having a hard time tracking and measuring those other marketing activities. They couldn’t quite say how effective they had been, they weren’t sure how many clients these other activities had sent their way, and they weren’t really positive that they were spending their money wisely.

So they wanted to get back into email marketing.

But they had been out of that sphere for so long, they didn’t know how to start back up again. So if you, too, have been lured away from email marketing by the promises of social media, or SMS messaging, or daily deal platforms, or whatever, I welcome you back into the fold.

Here are some easy tips for rekindling your email marketing program:

First, have no fear about reaching out to your past subscribers. In most cases, you can get back into their good graces very quickly and effortlessly. In fact, some readers may not have even noticed your absence.

It’s perfectly acceptable to offer an explanation for your lack of email messages over the past weeks, or months, or however long it’s been. If your absence was caused by a financial hiccup, poor time management, or some other sob story, don’t go into the nitty-gritty details. Just say something to the affect of “We apologize for our absence” or “Hope you’ve missed us as much as we’ve missed you”.  Going into too much detail could cause your readers to lose faith in your business, so spare them the details.

If you’ve been absent from email marketing for more than just a few issues or so, it might be necessary to give your readers a brief re-introduction to your services so they will remember what kept them from hitting the unsubscribe button when you were sending out your emails more regularly. Remind them why they like you and describe what you have to offer them.  Be sure to make this section very benefits-rich – more about how you will help your reader than about how great you and your business are.

And finally, don’t think of email marketing as a stand-alone platform. There’s no need to abandon your new marketing activities in order to reintroduce email. In fact, email works great in combination with social media, with your blogging efforts, even with your print marketing campaigns. Don’t think of the various marketing platforms as one-or-the-other, instead, focus on multi-channel efforts.

The fact is, email marketing is still an exceptional tool for small business marketing. It’s inexpensive, it’s easy to track and measure, and it’s still very effective. If you’ve fallen victim to the false rumors that email marketing is a dying channel, you should definitely consider reinstating your email marketing program.

Photo by misterbisson

]]> http://www.modernimage.com/blog/email-marketing/how-to-kick-start-your-abandoned-email-marketing-program/feed/ 0 http://www.modernimage.com/blog/affordable-website-design/creating-a-faq-page-for-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=creating-a-faq-page-for-your-website http://www.modernimage.com/blog/affordable-website-design/creating-a-faq-page-for-your-website/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:05:10 +0000 Karen Scharf, Small Business Marketing http://www.modernimage.com/blog/?p=1122

A Frequently Asked Questions page, or FAQ page, is a staple on many websites. This page especially becomes necessary if you are selling a product or doling out complicated information. Usability should be at the forefront when you’re compiling and creating your FAQ page. A well-designed FAQ page increases user experience and saves you and the reader time, and therefore, money.

Your FAQ page should supplement quality content on the rest of your site. The questions should be genuine questions and concerns your users have expressed – you discover these through comments, email, and/or phone calls. Don’t simply make up a list of questions you think readers should ask. We’ve all seen those websites with Frequently Asked Questions that consist of content like, “Why is this considered the best website ever?” Don’t do this. It is completely unnecessary. Simplicity is best, so if there are no genuine questions, that is fine. It just means that you have answered everything somewhere else on your website! Good for you.

Also, don’t use your FAQ page like that junk drawer in your kitchen. You know, the one with that weird tool, the happy meal toy, broken pens, and empty rolls of scotch tape. The FAQ page is not a dumping ground for all homeless, miscellaneous information.

Don’t start off with an FAQ page. The need for this page will become apparent over time, and the content needed will eventually become fairly obvious. Spend some time studying your feedback, determine overlaps, and pinpoint common areas of confusion. Once the need for an FAQ page is established, there are some things you can do for maximum usability:

Make it easy to find

If your FAQ page is hard to find, your visitors won’t use it. This is not an egg hunt, so make sure the page is in an obvious location. Again, this page will save you time and resources, so give it proper credit. Also, don’t give it an obscure name; stick with FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions. That is what your reader is going to be looking for.

Focus on readability

Use text decoration and spacing to delineate questions and answers. Use different fonts, font sizes, bold, italic, whatever, just make the questions and answers obviously different. Next, categorize the questions and provide a search option for long FAQ pages. For complicated answers, provide visuals, such as pictures, screenshots, and graphs.

Answer directly and casually

Don’t provide long-winded explanations. Make the answers succinct, yet personable. The FAQ page is yet another way to connect and communicate with your readers. However, you don’t want them drowning in a sea of confusing, answered questions. Get them back to your main page as soon as possible, but with a clear understanding of whatever it is they were asking before.

FAQ pages strive to make answers to common questions and misconceptions easily accessible to users. By following a few guidelines, you will find yourself answering fewer emails and phone calls, while increasing productivity, traffic, and/or sales.