Small Business Marketing | Marketing for Entrepreneurs | Realtor Marketing » internet marketing

Small Business Marketing – Layering Your Marketing Message

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:49:44 +0000

Small business marketing is all about getting prospective customers to notice you. I KNOW, you think that small business marketing is about getting them to BUY from you, but first they have to know you exist!

The easiest way to get people to notice you is to show up everywhere they go, from in person, to their mailbox, online at social media and in their email inbox. This process of being everywhere is officially called layering and should be part of a planned structured marketing campaign.

LL Bean is stalking me. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the LL Bean gang! They have American made clothes (I am from the rust belt near Pittsburgh so this has always mattered to me). Their clothing is unbelievably high quality and they have a no questions asked return policy. Seriously, you can wear your shoes, clothes or coats for YEARS and if something goes wrong, they will make it right, no questions asked.

Years ago I got on their mailing list and they have continued to send me catalogs, even though I have not ordered in quite some time. Sort of nice, but did not compel me to buy.

Social Media Marketing

So today I opened my Facebook and they had posted a message about extreme weather clips on the LL Bean Facebook page. Not a picture of their product with a link (although they have them too!), a video from the weather channel about terrible cold weather.

Small Business Marketing Tip – So NOW I am thinking about cold weather in conjuction with LL Bean! They have snuggly warm coats and slippers in case it snows like that here.

Email Marketing

After cruising the Social Media and noticing the LL Bean clip (I didn’t watch the video but got the gist and the association stuck). I popped open my inbox to delete messages (I mean read my email…hehehe). What showed up there? An email from LL Bean!

Now I am in marketing so I tend to notice when things happen like this, but I am also human and the urge to buy something from LL Bean is getting greater and greater!

Direct Mail Marketing

So, as most of you know I am an internetty kind of gal. I get leads from the internet, teach internet marketing classes and have every whiz-bangy kind of appliance needed to access the internet at my disposal.

That having been said, I rarely BUY things on the internet. I go to stores and look at catalogs (doh, I just happen to have an LL Bean catalog handy!). Sending me a catalog will definitely make this layering marketing work better for the Bean!

How To Do Layering For Small Business Marketing

So you are a small business owner or entrepreneur and you are thinking to your self (in a really snarky tone, I can hear you) that you do not have the millions of dollar advertising budget that LL Bean has! That figuring out all that technology is going to take time and money you don’t have.

Here are some easy ways for small business owners to capitalize on what we have seen here today!

Direct mail marketing – There are two ways to do direct mail marketing on a shoestring. Print dinky postcards on colored paper, 4 to a sheet or buy them from Vistaprint for pennies on the dollar. I checked yesterday and the cost for a postcard stamp is 29 cents so the cost to do a 100 piece mailing should be less than 50 bucks total. I am getting ready to send a 100 piece dinky postcard mailing this week and will let you know what the response rate is!
Email marketing – if you are not using an online database like Constant Contact or Office Auto Pilot (the one I use) yet, start today. Figure it out and start building a list! Send them informative emails. I KNOW, you are all clamoring about what to send, send something that is related to your business!
Pick up the phone – Call them to see if they got what you sent! Your mailing made this a much warmer call.
Social Media Marketing – Post something about this on your social media like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or LinkedIn. Be careful not to be too salesy, just something good and interesting for them to enjoy that is related to your business.

With my coaching clients, I recommend that we have “theme months” where we pick a theme and market to that using multiple sales channels. I can’t stress enough that you should pick a theme for this month RIGHT NOW, set up some of these layered sales outlets and get started bringing in more prospects and sales!

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If you would like to find out more about my Small Business Marketing coaching programs today, give me a call 727-415-9165.

Small Business Marketing Magic – There is no get rich quick!

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:43:09 +0000

Small business marketing magic is a lie! There is no get rich quick scheme that can grow you a sustainable, ongoing marketing plan. Having a good marketing plan that feeds into your Small Business Lead Generating Sales Funnel, is hard work and not something that you should expect overnight.

Facebook Business Page Lies

Yesterday I was working away diligently and got a call. It looked like one of my client’s numbers so I answered. A lady wanted to know if we sold Facebook fans. I asked her if she wanted us to help her grow her page with real people and she said no, that she wanted to know about getting 10,000 likes right away. Sigh. We have clients who have paid some money (eighty-nine bucks) for 1,000 likes. They got about 400 total new likes and honestly, they were not real Facebook people. They were profiles that were auto-set up with a photo and very limited info. They had no friends, they had no updates, basically they were just one like from someone who would never share your page, comment or care about what you do.

I cannot see any way that having 10 or 10,000 fake fans will help anyone grow and told her so. She then brought up the fact that there were LOTS of companies selling this so it must be real! I told her that I would love to lose 15 pounds a week and that there are lots of companies selling that also. Doesn’t make it so!

Social Media Marketing Will Result In Immediate Sales

Small Biz owners are always surprised when we tell them that social media will not be likely to get them SALES in the first month. The first month of getting your social media and internet empire set up is a building process. It involves building a Facebook business page, branding your Twitter and YouTube channels, making videos or writing blog posts. All of these things are vital to showing the world that your company has a strong online presence.

So, does that mean sales will start flooding in once you have your empire set up? Nope. Sorry to be the bearer of more bad news BUT, social media is a great channel for getting people interested, doing networking and talking about your business in a way that will spark an interest in what you do. No matter what the hype is, Facebook will not sell a million of your products if they do not sell at that rate in the open market. What it WILL do is act as a great source of leads, leads that have to be nurtured and grown, just like you would in the real world.

Many times I hear that people don’t want to spend all that time talking to people online. I think they want people to call and say, “give me 10 of those widgets”. The best way to think about social media is to equate it to real life networking. If you have ever gone to a networking event and had someone chew your ear off about how great their product is, that will give you an idea of how some people come across online. The SOCIAL in social media means that you will have to talk with them (either through messaging or emails) before they are going to want to call and place an order.

You Can “Go Viral” And Your Business Will Explode

I wrote a post the other day about Trying To Go Viral With Your YouTube videos. Some of the data that I found was astounding like only 80,000 hits on a video that had Eminem, a commercial on the superbowl and a cost of 9 million dollars. That is a REALLY high cost per hit.

Going viral online is like getting on the Oprah Show. We ALL dream about producing something that is so brilliant that everyone wants to share it and we can get rich and retire to Aruba. The fact is, Oprah rarely features companies on her show and going viral mostly involves people, pets or kids doing something funny and non-commercial.

It is much better to try and capture a target like “going viral to people who want to buy or sell a house in the Stratford Lakes subdivision”. Not going to be a lot of people, but are going to be people people who are interested in working with you! For a pizza shop, going viral nationally will not do all that much to increase business, but if you can get videos of the neighborhood kids enjoying your pies, they may share them with their friends who can comfortably reach your business by car or on foot.

So, there are three small business marketing magic myths busted! Really, all it takes is hard work and time to promote your business. Not sexy but the truth!

PS – Next post is going to bust the loch ness monster, yetis and the fat guy in the big red suit wide open!

Small Business Marketing – How Do People See Your Company

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:46:42 +0000

Small business marketing, sigh. In the past it was easy, take out a yellow page ad and you were done. Well times they have changed and small business marketing is now a million moving parts that all have to be working together to make a whole campaign.

We talk to our clients every day and they are grouchy that they have make videos and answer online questions and basically be available to their potential customers who have not even said they are willing to buy yet, they are just exploring their options.

In this day of always on internet (remember when you had to log in and out and only got 1 hour a day), consumers are researching your company or product extensively before they are willing to give you their hard earned money. They are checking to see if you have good reviews on Yelp, seeing what your Facebook page looks like and if you talk there. Some like Twitter and tweet you first to see if you are a real person. I know what you are thinking, GIVE ME A BREAK, who has time for all that sillyness, I just want to run my business and make some money.

Here are two of the small business marketing quotes that we have heard since YESTERDAY

“She found us through an ad and went to the site and found Facebook there…. Don’t know why in the world she didn’t just call in the first place.”
we have a listing that would like to list with us but they do not find us on internet searches when entering XXX luxury or XXX waterfront etc.

These types of things come through every day. A customer of ours who doesn’t understand that the lady is not going to buy ANYTHING before vetting it on the Facebook. A realtor who doesn’t like the internet or blogs and who never saw the benefit of ranking well for keywords, until every other client asked why they didn’t show up in Google.

Unfortunately, if you are going to be in business in this day and age, you HAVE to be fluent in small business marketing online. Every day you are not out there, you are falling behind and may never catch up.

Small Business Marketing Solutions

So all the doom and gloom, what is a business person to do? Here are my top tips for getting started.

If you are OK at using the internet yourself, start taking classes to find out what you should be doing and then start small and do something everyday. I have a membership site that can help with your DIY Small Business Marketing efforts.
If you truly have a very small marketing budget and no computer skills what-so-ever, find a kid. They grew up on this and are technically savvy about how to use the systems. The problem with hiring a child is that they have no marketing knowledge and could hurt more than help your efforts.
If you have any kind of marketing budget at all, it is worth hiring a professional marketing company like us to do your marketing for you! I KNOW most yellow page ads cost about $800 a month, for that you could have a really good running start to a small business marketing online empire!

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is just how it is and only going to get worse going forward. We didn’t mention QR codes, mobile or any of the other things on the horizon that you are going to have to master along with all the “normal” things we have to do small business marketing wise today. My best suggestion to the small business owner who wants to stay in business is to start today!

Small Business Internet Marketing – RSS Feeds

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:35:36 +0000

I am a small business internet marketing kind of gal. Notice the small business part? While I try to keep my posts non-techy so that my peeps can implement most of the concepts themselves, this RSS Feeds post is going to be a little technical BUT worth reading if you want free traffic to your blog, facebook or videos sites!

What Do Search Engines Do

Before we get too technical, lets talk about search engines and what their job is. Search engines are constantly looking for new information to show humans who have used keywords to do searches. So, if you do a search for “big screen tvs”, search engines will provide you with a variety of sites, some with reviews, some with sales and some with research data. They will do their best to provide a variety of content so that the human who is searching finds what they are looking for, be it a news story, blog post, picture, press release or any other manner of information.

Additionally, search engines have algorithms that allow them to know that when you type “superbowl” you really mean “super bowl”, that big football game played at the end of the season. They can also know that humans search for “cold remedies” when they really want to know about “sore throats”. Our language is diverse and keeps the google on its toes.

Small Business Internet Marketing – RSS Feeds

So what are RSS Feeds and what do they have to do with search engines and content? RSS Feeds are technically “Really Simple Syndication” feeds that PUSH content you have developed to other places such as blogs, twitter and other aggregator websites who need to have LOTS of content. There are couple of ways to find these feeds, (1) if you are using the Firefox web browser they appear in the address bar as blue icon or (2) you can look around the page and see if you can find an orange icon that indicates an RSS feed is available.

As a small business marketer you can use these feeds for a number of different things like auto-publishing to your Twitter account or posting to your Facebook page, but today we are talking about the magic of other people using YOUR feeds to produce content for THEIR site.

The picture above shows a screen capture of someone who took my blog post about Superbowl Demographics and posted it on his website. This site did a REALLY nice job of it, pulling quotes, recognizing me as the author and adding backlinks to my blog. See HIS post here. It is safe to assume that he has taken my RSS feed and is using it to publish content on his blog. The picture down here is another site that publishes my content, RealtorYou.com. They pull my posts and put them onto their pages, adding backlinks to my recent posts although they are not as good at crediting me as the author of the content.

So why would these people take my posts and publish them on their sites? I am trying to rank for certain keywords like realtor marketing, small business marketing and entrepreneur marketing. The RealtorYou.com site seems to be trying to rank for “internet marketing for Real Estate Agents”. Search engines DO put a lot weight on having the exact keywords people search for BUT they also add up different bits to make a whole. In this case it seems that RealtorYou.com is hoping that my Realtor Marketing articles, plus the work that they do will get them to the top of the search engines for the search term “internet marketing for Real Estate Agents”.

Additionally, they are running google adwords down the right side of the page so they get a little bit of money anytime someone clicks on one of those links. For all we know the whole site is nothing but aggregated feeds that they never have to do any work to update and which may pull them in a ton of money.

What are pingbacks?

When you have a blog, often you will get a message from your blog that you have a pingback. A pingback means that someone has published your content on their site with a link back to your blog. It is VERY nice and you should ALWAYS approve it unless the site publishing it is a “bad neighborhood” like porn, pharmaceuticals or gambling sites.

So what does that mean for small business internet marketing?

Is this post going to explain EVERYTHING about RSS feeds and how they help your small business internet marketing efforts, no. Is it going to tell you about everything that you need to do to get your feeds recognized so that complete strangers publish your content on their sites, no. As small business marketers, what I hope it does is open your eyes to why having a blog, Facebook or YouTube channel might be so important. As you publish content on these media which have an RSS feed, you never know who is going to pick it up and use it for SEO or to “plump” up THEIR content!

If you would like to find out how we help our clients use RSS feeds and other fun marketing items to grow their business, check out our Small Business Marketing Services!

Thanks to Richard Turcott for featuring my post in his RSS blog!

Blogging – When to post and when to just do it

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:50:17 +0000

Blogging is a GREAT lead generating tool and the best bloggers know that to increase traffic, all they have to do is post an article. That having been said, if you can not have a perfect blog posting schedule, do not miss an opportunity to get something out there!

I write blog posts about 2 times a week during normal times. This month I am writing 31 posts in 31 days so I have some good data to tell you about in regard to what a normal month looks like compared to a month where ridiculous amounts of blogging are happening every day!

The first Saturday of this month I posted and got 67 visits, last month when I did not post I got 24 visits. Weekends are usually terrible traffic days for me BUT by posting I more than doubled my traffic (Sunday was 63 and 40).

For the first full week of last month I had 377 visits and this month, posting every day, that number jumped to 743, a significant rise in traffic. Now, this is all organic traffic and I will have to stop my testing because I have started some paid campaigns which will skew the results, BUT just that little bit allows me to extrapolate that I can double my web hits just by posting every day.

So when is the best time to post to your blog?

In his article, The Best Time To Post, Socialnomics guru, Erik Qualman braves a train to tell us that these are some good blogging guidelines:

* Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are your best days
* Saturday is the worst day
* Holidays are slow traffic days (except commerce sites)
* 10 am â€“ 11:30 am and 1 â€“ 3:30 pm are best times to post
* Stagger posts based on time zones

I agree whole heartedly that these are the best times. I get the majority of my traffic on Tuesday through Thursday and find that both B2B and B2C blogs report this shift. It seems to me that business people are accessing information during working hours on weekdays and that employed people are accessing information during working hours on weekdays also!

I have to say that in a perfect world I DO like to get my post out by 9am Eastern Time so that I have time to bookmark it and have the majority of people in the United States available to see it all day. This practice seems to result in the most hits per post, not even taking into account the lifetime value on post that is sitting out there generating search engine traffic for me on an ongoing basis.

Okay, perfect world aside now! I am writing this post at 12:30 Eastern time and will still publish it today. I published one of my 31 posts at 4:30 in the afternoon and still got traffic, maybe not as much but there was still a response to my article. If you set a goal like posting every day or twice a week or every Tuesday, stuff will happen. Your client will call or your breakfast will catch on fire or some other calamity will happen. What I do not want you to do is give yourself such a tight time frame that if you miss it, you don’t post at all.

I have seen this happen with newsletters. Supposedly the best time to send a newsletter is Thursday morning. Clients will miss Thursday morning and then feel like they have to wait until the next Thursday morning to send it and then something happens, I am sure you see where I am going here.

Marketing done imperfectly still benefits your company! Getting a post out there is more important than waiting to have all the planets align just right and never posting anything.

How To Get More Blog Traffic On The Weekend

Tara Jacobsen — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 15:55:26 +0000

Getting more blog traffic on the weekend can be a real challenge. On the weekends many sites’ traffic drops like a stone, I know that mine does!

If you are targeting business traffic, there is a good chance your site traffic will decrease on the weekends when people are less likely to be working and more likely to be playing. Typically I do not do blog posts on the weekend BUT doing one yesterday doubled my (admittedly low) weekend hits for a Saturday. Since I am posting every day this month, I did not do an authority or evergreen post that would be wasted on a low traffic day and am writing more informational and less keywordy posts. No matter what we do, most B2B (business to business) will occur Monday through Thursday, so targeting that time is vital.

If you would like to find out more about writing evergreen blog posts, check out this link!

That having been said, some sites traffic INCREASES on the weekends and this blog post is for you! If you are selling something that is more personal, fun or family oriented, people can be surfing around looking for entertainment or shopping for themselves or their family. Here are some great posts that I found for this B2C (business to consumer) crowd!

7 Easy Ways to Get More Weekend Traffic for Your Website – The big A HA that I took out of this one was to use paid or PPC traffic on the weekends. Much as I don’t post on Saturday and Sunday, I have never run a campaign on the weekend and may set up one just for that purpose. I DO think that it will have to be more tailored to new business owners and part-timers though.
How to Increase Your Weekend Traffic by Ehow – This one reminded me of how most Ebay contests end on Sunday evenings. You could run a contest that would focus on that deadline, BUT make sure YOUR weekend is open for work so that you can promote it continually on Email, Facebook and Twitter. Just setting up Hootsuite posts will not work for this, you will have to be available to “talk” with people who are excited about your contest.

Overall, I just think that after I do my death march of 31 days of posts I will go back to focusing on the days that are inherently better at generating traffic. I still feel that trying to get people to act differently just because I want them to is counter-productive. BUT I think I will do some weekend PPC just to see what happens with that!

How Can You Get More Blog Hits

Tara Jacobsen — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 00:02:31 +0000

Today’s post is about how to get more blog bits. I am on a roll to do 31 posts in 31 days if that gives you any hints!

So you have a blog and are ready for the flood of traffic that is inevitably going to beat down your internet door…right? Most people with a blog do not have a plan to post regularly, do not have a plan on what to post and get discouraged because they do not get many comments. Well, I have had a blog for quite a while now and can tell you that when you start out, no one comes. Then a trickle, then more and more until it does become fun to post because you know that people are reading.

Seth Godin wrote a book called “The Dip”, in which he talks about what it takes to find success and how you need to know ALL endeavors have a big dip in the road to success. His great example is a really tough kind of chemistry pre-med doctors have to take, most students fail that class and quit there. Seth’s thinking is that if you are not going to do EVERYTHING possible to get through that class, why even start medical school. Blogs are like that too.

You start off all happy and worried about what it looks like. You get your buttons in the right place and may even post a couple of times. BUT then life and work get in the way. You are thinking you will post weekly and wind up posting monthly or even further apart. You get worried that you haven’t posted enough and throw up something just to get the monkey off your back.

Post Often

I mean post at least twice a week if not more. I KNOW, you are not good at writing, do not know what to write about and worry that no one is reading them, BUT until you get a good number of posts under your belt you will not get better.

Set a schedule and keep it. I pledged to write 31 posts in 31 days so I WILL write a post today, one tomorrow and one the day after. Unless I break all my fingers, there is no reason why I cannot get them done. Generally I post at least two to three times a week.

Write About All Different Kinds Of Things

Last month I had traffic from search engines on 806 different keywords. 708 of those had only one hit. This is called the long tail of search. Chris Anderson wrote “The Long Tail” years ago, in which he discussed the fact that most of Amazon’s sales come from books that only sell one copy per month. This translates to the fact that I could never imagine when I am writing posts that people would search for “are email newsletters good for business in 2010″ BUT since I have written about email newsletters and business a lot, google served up my site as something that might interest them.

Learn To Do Keyword Marketing

Write your post and then figure out what good keywords are for the topic you picked. I wrote a whole post about “How To Write A Blog Post That Will Rank In Google” that you can check out if you are interested in that kind of thing.

Bookmark Your Blog Posts

Make sure that you are submitting each post to Stumble Upon, Reddit, Digg, Delicious and Google Bookmarks at the least. This is a free way to get more traffic coming to your site to read your posts.

Add Your Posts To Facebook and Twitter

I get a lot of free traffic from these social media sites also. You may not believe it but I like Twitter even more than Facebook for getting the word out about what I have written! There are computers all over the internet who are searching Twitter to find great content and I make sure to give it to them.

Quite Worrying That No One Comments

I get between 2,000 and 3,000 hits a month and I only get about 10 real comments a month. Now I am sure that there are ways that I could train my gang to comment more (asking them to comment comes to mind) but I do not care if they comment! I care if I am getting more traffic to my site this month than last month AND that I am converting that traffic to sales. That is something to get worked up over, not that no one talks to you.

Make Your Blog About Something You Like

This one is huge for me! I work with all sorts of people who are looking for a hot niche. They want to know what will get them big money fast. Let me tell you, if you pick a niche you know nothing about you will struggle to write about that topic. If you pick something because it is popular, not only will it be hard to write about BUT you will have a lot of competition. Now, don’t get me wrong, I write about marketing which is a HIGHLY competitive market BUT I LOVE IT! I can generate a post without having to do research. I can write a post in about 15 minutes if I have to. Liking your topic can make all the difference in your success.

If you are a small business owner who struggles to do their blogging, we can help! Check out our small business marketing services page for more information.

Small Business Marketing and Social Media Marketing Services

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:40:23 +0000

If you are here, you are probably a small business owner or entrepreneur who has heard all the buzz about social media marketing and how it can help grow your business. BUT who has the time to do all that tweeting, blogging, and networking when you have a business to run? Our social media marketing services can help!

Social Media Marketing and Marketing Artfully

Today’s social media stretches across sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and blogs. Oh, for the good old days when you could just order the yellow page ad once a year and be done with your advertising! Now it seems like everyone wants the small business owner to be a technical guru who knows how to set up all these sites and THEN can find the time to post every few days, make comments and interact regularly. Seriously, who can do all that AND take care of running their business?

I KNOW, every social media marketing company says they are different, but we have the tools and know-how to keep you on the front edge of new products and programs (our clients had early access to google plus and have been growing their circles almost as long as the service has been available!) Our owner is a nationally recognized marketing speaker whose hand guides all of our marketing efforts on behalf of our clients, assuring that what you put out there will have the maximum effect. Additionally, our staff is all located in the USA and have been with us for years (some since day one!)

If you know that you need to be doing all of this but don’t have the time or energy to handle it all, give us a call today 727-505-5384 or Request a FREE, No Obligation Quote

How Does Social Media Work For Small Business?

Social media marketing is great for getting the word out about your small business! If you do it right it can keep you top of mind for all your prospects, clients and past customers in a friendly manner that does not scream SELL, SELL, SELL. Too often we see small biz owners with great intentions doing social media wrong, too strong, too salesy, too, too, too.

I KNOW you have gone to a networking event and gotten stuck in corner listening to "that guy" talk about his product for what feels like hours without a break to breathe or get to know him. Social media (or social networking as it is more rightly called) is actually about building trust and making real connections with people, rather than just shouting your marketing message at them.

Your social media empire is built over time, growing your friends and likes, following people on Twitter and getting followed back, building your links in the search engines so that when someone is considering buying your product or service, you get the call!

Social Media Marketing Pricing and Services

While every business business is different, we KNOW that it is easier to know from the outset a general idea of what type of pricing you will be looking at. We are VERY focused on doing the things that are best for each of our clients and every client has an hour long consult to determine YOUR needs and focus. Additionally, we do a keyword assessment to make sure that you are targeting the correct keywords for your industry.

This level is for the true small business owner who knows that they have to have a solid marketing presence across multiple channels. We will build out these properties & get you followers, friends & likes in addition to creating content for each. Because every client is different, this is an example of what we will do each month, keeping in mind that your tasks may vary:

Publish 2 keyword targeted blog posts per week
Publish 2 videos per month (more if client generated)
Request contacts and post to Facebook 2X weekly
Request contacts and post to Twitter 10X weekly
Request contacts on YouTube weekly
Request contacts and post to LinkedIn 2X weekly
Submit blog posts to backlinking sites
Drive traffic to your website if appropriate
Request contacts and post to Google+ 2X weekly
Build a blog on your hosting & domain (you own it!)
Optimize and brand your social media sites
Set up google analytics & feedburner
Build a custom Facebook page

Give us a call today 727-505-5384 to find out more or Request a FREE, No Obligation Quote

This level is for a small biz owner who knows that they need to do something, but their budget is not big enough to get the full treatment. Many of our clients start out on this level and move up as their branding and exposure increases.

Publish 1 keyword targeted blog posts per week

Request contacts and post to Facebook 2X weekly

Request contacts and post to Twitter 10X weekly
Request contacts and post to LinkedIn 2X weekly
Submit blog posts to backlinking sites
Drive traffic to your website if appropriate
Request contacts and post to Google+ 2X weekly
Build a blog on your hosting & domain (you own it!)
Optimize and brand your social media sites
Set up google analytics & feedburner
Build a custom Facebook page

Give us a call today 727-505-5384 to find out more or Request a FREE, No Obligation Quote

Entrepreneur or solopreneur with a little budget but no time or expertise to handle social media yourself? This one is for you! We make sure clients and potential clients can find you on the internet and that your online presence is fresh.

Request contacts and post to Facebook 2X weekly
Request contacts and post to LinkedIn 2X weekly
Request contacts and post to Twitter 10X weekly
Drive traffic to your website if appropriate
Optimize and brand your social media sites

Give us a call today 727-505-5384 to find out more or Request a FREE, No Obligation Quote

Nice Things They Are Saying About Us!

Having Marketing Artfully manage our marketing has been a lifesaver. Before we started with them, I had a hard time justifying the expense in my mind. Boy was I wrong! They are worth every penny and then some.

They keep us on track with our social media, bloging and u-tube video marketing with the added benefit of SEO expertise. They let me do the part I enjoy and they handle ALL of the rest. I don’t even have to think about any of it which is such a HUGE relief.

And the best part is that not only are our past clients and people in our database regularly telling us about ‘how they see that we’re so busy’, we’re also getting high-quality referrals, leads and sales as a result. In fact, we’re closing on a sale in 2 weeks netting us over $11,000 in commission simply because of our Facebook presence!

~ Julia (& Matt) Fishel, Palm Harbor Florida Realtors

Small Business Marketing Services

Social Media Marketing

Your social media marketing efforts can seem to eat up your day. Who has time to make friends, get followers, post information, write notes AND do business. In this day and age, having a professional looking Facebook Business Page is a must have. Using Twitter might seem like a waste of time to you, but your competition knows that there is business to be had there. We can help design, implement and manage your social media empire at a great monthly rate that will not break the bank.

Some Facebook Business Page Examples:
Aspenfalls Spa
Suncoast Partners
Insite Wellness
Pearsons Professional Pet Services

Some Twitter Branding Examples:
Smart Health and Beauty
The Pinellas Peach
Smarter Women Colorado

Search Engine and Keyword Marketing

Search engine and keyword marketing is built into everything we do. From our smallest client to our biggest companies, finding the right search terms matters, not just to Google but on Facebook and Twitter too! Our keyword guru will find a mix of attainable keywords to rank for which are relevant to your business AND which have good monthly search traffic. This keyword research is a $250 value which is included for EVERY one of our clients.

Blog Website Marketing

Blogs ARE for business. There is no better way to get a consistent message to the search engines and your social media sites than to have a blog site. We work with you, targeting your goals and then producing relevant content for your site. We SEO it AND post it, sending your message out on a regularly scheduled basis to the search engines and social media. It is your choice how much control to have, some of our clients review everything we post, some just are happy that marketing is happening without them having to lift a finger!

Some Business Blog Examples:
Florida Rental Boat
Austin TX Luxury Real Estate
Green Cleaning Products – Premium Blog
Smart Health and Beauty – Premium Blog

YouTube Video Marketing

Video marketing is all the rage for good reason. With the new Flip cameras and digital recorders, we can make a movie, post it to YouTube, add it to a blog, upload it to Facebook and generally market the heck out of it. AND the best part is that slick, commercial movies are out, real people are in. Whether you want to be in the videos or would rather use screen captures and voice-overs, we can help.

Some YouTube Examples:
How To Buy USA Real Estate
Deborah Ward and Associates
Magical Bookkeeping Solutions

What Makes Us Marketing Experts

Today it seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry has taken a social media marketing class and is now calling themselves an expert. Our marketing guru, Tara Jacobsen, has been in marketing for over 10 years, is a nationally recognized marketing speaker and has had marketing pieces published as national examples of effective marketing campaigns. Her in depth of knowledge across the board allows us to provide you with a comprehensive marketing plan that will get you leads and ultimately increase sales.

All of our receive a monthly report to review goals, set milestones and check analytics of what was accomplished the previous month.

Our team includes Tara, Stacy Hansen of Personalized Marketing Corp., Michelle Vazquez our client services manager, writers, technical geeks and admin people who are all working together using systems we have developed to make sure your online and offline marketing efforts run smoothly.

Small Business Marketing FAQs

We talk to small business owners every day about their small business marketing needs and some questions come up over and over. Here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions we get. If you have any further questions, please give a call at (727) 505-5384 and we will get back with you as soon as possible!

What do your services cost? – We have monthly plans that range from $297 to $997 a month depending on what you need done for your marketing. The quality of service we provide for each type of client does not change, only the amount of time that is available to work on the projects. We talk with you BEFORE you sign up to make sure that our efforts will be able to meet your expectations.

Do you require a contract? – We do not require a contract. We only work with clients that we like and who like us! We do ask though that you budget for at least three months as there is time at the front end that it takes to get everything set up and our efforts to kick in.

Can you bill us? – Honestly, we keep our prices low by avoiding invoicing and chasing checks. All of our billing is done through 1ShoppinCart.com which is a secure, online service. We bill in advance for the month and schedule work for clients after they have paid. Because we have time and expenses involved in our work, if you miss a payment, work will cease until you get a valid form of payment entered into the system.

Do you have custom small business marketing services or a la carte pricing? – We are always happy to talk with potential clients about your needs and tailor a program to meet your budget requirements.

Top 10 Internet Marketing Lies

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:07:16 +0000

The TOP 10 Internet Marketing Lies! Okay, that may have been a little overly dramatic, but believe me, todays post is about over the top marketing.

Here are my Top 10 Internet Marketing Lies in no particular order and with my own take on what is really going on. All examples are taken directly from emails that I have been sent and are less than 1 month old.

I am writing this because people are spending good money every day on products and services that do not work and which cost A LOT of money. Hopefully when you are done with this post you will be able to sort out good products from hype and get some real help!

Top Internet Marketing Lies #1 – “It’s about a new $2,367 a day secret. And the best part…It generates INSTANT results!”

This one is over the top. Your total income for this offer would be $863,995 a year. AND they say you get INSTANT results. Really? Don’t you think if someone was selling a way to make almost a million dollars a year instantly they would sell out immediately?

Top Internet Marketing Lies #2 – “Tara, $146,063 in on 30 days? No problem – Have you always dreamed about making an automated income as an affiliate marketer online?”

I am assuming it should be “only” 30 days but this one is even more ridiculous. Annual income would be $1,752,176 – yep that is right, this one is almost TWO MILLION a year, but wait it gets better…it is automatic. I have to tell you, most online marketers I talk with would be happy with ten thousand a month and most make considerably less than that.

Top Internet Marketing Lies #3 – “Video EXPOSES How $23.6m Was Made”

Okay, it is getting out of hand here now. BELIEVE ME, if I really thought that I could make $23 MILLION watching videos I would be watching them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It would take almost 12 YEARS of the previous ridiculous offer to make as much as this one promises.

Top Internet Marketing Lies #4 – “Newbie Earns $37,730 In His Second Month”

Alright, this one is ONLY $452,760 a year BUT it implies that a brand new internet marketer could be raking in the big bucks within a month. I can tell you, I have been on many trainings with newbies and they are ALWAYS left behind. They do not understand the vocabulary, let alone have the skills or experience to get off the ground within 30 days. That is not to say that Newbies can’t learn those skills, but it is not realistic to think they could learn them AND succeed within a month.

Top Internet Marketing Lies #5 – “RE: your $400 a day?”

This is one of least favorite email “tricks”. This marketer added RE: to the email subject. Because most email programs do this to show when someone is replying to you, it seems like they are answering a question that you asked them. VERY disingenuous and makes the offer seem shaky even before I open the email.

Top Internet Marketing Lies #6 – “It will do things like create over 10,000 social media accounts at the push of a button!”

I have to say this is crazy! It may create that many social media accounts but what are you going to do with them? I see lots of these when I am doing work for clients. Usually it is an account that has 1 link on it that goes to an affiliate product. While I am not anti-marketing on social media, I am anti having pure spam accounts.

Top Internet Marketing Lies #7 – “$1 gets you all the traffic you wantâ€¦Become a Social Media Expert for Only $1″

OHHH this one makes me mad. I have been marketing obsessed for 10 years now and spend all my time reading and learning about marketing. The idea that you could spend a buck and become a social media expert makes me wicked mad AND makes me worry that there are going to be thousands of people out there selling bad social media marketing services.

Top Internet Marketing Lies #8 – “Make $557,22 every 24 hours!”

That is not my typo, this one says you can make $557,22. Well if it is $55K then your annual income would be $20,338,530 a year – that is right, $20 MILLION. And if it is actually $557,220 then your income would $203,385,300 – TWO HUNDRED MILLION a year. If someone has found a way to make TWO HUNDRED MILLION a year, do you REALLY think they would be selling an information product, really?

Top Internet Marketing Lies #9 – “Best Freebie I’ve Ever Seen…”

This one you have to be careful of! When the internet marketers launch a product they generally send out three free videos then go for the hard sell. Those videos are sometimes GREAT! So if you are careful that you don’t slip and buy something, you can get A LOT of great training for free. AND if the information that they are giving away for free is that good, consider buying the product. Just make sure that their pitch sounds realistic so you do not get burned.

Top Internet Marketing Lies #10 – That there is no good training online. This is my last one and it is going the other way. I have bought many training programs online that ranged from absolute drivel to mind-blowingly wonderful. What you SHOULD do if you want to find out if someone has good training is ask someone in the industry if they have ever bought training from that person and if they thought it was worthwhile. I have a number of people who’s training has been MARVELOUS and who I can recommend should you be interested!

Website and Blog Design – The Wrong Things

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:10:33 +0000

When small business owners having a website or blog designed, they are all happy and ready to start. They have been thinking about this for while and know just what colors and fonts they want. Sigh.

Website and Blog Design – So What Are The Wrong Things?

Looks – Looks are important…BUT! Spending time on getting the right color purple font is a terrible waste of time. Websites and blogs should be about usability. Having snazzy fonts and colors makes it harder to read.
Fancy Flash or Movie Intros – Making users click through a landing page with a “skip intro” button is a waste of time and money AND confuses the search engines.
Picking A Fun URL – Your website should be easy to find online. Having a “fun” URL like WhizzyWigsAnDooDads.com will be fun to market, but will not help you in the search engines. Nor will having your company name. I bet you will rank well for that even if you do not try all that hard since hardly anyone else will be competing with you!

Website and Blog Design – So What Are The RIGHT Things?

Good Solid Design – You want a site that looks professional and which directs people to where you want them to go (like your products or services page).
Easy To Use Navigation – Having tons of different things for people to do is distracting. You should be able to tell at a glance what you want your users to do when they land on your page. They should also have an easy way to get to the subpages of your site. Generally, it is good to use the same words that everyone else does – not creative but effective!
Readable Pages – DO NOT have too much text on the page. Break it up with pictures and headings.
Great Content – Today there is nothing more important than having great content that internet users are looking for. They do not care what solutions you offer or any other industry buzzwords, they just want answers to their questions.
Keyword Research – This is the most important one! You can have the most beautiful site on the internet, but if no one can find you on the search engines it will not matter. Make sure to target keywords with high searches and low competition!
A Good Searchable URL – This is the second most important! If you name your site www.LakewoodBookkeepingAccounting.com, it will not be as fun to market, but it sure will rank better for important keywords don’t you think?

So if you are considering having a website or blog designed, make sure you are more concerned with things that matter than what it looks like! AND if you designer won’t have these hard conversations with you, you may wind up with a great looking site that no one ever sees!