Marketing Your Website

Whenever I work with a small business you are just so keen to get into the tactics of a Facebook Page or a google search campaign or a referral program rather than the strategy behind this activity. It is understandable because it is easy to see that marketing activities create action, leads and sales.However, it is critical to get clear about your marketing strategy first, if you want to attract the right clients and have a plan that will work for the long term.

Here are the steps I go through when building a marketing strategy for a small business.

Pinterest is no longer the niche network it started as. The social bookmarking site has skyrocketed overnight into one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. Wondering what the hype is about? Here are 8 reasons why Pinterest is irresistible for small business.

The internet is all aflutter with pins and pictures lately, and unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve probably heard of the latest social media craze: Pinterest. Pinterest is a social sharing site in which users create virtual scrapbooks (or pin boards) of images collected from all across the web.
 

What is Pinterest?

If you’re scratching your head thinking, “What is Pinterest?!”, don’t worry! It’s a very simple, fun, and powerful social media site. Pinterest has already become the third most popular social platform in the United States, and with over 160,000 Aussies visiting each the site each month, it’s quickly making its mark here, too. 

Pinterest is a visual scrapbook of sorts. It’s a mix of bookmarking the best content on the web, compiling ideas through images, and sharing it all with your friends. Pool together ideas on a certain topic to reference back to, or guide visitors back to the website of origin to learn more about the pin. (If your wheels are starting to turn with how you can use Pinterest to get traffic on your own website, keep reading! Pinterest has massive potential for business.)

Small Businesses are now jumping on the Facebook Ad band-wagon, due to its ease-of-use, affordability and success of the ads. However, I’ve heard that small businesses are having trouble turning their ‘clicks’ into ‘conversions’. Here are four power tips that’ll help your small business make your Facebook Ads more effective.

Is it bothering you that all you hear lately are retailers closing their doors for good? Business failure is high and it seems all we hear about is that these economic conditions are only going to get worse.

I tell you; it bothers me!

As a consumer, this impacts on what I can buy as it limits my choice and availability of Australian goods and services. With all this negativity in the air, I’m sure it saddens all small and large businesses within Australia; with ever-more empty retail spaces popping up, the future is the ‘unknown’ for many retailers. 

You may have seen them on posters or cards: A strange barcode-like box with squares on three corners. They're called QR codes and the idea is that people scan them using the camera on their phone and are then (generally) taken to a web-page.

It is possible to store information other than a website URL in a QR code, but for this blog post I'm just going to talk about QR codes that store website addresses. If you want a QR code to do something else and you're not sure if it's a good idea, send me a comment and I'll let you know what I think.

QR Codes: Are they useful? Or just a passing fad?

This blog was originally written for Australian Businesswomen's Network herbusiness blog on the 18th January, 2012 - by Bianca Board.

What’s one thing you’re going to do better in 2012? I hope it’s taking action to improve your website! It’s a huge untapped resource for most of us small businesses as we can sometimes fail to see it as an investment. Like any investment it should be showing you a profit.

Marketing your website and ensuring it is converting leads and getting you more sales should be at the top of your priorities for 2012. I have 12 pointers to help you get started on this… but trust me; they won’t work unless YOU take ACTION!
 

Interviewed by Sarah McCormack, Marketing Manager of Web123.

Hi, it’s Sarah McCormack here with you today. I’m Web123’s Marketing Manager and I’m lucky enough to be interviewing Jack Delosa.

Jack Delosa has been repeatedly featured as one of Australia’s top entrepreneurs, from having his company listed in the Fast 50 Start-Ups in Australia, being listed as one of the top 10 entrepreneurs under 30 in Australia in the Dynamic Business Young Guns and three times listed in Australian Anthill’s 30Under30 Publication.

Jack Delosa has consulted for brands such as Microsoft, Virgin and CPA on the topics of business growth and performance. Today he is a spokesperson for entrepreneurship in Australia and we are very lucky to have spoken to Jack about his journey and the advice he can provide small businesses and entrepreneurs!

Small business marketing can take on many different forms. One of the best new ways of promoting your business online is through videos, especially on YouTube. Here is a how to guide of YouTube strategy for small business -- the easy way!

One of the most frequent questions we get here at Web123 is, “How do I get traffic to my website?” We usually answer with a conversation about promotion, strategy, targeting -- but it’s a massive topic that doesn’t have a quick and simple fix. This question was repeating itself frequently enough on our support line that we decided it was time to take action and help educate the masses. If that many of our clients were struggling to understand how they can build their businesses by using Facebook and SEO, then it was time to sit them down and get serious about online success strategies.