RRL:

(CWMIFG, January 29, 2017, 5 Steps To Making a Micro-Business

http://www.innovationforgrowth.co.uk/Blog/5-steps-to-marketing-a-micro-business/ )

5 Steps to Marketing a Micro-Business

To find out how small business owners are keeping up, Vistaprint recently surveyed “micro-
businesses” (U.S. small business owners with fewer than 10 employees). Here’s what they
found.
Despite their small size, micro-businesses in general have moved into the digital marketing age.
More than two-thirds (68.8 percent) say they market their businesses both online and offline.
Over half (52.7 percent) say their online presence is “very important” to their marketing efforts,
while 30.4 percent say it’s “fairly important.”

However, there’s still a long way to go. More than one-fourth (28.9 percent) of small business
owners surveyed say they don’t market their businesses both online and offline. And even those
who do market both ways often fail to present cohesive branding. About one-third of micro-
business owners say developing a more consistent online and offline marketing identity would
have a “substantial” financial impact on their businesses, and one-fourth think it would have a
“significant” impact.

How can you maximize marketing a micro-business (or any business)? Here are five tips:

1. Make sure your business website is up to snuff. Less than one-third (32.7 percent) of small
business owners in the survey say their website is their primary means of marketing. However,
even if your website is not your main focus, it needs to be in good shape. Make sure your
business website is mobile-friendly; most people search for local businesses on their
smartphones these days, and Google awards higher rankings in search results to mobile-
friendly sites. Make key information—your business address, hours, and phone number—easy
to see, and keep it updated.

2. Give online advertising a try. Just 6.6 percent of micro-business owners in the survey
describe online advertising as a marketing priority. However, when properly executed, online
advertising can be highly effective and affordable. Since prospective customers search for
businesses online, having your ads show up when they search for what you sell can only help
your business.

3. Get listed in online directories. Only 5 percent of survey respondents say online directories
are a key marketing method. But if your business is one that attracts local customers, online
directories are vitally important to getting customers in your door. Plus, it’s easy (and generally
free) to list your business in local search directories such as Google My Business or Yelp. To get
the best results from online directories, make sure that your business name, address and phone
number are exactly the same in all of your listings—if they vary at all, search engines will view
the variations as different businesses.

4. Don’t rely solely on social media marketing. Social media is the dominant marketing method
used by micro-business owners; 53.3 percent say it’s their primary marketing focus. However,
while social media marketing is important, putting all your efforts into social media marketing
can leave you vulnerable. What happens if the key social network you rely on makes significant
changes to its algorithm or has a sudden decline in popularity?

5. Promote a cohesive brand image. More than half of small business owners surveyed say
business cards are their primary print marketing method; print advertising and signage are also
used. Whether your marketing online, on social media or in print, you need to convey a unified
brand image throughout. That means using similar graphics, colors and images, as well as
reinforcing trademarks and taglines. Last but not least, make sure that your print materials
drive customers to your website and social media presence, that your social media accounts
link to your website and that your website prominently displays your social media icons.

(ND, Social Media Marketing for Philippine Businesses, http://digitalmarketingphilippines.com/smm-for-

ph-biz/)

Social Media Marketing for Philippine Businesses

According to our report on the 2013 State of Digital Marketing in the Philippines last December,
Filipinos are among one of the most avid users of the Internet. It shows:
1. There are 33 Million Filipino Internet Users
2. The country is the second highest ranking in Southeast Asia in terms of Internet users
3. 83% send private messages to friends or acquaintances through social media
4. 81% post messages or update their social media status on a regular basis
These statistics are just few of the many figures and data’s that we can find about Filipino users
and could give us enough compelling reasons to use the Internet for our businesses and social
media websites like Facebook.
Why use facebook for promoting your business?
1. You can promote your business without a website using only a business Page (We have 9k
website offer here)
2. Facebook is the #1 Social media in the Philippines so most of your target customers are
probably there
3. Facebook offers Robust Advertising Chanel
4. It is Small and Medium Business Friendly
5. Flexible when it comes to Advertising Budget
6. Very effective for business who wants to target local or global customers

(Victorino Abrugar, March 21, 2014, Why Small Businesses Should Invest in Facebook Page Ad,
https://businesstips.ph/why-small-businesses-should-invest-in-facebook-page-ad/)

Why Small Businesses Should Invest in Facebook Page Ad

According to Abrugar (2014), Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Philippines may not have big
marketing budget unlike their bigger competitors. However, when it comes to marketing online, SMEs
should consider shelling out money to extend their marketing reach, increase their sales, and grow their
business.

Most Filipinos are Facebook users, whether at their desktop or at their mobile phones and tablets. That is
why if you’re doing business in the Philippines, your target market might just be lurking on this crowded
social network.

The good thing about Facebook Page likes is that you can keep them as long as you’re giving value to
your Page subscribers. Also, as your Page’ followers increase, the doubling effect can happen, which
means the growth rate of your Facebook reach can accelerate further as the number of likes in your Page
increases.

(Topp, March 25, 2015, http://microbusinessforteens.com/word-of-mouth-in-a-digital-world/)

What’s the best kind of advertising for a micro business in a digital world?

One that doesn’t cost anything and brings in a lot of customers.

One way to kick start word of mouth marketing is to ask customers write a nice review about you and to
tell all their friends.
True Story: My friend, Dave Huff, started a Mac support business, Mac Home Support,
(http://machomesupport.com). He’ll work with anyone needing help with their Mac or Apple products. We
called him to help my daughters and I straighten out our iTunes library after I accidentally deleted all the
music on my iPod.

We don’t have a Mac, but we did need help with iTunes. Dave spent an hour hour in front of our PC
answering our stupid questions like, “What do the blue circles mean?” and “What do the check marks
mean?” Then he showed us a neat feature called smart playlists to help get us organized.

When I asked what we owed him, he said, “I want you to tell everyone you know about my business.”

So I did. I put it on Facebook that evening and now I’ve told all of you about MacHomeSupport.com too.

That’s how word of mouth works in the digital age.

Try it! Ask your customers to tell everyone about about you. They can pin, post, review, like, etc…

Book Reference:

On the book known as Foundations of Marketing by Pride/Ferrell (Reference to be taken on

Tuesday)
Generating the power of Twitter
Twitter provides an interactive platform that has created an opening for companies to connect
with consumers.
Many companies use Twitter to market their brands to consumers.

Many companies use Twitter to market their brands to consumers. Companies such as PepsiCo,
Procter and Gamble, and Verizon use Twitter.
4 reasons Online Marketing is so effective
According to WebpageFX Inc., as a business owner you have many different marketing
strategies that you can choose from but you should remember that your budget isn’t infinite so
you should choose properly. Customers nowadays rely on the internet to search for stuff they
want so you should think about using internet as your marketing tool too.

Although the internet may be new when it comes to being a marketing tool compared to print
ads like billboards and such, it has now became arguably essential to people. Customers don’t
listen or pay attention to advertisements that are presented to them as facts instead they go
straight to the internet and search for it so it’s really better if your business’ presence is there.

There are many reasons why internet is important for marketing but here are the top four:

Your customers are online — marketers always wanted to penetrate the potential customers’
place, work, information, and their entertainment. Fortunately, internet satisfies all of that.
About 3 billion people around the world has internet and 80% of them says that they use
internet to search for products and 53% of them buys atleast one product per year.

It’s Cost Effective — Online marketing will surely cost you money but atleast the advance
targeting options makes it easier for you to advertise to people who might actually be
interested in your business. For instance, you hang a poster outside your store. Surely people
would see it but most of them wouldn’t even care while if you post it online and people would
search for a product that you have, then your business would be shown there. There will be a
huge amount of chance that they would go check your business out since they are interested.

Communication goes both ways —

While the most traditional method which is print ads are just a one way communication unlike
the internet ads which is a two way. Why? Because if you see a printed poster and you’re
confused, you probably need to go to the physical store to ask questions. If it’s online, there is a
help service to get more information which they can be more comfortable and might even
make a purchase online. Having a site can be really efficient but also having a social media
account to directly respond to their reviews and questions is much better.

The internet is always open — Most business are not 24 hours open to respond to people and
to promote their business but fortunately the internet is. Your customers don’t have the same
work schedule and such so it’s not possible to reach all of them at the same time. You would
need something that is always running and be there when they need it. Social media and other
websites are always available to take their message and their concerns.

So why is online marketing important? Well simply because you can generate higher revenues
at lower costs at any day or night.

https://www.webpagefx.com/internet-marketing/why-is-internet-marketing-so-important.html
PepsiCo used this to its full advantage by connecting with musical artists and used their appeal
toward today's youth. By using its Twitter page, PepsiCo provided a live stream of a concert
within a tweet. Users saw this and re-tweeted which promoted the broadcast and the concert.

Doing this, PepsiCo used its consumers to further advertise its product through digital
promotion. The results made PepsiCo rethink how it has allocated its marketing budget.

Growth and Benefits of Digital Marketing

The growth of Internet has provided a lot of opportunities for marketers to forge interactive
relationships with consumers allowing companies to pinpoint and hit their exact target markets
and reach other markets previously inaccessible.

One crucial benefit of the internet is that the consumers and marketers can share information.
Through websites, social networks, and other digital media, consumers can learn about
everything they consume and use in life.

For many companies and marketers, engaging in digital and online marketing activities is
essential to maintaining competitive advantages. Increasingly, Small businesses can use digital
media to develop strategies to reach new markets and access inexpensive communication
channels.

Social networking sites are advancing e-marketing by providing additional features, such as the
ability to purchase products and gifts through Facebook.
Why is Online Marketing so Effective?

According to Smit, C. (2016), Online marketing which is also known as internet marketing, e-
Marketing or i-marketing. Online marketing is an interactive tool that can be used by the
marketers and the public since online marketing literally means “Advertising online or on the
web”

Why is Online marketing so effective? Online marketing’s sole purpose is to put up marketing
advertisments at the lowest possible cost and risk investment in order to maximize the sales
potential and receive higher profit.

There are advantages and benefits of online marketing which include: the cost of it is
inexpensive compared to other medium. Cost effective design and well planned strategies that
reach a broader audience simply because of its availability to be viewed virtually all around the
world is far more preferrable than the traditional marketing way.
Online marketing allows consumers to look and research products in their own pace and
convenience. People also prefer that the option of choice is abundant and the results are seen
quickly. The overall success and effectiveness of online marketing largely depends on the
business goals and the cost volume profit analysis. All elements of online marketing can be
traced and tested in some way, shape or form. Like pay per impression, pay per click, pay per
play, and pay per action in which all of it is converted to cash everytime. Web analytics is also a
useful tool in being able to see the exposure, response and overall efficiency of online
marketing by collecting, analyzing and reporting back the internet data that best determines
the return of investment. It can instantly be tracked since online marketing encourages
interaction by clicking on the ad or the site in which the pay per click is the most effective and
the source of it’s traffic can easily be tracked. Therefore you can see what advertisment gets
the most click.

Online marketing can be easily implemented compared to the traditional marketing.

Reachingthe target audience within a matter of days and in some cases it can only take hours. It
provides a great flexibility level in which you can test new markets, new programs and make
changes if needed. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies who specialize in helping
companies to best market their products and services online can be on top of other business
when it comes to the search engines and directories. This can make sure that the other
competitors will be kept at the lower part.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-online-marketing-so-effective-chris-smit

How is the effectiveness of advertising media measured?

According to Iacobucci, D. (2018) in the Marketing Management Fifth Edition, there are many
ways in determining the advertising effectiveness. It should be clear that things get both more
complicated, and yet there are some synergies.

If the goal is to enhance awareness and memory then to reach is your goal and rather than
frequency which can be measured by the viewership, readershup and circulation nunbers,
traffic indices and many measures of exposures. If your brand is already well-known and your
ad’s is an attitude adjustment, then surveys will be necessary.

The advertising researchers often ask the respondents where they saw the ad. Is it on TV?
Radio? Mail? And the like. When you market your product, your concern would be if the ad has
reached the consumer by any means or through any medium.

While varying ad weights, research has found that qualitative differences such as better ad copy
or strategies to reach current non-category users, etc., can increase te likelihood that TV
advertising will positively affect sales. Researchers have also found out that instead of spending
ad dollars on retaining customers who already have a positive reference on the said product
why not eliminate these wasted dollars and start spending it on consumers who are more more
ambivilent to prevent their switching to the competition.

Online marketing is quite new when it comes to advertising. Click-thru rates are a simple no
brainer, but they can track downloads, inquiries, purchases and the such. Then the costs can be
assessed in cost per click, cost per download, cost per acquisition and the like. The costs of
online advertising are low but click-through rates are also low therefore cost-per se is not really
that impressive. Cost effectiveness of online marketin might not be that great but cost per se is
also low that the most advertising managers are willing to live with.

The bottomline is that direct advertising and online media advertising is not that different. It’s
just that one message can be better than another or one medium can be better than another;
It’s that there are synergies, and some messages that are conveyed more effectively via media.
The challenge is to find the fit that works for your brand and product.

Marketing Management fifth edition

The 5 Digital Marketing Strategies Businesses Says Work Best

According to Brooks, C. (2014) on his article online, he said that email is the king of digital
marketing since they say that it is almost 54% effective. However, many tactics are not far
behind.

40% say that blogs, social media are among the most succesful online marketing strategies and
the least successful are mobile marketing and e-commerce marketing.

Overall, businesses that uses digital marketing made a very positive reports. 9 out of 10
businesses rate that is is successful to some extent with more than a quarter of “very
successful” results. Businesses have many range of motives to use online marketing such as
wanting to increase customer engagement, sales revenue, leads for their sales teams and brand
awareness and these were the most important reasons.

The study conducted also said that the majority of bussinesses believe that their digital
marketing efforts are only getting better. 70% say that online marketing and its effectiveness is
only getting better while only 4% say that it only gets worse. Althought in order to achieve their
marketing goals there are many challenges that they will be facing. "The most challenging
obstacle to success is clearly the lack of an effective digital marketing strategy, followed by an
inadequate budget to fund programs," the study’s authors wrote.

Among the other challenges business must overcome to achieve better marketing results is that
they lack training and expertise or the inability to prove the return of the investment and
increasing competition.
The study that was used was based on surveys of 333 marketing, sales and business
professionals from around the world.

https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7204-internet-marketing-strategies.html

How to Use Instagram to Promote Your

Brand and Drive Sales
Now that Instagram has over 300 million monthly users (that’s more than Twitter!), many brands are

finding ways to interact with the Instagram community and earn personally invested customers who

keep coming back for more.

But it’s not just the numbers you should care about. It’s the people using Instagram.

Instagrammers are shoppers. Iconosquare’s 2015 Instagram study shows that 70% of IG users

report having already looked up a brand on the platform. Plus, 62% of users follow a brand just

because they like it!

If you post the right Instagram images, consumers soak up your marketing message without any

hard sales pitches from you; hence, your magic spell for appealing to customers without “selling to

them.”
Shoppers turn to social media for references. So the moral of the story is this: Instagram helps

convert passive shoppers into confident customers.

If you’re new to the Instagram world, no worries. Everything you need to know to market your brand

on Instagram is covered here. And if you aren’t a noob, we’ve got you covered, too, with the more

advanced tips you don’t usually see.

Let’s get started.

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/drive-sales-with-instagram/