Online marketing tips and trends to get you started

Sometimes it’s fortuitous if you’re late in preparing your weekly blog. 

For example this week I was planning to write about how slow many SMEs were in general in adopting e-business technologies and practices.

But before I had a chance to complete my assignment, SmartCompany enlisted some pre-eminent and very credible online marketing experts to expand on the latest e-marketing tips and trends.

And what they had to say was very true and very useful.

However, the problem was, for the bulk of SMEs – the very audience for this website – the advice was way out of their league.

Why?  Because the same bulk of SMEs (unfortunately) are still years behind when it comes to adopting professional e-business tools and techniques.

The truth is that many SMEs are still paying Yellow Pages printed directories and its ilk the same fees they have for years – when the bulk of their customers let their fingers walk on computer keyboards to research and often complete their purchases.

This is proven in the fact that according to Sensis’s latest annual report, printed directory revenues actually grew 5% last year!

An astonishing statistic, given the omniscience and growth of Google and other online marketing vehicles.

But a sobering indication of where SMEs are at nonetheless. 

A major sad but true reason for their reticence to jump aboard the online bandwagon is that it is simply too complex and difficult for them to know where to start.

E-business is a complex and ever-evolving arena that doesn’t stand still long enough for many smaller business operators to assess and plan new initiatives.

Just when they think they are grasping the fundamentals of it, yet another major development will emerge (such as social networking) and change the landscape before they’ve had a chance to perfect the old one.

Furthermore, the industry is a confusing mess to the uninitiated.  Last year’s web designers are this year’s SEO or social networking consultants.  And most don’t seem to have the price tags or patience that a smaller business requires.

So when the friendly Yellow Pages rep comes a calling every 12 months or so, speaking their familiar language of position, size and colour, it is like a breath of fresh air.

You have to remember too, that many small business operators do not get to spend time online the way you and I do.  To them the computer is an administration tool used to “do the books” and prepare the odd document.  In fact, many dislike computers as time spent with it is time spent away from their non-computerised tool of trade – which means it is non-earning time.

Even if they employ someone to take care of marketing, e-marketing may be a very small part of their role, which is often part time anyway.

So there exists a very real “digital divide” in smaller business.

This lag in adoption has led to an “adoption curve” quite unlike that normally experienced by new technology.  As outlined in my hastily prepared diagram, those who have the time and money to throw at new technologies form an early but ultimately small group of adopters, while smaller businesses represent a very large, but very slow majority.

So with a tonne of due respect to the e-marketers quoted in these pages yesterday, here is my alternative list of e-business fundamentals SMEs need to get right before attempting the latest tips and trends.

Get into email marketing
According to the latest Sensis e-business report, only 18% of small business considered email marketing an “essential application”, coming in at a modest No 14. 

Yet according to professional marketers, email marketing delivers the best return on investment of any direct medium, and in one survey providing an astonishing 4600% return on investment (yes a $46 return for every dollar spent).  

Yes it takes some time to get it right, but once you do it costs next to nothing to keep your name in front of interested customers and prospects.  It remains the most under-rated e-marketing tool there is.

Set up a secure online shopping cart

Readers of this blog are probably sick of hearing it, but the reluctance of traditional retailers (aided by the well documented anti-internet stance of leading retailer Gerry Harvey) to explore the online sale channel is nothing short of amazing. 

I’d put the number of retailers with secure e-commerce websites at about 10% to 15%.  But with cart technology now costing a fraction of what it did only a few years ago, combined with a growing number of informed providers and consultants, the reluctance of retailers to embrace technology that will effectively triple their opening hours and multiply their customer reach for a matter of a few dollars a day remains one of the great mysteries of the internet.

Set up online booking

What is now a mainstay of the travel and tourism industries – online booking – strangely lags in other booking-oriented industries.  Not only are web users very familiar with the notion of booking online but booking technology is cheap. 

Not to mention the productivity and cashflow savings of having customers help themselves to an appointment and a payment.  So come on all you doctors, naturopaths, accountants and tennis coaches – get with the online booking program.

Add a content management system

The amount of SMEs still hiring their costly web designer to make basic changes to their websites is still huge – I’d estimate about 70%.  Yet a CMS will pay for itself very quickly – not just in web design savings but in increased sales that an “editable” website will bring from the fresh content that both customers and search engines love.

Start a blog

Yes it’s time consuming, but blogs and your website allow you to repurpose your content for multiple online media.  Your email newsletter will help you keep in front of your existing customers and prospects while the same content on your website and blog will attract new ones.  Where possible, try to become an “expert blogger” for an online magazine, which means that you get their database thrown in as well as your own.

Explore online collaboration tools

There are some amazing and often free online collaboration tools that will increase your productivity, speed up projects and improve cashflow.  Some of the tools my business uses include online briefing and survey forms, online spreadsheets such as Editgrid for monitoring projects and payments, desktop sharing tools like Teamviewer and webinar and teleconference tools like Cisco Webex.  There will be many others that will help fire up your business too.

Experiment with social networking

Caution needs to be taken here because social networking can be very distracting and time consuming for the time poor SME operator.  However given that a growing chunk of our customers are using it, it’s a medium that can’t be ignored. 

My advice is to choose just one social or business network that you think your customers will be using, allow yourself a strict amount of time to get to know it and measure the results.  If it works for you, explore some other communities.  For mine, I find LinkedIn the most beneficial and as a result, my Facebook and MySpace pages have been left needing serious attention.

Of course not all SMEs are laggards.  There are hundreds if not thousands of SME operators who have quickly realised the amazing and unprecedented reach, immediacy and low entry cost e-business provides. 

However these pioneers form only a small portion of the overall picture – at the same time providing more traditional businesses with new competition and new headaches.

Craig Reardon is a leading eBusiness educator and founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which provide the gamut of ‘pre-built’ website solutions, technologies and services to SMEs in Melbourne and beyond. www.theeteam.com.au

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