SBA October 19, 2009 Presentation

The following speech was delivered on October 19, 2009 by Jonathan Jaffe, Founding Owner, in a SBA series for small business owners.

Good evening. My name is Jonathan Jaffe, and I help small businesses receive between 100 and 200 leads per day on the Internet.

I am the Founding Owner of www.its-your-internet.com, an Internet marketing and high tech consultancy in Forest Hills, Queens.

Tonight you're going to be treated to some of my most intimate secrets on how to market your business most effectively over the Internet.

In my 15 years of consulting in the technology industry, including for some of the largest companies in the world, there's been at least one truth that I've learned. Technology is an efficiency factor. That means that the right technology can help you better at something you're already doing, but it's not a magic bullet that substitutes for sound principles. So the first secret to Internet marketing is to understand a little bit more about traditional marketing and the various forms that it takes.

Whether you have a store that sells products or an office that provide services, to get clients or customers you need to inform various individuals about what you do and not just any individuals but in particular two classes of individuals, those that need your products or services or those that know someone who needs those products and services.

How do you this? Various businesses have tried different approaches, but broadly speaking they fall into two main categories. The first is direct solicitation. The second is a mass broadcast appeal.

How do we accomplish direct solicitation? Simply put direct solicitation is when you know that a particular individual has a particular need for your products or services. So in traditional marketing, we make phone calls, we shake hands, we write letters, and we receive introductions.

This equation requires two critical pieces of information. We need to know who this customer is. We need to know how to be able to reach this potential customer.

Now let's bring this online. Introducing Twitter. Twitter is just one tool in our online arsenal that allows us to determine number one who is this potential customer and number two how do we reach them.

Just imagine for a moment if you had the power to be a fly on the wall on conversations going on anywhere around the entire world simultaneously filtering out between all of those conversations the ones that were pertaining to someone in need of a specific product or service that you happen to offer in the area that you happen to offer and you have a capability of jumping into the middle of that conversation, interrupting the conversation and saying "Here I am, here I am, here is my product and what I can do for you. Why don't you turn to me?"

See that's the magic of a tool like Twitter. Most of the news reports focus on the fact that on Twitter there are tons of idle conversations going on. What they miss is that those conversations themselves contain invaluable information in particular to your particular business. If I'm a plumber and I can note the fact that Susie just had a plumbing disaster or better yet a major corporation has a plumbing disaster that is flooding the building, then I can be the hero of the day who steps in and says, "Hey, do you need a plumber?"

If I sell T-shirts emblazoned with logos of self empowerment, and I were able to find out that Jill's son isn't doing so well in school and needs a pick-me-up, or better still that a large company is planning an empowerment outing for all their employees, then how incredible would it be if I can reach out to those individuals with my message with my product to say hire me hire me to provide you your product.

The vehicle here is the tweet. Tweets in Twitter are similar to the text messages on cell phones. They can be no more than 140 characters, but if you’re writing one make it under 120 to allow other individuals to be able to re tweet your message.

Everyone can see everyone else's tweets. They're searchable. Most people even use hash signs, also known as number signs or pound signs, to tag certain words or certain concepts within the individual tweets. For example, #smbiz is a relatively common hash tag for small business news and information.

So if you're on Twitter, you can run a search for people and individuals who aren't even directly looking for your services or products, but have a need for the products or services that you provide. Once you find these tweets, all you have to do is to reply to that individual who wrote the original tweet. Now when you reply, keep in mind that you cannot sell yourself in 140 characters. It is virtually impossible. So your goals have to be a bit more modest. Your goal should be to start a conversation. Ask the individual more about his or her situation. Introduce yourself as the potential solution to his or her situation. Work up to the sale. Refer to your website or other online documentation if the individual has specific questions that would require too detailed an explanation, keeping in mind that you already have the means to reach and contact this individual.

Meeting someone in this way is analogous to meeting some in a train, or right outside by your office, or someone at a cocktail party who does not know much about you, but from whom you overheard a specific need. You still will have to address the concerns that they would share ordinarily in those other settings. Are you legitimate? Are you credible? Can you deliver on what you say? Are you going to harass them just to get the sale?

In the world of traditional marketing, especially among smaller businesses, the best leads, the leads on which often a small business is entirely dependent, are referrals.

So how do you get referrals on the Internet? It's actually not much more difficult than getting referrals off-line. Sometimes someone with whom you've done business or someone who knows you well and knows your business leaves a comment somewhere on the Internet indicating a positive review. This positive review may be on Twitter. It may be in a social bookmarking site, or on a random blog.

These comments can be extraordinarily powerful. These days when people research about your company they don't just look at your website. They look at the totality of your online presence. This can be a blessing and a curse. Any review about you, your company, or the particulars of the type of product or service that you sell, can be easily found through a search engine such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Has anybody ever heard of RipoffReport? This is a site that compiles complaints about your business and products on the Internet. More often than not, at least in my experience, it has been an ex-employee, a disgruntled competitor, and anybody but an actual customer complaining. These reports can result in real damage to your reputation and to your sales.

That's in a negative light; however, most comments help your potential clients and potential customers understand more about the quality of the products and services which you offer.

You can get these comments. While you can't get them directly, you can remind your customers and clients to leave positive feedback about your products and services on the places to which they go online. The best way to enforce this is through social bookmarking tools present upon your website.

That brings us to the topic of social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is simply when individuals share information about the content or services or products that they like online with their network of friends. Friends is a very loosely defined word on the Internet. In real life, a person may be closest to five to fifteen individuals, but somehow on the Internet they know thousands and tens of thousands. It is easy for a single individual to disseminate a great deal of information and misinformation to others on the Internet. Some of the easiest ways to do this is to use services such as delicious.com, reddit.com, stumbleupon.com, and of course Digg.com. Each of these sites gives individuals a way to vote on the sites that they like. Remind visitors to your site, and any of your current clients or customers to use such services to post more information about you. This information is online forever.

So what are we discussing now? We're starting to discuss the foundation, a durable foundation, that you are building brick by brick, for your online presence and reputation.

Each of these little bits of information that is floating out on the Internet becomes part of your total online presence. They define your company. They define your services. They reinforce your messages.

Now these are all types of referrals. If you recall that's the topic about which were speaking right now how to get these warm leads not cold leads from the Internet. A warm lead by definition is when somebody is coming in with a positive impression of your business.

Now there are techniques online that will allow you to replicate the even warmer lead you would typically receive from referrals from those individuals that have done business with you repetitively over years.

Business social networks or professional social networks can help you leverage your existing professional relationships to derive the most value from those relationships, and in particular to reconnect with those clients and customers who have great opinions about your work, but whose endorsement never reaches new potential clients.

LinkedIn and Plaxo are two such professional social networks. I encourage you, directly after this presentation, to go onto both to sign up for both and to see whom you know using both social networks. Just last month, LinkedIn surpassed 50 million users. Incidentally, so did Twitter. That's not a number to sneeze at. So how do networks like these work?

When you sign into one of these networks, it asks you to make first and foremost connections with other individuals whom you know who are on the same network. This may be somebody with whom you've done business with as a business partner in the past, it may be a former classmate, or long-time client. Connecting with someone reminds them that you exist, and more importantly reinforces that you actually deliver services they might need or someone they know might need.

There are also other benefits. From these individuals, you can solicit recommendations. This is an easy way to acquire endorsements of your work. The trick is usually to endorse someone else, such that you create an obligation for them to endorse you in return. Such is the social etiquette currently on these networks.

Use these endorsements which have been provided to you not just on the social networks, but also on your website and your presentations in your communications with potential customers and clients.

Next, use the status, continually updating it each week, to let the individuals whom you know keep up with what's going on in your business. Perhaps you've introduced a new product or new service. Or you can reach out with some piece of invaluable information, relevant to the particular time period. For example, an accountant might want to inform his network of colleagues, clients, and friends that the MTA capital tax is due November 1. This type of value add reminds everyone in your network who you are, what you do, and more importantly the extra value that you always bring to the table.

Use these social networking sites to reconnect with individuals with whom you have lost contact. For example, I have used these networks to reconnect with individuals I've lost touch with over 10 years ago. How do you do it? When you connect to someone, you can also see to whom they are connected. So if I know John and John knows Sue, and I used to know Sue, I can reconnect with her through John.

Many of these sites have areas where members can ask and answer questions. Make use of these features. Ask questions that will help you in your business, but also provide answers to individuals seeking your services. Now individuals may not be directly seeking your services, but if you provide good value and good information, surely if they know individuals who are seeking your services you will be referred to them.

What makes these professional networks different than other social networks that are more general in nature such as Facebook and MySpace is that the individuals who are signed up are not simply there as individuals, but as individuals in a profession. It's Bill the accountant, Jane the entrepreneur, and Raj the CFO.

You can also search through these professional networks for individuals who you would like to meet. When you find someone who you'd like to meet, you can instantly see if anyone who you know is connected to this individual.

Let me return now to an earlier point that I originally made. It's 2009, and honestly I look out into this audience and I see many individuals are quite phobic and fearful of the Internet and marketing in such a way. I want to emphasize again that this is the same type of marketing that you do today off-line, just brought into the online sphere.

You survive upon referrals. You are comfortable talking with a stranger about what you do. You know the common questions and concerns that your potential clients have about your products and services. All we're doing is giving you the equivalent online counterparts that enable you to realize the efficiencies of the technology available to expand your message to an even greater audience.

So let's talk about this greater audience. One of the chief advantages of the Internet is that it allows you to reach an audience that you otherwise would be unable to reach because of lack of budget or lack of presence. For example, I recently gained a client through Twitter, who happens to be a gravel crushing and washing company in the middle of Alberta, Canada.

Obviously, I don't have a presence in the middle of Alberta, Canada. I may be reaching here, but I don't think anybody in this particular room has a presence in Alberta, Canada. That's the magic of the Internet. Whether that audience happens to be thousands of miles away or one office over but never looks at what you do, there is a way to reach those individuals online who need your services.

Search engine optimization also falls in the category of direct solicitation. The reason it does so is that under the ideal circumstances, you have placed content on your particular website, or blog, or press release that matches a particular individual's search. If you’ve done a good job, you're not just driving traffic to your website, but driving the traffic of those individuals who actually will purchase a product from you.

So what is important in search engine optimization? The answer is quite simple. Match the search.

No more than one page on your website can match one particular search. If every page on your website attempts to match every search, then effectively you are diluting your efforts.

In this, consistency, consistency, consistency is key. Your title, your meta-tags, the text of your first paragraph, the URL of the current page, and any links to that page and additionally the content of the pages containing any links to your website absolutely must -- I must say it again -- absolutely, positively must contain not some but all of the words that are present in that search.

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that, but if you follow those simple guidelines, even just those five simple rules, you will rank. Now of course there are those charlatans out there who will tell you that for $300 they can make your site ranked at the top of Google etc. There are no shortcuts. In order to rank, you need content, and that content cannot be images only.

Let's pretend for a moment, especially as it's been particularly cold outside, that your heat breaks down, and you call in two experts to help you fix the problem.

The first expert starts out by telling you how you have an old boiler and you're going to need to that boiler replaced and it's going to cost a certain amount. The second expert doesn't bother to tell you what the issue is or how it's going to be fixed, but simply promises that for $300 you're going to be warm. So of course, you, being a prudent money manager, choose the guy who says it's going to be quick and cheap.

But here's the catch. That guy goes to the back of your house, takes out a match, and sets your house on fire.

Are you warm? Of course you are warm; however, it's not sustainable. The heat that you feel is temporary. Likewise, what black hat search engine optimization quote unquote experts do is put your site on some very unsavory sites such as pornography sites, gambling sites, overseas sites, and such. These are sites that no reputable business wants to be on.

In three months time, just like the IRS audits taxpayers, Google comes back to your site and will determine that you're cheating. Why does Google care? Google cares because if the majority of websites that are out there on the Internet ranked for search terms even when they should not, people will stop using Google. Most of you don't remember this, but Google wasn't the only game in town years ago. In fact earlier search engines such as AltaVista and Excite were dethroned by Google because eventually no matter what you searched for on those engines you would come up with only sites for big car companies. Now of course the search engine quote on quote experts will show you one or two examples or even a dozen examples of companies to which this did not happen. Just as the IRS does not catch everyone who cheats, Google doesn't catch all cheaters either. The question I have for you is do you want to run that risk? If you're selling campaign buttons for the November election, it probably makes sense; however, if you are in business for the next two years, the next five years, the next 10 years, you probably don't want to be blacklisted by the search engines.

How effective is search engine optimization that is organic in nature? I will tell you that I have one client who receives between 100 to 200 prospective clients each and every single day from the Internet. They are a small business. They took no shortcuts. In order to get the 3 to 4,000,000 unique visitors they receive every single year, they have over 2 million pages of content. So if you come up to me tonight and say to me “How do I make my five page site number one on Google?”, I will say "not possible."

Realistically, depending on the particular competitive nature of your market, you need at least 100 to 200 pages on your website to be able to receive a respectable flow of leads. To use a crude analogy, even though it may be raining very hard, you will not get a drink of water if you go outside with a spoon. You need something the size of a bathtub in which to collect it.

I'm going to take a moment right now to talk about more generally search engine marketing than specifically search engine optimization. Search engine marketing is more of a holistic look at interacting with search engines. I strongly counsel against pay per click. Unless you sell a specific product at a discount that has a high margin or a product with an incredible margin such as diamonds, pay per click is usually a losing proposition. That is because -- and studies by eyetools.com do bear this out -- when individuals look at the search results, they first scan all of the organic results and only click on the pay per click if they do not find what they are looking for in the organic results.

So in my experience it takes between 10 to 20 clicks to get a sale. If your margins permit you to afford this, then try it out. Like everything else you try, start small, do it slow and test test test.

At the outset of this speech, I laid out traditional marketing in two basic forms: direct solicitation and broadcast advertisement.

Before the advent of Web 2.0, broadcast advertisement was limited strictly to banners on other websites. Now we can do a lot better than that. Using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace, especially Twitter, you can broadcast your message out to millions of people and see instantaneously the response.

URL shorteners like http://br.st/ -- 'burst' -- in conjunction with these social networks offer a unique glimpse into the quality of your marketing messages. Better yet, they offer them in real time.

I'll give you an example of how the services are commonly used. You take the URL of your website, shorten it, and use it in a tweet. By doing this, you can gauge exactly in real time the response. If you're an electrician, are your potential clients going to respond to better a message about how clean you leave the workplace, how you work in teams to accomplish the same amount of work in half the time, or the fact that you've been in business since Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb?

By measuring the response to tweets with each of the three marketing messages, you will have a better sense of which messages customers respond to.

Once you have determined which messages resonate best, use those messages consistently in every single piece of communication you put out. That includes your website, any banners, any promotional material, any tweets, on your Facebook page, on your MySpace page, on your blog and in any videos.

Broadcast messaging with Twitter is simply a tweet that goes out with a specific set of hash tags, your message, and the shortened URL back to your website. Don't just use one URL for your entire website. Direct individuals to particular pages on your website that specifically answer or market a particular service that corresponds to the questions they may ask.

So how do you get 500 people an hour to your website? The answer is discipline. You must have an overwhelming presence in your space on the Internet, and tweet consistently. Use the status on MySpace and Facebook and LinkedIn to complement the things that you're tweeting about. Tweet about things that are interesting to your potential clients. Use the words that they will use in their searches. You can find these words that they will use in their searches from the search engines by simply typing in the first couple of characters on each of the search engine's homepages and seeing from the resulting drop-down list what others have searched. People search alike, and their searches are not only relevant to search engines but also to any marketing message that you produce.

I'm not a big believer in blogging. I think there's a better use of your time in using Twitter or the other services that I described, especially if you cannot afford to hire someone to blog full time for you. There is a great blogging tool for those that don't have a ton of time to blog. That tool is Tumblr.

The reason that I like this particular blogging platform is that it's very easy to use and your blogging entries don't have to be particularly long; furthermore, your updates can be posted directly to Twitter.

Producing content by means of a blog is an important step in getting your message further out there; however, equally important is responding to blogs by placing comments upon them. Use the search engine Technorati to discover blogs that are about your industry, where your comments are most likely to be seen by your potential customers.

YouTube and UStream.tv are also useful tools in getting out your message. These two sites allow you to create videos and post them online. The difference between them is that UStream.tv offers live streaming and chat while YouTube is static clips.

When you are creating content for the Internet, even more important than the volume and the quality of any individual communication is the consistency of that communication. Don't create a lot of content one day and then disappear for a few weeks. Create a little bit of content every single day. Those small bits will add up and just like the proverbial tortoise who won the race against the hare, you will reach your goal without tiring out.

Tonight we have discussed quite a number of topics from how to reach and market to an audience to how to target specific individuals. There a few more items of which I would like to mention.

Online directories such as backpages.com, zoominfo.com, Google Pages, Google local business, and aboutus.org are very useful in establishing broad credibility for your company on the Internet. Even after individuals have visited your website and decided to do business with you, they may look at other sites on the Internet to determine whether to seal the deal. These sites give you the opportunity of getting a few more links on the Internet on relatively popular sites that are likely to come up in search engines.

Don't forget to invest the time and money that is necessary in your own Internet site. Intuit.com is advertising five dollar a month websites. Microsoft and Google and Yahoo offer websites for free. Ning is a popular avenue for creating mini social networks. What all of these have in common including sites designed by your cousin Tony or your friend Mary is that they do not adequately represent your business.

Everything you do online from the colors, the fonts that you choose, the text you write, and the imagery you choose to display, you need to promote a single identity for your company with one overriding message.

It's nearly impossible to do this with the free or extraordinarily low cost off the shelf solution, nor do you get the same results when working with a team that is 12 time zones away.

Over the last fifteen years, the Internet has become nearly ubiquitous in the United States. Today, 74% of Americans are online with nearly 63% of Americans having broadband access at home according the Pew Internet and American Life Project.  This ubiquitous access coupled with high speed access on multiple devices means that the Internet has become a highly viable platform to distribute large amounts of marketing material in nearly every form to nearly everyone. With tools like YouTube and UStream.tv any business can have the equivalent of its own television channel. With WordPress, Blogspot, and Twitter, any business can have its own newspaper and newswire. With ConstantContact and iContact, any business can form their own email marketing campaign. With GoogleSites and OfficeLive, any business can have a basic web site.

Finally tonight, I would like to talk about Branding.

Branding on the Internet has a long and storied history. Branding is the identification of a product or service with a particular company and vice versa. If I say Kleenex, you think tissue. If I say Chevrolet, you think of a car perched on a rock. Likewise, if I say office supplies, you're likely thinking about Staples. If I mention hamburger, maybe McDonalds popped into your mind. If I say computer, you might think about Apple or HP.

Different brands have different emotions we associate with them. Let's try some:

• Pepsi versus Coke
• McDonalds versus Burger King
• Verizon versus AT&T
• Geico versus AllState
• Barnes and Noble versus Borders

Think about what emotions are instantly associated with each one.

So can small businesses effectively create brand identity through the Internet?

Early marketers such as Seth Goldin argued forcefully that companies could persuasively set their identity through banner advertisements alone. In practice though this has never been recorded as successful despite the numerous creative ways that banner ads evolved into pop ups, in page pop ups, rich media (video, audio, and animations), and even as interstitials where before you get to your content, an ad pops up instead.

Yet, there are companies who were successfully able to brand themselves on the Internet through sheer usage with almost no offline (that is television, radio, or traditional print) advertisement. The most notable of these would be Google. Others would include MySpace, Facebook, Craigslist, WordPress, and Amazon.

The lesson here is that branding on the Internet is possible, but only when you are consistent in the presentation of how people use the services you offer on the Internet, mainly on your own site. Even in the virtual world online, you can form a unique identity for your company.

When you build identity you are looking to create an intangible. What does a potential customer or client feel when they see your name? Branding combats the following:

1.       Fear

2.       Uncertainty

3.       Lack of trust

Make sure you have a professionally designed logo.

Professionally designed does not mean expensive. Check out sites such as www.19dollarlogos.com.  Avoid a logo that looks cartoonish or unprofessional.

Put your business address and phone number at the top of the home page.

Do not bury your phone number on the contact page of your site. Real businesses have physical addresses.

Place some testimonials on your home page and if you are startup, don't be afraid to admit it.

People like to see other people's comments. Make sure the comments are specific to the services you offer or the goods you sell not just generic praise such as "they're great."  If you have many years experience tout it, but if you do not, disclose that you're a startup. Whether you are in business ten years or one month, people want to know.

Consistency, consistency, consistency.

Once again, to build a brand, you need to be consistent. You have to do this from the colors you use, to the fonts, the message, and the overall tone or voice of the site. Whether you are playful or professional in your tone, be consistent.

The tone you set is an integral part of your identity, and it's important that you keep the same tone in marketing emails, brochures, and advertisements, especially as a smaller business you cannot afford to be inconsistent.

Do not try to be too creative.

Branding is about consistency not only in your own site, but also in the broader marketplace. If you find yourself always classifying your business under the ‘Other' category or your site has a unique menu system, you may be more confusing to potential clients and customers than enlightening.

Talk about the key differentiators between your business and your competitors'.

What makes your business different from your competitors? Every business has competitors. Absolutely every business does. Where would your clients go if your business did not exist to fill their need?

On a final note, in your rush to make use of all of the new Web 2.0 tools and online advertising, don't forget that we are in a time where the cost of advertising in traditional media is at an all time low. It still works. ValPak, posters in the subway, flyers, newspaper and magazine ads, and radio ads do target mass audiences. Use these traditional forms of advertising to drive people to your web site instead of your phone line where your site can close the sale without tying up your time.

So I hope tonight you have gotten a taste of Internet marketing and seen the tremendous potential for growing your business. Internet marketing is not just for online businesses. It's for everyone.

Take the time to learn and understand these newer technologies. They can be a powerful force in helping your business grow even in these trying times.

Thank you very much.

At this point I like to open up the floor to questions and also to demonstrate some of the techniques I spoke about tonight.