Small Business Marketing 4 - Old City Web Services

Business to Business Marketing: Videos

January 20, 2015 by anoadmin

Many small businesses today rely a great deal on Business to Business (B2B) marketing as part of their business model.

B2B is a marketing practice that allows a business to sell products or services to other companies that resell them, or use them in their products or services.

When it comes to content marketing, a whopping 76% of businesses are using video as part of their content marketing strategy. 72% of those that use it, say that YouTube is their video platform of choice to distribute content for lead generation and brand visibility purposes.

The question is this: is video marketing effective in all cases? Or should it just be one small part of a broader B2B content marketing strategy?

Some upsides to using video in content marketing is that video is easy to combine with a broader social media marketing strategy, and it is easy to share via multiple venues to bring brand or product awareness.

As with all marketing strategies, though, one must know their audience and what will be most effective for who they are targeting. As a marketer of your small business, it's key to understand what will be received well by who you are marketing to.

Video is a quick way to get the message about your services or products out there. But B2B is complex and it isn't always as easy as making a video, pushing it out there, and seeing immediate results, and video marketing isn't a silver bullet. As a marketer of your small business, you should never over-simplify your buyer into one narrow package. Not all buyers are looking for the same thing or using the same process to make a choice of product or service: some rely simply on facts, some on emotion, some on a combination of both. Video is an excellent way to draw in the buyer emotionally but may not provide as much fact as the buyer needs to make a choice. On the flipside, a fact-based video may draw in a buyer based on product description but not draw in an emotional buyer who is looking for a compelling connection when making the choice of which business to go with.

At the end of the day, any marketing strategy for your small business should be nuanced and complex enough to cover the many different people who are looking to use your products or services. At Old City Web Services, we can help guide you in the process of broadening your strategy and help you grow your business in 2015.

How many people are finding your site?

December 11, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Proven ways to market your website

So, you've taken the time and spent the money on a brand new website, but now what? You now have the challenge of bringing in traffic and not just any traffic, but new, qualified visitors that will spend time exploring your site and essentially contact you for either more information or to secure the deal.

Marketing your website once it's live is just as important (if not more so) than the site itself. Today, we are going to give you two HUGE ways to pull people into your site.

SEO, SEO & MORE SEO

We cannot emphasize the importance of this enough! Search engine optimization (SEO) is the primary way people are going to find you online. Search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo are taking over the web and you can guarantee people will be searching for you (and your competition!) on them. DO NOT let your competition get ahead. Make it easy for people to find you, and only you, by having your site fully optimized by a professional. Test it out by signing into your Google Analytics account and see what common keywords and phrases people are using to find you. Then Google these key-phrases and see if your website comes up as a result. If you don't see a link to your site on the first results page, people aren't finding you, plain and simple. Since SEO trends are constantly changing based on alterations made by search engines, this is something that should be ongoing and maintained to ensure your one step ahead of competition.

Facebook Ads

In September 2013, Facebook had 728 million daily active users and 874 million monthly mobile active users. Furthermore, these millions of users are spending a huge amount of time on the site-- an average of 55 minutes a day or 30 hours a month! The final kicker-- Everyone's on Facebook! All types of demographics are now regular users of the social network. So how does this pertain to generating more traffic to your website? Facebook Ads allow you to target specific demographics based on location, age and even those who have "Liked" your page. Basically Facebook Ad's are a cost-effective way to take advantage of Facebook's traffic in order to bring these users to your website.

Make sure your SEO and ad campaigns are done right the first time -- contact Old City Web Services so that people will start finding your website online today!

Once you've mastered these two crucial marketing challenges, you can focus on growing your website and expanding your social media presence, which will in-turn increase your web traffic exponentially.

Holiday Marketing Tip Challenge

November 20, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

FACT: St. Augustine attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each holiday season.

Whether a visitor stays for one night or all month, it is widely known that during the holidays, tourism in the nation's oldest city is thriving. If you own a B&B, restaurant or tour company, you're probably busy answering the phone and responding to email inquires this time of year.

Even though you're busy, don't forget to engage your customers with holiday marketing initiatives! This season, Old City Web Services challenges you to try at least one of these three marketing tips. Test it out and then shoot us an email or give us a call to let us know if it was a success!

1. Dress-up your Facebook page

As you dress your turkey for Thanksgiving, why not dress-up your Facebook and Twitter pages while you're at it! Create a holiday-themed cover photo that includes one incentive to customers--a promotion, discount or giveaway. What better way to engage customers while getting into the holiday spirit at the same time.

Not sure what a Facebook cover photo is? Old City Web Services specializes not only in custom design, but in Social Media too! Contact Us for more info.

2. Invite your website to the party!

Is your website holiday-ready? Make sure your site is updated with holiday flare, such as photos from Nights of Lights, a video featuring how to make a delicious holiday treat or a new Christmas package/special. Add a minimum of one piece of holiday flare to your website that will let customers know you're the go-to business to visit during their stay in St. Augustine.

Do you have the flare, but not the web expertise? Contact Us for a quote on giving your site that extra holiday glitz you need!

3. Give thanks to your customers

This is the perfect time of year to give thanks to those who love and support, not only you, but your business too! Send out an email to your past and present customers, letting them know you appreciate their brand loyalty. It's almost guaranteed this will bring back at least one new sale or prospect. After all, what harm can it do? If anything, you will put smiles on your customers faces...what more could you ask for?

No way of getting the message out? Old City Web Services can design an e-mail template using your photos, logo and colors & text, upload your contact list(s) and send out a mass e-mail blast to all your customers for you! Contact Us for more info.

Influence with design

November 14, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Determine your goal, make a plan & persuade your audience

What is design and how does it relate to my website? Let's start with a definition:

Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; interface design; user experience design and search engine optimization.
Web design refers to a process or a series of activities that will ultimately give someone or something a unique identity via the world-wide web.

Web design should accomplish a goal. Ask yourself: Why would people want to visit my site? What will people want to see or do once they get there. Is the important stuff easy to find? Think about your site's intent. Are you trying to showcase products, reach new people, expand employee relations, interact with your customers more or maybe you just want a mere presence.

Want to learn more about the power of design and how we can help make your digital goals a reality? Contact Us today to learn more!

CMS Update Management

November 6, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

The importance of staying on top of site updates

One of the many services Old City Web Services, Inc. offers our clients is Quarterly Content Management System (CMS) Update Management. It is important to update both the version of your website and all of the plug-ins as a preventative maintenance measure to lower the risk of potential security issues.

During the unfortunate event when a website is compromised, not only can valuable content and prospects be lost, but it can also decrease your website's position in search engine rankings. Google actually de-indexes sites with malicious code on them, therefore when such code is placed on your site, you can almost guarantee your placement in Google search results will weaken.

Furthermore, updates aren't always compatible with existing themes or plugins, consequently causing problems to arise with the functionality of your site. Unfortunately, WordPress does not provide an easy way to "roll back" updates; therefore it can be a time-consuming and often times scary task if you do not have a reliable way to first conduct a backup on a secure server. Old City Web Services will always keep a recent backup of your site prior to completing these updates. This means if there are any issues, we can easily restore your website immediately.

Let us help you manage your CMS updates for you. This service includes updating the WordPress core, all plugins and the removal of any spam comments when necessary. Each quarter, we will ensure your site is completely clean and updated.

Want to learn more about our new CMS Update Management service? Contact Us today to learn more!

Hashtags for #Smallbiz

October 30, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Hashtags are something you definitely should be using when formulating tweets, assuming you already have a Twitter account dedicated to your small business that is. A hashtag is designated with a number sign (#) paired with a word or phrase (without any spaces or other characters) to perform a variety of functions. In the Twitter world, users attach hashtags to tweets as a search mechanism that categorizes keywords and phrases. For example, two hashtags commonly used by small businesses are #smallbiz or #smb. Attaching one of these to a tweet will help categorize your business, allowes users to find you. Want to begin using Hashtags on your #smallbiz Twitter account? Here are three tips to get you started:

1.) Keep it simple

When crafting hashtags, a good rule of thumb is to keep them simple and consistent. Long, complex tags are neither search-friendly nor commonly used. For example, if you want to tweet about a new app you recently launched, instead of tagging #Smallbusinessappsandtools, you're better off breaking it up and using two shorter tags, such as #smallbiz and #apps. This also increases the readability of your message. Lastly, don't be afraid to use abbreviations for words--there's a character limit for a reason!
2.) Be creative

Twitter allows users to create their own hashtags so don't be discouraged or think that just because you're a small business, your new tag won't be discovered. Both large and small brands create hashtags to generate buzz around a marketing campaign or to entice customers. For example, if you're having a contest for free concert tickets, you may want to create a hashtag that incorporates you and the band name (i.e. #StyxOldCity ). Your tweet could be something like: RT to win FREE TIX to the Styx Concert this WKND #StyxOldCity. Maybe provide a link to for people to get more information or purchase tickets online.

3.) Organization

Stay on top of trending and relevant hashtags by organizing your columns on your social dashboard. You can customize these columns by either your social networks, popular search terms or by specific hashtags. Not sure what a social dashboard is? Check out Hootsuite and TweetDeck--two social media dashboards that allow you to schedule, manage and analyze multiple networks in one centralized location.

Want to learn more about how to implement hashtags into your social media strategy? Contact us today by emailing us: letusmarketyou@oldcity.com or by giving us a call: 904.829.2772.