Mobile specific sites support your overall internet marketing efforts.

In the article Mobile Sites Design Best Practices, the top three mobile design best practices are:

1. Choose Critical Components such as your logo, clarification of WHAT you do, link to your site pages, a click-to-call phone number and a link to your full site
2. Remember Mobile Site Users SCAN vs. READ and does not need to have all the pages that your web site has, only the most important ones and keep text to a minimum by using bullet points or short sentences
3. What Action do you Want Users to Take – design elements that make it easy for the user to know what is clickable are extremely helpful

An increase in mobile device usage means it’s more important than ever to consider having a mobile presence with an effective mobile site. If you are still on the fence about the importance of having a mobile site, read Lorrie’s Introduction to Mobile-Friendly Websites, where she addresses the important points to understand before heading down the mobile path.

At Web Marketing Therapy, our mantra is “we do not plan to fail, we fail to plan.” (also said as “strategy first, execution second”). Defining clear goals of what you and your business are, how you are perceived and what you expect from your online efforts are necessary to do before they go live on the page.  However, such planning takes time and effort and for busy entrepreneurs, a reasonable place to begin. So I produced my favorite marketing tool, the 36 Hour Course on Online Marketing by Web Marketing Therapy CEO Lorrie Thomas that is chock full of helpful directions and began to carve out a marketing plan of attack.

First, we took baby steps and answered the online marketing questionnaire to gather some notes. Second, we used those notes to devise a rough marketing strategy that married the offline efforts with the new online ones for consistency. By taking the time to consider these questions, certain facts revealed themselves quickly. Lacking from her marketing materials was her knowledge, expertise and product offerings so there was work to be done to establish a unique virtual identity.  Here were the main three key points we focused on:

1. Is What You Have To Say Different?

Are you saying the same things the same way your competition is?  It is important to distinguish yourself so create a marketing message that establishes a leadership role in this industry and highlight your unique brand. Explain in that message why clients need your services. Customers make decisions with their emotions so doing a little web marketing therapy on messaging (as well as channeling Maslow’s hierarchy of needs into it) can work wonders on your results.

2. Who is Your Target Audience?

You can’t be all things to all people, but by deciding who your clientele is and what motivates them will help to laser focus the message directly to them. This purposed, focused concise message means a better chance of capturing other non-targeted audiences as well. With this in mind, the spa client is targeting a larger professional client base that she knows is currently underserved in the community.

3. Can You Take The Heat? This question was of particular interest to the spa owner as she was also redefining and shaping her new and improved offline image. The following questions helped to focus online goals and priorities.

• Do you have what it takes to tell your story in a way that people remember?
• Are you ready to focus on a new audience who is motivated to say yes?
• Are you able to ignore complaints to the new cutting edge approach?
• Are you ready to start marketing with visual images such as video?

The difficulty with creating a strategy was just making the time to just sit down and do it. Once the effort was made and information analyzed, the plan came together easily and a thoughtful marketing plan was created. With her new business image in tow, the spa owner reports an uptick in web traffic and bookings from fresh new faces. Way to go!

A common ailment in business is that professionals or organizational teams do not really know what they want or haven’t formally defined it. Or, they have lost sight of what they want, getting too entangled in details of working IN their business, which could hurt their ability to work ON their business.

Knowing what you want means having clear business goals, then using marketing as a way to support those goals…one before the other. Web marketing can support via a number of tools – blogs, video, websites, online advertising, emails, etc.

Example 1: Say your “want” is to grow your business to sell your business.  If you work on the business all day long and don’t hire help, then your “what you want” is not being supported by your actions.  (FACT: People don’t want to buy companies that are codependent on a leader, they want companies with great marketing potential and set systems that can be handed over.) Saying you can’t afford assistance to help with things like order taking, calls, systems development or marketing management is like saying you can’t afford to really get what you want.

NOTE: Self-diagnosing unhealthy behavior can be ugly, but sometimes ugly has to happen and be broken down to get to breakthroughs.

Example 2: Let’s say your want is to attract ideal clients (not a bunch of people you don’t like or want to work with).  By being clear on what you want, you can make sure your website clearly communicates who you are, what you do and whom you serve (IDEALLY whom you serve) so un-ideal clients don’t even enter the sales funnel.  Don’t waste time marketing to people who are not ideal clients.  Put your time and energy towards people who will matter.

Take a break from the computer and ask yourself what you really want.

I know what I want.  I want to help organizations who are ready to invest in their success.  I have systems that help pre-qualify ideal clients. (See this pre-client questionaire to see how we spell it out so we don’t sell out).

I have no desire to sell WMT, I love being in love with the people I work with and I want the people I partner with to have a healthy life/work balance.  We CAN have a great personal life and a professional work day that involves working with great people.

Success starts with knowing what you want.  When you have that clear, then web marketing can have your back to get to you where you want to go. 

Web Marketing Advice: Five Healthy Marketing Tips
In today’s time-crunched, tech-centric, world, we tend to feel overwhelmed by the plethora of web marketing tools out there even for professionals or those seeking a marketing degree.  The key is to remember that it. The key is to remember that it is not the tools but how we use the tools that makes our marketing matter. Enjoy this dose of web marketing therapy to kick-start the week!

#1- Stop selling and start serving your prospective customer
Customer service via well-managed websites, educational content,  blogs, email newsletters, etc… that have VALUABLE content will allow you to do what marketing is really all about, build relationships. Relationships (via service first) equal sales, pushy sales tactics do not make you money honey!

#2 – Be an educator. Teach to build trust and credibility
•    Use the web to engage in markEDing! (Marketing from an EDucational vs. overtly promotional approach).
•    Share educational materials, content and tips to funnel people into signing up for your events.
Being an educator via authoring online content can help you go from being an expert to being an AUTHORity and that is where credibility kicks in. Utilize social media networks, email, blogs and micro blogging as a platform to reach consumers and educate them with your expertise.

#3 – Craft valuable content that also multi-tasks to boost search visibility
The slogan “content is king” still holds true. Content is an important element to web marketing because it fuels search indexing, builds indexed pages for a website, serves customers, and boosts visibility.

#4 – Re-purpose your marketing assets and collateral online
Recycling is not only good for the planet, but it is also good for your marketing!
•    Videos can be edited and hosted on video-sharing sites,
•    Photos can be posted on your blog, and
•    Great content can be re-purposed on your website and shared on ezine sites, newsletters and on social media sites.
No need to reinvent the wheel, be creative and recycle marketing collateral!  I took the time to share these tips for the upcoming conference team I am supporting, it took me NO TIME AT ALL to re-purpose/recycle these tips as a blog post. 

#5 – Build a successful email marketing campaign
Make sure your email marketing execution is on brand, on purpose, and offers relevant value. Do not let tools like social media dissuade you from making email a priority in your marketing planning. Email marketing still works!

If you have any marketing tips to share or questions to ask, don’t hesitate to reach out!
Virtual Marketing Hugs,
The Marketing Therapist

Here’s a quick overview of the Do’s and Dont’s of Social Media Marketing Content:

• DO focus on content that is about more than just your organization-the WHY people buy your product/services rather than the WHAT or the product itself.
• DON’T share content that is ONLY about your company or organization.
• DO become a hub of information by sharing those great content!  Save your reader’s time and energy by compiling it all on your social media platforms.
• DON’T become overwhelmed by the feeling that you need to personally come up with all your social media content.
• DO embrace the three V’s of social media marketing – Value, Values and Voice!
• DON’T avoid social media marketing!

Read the full article here: http://www.wilsonweb.com/newmedia/ross-social-media-dos-donts.htm.  Learn to use social media marketing to brand, build and boost business!