Local Business Marketing

Home Grown Marketing

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What does “marketing” mean to you?  What does “Sales” mean to you?  Some of us define the two words in a similar way but in reality they are different.

Regardless of what type of business you run, Sales is about cash today, money in your pocket, the proof of your competing in the market place and the value of your product.

When your sales rise there are only a couple of reasons 1) Existing customers are buying more or 2) New customers are starting to buy from you. For you and your business either way this is Good news…Sales are Good!

However, when Sales are falling the opposite is true…  1) Former customers are buying elsewhere and 2) New customers are not being attracted to your business.  Not Good news!

Here’s where we need to focus. No one really talks about rising or falling marketing because unlike Sales, Marketing is not easy to measure. Good Marketing is about communicating useful information to prospective and existing customers! It’s about getting feedback from your existing customers to help you enhance your demonstrable superiority of your products and services.

For someone in the restaurant industry using the finest ingredients to create superior quality dishes over your competitors standard out of the box/freezer methods. For someone in the service industry, using simple systems as followup cards or calls to show that you care about your customers experience with your company goes a long way over competitors that don’t follow up. It’s all about communication!

Home grown marketing really comes from the heart not a hired firm that big companies may use. You know your customers and you can develop a marketing plan that is affordable and effective for your business, no matter what type of business you own.

The key to business is repeat customers and in order to have repeat customers you have to have superior products / services that are worth coming back for. Once you provide a great customer experience and WOW them, you then continually keep the lines of communication open to keep improving your products / services according to their needs. It doesn’t matter what type of business… these principals work!

Make Marketing claims only if you can deliver. Don’t make a claim you can’t back up! Consumers need real people to deal with not some hyped up AD or campaign claiming promises you can’t keep. Be real with your customers and they will become your best marketing tool by far!

Here are a few fundamentals to keep in mind when making a Marketing claim:

Attribute of your product or service

How the product is made
Who makes the product
What benefit does the product provide the user
Who else uses the product

Pick one of the above to focus on based on your type of business / customer / service and get your customers feed back via…questionaire, email survey, etc.

Communicate with your existing customers regularly, ask them what benefits they have with your products/services, ask them how to improve your product / service and be sure to give them an incentive to refer your business to their friends, family, business associates etc.

Being the Little Guy in Marketing can be fun when your Home Grown Marketing efforts come from your heart and knowlege of your customers needs. Have fun with it and remember you don’t need a huge budget for Home Grown Marketing but you do need a to set aside a regular budget for your marketing efforts. Invest in Home Grown Marketing and your business will grow and your regular customers will become your word of mouth marketing force.

If you need any assistance with any of your marketing efforts, let me know, I’d be glad to help you in any way I can. You don’t need to spend big bucks to get the results you’re looking for!

Internet Marketing Plan For Small Businesses in Nashua NH

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Marketing Recipe That Works

After a long career in the Food Service Industry and owning my own Catering Business for many years, I tend to use food stories in my writing.

    Now if this was a recipe for …. Let say Chicken Broccoli Ziti for 6 people I’d say :

  • 5 pieces of chicken Breast bake at 350 for 1/2 hour
  • Broccoli Florets (1 bag frozen) or 2 heads cut and steam for a few minutes
  • 1lb of penne or rigatoni (really the pasta of your choice) cook it al dente
  • After the chicken is done and cooled cut it up in bite size pieces  – mix in the cooked penne – mix in the broccoli – add in olive oil till it has a nice mixed consistency  –  add in salt,pepper and Minced garlic and grated cheese (I like alot of Romano) also add 1/2 can of chicken stock  if you like. Sometimes I do sometimes I don’t.  Mix it all together well , Put it all in a Casserole dish with a cover or throw away 1/2 steam pan with lid for about 1/2 hour at 350. Simple as that. This is an easy one to throw together ahead of time and then just toss it in the oven when you get home to heat up. Enjoy!!

I get side tracked sometimes when I’m Hungry (must be that Italian up-bringing).

In Regards to Business and Website Exposure

Short and sweet , this is the RECIPE :

  • Original Content with Your Story, Your path, Your experiences … Be yourself
  • Helpful tips, education / Information —  about your– product / service
  • Add Video Content to your website (original or related by other experts in the field)
  • Add a weekly message to keep in touch with potential visitors
  • Mix all these ingedients with On page SEO , Off page SEO , LINKS  and TIME.
  • Let this all simmer and the end result will be organic traffic to your site that can’t be stopped

    • 

SEO + LINKS + TIME = WEBSITE SUCCESS

Let me know if you need any assistance putting together a recipe for success !

Steve DAngelo

Email Me at : steve@stevedangelo.com
Phone # : 603-321-1671

Local Search Marketing – Internet marketing Coaching

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Learning IM can be challenging and some have time to learn on a tight budget while other have money to spend and  no time to learn. With that in mind I put together a program I feel falls in the middle somewhere to help you to learn internet marketing strategies with some help and eventually you’ll be able to handle all of your campaigns on your own with little consultation.

 Visit my  Internet marketing / Local search marketing Coaching page on my main site. Head over to www.stevedangelo.com/coaching for more info.

Local Search Marketing Nashua

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In a Previous post I dicussed the power of local search marketing. Having a local small business for many years in Nashua was rewarding and allowed me to learn alot about the community. One of the things that stands out to me after all the years
is the fact that the small business communtity is the life blood of the economy.

Most donations to community fundraisers are provided by small businesses, whether it’s the local boys club or youth sports teams, small businesses come through time and time again. I have been involved with youth hockey in the Nashua area for over 15 years.
Some of the most enjoyable times of my life has been donating my time coaching, being a team manager, donating catering services over the years for team parties etc.

I’m using my experience in Youth Sports, particularly Youth Hockey as an example, to show you that no matter what your interest may be there is a place for giving back to the community. Granted I had kids and still do involved in youth sports, but getting involved added a new dimension to the experience. I now have a lesser involvement as my son is playing high school level Hockey. I still have the role as Assistant Coach on his current team prior to the High School season starting. As I was dwelling on the fact that my involvement is slowly getting to the point of being the “encouraging” spectator parent in the stands, I realized it doesn’t have to stop here. There is plenty of room to give back even if our kids are grown up and out of that period of life. My hope someday in the near future is to start all over again and Coach 5 and 6 year old future hockey stars with my son after he’s done with school.

So what does all this have to do with Local Search Marketing ??
I started thinking about how much money I wasted over the years in business on things I thought were a good idea based on the sales pitch of a skilled salesman rather than some research on my part. So that would be LACK of due diligence as a problem I had. Why didn’t I check into things properly? The answer usually came back : I was to busy to really stop and run the business properly. As a small business person I was wrapped up in the day to day stuff without much room to think beyond the next week or so. I had blinders on and wasn’t seeing clearly what was going on around me in the industry. As technology changed I was reminded many times of the need to get a web presence and build a website for my catering business. But I remained a little old school and touted that newspaper ads and word of mouth is the best form of adverting … Blah Blah . I will say that Word of Mouth is still my favorite but I needed to come out of the dark ages when it came to marketing.

To make a long story short I got a nice website done up by a friend who is in the web design business and bingo… business increased . The reason for all the stories today is this….plain and simple. Marketing and advertising today is going through a change some of the old thing don’t work as effectively or don’t work at all.

Money spent on the old ways reminds me of the money I threw out the window years ago on things I thought were good because others were doing it. If you don’t track how your marketing is working you’re just throwing money out the window. I’m working with small businesses to tighten up the marketing and advertising belt and use some of the saving to either put more profits in the pocket or May be help out your local sports team or boys club or what ever.

You see the whole helping the community part can be a result of using your funds wisely and Giving Back with some of the surplus.
Without sounding like a total sales pitch here , I will say that if you advertise in any yellow book, send out any coupon mailers, put ads in the local paper, radio ads, tv even …. any of these . If your doing any of these and not utilizing Local Search Marketing your spending way more than you need to be. You may not understand how or even what Local Search can do for your business, but don’t make the mistake of ignoring new ways of marketing. Some small businesses right here in town don’t even have websites yet. Those businesses are either doing so great that they don’t need any new customers or they “think” that they don’t need a website. The Fact is most people search online for everything and technology is pushing us more and more toward mobile marketing with our smart phones to be able to do it all from our phone.

I’ll wrap it all up here just to say. With tight budgets these days we all need to work smart and get the most for our dollar. I’d be glad to answer any questions you have about cutting your marketing budget. Once you do that then you’ll be able to find the area in your community you can donate some time or money or both. If you already do that’s awesome! Then just think of all that extra cash you’ll have in your pocket once you make some tweaks and changes that will ultimately save money and build your business at the same time.

Local Search Marketing For Your Business

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Local Search is the buzz right now. Yahoo and Bing merging will give many more bang for the buck.
That merger will give google a little bump …maybe …. I really want to focus on the little guy, the local guy,
the mom and pop, the corner store, your auto shop, your dentist, your favorite lunch spot, you get the point
right. It’s the little guy …the small business that has to adapt and learn how to do their local marketing on a small
budget. The big boys ,the larger corporations have much more to work with financially.

If you have read any of my posts you know that I had been the the food industry for many years
and owned my own Catering business for many years. My understanding of local marketing going back a few years was
to basically get out with flyers, newspaper ads, coupon mailers and the dreaded Yellow page ad.

I used to hate dishing out the monthly fee for the yellow page ad I had. At that time going back 4-5 years
I was paying around $300 per month for a realitively small ad about 1/12 page. The funny thing was, as much as I hated
paying for the ad guess what, it worked and the fact of the matter is if you didn’t advertise in the dreaded Yellow Books
you would lose business.

The reason you would lose business is because all your competion was there in the book. If you’re not and they are and someone goes to look for a caterer or what ever…… they get the call and you don’t it’s that simple.

Now today the same thing is happening with search engines. When you go to google and type in what ever your looking for , Google starts giving you the local businesses that match you search criteria. The problem today is most small local businesses don’t have a clue on how to tap in and get their share of the local search results.

If the owner of a small business doesn’t take advantage of local search and all the techniques available the bottom line is that business is missing out on the best and most ready to buy audience. If you own a small business and are spending money monthly on the yellow pages and mailers and ARE NOT utilizing the power of local search ….. Forgive me but you are spending much more than you need to, to get less results… period. I can help you get your local search marketing done right and bring more customers in your door.

Sign up for the free report “Google Places for Local Businesses” on the top of the page and you’ll get a link to download the report.
Also head over to my Free Reports page to pick up a short Local marketing report. Hopefully this information was helpful to you and if you need and help with any of it let me know.

Is Traditional Marketing Dead ?

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Small business internet marketing is such a significant topic today. Virtually all large companies have now switched all their marketing focus (and budget) to the internet. The same techniques can totally transform the fortunes of small businesses, many of which are struggling in the recession.
The traditional methods of marketing such as Yellow Pages and newspaper ads just don’t bring the results that they did just a few years ago. It used to be essential to be in the yellow pages. Not any more. In fact you may well be wasting your money entirely. Last time I put a decent size ad in yellow pages, we didn’t have a single response. Not one. Over a whole year. The same applies to brochures and flyers – when did you last get a decent response from any of those? People just get so much junk mail these days, it all goes straight in the bin.
Get the report here