Small Business Marketing Strategies

What if all I have is a small email list?

By Christian

A lot of you are new to marketing online, and there is a common belief that I want to crush today. It’s probably holding you back from getting the results you deserve. Many of you believe you need a big email list in order to make a big profit. This ain’t true.

Yaro wrote a post about how having a small email list is all you really need. I dig it. It’s the first straight forward post I’m aware of…from an A-lister…speaking directly to the fact that small, targeted lists can be highly profitable.

Everyday, we see well-known marketers with tons of traffic and tons of subscribers. It’s natural to compare ourselves to them. We read their sites…just like everyone does. You know, guys like Brian Clark and John Chow and Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak and all these people. I also have several more linked up on my resources page. They follow a familiar business model, and it’s a model that works. You SHOULD read this content, and you SHOULD learn from them. They have a lot to offer, but don’t forget that not everything they do may translate to your business.

This is one of the reasons I feel compelled to write this blog. There’s just not a ton of bloggers out there talking DIRECTLY to the challenges and needs of a small business owner with a small list. Small as in…less than 5000 people. There are a few very important things you may not realize:

Small is NOT a problem. It’s just a different business model.
Many, many marketers are out there as you read this, pulling in a very decent living from a very small list. It’s doable, and importantly…it’s doable by YOU.
Bigger ain’t always better. Should you grow your business? Always. But growth doesn’t always mean bigger. Sometimes it’s way more profitable to focus on quality over quantity.
When you have an email list with 100,000 people on it, you can get away with a lot. I don’t mean this rudely or dismissively. It’s takes a serious amount of awesomeness to build a huge list like that, but let’s be honest…if you have a list that size, you can send out just about anything, and you’re gonna get some orders. When you have a small list, you have to be awesome. There’s a much smaller margin for error, because you need to make every email count.
I was making a full time income on this business when my list crossed 500. Proof that a small list is all you need.

You don’t need a huge list. You need a great one. This isn’t a shortcut, but it’s an important point. Just one subscriber who is totally down with what you’re doing is worth more than 1000 who aren’t. Quality, not quantity, is the key.

Are you running a small business in a small market, like most readers of this blog? If so, then building a huge list isn’t in the cards. Don’t sweat it. It doesn’t matter. Instead, build an awesome, small list. Consider the benefits:

A small list allows you to be much more engaged with your readers one-on-one.
A small list allows you to listen more attentively.
A small list allows you to produce offers that are much more targeted and valuable to your readers.
A small list, when managed properly can be just as profitable as a big list.

I’ll talk more about the mechanics of marketing to a small email list in future posts. For today, I just wanted to encourage you; size doesn’t matter 🙂

If you want to attack this issue directly in your business, hit me up for some small business consulting. In a very short time, we can knock weeks or months off the learning curve for you. Also, if you have any direct questions about email marketing, fire me an email or hit me up on Twitter. Let’s talk.

How can I improve conversion on my website?

By Christian

We spend so much time and money getting traffic to our websites, building our subscriber lists, etc. It’s understandable that one of the biggest questions I get is “how can I improve conversion on my website?”

Think for a minute about the difference between “making contact” and “making an impact”. The difference is huge. For example, you could send a spam email to half a million people this afternoon, if you wanted to do that. It wouldn’t cost very much, and you would be “making contact” with a large number of people, right? But what would it get you? Probably…not much. Consider the fact that “making contact” is probably not really what you’re going for. What you REALLY want to achieve is “making an impact“.

IMPACT: The secret to a 70% opt-in rate

When you “make an impact”…that’s when your conversions go through the roof. That’s the difference between getting a 3% and a 70% opt-in rate. I know, because I’ve been on both sides of that fence. So many people ask me how to get more traffic out to their site, and I respond that my most profitable site only gets a few thousand visitors per month.

If you want to build a site that gets hundreds of thousands of page views monthly, I’m not your guy. I’ve never done that. But if you want to be highly effective with your niche marketing campaigns, that’s precisely what I do. Do you really want to just get more and more traffic? Or do you want to make a much greater impact on the people that matter most to your business?

The direction marketing is headed

We hear about all the A-listers out there who have tens- or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers, but did you know there is an entire world of marketers that make a fantastic living on a list of just a few hundred people? Today there are more businesses marketing online than ever. And do you think that number is going up or down? More new businesses flood the interwebz daily. It’s a beautiful thing. But with as noisy as things are these days, they’re only going to get noisier. This means we need to have a greater IMPACT on our visitors. We NEED to get better conversions, because most of us are not in a niche where getting a hundred thousand visitors a month is even viable. It’s not part of our business model. We need to get great visitors, and we need to keep them.

Focus on engagement. While it’s great to have a big list and a lot of traffic, there is ALWAYS a small segment of your list that is comprised of the people that really “get” you. Focus on them. Focus on making a big impact on a small number of people. I know, it potentially means doing away with the ego stroke of being able to say “I have an Alexa rating of X” or “I have a million-bazillion RSS subscribers”. For some business models, these type of metrics matter. They have their place. But for us small business owners running a website to a niche audience, we need to focus on what’s actually going to grow our business.

How to make an IMPACT

At the end of the day, this isn’t rocket science. Thank God, right? It’s why I love this business. It’s OK to just let it be simple. How do I get awesome conversions with my websites? I have opt-in forms that convert at over 70%, because I build the opt-in form especially for a small, highly targeted group of people. So when they visit my web page, it’s almost impossible for them to not take advantage of my offer. It was built, after all, with them in mind. It speaks straight to their most pressing need, and they know it. They know they’re not looking at a mass-marketed offer, because they’re NOT looking at a mass-marketed offer! They’re looking at an offer that was put together especially for them. They’re looking straight down the barrel of a highly targeted “impact marketing” campaign.

You can do this too. It’s the difference between sending a black and white direct mailing piece, or visiting them in person and shaking their hand. It’s the difference between having your customer on an autoresponder, or taking note of their mailing address when they place an order, and sending them a handwritten thank you note. It’s the difference between having an opt-in box in the sidebar of your blog, or having 7 different opt-in pages…each one targeted to a specific segment of your readership.

Of course, in order to have high conversions like this, you have to do two things:

You have to pay close attention to your clients and customers. You have to know them.
You have to take the time to engage people personally.

People KNOW the difference between automated mass communication and authentic engagement. Personalizing an email is fine, but people still know it’s a broadcast message. They’re not impressed. Mass communication is important, so I’m not saying otherwise, but if you want high conversions you need to go the extra mile.

Authentic engagement is what causes high conversion rates, and it’s just something that cannot be faked. It also cannot be automated. It’s a business decision we all have to make, but if you want to make every visitor count, and if you want stellar conversion rates, that’s how you do it. Make an impact.

Does your blog disappoint you?

By Christian

I just got a great message from a reader indicating he’s fed up with blogging and doesn’t know what to do moving forward. He doesn’t want to quit, but he’s not getting the results he’s looking for, so he’s just kind of stuck.

His main question is “Can you take a look at my blog and tell me what to do?” I get asked this a lot.

Unfortunately it’s just not helpful for me to give you blanket, generic advice. I hate telling people that, but taking a look at your site and giving you some watered down advice is just not good business for either of us. The truth is your ideal plan of attack is completely, 100% dependent upon your goals. It’s also dependent upon where you are now and how long you want it to be before you start making serious things happen. These things HAVE to be addressed!

Since I do consulting with you guys here, I wanted to get that out and be very clear. I can’t give you goals. I also cannot provide you with drive or aspiration. That’s on you, baby 🙂 Basically it works like this: if you don’t have goals, I can’t really help you achieve them. That makes sense, right?

How to make a great goal for your blog

BUT…if you’re willing to sit down and talk it out a bit, we can most definitely fine tune your approach to web marketing and make things happen for you. One of the biggest things small business owners struggle with is knowing what to pursue with their blogs. It’s kind of hard to set a goal for your blog when you’re not really sure how blogging works to begin with, right? So I want to give you a three step process. This is my advice for any new bloggers, without a doubt.

Get very clear on your target market – your audience is NOT everyone. Focus!
Once you know your audience, get clear on your goals – is your main goal engagement with your readers? Affiliate income? Email list building? Client lead generation? Obviously, without a targeted goal you cannot have a targeted approach to achieving it! When you know what you want, step 3 becomes much simpler.
Put together a simple, easy to sustain plan for making it happen – this can involve tweaks to your site, changes to your approach for creating content, changes to your marketing or all of these.

Does it make sense that steps 1 and 2 are absolutely crucial? Does it make sense that without steps 1 and 2 in place, it’s pretty much impossible to do step 3? I can help you with any or all of these three steps, but these represent the path for getting exactly what you want out of your blog.

Should I set up a Facebook business page?

By Christian

There’s been a streak of marketing lately from people selling Facebook marketing courses, and as a results I’ve had some questions about whether or not it’s smart to have a Facebook business page (they used to be called ‘fanpages’).

Facebook is becoming a business platform more than a social network. It’s angled heavily for business now, which is fine in principle, but their execution sucks.

Currently, Facebook presents fantastic opportunities for business owners right now, but I’m not going to have any part of it.

Why? Because it’s scammy. I do see a lot of great opportunities on FB right now, but the way they’re approaching their business is a short game, and that’s not how I roll. It’s also not what I recommend to clients I think every business owner should look at Facebook carefully right now, because we’re watching a disaster in the making.

It’s marketing with a social media skin. Facebook is monetizing their user base, which is fine. But they’re using covert tactics, and making their user accounts very accessible to marketing messages, and most users don’t understand this.

Do you want to reach a LOT of people with your message? If so, then on the surface it may seem like Facebook is a great way to do it.
Do you want your users to actually trust and accept your marketing? If so, then you need to be very careful with how you proceed to market yourself on Facebook.

For example, did you know that when you click the ‘like’ button for one of your favorite businesses, gurus or celebrities, you’re also automatically signing up for their email list? What’s wrong with this? Three things:

Are you asked if you want to receive email from them? No.
Are you asked to confirm your email subscription? No. You’re just automatically on their email list now.
Is there an opt-out link or any clear way to get off an email list once your on? Again…that would be a ‘no’.

This is the OPPOSITE of permission-based marketing, which is what social media marketing is SUPPOSED to be all about. This is just one of many, many examples. It causes users’ inboxes to get flooded with marketing messages they didn’t anticipate, and most users don’t know how to get off the email list.

Check this out…as a marketer, I can go in and create a new group on Facebook for free. Then I can add you to that group without reference to you…completely without your permission or even your knowledge. And you will then start to get email from that group. Again…automatically. And if you don’t want the email, it’s then up to you to figure out where the email is even coming from, and it’s up to you to figure out how to get off the list. Sounds great, huh?

Again, it’s a short term marketing opportunity for business owners. I have no inherent fight with anyone who uses Facebook for marketing. Why? Because there are many ways to do it ethically. But you really need to learn the platform, and you need to respect your users, or you WILL end up alienating them. In fact, Facebook encourages it.

When you take a massive network like this, and you flip it around without people’s knowledge and turn it into a marketing platform which presents itself as a social network, you’re asking for trouble. Is Facebook still free for personal accounts? Yes. Does Facebook have every right to monetize it’s platform? Of course. My criticism of Facebook is not that they’re monetizing. My criticism is that they’re doing it in a really sketchy way, and their user base WILL retaliate.

Boundaries are not evil

By Christian

It’s natural is get stressed when you hit 3 red lights in a row. It’s natural to get upset when you have to wait at your house for 4 hours, waiting for the cable guy to show up. As human beings, we rarely appreciate boundaries…we see them as unnecessary hurdles. We see them as a pain.

So when it comes to selling your product or service, you may be inclined to remove as many boundaries as possible. After all, you want to be easy to work with, right? You don’t want to upset your customers with any unnecessary hoops to jump through, right? Well hold on there. Be careful.

Boundaries are not evil. They’re necessary.

The fact is that without red lights, a lot more of us would be dying in car crashes on the way to work. They upset us, but they also keep things running a lot more smoothly, wouldn’t you agree?

I see these things in my consulting work all the time:

A salesperson gets a call, but they are not assertive in getting the persons name and phone number. They just give the prospect the information they asked for and hang up, losing the opportunity to help that prospect any further.
A small business regularly lets their clients talk them down in price, instead of competently selling their value and only working with customers who see real value in what they do.
A consultant allows clients to pay them 30,60,90 days after the work is complete, instead of getting paid up front.
A new online marketer has great content but wants to give everything for free. They feel by making offers too soon, they’ll turn off their readers and not build a strong audience. Instead, they end up building a readership that expects everything to be free. How exactly do you monetize THAT?
A new salesperson decides the best way to get business is to never say “no”. They answer their phone 24/7 and work with any client who can fog a mirror. Obviously this is unsustainable, but they’re afraid that setting boundaries will unnecessarily turn away business…which is something they cannot afford to do.

All of these are examples of business owners taking down boundaries. They’re making themselves more accessible. They’re giving their customers and clients what they want, so how could that possibly be a bad thing? It’s bad because it’s not sustainable, and it’s not a win-win.

We need boundaries because boundaries are what enable us to all work together and live with one another in a mutually beneficial way. That’s what we all want, and that’s why it’s WORTH it to put up boundaries. We need them.

For example, you’re not evil for requiring an email address first, before the customer can download the free report. You’re not evil for having your consulting clients to pay you in full, in advance. You’re not evil for turning off your phone at night and not taking calls from your clients or customers at 4 in the morning. Yes, they’ll call you then, and yes…it’s ok to call them back during reasonable hours.

Your business is NOT just about your customer. It’s about you too. Find what works for BOTH of you, and set up boundaries to ensure that balance is met.