Life Stages

Were you ready to buy a $25,000 car when you graduated from high school? Sure you wanted one but you weren't ready for it. Some of the best marketing planners focus on the product or service and the target audience's current stage of life. When you're retiring your not thinking about college...right?

So when marketing your business think about marketing to life stages. Life-stage marketing allows you to accurately predict what consumers will buy and when they will buy. Implementing a life-stage marketing program harnesses this predictive capability into a long-term approach that consistently achieves a healthy return on investment. At Micromarketing, we specialize in this approach. It's called life-stage marketing. Life stages we specialize in include:

• New Movers-Reaching the nearly 21 million people that move each year while they are getting acquainted with their new surroundings makes an early connection that can create a lasting relationship.
• Bridal Registry-Direct marketing industry sources estimate that more than 2.2 million couples marry annually, driving an industry estimated to generate $35 billion annually in sales.
• High School & College Graduates-The May 2009 issue of American Demographics magazine estimated that 5.9 million people in this segment were full-time students in four-year institutions - that spent $9.2 billion on discretionary items during the school year.
• Expectant Parents-Every year there are 1.5 million parents expecting, and 3.2 million families with young children. New parents are likely to purchase items they've never shopped for before! By marketing to them directly, you can educate them on your product or service, and why it's perfect for their new role as parents.

Too Many Frustrated People This Week!

I have been working with some clients this week that we have previously done websites for that are so frustrated, over whelmed and confused with the new landscape of the internet. Just because you have a website doesn't mean people will come. Once your website is built is sits among hundreds of thousands of other sites on the internet. Now their site sits like an island in an ocean of content and commerce online and your frustrated about how to get your customers to you!

There are so many ways to get them there! The most important thing is to now make your website the center or cornerstone of your entire marketing campaign- drive drive drive people to the site in everything you do. Use social media sites to promote traffic on your site, blog, FaceBook,LinkedIn,Alias, Merchant Circle,Twitter there are thousands of networks. Find the ones relevant to your business and join and participate in them! The cost is usually free to do this but there is a cost in the time you will be spending to market yourself online. You can also outsource this activity with a marketing firm. You can also promote your site through Search Engine Marketing and the newest in the industry - Behavioral Targeting. For behavioral and lifestyle marketing you should consult a professional. It's not as expensive as you think- it can be as little as $500 per month.

With the trends and change online...most business owners are frustrated and want help. According to a recent study, more than 60% of websites lack the proper web programming to be ranted properly by Internet search engines.

Here are some tips for your site:

• Monitor where you stand- Add Google Analytics to your site
• Keywords, keywords, keywords!- You should be conscious of placing appropriate keywords throughout every aspect of your site: your titles, content, URLs, and image names.
• Link back to yourself-There is probably no more basic strategy for SEO than the integration of internal links into your site -- it is an easy way to boost traffic to individual pages.
• Search-friendly URLs-Make your URLs more search-engine-friendly by naming them with clear keywords.
• Create a sitemap-Adding a site map -- a page listing and linking to all the other major pages on your site -- makes it easier for spiders to search your site.
• Avoid Flash Design
• Add Image descriptions
• CONTENT- Your content needs to be fresh -- updating regularly and often is crucial for increasing traffic.Social media distributionYou should be distributing links to fresh content on your site across appropriate social networking platforms.
• Link to others-An easy way to direct more traffic to your site is by developing relationships with other sites.

For more information visit http://www.grassrootsm.com/interactive-site-content/grassroots-interactive-services.html

What is Marketing?

I meet so many people each day and every single one has a different idea about what marketing is... Some think that its Public Relations and others think is promotional items, a billboard or TV advertising. The majority believe that their marketing is advertising or traditional media.

From Wikipedia: Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.

Now that you have heard that...here is a story that I read somewhere and it in my opinion truly defines MARKETING...

If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying "Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday," that's advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that's promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor's flower bed, that's publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations. If the town's citizens go the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they'll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that's Marketing!

I believe that true marketing involves the strategy of the business that I am serving. Strategy involves the product or service the client produces and the audience in which the client needs to reach. Once that is determined I work to connect the deliverable (public relations, advertising, online marketing and promotional products) that best reach that audience and deliver the clients message.

Tracking Web site traffic- How effective is your business

As a small-business owner, you're not likely to hire a new employee and then become totally clueless as to whether that person ever shows up for work.

You're also not likely to take on a new partner without some way of tracking the revenues, benefits or efficiencies gained from the relationship. So why do so many small businesses build Web sites, invest in online marketing campaigns and then devote little or no effort to analyzing the return on their investment?

Every day I meet with companies that either have a website, need one or need an update to what they built 5 years ago and it always baffles me when I ask how do you measure your results to something that is so essential to your business.

So now I have to ask- howe do you measure your website traffic and how is the effecting your business? Is your business growing because of your internet sales?

Is Your Website Social Media Friendly?

Usually my first interaction with a potential client is following a brief review of their web site. Unfortunately all to often the initial review identifies numerous issues which potentially have a detrimental affect on how well the web site achieves the goals and objectives of visitors and the business. So often the basics get overlooked. With Social Media becoming a big part of your business's activities, it is imperative the web site supports online activities. Have you evaluated your business's web site to determine if you have the information and processes in place to achieve user and business goals?