You have likely heard of sites such as Groupon which offer daily deals on local businesses. You probably have also heard of other local based sites and services, such as Yelp, City Search, and Foursquare, which allow you to target local customers, for a price. You can also post special deals on local profile sites such as Google Places.

A Lot of Options

While local advertising on sites like these make a lot of sense, all of the choices can be a bit intimidating. Your management costs and fees can really start to add up as well. This is where a business called Adility can step in and help you sort everything out and bring in new customers with your discount offers and gift cards.

At first glance, Adility supplies small businesses with a way to market their business using gift cards and value cards (which offer a discount to purchasers). But Adility does far more than that. What they provide small businesses is a way to distribute their special offers over a wide but local audience online, as well as in local retail locations. Once you dig in to what Adility is really providing, I think you will be tempted to give them a try.

What is a Discount Offer

First, let’s talk about discount offers. These are offers that you make to provide certain services or products at a discount. You would probably put limits on these special offers, perhaps only opening them up to new customers, for instance. For instance, you may want to provide $50 worth of dry cleaning for the discount price of $25. People can purchase your special value card and use it the next time they need dry cleaning.

Now, why would you want to sell $50 of something for $25? Well, it is a way to bring in brand new customers. It is a way to get local customers to switch from a competitor to you. It is a way to create some buzz for your small business. And yes, it can pay off in spades.

Life Time Value of a Customer

The pay-off is related directly to the lifetime value of the customer. Are you confident that if you get a new person to try you out one time you can hook them? Can you provide an experience so great that they will wonder why they didn’t discover you before, and will want to tell all their friends about you? If so, using a special discount to get them in the store is a no-brainer.

Consider This Before You Offer a Discount

There are some things to think about before you become discount offer crazy. Thomas Cornelious, CEO of Adility, was kind enough to share some tips with me, which I will paraphrase.

• Keep the special offer simple. The last thing you want to do is provide a great offer but make the person who bought the discount card jump through a lot of hoops to redeem it. You WANT people to redeem your value cards, because the true value for you is to gain a new loyal customer. Some businesses make it hard to redeem discount cards because they want the cash flow up front from people buying them, but they don’t actually want to deal with the customers.
• You are advertising. The whole process of the discount card is an advertising process. The sale is not made after they buy the card. True success is when the card buyer uses the card and has such a great experience that they want to return. Keep in mind that people redeeming these cards are often new to your business, so take time to explain everything and to introduce them properly to your business.
• Have a plan to get them to come back. A promotion can bring in new customers in droves, but if none of them come back you will be lucky to break even. Consider offering another special offer once they come in to get them to come back. Customers that come three times are often more loyal, developing the habit of visiting your business.
• Get personal. When someone comes in using a new customer special discount offer, you know that they are new. Take a moment to get to know them. Give them the kind of personal experience they can’t get at big franchises. Treat these new customers as royalty, and you will really wow them into becoming long term customers.
• Don’t over-extend yourself. One “problem” with using discount offers is that they can bring in too many customers. Make sure you have the staff on hand to handle any increase in customer volume. Also, consider putting a cap on the number of discount offers that you sell.

How Adility Helps

Adility acts as a sort of broker, helping small businesses distribute their gift and discount cards. They offer a free program which comes with one distribution channel. This is how your offer gets in front of customers, and Adility has a lot of great online partners that they can distribute your offer through. Adility’s premium program runs around $49 per month, which gives small business owners full access to all distribution channels, both online and at retail locations. This package also has some extra benefits, such as a flash commerce site which is branded to your business so you can send prospects directly to your offer and promote it via social networking.

Through the process, you stay in full control, picking where to show your offer, how many offers to put out there, and more. There are other costs involved. For instance, coupon sites take a portion of every sale you make. If you decide to distribute your cards through local retail locations, there is some cost involved with getting cards printed. Adility makes it rather easy to manage all of the different costs and rolls all of the distribution sites into one campaign so you can manage it. Think of it as Google Adwords, but for gift and discount cards.

This type of promotion can bring in a lot of new customers to your business, all while paying for itself. If you just get one visit from everyone who buys your offer, you won’t see much financial benefit. But if a portion of the buyers come back again and again, you will have made a sound marketing investment.

Ready to give Adility a test run? They are generously providing a free 6 month trial just for All Business Answers readers. This offer is limited to the first 100 people who sign up for it, so you better act fast! All you need to do is visit Adility.com and sign up for the 30 day free trial. Then send an email to support@adility.com with the code AllBUS to get your free trial extended to 6 months.

Social Search Results in Google

Recently, I have begun to notice something interesting in my Google search results. At the bottom of the page for some searches, I get a section of results categorized as “results from people in your social circle.” These are specialized search results that provide links to articles that people I know (or at least follow) have written. Other than being pretty darn cool, this is an exciting way to continue to grow your business brand.

Build Your Brand Through Personal Search Results

Imagine a scenario where you connect with all of your customers, plus more than a few prospects, via things like Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, Gmail, etc. When those people search for something related to your business, you hope that your page is optimized enough to appear in those search results. But if you are connected with these people, if they follow you or have e-mailed back and forth with you, for instance, you have a good chance of having your relevant page show up in the social circle area. Think of how nice it is for your brand when your image pops up with an article related to what they are searching for. This is a way that you can provide personalized results to customers and prospects that you connect with.

Of course, to show up in those results, you need to connect with people. You need to be active on social networks. You need to engage. Sure, there is a lot of hype surrounding social media, but having your page pop up in a special section on Google search results is not hype. It is marketing and branding gold.

Google Places is one online profile that you definitely want to set up for your small business. It is totally free to do so, and since this profile will show up in search results (at the top), you really need to have one. To really optimize your Google Places listing you should spend a little time working on your business profile.

Check for Accuracy

First, check to see if you have a listing yet and to find out if it is up to date and accurate. Besides the basic information, Places gives you the option to add custom information. One great idea is to add images or even video to your listing. You will usually be listed amongst other similar businesses, so this is a great way to grab attention and bring people to your website.

You also want to make sure your business location is set up properly. With the new version of Places, you can choose a region that your business operates in, so that your business will show up in searches throughout that region, and not just in your home town. Make sure that you have chosen your region properly to get the most exposure on Google search results.

Get Ready to be Searched

Next, you want to make sure that you have an accurate category selected for your small business. This will help Google to show your business with the correct search results. You can create a custom category if you need to, but if you fit into one of the standard categories be sure to choose it.

Google suggests that you pick as specific a category as possible. This is a quote from Google’s official documentation: “Don’t be afraid to choose specific categories instead of broad ones. The important thing is that the categories are accurate and describe your business well. Google’s search algorithm makes sure that users looking for “Book Stores” will see businesses in more specific categories like “Used Book Stores,” “Comic Book Stores,” and “Rare Book Stores” too.”

You should note that Google will use the category as part of the data to bring your listing up for search results. Another set of data that is important is what you include in the rest of your profile, so be sure to fill it out completely and focus on important keywords. Finally, Google will search whatever website you link to your profile for additional search data, so be sure to link your main website to your Google Places Profile

The World Wide Web

Google is a search engine, and it pulls in information from all over. Having a strong Google Places profile will help your small business be found online. Making sure your information is up to date there is important, but it is also important to update your business information on other profiles and on any websites that talk about your business. Google will scour the web for accurate information about your business, so don’t let old information stay up on a website or business profile.

Accurate information will improve your business’ search ranking. Another thing that will help your ranking is if Google can find reviews or blog posts about your business. This is why it is important to ask happy customers to post positive reviews of your business online, either on review sites or even on personal blogs. These reviews will improve your search rankings, according to Google.

Spread the Word

One nice thing about Google Places is that many smaller business directories use its information. You don’t necessarily have to go to each small business directory and update your profile. You can focus on Google Places and a couple of other big sites and that information will be spread out amongst the masses.

Setting up your Google Places profile will help people find you and will improve your overall search rankings. Doing so will take a few minutes out of your day, so what are you waiting for?

1. Put contact info everywhere

Wonder why people never call? Maybe its because they don’t know your number. Your primary contact info should be everywhere, including your web site, business cards, and all of your marketing material. Make it easy for people to find your number, email, or any other means of contacting you.

2. Set up a Twitter account

Twitter is tops for ease of access when it comes to the social networks. Having a Twitter account and actively using it opens up a new channel of communication.

3. Set up some chat accounts

People actively use chat software, such as AIM, Google Chat, and Skype. You don’t have to use all of them, but you should use some. There are even chat clients that support multiple chat platforms.

Take this a step further by incorporating chat into your web site. Google Chat has a function to make this easy. It is often easier for people to reach out to you via live chat than to pick up the phone.

4. Have easy to find and use contact forms

Have a contact form on your web site. It is up to you what information to ask for, but if you just want a person to reach out to you, make it simple. Ask for name and email, along with their question.

5. Get active on Facebook

Facebook is here to stay, obviously. Chances are, you probably already have a lot of customers actively using Facebook. So it makes sense to start an account for your business. Alternatively, you can start a fan page for your business using your personal account.

Provide links on your site to friend you on Facebook. Once you get established there, many of your Facebooking customers and prospects will reach out to you there.

6. Allow comments on your blog

If you write a blog, allow for comments. Don’t worry about spam or negative stuff, you can moderate your comments to keep that stuff out. By having comments, you are opening up another means of communication. It is a good idea to respond to the comments on your blog as well as to send an email response to the commentator. Its a great way to start a conversation.

7. Get a toll free number

Make it as easy as possible for people to call you. If you don’t have a toll free number, consider using an online service such as Ring Central to get one. People will be more likely to call if its free.

8. Make signing up for your newsletter easy and obvious

Your newsletter is a primary means of regular communication from you to your customer. Sometimes, the only way  a person will reach out to you is to sign up for it. So make it easy and painless. Include big links to it on your site, and only ask for name and email when a person first signs up.

9. Host webinars and calls

A great way to be accessible is by putting yourself out there. Hosting a webinar or live call on a regular basis allows people to interact with you on a group level with the opportunity to make it more personal by them asking a question. This is easier for some people than picking up the phone and asking questions directly. With a webinar, they have a chance to just listen in. Its up to you to excite them enough to move that to the next level of interaction.

10. Engage in plenty of conversations

A hermit is not very accessible. Instead, be the life of the party. Be everywhere. If you are active on social networks, a regular blog commentator, a blogger yourself, you will have more face time and make it easier for people to discover you and engage you in conversation. Just by being there, you are naturally much more accessible.

photo credit: Mr. Read

Recommended Reading

I am constantly on the prowl for good business books. Right now, I am reading Crush It, by Gary Vaynerchuk. I love Gary’s take on passion and business. This book will give you a kick in the butt to get up and get moving as you pursue your passions and your business.

If you are interested in Crush It, you can get it through Amazon by clicking here or by visiting your local bookstore.

Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.

Get Unique Content Weekly with The All Biz Answers Insider Newsletter

–

Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com

This is important. The world’s attention span is shrinking, at least when it comes to advertising. You need to know what message you want to get across and be able to do it simply. If you can, people will still listen. If not, they will just be annoyed by your marketing efforts.

Can I Have Your Attention for a Few Milliseconds?

Everyone is saying that the human attention span is shrinking. People have less time and just won’t give you the time you need to make your sales/marketing pitch. Well, we all actually have the same amount of time.

The thing is, from a marketing standpoint, you just can’t get as far with traditional methods. Thus, marketers blame people for short attention spans. But from the people side of things, we are actually just fine, thank you very much. People are still capable of giving attention to things that they care about. There are just more sophisticated ways of connecting with what we care about, so we are able to focus on them more and tune the rest out. Yes, this does have some negative consequences, especially if we become insular and don’t listen to other points of view. But from an advertising standpoint, who needs it?

Well, we are still influenced by marketing, just in different ways. One of the big shifts is that people will not spend a whole lot of time considering an option before moving on. When a Google search brings back thousands of sites, people will scroll through several quickly until finding one that appeals to them. The ones that catch the most attention are able communicate their message quickly, both visually and with its content.

Your job as a small business owner is simple. Keep things simple. The more focused and clear your message is, the better. If you can’t put your entire marketing message in one simple 140 characters or less post on Twitter, you have too much fluff.

Master the format of short and quick, and you have a much better chance of someone hearing out the rest of your story. Make your introduction your message, and elaborate if you need to. Its even better if you can boil down your message so that it needs no elaboration.

Here’s a hint. Every time you look at your marketing message, don’t think of what you can add to it, but rather what you can cut out of it.

Refine Your Message to its Core Truth

You probably know what an elevator pitch is. Its your sales pitch boiled down into a very short message. You should be able to be compelling in a very short time window, say the length of an elevator ride.

The elevator pitch isn’t just for the go-getter salesman and the super busy CEO. Normal people are just as busy and guard their time just as closely as any CEO.

Think of it this way. If you want to show respect, package your message in such a way that it can be consumed quickly by your target audience. Chances are, it will be consumed while the prospect is in the middle of something else. If its just fluff, it will be skipped. If its compelling, you have a chance to grab the attention of that prospect for a few more seconds.

Here is where you marketing message needs to fit. It needs to fit in a voice mail. It needs to fit in a Google text ad. It needs to fit in a Twitter update. It needs to fit on a business card.

Some businesses hold to the idea that they can just sit down with someone and then they can sell them. Yes, but its getting harder and harder to get people to sit down with you. If you need a lot of time to sell a prospect, you could be in trouble. My suggestion would be to switch to educational marketing. Even then, you need to bait the hook and get people interested in listening to you with short messages.

Here’s a hint. To refine your marketing message, write it up. Take as many words as you think you need. Now, delete all but the most important words. Start by cutting out your ifs, ands, and buts. Then move to your fluffy adjectives and verbs. Cut down to the core words, and then try to craft them into one or two sentences.

Say More, Annoy Less

The holy grail of marketing, in my book anyway, is to be able to talk openly with prospects without them being annoyed by you. There are a lot of aspects to this, like getting permission and providing value. One of the biggest parts is saying more when you do communicate.

Wait, didn’t I just tell you to cut down your marketing message to its barest essentials? Yes, that was me. I don’t want you to say more as in more words. I want you to say more as in make every single word count.

If you can have people hanging on every word you write or say, you won’t be thought of as annoying. This means limiting your sales pitches and making them count when you do make them.

If your words matter to the people that hear them, you are going to win. If they are seen as annoying dribble, you are going to lose.

You decide what you want to do. Either take the time to craft a concise and powerful marketing message, and build an information and education campaign around it, or don’t. As the options for people continue to increase, they will be tuning more and more noise out. Don’t be the noise. Instead, be the trusted insider. And when you are, never waste people’s time with excess. Get to the point, and stay there.

Here’s a hint. Disguise your marketing message as a public service announcement. You can inform and sell at the same time. If people digest your marketing message as information, they are more likely to be predisposed to buy.

So, I’ve just taken over a thousand words to tell you to keep it short. See, its a process to learn to be brief and get to the point. You won’t be able to do it right away, but with time and practice, you will be an expert at marketing zingers that speak volumes. Good luck!

Recommended Reading

I am constantly on the prowl for good business books. Right now, I am reading Crush It, by Gary Vaynerchuk. I love Gary’s take on passion and business. This book will give you a kick in the butt to get up and get moving as you pursue your passions and your business.

If you are interested in Crush It, you can get it through Amazon by clicking here or by visiting your local bookstore.

Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.

Get Unique Content Weekly with The All Biz Answers Insider Newsletter

–

Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com

Keep Selling to a Minimum

If you have a goal to connect with customers and prospects and to build trust through conversation, you need to keep your sales pitches to a minimum in your newsletter. There are exceptions to this. You could offer a newsletter that was all discounts and special offers, all the time. If people like your product, they will like that.

For the most part though, if you have a traditional small business, you only have a few things to sell and/or are not discounting constantly. What you need to focus on with your newsletter is your knowledge and expertise. If your customers buy web site design from you, you should seek to educate them in that arena. For instance, you might include an article about how they can get listed on Google Local for free.

The goal is to provide a newsletter that your ideal customer base will want to read, on a regular basis. You may not be able to write one that every single customer will look forward to, but you can do one that your most active and loyal customers will appreciate.

Stay Regular

For a newsletter to work, it has to be sent out on a regular basis. Just like with marketing in general, you need to stay in front of your prospects. The best scenario is to send a newsletter out once a week.

You can come up with enough interesting content to do a weekly newsletter. You just need to commit to it. Also, your customers will not be annoyed with a weekly newsletter, as long as you are providing good content.

If you are communicating on a regular basis via your newsletter, you are building a real relationship with your prospects. People who read your newsletter will be informed, be insiders, and will help spread the word and be more inclined to buy when you need them to.

If you just send a newsletter irregularly, with a press release or special offer, people will not be in the habit of reading it or trusting it. It will largely be a waste of time.

Always Get Permission and Maintain Trust

If you want your newsletter to be successful, you absolutely must make it permission based. Sure, it is fine to email your customer base from time to time without getting permission. But that is really no different than sending postcards. With a newsletter, you want people to buy in to the concept of it.

Send out regular invitations to join the newsletter to your customer base, but don’t just start sending them the newsletter until they sign up for it. There are lots of reasons for this. You don’t want to be seen as a spammer, for one. But also, you really want to qualify your readership. Those that take the time to sign up for the newsletter are far likelier to read it and to engage in a deeper conversation with your company.

Once you get permission, you need to maintain the trust. Never sell your newsletter list. Its okay to make offers from other companies, ie. affiliates, but only if you know and trust the product. Trust is the key to doing business. The newsletter is a goldmine for creating and building trust, because it allows you to stay in regular conversation with your prospects and customers. So honor that trust. Give value, and don’t be selfish with your newsletter.

If you follow these three rules, you will be on your way to developing a great newsletter. Now, you just need to work on creating the right content.

Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.

Get Unique Content Weekly with The Letter

–

Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com

RSS, which stands for Real Simple Syndication, is what makes it possible to grab articles from your favorite blogs and read them all together in one place. You need two things to make this work. First, you need choose a feed aggregation tool, or basically a reader that will pull the different RSS feeds to one location. Secondly, you need to know how to access the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs.

Choose a RSS Feed Reader

Your RSS Feed Reader is a web service where you will have access to all of the articles from the blogs you want to follow. There are many options here. The one I like and use is Google Reader. Google Reader makes it very easy to grab feeds and organize them into different folders, and also to browse through articles by title or by blog.

Grab the RSS Feeds

There are several ways to get a blog’s RSS feeds. Many blogs make it easy by adding a button that you can click. An RSS feed button is usually orange with 3 diagonal slashes.

If you click on an RSS feed button, one of two things will happen. You will either be taken to a page which asks you to choose which RSS feeder you use, or you will be taken to a page with a lot of funny text. In the first scenario, you will only need to select your RSS reader of choice and you will automatically be taken there and will be able to add the feed to your reader. In the second scenario, you need to copy the web site address that appears in the search bar. You will then need to go to your reader and manually set up a new feed, pasting the address in where appropriate.

The other way to add a feed is right from your reader. With Google Reader, you can click to add a new subscription. That is where you can paste the web site address from the previous scenario, but you can also just type in the web site address for the blog. If it is RSS capable, Google Reader can automatically find the feed and set it up in your reader.

The Benefits of RSS

Having all of your favorite blogs in one place is nice. It is kind of like having a newspaper, but customized for your favorite content. With RSS, you can stay on top of new content at your favorite blogs. It is easy to skim past articles that don’t interest you to find the gems that you want to read.

Of course, you will still want to visit the actual blog from time to time, to leave a comment or to read full articles. You can do this easily from your reader by clicking a link. A RSS reader makes interacting with and reading blogs simple. If you are reading to educate yourself, it makes sense to pull content from a lot of blogs into a reader and then focus on the posts that are pertinent to you.

If you don’t already take advantage of RSS and a feed reader, try it out today.

Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.

Get Unique Content Weekly with The Letter

–

Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com