Video - The Next Wave Of Small Business Marketing

One of the strongest trends for small business is the need to build connections with your clients -giving them an insight into who you are and what you do. You need to do that through words, stories or parables and testimonials. Written words can only go so far.

The trend I am seeing coming from the US in marketing is the addition of video to things like websites, promotional DVDs and blogs. Think of the explosion of You Tube. More people watch You Tube across the world each day than people watch TV.

The cutting edge of the trend is live self-broadcast TV streamed from your website. Think of it like your own ongoing TV program. One of the gurus in this is a guy who talks about wine - Gary Vaynerchuck. A guy who is passionate about wine talks about it in laypersons terms complete with plastic character toys. It is out there, loud, real and he out-rates many of the top US TV shows.

People want to see you, engage with you, look you in the eye and check you out as a person. They want to see if you really are sincere about your product or service. They don't want a highly polished TV presenter. They want to see and connect with the real person, warts and all. If you are too polished they click away as they can't connect with you.

With a website you only have a few seconds to grab someone's attention. With the addition of video their average length of stay on your site increases. Length of time someone stays increases the likelihood of them signing up for your newsletter, reading your words or buying your product. So, going by trends, the addition of video to your site or your blog is something worth considering.

If you are going to add in video (and we still call it video even though it is something else) to your website or your marketing mix, what should you do and how should you do it?

The technology

Let's start with some basics. The technology you use does not have to be complex or expensive.

It is possible to add video to your homepage for $12US. Use your web camera to record the film of what you want to say. Then use Microsoft Movie Maker (free with windows XP) to edit the film. One cool tool is Video Web Wizard to convert the film to a flash file and to put the little TV screen around the film. Finally add your flash file into your website.

The words

What you say on your video is important. You need to treat it just like any other piece of copywriting. Consider your audience and what they are interested in hearing about. You need to have a logical flow through your words and you need to have a strong call to action in conclusion.

You also need to keep it simple, and not too long. Use a copywriter to help you refine your words if you are not confident in what you are going to say to present your business in its best light.

Adding video to your home page should not replace your general words and text. Remember the search engines can't index a video so you still need your keyword rich text beneath your video to help search engines find you.

General stuff

While the people want to connect with you, you want to make sure the location you are filming in is attractive, not too distracting in the background and has sufficient light (you don't want to look like you are in a nightclub).

You also want your basic appearance to be neat and tidy. Remember to smile, to look down the lens of the camera (and not to the side or away as that can make you look shifty). Remember to blink - some people get the fixed in the headlights stare look and forget to blink.

Don't expect to get it right the first take.

Rehearse your words until you are confident with them, and then expect a few goes to get your video to the point you are happy with it.

Finally it is OK to change things around. The technology is now so simple you can change it as often as you are comfortable with doing it - daily if you like.

So dip your toes into the waters of video marketing. Like everything you need to test and measure your results to make sure it is working for you.


About the Author

Ingrid Cliff is a Freelance Copywriter with her Brisbane Copywriting Business (Heart Harmony). Ingrid writes a free weekly small business newsletter packed full of articles and tips and Small Business Ideas blog for small businesses. www.heartharmony.com.au

Relaited Links:

• The Importance of Marketing Mix and the 4 Key Mix Elements
• The Importance of Marketing Mix and the 4 Key Mix Elements
• Market Segmentation Can Help You Grow, or Gain, Market Share

Getting Inside Your Customers Heads

When you are in business, your task is to meet the wants, desires and needs of your customers. Easy!

This is much harder than it sounds. Each person is totally unique and if you look at their individual wants, desires and needs you will never be able to satisfy them all and you will go broke trying.

This is where statistics comes into play. If you get a large enough group together they will begin to form a statistically coherent pattern. You can use this pattern to gain a little glimpse into what is going on in your customer's heads. That is the purpose of things like census data - to look at big enough groups of people to help governments make appropriate policies.

Back at the turn of the century the statisticians looked at things such as demographics. Businesses worked out their best customers were all of a certain age, spent a certain amount of money, lived in certain areas, had certain jobs and visited certain shops.

Demographics were a great start to help us to segment our customers and to help us work out where we should target our marketing. Even today you will find print media will provide you with demographic data on their readership to help you make a decision about whether or not to advertise in their publication.

The problem with demographics is they don't take into account large variances within groups and they don't take into account the changes in how people view the world. 30 years ago you could look at a demographic profile and make a decision that if you wanted to reach businessmen of a certain income and age you should advertise in the Financial Review or Wall Street Journal.

These days people gather their information in a more varied way. With the internet people search for precisely what they want - they hang out with like-minded people and exchange ideas and information.

Readership of newspapers and magazines are dramatically down. TV viewing is down. Radio listeners are down. People go to their clan or their group to find information. Using demographic data as your sole way of making your decisions is not helpful to your business.

So what has replaced demographics? In recent times we have started to look at psychographic profiles. We work out the common things our best customers think, value and believe in.

Psychographics are where you start to look at why people do what they do. To do this you ask questions such as:
* What needs are your best customers looking to fulfil?
* What beliefs about themselves and the world do they hold?
* What inspires them?
* What problems do they have?
* What is similar in how they view the world?
* Where do they hang out?

Psychologists have been doing something similar for years when they look at tools to help profile people such as Myers Briggs, Team Management Index, and Belbin. All of these are ways of categorising ways people view and interact with the world.

Let's make this a bit more practical so you can see what role this plays in business and getting inside your customer's heads.

One client I have specialised in kitchen and bathroom renovations. We started with demographic data and found that 95% of all their clients were over the age of 40. They lived in their own home, were employed in white collar jobs earning a reasonable but not excessive income.

We then started to dig a bit further to look for similarities in their lives and how they viewed the world. All of them had raised their families and finally as the kids were getting a bit older they had some discretionary income that they chose to spend on themselves. "It was their turn" was a common saying among these clients when talking about their renovation. "They had put up with things for years and now they deserved something nice."

The one interesting thing was every single house was extremely messy and the clients apologised about the mess to the tradespeople.

So how did this translate into our marketing? Well we placed an emphasis on it being their turn and deserving nice things. We also made mention of the fear of people looking down their nose at your house and how the tradespeople the company used were real people who understand if the rest of the house wasn't in show perfect condition.

We also used pictures and colours that reflected the taste of their customers (and not some over the top flash designers).

Is this manipulation? No. We just looked at what was already there with their customer base and sought to understand their needs better.

The business wanted more customers just like the ones they had, so by directing our marketing to the psychographic profile of their best customers made it easier for customers to feel right at home with the company from the marketing. This translates to more sales from the right customers.

Now it's your turn to get inside your customers heads. Go back to your best customers ... the ones you truly love working for. What makes them so great? How do they view the world? What problems are they trying to solve by coming to you? What do they value? Where do they hang out?

While you are at it have a look inside at yourself. What makes you so great? How do you view the world? What problems do you love to solve? What are your values? Where do you hang out?

When your profile and your customer's profile are congruent, then your business booms. If you are in a state of flux and you are not clear on your own profile, then business can be challenging as you attract the wrong type of customers to your business.

Getting clear on your own profile and the profile of your ideal client makes marketing easier, selling easier and your life easier.


About the Author

Ingrid Cliff is a Freelance Copywriter with her Brisbane Copywriting Business (Heart Harmony). Ingrid writes a free weekly small business newsletter packed full of articles and tips and Small Business Ideas blog for small businesses. www.heartharmony.com.au

Relaited Links:

• The Importance of Marketing Mix and the 4 Key Mix Elements
• The Importance of Marketing Mix and the 4 Key Mix Elements
• Market Segmentation Can Help You Grow, or Gain, Market Share

The Importance of Marketing Mix and the 4 Key Mix Elements

The marketing mix section of your small business marketing plan concentrates on the tactics used to achieve the marketing and business plan. Those tactics can be categorized as the four Ps of marketing: product, price, promotion and placealso known as the distribution channel.

A common analogy used in describing marketing mix is relating the mix in marketing mix as being the ingredients in a recipe: you need to get the quantities of each element right or the result will not be what you need or expect.

Consider the following questions carefully when you build your marketing plan:

When developing your marketing tactics for the product, you must consider the features, advantages and benefits of the product. Define all the characteristics of your product. Define and rank which are most valuable to your target market Why are they valuable to your market Define what is unique about your product and why it has a competitive advantage something that is not easily duplicated. Consider conducting a marketing research survey to test your assumptions. You may be surprised to find out that what you thought was important to your market is not. Make sure you can address all these questions in your marketing plan.

Pricing your product sounds like a straightforward process but the reality is that it is a very complex process. At what stage in the life cycle is the product Product life cycle stages will influence price. Are you the high cost, high value provider Or the low cost, high volume provider Does your product have unique attributes that can not be easily duplicated Does your product have a competitive advantage not easily overcome Are you trying to buy your way into the market Be very careful with this buy-in strategy --it is often very challenging to move a low price up. Is this product a loss leader for your sales of another, more profitable product There are still more questions to consider when developing your price and you must analyze each answer carefully before determining the price for your product. Typically it is a good idea to plot your price attributes on a grid - you can visually see where you are on a grid and better assess if that is the right place to be.

Promotion includes a number of marketing communications tactics. Should you build a direct mail program is your product conducive to a printed description; do you have a good targeted mail list Can you market your product online Are traditional advertising methods print, radio, television the most appropriate What kind of budget do you have Does your product have a strong enough brand If not focus on building a stronger identity and brand. How can public relations efforts help you promote your product Can you successfully participate in trade shows and industry events to sell your product How will you craft your sales story: from sales letters to sales pitches Have you build measurements into each of your promotional vehicles Do you truly understand your market and your audience Recognize that you will need to use more than one of these tactics to launch a successful marketing campaign.

Place is how your product moves to market. What distribution channel will you use Will it be a business-to-business channel or a business-to-consumer channel Will you sell using your own sales staff, or will you outsource sales and use distributors or sales agents Can you sell your product online or must it be offline and in-person Is your market geography wide or narrow What are the implications of the answers to these questions on your marketing mix

When building and creating your marketing plan you must consider these elements of your marketing mix because they will have a significant impact positive if well planned and managed; negative if poorly planned and not managed on your products success or failure.

All small business owners go into business expecting success; not all plan for success. Ensure that your small business enjoys success by developing a strong strategic marketing plan that includes a comprehensive marketing mix.


About the Author

Kris Bovay owns Voice Marketing Inc, the business and marketing services company. Kris has worked for, and with, a range of small, medium and large businesses and has been able to help business owners focus on their challenges and improve their business results. Kris has a masters degree in business administration, with a specialty in marketing, operations, planning and strategy. For more business advice, visit

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• SEO Marketing Strategies You Can't Afford To Miss

Market Segmentation Can Help You Grow, or Gain, Market Share

You dont need to buy market share, you need to learn how to earn market share. Market segmentation is one of the functions within the overall marketing plan that will help you earn your share of the market. By segmenting your market into more targeted buyers or groups of buyers you will be able to grow existing sales and build new sales; and grow them without cutting price. The goal for market segmentation is to target the most likely to buy and understand your target market enough to focus in on what it needs.

There are a number of different levels of market segmentation: mass marketing, segment marketing, niche marketing, local marketing, one-to-one or direct marketing - each level has different attributes.

In mass marketing, you produce one product that serves all markets and that can be produced in mass and distributed in mass. For example, paper clips, which can be mass produced, mass distributed and can serve all its markets business, financial, school, etc..

In segment marketing, your product can appeal to buyers in different groups or segments. These buyer segments have similar needs and wants. Segments are determined by assessing certain criteria. For example, product-usage patterns, demographics, psychographics, and geographics and more. The benefit of segment marketing over mass marketing is that you can narrow the product offering to specifically address the needs of the market segment you have defined as your primary, or secondary, or tertiary market. The other elements of marketing mix; price, promotion and distribution can also be more focused to deliver the needs of the market segment.

In niche marketing, you will narrow the market segments even further to find smaller markets that are less populated by competitors and that are under-served by others. To find your niche market, assess the market segment for similar needs and wants and divide the segment into smaller niches. To do well in niche marketing you must understand your customers extremely well and you must be able to understand their business, or their needs and wants well enough to provide solutions. Specializing in niche markets often results in higher costs not the economies of scale that you find in mass marketing, and even to some degree, in segment marketing, and also higher profits if customers recognize and accept the value your product brings.

In local marketing, you will focus on a local area or region to market your product. This does not mean that your product is not sold globally, it means that you focus on building marketing programs or tactics that address the local area needs and wants for your product. For example, shopping in Vancouver, British Columbia typically is at street level so storefront displays are large and dramatic; while shopping in Calgary, Alberta often happens inside malls because of weather conditions, resulting in smaller storefronts inside the mall and smaller scale displays.

One-to-one or direct marketing is the latest marketing segmentation strategy and it comes from a segmentation approach called individual marketing. One-to-one marketing is a segment of one, compared to a segment of many. Building your marketing concept is focused on how to identify the needs of one individual and how to target that one in your marketing plans. To be successful in direct marketing you must be able to either collect or acquire data on individual buyer behavior, habits, and attitudes many loyalty card programs collect that type of data. Computer technology has enabled this type of market segmentation.

To best identify your market segments, you will need to conduct research surveys, perhaps by using focus groups or other exploratory interview techniques; you will need to analyze the data you gather; and then you will need to develop a profile of each segment that you identify. Be aware that consumer and business market segmentations use somewhat different approaches to reflect the differences in consumer and business markets.

Once you have identified your market segments, you must evaluate and select the target marketing segment and approach best suited to your product, and to your business objectives, strategies and resources. Your small business growth objectives can be supported by a strong market segmentation approach.


About the Author

Kris Bovay owns Voice Marketing Inc, the business and marketing services company. Kris has worked for, and with, a range of small, medium and large businesses and has been able to help business owners focus on their challenges and improve their business results. For more business advice, visit

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• How to Succeed in Internet Marketing With Organic SEO