• Post your local hashtag where visitors will see it.

The Cathlamet Chamber of Commerce does an awesome local photo contest. Most of the photo submissions come from locals. They use these on their annual events calendar and other publications.

Cathlamet also has visitors, people who boat along the river from the big city and stay at the local marina. Some are taking photos and posting online, surely. But it’s not always easy to find those photos or posts. So let’s make it easier.

• Decide on a local hashtag.
• Work with a local artist to put the hashtag on a sign that suits your local style.
• Post it where visitors are.

Cathlamet is a town of 553 people, and I don’t think there is any other place named Cathlamet anywhere. So they can just use #cathlamet as a tag.

They have a casual rustic mountain town charm. They also have a vibrant artist community. A handpainted wooden sign suits them perfectly.

Visitors tend to come in through the marina. Let’s go post that sign right at the marina.

Then it will be just that much easier to find photos and posts from visitors. The chamber can reach out to these folks when its photo contest time and even throughout the year.

Simple.

When I first shared this article in my email newsletter, I heard back from Brandynn Stanford, in Dublin, Texas, where they have a hashtag sign right at the local airport. They chose three hashtags to include, based on what is already shared on Instagram. Brandynn said that #dublintx already had 2,274 posts, and #dublintexas had 1,856 posts. That’s pretty awesome!

Hashtag Sign-Dublin, Texas, Airport. Photo courtesy of Brandynn Stanford.

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The Celebrity CEO by Ramon Ray

Summary: Community building in a way small town entrepreneurs can identify with. Good section on tools, and lots of timeless techniques. 

The title sounds a bit grandiose to small town ears, but the way Ramon Ray talks about building community will sound very familiar.

• You are the face of your business.
• You’re part of a small community.
• Serve people like they matter to your whole network. 

Of course, the section on online marketing tools will age as tools change, but half the book is spent setting out the timeless approach. Whether you’re serving a local market or getting beyond geographic limits, take your small-town sensibility with you. 

Good stuff for rural entrepreneurs.

Find out more and buy it from The Celebrity CEO page.

Disclosure: Ramon Ray is my friend and sent me a copy of this book. I like the book, so I’m sharing it. Other friends have sent me books that I did not review because I didn’t find them useful enough to share.

Ramon Ray and Becky McCray pause for a selfie at SMTulsa 2016.

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Customers who buy handmade soap don’t just want to get clean. What do they want to be good at?

A few weeks ago, we talked about knowing your customers in order to help them answer questions they get asked. This week, get to know your customers better by thinking through what they want to be good at.

What do your customers want to be good at?

You help customers all the time. The question today is what are you helping them be good at? If you help someone be better at something important to them, they’re more likely to want to work with you.

Let’s look at 3 examples of local businesses and how they help people be better at something.

• If you run a tire store, you may be helping people be better drivers or be good at keeping their family safe on the road.
• If you are an accountant, you might be helping people be better at their small business or become good at their finances.
• If you craft handmade soaps, maybe your customers want to be good at reducing waste to protect the environment.

Think about your own business. What do your customers want to be better at? What things do you help them do well? Take a moment to jot some notes.

Share information they need to be better

Of course your product, service or business helps customers, but you can go another step by creating content or information that helps them.

• Answer customer questions
• Make recommendations based your own expertise
• Share examples from other customers with permission or by making them anonymous

Share this info in words, photos, illustrations or video. Use live video, create your own blog, post on social media. Use whatever channels help you reach your customers. This is content marketing.

The goal of sharing is more than just making customers better. It’s also about convincing them to work with you in particular. Entrepreneur Brian Clark said it this way:

“It becomes your job to show up early with valuable content that convinces the prospect that they’re more empowered with your guidance than they would be otherwise.”

Brian also suggested these questions to help you figure out how you are empowering customers to get better at something:

• Once a person becomes a customer or client, they are empowered to ______________.
• Their experience with us makes them feel ______________.
• When speaking of their experience with others, they say ______________.

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When customers talk instead of type, will they use different words? Photo by Andres Urena on Unsplash

For years, we’ve all worked on SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to get our names out there and associated with specific words and phrases we knew our customers would type into a search engine to find us. Now that customers are saying their searches out loud, how does that change things?

Today’s voice searches happen via smartphone tools like Siri and Google Search, and via home assistants like Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod.

What words do customers type?

It still matters because many searches still happen on tablets, laptops and even by typing searches on phones. To pick the right keywords, you have to know what people search for. What is your customer thinking when they type a search for the solution you offer? They don’t know your name or your business yet. All they know is their own problem.

For my liquor store, we saw a lot of search phrases like “liquor store” and our town name.

What words do customers say?

It’s a little different when you speak a search instead of typing it. They may be shorter and more to the point.

Think of starting with this phrase, “Siri, find me…” and what would they say next? They still don’t know your business name, but they know what they’re looking for.

For my liquor store, we saw searches in our analytics that looked like they were probably done via voice. Searchers asked for phrases like “liquor store near me” and specific products like “tequila.” (I can just imagine people saying to their phone, “Find me tequila!”) Customers weren’t just searching for the type of business but also the specific thing they wanted.

Especially as small town stores diversify their product lines, customers aren’t sure which particular store they need. They search for the item. 

My local sewing machine center carries adult coloring books and handcrafted gift items. Customers aren’t going to guess that from the name of the business.

Small town stores have to write a lot more online about all the unusual and unexpected product lines they carry so they show up in terse voice searches for specific products. 

You can do this on your own website, your social channels and on search profiles like Google My Business.

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Photo (CC 2.0) blullana_miranda, on Flickr

You’ve seen the stories, “Build Your Business with No-Cost Marketing.” This headline has been used many times, most recently when talking about social media.

We want such things to be true. Yet, we also know the reality – there is a cost to everything. It may not be a cost in dollars, but instead, it may be a cost of time.

So as you plan your small-business marketing budget, it is important to plan not only the dollars a marketing effort will take but also the time you will have to put into the project. Ask yourself, which resource is at a premium?

Most small business owners will quickly reply that they have less money than time. But is that really the case? Take for example, these common arguments; first,  social media marketing doesn’t take dollars, just time and, second, everyone can do it.

Time spent occurs in many different ways. They include:

• The learning curve – To use any tool, you first have to learn something about it. Then you learn the basics and, to get the most out of it, you have to learn some of the tricks and tips.
• Building and maintenance – I don’t know how many people have commented to me that while building a social media effort was hard, the maintenance of it is were far more time is spent.
• Platforms change – No only does the best marketing tool get replaced by something else, but internal changes within a tool are constantly being made. Thus to get the most out of one, you need to keep learning, tweaking, and changing.
• Time wasted – Social media, if you don’t monitor yourself closely, can eat up enormous amounts of time. You  start out doing one thing and find yourself spending extra time checking out more leads and ideas. And it’s addicting, we don’t turn it off. An ag-business owner I know once wrote on how he wanted to check the weather. Two hours later, after also doing the news and sports, he found himself immersed in movie reviews and videos. Be careful!!
• Is it your thing? Each of us have skills and talents and know what comes easy and what we struggle with. What someone else can learn and do in a day might be a week of misery for us to follow.

Everything I have written may have you feeling as though I am arguing against having an online presence. Nothing can be further from the truth. I am a full believer in the need of a small-business to be present online. This blog is only designed to: (1) make you question whether or not your presence should be a do-it-yourself effort; and (2) determine the size of your effort. You don’t need to be in all places.

So as noted in the beginning, plan your marketing campaigns, plan your dollars and plan your time. Know what your time is worth and how you should best spend it. Investigate where you can reach your audience. Learn what they want from the dollars they spend. Understand the emotional ties they have to your products and services.

So forget the hype but hold on to the ideas. Marketing, including social media, is key to building your business.

Online Tools (CC) by Greyweed, Flickr

What’s being said about your small business online?

Many small business owners have made the decision to not get involved in the growing social media trend. Their reasons include: the time or money it takes; don’t understand it; doesn’t seem necessary; or their customers aren’t using it.

Avoiding the online world  is the wrong path to take for two reasons.

First, your business is being put on the map without you doing a thing. This happens when various companies and services just do it. It also occurs when people, such as myself, identify you through Yelp, Trip Advisor or being a Google Local Guide. (I put one on and corrected one before coming to work this morning.)

When your business is identified and mapped, you have the opportunity to “claim your business.” This means you can provide basic information about your business including physical address, phone number, web site, and store hours. This information is what the mobile world, well over 50% of the U.S. population, uses as their business data base.

It also allows you to correct information that someone else may have already posted. I did a workshop on having an online presence. During the event I searched for several businesses present that day. The physical location for one of them, a restaurant, showed up as being in the parking lot over six blocks away. As a consumer, if I can’t find you immediately I will probably just go somewhere else.

When claiming your bubble, you also will find reviews already posted.  Thank people for offering testimonials.

For negative reviews, engage them to see how you can resolve the problem. If it is a major issue, take the conversation out of the public channel. The important thing though is to show you are responsive. And it’s important that others see you are concerned.

There is an underlying caveat to responding to reviews, negative and positive. It assumes you are being timely in your response. A response six months after the fact doesn’t help.

Second, outside of the business mapping service, people are more and more likely to use a social media channel for a testimonial or, more likely, a complaint. It’s crucial that you have one or more alert systems in place to monitor what is being said about you and your business.

In the area where I live, there is a controversial issue. Without their knowledge, businesses are being mentioned as being supportive or non-supportive. In the cases I am aware of, they are neither. However, this does not stop social media from spreading the story.

Responding to this stories is crucial for small-business owners. Yet in three of the cases I know about, the owner was not aware of the stories. Thus, my big push as to why you need to be online.

The chances are that, at some level, your business is being mentioned online. Even if it is your local paper’s online edition, you are there.

So accept the fact your business is online. Make plans to use it for building your business.

Millennials, according to Megan, are the largest cohort and encompasses people born from 1980 to 2000. This generation is seen as “influencers,” changing the way business is done. What they want is having a ripple effect in what younger and older generations want as well.

When shopping, millennials are looking for experience and adventure. They want customization and desire, if possible, a connection with the source of their purchases.

Megan noted how important social media is to this generation. She encourages business owners to get involved by picking one platform and staying small.

Grab a cup of coffee and spend 15 minutes learning how to tap this large and influential generation.

Photo provided by Kupper Subaru

Last weekend I took our car in for a routine oil change. As expected the staff were friendly, the service quick, and everything was done right. They provided a comfortable lounge area while I waited with a big screen TV, coffee and water. Those were my expectations and they were all met.

However, there is one more part to the story.  As I was doing the initial paperwork, I noticed some bicycles. They had helmets and backpacks so I asked if staff rode their bikes to work. This is where the routine experience became something amazing.

The response to my question was, “no, those are for our customers to borrow. Do you want to take one out?”  The auto dealership is close to downtown and not far from a bike trail leading to one of our state parks. There was apparently no limitation on where you could with them or how long you could take them out. Check out their program here.

I didn’t take them up on the offer but, as someone interested in helping businesses market and stand out from their competitors, I thought this was great marketing.

Here are just some of the reasons why:

• It was relatively low cost. Bikes, backpacks, locks, and helmets is it. Plus some signs.
• Bike riding engages and offers the customer an experience. Even if you don’t take a ride, I didn’t, the idea gets attention and interest.
• It connects with their brand and many of their customers.  Subaru ads often focus on outdoor activities, experiencing nature, etc. The ideas of loaner bikes fits well with the message they sell.
• May is National Bicycle Month. They connected with that by running YouTube contest showing the bikes ridden on various local trails. If you could name the trail, you won a prize.
• They took advantage of social media for marketing and shot their own video, all low-cost marketing.  See: http://bit.ly/1Jv2CtQ
• When speaking to Jerry Coutts, Service Manager and person responsible for the idea, he noted the idea came from seeing it at another dealership. Good marketing often comes from watching what others are doing. You need, though, to modify them for your situation and to set yourself apart.
• They found a catchy name, #KupperKruiser.

The list goes on but I will end with one final thought.  The most effective marketing comes when others tell your story. This idea is a good one for encouraging this to happen, it takes the routine and makes it something to tell your friends.

As far as growing the campaign, they have opportunities with increased signage and posting pictures and/or videos of customers using the bikes and talking about the experience. This would enhance the visibility, expands customer endorsements, grow social media activity and keep costs low. They can also think about what could be done over winter and again next year.

As a disclaimer, this is not a paid endorsement. I saw a clever marketing idea and appreciated how the idea was developed and implemented. Ideas like this are something any small business owner can do. Small business owners should always have their eyes and mind open for such ideas, ways to get people talking and set your business apart. That’s effective marketing.

Good job Jerry and Kupper Subaru.

Tools (CC) by Spinster Cardigan, on Flickr

Marketing makes many small-business owners nervous. They aren’t sure just how to approach it in terms of an overall focus. Nor do they know what to do when bombarded with a constant stream of articles touting the new “must-do” marketing approaches. (See Basic Marketing Tips)

The typical response of business owners when facing these issues is to go one of two directions. The first direction is to run some ads, contribute to local fundraising efforts and join local civic organizations.

The second approach is to try every new tool that comes along but often with no thought as to how each tool, or if each tool, fits into the marketing plan.

Two issues arise with both of these approaches. First, the business owner has no plan or goal for marketing. Second, without goals, trying to decide what tools to use becomes nearly impossible. The glitter and idea of new tools becomes the deciding factor instead of what each tool offers.

It’s knowing what you want to achieve that should drive your marketing effort. This means knowing who your potential customers are, where they are located and how to reach them. It is this information that should guide the selection of the best marketing tools to use.

Some of the traditional marketing tools such as meet and greet, business cards and signage or visual pull, offline and online, still are great tools.

And nothing can replace the brand ambassador, or that customer who shouts out how great a job you are doing. But on the flip side, nothing can hurt like the negative review that a dissatisfied customer offers.

Mentioning brand ambassadors or dissatisfied customers brings in the idea of the global marketplace and some of the shiny, new marketing tools available. Where once the dissatisfied customer told maybe 20 people, today the world is his or her stage through new tools such as online review sites or social media. Similarly, the ambassador is of great help. Today’s consumer puts a huge amount of trust in these online comments, even when coming from people they don’t know.

Online Tools (CC) by Greyweed, Flickr

E-commerce, mobile, location-based marketing and social media represent just some of the new marketing tools that small-business owners can use. Each tool may have a place in the marketing plan.

So what’s right in terms of shiny, new marketing tools or tried-and-true old standbys? It depends. The small-business owner’s knowledge of his or her customers, goals and capacity should be the deciding factor on what to use. Business owners shouldn’t select marketing tools based on what those tools have done for someone else or the promises made about their effectiveness.

Two final notes: First, even with a careful selection of tools, no results are guaranteed. That is why the owner constantly must evaluate what’s working and what’s not and make the appropriate adjustments. Second, more new tools always will be coming along and the customer also will change. Thus, what works today may not be the tool for tomorrow.

Effective marketing can pay big dividends. It demands a market understanding and a selection of the best tools to use, whether traditional or new and shiny. Each business owner needs to find his or her best path.

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