By Morrie S. Goldman
Definitive Marketing, Evanston, Ill.
(Guest writer)

Web Sites and Blogs

Morrie Goldman, B2B Marketing Expert in Chicago

If you don’t have a Web site and you are in business, you need one! If you have one that’s more than a few years old, you probably need to re-evaluate it. Look at competitor Web sites for comparison, then try searching your keywords or business category on Google and see if you can find your site. Talk to an experienced marketing communications professional.

Limited funds? Build your own basic Web site from a variety of templates, from web hosts like these.

Without even registering a domain name, you can build an attractive site by mustering your creativity and heading over to wordpress.com or weebly.com.

These low-cost hosting providers offer many good templates:

• 1and1.com
• godaddy.com/hosting/Web site-builder.aspx
• intuit.com/Web site-building-software/
• smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/

Better solution: learn how to build a site in WordPress or have a pro build it for you. This open-source (no charge) software is also the most popular for creating a blog. Learn much more at wordpress.org.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engines use algorithms to match a search query with content on popular Web sites that closely relates to that topic. The techniques that a Web site owners uses to rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP) is called SEO. A lot of SEO tweaks can be done that are allowable and even recommended by Google and others, but some techniques can make your site disappear. In other words, it’s not nice to try to fool mother Google. You can do a basic job yourself (when you learn the techniques), hire someone to do a basic optimization or hire an SEO specialist, (expensive). You can’t buy better rankings from Google and no SEO specialist can guarantee top rankings. If they say they can, run away!

• www.inc.com/magazine/20100701/how-to-optimize-your-site-for-search.html (kind of dated, but a good starting point)
• Google’s SEO Guide: http://goo.gl/LRmZa
• www.wikihow.com/Optimize-Your-Web site-for-Search-Engine-Use

If you already understand the basics , visit: searchenginewatch.com/

Grade your Web site: http://goo.gl/rVzhu (various free online tools to check your Web site)

Online Advertising

There are endless sites that sell advertising on-line and many of them allow you to zero-in on regions, business categories, demographics and more. You can buy text ads or banner ads (which are graphics). Text ads may be sold on a per-click basis (Google Adwords is the best known), cost-per-thousand exposures, or a fixed price over time. Banner ads come in all sizes and shapes and are not usually sold on a per-click basis. On-line advertising can be cheap or very expensive. The process can be simple or very complex, depending on how much science you want to apply. A few places to learn more:

• google.com/adwords/seminars/adwords101.html
• advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/home
• entrepreneur.com/article/174914 (15 Web sites to promote a local business)
• Trade publication newsletters, social media sites, local business sites (Yelp, Yellow pages, Yellowbook, Craigslist, etc.)

Other Advertising Media

Print is not dead! There are also opportunities in local radio, cable, outdoor and others. Best to consult with a marketing communications pro first, because commitments are greater than online and results are harder to track.

Public Relations

If you have something to say about your company, services, products, events or industry, share it with the press! Read this book or hire a pro (even better, do both):

“The New Rules of Marketing & PR” by David Meerman Scott.

Social Media

Short and sweet. If you don’t have a personal Linkedin page, create one today. If you don’t have a LinkedIn company page, create one tomorrow. Depending on what kind of business you have, evaluate whether you could benefit from business pages on Facebook, Twitter and others.

It’s a good idea to at least create accounts to protect your name. Be aware that while basic usage of social media sites is free, your time is not. To do it right, you’ll need to devote a lot of time in these sites or hire someone to do it for you. In any case, learn more about social media. It isn’t going away.

Also consider advertising on social media sites. It’s expensive, but if you know who you want to reach, you can zero in.

Business Cards, Envelopes, etc

Unless you are skilled as a graphic artist, don’t make your own logo or business card. If you are on a tight budget, but still want to look professional, check out the stock card designs from these companies:

• www.vistaprint.com
• www.zazzle.com
• www.gotprint.com
• Local instant printer or office supply store

If you don’t have a logo, consider having one designed. You’ll get a lot of mileage out of it. For a full corporate identity or branding program, see a marketing professional or an artist with experience in business graphics.

Networking

This is the “live” kind. Unless you are job hunting, look for and attend networking groups where you are likely to meet potential customers, not peers. Create and practice a 10- to 15-second elevator speech that sounds unique and ideally, builds a bit of curiosity to learn more. Check: meetup.com, business meeting calendars on local media Web sites. If you are an expert a topic of interest, look into speaking at a conference or trade show attended by prospects.

Direct Marketing

Snail mail is not dead. But it’s very important that you have a really good list. Two really simple ideas that get results:

A personalized letter (with a P.S.) on business letterhead can often break through barriers that block your phone and email attempts. Include a piece of literature and a simple response vehicle, such as a business reply card or fax-back form.

Color postcards have become very economical. Use them to build awareness of new products or services or promote special offers. Include a QR code to bring smart phone users to your Web site (QRstuff.com). See printers listed under business cards.

Email Marketing

So, you want to send monthly emails to your customers and prospects? It’s best if you do this via one of the commercial services. Some popular ones are listed below. All of these allow you to choose and modify a pre-made template, store and maintain your list and view analytics of how many opened your email, took an action or opted out.

• ConstantContact.com
• iContact.com
• MadMimi.com
• MailChimp.com

All offer free trials.

Research

See how your Web site ranks against competitors:

• www.alexa.com
• www.graphbuzz.com

A lot of secondary research is available free if you look hard enough, from government organizations, trade media publishers, trade associations. Commercial industry studies can be costly to buy, but might be available at a university or library. Start by talking to a good reference librarian, on-line searching and making phone calls.

Do your own primary research free with surveymonkey.com It’s an easy-to-use tool, if you already have an email list.

Visit relevant trade shows and ask vendors questions. It is surprising how much can be learned at these events.

Morrie Goldman founded Definitive Marketing 14 years ago. He has a master’s degree in marketing communications from Roosevelt University, began his career with Bell and Howell and has held senior-level positions with two advertising agencies. His approach is to become an integral part of his B2B client’s marketing teams, often becoming a surrogate marketing manager or marketing communications manager.

One way is to find a free WordPress training workshop. I would be happy to give one for your organization. (Contact me for more info.)

This brief online slideshow was prepared for a WordPress training workshop for Jewish B2B Networking.

Constant Contact newsletters we’ve designed and managed recently.

Some time ago, I wrote about whether the popular online communications tools (Survey Monkey, WordPress, etc.) are as user-friendly as they claim to be.

They’re getting better, of course. In particular, Constant Contact has been making frequent improvements in their user interface, as well as adding quite a few new templates.

That’s one of the reasons I signed up with Constant Contact to be a Solution Provider. Visit the Jonathan Lehrer Communications site for the whole story and how you can sign up for a 60-day free trial with Constant Contact.

You might also benefit from my critiques of some Constant Contact newsletters. Maybe you’ll pick up a few tips for your own email marketing efforts.

If you want to chat about what your organization might do with an email newsletter, I’m here to help.

Our communications know-how and editorial experience, along with the leading online newsletter provider is a combination that will turn you into a publisher-marketer.

Use your Fundamental Idea as the key ingredient, whether the recipe is for a blog, a website a company brochure or a white paper. If you get this right, you deserve latkes — potato pancakes — with applesauce (lower left).

When clients ask me these questions, the answer is almost always, “do you have something to say?” In other words, if you don’t have a message — a Core Concept — it’s fairly useless to worry about how you’ll deliver it.

To the business owner who dreams of getting a lot of “likes” on his Facebook postings, the concept of a message strategy can seem a bit foreign. So I illustrate it by talking about my favorite topic: dessert.

Lately, as I have been having occasional business meetings at Baker’s Square – for their free wireless Internet, of course – I’ve been thinking about pies.

Should I have Country Apple, French Apple or Apple Cinnamon? Should I accompany the pie with a cup of apple-flavored herbal tea?

They’re all different formats of apples, and obviously they couldn’t exist without the apple.

(At about this point, it should occur to you that in my fruit-flavored analogy, the apple represents the Core Concept. Clever, no?)

Let’s expand the analogy to include just plain apple slices, apple slices with peanut butter, apple slices in a salad, applesauce (on potato pancakes, of course), apple cider and taffy apples (a favorite of both my wife, Estee, and my daughter, Lia).

Before Blogging, Know Your Basic Message

If you don’t have an apple – a Core Concept – you’ll have a hard time coming up with something to blog about on a regular basis.

But if you have a basic message, or a perspective on your business, you’ll never run out of topics.

This all came up recently in a conversation with a potential client who owns a medical transcription service. His doctor clients record messages which get transcribed and inserted into electronic medical records systems. So what should he blog about? A series of posts about how to spell the disease du jour wouldn’t be very interesting.

Let’s pick a good apple (Core Concept) for him. When the client noted that medical practice managers are looking to cut costs, we suggested he start blogging about how to make a doctor’s office more efficient. Thanks to his existing subject-matter knowledge, he instantly had a thousand ideas for articles.

It’s just like a great cook who sees a bushel of apples and starts to imagine a dozen ways to make them into pies.

Once you get the Core Concept, you can create one-sentence comments on Twitter, three-sentence notes on Facebook, longer pieces on a blog and even more in-depth articles in professional journals.

Is he just repackaging the same content? Perhaps, but if he constantly relates it back to his business, he is attracting wider audiences who respect his opinions and are more open to using his transcription service.

That’s my Core Concept today. Care to join me for a piece of pie?

In the Internet Age, you need more than a nice business card to create a good first impression.

In the midst of a recent Communications Audit – that’s my term for a brainstorming session and review of marketing materials – a lively discussion developed on the topic of business cards.

In this Age of the Internet, ye olde business card remains an important marketing asset.

The discussion on this particular day was the value of embossing the firm’s logo on the card.

It’s a well-turned phrase, but also a truism, that a nicely embossed card creates a good impression.

Describing his embossed card, the client said, “When I present my business card to a customer, I feel proud about the way the card looks, and it shows that I’m proud of the business.” The sincerity in his voice and his dedication to running a customer-focused company helped me to understand why he is such a successful salesman.

Creating a Good First Impression on the Internet

But while we’re examining his embossed calling card, let’s also think about how effective it is in creating a first impression.

Remember, in the Age of the Internet, a customer has likely checked you out before you ever meet her or have a chance to present your card.

The completeness of your LinkedIn profile and the effectiveness of your website are important factors in your first impression, much more so that the paper stock, ink varnishes and embossing on your business card.

When you meet people in person, what do they think of you if you’re wearing a great tie and a wrinkled shirt? Or if your hair is combed but your mustache needs trimming (I guess I’ve been looking in the mirror too much).

Checklist: Creating a First Impression

Use this quick checklist to evaluate the first impressions customers might get of your business:

• Does your website compare well to your competitors’ sites? Is the content fresh? Is the navigation clear?
• On LinkedIn, do all of your associates have complete profiles that showcase your company’s capabilities?
• Does your company logo reflect what you stand for?
• Does your Facebook page look like you’ve been paying attention to it?
• Does your office phone system drive potential customers insane?
• Are there piles of papers on your receptionist’s desk?

By answering questions like these, you can quickly develop a plan to create the best possible first impression. As the old saying goes, you have only one chance to do it.

The Value of a Communications Audit

Bringing in an outside facilitator to conduct this review process can make it easier to navigate office politics and lead to a plan with broad buy-in. Contact us if you’d like to learn more about how we lead workshops to evaluate marketing materials for small businesses and non-profit organizations.

Take the right steps and traffic like this will be headed to your website.

Dear Curious:

Begin by telling the world.

• Ask employees to link to the site in their email signatures.
• Schedule social media posts with links to specific pages on the site.
• Write a blog article about the business decision process that led to the new site. Here’s an example from a site I recently completed for Joseph Robertson Foundries, Limited, a Toronto company that makes brass, bronze and aluminum castings.
• Ask your execs — lawyers, accountants, marketing pros — to ensure that their personal listings in professional organizations include links to the site.
• Promote the site on any and all customer communications, such as billing statements, store signage, business cards and print advertising.

Publish an Email Newsletter

Next, launch that e-newsletter you’ve been thinking about.

Jonathan Lehrer Communications, Inc. is a Constant Contact Solutions Provider. Visit our partner page to sign up for a free trial.

Use the newsletter to drive traffic to your website by including “teaser” versions of the content on your site, with links to the full article. The newsletter should be branded with the same logo, colors and photography that visitors see on the website.

Keep the Website Fresh and Alive

Your website is like a garden that must always be tended.

A month after the new site goes live, take a few minutes each month to check for:

• Outdated content
• Links to external sites that may no longer be valid
• Feeds that have stopped working for some unknown reason
• Copyright date that’s not right anymore
• Former staff members who are still listed on the “about us” page

As frequently as possible, check your Google rankings for your important keywords and tweak the site as necessary.

Continually adding new content will keep your readers/customers/constituents engaged and it will keep the search engines happy. Personnel changes, new products or programs, blog commentaries about the latest political developments, updated seasonal hours for your call center are among the many news items that should be added to your site.

And there’s more

• Crank up your marketing budget and start a pay-per-click advertising campaign.
• Add more videos to your site (post them on YouTube, then link to them from your site).
• Beef up your FAQ page based on what your call center people say customers are asking.
• Send a press release about the new site to trade magazines and blogs that cover your field.

Now go outside and water your real garden. With constant nurturing, the flowers will bloom and the traffic will flow to your website.

This is my month and I wish you would pronounce it correctly.

My birthday — the first of the month — ushers in 28 (or 29) days of the most mispronounced period on the calendar. I understand that marketers are trying to personalize their message by inserting “you” in everything, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept Feb-YOO-ary.

Who put the "you" in February? I don't see it anywhere in there.

Yet professional newscasters and announcers lately have succumbed to widespread adoption of this error. Given the amount of time broadcasters historically have spent in bars, you’d think they could pronounce a word that has “brew” in the middle.

In honor of poor February — short, cold (except for 2012) and mispronounced — I am declaring it National Let’s Stop the Mispronunciation Madness Month.

Here are this year’s target words, collected during many tedious hours of watching local news in one of the nation’s top media markets:

• Temp-a-chur (a favorite of on-air weathermen)
• Ex-peer-i-ment (when we did these in high school chemistry, the second syllable rhymed with “air”)
• Im-por-dant (if it was so important, you should speak as though it was spelled with a “t” instead of “d” — because it is)
• Off-ten (please say “often” as if it does not have a “t”)
• Nuke-you-ler (here again, someone is trying to make us feel better about nuclear energy by inserting “you” in the word — and I swear I heard a spokeswoman from Exelon say it this way in a radio interview this week)
• Mu-zum (this is a place that houses fascinating exhibits, but I’m more fascinated with the process that is rapidly eliminating “myoo-zee-um” as the correct way to say it)

Hoping that the announcers among you may wish to practice on some additional words, please have a look at “10 Words You Mispronounce That Make People Think You’re an Idiot.” This article recently was promoted on Facebook by Chicago newscaster Charlie Meyerson, whose post attracted dozens of comments and contributions to the list.

I implore you to help commemorate National Let’s Stop the Mispronunciation Madness Month by delivering “Feb-roo-ary” clearly to the face of the next person you hear trying to pronounce it any other way.

A blog post should be 300-400 words.

A client recently sent me an article to post on the organization’s blog. Her email noted that it might be “a little long.”

No kidding! It was more than 1,300 words.

In this era of what I like to call the Internet-Induced Attention Deficit Issue, my client’s proposed blog post was about 1,000 words too long. Edit it, slice it, cut it or split it into three posts.

Bloggers and webmasters have become obsessed with SEO — search engine optimization — a collection of techniques that get your page ranked highly by Google, thus attracting visitors to your site and bringing bundles of fame and fortune. The folks at Google say the best way to get their attention is to create a page that is useful for a human reader.

The best length and format for a blog entry

Off the top of my head: Your heading (title) should be inviting but not obscure. “Company Results” doesn’t say anything. “ABC Company Reports Strong Third Quarter Earnings” tells the reader exactly what the article is about. Plus, useful information is getting indexed by Google.

The power of one: Focus your post on just one small topic, a single main idea.

Keep it short: A great length for a blog post is 300-400 words. Your busy reader can breeze through it quickly.

Headings, bullets and images

Two headings are better than one: Use one or two subheadings in your article. They help to break up the text, and make it easier for the busy reader to skim. Formatting the subheadings as “heading2″ (using the HTML tag H2) is a signal to Google that this text is important, so make sure the subheadings contain your keywords.

Magic bullet: Make a list of items easier to read by using bullet points.

Get the picture: An image helps to draw the reader into your story. The caption should summarize your main point. Giving the photo an “alt” tag tells Google what the picture is, and helps to improve your search ranking.

A lengthy, poorly organized blog post is like a meal at Denny’s: There’s way too much on the plate and it’s probably not healthy. Concise writing will keep your readers and your search engines happy.

Word-of-mouth is successful because it’s a marketing message from the most trusted source: someone you know. (Admittedly, not everyone I know carries the same amount of trust.)

Facebook, with its extensive friend networks and ability to communicate personally and honestly, ought to be the ultimate word-of-mouth tool.

If you’re a synagogue executive director or a leader of any non-profit, some of these ideas might help you get more out of Facebook. (Feel free to ask me for help!)

Make Facebook more effective in a synagogue, membership organization or non-profit

• Find volunteers to help manage the Facebook page – it’s one of the few projects that’s easy to “outsource” to someone who is not paid staff.
• Create a Facebook “fan” page (a fan page is much better than trying to create a personal page in the name of your group).
• Create a separate page for Youth Group, Sisterhood, Brotherhood, etc.
• Completely fill out the “info” page, and load it with search-term keywords.
• Be sure to include your organization’s logo.
• Make the page open to the public (not a “closed” group).
• Use all available resources (printed bulletin, email newsletter, public announcements) to encourage members to become fans of your Facebook page.
• Ask youth to show their parents how to become Facebook fans.
• Post at least three to five messages per week.
• Ask members to hit the “like” button and comment on the posts – this helps to give the posts more visibility.
• Encourage members to post comments promoting upcoming events or just telling the world how happy they are to be involved with your group. Even better, get them to include a photo or link to your home page.
• Make posts meaningful, thoughtful, thought-provoking.
• Consider a weekly, brief Torah commentary, or at least a title of the rabbi’s upcoming sermon.

Don’t be afraid to be creative. Just ask people to keep their posts friendly, positive and respectful. Just as you do in real life, if you practice derekh eretz (proper ethical behavior) online, all will be good.

When it comes to synagogue marketing (and very possibly marketing churches, too), technology is trumped by the old stand-by: personal contact. Paid newspaper advertising doesn’t seem to work well, and the jury’s still out on the effectiveness of social media.

As a lifelong professional communicator, and former president of Beth Hillel Congregation Bnai Emunah in Wilmette, Ill., I constructed an informal survey (using Google Docs) which I sent to Chicago-area synagogue executive directors and randomly selected rabbis, as well as Conservative synagogue presidents on a national listserve.

Facing competition from the Internet, iPads, the golf course and other non-religious distractions synagogue leaders are eager to find marketing techniques that will engage current members and attract new people, without draining the temple’s resources.

What’s working and what isn’t

My survey was intended to spark a discussion, but my method was neither “scientific” nor comprehensive.

Respondents were asked to rate the effectiveness of each tactic shown, on a scale of Very Ineffective, Ineffective, Not Sure, Effective and Very Effective. The charts show the percentage of respondents selecting Very Effective OR Effective.

In the first chart below, “new members” refers to prospective members. Since they are not yet members of the congregation, some of the tactics needed to reach them are different from what might work with current members.

Email usage is high

Use of email in congregations is widespread but not universal. Only 5 percent of respondents estimated that all of their members use email regularly, while most said the proportion of people on email was more like half or three-quarters of the congregation.

Social media is used, but not necessarily useful

Synagogues are using Facebook but the value hasn’t been established. Four out of five have a Facebook page, and at least half have a separate page for their youth group. But more than 50% said they weren’t sure whether Facebook (or Twitter) was an effective marketing tool.

It seems to me that Facebook is (or should be) the ultimate cost-effective word-of-mouth marketing tool. If word-of-mouth is so effective in synagogue marketing, shouldn’t Facebook be effective, too?

I’ve got a few ideas on how to use Facebook as a word-of-mouth marketing tool.

Marketing and promotional techniques that work in synagogues

In open-ended questions, several of my respondents mentioned these additional techniques that have been successful:

• Make the synagogue Web site more interactive
• Label some email newsletters as “Special Notice” from the rabbi
• Mailed postcard listing multiple events
• Full-time membership/marketing person on staff
• “Robo” calls or automated phone calls
• Weekly press releases to local paper
• Train support staff on how to speak to prospective members
• Creative programming, events outside the synagogue (“Shabbat at the Beach”)
• Lower dues to certain groups
• Community event participation (float in local parade)