Small business marketing

[Mark Atkinson]

Thanks Dave. I have actually drawn up a whole marketing plan dealing with our marketing procedures in both the short and long term. It does include cold calling and such things. What I'm trying to do is "kick start" the business with some form of paid advertising. Basically, I want to get Red Giant out in front of as many potential customers in as little time as possible.

I know that I'm not going to see amazing results immediately, but while we have the funds available I want to make us of them to advertise effectively in conjunction with our "free" advertising efforts such as cold-calling, emailing etc.

Essentially I'm asking what the best way to utilize R10k worth of marketing money would be. I see that Marketing Motor isn't accepting any new clients at the moment, but that they have another program running called Sales Motor. At $299 though, it seems a bit steep. Makes me wonder whether they cost-benefit ratio would be favourable.

[Dave A]

I see that Marketing Motor isn't accepting any new clients at the moment, but that they have another program running called Sales Motor. At $299 though, it seems a bit steep. Makes me wonder whether they cost-benefit ratio would be favourable.

Giving your segment, I'm not sure they'd take you on with their sales motor deal anyway. It's a full service package and they have already turned away would-be clients where they see problems in producing a healthy ROI.

[Mark Atkinson]

Giving your segment, I'm not sure they'd take you on with their sales motor deal anyway. It's a full service package and they have already turned away would-be clients where they see problems in producing a healthy ROI.

Well I have sent them an email asking for an honest opinion on whether or not they would be able to do anything worthwhile for us. Either way, I'd be interested to hear their views.

Mark give google adwords a try since you prepay you can limit your spend but you need a website to point to.

Google Adwords is already in the marketing strategy. The problem, however, is finding keywords that aren't that competitive within our niche in order to run a cost-effective campaign. We've tried a campaign before for our original web design venture. We targeted a bunch of the most competitive keywords around and needless to say, the campaign failed miserably. This time around I will be sure to go about the campaign slightly more intelligently.

Also, although I think your suggestion for giving away something like an iPad has merit, I don't think it's viable at this time. You need a pretty big following on Facebook/Twitter to get something like that going Viral. Even then, people often just participate for the prize and then forget all about your business thereafter. In other words, it doesn't target a segment of the market in particular.

Whenever I think of giving away a prize via a competition, I always think of the opportunity cost. Let's just say my thoughts generally get the better of me.

[Nienke]

This time around I will be sure to go about the campaign slightly more intelligently.

Mark, I hope you share your knowledge, and won't mind to let me know how you'll go about deciding your keywords more intelligent then last time. Maybe I should review mine.

[Mark Atkinson]

Mark, I hope you share your knowledge, and won't mind to let me know how you'll go about deciding your keywords more intelligent then last time. Maybe I should review mine.

The idea is to do keyword research using a keyword tool such as Google's keyword tool to search for keywords related to a broad keyword that you enter. The idea is to choose keywords that pertain to your business which have more local searches (if you're a local business) per month but a lower competition.

Then you need to make sure that your Google ads (the text) is relevant to your keyword which is relevant to the landing page.

It's no simple task. It's a case of continuously monitoring and tweaking your Adwords campaign in order to attain the best results.

I am still struggling with my campaign for web design.

Oh, and please let us know how it went with Marketing Motor

I must be honest, I'm probably going to cancel my Marketing Motor subscription. I'm not happy with the results I have received this far. The quality scores I've attained with the program are dreadful and I'm being forced to pay R40+ per click for some ads.

That's not to say that it won't work for other fields, though. I'm just saying that for web design, it hasn't worked at all. And I don't feel like I've received sufficient guidance from the guys at Marketing Motor to help me make the program more effective (despite several efforts to get that guidance). Not happy with the "generic answers" I tend to receive from them.

They obviously have a lot of other satisfied clients in less competitive fields, though. I believe Neville and Dave are two such examples.

[BryanCasson]

I am still struggling with my campaign for web design.

Yes Mark, Web Design is a tricky one. I too struggled in the beginning with this one, but now I finally have quality scores of between 8-10. The main reason is that the competition is quite large. You need to break the campaign down to become highly targeted. Eg. Johannesburg Web Design going to a page on your design services in JHB, or Wordpress Web Design going to your wordpress web design services. Once these sub topics start to perform then you can go and try add Web Design.... presto, quality score of 8/10 rather than 4/10 on the first attempt.