Lorraine Ball Named to IBJ Most Influential Women List

Each year Indianapolis Business Journal recognizes local women who have demonstrated professional excellence and leadership in their careers and community service. IBJ first published a list of influential women in 1996. They included government and civic leaders and top executives in a variety of industries.

This year, as the list was expanded to include women from the small business community Lorraine Ball, founder of Roundpeg, Indy’s leading small business marketing firm, was added to the list. Other 2008 recipients included:
<ul>
<li>Joyce Sommers  – Executive Director Of the Indianapolis Art Center</li>
<li>Melina Kennedy – Baker and Daniels, who I hope will run for Mayor in a few years</li>
<li>Claudette Einhorn and Yvonne Shaeen – Civic leaders and community volunteers</li>
<li>Susan Brock Williams – Purdue University</li>
<li>Alecia DeCoudreaus VP General Counsel, LIlly USA</li>
<li>Beverley Pitts President, University of Indianapolis</li>
<li>Linda McCoy – Pastor, The Garden</li>
<li>Teresa Lubbers – State Senate</li>
<li>Kathleen Givens Lucas = Bose Mckinney &amp; Evans</li>
<li>Margo Lacy Eccles – VP LDI</li>
<li>Melissa Profitt Reese – Ice Miller</li>
<li>Ann Shane, VP Bio Crossroads</li>
<li>Ann M. DeLaney – Founding Partner DeLaney &amp; DeLaney</li>
<li>Ellen Rosenthal, President &amp; CEO Conner Prairie</li>
<li>Sharon O”Donoghue Exec Director Business Ownership Initiative of Indiana ( The other Small Business leader on the list)</li>
<li>Susan Williams – President Indiana Sports Corp</li>
</ul>

Improving Your Website

Creating a productive website does not require more flash or more pictures.  A great website requires simple navigation and great content.

Content that is interesting to your visitors, and eye catching for search engines.  The challenge is to find a balance between the two different audiences.

Search engines like lots of copy, containing key words, repeatedly if possible.   You readers, with serious attention deficit want you to get to the point quickly.

The key is to be sure you know the very best phases. One tool you can use to find a starting point for word selection in your copy is the keyword tool from Google Ad Words. Simply type in a phrase you believe clients will use when looking for your type of business and the tool will provide a series of phrases, and how often they are used when by consumers searching for you.

For example:  I selected “small business marketing” and discovered “marketing strategy” was searched significantly more often – on average 201,000 times a month, and “small business ideas” a phrase I have never deliberately used, is searched more than 20,000 times a month.   While not the most popular, it has a steady following, and would be interesting to add to the mix!

The lesson for you?  Take the time to reserach the best key words, and include them  in your writing.  Don’t over do it with text which reads like this: Small business marketing strategy should include novel ideas for small business owners, which expand their current small business marketing activites. While the engines will love it, your readers won’t!

Need help with your website?  Roundpeg offers great starter sites as low at $950

Warning: Shameless Self Promotion

In April, when we launched the new roundpeg website we included the blog: Business Notes as a way of driving traffic, sharing good content, and occasionally pimping what we do. To be fair to our readers, I am telling you in advance this particular post is about pimping what we do. So, be warned, and if you aren’t interested in samples of our work, skip this post!

Now that we have narrowed down the audience: We really wanted to show off some of the websites we have been working on. Built on a WordPress platform, we are really excited about how much variety and personality we have been able to build into these simple sites. And the best part? They are easy to maintain, so our clients, (small business owners) can have an affordable, vibrant and dynamic site.

Check out: www.sunnymoondj.com, www.chefjj.com, www.gomomfitness.com ( this one is very pink), www.aballstudio.com, www.turningpoint-consulting.com, and www.makeroomnow.com.

Need help with your small business web site?  Call Roundpeg today!

Creative Partnerships for Small Business Developement

One of the fastest ways to establish your small marketing business is to establish a partnership with other small businesses, says Duct Tape Marketing blogger John Jantsch.

His ideas for like minded partnerships as well as outside the box partnerships can be found here.

For more information on this subject consider ordering a copy of Lorraine’s book : Confessions of a Networking Junkie

Build Relationships with Good Use of Web 2.0 Tools

Small business marketing is a different animal than marketing for a large corporation. As a small business you don’t have a budget to reach the masses, so to compete you need to have a more personal relationship with your clients.

Web 2.0 tools such as Blogs, e-zines or newsletters allow clients and prospects to get to know you as the first step in building a trusting relationship.

Not sure how to get started?  Which tools make the most sense for you?  Check out my Seminar: Web 2.0 and Why Do I Care on October 30. It is being offered as part of Rainmaker University.

Good Ideas are Worth Copying!

In marketing, there are few original ideas.  Every designer or writer gets inspiration from somewhere. According to the author of Ditch the Dusty Widget every small business owner should adopt this strategy when it comes to developing their own marketing material.  She suggests:

In your “Best Practices” hard file, you should collect those types of marketing tools that spark ideas for how to market your own business, or that simply grab your attention and strike you as really well done. Even if the advertisement is for a furniture store and you sell fishing gear, keep the ad if it contains imagery, style elements, a unique offer or some other clever marketing technique that you could repurpose for your own needs.

In addition to hard copy, I recommend collecting websites as well. I have document where i post links to sites I consider worth saving.  Maybe they have a cool layout, fun headline, or maybe the site is just a great resource for inspiration and new ideas.

Save the good and the bad…  whether you are going to do the creative work yourself, or turn the project over to a professional firm, knowing what you like and don’t like on the front end will make the process much smoother, with the end result something you are really happy with.

Move Marketing to the Top of Your To-Do List!

Do you have all the business you need?  This week, and in your pipeline?  If the answer is yes, then you can relax, skip this blog post, and work on something else.

If not pay attention.  -

• MARKETING is an important activity – It is what will feed your pipeline.
• MARKETING is not just advertising – it is networking, direct mail, email, blogging, and much more.
• MARKETING does not have to be expensive or time consuming
• if you are serious about your busienss – MARKETING is mandatory.

In a recent post on Duct Tape Marketing John Jansch says:

Marketing is and must become a habitual activity in your business. You must live by the marketing calendar or die by the lack of time available to complete the greasing of the squeaky wheel.

So what is your habit?  Do you set aside time weekly to evaluate what is working, and why your phone is or ins’t ringing?  He goes on to suggest:

The only way to find time for marketing is to plan for it. Create a marketing theme for every month of the year and then build marketing activities on a daily and weekly basis around the theme.

I loved this idea – It allows you to tie all the pices of your marketing together.  Messages you create in blogs can be used in newsletters, and emails.   A little planning goes a long way to making it easier to manage your marketing.

On-Line and Off-Line Work Together

In a recent post, Small Busienss Marketing Expert – John Jansch of DuctTape Marketing asked the question Are You Too On-Line?   My immediate reaction was surprise… his title made it seem as if he was backing away from his solid support of on-line strategies.

But he didn’t disappoint me.  He goes on to reinforce what I have been telling my clients for a long time, the on and offline strategies compliment each other.  While your website is the center point of your marketing it doesn’t stand alone.    You can not run your entire business from behind your computer screen.

Examples of how to blend the elements

1. Get out! Network then bring the cards home and send an email or better yet, MAKE A PHONE CALL ( for you Gen y’s and Gen next in the audience, some people actually talk into that device you use for texting)
2. Send targeted direct mail, and drive traffic to a personalized URL more information or even order fulfillment

For other ideas, read his origianl post:

The new small business marketing masterpiece: wallet mailers

As companies shift more and more of their marketing budget to the internet, direct mail while more expensive, will become more effective because people receive less.

You will however continue to need to find creative ways to get noticed, one suggestion my Intern Emily found – wallet mailers.  check out the article by Dave Russell

Read full article

It is Not How Much Money You Spend

When I was the brand manager for Bryant, I had a significantly smaller budget then my Carrier counterpart, so I learned to do more with less.

Those same techniques serve me well today as a small business consultant, helping my clients find creative ways to reach their customers. Charlie Cook from the Marketing Insider has written a good post on the topic. Yes he is promoting his book, but his advice is solid:

Give something away for free

Use publicity to attract attention

Use eMail appropriately are all solid pieces of advices.

Remember, when it comes to marketing, it is not how much money you spend, but how well you spend it that makes the difference.

Looking for more specifics check out Promotions on a Shoestring on September 23rd at Rainmaker University.

Less is More

When it comes to tagging your content for your blog or website sometimes “Less is More”  at least according to SEO expert Michael Gray. In a recent post he explains why fewer categories and tags make it easier for Google and other search engines to find exactly the right information on your website.

He suggests:

Don’t display full posts on your homepage or in your archives, only display the full content on the single post page.

Categories, Dates, or Tags, choose one and block google from crawling the others. I’m a big fan of using categories because it helps set up a SEO Siloing structure, but if you prefer tags or date based, go for it.

Limit the number of paths Google can use to find your content. If you choose categories as your primary structure keep your posts in a few categories as possible.

This is a great strategy for small business owners trying to incorporate blogging into their marketing mix.  It makes it much easier to find a few categories and post, post, post, rather then splitting hairs

And while I won’t be going back and redoing the hundreds of posts I have already written I will be taking a more streamlined approach to future posts.

Clients Want Shortcuts

In this day and age, we are all over stimulated and bombarded with information on every front.  Want more clients in this cluttered environment? Walt Goshert, small business marketing expert suggests creating building a step-by-step process into your marketing strategy that your clients will find you easy to work with and a refreshing change from the constant information overload.

Read more.

E-course for Small Business Marketing

Use the power of the internet to build your small business by offering an ecourse. An ecourse demonstrates your expertise on your specialty by teaching others about it. eCourses help establish you as a subject matter expert, keeping you in front of prospective clients, and increasing your chances of future business.

Read more.

Try, Measure, Adjust and Try Again

As a mediocre science student, the one thing I really understood was the scientific process.  This structured approach to testing any theory or idea made perfect sense.  Try something, measure the results, adjust your variables and try again.

In theory, this same process works for marketing.  Try a campaign, measure the results, adjust and try again.  The problem: traditional advertising is tough to measure.  How many of the phone calls you receive this week are really directly a result of the the advertisement you ran on Sunday?

The internet is a marketer’s dream! Rapid results, readily available from a wide variety of sources are at your fingertips on the web.

Bryan Eisenberg, author of Always Be Testing, shared ideas on this subject with John Jansch of of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.  Some of the tools he suggested:

• Google Website Optimizer tests the effectiveness of one headline or offer from another.
• Google Analytics gives you a better feel for how people view your pages.
• You can access the workforce ofAmazon’s Mechanical Turk or UserTesting.com and get usability testing done on your web pages.

Take advantage of these tools to improve your site and on-line marketing.  Test, Test, and Test again!

It’s Not Just What You Say, But How You Say It!

Alexandra Brown, author of a popular small business marketing blog wrote a great post recently about how to create copy that sells.  Her suggestions work equally well for web copy, brochures, email or blog posts.

She suggests:

1. Be reader-centered, not writer-centered.
2. Focus on the benefits — not just the features.
3. Draw them in with a killer headline.
4. Use engaging subheads.
5. Be conversational.
6. Nix the jargon.
7. Keep it brief and digestible.
8. Use testimonials when possible.
9. Ask for the order!
10. Have your copy proofread!

To this list I would add the final copy check…   How many times do you use the words, you, your, vs WE, US, OUR, and I..   Customer focused literature, should be 2 x 1 2nd person to 1st person.  ( and our customers is still about you)

Write about what they need, if you get their attention, you will earn the right to talk about what you sell.