We
believe that success in online marketing for a small business isn’t just about
the right set of tools. It’s also about the know-how.
We’ve
spent a lot of our focus recently on packaging and sharing that know-how, based
on our decades of experience in online marketing. The result? Our set of free online marketing guides,
known as The Download. We have guides developed for several
industries including nonprofit, retail, real estate, and many more on the way.
TIP:
Get The Download, our comprehensive and easy-to-understand guide to online marketing.
The
goal of these guides is to give small business owners and nonprofit
professionals a comprehensive, but approachable map of the modern online
marketing world.
We get
excited about the opportunities that digital marketing tools can
bring to small businesses, humanitarian causes, and more. This is our way of
highlighting those opportunities and telling people how to take advantage of
them.
As our
next step in this effort, we’ve been working with a local Constant Contact
customer to actually implement the recommendations outlined in The
Download, step-by-step.
We’re
going to share that story in a series of blog posts, of how we used our guide
to give a local business a marketing “makeover,” and to bring a real small
business owner closer to achieving her goals.
This is
the beginning of that story and I’d like to start by sharing a little bit more
of our philosophy behind creating and sharing The Download.
A guide made for the real world
After
releasing The Download, our team was eager to test the guide in the
real world.
As much
as we love marketing (we are an online marketing company after
all), we know that most small business owners have a lot on their plates and
they can’t devote all of their time and money to marketing efforts.
Not
only do we want to recommend tactics and tools that are effective, but we also
want to make sure our recommendations are realistic. That means:
·
Tools and strategies that can be set up and managed in a
reasonable amount of time
·
Tactics that generate a return for the small business owner
·
Plans that are flexible, able to accommodate the shifting
schedule and priorities of a modern entrepreneur
·
Explanations that are easy to understand, especially for
non-experts
We get
it — most small business owners are marketers by necessity. The vast majority
aren’t working with online marketing teams and are lucky to have just a few
hours each week to dedicate purely to marketing. Nevertheless, marketing is
essential to the success of a modern small business and can’t be neglected.
There needs to be a balance.
That’s
what this project is all about — taking our online marketing guide into the
real world to help small business owners find that balance and implement online
marketing plans that work to serve their goals – in a way that works with their
lifestyle.
Introducing Dawn, owner of La Provence in Rockport,
Massachusetts
On a
brisk November day, my Constant Contact teammates Ashley, Patrick, and I drove from our office up to
Rockport, Massachusetts, an adorable seaside New England town full of small
shops, restaurants, and beaches. It’s a major destination during the summer
months, but this afternoon, it’s quiet and peaceful.
We’re
in town to visit Dawn, a Constant Contact customer and owner of La
Provence, a small store selling French goods. Her store is simply
adorable and represents everything I love about these small New England shops.
It’s cozy, warm, exudes personality, and is filled with unique little finds I’d
be unlikely to stumble upon if I were shopping online.
Dawn
warmly welcomes us inside and we enter the shop, with The Download guide
in-hand, excited to team up with her to take full advantage of Constant
Contact’s tools and marketing know-how. In order to know how to help her, we
wanted to get to know her — how she came to be a business owner, what her
goals and priorities are, and what her day-to-day is like.
Becoming a business owner
“I was
actually waitressing across the street from the old location of La Provence. I
was friendly with both owners. Bill, who was one of the owners, came by to pick
up his tuna melt (with onions and no tomatoes) and approached me about buying
the store,” Dawn tells us.
“Initially,
I thought he was crazy. But then I thought about it. I approached my dad who’s
a business owner himself and he was just like, ‘Go! Do it!’. He also told me to
be ready to work.”
She
didn’t waste any time and decided to seize the opportunity.
“The
other store owner trained me for about three hours and the next day we signed
papers. They left and there I was, behind a register with inventory to sell. I
was a business owner.”
“That
first summer I was open, I was in the store about 70 hours per week. I just
showed up and was open every day and every night, and I worked my butt off. But
I realized I liked it and I just kept going. I really threw myself into it. And
I’ve been running with it ever since.”
Nowadays,
things are a little different. Dawn has three kids, her store is off the
ground, and she is turning her attention toward the future.
Dawn’s goals for her small business
When I
spoke to Dawn about her hopes for her business, she, of course, wanted to
increase her revenue, but more specifically she wanted to create an online
revenue stream for her store that would sustain her in the winter and spring.
While Rockport is a bustling summer destination, and Dawn’s store attracts some
holiday season business, the early months of the year can be quiet.
“We’re
so busy for about three months, but there are nine more months in a year, so my
goal was figuring out how can I still sustain the business during that
time.”
Dawn
initially focused her marketing efforts on email
marketing. She dabbled in Google ads, but had some difficulty, and
found herself relying heavily on word-of-mouth advertising. Most of her online
customers were people who had heard about the store during an actual visit in
the summer months.
As we chatted,
Dawn expressed a desire to continue engaging with and catering to her current
customers, but at the same time, to expand her customer base beyond the people
who were able to discover her store in-person.
Longer-term,
Dawn shared that her goal would be to pivot from needing to open and work the
store herself every day to a focus on managing the overall business operations
and marketing. She’d like to carve some time out of her busy business schedule
to focus on her other important roles: mother of three and a highly engaged
member of her local community.
The road ahead: Using The Download as our map
With
Dawn’s goals in mind, we put our heads together, cracked open The
Download and got to planning. We kicked off this project in November
and used the holiday season as a launch and experimentation opportunity,
working with Dawn to try new marketing tactics and observe her current
processes.
In the
months ahead, we’ll continue to check in with Dawn and to build on our
experimentations to move her closer to her goals of engaging current customers,
attracting new customers, and creating a sustainable, year-round revenue stream
from her online store.
Some of
the things we’re already working on with Dawn that we’ll be sharing details on
in later posts include:
·
Launching a new business website for La Provence, with a brand
new online store
·
Optimizing Dawn’s email marketing to engage current customers
and welcome new ones
·
Updating her social media presence and strategies
·
Ensuring her store’s business listings are optimized to properly
showcase her business
·
Exploring how content creation can serve Dawn in all her online
marketing goals.
My hope
is that, through this story, we’ll be able to show you how you can take
advantage of the latest online marketing tools and know-how, regardless of your
level of experience or comfort with the world of digital marketing.
We say this a lot here, but it’s because we believe it
— You’ve got this!
If our
tools and know-how can work for Dawn’s business, they can work for yours. Whether
your goal is to grow your business or to simply carve out more time for
yourself for other things, we have tools and guidance to help you.
Check
back on our online marketing blog or subscribe to our newsletter to continue
to follow Dawn’s story. In the meantime, you can dive into our online marketing
guide yourself and start trying out our recommendations to transform your
business or organization.
Not sure where to start with marketing? That’s why we
created The Download.
We know you're busy
trying to grow your big idea. Because we work closely with small businesses
like yours every day. Drawing on decades of experience, we're now sharing our
online marketing knowledge in a free guide that's packed with tips, examples of
what works and what doesn't, and a whole lot more, like:
*How people find you online*
*How to set yourself up for success*
*How it all comes together*
*How online marketing can work for you*
*How people find you online*
*How to set yourself up for success*
*How it all comes together*
*How online marketing can work for you*
Jake Link http://www.jakelinkwebsite.com
Senior Content Manager at Constant Contact
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