It’s a new year for you and your business, full of challenges and opportunities and surprises. As a new year begins, it’s a good time to sit back and reflect on the successes and failures of the past year, and chart the course for the year to come. Since at Find It Local 411 our expertise is in internet marketing, here are some common marketing mistakes to avoid making in 2012:

1. Ignoring your marketing needs. Because marketing is usually a separate activity from the rest of your business, it’s easy to drop it by the wayside when other concerns come up. Remember: if you’re too busy to keep up with your marketing needs, you can always ignore them. Just don’t expect to stay busy if you do.

2. Shooting in the dark. Ok, so you’ve got a healthy marketing budget put together, but you’re not seeing any results a few months in. How can this happen? Quite simply, there’s a lot of different ways to put your advertisements out there, and if you use the wrong one, you could be reaching the wrong audience, or no audience at all. Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to develop an intelligent marketing strategy, if you know where to begin.

3. Assuming that what you’re doing now is as good as it gets. You may be doing well already, but it’s still a good idea to evaluate where you are, and what you could be doing better. Your customers are constantly changing the way they live, and the best ways to reach them and appeal to them are also changing.

4. Not trying to expand your horizons. There could be whole segments of business that you’re not reaching, because you’re not even trying to reach them, and it hasn’t even occurred to you that they’re out there. Think outside the box!

5. Sticking to what you know. (This can often go hand in hand with the other mistakes written above.) As an entrepreneur you’ve had to wear many hats on a daily basis, and probably do a lot of your own marketing work; but you could be ignoring some of the best opportunities, simply because they’re outside of your areas of expertise.

Whatever your marketing needs, Find It Local 411 is here to help. We’re determined to make sure that you know how effective your marketing efforts are, and how to find and reach the audience you need. With years of experience crafting and implementing marketing strategies for clients in a wide variety of industries, we’re confident that 2012 will be the year your marketing really takes flight.

Every company is in many ways unique, both in the composition of the people who work for it, and in the people that it serves, its customers. When devising a marketing strategy, there are two important factors to consider:

1. Who are you?

2. Who are your customers?

Who you are, as a business, can be broadly defined as the product you produce, and the way in which you deliver them to customers. As simple as it sounds, it’s important to go about answering these two questions as if you don’t already know the answer, because there’s a good chance that you don’t actually know the answers as well as you thought you did. With a small business, you may find upon closer examination (or you may know right away) that what you started out doing and how you had planned to do it has evolved to better meet the conditions of your market, and therefore that your initial line about who you are and what you do no longer applies. This isn’t a bad thing—an entrepreneur is nothing if not adaptive—but it is worth taking stock of. You’ll probably even find that you’ve been doing a lot of things right without even thinking about them.

Who your customers are is tricky, because again you may enter into the thought process with a number of potentially false preconceived notions about the answer. Perhaps the easiest mistake to make in crafting a marketing strategy, which could lead to the complete failure of the strategy, is to assume that your customers are coming from the same place that you are. This usually takes the form of assuming that they know something about your product that they don’t (but often, they’d love to).

You need to sort out, to the best of your abilities, the answers to both of these important questions, because otherwise you could end up getting your marketing in front of the wrong audience. Talk to Find It Local 411 about effectively finding the answers to these questions. We take the time to help our clients develop the strategies which will help them bring their products and customers together, and refine their marketing and sales processes.

Using social media to connect with your customers can be an incredibly powerful tool for bringing in business, and it should not be ignored. However, if implemented poorly, it can also be a waste of time and resources which could have been devoted to more effective marketing tools, so it’s highly important to do things right from the get-go. Here are a few guidelines for maximizing the potential of social media.

1. Integrate your social media with your other marketing tools. Your Facebook or Twitter page shouldn’t look generic; it should be an extension of your brand. Find It Local 411 can design you a page that will continue the unique look of your website, newsletters and print design. If you’re launching a new social media account, tell your customers about it in your other marketing! Your newsletters, mobile marketing, and blog should all simultaneously announce your foray into the social world. If you’re running a brick-and-mortar store, put a sign in the window. Your customers will love being in the know, provided you make it worth their while, which brings us to…

2. Sweeten the deal. In general, people don’t follow a business on Twitter or Facebook, or sign in on FourSquare just because they like being there (though that definitely helps); the generally accepted practice for social media is to reward the customers who follow you for their attention. You don’t have to break the bank or suddenly start selling your products below cost. A small promotion can go a long way when it comes to securing customer loyalty.

3. Make it fun. People have their social media accounts for fun. Sure, they might do business through them in some ways, but they still expect it to be an enjoyable experience, and they should. This can be helpful for you, too, because running a business can be stressful. Let running your social media account be fun for you, too. While this can be helpful for you, it can also make great business sense. Customers like dealing with people, even electronically. They respond to being treated genuinely, and with respect.
Getting into social media can be tricky, but it can also be highly rewarding. Find It Local 411 can help you make the most of this powerful marketing tool, and give you lots of advice on how to make it work for your specific business. Contact us. We love making your customers love you.

Whether you’re in traditional or online retail, now is the time to plan out your advertising campaign for the holiday season. Find It Local 411 is here to help craft a marketing campaign which will help your customers (and you) have a the best holiday season yet. Here are a few tips for putting the shine on your marketing this year:

1. Use text messaging promotions. Include in your television, radio, and internet advertising a code to text for special deals in-store (or online). This can be especially effective leading up to Black Friday, when customers are already out shopping, and eager to get the best deals possible.

2. Emphasize the gift-worthiness of your product. Whether you’re selling shoes or life insurance, this is the season of giving, and that sentiment appeals to customers. If your product isn’t something that is traditionally given as a gift, your messaging could still be gift-focused. Get creative (we’re here to help with that). You could even craft a gift basket or gift wrapping ideas for your products. There are a lot of possibilities to explore, don’t rule anything out without thinking it through!

3. Be proactive. Customers are out there looking, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll find you and your products without some help! After all, there are a lot of competitors for their attention at this time of year, and they want to spend as little time looking for and purchasing the perfect gift as possible. Talk to Find It Local 411 about the best way to market your particular product. We know we can help.

We’ve done enough web design for a broad spectrum of clients over the years that we’ve learned a lot about the process.

When you hire someone to build a professional web site for your business, it can be daunting to work out with your designer what you need from your site, how it should be presented, and how much it will cost. It’s even possible that when you begin the process, you don’t know exactly what you need out of a web site, or what realistic expectations should be moving forward. Fortunately, we’ve been through the process enough times that we know what questions to ask and what to tell a client to expect in terms of costs and deliverables. Here are a few things to look for in a site design that will hope you narrow in on what your priorities are.

1. A Good Site Will Focus on Your Strengths

If the majority of visitors to your site are going to be looking for your flagship product, they won’t want to click through three pages, or learn more about your brand before they can find it. The difference between telling a customer more after you’ve got their attention and making them work to find what they want could be the difference between a closed sale and a walkaway.

2. A Good Site Is Easy To Use

If done wrong, a site’s design and usability can be in conflict with each other at any given time. When that happens, it may not matter how good it looks if it’s not going to make the conversions your business needs. It may seem counter-intuitive, but making sure that the information on your web site is properly organized can be a lot of work, and it’s well worth the extra effort to make the finished product intuitive for users. At the end of the day, a site which doesn’t help you sell your products or services is a worthless site.

3. A Good Site Is Brand-Conscious

It’s important that you’re projecting the same image across platforms, from your social media pages to print advertising to your web site. This covers the copy which is written on the page, the visual look of the site, and the overall “feel” of the presentation. If you don’t have a good handle on what your unified brand is before you start the process of creating a web site, that’s worth mentioning to your designer. We’ll happily help you develop and hone your branding while working on your site.

Direct email marketing can be a great way to reach a large customer base, to let them know of the exciting things you’re doing for them—if it’s done right. The bad news that if a mailer is poorly executed, or poorly timed, your message can fall on deaf ears, no matter how great it is. The good news is that Find It Local 411 has the expertise and technology to make direct email marketing one of the best things you can do for your business, and we’d love to put them to work for you.

With us, you get the complete package

From graphic design of your e-newsletters to data entry to helping you develop winning marketing strategies, Find It Local 411 is equipped to be your go-to resource for email marketing. Even if your email list currently exists as a stack of paper contact forms from a trade show, or business cards from a drawing, we can handle all of the details!

Results, results, results

We’re always focused on the bottom line for our clients, which is getting them the marketing services they need to grow their business. We’re focused on results just as much as you are, because we want to keep you as our client. We can use a number of metrics to help you keep track of how effective your email marketing campaigns have been, and work with you to develop new strategies and adapt to changing conditions in the local economy.

Email marketing can be a great tool for a wide variety of industries and business. Whether you’re an optometrist offering a special on eye exams, a restaurant letting customers know about your new location or menu items, or an online retailer offering a rotating set of weekly deals, Find It Local 411 has the tools you need to keep track of your customers, and keep them informed!

Ever get the feeling that your newsletters aren’t reaching your audience? Even when you have a large subscriber list, and you’re putting out great, informative content, sometimes your open rate can be low, and it can feel like you’re talking in a crowded room. Often, how you present your content can be as important as the content itself, because if you don’t get your subscribers’ attention, it won’t matter how informative and useful the information you have to convey is. At Find It Local 411, we’re experts at making sure that your newsletters stand out in a crowded inbox.

Focused on your goals

The first thing we consider when we’re beginning an email newsletter design is what your goal with the newsletter is. Are you promoting new services and products? Are you providing information as a perk to your members (thus showing them that they’re important to you)? Are you keeping people aware of growing trends? We help you to ensure that the key message, and any associated call to action, is front and center, so even if your readers skim the rest of the newsletter, they get the most important part of the message.

Putting on your best face

It’s important to us that no part of your messaging, from your web site to your social media presence to your e-newsletter is generic. It has to come as an extension of who you are as a business, and remain consistent with your overall identity. This overarching approach informs our visual design, meaning that your newsletter will look just as good as any part of your marketing. We can even include video content embedded directly into the email, so that you can address your audience in a more personal (and unique) way.

With Find It Local 411, your identity and your message are what’s important to us. We have the tools to help you reach your audience in the best way possible, and we love helping your business succeed.

You’ll hear a lot of discussion of marketing and advertising that focuses on how your ads and website look, or how catchy your tagline is, or what your call to action is, and these are all important aspects of a marketing campaign. Professional web design and a marketing campaign that focuses its efforts to where they are most needed are incredibly important. What is also important, and what is easy to overlook, is a relatively new (and increasingly important) marketing tool: Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

What is SEO?

Simply put, SEO consists of an ongoing effort to make you more visible on the web, so that when someone searches for your business on using a search engine (like Google, Yahoo, or Bing), your business is in the top search results. Studies have shown that the vast majority of people who use search engines only click through to the first few results, so getting your site toward the top is crucial, and SEO is the process of increasing your site’s visibility to search engines, and on the web in general.

It Starts With Keywords

Let’s say you run a dry cleaning business called “Scrubbed Suits,” in Valparaiso. You want potential clients to find your business on search engines, but the majority of the time, they don’t know anything about you or your business. They’re not going to search for the name of your business, or your address. They’re going to search for “dry cleaning in Valparaiso,” or any number of other combinations of keywords, which are unique and user-generated. At Find It Local 411, we begin our SEO process by determining which keywords are valuable to your business, and who’s searching for them. We then integrate those keywords into your web identity, and make sure that search engines and their users are able to locate and use your site.

It’s About Traffic

Traffic to your web site is divided (generally) into four categories: direct traffic from users manually entering your web site’s url into their web browser, traffic from links to your site on other web sites, search traffic, and ad banner-generated traffic. Ad traffic is generally paid for on a per-click basis, and for some keywords (generally the most competitive) the cost per click can be very high, and getting the traffic your site needs could stack up quickly. AdWords (or other pay-per-click services) are often still a sound investment, but smart SEO is necessary for directing qualified organic traffic to your site, and can be a far more cost-effective way to draw a higher volume of traffic.

Chances are you’re already running an efficient business which provides excellent services to its customers. What you need now is to get out there and grow your business, and Find It Local 411 is there to help, with a full suite of services designed to raise your profile, and your sales.

In this day and age, your company’s web site is the single most important part of your advertising apparatus. As far as the web (and its users) are concerned, it is where your brand lives; a place where potential customers go to get a sense of who you are, what you do, and how well you do it. In a properly-designed marketing campaign, it is the hub of all of your other advertising activities. Your mobile marketing, AdWords and social media campaigns—and even print ads and billboards—all point directly to your web site. But once you’ve got their attention, what do you do with it, and how do you keep it? How do you use this opportunity to close a sale? These are some of the toughest questions an entrepreneur faces, and fortunately, Find It Local 411 is there to help you answer them.

Custom Web Development

You don’t run a generic business, and you don’t provide generic service to your customers. That’s why a cookie-cutter web site for your company won’t cut it. Before we start writing our first line of code for your site, we’ll make sure that we know what your brand is and who you are, and we’ll tailor your site to meet the specific goals you have for your business, whether you’re running an online store, or you need an informational site for your consulting business. Experience has shown us that a successful site has to be informative, easy to use, and visually appealing, and we integrate all of these elements seamlessly into every site we design.

Your Web Site (Not Ours)

We don’t have to tell you that things change fast in the world of small business, and it’s important to us that your web site be as agile and adaptive as you are. That’s why we use the WordPress platform to build our Content Management System, so that once your site is up and running, you can add and remove content all on your own, no coding required. This usability is paired with our always responsive support, so that any time you need us, we’re only an email or phone call away.

We pride ourselves on the work we do to help our clients get the absolute most value possible out of their web site, by tailor-making their sites from the ground up to reflect their unique identity and services, and giving them the support they need, when they need it. Our services are all geared toward helping the end users—your customers—have a positive experience every time they interact with you online.

It’s important in today’s competitive environment to have your own web site as the standard way to tell customers about you and what you can do for them. It’s also important to make yourself easy to find, by actively putting your brand out in front of potential business. With over 600 million users worldwide, Facebook is a terrific way to be found. However, with that large a user base (and growing every day), it’s more and more important that you make your business stand out in the crowd, and Find It Local 411 has the knowledge and expertise to do just that for you.

• We create Facebook pages that are specifically designed for your brand, incorporating the “look” that works for you, that distinguishes you from all of the other sites on Facebook. This is especially important when you consider that Facebook might be the first point of contact between a customer and you. We can use that first impression to show them what’s special and unique about your business, which is something a generic page simply isn’t equipped to do. Remember: you might never get a second chance.

• We can embed your content—such as videos and images—directly into your facebook page. We’ll also always include links to your other social media accounts, and of course your website. In short, we ensure that any way a potential customer can get ahold of you is made available to them, right on your Facebook page.

• The “Like” button is the most important feature of a Facebook page. People who click “Like” when they visit your page, even if they never return to the page again, will receive your updates in their news feed. Also, their contacts will receive notification that they have “liked” your page, which could in turn lead to even more traffic. We make sure that this important feature is emphasized in our designs, to maximize the number of conversions your page generates.

It’s so important that the impression you make with your Facebook page increases a potential customer’s interest in your business, leaving them wanting to know more about you, instead of simply clicking away. By making your page unique, user-friendly, and attractive, Find It Local 411 can help you get the traffic your business needs.