Selling your products online can be a daunting task, especially if you’ve never done it before. It can seem like an unwelcome distraction when you’re working hard to keep things moving smoothly off the web, and if you’re not the tech-savvy type, it can seem like an impossible hurdle to overcome. But at Find It Local 411, we’re all about helping our clients overcome seemingly impossible hurdles, and build their business in ways they didn’t even know they could.

Where to start

Depending on your needs and products, the easiest place to start could be putting your products (or even just the most popular ones) on the Find It Local 411 Marketplace. It’s a great introduction for those who want to get their feet wet selling online, and it’s easy to scale it up to sell your whole line of products there! Best of all, it’s completely free to set up an account. Check it out! When you’re ready to take it to the next level, we’re there for you again, with our complete suite of web design and development, plus a wide variety of marketing services to get your products and your brand out there.

Why you need to do it

We love helping businesses thrive locally, but that doesn’t mean that people everywhere shouldn’t be able to use and enjoy your great products. Also, we don’t have to tell you that sales in certain products and regions can fluctuate from time to time; wouldn’t it be nice to have sales someplace else pick up when your local sales take a dip? Better still, there could be entire markets for your product that you haven’t tapped yet, because they have no way to find you—until now, that is.

Whether you’re just starting out marketing your products online, thinking of re-vamping your store’s functionality, or marketing your products to a new audience, our online shopping, design, and marketing team can help you get your business to where you want it to be.

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.

You’ve been here before: you keep wanting to budget the time and funds necessary to really market your business, to finally develop the niche you want to work in with the clientele you want, and make the move from cash flow neutral to cash flow positive. You keep wanting to strategize and more fully develop your business. But just taking whatever clients you can get in order to pay the bills—and working long hours to make short-term project deadlines—always seem to take precedence.

Fortunately, 2012 can be the year that you finally start to take your business in the direction you want it to go. The first step is to dedicate the time—just a few hours—to sit down, maybe with your business partner or a few of your closest associates, and determine where you want your business to be. Obviously, it’s important to set realistic expectations, and determine concrete steps from where you are to where you want to be.

Next, talk to us at Find It Local 411, and find about what we can do for you. It’s important to us that we help you put your best foot forward in your marketing and branding, whether we’re starting with a complete re-brand, or breathing new life into an ongoing campaign.

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.

Having a good sense of who your customers are and what they’re looking for when they contact you can be one of the most important tools at your disposal as a small business owner. It can be a tremendous help in deciding where to apply your marketing budget, and in knowing what products or services should be emphasized (and which should be phased out). In short, every business needs a working strategy for the short and long term, but it’s impossible to create a working strategy without sufficient information. Here are a few ideas about how to learn more about your customers without seeming too intrusive:

1. Ask them. If you do a lot of business over the phone or in person, there’s a delicate balance to strike between getting the information you need and alienating the customer by being too pushy. It’s best to think of a single question which can be asked during the process of helping the customer, for example: “I’d be happy to check that price for you, do you mind if I ask how you heard of us?” If your services involve a relatively engaged process, customers might welcome a simple questionnaire at the conclusion of your business with them. Make the questionnaire useful for your sales and marketing as much as it is for your quality control, by asking a few simple questions about their needs, how they found you, and what their expectations were going into the process. Your customers will be glad to know that you’re interested in their satisfaction, and in improving your processes.

2. Take advantage of SEO. Part of a well-crafted SEO campaign involves detailed research into who’s searching for your products, and what they’re searching for when they find you, which is absolutely essential when you do business online—and every business is an online business, or needs to be. With FindItLocal 411′s Search Engine Optimization, the maximum amount of information about your clients (and potential clients) is at your disposal.

It may sound trite, but the most important thing about crafting your marketing strategy is to have a marketing strategy, which can be evaluated in terms of its inputs and outputs. The most important input is information about your customers and potential customers (and your lost customers), and your only output is the only one that matters: sales. At FindItLocal411, we excel at helping our customers develop a working strategy for marketing their businesses, making sure that the right information is available to our clients, so that they make the sales they need.

When you’re using a business social media account, it’s important to not abuse the relationship you’re trying to cultivate with your customers. If your posts aren’t reaching customers where they’re willing to listen, then they may start blocking you altogether, and you’ve lost that opportunity. Here are a few tips for how to keep your customers attention (and make the most of it) on facebook and twitter.

1. Be yourself. If you’re using a business name (e.g. @Finditlocal411), and speaking on behalf of your business, it can be easy to slide into marketing speak, and while you are indeed marketing and networking when you use social media, it’s important that you don’t speak in such a way as to alienate your audience by making them feel like they’re just viewing pop-up ads in their feed. Have fun. You don’t need to tell your audience what you’ve just eaten for lunch, but be sure to breathe some of your own personality into what you say. If people sense that the enthusiasm in your posts isn’t genuine, they’ll lose interest in you. Let your enthusiasm for your business and what you’re doing shine though.

2. Think like your readers. Ask yourself what someone who subscribes to your business’ feed might want to know from you. It can definitely be worth mentioning that you’ve just hired a new employee, or attended an exciting local event, but primarily people want to know about your products and services. If you’re in retail, it can be a nice way to gain customer loyalty to include a coupon code for your online subscribers periodically, that they can use when visiting your site or store.

3. Don’t be too personal. This may sound contradictory to #1, but it’s worth mentioning that you’re still using your feed to have a professional interaction with your customers and partners. Online interactions aren’t the place to discuss a personal tragedy, a surgery you’ve undergone, or anything which might make a perfect stranger uncomfortable to read.

4. Reach out. If you’re happy to be partnering with another firm, or if a supplier has really come through for you, or even if your staff just loves to patronize a local coffee shop, go ahead and use those as opportunities for outreach. Not only is it an important way to build relationships with your affiliates, showing your willingness to reach out like that is good for your business, because down the road, the businesses who benefit from your referrals are very likely to return the favor.

When you’re ready to dive into this important field of interaction with your customers, FindItLocal411 is there to help you, through our full suite of online marketing services. We’ll always take the time to find out who you are, and incorporate your personality and identity into everything we do, from newsletters to mobile marketing to visual customization of your Facebook and Twitter pages.

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.

Marketing directly to your customers via mobile marketing might once have seemed cutting-edge or even gimmicky, and outside of the bounds of what would be reasonable for your business, but that time is long gone. Now, people are using their mobile phones for so many things that not having the ability to reach them through mobile messaging might as well mean not being able to reach them at all.

It Works

Snail mail often goes to the trash unopened, and emails can sit in the inbox waiting for days or even weeks for someone to get around to reading them, but 97% of text messages are opened and read. With the right call-to-action, this could be your most powerful tool for connecting with customers. Mobile marketing is also highly effective for customer surveys and voting, which can be a fun way to get customers to sign up for more updates, as well as a truly indispensable way to get feedback from them about what’s working and not working about your services.

It’s Personal

Mobile marketing is only a part of the full suite of services you get with Find it Local 411. From print advertising to your web site to email newsletters, these can all be integrated with an expertly-crafted mobile marketing campaign. As with all of our services, we never create a one-size-fits-all campaign. We start by asking what you need to accomplish, and help you decide the best process to get there.

With Find It Local 411, your customers will come to expect the high quality, personalized experience that you can always expect from us. We’re experts in helping you put on your best face, and we love helping you make your customers happy.