Burst Media surveyed more than 4,500 women 18 years or older about their current use of the Internet for household purchases and their penchant for web coupons:

More than two-thirds of respondents (69.4%) say they would print and redeem an Internet coupon for a product they would be interested in purchasing. Three-quarters (75.2%) of women 35-54 years would print and redeem an Internet coupon – this compares to 62.2% of women 18-34 years and 67.7% of women 55 years and older. Among all respondents, 43.0% say they are more likely to redeem and print an Internet coupon today then they were six months ago. Read the Burst Media full story here.

Other industry experts have taken note of the consumer’s love for a deal as well. About this time last year, Google searches for the term “coupons” exceeded searches for “Britney Spears.” (AdAge.com).

Consumer penny-pinching and the decline of newspapers are making online coupons a hot ticket:

NEW YORK, NY – March 31, 2009 – Platform-A’s Business Intelligence organization, in partnership with Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), has released the results of a new study on trends in consumer couponing with interesting results. Based on input from more than 36,000 IRI panelists gathered in September, 2008, the study gauged consumer usage of traditional newspaper coupons and interest in digitally distributed online coupons. (Full press release here.)

As a result of this growing trend several websites now offer access to coupons for almost anything you buy. Sites promoting the best deals are also becoming extremely popular. Here are a few examples:

• Shop and Save: Search results page for coupons and deals.
• Slickdeals.net is a free, user-driven deal sharing site where consumers share information and collaborate in order to make better shopping decisions. The site provides a forum for discussion of  various shopping tools.
• GasBuddy.com provides residents and visitors to an area access to local gas prices.
• BestCouponCode.com is one of many sites that now offer coupon code listings.

Yes, people love discounts and consumers are seeking coupons whether they’re offline or online. Just adding a dotted line around an image can increase click-thru rates.

Coupons can be used in many ways, whether you sell products or services. Common uses include retail shopping carts for almost any product; however, you’ll see them used effectively in email marketing campaigns, social networks, forums and blogs. Consider the use of coupons in your marketing strategy but be ready to honor the deal. Don’t forget to include an expiration date!

Are you using coupons in your marketing campaigns? Tell us about it (leave a comment below). Need help setting up a marketing campaign using a coupon strategy? Give us a call, we’ll be glad to help – thanks.

Quantcast, with just 70-employees, is already the de facto standard for measuring Web audiences. They determine who’s clicking on ads, visiting websites, and buying products online. Subsequently, the information is used to help match consumer characteristics with the campaign goals of media buyers. According to Fast Company, 9 of the top 10 media buyers in the U.S. are customers; as are CBS, ABC, and MTV Networks.

Here’s a quote from the “About” page at Quantcast:

Ten years ago the Internet had 9.5 million websites and 150 million people online. Email was a relatively new phenomenon. Fast forward a decade and we’ve seen the most rapid adoption of a new technology in the history of the planet. Not only is everyone, including your grandmother, using email, chat, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, but 1.6 billion people, and growing, now engage with over 240 million web pages on the Internet.

CrunchBase reports that Quantcast received $27.5M in Series C funding (1/4/10), $20M in Series B funding (1/1/08) and $5.7M in Series A funding (3/1/07).

Another company on the Fast Company top 10 list is Slide. Through its branded Funspace, the company now serves some 10 million videos a month and is the largest video-distribution platform on Facebook. And Facebook, by the way, is number one on the most innovative list in the web category.

What do all of the companies on the list have in common with small business owners?
The ability to identify opportunities and react quickly – innovation. How does your company plan to innovate in 2010 and beyond?

The ability to distribute your content across several online platforms from one source is critical. And, if you want to save time and increase your online exposure you need a system to perform the task for you automatically. First, consider your content source. Are you using a Content Management System (CMS)? Examples include dynamic websites, blogs, and shopping carts. All include simple tools for re-publishing your content on other websites whenever you update the “source” (your website, blog, etc.).

LinkedIn.com “applications” is one example of an automated website marketing tool. Whenever I publish content on my blog it is automatically re-published to my LinkedIn profile where hundreds of my contacts are notified and millions of LinkedIn users can stumble upon the information while browsing. This simple process, which is easy to setup if you have a WordPress blog for example, increases traffic to your site. We measure the traffic using analytic tools such as Google Analytics, which is the science of website marketing. In a few clicks, we can determine the popularity of our latest blog post on LinkedIn, and a bunch of other sites for that matter.
[slider title="Support for LinkedIn.com"]Prefer we do this for you? If so, just give us a call: 804-723-9160. We provide LinkedIn customization as well as social media training for our clients and their staff.[/slider]

Similarly, you can connect your website content to dozens of social networking sites such as Facebook.com and Twitter.com; it is relatively easy when your website is built using a CMS.

Here’s a short-list of links to website tools – detailed explanations are included on the sites:

• bit.ly – Allows you to shorten long links and track how many people click on the link. This tool is great for posting on twitter or Facebook given you can measure how many clicks your shortened link gets. There are numerous tools similar to bit.ly. Here’s an article that covers five more: visit FriedBeef’s Tech blog here.
• StumpUpon.com – Allows you to bookmark and browse content made popular by a community of Stumblers; you can also use the tool to bookmark your content for others to view.
• AddThis sharing tool by clearspring. Including a “share” tool on your site makes it very easy for you and others to share your content with friends and colleagues.
• Website Grader – provides a website grading score that incorporates your website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how your website can be improved from a marketing perspective.
• Google Webmaster Tools – Check your keywords and how well you site ranks for those words and determine if any pages on your site are causing problems for Google when crawling your site. The tools also allow you to see what pages are getting the most links, etc.
• Term Extractor – This tool analyzes the content of a given page and extracts the terms that appear to be targeted at search engines.

The processes are confusing and complicated. The results are frustrating and it all seems like a colossal waste of time. If that’s you, let’s first dispel some of the myths of social media.

One: Social Media is Free

Yes, for next to nothing you can quickly create a presence on the top three social media sites – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. And, you can create accounts on other sites such as Blogger, WordPress, YouTube, Flickr, StumpleUpon and Digg; all within a few hours. That too is almost free but incorporating the plethora of tools into a business marketing system that produces real results requires time, marketing savvy and money. Social media marketing is far from free.

Two: Social media profiles are just brief bios or short descriptions of your company

You don’t need to spend a lot of time creating your social media profiles or bios; right? Unfortunately, that’s far from the case. Those that understand the strategy and importance of social media profiles are obtaining far better results than those that don’t. Profiles are very important and very effective when they include a theme that matches your online business goals and objectives.

Three: Anyone can do it and you can do it in-house.

Ask yourself, do you have the experience? Are you using the most appropriate strategies and the right tools? Fact is, few businesses have in-house teams with the experience needed to launch an effective social media marketing campaign. And, many lack the resolve to allocate the necessary resources required to obtain meaningful results.

What do you need? First and foremost, a concise written strategy as well as numerous technical tools, a contact list manager, copy writer, graphic artists and, most importantly, knowledge and experience.

Social media marketing is a fundamental shift in the way individuals network, organize information and communicate. In essence, it is the child born from the evolution of technology during the past two decades. Today, businesses are leveraging technology in more ways than you can possibly imagine.

Each business has unique goals and objectives. Therefore, establishing a social media marketing budget depends on your industry, your competition and your expectations. But, creating a budget is similar to any other project. Here are four quick steps to get your started:

What “projects” and “resources” are required?

1. Social Media Strategy and Theme – generally developed by the business management team (or owner) with the marketing/communications manager. If you don’t have a full-time marketing manager, consider outsourcing this important starting point to an experienced marketing firm.
2. Tools – select the sites and tools you’ll focus on for your campaign. And, stay focused. The most appropriate sites are not necessarily the top three. Research the sites visited most frequently by your target market just like you would with any other marketing campaign. Stick with your plan long enough to collect meaning data to determine the effectiveness of the campaign.
3. Integration – plan out specifically how you intend to use other forms of advertising – such as marketing brochures, trade shows, local events, print ads, etc. Are you driving traffic to social media sites and capturing leads to build your contact list? Are you sponsoring an event supported by an email marketing campaign? For example, are you posting photos and copies of presentations you gave on your blog following an event? There are costs associated with this aspect of the project such as contact management software, email marketing software, blog maintenance, etc.
4. Define success – almost everything online can be measured. However, the more you intend to measure the more money you’ll spend collecting and analyzing data. It is very important to understand some of the costs are “branding” costs and some are “operational” costs (IT support). Understand the different aspects of your marketing campaign and appropriate the resources as well as the expenses accordingly.

Next week we’ll go into more detail on planning and budgeting for social media marketing. You can subscribe to our site here; it allows you to receive the updates when they are published. Also, please leave a comment below if you have specific questions about social media. Or, tell us what lessons you learned last year about social media marketing?

A few photos of the Asian Chamber members attending the event – thanks again for inviting AIM Custom Media to present to your group of members. We enjoyed meeting your new members and guests.

Are you passionate about increasing sales but can’t seem to get anywhere using social media? We all know millions and millions of links and leads are shared everyday on social networks. And, there are several simple things you can do to improve your results and get your share. This evening (January 27, 2010, 6-8pm) I’ll be giving a presentation at the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce Business Networking Forum. Here’s the info from the Chamber’s website and a link for additional details:

Marketing Yourself and Your Business in the New Digital World

2010 is going to be an incredible year for marketing. Entrepreneurs that survived the economic storm of 2009 are in an exciting position for 2010. The days of costly brand building are over. It is going to be a time where innovative marketing is going to flourish. Brand marketing is going to be cheaper, faster and smarter.

Are you ready to enter the universe of possible marketing and advertising initiatives?

If yes, let Social Networking Guru Greg Magnus break down for you the steps needed to make when moving into the complex world of social networking, beginning with how to best put social networking to use, whether you are:

• Business prospecting
• Promoting your brand
• Recruiting talents
• Hatching a new venture
• Engaging and retaining customers, or
• Exploring a new career

Coordinated by the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce, this group of businesses and professionals meet monthly between January and June to network and discuss key issues impacting their businesses’ bottom line.

Guest Speaker:
Greg Magnus, President
AIM Custom Media, LLC

Date & Location:
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 From 6-8pm
Mekong Restaurant, 6004 West Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23230

More information here.

If you can’t make it or you already missed it, you can subscribe to our site here. I’ll post the presentation materials later in the week and you’ll receive the info when it is added to digital AIM.

NOTE: If you subscribed, please check your Inbox right away. Within the next minute or two, there will be an email asking you to confirm your subscription. This is called “double opt-in” to make sure that someone else cannot subscribe you to our list. It is very important that you click the confirmation link in that email. If you fail to do that you will not receive the info requested.

To begin with, website marketing requires a lot more than a website. What’s essential?

1. Website Marketing Plan
   • Development of a small business website marketing plan requires: industry knowledge (current trends, marketing research), strategic planning, financial management (budget), team management (human resources) and a clear understanding of what it will take to implement your plan (basic, if not advanced, technical skills).
2. Things to consider:
   • MARKETING EVENTS CALENDAR (2010): Prepare a schedule of major industry events such as trade shows (local/national), PR events, seminars, speaking engagements, etc. Determine in order of priority the most important half dozen or so for your business (certain businesses will have a few dozen).
   • LEAD CAPTURE: What online resources do you plan to use to capture leads before and after each event? Do you intend to create specific website content for each event? You said yes, right?
   • MARKETING CAMPAIGNS: Have you planned out the resources required to implement your marketing campaigns for each event? Consider what it really takes to implement email marketing, social networking, press releases and similar tactics such as blogging and article marketing. Website marketing requires IT support, graphic designers, and copy writers for each event as well as post event follow-up marketing.
   • SEGMENTATION – TARGET MARKETING: Have you created a contact and prospect list for each event identified? Known as list segmentation and target marketing, it is key to successful website marketing. List development and management is often neglected by small business owners new to online marketing.
   • LIST MANAGEMENT: Review your customer list as well as your social network connections and determine if the majority are within your target market. If not, grow your list as well as your network by specifically targeting key players that have the ability to drive new business and referrals. Also, determine how you’ll manage your list? Your email client, such as MS Outlook, is probably the wrong answer.
   • CONTENT MANAGEMENT: Over stated but not something you want to forget, “Content is King.” Regular website updates are mandatory for marketing online. And, it almost always requires technical resources that often overwhelm the average small business marketing department.
   • TECHNICAL SUPPORT (IT): Understand the need for IT support and graphic designers as well as the usual marketing copy writers. Also, understand your sales people are not website managers. Asking them to do so is a misuse of their talents so make sure you have the right people doing the right job when it comes to website marketing.
   • SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO): The most important thing to understand about SEO is “you must be persistent.” SEO is an ongoing process, not an event. There are numerous SEO strategies and the costs can range from a few hundred a month (limited expectations for growth) to tens of thousands (shopping cart sites with high ticket items that require lots of website traffic). Search engine optimization is often beyond the technical skills of most small business owners; get help when you need it. Sure, you can “do it yourself” but in most cases the skills require an expert to be truly successful. Think of website traffic like putting gas in your car – stop adding gas and you’ll sit on the side of the road where you’ll watch the traffic go by.
3. Financial Management:
   • BUDGET: Does $3,000 or $5,000 per month sound like a lot to you for website marketing? If so, think about it. That figure is equivalent to $36 – $60,000 per year, which probably isn’t enough to hire the appropriate staff with the skills needed to successfully grow your business online. And remember, everyone it seems is planning to grow their business online in 2010.
   • VENDORS – OUTSOURCE: To rise above the competition, you’ll need to get the appropriate help or spend a lot of your time each day as a “website marketer” instead of as a business owner. Do what you do best with your time. If it isn’t website marketing, then consider outsourcing.
   • Online marketing budgets vary greatly depending on the industry and business revenues. Contact us for assistance with the budgeting process if you don’t already have specific numbers in mind for your plan.

A few quick tips:

1. You can use most any magazine editorial calendar appropriate for your industry as a planning guide. I’ve owned and worked for a few publishing companies. The major publishers put a lot of time and energy into their editorial calendars – no need to recreate the wheel. For local events, check with the chamber of commerce and city magazines as well as last years blog posts; many publishers have maintained blogs for several years now and you can review their archives. Also, ask your mentors, vendors and business colleagues as well as your competitors websites.
2. Learn from others that are already successful. A business colleague and personal friend publishes the “Rich Niche Group” blog. A significant portion of his blog posts are interviews of successful entrepreneurs; learn from their experiences. Here’s an example and a link for you: “We originally had visions of building a little bit of a client base, selling to AOL, and retiring in the Caribbean. Well, we were a little late for that, so we had to opt for Plan B which was to buckle down and build the business.“ Dale Coyner, Serial Entrepreneur, Founder of Communicast and Open Road Outfitters.
3. Email marketing software that is hosted online can be used to cost-effectively manage a small business contact list. Use a software program that allows you to add custom fields to the database. Also, you can easily add new prospects to your list just by opening up a website browser and accessing your list and/or your newsletter subscription form.

Are you preparing your 2010 Website Marketing Plan? Share your ideas in the comment section – thanks.

By Greg Magnus
AIM Custom Media
www.aimcustom.com

RESTON, VA, December 2, 2009 – comScore (NASDAQ : SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 30 days of the November – December 2009 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $12.26 billion has been spent online, marking a 3-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. Cyber Monday reached $887 million in online spending, up 5 percent versus year ago, and matching the heaviest online spending day on record, December 9, 2008. Continue reading at comScore >

Here are a few simple and effective tips for increasing your online credibility:

1. Provide verification of the accuracy of information on your site. Providing third-party citations and links, such as references and links to the source material, builds website credibility. Even if your visitors don’t follow the links, their confidence in your content increases.
2. Quickly establish that there is a real organization and human beings backing your site. Although it is often overlooked, you can easily establish credibility by showing a physical address on your site’s footer as well as posting photographs of real people or your office(s) on the “About page.” Listing your membership with local and national associations also helps establish website cred.
   
3. Highlight the expertise in your organization by offering examples as well as testimonials.
• Do you have a testimonial on your home page with a link to more?
• Do you tell your visitors you are an expert or do you imply it through “recent” testimonials or published articles?
• Be sure to provide credentials as well as links to the applicable associations/organizations.
• Conversely, don’t link to websites that you have not checked recently – linking to a questionable site can harm your credibility by association and hurt your search ranking.
4. Show that honest, trustworthy and real people stand behind your website. Clearly demonstrate that real people are associated with your company – even if you are a one-person shop. Next, highlight your online community involvement (social networks) as well as your involvement with the local community, where applicable.
   
5. Make it easy to contact a real person when the situation requires. A simple way to boost your site’s credibility is by including your contact information everywhere that is appropriate: phone number and a physical address go a long way to build credibility. Naked “contact us” forms (no phone or address info) can be more damaging than good.
   
6. Budget the money and/or time to have a professional website design. Many Internet prospects will quickly evaluate your website by visual design alone.
• Is it engaging?
• Are you offering to converse with the visitor?
• When designing your site, pay attention to consistent page layout, typography, use of color and images.
• Most importantly, does your website’s visual design match its intended purpose?
  
7. Make sure your website content is useful. Research repeatedly shows that sites win credibility points by being useful as well as easy to use. The best websites don’t dazzle you with technology, they quickly help you find what you came for.
   
8. Update your website content often for obvious reasons. People assign more credibility to fresh, useful content than most anything else.
   
9. Use restraint with your promotional content and clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. There is nothing wrong with advertisements unless they are excessive or un-distinguishable from relevant content. Avoid automated pop-up ads; they are annoying period. 
   
10. Regularly check your site for typos and bad links, no matter how small they seem.

Here are two articles I enjoyed reading this week published by Inc.com:

Great No-Cost Software: Free is a lovely word; unfortunately, it’s often followed by a disappointing product. We have found 10 great free apps that will help you run your business. Some are so good, you might even be willing to (shudder) spend money on them. – By Mark Spoonauer

Thirty Profiles of Resilience in Business: You just can’t keep an entrepreneur down, as these tales of leadership and overcoming obstacles illustrate. – By Kelly Faircloth

With respect to blogging and websites for small business owners:

15 Unconventional Uses of WordPress in Action: WordPress is known as one of the most powerful open-source blogging platform, but it can be a lot more then just a blogging platform. We already know about using WordPress as a content management system (CMS), but WordPress is much more flexible than that. – By the Editorial Staff at wpbeginner.com

The Entrepreneur’s Handbook – 59 Resources For First Time Entrepreneurs: As a first time entrepreneur you probably have tons of questions. And every time you do a Google search for an answer you are bombarded with too much information and in some cases that information contradicts other things you have heard. Due to this, I have created a list of 54 resources that should help you out.

I also gave a presentation to the Virginia Career Network. The group assists unemployed professionals network and find new career opportunities. For those interested, I posted the presentation here.

What did you find interesting this week? Let us know by leaving your comments – thanks!

When it comes to small business, the owners are often a vital part of the sales and marketing team. If not “the team.” And, many hit the streets on a regular basis to engage in hand-to-hand combat; presentations, seminars and local business events. This is especially true for service professionals such as attorneys, accountants, architects, business advisers, life coaches and consultants.

So, you just returned from an exhausting, long day of face-to-face marketing. It is by far the most time consuming and costly sales tactic but also one that can produce high closing rates. And, most importantly, you now have an excellent opportunity to follow-up with not only the people you met but also your target prospects that couldn’t make it that day. How so?

It is easy to follow-up with the prospects you met as well as reach your online social network while doing so. Here are a few tips to consider:

1. Trash that “thanks for attending, let me know if there is anything I can do..” email. Engage your prospect with a keynote summary of your presentation that includes an added “bonus” and I don’t mean a coupon here. Write-up your notes and add the questions asked as well as the answers provided during the presentation. However, don’t email the notes or the presentation. First publish the information online; preferably your blog. Send a link to your online content in the email.
   • Now your offline activities are being integrated with your online marketing tools.
   • A limited number of prospects will see your email. Potentially dozens if not hundreds or thousands can access your useful information online.
   • Your making an effort to engage your prospects.
2. Talk about the questions asked during the presentation on:
   • Social networks and forums
   • Your blog, your customer’s blogs and others read by your clients and target prospects
3. Let everyone know you have additional and important information to add; Part 2 of the story for example. Normally there isn’t enough time in a presentation to adequately cover all of the material. For your top prospects, invite them to subscribe to your blog and/or email newsletter; better yet, subscribe them yourself and ask them to confirm the subscription. Inform them you’ll be adding Part 2 to your newsletter or blog – give them a reason to want to subscribe.
4. Collect feedback and publish the comments online with your presentation. If a prospect emails the feedback to you, go to your blog and publish the comments for them. But don’t forget to reply to the comment online and directly to your prospect.

In fact, all of the recommendations above include one very, very important aspect of sales and marketing – engaging your prospects. Without engagement, building a meaningful relationship is impossible given there is a lack of emotional attachment. We’ve all seen it before. “Information” is presented to the target audience. Considerable time is spent “marketing” the material but the content fails to hit an emotional cord with the target due to lack of engagement.

What else is important? The steps covered above are typical processes in a marketing campaign. Unless you gave that presentation for sport, your in business to do business. An integrated marketing campaign is an absolute necessity if you want more business.

Here’s an excerpt from an article on follow-up marketing I published previously on our company blog:

“Instantly, I felt I was getting special treatment and all I really received was a simple document. I shared my experience with several friends. Engagement in action – it works when you know how to set up communication strategies for every new prospect or client.

Several much shorter and concise follow-up communications were sent to me by the concierge. The messages included service features that were easy to digest, remember, and most importantly repeat to others. Following up with a new client or prospect with the right message, at the right time, is a key element of your marketing strategy.”

Many marketers fall short here. They often fail to incorporate the “process” into their marketing plans, or lack the resolve and resources to promote their campaign beyond the early development stages. [Source: Word of Mouth Marketing: People are Talking by Greg Magnus, AIM Custom Media, Glen Allen, VA - December 2005.]