Yelp reported that 61 million people visited the site in the 3rd quarter of 2011.

Many small business owners don’t realize Yelp’s influence, let alone contribute to the conversation on the site. Including Yelp in your small business marketing plan can be a great way to build word-of-mouth-marketing. You’ll develop relationships with influential customers and encourage new customers to give you a try.

What is Yelp?

I would describe Yelp as an avid online community of passionate reviewers, eager to uphold their reputation and grow their influence. Casual users visit the site to find recommendations about nearby businesses, whether that be near where they live or where they are traveling.

Yelp got its start with restaurants, but it’s not just for restaurants anymore. You’ll find reviews on dentists, retail shopping, hair salons or even hardware stores. In many cities, the company has invested in local Community Managers, who develop and nurture relationships with local businesses and power reviewers.

Yelp Advertising

Of course Yelp would tell you the best way to improve your marketing with their site would be to buy advertising. Advertisements appear in search results and on competitors’ business pages. Below is an example showing Hannoush Jewelers’ business page with an advertisement for Rogers Jewelers:

There are a few other perks to advertising, such as the ability to display a video. Advertising on Yelp ranges from $300-$1000 per month.

Yelp Deals

Yelp also offers a way to provide customers with discounts from your business page, called Yelp Deals. Customers buy the “deal” from the site, and Yelp keeps 30% of the sale. Here’s an example of a deal, shown in a search result:

It’s hard to say how effective Yelp Deals are, but they might be worth an experiment, especially since there are no up-front costs.

More Marketing with Yelp Tips

There are several things small businesses can do to improve their Yelp marketing efforts without buying advertising or posting deals. I recommend taking these steps before making any ad buys.

First, ensure your business information is complete and up-to-date. On your business’s page, “unlock” your listing to add hours of operation, menus, pictures or an OpenTable reservations widget. Here’s a screenshot:

Once you unlock your business’s page, you’ll also be able to see handy data about the visitors to your page.

Another benefit to unlocking your page is that you’ll be able to communicate with your reviewers. Responding to your reviewers can build your relationships with them… if you do it carefully.

To respond to a negative review, consider the customer’s input constructive criticism, and try to remedy the issues the customer experienced. If you can “make it right” with the reviewer, chances are she will revise her review more positively. Even if the review is unreasonable, your business will not benefit if you reply angrily or defensively.

Responding to a positive review is much easier. Consider sending a private thank-you to the reviewer with a personalized note that shows you truly read and understood the review.

To really engage with Yelp, find out if your city has a Community Manager. This person organizes events for Yelp reviewers, and you might be able to improve your standing with local reviewers by hosting a free event just for them.

For more information about marketing with Yelp, send me an email: amanda@zooinajungle.com, or you can check out some of my reviews on my Yelp profile.

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I venture to guess that is an overly optimistic perspective for many businesses. In November, most small businesses are striving to finish up the current year in a good state.

In fact, January is a great time to plan for the rest of the year. The previous year’s results are final; holiday vacations are over, and employees are refreshed and ready to dive in.

As you start focusing on the new year, consider these tips in developing your 2012 marketing plan.

Your 2012 Marketing Plan

What do you hope your business will look like in 2012? Understanding your goals is key to developing your marketing plan. If you can answer the following questions, you can plan to succeed:

• How do you want 2012 to be different from 2011?
• How do you want it to be the same?
• Will your market environment change in 2012?
• Who should be your customers in 2012?
• Should you offer any new products and services this year to meet those customers’ needs?
• What are your revenue and profitability goals?

Evaluate your marketing activities from the previous year. Being a spreadsheet fanatic, I make a spreadsheet of all activities, including their cost, metrics and attributable revenue. For instance, with a pay-per-click advertising campaign, your metrics will include how many visits to your website or how many phone calls you received.

Using this information, determine which marketing activities you will stop doing this year. You should stop any activities that don’t help meet your goals or have no hope of being profitable this year. Easy, right?

Now, decide which marketing activities you will continue and if you need any new initiatives or strategies. If you expect 2012 to be quite different from 2011, your marketing activities will very likely change dramatically. Perhaps your goal is to connect more deeply with your local community, so you might change from a strategy of print and TV advertising to sponsoring and developing local events.

Next, consider your marketing “capital improvements”– investments you made last year whose benefits continue into this year. Perhaps you redesigned your website, invested in a CRM system or wrapped your service fleet in new graphics. Based on your goals, are there any large investments you need to make this year?

Taking a look at all the marketing activities that will help you reach your 2012 goals, create a budget and timeframe for implementing them. Determine if you need additional marketing partners or if your current resources are sufficient.

Finally, make sure you actually implement your marketing plan! Get started right away… after all, 2012 is already upon us.

Need help with your 2012 marketing plan? Sometimes an independent assessment can help you prioritize your goals and put things into perspective. I’d be glad to talk with you… just email me at amanda@zooinajungle.com or give me a call at 513.833.4203.

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If it’s been awhile since you invested in your business’s appearance, customers could be thinking the same about you. After a few years, a business owner’s familiarity with her surroundings can cause her to overlook the slow decay of time.  Take a fresh look at the impression you are making on customers when they see your business for the first time.

You only have one chance at a first impression, goes the adage. And your first impression with customers is crucial- what they notice first sets the tone for how or if they will do business with you.

Your business’s exterior needs to be welcoming, easy to understand and clearly explain who you are. Your exterior could be a brick-and-mortar store, a website or even your sales team. Here are some examples to get you thinking.

Good Exteriors for Marketing

The Pink Box is a boutique in my neighborhood that shows a great exterior appearance, with a fresh sign and interesting window display. It’s easy to know when they are open and what you can buy from them.

My favorite part of The Pink Box’s exterior is this cheerful open sign. On chilly or hot days when the store must keep the door closed, this sign serves as a beacon to everyone on the square.

There’s a lovely inn in Carmel, CA that looks just as lovely when you first drive up. The Candle Light Inn looks inviting, and it’s easy for newcomers to know where to park when they arrive.

Not to overload on the pink, but the Olde Pink House Restaurant in Savannah, GA does a great job of communicating their stately yet fun vibe with their exterior.

The menu board on the front steps also helps customers know what kind of food to expect.

Camp Washington Chili hasn’t been around since 1771 like the Olde Pink House, but they have been in the same location since 1940. They’ve really kept their exterior fresh and updated, which contributes to their continued success. And with that sign, you certainly know what they sell!

Not-so-good Exteriors for Marketing

Often, seeing bad examples is just as useful as seeing good ones. Here are some unfortunate businesses that really could stand to improve their exterior appearance.

The BonBonerie is one of the best and most creative bakeries in Cincinnati, OH. For a new customer, it’s very difficult to find the entrance, because it is facing the parking lot, not the main street. This kind of confusion could cause a customer to drive away instead of stopping in.

This exterior inspires more questions than appetites. Did Laurie and Debi have a fight? Is this supposed to be a joke? What exactly is the name of this restaurant, anyway?

Casbah is a great Moroccan restaurant in Savannah, GA, with an inspired decor, great staff and delicious food. But you could never tell from the outside. If your sign is old and faded, and your canopy is dingy and worn, many new customers will pass you by.

To see some examples of websites and logos, read my articles, “Web Design Essentials for Small Business” and “Small Business Logo Design.”

There’s good news. Even if your business looks more like the bad than good examples, you can start making things better today. Your website might need a redesign, or your building a complete remodel, but there are small steps you can take to incrementally improve your appearance. Need some ideas? Send me an email or call me at 513.833.4203.

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If you’re small, think small

When you think about your success and plan for your business’s future, think big. But when you plan on how many people your marketing communications should reach, think small. You want to reach only the people who are interested in products or services like yours. Right now, in the Delta Sky magazine, there’s a full-page ad for a synthetic motor oil, whose creator, it is claimed, “Changed lubrication history .” Giggles aside, how many travelers are in need of a synthetic lubricant during their flight?

Don’t waste your money on marketing to people who don’t care. Here are some tips for how small businesses can “think small” about their marketing:

• Online search advertising and Search Engine Optimization. People are actively searching for your products and services. Be there when they are looking and ready to buy.
• Stay in touch with your current customers, to encourage them to buy more frequently and refer you. For example, a resort might send a birthday card to past guests with a complimentary service coupon for the guest’s next stay.
• Ask current customers where and how they first learned about you. If you hear the same answer several times, increase those marketing efforts.
• Instead of advertising in publications, get mentioned in them. Your customers probably do read newspapers and magazines, but they trust the stories more than the advertisements. Do something news-worthy, and many publications will be glad to cover it (especially if you offer to provide the copy!).
• If you are a local business, like a restaurant, go out in your neighborhood and meet your customers. One idea is to host an event that showcases your product, offers free samples or includes a contest. It’s inexpensive but effective.

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Many small business marketers make the mistake of  developing marketing strategies and materials that please the owners of the business instead of its customers. However, customers usually  value very different things from the company’s own management.

Let’s take an optometrist practice as an example. Optometrists are wonderfully skilled at analyzing and treating eyes. Most of them love eyes, and in marketing conversations I’ve had with them, they want to focus on what they do best: eyes. But that usually makes for bad marketing.

Here are two recent optometrist ads I found that embody optometrists’ love for eyes:

These ads are ineffective because optometrists’ patients don’t spend all day looking at or thinking about isolated eyes. Non-optometrists consider eyes in their context – as part of the face. Many people even become uncomfortable or squeamish when viewing a large photo of an isolated eyeball. Those certainly aren’t the feelings optometrists want to encourage when someone thinks about visiting the eye doctor.

For the ad visuals, it would be better to show what patients value, such as living a better life because they can see, or feeling more beautiful because they have contacts instead of glasses. At the very least, optometrists should include whole faces in their advertisements.

Although my optometrist example is very obvious, these lessons apply to all small businesses. What is your business’s “eyeball?” Are there details your marketing strategy focuses on that don’t provide context for your customer? Have you asked your customers what they value? For good marketing, identify who your customers are and what they want before you embark on any marketing ventures.

And don’t market to yourself.

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In this podcast, I offer several tips for small businesses looking to improve their implementation skills. Listen or download below:

Download the small business marketing implementation MP3 file here. (4.7MB)

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Being naturally optimistic, I always try to turn bad situations into new opportunities. Our still-faltering economy may be dragging down business, but there are ways for small businesses to take advantage of the economic downturn. Here are a few:

• Landlords may be willing to make deal and offer short-term leases. The Wall Street Journal reports that a new trend has started in retailing: the pop-up store. These stores operate with a short-term test lease to determine their feasibility. Creating low-risk leases enables more entrepreneurs the opportunity to start small-business retailing.
• Start a business, and start making money. With many businesses unwilling to hire new employees in this uncertain economy, “accidental entrepreneurs” are being born. A USA Today story shows that 25% of workers laid off in the last six months are considering starting a business instead of finding a new job. Businesses still need work done, so they are increasingly turning to outside resources (that has certainly been my experience).
• On the flip side of unemployment, if your business is looking to hire, you have great options right now. You need to maximize this opportunity. Make sure not to rush hiring decisions- conduct enough interviews to find the right person for the job who will fit with your culture.
• If you have the cash to ramp up your advertising, you can buy more for your buck. For example, one of my clients is in an industry where pay per click (PPC) advertising has completely dried up. Now we can advertise with little competition and a much smaller budget. There may be fewer customers than before, but we are reaching almost all of them.
• If this economy is leaving you with too much extra time, put it to good use. Take my small business marketing test to find your weak areas. When your business is booming, it’s hard to find time to plan for the future. If you work on your business strategy now, your business can come back stronger than it’s ever been.

Has your business developed any opportunities as a result of the recession? Please share!

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Yesterday, an acquaintance asked me for advice on his startup company’s marketing. He just didn’t know how to get started with his first customer. He wanted to know what kinds of brochures, business card or website he needed to get people interested.

I told him, “Decide who you want your customers to be.”

He replied, “Oh, you mean middle class or upper class?”

“No, I mean decide which specific people in which neighborhoods should be your customers. Get to know them, how they talk and what their needs are. Then you can start selling. Then you will know what should be on your website.”

When people first start looking for customers, their instinct is to look for large groups of people and hope to convince a few of those people to hire them. The idea is, “If I aim for all middle class families, surely I’ll get a couple of customers.” But this instinct is wrong. The more people with whom you try to communicate, the less each one will pay attention to you. For example, I imagine you rarely pay attention to the loudspeaker at the grocery store. It’s just not that meaningful to you because the grocery store is trying to communicate a general message to the entire store. When you try to be meaningful to everyone, you end up being meaningful to no one. Generalization for the masses is the worst way to sell a new (or any) product.

To find its first customer, a startup needs to get specific. Instead of selling to groups differentiated by demographics, sell to individual people. Talk their language and address their needs.

On a related note, marketing expert Steve Yastrow wrote two very helpful newsletters on how to differentiate your customers as individuals instead of groups– Do Differentiation Differently and How to Do Differentiation Differently. Steve’s essential message is:

“Your customer doesn’t really care if you are different. But he will be blown away if he sees that you think he is different.”

Showing your customer you think he is different is more work than blanketing a city with flyers- but it will also yield more results. As counterintuitive as it may seem, startups (and all companies) will find more customers if they focus on fewer people.

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You know that the marketplace changes rapidly, and you have to change your business model with it. But how do you know which changes to make? It’s simple. Ask your customers.

In this small business marketing podcast, I discuss changing business strategy with David Weatherholt and Russell Ball. Russell successfully changed his marketing approach- and company name- to fit the needs of his marketplace. I detail how all small businesses can keep their fingers to the pulse of the marketplace by conducting simple, thorough research with their customers.

Listen or download below:

Download the small business marketing research MP3 file here. (12.8MB)

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Listen or download below:

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