McIntosh Marketing Blog

Small Biz marketing success is dependant upon being found and building trust.  And in today’s economic climate, building your brand must entail a strong internet presence. As you may have discovered, simply having a web site is not enough. Yet, 90% of the small businesses in existence that have a web site are not engaging in the most effective method to building more traffic to it: Blogging.

Your company blog is not only a free method in which to build original content to your web site, a must be done SEO strategy for online marketing success, but it really becomes a long-term strategy to reach out and develop many of the potential niche markets that exist within your business.

Additionally, there are some simple steps to expose your company blog to more and more customers, as well as increasing your blog’s value as a B2B website. Here are some helpful marketing tips to gain maximum SEO potential for your blog:

• On all company emails, include links to your company blog.
• Ensure that your blog is listed within the blog option on LinkedIn.
• Ensure that your blog is prominently featured on your company Facebook fan club.
• Distribute your blog postings to all the various social media outlets via Ping.fm.
• Get your blog listed in the dozens of blog directories, such as Technorati.
• In whatever you print and publish off-line, such as letterhead, business cards, etc. include your blog address.
• Blog at least twice a week. Get an SEO expert to help you find the key words and longtail words to get best results.
• Watch this video and learn even more!

Years back, a blog was the new social media outlet where somebody commented about their favorite restaurant. Not anymore. Businesses at all levels are discovering that the company blog can be a highly effective means of  quickly changing and publishing power content, particularly when it is coupled with a search engine friendly web design. While many businesses are working to incorporate blogs into their websites, many more are using WordPress to build their entire website.

Small businesses and many startups are discovering WordPress’ ease of use and capability to empower their SEO strategies. And it’s not just small business entrepreneurs using WordPress to build their sites. Companies like UPS and The Wall Street Journal Magazine are building advanced websites using WordPress that is driving web traffic out the roof.  And for the doubters and skeptics, just take a serious look at WordPress Showcase and tell me if you can see the difference between a website and a blog.

With your web site and blog built within one format, one is now building links to one main site versus links to a web site and then other links to a separate blog.  With WordPress, any small business can now publish original content, company news, product releases, acquisitions, reports on events and seminars, educational tips and about everything imaginable with all website link building to one domain. Your WordPress blog literally becomes your online Gutenberg Press on ginseng.

Many leading best-selling authors, bloggers and SEO experts have determined that blogging was their most succesful action in reaching people, opening doors to Fortune 500 companies, as well as the secret to success in taking their game to a higher level.

McIntosh Marketing has successfully been building hundreds of profitable websites on the WordPress format, due to its incredible capabilities, the access to blogging as well as its SEO friendliness. We cannot stress enough that your company blog and website should be built on a WordPress format.

When you dwell on the fast-paced world of marketing, with all its dynamic and aesthetic qualities, accountants and accounting firms are not the first thought that comes to mind. But in actual fact, B2B financial services is one of the most deficient fields in regards to effective marketing, despite the huge need for their invaluable services that the offer the B2B market.

Having lead many business management workshops for accountants, CPAs, EAs and bookkeepers, I have found that the prevailing logic in marketing, within in each of their respective fields, is to build over time with word of mouth. Now while word of mouth is the backbone of success for the majority of businesses worldwide, this can become an all too “Everybody knows that” that obviates necessary and more modern means to reach the B2B contacts that are vitally needed to expand any firm or practice.

But many are still left with this burning question, “What business marketing strategies are best for accounting firms?”

The word Branding has become the latest buzz word within financial circles and academia as a means to make an attempt at a marketing strategy. Using the word can make us sound like we understand marketing, but in all truth branding is not the major problem with most accountant’s marketing strategy. Sure, small business branding is important. But once you are past the logo, the stationary and the signage, now where do you go? And this is where most business marketing strategies start on their long-term plunge into stagnation.

Ultimately, the success of any marketing, including branding as an important and vital part of the marketing paradigm, is judged solely by increased sales and higher profits. How else can we truly measure about the branding experience that we are projecting? This decpetive marketing battle has been the Waterloo for too many businesses trying to buy feelings rather than to generate more sales and profits. Our world today is in an economic maelstrom,so you must focus on expanding measurable, sustainable profits.

Here are a few things that any accounting firm can engage in that are relatively simple, but highly effective. I would to also note, that  in speaking to and working with hundreds of professionals in the accounting and financial fields for over the last two decades, that these tactics have been vetted as highly successful. In other words, I am not sharing theory or attempting a stab in the dark.

1. Join a business networking group. I suggest Business Network International (BNI). Why? Because I know a CPA in San Francisco who has built her firm to almost two million dollars in annual gross sales. She clearly demonstrated to me, on a very meticulous spread sheet, that one-quarter of that annual income was derived from her 11 year involvement in her local BNI chapter. There are other business referral groups similar to BNI, but the point is be a joiner and a committed member.
2. Utilize the services of an outside company to call and set appointments for you. This is a highly effective marketing method that Kep Kepner, a CPA from Dallas, Texas recently turned me onto. He recently secured the services of an outbound calling company that is only paid when you make a personal presentation. Kep is closing about 60% and is paying a company called Callbox Inc. about $1,800 for 15 appointments. Kep shared with me that this has been one of the best sources of new business.
3. Activate your past clients. In other words, be sure to keep an accurate mailing list and mail a letter or newsletter at least once every quarter and remind them what you do, that you render high-quality service and that you appreciate any referrals. People are busy, so remind them that you exist and care.
4. Ninety percent of firms have either no web site or one that is so ineffective, that in actual fact their out-dated website positions their brand and their business as old and outmoded. You need a simple, attractive website with a blog installed within it. Your company blog must be networked with online directories, social media and other distribution methodologies. Blogs can be an effective means of attracting more and more B2B contacts. Moreover, a blog that consistently performs and offers helpful, original quality content will be a super performer for increasing your presence and thus more sales.

I would enjoy your feedback on this blog post to see if this was helpful or if any other information would be if use.

I have noticing a current trend in several online marketing books and blogs that I find dangerous. The idea is that your blog or article has to be only informational and does not need to sell. This is misleading and not based on historical or statistical fact.

Of course your blog post or your article has to educate. But if there is no call-to-action, then you leave a person lost, not knowing where to go or what to do. True selling is about solving a perceived or real problem and then directing your prospective client to DO something, so as to overcome, alleviate or solve that problem.

Whether through the pages in a book, or in person, having a rich background in sales always results in better writing, and this makes for a better company blog. Your selling skills establish not only a foundation for business acumen, but those skills will far exceed punctuation, proper grammar and descriptive adjectives in getting more people motivated to do business with you. Don’t get me wrong, writing skills will more and more be in demand. To maintain a steady stream of original content, one will have to have strong writing skills.

But nothing will ever replace the advantage of having been in the trenches and having to truly listen and understand another person’s problem, really get into communication and then to help them overcome their fears, ignorance or misconceptions to the end results of a closed sale. When one can really achieve that, added to great writing skills, you have the ultimate combination in any writer or blogger.

So many businesses are asking how to achieve improved marketing ROI on the dollars they are spending. And while talking about educating the masses and inspiring the tribe, any business person needs to see a return. Otherwise, the business will not last or the business person will lose interest and thus the blogger their source of income.

And what I say is not a matter of opinion. Check out the following experts in marketing and advertising, all of whom learned how to sell people, in real life, and all who went onto to build huge marketing organizations. All of these professionals were result orientated and that came from learning how to sell and close a sale.

David Ogilvy On YouTube

Sergio Zyman’s Website

Grant Cardone’s Site