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Click and Mortar Marketing – 5th Anniversary Post by Clickandmortarblog

Hard to believe it’s been five years since we started this click and mortar marketing site called clickandmortarblog.com. What’s even crazier is that the amount of content pertaining to click and mortar marketing and small business that’s come through here is so much more than I originally anticipated.

As of this day we have written all but several posts in house and this was due to myself being unsure about how I was going to write, edit and do it all.

Click and Mortar Marketing by Clickandmortarblog.com
Since 2010 – Click and Mortar Blog has been delivering marketing tips, tactics and information for the small business owner and marketer looking to expand on the web…

When we first started in February of 2010 I had Jeff Stuhlmiller contribute a few articles. He was kind enough to lend a hand but since then all the rest of the original posts for clickandmortarblog.com have come directly from the publisher.

Why do I share this on the eve of our 5th Anniversary? Because in this day and age of copycats and laziness, many an online marketer may take the easy road to stealing other people’s content.

Especially if he or she is working in click and mortar marketing and doesn’t understand how to create totally original content.

There are some really good to great content creators out there on the market today who work their “you know whats off” each and every day to provide businesses and organizations like yours, original videos, audios, articles, photos and graphics for clients around the world. They put their hearts into creating content that means something and is valuable to them and their clients.

Then some lazy, unethical person comes along and decides the he or she is going to scrape their website for new content that can be used for their own website or video. And do they ask for permission? Not! They copy, paste and go along their merry way. 🙁

When it comes to click and mortar marketing I know from years of experience that this happens all the time. Retail business owner A hires Writer A to write 5 blog posts for her website and social media channels.

Writer A then takes her time and the business owners money doing this, and scans the web, copying and pasting content into a word doc. Then she spends a little time rearranging the content so it looks like it’s original when it’s really not!

This is only one scenario of many that can play out for the small business owner who wants to create good to great quality original content online, but just doesn’t know. 

Click and Mortar Marketing for the Small Business Owner 

For a retail or service based business owner who is looking to really kick it up a notch with click and mortar marketing – always find credible/reliable sources for creating online content. That includes your photography, graphics, videos, audios and especially the words that support these. 

Interview more than three people and pick the ones that understand your business and will deliver the goods on time and on budget. If you need some help with this – connect with SBM.

Your click and mortar marketing is pulling two worlds together where your buyers coexist, and thus the content needs to work together to achieve the results that you are after. You get there by using quality original content, which is the best way to go when it comes to connecting with your small business’ target market.

And if your business is utilizing click and mortar marketing you must be testing every step of the way to see what is working and what is not. That way you maximize your ROI.

Next time I’ll dig into the content strategy, so stay tuned.

Dave Krygier
Publisher
ClickandMortarblog.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Do I Increase My Sales – Offline to Online Anniversary Post

How do I increase my sales but lower my advertising costs the small business owner asks the man sitting across the table. The man simply states that in order to increase his sales the small business owner needs to change the way he thinks.

Well this is much easier said than done for most business owners and managers as they are shuffling their way through daily grind of small business.

Clickandmortarblog.com Offline to Online Marketing Anniversary Post
Have you been thinking inside the box too much lately?

When I first started to write on this blog in February of 2010 I was in search of ways to help offline small businesses get online and develop ways to attract, capture and convert prospects into customers utilizing online resources.

It was quite the search and ultimately I put together the pieces to be able to provide small business owners ways to connect their offline marketing with the online world and visa versa.

Why would a small business owner continue to struggle and pay countless thousands of dollars per month and year only to find that the marketing and advertising is not working?

Fear of loss of business? Not knowing other ways to create new business?

A little of both? Probably.

In a recent conversation with a business owner he mentioned that his agency didn’t know the difference between marketing and advertising. I mean this came as quite a shock considering the thousands of dollars this man had invested with this advertising company.

The confusion that is spread across the land of small business is so vast that it amazes me that most small business owners are able to make a profit.

So where does this lead us today when we broach the topic of Offline to Online Marketing? How does a small business owner with a limited budget and resources really do both?

This is the question we must face and answer plus we need to ask these Five Tough Questions:

  1. Is the Offline Marketing and/or Advertising really working and has it been tested?
  2. Is the Online Marketing and/or Advertising working and has it been tested?
  3. Is there a mix of both that has tested and proven to bring in new business?
  4. Is the Marketing and/or Advertising showing ROI?
  5. Is there marketing in place to connect and keep current customers in your world?

It still surprises me as to the number of small business owners who don’t test their advertising. Yet they continue to spend and spend and spend, even when they don’t really know if it’s working!

The Online World has Changed

In the past four years the online world has changed dramatically with the uprising of local, social and mobile channels.

Local Search Optimization and Marketing has had a big impact on small businesses that rely on the local community for traffic and sales. From maps listings to directories to reviews and more. It’s an ever-changing landscape that can be red one day and then green the next.

Social Media Channels such as Facebook, Pinterest and Linked In are impacting small business in ways not even on the radar back in 2000. Mobile Technology and Search has been the biggest shift that I have seen since 2009.

More and more business people and consumers are using mobile web enabled devices and replacing their traditional desktop and laptop computers.

It’s like the wild, wild, west when it comes to mobile and the changes coming so frequently that it’s virtually impossible to keep up unless you are plugged and tuned in daily.  So the next time someone asks you or you ask someone else, how do I increase my sales but lower my advertising costs, know that there is hope right around the corner. There is hope and our friends at Small Biz Mechanix are paving the way to help small businesses connect the offline to the online world.

Stay close and stay tuned as there are plenty of updates on the way.

To your small business success,

Dave Krygier
Publisher

What is Click and Mortar?

When asked what is Click and Mortar I say, “it’s where a business that still has a physical presence (meaning location) that serves the community or region and utilzes the web to drive traffic, connect, communicate and offer goods and services to people.

Click = The Web.

Mortar = The Physical Business  – retail, service, distribution and manufacturing.

Combine the two together and what do you get? Nothing! Unless you develop a plan and implement the plan.

As I’ve written about in past posts…I coined the phrase click and mortar in either 96′ or 97′ and used it when describing to others what we were doing at that time in our business, which I refer to today as The Tiny Store.

Back in the 90’s ‘the click’ was a static web presence that enabled our small business to expand and grow over a 6 year period.

You know what our simple plan for using the Internet back in the 1990’s?

It was this – create an online catalog so our prospects and customers could see all that we offered. This way we didn’t have to mail physical catalogs and brochures to those in Alaska and Eastern Washington.

In the beginning it was never about ‘driving traffic’ and increasing page rank, because the web was so new and so were we.

Now I caught on really quick and we did develop ways to capture, cultivate and communicate with the people who found us through the old search engines – Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Webcrawler and Lycos.

And we did have a huge advantage being first to the party and adding a ton of content to our site. We also utilized email, the phone and ye ole’ fax to get the job done. Had I had access to an email auto-responder, life would have been quite a bit different, but that wasn’t the case, so I dealt with the slew of email that crowded my inbox every week.

Auto-responders were just getting started and quite honestly I didn’t know they existed. My bad for not researching and looking into it.

The click for us was a great lead generating tool. The only problem was that the leads came from all over the world and we just really wanted to serve Washington and Alaska.

For some small businesses they still don’t understand how to use the click to drive business to the mortar.

Today’s web offers so many ways to drive traffic and you can target your market and be as creative as you want to. It’s a marketer and biz dev person’s dream, yet so many miss the boat and go another year without doing anything. Or they just add a couple of social media buttons thinking that this is what everyone else is doing and we need to be doing what they are doing.

I say that you do what’s best for your small business. Use the click so it benefits your company! Use the click so it does what you want it to do for your small business.

What is click and mortar? A smart way to do business combining the online with the offline.

If you are a retailer, service business, distributor or manufacturer and desire to develop and grow your business using the click so it can help your mortar based business; then get on over to SmallBiz Mechanix and waste not a moment more.

Dave Krygier
Publisher