Marketing Tip Monday. . . .A Little Delayed

Who's Talking About You?

As a matter of routine, you should know who on the web is mentioning your business.

Google(tm) has a free service available for this. Through their main page, you can set up a tracker to get once a day updates (don't get them as they happen - your email can get bombarded) .

Head over to Google. On the upper left-hand side of the page, click "more." Follow the pop-up to "even more." This will bring up a page with a wide variety of options, but you want the first one - "alerts."

Put in the word or phrase you want to track. Set it for how often you want the alerts sent to your email account or your feed. You will then be automatically notified if someone blogs about you. Remember, you can set this for more than one alert. For example, I have it set to track "FunkyQuail" and also "Funky Quail."

You may also find that some of the things you say on the web show up here! That can be very good to know.

Once you know who is chatting about you, it's easier to make a plan to get more good things said about your business. More on that later!

photo courtesy of www.publicdomainpictures.net

Marketing Tip Monday

Consistency in Your Business Brand Image

With the new year, many of us who sell on-line are looking at our Marketing Plans and reviewing 2008, and making plans for 2009.

Your first start should be a review of your logo. Are you consistent? Do you have a shop on Etsy and one on ArtFire? Are the names the same? Do you own your webname?

Example:

http://FunkyQuail.com - we own it and it currently re-directs to the Etsy shop named http://FunkyQuail.Etsy.com. Then on Artfire, we also sell the knitting shirts and some of Becky's painted shirts and that name is http://FunkyQuail.ArtFire.com.

I am a member at Ravelry (an on-line knitting community. My user name? Funky Quail, of course.

Then I am on Twitter. My Twitter name? FunkyQuail!

Oh, and looking for my Flickr page? http://Flickr.com/FunkyQuail

This is all a deliberate effort in branding.

Consistency is the key.

Now is a great time to review your branding. If your Flickr page is one name, your Etsy shop another, and ArtFire yet another, it's time to consider if that is the best strategy for you.

If you have different names, perhaps that is best for your business. Maybe you carry very divergent stock in your different shops, or perhaps one is for supplies and the other for paintings and another for ceramics. But it should be a conscious decision and not one ever done without really thinking about how you want your customers to perceive your business.

And of course, you *do* own your own URL, don't you? NO???? Then get to http://GoDaddy.com and buy it, before some nefarious person snatches it right out from under you!

Funky Quail on Art Fire

Expanding the Scope

Yesterday we opened a studio on the new sales site, Art Fire.

We put Becky's hand-painted shirts there, as well as the basic line of knitting tees and hoodies. More items will be added in the future, but we have a good start so far.

Art Fire is in beta, which means they are still working out the kinks. They still have a long way to go to create an effective search, but they are offering STATS for the shop. As a marketing professional, this is very important to me. I need to know where shoppers in my store came from, in order to create a solid marketing plan. The fees are reasonable, too. I won't be hit with constant fees for relisting, just to try and stay near the top.

An important caveat in real estate is "location, location, location." It is a lot like that on the web. It's not who you started with, or who makes the best cupcakes, or even choosing one over the other. It's simply a matter of being where the customers are shopping. And in our case, that means branching out and trying new opportunities.

Check us out if you have a chance! http://FunkyQuail.ArtFire.com