On eMarketing

See what I did there? I left the "e" lowercase. I'm now hip with the business crowd circa 2003. I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to market business online- specifically how to do it for free. Here's a few suggestions.

1. Use Twitter as a constant reminder that you exist. Lots of businesses don't have any idea that Twitter can be used as a business tool, and many that do use it don't have any idea how to use it. To begin, you have to create an account, with a name that is recognizable. For this article I'm going to pimp Sakura Japanese in Boone NC. A good name for them is "SakuraofBoone", and not "BooneJapanese" or something like that. The goal is that people see your name and immediately think of your business. Step 2 is following people. Do a near:boone (or any other place, zipcode, etc) search, and literally follow every person that comes up. You want to be following thousands of people. I believe that the approximate rate of being followed is something like 18%. Thus, following 10,000 people will net you 1,800 followers. Never stop following people. Step 3- tweet often, and tweet relevant things. Often businesses don't know what to tweet. Rather than say dumb things like "Celebrate X holiday at Sakura!" or "Long day? Eat at Sakura!", make customers want to get your tweets. Give small deals, and talk about the food. Examples- "Tell your waiter X and get a free soup with dinner tonight", and "Just served a plate of hibachi steak and mushrooms, man it smelled good". This is going to give customers the desire to go to your restaurant, and a reason too. The last thing you need to do with Twitter is us it as a link hub. List every last place customers can find you on the web.

2. Use Facebook as a pseudo-website. Post many of the same things you post on Twitter to the business page. Deals are what will make people become a fan, and again, constant reminding will bring in business. Since we're talking free, I'll only say that if you want to spend money- targeted ads might pay off well. Facebook will be as good as a website at getting customers directions, and staying in contact with them. Starting discussions about the food and atmosphere will not only bring in customers, it will help better the place.

3. Create a website. Use a service like Squarespace to get a site up and running, and try to secure a name that is short, but recognizable. Go for a ".com" over any other address. On this site you need a few things- menu, pictures, directions, and text. Write a history of the place, post pictures of the setting and food (HIGH QUALITY PICTURES ONLY, as in- photoshopped as necessary), get maps, and make the site open and encourage navigating all around. Get a twitter feed going, so that the deals and enticing info you post is fed to the site as well.

4. The last step is market the digital media physically. Every menu needs to have these 3 addresses up. Have a visible display showing them near the entrance and checkout. Have the waiters tell customers about the online deals, and print the addresses on the bill and receipt.

This has been pretty restaurant-centric, but it wouldn't be such a stretch to replace the specific details with things relevant to your business. The goal in all of this is to establish a large presence in the space where people are spending more and more of their time. I believe that keeping up these free (or very cheap) digital billboards will be much more beneficial than a kitschy commercial or advertisement in the paper.