4 Small Business Success Stories
Even in this tough economy, there are ways to thrive and drive business through smart and strategic online marketing campaigns. Taking a step back and looking for ways to implement an online marketing strategy doesn’t require a huge financial investment, in fact, if done right, small businesses can attract more customers and grow profits. Here’s a look at four success stories from small businesses that benefited from savvy online marketing ideas.
Lawson Photography wanted to create a new web page on their business website that allowed them to stay in touch with customers by sharing fun insights and photography related stories.
Lawson Photography hired a webmaster who created a a blog for Lawson’s website. There, both existing and potential customers had a place to leave comments on making them feel like part of the online dialogue. The blog on Lawson’s website also, gives the company’s site a personal feel and also functions as a great online marketing tool.
Having a blog on a business website, is an excellent low cost approach to online marketing. When you update a website frequently with fresh content, you increase your website’s rankings in search engines like Google. The higher a website is ranked, the more it appears at the top of search engine results.
Therefore, when Lawson’s Photography updates their web content via a blog, they turn a static website into a dynamic site with better search results and a place for visitors to find new content.
Cozy Sac a furniture company that sells bean bag style chairs on an e-commerce website increased sales by launching a redesigned website. Cozy Sac, sells a hip product, but its previous website’s design from 1996 was too outdated to showcase the hipness of the products.
Cozy Sac hired a web design team to give their brand a face lift. The web designers took the outdated design and created a clean and modern look for the e-commerce site which vastly improved the display of the product line.
In addition to cleaning up the branding, the web design team implemented a shopping cart feature which resulted in enhancing the online shopping experience for visitors. The shopping cart feature made it clear to visitors that they are on an e-commerce website and can actually make online purchases.
The easier it is for potential customers to find your product, navigate the website, and to shop, the more sales will increase.
Cypress House Bed & Breakfast in Key West is one of the 84 bed and breakfast places to stay in Key West. With so much competition, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd to attract new guests. That’s why, Cypress House Bed Breakfast in Key West, needed more visibility online.
They decided to optimize their web pages through an aggressive SEO campaign. Most of the Cypress House’s new business comes from people searching the internet for a place to stay.
Once Cypress House implemented the aggressive SEO campaign targeting key words: bed and breakfast and Key West they immediately show an increase in traffic and online books.
Lazy Parrot a hotel over in Rincon, Puerto Rico found a virtual way to increase guest bookings.
In the beginning of 2010, Lazy Parrot hired a photographer to do a virtual tour of their hotel who then put it on their website.
Once the virtual tour was launched online, Francia Lantz, owner of the Lazy Parrot, experienced amazing business success. The virtual tour gives viewers a glimpse into what the interior and exterior of the hotel looks and feels like.
Since the installation of the virtual tour on the website in February of 2010, Lantz says that she had more bookings this past summer than in previous summers. How’s that for a success story in a down economy?
To recap, these four business success stories happened through smart online marketing techniques. If you are a small business struggling to find prospective customers consider executing one or more of the following: a SEO campaign, website redesign, installing a virtual tour, and devoting time to writing a blog for interesting web updates.
By — Andrea Richard