Marketing is a challenge for small businesses everywhere, and if you are a small business owner, you are well aware of the hurdles involved. Luckily the internet has tons of online tools that make that challenge easier to face! But wait, what are the best tools? In an effort to answer that question, we are kicking off an interview series with members of the Twitter community. We want to know exactly what challenges small businesses face, and what they are doing online to overcome those challenges.

We interviewed Eric Fransen from Fort Mill, SC (@ericfransen), owner of Klik Marketing: www.klikmarketing.com

First off, what services does your company provide? We offer Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Optimization, Behavior Analytics, PPC Campaign Management and generally any Internet Marketing type service.

When did you launch your business/how long have you been in business? I launched my first Internet Marketing business in 1998. My new venture (founded 2008) is built on the same principles of my previous company except we are focusing strictly on the Internet Marketing side of things and aren’t providing any design services.

What marketing tool(s) does your company currently use? Web Position, Web CEO, Excel, Google Analytics, SEO Toolbar from SEO Book, Custom Manuals for clients

What has been your greatest marketing tool? My most successful marketing tool comes from a combination of current client referrals and people reading our blog postings. After the initial referral we send most people to our blog to give them an idea of how we work. It usually closes the deal before we even get on the phone with them. 

What are the biggest challenges your company faces in marketing its product and what are you doing to overcome those challenges? The Internet Marketing industry is unique in that we are competing worldwide with freelancers, boutique firms, large agencies and everybody’s nephew. So going out there and getting a top ranking for search engine optimization company is a bit harder that getting a top ranking for most other industries. So for internal marketing purposes we don’t focus as much on the search engine side of things. Our goal is to put out good blog posts and take care of our customer base. Our rankings will come over time, but are revenue steam isn’t dependent on it.

A lot of companies are shifting their marketing efforts to online tools and free social media marketing. Has your company made this kind of shift, and if so in what ways are you marketing online? The majority of our marketing is paid for in time. We practice what we preach. Between Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Blogging, Technorati, MyBlogLog, Friend Finder, etc we dedicate time each day to put out good content for our target market. Training videos will be our next step. We’ll be putting together monthly series that help small business owners do a lot of their own Internet Marketing. We act as their Director of Online Marketing and they will do the majority of the grunt work. It’s not that we don’t want to do this work, but based on our clients finances and their intimate knowledge of their product line we feel we can make better progress by directing their efforts. If they want us to do the work we’ll gladly dig in, but I’m seeing a niche area that we want to specialize in.

How are your company’s sales tactics or way of doing business being affected by this recession and do you have any advice to other small business owners?

Any cost saving tips? We’ve found over the last 10 years of doing business with hundreds of companies that communication is king. As long as we communicate with our clients, give them reasonable expectations and then exceed them they will stick with us. The majority of our clients’ websites are an effective part of their business and they realize through the good and bad times it turns a positive ROI and they need to put money into it, because more comes out of it than goes in. In regards to cost savings tips. We have just released our “We Are Your Online Marketing Department” campaign. The yearly savings are in the thousands depending on the industry, marketing, competition, etc. I believe this type of offering is going to allow us to stand out in a down market. Everybody has to bootstrap it a bit like when they started out. We want to be there to give the business owner or manager the tools to move in the right direction on the Internet Marketing side of things.

If you would like to be a part of our interview series please email us at info@marketingrooster.com, or if you are on twitter DM us @marketrooster.

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