A Website Alone is Not Enough Pt2

Here is Part 2 of Lisa Blacklers guest Blog Apperance

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Managing Data

It is important to monitor what is happening on the site – how many people visit  from which sources.  This allows tweaking of the site to maximize its potential.  Which pages do people enter the site at – it is not always the home page.  If you learn that the search “long sleeved blue dresses” brings people to the page of blue dresses and they subsequently make a purchase, you can use this information to boost other pages of the site.

Where possible, visitor information should be captured.  This allows further marketing to them in the form of email marketing.

Maximising the Value of Visitors

Capturing contact information from visitors allows you to market to them in the future.  An email marketing campaign allows you to communicate special offers and new product launches and encourage return visits to your site.  It can build a dialogue and a relationship which is often missing from e-commerce sites.  With a relationship, customers feel valued and are more loyal.

If the purchasing data is harnessed, it is possible to use this to upsell in the future.  If they have bought 6 months’ supply of printer paper, then emailing them a reminder after 5 months will be helpful to them and bring them back to your site.

Social Media

Depending on the industry sector, social media can be deployed in different ways to increase awareness amongst the target market as well as to communicate with customers.  Twitter and Facebook allow a conversation to take place – engaging people is a powerful way to bring them onside.  These tools are also powerful for customer service.  Many large companies monitor Twitter for mentions of their products and the best ones will pick up on any issues being talked about and deal with them.  This turns a problem into a positive experience.

Both Facebook and Twitter require time and commitment.  They are about relationships, not about broadcasting.  However, they are inexpensive and powerful tools.  Facebook also has a targeting pay per click advertising system.

Summary

If you build it they will come is simply not true of websites.  To maximize the investment made in site development there must be thought and effort made to make it work as hard as possible.

Lisa

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Lisa Blackler heads up Honesty Marketing and draws together the experience of a vast virtual team of experts to ensure that clients benefit from the very best in marketing, creative and technical knowledge.

You can get in touch with Lisa on 01933 419079 or visit her website http://www.honestymarketing.co.uk

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A Website Alone is Not Enough Pt2

A Website Alone Is Not Enough Pt1

This next post is a 2 parter, the second part will be posted on Friday and has been written by a good freind of mine Lisa Blackler from Honesty Marketing.

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A professionally designed website is an important investment.  It presents your business as trustworthy and serious, and harnesses technologies and design features to increase enquiries and sales from site visitors.

However, a site that is simply well designed will not perform as strongly as possible.  There are many techniques that will boost sales from your investment.

Copywriting

The words on your site have 2 functions: 

1. To convince the visitor that they wish to do business with you and 

2. To maximize results from search engine enquiries.

1.        Persuasive copy is vital.  It must be relevant to the target market, addressing their needs and desires in order to demonstrate that your business matches those needs.  The vocabulary, tone of voice and choice of messages all contribute to this.  A beautiful site with poorly written copy will not sell.  This is true of every word on the site, including product descriptions on e-commerce sites.  Developing a “personality” that is in sync with the site style and the target market  is vital.

2.       The identification of key search terms and the incorporation of them into the site will increase the site’s ranking on Google as well as mean that when viewing the site the visitor will see that it is relevant to their needs – more visitors and more conversions.  This is a skillful task, as “shoe horning” search terms into copy leads to uncomfortable reading.

Other SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

It is important to identify where inbound links can be found.  This varies from business to business, but directories such as Yell and any industry specific ones should be identified and listings placed.  The sites should be of quality so as not to devalue your own site.

Google Adwords is another option to consider to increase visits to the site.  With careful selection of relevant search terms, a competitive cost per click can be found to bring people to the site.  This may take some creativity using “long tail” search terms eg “long sleeved blue dress” rather than just “dress”.

Blogging is another tool to pick up on search terms.  A well written blog can bring visitors to the site and done cleverly it is possible to pick up on searches for terms that may not otherwise appear on your site.  For example, a search for “celebrities at the Chelsea Flower Show” might not reach your main site, but a timely blog could get them there.  If you are a garden designer, then this is powerful.

Part 2 will be posted on Friday

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Lisa Blackler heads up Honesty Marketing and draws together the experience of a vast virtual team of experts to ensure that clients benefit from the very best in marketing, creative and technical knowledge.

You can get in touch with Lisa on 01933 419079 or visit her website http://www.honestymarketing.co.uk

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A Website Alone Is Not Enough Pt1

Give Great Customer Service

Customer service should be key in your business and form part of your marketing, ensuring you look after your customers means that they will remember you, use your services again and recommend your services to others. This is why it's worth spending some time ensuring you've got it right.


Too few businesses concentrate on customer service yet now in our times customer service is a key factor to a successful business. Imagine if your cost to acquire a customer is £20 - this means that roughly for every £20 of marketing spend you'll get a customer. Now if you get that customer and treat them brilliantly and they tell a friend or relative about you and then they go on to use you, you've then saved yourself £20 which will then go into your profit!


Lets now imagine that you give prospects who aren't yet your customer a brilliant service, If you can demonstrate you give great service, your conversion rate will increase, therefore your cost to acquire a customer drops even further.


I really don't understand when business owners just give the standard service to customers, It's much more profitable to make your customers think WOW what a great service.
Something else you should be doing is ensuring that your top paying customers get more from you, It's only right, they are spending the most money with you.


So with this in mind what's is a list of 5 things you can do to give your customers an extroidinary service?
Here is a short list of basic ideas

• send them a birthday card.
• answer your phone or have a call answering service
• don't keep them waiting
• under promise - over deliver
• If you are B2B find business for them
• have a NO Brainer Guarantee 

Your goal should be to ensure that your customers or prospects would be crazy not to use you as going to your competitors would cost them more! This does not mean be the cheapest though, I'll cover pricing in another post.


To your success
Paul

Give Great Customer Service

To Advertise or not To Advertise?

That is the question, or is it.
In my first 3 years of business I thought advertising was just what you had to do to get business, I was wrong and I've been proven right time after time. I have spent literally thousands on advertising with online companies, magazines, radio, yellow pages and the BT phone book and never got a penny in return. While you're a start up spend as little on promoting your business as you can and if you're a procrastinator this is where that skill will come in handy think about where you spend your money, if you're not a procrastinator become one when it comes to money on advertising. Stick to Networking/ word of mouth and all that free online stuff for now!


I will add one exception to this advertising rule and that is the online site bestof, that has worked for me. the business is a franchise and if you are a local business, and have a decent franchisee running your area they will help you to get business by using the site and promoting you, check out my local Site


To Your Success
Paul

To Advertise or not To Advertise?

Free Online Marketing

Well hopefully by now you've set up your website and you've got a nice shiny domain name and email, you're going to get loads of business now! Sorry to shatter your dreams but it's going to take a bit of work to get your site found, your site is like a needle in a very big haystack and how do you find a needle in a haystack? - with a magnet. 


With the rise of social media over the last few years you've got a nice big magnet to promote your site and for the most part it's all free! 


There is an art to social media in getting it right and I'll give tips on each specific one over the next few weeks this is just a guide to get you started. here is a list of site you should get up and running to promote your business and new website.


While social media is great don't use it as a blatant Ad for your business, you need to be very subtle about it, social media is about building relationships first don't spam people with your business.


Twitter & Twellow
Twitter is really simple to use, basically twitter is conversations online the length of a text message that go on whether you are there or not, Setting up your twitter site is simple and takes about 10 minutes - do not pay someone to do it (I've seen a company charge £75 to do this and there are probably other charging more - this is a rip off) once you've set up your profile find people to follow those that may share your interests an dthat you could have a conversation with. You write posts about what you are doing and comments on social stuff thats happening, Tweeters will follow you back and then see your posts they may comment about what you've written and you do the same by hitting the reply button.


Twellow it just a twitter yellow pages you get to write a bit about you and your business and have a link to your twitter site and your website.


Facebook 
You can create your own fan page for your business, this site can be a bit more down to business but keep it fun and add tips and photos, Send the page to your 'Friends' so they can see what you're up to and can 'Like' your page then other people will find it and 'Like' it too. 
Click on +Create Page


4Networking
4Networking is a fantastic business networking organisation that set up in 2005. Business networking groups meet all over the country and 4N has, at the time of writing this over 250 groups with business owners meet for breakfast to connect with like minded business owners. There is a cost to meeting like this and becoming a member and I'll talk about networking in another post, the great thing about the 4Networking website is that It's free to use! you can go on fill out a profile  with a link back to your site and contact details and then you can use the forums to connect with other businesses!


LinkedIn 
Really easy one fill out your LinkedIn profile, find and join (or start your own) groups over time find people to link with - this may be from networking events, or from your groups you're part of.


Blogger
You could set up your own blog just like this one to let people know about areas of your business and tips on  how to do something! keep in mind though it's not about making a blatant Ad about your business have links to your website but don't make each post about you and your business, no one will read it give something of value! It may be about your journey in business too. Let me know about it though I'd love to read it.


Click on my links for these social sites so we can connect on those! 
With all these site there are some rules to making it work.

1. People buy from people - add a picture of yourself not a logo or picture of you and a friend or pet
2. Fill out your profiles in full
3. Don't spam people keep it social
4. Add value in what you do and do your best to help others.

To Your Online Success

Paul

Free Online Marketing

Get Online, for Free!

An online presence is a must these days, if you don't have one whatever your business you'll be left behind. 
When I moved to Hertford I needed to move my local doctors so I Googled it and found only one GPs with a website, I called them and then registered there, and that's true for most businesses most people look online for a service or product now, if you can't be found you're losing money - one golden rule of business is don't lose money!


Great news though you don't have to spend thousands to get online today you can do it for free and here's how,  an organisation called Getting British Business Online are supplying free domain names and in association with Google and other partners, using Google Sites to give you a free site, it's really simple so don't be daunted at the thought of building a website, as if you can use a simple word processor then you can build your site and if you need help there is help available too with online training. 


Remember though with your first site keep it simple don't go over board with different fonts font sizes and colours and keep it to your branding. Also add some pictures too.


In the next blog post I'll cover some great tips for marketing online for free! 




To Your Success 
Paul

Get Online, for Free!

Email get it Right

One pet hate of mine is businesses that don't have a business email, by this I mean they'll have dodgybuilder@MyInternetServiceProvider.net even if the name is @ yahoo, google or hotmail it's not good.
The problem with this is I believe that

1. It looks unprofessional
2. It can't form part of your brand.
3. What happens when you leave that ISP?

What I find worrying is that it only costs a couple of pounds per month to get an email such as 

yourname/ Info/ enquiries@yourbusinessname.co.uk you can even get it for free and that's what I'll talk about in tomorrows post how to get online for free.

To Your Success

Paul

Email get it Right

What's in a Business Name

Thinking of a new business name can be huge fun, however some considerations need to be taken.

• Is the web address/ domain name taken?
• Will people know what you do from the name?
• Is it easy to pronounce?
• Is there a meaning in it?
• Shorter punchier names work well, Is it?
• Do you like it?

You can check if your desired domain name is free at 123-reg.co.uk having what you do in your business name and/ or your domain name can be of benefit with the search engines but not essential. 
A good tool to use for coming up with names is a thesaurus  just enter some words and write them down and then match them up, so if you were going to start a plumbing business you could be called Professional Plumbers, or put professional into the thesaurus and you'd get Adept, Efficient, Expert, Skilful or Slick...Plumbers. ( just an example of course)

Remember you're going to have the name for a long time and it will be part of your brand, to change it after several years could mean disaster especially if a lot of people know your name/ brand So work on it and get it right now, it would be a good idea to write a list of the finalists and then ask people you know to rate it and then go with the top one - so long as you really like it too.




To your Success


Paul

What's in a Business Name

What Business?

So you definitely want to start a business - you've found you why, your reason for doing it, have you got a business industry you know you're going into or are you still looking for that idea? finding a business idea to start up in is really easy and something you can 'brainstorm', what are you good at, what skills do you have or hobbies you have that you'd like to convert into a business, you don't have to have to have an original idea Richard Branson, He has nothing new so you can do the same. 


You could start up a completely new business, you could become a franchisee or start a network marketing business. they all have their pros and cons, which I'll discuss in later posts.
Just ensure whatever you go into you are really passionate about doing, don't do it just because it's the first thing you came across and you want to get going in a business - on the flip side though don't spend ages thinking you've got to get everything right first 


I once met someone at a business start up show who said he was starting a business, but he wanted to get it 'right first'. I asked him how long he'd been starting up for, I received the reply of three years!


Franchising this site has a nice calculator to find you the right franchise.
Network Marketing is a relatively new industry this site will show you what it is.




To your success


Paul

What Business?