Working with clients is so inspiring! Yesterday we had clients participate in one of our SEO (search engine optimisation) workshops. Often people think that SEO is a very mysterious and difficult concept and when you don't know a lot about it, it actually is. The good news is that with a couple of simple insights and tricks, this mystery unriddles itself instantly. Also, it's not as difficult as you might think, you just need to know the tricks and do the work! This is what our clients experienced yesterday as well! For example, did you know that: - Regular blogs on your website create more opportunities to pop up in search results - Key words that you've used for finding your site should be in the text on each page AND in the code of your website - Think of your customers and what words or phrases they're searching for, what problem do they need solved? Take your customer's perspective, not your own. More workshops are planned for the spring. Click here for details. Often, the first impression of a business will come from just the marketing materials that the business produces. A potential client may pick up a flyer or see a poster and decide whether they want to know more about the product or service within a few seconds. What does your marketing material say instantly about your products/services? A client came to us recently and asked us to coach them to improve their sales abroad, which predominately come from groups such as hobby associations. They appeared to have a really good sales process but were finding it hard to get enough first contacts made. We always dig in deeply with a new coaching client to investigate the cause of each issue so that we know we are helping the client to fix and improve the right areas of the business. Firstly we sharpened the communications objective for this target market, which became ‘generating traffic to the business website’ (because that seemed to be their main sales point with a solid process in place). In this case, the first impression was one of the problems. The materials that the associations were passing out didn’t appeal to the target customers’ needs and didn’t accurately reflect the value of the product for them and the benefits of using it. Another issue was that the marketing materials did not clearly guide their target customers to the website. It was like giving a square peg to a round hole.... To dramatically improve the first impression that many of their potential clients around the world get, we started our coaching journey by helping them establish: What their target market needs and values are. Is the product/service for this market perfect, clean and angular or soft and comfortable, is it reliable or is it a good bargain? For example, compare these three flyers and think about what each target market values – does a potential client of a spa like sharp, angular lines and dark, serious colours? Together with our client we defined what the reader of their marketing materials should do next. They should head to their website. If you want your target customers to go to your website, then the website address should be clearly stated. When the target customer gets to the website, they need to know what they should click on to book something. By helping this client recognise and formalise their objective and their target market needs and values and what they want their prospective customers to do next, they now can get on with redesigning their material to make a much better first impression and get their target customer to visit their website (their main sales portal). That better first impression should see more visitors to their website and requests for more information and we know that once people come into contact in both those ways, they usually buy. Watch this space for the results! Often we see entrepreneurs undertake many marketing activities for their products or services. Although being active and visible is good, make sure your activities are contributing towards your objective!
So keep your marketing efforts focused on a single objective, whether that is to raise awareness and find new customers, grow business with existing customers or develop new niches for your product or service. Write down your marketing objective and evaluate each marketing activity to make sure it aligns with it. Good luck! Monday morning marketing idea If you have a service or product, local events are great ways to meet and get to know your target market. Make the most of the time by talking to your potential customers, try to capture their own words and get their email addresses...as many as possible!
Monday morning marketing ideas Have a marketing objective in mind and link every single thing you do back to this objective. This will make sure that you spend your precious time on the right things. Then, make a week-long plan for the different tasks you have to do to make sure you stay focused and do your tasks in the best possible way.
Monday morning marketing idea Ask, ask, ask. Most people are very happy to review or send you a testimonial.
If you haven’t got any customers that you can ask, ask a friend/contact to trial your product/service and then review it. If you are sure of the reaction, ask social media followers or specific customers to review you on Facebook. You can also create a testimonials page on your website but we find it best to put your testimonials and reviews throughout your site content, in places where it fits best. Monday morning marketing idea Search engines absolutely love good quality content but they react even more so to the latest content – recent articles, page content, images and films. Assuming you have your website optimised for search engines (check that you have keywords on each page and that your images have alternative text so computers can read what is in them), each new piece of content will boost your visibility to searchers.
Monday morning marketing idea Give help where people ask for it but make sure you are talking on places that your potential clients are operating on. If you are a local business, stick very definitely to local sites.
Monday morning marketing idea The best way to get a new customer is if someone else recommends you. You do sometimes need to ask though, so set up a simple referral programme or a more complex affiliate programme and get more sales that way. Most people are more than happy to refer businesses that they trust.
Monday morning marketing idea Start with these services: Google My Business and Bing Places for Business. If you think it would be worth it, try Yahoo Localworks (a paid service) or a local online directory, like our local Life in Danderyd (free). Ask customers to leave reviews on your local business listings too and keep an eye on them to make sure that they are fair and that the listing is still looking good.
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