How To Maximise Your Online Presence by Guest Blogger, Bob Francis

It never ceases to surprise me how many small businesses still do not effectively promote themselves on line. Many have a website but do not use this resource to its maximum advantage and many are unaware of the other ways in which they can promote themselves and their business. So here are a number of simple tips that can be used to maximise your online presence:

1. Get listed in Google Places

Google searches now prioritise local results. By entering your businesses details in Google Places, Google will be able to index your business and provide these details in searches improving your ranking and providing increased traffic to your website.

2. Get listed in appropriate directories

There are many Online directories covering all types of businesses. One of the best known is Freeindex. In addition to a basic entry of all you business details you can enhance the listing and include links to your website. Most directories get thousands of hits a day and will provide traffic to your site. You can also use sites like Gum Tree to enter a free ad for your products and services.

3. Get articles published in article directories

This is a great way to develop your position as a thought leader and to expose your brand to a wider audience. Articles will be picked up by other sites or bloggers and published with your by-line and website details. Google now indexes these articles which helps with SEO and increased traffic to your site. Ezine Articles is a good example of such a site.

4. Write a Squidoo Lens

Squidoo allows you to build a simple one page website which can be used to promote a product, service or special offer. Economies of scale means that again this will be seen by many people outside your normal sphere of influence and help to improve rankings.

5. LinkedIn

One of the most useful social media activities you can engage in is updating and maintaining your profile in LinkedIn. You can start your own Group based on your business and invite people to engage with you discussing issues that affect your market. In addition you can raise your profile by answering questions raised by other members of LinkedIn. As part of the answer you can link to topic experts, perhaps within your company as well as provide further information by including links to your website.

6. Facebook

Over recent years Facebook has grown substantially in numbers of users and in the way they can interact. In addition to setting up your own personal Facebook page, you can now set up Groups and your own Business Page. For some parts of the population this is the main form of communication and if that is your market then you need to maximise your engagement with this media. Because of the real time nature of communicating by Facebook it is ideal for starting conversations on new products and services and asking about future trends.

7. Twitter

When Twitter started it was primarily used for friends to tell each other what they were doing. It was simple to use, took no time to deliver 140 characters of information and could be done on the run (using mobile technology.) More recently businesses have taken to Twitter as a means of driving traffic to websites and blogs. By adding links to photos, websites, products, offers etc it has become a mainstream communication tool for business.

8. Blogging

Most websites are static and are rarely updated. Often this is due to the technology used making it difficult for anyone other than a programmer to change anything. But the one thing that a website must do is attract visitors and get them to carry out some form of action (call, email, buy.) One method of keeping visitors coming back time and again is to provide regular updates on activities within the company or market place, information on products and services, special offers and the like. The addition of a good blog to a website will help with SEO, traffic and will help to keep customers engaged. Take a look at Blogger and WordPress.

9. Maximise your reviews

In a B to C environment buying tends to be done after referral to friends relatives and work colleagues. Peer reviews and referrals from friends has a much greater effect on the purchasing decision than anything you can do. So it is important that you obtain testimonials, case studies and third party reviews which will help customers with their buying decisions. Using organisations like Tripadvisor and Qype assists in maximising reviews of products and services.

10. Trust signals

Do not forget to include details of corporate or personal membership of trade bodies or institutes as well as copies of certificates of achievements and awards on your website. This will help improve trust between the company and is potential customers.

11. Benefits

Review your website copy. Do you talk about what you do or do you talk about what you do for customers? Customers by benefits. How do your products and services benefit customers? This is what visitors to your site need to see. They do not stay long enough to wade through lots of copy about how you make your products, what machines you have etc., etc. Focus on how you help customers save time and money which in turn will help turn more visitors in to customers.

12. Calls to action

When potential customers arrive on your home page (or other landing page) do they know what is expected of them? Does your website make clear the call to action? In many cases websites tell a good narrative story about the company and its products but neglect to take the customer on the next stage of the purchasing journey. You need to encourage them to go one step further by getting them to contact you by phone or email, to download some free information in exchange for their email address, or take up your latest special offer.

13. Google

Google offer a number of free tools to help you maximise your web presence. One of these is Google Analytics. The reports from Google Analytics helps you to understand how people interact with your website, where the enter and exit the site, how long they stay, what keywords or search terms they use and many other areas. All this information if understood and used correctly enable you to improve your site and gain more traffic and better ranking.

Another Google tool is Alerts where you can keep abreast of what is happening in your industry, any breaking news that helps you and information on competition including what people are saying about your business.

Google+ is one of the latest products from the search engine giant. This is a Social Media Tool which can be considered the equivalent of Facebook. It has some powerful features and is well worth exploring to maximise your presence.

Embedding Google Maps into your website not only helps customers find you if you have a physical presence but also ensures better rankings for your site. As indicated earlier combined with an entry in Google Places ensures more traffic can find you.

14. Google adwords

This is not a free tool but is very useful to drive up your website rankings and targets potential customers looking for your products at that moment. Depending on how much you bid for the search keyword phrases you ad will appear on the relevant search results page at or near the top ensuring you gain maximum number of hits. Costs can be held in check by use of the budget limits which ensures that you do not overspend your daily budget.

15. Title tags

Title tags are embedded in the coding for each page of your site. Most people just use their company name in the title tags. But typically most people do not search by company name therefore using keywords and phrases in the title tags will help in search engine rankings.

16. Meta tag description

This is the part of the search engine listing that appears below the main title. It should be used to describe the main benefits that you offer your customers. If Google cannot find a meta tag description it will normally pick up the first one or two lines of the website home page which as we have seen does not always do the company justice.

17. Email signature

Email signatures are a great way to promote your website, blog or other on line presence. The inclusion of hyperlinks to your website makes it easy for potential viewers to connect.

18. Email marketing

Set up a method of collecting visitors email addresses in exchange for white papers, newsletters and other useful information. Building a database of people interested in your products and services will allow you to regularly send them information on special offers, new products and services and exclusive deals. A couple of popular platforms for this are Constant Contact and MailChimp.

Bob Francis

bob.francis@sgba.co.uk

sgbabusinessadvisors.co.uk

More business? No thanks I’m fine! What?

I despair.

Is entrepreneurism dead for British businesses?

So here I am at the Ibis Hotel in Earls Court at a seminar being run by Lee Gilbert (he’s great by the way – look him up. He’s an Internet Marketing Expert) and lo and behold there’s a ‘traditional’ English public under the same roof.

So, what has this got to do with the headline? Well, I only found out by accident because it happens to be raining and I didn’t bring a brolly; therefore thought I’d see what was available in the hotel.

There are another 50 people at the event, any of whom would only have found the venue by accident not by design.

There is admittedly an A-frame billboard in the reception of the hotel but no concerted effort by the pub to promote their services to almost a captive audience.

There’s 2 possible exits from the conference room we are in, neither with any clear promotion for delegates.

Wouldn’t you as a business owner do something proactive rather than leave it to chance – a couple more A-frames,  leaflet delegates as they came out, liaise with the event organisers to highlight the venue as opposed to all the establishments outside of the hotel,…..?

How many thousands of potential prospects just walk out the door and spend their pounds elsewhere over a year?

Why rely on the weather?

Stranger than fiction!

Don’t Get Your Mucking Words Fuddled

Whatever message you are trying get across, using the right words is essential. Sometimes subtle changes can make the world of difference – as exemplified very well by the following video:

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10 Steps To Success in 2012 – Step 5: Measure

10 Steps To Success in 2012 - Step 5: Measure

Whatever your marketing efforts entail – you need to be measuring the results and tracking where you get the most leads being generated. You can do this in a number of ways. This is easier online as you can use specific website or email addresses that relate to a particular campaign. 

Google Analytics is also a great, free tool to track visitor activity on your website. There are also tools for tracking traffic via email campaigns and social media interactions, as well as pay-per-click ads; most of them are free or low cost. 

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it and know how effective a specific piece of marketing is. 

For offline activity, telephone tracking numbers can be an effective, and relatively low cost way of knowing where business opportunities are coming from. A telephone tracking number is a ‘normal’ number (as opposed to 0845/0870/etc) that is published in your mailshot or advert, specific to that particular marketing channel; thereby providing you information on how many calls came through for a given project. 

It is important to know your return on investment for any marketing that you do, to enable you decide what to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t work – this way you get more ‘bang for your buck‘!

Download the full guide: 10 Steps To Success in 2012

Or alternatively, you can use Facebook or Twitter to get your copy:

10 Steps To Success in 2012 – Step 4: Method

10 Steps To Success in 2012 - Step 4: Method

Great, so you’ve got your target market, your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and a message that hits the spot – now your challenge is to get the message out there through a variety of marketing activities. In my mind, these be categorised into passive and active, then online and offline. 

Passive marketing is an advert or a directory listing for example, where you are waiting for a prospect to take action to contact you i.e. you have no direct control or influence. 

Active marketing is where you are engaging directly with your prospect – this might be through email marketing, telephone calls, direct mail, etc. In this case you have more ability to encourage a ‘call to action‘ that will lead to new custom. On the whole, being more ‘active’ is likely to yield better results for your business. 

Your marketing should be ongoing and you should be implementing multiple channels to your identified market.

Download the full guide: 10 Steps To Success in 2012

Or alternatively, you can use Facebook or Twitter to get your copy:

10 Steps To Success In 2012 – Step 1: Market

10 Steps To Success in 2012 - Step 1: Market

Identify who your ideal customer is. Rather than trying to be all things to all people, be specific about who you would want as a client. Look at who your best customers are now (and your worst) and aim to get more of the best (and much less of the worst!). 

Your niche could be defined by:

• turnover
• number of staff
• geography
• industry sector
• sex, age or ethnicity
• hobby/interest
• position within a company
• etc

 …or more than likely a combination of these factors.

How many new customers do you actually need? It is easier to target a prospect list with a 1000 names on it versus tens or hundreds of thousands. The more specific you are, the better you can position your offering and make it appeal to a niche audience.

Download the full guide: 10 Steps To Success in 2012

Or alternatively, you can use Facebook or Twitter to get your copy:

What is marketing? Answer in a 100 seconds video

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I think this video is great and captures the power of words within marketing.

What do you think?

Is Your Website Working?

Does your Website attract a steady flow of targeted traffic, build an opt-in list, supply you leads and income from sales of products and services?

If it doesn’t, then you need to examine your Website content, design and structure.

In most cases, Websites are designed and built first. Then the business owners try to figure out how to attract visitors. This approach is backwards.

Before you have a single web page built or content written you should have clearly identified your strategy for attracting visitors and converting them to leads or clients. Using the web to market your product or services requires a web marketing plan.

The web has the potential to be a powerful communication tool, but your Website needs to be designed in order for you to achieve your marketing goals. These goals also have to be measurable.

A Website built and managed without a clear marketing plan is usually a waste of time and money. Many Website are nothing more than web billboards. These sites generally do not attract clients and provide little marketing benefit.

What should you measure?

The most obvious category that can be measured is the amount of traffic that your Website is generating. The key value is the number of unique visitors that come to the Website. There are other values that are important, such as page views and average length of stay.

As you measure these values over time the goal would be to have a steady increase in all of these values.

Of course, if these visitors are not doing anything when they are on your Website they are of little value.

Do you have a call to action?

Your Website should be designed in such a way that your visitors are presented with a call to action. This call to action should be obvious to the visitor. Your call to action is another element that can be measured. How many visitors perform the call to action?

The call to action can take many forms. It may be opting in to a email newsletter list, or filling out a lead form. The ideal action is the purchase of a product or service.

When a site visitor performs the call to action, you have a conversion. The number of conversions divided by the number of Website visitors is the conversion rate.

One of the goals of the Website should be to increase the conversion rate.

Testing

Once you have your measurable elements, traffic and conversions, you can test various ways to make your Website work. You can test various techniques for increasing traffic. Options here include search engine optimization of your Website, pay per click advertising, press releases and article writing.

Then you will also want to increase your conversion rates. Split testing is used to determine how various elements within the web page affect the visitor. You can change the elements on the page such as the headline or color of text and graphics, to measure the affect on the visitor.

Website Goals

You now have the understanding that your business Website should be working for you with a marketing plan. You need a call to action. You need to measure traffic and conversions, and then test to improve the results.

With these measurements in hand, you can now set goals for your Website.

via UK Business Advisors Ltd | UKBA – Is Your Website Working?.