How well are you doing at winning new customers and prospects? Is it very important because your percentage success rate at winning opportunities has a direct impact on the number of opportunities that you convert paying customers. Even a small improvement in your success rate will help you to make more money.
Step 3 in our Methodology is all about the steps prospects go through before they decide to buy from you.
Recent new business success
Let’s start by doing an analysis of your recent business successes. Go to your accounts software and print out a list of all of the invoices you have raised over the last six months. Make a note of the total sums payable by each individual and rank than by size so that you have the largest paying customers at the top of the page.
Now let’s have a look at some of the history of each of these customers or clients.
How did you first get to know them?
What dates did they first get in touch with you?
What was the first opportunity they discussed?
What was the final proposal to put to them? Was there a difference from 3 above?
Who led the discussions?
Now let’s do the exact same thing for your existing prospects. You should have a list somewhere of all of the prospective new clients with whom you’re in discussion at the moment. Print that list out and answer the same questions as you did with your previous clients. Below is a form that you can use to fill out which may help you to order your thoughts for these.
Where does business come from?
Within your list of prospects may be some which are not yet concluded. Write down what’s the next step is towards bringing them closer to having a discussion with you and making a decision to buy.
How many biz dev stages are there?
A new business pipeline may have many steps, frequently there are common steps which all prospects go through. Usually for a B2B business they start with initial discussions, and you refine your offer and what the customer wants to buy, and you had a price and discussed whether they are prepared to pay for it, then you negotiate and then you either win or lose the business. It is a pretty standard sales funnel.
For B2C businesses the products are standardised and the steps have fewer reviews and revisions.
See if you can Identify what stage each of your current opportunities are at. Note: I put into an opportunity any discussion which has the potential to become new work – but I set it at a very early stage to reflect this.
Look for patterns in the data
What causes you to win business and what makes the sales funnel longer or shorter? Try to identify the causes of positive and negative situations in your sales funnel. These are areas to focus on – the ones which deliver faster revenues are worth focusing on.
If you have lost some opportunities recently, one tip I recommend is to ask a neutral third party to ring these people up and find out why you didn’t win the business. People will often be more honest than speaking to someone who does not work for the business. This can give you great insight.
Next time we’ll be looking at your business and brand profile and how to raise your profile.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/business-pipeline.jpg341845Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2016-05-02 10:00:002019-08-13 15:18:04Step three: New business pipeline
My name is Emelie and I have been interning with Creative Agency Secrets for the past 2,5 months. I am a Swedish marketing student at Halmstad University and this internship has been a part of my education. It has been great to finally get to work with marketing for real rather than just be reading about it in a textbook. I am happy I got the chance to do my internship here in New Zealand, it has been a fun challenge and I have learned a lot.
What I have learned
During my time here I was lucky to learn many different things within digital marketing. I have learned to work independently and to do research in order to be able to create great content for both Creative Agency Secrets and for our clients. My colleagues have introduced me to a bunch of awesome marketing tools such as; Feedblitz, MailChimp, WooRank, SumoMe, EventBrite, Teamwork, Google Analytics and WordPress just to mention a few. It’s been fun to learn how to use all these tools and see how effective they are when you use them right.
Writing, writing and writing. I have been writing many blog posts and learned the importance of SEO. You have to create great content and you have to make sure your website gets noticed. Because if no one will read your post, then what is the purpose of having all this great content on your website? By improving your SEO, you are more likely to get noticed on the web.
Not to forget, social media has been a big part of my work here. I have been doing social media for some of our clients. It is not always that easy, I have learned it can actually be quite hard. Anyone can get likes, but it gets a lot harder when you want your likes to click through to your website and actually become a customer of yours.
Tack!
I am very grateful for this opportunity and I would like to thank the team for this time together. Rebecca, Jeremy, Laura and Conrado, thank you! Thank you for all your help and all the time you have spent on explaining and teaching me new things. I have learned a lot and it is all thanks to you. I wish you all the best!
We have just opened a coworking space and although we are getting good traffic to the website we are struggling converting paid members, both online and offline. Any tips from those who have started coworking spaces on how you signed up your first 10 or 20 members?
The answer is the same for any new product or service being launched.
I have been a coworking user for 3 years (not an operator). Local Marketing by Experience is what you need to do. By this I mean get visitors to the space and pitch them when they are there…
My advice is this
offer the space as a meeting venue for Meetups locally. Get people visiting the space through meetups and ask the organiser to allow you to pitch all attendees about the available space and “special rates” for their members.
Research highly networked people you know and ask them to help you publicise on social platforms. Ask them to occupy the space free of charge on the condition that they use your space to host their meetings – so they bring people in.
Offer the space short term for the use of local business incubator (they typically run Lean Canvas startup programs for 8 – 12 weeks). This gets visitors in the space and it looks busy… again, you achieve the objective of getting people in and using the space and used to visiting.
Review your pricing. Find out why visitors choose to go elsewhere and if it’s price – adjust accordingly.
Review your offer. Can you offer Co (collaboration) and Working (shared workspace)? Most only offer workspace. My advice is to proactively manage the collaboration part. How can you introduce workers to each other, now can you facilitate them winning new customers in your space, how can you leverage your networks to help them win business… .
Coworking space
How can you use your platform to help them sell more? If you do this, people will want to use your platform for their business because it grows as a result of the collaboration and the working together. And the condition for that is to pay you to occupy your workspace…. problem solved.
Although all these tactics can work, my view is that the last one gives the most opportunity – but it takes work and is possibly hardest to deliver on quickly.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/coworking.png7801172Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2016-04-26 18:11:042019-08-01 15:31:38How to get your first co-working members?
Sometimes you find out that someone has reproduced your work without permission. There are scales of bad-ness here, ranging from plagiarism through to lack of attribution.
Rachel Martin website GrowthHacking expert
What should you do when you find out?
The answer depends on a few things – if you are a world famous published author and public speaker, you may respond differently from if you are a blogger or a business or a startup. The picture above is Rachel Marie Martin – a Mommy Blogger at findingjoy.net who has suffered multiple abuses of her intellectual property.
Aim for a Win-Win outcome
My suggestion is for you to ring them up and ask to speak to the person who published and instead of complaining, tell them you know they’re using your intellectual property without permission – and ask for something in return.
This should be of value to your and your business. This could be a booking from them to use you as a trainer in exchange for using your articles. Or get them to run an advert for your services free in the next 3 months newsletters. Or an agreement to use more of your articles with express sales offers.
Complaining can work
But in my experience it puts peoples backs up and you are less likely to come out of it smelling of roses.
My preferred tactic is to let them know you’ve found out and then ask for a favour in return – which they should feel obliged to agree to doing.
How to find who’s using your material
The best way is to set up Google Alerts for your name, your brand name and other search strings which can easily trace back to you. I am lucky that AFAIK I’m the only Rebecca Caroe in the world (yay) so easy to find. Be creative – you can also use Google Search Console to find incoming links to your site and linkbacks in blog comments usually get tracked too.
Good luck… and of course a last resort is the Cease and Desist letter (but avoid getting legal if you can).
No related posts.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Rachel-MArtin.png580586Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2016-04-22 16:40:392016-04-22 16:40:39What to do when your content is used without permission
In this section we’re going to look at all the different collateral you use to talk about your business to a new prospect.
Search around your office and pull out a copy of every single thing that you can find which has been printed or used electronically to describe your business services and products. Take a couple coffees with you as this might take some time!
So the sort of things that you should be looking for are printed collateral – these might include business cards your brochure case studies printed service or product sheets, notepads.
Other things should definitely include in your collateral list are your business website and any other listings that you have on external websites such as Yellow Pages, Hot Frog, Localist, Finda et cetera.
Now have a think about other information that you send out regularly these could be newsletters you maybe write a business blog, or articles that go in the newspaper or maybe a specialist magazine – add them to the list. Do you also have other things you do like videos? Or maybe articles on LinkedIn.
How about social media? Do you have a business profile on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram there are many more of course so just check all of these and add to the master list.
Which works well for your business?
Now the critical thing is to see whether or not these marketing communications have been effective for your business. Look at the design of each one, is it a consistent? Is your logo, branding and strapline the same on every single one? What about those external listings websites like the Yellow Pages are you using the same words to describe your business in every single place and what about the website landing pages are they all the same?
If you don’t have firm data, just give yourself a score out of 10 for each item listed.
How often do you send out newsletters, articles and other expert updates? Who writes them? What topics do they generally cover? How about press releases? Do all of these align with your business mission statement that we discussed in the previous chapter?
I am expecting that you will find some inconsistencies. This is normal. Make a list of the different items and those you perceive that need to be improved and plan who is going to do this and by when.
If there are obvious gaps in your list which you know should be filled, add them – or make it a “wish list” of marketing materials you’d like to have available.
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of attending the 2016 Asia/Pacific Podcasting Conference, held here in Auckland. It was a fantastic two day event that showcased a number of talented speakers and presented some interesting ideas towards the future of podcasts.
We use some sort of variation of podcasting with a number of our clients, and the buzz remaining from the Asia/Pacific Podcasting Conference got me thinking:
Is there substantial value to be gained from adding a podcast to your marketing mix?
I would argue yes, absolutely. Let me explain why…
1 – It’s going to be huge!
Podcasting is currently experiencing massive amounts of growth around the world. There are over 1 billion subscriptions to over 250,000 podcasts right now. With technology constantly improving, it is becoming ever more popular among the digital savvy.
2 – But, it isn’t as common as blogging… yet.
Which is a good thing. As more people start podcasting, competition increases and therefore, so does the overall quality of podcasts. Can you afford to wait until your competitors are experts before you join the race? As an early adopter, you have free reign to influence this goldmine of a marketplace as you like! Being seen as original and a pioneer can do wonders for your brand’s credibility.
3 – It is incredibly easy to do!
Sure, you have to feel comfortable on a microphone and possibly a camera too, projecting yourself to what could be… millions of people! But you could record your podcast from your bed if you wanted, never having to see these people hanging on your every word, which should help alleviate some of those nerves!
Worried that you don’t have anything to talk about, or don’t know enough about a subject to be an ‘authority’ on it? Fear not! Some of the greatest podcasters out there started out not knowing what they were talking about, but they did it anyway because THEY wanted to learn. In the process, they helped educate their audience and became known as the authorities in their chosen topic!
4 – You need but a few resources to get started.
Actually, all you really need is; an idea, a passion for that idea, a webcam/microphone/laptop/smartphone, maybe a co-host or guest and you’re basically away! It couldn’t be simpler. With ever-improving technological advancements, it’s getting quicker and easier to publish your content online without the assistance of a film crew or recording studio.
This also makes it incredibly time-efficient to produce a decent show as well! If you know what you’ll be talking about and a rough idea how to use the equipment, you can put together a clean, engaging show in a few hours! Obviously, this is dependent on how much editing and fine tuning you may need. You can be sure though, with practice, that time will get shorter and shorter as you perfect your craft!
5 – People engage in it.
Who has time to read lengthy blog articles anymore? Well, still a lot of people. But the point is, a podcast, if done right, will entertain you in a way that words on a page cannot. We lose so much emotion and sentiment in text, but those elements are carefully preserved when you listen to two people passionately discussing a topic.
Podcasting also allows for direct contact with your community/audience. Who wouldn’t become a raving fan of your show if you were personally shouting out to them? The very nature of a podcast immediately makes the listener/viewer feel like a part of your conversation and therefore, more likely to engage with your brand.
Podcasts should also be fun!
Yes, it may be difficult to make something like tax accounting sound fun, but at least it gives you a stage and a spotlight to express your personality or your brand’s character. This alone may be enough to sway any potential customers from a competitor and into your corner.
6 – Podcasts feel genuine.
Podcasts are typically independent of any large branding agencies and thus are ‘uncorrupted’ by the guise of corporate advertising. That’s not to say they are all without their own agendas. However, people seem to respond better to marketing sales pitches when they are delivered through a conversation, instead of being forced upon us by advertising agencies. This creates a unique environment for you to promote and sell your product/services without feeling like an infomercial.
7 – Versatility.
Podcasts can be enjoyed in places where reading a blog cannot! Your commute to and from work, while you sweat out the kilometres on the treadmill at the gym, while you walk your dog, cook dinner, sit in the bath or simply drown out the distractions of your surroundings.
Are you ready to start podcasting yet?
As businesses look for new platforms to compete for and connect with their customers, podcasting is sure to experience a major growth spurt as marketers seek to capitalise in the near future. In an industry driven by building ‘community’ and offering tailored experiences for their customers, podcasting offers both one of the most engaging ways of connecting and creates the perfect platform to deliver incredibly high-value content.
Improving the SEO for your business is very important. When potential customers search for your products and services you obviously want to appear as high in the search engine rankings as possible. In order to do so, your SEO has to be better than your competitors. Google and other search engines will rank what they think is relevant to what is searched for. Therefore, you have to make sure Google thinks your business is relevant to rank. The higher ranking you get on Google, the more likely you will be to drive more traffic to your website. So, what do you do and where do you start?
BrightLocal’s 7 SEO tools
BrightLocal is a company that specializes in SEO tools that help businesses grow through the effective use of search marketing. Today, BrightLocal have more than 20,000 customers worldwide using their 7 SEO tools.
1. Local Search Rank Checker
The first tool is the Local Search Rank Checker. It tracks your ranking on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo and it covers both organic and local search rankings. You have the opportunity to set up this tool to run a report automatically every month or week and you can compare your result to previous reports. Decide what settings will work best for your business. Finally, the report is also available for you to download. Keep track on your ranking and make sure it goes up!
2. Local SEO Check-up
The Local SEO Check-up tool provides a fast and comprehensive audit of a business’ local SEO set-up. It’s a complete local SEO audit tool that runs more than 300 automatic SEO checks. It enables you to speed up your SEO audits and it only takes 5 minutes to set up! You get a clear and accurate report within 15 minutes which you can share directly with clients and prospects. The things this tool checks includes: inbound links, domain authority, your presence on the most important local directories, social media, and Google Places.
3. Google+ Local Wizard
You use Google+ Local Wizard to quickly analyze you Google+ optimization and benchmark your business against your top 10 local competitors. You can also see your ranking on Google+ for your key terms.
4. CitationTracker
CitationTracker is a tool that helps you find, track and manage your local citations. A citation is a listing for your business on a third party site, for example; on a review site like Yelp. By using this tool you will get help with your citations in four different ways. It will help you find existing citations, locate old and incorrect citations, spy on your competitors citations and track the change you make to your current citations. You can also find new citations by locating your top 5 competitors and list your business on the same site!
5. CitationBurst
The CitationBurst tool helps you if you don’t want to go through the labours of manual citation building yourself. CitationBurst will do it for you! It gives you the chance to submit to multiple directories at one time and help to generate listings on local, general and niche directory sites. Pick what sites you want to submit to and CitationBurst will complete the submissions for you within 14 days.
6. ReviewFlow
What ReviewFlow does is that it locates and monitors online reviews on important directories and reviews sites. Using this tool makes it possible to find existing reviews and track all new reviews you receive. ReviewFlow keeps track on all major review sites such as Google+, Yelp and Tripadvisor. By collecting reviews from all sites the report makes it easier for you to read and comment your reviews. You can schedule the report to update monthly, weekly or even daily.
7. ReviewBiz
The final tool is ReviewBiz. It gives you the opportunity of adding a ReviewBiz badge to your website. Create and customize your button and copy paste the code onto your website. By doing that, your clients can easily click-through to a review site of your choice to read and add reviews about your business. Positive reviews will boost your local ranking!
Image credit: pixabay.com
No related posts.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/SEO1-2.png371956Emelie Tillackhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgEmelie Tillack2016-04-12 08:44:332019-08-13 15:18:177 Tools to Improve Your SEO
This section is all about explaining in as few words as possible what’s your business does, what product or service it makes, and who you sell it to.
One way of describing this is an elevator pitch. Let me give you an example my business creative agency secrets, has the strapline “marketing success unlocked”.
That is the quick version of what it is that we do. We offer marketing success to people who previously found this a problem that they could not resolve. You notice that this actually is also incorporated into our logo which is two things, a C. A. S. initials and also a padlock which is open. Thanks to Ross Murray who is our wonderful graphic designer, he designed this for us and it was a great moment when we saw what he had created and how well it aligned with what our business does. You can contact Ross and Angela Murray at www.redspark.co.nz
We then have a longer version of our elevator pitch.
A marketing agency specialising in execution marketing for small and medium businesses.
And of course we have an even longer version, you can read this on our website in the about us page.
How do you describe your business?
Here are some ways that you can help to think through the different options
What’s the company history?
Who are the key personnel?
Who are you trying to sell to, your target customers?
Do you have some specific objectives of the business, this may be to grow it, to sell it, to create an income for yourself, to be a social enterprise? There are many more
Who are your competitors, what is unique, special or different about you?
What’s your track record? In previous businesses and in this current one. What sort of clients have you helped?
Do you have case studies? Are they well known? How did they reflect on your business?
Write down longhand the answers to all of these questions.
You may have some other questions that you think are particularly relevant to yourself. From this, you want to try and build 3 separate statements about your organisation.
The first one needs to be the equivalent of a strapline to go alongside the company name and logo. Here are some examples from clients
SD Talent, best practice human resource management for your team, outsourced.
Crossfire, trusted fire engineering.
Baucher Consulting Ltd, better tax stories for you: a better tax system for everyone.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/state-your-business.jpg561845Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2016-04-11 08:00:572022-12-19 11:57:16Step One: State Your Business
Step three: New business pipeline
/0 Comments/in B2B, Sales, Strategy /by Rebecca CaroeHow well are you doing at winning new customers and prospects? Is it very important because your percentage success rate at winning opportunities has a direct impact on the number of opportunities that you convert paying customers.
Even a small improvement in your success rate will help you to make more money.
Step 3 in our Methodology is all about the steps prospects go through before they decide to buy from you.
Recent new business success
Let’s start by doing an analysis of your recent business successes. Go to your accounts software and print out a list of all of the invoices you have raised over the last six months. Make a note of the total sums payable by each individual and rank than by size so that you have the largest paying customers at the top of the page.
Now let’s have a look at some of the history of each of these customers or clients.
Now let’s do the exact same thing for your existing prospects. You should have a list somewhere of all of the prospective new clients with whom you’re in discussion at the moment. Print that list out and answer the same questions as you did with your previous clients. Below is a form that you can use to fill out which may help you to order your thoughts for these.
Where does business come from?
Within your list of prospects may be some which are not yet concluded. Write down what’s the next step is towards bringing them closer to having a discussion with you and making a decision to buy.
How many biz dev stages are there?
A new business pipeline may have many steps, frequently there are common steps which all prospects go through. Usually for a B2B business they start with initial discussions, and you refine your offer and what the customer wants to buy, and you had a price and discussed whether they are prepared to pay for it, then you negotiate and then you either win or lose the business. It is a pretty standard sales funnel.
For B2C businesses the products are standardised and the steps have fewer reviews and revisions.
See if you can Identify what stage each of your current opportunities are at. Note: I put into an opportunity any discussion which has the potential to become new work – but I set it at a very early stage to reflect this.
Look for patterns in the data
What causes you to win business and what makes the sales funnel longer or shorter? Try to identify the causes of positive and negative situations in your sales funnel. These are areas to focus on – the ones which deliver faster revenues are worth focusing on.
If you have lost some opportunities recently, one tip I recommend is to ask a neutral third party to ring these people up and find out why you didn’t win the business. People will often be more honest than speaking to someone who does not work for the business. This can give you great insight.
Next time we’ll be looking at your business and brand profile and how to raise your profile.
Read the other posts from this series here!
No related posts.
My Internship at Creative Agency Secrets – Emelie Tillack
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Emelie TillackWhat I have learned
During my time here I was lucky to learn many different things within digital marketing. I have learned to work independently and to do research in order to be able to create great content for both Creative Agency Secrets and for our clients. My colleagues have introduced me to a bunch of awesome marketing tools such as; Feedblitz, MailChimp, WooRank, SumoMe, EventBrite, Teamwork, Google Analytics and WordPress just to mention a few. It’s been fun to learn how to use all these tools and see how effective they are when you use them right.
Writing, writing and writing. I have been writing many blog posts and learned the importance of SEO. You have to create great content and you have to make sure your website gets noticed. Because if no one will read your post, then what is the purpose of having all this great content on your website? By improving your SEO, you are more likely to get noticed on the web.
Not to forget, social media has been a big part of my work here. I have been doing social media for some of our clients. It is not always that easy, I have learned it can actually be quite hard. Anyone can get likes, but it gets a lot harder when you want your likes to click through to your website and actually become a customer of yours.
Tack!
I am very grateful for this opportunity and I would like to thank the team for this time together. Rebecca, Jeremy, Laura and Conrado, thank you! Thank you for all your help and all the time you have spent on explaining and teaching me new things. I have learned a lot and it is all thanks to you. I wish you all the best!
Yeeey,
Emelie
No related posts.
How to get your first co-working members?
/1 Comment/in B2B, Case Studies, Local Marketing /by Rebecca CaroeThe answer is the same for any new product or service being launched.
I have been a coworking user for 3 years (not an operator). Local Marketing by Experience is what you need to do. By this I mean get visitors to the space and pitch them when they are there…
My advice is this
Coworking space
How can you use your platform to help them sell more? If you do this, people will want to use your platform for their business because it grows as a result of the collaboration and the working together. And the condition for that is to pay you to occupy your workspace…. problem solved.
Although all these tactics can work, my view is that the last one gives the most opportunity – but it takes work and is possibly hardest to deliver on quickly.
This is in answer to a question on Clarity.fm
No related posts.
What to do when your content is used without permission
/0 Comments/in Blogging, Content Marketing, Copywriting /by Rebecca CaroeSometimes you find out that someone has reproduced your work without permission. There are scales of bad-ness here, ranging from plagiarism through to lack of attribution.
Rachel Martin website GrowthHacking expert
What should you do when you find out?
The answer depends on a few things – if you are a world famous published author and public speaker, you may respond differently from if you are a blogger or a business or a startup. The picture above is Rachel Marie Martin – a Mommy Blogger at findingjoy.net who has suffered multiple abuses of her intellectual property.
Aim for a Win-Win outcome
My suggestion is for you to ring them up and ask to speak to the person who published and instead of complaining, tell them you know they’re using your intellectual property without permission – and ask for something in return.
This should be of value to your and your business. This could be a booking from them to use you as a trainer in exchange for using your articles. Or get them to run an advert for your services free in the next 3 months newsletters. Or an agreement to use more of your articles with express sales offers.
Complaining can work
But in my experience it puts peoples backs up and you are less likely to come out of it smelling of roses.
My preferred tactic is to let them know you’ve found out and then ask for a favour in return – which they should feel obliged to agree to doing.
How to find who’s using your material
The best way is to set up Google Alerts for your name, your brand name and other search strings which can easily trace back to you. I am lucky that AFAIK I’m the only Rebecca Caroe in the world (yay) so easy to find. Be creative – you can also use Google Search Console to find incoming links to your site and linkbacks in blog comments usually get tracked too.
Good luck… and of course a last resort is the Cease and Desist letter (but avoid getting legal if you can).
No related posts.
Download your Traffic, traffic, traffic workbook
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca CaroeTraffic-Webinar-WorkBook Download by clicking on the link
No related posts.
Step two: Marketing Communications
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca CaroeIn this section we’re going to look at all the different collateral you use to talk about your business to a new prospect.
Search around your office and pull out a copy of every single thing that you can find which has been printed or used electronically to describe your business services and products. Take a couple coffees with you as this might take some time!
So the sort of things that you should be looking for are printed collateral – these might include business cards your brochure case studies printed service or product sheets, notepads.
Other things should definitely include in your collateral list are your business website and any other listings that you have on external websites such as Yellow Pages, Hot Frog, Localist, Finda et cetera.
Now have a think about other information that you send out regularly these could be newsletters you maybe write a business blog, or articles that go in the newspaper or maybe a specialist magazine – add them to the list. Do you also have other things you do like videos? Or maybe articles on LinkedIn.
How about social media? Do you have a business profile on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram there are many more of course so just check all of these and add to the master list.
Which works well for your business?
Now the critical thing is to see whether or not these marketing communications have been effective for your business. Look at the design of each one, is it a consistent? Is your logo, branding and strapline the same on every single one? What about those external listings websites like the Yellow Pages are you using the same words to describe your business in every single place and what about the website landing pages are they all the same?
If you don’t have firm data, just give yourself a score out of 10 for each item listed.
How often do you send out newsletters, articles and other expert updates? Who writes them? What topics do they generally cover? How about press releases? Do all of these align with your business mission statement that we discussed in the previous chapter?
I am expecting that you will find some inconsistencies. This is normal. Make a list of the different items and those you perceive that need to be improved and plan who is going to do this and by when.
If there are obvious gaps in your list which you know should be filled, add them – or make it a “wish list” of marketing materials you’d like to have available.
Read the other posts from this series here!
No related posts.
Podcasts – 7 Reasons Why Marketers Need Them
/0 Comments/in Digital media, Marketing, Marketing ideas, Social Media, Strategy /by Creative Agency Secrets TeamEarlier this year, I had the pleasure of attending the 2016 Asia/Pacific Podcasting Conference, held here in Auckland. It was a fantastic two day event that showcased a number of talented speakers and presented some interesting ideas towards the future of podcasts.
We use some sort of variation of podcasting with a number of our clients, and the buzz remaining from the Asia/Pacific Podcasting Conference got me thinking:
Is there substantial value to be gained from adding a podcast to your marketing mix?
I would argue yes, absolutely. Let me explain why…
Podcasting is currently experiencing massive amounts of growth around the world. There are over 1 billion subscriptions to over 250,000 podcasts right now. With technology constantly improving, it is becoming ever more popular among the digital savvy.
2 – But, it isn’t as common as blogging… yet.
Which is a good thing. As more people start podcasting, competition increases and therefore, so does the overall quality of podcasts. Can you afford to wait until your competitors are experts before you join the race? As an early adopter, you have free reign to influence this goldmine of a marketplace as you like! Being seen as original and a pioneer can do wonders for your brand’s credibility.
3 – It is incredibly easy to do!
Sure, you have to feel comfortable on a microphone and possibly a camera too, projecting yourself to what could be… millions of people! But you could record your podcast from your bed if you wanted, never having to see these people hanging on your every word, which should help alleviate some of those nerves!
Worried that you don’t have anything to talk about, or don’t know enough about a subject to be an ‘authority’ on it? Fear not! Some of the greatest podcasters out there started out not knowing what they were talking about, but they did it anyway because THEY wanted to learn. In the process, they helped educate their audience and became known as the authorities in their chosen topic!
4 – You need but a few resources to get started.
Actually, all you really need is; an idea, a passion for that idea, a webcam/microphone/laptop/smartphone, maybe a co-host or guest and you’re basically away! It couldn’t be simpler. With ever-improving technological advancements, it’s getting quicker and easier to publish your content online without the assistance of a film crew or recording studio.
This also makes it incredibly time-efficient to produce a decent show as well! If you know what you’ll be talking about and a rough idea how to use the equipment, you can put together a clean, engaging show in a few hours! Obviously, this is dependent on how much editing and fine tuning you may need. You can be sure though, with practice, that time will get shorter and shorter as you perfect your craft!
5 – People engage in it.
Who has time to read lengthy blog articles anymore? Well, still a lot of people. But the point is, a podcast, if done right, will entertain you in a way that words on a page cannot. We lose so much emotion and sentiment in text, but those elements are carefully preserved when you listen to two people passionately discussing a topic.
Podcasting also allows for direct contact with your community/audience. Who wouldn’t become a raving fan of your show if you were personally shouting out to them? The very nature of a podcast immediately makes the listener/viewer feel like a part of your conversation and therefore, more likely to engage with your brand.
Podcasts should also be fun!
Yes, it may be difficult to make something like tax accounting sound fun, but at least it gives you a stage and a spotlight to express your personality or your brand’s character. This alone may be enough to sway any potential customers from a competitor and into your corner.
Podcasts are typically independent of any large branding agencies and thus are ‘uncorrupted’ by the guise of corporate advertising. That’s not to say they are all without their own agendas. However, people seem to respond better to marketing sales pitches when they are delivered through a conversation, instead of being forced upon us by advertising agencies. This creates a unique environment for you to promote and sell your product/services without feeling like an infomercial.
7 – Versatility.
Podcasts can be enjoyed in places where reading a blog cannot! Your commute to and from work, while you sweat out the kilometres on the treadmill at the gym, while you walk your dog, cook dinner, sit in the bath or simply drown out the distractions of your surroundings.
As businesses look for new platforms to compete for and connect with their customers, podcasting is sure to experience a major growth spurt as marketers seek to capitalise in the near future. In an industry driven by building ‘community’ and offering tailored experiences for their customers, podcasting offers both one of the most engaging ways of connecting and creates the perfect platform to deliver incredibly high-value content.
Of course, these aren’t the only reasons to get into podcasting. Check out these interesting statistics: Big Time Podcasting Statistics and Demographics if you need further persuasion.
If you previously discounted the idea of adding a podcast to your marketing mix, perhaps now is the time to reconsider.
No related posts.
7 Tools to Improve Your SEO
/0 Comments/in B2B, Marketing, SEO /by Emelie TillackImproving the SEO for your business is very important. When potential customers search for your products and services you obviously want to appear as high in the search engine rankings as possible. In order to do so, your SEO has to be better than your competitors. Google and other search engines will rank what they think is relevant to what is searched for. Therefore, you have to make sure Google thinks your business is relevant to rank. The higher ranking you get on Google, the more likely you will be to drive more traffic to your website. So, what do you do and where do you start?
BrightLocal’s 7 SEO tools
BrightLocal is a company that specializes in SEO tools that help businesses grow through the effective use of search marketing. Today, BrightLocal have more than 20,000 customers worldwide using their 7 SEO tools.
1. Local Search Rank Checker
The first tool is the Local Search Rank Checker. It tracks your ranking on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo and it covers both organic and local search rankings. You have the opportunity to set up this tool to run a report automatically every month or week and you can compare your result to previous reports. Decide what settings will work best for your business. Finally, the report is also available for you to download. Keep track on your ranking and make sure it goes up!
2. Local SEO Check-up
The Local SEO Check-up tool provides a fast and comprehensive audit of a business’ local SEO set-up. It’s a complete local SEO audit tool that runs more than 300 automatic SEO checks. It enables you to speed up your SEO audits and it only takes 5 minutes to set up! You get a clear and accurate report within 15 minutes which you can share directly with clients and prospects. The things this tool checks includes: inbound links, domain authority, your presence on the most important local directories, social media, and Google Places.
3. Google+ Local Wizard
You use Google+ Local Wizard to quickly analyze you Google+ optimization and benchmark your business against your top 10 local competitors. You can also see your ranking on Google+ for your key terms.
4. CitationTracker
CitationTracker is a tool that helps you find, track and manage your local citations. A citation is a listing for your business on a third party site, for example; on a review site like Yelp. By using this tool you will get help with your citations in four different ways. It will help you find existing citations, locate old and incorrect citations, spy on your competitors citations and track the change you make to your current citations. You can also find new citations by locating your top 5 competitors and list your business on the same site!
5. CitationBurst
The CitationBurst tool helps you if you don’t want to go through the labours of manual citation building yourself. CitationBurst will do it for you! It gives you the chance to submit to multiple directories at one time and help to generate listings on local, general and niche directory sites. Pick what sites you want to submit to and CitationBurst will complete the submissions for you within 14 days.
6. ReviewFlow
What ReviewFlow does is that it locates and monitors online reviews on important directories and reviews sites. Using this tool makes it possible to find existing reviews and track all new reviews you receive. ReviewFlow keeps track on all major review sites such as Google+, Yelp and Tripadvisor. By collecting reviews from all sites the report makes it easier for you to read and comment your reviews. You can schedule the report to update monthly, weekly or even daily.
7. ReviewBiz
The final tool is ReviewBiz. It gives you the opportunity of adding a ReviewBiz badge to your website. Create and customize your button and copy paste the code onto your website. By doing that, your clients can easily click-through to a review site of your choice to read and add reviews about your business. Positive reviews will boost your local ranking!
Image credit: pixabay.com
No related posts.
Step One: State Your Business
/0 Comments/in B2B, Marketing /by Rebecca CaroeThis section is all about explaining in as few words as possible what’s your business does, what product or service it makes, and who you sell it to.
One way of describing this is an elevator pitch. Let me give you an example my business creative agency secrets, has the strapline “marketing success unlocked”.
That is the quick version of what it is that we do. We offer marketing success to people who previously found this a problem that they could not resolve. You notice that this actually is also incorporated into our logo which is two things, a C. A. S. initials and also a padlock which is open. Thanks to Ross Murray who is our wonderful graphic designer, he designed this for us and it was a great moment when we saw what he had created and how well it aligned with what our business does. You can contact Ross and Angela Murray at www.redspark.co.nz
We then have a longer version of our elevator pitch.
A marketing agency specialising in execution marketing for small and medium businesses.
And of course we have an even longer version, you can read this on our website in the about us page.
How do you describe your business?
Here are some ways that you can help to think through the different options
Write down longhand the answers to all of these questions.
You may have some other questions that you think are particularly relevant to yourself. From this, you want to try and build 3 separate statements about your organisation.
The first one needs to be the equivalent of a strapline to go alongside the company name and logo. Here are some examples from clients
SD Talent, best practice human resource management for your team, outsourced.
Crossfire, trusted fire engineering.
Baucher Consulting Ltd, better tax stories for you: a better tax system for everyone.
Read the other posts from this series here!
No related posts.