Coaching For Success
Posts tagged Marketing and SEO
‘Webinars – Can Be An Effective Marketing Tool’
Jun 9th
Webinars Can Be An Effective Way To Promote Your Small Business
Before adopting any promotional strategy for a product, a lot of data collection isdone to understand how a customer perceives the product and its promotion. The objective of any promotional campaign is grab the attention of a potential customer and in the most effective manner so that it attracts them to ultimately buy the product.
There are a number of different media used for promotion like print media, online media, radio, television etc. And accordingly the promotional message can be visual, audio, a combination of audio and video or a dynamic audio-visual combination in an interactive mode. A method of dynamic audio visual is a webinar. Webinars are an under utilised method of promotion in the online advertisement arena.
In simple words, a webinar is a presentation which can be used to tell people about your product in the form of visuals with audios, online with an audience watching. Research has shown that a person retains information more effectively if they watch it as well as listen to it. That is why webinars are a very useful tool. In fact, their ability to reach a large number of people makes them an amazing online medium to promote your product.
The success of a webinar depends upon the message conveyed through it and the manner in which it is communicated. Some basics can help you build a successful webinar as not all methods of webinar work. Below are a few guidelines for you if you decide to use webinars, the information is for both products and services as both can be promoted via webinar.
‘Guide and not teach’
Before making a presentation through a webinar, the target audience must be carefully selected and invited. It is advisable to have an informed audience who is genuinely interested in your product. Because your audience is well informed, you must refrain from making a sales pitch in front of them. Instead, you should respect their previous knowledge and guide them in such a way that they are impressed by your product through their own judgment. That way, you don’t teach them about a new product but you guide them using their prior knowledge to naturally allow them to see your product as the one to buy.
‘Set clear objectives and goals’
As seen above, the audience must be guided to your product. In order to accomplish this, you must also be able to relate their problems to your product as the solution. In order to do this you must start with understanding the existing problems and the needs of your customers. It should be clear cut that what you offer is what they need and this and only this must set the objectives and goals for your webinar. A clear definition of the objectives that need to be met is crucial for a good webinar.
‘Relate to customers’
Once the objective is set, then the content is developed. If you can make the audience relate their needs to your offering, then you are in a winning situation. The whole presentation must focus on gentle persuading them that the solution you are offering is precisely what they are looking for. In the process, you must respect the prior knowledge of the customers by align your objectives with their interests, do not be over pushy in the content or start to make it a sales pitch, rememberto be informative, authoritive on that particuliar problem and friendly, if the audience feel you speak from authority the natural tendancy is to listen and take onboard what is being said so that they end up purchasing from you. If they feel it is a sales pitch they will not bother – you were warned 
There are a lot of online service providers for webinars like-On24, Citrix gotoWebinar, and Cisco WebEx; choose the right service provider depending on your needs and budget, trial them first if you can, as many now do a free trial period. Webinars have great potential to raise your company profile and also help sell your product. Like all marketing strategies, it must be implemented in the right way for it to work so your business can take advantage of such an effective tool.
Google Updates Algorithm AGAIN!
Jun 7th
Google Algorithm Changes Again
Everyone wants top rankings for their website and most people use search engines to find what they are looking for. We all know that if your website is not in the top of a search engine that you will miss out on prospective clients, however as you also know getting these top ranks are not easy. We almost all know in some form what SEO (search Engine Optimisation) is, even if we have not got a clue how to do it. But whether we have done it ourselves or got someone to do it for us you will know that a one of hit will not fit the bill especially when search engines make changes make changes to their algorithms (this is the special formula that SE’s used to rank your site in the search engine results pages [SERPs]). Sometimes these tweaks are minor while other times they are huge and the impact is far reaching for all onliners.
Google has made an algorithmic change, which, looks for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. Apparently this is not a flyby night minor change either as Google have stated it is a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which suggests that sites getting less traffic will still be indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic. Google have said they will not be rolling it back.
So where does this leave your average small to medium sized business owner? Well if you have an ecommerce site using a structure that has longtail keywords for pages less viewed, you need to check your stats and see if you were in fact impacted by the update (did you lose traffic from some long tail phrases), also check out your linking practices ensure all links have been obtained using whitehat techniques. Another very important thing to do to help yourself now is check your link strategy out and ensure you are passing link juice to your internal pages.
Make sure all pages have unique good quality information (if you do ecommerce, this is definitely for you do not just use the manufacturers materials) and if you do not use them currently or have not used your social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for a while now is the time as this will help you to build links to internal pages and get traffic throughput to them. Most savvy Business owners realise they can not rely purely on Google or any search engine for that matter for traffic and that social media sites can help boost their business’ exposure. Finally do not go mad do not change everything in the hopes of fixing something that may not even affect you, use your stats and above all common sense.
This is not the end of Long Tail Keywords however good optimisation is really important to your continued online success now, forget how to change, manipulate or find a way around the algorithm changes instead work with it and fix your SEO efforts accordingly by making consistent updates to your content, posting high quality articles that have been optimised on to a well designed site that has also be optimised is the winning game plan here. This does not mean that your rank will be the same indefinitely it does mean that you do work a bit harder and a bit differently to consistently keep you business in front of potential customers.
Is Conventional Advertising Dead?
Jun 2nd
Leaflets a Traditional Form of Marketing
‘Outdoor Advertising’
The traditional printed ‘brochures’ or ‘leaflets’ carry your message to various sets of customers, by reaching inside their homes. They are very cost effective provided you have good distribution channels i.e a good delivery company and if done in the correct way can get your phone ringing immediately. The mass distribution or door-to-door distribution approach has proven for some industries to have a higher ROI for B2C ( Business to Customer) than an online advertising campaign of the same nature. Apart from leaflets, and brochures, posters or banners can be printed and placed on various public sites i.e billboards if youcan afford it or places like local Banks (seen as trustworth on the most part) is always a good place to advertise as they have local boards for advertising and local shops. These advertisements are also cost effective, have repeated exposure to customers and provide quick communication, with local boards in banks if they are busy banks you may need to go there twice a month to renew your ad. None of these methods will work for you if your message is not concise with a finishing touch of creativity.
‘Newspaper advertising’
Newspapers or magazines have a mass reach and therefore are a good means to reach many customers by a single ad. You get the attention of your target customers by strategically choosing the section where you put your ad, be it classifieds or in an editorial section. If you are publishing an ad in editorial section make sure that it is more of an image building or awareness creation activity rather than a sales pitch. The biggest advantage of using newspapers and magazines is the mass reach among the already classified audience which means you can target your customers easily. Since the newspaper or magazine ads have a short life span, they ought to be creative enough to get and sustain the attention of the reader. The Proviso here do your research on the reach of the paper you are putting your ad in make sure it reaches a significant amount of the right type of readers (target the type of reader and the type of newpaper or magazine you use),also haggle on the price you pay to advertise always try to get a discount on long runs or extra weeks free.
‘Mass media advertising’
TV, radio and cinema are the conventional means of advertisements. They have proven to be most effectivethough they are not cheap. Because they cater to such a large audience it becomes difficult to capture any target audience unless what you sell has a wide ranging appeal i.e. a product like chocolate. A TV or a radio ad must contain a message that has a repetition of ads in order to sustain the attention of customers in these cases. In fact, repetitive advertising is not very costly in the case of radio, as radio ads don’t have images, but the message you want broadcast must be quick, sharp, to the point and of broadcasted quality.
‘Direct interaction with customers’
Reaching out to your target customers by direct interaction with them is a useful promotional method. one of the ways is ‘direct mailing’ which is, sending a sales letter to a list of customers by mailing or by inserting them in newspapers or magazines. You can also distribute CDs containing an audio or visual message. Though the responses are not always one hundred percent but a fraction of customers are still captured. You can also organize PR events where you can involve the public. But you need publicity for such an event to be successful. Such PR activities are better than mass advertising as you get on the spot feedback for your campaign. Last, but not the least, is the ‘word of mouth’ advertising. If you have established a reputation for your brand, then all you need to do is to showcase your product and its features; the rest will be done by your customers. Remember, your customers become your promoters if they like your products or your worse crritics if they do not.
Conential advertising is far from dead it still is a better form of advertising for some business types than online marketing and does have the added advantage of something physical which many people still can associate with far easier than virtual advertising. There is still a lot of potential in conventional advertising provided you know how to utilise it. remember that like all advertising these methods can be your friend or enemy depending on how well you have researched and planned your campaign.
Understanding Offline Marketing Can Help your Online Marketing
Jun 1st
In today’s hectic, bloated online world where information overload is stifling creativity and trashing old school ideology it is refreshing to step back into the old world to drenge up the methodology of past glory and use it to create new online glories. When it comes to marketing this revival is both useful and warranted and can help small business owners to understand what is really take place online by using terms they understand from offline marketing for comparison.Most importantly if used properly it can increase client conversion.
OK so let us look at some of these ideas, offline when you are going to do a Marketing Campaign you will either get a marketing specialist or do it yourself in either case both should start by
1, Identifying potential customers, offline you may use surveys, the post office services or things like Dunn & Bradshaw’s directory to help you do this. These methods are still extremly useful and work very well in terms of targetting prospects – if you understand what service or product you are selling. Online there is no real difference in that you still should be doing this only this research can be done using deep keyword research or by finding like minded communities and forums both using search engines, blog catalogs and social media sites – Facebook have great tools which are supposed to be used for targeting a Facebook ad campaign can actually be used to tell you how to find your market inside Facebook without spending any money.
2, Placement of your marketing – offline you would not put an ad or run a campaign for a bakery in a car magazine would you? ( I hope not ) by ensuring that the right type of prospect see your ad in the right offline mediums canhelp improve your businesses chance of obtaining new customers – online it is no different you in that you must make sure that the right people arrive at the correct landing place (targetted traffic) for the search query (keword) associated to that product or service and not another unrelated product.
3, Measure responsiveness- just as you would measure response for offline marketing to an ad, radio or TV campaign you should do the same online – measuring which pages or sites are working. Measuring responsiveness helps you to tweak, remove or change an ad and where best to position it for maximum effect – lets face it why spend money on a campaign that does not work , measuring allows you the ability to stop wasting moneye. Use freely available tools like Google Analytics and Optimiser to help you see what is working and also help you split test pages, if you do not know how find an internet marketing specialist to help.
Finally your best gauge of the success of your marketing campaign on and offline are your customers and also the people who you did not convert (yes I did say the people who did not convert) – the people who became customers by buying from you should be willing to tell you why they bought your product or service and how they would use your product or service within their offline/online business – this is no different online – think about testimonials these are just customers recounting why they bought a particluar thing.
Funny but the people who did not buy are equally if not more important as they are the people that for whatever the reason was, were not quite happy with your offering – offline you may ring them up or survey them, online why not find out why by showing them an exit screen offering them a discount for your product or service (some will buy with a discount – this is a proven strategy) but if they will not offer them a free report to tell you why they did not choose your service (do this as a quick survey no more than five multichoice questions or as an open comment box. This may seem an unusual stratergy but it can help you improve the quality of your offering so that you are losing less customers. Again here click path analysis can tell you online what information people are viewing and finding interesting on your site so you can further push promotion of these products or services or work on those not doing so well.
My personal opinion is that offline ideology and methods are as good as they ever were and understanding them makes it much easier to market your business product or service online. Do this simple test – Ask yourself – how does what i want to do online this relate to offline marketing? Which offline idea or method is this? If you cannot answer get an internet marketing specialist and ask them, if they cannot answer find a new one ASAP one who understands both online and offline marketing and will be able to help you maximise your businesses results both online and offline.
Marketing Strategies for a Small Business Enterprise
May 27th
Brand Marketing
No matter how good your product or service is without customers to buy them your business will ultimately fail. Marketing is an enormously important factor in generating customers for your business whether you do this online or offline (conventionally). It is the key success factor for any business (just think Nike), be it a small entity or a large firm.
In simple words, it is creating demand for your product by potential customers and additional demand from existing ones. A proper marketing strategy addresses strategic issues like-a company’s brand image; its competitive strategies, the target customer and his behaviour. Based on the analysis of the above factors, you should look to allocate the correct amount of time, money and human resources to get your marketing done.
There is a tendancy with small business owners to spend less on marketing when things are getting tough and this is short sighted indeed as this could make things even harder for your business to survive in the long run. Regardless of how much money you set aside you can market without deep pockets and without cutting off your nose to spite your face.
The key to this whole process is based on customer focus and outplaying your competitors, not by waging a price war which neither business can really win but by strategical adding value whether actual or percieved in your customers mind which is what builds your brand. Your marketing brand image does not have to be built over years it can be built over shorter periods if you get your brand position correct and you provide good products and/or services.
People do not buy products or services persa they buy people and brand allure, if they like your company slogan or message, they will buy into your company an example is Nike – ‘Just Do It’ or Dominio’s Pizza – ‘ if we do not deliver within 30 minutes you get your pizza free’ or for people look at Paul McKenna – who had got both people (in this case himself) and brand allure -’I can make you Thin’, the point i am making is potential customers and existing ones buy people and brand allure – what can it do for me/ my business.
If you get your marketing brand correct it generates a brand loyalty among your customers which then leads them to tell others about the percieved and actual benefits you bring to them, this in turn could brings you new business. The benefits perceived by a potential or existing customer from a product or service should be inline with the marketing strategy of the company. The market targeting of potential customers is an important step as it can affect the final output of any promotion your business does. Depending upon the market research you decide to do and its outcomes the medium of promotion can then be decided like offline marketing or online marketing. Part 2 in a few days time – check back for it.
