February 22, 2009
Email Newsletters
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Most of us receive various email newsletters on a regular basis. Many of us also create email newsletters to be sent out to clients and others who are interested.
Today I saw something that created a negative impression due to the quality of what I saw.
The email newsletter I opened was something called ‘ActionSTEPS’ which is sent out by someone I don’t recall meeting but still, I don’t mind receiving it. The newsletter looks fine design-wise, had three core articles, and some other links. It soon became apparent that the articles were created by business coaches who are part of this big ‘ActionCOACH’ business coaching franchise worldwide. It sort of makes sense – buy a franchise and then use articles created by other franchisees to promote various subjects. And indeed, the subjects were of interest:
- 5 areas you should focus on during this recession
- All hands on sales deck
- 3 steps to keeping your clients longer
So I clicked on the first link to view the ‘5 areas you should focus on during this recession’ article. That took me off to the page http://www.actioncoach.com/business-coach.php/5+Areas+You+Should+Focus+On+During+This+Recession.
Feel free to read through that article before reading further ……..
Finished?
Then you’d have picked up on what I did – glaring typos and grammatical errors.
Let’s see if we can spot the missing word in the sentence ‘I believe that are five basic areas to focus on first.’.
Yes, it would look so much more complete with the word ‘there’ after ‘that’.
And the sentence ‘This no time for Chicken Little thinking, invest wisely, but first on yourself and our mindset.’ would perhaps read better with an ‘is’ before ‘no time’ and ‘your’ instead of ‘our’.
The object of this is not to point out every error in that article and indeed, the content of the article will be useful to some people, but my point here is about attention to detail.
The person who sent the email newsletter would have selected the article (or at least someone would have approved it’s inclusion). How hard would it have been to identify the errors, politely bring them to the attention of the article writer, and move forwards?
What’s happened in reality is that I, and other people, would have a negative impression of both the original article writer and also the person who allowed it to be included in the email newsletter. Without wishing to be too pedantic, attention to detail is important and although some mistakes do slip through, the more mistakes that appear in a single publication, the higher potential of a negative impression being created.
So, the simple message here is: if you’re using other people’s content, linked to from your own email newsletter, then it’s worth investing those few minutes to double check to ensure that there’s nothing that will create a negative impression of you, or the article writer.
February 19, 2009
Uncategorized
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For many web developers this will seem like a big case of teaching to suck eggs but there are many web developers who don’t capitalise on this simple strategic tip, reinforced in my mind by feedback from one of the web development companies we use for client projects, as told in the following conversation …
Developer: “Can you look at [site A] and [site B] and give me some strategic insights about them both?”
Me: “Wow! How did you get leads into those companies – they’re pretty high profile?”
Developer: “Both of them had found my contact details on the footer of [client site 1] and [client site 2], liked what they saw about the website and made contact”.
That’s a quite satisfying conversation to have and perhaps it’s the ultimate compliment to get potential business out of the blue purely because people like what you’ve done. The developer had a swollen head for awhile, I was also happy (because my strategic input to the site would have created a big part of the impact), and the result was new business to be gained purely from the web developer having their details at the foot of each page of the website.
It doesn’t happen every day of course. Actually, it’s rare, but at least by having a link to the developer at the foot of the page, there are opportunities.
The same also applies to anyone in a web marketing capacity. Even more so. For example, a company searches for ‘red widgets with blue spots’ and finds a client website. They’re pleased with how easy it was to find the website and so if they see a link such as ‘Search marketing by [company name]‘ in the footer of each page then there’s always potential that they’ll want some of that same sort of visibility for their own company website.
February 13, 2009
Google Adwords
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14th February is the day that men all over either get a few brownie points or are in the dog house for forgetting or buying the wrong thing.
The big decision is whether to spend £30, £40, £50, more, on that bunch of flowers that looks like it cost the florist just a few quid to put together and make a hefty profit. But it’s worth looking at what that investment brings and comparing that to the world of business …
£30-£50 on a Valentines bunch of flowers would normally result in a happy person who is going to be in a good mood all day and possibly into the next couple of days. Certainly money well spent and getting a better result than if you’ve spent it on the latest PS3 or XBox game and sat there playing it all Valentines Day.
But let’s look at what £30-£50 could buy your business as a Valentines present. Depending on your business sector and how competitive keyword phrases are in Google, you could be looking at anything between 30 and 50 visitors (if costing £1 per click) or 150 – 250 visitors (if costing 20p per click) for that £30-£50 investment in PPC advertising.
Of course, you have to get the PPC setup right and your website totally effective (so that visitors are highly qualified and have a good potential to convert to enquiries) but the result from that present to your business could last far longer than the investment in flowers. If even only one person out of all those visitors became a client, who goes on to generate ongoing revenues then that £30-£50 investment has been more than worthwhile. If you get several enquiries leading to several clients then the return on that investment rises even further.
Of course, the advice here isn’t to spend that money on PPC as a present to your business INSTEAD of buying flowers. That would be poor advice because your business can’t perform as effectively if you’re dead or seriously maimed by making the wrong investment decision on Valentines Day. But to feel that buzz of PPC investment converting into enquiries and business will leave you with a positive feeling long after those Valentines flowers have died and been dumped.
February 12, 2009
Website Strategy
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We’re in a recession. No big surprise there, but in the spirit of the vulture, there are always opportunities to be capitalised on. One such opportunity is the phone numbers of competitors who have gone bust.
In recent months I’ve picked up on numerous competitors of clients who have found it all too much and have gone to the wall. This highlights an important area of web strategy that many companies are unaware of – monitoring competitors and looking for opportunities.
Most companies are aware that it’s not rocket science to have a page of their website that basically says “there are many companies in this sector – you may recognise the following companies …”, followed by a list of company names and then: “we think we stand out from the crowd because we …” (launch into USP to encourage them to contact you as a preference). Such a page can often be picked up via natural search engine results and, thanks to Google relaxing the rules on using competitors names in PPC, potential clients can even be actively attracted into that page of the website via PPC advertising.
Going beyond those basics though, there are few companies that keep an ongoing record of their competitors details, and monitor the progress of their competitors. This doesn’t have to be complicated – it can simply be a list of:
- Competitor name
- Competitor telephone number(s)
- Competitor website address
The intelligent part is in having a process whereby someone in the company is keeping an eye on those competitors to see how they’re doing, whether they’re in trouble, and when they die. This is where you can capitalise on being prepared. Here’s the scenario:
Widgets Ltd sell widgets but they’ve gone bust. Their website may live on for awhile but in theory, their telephone number suddenly becomes available. You, as a rival widgets company, find out that you can buy their phone number and have it redirected to you. From that point onwards anywhere that their phone number exists will result in calls coming through to your widgets company and you can therefore capitalise on the sales opportunties.
Taking this further though, you could ramp up your PPC visibility under the name of that competitor and attract searchers into a specially created page of your website that notes the competitor has gone bust but that you, as a strong widgets company, are in the position to service their requirement.
Finally, it goes without saying, that if the opportunity arises, you buy their url’s or even url’s similar to them, and have them redirecting to your own website or create a mini-site specifically for the purpose of picking up on the traffic that the dead competitor should have been having (perhaps from various online directory listings that they may appear in).
This is all a bit vulturistic (a made-up word but it seems to fit) but business is business and in a recession, companies need to make the best of a bad economic environment and capitalise in any way they can.
