2009: Year of the Ostrich

You may be wondering why you're receiving a January email newsletter when the month is nearly over.

The answer is simple: unlike the Chinese view that 2009 is the year of the Ox, the reason for this delayed newsletter is strongly linked to the fact that 2009 is going to be the year of the Ostrich for many companies.

Predictably, the Ostrich reference, relates to the head-in-the-sand attitude that plagues so many businesses. There's lots of talk about recession and it's easy to get caught up in it all, but the simple fact is that most businesses are lazy and have had their heads in the sand for far too long and should place some of the blame for any downturn in business in their own back yards.

Why? Because the majority of businesses have plodded along for too long and have done little in the way of building infrastructure ready for the bad times. For the purposes of this article, I'm referring to the strength of their websites.

The reason for the delay in this newsletter production is quite simply that demand for Custwin time has been much higher than usual in January. Some of that demand came from existing clients but a lot more of it came from companies that have entered 2009 with their heads in the sand but have pulled them out for long enough to see what opportunities there are to turn things around.

It's been quite phenomenal to experience the rapid increase in enquiries from companies that are starting to feel the pain of the knock-on effects caused by an economic downturn, and while it's always possible to help companies who want to gain more business via their websites, the solutions are rarely 'quick fix'.

Here's a typical scenario:

Company A suddenly wants business to be coming in from their website and their perception is that it's simply a case of setting up some Google advertising. Wrong! Invariably, the company websites aren't yet strong enough to warrant spending money on attracting visitors to those websites. What's the point in spending £hundreds with Google if those £hundreds don't convert to strong levels of business because the website is too weak?

When Company A are asked questions such as "let's look at the data showing your visitors to the website in recent months", and "which forms of marketing drive most people to your website?" the response is usually "don't know" or, at best, a relatively weak view of website traffic.

Company A are then not happy to be told that in order to move forwards they need to be making various website changes and they need to be effectively tracking who visits their websites and how they interact with the website.

It all seems like too much to handle and they scream "but I just want to get more business in!".

Let's look at what should have happened, many months ago before all this downturn ...

Company A, with 'enough' business coming in, should have allocated more attention to anyone who brought to their attention that their website wasn't strong enough or visible enough online. By looking at such issues when business is flowing quite well, time and budget could be allocated to fix what needs to be fixed on the website, so that it's ready to actively promote online if that's needed at some stage in the future.

Unfortunately, all those 'Company A' organisations out there kept their heads in the sand and only now are thinking "hell, we now have no choice but to find ways to generate more business". The reality is that the process of getting more business will take longer to achieve because of the lack of fundamental basics months in the past. It'll happen, but not without some discomfort and cost to make those websites good enough to be worth spending advertising budget on.

Returning to the title of this article, the enquiries we get are a fraction of the businesses out there who are suffering and the grim reality is that throughout 2009 there will still be thousands of businesses that have absolutely no concept that their websites are losing huge opportunities every single day and that their competitors are getting stronger by focusing on their website strength, and then marketing those websites.

Those businesses that continue to be the Ostriches throughout 2009 are undoubtedly going to be amongst the business casualties this year and next. Those that have woken up and are shaking some of the sand out of their ears now have the potential to start playing catchup with all those competitors who, for a long time now, don't have the word Ostrich in their vocabulary.

If you know any businesses that are noticing a downturn and would benefit from a free no-obligation chat about the opportunities being missed through their website then please do get them to contact us. We can't promise overnight miracles but we will be honest and explain exactly what can be achieved in both short and longer-term timescales.

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Contact Focus: QJ

As a change this month, we're not shining the spotlight on a client but instead on someone who has left a marked impression on us and we feel could benefit you all through starting a dialogue with him.

QJ (that's his real name and you'll have to ask himself the reasons why) has a company called Quite Stunning and to say there's a lot more than meets the eye is an understatement.

In a nutshell, QJ runs a series of seminars (open and in-house as required) that help people get the best out of their presentations.

"Boooooring", you may be thinking but actually it's not remotely boring. Our perception of seminars that are usually promoted as "enhance your presentation skills" has historically been that they just don't hit the mark but QJ's seminars are quite different.

Perhaps the biggest surprise when attending a QJ event is that you're not being trained to present yourself in 'the right way' but you're being guided in how to be more effective through being yourself and capitalising on your strengths - all within a friendly atmosphere.

That sounds like a typical sales pitch but we wouldn't highlight anything we hadn't benefited from and we certainly benefited from participating in a QJ event.

If any other reason is needed to find out more about QJ then ask yourself this simple question: "When I attend a networking event, or give a presentation, do I walk away at the end having had people gravitating towards me as a result of my presentation instead of me making all the running?". If the answer to that is "No" then QJ has the expertise to flip that to a "Yes".

Find out more about QJ on his website at http://www.quitestunning.co.uk/welcome.htm, particularly the short video, which gives you some good insights.

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Google PPC Phrase Match

Experts in the field of getting clients results from Google Pay Per Click advertising have differing views on what gets the best results.

Unfortunately, as PPC 'experts' become as common as web developers, and as companies start to experiment with creating their own PPC campaigns, the quality of advice and expertise available is often dubious.

One of the common mistakes is setting up keyword phrases within Google PPC campaigns as what is known as 'broad match'.

To take an example, let's say that you have a phrase that you want your advert visible under when people type that phrase in Google. You're a company that specialises in food hygiene courses and that phrase is 'food hygiene training'.

If the PPC campaign is set up so that it's just:

food hygiene training

... then your advert will display when people type 'food hygiene training'. That's the upside. However, because it's been set up as what's known as 'broad match', if someone types a phrase such as 'training my children in food hygiene', because the words food, hygiene, and training are within that search phrase, Google will display the advert. Inevitably, even though we assume most people can understand what IS a relevant advert to click on and what isn't, they'll often still click on your advert. Result: a waste of a click because that person is never going to become a client.

However, if you set up the phrase so it's what's known as 'phrase match' in the following way:

"food hygiene training"

... the mere inclusion of those quotation marks mean that Google will only show your advert when people type those words in that exact order and with no words inbetween. So, although it's feasible someone still types 'food hygiene training for my children', and your advert would still display in the search results, it does at least cut out a lot of irrelevant clicks. As an added bonus, if someone types 'food hygiene training in London' and your area is London then your advert will still display. Having said that, there are much cleverer ways of setting up PPC campaigns than purely relying on generics such as 'food hygiene training' to capture numerous variations on that phrase that people may type.

There are numerous companies who have had PPC campaigns set up by so-called experts that have set everything up as broad match. Although broad match does have some merits, what tends to happen is that Google sees it as an excuse to display the adverts whenever the words are typed in any order and within any type of search phrase, which results in much higher levels of clicks but ultimately, many of those clicks are wasted.

One easy way to tell if this is happening is to keep a close eye on website traffic data because if you're using a decent system it'll show you all the referring phrases that people typed and brought them to your website. If you're seeing visitors who have typed phrases that are clearly unrelated to your business focus, and who are people who quickly exit the website, then it often indicates that some of your PPC campaign has been set up as broad match and so should be professionally reviewed.

Please do contact us if you'd like more details about how to get the best results out of your Google PPC campaign.

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The Importance of Recording Enquiries

Long before marketing your business in any way (which includes raising your visibility in Google) ...

Long before making any changes to your website ...

Long before stepping outside the door to meet people who may be potential clients ...

You need to ensure that you have an effective system that enables you to record every single enquiry that comes into the business. The reason for this is simple:

If you don't record how many people are making enquiries, and what the quality of those enquries are like, then you don't have an accurate visibility of how well your existing 'out there' visibility is working for you.

Let's say you have a Google PPC campaign and it generates 1,000 visitors to the website each month. You have a general feeling that business is flowing in and you seem to be busy. However, if you're not recording each enquiry then you don't have an accurate enough picture. It may be the case that 1,000 PPC clicks is only leading to 10 clients but those clients are profitable enough to outweigh the cost of those clicks. At 1% of your overall clicks though, that level of business-gain rate is pathetic (you should be aiming for at least 10% of all your website visitors then becoming enquries).

Recording enquiries is also important so that you can compare the actual enquiries to your website statistics data (preferably on a daily basis). If, for example, you had two enquiries in one day, and your website statistics data told you that you actually had 100 visitors to the website in that day and many of them didn't stay around long enough, then you'd know for sure that action needs to be taken.

Custwin work with many clients who want to get a lot more from their websites and any marketing activities that result in people going to their websites. We always start with the simple question of "are you recording certain information about every enquiry you get into something like an Excel spreadsheet?". When clients start that process we then have an accurate view of what level of enquiries the business is currently generating in comparison to marketing efforts, which gives us the basis to move forwards and work towards ensuring that the spreadsheet of enquiries builds and builds day after day, week after week, month after month.

If you, or anyone you know, don't have a system of keeping an accurate record of enquiries that are received then please do contact us and we'll be happy to provide the simple steps for free.

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Custwin Figures from 2008

We've been going through some figures for all of 2008 and we've come up with some interesting figures related to our clients.

These figures detail what clients have been spending and what the return on investment has been.

The first figure was easy to calculate because we have full visibility. That figure was the amount of money that clients spent on PPC advertising with Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

That came to a total of £521,482 between all clients and that investment brought those clients a total of 1,594,192 clicks to their websites. Obviously, some clients have lower costs per click and others have higher, but that's how it works out overall.

The figure that's less easy to calculate is the financial return on that investment from clients and although there are many clients who we don't have a deep enough insight into, and we often don't know profit margins, we know enough to come up with an overall estimated turnover figure (as a direct result of the PPC campaigns) from all clients combined ...

£21 Million

That figure has been derived from client feedback and analysis of how clicks have converted to business.

For each business sector the actual benefits are different of course. For example, a set of barristers who spends a few £hundred on clicks a month can convert many of those clicks into high-revenue cases that are worth many £thousands, whereas a company selling products may make a small margin on larger numbers of sales.

The Custwin client base is extremely diverse but it was a good exercise for us to analyse the return on investment for the customer base as a whole. In short, the overall investment in PPC clicks has cost just over 2% of the total revenue gain. Considering that most businesses work on a profit margin much higher than 2% then 2008 has got to be viewed as having been a successful year for clients.

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