90% Lose Business At 2020

Kent 2020, the biggest Kent business event of the year, happens on April 2nd.   Business people from all types of companies will be there with the hopes to advance their businesses in some way.  Unfortunately, while those people are at 2020, the majority of them will be losing business.

Kent 2020 is all about business people furthering their businesses through networking, capitalising on the expertise of the hundreds of exhibitors, and learning from the seminars and workshops.  Custwin will be exhibiting, expecting to be speaking to numerous businesses that want to gain a lot more business from their websites.

While it’s certainly to be encouraged to attend 2020, it’s our estimate that at least 90% of the businesses attending (both delegates and exhibitors) will have lost potential business in the time they’re at 2020.

This business won’t be lost because of them being physically away from their place of business but from the high likelihood that visitors to their websites during their absence won’t find what they wanted and so will exit their websites and go to competitors instead.  The sad part in this is that those high numbers of businesses will be blissfully unaware that the business has been lost.

Why would they be unaware?

Because they’re not keeping track of the visitors to their website, and how those visitors navigated through their website.

Taking Custwin as an example, all the time we’re exhibiting at 2020, our website will be tracking who visits the website, will often be able to identify what companies those visitors came from, and will be able to clearly see which parts of our website were popular, and which may not have been.  If we identify companies that have visited but haven’t made contact then we have the opportunity to follow that up if appropriate.

This becomes more important after 2020.  We’ll have spoken to many companies during the day and it’s likely that many of those will visit our website in the following days.  By us being able to identify when those companies have visited, and what they looked at, gives us useful insights into their level of interest.

For those companies that talk to us at 2020, we’ll raise the question of “after today, will you be able to identify which companies have visited your website while you’ve been here, and if those companies haven’t made contact with you then is that a major concern to you?”. 

For most people, such a question will be new to them and will hopefully spur them on to implement good website visitor tracking systems.  That way, by the time next year’s Kent 2020 comes round they’ll not only have gained strong insights into their website visitors but would have implemented positive changes to their websites, so ensuring that they won’t be losing business while they’re attending 2020 in 2010.

Back to top^

Client Focus: Roastmaster

One of our clients, Roastmaster, is going from strength to strength through making some relatively simple changes to their online presence.  Of primary importance in this was the refinement of the visibility of their Google Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign.

The Roastmaster business provides spit-roast and barbecue catering services to corporate and private clients and they regularly receive great feedback about the catering provided.  Over the past couple of years Custwin has been working with Roastmaster to ensure that people throughout the UK would see their adverts appear in Google when they typed relevant phrases (for example, ‘hog roast Norwich’).   This generated high numbers of clicks to the website each month, out of which enquiries were gained.

However, websites (and competitors) never stand still and so late in 2008 a new Roastmaster website was created with the purpose of converting higher numbers of clicks into enquiries, and we also took the decision to narrow the focus of the PPC campaign to a geographical area that was much easier to service from the Roastmaster base in London. 

The results of this have been that in the past few weeks alone, a substantial amount of the Roastmaster availability in 2009 has already been booked up, which is obviously very pleasing.

This is a prime example of why it’s important to focus on the basic comparison of number of clicks/visitors to a website and the numbers of actual enquiries gained.  All the time that the ratio of visitors to enquiries isn’t strong enough then it means (for any type of business) that the website will benefit from being enhanced and the online marketing of the website may also benefit from being modified.

In the case of Roastmaster, the business wanted to keep pushing forwards and the results prove that what were relatively simple changes, made a big positive impact on enquiry levels gained.

Are you getting the best from your Google PPC campaign? Please feel free to contact us for a no-obligation discussion about how we can help.

Back to top^

How To Check Website Success In 5 Minutes Per Month

When we talk to potential and existing clients about the importance of analysing website statistics data, the response is often along the lines of “we don’t have time to get deep into all that!”.  In such instances, although it’s frustrating for us to see companies throwing away potential business (through not getting more into analysing website statistics data), we advise just one simple activity that will take only 5 minutes per month.

Most businesses keep track of the number of enquiries they’ve gained each month.  Ideally, those records should also include enquiries that didn’t amount to anything as well as those that became business. 

Logically, businesses should also be keeping a record of the source of each enquiry.  For example, someone may phone but what’s important is to identify whether the phone call originated from being found via a search engine or from a phone number listed somewhere else.

Assuming that the business is keeping an enquiries record each day, that then becomes a full month’s worth of enquiries (and if it’s not keeping an enquiries record then that’s a fundamentally basic business process that’s missing).  This means that there will be a view of how many enquiries originated from the company website.

This is where the 5 minutes per month activity becomes relevant.

Those 5 minutes are all it takes to get one or two important pieces of information that can be compared to the level of enquiries. 

The first piece of information is the overall number of visitors to the website during the month.  By comparing that number to the number of enquiries that are perceived to have been gained via the website during the month gives a figure that may not be pleasing to see. 

The second piece of information would be the overall number of clicks gained directly from a PPC campaign (if running one) and comparing that to the number of enquiries.   If the number of enquiries compared to PPC clicks is poor then this is of even more concern because, in theory, the PPC campaign should be much more targeted than general visitors to the website.

Custwin sets an expectation that clients should get a minimum of 10% of all PPC clicks converting to enquiries.  With general website visitors the expectations can’t be as high (because the quality of other traffic coming into the website isn’t as controllable).

The starting point for any business though, is to compare the overall numbers of website visitors to the numbers of enquiries that are perceived to have originated from the website (these may include PPC visitors).  Having identified the percentage of enquiries gained out of all the visitors, and finding that the figure is too low, that’s usually enough to make companies want to take their time investment above 5 minutes per month.

Back to top^

Capitalising On The Names Of Competitors

If you’ve ever typed the name of a company into Google and seen an advert appear for another company then you’d have seen an example of one company capitalising on the name of a competitor.  There was once a time in which Google wouldn’t allow this to happen in PPC advertising but times change and it’s now possible to gain clicks from people who have typed the names of competitors into Google.

With a few exceptions (for example, companies that have previously registered their trademarks with Google before the changes came into effect), it’s now ‘open season’ for capitalising on the names of competitors.

As an example, if ABC Ltd had a major competitor of XYZ Ltd, it could have it so that when someone types XYZ Ltd into Google, that an advert appears of:

Looking for XYZ Ltd?
Come to ABC Ltd instead.  We offer
a superior level service for you.
www.abcltd.co.uk

Obviously, that’s quite blatant, and could spark all sorts of battles, but there are cleverer ways to do similar.   For example, suppose that ABC Ltd and XYZ Ltd are both companies that sell widgets.  ABC Ltd can set up their Google PPC campaign so that when someone types XYZ Ltd an advert appears of:

Ultimate Widget Supplies
See why ABC Ltd are the widget
supplier you should be choosing.
www.abcltd.co.uk

This means that the person initially interested in XYZ Ltd sees an advert that makes them think “hmm, I wanted XYZ Ltd but what’s so special about ABC Ltd who seem to have a lot to say for themselves?”.   So they click on the advert.

If that advert links through to just a general page on the ABC Ltd website then it only has a limited effect.  However, if the advert links through to a page that emphasises why ABC Ltd really are the best widget supplier, and even goes as far as comparing themselves to other companies, including XYZ Ltd, then the impact is going to be stronger and the person initially interested in XYZ Ltd then has more reason to further investigate the website of ABC Ltd.

That’s just a simple example and there are various ways to capitalise on competitor names in a similar way.  Our recommendation though is to be subtle in the PPC advert itself and ensure that those who click on the advert still have good reason to investigate you further.  Otherwise, all you’ve achieved is a wasted click to your website.

Back to top^

Buy URLs To Protect Against Negative Publicity Online

Negative publicity online is becoming an increasingly big industry and it’s something that’s losing companies large amounts of potential business.

A recent example seen by Custwin was a company that had provided a service that wasn’t to the satisfaction of a customer.  That customer got a bee in their bonnet and discovered that they could buy the .info version of the company url.   They then used the url to write an ongoing account of their battles with the company.   You wouldn’t think this would have too much of an impact.  But it did.

What started to happen was that when people typed the name of the company, this .info website started appearing prominently in Google and, as you’d expect people to do, they clicked on the link to find out more about the negative experience the person had been through.  This, in itself, would have lost the company a lot of potential business.

This happens all the time and there are many directories appearing (Qype is one example) that highlight the negative experiences people have had with companies.  That’s a problem in itself and the deeper subject of managing negative publicity online is far too much to go into here, but the golden rules can be simplified as follows ...

1. Don’t give people a reason to have a negative experience and feel that they need to make it highly visible online.

2. Don’t make it easy for them to promote their grievance by using a url variation of your company name.   Most companies tend to buy the .co.uk and .com variations of their urls but rarely go further than that.  After all, there are so many variations (.info, .net etc. etc.).  In the end it’s a business decision how many url variations to buy but they’re relatively cheap to buy and perhaps it’s a wise choice to make.

We hope that most readers won’t have any reason to experience negative publicity and people using url variations that are damaging but ‘just in case’ it may be worth buying some of the more common url variations.

And if you’ve not already done so, it’s well worth typing your company name into Google and looking through a couple of pages of search results – just to make sure that there’s no negative publicity about you.

Back to top^