Online marketing

Is Your Website Just a Pretty Face?

Mar 26, 2014 By Tea Leave a Comment

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post…the work just takes over sometime. But no excuses, blogging is great for clearing what’s on your mind and sharing knowledge you have with others. Things that sometimes feel so ‘normal’ may just be the right message someone else needs at the time. So, if you haven’t tried it yet, I challenge you to start blogging. It’s fun!

What’s prompted me to write this blog? I recently ran a promotion for small businesses for a website design and I got to talk to a lot of small business owners. They all had one common challenge – They knew they want a website but they had no clarity what website should be.

Sure you can say, website is a website, some are nicer then others, but it’s a website.

They all wanted to have a beautiful looking website, yet almost none of them knew what the real purpose of their website is.

There are only two purposes for having a website:

Website is your business card, a place where people can come and check you out to see if you are legit. A person already knows you, has you details, knows your website address and checks you out.
Website is your lead magnet machine. This means that your website is created to serve your ideal customers and gets them to contact you, sign-up to your list or buy from you.

The first website is all about you and what you do. This is fine, if you don’t plan to make any direct money with it. The second one focuses on clients, their problems and solutions you have for them. Very different proposition, isn’t it?

The purpose of the website drives the design of the website. It’s easy to make things look pretty and fun, but how is it perceived by a visitor that lands on your website?

Now, look at your website and think about it by answering these 3 questions objectively (or better, test it with your family/friends):

What is it?
What is it about?
What’s in it for me?

This is what every visitor’s mind does, when they land on your home page. If they don’t get clear answers, they are out of there, and you’ve lost a business opportunity.

What if your website doesn’t answer these questions well? What to do to fix this?

Oh, you need a new website, now! Just joking. Most websites can be easily tweaked, so:

Decide the purpose of your website
Change content and functionality on the home page of your website to support the purpose
Contact your web designer to make changes, if you can’t make them yourself.

And if you’re not sure, if you website is what is should be, don’t hesitate to contact me for a quick chat about it. I love websites, so it will be my pleasure to look at yours.

How to use hashtags in Facebook for business

Jun 19, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Are you using them or have you at least noticed them?

I’m talking about Facebook hashtags…

I’m sure you are at least aware that Facebook introduced hashtags earlier this week. (read about it here).

In my last post blog I talked about what hashtags in Facebook mean for business. This time I would like to show you how to use them and why you should be using them in your online marketing.

The most obvious reason is

Reach bigger audience and expend your fan base

Research shows that approx. 88-100 million people are engaging on Facebook during primetime television. By strategically using Facebook hashtags you will expand you reach to a wider audience. Bigger reach means more exposure and more exposure means growing your fan base. All that whilst watching TV – sounds good or what?

Create a buzz about your brand and expand your brand awareness

With strategic use of Facebook hashtags you will increase your visibility and engagement with your brand. When people click on hashtags and go to a page of content specific to that hashtag, they are more likely to engage with this page, as it is relevant to something they like or find important. This means more likes, more comments and also potential clients.

Make it personal

Everyone likes to know that there is a ‘real’ person behind a Facebook page. Especially if you are a small business owner, people want to meet you. With Facebook hashtags you can show your interest, what you stand for, what inspires you…Make it personal; yet stick to your branding. Don’t let the hashtags bite you!

Join a conversation about your brand and promote your events

Using relevant Facebook hashtags in your posts as well as monitoring conversations about your brand helps you create a buzz, respond timely on any adverse conversations about your brand and stay on top of what people are saying about your brand.

Create specific Facebook hashtag for your event and encourage attendees to engage. This will boost visibility of your brand, products and services and number of likes. This kind of ‘likes’ are likely your potential customers. They are already at your event, they liked you, so they are interested in you and what you have to offer. With a bit more schmoozing…you have them J

I hope this sparked some ideas on how to use Facebook hashtags on Facebook for business. I also know that there are some people who hate them and resist using them…are you one of them?

I’m interested to know if you like them or not and why? So don’t be shy…get the debate flowing….

Who Do You Talk To On Social Media

Feb 19, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Last time I wrote about how to identify your perfect customer and ‘build-up’ your Customer Avatar; now let’s look how this applies to social media marketing.

You’ll be relieved to know that the same rules apply in social media marketing and online marketing in general, as they do for marketing and advertising offline. The only difference, and advantage, is that online marketing is much more targeted because of the various software abilities which let you choose who you want to advertise to, e.g. gender, location, age, interests etc. You can also measure your results more tightly and tweak your campaigns accordingly.

For example; if you place an advertisement in a newspaper, you don’t know who will buy the paper and read your advertisement. You can only assume that your target audience have seen it. With online marketing tools, you can choose to whom your ad will be presented to. You can measure impressions, any click through and various other elements. You can also easily change any elements of your ads and split test various versions.

The more in-depth knowledge you have about your perfect customer, the more you can target your social media marketing campaigns. This means that it’s easier to determine what works and what doesn’t, which makes online marketing more cost effective and flexible.

So, you already know how to identify your perfect customer but what happens when your fans are not your targeted audience?

This is quite common problem when you’re starting with Facebook and other social media platforms. At the start you need to get the number of your Likes up and the easiest way to do that is to ask all your friends to like your page. While they will be engaging with you regularly and be great advocates for your brand, they might not buy anything from you. You will be spreading your reach through friends of their friends; however it might take time to finally get exposure to your targeted audience who will actually buy from you.

If you are in this position, you need to take steps to change demographics of your fan base.

How do you do that?

There are various ways but the most obvious and quick one is paid Facebook advertising. When creating ads on Facebook you can choose who to target with such precisions as to age, gender, location, interest etc. Facebook Ads (sponsored stories, promoted posts) are one of the most targeted advertising tools online and I guess they supersede any offline ads as well. Incorporate them with your email marketing campaign and you have just created possibly the most targeted audience for your business.

You know that I’m a great advocate of free traffic but you need to start making profit, so you need to change your audience as soon as possible. Setting aside a conservative budged to start with will make these changes faster. And once you are talking to your targeted audience you will see that engagement with your page will increase and so will your profits. The beauty of Facebook Ads is that you are in control of your campaign. If set up right, you will soon start making profit. Once you discover a lead generation formula that works for you, the sky will be your limit.

I know starting with paid advertising on Facebook can be a daunting experience. If you don’t know where to start or if you’ve tried it in the past but it didn’t quite work, we are here to help you.

We can either run you Facebook ad campaigns for you or coach you to create your own ads that perform.

Imagine what a good Facebook lead generation strategy will mean for your business….

Contact us to discuss your strategy

Want to Meet Your Ideal Customer

Feb 17, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Have you ever heard this saying: “You can have the best offer but if you are pitching to the wrong audience you will not make any sales”?

Knowing who your customers are is essential for any marketing campaign.

To know them means to know who they are as a person, what they like and respond to, what makes them angry, what excites them. Once you know them you will know exactly how to advertise to them, which will result in making more sales.

It sounds pretty easy, so why are many businesses still struggling?

Most business owners fail to plan their marketing and as a result they are too many things to too many people.

This means that lack of clarity and identifying who your targeted audience will result in shooting your message to potentially wrong audience or sending mixed messages. Imagine for a second, that you are selling designer women’s fashion with a high end price tag and you are advertising your products in a teen fashion magazine. You will not make many sales. Teens may grow to like your brand but are probably not in a position to buy from you yet. If you would advertise exactly the same products in a magazine that targets women with high end earnings, your sales would be skyrocketing.

How do you determine your target audience?

This is as easy as asking yourself few questions but it’s probably one of the most important tasks you need to complete as a business owner before you start any marketing campaign. In fact, it is so important that you should do that before you even start your business.

If you haven’t done so, you need to do it as soon as you stop riding this article. I cannot stress enough how important this is. Without in-depth knowledge about your target audience, you can forget about successful marketing campaign.

So, where do you start?

I’m confident that in general you know who your products or services are for. To be really effective in advertising you need to get few steps further and really get to know these people. You need to consider:

The way they think, talk, their beliefs, opinions, and how they form their opinions
What are their hobbies or interest
How they spend their leisure time
What they wear
Where they hang out
What kind of publications they read and which stations they watch or listen
etc

All these details are important and will make your marketing campaign successful. The better you know your targeted audience the better you can communicate with them. Once you have a good understanding of them then you will know exactly how to appeal to them. Makes sense?

Then once you know them you have to become them. This means that when you are creating your marketing campaigns, you need to put yourself in a position of your audience and consider your add from their perspective. You need to step in their shoes.

The easiest way to achieve this is to create you perfect customer Avatar. If this brings blue tall creatures to your mind, you are half way there. Because imagination is important part of creating your customer Avatars, you need to get ‘under their skin’

Your perfect customer Avatar is a list of traits that your ideal client portrays. It’s their inner desires, hidden fears and all the things that keeps them awake at night.

Your avatar represents a whole group of people that you identified as target audience. When you communicate with your target audience, you always talk to your Avatar. This means you always communicate in first person, like you are talking only to your Avatar. If you studied your targeted audience well, then each person will identify themselves in your Avatar.

Everything you communicate to your prospect market is designed around your Avatar and speaks directly to your Avatar, which makes it the most valuable marketing tool for your business.

Creating your Avatar might feel a bit strange at the start but it’s actually heaps of fun. They are like your marketing campaign buddies that you can turn to every time you are creating ads. Visualize yourself looking at your ads from your customer avatar perspective and take into account all relevant factors.

So now that you know the secret to successful marketing, all you need to do is get thinking and spend couple of hours considering your Avatar.

I’ve created a report for you that will take you through the process and the most common questions you need to ask yourself to create your ideal customer avatar. You can download it HERE.

Now that you know your ideally customer, keep the Avatar in mind anytime you are communicating with your target audience, whether it be via ads, blog post, videos, social media…and you will notice it’s sometimes easier to talk to one person then a big group.

I would like to know what you think about Avatars and how will you use this secret powerful marketing weapon.

Low-Cost Marketing Strategy with Proven Results

Feb 11, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

As a business owner you are probably always on the lookout of how you can increase your visibility and attract more customers. It’s true that paid advertising is the fastest and easiest way to achieve this. But in the great world of the Internet, not all advertising needs to cost a lot of money to be efficient.

You probably heard about content marketing and if not, you need to read on, as content marketing is one of the best low-cost and high-return marketing forms that will get your business visible and increase your credibility.

The idea of content marketing is that you create a content that educates and/or entertains your target market. In return for sharing valuable information, your followers will reward you with their appreciation, trust and loyalty. Once such relationship is established, your educated followers will buy from you, even though you haven’t really pushed to sale to them. How wonderful is that.

This cute image explains how it works (courtesy of Aweber)

Content marketing is very popular with online marketers and if it works for them, then it works for anyone who has a website or uses social media marketing.

How to make it work for you?

The reason why many don’t tackle content marketing is the good old excuse of not having enough time. It’s a bit of a BS, as content marketing can all be done in advance, all you need to do is plan ahead. So the first step to make it work for you is, you’ve guessed it:

Planning

It’s simple. Answer these questions and you have your plan:

What will I post? Will I educate, entertain, provide news about my industry, share tips, etc.
How will I spread my word? Will I blog, guest blog, post on social media, use email, comment on forums etc
How often will I post? Frequency of you communications is important factor as once you’ve established a relationship, people will expect you keep up with that frequency.
Where will I find information to post about? What content you already have that you can re-use? Where can you find news from your industry?

Once you answer these questions, you have a plan. Now all you need to do is write your content.

Writing

The most efficient and productive way of performing tasks is to bulk them up. So, if you need to write content, the most time-efficient way is to sit down and write as much as you can in a given time. Once you have the content ready, then schedule it for posting. This way you will save heaps of time and you know how it is, once the pen (fingers J) runs smoothly, you don’t want to stop the creative flow.

Consider setting up one day in a week; let’s say Monday morning for 2 hours, to write one blog post, email newsletter and 10 Facebook posts. Then schedule them in WordPress and Facebook and you are done for the next week with your content. Now you can concentrate on other aspects of your business.

Think about which day best suits you to write. Unless you really have to, refrain from opening your email of Facebook until allocated time is over and you have some content.

Content marketing does not stop with writing and publishing. The next important step is:

Monitoring and responding

You need to regularly check all platforms where you publish your content for any comments, questions, so that you can respond in a timely manner. Especially when it comes to social media you need to respond quickly to elevate engagement, which prolongs longevity of your posts and give you more reach and exposure.

Set up reminders to check your posting platforms daily and for social media make sure you are available for at least 30min after your posts are publish, so that you can promptly engage with fans. Then set your smart phone with push notifications to follow any comments throughout the day. (Warning – create a discipline to only check business account notification, to avoid getting pulled into private conversations and checking upon your friends – this can wait until later. You have business to run J

Remember, a good marketing strategy combines paid and free advertising. Content marketing is not only cheap; it allows your potential customers to get to know you and build relationship with you. It also helps you build credibility by educating your market and presenting your product and services.

If you are already using content marketing, share what works for you in comments below.