Choose your words wisely

Small business marketing UK

“Don’t use a big word when a singularly loquacious and diminutive linguistic expression will satisfactorily accomplish the contemporary necessity.”  We want to emphasise how powerful words can be in your marketing collateral, on your website and even on your social media posts. We have said many times before, that a common mistake to make, is to assume that your audience knows exactly what you are talking about and all of the insider trade jargon makes you sound knowledgeable. In the marketing space, we see this ourselves, a lot. “How to improve your CPA” “Do you want a bigger ROI.” “Has your SEO failed the EAT test.” etc. Marketers like an anachronism as much as any other industry. It can be an easy rabbit hole to fall into. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense if your headline read, “Your website found on page one of Google.” or “Stop wasting money on poor advertising.” They sound harsh and simple but that’s the whole point. No ambiguity, clear words telling you exactly what you will get. We practice what we preach. For example, one of our long-standing clients is an “Effluent Removal” tanker company. Our job was to increase turnover and raise awareness. We simply put, “We empty septic tanks in Swindon and Wiltshire.” at the top of their website. That’s it, straight to the point, and explains from the get-go what services you will receive. The next section of their website highlights the three steps to getting your tank emptied in a simple frictionless way, a little bit about the Team for reassurance and proof of trust and that’s it. An uplift in turnover, higher rankings (often first), and all because of a few word changes. The browser does not have to burn brain calories trying to navigate through meaningless pages of text muttering, “I just want my tank emptied…” We accept that at first, this feels a little unnatural but it is worth bearing in mind that the very recent updates to the Google search algorithms now look kindly upon pages and text that are clear, helpful and will prove to be useful for the person searching. Whilst beautiful, poetic, and flowery Prowse may look great spread over a relaxing tropical beach picture on the front of your website it will have zero impact. Trust us. Make time to look at your website and the marketing you currently employ. Is it obvious what you do? How will using your service improve your customer’s life? Do you have a memorable strapline? And most importantly of all, what happens to your customer if they don’t choose your business? Presenting a clear solution, overcoming philosophical problems (see future blogs), and demonstrating how your services will help improve your customer’s situation are the building blocks of modern marketing. Never fear. If you can’t do it, choose So&So marketing so you can concentrate on running your business. See how that works? If we may be so bold as to use our own website as an example, the first words you see are “Good marketing changes everything.” Then comes the how. “Converting web design, graphic design and marketing to help scale your business with ease.” Again, we tell you who we are helping and let you decide if you want to continue exploring. We have very deliberately placed key headings in certain areas on our homepage to form a narrative. You can scroll through our page just by grabbing the headlines and you will still have an understanding of how we can help you. That’s what most of your visitors will do too. So to sum up, don’t be afraid to cast a critical eye over your marketing and be honest with yourself. If you are brutally honest enough, you should find that a lot of the words on your website and leaflets should end up on the cutting room floor. Replace them with clear, positive, transitional, and powerful words that will kickstart your marketing, boost your sales, skyrocket your business, and build something people will love… etc Sometimes, we can’t help ourselves!  

Text marketing

text messaging services

Text Messaging is one of the most underused methods of direct marketing, but in our opinion also one of the most effective. Small businesses seem to dismiss this form of marketing because there is a cost associated with it, but when you look at the statistics the reward in terms of open, read and response rates outweigh the cost especially when you compare it to other forms of media, with response rates 5 times that of Email Marketing. By generating an opt-in mobile database you can ensure your text messages are going directly to those who would be interested in your products or services. With a 98% open rate (Gartner), and with 95% of those messages read within 3 minutes (Forbes) there is no better way to promote an offer or special event within a short time frame with your audience knowing almost instantly about your offering. Did you know? On average, it takes 90 seconds for someone to respond to a text and 90 minutes to respond to an email.   75% of people would like to have offers sent to them via SMS (Source: Digital Marketing Magazine) – **If you have your opt-in database and you can add value for your customers this would be higher**    50% of those surveyed who received an SMS from retailers, purchased as a result (Source: Marketing Charts)    Sales prospects who are sent text messages convert at a rate 40% higher than those who are not sent a text message (Source: OneReach)   Mobile offers are redeemed 10 times more frequently than print offers (Source: eMarketer)

What is a talk trigger?

Marketing in Weymouth and Dorset

A talk trigger is a unique and remarkable aspect of a business that creates word-of-mouth buzz among customers.

Content marketing

Get the most from your business website and provide your visitors with valuable information about the services you offer. Make your website useful and consider adding a blog to help your visitors solve their problems. What is content marketing? Simply put, you create rich content about your skills and pass on your expertise with how-to guides along with valuable tips and advice to your customers in the form of blogs. Your blog posts can then be posted on social media which in turn provides you with links back to your website. This will also give your website content more authority which is a ranking measure used by the major search engines. For example, if you are a plumber in Swindon, you could write an informative article about changing a tap or a washer. You provide expert knowledge, demonstrate how to do the job, the tools needed and how long it will take and explain the difficulty levels, etc. In turn, the reader learns how the process works and feels empowered to do the job themselves. You have directly helped a customer for free!Sounds counter-intuitive doesn’t it? Why would I tell my visitors how to do my job? That’s the whole point of content marketing.  A well-aimed blog about how to fix a leaking tap is something that people will search for and a subject that your website will be found for. You are helping your customers as well as creating new ones, you are making yourself the go-to person for advice about plumbing in your town. Your posts stand a good chance of being bookmarked,  liked and shared and help establish you as an expert in your field. You are positioning yourself as the guide on the subject whilst at the same time, adding value to your customers. You’re one of the good businesses. The more you write, the more your business appears as the most helpful plumbing business in town. See how that works? Assuming you are a busy person, set aside an hour a month to write your blog about helping your customers overcome a problem and then publish it on your social media and website. That’s obviously twelve really useful blog posts that you have to call upon to re-purpose as you need to. Blogs can be rewritten, updated and fine-tuned to evergreen content that will cement your website firmly in the high levels of search rankings. You could even write about a current hot topic of the day if it somehow relates to your business. You could go viral! When do I start? The sooner the better. Take an honest look at your existing social media posts and website content. Do they add any value? Are they useful to your potential customers? Or do you just talk about yourself? Now, replace all of your old posts with your new fresh, helpful blog content and your business will become an authoritative resource for customers. Customers are more likely to reach out to you first when experiencing a plumbing issue! You have positioned yourself as a guide, creating brand awareness and could even have created one or two brand evangelists!Writing is like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the easier it gets. Once you get used to writing and researching blog information it becomes second nature. But it takes time to get results. You have to put the work in to see a return. Nobody knows your business better than you do but don’t advertise that fact, let your content marketing prove that for you.

10 website essentials for success

Small business marketing

Running a small business can require a lot of organising to get the most from your valuable time. So, to that end, we will be building up a portfolio of useful blogs and articles that will provide you with a quick reference across many areas of marketing and growing your business. In this first blog, we highlight the essential basics every website should have for success. Secure hosting package. Simply put, that is where you see the small padlock symbol in the address bar of a website. This is vital if you run an online store as it provides a secure network for purchases but it is also needed to boost your rankings in searches, particularly on Google. Most hosting companies offer SSL Certificates.   Fast loading pages. Seems obvious, but the quicker your web page loads, the better the retention rate of your visitors. Again it is also an important cue for Google to rank your website higher in searches. The quicker the site, the better for customers, and the better listing.   Useful images. Does your website carry a lot of unnecessary images? Does the imagery you use help explain your product or services? Large and pointless images slow the page delivery and can prove annoying to visitors who can be forced to wait.   Clear navigation. Is your website easy to navigate and intuitive to use? The ideal situation is that it should take no more than three clicks to get to the content you are looking for.   Clutter-free. It can be quite common for businesses to try to cram in as much information as possible on the homepage of their website. It’s tempting if you offer many different products and services. However, most business is done with companies that are easy to deal with. A frictionless transaction.   Clear messaging. In a similar vein to removing clutter, are the words you use clear, to the point and helpful? Poetic, flowery and industry jargon-filled headlines look great but do they serve a purpose? Don’t be afraid to get straight to the point. Ask for sales, and explain clearly how using your business will improve the life of the customer.   Easy contact. Surprisingly this is often overlooked. Is it easy to actually get in touch with you? You wouldn’t make the cash register hard to find in a shop so why do that on your website? Provide contrasting coloured buttons and call to action sections on your homepage to guide your visitor on what to do next.   Prove what you do. People visit websites to find the answer to a problem or to purchase a product or service. Make sure your homepage includes genuine, provable testimonials and links to satisfied customers. This will give confidence to your visitor that you are credible to do business with.   Up to date. Vital that you keep your pages up to date and freshened up. A website with a 2011 copyright notice, and links to defunct social media pages (Google + closed 2 years ago!) will give the impression you don’t care or even worse, you have closed.   And finally. Does your site pass the grunt test? In other words, could you show your homepage to a caveman for 10 seconds, turn it off and then ask them what it is your business does. Can they tell you? If it is not immediately obvious to our caveman or your visitors what you do, how you can help and how they can contact you in those first 10 seconds, your website needs a re-design. Keep it simple.  

Social media snub?

Small business graphic design

There is a new form of customer service faux pas and it comes in the form of the Social Media Snub. The old-school and still very prominent snub is in my book one of the worst customer service crimes and can offend a customer in many ways, take a look at the examples below: –      To avoid dealing with you, the receptionist ignores your presence and picks up the phone before you reach the counter – The bartender who serves the people around you without even acknowledging your existence – Or the team members who are so engrossed in their conversation with their workmates that they don’t even realise you are there. A snub shows blatant disrespect and is the most significant way to lose customers, resulting in them bad-mouthing you, and sending them directly to your competitors without you ever having the chance to win them back or apologise. The Snub is even more prominently online and is even worse in this form as there is no hiding from it. The disrespect you dish out here is in public, and that can hurt a customer and you much more. The problem is that it can be so easily done. With so many companies engaging in Social Media without a solid plan, strategy or system, it is quite easy for posts to slip through the net, or remain unanswered for long periods. So what is a Social Media snub? When a post is not answered on a social media site, the page still responds to other questions, adds promotional posts or interacts with other users. A social snub is worse than those detailed above as it is public, people can see that you have been snubbed and that hurts. There is no mistaking it. With some of the examples above the age-old excuse of “Sorry sir, I didn’t see you there” can be used. The same can’t be applied to Social Media.   Other posts are being answered, which in all terms and purposes makes the customer feel that they are not as important as others. All of the above can have a hugely detrimental effect on your brand, not just from the person you snubbed but also from all of the other people who may now not post due to other posts on your page not being responded to. 6 Ways to avoid the Snub: -Just answer the question – If you cannot answer it just say -Empower your followers to answer the question -Acknowledge the post and say you will find out the answer soon -Say you cannot answer the question but give them the details of the person who can -Ask them to Direct Message you with their details and get someone to call them who can help them Falling into the trap of thinking that Social Media is a cheap form of Marketing or for SEO purposes may mean you are taking the eye off of the ball and alienating customers in the process. All of this reinforces the need for a defined Social Media strategy for businesses of all sizes. Work out a schedule and allocate team members to deal with posts, questions and complaints, as well as engage in conversations with your audience and post interactive content. But make sure you respond to every customer, every time!

Customer Experience

Oceans Boutique

Customer Experience is the latest and most crucial competitive business battlefield, and it has been proven to be one of the main reasons why customers choose one brand or business over another. In a nutshell, Customer Experience is how a customer perceives your business based on the interactions that you have with them. I.e. your telephone manner, how you present yourself on social media and in person, as well as any other point of communication you have with them. I believe that the increased importance of Customer Experience by consumers is both the biggest threat and the biggest opportunity for small businesses and the stats back it up. Why else do you think most of the big companies are increasing their spending on Customer Experience and are replacing Marketing positions with Customer Experience Officers? Here are some juicy Customer Experience stats. 89% of businesses are expected to compete mainly on customer experience. (Source; Gartner) 84% of organizations working to improve customer service report an increase in revenue. (Source; Dimension Data) 50% of customers increase their purchasing with a brand after a positive customer service experience. (Source; Hubspot) 89% of consumers begin doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. (Source; Oracle) After a positive customer experience, 69% would recommend the company to others, and 50% would use the business more frequently. (Source; NewVoiceMedia) 55% of customers become a customer of a company because of its reputation for great customer service. (Source; RightNow) And if you are still not convinced of the importance of the Customer Experience delivered by your company think to yourself about how likely or unlikely you are to do business or purchase a product from a company based on the experience they gave you.