Start and Grow Your Business

How big is Google Plus and the Plus 1 button for your business?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:41:00 +0000

Welcome to my first video, it's about how you should have the Google +1 button on your website and be using Google Plus as part of your Social media Strategy in your marketing.

Catch up with me on Google+ gplus.to/pauljennings

To your success

Paul

Build a network to build your business

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:59:00 +0000

The marketing strategy I'm about to explain for your business, can be very powerful, when done correctly. look at it as a serious potential route to market for your product or service and make sure you understand fully how it works before making a decision.

With most marketing strategies, we find that they can cost quite a bit of money and we won't know if they will work for our business, or what return we'll get! If you decide to build a network to promote your business and market your business, you'll know exactly what your overheads are for gaining new customers, therefore your pricing can be much keener, as you won't have to pay out, until customers or clients have brought your product or service.

What exactly is Network Marketing

Generally your route to market should only be through a network of distributors - advocates that like your product or service enough to recommend it to their friends, colleagues, family and other people they know. When they get a customer you then compensate them with part of the profits from that sale. The distributor can also go out and find other distributors to build a team which they then earn from when they make a sale (*Note* in the UK it is illegal to pay distributors for recruiting other distributors as this would make it a pyramid scheme). When someone becomes a distributor for your company, it is their own business. you cannot tell them when to work or how many hours they have to do, it is all off of their own back, therefore you need to make it worth their time

There are different structures in network marketing businesses such as Binary, Breakaway, Uni-level, Matrix or a combination of these systems. However I'm not going to go into each system here.

Network Marketing works with almost any product or service, however it works best where there is service that is used on a consistent basis by the consumer, so the distributor doesn't have to go back for repeat sales, they then get paid a percentage on those services every month and after a period of time, the distributor can build an excellent residual income. With products, the distributors has to make sales every month, so at the beginning of the month they start at £0.

As with a franchise, generally you will have to charge the prospective distributor a fee to join your company, this will prove they are serious, but also cover your costs training and getting them started with any marketing material, also like a franchise, you may want to charge them a monthly fee, this covers your overheads involved. If you didn't charge this fee you'd then have a lot of people getting your marketing materials and being trained and then not doing anything with their business, this would eventually put you out of business.

With a network marketing strategy, you'll need to have your distributors doing a minimum amount of activity, until they get paid, or at least get paid full commission by retailing the products or the service, otherwise you'd have people just signing up distributors and no one retailing, will equal no money coming in to the business.

Tips to start and run a successful Network Marketing system

Always pay your distributor base on time.
Always deliver a great service, it is your distributors friends and family buying the product or service.
Have great training.
It's best to keep this as your only route to market.
Work with a financial director to cover how much you can pay the distributor base.
Their should be several bonuses available for the distributor base, so the more activity they do the more they can earn.

Misconceptions you'll find with marketing this way

It's an illegal pyramid scheme - As I said earlier, It's only illegal if people get paid for recruiting distributors and there is no product or service involved. Also when you look at any sizeable business they are pyramid like in structure.
Only the people first in earn lots - This not true as in most systems new distributors can overtake the person recruiting them and eventually make more money.
It will eventually saturate and people will lose out - This doesn't happen because the birth rate exceeds the amount of distributors that join, Not everybody wants to do it and generally people are too lazy! about 20% of the distributors that come into your business will really work at it!

Done and run well a network marketing business will be win/ win/ win for all involved, the company, the distributor base and the customers.

To your success.

Paul

I've been a distributor in a very successful UK based Network marketing company since 2008 and am now within the top 2% of distributors, It's helped me improve my marketing and sales skills and I also earn a healthy residual income from it. You can find out more about that and join me here

Would Facebook Pay Per Click Marketing be for you?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:41:00 +0000

Carrying on from my last couple of posts I thought I'd write about Pay Per Click marketing on facebook and why it may be better for you than PPC on the search networks.

So what are the benefits of using facebook ppc, the main difference about facebook ppc is, rather than advertising to people that are looking for your product or service keyword(s) at a specific time you can advertise to people who may be interested in your product or service and your ad will show when they use facebook, if your ad catches their attention they'll click on your ad and then be taken to the site you've specified.

Marketing on facebook can be very targeted as you can fill in search data to be targeted to your potential customers or clients, so if you were a running shop and wanted to target runners you can and your ad would only show to runners that are using facebook, what is great is when you set up your campaign and add 'runners' or 'running' to your keyword terms facebook will tell you how many people your ad has the potential to reach (remember some of these may not use facebook at all any more or on a regular basis) you can also target ages so if you just wanted to target runners over 50 then you could and if you just wanted to target runners in a local area you can do that too!

You can be really sneaky and just target followers of your competitors pages too, so if in your search terms you put a facebook page in, your ad will just show to those people.

One of the best things to do is to set up a facebook page to send your prospects to, on that page you can then give tips and post about useful resources about your product or service, add things that will keep your fans coming to your page to look at your tips if they miss it on their wall. Then when they are ready they'll go through to your site and buy your product or service.

A great way of getting people to like your page via facebook ppc is to keep your ad simple so if we go back to the running retailer a simple ad would be 'Like Running? Click 'LIKE' what happens in the minds of the prospect is they think 'yes, I like running, I'll click like' simple and they don't have to think or view the page first. I did this with the Best of Hertford facebook page http://www.facebook.com/thebestofhertford and I got the cost per 'Like' down to 5 pence, now to get a fan for 5 pence is really great and I had simple copy in the ad of 'live in Hertford? click LIKE'.

I'd love to see your facebook page so let me know the address and I'll stop by and 'Like' it.

As with normal search ppc though try a few different ads and test and refine them.

To your Success
Paul

Visit my new Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bloom/173730166021105 and click like for more tips and links to resources.

Don't waste money using Google Adwords marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:37:00 +0000

Pay Per Click advertising and Google Adwords Marketing is one of the best ways to drive prospective customers to your website and ones that are already looking for your product or service, especially if your site is new and not been picked up by the search engines yet.
For those that don't know what Pay Per Click marketing is a previous post I have written. Using Adwords in your marketing strategy can give a significant boost to your business and a great return on investment and if you've not tried it yet then do so.

The one thing with Adwords is that you can spend a lot of money and get little or no business from it, and I've heard this complaint from entrepreneurs many times, unfortunatley I've not seen their particular Pay Per Click marketing campaigns to comment on how they have spent too much with poor results but let me explain some posibilities as to why. However let me clear up one myth and that is that your competitors can click on your ads over and over again and use up your budget, if they try this the Google Adwords program will recognise that the clicks come from the same PC and therefore not count clicks, this means that the competitor would have to use several different PCs and that would just be a waste of time (unless they were mental of course) which would be better spent getting new customers.

One way to use a lot of your PPC marketing spend is to set the wrong area for your ads to show, on my old Hertford Electrician site I have Google Adsense showing this shows up ads for other electricians, now my site is for Hertford and the for the local area only so why would an electrician from say Bath want to advertise in Hertford, it would not be worth them coming up to my neck of the woods for work! so when a person click on the ads they lose money, another point for this is that they have their ad showing on Googles display networks, the problem here is your ad will get shown on a site with relevant content to your site but it may not be a great site to get prospects, therefore you budget may get wasted here when people are just curious and click on the ads.

Setting your bid too high means that your budget could get swallowed up pretty fast, it's best to aim for the second or third spot rather than the top where you'll be paying the maximum cost per click all the time. best to start low and increase the bid as you gain some metrics from Adwords.

Start off your campaign with a few keywords, if you have lots of keywords and largely irrelevant ones your money will again be wasted, on top of this you'll not get good metric feedback.

Test, Refine, Repeat is what you should be doing with your Ad copy on a regular basis, start off with 10-15 ads and find the top performers, create duplicates and change a word or two test that Ad for a few days to see which gets the most impressions and clicks, then do it again, changing just one word in the ad can reduce your ad spend and get a better return on investment.You also want to set your ads to show evenly so that you can see exactly how each performs.

Always be refining and tweaking your ads on a daily basis to see if you can get better results and reduce your spend and increase your ROI.

To your Marketing success
Paul

Do you run a business in or around Hertfordshire? I run 121 Google Adwords Marketing training with £50 free to spend on Google Adwords

Get more business with Pay Per Click Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:12:00 +0000

Have you tried Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising yet? Marketing your business with PPC can be a great way to bring in new business.

What is PPC?
When you search on your preferred search engine for a product or service, you're shown results for that search, at the top and down the right hand side of the page are shaded boxes and in the top of the box are the words 'Sponsored Ads', the rest of the pages are what are called the organic listings or map listings, the 'Sponsored Ads' section are the PPC section where advertisers have 'bid' for the ad to show, I say bid because advertisers ads enter into an auction to be shown when someone searches for their product or service and depending where they come in the bidding depends where the ad gets shown.

If you were to bid £1 and a competitor was to bid £1.05 and others less than £1.00 your Ad would be shown in second place. Up until this point though it has not cost any advertiser* a penny, the time when the advertiser gets charged is when the searcher clicks on the ad, hence the term Pay Per Click.

Keywords
when setting ads, advertisers need to set some keywords, words that are relevant to the business that someone searching for a product or service will type into the search engine, every word has a different cost per click depending roughly how many advertisers there are and how much they are bidding for it therefore where you set your bid can make your keyword show or not be shown in the ads. The people bidding the highest will win the auction and so have their ad shown first.

Setting a budget
When setting up your ad, you are asked to set a budget, you may set a budget of £10 per day and let's say you set a bid of £1, once your ad has been shown and clicked on 10 times your ad will stop being shown for that day.Lets say your competitor sets a budget of £10 also and and set a bid of £1, your ads will stop being shown around the same time, If however you set your budget at £15 your ads will be shown longer so you should get more business than your competitor. If however you set your budget at £10 but your bid at 75 pence once your competitor's budget has been used up your ad will start showing at the top later in the day once your competitors budget has been used up. The one thing with PPC is that once your set budget runs out it's like saying right I'm closing the shop - no more sales today. one benefit is that if you become busy you can turn it off and when you need more business turn it back on again. One tip is to set your ads so they show all the time at the start and see when you get the most clicks, then re set the times your ads show to only the times you get the most clicks.

The Ad
The ads that you create are limited to a certain amount of characters and you need to make it compelling to the searcher to click on it, It also needs to have relevant keyword(s) that searchers are looking for, a relevant ad has more chance of being shown over a competitors and more chance of being clicked on by the searcher. When starting your campaign you should create around 10 Ads and test them to see which gets clicked on the most and then you take the best performing ad and create variations and pretty much repeat that all the time.

Your website
I'm going to keep this short, If your website is not good your prospective customer will bounce ie leave your website, in other words you'd have wasted your money on PPC, make sure you have a good and well designed website before initiating a PPC campaign.

The networks
The three main networks for advertising your site are Google Adwords (the most used) Microsoft advertising and Yahoo Advertising Solutions, Google has more people using it for searching therefore it has more people advertising on it, the other two have less people using them so less advertisers which can mean you spend less or get more for your budget.

Conclusion
This has been a simplified overview of using Pay Per Click Marketing and PPC can be great for getting new business, however it can take time to tweak it to get it right, the right ad, the right budget, the right bid etc. It really is a science or art, whichever way you want to look at it. PPC done well means you can get more business than your competitors and spend less than them, this is when it's done well!

To your PPC marketing success
Paul

*Except for when you Pay Per Impressions

PS If you run a business in Hertfordshire or don't mind travelling to Hertfordshire then you may be interested in my Google Adwords marketing 121 training

What do you sell?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:49:00 +0000

I once heard a business owner who was asked the question 'what do you sell?' to which he gave the reply I don't sell anything I'm an electrician. At the time I was in a business networking group and was also an electrical contractor, really for me it was a head in hands moment, but also good because this was one of my 'competitors'. Even when prompted again he said he didn't sell anything and really got defensive.

Let's get one thing straight to start off with, if you have started or are starting a business and exchange products or services for money, by doing this you are selling and if you are running a business, when you sell something is when you make money, it surely makes sense to get good at selling?

The problem is for most small business owners is that little word 'selling', too many people (In the UK) associate selling with car salesmen, double glazing salesmen and estate agents, well at least this is the stereotype model of selling people have in their heads. Selling something to someone that they don't really want at an inflated price or pressurizing a sale this may be the model that some people have in their heads anyway. When they think of selling they get in this image in their mind and they want to be as far away from that model as possible, which to be honest so would I.

But I don't think like this, the problem is, this may have been the stereotype model from years ago and the 'evil salesman' type portrayed by the media, but this is not what REAL sales is about at least not today.

Today sales is about building a relationship, listening to what the prospect needs and seeing if what you have (product or service) will fit that need, It's about building rapport so that the prospect likes you and you get on well, It's also about having integrity and if you think that what you have isn't right for the prospect then being able to stand up and walk away.

Here's the thing though, we are all salespeople whether you believe it or not we are and we've been selling all of our lives, right from when we were babies and wanted something from our parents, or started to make friends and wanted them to like us we were selling ourselves, then when we went for our first job interview even more so we were selling ourselves, what about when we have an idea and we want someone to buy into it, that's selling too or when we're with a group of people and choosing a restaurant and we want to go to a particular place and they have other ideas, this is selling too. We sell all the time almost on a daily basis.

So if you're running a business you're a salesperson and if you're not used to that idea you'd better get used to it or you're going to struggle in business, you're either going to have to pay someone else to do the sales or get out of business!

So now you recognise you're a sales person, here are some tips;

Listen to your prospective customer or client, there is an old saying of 'you have 2 ears and 1 mouth, use them in that proportion'.
Find some common ground and build rapport.
Sell with integrity and be prepared to walk away.
Use a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager which I wrote about in this post) system to keep track of leads and conversations you've had and when you've spoken to them and when you need to follow up.
Some will, some won't so what..next. I think this line is self explanatory, don't beat yourself up when someone says no.
Be persistent, never give up, they may say yes later.
Don't insult your prospect if they say no, even if the product or service is brilliant for them, if you do you'll never get to do point 6.
Don't give them the features of your product or service, or the benefits, give them the FEELINGS they'll get when they use your product or service.
Get good at sales.

To your sales success.

Paul

Here are some great sales books you can get through my Amazon affiliate links, as ever if you buy through theses links I'll get paid a bit of money for the referral enough for about half a pint I think maybe a whole one, not going to be able to buy the pub though.

Increase your profit by staying in touch with your customers

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:21:00 +0000

Keeping in contact with people who come into contact with you and your business is crucial, crucial to increasing your profits and building your business, whether it's a lead/ prospect, customer or someone you've met at a networking meeting.
Keeping in touch with people needs to be managed and the best, well only way is through a CRM (Customer Relationship Management system), A CRM system will help you keep track of the 1000s of contacts you'll build up in your business life, whether its a reminder to call a customer or send a Christmas card to automatically sending out an emails to leads, a great CRM helps you systematise this process and makes it simple.
If you like me, can at times be a little unorganised then you really should be looking at a CRM system apart from increasing your profits it can be a time saver and memory jogger, such as logging what was said and agreed on a call.

Customer Service
A CRM system also helps you improve your customer service, you can set up a relationship builder so you can remember to follow steps once someone becomes a customer which totally systematise the process.

step 1 may be send a thank you email
step 2 may be to call in a months time to ensure everything is okay
step 3 may be to send an email with tips on how to get more form the service or product and so on....

So what does this do? It shows the customer that you care and also keeps you in their mind and therefore more likely to use your product or service again an/ or refer you on to someone.

A service I use is Oprius, out of all the online cloud systems I trailed, I found Oprius to be the most intuitive and easy to use, with Oprius you can set up a lead capture page, set up an auto responder as well as keep track of your contacts where they came from and the contact you've had with them and when to contact them next, This sort of information is invaluable.
Unfortunately a lot of business owners don't keep track of this information or action it, this is a waste of marketing efforts and is literally throwing money away and as good as a bucket with a hole in it!

Click here to check out Oprius and trial it for a month for free
So, a Great CRM can save you time and help you be more organised and help you to give great customer service all of which will increase your profits. So if you're not using a CRM yet so spend some time exploring and trailing out a CRM system.

To your success
Paul

Superbrands: What can we learn from them?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:25:00 +0000

I've been watching a programme on BBC iPlayer about the superbrands recently and finding it very interesting, especially one particular episode about fashion got me thinking. What I find fascinating is the value that people attach to a particular brand and what they would pay for an item, that if it didn't have the logo on it, it would be worth a fraction of the price!

So how do they get us to pay the highest price tag possible? The answer is simple - Feelings. Now in reality they are getting people to pay for something that is just created by our own minds and neurology, something we can create ourselves and for free.
Let me show you, As you sit there reading the screen, think of a time when you were totally relaxed, it may have been on holiday or spending time with friends...you choose. Now close your eyes and as you think of that time now are you feeling the same feelings you felt when you were there?

What feelings are attached to your product or service? Because when you are selling your product or service, when you drill down, you are not actually selling the product or service you are selling the feeling and if you can give a stronger feeling than any of your competitors can give then you'll get the sale. The thing is though if you can't deliver on that feeling after sale customers/ clients then suffer from 'buyers remorse' on the flip side though if you do and deliver an even stronger feeling, they'll buy from you again and again.

Changing your life with Goal Setting

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:04:00 +0000

Lots of people and talk about goal setting, and they have many different ideas on the subject too. The thing is it doesn't really matter what method or process of goal setting you use just use one as long as it feels comfortable for you. You may need to have a go with different ideas of goal setting and from doing that you could even create your own system that really fits for you and your goals to change your future.

"An average person with average talents and ambition can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society if that person has clear focused goals" - Brian Tracy

So why set goals? well if we've not set goals how would we know where we're going in life or business, and if we don't know then we're not growing and just going along with the ebb and flow of life and when that happens we really can't complain about where we are in life of where we will be in the future.
it's a bit like saying I want to go on holiday, but not saying when, where how you're going to get there or with whom and what you will do there.

Write down 5 simple goals now that would change your life in the next 6 months and work towards achieving them now!
It may be learn a new skill, language, earn more money, go on holiday to a certain destination, read 2 books per month, whatever it is start now.

To your success
Paul

PS. You can view some goal setting tips on my website Here

Are you doing enough to get more business?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:25:00 +0000

Marketing is the key to a successful business, so why do so many businesses either stop doing it when they are busy or stop doing it when times are tight? Usually it's the first thing that goes.

When things are tight, businesses should be doing more marketing to increase the business coming in. Lets imagine our marketing to be like a car, if times are tight but you need to get somewhere, you wouldn't stop putting fuel in (different marketing tools) because you wouldn't get to where you want to go. Like wise if you're on a long journey (building a business) you wouldn't not stop to refuel on that journey just because you're making good time, otherwise you'd run out of fuel at some point and not reach your goal destination.
Marketing is so important and you should be refuelling on a regular basis to keep your business going.
On this basis we should be doing a bit of marketing each day to fuel our businesses. Too many business owners think that it's their job once they have started a business to do the work - As Michael Gerber puts it in E-myth 'be the technician' when really it their job to work on their business and grow it so they can either move out of the business so it can run on it's own or to franchise or sell it!
The only way to grow a business is to do some marketing and marketing done bit by bit each day is the best way to go, as by doing it this way is like an avalanche it's starts with a tiny bit of snow but as it goes down the mountain it gathers momentum taking more snow with it as it goes to become an unstoppable force.

So diarise each day your marketing activities even if it's 20 minutes per day and do it and make it an unstoppable force in your business to grow it.

To your success.
Paul

Become an expert in your field

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Showing that you are an expert in your chosen field is a sure fire way of gaining more business. There are many ways that you can do this;

Speaking at business events is a great way to show your expertise and that you know what you are talking about and it builds trust that you do too, using business networking events such as the 4Sight slot at 4Networking has proven successful for many people and a great way to build confidence and practice that talk before moving onto bigger events.
Write articles for papers, especially local ones as they are always looking for great articles to fill the pages. Send them an article that they feel gives value and you've got your name in the paper which gives you massive credibility.
Writing a blog is also great and you can then link to it via twitter, facebook and other social media and also from your web page.
Write a book on your chosen subject is another way to show your expertise and it's not as hard as you think and with a book or two under your belt you'll instantly be seen as the expert, If you need help writing your first book I have a friend who can help you out - The Book Midwife.On top of that you've then created yourself a residual income from the royalties every time your book gets a sale!

Whatever your medium for showing your expertise always add value to what you do, give away free tips that will help others, they'll then come looking for you and your service.

To your success

Paul

A Website Alone is Not Enough Pt2

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 18:03:00 +0000

Here is Part 2 of Lisa Blacklers guest Blog Apperance

_____________________________________________________________

Managing Data

It is important to monitor what is happening on the site – how many people visit from which sources. This allows tweaking of the site to maximize its potential. Which pages do people enter the site at – it is not always the home page. If you learn that the search “long sleeved blue dresses” brings people to the page of blue dresses and they subsequently make a purchase, you can use this information to boost other pages of the site.

Where possible, visitor information should be captured. This allows further marketing to them in the form of email marketing.

Maximising the Value of Visitors

Capturing contact information from visitors allows you to market to them in the future. An email marketing campaign allows you to communicate special offers and new product launches and encourage return visits to your site. It can build a dialogue and a relationship which is often missing from e-commerce sites. With a relationship, customers feel valued and are more loyal.

If the purchasing data is harnessed, it is possible to use this to upsell in the future. If they have bought 6 months’ supply of printer paper, then emailing them a reminder after 5 months will be helpful to them and bring them back to your site.

Social Media

Depending on the industry sector, social media can be deployed in different ways to increase awareness amongst the target market as well as to communicate with customers. Twitter and Facebook allow a conversation to take place – engaging people is a powerful way to bring them onside. These tools are also powerful for customer service. Many large companies monitor Twitter for mentions of their products and the best ones will pick up on any issues being talked about and deal with them. This turns a problem into a positive experience.

Both Facebook and Twitter require time and commitment. They are about relationships, not about broadcasting. However, they are inexpensive and powerful tools. Facebook also has a targeting pay per click advertising system.

Summary

If you build it they will come is simply not true of websites. To maximize the investment made in site development there must be thought and effort made to make it work as hard as possible.

Lisa

_____________________________________________________________

Lisa Blackler heads up Honesty Marketing and draws together the experience of a vast virtual team of experts to ensure that clients benefit from the very best in marketing, creative and technical knowledge.

You can get in touch with Lisa on 01933 419079 or visit her website http://www.honestymarketing.co.uk

_____________________________________________________________

A Website Alone Is Not Enough Pt1

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 23:03:00 +0000

This next post is a 2 parter, the second part will be posted on Friday and has been written by a good freind of mine Lisa Blackler from Honesty Marketing.

_________________________________________________________________________________

A professionally designed website is an important investment. It presents your business as trustworthy and serious, and harnesses technologies and design features to increase enquiries and sales from site visitors.

However, a site that is simply well designed will not perform as strongly as possible. There are many techniques that will boost sales from your investment.

Copywriting

The words on your site have 2 functions:

1. To convince the visitor that they wish to do business with you and

2. To maximize results from search engine enquiries.

1. Persuasive copy is vital. It must be relevant to the target market, addressing their needs and desires in order to demonstrate that your business matches those needs. The vocabulary, tone of voice and choice of messages all contribute to this. A beautiful site with poorly written copy will not sell. This is true of every word on the site, including product descriptions on e-commerce sites. Developing a “personality” that is in sync with the site style and the target market is vital.

2. The identification of key search terms and the incorporation of them into the site will increase the site’s ranking on Google as well as mean that when viewing the site the visitor will see that it is relevant to their needs – more visitors and more conversions. This is a skillful task, as “shoe horning” search terms into copy leads to uncomfortable reading.

Other SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

It is important to identify where inbound links can be found. This varies from business to business, but directories such as Yell and any industry specific ones should be identified and listings placed. The sites should be of quality so as not to devalue your own site.

Google Adwords is another option to consider to increase visits to the site. With careful selection of relevant search terms, a competitive cost per click can be found to bring people to the site. This may take some creativity using “long tail” search terms eg “long sleeved blue dress” rather than just “dress”.

Blogging is another tool to pick up on search terms. A well written blog can bring visitors to the site and done cleverly it is possible to pick up on searches for terms that may not otherwise appear on your site. For example, a search for “celebrities at the Chelsea Flower Show” might not reach your main site, but a timely blog could get them there. If you are a garden designer, then this is powerful.

Part 2 will be posted on Friday

_________________________________________________________________________________

You can get in touch with Lisa on 01933 419079 or visit her website http://www.honestymarketing.co.uk

_________________________________________________________________________________

Give Great Customer Service

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 01:22:00 +0000

Customer service should be key in your business and form part of your marketing, ensuring you look after your customers means that they will remember you, use your services again and recommend your services to others. This is why it's worth spending some time ensuring you've got it right.

Too few businesses concentrate on customer service yet now in our times customer service is a key factor to a successful business. Imagine if your cost to acquire a customer is £20 - this means that roughly for every £20 of marketing spend you'll get a customer. Now if you get that customer and treat them brilliantly and they tell a friend or relative about you and then they go on to use you, you've then saved yourself £20 which will then go into your profit!

Lets now imagine that you give prospects who aren't yet your customer a brilliant service, If you can demonstrate you give great service, your conversion rate will increase, therefore your cost to acquire a customer drops even further.

I really don't understand when business owners just give the standard service to customers, It's much more profitable to make your customers think WOW what a great service.
Something else you should be doing is ensuring that your top paying customers get more from you, It's only right, they are spending the most money with you.

So with this in mind what's is a list of 5 things you can do to give your customers an extroidinary service?
Here is a short list of basic ideas

send them a birthday card.
answer your phone or have a call answering service
don't keep them waiting
under promise - over deliver
If you are B2B find business for them
have a NO Brainer Guarantee

Your goal should be to ensure that your customers or prospects would be crazy not to use you as going to your competitors would cost them more! This does not mean be the cheapest though, I'll cover pricing in another post.

To your success
Paul

To Advertise or not To Advertise?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 01:27:00 +0000

That is the question, or is it.
In my first 3 years of business I thought advertising was just what you had to do to get business, I was wrong and I've been proven right time after time. I have spent literally thousands on advertising with online companies, magazines, radio, yellow pages and the BT phone book and never got a penny in return. While you're a start up spend as little on promoting your business as you can and if you're a procrastinator this is where that skill will come in handy think about where you spend your money, if you're not a procrastinator become one when it comes to money on advertising. Stick to Networking/ word of mouth and all that free online stuff for now!

I will add one exception to this advertising rule and that is the online site bestof, that has worked for me. the business is a franchise and if you are a local business, and have a decent franchisee running your area they will help you to get business by using the site and promoting you, check out my local Site

To Your Success
Paul

Free Online Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:42:00 +0000

Well hopefully by now you've set up your website and you've got a nice shiny domain name and email, you're going to get loads of business now! Sorry to shatter your dreams but it's going to take a bit of work to get your site found, your site is like a needle in a very big haystack and how do you find a needle in a haystack? - with a magnet.

With the rise of social media over the last few years you've got a nice big magnet to promote your site and for the most part it's all free!

There is an art to social media in getting it right and I'll give tips on each specific one over the next few weeks this is just a guide to get you started. here is a list of site you should get up and running to promote your business and new website.

While social media is great don't use it as a blatant Ad for your business, you need to be very subtle about it, social media is about building relationships first don't spam people with your business.

Twitter & Twellow
Twitter is really simple to use, basically twitter is conversations online the length of a text message that go on whether you are there or not, Setting up your twitter site is simple and takes about 10 minutes - do not pay someone to do it (I've seen a company charge £75 to do this and there are probably other charging more - this is a rip off) once you've set up your profile find people to follow those that may share your interests an dthat you could have a conversation with. You write posts about what you are doing and comments on social stuff thats happening, Tweeters will follow you back and then see your posts they may comment about what you've written and you do the same by hitting the reply button.

Twellow it just a twitter yellow pages you get to write a bit about you and your business and have a link to your twitter site and your website.

Facebook
You can create your own fan page for your business, this site can be a bit more down to business but keep it fun and add tips and photos, Send the page to your 'Friends' so they can see what you're up to and can 'Like' your page then other people will find it and 'Like' it too.
Click on +Create Page

4Networking
4Networking is a fantastic business networking organisation that set up in 2005. Business networking groups meet all over the country and 4N has, at the time of writing this over 250 groups with business owners meet for breakfast to connect with like minded business owners. There is a cost to meeting like this and becoming a member and I'll talk about networking in another post, the great thing about the 4Networking website is that It's free to use! you can go on fill out a profile with a link back to your site and contact details and then you can use the forums to connect with other businesses!

LinkedIn
Really easy one fill out your LinkedIn profile, find and join (or start your own) groups over time find people to link with - this may be from networking events, or from your groups you're part of.

Blogger
You could set up your own blog just like this one to let people know about areas of your business and tips on how to do something! keep in mind though it's not about making a blatant Ad about your business have links to your website but don't make each post about you and your business, no one will read it give something of value! It may be about your journey in business too. Let me know about it though I'd love to read it.

Click on my links for these social sites so we can connect on those!
With all these site there are some rules to making it work.

People buy from people - add a picture of yourself not a logo or picture of you and a friend or pet
Fill out your profiles in full
Don't spam people keep it social
Add value in what you do and do your best to help others.

To Your Online Success

Paul

Get Online, for Free!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 16:03:00 +0000

An online presence is a must these days, if you don't have one whatever your business you'll be left behind.
When I moved to Hertford I needed to move my local doctors so I Googled it and found only one GPs with a website, I called them and then registered there, and that's true for most businesses most people look online for a service or product now, if you can't be found you're losing money - one golden rule of business is don't lose money!

Great news though you don't have to spend thousands to get online today you can do it for free and here's how, an organisation called Getting British Business Online are supplying free domain names and in association with Google and other partners, using Google Sites to give you a free site, it's really simple so don't be daunted at the thought of building a website, as if you can use a simple word processor then you can build your site and if you need help there is help available too with online training.

Remember though with your first site keep it simple don't go over board with different fonts font sizes and colours and keep it to your branding. Also add some pictures too.

In the next blog post I'll cover some great tips for marketing online for free!

To Your Success
Paul

Email get it Right

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 16:30:00 +0000

One pet hate of mine is businesses that don't have a business email, by this I mean they'll have dodgybuilder@MyInternetServiceProvider.net even if the name is @ yahoo, google or hotmail it's not good.
The problem with this is I believe that

It looks unprofessional
It can't form part of your brand.
What happens when you leave that ISP?

What I find worrying is that it only costs a couple of pounds per month to get an email such as

yourname/ Info/ enquiries@yourbusinessname.co.uk you can even get it for free and that's what I'll talk about in tomorrows post how to get online for free.

To Your Success

Paul

What's in a Business Name

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:14:00 +0000

Thinking of a new business name can be huge fun, however some considerations need to be taken.

Is the web address/ domain name taken?
Will people know what you do from the name?
Is it easy to pronounce?
Is there a meaning in it?
Shorter punchier names work well, Is it?
Do you like it?

You can check if your desired domain name is free at 123-reg.co.uk having what you do in your business name and/ or your domain name can be of benefit with the search engines but not essential.
A good tool to use for coming up with names is a thesaurus just enter some words and write them down and then match them up, so if you were going to start a plumbing business you could be called Professional Plumbers, or put professional into the thesaurus and you'd get Adept, Efficient, Expert, Skilful or Slick...Plumbers. ( just an example of course)

Remember you're going to have the name for a long time and it will be part of your brand, to change it after several years could mean disaster especially if a lot of people know your name/ brand So work on it and get it right now, it would be a good idea to write a list of the finalists and then ask people you know to rate it and then go with the top one - so long as you really like it too.

To your Success

Paul

What Business?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:48:00 +0000

So you definitely want to start a business - you've found you why, your reason for doing it, have you got a business industry you know you're going into or are you still looking for that idea? finding a business idea to start up in is really easy and something you can 'brainstorm', what are you good at, what skills do you have or hobbies you have that you'd like to convert into a business, you don't have to have to have an original idea Richard Branson, He has nothing new so you can do the same.

You could start up a completely new business, you could become a franchisee or start a network marketing business. they all have their pros and cons, which I'll discuss in later posts.
Just ensure whatever you go into you are really passionate about doing, don't do it just because it's the first thing you came across and you want to get going in a business - on the flip side though don't spend ages thinking you've got to get everything right first

I once met someone at a business start up show who said he was starting a business, but he wanted to get it 'right first'. I asked him how long he'd been starting up for, I received the reply of three years!

Franchising this site has a nice calculator to find you the right franchise.
Network Marketing is a relatively new industry this site will show you what it is.

To your success

Paul

Have a brilliant new year in business.

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 23:19:00 +0000

Just a quick one because it's new years eve and I want to get back to the festivities!
Whether you are starting or growing a business in 2011 do you know what 5 (or more) things you want (that you are responsible for) to have, be or do that will make it your best year ever?
Just something to think about, of course you can have more, just write them down, plan how you'll achieve them and then committ to them.
Have a brilliant 2011
Paul
------------------

Why do you want to Start a Business?

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jennings) — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:28:00 +0000

Welcome to the first post of Start and Grow your Business, being the first blog post I thought it apt to ask the question 'Why do you want to Start a Business'? What is your number one priority in doing so?

Are you starting a business because you want more income than you currently get from your job, you want more spare time or more time with your family, you want to have financial freedom and security for the future? or is it you want to retire earlier than the predicted 70/75 years of age we're heading for or maybe you just want to leave a legacy for your family?

Whatever your reasons for starting a business I believe you need to think about your why? Why are you doing it. This 'why' will be your driver throughout your business life. A great Idea is to write down your 'why' and your goals for yourself and then write a mission statement or purpose about what it means to you. This only needs to be a page long and 2-3 paragraphs and you can print this off and put it on your wall to read regularly.

Remember though to make sure you are doing something you really love to do, as in doing this will make all the work you do on your business not feel like work at all!

Do something you love doing and you'll not work another day in your life - Chinese Proverb.

I hope you have found this first post useful.

To your Success.

Paul Jennings