The show will be held at the O2 Arena over 3 days on 18^th to 20^th March.  There will be 200 workshops and 200 seminars for businesses of all sizes – alongside which will be some very large exhibitors (with large announcements) including Google, Microsoft, and Nokia.

Our stand will be at the centre of the show (Stand C20) and we will be talking to delegates about all things marketing.  If you want to increase your growth whilst taking your marketing to the next level, come and see us.

Never?

Well, there seems to be one type of software that all too often remains untested until after it’s been purchased: content management systems.

Just to be clear, a content management system (or CMS) is the generic term used for the admin software that a business owner or their staff members can use to update the content of their website.  Using a CMS, a non technical person can log into the software, change and add web text or images, upload files, write blog posts and generally keep the website up to date.

However, what I find interesting is that almost without exception, the people I speak to tell me they didn’t trail their CMS before they bought it as part of their new website.

If you have had a new website developed with a CMS included, is that true for you too?

Not all content management systems are created equally

Some content management systems are just plain bad.  If, for example, a CMS requires you to add in bits of code in order to format your text, or if it doesn’t allow you to add new pages easily or it doesn’t allow you to add new images where you want, then avoid that CMS.  It’s already not fit for purpose.

However, you will need to do a more thorough test of the CMS to know if it’s the right one for you. A proper trial would involve you using it in the way you expect to use it in the future.  Add new pages, change page text and formatting, move and add images, upload documents, add blog posts and (if relevant) use the shop/ecommerce function to add and change product information, so you know it will do what you need.

There are quite a lot of ‘off the shelf’ content management systems and some are perfectly adequate for many websites (though there is no such thing as a perfect CMS).  Good examples include WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and ExpressionEngine.  But they each come with their flaws.  The ways in which you intend to use the CMS will to a greater or lesser extent expose the flaws in any given system.

From experience, the businesses that use content management systems which are best suited to them are much more likely to have a ‘living’ website that is updated regularly and (very importantly) is feeding their website visitors and the search engines with regular and timely content.

Don’t get stuck with a CMS that discourages you from keeping your website updated. Try before you buy.

So does that mean social media is the right choice for your business?

Well, not necessarily.

As mentioned, social media, is at its core, a communication tool.  Websites such as Twitter allow you to listen to what’s happening in your market and of course also allow you to connect with customers and key influencers.  Social media is obviously ideal for some markets – many consumer markets in particular can be reached very effectively using social media.

But as a marketing professional, I would not be doing my job properly if I made a sweeping statement like ‘all businesses should be using social media’.  Because frankly, not all should.

Social media, like any other communication tool, should be weighed up in relation to your business and your customers.

First things first: don’t believe [all] the hype

Social media has become a key part of many aspects of our lives.  But it’s not become a key part of all aspects of our lives.

When I want to read a good story, I don’t refer to Twitter, I pick up a book (or ebook reader). If I want to find a good local dog-sitter I ask local dog owners, I don’t search facebook.

The point is that though social media is valuable in many ways and for many people, it’s not valuable in all situations.  So whilst some might claim social media to be the obvious choice for all businesses, common sense tells us that this can’t be the case.

Here’s a quick example:  An established and successful author was interviewed regarding the advice he could give to aspiring writers. The author had an active presence on Twitter, so the interviewer asked if the author found Twitter a useful tool for connecting with his audience.  The author was dismissive, saying that only his publicist used his Twitter account and he would suggest other aspiring authors avoid social media as it can be a constant distraction from what’s really important: writing.

Before that interview took place, most would assume the author was using social media to reap rewards.  However, for him and his business, it’s actually a threat to his time and his focus.

Which leads me on to the next point…

Social media requires time and effort

As you will no doubt already know, building a business takes up your time from every angle – sales, suppliers, finances, staff, customer care – the list goes on.  And social media will add to that list.

Some might say that ‘not enough time to manage social media’ is a poor excuse not to get involved.  But the fact remains, there are other more important business activities that require your time, and if social media can’t be fitted into your routine properly, you risk making a half-hearted attempt which could be worse than no attempt at all.

Social media requires money

Ask yourself a question:  If social media websites charged for their use (let’s say £3000 per year) would you still use them?

If the answer is ‘no’, you might want to rethink the reasons why you are using/considering social media.

The truth is that ALL marketing activities cost money and social media is no different.

For example, if for every working day of the year (approx 260 days) an employee spends one hour using social media, that could translate to thousands of pounds invested in man hours every year.  Add to this the fact that there are only so many working hours in the day, and that time invested in social media could mean another marketing activity is therefore not conducted.

So, if ALL marketing costs money, and your money has a limit, does social media fit into your budget above your other marketing options?

Social media requires interaction

Whilst social media can certainly be a useful tool to listen to your market, at some point, you need to interact with people. You aren’t going to be part of the party if you don’t say anything.

This however, leads on to another problem: are there people to interact with?

In other words, social media requires interaction to be effective, but if your market does not use social media (or doesn’t use it to interact in your market place), then you might well find yourself using social media to talk to no one.

It’s a fundamental marketing question and it applies to social media as much as any other marketing activity: are you operating where your customers are? If not, move your focus.

Social media might not generate new customers

Depending on your market, (and B2B markets tend to be more typical of this), social media might never generate any clear new business opportunities.

That’s not to say that social media can’t work in a softer way to build your brand in your market place, but if your expectation is that customer enquiries will come directly via social media interaction, you could be disappointed.

If, rightly or wrongly, your objective for using social media is to generate enquiries, think very carefully whether your market is likely to use social media to enquire.

Please don’t be mislead into thinking that I am not a fan of social media.  I am.  But I am a greater fan of using the best marketing activities for any given situation, and that may or may not include social media.

Well maybe, but that wouldn’t be my first approach. Instead, I would first try Google Adwords.

Not the answer you were expecting?

In case you are not familiar with Google Adwords, this is the system you would use to run sponsored text adverts so they appeared at the top and down the right hand side of a Google results page.

OK, but what has Google Adwords got to do with understanding what motivates my market?

In simple terms, if you ran a Google Adwords campaign, your text adverts would appear if people typed in a search term that matched one of the search terms you had pre-defined. For example, an architect firm (we’ll call them ABC Architects) could set up their Adwords campaign so that their adverts appeared when someone searched for the term ‘architect’.

The beauty of the Adwords system, is that it will then tell ABC Architects what search terms people actually type into Google that include the search term ‘architect’. This provides an extremely valuable window into the thinking of prospective customers. Adwords will give ABC Architects an insight into what their customers really want.

So, for instance, ABC Architects might perhaps think their market is motivated to work with highly qualified architects as a priority.  But, looking at Adwords, the results could perhaps show that people are more interested in searching for the ‘best architect’ or a ‘London architect’ or perhaps an ‘award winning architect’. It might become apparent that people may almost never search for a ‘qualified architect’.  That’s not to say they don’t want a qualified architect, it just suggests that the market isn’t motivated by an architect’s qualifications as a first priority.

If the above hypothetical Adwords findings were true, ABC Architects could then focus their marketing and website efforts on demonstrating that they are one of the best in their field and that they are local to their clients in London and that they have independent awards to prove their expertise. These messages might then take priority over promoting ABC Architects’ qualifications.

Whilst Adwords is not the only method for gaining an insight into what motivates a market, it does provide real intelligence. I say ‘real’ because, the intelligence is not based on what customers say or think they will do, it is based on what they are actually seeking.

The presenter then argued that actually, the reason we should be in business today is to be in business tomorrow. His point being that the greatest and ultimately most profitable businesses don’t just focus on making profits. Instead, they focus on building a business that stands for something that their customers can buy into.  In other words, building a business with a purpose first then supplying products or services that demonstrate that purpose.

This might not be a ground breaking insight into marketing and business strategy, but it did remind me of a video I watched a little while ago that made a similar point in a very simple way.

So, today’s video is another great example from the TED library. Simon Sinek speaks about the simple difference between businesses that build a following and those that sell products or services.

Firstly, is paid search relevant to your business?

A fundamental characteristic of paid search is that for it to work, people have to be looking for your product or service online or looking for a related issue/product/service that has a logical connection with your business. In other words, if no one is searching online for anything to do with your, say, industrial widgets or speciality services, then no one will click. In that case, for the most part, gaining a profitable ROI from paid search is going to be tough. Your paid search campaign must use keywords that are searched for in sufficient numbers online to generate traffic to your website that is made up of prospective customers.  If it doesn’t, consider putting your marketing budget elsewhere.

Secondly, what is your average profit per sale?

Assuming that your market/product is searched for in sufficient numbers online, then how much profit are you likely to generate from each sale? Will you spend more on clicks than you could ever make back in sales?  This might seem like an obvious question, but unfortunately there is no shortage of businesses making a loss on their paid search campaigns.  It’s worth doing the simple sums…

For example, if you need an average of 25 paid search clicks to generate one enquiry, and it takes an average of 10 enquiries to make a sale, that makes 250 clicks per sale. Could you then make a profit if you were paying £2 per click?

Obviously all ratios and click costs are different for different businesses and industries, but doing some simple sums upfront could save you money down the line.  In fact, it’s not uncommon for a business to adapt a product or service’s pricing so that it does generate sufficient profit to fund a paid search campaign.

Thirdly, is your campaign being managed with ‘intelligent common sense’?

For want of a better term, the phrase ‘intelligent common sense’ is one I coined a few years ago in attempt to try and describe the approach businesses should take towards their marketing strategies and messages. For paid search, it means using the intelligence you can gain from tools such as Google Adwords and Google Analytics regarding how people are finding, clicking on and using your website, but then importantly, applying some common sense as to how you use that information.

For instance, Adwords might be telling you that certain keywords are gaining a healthy click-through rate, so now is a great time to sit down and use your common sense; what new/related keywords can you add to the list that perhaps Google’s own keyword tool has missed? Or, can you update your advert text so it grabs the prospective customer’s attention but also stands out against the other adverts appearing alongside yours? But remember, keep applying that common sense – you don’t just want as many clicks as possible, you want clicks from good quality prospective customers, so the text should also be balanced to gain the right mix of volume and quality. This aspect of constantly using the data/intelligence and interpreting it with common sense is critical for you to ultimately improving your enquiry numbers.

This is the first of several paid search posts I will be adding, so check back for the next article.

Malcolm Gladwell

This is a eloquent reminder about the importance of offering products or services that genuinely make customers happy (and also that some customers don’t know what will make them happy until you give it to them). Filmed at the TED Conference in 2004.

David Meerman Scott

David is a big supporter of using social media and viral marketing. In his video (which I warn you is quite long but worth it) he discusses how ideas and marketing messages can go viral. If you learn nothing else from this video, it will show you that any business in any industry has the ability to create and execute a successful viral campaign.  Filmed at the BMA Conference in 2009.

Seth Godin

Where would a list of classic marketing videos be without the inclusion of Seth Godin!? Seth has several videos online, but this particular one highlights the importance of looking at your business and seeing where your customer processes or customer communications are ‘broken’. This immediately gets you thinking about how you can reconsider your processes to make them delight your customers.  Filmed at Gel 2006.

To do this, Google decided to take into account the speed at which web pages load.  In other words, a slow site is less usable and a quick site is more usable. Obviously, this doesn’t take into account the extent to which a site’s layout and functionality aid usability, but for Google, the site’s speed is a good place to start.

It’s worth saying upfront that a website’s load speed will not be a critical factor that decides whether your site appears on page 1 or, say, page 10. There are other factors that are much more influential (including your domain’s age, your site’s content/coding, and the number and quality of other sites that link to your site). But, if you are already on top of those aspects of SEO, you should consider its speed as well.

Even ignoring the impact on Google’s rankings for a moment, a slow site could simply mean your website visitors may desert you if they can’t get to the content quickly enough. There is plenty of research to suggest that even 3 seconds is too long for many to wait for a page to load – especially if the visitor is new to your site.

So, there are at least two things you can do to help your site’s speed:

The human test (often forgotten, but most important)

Before your developer starts running automated tests, try a more human approach. Firstly, open up Internet Explorer (the most-used browser for the majority of websites), clear your browser’s cache and visit your site as a normal visitor would… i.e. go to the home page, maybe visit your About Us page, then the products/services sections, then the blog if you have one, then the Contact page etc etc.

Try this on a few different connections – at work, at home, at friends’ houses (on their PCs) even on the PCs in electrical retailers! The more places the better. Do the same for several other sites too (perhaps your competitors’ websites) so you can get a feel for which sites load more quickly than others. As an aside, this exercise alone may also show other usability/functional issues on your site you may not have identified when using your usual PC/laptop/Mac.

Now, while you are at it, look at all the sites on a few mobile devices – again, it’s possible you will learn some good, bad and possibly ugly truths about how your site looks and performs on mobile devices.

This simple and very low-tech approach to reviewing your website will have given you chance to view your site through your visitors’ eyes. Make a note of the issues, then go on to step number 2…

The speed test

There are a range of website coding factors that will affect the speed at which a page loads. Thankfully, Google can do the job of testing your site’s code and pointing out where improvements can be made.

Visit: http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com and enter your web address.

Once you enter your web address, Google will give you a score out of 100 and on the left side of the results page will give you a list of changes you can make to your website’s code – ranging from high to low priority. If you aren’t a developer, then these changes might not make much sense, but you can simply give them to your developer and ask them to work down the list and implement the changes.

Once done, re-run the test (or ask your developer to) and you should see a much higher score out of 100. If your score is now much higher, then you now know your website functions more effectively. If however, you feel that your website still runs too slowly, do look into your web hosting. Not all hosting is created equally and it would be worth considering moving your site if it still loads slowly.

As mentioned previously, your site’s speed isn’t a major influence on your site’s ranking on Google when compared to other factors, but it does still play a part. Plus, it’s good practice to keep an eye on how your site is seen by your visitors.  After all, if you were running a retail shop you would be walking the aisles regularly to make sure everything was presented as it should be for your customers – it’s worth taking the same approach for your website.

If you are concerned about your website or its load speed, let us know.

The site is particularly advanced for a legal sector firm but manages to retain its simplicity in terms of visitor experience and content.

View the Brookman Solicitors website – we would welcome your comments and feedback.

Assuming that Twitter is the right medium for your business (it’s certainly not right for all businesses), the amount you get from your Twitter relationships does relate to how much you put in.

For the most part, businesses that fully embrace Twitter – typically using it every day for meaningful online conversations – are those that gain the most from it.  But, for many business owners and managers, using Twitter every day is not a realistic option – they just don’t have the time to maintain it.

The solution: an outsourced Twitter service

In simple terms, an outsourced Twitter company will manage your Twitter account, submit tweets (written by them or by you depending on the situation) and if required, they will communicate with your followers, as if they were you.  It’s worth noting that the level to which your outsourced Twitter company interacts with your followers can be pre-agreed.  They can either be limited to only very basic/polite conversation (with you then being notified of more complex conversations that you handle personally) or they can be briefed on your business and given a more free rein.

Are outsourced Twitter services appropriate?

The short answer is, ‘it depends’.  In my view, the medium or long term goal should always be for you to handle your own Tweets.  However, in the short term, many businesses struggle with Twitter because a) they don’t really know how to use it for best effect and b) they don’t stick with it long enough to see any kind of benefit, or for their use of Twitter to become a consistent routine in their working lives.

If using an outsourced service allows you to: gain a better understanding of Twitter, begin building a quality following, and allow you to experience the benefit before you run out of time or patience, then I think the service is appropriate.

However, as with all companies, not all outsourced Twitter companies are the same.  Do choose a company that has people you like (they could be tweeting in your name after all) and do choose a company that understands you as an individual, your business’ culture and your industry.

Once you have found the right company, I would suggest you start the relationship on the basis that you will be taking over the Twitter account once you are comfortable with the routine and with Twitter itself.  If you start on the basis that your Twitter account will always be outsourced, you risk never making the mental commitment to it.

Disclosure:  Execute marketing provide outsourced Twitter services, however, in line with our advice above, our service is based on educating our clients about Twitter and as quickly as possible, allowing them to take over their tweets and Twitter account.