Social media – not so different to the old

Like any other marketing activity – new media isn’t so different to old media in that respect – it needs to be planned and thought out, otherwise, you run the very real risk of putting a lot of effort in, and getting very little back. Very much like traditional media in that respect.

Unfortunately, a lot of marketing by small and medium sized businesses isn’t well thought out, without defined objectives, without a structured plan – and as a consequence, a lot of that marketing fails. Social media is no different.

So where should a business start with social media?

Hot Lemon’s top tips for social media for business

#1 Set an objective

Why do you want to use social media? What do you want to achieve by using social media?
These might seem obvious questions – after all why do something if you didn’t want to get anything from it. However, in all likelihood the majority of businesses using social media (and certainly small businesses) haven’t iterated the answer to these questions. In other words – they haven’t set themselves any objectives.

Without objectives, you don’t know whether your being successful or not. You don’t know whether you’re wasting your time and investment.

#2 Research

First things first. Before you do anything with regard to social media – do research.

Find out what the differences are between the various social media platforms, get a basic understanding of the differences between the big boys – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (and increasinglyGoogle+). Understand where other quasi-social channels, such as Flickr and YouTube fit in. If you’re a niche business, find out whether there is a specific social platform for your industry (there are hundreds of social platforms out there).

Then, find out what your customers use, what your target market uses. Do they use Facebook, or are they Tweeters. If B2B, perhaps LinkedIn is the platform of choice.
You will only know if you do the research first.

#3 Choose your weapon

Focus on one channel. Do not try to be a jack of all trades.

Using social media successfully takes time and effort. As a beginner to social media it’s going to be difficult enough making a competent fist of just one social media channel – let alone three or four.

Use the research you have done (see tip #1), and focus your efforts on that channel.
Only once you are more familiar with social media and understand the commitments required to make social media a success, should you move on to the next channel. Do not bite off more than you can chew.

#4 Plan Plan Plan

You have an objective. You have a weapon. Now plan how to use it.
Failing to plan, is, planning to fail.

By planning you can allocate resources effectively, create milestones to measure your performance, and adapt and amend if it all goes tits up.

#5 Determination and consistency

Social media for business isn’t easy. It doesn’t necessarily bring instantaneous results.
Building a following takes time. Getting results takes longer. However, don’t give up (this is why planning is so important). There is light at the end of the tunnel, it just takes time.

Be determined and consistent. Determined to keep on going through the lean periods, and consistent to give people a reason to follow you.

#6 Character

Do not fall into the trap of corporate PR. Do not troll out the same corporate line again and again. It’s social media – give yourself, your business your brand a bit of character.
Celebrate successes, commiserate and share.

Show your followers the character of the business, give them something to be social with. Remember the old sales adage – people buy people. In the social media sphere – people buy character.

#7 Its called social for a reason – give and take

Being social is not all about taking. It’s about giving and sharing as well.
Your followers will not appreciate you taking al the time. Give them something back. Be that an insight into the business, sharing the tips and tricks of the trade, insights into the market or even discount coupons.

Give and take – build a relationship with your followers.

#8 get a widget

Whichever social media channel you choose, the people most likely to follow you are those that are looking at your website already.

Make it easy for them to follow you on social media by placing widgets on your website. Remove the barriers and make it as easy as possible for them to engage with you through social media.

#9 don’t be a pain in the ass

Time and time again people fall into this trap. They repeat the same message again and again trying to gain traction and interest – yet all they are doing are pissing their followers off.

Just because someone follows you on a social media channel does not give you carte blanche to pepper them with sales messages. Keep it realistic, because otherwise your followers will leave you.

Likewise, if what you are sharing does not add value, do not expect people to stay following you.

#10 stay on topic / message

People sign up and follow you for a reason. Perhaps because you’re in an industry or provide a service that they are interested in, or a brand that they would like to be associated with.
Therefore they expect you to talk about certain subjects – that’s why they are following you.
Do not alienate them by going off message on a regular basis. That is not the reason that people have followed you.

Where to start with social media for business

If you don’t know where to start with social media. Or want help in making social media work for you and your business – get in touch with Hot Lemon.

We provide a social media service that can help you and your business get a head start on social media – see our website for more information.

Should small and medium sized businesses get involved in social media?

And, if yes, what are the benefits of doing so? (or in other words, how do I get the finance director to give me the money to do so..)

Why businesses should be using social media

The answer to the first question is easy – it’s a definitive yes. After all common business sense dictates that you follow your customers – and if your customers are using social media – so should you – “simples”.

And the answer to the second question – lots. OK, let’s put a bit more flesh on that. Depending on the objectives set by the business for their social media strategy, some of the benefits businesses can accrue from social media include:

• cost-effectiveness – social media can be (emphasis on the “CAN” there) a highly cost-effective form of marketing. Firstly, the initial setup is FREE (yes, I did say the F word). Secondly, if done well (emphasis on the “WELL”), can recoup any investment in terms of time and money many times over*
• brand development – social media can be a very useful tool to develop your businesses brand and brand awareness. It can get your brand, your message and your tone of voice to a larger audience, it can develop brand relationships with your customers and it can be used as a conduit to support the brand proposition
• business networking (social capital) – social media can be used to build, develop and support networks that are beneficial to the business. Both in terms of clients and suppliers but also other businesses in similar sectors – this can be a major form of lead generation for the business
• lead generation / business development – social media can be used very effectively as a sales tool to generate new business leads. Both in terms of getting the businesses customer proposition across to a wider audience, but also in terms of communicating special offers and promotions – something (which if done well) can go viral
• customer support – social media can be used as a great customer support tool – again if done well, can help customers resolves issues with your products and services, but also build the brand by being seen to offer good open customer support
• customer research – social media can be used to garner thoughts, viewpoints and opinions of potential customers on new products or service ideas (or existing ones) providing invaluable customer insight
• support traditional marketing – social media can be used highly effectively to tie in existing marketing activity, and to actively support and enhance it by giving it an interactive element (note, all marketing should be integrated with each other – don’t be going off and doing things separately)
• search engine optimisation – good use of social media can see the creation and propagation of links back to your main website – thereby potentially improving the search engine ranking of your site.

* like any form of marketing, if not thought out and done with a modicum of competency – it can all be a waste of time and money.

Note of caution…

All of the above benefits depend upon your business gaining traction and trust within the social media sphere. If you don’t put the effort in, then people will not engage with you.

Getting started

Want to know how to get started with social media for your business?. Well the first step is to read our next blog post – “Social Media – the Basics for Business”.

The second step – well that depends on you. But if you need any help or advice on using social media for business – you can always get in touch with Hot Lemon – we will be happy to talk you through social media and what it can and can’t do for your business.

If only online success was that easy. Unfortunately, it isn’t. Yet, this is one of the most common misconceptions that small and medium sized businesses have about the internet.

There are thousands of examples of websites littering the web, where businesses have spent a lot time, effort and money in creating an online presence only never to build on or market that presence.

More traditional than you think…

A website, in many ways, is like a traditional printed brochure. If you don’t market your brochure – send it out to customers, make it readily available, and no one reads it – then it might as well not exist. Likewise a website.

Whilst there are some notable exceptions, if a small business doesn’t actively work on promoting and marketing its website continually, then the website is unlikely to ever be a success for the business.

The opportunity is there…

The internet represents a great opportunity for business. No other medium can give a business access to a global audience numbered in its billions. Yet, the average small business website only generates less than 20 unique visitors every month.

Unfortunately, the average small business website is never actively marketed or regularly updated, and hence they fail and fail again.

Website marketing – it doesn’t have to be hard

To make the most of the web, a business needs to actively market and promote its website, either through traditional marketing, or through search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) continually. Or at least on a regular basis – not every six months!

These needn’t be hard, and it needn’t be time consuming. But it needs to be done. Otherwise, the initial investment made in the website could well be wasted.

Some website marketing techniques a business should consider doing include:

• keep the website up to date – with latest offers and news. Search engines like fresh content on websites, and will rank regularly websites (all else being equal) higher
• content content content – think about adding new or additional content to the website, be it product reviews or market analyses(or update existing content on a regular basis)
• give customers a reason to visit the website – either in terms of special offers, discount vouchers or content like how to guides
• online advertising – consider using pay per click (PPC) to drive traffic to your site if not achieving high ranking natural search results on keywords
• integrate your marketing – ensure that all other marketing and promotional material has the website address on it, and give customers a reason to visit the website (maybe by having more detailed content available)
• traditional advertising – make sure you promote your website through your existing traditional advertising (look at the majority of adverts nowadays by the big boys, and they all direct customers to the website)
• build profile #1 – blog – use a blog to build an online profile of proficiency in your chosen market
• build profile #2 – articles – submit articles and press releases on your market, your product
• build profile #3 – comment – submit relevant and added value comments on industry blogs to build profile (and links)
• build links #1 – directories – use relevant and highly rated directories to verify your industry sector and regionality
• build links #2 – link building – develop high quality links to your websites from other trusted websites (for example blog comments, articles, press releases, links from relevant websites)

All of the above (and there’s more, just not being too comprehensive in this posting), will help build traffic and improve search engine rankings. None of the above need be onerous – for a small business perhaps ten minutes a day – although this depends on your market and the level of competition in that market.

Don’t let your website die…

Make no mistake, if you do not make an effort to promote and market your website online using a combination of the above techniques, then your website is unlikely to be successful. Like everything else in life, having a successful website that delivers value to your business is dependent on you putting the work in.

If you want any help in marketing and promoting your website, or perhaps further information on any of the above techniques, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Hot Lemon.

Or, alternatively, one of my favourites:

“prior preparation prevents piss poor performance”

Like everything else in the business world (and the wider world for that matter) – planning and preparation is critical for success. Marketing is no different.

However, the majority of small businesses rarely involve themselves in the marketing planning process, preferring, instead, to do there marketing in a more ad hoc, less structured way. Whilst this may suit smaller businesses, for those businesses wishing to grow and develop themselves, this lack of marketing planning can potentially be a significant handicap for their future success. At the very least it will ensure that the resources dedicated to marketing the business (both time and money) will be at least partially (if not all) wasted, and at the very worst, could see the business bankrupt itself chasing non-profitable customers.

A marketing plan?

A marketing plan, in many ways is similar to a business plan (for many organisations, the two are interchangeable). It can be as simple, or as complex as the business requires and it exists to provide a roadmap for the business to follow in order to achieve its objectives (for example: turnover, market share, profitability). Like a business plan, a marketing plan is a live document. It’s not something that is written and then followed to the letter no matter what. If situations change, then the market plan needs to change and adapt to the new circumstances.

A marketing plan exists to provide a structure for the successful marketing of the business.

Further, a comprehensive marketing plan can help the business identify and exploit opportunities within its market as well as highlighting any potential weaknesses.

And, before we get too involved, a marketing plan can be as specific or generic as the business wants / needs. In other words, it can either be focussed towards the business as a whole, towards a specific product group, product or customer type.

Most larger businesses, for example, will have several marketing plans (theoretically all tied together at some level to form a master plan) for the business as a whole, product groups, individual products and customer groups. The objectives for the business will cascade downwards to form the objectives of the product groups and the like.

Further, whilst marketing plans can be lengthy all encompassing documents – they don’t have to be. They can be as concise as the business needs them to be – as long as they still provide objectives and direction.

What should be in a marketing plan?

Quite simply, as with any other plan, a marketing plan should answer the following inter-linked questions:

• Where we have come from?
• Where are we now?
• Where do we want to go?
• How are we going to get there?

I say inter-linked, as by answering each question the business can gain insights to answering the next question and potentially highlight new opportunities or for that matter threats to the business. And again, the simplicity or complexity of the answers to these questions depends upon the business and the market it’s targeting.

Where have we come from?

This is a critical question to answer. If we don’t know how the business has performed in the past, what its been good at, and what it hasn’t been good at – we can’t possibly predict or plan in any meaningful way what the business will do in the future. A deep understanding of the business, its products, customers, financial, people and processes is a necessary foundation to any marketing plan.

Specifically, we need to know:

• sales performance – of the business as a whole, and of individual products. It is critical to understand what has sold well and what has not – individual products and services will, undoubtedly vary greatly – some being faster sellers than others. If we don’t know this, it will be hard to generate any meaningful sales or revenue objectives for the marketing plan nor any form of baseline to measure the effectiveness of any marketing activity
• profitability - distinctly different to the above. What are the most profitable products and services, what are the least? If you do not know what is profitable to the business (and by how much), you don’t know what to focus your time and effort on. It is not uncommon for businesses to focus on selling products that have very little margin – if any – because they do not understand where there profit comes from. Accurately assessing profitability (with sales performance) will give businesses an insight into what type of products and services they should be focusing on
• customers – not all customers are the same. A few will be profitable, most will be marginal, and a few will be non-profitable. Pareto’s principal holds true for the majority of industries (80% of profits come from just 20% of customers) – so it is critical to identify those customers that are highly profitable (or likely to be), and either find more of them, or sell them more. Vice verily, by identifying those that are not profitable….. Segmentation – the division of your customer base into definable segments – is again, critical (using critical too much – sorry). By segmenting the customer base, the attributes of a profitable customer can be defined, and can be earmarked to be targeted within the marketing plan
• what has worked – what hasn’t worked – understanding what has worked for the business previously, and what hasn’t is again key (different word to critical there). This is very much a process / people question to answer – if the business is good at a particular thing, and it has done well in the past – worthwhile investing in that in the future. Likewise, if a business has failed in a particular action or process in the past – what is the likelihood of turning this around in the future? For example, the internet may have worked for your business in the past – and therefore can be expected to work well in the future. However, it’s just as likely not to have worked – maybe because the product or service isn’t suitable for online – in which case should you be focussing on it in the future?

It should be noted, that many small businesses may not have robust historical data, or for that matter the level of sales history that allows meaningful historical analysis. In which case, businesses should make a judgement call from their experiences in the market – paying specific attention to profitability and customers.

Where are we now?

Answering the previous question has given us a firm understanding of what has sold in the past, what has been most profitable, and who is most likely to buy it. By answering this question we want to find out what’s happening today – specifically what the state of the market the business is trying to market its products and services is in.

Things that need to be assessed here include:

• state of the market – is the overall size of the market growing or shrinking? What are the trends within the market – higher purchase prices /lower volume or lower prices / higher volume etc.
• the competition – getting more or less competitive? What are they doing right? What are they doing wrong? In what way are you better than them?
• the wider environment – what’s happening in the wider market (society) that will affect your business. For example, forthcoming government legislation, new regulations, changes in tax, shifting political views and social attitudes (for example the move towards environmentally friendly products). Can also include other things such as the increasing use of social media, the opening of new transportation links etc. In other words, things from the wider environment that may affect your business.

By answering this question, a business should understand its current position within the overall market, and an understanding of where that market is going in terms of trends. Is the market growing / declining, what is the competition like – increasing / lessening and what is the focus of that competition is it price, service, the product itself or a combination of all three, and what effects, if any, is the outside world having on the market.

Where do we want to go?

This is the hardest question to answer. It’s very easy to answer it superficially and come up with some random but ultimately un-achievable aspiration. It’s harder to come up with something that is both stretching yet realistically achievable.

This is why its important to answer the previous two questions. Because they can guide the business into understanding what is achievable within their market and critically what isn’t. From answering those questions, a business should have a good understanding of who their most profitable customers are, what their most profitable product is and which distribution channels / promotional activities work best for them. Further, from understanding the current market, businesses will have a firm view on what is achievable within that market. This can guide a business into setting appropriate and realistic objectives in terms of where they want to take the business.

Ideally, when setting an objective, its best to be as specific as possible. Both in terms of what the business wants to achieve, the time period they want to achieve it in and the resources and investment they are willing to commit in order to achieve it. For example:

• increase sales by 10% by end Q2 spending no more than £5,000

However, even the above is quite generic, and not necessarily as granular (specific) as it should be. Much better to have something like:

• increase sales of product x by 12% to end Q2 with a spend of no more than £3,000
• increase sales of product y by 7% by end Q2 with a spend of no more than £2,000
• maintain sales of product z and w at current levels within existing budgets

The above will still gain a 10% overall increase in sales, but is a little bit more specific, and has broken the monolithic 10% target and broken it down into two more manageable and specific chunks.

Where possible, objectives for marketing plans needs to be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and targetable). Although sometimes, for example when branding issues are involved, things may get a little bit wooly.

Note, whilst I do mention sales above, this shouldn’t be the driving factor in any business. What should be the driving factor is profitability – which while closely linked to sales, is not the same.

How are we going to get there?

Now, here’s the interesting bit – how are we going to get to where we want to be?

However, we already have some things to help us. We know specifically where we want to be, we know how much money we want to spend in getting there, and from the analysis of the business we know (or at least have an inclination) as to what has worked before, who the most profitable customers are and what the most profitable channels are.

There are a couple of ways to approach this – simplisticly or more comprehensively. The simplistic approach, which I will detail shortly, will adhere to the majority of small businesses views on marketing – i.e. it’s all about the window dressing of how you promote a particular service or product – on other words the marketing communications side. Whereas the more comprehensive view on marketing entails the full marketing mix – the 7 p’s of marketing.

The 7 p’s of marketing

The more comprehensive view of marketing is that it is a holistic all encompassing discipline affecting every part of the business process. This view on marketing often centers around the 7 p’s of marketing:

• price – the price charged to the customer for the product or service (assuming price elasticity – lower price= more sales/lower profit, higher price= less sales/more profit). Also for some products, there is a perceived value, especially if a brand is involved, which can substantiate significantly higher pricing levels
• product – the actual product itself, its features and benefits, how it compares to the competition, its perceived value, and any added value to the potential customer
• promotion – the advertising / marketing communication of the product itself
• placement – the distribution channel used for selling the product or service – for example your shop, third party distribution, door to door, by telephone, mail order or online
• people – the customer facing people that represent the business – the sales guys
• physical environment – what is the environment like that the product is being sold in – is it conducive to the product
• process – the manufacturing process of the product (for example – built using traditional means) and any added value after sales service or gurantee

By playing around with the 7p’s a business can develop a comprehensive marketing strategy to achieve its objectives.

For example: choosing to use a new distribution channel (perhaps using the internet), developing a dedicated sales force, or developing the product itself.

The thing to remember is that all of them are inter-connected, changing one will necessitate changes in the others.

Marketing communications

However, most small businesses when they think about marketing, think about marketing communications – the promotion P of the seven p’s. This doesn’t mean that they ignore the other marketing p’s, they just consider those to be part of the business process, and not necessarily part of the marketing process.

Marketing communications include:

• advertising (online / traditional / outdoor)
• direct marketing – email / direct mail
• public relations (press releases etc.)
• sponsorship
• sales promotion (special offers)
• branding

Businesses can choose one, several or all of the marketing communications mix to market themselves, depending on their budget, their market and their customers (prospective customers) attitudes. Depending on the business being marketed, the customer proposition and the target market some of the above will work better than others, whilst some won’t work at all.

However, all potentially do have value for a small business – even sponsorship (for example sponsoring a local sports team) and PR (for example – writing a press release for the local paper).

Deciding which combination of the above together with what communication message and when is the fun bit of marketing planning.

Much of this will be driven by an understanding of the business, the market its in, and the businesses customers. However, all businesses need to consider the following when developing their plan, and structure it as much as they can anticipating what the customer response is going to be.

• what the message is – the customer proposition
• who is it being targeted at – customer segmentation – i.e. the potentially profitably customers
• what communication channels are going to be used – i.e. advertising for hard to reach audiences, direct marketing for those who we know
• when are we going to do it.

Measurement

We also need able to measure the success or lack of success of marketing activities in order to adapt. Perhaps if something works well – we can do more of it, vice-verily, if something isn’t doing so well, we can do less of it.

There is no guarantee that any marketing activity will make any difference at all to the business. Marketing can be one of the easiest and most effective ways for businesses to loose money. This is why it needs to be measured – so that if marketing activity is generating very little or no return it can be stopped or adapted before it looses more money.

Obviously, somethings are easier to measure than others. But businesses need to try and measure their marketing results as much as possible so they can demonstrate the effectiveness of good marketing, and they can demonstrate that investing in marketing does actually produce a return on investment.

Putting it all together

Now comes the bit everybody loves – putting it all together. We already know where we want to be, what we want to achieve by when and with how much. Further, we know what we have to play with (assuming here we are focussing on a marketing communications) and we also know what type of customers we want to target, so its simply a case of scheduling (either in sequence or in parallel) specific actions targeted at specific groups.

For example, a quick, simple and easy marketing plan could be:

• week 1:build and agree customer proposition
• week 2: identify key target groups (customer types)
• week 3-5: develop website / write and print sales brochure / build database / create direct mail item
• week 6: launch marketing campaign / launch website / distribute brochure / send direct mail / hold launch party for key customers / issue press release
• week 7: follow up sales activity on direct mail / follow up website leads
• week 8: review campaign to date / measure results against success factors (objectives)

Obviously a very simple outline – but it gives you the gist. For some small businesses, this is all they might need – for others – with perhaps more staff, or a more complex marketing plan – more is needed to explain each step in further detail.

The key thing about a plan (any plan for that matter), is that it can be followed and understood by people within the business, who can then plan activities around it (and build those activities into the marketing plan). For example, with the above plan – perhaps the sales department would like to get involved by doing some pre-sales activity prior to the official launch with targeted customers, or, the service department might think it worthwhile mentioning the launch to customers they interact with – perhaps distributing the new brochure.

Another key thing about any plan – is never do anything in isolation. Don’t spend a lot of time planning something, then do it and not follow it up. Ensure every action, where possible, is followed up.

So, how do you write a marketing plan?

Well, if you have followed the above, you just have.

Marketing planning doesn’t need to be about jargon, or fancy structures and graphs. It is a plan that has been thought out about what the business is good at, what the opportunities in the market are, what the business wants to achieve and how it’s going to get there.

The marketing plan needs to be used and understood by the business, its format and structure are less important.

Something to constantly review

As mentioned before, a marketing plan is a live document – it needs constantly reviewing (well, once a week will probably be enough) and adapting to changing circumstances.

If something isn’t working – stop doing it. If something works better than expected – do more of it. If the business changes, change the marketing plan.

Much of this will only be obvious if you actually measure the results of your marketing – insofar as you can. Whilst somethings are wonderfully easy to measure – for example the number of discount vouchers used, or the number of purchases through a new website. Others, unfortunately are not.

If you want to find out more about marketing planning – please get in touch with Hot Lemon, we would be happy to talk through any questions you have – often only for the price of a cup of coffee.

Marketing basics – measurement

“You can’t manage, what you don’t measure“

As the above quote states, you cannot manage, improve, or even know if something is effective or not, if you don’t or cannot measure it.

This is as relevant for marketing as it is for any other business sector.

Why measure?

Quite simply: if you don’t measure your marketing in terms of end results – you don’t know if it’s working or not.

This is significant, as a business can waste a lot of time, money and effort on ineffective marketing, without measurement – it will never know. This can be the difference between a profitable business and an unprofitable business.

By accurately measuring marketing performance a business can focus its marketing investment on those activities which generate the best return and reduce investment on those activities which are less effective – leading to enhanced returns (read profitability) and potentially reduced costs. Accurate measurement can also identify problem areas which the business may need to address.

Measure everything?

Unfortunately, this is the greatest conundrum for modern marketeers. Not everything in the marketing world is precisely measurable. As John Wanamaker once said:

“I know that half of my advertising doesn’t work. The problem is, I don’t know which half.”

A customer, for example, might buy your product or service because they saw your advert, received a direct mail piece from you, visited your website, or on recommendation from a friend – and if they don’t tell you, well you will only be able to guess why.

This is not to say that measuring your marketing is useless. It’s not, but it’s not an empirical science either, so don’t necessarily expect empirical results (although a lot of marketing data does get very empirical) – the results often need interpretation.

For example, brand awareness marketing may not see any immediate results in terms of sales uplift for several months. This is not to say that this type of marketing is of no value – quite the contrary – it needs to be measured and interpreted differently.

What to measure and why?

So what can you measure? Well quite simply everything where the business interacts with the customer or potential customer, from sales, to queries, to complaints, even to mentions in the local paper. All of these will provide some form of measurement of marketing effectiveness.

For example, some of the things a business can measure with regard to marketing are:

• sales – a simple one to start with, the actual value and number of sales within defined periods – if baselined (i.e. you have matching sales data from an equivalent period), you can match this against marketing activity to see if there has been an uplift in either the value or number of sales
• inquiries – the number and type of customer inquiries to the business about their products and services, again simple to measure
• market share – not as easy to calculate as you need to know the percentage of your sales of all the sales in the market, but can be done by market research or by industry returns (if the market your in has industry returns)
• brand / product awareness – again, something which requires pro-active measurement like market research
• customer satisfaction – either by separate market research, or by asking customers / visitors to comment on your services
• direct mail responses – good direct mail will always have an offer code – so the number of sales associated with a particular offer
• advertising responses – if your advertising has a specific call to action with an offer code or landing page – easily measured, otherwise, somewhat harder (as in brand building campaigns)
• email marketing – the open rate, the click through rate, and the conversion rate (if linked with a specific offer) – need to ensure the email software your using can measure all of this!
• website visits – the absolute number, unique visitors, and the number of pages viewed by each visitor. Easily measured by online analytic software (did anyone say Google Analytics?)
• website inquiries – the number of inquiries made through the website
• registration / eNewsletter signups – again an easily measured metric.

And nearly forgot this last one:

• marketing spend – the actual money invested in marketing – ideally split down by period and by category.

All of the above can be used to measure the effectiveness of marketing activity, either on there own, or as a combined metric. But the real fun begins when you start linking some of the above metrics together.

For example:

• average value of sales over a defined period – if this is increasing – generally good news – if decreasing – can highlight potential problems down the road
• average number of products sold per customer – similar to the above
• incremental sales / marketing spend ratio – this is an interesting one, bit of a rough measure – but an effective one
• inquiries / sales ratio – lots of inquiries but no sales – somethings wrong somewhere
• email open / click through ratio – if persistently lower than market averages – somethings with either the offer or the creative
• email click through / conversion ratio – as above
• website visits / website inquiries / registration ratio – again, if persistently low, something is persuading the customer not to engage – perhaps an issue with the layout of the website
• website bounce rate / pages viewed per visit – if high bounce rate (visitors which only view one web page then go) and low number of pages per visitor – the website needs work!

As you can imagine, there are many more permutations of using and combining the above data – especially if split down by period. From this businesses can produce meaningful results which will tell that business whether their marketing is working, and potentially highlight areas where their marketing and sales process is failing.

What measurement can tell you

Quite simply, effective measurement can tell you what works and what doesn’t. This allows you as a business to either invest more in what works (increase your sales and increase your profitability) or reduce investment in what doesn’t work (reduce your costs and increase your profitability).

Additionally, accurate measurement can provide valuable management information on issues within the business that have remained hidden because of lack of accurate measurement. For example, a weak link in the customer journey, an ineffective sales desk, an over complicated sign up process or even out of line pricing.

For example, you might get a lot of visitors to your website, but very few conversions (either sales, or visitors signing up for further information (newsletters etc.)). This would suggest a couple of things:

• the website is being marketed to the wrong audience
• something on the website is preventing conversion – is the customer proposition out of line with visitor expectations, is the sign up process too complicated, what is the usability of the website like etc.

What every business should be trying to measure…

So, for the average small to medium sized business, there are a lot of things to measure – some better than others in providing key management information that can really help the business.

I am assuming (hopefully rightly – although having set up profitability models in large organisations, I know many business don’t have a clue about this), that the business already knows its:

• profit margin – expressed as a percentage, a measure that details the earnings a business will retain out of every sale, for example, a profit margin of 10% means that for every £1 of sales, the business has a net income of £0.10. (calculated by dividing net income by revenues). Ideally, this would be calculated for both the business as a whole, and for individual product or service lines (and delivery channels) – although this may be hard, as this requires accurate apportionment of costs and revenues.
• cost of sales – the cost associated with selling each and every product or service, including manufacturing, distribution and sales and marketing costs – ideally split between products and services and distribution / sales channels.
• average sale value per customer – a rough and ready measure of the value that each and every customer represents to the business. This has to be closely linked to the profit margin, so as to understand the true net value of those sales. Ideally, businesses would segment their customer base to identify those customers which are of more value to them and focus their efforts on marketing to those customers.

My view is that businesses should be focusing on measuring the following key marketing metrics:

Cost of acquisition (customers)

This is the cost to the business of acquiring a new customer. It is a valuable metric as it allows a business to understand the relationship between acquiring new customers and the bottom line profitability of the business. It is calculated by dividing marketing and sales costs (for acquiring new business!) by the number of new customers.

For example, if a business spends £100,000 on acquiring new customers and gets 100 new customers, the cost of customer acquisition is £1,000 per customer.

Is this good value for the business? Well, on a simplistic level, if the average sales to those customers is £10,000 and the profit margin of providing those good and services to those customers is above 10% – then yes. If not then, the business needs to reassess it’s customer acquisition activities in terms of reducing costs or increasing average sales per customer.

On a more complex level, businesses need to think about the lifetime value of a customer.

LCV – lifetime customer value

The lifetime customer value metric is an estimated figure of the value a particular customer represents to a business over the lifetime of that customer’s relationship with the business.

For example, once acquired, a customer may have a relationship with a particular business over a number of years. Using the example above, if the customer spends £10,000 per year and remains a customer for three years, the simplistic lifetime value of that customer to the business is £30,000 (annual sales multiplied by length of relationship).

This is a very strong metric for businesses to understand as it allows the business to invest more in customer acquisition activities (and retention strategies) safe in the knowledge that overall, over a number of years, that new customers will be profitable.

However, this can be a fiendishly difficult figure to calculate accurately, and depends upon businesses having accurate sales and marketing data in which to build assumptions. First of all, assessing the average lifespan of a customer (3 years or ten years? – only your data will tell), secondly in estimating annual sales (do they increase year on year, or do they decrease) and off course the profit margins of the business. Further, in order to accurately assess life time value – you need to discount future cashflows into net present value – perhaps anther blog posting there…

Remember – not all customers are the same. In order to get the best out of LCV, a business needs to meaningfully segment its customers, by channel, by behaviour etc. Only by doing this can a business identify its most profitable customers, and target acquisition strategies on getting more of the same.

ROI – return on investment

Obviously, saved the best to last.

Return on Investment is probably the most widely used financial metric used in marketing (as for any other business activity). Quite simply, its a percentage figure (although some use ratios) of the profit earned from the investment (in this case, investment in marketing activity). Whilst relatively simple to calculate – it’s surprising how many people (professional marketeers included) get it wrong.

Simply, it’s:

revenue from marketing activity x profit margin – marketing investment
marketing investment

This calculation can be done for all of a businesses marketing activity, or more relevantly, for specific marketing activities. It can therefore be used to identify activities that add value to the business and where additional investment may reap rewards, and reduce investment in those activities that are not generating significant returns.

Note – this is assuming that the marketing objective has a specific measurable output (i.e. increased sales), brand building activity may not.
For example:
A business may spend £1,000 on a direct mail marketing campaign, sending out 1,000 packs to potential customers.

From this activity, they get a conversion rate of 5% (i.e. 5% of those mailed actually buy), with an average sales value of £100, the profit margin of this product for the business is 20%.

The calculation would then be:

£5,000 x 30% – £1,000
£1,000

The resultant return on investment would be 50%.

Note: small differences in these figures can change the ROI dramatically. For example, if the profit margin of the business was only 20%, the ROI would be 0% (you would gain a better return by putting the money in the bank!). Likewise, if the conversion rate was only 3.335% – the ROI would be 0%.

However, if the response rate was 10% (with everything else the same), the ROI would be 200%!

In summary

As you can appreciate, this is just scratching the surface of what can be achieved / learnt by using the right marketing metrics in your business. Being able to measure your marketing effectiveness (even if a lot is based on assumption) can give a business valuable insights into what works and doesn’t work for them – allowing them to invest more on activities that work for them, and reduce investment on activities that don’t work.

However, please remember that certain marketing activities are hard to measure in terms of simple defined financial outcomes – for example branding campaigns. Therefore, businesses need to measure these activities with a degree of pragmatism.

If you would like to find out more about marketing measurement, or marketing in general, please don’t hesitate to contact Hot Lemon.

This is the basis of how Hot Lemon assesses websites for SEO and usability (they are both important for an effective small business website). Much of this will be reiteration of previous posts and diatribes, little is likely to be surprising (well as long as you have read up about SEO before) – after all, it’s why we have called it a checklist – it’s a list of things to check to see if your site is working as hard as it should be for your business.

Whilst some of the checklist items may be techie, others are commonsense. We hope you find it of value, and if you have any suggestions of comments, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at Hot Lemon.

The SEO checklist:

• keyword focus – each web page (search engines index web pages not websites) to have a keyword focus. It’s surprising how many websites don’t – instead they focus on a particular page, trying to make it all things to all men (and women) – usually the home page, and forget about putting the time and effort into the other pages of their website.
• granularity – each page of of a website to focus on one particular subject. Do not try to squeeze everything onto one page . Give search engines a fighting chance of being able to understand what a particular web page is about.
• market focus – web pages, where possible, to include a market / regional focus. If a website is targeting a specific market or regional area, this needs to be reflected in the keywords.
• keyword research – have keywords been researched for the specific business, market and industry sector. Businesses may think they understand what keywords are relevant to their business, chances are they don’t fully understand.
• long tail keywords – does the site use specific longer tail keywords to attract specific search queries. Long tail keywords are those keywords that are used less often in searches, but are usually far more specific.

General technical

• coding – is the coding of the site facilitating or preventing search engines from accurately indexing the site, and following relevant links. Whilst a web page might render correctly in a browser, this does not mean that it is coded correctly.
• flash – does the site use Flash? If so, is it suitably described using alt description? Best to avoid for any important content as search engines cannot read Flash files
• transparency – is the website fully transparent for search engines. Flash as well as java script can make content invisible to search engines. Audio, video and images needs to be titled properly with suitable alternative text descriptions.
• frames – does the site use Frames. Frames are generally not good as they cause search engines difficulty in indexing the content

Content is king

• does the site have unique and relevant content – content needs to be relevant and keyword focused
• frequency of content update – how regular is the content updated – the more frequent the better – either in updating existing content or adding new content
• page size – what length are the pages – search engines generally have a preference for shorter more focused pages than longer all encompassing pages
• content focus – specifically keyword focused pages the better
• legality – has the website content been illegally copyrighted – ensure all content is unique and your own, unless reproduced with relevant permissions (even then wouldn’t recommend it as search engines wouldn’t consider it unique).

Structure

• flatter better than deeper – the organisation of files within the website – generally, flatter structures work better than deeper ones. Although, depends on the content and the relevancy, if having a deep structure (with lots of folders and sub-folders – ensure they are content specific).
• accessibility – is the website accessible to search engines. Password protected areas won’t get indexed, broken links won’t be followed and coding errors will cause search engines to miss content.
• mapping - does the site have a comprehensive up to date xml sitemap. Is it accessible via links from the home page, and has it been submitted to search engines. All do’s. Also, consider having an image sitemap as well.
• size is important – what is the size of the website, two or three pages, or a thousand. Generally, the larger the better, but pages need to be content focused – don’t do content for content’s sake.
• domained – does the site have a unique domain name? If not, it needs one. Don’t use free services – there free for a reason.
• hyphenated – are the url’s readable by humans? Do they contain keywords? Are they descriptive of the content the url’s point to? Hyphens are good for separating url’s and making them more readable, both for humans and search engines.
• mis-direction – does the site use 301 redirects (where a page has been moved or deleted), is the redirect similar or the same as the original page – misleading redirects are considered a black hat SEO technique.
• invisibility – is all text on a page visible? Invisible text – isusually considered ablack hat method – i.e. hiding text behind images / or white text on a white background and even that age old favourite of the text indent!
• described – is everything described appropriately? Not using alt tags or long descriptions for video, audio, image, Flash and javascript files can lead to content not being indexed correctly – if at all.

the nitty gritty

Going into a little bit more detail:

• keywords in page title – very important to get the keyword in the actual title of the individual pages (can add value to get it into the domain as well), the closer the start of the title the better, try and keep the title under 75 characters
• keywords in headings (h1, h2, h3 tags etc.) – obviously H1 the most important, keywords closer to the start for greater relevance – don’t hide headings, and don’t use text indent as a text replacement methodology
• keyword density – not to much, not too little. This is a balance, most important thing is to make the copy readable for humans. Overuse of a keyword in a body of text can be considered as keyword spamming
• keywords at beginning of document – generally, the text at the beginning of the page, is the most important – search engines understand this. So get a keyword or two in the first sentence.
• keywords in anchor text of links – ensure your anchor text is descriptive of the content they link to (with a keyword or two), and search engines also consider context of links – so make sure the context is keyword relevant
• keywords in <alt> tags – for images, audio files, video files (use the long description as well) and Flash / Javascript files. The long description can be used to have transcripts of audio or video content.
• keywords in meta description – of less value nowadays, but Google still uses this for the site description in search results
• keywords in proximity – the proximity of keywords to each other is important – as it demonstrates context for the search engine
• keyword phrases – phrases are just as important as specific keywords – don’t be afraid of using them
• secondary keywords – keyword research should highlight a range of keywords – combine primary keywords with secondary keywords to get the best effect.
• keyword synonyms – different words with the same meaning – search engines can differentiate these, so good to have them – for example, buy / purchase, quickly / speedily
• keyword stuffing / spamming – repeating keywords again and again and again can be considered as stuffing / spamming – both of which are not good
• too many links on a page – try to keep links on any page under 100 (if not significantly more so), search engines may think your link spamming

Added value extras:

Other things that add value to sites which we look at include:

• blogs – regular blogging can provide sites (if the blog is part of the site – as opposed to a separate entity on a different domain name) with lots of lovely keyword rich content that search engines adore. Always a recommendation for those serious about getting better SEO
• social media – having a social media presence doesn’t increase your SEO as much as many think it does, however, good source of links and can help to drive traffic and therefore encourage further link building .

The external stuff…

Good SEO isn’t all internal. A lot of it, especially where a website ranks in search engines is down to the number and QUALITY of external links to a particular site.

Good SEO = good internal SEO + good links from relevant sites.

• not all links are equal – links from link farms, link spamming sites, or link circles are generally discounted
• links from high page rank websites are of more value
• of greater value are links from established respected sites in a relevant sector to the website (i.e. links from media sites for a media business)
• links from .edu, .gov sites even more valuable – as these sites can rarely be commercially influenced
• the anchor text, context and the number of links originating from a page linking to a specific site are all relevant

Off course, there is a lot more to good SEO, of which the above can only be a summary. Chief among these is research and content. Research in terms of finding the right keywords for the business (both for what you do, and where you do it), and then developing supporting relevant content for those keywords. The next most important aspect of good SEO is perseverance in developing the website’s online profile – primarily in building good high quality links .

As per always, get in touch, or leave a comment to find out more.

The situation: wanting to say too much……..

One of our web design clients (did you know we do web design?) which we are providing a full web design service for (web design, proposition development and copy writing) wants to communicate every single thing about their business, and every single reason why people should use their business, under every single situation – perfectly understandable.

However, a formal company web page isn’t necessarily the best place for it. Why – because monolithic blocks of text and bullet points become tedious to read, they deter visitors from engaging and they obfuscate core communication messages – which in this particular case are the sales and call to action messages.

Whilst there are methodologies to categorise this content, and compartmentalise it on sub pages, we decided on a different solution, a solution which would allow the business to expand on their core offerings at great length – but do it in a way that is more accessible to their visitors….. the blog.

The solution: core messages on the website – expanded message on the blog…

The solution that worked best for this business was the addition of a blog to their online presence.

This gave us a number of benefits:

• the website was kept clean and concise – strong customer proposition with relevant supporting material, whilst not allowing unnecessary content to obfuscate core messages (obfuscate is a good word don’t you think…)
• clear action paths were established for those wanting further information on a particular subject – links to relevant blog articles
• the blog allowed significantly more content to be added for specific groups / sectors / situations
• the blog allowed a more conversational tone between the business and their customers – removing the need for copy editing on such a grandiose scale, and facilitating relationship development
• the blog is a two way communication channel – allowing for direct feedback to the business.

Just one of the ways in which a good, focussed blog can help businesses.
By the way, Hot Lemon does offer a blog service – from developing custom templates (like this one your viewing), to the actual blogging itself….. Have a look at our website for further details.

If you’re interested in how blogging can help you and your business, get in touch with us.

Well, when I say the complete guide, lets say an abridged guide that still manages to get all, well most of, the relevant points across.

Blogging for business

Blogging is now a very established part of the world wide web. Whilst being challenged in some quarters by the inexorable rise of social media – the growing desire to shrink everything down to 140 characters or less – it still has a strong role to play in businesses online representation and strategy.

If done correctly, blogging can deliver significant benefits to small and medium sized businesses. If done incorrectly – like all else in this world – it can be a sad waste of space, time and resources.

But don’t fear, Hot Lemon’s “Blogging for business – the guide” is here (oops might have over egged the blog post there – but we will see how it turns out).

What are the benefits of blogging for businesses? (or in other words – why blog in the first place)

So, what can a business gain by blogging?

Businesses can gain a lot by blogging. For example, the following list details some (tired to make this list it as comprehensive as possible, but you know your going to miss somethings out) of the key benefits businesses can gain by having a “good” (as opposed to a “bad”) blog:

• increase traffic – the be all and end all (in relative terms) of the web. A businesses online presence is nothing it it doesn’t attract traffic. Blogs can help generate traffic to a business by the pure and simple way of providing search engines with good, relevant content to index
• develop relationships – blogs can be used as a more informal – two way – communication tool with a businesses target market to develop more meaningful longer term relationships. Because blogs are more informal than a businesses website, they can be used to express character and attitude that potential and existing customers can relate to. Remember, people buy people, and blogs are a good way of getting your character across – in a way that a formal business website would have difficulty doing. Further, visitors can signup for updates from blogs they like, ensuring that your messages keep on getting through
• develop leads- blogs allow businesses to discuss their products and services in a more informal manner – perhaps offering guides / additional information, price and feature comparisons with the competition etc. In other words – good information to support the conversion process of a visitor to a customer. This is especially so if the information and viewpoints are inappropriate for the businesses main website
• provide support – blogs are used successfully by many businesses as support forums. This not only adds to the depth of relevant and appropriate content about the business its products and services online (good for SEO), but can act as a resource for future customers and – because of the comment feature – be highly interactive
• help with research and development – businesses can use blogs to interact with their customers (developing relationships again) and generate viewpoints on new products and services, or suitable enhancements to existing ones
• develop the brand – blogs can be used to publish content, views and opinions that can support the brand of the business. For example, if a business wants to be considered as leading edge and forward looking – what better way than to have a blog focusing on these issues and getting relevant and appropriate content, views and opinions out in the public domain. A blogs more informal structure will allow businesses to vent their opinions, for example, where it would be inappropriate to do so on their more formal website
• search engine optimisation – similar to the first bullet point, but of such importance, I’m mentioning it again. Blogs can help a business develop it’s SEO by providing search engins with timely, relevant and regular content – the content that search engines love to index.

How to blog? Where do I start?

Right, before you dive in and start blogging – STOP!

Like everything else in life, failing to plan is planning to fail. Or alternatively, and my favourite from years back, the five “P’s” – “Poor Planning results in Piss Poor Performance”.

Whilst jumping in at the deep end is acceptable for a personal blog. We are talking about businesses here, so it is critical – like any other marketing activity – to set objectives.

Objective setting – why are you blogging?

From above, there are a lot of reasons why businesses should be blogging. But in order for blogging activity to be beneficial for the business, it needs to have an objective(s).

Having an objective for a blog will allow the owner – the blogger – to develop appropriate and relevant content for the target market, to stay on message (critical for encouraging people to follow the blog), to understand the time and resource commitments that a blog represents and above all, to understand the measures for success.

• Set goals- have a high level objective of what you want your blog to do. For example:
• SEO – focus content on relevant keywords and phrases with links back to your main site
• brand development – content that reflects the more emotional side of your business
• lead development – content that is focussed on your products and services, with strong calls to action
• service and support – content focussing on issues surrounding your products and services, guides, how to’s and innovative uses of etc.
• Define the target market – this will define how you “speak” to your audience. Different audiences are receptive to different styles in communication. For example, the style of language, the use of imagery and of support media (videos / music etc.)
• Define content strategies – what type of content (subject areas etc.) will achieve your objectives. For example, how to guides, reviews and comparisons of products and services, commentary on current developments within the relevant market. Defining this will help with producing timely, relevant and regular content
• Budget appropriate time and resource – blogging is a form of marketing communication. It’s not necessarily something that can be done lightly, and it can take time to produce relevant and appropriate added value content (after all, you want something that your potential market actually wants to read). Make sure that this is considered from the start. Otherwise, another dead blog…… (which is worse than having no blog at all)
• Define technology – choose your blogging platform, become familiar with it, and brand it.

What on earth can I blog about?

What on earth can you not blog about? This is one of the most common failures of business blogs – running out of content ideas – due in no small part because defined objectives were not set up for the blog in the first place!

There is no limitation to the content that can be blogged, however, for a business blog, it needs to be relevant, on message and appropriate. The critical point there is “on message” – people will be reading your blog because it is focussed on a particular subject matter – therefore don’t disappoint them by writing about something completely different instead.

With regard to content:

• always write for your audience – as defined in your objectives. Granularity is key here, the greater the audience you try to attract – perhaps the mass market audience – the greater the likelihood that you will attract no one. Also, never write for search engines – search engines are clever enough to pick up and index relevant content – you don’t need to help them overtly with that
• always provide value – give your audience something of value in each and every post. Unless you lead an existing life like Stephen Fry, very few people are going to be interested in your day. However, they will be interested in a viewpoint about the latest development in their industry, they will be interested in competitor reviews, they will be interested in gaining insights into how to do things differently or better. Ever wondered why there are so many tip ten lists on the web? Because it’s an easy way of providing added value.
• don’t be afraid to be less formal – blogs are not web pages. There not part of your formal website structure – there alive. Give your blog an attitude a character that can help support your brand. For example try to come across as friendly and approachable – not stuffy. However, because it’s business – don’t get too informal, and remember you are representing your business online
• keep focus – but provide variety – even on the most focussed of blogs, there is a lot of variety you can talk about. From competitor positioning, product and service review, comparison, case studies, research, commentary, guides critiques etc.
• each post to have a focus – for each and every blog post, write around the title (and make sure it contains a relevant keyword for your business)
• every post to have a call to action – for every blog post have a strong call to action. You have gone to the effort of creating relevant and entertaining content – get your visitors to do something for the pleasure of reading it. For example, sign up to the newsletter, visit the main website, buy a product. Progress the relationship you have with your readers by engaging them
• relevance – above all, and I know it’s reiterated – make sure all your blog posts are relevant to your target market. Don’t go off message, no matter what the temptation. People are reading your blog because it is about something they are interested in – don’t lead them elsewhere – because they won’t be interested, and they will disengage.

How to blog – things you should be doing…

Not to be too prescriptive…

But, when you do start blogging, you should:

• measure everything – install Google analytics (or similar) on your blog, and track your mentions on social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Only by measuring your blog can you ascertain whether it’s successful and whether it’s worth the time, effort and resources you are putting into it. The critical thing to measure here is the click throughs to your main website, after all you are doing this for marketing purposes
• be consistent – aim to publish something two to three times a week (most commentators suggest three times a week), this will stop your blog getting stale, and encourage people to follow you as they can expect regular content on a subject they are interested in – all about developing that relationship
• be persistent – it will take time to build an audience. Don’t be put off by small viewing numbers, it can take months to build a decent audience. This needs to be considered when setting objectives – do not expect an audience of thousands from the beginning – for your first posts – don’t even expect an audience…
• stay on message – remain relevant – again another reiteration – must be important then
• interact with your readership – if someone comments (as opposed to spam about growing parts of your body), engage with them in the comments section of your blog – this shows you are approachable and receptive
• leverage social media – no use not telling anyone about your blog. Make sure you link promiently to your blog from your main website, and share your blog posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – as a minimum – give yourself as much publicity as you can
• link to your website – at least once in each blog positing – where appropriate and relevant (which is why it’s important to define your content strategy).

You should also set up regular review periods. To see what has worked, what hasn’t worked – what subjects attract visitors, what subjects don’t. This will allow you to alter the focus of the blog in order to make it work for you and your business.

A regular review will also let you know if your blog is justifying the time and effort that you are spending on it.

Blogging – some common mistakes…

We all make mistakes, but I feel it’s always better to let someone else make mistakes and to learn from them, rather than doing it myself. Does that stop me making silly mistakes?

Anyway, some common blogging mistakes include:

• formaility – being too formal on your blog, making it stuffy and uninteresting to the reader, many businesses fall into this trap – “the propaganda trap” – and start using their blogs as a conduit for press releases. This is not what blogs are about, and the formality of these type of blogs ensures a limited readership – blogs need a bit of life and character to them to be successful
• consistency – ummm this chestnut again. Fail to publish regularly and your readership will melt away
• relevance – go off topic and you diminish the reason people are following you for. All content must be relevant to the objectives of the blog
• sloppiness – whilst some leeway is given with regard to grammar and spelling on blogs because they are less formal than websites, a blog full of mistakes, spelling and grammar – will be a turnoff for most people. And remember, for the small bsuienss blog – you are representing your business online
• opinions – great to have – but don’t go overboard. As much as a strong opinion will attract, it will turn away an equivalent number. For a personal blog not a problem, for a business blog – shelve the strong opinions
• accuracy – similar to sloppiness – if your going to talk about a subject, or around a subject – get the facts right – nothing turns people off than wrongly founded opinions and statements
• plain-English – write in simple terms. Don’t use jargon, try not to use complex sentence construction. Make your content accessible to all reading ages.

Blogging – put the excitement back in…

Blogs don’t have to be just text and the odd occasional image (perhaps I should read this section carefully).

Most common blogging platforms are now capable of handling, with ease, multi-media – for example video and sound files. Additionally, there is a wealth of interactive features – readily available – to make your blog come alive and to encourage audience participation. And the more you can make your audience participate – the better the relationship.

Social media and blogging

Effective blogging cannot be done in isolation. It needs to be integrated with the businesses online presence – both their website and their social media presence.

Whilst social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter are fantastic for bite-sized content, they are somewhat less effective for longer more involved content. This is where blogging reigns supreme. But it needs to be integrated with social media to maximise it’s effectiveness. Social media channels need to be used to promote a blogs content, to publicise it.

In summary….

Hopefully, this post on blogging has been helpful and informative – if it has, please leave a comment or two – it’s nice to be appreciated.

And like all good blog articles, you should reference a product or service of your business within the blog post. For example, Hot Lemon’s customised blog service. Where we can customise a blog to match your coporate identity, and even develop and write content for you – obviously for a modest fee. And again, like all god blog posts, each post should have a link back to your main website – like this one here which links to our web page on blog customtisation: link to blog customisation.

All of these are, for the non-technically minded, are easy to use. However, many of these businesses do not have a firm comprehension of how good (or bad for that matter) their websites are for SEO – having been designed and built by somebody else, or perhaps using a hosted self build service.

Search engine limitations

Search engines cannot “view” pictures, “read” Flash or Javascript for example – all common items, especially on template sites, used in web design. If used wrongly (without proper titles, file names and alt tags), they are effectively invisible to search engines. So if your site is constructed using these technologies, search engines may well not be able to index your site correctly (or even read the content).

For example, I have been following someone on Twitter of late – as you do – who’s doing a lot of work promoting their website (blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc.). Unfortunately, the home page of their website has been constructed using images and Javascript. Looks great – but is virtually invisible to search engines. So all the hard work in generating traffic to their website is being wasted because of bad coding / bad SEO.

But how can you tell your site is visible to search engines?

Find out how search engines see your site…

One of the best ways of assessing how good your website is for SEO, is to it view as a search engine would. Thankfully this doesn’t need super human powers of insight, or a deep understanding of coding techniques.

The best way is to use an “SEO Browser”.

For example: http://www.domaintools.com/seo-browser/

This allows you to see your website as a search engine would. This can give you an insight into how much content on your website can be indexed by search engines, what can’t be. Additionally, this will also give you an insight into how your website is read by screen readers for the visually impaired.

What is a customer proposition

A customer proposition is a clear and concise definition of what your business offers your customers. It is in effect your promise to your customers – “do business with me, and this is what you will get”.

It is in effect the reason you are in business, you have identified an opportunity in the market, and developed a service or product to meet that opportunity.

Why is a customer proposition important?

A customer proposition is important because it crystallises why customers should use your business rather than your competitors. This is important both internally (for your own staff) and externally (for your customers) as it highlights and reinforces the gap you are targeting in the market and any unique capability that you may have.

The development of a customer proposition can also highlight areas where perhaps you are not as strong as your competitors, and those where you are stronger, allowing you to either develop your weaknesses or promote your strengths.

A sign post for your business

In effect therefore, your customer proposition is your business rationale. Its iteration can help any business to focus its efforts on its core business and customers.

A robust customer proposition can also aid in the identification of new market sectors which your business can expand in, as the proposition should be highlighting the things that your business excels in, and has a competitive advantage in vis-a-vis your competitors.

Helps to develop marketing and sales…

A customer proposition can also act as a foundation for the creation of marketing and sales messages and collateral. It clarifies what your business is about, and therefore, makes your communication messages (your sales and marketing messages) more concise and clear. The more concise and clear your sales messages – the greater the chance they have of being received and understood by your target market.

What does a customer proposition look like?

So, we can see the benefit of having a customer proposition in that it outlines what you are offering to the market, and what your customers can expect of you. But how do you construct one, and what do they look like.

Well in terms of constructing them, that should be the easy part, because it is iterating your business concept into words. Perhaps you have not done this before, but if you think why you started your business in the first place, you should be well on the way. And in terms of what they should look like, you should always try to make them as simple as possible.

Additionally, they should always highlight a key competitive advantage that you have over your competitors, as this helps to reinforce why your customers should continue to use your business, and why your business is targeting those customers.

For example, our customer proposition is:

“To provide cost-effective, appropriate personalised web design, marketing and consultancy to small and medium sized businesses”.

In the above proposition, the key words are:

“cost-effective” – were not looking at providing “big ticket” studies or fantastically expensive recommendations, were looking at providing effective solutions to your problems which don’t cost the earth, either in resources or money.

“appropriate” and “personalised” – just because something has worked for someone else, doesn’t mean it will work for you. All our advice and consultancy is unique to you – we haven’t got a standard package or template. Our services are unique to each of our clients and appropriate for their needs.

“small and medium sized businesses” – here we are defining our target market. Whilst we will do business with larger companies, it would be silly not to, our focus is on companies which do not have large marketing departments, which do not employ large agencies, i.e. companies where our advice and consultancy can make the most difference.