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9 ways to market your business on a budget

Posted on 8th September 2015 by The Marketing People

A question we are asked time and time again is how a small business with a small budget can make the most out of their marketing.

Yes, it’s true that the bigger your marketing budget, the better your marketing can be. Take John Lewis for example, they spent £7 million on just their Christmas campaign, but it worked. (And I bet you still talk about Monty the Penguin today!)

If, like the majority of people, you don’t happen to have £7 million spare for your marketing budget, we have some great tips to get your business booming on a budget. Every business has to start somewhere!

There are a number of “free” marketing activities you can do that can help you to create big opportunities for your business. We use the word “free” loosely here, because it will cost you your time and effort, and your time is valuable.

Social Media

I guess you knew this one was coming; social Media is a brilliant tool that allows you to connect with your target audience directly, and you can do it for free!

Don’t believe though that this means instant results, and you must remember you won’t gain a lead for every post you put up. You have to work hard at it for leads to blossom, but it is proven to work.

Social media tips:

Find out which social networks your target audience use
Read up about best practice
Test when is the best time to post
Analyse what your audience react well too

If you are struggling, but feel this a marketing activity that will benefit your business, there are many courses around to improve your social media skills for business, though there will be a cost to those.

Want to know more on social media? We recommend 14 common social media mistakes and what to do instead as further reading.

Blogging

Blogging is a huge part of inbound marketing that will help to attract your target audience. But it is also a good way of keeping existing customers coming back to your website.

As well as giving you the opportunity to showcase your knowledge and share advice, it gives prospects a chance to learn more about your business and your services / products.

Blogging tip: focus on creating high quality content – think, the best content someone could wish to read around a particular topic.

Once again, you can find courses and sessions that will teach you how to blog, or you can even get someone to write them for you. Of course, there is a cost implication to that.

Testimonials and Case studies

The words of others speak wonders; studies have found that 88% of people are influenced by online customer service reviews when making buying decisions.

Testimonials teamed with evidence of the work you have done with them is some of the best advertising you can have. Take the time to write case studies on the projects you have worked on, and don’t be afraid to ask for testimonials from your current customers.

Not sure how to ask for your reviews and testimonials? We recommend Why customer reviews are important and how to get them as further reading

Your elevator pitch

When it comes to small businesses, people can be the best marketing tools your company has. By taking the time to perfect an elevator pitch (or two) you give yourself the best change to market to people when opportunities present themselves, and you have nothing else to hand.

Content Marketing

This is another method you may have heard a lot about. In fact, 98% of B2B marketers say content marketing is core to their marketing strategy.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, content marketing is using content (blogs, ebooks, guides, recipes, videos, etc) to provide your target audience with something useful and helpful.

As we mentioned above, you should be creating high quality content that provides the reader with some value. This will help them move through the buyers’ cycle and get them one step closer to buying.

There are a number of methods for making your content more SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) friendly, so if you are considering this route, I would advise committing to a little more research into SEO. Once again, options are available for courses or someone to do this on your behalf, but this would incur costs.

Want to be the best at content marketing? We would recommend How to create the best, most useful, content in search results as further reading

Strategic alliances

Creating strategic alliances with non-competitive businesses can work really well for a smaller business.

Find local companies that compliment your services, and you can refer customers between yourselves, create offers for going between your businesses, and even guest blog for each other once you have worked together for a while.

Make sure your find a business that not only do you like, but who believe in providing an excellent service as much as you do, and whose work you trust. It will look bad if you refer your clients to a business who lets them down.

Great Customer Service

Nothing can ruin a company quicker than bad customer service. According to a study in 2014 58% of consumers will never use a company again after a negative experience.

And just as good reviews will spread to bring you new customers, bad reviews will spread like wildfire, taking twice as many customers with them.

Interested? We would recommend LEGO’s excellent example of customer service as further reading

Free consultations

Many businesses will offer free consultations to see how they can help potential customers, but the mistake they make is not promoting that particularly well.

If you offer free consultations, promote this and let your target audience know. Seeing that you offer a consultation, or a review, where they can find out more about your offering can encourage more people to get in touch.

Positivity and Persistence

Regardless of which activity you decide to use, remain positive, and stick with it!

Marketing is not all instant results, some activities take a little longer to produce results.

Good marketing will bring you consistent results over a long period of time; don’t lose faith if things don’t pay off as quickly as you think. However, always make sure you measure your marketing efforts and their results so you can judge when it is perhaps time to move on to the next idea.

If you would like to take advantage of our free marketing consultation to see how marketing could gain you more customers, improve your business position or create more opportunities for you to sell, speak to one of the team on 01543 495752.

What information needs to be on a business card?

Posted on 4th August 2015 by The Marketing People

Your business card may be the first impression someone gets of your business, so it’s important to make sure your business card contains the right information.

It’s amazing how many people have business cards that don’t do them, or their business, justice. You go to an event or a networking meeting, and the amount of people who have ‘forgotten’ or ‘run out of’ business cards is tremendous. This is the memory of your chance encounter that your prospects will keep, so why are you not making the most of the opportunity?

Here are 5 tips to help you make the most out of your business card, and ensure prospects remember you.

Make sure it contains your key information

First of all, do you have a business card? If you do, does it include the vital and necessary information for someone to contact you?

Who are you?
What is the best number to contact you on?
What is your email address?
Have you placed your address so that prospect you are setting up a meeting with knows how to find you?

You also need to take care to spell check your information. If you have misspelt your information, not only does it mean the prospect is less likely to be able to contact you, but they’ll be less likely to want to if you haven’t taken the time to spell check a small amount of information.

Consider how your audience want to contact you

You need to consider how people may want to contact you. Understand that shy people would rather email and have a response before they pick up the phone. Others want to pick up the phone and talk to someone directly and have an instant answer on their query.

If you only provide certain contact information on your business card, you limit who will make the first contact with you, so ensure you leave a good selection. However, be warned, you can include too much information.

If you are adding your Facebook address, Twitter handles, LinkedIn profile, Pinterest account and where to find you on Google+, you may want to scale back a little. Include your key contact information, and leave the social accounts for when people head to your website.

Encourage people to contact you using your preferred contact method

Though people do have preferred methods of contact, you can try and suggest which way is the best way to contact you.

With a business card, it can be as simple as explaining to someone, it is easier to reach you by phone, as you are on the road all day. Prospects will appreciate knowing the best time and method to get in touch, and it will help build a bond, knowing you are making it easy to be contacted.

Make it memorable

Your business card is the part of your company that others get to keep. Do you really want that represented by a flimsy piece of card with the bare minimum printed on? What would you think if you received your business card? Is your brand instantly recognisable?

Ensure your card is not only informative but eye catching. Not only does this give you a better chance of your business card being kept in a safe place, but if it does get thrown on the pile of paper at the office, it will definitely be spotted again.

Use both sides!

When you receive a business card, what is the first thing you do? You read the information on one side, and then you turn it over to look at the information on the back. You have two sides to a card, why are you wasting one?

If all of your info fits neatly on to one side, then why are you not using the other side to promote your business, represent your brand or as an opportunity to sell? Printing one sided business cards is a wasted opportunity.

Not sure what to do with that spare side of your card? Why not have a look at this case study to give you some inspiration?

Looking to update your business cards? Why not give us a call and speak to one of our friendly team, you can even pop in if you like. Or if you’re looking to read more about print, why not check out our other blogs.

How to Remove Your IP Address from Google Analytics

Posted on 3rd October 2012 by The Marketing People

Remove your IP Address From Google Analytics & Improve Your Reports

Updated: 09/04/20

Google Analytics is a vital tool which helps you to keep track of traffic to your website, see how people are reaching it and what they’re doing when they get there.

But are you using it correctly?

If you do not setup your reports correctly, you will:

Show an unrealistic increase in traffic to your site
Give you / your client inaccurate data
Harm your conversion rates

By including your IP address in Google Analytics, your data will include visits to your site from yourself, and anyone else with the same IP address i.e. your colleagues, and therefore be inaccurate.

Thankfully there’s an easy solution which allows you to exclude your IP address, meaning your statistics will provide a much more accurate reflection of visitors to your site, and it will add credibility to your website reporting.

Watch our short video and read our step-by-step guide now to find out how to exclude your IP address and start using Google Analytics correctly:

Top tip – Remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel while you’re there for tons more free hints & tips on all aspects of marketing

Remove Users from Google Analytics – Step by Step Guide

Tip – Visit https://whatismyipaddress.com/ and it will tell you your IP addresses for both v4 or v6 depending on your internet provider.

1. Login into your Google Analytics account

2. Open the relevant website account and click ‘admin’ in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.

3. In the ‘account’ menu click ‘all filters’, or under ‘view’ click ‘filters’

4. Click ‘add filter’

5. Create new filter and then add ‘filter name’ (i.e. exclude my IP address)

6. Filter type = ‘predefined’ and select ‘exclude’

7. Select source or destination = ‘traffic from the IP addresses’

8. Select expression = ‘that are equal to’

9. Add IP address (remember to make sure you know if your IP is either static or public. Having the wrong one could cause incorrect data).

Tip – Visit https://whatismyipaddress.com/ and it will tell you your IP addresses for both v4 or v6 depending on your internet provider.

10. Save

That’s it! A quick and easy way to exclude users using your IP address in Google Analytics.

Can I remove multiple IP addresses in Google Analytics?

You can also exclude multiple IP addresses in the same way, but instead of using a predefined user setting, use the ‘custom’ filter type and use regular expressions. We recommend watching this tutorial on how to use regex expressions in google analytics

If you would like help with SEO, or any other area of your marketing, get in touch with the marketing people now on 01543 495752 for real business