Jon Smith / On...

Every online business is competing for press coverage. There are only so many physical inches of print media published every day and only so many online news or industry-related websites, therefore it’s essential that your press release gets to the right editor, is noticed, and the content gets transformed into a feature or article.

Good PR is all about putting yourself in the position of the journalist or editor. If you received over 100 press releases a week, but you only have seven articles to write, what’s going to help you choose which stories to run?

Target your audience – you’re wasting your time and the editor’s time if your business or the angle is completely unrelated to the publication’s usual fare. This may sound obvious, but new businesses sometimes try the scattergun approach in the hope that something, anything sticks. Your ‘new maternity wear range’ press release is more likely to be picked up by a lifestyle/female orientated/baby-related publisher than a financial products publisher

Do your research – find out the name of the editor or writer and address the Press Release to them

Check and double check – make sure any facts are indeed correct, especially when it comes to numbers, as these are the easiest to check

Spelling and grammar – have someone else proofread your text; mistakes reflect badly on you and your business and it’s another excuse for your release to be ignored

Timing – consider publishing deadlines; magazines are written well in advance of their publication date. i.e. the June edition is usually in the shops in late May and being written in March and April. So if you want a magazine to feature aspects from your ‘100 hot bikinis’ release, you need to be talking to them in February.

Angle – So, you’ve added an additional luxury product range to your website, or you’ve branched into Conveyance to complement your existing Family Law services… So what? Who cares? Why is that news, and why should an editor use their valuable space to promote you? You need to give the publication an angle, something unique, quirky or interesting that can make your press release relevant, interesting and exciting for their audience.

Posted at 11:31pm and tagged with: PR, press releases, marketing, promotion, start a new business,.

April 28th 2012

On… Winning the hearts and minds of customers

To win the hearts and minds of a customer is a long process which begins the moment they see an advert, banner, link, business card or any mention of your website address. The customer’s journey and relationship with you begins on that first click and you’ve got to impress from then on. Is your homepage or landing page delivering on what the advert or link promised? How straightforward is it for customers to order the product they want from you, or to contact you about your services?

Posted at 10:28pm and tagged with: CRM, start a new business, marketing, Customer Service, two column,.

April 27th 2012

On… Gaining Respectability

The fly-by-night nature of the web is both an advantage and a disadvantage when you’re launching your own online business. On the positive side, as you’ve learnt, you can quickly create a web presence which gives the impression of a large established organisation; done right, customer will flock to your virtual doors. On the flip side, because it is so easy to create a website and there exists a plethora of beautifully created but essentially fraudulent websites out there, canny customers will always proceed with caution.

Gaining respectability starts with your homepage, and how well that is received, but your entire website and proposition must stand up to the same scrutiny, not to mention the order pipeline, your email/phone interaction with the customer and off course your delivery – be it a product or a service. Then there’s your after-sales care or follow up and your email marketing campaigns, PR and what folks are saying about you through social media sites… Respectability on the web is hard won and fast lost.

Posted at 10:28pm and tagged with: Customer Service, start a business, e-commerce, marketing,.

April 25th 2012

On… Defining “tone of voice” for your new business

Decide upon a distinct tone for all your communications and stick to it – it doesn’t have to formal, just consistent and in-keeping with your brand and your target audience. Having a unique tone can be the key to winning customer’s trust, winning valuable press coverage and ensuring that it’s your brand and your website that users click on and recommend to others.

It’s obviously possible to alter your company tone of voice over time, but deciding on what you want from the start will be far more effective. For an example of a distinct tone which has won a company customers and reputation check out Innocent

Creating a unique, witty or off-the-wall style will immediately get you noticed and help differentiate your site from the raft of competitors out there. Certain topics or professions may limit your ability to get creative – after all you’re unlikely to drum up much divorce advice business for your law firm if you make light of the client’s situation or circumstances – however, including a well thought out diagram of the divorce process and a bullet-pointed list explaining how your firm can help, will sell your services far better than pages and pages of legalese than confuse your reader.

Be different, inform, engage.

Posted at 9:20pm and tagged with: marketing, start a business, online business,.

April 7th 2012

On… Cleansing your email database

Cleansing your database

You’re kidding yourself and negatively impacting your campaign statistics if you don’t keep your email database clean and up to date. Continuing to send emails to addresses that no longer exist, no longer open your mails or no longer interact with your mails, is a waste of time and money. Purge your hard-bounces after every mail shot.

Re-activation mails should be sent to customers from whom you’ve received no interaction over the past six months – they haven’t logged in to their account on your site, they haven’t contacted you and they haven’t clicked on an email marketing link. A re-activation mail acknowledges that you haven’t heard from/seen a customer in a while, it reinforces your strengths and Unique Selling Points (USPs) and can even include a return incentive such as a discount code. Critically, you must offer the customer the opportunity to Opt Out and promise to remove the address from your list – if you win back the customer, great, but if they don’t respond of Opt Out, you can be sure the customer is lost.

Yes, you’ll have a leaner mailing list, but it will be an active database.

Posted at 10:28pm and tagged with: e-mail, CRM, start-up, start a new business, marketing,.

April 6th 2012

On… Allowing Customer to opt out

Opt Out

As counter-productive as it may sound, you must offer your customers the option to Opt Out of future email marketing campaigns. Yes, they’ve said they want to receive e-mails, but this doesn’t mean ad infinitum, it could be that a user was interested in receiving updates about offers for a particular period of time, or they were researching a particular product or service and now they are satisfied. Or, they’re simply no longer interested in your business offering anymore… Offering users the ability to Opt Out doesn’t necessarily encourage users to abandon your service, it simply allows customers the chance to manage their affairs and thus instils goodwill and helps you manage your mailing list. Be sure to offer an Opt Out link at the bottom of every email marketing shoot, and within the My Account section of your website.

Posted at 10:33pm and tagged with: start a business, start up, marketing,.

April 5th 2012

On… The importance of A/B or Variate testing

A/B or Variate testing

You will never be all things to all people and even if you employ the most accurate targeting imaginable, your email shoot will not convert every recipient all of the time. To improve your opening rate, click through rate and ultimately the conversion rate of campaigns, it’s advisable to test different designs and copy and measure the results.

If you have identified 1000 registered users who have opted in to receive email marketing about one of your products or services, break this group into further smaller clusters – for example, four sets of 250. With each variant email, test a specific alteration such as the size and colour of the action button, or the sales message in the opening paragraph, or the subject line…

It takes time, but over the course of a number of shoots, you begin to build a profile of what works for a specific group of your customers. There are learnings that can be applied across the board, and their will be interesting subtleties that seem unique to a particular sub-set of customers.

Record your findings and constantly optimise – remember that even a single percentage increase in your opening rate will impact the effectiveness of the entire campaign, and adding a single percentage increase to your conversion rate, can result in massive shifts in your profitability.

Posted at 11:13pm and tagged with: marketing, online business, start a business,.

April 3rd 2012

On… Creating the right tone/content for your website

Tone/content

You will have created and utilised a tone throughout your website copy and advertising creative. Your email marketing activities must also convey this tone to show the correlation between this campaign and your overall business. With email marketing there is the additional pressure of having to get an effective message across, quickly. Writing effective email marketing copy is a challenge. Here are the main pointers to remember:

An effective email marketing mail focuses on the following three core tenets.

· The specific product, service or promotion

· The benefit to the user

· The action you require from the reader

The specific product, service or promotion

It sounds obvious but you must focus the mail on a specific product, service or promotion. A generic ‘hey, we’re here and we sell stuff’ message is a waste of your time and your customer’s. Decide on what you’re going to promote and tailor the design, layout and text to support this choice.

The benefit to the user

Just notifying the reader that you sell or provide something, is not enough. There needs to be a hook, to pique their interest and convince them they need your product or service. The benefit of course could simply be a very competitive price, if this is the case, ensure the imagery, and copy highlight this fact. A benefit can be seasonal, related to a festival or on the service side; relating to changes in the market, law, technological improvements etc. The benefit to the user should also reinforce why the reader should choose you…

The action you require from the reader

Make it easy for customers to do what you want them to do. If they need to click on a link or a button, make it obvious that it’s a link or button and design the page so that everything (text, image, train of thought) leads to that one goal.

If you require the reader to complete a form, keep the questions to a minimum and only capture what’s absolutely essential for them to continue – by definition of the fact you have emailed the customer, asking for their name or email address are redundant steps.

Posted at 10:39pm and tagged with: two column, start a new business, online business, marketing,.

March 11th 2012

On… Targeting the right customers

Targeting

Whatever your product range or service offering, customers are not interested in everything you sell or do. Using the example of an accountancy website, you client first hired you to help with their company formation which you duly did – you know the client has a small manufacturing business. Sending that client email marketing about your new service for online retailers is a waste of your time and theirs. Likewise, if you are an online retailer clothing for men and women, and your customer has purchased a selection of dresses and blouses, there’s little point sending a mail showing off your latest men’s shoe collection.

Posted at 10:49pm and tagged with: targeting, customers, start a new business, marketing,.

March 9th 2012

On…The importance of opt-in marketing

Opt In

The temptation is to add every email address you receive (from inquiries, from business cards, from customers who have placed an order or even from bought lists) and to add them to your mailing list. The rationale is that if they’ve shown an interest in your website then they’d love to hear about all your latest offers. Wrong. Not only is this ethically questionable, it’s now illegal. Data Protection laws have finally caught up to the Internet and unless a customer has opted in specifically to receive your mailing list, you can’t use their email address.

What if I take the risk anyway? You might get away with it, you might make a ton of sales. But if you get caught, you will be fined (we’re talking significant six figure sums, depending on the territory) and all the hard work you’ve put into creating and running your online business is for nothing.

Opt In, means the customer has to physically check the box, to confirm they would like to receive email marketing. Opt Out (i.e. the checkbox is pre-checked) is the same as not asking for permission… don’t do it.

Frequency – there are no hard and fast rules about what is an acceptable frequency of emails. It is likely that you will try a few patterns to assess the effectiveness of campaigns. Some companies work on a monthly basis tying their messaging in with major holidays and festivals. Other companies mail their list at least once a week. You can’t be all things to all people and that is why targeting is critical to the success of your online campaigns

Posted at 10:10pm and tagged with: opt in, marketing, e-mail, start a new business,.