Jon Smith / On...

writing & digital marketing

May 6th 2012

On… Blogging as a small business

You can look at blogging in two ways – like trying to keep a diary when you were young; in which you wrote furiously through most of January with the best of intentions but by February you were too busy and by March it was completely forgotten about. In simple terms, an annoyance. Or, you can treat blogging as a powerful marketing tool that helps build your brand, your customer base, links to your site and unique content which can only help your website perform better in natural Search.

Adding a blog to your business website is a simple procedure for any web developer and the quality and customisation options from the big players such as Tumblr, Wordpress and Blogger leaves very little need to develop your own blog platform.

Blogging helps:

Brand building – your blog, can become a destination for industry professionals and journalists as well as customers who want to know the latest information. Writing in a certain style can attract readers, but writing with authority is key.

New Customer Acquisition – a well-written blog that’s quoted on other sites, linked to, referred or recommended will attract eyeballs and inevitably new customers for your product or service

Customer Retention – Offering an RSS feed allows existing customers to stay abreast of your views and news, keeping your business in their radar and the value-added nature of a blog instils goodwill

Reputation/Search Results – as you discovered in the SEO posts last year, performing well on natural Search relies heavily on your website’s content, visibility and reputation. Regular blogging answers all three – your website will gain unique content, which in turn results in more inbound links which in turn leads to improved reputation.

If you take the step to include a blog on your website remember to update regularly. By default your blog posts are date stamped; a gap of a few weeks or even months looks bad. If you set yourself target, be sure to stick to it.

Don’t oversell through your blog – this isn’t the media to push products or service, treat it as a way to pass comment or observations. By all means include links to products or services, but use an original angle in the blog and try to inform customers rather than overtly trying to sell to customers.

 

Posted at 11:17pm and tagged with: blogging, tumblr, start-up, start a business, marketing,.

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 24th 2012

On… Good Customer Service from your online business

Customer Services does not just mean offering a phone number or an email address on the site and hoping for the best.

To manage your expectations, if you’re operating an e-commerce operation, you’ll be very lucky indeed if your customer contact rate is less than 5-10%. This means for every 100 orders you ship, at least 5-10 people will contact you before, during or after their order. Of those same contacts about 50% will contact you again with a follow up inquiry. You must allow for this in your daily operations and have suitable staff allocation in place.

At first you will be able to handle the calls and the emails yourself, but for all the time you are answering a customer, or finding out what happened with their order, either internally or with the carrier, you’re not doing the other twenty tasks that need to be done.

For service providers, customer services also covers sales inquiries and client care, both pre- and post-sale. These inquiries won’t be so numerous, but without doubt each inquiry will be unique and will require a detailed and well researched response. Again, you will be able to handle this yourself initially, but eventually it will require its own resource.

Posted at 7:56pm and tagged with: Customer Service, start a business, online business, online reputation,.

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 2nd 2012

On… Going above and beyond to attract customers

Going above and beyond

You’re a new business and you have to impress potential and returning customers – giving away something for free may seem counter-productive but it can be super effective at ensuring future custom and causing a word-of-mouth stir. This is true for both product and service providers.

For product providers:

* give away something novel i.e. a free packet of sweets/candy bar with every order

* upgrade random customer’s delivery options – under promise over deliver

* include a voucher or code for a discount of future purchases.

* offer a reward for introducing a friend to your service

For service providers:

* A pdf guide or white paper on a topic of interest to potential clients available for download - if it’s branded, you’ll get the call… see http://www.aedgency.com/resources/guides/

*An invitation to all your clients to join you on a night out

* offer a reward for introducing another company to your service

* Run a fantasy football or similar league for your clients with an attractive prize for the winner

* create an award – i.e. if you are an accountant launch a competition via your website or create a micro-site for the best business plan – you’ll have a great chance to get media coverage, traffic and all those new businesses will need accounting services…

You can use one or all of these techniques at different times of the year – your aim always is to delight your customers.

Posted at 10:39pm and tagged with: Customer Service, online business, online reputation, start a business, two column,.

March 12th 2012

On… Effective data capture

Data Capture

Targeting can only happen if you have collected and correctly recorded/processed data. How and what to capture is a debate beyond the scope of this book and this very topic will have Customer Relationship Managers fighting to the death with Usability Managers. On one hand you want to capture as much as possible to accurately segment the database to improve targeting. On the flip side, if you ask too many questions, or you ask questions before you’ve built up trust and a relationship with a customer, they’re not going to answer completely or accurately, which devalues the process and the data…

What’s a girl to do? Well, at all times it’s essential that you put yourself in the shoes of the customer and make decisions based on the customer journey through your site. When you’re selling products online you want to make the process as straightforward as possible, and that means asking the minimum number of questions to allow quick progress through the order pipeline.

Effective data capture and targeting:

·      On a customer’s first visit or purchase ask as few questions as possible – you need to build trust first and show you can deliver on your core product or service

·      After a customer’s first purchase or after you have provided a service, follow up with a questionnaire asking the customer to rate aspects of the service. On this questionnaire you can add additional (optional) targeting questions – such as gender, age range, purchasing interests etc

·      People change email addresses – your database is full of defunct email addresses and continuing to send mails to these addresses is a waste of time and money. It will also negatively affect your statistics when you measure the effectiveness of campaigns. Cleanse your database of hard-bounces (email addresses that never arrived at the recipients inbox)

·      In the ‘My Account’ section on your website, empower users to alter their preferences and interest. By asking the customers which products or categories they are interested in, you will have the most accurate information available.

Posted at 10:49pm and tagged with: two column, start a business, data capture, online business,.

March 10th 2012

On… Social Media and your new business venture

Social media, why all the hype? Facebook is now one of the highest trafficked sites in the world with more than 900 million users and growing.

Phrases like Web 2.0, the semantic web, social buzz, m-commerce and digital marketing may or may not mean something to you, but what they’re all pointing to and what we’re all heading towards is an online world where your website is no longer necessarily the conduit through which customers interact with your online business or your brand – your business has to be truly digital and that means having a presence on social media platforms that complements your website, extends the reach and appeal of your brand and engages users through the devices and applications with which they engage.

Posted at 11:42pm and tagged with: Social media, networking, start a business,.