Tag Archives: online marketing

04.24.14
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Diversify your online marketing: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

diversify your online marketing

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

It is generally accepted that an integrated approach to marketing, and by integrated I mean both offline and online marketing efforts, works best. However, for many small online businesses and start-ups with modest budgets and resources,  the reality is that digital marketing remains one of the most cost-effective ways of marketing.

Diversify your online marketing efforts

If you are prepared to put in time and effort then online marketing can help you climb up the search engine rankings, drive more traffic, build customer relationships and increase conversions. However, it is essential  that you don’t focus your efforts in just one area, rather diversify your online marketing to cover different activities. For example you may excel in your social media efforts, but if you are using social media in isolation then it just isn’t going to bring in the traffic you need to make your online business successful.

Of course,  it is also about striking the right balance between undertaking a variety of online marketing activities and not spreading yourself so thinly that you are unable complete any activity to a professional standard. I would therefore suggest you focus on some key areas and do them well.

Content should underpin everything you do.

Content should be the constant in all the activity your undertake. Your customers want to see relevant, fresh and valuable content and consequently this is what Search Engines want to see too – up-to-date, relevant and quality content. Good content is absolutely central to whether your digital marketing will be effective.

Key areas to consider:

Website

Your website is so important – so focus your initial efforts on getting it right. You may have a great product or service and traffic may be flowing in however,  if your website isn’t up to scratch then no sooner than a visitor arrives, they’ll leave – without hanging around to see all the great things you may have on offer. You should be looking at your website’s navigation, usability, accessibility, credibility and of course, content. Take a look at our post 7 website essentials for a successful online presence for some helpful tips and advice to making the most out of your website.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing involves two areas –  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC)  advertising (think Google AdWords). Search engine optimisation focuses on improving your website’s position in the search engines natural listings – using on-page optimisation, keyword and keyphrase analysis and link building.  With PPC advertising you pay for an advertisement to appear  at the top and to the right of relevant search engine pages.

It’s best  to take a two-pronged approach – especially when you are starting up.  Don’t forget it takes time for you to climb up the natural search engine listings through SEO so driving traffic through PPC as well is a good idea.

Email

Email has suffered a bit from bad press over recent years however I think is it an excellent and very cost-effective way of keeping in touch  with customers. Email is a great channel  of communication, it’s so quick and flexible you can (and indeed should) use it to communicate all sorts of information. Such as marketing offers and promotions, product and service updates, informative newsletters and customer service correspondence. Focus on building a great database of customers and targeting your emails appropriately to each segment.

Blogging

As we’ve already mentioned, keeping your website up-to-date with fresh and relevant content is essential. Setting up blog on your website is a great way of doing this. Not only are you helping keep  search engines happy, you are also giving something back to your customers (which is great for relationship building) and enticing in new customers looking for information on a particular subject. Try and keep the blog relevant to your target audience and online business.

Social Media  

And of course we can’t finish without the growing phenomenon of social media. Social media – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram – are one of the best ways to give your brand personality and build relationships with customers through two-way dialogue. In a 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 89% of marketers said that social media had generated more business exposure with benefits including:

  • Improved sales
  • Increased exposure
  • Grew business partnerships
  • Generated leads
  • Improved search rankings
  • Increased traffic
  • Market place insight

 

It will take both time and effort in all these areas for you to reap the rewards of digital marketing.  However having a diverse and integrated approach goes hand-in-hand with creating fresh and relevant content. Stick with these digital activities and you will see your search engine rankings improve,  traffic to your website  increase and relationships with your customers develop.

 

We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic, so do please take a moment and leave a comment.

Easter Basket image courtesy of artur84 /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

02.27.14
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How to optimise your landing pages and increase conversions

Apollo moon landing

Don’t underestimate the importance of a good landing.

Landing pages play an integral role in maximizing online conversions. Yet, a surprising number of small online businesses overlook their importance.  A good landing page should engage your visitor, generate a response, increase conversions, answer your customer’s information needs, reduce your ‘bounce’ rate and support your brand.

“Landing pages can be described as the entrance doors to a website that only selected customers are directed to” (Gay et al, Online Marketing, 2007)

Put simply, your landing page is the destination web page a customer arrives at when they click on a link – usually from a marketing communication or referring site. The landing page, the page on which your customer enters your website, is incredibly important as it is often the first impression that they get of your business.

Do you recognise this all too familiar scenario? You spend time putting together a fantastic offer and communicate it effectively to your customers via a great, targeted email campaign.  Your customer, enticed by your exciting offer, clicks on the link through to your website – then inexplicably exits your website immediately? So what might be going wrong? One possibility could be down to the web page you have sent your recipient to – the landing page.

Exit signBounce rate – how are your landing pages performing?

“In a nutshell bounce rate measures the percentage of people who come to your website and leave “instantly”. Thought about from a customer perspective rather than I came, I saw, I conquered, the action is I came, I saw, Yuck, I am out of here.” Avinash Kaushik

The bounce rate is a really useful measurement to use when you are evaluating the effectiveness of your landing pages. Your bounce rate is essentially the number of customers who arrive at your website then leave immediately – without looking at any other pages. The basic rule of thumb is the lower the bounce rate the better. A high bounce rate may suggest some issues with your landing page.

A good starting point is to look at your Google Analytics (or equivalent) Landing Page report and look at the landing pages with the highest bounce rate. From here you can visit those landing pages and review what might not be working so well – unrelated or irrelevant content, no call to action, confusing format and so on.

So what is an average bounce rate to measure your performance against? Actually, an average bounce rate is difficult to pin down as it will differ for industry and web page type (for example a contact us page is automatically going to have a high bounce rate due to the nature of it use – in fact a high bounce rate in this case would indicate your contact page is doing its job). However to give you a ball park figure , Google put the average around 40%-60% so this is probably a good starting point to begin with.

“According to Google the average bounce rate for most sites falls in the range of 40% – 60%.  If your site bounce rate is below 40% you are doing well and if it’s above 60% then you definitely need to find out why”. Anders Analytics

Welcome mat imageWhat makes a good landing page?

So, your hard work has paid off. You have successfully grabbed your customer’s attention and they’ve clicked through to your site. How then do you make sure you don’t lose them? The first thing to remember is that the page your customer arrives at may be the first experience they have had of your website. You need to make them feel welcome and reassure them they’ve arrived at the right place.

1. Create different, campaign specific landing pages

Often the first place that visitors are automatically directed to is the home page, and sometimes this is appropriate. However, the problem with the home page is that due to the broad  job it has to do, it can’t be very message specific. This can make  it difficult to develop a customer’s interest and elicit a particular response.

You need to consider where it is the customers is coming from – be it an email newsletter, search engine, social media site or a specific marketing promotion – and direct your customers to a landing page that is appropriate to the message being communicated. For example if your customer has been enticed by a special promotional offer, then you should have a specific landing page dedicated to that offer. The landing page should enable the customer to easily find out further information about the offer and there should be a clear call to action.

2. Think about it from your customer’s point of view.  

Before you write the copy for your landing page, think about what it is that will drive your customer to click-through to your website. What link has bought them to you – what are they expecting to find? You then need to write your copy accordingly. Your landing pages should provide additional, relevant information to your searchers based on the offer or referring site that they have just clicked through on.

3. Have a clear and specific message

Make sure that the message you are conveying to your customer is clear, targeted and specific. Don’t get distracted and try to be all things to all people. Keep your message concise, relevant and to the point.

4. Have recognisable and consistent branding

Make sure your landing page reflects your brand and is consistent with the rest of your website – even if your landing page is just temporary for a time-specific promotion. Remember, even if your ultimate objective is conversion, you must try to ensure all visitors (even those who choose not to convert at this time) have a positive experience. As we mentioned earlier, this maybe your users’ first time on your website and so you need to create a good first impression if you want them to come back.

5. Clear and easy call to action

Make it as easy as possible for your visitors to convert. Your call to action should be obvious and it should be easy for your customer to respond to. If you’ve got them this far, you don’t want to put them off with a complicated call to action or a request for too much information. The more straightforward it is, the more likely it is you’ll get that conversion.

6. Well thought out page design and layout

As with any other web page, think carefully about page design and layout. It should be easy to navigate, user-friendly (for example how easy is it for your user to complete an action?) and visually appealing.

I’ll leave you with some solid landing page advice from Web Analytics guru Avinash Kaushik on improving your bounce rate:

“If you want to have high performing web pages make sure that you:

1. Have a clear understanding of what the purpose of that page is and

2a. a clearer understanding of what drove customers to the page and

2b. what they want to accomplish to ensure that

3. #1 and #2 are in alignment.”

We’d really love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic, so please do leave a comment.

Exit sign image courtesy of cbenjasuwan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Welcome mat image courtesy of John Kasawa at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

01.30.14
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Small business guide to marketing plannning Part 5: Implementing and measuring performance

triple jumpMaking it happen and measuring your performance

To conclude our ‘Small Business Guide to Marketing Planning’ series, we look at the final two stages of the SOSTAC marketing planning process – Action and Control. Action is the who does what and when of the Tactics (examined in Part 4 of this series). Control is how you measure your performance. How successfully have you achieved what you set out to do in your objectives?

Action – Who does what and when

The ‘Action’ element of the SOSTAC  is essentially the details of your tactics. It involves thinking about the specifics and practicalities of implementing your plans. You need to think about:

  • Tasks: What actually needs to be done? Think about all the tasks that need to be implemented in order for you to roll out your plans. For example, if you were planning  a series of traffic driving promotions in order to grow your prospects database, then what development needs to take place on your website first in order for you to data-capture the new names coming in? You need to think about all the tasks that your plans entail.
  • Resources: Who is going to be responsible for what? Will you need to outsource or bring in any external agencies?
  • Timescale: What timescale are you working to? What are achievable and realistic deadlines for your tasks?
  • Budget: Make sure you are aware of all the potential  costs – website development, promotions, design and so on.

There is no use having a wonderful strategy and great tactics if you haven’t looked at how and when you are going to get your plans underway. You need to think about your available resources and consider what is a realistic timeframe. Outlining exactly who will be responsible for what and setting agreed deadlines will help ensure your plans are rolled out successfully and within the timeframe dictated by your objectives.

desk calendarSchedule

Creating a schedule is the best way to ensure everybody is clear about who is responsible for what and what the agreed timeframes are. Remember, if  a task falls behind schedule it is likely to have a knock-on effect on all your other deadlines.

You can easily put together a perfectly adequate schedule on excel – just remember that it is a working document and should be kept updated, referred to and amended accordingly as your plan progresses. Outline each task, who is responsible and what the deadline is. Circulate your schedule to everyone involved (this includes external resources if you are outsourcing) as it will ensure there is no confusion about who is taking responsibility for what. And, even if you are a one-man-band and planning on doing it all yourself, creating a schedule is still important as it provides a useful and detailed action plan for you to work to.

Control: How do you measure your performance?

It is really important to be able to ascertain whether you achieved what you set out to in your objectives. And, if you haven’t achieved specific targets then it is essential you understand why. Otherwise, you risk repeating unsuccessful tactics over and over again wasting valuable time and money. It is only through measurement and analysis that you can understand how to improve on your performance.

So, first you need to decide upon how you intend to measure your performance. What KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) do you intend to use? Of course this will depend on what your objectives were, but could include analysing  RoI, number of new leads, conversion rates, traffic sources, new visitors to your site, page impressions and so on. Think about what are the most suitable metrics and measurements to enable you to assess the success of what you have undertaken.

Web Analytics

As an e-commerce site it is inevitable that some of the measurements you will be using will be web analytics. This is why it is important to get to grips with some of the common metrics – they can tell you an awful lot about your business!

“Web analytics is essentially about monitoring how visitors are using different pages and features on your website” (EConsultancy, Web Analytics: A Beginner’s Guide)

Web analytics are useful metrics to help you better understand your performance – in terms of both your website and response to specific campaigns. There are many useful metrics but if you are just starting out then the ones listed below are probably the ones to familiarise yourself with first.

  • Traffic source: This tells you where your traffic is coming from – through direct traffic (existing customers, offline campaigns), search engines, referring sites or campaigns (email, banner ads, social media campaigns and so on)
  • Visits: Basically how many visitors are coming to your site. You can find out the percentage of new and repeat visitors.
  • Page views: Number of page views can be an indication of how engaged your visitors are by telling you an average of how many pages they visited. You can also find out the average duration of visits.
  • Bounce rates: This is often used to measure the quality of traffic coming to your website. It tells you who visited only one page of your site and then left immediately. Take a look at Avinash Kaushik’s article on just how useful bounce rate can be.

If you are just starting with web analytics then there are a lots of helpful free resources available. We like:

Customer satisfaction

Of course don’t forget there are other more qualitative ways to measure your performance. Customer feedback can be invaluable. Monitoring customer satisfaction through taking note of customers views and opinions can tell you a lot about how your performance through the eyes of your customers.

ShopIntegrator’s Small Business Guide to Marketing Planning

This is the final part of our Small Business Guide to Marketing Planning. Hopefully we’ve been able to show you that by using a simple marketing planning framework like SOSTAC, you can create a useful and relevant working document. We really believe that investing time and effort into putting together a marketing plan for the year ahead will pay dividends in the long run by helping give your business clear direction and focused objectives  in order to move your online business forward.

  • Part 1 : Introduction to Marketing Planning and the SOSTAC framework
  • Part 2 : Situational Analysis: Where are you now?
  • Part 3:  Setting Objectives and formulating Strategy: Where do you want to be and how do you get there?
  • Part 4: Tactics: How exactly do you get there?

Triple Jump © Denys Kuvaiev | Dreamstime.com

3D desktop calendar image courtesy of Renjith Krishnan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We’d love to hear your thoughts in this post, so please do leave a comment.

01.23.14
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Small Business Guide to Marketing Planning Part 4: Tactics

Soccer tactics on chalkboardOur Small Business Guide to Marketing Planning has been looking at how using a simple marketing framework like SOSTAC can help guide you through all the elements needed to make a marketing plan a useful and relevant tool for your business.

  • Part 1 discussed the value of marketing planning for small businesses and looked at SOSTAC as a planning system.
  • Part 2 examined situational analysis and the importance of understanding where your business currently stands.
  • Part 3 talked about how to write SMART objectives and formulate your marketing strategy.

In Part 4 of our marketing planning guide we look at tactics and the communication tools we can use to achieve the targets we have set our business for the year ahead.

Tactics: How EXACTLY are you going to get there?

So, the market analysis you’ve undertaken means you know where your business currently stands and consequently, you have formulated your goals and objectives. You should have good idea of where it is you want to be. Your strategy has looked at how you are going to achieve your objectives. So the next step is tactics – how exactly are you going to get there? What digital communication tools are you going to use to support your strategy in order to achieve your objectives? The tactics element of your marketing plan is really the detail of your strategy;  it is here you outline the tools you are going to use.

Benefits of digital marketing tools

Digital marketing has brought with it a number of benefits for small online businesses, making it possible (with a bit of investment in both time and effort) to market on a more level playing field with some of the bigger competitors. Digital marketing offers SME’s the benefit of:

  • Lower costs: there are a number of digital tools that small online businesses can utilise without the cost associated with some of the more traditional marketing methods. For example social media, SEO and email  are all tools that smaller business can use without having to incur high marketing costs.
  • Creativity: digital marketing has made it easy to be creative with your marketing – social media, video, games etc. can all be used to pull in potential customers through engaging online content.
  • Interaction with customers: the interactive nature of the web has provided an excellent environment for developing customer relationships. For example, blogs, discussion forums and customer reviews have all made two-way dialogue with customers far easier. Rather than just throwing out messages,  digital tools enable you to pull customers into your site and engage in more meaningful communications.
  • Easier measurement: the digital environment has meant the introduction of online tools like web analytics that can help you measure your performance with more accuracy. Web analytics are simply the tools we can use to measure, collect and  analyse data to better understand our online presence. By using metrics such as traffic source, conversions, bounce rates and so on, small business can more effectively measure the performance of their marketing activity.
  • Immediacy: if you’ve got something exciting to say, you don’t have to wait to shout about it to your customers. Email and social media can be instantaneous. For example if you have something that is time sensitive sending an email promotion to a customer is far quicker (and lower cost), then its offline direct mail counterpart.

Digital Marketing Tools

Obviously the digital communication tools you decide to use will depend on your objectives and strategy alongside available budget and resources. But as a small online business, the key digital tools you may want to consider are likely to include:

  1. Search Engine Marketing (SEM):  the process you go through to increase your page ranking on search engines in order for you to increase you business’ visibility and drive traffic to your site. SEM essentially divides into two,  increasing your ranking through SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and through paid advertising (PPC). Search engine optimisation requires time, effort and commitment but is an essential part of building your business’ presence online.
  2. Online PR: sending out press releases to relevant media can be a great way not only to promote your latest news and developments, but also keeps fresh content coming into your website for SEO purposes, increases inbound links to and builds brand awareness.
  3. Online advertising: interactive online advertising essentially means you advertise your business on a third-party site through a banner ad. Although there are likely to be costs associated with online display advertising, it can be a useful way to increase awareness of your brand and generate direct response from potential customers.
  4. Email Marketing: email is an essential channel for both acquiring new customers and retaining existing customers. Despite worries over the increase in spam, email remains an effective marketing tool. The costs are low (in comparison to direct mail), response can be immediate, it can be quick to deploy, and can be tailored to specific customer segments easily.
  5. Social Media: Engaging with your customers though social media is a great way to give your business and brand a personality. Used thoughtfully, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media sites can help promote your products, help you gain valuable customer insight and help drive new traffic and increase inbound links to your site.
  6. Online sales promotion: Online vouchers, discount codes and e-coupons can be a great sales promotion tool. They can help increase sales, drive traffic and reward customer loyalty.
  7. Content Marketing:  We’ve mentioned it over and over again in previous blogs, but content is the cornerstone of online marketing – it is absolutely central to everything you do. Think about ways to keep content on your site fresh, up-to-date, relevant and interesting. Perhaps look at ways you can increase your content such as through blogging, video demonstrations, customer reviews and competitions. For ideas, I suggest you take a look at a The Content Marketing Matrix from Smart Insights.
  8. Online partnerships: Identifying ways in which you can work in partnership with a third-party to promote your online services can pay dividends by opening your business up to a stream of new and relevant customers. This could be with affiliates, suppliers or complementary businesses and associations.

The final part of our marketing planning guide will be looking at Actions and Control the final two elements of the SOSTAC marketing planning framework.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this post, so please do leave a comment.

Soccer Game Strategy image by Kromkrathog at FreeDigitalPhotos.Net

01.16.14
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Small business guide to marketing planning part 3: Objectives and strategy

world map and compassTo give your business direction and enable it to move forward, you need to have a clear idea of your goals, objectives and strategy . You may have a general idea of where you’d like your business to be in one, two or five years time, but without setting specific targets you may find you lose track of where you’re going and have no way to measure the success of what you are doing.

So, welcome to part 3 of our small business guide to marketing planning. In Part 1, we  looked at the importance of marketing planning and how using a framework such as SOSTAC can help you build your small business marketing plan. Part 2 discussed the first step in marketing planning – situational analysis and examined the question ‘Where are you now?’ This post looks at the importance of  setting objectives and how to formulate your strategy by thinking about ‘Where do you want to be?’ and ‘How do you want to you get there?’

Where do you want to be?

Having undertaken your situational analysis you should have a pretty solid idea about where your business currently stands. You’ll have a good understanding of your customers, the marketplace and your competitors.  You’ll also be aware of  your business’ strengths and weaknesses, alongside any opportunities or threats that may be on the horizon. All this analysis will help you mould your goals and objectives. These may include wider, long-term goals such as your business mission and vision as well as more specific short to medium term objectives.

So for example; say your situational analysis has identified that one of your weaknesses is that you have only a small database of prospective clients,  one of your goals over the year is likely to be to grow your database. Put into a specific short-term objective that you can focus your strategy and tactics around, your objective could be something along the lines of:

  • To increase ‘prospects database’ contacts by 25% by 30th June 2014.

SMART objectives

To make you your objectives both useful and relevant, you need to make them SMART. This way it is clear to everybody what the target you are progressing towards is.

  • Specific – objectives should be detailed and specific to a particular area – not vague or wishy-washy as that will make them impossible to measure.
  • Measurable – the objective should be able to be quantified.
  • Achievable – is the objective likely to be achieved or have you overestimated targets?
  • Realistic – do you have the resources, time, budget to make the objective happen?
  • Timely – you need to have a specific target time frame to work to.

How do you get there?

Now you know ‘where you want to be’ through setting clear goals and objectives, you need to think about how you’re going to get there. Strategy is driven by your situational analysis and is essentially about how you intend to go about meeting the objectives you’ve set.  So in our example our objective was to increase the number of contacts on our database. Therefore we are likely to want to drive more traffic to our website, which may well mean improving our search engine visibility and ranking. Our strategy will be thinking about the best ways to do this. This may include looking at:

  • Customer segmentation and target marketing strategy. Probably the key element when formulating your strategy is your customers and segmenting them into clearly defined customer groups by identifying the different behaviour and needs of each group. You will have looked at segmenting your customers as part of your situational analysis, so your strategy should then focus on how you intend to target your marketing to each customer segment.
  • Your positioning and OVP ( Online Value proposition): Where is your business positioned within the market and what is it that makes your e-commerce offering stand out from your competitors? How can you exploit this to your advantage?
  • Content strategy:  So if your strategy is to drive traffic to your website,  you will want to improve your search engine ranking and therefore you will need to look at SEO (search engine optimisation) . Content is absolutely central to SEO And so you will need to think about ways to improve your online content.

Your strategy is all about what actions are you going to undertake to ensure you achieve you objectives.  Your next step will be defining the tactics you are going to use (the tactics element of the SOSTAC framework will be part 4 of our marketing planning guide).

So, how does all this fit into the SOSTAC framework?

Going back to our earlier example objective of growing our prospective database, lets look at it in the context of the SOSTAC  framework :

Situational Analysis

1. Where are you now?

SWOT analysis  identified that the current prospects database was poor

↓

Objectives

2. Where do you want to be?

SMART objective: To increase ‘prospects database’ contacts by 25% by 30th June 2014

↓

Strategy

3. How do we get there?

 Strategy: To drive traffic to our website in order to data capture new names and achieve our objective of growing our prospects database by 25%.

↓

Tactics

4. How exactly do we get there?

What marketing tactics will we use in order to drive traffic to our website and data capture new names for our database?

Actions

5. What is our plan – who is going to do what and when?

Who is taking responsibility for our tactics. What is the schedule and timeframe required in order to meet our objective’s deadline? What is the budget? What resources do we have?

↓

Control

6. How are we going to measure our success?

We need to be able to measure our performance through analysis such as, KPI, web analytics, conversion rates in order to be able clearly measure whether we have met our objectives.

Part 4 of our Small Business Guide to Marketing Planning will be looking at marketing tactics.

Image courtesy of Keerati at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts on this post, so please do leave a comment

12.19.13
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How small online businesses can benefit from post-Christmas sales

christmas salesThink ahead to the post-Christmas sales

Retailers have been predicting very healthy sales in the run up to Christmas this year, perhaps no more so than online where research forecasts a 20% increase year-on-year.

“Online sales are forecast to hit £5bn this Christmas, an increase of almost 20% on last year, while total sales over the festive season will top £40bn, a rise of 3.5% on 2012, according to forecasts from Deloitte where forecast for online sales are up 20%” Guardian Business News

In the excitement and frenzy that is all part and parcel of Christmas, it can be hard to think ahead to the post-Christmas sales. However, it is important that small businesses are prepared for the post-Christmas sales period before they go off on their Christmas break. Unprecedented growth and increased access to mobile devices, has seen the traditional ‘January Sales’ shift to December as people go online earlier and earlier to grab a post-Christmas bargain. According to research from Econsultancy,  last Christmas saw Boxing day as the busiest in terms of traffic and sales through mobile phones peak on Christmas day.

Benefits of post-Christmas sales for small businesses

Post-Christmas sales are an opportunity to clear seasonal stock, excess stock and unwanted stock.  It is also a great time to capture bargain hunters and people with Christmas gift vouchers that they are itching to spend!

In addition, research shows that the average order value increases post-Christmas. Econsultancy found that last year people were adding higher priced items and more products to their baskets after Christmas than in the lead up to Christmas. As a consequence they found that the Average Order Value (AOV) increased. Last year January 1st saw the peak with an AOV of £77.69.

Be prepared – plan your post-Christmas sales before Christmas

With the Christmas sales starting earlier each year,  it is important that you are as organised as you can be before Christmas. This way you are ready to press the button to go live as soon as you need to be. Being prepared beforehand allows you to enjoy your Christmas break and not lose valuable shopping hours. So think about:

  • Stock – What stock do you plan to offer deals on? For example identify what stock hasn’t been shifting as well as expected in the run up to Christmas and stock you have excess of that you would like to be rid-of. Think about your pricing. It is important you know what your product margins will be now you are offering products at a lower rate.
  • Website – prepare your website so it is ready to go live for the post-Christmas sales. Make it clear on the home-page that you are having a sale. Your sale items should be listed clearly up front so they are easy for people to find. Many online retailers list their biggest discounted products at the top to entice consumers in. For example see Boden’s online sale where the highest percentage discounts are listed first.
  • Shipping and Delivery – plan your shipping and delivery ahead. Remember you are selling your stock at reduced prices so your profit margins are going to be lower. Factor in shipping and delivery costs when you are working out your discounts.  For example using free delivery or reduced rate delivery as an enticement may not be a viable option as you may end up selling at a loss.

Tips for your promotions.

Just like your website, get your promotional communications designed and ready before Christmas. This way you’ll be able to send out promotions to customers the minute your sale goes live.

Use all your online tools to spread the word to your customers – there is no point in having a sale if your customers remain unaware of it.  Email your customers with news of your sale, enticing them in with a showcase of your top offers. Announce your sale and special offers on all your social media platforms.

Use a ‘drip marketing’ technique for the duration of the sale period. This is where you can plan a series of sequential communications to coincide with the relevant offers you have planned. For example send out a series of strategically timed communications that will pull customers into your website for the entire post-Christmas sales period:

Sale now on

↓

Up to 40% off

↓

New lines added

↓

Up to 50%

↓

Last chance to grab a bargain

↓

Sale extended for a few days only

↓

Sale ends midnight tonight

The post-Christmas sales can be a profitable time for your small business as long as you plan ahead and spend some time thinking strategically about what you are going to do. This way you’ll hopefully be able to increase your sales and AOV, get rid of unwanted and excess stock and avoid any of the nasty surprises associated with lower profit margins.

We’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts on this post, so please do leave a comment

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono at freedigitalphotos.net
11.21.13
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Marketing for small business: Getting started with Pinterest

The Pinterest PhenomenonPinterest logo

For the last year or two, this social media phenomenon has been the buzz word on every marketer’s lips. It is already massive in the US and looks like set to take the UK and Europe by storm as well. So as a small business what does Pinterest mean for you? Should you be including it in your social media portfolio?

Impressive Pinterest Statistics

There is no doubt that Pinterest has seen meteoric growth since it launched in 2009. Here are a few statistics to give you a feel for the sort of growth it has experienced in the US  – a trend we are likely to see replicated in the UK:

Push pinSo what is Pinterest all about?

“Pinterest helps people collect and organize the things they love” Pinterest

The easiest way to think about Pinterest is as a sort of social media pin board or scrapbook.  People share their interests by ‘pinning’ them to ‘boards’. It is a social media platform with a strong emphasis on the visual and people connect to each other through feeds and by following boards that has content they find interesting.

Pinterest explains the ‘Pin Cycle’ as follows:

Pin

For example, lets say an unusual piece of jewellery on a website catches the eye of someone on Pinterest. The pinner pins the image onto their ‘unique accessories’ board

↓

Repin

A follower of the pinner likes the pin and repins the jewellery onto their ‘stylish jewellery’ board.

↓

 Discovery

Someone browsing their feed or searching for ‘stylish jewellery’ or ‘unique accessories’ will find the pin for the unusual piece of jewellery

↓

Click through

As more people discover and repin, the more people click-through to the source of the pin – the original website

Benefits for small businesses

As we mentioned at the start of this post, statistics indicate that Pinterest is growing and is likely to be here to stay as a social media platform, so there is value to getting on-board. If you are concerned about time and resources, then perhaps a good starting point is to think about how easily you business lends itself to Pinterest.

If  you are in retail – particularly B2C you’ll probably find Pinterest is an easy step to make without too much effort. B2B can work well but it may require a little more creative thinking at the start. For example, if you are already generating content in the form of say a blog or video then these can work really well. In fact here at ShopIntegrator our first board was our Small Business Blog as it was an easy first step into Pinterest for us.

If you are able to commit some time to Pinterest then it offers an additional opportunity to engage with and learn about your customers. It also provides a good way to help build your brand and develop your brand’s personality.

A few useful tips for getting started

1. Get a feel for Pinterest

Before you dive in setting up your own presence, spend a bit of time getting a feel for how Pinterest works. What are other businesses doing? This way you’ll get an idea for what works and what makes a  pin popular (how many times a pin has been re-pinned is a good measure of popularity). Check out  your competitors and those businesses in a similar market that are popular and have a good following. Pinterest also has some interesting  case studies that are worth looking at for some inspiration.

2. Think about your target market

You should be thinking about your target market when you start creating your presence.  What are your customers likely to be interested in? If you sell kitchenware for example, you’d expect your audience to be interested in cooking and food so your pins could include recipes, seasonal produce and new food trends. Make yourself a bit of an expert in the areas associated with your industry or market. Look at your customers own pinboards – what are they pinning and who are they following. This will give you an insight into what it is your target market is likely to value and find interesting.

3. Create and organise boards

Once you have got a feel for who it is you are pinning and creating boards for, you can get started on generating ideas. There are all sorts of popular boards that you can create in addition to product boards. Here are some popular boards that could help get you started: client showcase boards (showcase your customers latest products), fan boards (customers can pin images to a board that show your brand off in real life environments) employee recommendation boards (get your employees to set up their own boards perhaps with employee recommendations or top tips)  how to boards (give your customers ideas and tips for using and getting the most out of your products), blog boards, seasonal boards and contest boards. Pinterest is a great way to get creative.

4. Follow other boards and repin

Like any social media Pinterest is all about interacting and engaging with the community – your customers. So, to make the most out of your presence be active – follow other people’s boards, repin, like and comment on pins that relate to your business area.

5. Promote your Pinterest presence

Promote your Pinterest presence on your website and emails by adding the Pinterest button. Don’t forget you can also use your other social media to help promote your boards.

Useful resources from Pinterest

The great thing about getting started with Pinterest is that it is all pretty straightforward to set up and use – we’ve put some useful support links from Pinterest below that will help you make the most of your Pinterest presence:

Pinterest Set up: http://uk.business.pinterest.com/setup/

Guides: Pinterest guide for Business http://business.pinterest.com/best-practices/

Useful Tools: Pinterest analytics, Pin It Button, rich text pins http://uk.business.pinterest.com/rich-pins/

Pinterest Business Blog:  http://businessblog.pinterest.com/

Happy pinning!

Image: Single pin image courtesy of  Master isolated images, freedigitalphotos.net
 

We would love to hear your own experiences and thoughts on this post, so please do leave a comment

10.24.13
by

How to start a successful blog for your online business

Blog definition imageAs a small business or start-up you may be toying with the idea of creating a blog for your business. But perhaps you are not quite sure of how to get started or how to make certain your content is interesting and engaging. In this post we’ll give you some top tips to get you on your way and blogging like a pro.

The benefits a great blog can bring

As we’ve discussed in previous posts, quality content is central to the success of so much of the marketing you undertake as an online business.  A blog is a genuinely effective way of creating engaging content for you site. Still not quite convinced? Then check out the statistics obtained an info-graphic from Ignite Spot :

  • Small business with blogs generate 126% more leads
  • Interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social media
  • Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links

Where should you start?

A sensible place to start is by looking at other blogs, including some within your own industry. This will give you a feel for typical formats, content and styles of writing that are out there, giving you a better idea of what works and what doesn’t. The next step is to get some blogging software. There are plenty of great blogging services that are quick to set up and straightforward to use. It is worth doing a bit of research to get the right software for your needs. Popular free services include Google’s Blogger (you will just need to set up a Google account) and WordPress.  Equally, your current website platform probably also offers a blogging service. Don’t forget to make sure you customise a URL for your blog and  host it off your website, otherwise you won’t get the SEO benefits.

Top tips for writing an engaging blog

  • Content: I would argue that the most important tip  to remember is that a successful blog is all about content. Your blog is not the place to be aggressively selling your products or services. It should be aimed at your customers and prospects – what kind of information would they would find  useful and interesting?  For example if you owned a florist shop you might choose to write about  tips on how to arrange flowers in a vase or how to keep cut flowers fresh for longer. You are aiming to be seen as an expert in your relevant field through providing informative and  engaging information that readers will hopefully share with others.
  • Topics: So how do you come up with great topics and ideas to blog about? Taking a look other business blogs in your industry is a good way to generate ideas – then think about how you can approach the topic from a different angle. Popular blogs include problem solving posts like how to guides, breaking news, pro’s and con’s posts (for example, going back to our florist shop the pro’s and con’s of fresh versus dried flowers for table centrepieces) or list posts such as 10 top tips for better time management, or 20 tips to beat the Christmas rush.
  • Headline: Spend time on your headline. As with most copy, your headline is a really important part of the blog. It is what often makes people decide if they want to read on. A good way to start a headline is to think about the keywords and keyphrases a customer or prospect might type into a search engine to find the kind of information you are writing about in your blog post.
  • Conversational:  You should try to make your tone friendly and conversational. Remember, you are trying to build a relationship with your audience so start by writing in first person using ‘I’ and ‘you’. It comes across as much more personable than writing in third person (this is not to say that there aren’t times when writing in third person is appropriate).
  • Share information:  Don’t  be afraid to share relevant and informative links to sources of  information you think your customers might find interesting or useful, such as statistics, infographics, publications or websites.
  • Open links in new windows : If you are including outbound links in your blog make sure you open them in a new window so your reader isn’t  taken away from your post permanently and are able to get back to your blog easily.
  • Post regularly: You don’t have to blog everyday – unless the mood takes you that is! But it is important that once you start a blog you need to keep posting regularly. It doesn’t do much for your brand image if a visitor arrives on your blog page and sees that your last post was six months ago. If you are pressed for time why not see if you have some  affiliates or contacts who might like to write a guest blog for you now and then?
  • How long?: Don’t get too worked up about how long your blog should be,  you will probably find the length will be dictated by the topic area you are writing about. It is the quality of the content that you should focus on rather than worrying about the quantity. If you do find your post  getting too lengthy then maybe it’s an area that lends itself to a series of related posts. However, if you are just starting out and want a bit of a guideline then an average  post is probably anywhere between 300-800 words.
  • Quality: Check your grammar and spelling. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because blogs usually have a less formal tone than other types of content poor spelling, punctuation and grammar don’t matter – they do. A slapdash post will reflect badly on your brand.
  • Feedback: Try and close your post by asking your readers to comment and if they do then reply back, as it is a good way to encourage engagement with your customers.
  • Images: ‘A picture paints a thousand words’. Images are really important.  A strong, relevant image can pull a reader in to your post. Plus, you get the added bonus of using these engaging images to help promote your post on sites like Pinterest.
  • Tagging and Categorizing: Keyword and keyphrase tagging and categorising will help potential readers find your blog post more easily. So for example for this post I could categorise it under ‘marketing for small businesses’ and ‘digital marketing’ and my tags could include keywords and keyphrases like ‘how to write a blog’, ‘SEO’ and ‘online content’.
  • Promote: Spread the word! You’ve just invested your time in writing a great blog post so make sure you tell customers and potential customers about it. Use your social media pages and email newsletters to promote your latest blog with a small paragraph about your blog’s content, a good visual and the link to the post.

Be patient!

Finally don’t forget, building up leads and links takes time. But is worth it – according to statistics from Traffic Generation Café  when you’ve written over 52 posts on your blog, traffic increases by up to 77%.

“Once you write 24-51 posts, your blog traffic generation starts to grow. That’s probably how long it takes to build a blog with enough pages to get indexed by Google and attract links from other sites as well as visitors.”

 So do persevere as evidence continues to show it really is well worth the effort!

We’d really love to hear your thoughts on this post, so please do leave a comment.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

10.10.13
by

Content is still King

Content ImageEngaging, high quality content is central to successful marketing and key to attracting and retaining customers. The phrase ‘content is king’ has been heralded in digital marketing circles for a good few years now. But what exactly does it mean and why is it so important for online businesses?

Content and content marketing

From an online perspective, content is essentially all the information you communicate to your customers and prospects. For example in terms of a web page content is the text, design and images used to convey information. If your content is interesting and engaging you are more likely to attract and retain customers, hopefully achieving repeat visits.

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” Content Marketing Institute

In the past marketing messages were primarily ‘pushed‘ out to customers through traditional media channels such as print, TV, radio and direct mail . The onset of new media has enabled businesses to interact directly with their customers, creating what is essentially a two-way dialogue. It is now primarily customers who are in control, since they actively seek out information on the web and are often the first to initiate contact. Visibility and interaction are key as online businesses need to find ways to ‘pull-in’ customers to their web presence. Content is an integral element of any online marketing. Whatever marketing tactic you are using, be it SEO (search engine optimisation), branding, PR, social media, inbound marketing or email, content is central to its effectiveness.

“Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed“ Google Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide

How to improve content –  where do you start?

A good place to begin is to spend some time looking at your current offering. This would mean evaluating all the elements that make up your content – from web text and graphics to sales, product and marketing copy.  Is your content:

  • Useful and informative to your customers?
  • Up-to-date, relevant and accurate?
  • Professional, with no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors?
  • Interacting  and engaging with your customers?

Since content is central to pretty much everything you do online, it is worth looking at your content as a whole rather than as lots of separate bits and pieces of information. That way you have a complete picture and can formulate a strategy for your content. And remember, content needs to be reviewed and managed on a regular, on-going basis.

What makes good quality content

Although link building and keyword optimisation still important for SEO purposes, the days of keyword stuffing your content have well and truly passed.  It is quality content that determines how a website is ranked by the likes of Google.

 “interesting sites will increase their recognition on their own” Google Search Engine Optimisation Guide

When creating content always keep your existing and prospective customers in mind. If you are generating content for them you are likely to be ticking the ranking criteria for search engines. Good content is essentially about engaging your customers and encouraging them to share. You can do this through keeping your content informative, engaging, easy to digest,  fresh, interesting, interactive, relevant, original and useful. There is a great infographic from Skyword that summarises the essentials of good content as the ‘Three S’s of successful content: Searchable, Snackable and Shareable’. Essentially this means content should be optimised for relevant keywords and phrases (again, this does not mean keyword stuffing!), it should be catchy and bite sized so it meets the demand for ‘on-the-go’ information and compelling enough for readers to want to share.

Ideas for creating quality, engaging content

There are lots of  ways  you can generate quality content for your customers. SmartInsights have created a ‘Content Marketing Matrix’ that is packed full of content ideas to help “Entertain, Inspire, Convince and Educate” customers. It has lots of excellent ideas so is well worth a look. Outlined below are a few ideas to get you thinking about how your business can create fresh, engaging and interesting content that is relevant to your customers and prospects.

  • Engaging in interactive social media such as Facebook or  Google+
  • Creating a blog that contains interesting, digestible information that is appropriate  to your market
  • Publishing market research findings such as trend reports and providing downloadable whitepapers 
  • Regular, informative email newsletters informing customers of your latest news, offers, products or services
  • Entertain customers by running competitions or quizzes
  • Online press-releases  to keep your customers, potential customers and industry contacts informed of developments within your business
  • Creating interesting infographics and visuals
  • Producing online videos such as useful tutorials or demonstrations
  • Introducing an online community discussion forum

Content looks set to remain a key factor for any business looking to succeed online, so spending  time making it as engaging as you possibly can, is time very well spent.

 

We’d really love to hear your thoughts on this post, so please do leave a comment.

09.19.13
by

How to use online vouchers, discount codes and e-coupons successfully

online disount vouchersCoupons and vouchers have long been used by businesses as a way of driving sales and encouraging loyalty.  I’m sure those of you old enough to have been around in the 1980’s will remember the famous green shield stamps and parents religiously collecting Esso’s Tiger Tokens to exchange for some questionable glassware.

The last few years have seen the use of online vouchers, discount codes and e-coupons grow significantly, and we’ve witnessed the increasing popularity of online discount voucher sites  – think Groupon, Wowcher, VoucherCodes and Savoo.  According to research by Savoo and Affiliate window, between 2009 and 2012 there has been nearly a 40% increase in the number of people searching for deals online.

A combination of general human instinct  (we all love a bargain), a long period of recession and customers becoming increasingly web savvy  (I can’t remember the last time I bought something from Boden without first checking what discount codes were available on the web) have probably all contributed to the rise of online voucher codes.  And, according to recent Forrester research conducted on behalf of vouchercodes.co.uk, growth looks set to continue:

“…the online voucher code market is still in a period of significant growth and advertisers utilising vouchers as a marketing channel enjoy a number of measurable benefits”

Benefits of online vouchers, coupons and discount codes

E-coupons can be downloaded and printed to be presented in-store or through a unique code that can be redeemed at an online store’s checkout. There are all sorts of ways businesses can incentivise customers with offers using online vouchers and discount codes. For example common offers include:

  • Buy one get one free
  • Money off codes such as 10% discount or  £5 off your order
  • Spend over £100 and save 20%
  • Free delivery and returns
  • Three for the price of two
  • Money off next order
  • Recommend a friend and receive money off your next order

Whatever type of incentive or offer you decide to implement make sure you think carefully the value of the offer and the length of time you intend to run the promotion – for example how would your profit margin fare if you offered 15% and free delivery for two weeks?

Voucher codes and e-coupons are a great, short term tactical sales promotion tool. They can be quick to set up, are easy to measure and split test, they are flexible and can be promoted at low cost via email, social media channels and on your website

The most effective ways to use vouchers, discount codes and coupons

1. Increase sales

Vouchers are a good way to increase sales to your website through incentivising prospective customers. For example you could use them to them to boost sales on a product that isn’t selling quite as well as you hoped or to invigorate sales to help reach a particular monthly sales target.

2. Rewards, loyalty and retention

Retention of customers is essential –  as we  all know our existing customers are our most profitable. Offering special loyalty rewards such as a £5 money off voucher can work really well. It makes a loyal customer feel valued and can lead to a spontaneous purchase.  Also, offering a new customer a discount on their next order is a good way of encouraging new customers to return.

3. Drive traffic and acquire new customers

A timely email containing an e-coupon can be an effective way of drawing new customers to your website. New customers may be more willing to take a risk and buy something if they feel they are getting a bit of a bargain to boot.

4. Launching new website, service or product

Online clothes retailers often use offer early bird discounts with next seasons previews. Voucher codes are a good way of generating interest in something new or trialling a new product.

5. Customer service tool

Often nothing appeases a disgruntle customer more than an apology with a nice discount voucher attached to it.

6. Generate leads and promote newsletter registrations

A discount code can be a good way of getting people to sign up to your newsletter – Gap and Banana Republic have successfully used a 15% discount code as  their as their newletter sign-up incentive for a few years.

Now a few words of caution…

  • Don’t overuse discount vouchers to the point that they reduce your overall profit margin.  Put objectives in place first and be clear about what  it is you want to achieve. Think about your incentive and for how long you should offer it for. Remember there is no one size fits all solution –  you must research and  test what works best for your business
  • If offering discounts make sure your discounts are genuine . You don’t want to fall foul of the Office of Fair Trading – I’m sure we’ve all seen the recent news on the investigation into some popular high street carpet and furniture companies.
  • Make sure any sales promotion activity you undertake complies with British Code of Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing. You can find full guidelines at http://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes.aspx

The internet has have provided us with  more options and an additional delivery channel but the key benefits remain the same. Used intelligently, with specific business objectives in mind then online vouchers, e-coupons and discount codes can be an invaluable sales promotion tool and I suspect, somewhat more appealing to this generation of savvy consumers than a set of crystal tumblers from their local petrol station.