From Just One Pound

Going off at a slight tangent this post, but at a recent networking event I became interested in the scalability of businesses and in particular how businesses can start from nothing and grow into huge financial concerns.

I was talking to a group of small business owners, one of which was the very proud owner of small retail business that literally started with one pound and had grown it from there into a very sizeable business indeed and is now turning over many thousands of pounds in about 18 months.

Unfortunately, she had some to a sticking point in which she was struggling to get the business to grow further; it all seemed to stem from the fact that she had started the business with no real vision of what she wanted the business to be or do and so she didn’t really have any idea on how she wanted it to grow in the future.

We talked for a while and I realised that as well needing some assistance with asking the difficult strategic questions (who is the customer?, what do they value?, how is she value better than her competitors? etc), she needed something very visual to grab hold of in order to help her move forward.

As she started the business with just £1, I started to look at business milestones from the point of view of how that simple one pound coin, had grown. How quickly did she double that pound? With that £2 how didn’t did she double that to £4 etc, I started to draw it out for her and she liked the concept.

I’ve replicated it below, the simple idea is that from a single £1, doubling your money each step, it’s just 21 steps to you making your first £1m.

She’s pinned this on her office wall and she marking out these 21 milestone steps, dating each step as see goes, she has found visualisation of her business incredibly powerful, she is also undertaking a proper strategic review to ensure that she is making her money doing the very best activities.

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Best Practice SEO on a budget

Many individuals and smaller businesses don’t have a budget for SEO work, but if you plan to do your own SEO then all it will only cost you is a little bit of time and effort.

Here's some thing you want to get done:

Keywords:

The first step is to think carefully about how potential visitors are likely to find you when they fire up their favourite search engine; what are the key terms that you would expect them to type into the search engine to find you.

Don’t be too general here, if you are repair clocks and you live in Bristol then “Clock Repairer in Bristol” is a very good start. When putting your list together, consider the ‘transactional’ keywords that someone might use for your service, these are words that might be used in an internet search that would suggest that some if ready or likely to buy, and could also help you understand how you might be trying to position yourself as a business.

So back to our “Clock Repairer” example, they could use something like:

“Cheap Clock Repairer in Bristol”
“The best Clock Repairer in Bristol”
“Order a clock repair in Bristol”

Also consider informational searches that someone might try; these are terms that show that someone is looking for more information before they make a purchases decision, those could be things like:

“Is my clock worth repairing?”
“How do I look after a clock?”
“How much is my clock worth?”

The idea with a lot of these informational terms is that you are looking to show that you know what you are talking about; you are building trust and credibility with your web pages.

Once you have 3-5 key terms that you think visitors will type to find your services then ensure that these terms are on your web pages (then search engines will get the idea that these are the terms that you want to rank well for).


Writing your pages:

It’s always worth writing your pages as if you are talking to someone who doesn’t know anything about what you do or sell, this way you are more likely to talk to your visitor in the right (consultative) way.
 Always remember to add more words like “you” and “your” etc and less of the “me” and “us” etc, that way you will be writing with your audience in mind.


Tagging:

Remember to include unique META Tags on each page, specifically ensure that the META Description and META Title are completed and unique for every page.

Ensure that the META Title is around 50-60 characters in length and the META Description is 100 and 150 characters in length.

Links are important

Links are the lifeblood of your website ranking, without any links to your pages you will not rank on any search engines and you’ll never found.

Think about any relationship you might have with other businesses – partners, suppliers, trade bodies or associations etc. See if you can get links from any of these websites.

If you create good content and people like your site and you’ll start to attract natural links.


Social Media

Use some form of social media when you start off, whether it be Twitter, LinkedIn, a blog, Facebook or Pinterest, and post often, several times a day is good, and make the post relate to your business.

To start off with pick one network and work hard at it – social media posting can take a lot of time and effect and it’s not worth spreading yourself thinly. You’ll have a good idea where most of your audience hang out – post there.

The search engines will quickly pick up the fact that you are posting quality content and hopefully engaging with your audience – this will help with ranking.


Can’t do it yourself?

As you won’t be able to afford to pay for speculative SEO work by an agency then look around for an SEO company that is willing to offer a ‘Risk and Reward’ deal. With this type of contract they will agree that they won’t get paid unless then get you on the first page of your chosen search engines for agreed keywords.

If they are successful then it will cost you money, but at least you know you're only paying for keywords that are on the first page of search engine results.

WARNING: Never pay an agency who guarantee that they can get you onto the first page – no-one can guarantee it.


It isn't quick:

Don't expect great results overnight, doing SEO like this without much effort isn't easy and getting on to the first search engine results page is very difficult, but see how you get on in 3-6 months and take things from there.

Top SEO agencies can't get you sustainable results overnight either!

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Eight Hour Marketing Plan™

Develop a basic Marketing Plan in only 8 hours with the 8 Hour Marketing Plan™
I first published my eight hour marketing plan in 2000 when I worked with a number of online businesses to try to get them to understand how easy it was to develop a simple plan.  This is a little out of date now and I will get around to updating it at some time; but I thought it was worth publishing anyway.

Hour 1 - Information gathering about your business

Get yourself a large box. Gather as much information as you can in one hour. This may not seem like long, but believe me after one hour you will be glad to stop ... and surprised at how much information you have gathered!.
Do not stop to read any of it ... this is the gathering phase. You may enlist others to help you in this or any other phase, but keep them within the same one hour restriction.

Your gathering should include all of your past advertising and marketing materials. Include items such as letterheads, envelopes, business cards, direct-mail pieces, magazine ads, Yellow Pages ads, invoices, statements, counter cards, sales samples, packaging materials, press releases, PR stories, promo items, print outs of web pages and anything else used to market your company.

Next, add sales statistical information available about your company. Place sales reports from the past three years in the box. Look for breakout information such as sales by year, month, product line, customer and geographical area. Place any target information or sales rep information in the box. When your time is up, stop. If you happen to run across something else, drop it in the box, but don't spend any more time on this. The secret is to keep to the time limit.

Hour 2 - Information gathering about your customers and competitors

Use a second box to gather information about your customers and your competitors, but again, do so within a one-hour time frame. Put in the box copies of your customer/client lists, details about your top customers, mailing lists, etc. If you have time, talk to your best customers and ask them why they do business with you.

Competitor information can be easily gleaned from several sources (web sites, in-house material etc).
Find copies of their magazine ads. Focus on the information that is readily available.

Hour 3 - Preparation

This third block should be used to compile the documents you have gathered into meaningful information. Again, give yourself one hours of uninterrupted time and, this time, you may want to consider getting away from your office or normal place of work.
Spread out all of the contents of your first box onto a table. With a note pad handy, start by looking at the sales numbers. Take a few moments to jot down the answers to these questions, as well as others you may have:

• Who are your biggest clients?
• What do they buy from you?
• What months are the most successful for you?
• What is your best product line?
• What are your sales trends?

Next, look at all of your marketing materials. Spread them out on the table. Think about each piece, as well as the entire collection. Obviously, you could spend a whole day critiquing your sales numbers and your marketing items. But by keeping the exercise to just one hour (remember you can build on this work later), you will better focus your attention. Here are some questions for this part of the exercise:

• What do your marketing pieces say about you?
• Is there a consistency to your approach?
• To whom are you speaking?
• Do the pieces tell the message you want told?
• How do your message increase sales?
• What relationship does your marketing team have with your sales team?

As you're making these notes, take one sheet of paper and designate it the "ideas page". As an idea comes into your mind ... no matter how crazy ... write it down.

Hour 4 - More Preparation

Now, put the sales numbers and the marketing materials aside.

Take the information and materials about your clients and your competitors and place them on the table. Select your three strongest competitors and your 10 best customers.

Spend a few minutes (3-4) thinking about each of them. Then ask yourself the following questions:

• Why do your best 10 customers choose you instead of your competitors?
• Do your competitors spend all their money with you or some with your competitors too?
• Do you offer your customers anything unique?
• Why are these competitors good? (if they are!)

This is the critical step in this process. An hours sounds like a long time on this, but it isn't!.
Once you have finished, put everything back in the boxes and stop (remember the time limit).

Congratulations ... you are halfway through the process.

Hour 5-6 - The Outline

Get your notes (for this part you can refer to specific items in the boxes if needed).
Unlike the other sections, you need two hours of uninterrupted time to complete this next stage. Beginning with your notes, build a brief outline of where you are. To help in the process, I've put together the following questions; most questions should have between three and five answers:

• What were your sales in the past three years?
• What do you want your sales to be next year?
• Why do your best customers do business with you?
• Who are your main competitors?
• Why do our customers do business with someone else?
• If you lost 2% of your average sized customers, what revenues would you lose ?
• How many customers are you losing each year?
• What does your current marketing materials say about you?
• What is the single best thing you do to market your business?

Hour 5-6 - The Outline

Remember you have two hours to complete this Outline stage, if you are asking the right type of questions, and really thinking about the answers, honest, truthful answers .. you need the two-hours.

Hour 7-8 - The Plan

This is another two-hours stage.

Use your notes and the items you have in the boxes to help with this final stage. You are now going to prepare the first draft of your marketing plan.

The idea is that you now have enough information and ideas to put together your marketing plan.  Don't worry if you find you cannot complete yours as shown here, just do what you can with the information you have, use your plan as a start of your activities and go from there.

What you have done will start as a guide for your day to day marketing activities, and you should be able to answer simple questions like; what do you want to say? why do you want to say it? to whom do you want to say it? where do you say it? wow do you want to say it? etc.

If you spend the Eight hours wisely, you will have a simple plan for marketing and the beginnings of the full marketing plan.

Hour 7-8 - The Plan

Remember that this is another two-hours stage.

What you have done will start as a guide for your day to day marketing activities, and you should be able to answer simple questions like; what do you want to say? why do you want to say it? to whom do you want to say it? where do you say it? wow do you want to say it? etc.

If you spend the Eight hours wisely, you will have a simple plan for marketing and the beginnings of the full marketing plan.

Continue working on the plan on a day by day basis, NEVER let it gather dust, you really need to revise the plan at least every quarter to get the most from it, and next year, it may only take you one hour to completely revise for the new sales year!

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Killer Social Media Strategies

Social media allows businesses both large and small to have a lot of impact and power, here are just a small number of things that you can do.

1. Q&A's

Social media has been developed to engage with your potential customers and customers alike, but may businesses have no idea how to do this easily.  The best way is to hold scheduled Q&A sessions – let your Followers and Fans alike ask you anything they want about your business, products and services.  You may even quickly discover problem areas or new product ideas; this approach will also do wonders for your brand too.

2. Solve Problems

By doing regular searches for your brand name, product/services or market sector you will quickly discover people who are asking questions on Social Media platforms about things that you should be an expert in. 

Respond to them, answer their questions; don’t answer with your sales hat on unless the question specifically warrant you suggesting your companies services but try to answer with your customer services hat on.

In fact this approach goes beyond traditional customer services and you’ll be seen as active within the wider community; this is huge for your brand.

3. Promotions/Offers and Competitions

You will have lots of loyal Followers/Fans, and it’s nice if you can reward then from time to time for being there for you.  Give special offers, promote events, provide competitions – anything to further your engagement with your market/community.

Give value and you’ll have a Fan for life!

4. Value added links

If you are a business that just provides links to your homepage or your products and services pages then you are missing a huge trick; provide links to useful resources/news items (whether on your site or not); this will continue to add value to your brand and your wider community.

Work SMARTER, not harder!

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Christmas Retail Branding!

Christmas has always been a time for brands to shine, but it seems that the 2012 festive period is somewhat different!

From last year I remember the Morissons ad with Brucie and Freddie; the John Lewis with the kid excited about giving his gift to his parents; Jamie Oliver cooking Sainburys food; Tescos had happy kids on a school stage; Iceland had Stacey Solomon driving home to her family; Argos had their aliens – and all the brands solidly had their respective promise that as a viewer we understood.

Proposition and brands are clearly identifiable; and this is important if they are going to attract lots of business from us shoppers.

Today is very different; John Lewis again went for the snowmen tearjerker and Argos have stuck with the aliens; but to be honest the rest of them have just merged into one brand/message/proposition!  Not sure what Littlesons, M&Burys and Bootalan are offering this year; I'm a very confused viewer and shopper!

Be really interesting to see who the retail winners and losers are this year!

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Five Tips to Search Engine Success

Tip 1 – You can’t outsmart Google

It’s a fact that if you try to beat Google by trying the latest way to force your pages into the top of the rankings then you will get found out!  Site owners that were spanked by Google's most recent updates (Penguin or Panda), will testify to the fact that you have to bide your time.

A spammy approach to gaining good ranking will hurt you and your business in the long run.  There is no automated way to the top, no quick win – only and effort will get you there.

Tip 2 – Normal business rules apply

If you owned a ‘bricks and motor’ store then I'm guessing that you wouldn't expect to attract customers for free; the internet is exactly the same, it isn't free nor easy to attract visitors to a website.

Invest time and effort and you’ll do well.

Tip 3 – ensure your site has a good infrastructure

It stands to reason that your site won’t survive for long if it had a poor design.  To get ranked well you need a fast loading site filled with pages with great content and pages that link to all the other pages within your site (needed so that search engines spiders know where all your pages are.)

If you're serious about your website, don't use the cheapest web host or designer. Slow poorly designed pages can influence the rankings of your web pages.

Tip 4 – Take Control

Stop searching for gurus or secret tricks that promise to make your site number one in Google (or any other search engine for that matter), they don’t exist.

Work with a search engine marketing professional, ideally someone who understands business and how search engines work.

With their assistance discover what your unique selling proposition is

Identify your audience and make a plan.

Create a great website with valuable content (if visitors like your site word will get out)

Advertise your site (use SEO, paid advertising, even traditional advertising to promote it)

Step 5 -  Act Now

There is always something is your business that’s more important that promoting your website (or so you think), talk to someone today (talk to me) about improving your search engine rankings.

SEO is not necessarily about getting backlinks. It's also not necessarily about getting high rankings on Google. It is about getting sales. It is about improving your business.

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The easiest way to get someones attention on Twitter

Twitter is great when you finally get noticed by an influencer or business that you want to get your brand or service in front of; but how do you get their attention?

The easiest way is to tweet about their favourite things or to retweet popular past tweets, but how do you find out that they are?

Favstar will allow you to do just that, by simply entering http://favstar.fm/users/their username into your browser you will find out what they like to tweet about and what are their most popular tweets; this then gives you a chance to engage with them on top topics or simply retweet their best tweet (which could have been from years ago!).

If you want to find out what tweets that your target have marked as a favourite then enter https://twitter.com/ their username/favorites

These are very simple tactic that I have used successfully many times.

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Recession-based Employment Tactics

UK Law Firm Irwin Mitchell today revealed a telling report showing that there is a huge lack of confidence in the economy and that businesses are three times more likely to encourage voluntary redundancies during the next 12 months compared to two years ago.

Other key findings from this survey of 320 senior business decision-makers are:

• One-third of businesses had made compulsory redundancies in the last year, with 75% of those also using a range of alternative cost-saving techniques.
• Seven out of 10 firms said they are "less confident" or expect "no improvement" in the U.K. economy in 2012 and 18% said they are "quite likely" or "very likely" to make compulsory redundancies during the same period.
• Out of those businesses stating they needed to reduce their employee cost base over the next 12 months, just over half (55%) said that they would introduce a voluntary redundancy program. This compares to just 16% of companies that did the same during the last two years.

In addition, firms are more likely to cut down the use of agency workers, freeze pay, grant unpaid absences, remove other benefits such as bonuses and reduce staff hours in the next 12 months compared to two years ago.

Outside of compulsory redundancies, the most popular method used to reduce the employee cost base during the last two years was freezing pay rises, so UK employees can expect their pay to be frozen during the next 12 months!

The full report can be found here.

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Improving Your Business in an Economic Slow Down

Now is the very best time to take a look at your business to help you move it forward.

Here are some tips on how to make that happen.

1. Find out what your competition is doing

This is a really fantastic opportunity to let your sales and customer service staff get reacquainted with past customers and communicate with current ones and through their discussions find out what your competition is doing.

Old customers are one of the best sources for competitor intelligence information, they left you for some reason, now is the time to find out why and what it would take to gain back their business. Was it price? Was it service? Was it quality? Were there performance issues? Maybe the competition just had a better product. Get as many details as possible to help bring improvements to your product and/or service.


Keep in mind that your old customers might also be in a "slow" period due to the slow down, so they may welcome talking or meeting with you find out how you can help them!


2. Training

Like most businesses you'll go through periods of time when you really couldn't afford the time people would need to be away from the business to learn new skills? Well right now could be the right time to allow them out to hone their skills or develop new ones by sending them to seminars and workshops (these can be really useful and cost effective). Or bring in a trainer to help teach team building, teach teams how to be more creative, or develop sales and customer service skills.

If you are concerned about the cost of outside training, why not cross-train your employees internally so your team is more flexible to deal with business issues going forward.


3. Don't cut your marketing budget

Chances are this is what your competitors are doing, and cutting yours too will simply mean that you could miss out on good market opportunities.

That said, a careful review of your marketing spend is sensible, look at what you are doing and why.


4. Check your Sales Literature

Now is a good opportunity for you to check your sales literature and web site to see if the sales messages are still working for you or whether you might need a refresh.


5. Revise your business plan

This is one of the most critical activities that you will need to perform if you are feeling a slow down in business.

Chances are your sales forecast will need to be revised, which means your overall budget will need to change. Get your business plan up to date so you and your employees have a solid strategy to work towards.


6. Ask your employees for suggestions

It's not just said for fun, your employees are you best asset, they know your business well and either know your customers or your internal processes and systems extremely well.

Find out what ideas they have for a new product or service, or how to make improvements to save money or increase performance.


7. Network

This is one of the best source of leads for any size business. Join a peer group, find a breakfast club, get back involved with a trade association, speak to existing customers. Nurture these sources and they will bring you business.


8. Remain positive

Listen to the news, read the newspapers or specialist press, and business gloom and doom is everywhere. You can't ignore it, it's always there reminding us how bad it is!

But is isn't always bad, chances are that you have a good core business, with great employees, focus on that. Get back to basics. What motivated you when you got into business? Revive the positive attitude and enthusiasm that made you successful in the first place.

Keep away from all those negative influences.

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