Do some marketing every day
One of the best pieces of advice for any business owner is to make sure you do at least one thing each day to market your business. On your task list each day should be one marketing activity.
I try very hard to follow this advice within my own business. So even when I am knee deep in client work and business is booming I try to do at least one thing to keep the pumps primed for the future.
So what can you do today that might pay dividends in the future? Here are some ideas to get you started:
Identify a potential joint venture partner, contact them with a view to opening a discussion about working together
Write an article and submit it to an article directory with a link back to you website in the resource box (we recommend this to really leverage your time http://www.betterbusinessresults.com/resources/uniquearticlewizard.html)
Set up a Google pay per click campaign to drive targetted traffic to your website
Send an offer out to all of your past customers
Post on your blog (you do have a blog don’t you?)
Write a press release and submit it using something like http://www.prweb.com/
Cut out and send an article of interest to a past client
I’m sure you get the picture. What have you done today to market your business. Doing one small thing each day will equate to over 200 things in a year – do it, it will make a significant difference to your bottom line.
Why 1 is not the magic number
One may have been the magic number in Jill Scotts song, however when it comes to the marketing of your business it really shouldn’t be.
In order to build a firm foundation for your business you need multiple marketing channels, this way if one suddenly stops working then your business can continue. How many different marketing methods are you using in your business? If it is just one or two then you are taking a big risk.
Don’t make it hard for your customers to do business with you.
I need to get my car serviced so remembering a flyer I received from a garage in Maynooth I decided to give them a call to book my car in. The phone was answered after a number of rings by a guy called Gary. I asked him for details of their service. ‘Sorry’ he replied ‘you need to speak to Damian he deals with the bookings. He’s not here at the moment can you call back in 15 minutes?’
I was stunned, here this business had a hot prospect on the phone and he was asking me to call them back in 15 minutes? This is like flushing money down the toilet. How much better would it have been to say ‘I’m really sorry but Damian, the person who manages the bookings is not here. Please can I take you name, number and make and model of your car so he can give you a call back with a price when he gets back in the office’. Had this happened I would have happily given my details. Damian could then have called me when he was back and this garage would have secured itself something in the region of €300 worth of business.
All too often business owners focus all of their money and effort on advertising for new clients. When new clients do not materialise they blame the advert, however often the problem can lie closer to home.
There is not much point walking 5 miles to a well to collect water if you have a leaky bucket. In the same way there is little value in spending money to attract leads if you do not have a proper process to treat them properly and try and convert them.
Are you sabotaging your own business growth?
I was recently speaking to a friend of mine who owns his own ground care business. He is very busy at this time of year with grass and hedge cutting contracts.
We were discussing ways that he could grow and develop his business and we identified a number of areas where he could get a lot of growth in his business.
However we also identified that he is personally doing just about everything in the business himself. From bookkeeping, invoicing, tendering for work and actually doing the ground maintenance he is doing it all.
In doing so he is making more money than he has ever done, but at what price? He is in a very precarious position, if he injures himself or gets sick his business will fold with him.
Do you fall into this trap like other business owners thinking that you have to do everything yourself?
Perhaps you feel that outside help is expensive or won’t do as good a job as you would. In the long run if you want a real business and not just a Job you need to start delegating some of the lower value tasks in your business.
This may mean reducing your income slightly in the short term but getting the right systems and processes in place is what is going to allow you to make the jump to a much bigger business in the future. Kind of like short term pain for long term gain.
If you would like us to assess your business and help you determine how you can make more money whilst doing less of the donkey work yourself then please contact us now.
A handy tip if you are trading with companies within europe
If you need to check whether a VAT number that has been provided to you is genuine then you can very quickly chek it using this Free handy online tool:
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/vieshome.do?selectedLanguage=EN
Are you making this mistake with pay per click advertising?
By now just about every business owner should be aware of the opportunity to promote their business using search engine pay per click advertising. Of these by far the largest and well known is the Adwords service from Google.
Knowing about it is one thing actually doing it is another, and doing it really well is a whole different ball game. All too often I see pay per click advertisers pretty much throwing away good money. They may be feeling good about having gotten themselves set up with pay per click but they should have taken the time to really master the service.
The number one mistake I see people making is having their pay per click adverts simply linking to the homepage of their website. Google provides so much analytical information that doing this is a real waste of money. To really maximise your chances of getting a good return on investment you need to design specific targetted pages which match very closely with what your target market are searching for.
For example lets say that you own a DIY hardware shop and one of the things you do is sell drills. A lot of business owners would make the mistake of setting up an adwords campaign using keywords such as “drills”, “drilling” etc and then linking the advert to the main homepage of their website.
This is the equivalent of someone coming into the DIY shop,asking if you sell drills and telling them to go back to the front of the store and find it themselves. You wouldn’t do it offline so why do it online? What you would do would be to at least take them to the power tool section or better still to the drill subsection.
You should therefore do the same on the web. If someone has searched for a specific term then the closer the page you send them to matches their search criteria the greater the chances of converting them will be. So in this instance you would have a specific page (known as a landing page) which would give full details on drills and which would keep the tight focus that they had in their original search.
Knowing exactly what keywords that people have searched on to then click on your pay per click adverts is one of the most helpful pieces of information you could ever hope to know when marketing your business online. Don’t waste the opportunity by sending your customers back to the front door!
Join our meetup in Maynooth, come and meet us and likeminded business owners
I am starting “Matt Eve’s Grow Your Business Network” we will be meeting in Maynooth, Co. Kildare every month starting on Wed 27th Feb at 8pm. You can find more details at http://smallbiz.meetup.com/863/
Each month I will be covering a topic about marketing or business growth and discuss ways you can use this in your business. There will be a nominal charge of €15 per head to cover our costs.
If you are interested please RSVP at http://smallbiz.meetup.com/863/
5 Steps to Success for 2008
I wish you and your family all the best for the New Year!
I hope you have made a resolution to make things happen this year!
I would strongly suggest you,
1) Set Your Goal,
2) Put a time frame on it,
3) Make a list of what you need to do to accomplish it
4) Make a plan
5) Take Action!
This is THE receipe for success!
If you would like some help taking your business to the next level this year please contact us now on 01 4433830.
New Business Opportunities Ireland Website
Are you thinking about starting your own business?
If so you are in good company. In 2006 there were almost 20,000 new companies started in Ireland, and many more smaller sole traders and partnerships. All businesses have one thing in common, you need the germ of an idea and then a plan to execute it.
Business Opportunities Ireland provides ideas and insights into all sorts of business ideas and opportunities.
If you are considering starting your own business but not sure exactly which business to start you might be interested to know that we have just launched a new website which will give lots of tips and ideas . You can find the site here Business Opportunities Ireland
Enjoy!
Look no hands!
I’m always interested in trying out new technology that can make my life easier. Having never learned to type properly, other than using one finger, I often find that my brain is going faster than I can type!
I’m now trying out a new speech recognition software called Dragon Naturally Speaking, it allows you to dictate what you want to say into a microphone, and then miraculously, it appears on screen. I’m hoping that I can use it in my business to speed up posting on this blog and creating articles, products and also for letter writing and other day to day things that I would normally type.
I have to say, having only spent about an hour with this software, is is pretty impressive. I have been able to write this blog post without having to touch the keyboard (except to copy and paste it into WordPress).
Hopefully, it is going to save me a lot of time and effort trying to find the right keys to press on my keyboard. If you do a lot of writing in your business, it may be worth considering, you can take pick up a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking on Amazon, and sometimes on eBay, fairly reasonably.
It really is a bit eerie, when you see the words that you are saying just pop up on the screen in front of you. It is as though, there is someone hidden away, typing everything you are saying!
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