What is your marketing saying about you?

I specialise in Reputation Marketing – and I have to admit that, whilst I passed an exam in Marketing many years ago, I don’t cover the whole marketing spectrum.  However, most small business owners consider marketing is about making yourself visible.

This might be with your website, print ads, radio interviews, social media, blogs, newsletters, press releases, magazine articles, flyers, exhibition stands, conference presentations and brochures.  Not all of these work for everyone – so your first step to a good marketing plan is to work out what your target audience is most likely to respond to.

Some of these media cost money, some take time and effort, so you need to put your budget for both of these in place beforehand.  It’s no good planning an in-depth blogging and social media campaign if you are too busy to invest that time – unless you’re able to outsource this to someone who understands your business and your audience and can deliver content in your voice.

The Voice

This is important – your business has a voice.  If it’s just you – it probably is a version of you, but the bigger the organisation gets the harder it gets to maintain a personal approach.  Your organisation’s voice and style needs to be reflected in every piece of marketing that goes out.

When it IS just you that’s easier, because you almost certainly walk the talk.  The challenge is when other people come on board – they need to understand what’s OK and what’s not.  Even if they’re not your spokesperson, people meet new people all the time, socially and in business networking.  They need to represent you as you want to be seen.

If someone says to them “Where do you work?” what do you want them to say about your organisation?  Can you be sure they won’t say something negative?  We’ve all heard people talking about their bosses in less than favourable terms.

The Style

There’s an argument that what works on Facebook or Twitter won’t cut it in an industry journal, which is a more formal environment.  However, I believe that you shouldn’t be someone you aren’t in any environment.

Using business language, whether informal or more formal is still important.  There’s nothing worse than a business that publishes text speak, bad language, poor English (or any other language) or less than respectful content. 

If you’re in a fun and funky business that doesn’t mean your marketing should sound like a rapper or use bad English and lots of slang.  If you’re a serious organisation it doesn’t mean that you have to come over as a faceless corporate.

The Message

Consistency is the key.  Even when you’re promoting different aspects of your business, you need to stay focused on your core message.  In reality all your material should look as though it belongs together.

Be clear, be concise and be to the point.

If you get all this right your marketing will work well to raise your profile and reach the people who want what you’re offering.

Get more leads on LinkedIn

If you’re selling to other businesses you could be missing opportunities if you don’t have an up-to-date LinkedIn profile.

I teach people to use LinkedIn effectively as a lead generation tool – and it does take a little effort, but not as much as you might think.  It’s all about having a strategy and system that work.

One of the most frequent complaints I get from clients is ‘I’ve only got 6 (14/23/50 etc.) people following my Company profile – how can I get more people engaged?’

The answer is that, unless you’re a big organisation like Ford or Minolta, most people are not going to follow your company page.  People buy people and will connect with small business owners on a personal level.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a company page, but don’t get stressed if only a handful of people follow it.  Instead focus on getting your personal profile working as hard as possible.  These are my tips for this:

Write a professional headline that tells people your profile is for them.  If you know who your ideal client is, this should be straightforward.  Include two or three of your key words.

Put in a good (up-to-date) headshot of yourself – just head and shoulders, smiling at the camera and looking friendly and approachable. NOT your logo, products or premises – LI T&Cs say it must be ‘a recognisable image of the account holder’.  Also people like to see who they’re dealing with.

Include email and phone contact info.  This is only visible to first level connections – and people will connect with you if you make it easy for them.

Make the links to your website more interesting.  How likely are you to click ‘Company website’ If you’ve got something more interesting more people will click.

Write a summary that is focused on getting you the results you want.  If that’s marketing your services or products then tell people the benefits of your services, the problems you can solve, the passion you have for the business.

These are my DON’Ts

• Don’t start your summary by thanking people for visiting your profile.  That will immediately ‘tune them out’.  Give them a good headline to hook them in.
• Don’t include any irrelevant experience and any role that’s more than ten years old is probably history now.
• Don’t put your endorsements at the top.  Most switched-on people think these are low value as you often get ‘endorsements’ from people who don’t know you and have no way of assessing your skills. Do ask your clients to add a recommendation though – these have real value.

This is just for starters – there are many more things you can do to improve your LinkedIn profile and start getting found in searches.

What is your website for?

I usually ask people this question during the first discussion when they ask me to write content for them.  It’s surprising how many of otherwise savvy business people haven’t really thought much about this past ‘Everyone has to have one these days, don’t they?’

To some extent they’re right – there is a credibility issue if you can’t be found on the web, but I do know some businesses that don’t have a website.  They do have a Facebook page though – and work hard keeping it up to date, interacting with customers and building their community.

If you’re going to invest in a website it’s wise to have thought about a few things first:

Who is it for?

If you even think about answering ‘Anybody who wants what we do’; STOP!  You need to be much more focused on your ideal clients or your website will be a bit like jelly, quite nice, maybe attractive – but doesn’t actually fill you up and is impossible to nail down!

If you know who you’re trying to reach, your design and copy will be much better focused and will deliver the information those people are interested in.

How will they find it?

Just because you have a website doesn’t mean that it has a big flashing neon sign saying ‘my website this way’.  Unless it gets found in searches nobody will know it’s there unless you tell them.

That doesn’t mean you need to invest in expensive SEO programmes, but it does mean that you need to think about where your traffic will come from. 

If you have a list then you can email them, but if you haven’t had a website until now, you probably haven’t grown much of a list.  If you’re active on social media you can spread the word via that – and you definitely should be doing this.  In fact, you should have a strategy to bring people to your website by a number of methods.

If you want a website that acts as an online brochure for people who already know about you and want to check you out, then traffic may be less important.

What are they looking for when they arrive on your site?

Knowing who your target visitor is will make it easier to give them what they want.  It’s worth knowing why people buy you – if you’re not really sure ask a few of your existing clients what they like about dealing with your organisation – and, critically, what the results have been. 

This information will make it much easier to deliver to meet expectations and make the visitor’s journey much easier and intuitive.

What do you want them to do before they leave?

It’s surprising how many websites don’t have any kind of call to action – on any of their pages.  You should know what you want visitors to do on every page – whether that’s to:

•         Move to another page
•         Sign up to your free download
•         Read your blog
•         Follow you on Twitter or other social media
•         Complete an enquiry form
•         Pick up the phone and call you
•         Buy something

If you’re clear about this – creating the copy to get results gets much easier.

Whether you’re creating a new website or revamping an existing one – I recommend you answer these questions before you ask for designs or content writing.

You might find the Perfect Client Profile Worksheet a really useful tool.  It’s free and you’ll find it in the Treasure Chest.

Get our Newsletter!

How many websites do you visit and they ask you to ‘sign up’ for their newsletter?

There’s no indication of what the newsletter will deliver and these days most of us are smart enough to recognise it as a means of getting our email address to market to us.

There’s nothing wrong with that – but let’s be honest – do you really want another miscellaneous email in your inbox?  How many of the newsletters you’re already signed up to do you actually read?

If you’re anything like me most get deleted – because they don’t deliver anything of interest or value to me.

A newsletter should deliver value for the reader

Many don’t.  These are NOT value for your reader:

• A new member of staff
• New clients
• An award
• Moving to bigger offices
• A busy month

As Rhett Butler famously said “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

They may all be things you and your team are excited about, but why would a potential, or even an existing, client find these interesting?

Your newsletter, like your blog, is an opportunity to show off your expertise.  Give your reader something useful.  This might be:

• A ‘how to’ article
• Some tips on a subject of interest (in which you are expert)
• Some inside information on developments that are relevant to your target audience
• A case study that explains how to get specific results

Don’t write a long article – short and to the point is the secret of getting your newsletter read.  For an e-newsletter a maximum of three items – one longer information piece, some PR for your latest offer and, maybe, a paragraph on your business updates – in that order.

How to get people to sign up

Everyone gets excited about building your list – and it’s true that it’s a really effective way to market. People who have parted with their email address to get something they want have, effectively, raised their hand and said “I’m interested.”

What will get them interested enough to willingly part with their contact information?

You need an ethical bribe; in other words you give them something of value and they’ll agree to be on your list.

The four things people respond best to are:

• How to ... (something you’re often asked about)
• 10 top tips on ... (your area of expertise – it can be 7 or 17 or any other number, but typically people respond best to odd  numbers – with the exception of 10)
• Your ... Checklist
• The 3 biggest mistakes people make when ... (something you’re expert in)

These don’t need to be long ebooks, a one or two page document delivered as a pdf is enough.  If you happen to have written a good ebook with a catchy title and really good content then you could give that away, but you could also sell it for a nominal amount and just give away the first chapter.

There are different approaches for different companies – you will need to find something that works for you, but remember it’s all about delivering value in the first instance – and then continuing to do so in every communication.  After all – it’s easy to unsubscribe too!