Fail to plan …

It’s that time of year when thoughts turn to a shiny new year and you start making plans (often called New Year’s Resolutions or the Annual Business Plan).  People who know me often hear me referring to them as ‘New Year’s Revolutions’ (with my tongue firmly in my cheek) on the grounds that they will either change the world (a revolution) or come around again next year (a different kind of revolution) because they didn’t happen yet!

However, I do believe that if you don’t have a goal and a plan to achieve it, nothing will happen.  The reason many New Year’s Resolutions or goals in the Annual Business Plan come around again is because the goal hasn’t been broken down into activities with deadlines and/or hasn’t been communicated to the people who will be responsible for helping to achieve it.

When it comes to marketing for your business, think of it as the stuffing for your sausage machine!  If you don’t have a way to keep business flowing in and giving your reputation a lovely, glossy shine you’ll suffer from feast and famine.  This is what happens when you’re so busy you don’t have time to do business generation – until that activity comes to an end and there’s a gaping hole.

A simple marketing plan

This is a basic plan – and you can add to it, but it will ensure that you have at least a foundation for business development.

Ideal client avatar:  This is a detailed description of precisely who you want to work with – their problems, challenges and headaches.  Also where to find them, which social media they are most active on, what they read and watch, where they network or visit.

The tools to reach them:  How you’ll be able to reach them, engage with them and/or influence them.  This will include social media, articles in selected publications or appearances on broadcast media, video material on YouTube, leaflets in their local venues e.g. gyms, clubs, at exhibitions, etc.

Budget:  Everything has a cost, whether it’s actual cash or the cost of your time (or that of your team or a contractor).  How much are you going to invest in business generation?  This is often a percentage of turnover or profit, but ideally it needs to be converted into a hard number of pounds (or whatever currency you operate in) as you don’t pay bills in percentages of your profit!

This now needs to be converted into an equation:

Number of contacts made / number of enquiries generated / number of proposals written = number of sales made.

For example 100 contacts made / 10 enquiries / 3 proposals  = 1 sale made 

So using those stats every sale requires making 100 contacts. 

Your numbers may be different, so you will need to track your results to work out what they are in order to work your own equation out.  Now how will you make the number of contacts you need in order to generate the sales you want.

Your marketing plan will have actions to take, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and as every small action will build to deliver your marketing targets, you’re much more likely to get the results you want.

My tip:  Keep a check on progress at least monthly to ensure the actions are matching the figures in your plan.

An abundant and prosperous 2024 from all of us at Inside News!

What's your style?

There’s a cliché that denigrates ‘style over substance’.  While I agree that style should not be a substitute for substance, style is important.

Your brand is about style – it tells people something about the kind of company you are, your approach to business and represents what you stand for (your values).

The way you talk to people, whether they are customers, potential customers, networking contacts or just people you come into contact with in the course of your day, give them an idea of what to expect from you.  This is especially important when you’re a sole trader or a small business where you are the primary deliverer.  

Style is particularly important when you are creating content.  Whether that’s for your website, a blog post or your newsletter people hear the ‘voice’ of your copy and get an impression of who you are.

Content style can vary enormously from conservative and corporate to quirky and cute and the most frequent influencers are social media and your newsletters (or email campaigns).

Even when you write your own copy, you may find that it doesn’t reflect your real style.  I blame English teachers who emphasis the need for correct – and often pompous – grammar and formally parsed sentences!  As a words geek I’m all for knowing the rules of grammar, punctuation (don’t get me started on apostrophes) and correct spelling, but style sometimes requires breaking the occasional rule!

Your newsletter is probably how your followers most often experience your take on your area of specialism.  It shouldn’t read like a text book; it should read as though you are talking to a friend or a business contact who has asked for enlightenment.

This is where the challenge occurs – and where the skill of a copywriter can achieve results that people who haven’t had that kind of writing training run into trouble.

I know of people who don’t like writing, instead they’ve recorded their thoughts verbally and had them transcribed.  Then they’ve simply published that transcription on their blog or as the value item in their newsletter (or both).  

While your written content should sound like you talking, when you actually talk you don’t speak succinctly – none of us do!  We change direction mid-sentence, several ideas or thoughts can run together, we ‘um’ and ‘er’ – and most of us have some repetitive verbal idiosyncrasies (‘you know’ at the end of sentences or an often repeated word ‘absolutely’, ‘OK’, ‘right’, ‘basically’ are some of the frequent offenders.)  When you speak you have tone of voice to help people to understand what you’re saying – when you write that’s missing and, therefore, your written content needs to be much clearer.   

Regardless of how you create your copy, my top tip is to then read it aloud and you’ll soon discover where the problems occur.  It might be a sentence that is far too long and leaves you gasping for breath or a phrase that you actually would never say.  Edit until it reads fluently – or work with someone who can capture your voice and generate content that sounds just like you.

Social diversity

 

All social media platforms are not equal – and your approach to each one should take that platform’s audience into account when you’re creating social posts.

Not everyone gets that.  Sharing cute cat videos is great on Facebook, but won’t go down so well on LinkedIn.  Does this mean that all the people on LinkedIn aren’t interested in cat videos?  No.  But they are on LinkedIn with their business head on and are interested in getting to know people in a business context.  Cat videos couldn’t be described as business content – unless you happen to be running a cattery and can deliver an appropriate message along with the video.

Someone recently told me that only ‘old’ people are on Facebook now.  I’m not sure my friends (and family) who are in their early 40s and still love Facebook, appreciate being categorised as ‘old’, but younger people are big consumers of video and images, so, if they’re your audience, check out Instagram and TikTok.

Even Snapchat has become ‘old hat’, apparently ‘everyone’ (LOL) is on Instagram now.

Who are your audience?

This question is critical to everything you do in business.  The clearer you are about exactly who you are trying to engage, the better your marketing message will get. 

On social media you can deliver the same message in different ways – appropriate to the platform, but sometimes you need to choose the best place to engage with your audience where they are mostly found – and talk directly to them.

Let’s not ignore the fact that most of us respond to visual material, so a good image or short video will get more attention than text only – even on a business platform.  The thing to get right is the content.

Let’s look at an example:

The core message:  A professional copywriter will deliver a more compelling message than you can do yourself.

LinkedIn version:

How do you know if your website is working?

It’s surprising how few people check if their website is generating enquiries or engagement.  When they do, they’re frequently disappointed by the sparsity of the results.

When I look at their website I can usually spot the problem – and it’s down to one of three things:

·       The message isn’t clear

·       It’s all about the company, not their visitor

·       It’s hard to find what you’re looking for.

These are all related to copy.

The visitor to your website should be able to understand what you’re offering in the first few seconds they’re on your site.  If they don’t, your headline and sub-headline need serious attention.

It may not be what you want to hear, but your visitor is not interested in what you do – they’re only interested in what they get.  The language on your website needs to reflect that.

If they can’t find what they want, your navigation is not doing its job.  Your products or services should be easily found with clear menus and sub-menus.  This is not only having navigation tabs that don’t require thought to understand what they lead to, but also in organising your website to make life as easy as possible for the visitor.

If you suspect that your website might be in need of an upgrade, why don’t you drop me a DM and I’ll be happy to give you some feedback.

The Facebook version:

You could also use this on Instagram.

TikTok would have a video, maybe showing before and after clips of what doesn’t work and what does on a website.  You could also post this on Instagram reels.

For X and Threads, you’d be looking at a short pithy statement –

“I can write, I don’t need a copywriter.”  “I can use a pair of scissors, would you like me to cut your hair?”  There’s a big difference between being able to write good English and understanding how to write commercial copy.

Your social media strategy needs social diversity!