Marketing & Strategy
Advice: How to turn web visitors into web customers
In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed his “hierarchy of needs” – food, safety, love, respect & acceptance – a series of 5 levels that were the building blocks for every human’s existence. In 2009, I’m proposing a new set of 5 ‘needs’ to be able to turn a web visitor into a customer.
Advice: The ‘one percenters’ – a list of small things every business should/shouldn’t do
If the world of business was able to borrow just one phrase from the world of AFL Football, then I’d hope it was the concept of the ‘one percenters’ – the idea that it’s all the little tiny things that players do that win the game for their team. Get enough ‘one percenters’ going your [...]
Advice: Keeping It Simple, Stupid.
Global financial crisis, or *no* global financial crisis, some downtime over Christmas and January is a great time to do some serious navel gazing into your business, take a good hard look at what has as what hasn’t worked in 2008.
‘Keeping it simple’ is just a realisation that over-complicating your business might not be doing you our your customers any favours – the chances are that if *you* get a little confused with your product or service offerings, your customers are certainly scratching their heads, too.
Advice: Search Engine Optimisation 101
Search engine *what*? Yes, yes, sorry if I use too many ‘big words’ this month, but for a lot of businesses, ‘optimising’ your site so that it appears higher in the big search engines is well worth the effort.
So, up front: what is search engine optimisation?
SEO (*much* easier to write than ‘search engine optimisation’) is the process of preparing your web site so that it ranks higher on the search results page of a search engine. The aim is to be seen before your competition – and even though it may or may not result in more clicks through to your web site, at least you were *found* – from that position, you can work on ways to increase your conversion/click-through rate. If you consider the reverse position, where your web site does not feature at all for a given search, then trivial things like your conversion rate won’t matter at all if no-one can find you.
So how the heck to we make sure our site is featured prominently for any given search? And how do I make sure my site is listed before my competitor’s site?
Well, I’m glad you asked. Read on…
Advice: The Cashflow Crunch: Who, what, when and how to survive one
So what really is cashflow? Why is it so important? And how the heck is my business going to survive this trend? Important questions – and if you don’t already know the answers, then it’s vital for your business that you read on…
Advice: Plan A: How to write a good business plan.
A business plan should never be an anchor or a dead weight dragging your business down – and it should never be an onerous task to put one together.
The good news is that there are 3 wildly different types of business plans – each one focussing on a different business purpose – and one of these types of plans should suit your needs perfectly, without undue effort.
Advice: Starting Something New – A ‘How To’ Guide
It all starts here: with the tiny seed of an idea. Perhaps it’s extending your current business into a market of a competitor; perhaps your ‘something new’ is to find a synergistic product or service that you can promote alongside your current range, but that cross-sell each other, and boost your total sales figures.
Folio: How Bazaar Antiques
How Bazaar Antiques is a large warehouse full of wonderful and truly bizarre antiques and collectables. Packed to the rafters with all manner of furniture, garagenalia and valuable antiques, How Bazaar is literally overflowing with many tens of thousands of precious items.
Advice: The Wonders of Web Site Statistics
Marketing is vital for any business – it’s simply the act of getting your name out there in a controlled and positive way. Nine times out of ten, though, marketing is almost impossible to measure: apart from focus groups, surveys and TV ratings, any effort you spend on marketing tends to pay off as a rather long term positive ‘aura’ surrounding your business. It’s all a bit ‘woofy’, but it does add up eventually.
Enter web site statistics: whether you have a tiny one-page ‘contact me’ web site, or a small brochure online, or a larger ecommerce or content-based web site, every person that visits your web site leaves their own individual, indelible mark.
Advice: Online & Offline Marketing: Perfect Partners.
Marketing your business is both a dark art, and an inspired work – that is, even with the best of intentions, marketing is a lot of trial and error, and plenty of hit and miss. Sometimes you make gains with bold new initiatives, but other times you’re just one of the many messages that radiates daily from the business world.