Online marketing is three things – your website, social media and email marketing.

Your Website

Purpose – to provide information about your business.

• Explain how you help people. Keep it clear and simple. Describe their problem, how you fix it and how great they will feel afterwards.  Focus on the benefits of what you offer.  Find out more 
• Use your website to build trust so that your website visitors feel confident in buying from you.  Testimonials, clear contact details, a personable, authentic About page. Maybe a blog.  Find out more
• Include Calls to Action – one on every page – to encourage potential clients to get in touch, or to take some action e.g. download a free checklist

Email Marketing/ Newsletters

Purpose – to keep in touch with your most likely ‘prospects.’  A list of clients, ex-clients and potential clients.

“The money is in the list.”  Email marketing is the most effective form of marketing

• Send regular emails to your list with content that will be of interest and value to them.  Over 90% of interested potential customers are not ready to buy when they first come across you. Regular emails keep you in touch with them so that, when they are ready to buy, you will be top of mind.

Social Media

Purpose – to raise awareness of your business and encourage people to find out more about you.

Social media can create an engaged community who become your customers and cheerleaders, sharing your posts across their networks.

• Choose 1 or 2 social media channels and do them well.  If you’re not sure which is best for your business:
  • Facebook and Instagram work well for Business to Consumer businesses.  Facebook is best for an older audience, Instagram for the under 30’s.
  • LinkedIn is designed for Business to Business connections
  • Twitter works well for both and is used by all age groups.
• Post a variety of content on social media. Combine some promotional items with interesting and helpful ones.
• Build your online social network by sharing relevant content from other people.

How Am I Doing?

It’s really important that you check the impact and results of your marketing efforts. There are lots of free tools available to help you measure your results:

• Google Analytics – gives you a fantastic range of information about visits to your website.  Find out more
• Email – Mailchimp, Aweber and other e-marketing systems give you useful information on open rates and clickthroughs.
• Facebook and Instagram Insights and Twitter Analytics give you information on the numbers of people who have liked and shared your posts, how many new followers you’ve acquired and lots more.

1.  Happy customers lead to more customers!

Testimonials from satisfied clients are the most powerful way to persuade people to buy from you.  Check out your customer feedback and testimonials.

• Are they displayed in a prominent place on your website?  Are you using them on social media too?
• Have you gathered all the positive feedback you could?  If not, get in touch with recent happy clients and ask them for some!

Ninja tip #1 – Gather snippets from client reviews in a spreadsheet and put them out as occasional social media posts.  A scheduling tool like Hootsuite makes this even easier.

Ninja tip #2  –  Include your client’s location in their testimonial on your website for extra local search engine pickup.

More about the power of testimonials in this Can Your Website Be Trusted? blog post.

2.  Consistency is the key 

Are you sending out a consistent message across all media – print, website. blog, email, social media?  Check your social media profiles.  Do they match the info on your website’s About page?  Make sure that your messaging is clear and consistent across all your marketing channels.

3.Generate some customer action!

Don’t let interested prospective clients drift away from your website or social media posts. Encourage them to do something to deepen their relationship with you before they leave.

Every page of your website and every social media post should have a Call to Action – phone me, email me, connect with me, download my freebie, read this blog post, go to this webpage.

You might find the  “Think, Feel, Act” paradigm helpful:

Think – the words you write are what you want them to think.

Feel – the image you choose shows how you want them to feel.

Act  –  the suggested action to draw them into your online community, or your sales funnel.

Testimonials from happy customers, consistent messaging and Calls to Action. Three ways to help your business get a headstart on the competition.

BT and ITV have collaborated on a series of adverts designed to help viewers through the Coronavirus crisis.  They include tips on working from home with Clare Balding, and how to download podcasts with Rylan Clark-Neal.

The one I want to highlight is “Taking your business online.” This short video is fronted by Jake Humphrey, a presenter who sports fans will be very familiar with!  In it he explains very well the things business owners need to think about to get their business noticed online.  It is definitely worth a watch.

Watch Jake Humphrey’s 3-minute Taking Your Business Online video

Three things to pick up on:

Email – if you’re going to email your customers as suggested, either do this individually or, if you email them as a group, make sure you use the BCC (blind copy) feature so that they don’t all see each other’s email addresses. This would be a major breach of GDPR!  This is where an email marketing system (Mailchimp, Aweber etc.) comes into its own.

LinkedIn  – if you want to set up or improve your presence on LinkedIn it’s very important to get your Profile and its headline right. Make sure your headline includes the keywords you want to get picked up for in searches.

Bespoke content  – this is key to getting your message out online.  Jake talks about writing helpful content such as ‘How to’ guides and blogs. If the idea of writing your own content scares the life out of you, do get in touch!  Or check out my post “How to create blog posts that will attract new clients” to get started.

Many small businesses are seeing a big reduction in visits to their website as a result of the Coronavirus epidemic. But there is another way to reach potential customers, which has nothing to do with your website and the vagaries of Google! Your email list.

Email lists are proving soooo valuable to many businesses at this time. An obvious example is the exercise instructor who is now offering online classes instead of in-person sessions.  If they have an email list it is super-easy for them to contact lots of their clients, past clients and potential clients. So that they can quickly move their business to an online model.

Emails are also a great way to keep in touch with potential customers, even if money is tight and they’re not able to buy from you just now. Keeping alive that relationship with them through the hard times, will pay dividends in the long term. It builds trust. When they are in a position to buy what you offer, you will have the edge over other businesses who haven’t shown the same commitment.

But I don’t have an email list!

If you don’t have an email list, tools like Mailchimp make it easy to set one up.

And if you’ve got a list but haven’t sent an email for ages, don’t worry!  We’re living through strange times and the chances are people will be delighted to hear from you!

Here are some of my blog posts on the subject of email marketing to help get you started:

The Power of an Email Newsletter

How to create emails that get results

Why GDPR is good news

Or check out my email newsletter services.

Christmas is a peak sales time for many businesses. Here are a few tips to help you maximise the effectiveness of your Christmas marketing.  Now is the time to start planning.

1. Schedule – first of all put together a schedule of key dates and work back from those. Black Friday, Christmas Day, last day for Christmas orders……
2. Be a helpful resource  – your customers will be bombarded with promotions and sales-y emails during the pre-Christmas period.  Be the voice of calm!  Write helpful, relevant social media posts and emails.  Whatever your audience will find useful and of interest. It’s worth putting some time and effort into creating quality, helpful content. People will remember you for it.  This will depend on your business but some examples would be:
   • Advice on planning a Christmas party
   • Shopping ideas for those ‘difficult to buy for’ people!
   • Ways to minimise stress during the festive period
3. Make the most of the personal. One of the advantages of being a small business is that you can come across as more real and relevant to people’s lives than a big business.  Make the most of personal experiences, whether about your clients or about you, to promote your products or services. Do you have photos, videos or stories from previous Christmasses that you can use?

Use your experience and your imagination to come up with effective, relevant and attention-grabbing ideas!

And Finally…..  These Online Marketing Principles Work All Year Round!

The three key principles  –  Scheduling, Relevance and Personal Connection –  apply all year round, to all types of business. They’re not just for Christmas!  So, even if yours is a business that isn’t focussed on Christmas sales, you can apply these principles very effectively to any online marketing campaign.

Happy Christmas Marketing!