|
So you want to reach your customers. You send out marketing materials, then more, then more. Yet you still don’t receive the response you want. In fact the response is actually decreasing now, which instinctively makes you try harder. Is it possible to overly market? It sure is. This is actually a very detrimental activity for your business.
When you decide to directly market to your prospects – whether it’s via social media and email, or printed materials like direct mail pieces – be careful how you do it. It’s easy to cross the line into spamming and degrade your image. Choosing how to conduct your marketing activities depends on the type of business you own, and what you are trying to sell. To avoid turning off your customers and decreasing your prospects, choose your marketing tactics carefully. Any good marketing person can help you with this if you aren’t sure which direction to go. But a good rule of thumb is: don’t repetitively spam your prospects with emails, direct mail, etc. in a very short period of time. It’s like receiving a phone call everyday from the same company, saying the same thing, with the same tone, and the same words. How long would it take you to stop answering the phone? Not long. Think about what this means for your business. If you need to increase interaction with your prospects, vary your materials and let them have the option to view it rather than forcing it upon them. Employ more inbound marketing strategies. Save the messages you really want them to see for planned campaigns and outbound marketing. That way you will get their attention when you really need it, but not turn them off by continuously shoving a bug in their ear. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs.
0 Comments
Blogs seem to be the hottest trend on the internet. Many companies are adding them to their websites in the hopes of increasing their customer base. But is this always a good idea? It depends on the company, and it depends on who is in charge. Here are some things to consider.
1. Can you write? If you are going to run and/or write a blog, first and foremost you have to be able to write. And to write well. Blogs are used to drive traffic to your site and to demonstrate knowledge and expertise. They are also used to engage your market in relevant trends and keep them updated on things that are going on in your organization or field of work. But if you can’t write with skill…then don’t write a blog. Let’s imagine a scenario where a potential customer sees an interesting blog title and clicks on it. They have arrived at your website, which was goal number one. Great! Now they start reading the blog entry and find that the wording is jumbled, there are spelling errors, it doesn’t flow, and overall they just can’t understand the message very well. What just happened? You just lost a customer. Why? Because you lost credibility. So before you add a blog to your site, consider whether or not you have the writing skills to successfully run one. And if you don’t, employ outside help to write or edit your content to make sure it stays professional. 2. Can you consistently add content? If you maintain a blog, you have to be able to consistently add content to it. It doesn’t have to be every day, although this is ideal. But it should be on a regular basis so readers stay tuned into it, view you as credible and invested in your company, and even start following you on RSS feeds and the like. A stagnant blog loses its effectiveness. It’s almost like that can of expired soup that ends up at a discount store – at one time it looked really appetizing and was worth some money, but it’s now sat there unattended so long that it’s no longer in the forefront of most shoppers’ grocery experience. And its worth has devalued to a discount price. Blogs need to stay relevant, they need to be active, and they need to keep moving. A living, breathing blog is an effective blog. And one that can convert prospects into paying customers. 3. Will a blog really benefit your particular offering(s)? Before undertaking the time and monetary cost of running a blog, consider its value to your company. What are you selling? Is it a product or a service? What topics around that product or service can you discuss in a blog? Is there enough there to make it worth the time and effort? Make sure you know the answers to those questions before you add a blog to your website. You don’t want to embark on the journey, only to find out that after 10 posts you no longer have anything to say. Good writers know how to continuously find topics to write about. It’s a skill that you can learn, or that you can hire someone to do for you. But regardless, blogs are not relevant for every company. Other marketing efforts may be worth more for your particular company depending on what you are trying to sell, and how much information about that particular item or service is really out there. Think hard about the return you are trying to get on a blog investment, before investing in one. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. Let’s think about what the job of a grant writer is: to use words to sell an organization to a particular target. Now let’s think about it further: isn’t this what a top notch marketing communications professional does?
What do you look for when looking for a grant writer? Someone who has years of non-profit experience? Someone who can write well? Someone who has worked at your organization in the development department for years and years? Well I’m here to argue that you should base your search on factors outside of just these entities. And that in fact, a good grant writer may not necessarily have the background you might think. An understanding of the nonprofit sector is important for a grant writer, as is an understanding of your organization’s goals and mission. However any marketing manager or marketing communications professional that goes into a new company has to learn these things - these are not unique abilities that can’t be grasped quickly. The important thing to look for is the SKILL SET the person brings to the job. Those are the things that can’t be learned, and that can be beneficial or detrimental to your organization. When you are looking for a grant writer, look instead at whether or not they have a true communications background, and exactly what type of background that is. Can they create words that sell? This skill set comes with marketing communications. Can they create succinct, informative copy that is easy to read and understand? This skill set comes with technical writing. Ideally you want to find a professional who possesses both of these skills, because a grant proposal involves doing two things: presenting a lot of information in a very succinct and organized way, and presenting that information in a way that sells to the person reading it. Finding a writer with that combination of skills, plus a desire to work in the nonprofit world, will help you have more success with developing your nonprofit organization. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. Every business owner would love to sit at home and watch their business grow, turn profits, and expand without having to invest 60+ hours a week to do so. Is there a way to sell your business without investing excessive amounts of time and money as a business owner? There is. But it takes good marketing sense and an understanding of the tools available to you.
One of the most important ways to sell your business is through its materials. The website you run, the direct mail pieces you create, the information you present to customers on sales calls or other interactions. Researching and managing those campaigns, and managing them well, is extremely important. But let’s not forget the tools themselves – the materials. Writing is a huge part of selling your business without having to work, because the written word sells your product or service on your behalf when you can’t be there to sell it yourself. Words are a 24/7, no holidays and no days off way of selling your business without incurring the costs of a new staff member. Can you really make a sales call to every potential client? And even if there weren’t geographical and time limitations, could you really afford to hire a massive force of sales personnel to reach each and every one of the potential conversions in your market? No, you can’t. Nobody can. There are too many people, too many businesses, and too many markets in this world. No single person or group of people can reach all of them by using manpower alone. This is why good writing is so important. Hire your business people, hire your campaign managers, hire your product developers. But then find a talented writer. Talented writers know how to create materials that can convert prospects into customers without much work on your part. The customers begin coming to you out of intrigue and interest, instead of you having to try to constantly go and find them. Selling your business without having to work? Yes, it can be done. Whatever your business size, constantly evaluate the effectiveness of your materials. If you are not having the conversion rates you want, give a contractor a trial run on a small project. See what they can do. You might just find you can save money and grow your business. And that is a good return on your investment. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. The challenge with traditional user manuals is that they can often become jumbled and hard to understand. And in an effort to fix this issue, writers can try to employ what I call "look over here" techniques to minimize the wordiness and simplify the content. I have found this approach to be extremely ineffective most of the time.
Why? Because user manuals are not meant to be flipped through 10 times for one task. That is what online help is for. So how can we create a good user manual? Well, we do so by dividing the content up and presenting it in a self-contained manner. In this way, ALL of the information necessary to perform that task is present in that section of content. Take this basic scenario of a sample page from a user manual, and see if you can tell what's wrong with it: Logging into the application 1. Open the Start Menu. If you do not know how to access the Start Menu, see page 5. 2. Locate Application A, and double click to open it. For more information about how to do this, see page 2. If you do not see the program listed, go to page 6 for troubleshooting. 3. On the login screen, enter your user name. For more information about where to get your user name, see page 3. 4. Enter your password. If you have forgotten your password or are not sure what your password is, see page 4. 5. Click OK to log in. Does it look concise and pretty? Yes. Does it appear easy to scan? Sure. But is it effective? No. Why? In the scenario above, we have turned five simple steps into an extremely complex, page-flipping process whereby the user has to go from page to page in order to perform a simple task. The workflow looks something like this: page 1, page 5, page 1, page 2 or page 6, page 1, page 3, page 1, page 4, page 1. Why put the user through this? And imagine if the pages weren't close together or there were 20 steps in the process? Let's say the manual was 200 pages long, and the user had to flip from page 25, to page 72, to page 4, to page 169, etc... The best way to format a user manual is to create self-contained modules that have all of the necessary information within the module. Page flipping should be minimized. However you must be careful to format the text so that it still maintains its readability. How do we do this? By using bullets and notes. My rule of thumb is: have your main action in the step, and any supplementary instructions in bullets or a note. That way, if the user doesn't need the extra help, he/she can move forward quickly and not be encumbered by excess information. Want to read more? View my expanded blog post here, where I go more in depth on the topic. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. So you own a business, or you are growing a business, or you are launching a new product or service. While at first glance entities like sales personnel and product quality (hey, a lot of people successfully sell very poor quality products!) can seem much more important than writing, writing is actually very large part of what drives new business, sells existing products and services, and promotes continued interest in what you offer. How so? Well let me explain.
Most likely you arrived at this website because of something I wrote. I speak directly to a handful of prospects everyday, but not enough to cover all of the traffic my website receives. And not enough to attract the amount of service inquiries and quote requests I get. Think about the websites you visited yesterday, or this year. How did you get there? Maybe you searched for something. Or you saw something. Or the way something was described or written intrigued you enough to want to learn more. Maybe it was on Google. Maybe it was on a social networking site. Maybe it was sent to you by a friend. But you saw words. Think about the ads on TV. What makes those ads compelling…or not? Are we watching silent films? Or are we hearing people speak, and watching text come across the screen, and looking at branding and taglines? Words. Words are powerful. Words are used in every aspect of business, from print and web ads, to radio and television campaigns, to business procedures and contract negotiations. The words that sell are words that took thought and talent to create. Have you taken a look at how your words are performing? How much are you willing to invest in your business communications? Find talent in this area. It’s the number one way to continue to grow your business when you can’t be there. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. If you are feeling overwhelmed and trying to figure out where to start with marketing your business, here is a quick five step guide to get you going:
Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. So you created a website. Great! But do you know how it's performing? Do you know which content is effective, and which isn't? Do you know where people are entering your site and where they are leaving?
This is where a program like Google Analytics comes in. How do you use Google Analytics? Well, you insert a bit of code into your website code, and Google extracts all kinds of useful information from your site to help you continue to monitor and improve its performance. What kind of information, you ask? Well it tells you things like:
Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. I just came across a posting on a freelance site. It said something along the lines of, "I want a new website designed, I want it to be number 1 on Google, and my business opens in a month." Hmmm....is that really possible? No, honestly it's not. Unless you want to pay to get your listing at the top (via Adwords), which can become costly if your website is ineffective. So how can you get your site to number one without having to pay extra?
Getting listed on the first page of a Google search is not a fast or easy process. Not only do you have to first get your site listed so that it will even show up in search engines, but you have to establish a presence and start driving traffic to it. Moving up in the Google rankings has to do with how you create your website copy, how you create your URLs, what types of information you contain in your site, and how people find you. If your site is stagnant and rarely accessed, it will start falling into obscurity and will never appear in searches. If your site is active and thriving, eventually you will move up in the rankings and hopefully make it into that first page of listings. The key is to get your site up and running, monitor traffic using a program like Google Analytics, and make sure it is functioning effectively. You need to monitor how people are finding you, where they are moving around in your site, and whether or not they are leaving your site immediately (this is what we talk about with the term "bounce rate"). There are a few ways to help drive traffic to a brand new site. The best way is to focus on inbound marketing - or, having people find you by linking to your site from other places. How can you do this effectively? Do some research on your own. Or hire a marketing consultant or freelancer to help you. A knowledgeable freelancer who understands how to write website copy can help you find the best ways to drive traffic to your site, and eventually get you closer to that coveted #1 slot. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. There are thousands upon thousands of writers out there. The rates they charge are anywhere from dirt cheap to really expensive. How can you find a good freelance writer? And what should you look for?
The first thing is a polished website. If the website is not appealing, think about the skills of the person who created it. In general a writer will have created their own website, or at least the copy within it. Is it visually appealing? Does it catch you and draw you in? Is it informative and persuasive? If not...well, don't expect the work they do for you to be of any higher quality. A writer's website is their calling card, and their marketing tool. It should be an example of their best work. If it doesn't look impressive to you, move on. Because your potential clients may react similarly to your materials/website if they are looking at work from that particular writer. Another important thing to look for is breadth of knowledge. Can this writer only write articles? Can they only write marketing copy? Can they only write blogs? But why would you care, anyway, if all you want is a blog writer? Well...a good writer can write for any medium and any audience. Specializing in something is great, being limited to one or two areas is not. Why? Because writers need to be able to get into the minds of their intended audience. And to craft whatever type of writing is necessary in order to meet the client's objectives. If the writer you are considering can only write in one area, will they really be able to effectively sell YOUR particular needs? And what if you find that your business grows, and you want to expand to other areas? Do you really want to have to go out and find another writer all over again, because your current one cannot deliver? A final thing to look for is professionalism and confidentiality. Does the writer willingly give out client samples to anyone and everyone who asks for them? Are there links to proprietary information on their website? Or is the writer careful about maintaining disclosure agreements and guarding their clients' key business information? You want a writer you can trust. If they don't portray trust and professionalism in their interactions and work samples, move on to the next one. And always remember: you get what you pay for. A cheap writer is like immediate gratification - the low up front cost is nice, but the long-term effects on your business end up costing you more. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. |
Contact me at [email protected].
Welcome to my blog. Please use the Category links below to find topics of interest to you, or just scroll through current postings. Receive new postings via email:
Categories
All
Archives
November 2014
|
RSS Feed
