What is Google Places and why as a business should you use this tool?

This online marketing tool provides people with a location map and information about your business. But what’s even more valuable, is that the Google Places listings appear on the first page of a Google search, giving you that vital high search engine visibility.

In itself this is a great way to improve your online presence. Even better, getting a Google Places listing is free. However, like many online tools it’s essential that you use Google Places correctly. So here are some vital tips on how to use Google Places to give your businesses online visibility a huge boost…

1. Complete your Google Places listing correctly:
If you don’t have one, the first thing you need is a Google account. Next make sure you take the time to fill in all the requested information correctly. The systems guides you through this so it’s not difficult, but it does take perhaps an hour of your time to do it right. However, failing to give the information requested may jeopardise the effectiveness of your listing.

2. Don’t forget to verify your listing:
The first time you post your Google Places listing the system will need you to verify who you are. This can be done by telephone or postcard to ensure only you have the permissions to change your listing. When the request comes through, do it immediately.  Not doing this will mean your listing will not go ‘live’. Telephone is the quickest way to get your listing up and running.

3. Use your keywords wisely:
Just like other elements of search engine optimisation you need to use the keywords that are relevant to your location, business, product or service in the text of your listing. This will help the right potential customers find your listing when they are searching online. However, beware of keyword stuffing, that is unnecessary and out of context repetition of your keywords. This includes trying to slip key words into your places title. So don’t use anything other than the correct name of your business in your places title.

6. Consider a promotional coupon:
Google Places also gives you the option to add a promotional coupon to your listing. This may be a discount or special deal that provides that extra incentive for a potential customer to click on your listing. Make sure any promotion is properly costed and is time limited.

7. Integrate Google Places into your online marketing planning
Google Places is a really useful online website marketing tool. However, it’s impact will be even better if it’s not used in isolation. Make sure you are also working on effective natural search engine optimisation (SEO) for your website, and considering using pay-per-click marketing like Google AdWords as well.

If you need help setting up your Google Places listing just ring me on 0845 47 47 486.

Q. I launched my new website three weeks ago having spent a considerable amount of money on it and have been disappointed that it doesn’t seem to appear on the first page of Google. My web designers have said this is quite normal and it takes time to appear, but I need to attract new customers sooner rather than later. So, are they right, and if so, how long does it take?

A. A new website is unlikely to make it onto the first page of Google so soon after launch. Search engines, including Google, need time to index the content of your website and measure its relevance to searches being made.

One important factor of search engine optimisation is how long your website has been around for. The older the website the more authoritative the search engines consider it to be. Other very important elements include how relevant and well search engine optimised your website content is, including key words, phrases and key word density that relate to the key words people are searching for. It’s also vital that you update your website with new website content regularly and the relevant links your website has.There are other factors to consider as well, so I suggest you contact a specialist search engine optimisation (SEO) provider to help you out.

Natural, or organic search engine optimisation (SEO) takes time, typically at least 6 months.These are the listings that appear on the left hand side of a typical search engine results page. Your goal should be to have your website ideally ranked on the first page (top 10) or at least the second page (top 20). This is because research shows only 8%-11& of people searching bother to go beyond the second search engine listings page.

But don’t despair, you can begin to get enquiries to your website much quicker by using pay per click advertising, often known as sponsored listings, Google Adwords or Microsoft adCenter. These are the the results that typically appear on the right hand side, or sometimes the top of the search engine results page. These are shown as sponsored listings or adverts.

An ideal online marketing strategy would be to use both search engine optimisation and pay per click advertising together.

For a free fact sheet ‘7 Essential Tips about Pay Per Click Advertising’ ring 0845 47 47 486 or email me at andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk.

Andrew Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing solutions for growing your business

Marketing advice, ideas and solutions for businesses in the East and West Midlands

0845 47 47 486
www.freshideasmarketing.co.uk
andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk

Q. I’m thinking about using email marketing to promote my service to other businesses, but I’m concerned about being labelled a Spammer. Have you any advice?

A. Done properly email marketing can be one of the most cost effective ways to market your business. The problem is too many people don’t do it properly, which means their emails end up in the Spam or junk email folders of recipients.

One essential is that you use a proper email marketing system rather than trying to cut corners and use MS Outlook. This will allow you to avoid many of the pitfalls that end up with your email marketing being caught by Spam filters. Just as important, a proper system will give you the essential information about what happens to your email marketing campaigns when you send them. How many are delivered, who does and does not open them, what they do when they do open your email, plus a lot more.

There are several systems available which you can often try out for free, such as MailChimp, Constant Contact and Vertical Response. Also important is the quality of the data you use to send your marketing emails to. Poor, inaccurate data is next to worthless and can get you labelled a Spammer, so either build your own accurate email marketing list, or find a reputable list provider and buy in your email marketing data. It’s not as expensive as you might think. In addition, writing effective sales emails or online newsletters is different to writing direct mail sales letters or hard copy newsletters, so if you don’t think you have the copywriting skills, find someone who can help you out.

For a free fact sheet ’10 Essential Tips about using Email Marketing’ ring me on 0845 47 47 486 or email andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk.

Andy Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing solutions for growing your business
Marketing advice, ideas and solutions for businesses in Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Birmingham and the West Midlands

0845 47 47 486
www.freshideasmarketing.co.uk
andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk

Lack of time is the ever present block to marketing activity. But the thing about time is that you make it available for the things that are important. So, is social media marketing important? In my opinion yes it is. It’s about investing time to work on your business not just in your business.

Take blogging for example. Having a business blog can be one of the most powerful tools for improving the online visibility of your business. As with so many aspects of online marketing, it’s all about content. The content of your blog can be used in many ways to improve your website visibility and search engine rankings. And it will work for you 24 hours a day.

So, how much time should you invest in blogging? I suggest a minimum would be 30 minutes a week, but to get real results you should consider devoting 30 minutes a day. It’s not really that much time when you think about it, especially for the return you can get from a consistent effort.

So how do you make the time? The key is some forward planning. So here are a few of tips to help you create the blogging time you need.

1. Make a blogging schedule

There are two things that are essential when creating a blogging schedule. First, block off some time in your diary when you feel your creative juices are flowing. It may be first thing in the morning, or later in the day. Start with perhaps 30 minutes one or two days a week. To start with your blogs are likely to be quite short, but as you grow in confidence they will become longer and more detailed.

If you find putting aside regular daily time difficult the alternative is to have a blogfest once a week.  Make yourself comfortable and write a series of blogs and then schedule your blog posts to be published through the coming week.

Second, spend about 15 minutes a day reading other blogs from people and businesses in your industry. Where appropriate leave comments when you feel you have something of value to say. Doing this will give you extra exposure as well as potentially driving traffic to your own blog and website.

2. Make a list of the subjects to talk about

This allows you to make your blogging time more efficient. It avoids that awful feeling of staring at a blank screen not knowing what you’re going to write about.

Make a list of subjects that will interest your audience. Then make a further list of 5 to 10 subtopics for each subject. If you chose 5 subjects each with 10 subtopics you have 50 ready made blog posts at your fingertips. Now assign these to your blogging schedule. Hey, presto! You now have a three to four month blogging calendar.

3. Decide on the style of your blogs

Choose from a variety of styles to suite each topic. Using different styles will also keep your blog fresh and engaging to the reader.

Styles could include:

• Top 10 Tips
• Case Studies
• How-to
• Personal opinion
• Questions and answers

These are only suggestions on how to plan your blogging. However, if you’re consistent, make your content relevant and engaging it will pay off for you in more online visibility, leading to more leads and more opportunities for your business.

Need help getting started with your blog, or guidance on how to write engaging blog content? Give me a ring on 0845 47 47 486 or email me andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk

Andy Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing solutions for growing your business

Marketing solutions, ideas and advice for businesses in the East and West Midlands

0845 47 47 486
www.freshideasmarketing.co.uk
andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk

1. Your Mailing List

Are you contacting the right people? Is your list similar to your existing profitable customers? Test your list before using it for a full mailing. Make it personal, not addressed to “The Managing Director” or “The Owner”.

2. Your Marketing Offer

Taking time to ensure your offer is targeted at your audience will pay dividends. It should be a combination of your product/service, its features and benefits and any time-sensitive offer.

3. Timing

Test sending your mailing to segments of your mailing list at different times of the year. Experience shows the best week can be up to twelve times as responsive as the worst. This difference is significant, yet few businesses think about timing mailings.

4. Your Content

Test your content. This includes the letter; long or short copy, colour or mono, the headline and the post script. Test the envelope; window, non-window, size and colour. Test postage; first or second class, mailsort, stamps or franked. Most important, make sure the content is well-written.

5. Response methods

People like to choose the way to respond, so have at least three option. For example; a responder and business reply envelope, telephone number, fax number, email address or web based enquiry form.

For further direct mail marketing solutions and information go here.

Andy Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing solutions for growing your business

0845 47 47 486
www.freshideasmarketing.co.uk
andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk

Marketing ideas, advice and support for businesses in the Midlands

The 7 Second Test

Too many websites give visitors such a bad impression or user experience. Statistics show you have 7 seconds to persuade a website visitor to stay. In truth I’m sure we’ve all visited websites where after just one look we’ve clicked and moved on. The question you need to ask is, ‘Does my website give such a poor impression?’

Make sure you are measuring your website’s performance effectively. So many businesses have no idea how many potential customers visit their website, or what they do when they’re actually on their website. If you lack that information it’s impossible to know how to start improving your website. So it’s essential that you use website analytics software to help you understand who your visitors are, where they are coming from, and how they are using your site.

The good news is that many tools, including the popular Google Analytics, are absolutely free. You can then use the vital information provided to improve the visitor experience and drive more and better quality traffic to your site.

Learn the SEO basics

Having your website rank as high as possible on search engines should be one of your top online marketing goals. So it’s no surprise that I’m often asked, “what’s the one thing that will help my website improve its ranking on search engines?” In truth there isn’t one ‘magic bullet’, but there are several important factors that really cannot be ignored. One of these is the text content of your website.

Content is King

Search engines love content, especially up to date, relevant content. Adding new content and keeping it up to date is really important, so having a Content Management System (CMS) on your website is a must. Use newsletters, blogs, forums and articles to help you keep the content of your site fresh. There are lots of free tools you can use to help you. For example, I use a WordPress blog which is very simple to use and very easy to sign up for. Just Google ‘Wordpress blog’, sign up and you’ll be blogging in no time.

Make it relevant and key word rich

Make sure the content of your website is relevant to your audience and reflects the key words or phrases you want to promote through your search engine campaign. The key words need to be used in context rather than needless repetition, known as ‘keyword stuffing’ which will end up getting you penalised by search engines. How often the key words are used (keyword density) is another factor. You can have too little or too much; it’s reckoned that between 3-8% is about right.

But writing key word rich relevant content is time consuming and often harder than you think. Finding an experienced website content copywriter will save you time and money in the long run.

Think social media

Social media is a really important tool for businesses of every size. It provides you with the opportunity to interact directly and personally with a huge number of potential customers, and increase awareness of your company, products, services and brand very quickly.

The best known tools for social media marketing include LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Take the time to find out how these can benefit your business and how to link them to your website. Deciding which ones to use will depend on whether you are in the business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C) markets and the type of customers you want to attract.

A Balanced Solution

However, it’s vital to remember that online marketing is just one of the tools you should be using for your marketing activities. You need to integrate the different marketing you use to produce a balanced and powerful marketing strategy to build your business.

Click here for more information on deciding which marketing solutions are best for your business.

Readers can get a free guide to “12 Ways to Build Your Business with Online Marketing” by ringing me at Fresh Ideas Marketing on 0845 4747486, or emailing andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk

Customers are ever more careful about how they spend their hard earned cash; they want value for their money. Although price is important, this doesn’t always mean cheap, but it does mean customers want to make sure that the product or service they buy is really what they need, at the right price and of the right quality.

Businesses are also ever more mindful of how they spend their tight budgets. Customers are their life blood, but more than ever they need to find the right profitable customers for their product or service and then hang onto them. The problem is that many businesses are still trading in yesterday’s market, when customers were easier to find and more eager to part with their money, rather than the very different market of today.

Marketing – the key to a business thriving, not just surviving

Marketing is the common key to customers finding the right product or service, and businesses identifying the right customers to buy from them.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing define marketing as ‘The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.’

But in the current economic climate business owners have often been forced to cut back on budgets, which often includes marketing.  Either that, or they are working so hard to just keep their business afloat, they don’t have the time to do marketing, or more likely, to do it effectively.

The irony is that during difficult economic times, marketing needs to increase not reduce. Typically a business should be looking at investing between 5% and 8% of revenue on marketing. But investing money in marketing is only part of the equation. Using the right marketing and knowing what works and what doesn’t is just as essential. The old marketing adage, ‘I know half of my marketing works, I just don’t know which half’, is all too true, and results in many businesses wasting valuable time and money. A common mistake is that a business puts all of their marketing eggs in one basket, rather than using several types of marketing activity to test and measure marketing effectiveness. Either that, or they try some new aspect of marketing and when it doesn’t work first time they just stop.

Talking with business owners it’s clear they know the importance of marketing, but often don’t have a written marketing plan, don’t measure the results from their marketing, or just don’t have the time to do more than the basics.

Marketing is both a science and an art, so you really can’t be sure what will work and what will not until you test it and measure your results. This raises two important issues for successful marketing; time and knowledge. In truth, for many SME sized businesses, lack of time to do marketing and/or lack of knowledge can be seriously restricting factors to effective marketing activity.

Business owners need to be honest with themselves and realise they cannot always do everything if they are going to take the opportunities to grow their business so it can thrive rather than just survive.  Many businesses are already familiar with outsourcing other business functions, so why should marketing be any different?

Many business owners are crying out for a marketing mentor, in effect an outsourced marketing manager to be an additional resource to use when needed. It’s all about empowering a business owner to have the opportunity to work on their business rather than just in their business.

Readers can obtain a free fact sheet, “10 Essential Tips to Effectively Market your Business” by ringing Fresh Ideas Marketing on 0845 47 47 486, or emailing andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk

But SME business owners cannot just rely on possible support from central Government to ensure their businesses thrive, not just survive in the coming year.

A key element of the success of any businesses is marketing. But more than that, it’s having a practical, workable marketing plan. For more information on the elements of an effective marketing plan, click here. 

So many business owners I talk to struggle to either put together a marketing plan, or to put their marketing plan into action. This isn’t because they don’t know how important a marketing plan is, it’s usually because they are so tied up with the day-to-day activities of working in their business, that they have so little time to work on their business, which includes their essential marketing activity.

That’s where I can help. I have the time, knowledge and experience to help SMEs put together a strategic marketing plan. But more than that I will also provide proven, practical, workable marketing ideas and solutions to turn those plans into marketing campaigns that boost enquiries and sales to give a real return on investment to build a business that will thrive, not just survive in 2011.

In effect my business is helping you build your business. By becoming an ad hoc marketing manager I provide the valuable extra flexible resource in terms of time and expertise that many business owners struggle to find in their own businesses.

Now is the time to start to put together your marketing plan for 2011.

Allow me to help you make 2011 an even more successful year for your business. Ring me now on 0845 4747486 or email me at andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk .

Here’s to your successful future.

Regards
Andy Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing solutions to grow your business.

In many cases the answer to why a business has a website goes along the lines of, ‘I need a website because my competitors have one,’ or ‘I need a website because I’ve been told I should have one.’ 

Often, their first step in getting a website is also their first mistake. They hand the whole website project over to a web designer, developer or frequently a graphic designer with web skills. Now don’t get me wrong, in general web designers and developers do a great job at doing just that, designing and developing a website. However, they are not the people you should be speaking to when it comes to deciding why you want a website and how a website can market and build your business in terms of boosting enquiries and sales.

Before anyone starts putting design pencil to paper, or writing one piece of website code there are several crucial decisions that need to be made about website objectives, target market, strategy, marketing and ‘calls to action’.

In fact, I suggest there are 5 essential steps to creating your highly profitable website:

1. Setting your online marketing objectives

2. Deciding on your online marketing strategy

3. Agreeing on the structure and usability of your website

4. Deciding on your website page content and design

5. Creating the content of your website

Click here for 7 more tips to an effective website marketing solution.

I’ll be covering each of the 5 steps listed above in subsequent blogs. But if you can’t wait to get your website generating more enquiries and sales, why not give me a ring on 0845 47 47 486 or email me at andrewkinnard@freshideasmarketing.co.uk and we’ll arrange a free no obligation meeting to get you started right away on a new website, or reviewing your existing site.

Andy Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing – Midlands based marketing adviser
Marketing Solutions for Growing Your Business

None of the above are good ways to decide how you’re going to invest your money in building your business. A marketing plan is essential before you spend anything on running any marketing campaigns. 

Your marketing plan should include at least five different ways of promoting your business to your potential customers and existing customers. If you don’t have a least five, listed below are just a few marketing ideas to promote your business. However, to be able to effectively use any of these marketing ideas you need to make sure you understand your markets, your customers and the benefits of your product or service. 

So here’s a list of just 21 of the hundreds of marketing ideas you can use to promote your business. Of course you can’t do them all and not all of them will be suitable for your business, but some certainly will. They’re in no particular order, but I hope they will inspire you to think about what you can use to improve your marketing. So my challenge is that you choose just three of them and put them into action. 

If you’re unsure which to choose or you need help to get them organised, don’t worry that’s why I’m here. I will provide the solutions you need to make sure you choose the right marketing to build your business through more enquiries and sales. Just call me now on 0845 47 47 486 for a free, no obligation initial meeting and let me help grow your business. 

1. Do a personalised direct mail campaign
2. Start using personalised email marketing
3. Ask for and use customer testimonials
4. Create a blog for your business
5. Use social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
6. Create a website for your business
7. Update or redesign an existing website
8. Get your website onto search engine rankings using search engine optimisation (SEO)
9. Use pay per click (PPC) advertising i.e. Google Adwords
10. Send a press release
11. Update your company brochure
12. Revamp your business card and letterheads
13. Run a seminar
14. Display your business at an exhibition
15. Join a networking group
16. Join your local Chamber of Commerce
17. Do a targeted leaflet drop
18. Start an online newsletter
19. Get a local call rate 0845 telephone number
20. Provide free guides or tips via your website
21. Get listed on your industry online directories

Here’s to your marketing success.

Andy Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing Solutions for growing your business