Three Essential Tips For Starting a Business In 2013

Anyone starting a new business will go through a similar internal pondering. Questions about income, cash flow, client base, risk and profit will go around in your head for hours, days, weeks, even months or years. But for those of you bravely stepping out in 2013 to start a new business, here are the best three tips I have learned.

Help me if you can….

One of the best ways to ensure success in your new business is to know where to look for help. Try to swallow your pride and ask friends and family for their opinion, and their help. Sometimes those that know you best will give the most honest answer. And sometimes it helps to just have the support of loved ones.

Then move further out and get advice from professionals. Consider getting a mentor accountant, marketing specialist or sales coach to help you along the way. Find out what local government schemes are available. Often there are small business grants and free resources available to you so use it to your advantage.

Focus on the goal

Focus and determination are your two new best friends. Chant the words every day; write them down and stick it to your laptop… anything to make you remember these two “friends”. Do not give up at the first hurdle, or the second or the 10^th! Instead, keep focused on the goal. Why are you setting up this business? What are you willing to sacrifice to make it work? Do not get distracted by trivial things. Stay focused and you are more likely to make great decisions and be successful.

Walk the talk

Produce great work, great service and even better outcomes. Simply put, if you impress your first client, then more will come. Also be careful not to promise what you can’t deliver. Whatever your business is, make sure you deliver the best work to the client. If you are starting your own cupcake business, make sure those damn cupcakes are delicious, look good and are hand delivered for the first order with a big fancy bow and a voucher for the next booking. This might sound over the top, but wow-ing your first clients will ensure that positive word of mouth spreads, and that you gain a great reputation that you can build on in other forms of marketing.

There are countless bits of advice people can give you and lessons to be learned. But follow these three points and you are on the road to success already.

Scaleogy.com, ‘The Success Catalyst’ announced today that their website traffic has grown thanks to Pinterest Traffic. Pinterest is a visual social media platform that is growing rapidly and is now believed to be the 3^rd most popular social network.

Pinterest Traffic is massively boosting website traffic in many niches in 2012.

This isn’t going to stop in the near future with the visual social media platform growing day by day. Scaleogy launched an innovative new section on their website, titled simply ‘Eye Candy’

“2013 is looking like the year of Pinterest and we are most certainly on board” says Ben Hulme the founder of Scaleogy.com ‘the Success Catalyst’.

Pinterest is growing at an alarming rate and there is a lot more to it than posting up your favourite images. It’s also a huge traffic generation tool for many businesses, and even though I have only just started Eye Candy, the traffic stats have been amazing.

“We all know that online businesses are dead without traffic, so it is important to look into all avenues these days. Leveraging the larger social platforms such as Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are essential for surviving online these days” Says Ben.

Scaleogy is a website bringing the best of the best to those living a lifestyle of luxury and inspiring those striving towards it.  Pinterest is a fantastic visual platform, which is the perfect fit to show case all the wonderful images from the articles on their website.

“Each image has a link back to our website. This means that when a Pinterest user looks at the image and clicks on it, they are immediately redirected back to our website. This is hugely powerful and a perfect fit for the nature of our business in the lifestyle and luxury market” Ben says.

If your business is visual or uses images in anyway then you should really head over to Pinterest and set up your account now. It’s very easy to use, quickly sign up and then create your ‘boards’ you can then upload images from your website or directly from your computer.

Then get social; you can interact with other users, follow them and comment on their images. You can also ‘re-pin’ other peoples images. Which enables their followers to see your images. So if you have a very popular image then this can go viral very quickly spreading round the entire network.

You can follow Scaleogy on Pinterest or check out their website for more about luxury and lifestyle brands, products and services.

Summary

Pinterest is a great tool for businesses, but not all businesses. Scaleogy is a great example of how a recent Pinterest launch can affect traffic to your website, however their niche is perfect for ‘Pinning.’

So how can a local business use Pinterest? Other great examples would be for Landscape gardeners – images of your latest beautiful works, Building and renovation services – images of your recent projects, Handmade or craft items – images of your latest creation and so on.

Have you used Pinterest for Business recently? Have you had any recent success?

4 Common Marketing Plan Mistakes to Avoid

A marketing plan provides business owners with insight into which strategies and techniques are the most efficient for conducting their marketing efforts. Despite its simplicity, the process of developing this plan may be overcomplicated or completely ignored by some business owners. Knowing the four common marketing plan mistakes to avoid can decrease the number of bumps in your business journey.

 Fails to develop a marketing plan. Although this is an essential aspect of starting your business, many business owners often find themselves skipping over this step.

Once they’re ready to move forward with their marketing efforts, they’re unable to do so because the most important piece of the puzzle is missing. Venturing into the market without a strategy for attracting potential customers to purchase your goods or services is a recipe for disaster. Take the time to develop a marketing plan with the process by which you intend to present your business to its potential market. You may not get it right the first time. However, as you move forward with your marketing efforts, you’d be able to fine tune different areas of your plan.

Omits valuable information. Your goal is to present as much information as possible without losing the essence of your marketing plan. Many business owners focus on achieving the end goal, instead of paying attention to the contents of the plan. Providing general information may only allow you to get a foot in the door, however a detailed-oriented plan will allow you to zoom into your potential market. Targeting everyone may bring you little to no success, however finding your target market will allow you to achieve the best results.

Limits marketing to advertising only. If you plan on taking the advertising route only, you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise. Marketing does not only involve putting out advertisements. It requires you to conduct market research; brand your business; develop a sales strategy; network; and provide customer support. If these elements are missing in your marketing plan, you may have to go back to the drawing board. Make sure that you do not have advertising as the only source of achieving your marketing efforts. While advertising is the means by which you connect with your potential market, you must establish a foundation on which you can implement your advertising strategies.

Does not keep track of marketing efforts. With all the excitement in the air about establishing their business, some business owners tend to go full speed ahead with their marketing efforts without realizing the importance of assessing their results each step of the way. For you to gain a better understanding of where your business is heading, you must keep track of your results. You may have placed advertisement in the newspaper and received several hundred responses. Would you consider this a success? It may be a successful ad campaign depending on the number of people who were converted to customers. On the other hand, it may be a total failure because no one was converted to a customer. The amount of money you spent on your ad and the amount of money you received in sales will determine the success of your ad campaign. Moreover, you may have used other forms of marketing.

How does your newspaper ad compare to those techniques? Make sure you conduct a thorough analysis of your marketing plan to gauge which are the most efficient and successful marketing strategies.

Avoiding these four common marketing plan mistakes can give you an edge over your competitors.

4 Simple Steps To Build An Email List For Your Business

Find Out Exactly How To Build An Email List and Why You Need To.

There’s alot of information available about how to build an email list, list building techniques  and creating a database of customers, but what is it exactly and how can you do it?

You Can Read On Or Watch My “Build An Email List” Presentation Below;

What Is An Email List?

An email list is a subscriber list, containing the details and email addresses of people who have chosen to give you their email address for one of the following;

• To be kept up to date with your products or services.
• To be notified about specific events in connection with your business.
• In exchange for a free download, coupon or other offer.

Why Should I Build An Email List For My Business?

With the latest wave of social and digital marketing platforms online, increased smartphone users and with e-commerce users on the rise, a large number of consumers (I would say the majority!) now use their email address to purchase and keep up to date with companies, friends and brands.

As a business, you need to know how to build an email list, and take advantage of the latest email marketing software available to help you keep on top of your database, and ensure that you keep in touch with your customers on a regular basis with news, updates and offers.

Traditionally, this would taken the form of good old fashioned printed material – brochures, adverts, coupons etc would have been sent via snail mail and delivered to the customer at home.

Nowadays, the customer demands digital information. Newsletters from all the major brands and companies are delivering their updates via email, so building an email list has become an essential and integral part of your business marketing strategy.

The Advantages of Building An Email List

One of the greatest blessings of using an email list for your business is having the ability to send direct links within your email for your readers to follow straight to your website offer or page.

Other awesome advantages when you build an email list include:

• It’s personal
• It’s targeted
• It’s a very fast way of getting in touch with your customers
• Running an email list is cost effective
• You can monitor marketing campaign effectiveness

How To Build An Email List In 4 Simple Steps

Step #1: You will need an autoresponder platform or email marketing software.

Using your own email service provider may seem a more economical way of building a list, but I can assure you, it will be extremely difficult to maintain, sending too many emails can result in your email account being shut down completely. With no reporting tools, you will also miss out on the opportunity for campaign monitoring.

I currently use AWEBER and MAILCHIMP to build and maintain my email lists, and can recommend either of them as suitable for you to use to build an email list for your own business.

When you sign up to either service, you will get a free trial period. Aweber charges around $19 per month after a trial, and Mailchimp is free for life – at the time of this post, Mailchimp allow you to keep up to 2,000 subscribers and send 12,000 emails a month free.

Both services provide excellent video tutorials, showing you exactly how to build an email list and how to tweak all the settings to suit your requirements.

Step #2: You will need to create a sign up form on your website

To collect your customers email addresses and start to build your list, you will need to create a web-form. Now, I won’t get too technical in this post, but if you are using WordPress, there are some amazing plugins for creating email list subscription forms. One of my favourite choices is pop up domination, which creates the pop up form that you see the first time you try to exit my site. The great thing about it, is once closed, your remaining session will remember and so the pop up won’t keep showing.

Select carefully where your form will appear on your site. Homepages and sidebars are firm favourites. Choose colours wisely, make sure they compliment your site, and try to make the submit button stand out and make it a real call to action.

Ensure what you offer in exchange for your customers email address is relevant. I find offering free ebooks or guides always works well. If you sell products, perhaps a discount voucher or offer would work well. As your customers are asked more and more every day to provide their personal details, you can increase the chance of gaining an email subscriber by showing them you value their details and offer them something in return!

Step #3: Think of Interesting Content To Share With Your Email List

This is a very important step when you start to build an email list. In order to build a strong relationship with customers, you will need to share interesting and relevant news and updates, some ideas for this can be:

• An introduction to your company
• A personal introduction from you
• Your social media pages on twitter, facebook, google etc
• Ways to contact you
• Special offers
• Discounts and coupons
• Latest industry news
• How to guides
• Free resources

Keep your list engaged, entertained and up to date with your business. This will help build loyalty, will give your customers excellent reasons to buy from you, and should encourage interaction on the various social platforms your business uses.

Step #4: Create A Series Of Auto-responders For Your Email List

It’s always nice to run your business on automation! Take the headache of responding to new customer sign ups by setting up a standard series of emails that are sent at intervals decided by you.

Once you have decided on the content you wish to share with your customers, you can put that into a one-off email series that all new subscribers receive.

For example: Here is the follow up sequence (auto-responders) for one of my email marketing lists. Once a subscriber enters their email address on one of my forms, they are automatically sent the first message after confirming their subscription, and then they will receive a series of follow up emails with useful information and news. My auto-responders cover the first month of subscription, after which I send blog updates and regular newsletters.

SUMMARY How To Build An Email List

Do you use email marketing for your business? I hope this short guide has given you enough information to get going and start to build an email list for your business.

The Sage Business Experts Programme Is Now Live!

I am excited to announce that I have been selected as a Sage UK  Business Expert, supporting UK small businesses.

Last month, Sage selected well-connected business people to join their experts programme aiming to support and advise the UK business community via social media and building online awareness.

I am honoured and very excited to be a part of the experts team and to provide even more online engagement with UK Business owners. The programme ties in really well with the support that I provide for business starts ups, and I think it will be great to share business insights from Sage with my online communities.

Sage Business Experts were chosen for their;

• Contribution to the business community – sharing knowledge and helping others improve and develop their businesses
• Knowledge and influence – from first-hand experience, Sage Business Experts have a wealth of understanding about business challenges and solutions
• Online presence – from forums and Twitter, to LinkedIn and blogs, Sage Business Experts are extensively connected

It’s great news that Sage are embracing Social Media and Influence and incorporating it with their programme to increase online awareness for both the business experts and their software, products and services. It reflects my work extremely well, and will hopefully help me share more exciting news and content for business owners.

About Sage

Sage is a well known and powerful Global business and accounting software provider, but what is little known is they are currently supporting a wide range of businesses by offering help and guidance on marketing, social media and other essential aspects of business.

Working with entrepreneurs and businesses from small one person start ups, right the way through to corporates, Sage provide a wide range of services and products, tailored to suit your company needs.

Sage Provide Software and Support Services for a wide range of products, supporting industries in the following;

• Finances
• HR & Payroll
• CRM
• Planning & Forecasting
• Retail & Ecommerce
• ERP
• Manufacturing
• Service Management
• Accountants and Bookeepers
• Construction

Summary

You can find out more about the Sage Business Experts here

I will update more with business news and insights from Sage soon!

I heard  quote the other day: “Hope is not a marketing plan”.

I thought this was very interesting, mainly because I have spoken to so many business owners who have just thrown some money at an advertising campaign, with no real sales and marketing strategy or funnel in place and say they ‘hope it works’

Lets be clear here. You can’t just pick a marketing strategy and “hope” that it will work. Instead, you need to put together a detailed plan where you lay out a clear sales and marketing strategy and a funnel that meets your business goals.This isn’t a to-do list of tasks. It’s a breakdown of each sales or marketing tactic you want to use and the process you’ll put in place for implementation.

Here’s a short guide to developing a strong sales and marketing plan for your business.

1. Start With Your Business Model

Not all sales and marketing strategies work with every business model. You’ll hear lots of “proven” tactics and marketing methods, but that doesn’t mean they’re the ones for you and your business. Take a good look at your own business model first and then outline some of the characteristics of that model and your target market, including:

• A detailed description of the key features of the target customer – demographics, spend levels, interests, etc.
• Where your customers will come from, such as organic search, paid search, joint ventures, offline sources, affiliates, etc.
• A detailed plan of your budget and estimated costs. There’s nothing worse than getting half way through a  campaign and having to pull out due to lack of business funds.
• What are your prospects’ buying triggers? i.e where when or how do they usually make a purchase decision? For example, it could be from a product review, a personal recommendation, through surfing content sites, etc.

2. What Are Your Competitors Most Popular Sales and Marketing Strategies?

Now check out your competitors and find their most popular sales and marketing strategies and tactics. How do they convert from prospect to customer? Where are they advertising and how to they get in front of the customer. Study carefully and research both offline and online. Examples include;

• Stand alone sales pages that include giveaways or freebies in  return for an email address (lead generation)
• Flyers, postcards and handouts.
• Coupon codes and discount vouchers.
• Regular free teleseminars or webinars that include an exclusive offer at the end.
• SEO and traffic generation organically.
• Social Media engagement and offer promotion.
• Multiple joint ventures and recruiting of affiliates.

3. Which Strategies Will You Focus On?

If you try to do too many marketing campaigns at once, you could fail at all of them. You’ll need to focus on just one to start with. Better to do one successful campaign than multiple failures. Plan it, test it out, find out if it works, and only then start introducing more elements. There are endless methods to pick from, so don’t try to do them all at once.

Try selecting the easiest marketing strategy first so you can put it in place and get moving right away. You should always have at least one easy tactic you can use that doesn’t require a lot of thought and planning. For example, you can create an autoresponder series that starts every time a person signs up for that list. It’s a passive form of marketing that requires very little hands on work. Then you can start planning out more campaigns.

In Summary: Your Sales and Marketing Strategy

Start at the end and work backwards.

Start developing your sales and marketing plan by looking at all the steps involved and getting it down on paper. Map everything out. Think about the activities you need to complete in order to implement and maintain each strategy.

Now put those steps into a priority order and process you can follow. How will you get from A-Z. Which steps do you take first? You can even use a mindmap to lay out a visual of your plan, which makes it easy to move things around. Mindmeister is a great, free online tool for creating mindmaps online. You can export any of the mindmaps to a pdf so that you can print and hand them out to your team or put up on display as a reminder.

Make sure you set deadlines for each step in your plan. Some sales and marketing strategies are dependent on a number of factors, including time between emails or follow-ups. Make sure you sett those dates in stone and stick to them!

Your sales and marketing plan will dictate the tasks you’ll need to do on a day to day basis. For example, if you know that your emails need to be sent out at specific intervals, then you’ll need to make sure these are created in advance and ready to go according to your deadlines.

Makes sure you don’t fall into the trap that many business owners make by trying to do everything at once. Focus on each strategy, one at a time, set deadlines, and deploy your sales and marketing plan like a pro.

What tools do you use for your sales and marketing strategy recently?

Do you have a small business marketing budget but want to create a big impact campaign? This checklist for business marketing ideas will help you minimize your advertising spend for maximum impact.

Not sure where to place your ad-spend? You’re not alone. Many new business start ups spend a colossal amount of their budget on marketing and advertising, and sit back after the spend with very few new leads or clients after a low performing campaign.

Years ago, I could put a small ad in the local freebie newspaper or sign up for a local directory listing (printed) and the customers would flood through the door. Businesses back then that were making an effort and budgeting for advertising spend reaped the rewards.

Fast forward to today’s economy structure and our digital age of information and content marketing, and we’re in a completely different race.

This #1 Tip Will Save You And Your Business Thousands!

Tip #1   DO YOUR RESEARCH FIRST!

If you’re looking to start an adverting campaign for your small business, then use the following marketing research checklist to find out exactly where your target marketing is looking. Then decide where your budget is best placed.

1. Research Demographics

– use Quantcast and Alexa to build a profile of your website visitor or check competitors visitors to get an idea of your target market.

2. Research Your Established Competitors Efforts.

Look at a similar business to your own, and work out what media platforms they are using and how. Tried and tested is always a great way to start when testing campaigns. Make sure you check it’s their regular spend. Don’t invest in their tests!

3. Find out what your buyers are searching for

Use Google Keyword Tool and research ‘buyer’ keywords. Put yourself in your customers shoes and try to think of what they would be looking for. Use the keyword tools suggestions for more ideas.

4. Get A Quote, never sign up straight away.

Often advertising companies will come back to you with a counter offer. This is particularly efficient for printed media – newspapers and magazines often have last minute space available just before the print deadline, so hold out until then to receive rock bottom prices.

5. Use Social Media!

If you’re like many small business owners and are reluctantly being dragged kicking and screaming into social media, then do it for your customers. They’re all there waiting for you. Guaranteed 🙂 The infographic below proves it.

6. Email Marketing

Promise yourself you will make an effort to build your targeted list of subscribers for your business. Collect your existing customers details. Start a regular newsletter, or just keep email addresses on file to help you promote special offers or new products or services. Want to try it for free? Mailchimp have their ‘Forever Free’ plan where you can send 12,000 emails per month to 2,000 subscribers.

Done your homework? Great! Now check out this ideas for small business marketing infographic to plan your moves!

Ideas For Small Business Infographic

Via: Bolt Insurance

Are You Wasting Money marketing Your Business?

I’m guessing the answer is probably yes. I went into a company last month and they were spending £2,000 per month on marketing and promotional material and they were asking me where it was going wrong, as they were getting little or no new business as a result.

I took a look at their newspaper ad, their flyers and their Online marketing efforts and noticed a HUGE problem. I saw it instantly.

Quite simply, there was no call to action!

BIG MISTAKE. But also very common. Business owners get so wrapped up in their brand, so focused on telling everyone how great their company is and how wonderful their services are and often forget the golden egg of marketing – THE CALL TO ACTION

No matter what media you are using to promote your company or your brand, you need to ensure that you have a clear, easy to understand call to action. Your advertising needs to seek a response from your audience – consumers are now blind to shameless self promotion and brand bashing.

Here are 10 Killer examples of a Call To Action that you can swipe and tailor to your own business needs.

Or perhaps they will inspire you to create new ones!

Remember, testing is key, and results will differ depending on your target market  and your industry or niche. Enjoy!!!

1. Call For a Free Estimate / Quote, etc.  – ideal for generating new inquiries.  Tell them what they will get when they call.
2. Pop In For A Free Consultation / sample, etc. – Free information and shows you’re friendly and approachable. Great for getting foot traffic.
3. Watch Video! – put it on a button great for sharing and tell the reader exactly what they get for their click.
4. Try It For Free – often generates a higher click through / inquiry rate than Sign Up Free or Get It Free.
5. Limited Availability – yes, you’re probably sick of seeing it everywhere, but it converts!
6. Reply Today – go on, replace the good old contact button!
7. Reserve Your Seat / Free Place / Ticket, etc. – the word reserve invokes a sense of limited availability without actually saying it.
8. Find Out How  – great when used after a compelling statement, can be used in so many different ways.
9. Get Your Copy Here / now / today – the word ‘your’ seems so much more sincere and speaks to the individual rather than the general public.
10. Click Here / Buy Now – yes, I know there are two here, but both are tried and tested to convert 🙂

See what I mean? You can transform your ad copy overnight by pre-selling your product or service and requesting a simple response!

Remember these 4 tips when you are developing your own call to action.

1. Request a clear, concise action from the audience
2. Make it a simple design – a button, an alert box etc
3. Try to create a sense of urgency or exclusivity
4. Answer the question your consumer is asking- ‘What do I do now?’
   

And there you have it! Give your marketing a little magic, sit back and enjoy the results!

Do You Have Any Favourite Calls To Action?

How Your Business Can ‘Go Local’ – Instantly!

Getting your customers to see your business online can be really difficult. You’re open for business, but how do you get the word out there Quickly, Effectively & For Free? – The answer lies in Free Local Search Directories.

If you’ve just started your business, you really can’t go wrong. You will need as much online exposure as you can get in the early days, and these free business listing resources will be just what you need to spread your Company details.

There are literally hundreds of Local search directories. I have collected 10 of my favourites below:

• Google Maps (free)
• Microsoft Live (Bing)  (free)
• Yahoo! Local (free)
• AskCity (free)
• SuperPages (paid)
• Yelp (free)
• Citysearch (free)
• Local.com (free)
• AOL Local Search (free)
• Thomson Local (free)

Some of these sites require you to sign up with them so you may access your business details.

Listing your business on these websites and including (where permitted) a link back to your website will help boost your SEO, drive traffic to your website and will result in Online presence on a bigger scale.

If you have a  new business, it is essential that you register with them and claim your business listing, as it can show almost instantly compared to the waiting game you may have to play with your main website.

TIPS:

Always include ‘keywords’ for your products or services as well as your company name and locations. This will increase the targeted traffic you receive from people searching in your area and can also increase your company presence in listings shown on mobile searches.

Prepare a standard ‘About Us’ paragraph in advance to claiming your listing, so you remeber to include all the important points about your business. Make sure you describe your Products, Services and your company Mission Statement.

Lure your target market with your USP and even create special offers for customers who mention your listings when they contact you. This is a great way of monitoring your traffic sources and will help you decide whether to purchase a paid advert from one of the providers.

So, if you’ve just launched your business or website, and you are looking for that ‘extra’ local traffic to ramp up Brand awareness and sales, get claiming right away!

Have you found Local Business listings have helped your business? Are there any important ones I have missed? Join the conversation below.

Setting out in Internet Marketing – Your Online Business.

Internet Marketing can be a daunting process to learn, but if you start out right from the very beginning, you can multiply your efforts ten fold and stop yourself falling into the 95% fail category. In order for things to make sense, you need to do a little housekeeping before you set out on your online business journey.

Firstly, sit down and think what kind of product or service you would like to offer. This can be very time consuming and an easy topic to get sidetracked on, so I suggest you make a list of ideas, including things you are good at, interested in or have experience of. Even if your idea doesn’t seem too popular to you, don’t let that put you off – when it comes to your researching aspect of setting up your internet marketing business, you may drill down and find that you’ve discovered an untapped niche!

Second, you’ll need to ask yourself  —“What’s unique about my product or service?” If you’re internet marketing / online business is much the same as a hundred other similar businesses, then you’ll struggle to make a go of it as you pretty much have no benefits to sell. Have a good think before you make a decision, and ensure you’re product or service is providing a solution to an existing problem.

Thirdly, you’ll need to think about the practicality of it all. Ensure that you’ll be able to fulfill your promises to your clients by delivering your offer completely to them. In fact, OVER deliver. Without being able to commit to fulfilling your promise, your online business will most definitely fail.

Price your product or service right too. It shouldn’t be priced too low, because then you won’t make a profit, and it shouldn’t be priced too high either, because then you won’t be able to attract a lot of customers.

These three things are quite important to you when you are getting started. Go about it the right way and you will see the difference.