Simon Ackland - Business Growth Blog

Nobody knows you yet...so what are you going to do about it?

Article written by: Simon Ackland | SMI Digital CEO (the Digital Marketing Agency division of SMI Business Impact)

So you have put your web pages on the internet and you expect people to know of your presence, but without a well thought out promotion and marketing effort... this will not happen...

Let’s face it – NOBODY KNOWS YOU YET!

Finishing creating pages for your web site is not the end. In fact, it is only the beginning. Just as completing your schooling is not the end but the beginning of your journey in the world beyond the walls of your classroom.

Unfortunately, a big number of you seem to think that the main battle has to do with the difficulties of understanding HTML or the masses of jargon (some good examples follow) or for the SMI Digital clients using a content management system (CMS) for creating your web pages.

People seems to rejoice too early...as soon as their pages are live on the web. "Now, where are all those new business leads?"

Why, that is a big W-R-O-N-G!

Since indirectly you are operating an Internet Business promoting your products and services, like any other business, you need to communicate. You need to interact. You need to let people know you are around and open for business.

I am sure you get my point by now. If you have not been making much progress in the early stages of your Internet Business, this may very well be the reason.

To get yourself started quickly and let people know you are in business, you can do the following easily for no fees or of course you can use professional services. While you do not necessarily need money to make money on the Internet, the life and death of your business depends heavily on your sweat equity and wisdom.

Remember, you did make an investment of money and time in building your website (or you are about to) so you need to get a decent return on that investment...which is SMI Digital's mantra; every $ invested in your website and digital marketing (or any marketing for that matter) should pay for itself over and over again.

Here are 6 basics to make you known at no or very little cost online, remember, these are only basics and many experts can provide you with the support you need to become more visible on the web.

1 - If you use a content management system (CMS) make sure you have prepared your Meta Tags inside every page of your website.
If you don’t have a CMS, then prepare a spreadsheet and give it to your web designer.

The Title Tag - The HTML title tag isn't really a meta tag, but it's worth discussing in relation to them. Whatever text you place in the title tag (between the TITLE and /TITLE portions) will appear in the reverse bar of someone's browser when they view the web page.

The Meta Description Tag - The meta description tag allows you to influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag. The first meta tag is the one that says "name=description"? That's the meta description tag. The text you want to be shown as your description goes between the quotation marks after the "content=" portion of the tag (generally, 200 to 250 characters may be indexed, though only a smaller portion of this amount may be displayed).

The Meta Keywords Tag - The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy.
The meta keywords tag is sometimes useful as a way to reinforce the terms you think a page is important for.

TIP: to see the meta tags of a page, right click on a web page and select view source. - at the top of the NotePad page that opens, you will see the meta tags.

How was that for some jargon! The language is becoming more common and we need to ensure our businesses have access to skilled understanding of these matter to ensure we get that ROI on the website and other digital marketing investment.

2 - Submit your site to major search engines (Yahoo!, Google, MSN, etc.). In internet jargon, it is called search engine submission.

This should always be the first thing to do as soon as you have your web site up and all your pages including meta tags. It might not be as important today as it once was, but you might as well get every advantage that you can, no matter how small.

3 - Submit your website link to other web sites with high Page Rank in search engines like Google.

Having your website link submitted to directories, forums or related sites with high Page Rank value will also result in increasing your site Page Rank when Google "bots" crawl on the pages in your web site.

4 - Participate in discussion boards.

Join one or two discussion boards where your prospects are gathering. You can interact, submit articles and this gives you the chance to leave your website URL on the board for people interested in what you have to offer. Do not join too many as it is actually unethical and disturbing if people view your profile to find that you post only once or twice on the board. If you have to leave the board, make sure you leave for a good reason.

5 – Join some online social networking sites and start promoting your profile and your business.

Be creative and create some activities and groups around your professional activity or your personal liking.

6 - Submit your articles to other websites and write a Blog.

There are many sites online that specialise in listing directories of articles. If you include a link to your website in your author’s resource box, publishing your articles on these sites is a great way to establish some links back to your website.

Furthermore, other sites and e-zines publishers might even want to publish your article in their publication!

With 6 easy ways to start, you can promote your website at no cost but if you value your time and it is all too hard, then talk to us.

Lost...Client Leads From Your Website

Article Written By: Simon Ackland | SMI Digital CEO (the Digital Marketing Agency division of SMI Business Impact Pty Ltd)

Unlike the TV series "Lost", we show you how to Find them again by automating the lead generation from your website.

1. Are You Still Using Email To Collect Leads And Enquiries From The Web?
With the vast majority of websites using a simple email based form (or no form at all, just a phone number) for prospective clients to respond to, how many:

• disappear into a Junk or Spam folder? or
• simply get Lost or buried in a full inbox? and/or
• don't get followed up for days (or ever)

When these email leads are tracked down (if ever) and contacted, guess what the biggest response is? That's right, they don't remember you or your company and most can't even remember why they would have made an enquiry. How many sales is this costing you?

2. A fast response to new leads will improve your sales results
You (or your sales team) must act quickly while the prospective client is still 'hot' or at least 'warm'.

What if you didn't have to worry about lost emails and could simply click on the 'Leads' tab of your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system each morning and discover a bunch of new leads for the sales team to contact straight away. What if the information provided in the CRM even qualified the Leads so you could prioritise them?

Further, suppose that each of these new leads had received an automated email response saying that their enquiry had been received and they would be contacted within 24 hours. That would demonstrate professionalism and reinforce the relationship straight away with the prospective client, and the CRM would provide strong support to ensure the contact was made within 24 hours.

That would speed up the sales process wouldn't it? Not only would you make more sales, but the ROI on your overall marketing expenditure would be vastly improved...imagine, a happy CFO!

3. Client Relationship Management (CRM) is the answer
SMI Digital is the digital marketing agency of SMI Business Impact which specialises in strategic planning, business development, marketing and business automation services. To discover the best all-round CRM solution for our clients, we have tested and investigated many options. What we found was that Salesforce CRM provides the best mix of:

• ease of use,
• no on-site software (fully secure web based),
• super-fast roll-out and
• the ability to automate both the sales and sales management business processes in small companies right through to multi-national sized corporations.

But the key is to find a system that suits you and that allows you to achieve the automation and improved sales opportunities by being fully organised.

SMI Digital: Dedicated to building your business through digital and web based marketing and business development strategies

NEED PROFESSIONAL HELP?
If you don't have the time or expertise, let our team of Digital Marketing, Marketing and Management Consulting experts help you. SMI Digital specialise in helping small to medium sized businesses build their sales and marketing knowledge and systems to increase lead generation and sales conversion; client, shareholder and stakeholder relations strategies; international digital marketing and business development; online sales systems; email marketing; SEO and social media optimisation; web advertising; brand design; website design and development.

Contact us today for your
F.REE Digital Marketing assessment

2009's Top Five Explosive Web 2.0 Trends...Powerful Yet Cost Effective Marketing Strategies

Article Written By: Simon Ackland | SMI Digital CEO (the Digital Marketing Agency division of SMI Business Impact Pty Ltd)

Web 2.0 is the second generation of the Internet.

Web 2.0 is transforming the Internet into an even more powerful tool for businesses seeking to leverage technology to drive revenue, increase profits and reduce expenses.

Virtually all businesses will be spending their marketing dollars online in the New Year. In fact, BtoB Magazine found that 79 percent of marketers plan to increase their online marketing budgets for 2009. In doing so, businesses will need trusted and experienced individuals, such as SMI Digital behind them in order to fully capitalise on the following top five hot Web 2.0 trends:

1. Interactive Websites
In order to effectively compete and meet the growing demands of today's more sophisticated customer, businesses are fanatically seeking to upgrade their web sites with features that enhance the user experience and deliver a measurable ROI from their marketing dollars. Businesses will focus on shifting their web sites from isolated, static information based destinations to highly functional platforms serving powerful web applications to end users that emphasise online collaboration, sharing, interaction and learning.

2. Managed Email Marketing
With email marketing delivering a $51.45 return on investment (ROI) for every marketing dollar spent, according to the Direct Marketing Association, businesses will continue to shift greater portions of their direct mail budgets to email marketing. More email marketing campaigns in 2009 will focus on highly targeted offerings, links to rich media content and social networking.

3. Social Networking
As online interaction becomes more and more prevalent in society; consumers are turning to online ratings and reviews, testimonials and blogs to educate themselves on products, services and much more. comScore recently found that more than three-quarters of review users in nearly every industry category reported that the review had a significant influence on their purchase. Businesses need to have social networking interaction features such as customer reviews, testimonials and blogs implemented into their web sites for 2009 to meet the growing needs of their customers.

4. Video
Whether businesses plan on implementing video to run ad's, product demonstrations and reviews or as email links, the main point is that they will be using video in 2009 more than they ever have. In fact, 86% of online retailers used some form of video during the shopping experience in 2007, up from 52% in the previous year. While potentially enhancing the user experience, video can also annoy and frustrate visitors. Businesses that use videos incorrectly on their websites can cause pages to load slowly, crash browsers and lose customers and dollars.

5. RSS Feeds
RSS is heading closer towards mainstream adoption as more businesses begin to implement RSS feed subscriptions via their web sites. For 2009 the pace of RSS growth is set to accelerate for both consumer usage and business implementation. RSS is geared around segmentation, therefore, failing to offer subscribers options with their subscription or sending them information they didn't sign up to receive will quickly lead businesses to RSS failure.

As with all technology, the web moves fast. If you are only just catching up with Web 2.0, then Web 3.0 is only just around the corner. You need to compete hard and be a leader to win in business. Digital marketing is no longer an option for most businesses...it is a must have; must do.

Need professional help?
As web sites and Internet marketing become more complex, a growing number of businesses are discovering the value of outsourcing the implementation and management of their Web 2.0 and Digital Marketing initiatives to trusted service providers that employ a staff of people with a full range of competencies. Call us! on +618 93648555 or enquire now. Click Here

You need it now more than anytime before!...New Client Acquisition

Article Written By: Simon Ackland | SMI Digital (the Digital Marketing Agency division of SMI Business Impact Pty Ltd)

New Client Acquisition

When it comes to acquiring new customers, you need to build databases quickly and cost effectively.

Most business owners would not have the appropriate technology and advanced analytics you need to determine your allowable cost-per-new-client, so you know your limits as well as when to increase spending.

Technology allows you to understand and build Business Intelligence with your customer's behaviours. Please be kind to your business and the law requirements, DO NOT send marketing email with Outlook, as it is not SPAM compliant and does not provide you any business intelligence to grow your business.

For example, when you send an email would it be helpful for your business to understand in real time the following?

• Did they receive your email
• Did they open your email
• How long it took them to open their email
• How many time they open the email
• What were they interested in reading
• Did they forward the email to a friend
• Did they click on a particular link if so how many times
• Automatically track and flag invalid e-mail addresses
• and more...

Your marketing efforts on acquiring the right type of customer for your organization must be constant and focused on building a strong database containing as many as possible prospects and customers through direct mail, print media, email, online activities, telemarketing, and point-of-sale registration.

If you don't have an email database, here is a simple tip:

Step 1: organise a competition with a big prize e.g. "WIN A TRIP for TWO" (maybe work with a travel agent to promote them and get it for free...you get the idea).
Step 2: design and print a postcard and send it to your database or distribute it through your network or points of sale...refer them to your website.
Step 3: yes... you may have to use an old delivery systems such as the post services.
Step 4: develop a sign-up or registration form on your website to receive the information requested in the postcard.

Result: conversion of an address book to an online database by getting the card recipients to register online.

Et voila...you did not have to call everyone to ask them for their email address and now your digital database is growing.

PS: Today the most cost effective communication solution is email (up to 1000 times cheaper) to create and send emails than direct mail distribution, the sooner you start building your email database the sooner you will build customer acquisition and retention at a very low cost.

Customer Retention

You must know that it is equally important to retain customers, as it is to generate new ones.

When you look at marketing solutions and deep analysis into your customer data you need to focus your efforts and investment on the most productive segments.

Build a retention plan that delivers the right message and communication to your customers to keep them coming back, to improve response rates, increase order values, and develop loyalty programs that maximise revenues and profits.

You must rely on lifetime value modelling to predict future revenue streams and to determine the present value of new customers. This best practice approach ensures that money spent up front to acquire new customers pays dividends well into the future.

Customer Loyalty Programs

You may spend 5 to 10 times as much acquiring new customers as you will retaining existing ones.

You will work hard and spend a lot of money to get customers to use your services or buy your products. It therefore makes sense to put an appropriate amount of effort into retaining those customers so that your company may enjoy long-term repeat business.

Your customers have more information today than ever before. Many are Internet savvy and all are out to find the best deal for them. One proven way to improve your chances of customer retention is through a carefully constructed customer loyalty program.
Quick tips:

• Identify and retain your best customer segments
• Extract more value from your customers
• Communicate more effectively one-on-one with your customers
• Estimate the value of your customers by segment
• Derive an allowable cost-per-new-customer
• Improve your brand or company image

Develop a structured plan to communicate with your clients and demonstrate the value they are to you. Most clients that change vendor do so because they feel unloved...so share the love and enjoy the repeat business and the extra profit and business value that results.

Need professional help?
As web sites and Internet marketing become more complex, a growing number of businesses are discovering the value of outsourcing the implementation and management of their Web 2.0 initiatives to trusted service providers that employ a staff of people with a full range of competencies.

Call us on +619 9364 8555 or enquire now. Click Here