​But what’s that got to do with marketing our business?

Habits are defined as routines of behavior that are repeated regularly and tend to occur subconsciously.

​It was Jim Rohn who said; ‘Work harder on yourself than you do on your business’, because it is what you do and how you do it that will determine your success.

Working on ourselves by developing habits that lead us to do the right things for our business – is good for our results. But first we need to know what are the right things to do. After all, there are only 24 hours in the day and we’re probably already using 25 of them.

Cutting down the number of things you have to do by choosing to do only those which deliver the biggest and best results is probably the most important. And for that you need an overall strategic plan for your business so that you know for sure what are the most important things you need to achieve.

​Once you have a strategy then you can fill in the blanks, the tactics, the details. But if you spend all your time on details then you can spend a lifetime working your way up a blind alley – because you never bothered to lift your head to see where you were going.

​So, we’ve established that doing the right things is important. But we all know how easy it is to become distracted. And that is precisely why we need to develop the habit of doing the right things for our business.

​Habitual behavior goes unnoticed because you don’t need to think about it. Whatever you are doing is achieved effectively and in minimum time and with minimum effort – leaving you with more time and energy to deal with all the other things that crop up during the course of the day. So good work habits are a good thing.

​Habituation is an extremely simple form of learning, in which an organism, after a period of exposure to a stimulus, stops responding to that stimulus in varied manners. In other words, you start to respond in a consistent way and to get it right first time. And getting it right first time is one of the greatest time savers ever.

​To make sure you do what you need to do for your business

The principles of success have been the basis of mountains of ‘self development’ books, training and courses which gets bigger though not necessarily better every day. And habits are a constant theme running through pretty well all of them.

Among the best know is Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Successful People and Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’ encapsulates 23 years of research to find out what were the same things that successful people did. Putting it another way, did they all have the same habits.

Old habits are hard to break and new habits are hard to form because the behavioural patterns we repeat are imprinted in our neural pathways. But the value of getting rid of old bad habits and developing good, new habits is enormous and can only be good for your business success.

The post H Is For Habits appeared first on Online Marketing For Business - Dewsbury.

A guarantee may have all sorts of legal and financial definitions depending on where and how it is used. But in the selling process it’s purpose is to affect the psychology of the prospect.

This is true of any marketing and selling process, wherever it is carried out – and online we work in a pretty hostile environment.

In online marketing we have no idea:

Basically, we don’t know anything about our prospect. Yet we have to deliver an offer to suit the prospects circumstances and that’s pretty hard to do.

Your prospect may be anywhere from a red-hot ‘I’m ready to buy now, take my money’candidate to a passing browser who is only mildly interested in your offer – but could be persuaded to buy in the right circumstances.

Listen to copywriters who write all those magic words that persuade people to buy and they will tell you that you need to grab their attention, identify their greatest need, magnify whatever their problem or pain may be and then offer them your solution. That’s assuming that you’ve caught your prospect’s attention at some moment when they are amenable to your offer.

If you are lucky, you will hit all the right buttons and your prospect will agree with your selling points as you lead them through the selling process up to the point of deciding to buy.

But then the ‘yes, but…’ questions start popping up in their mind. They start reminding themselves of all the reasons that they should not buy. Anything from what the wife or husband will say to the fact that they know they can’t afford it.

So you need to ensure that there as as few reasons for the prospect to persuade themselves NOT to buy as possible. You set out to make the barriers to entry as low as possible.

Make the price as low as possible as you lead them into your sales funnel. Give them as many buying options as possible; give them multiple bonuses; but ultimately the best way is to persuade your prospect that whatever decision they make, including a decision to buy your product, they are never going to lose their money.

A guarantee that if they don’t find that the product does what you promise then they can have their money back completely removes the financial risk to the customer. Indeed, some marketers even go as far as ‘risk-reversal’ and offer to pay the customer if they are unhappy for any reason.

So in marketing terms a guarantee has nothing to do with the technical or financial or legal obligations of either party. It is everything to do with influencing the psychology of the prospect – to remove what is probably the biggest ‘yes, but...’ objection to a sale by ensuring that the prospect understands that if they are unhappy with their purchase they can always get their money back.

The post G is for Guarantee appeared first on Online Marketing For Business - Dewsbury.

Especially as S also includes important words like ‘split testing’ and ‘social proof’ that need to be dealt with. So, for today, F is for Sales Funnel.

The sales funnel applies established process engineering principles to sales leading, inevitably, to better results.

Breaking down the sales process into a number of steps enables the merchant to easily manage each step in the conversion process and progressively improve the performance of each step and of the overall process thereby leading to increased profits. This is called a ‘sales funnel’

The process starts with a low cost, easy entry product or service (often referred to as the front end) and then moves the customer progressively to higher value products (the back end – of which there may be several layers).

To be successful the merchant must provide offers that match the customers needs and willingness to pay. i.e. they must provide a perceived value for money.

Sales Funnel

The advantage for the merchant is the ability to progressively test each step to improve the conversion rate of that step, i.e. it’s effectiveness in moving the customer on to the next stage, with the intention that the accumulation of small gains at each step (optimisation) will amount to a substantial improvement in the total result.

While ‘sales’ has traditionally been surrounded by a good deal of mystique the reality is that human psychology including the reaction of prospects to offers is increasingly well understood. This has been particularly aided by the increasing amounts of data arising from online transactions where data on customer reactions is particularly easy to gather.

Although the sales funnel is applicable using any sales method, it is the speed and automation of online marketing that makes the application of the sales funnel process so effective online leading to quicker progress and bigger profits.

The initial offer and each progressive ‘upsell’ to a higher value offer can be designed in advance. In addition, ‘downsell’ offers can be built in to the process to be presented when the prospects backs away from the next higher offer but may still be tempted by a package at a lower price.

Split testing of each step in the process can be built in to the development and continued throughout the life of the product offer.

Once established and working effectively the sales process becomes a fixed, robust and well proven element of the business.

The owner can then focus the majority of their effort to the marketing process by generating more leads to enter the sales funnel (maximisation) in the certain knowledge that every lead entering the sales funnel process will produce a known value of revenue and profit.

Applying the Sales Funnel to your local business

Even though many local businesses deal in physical products and services and have ‘traditional’ marketing methods built in to their DNA, nonetheless, an understanding of the principle of the sales funnel can transform their results.

If you would like some no obligation help in understanding how the Sales Funnel can be applied to your business then give us a call on 01924 459244.

​

The post F is for Funnel – of the Sales Variety appeared first on Online Marketing For Business - Dewsbury.

E-mail remains a powerful communicator and time-saver for business owners.

Yes, there always seems to be too much of it but consider that all online marketing is a numbers game and some email does get to your target market – and that email is free – and then ask yourself if you can think of any marketing strategy that delivers a better return on investment.

The real point about email is that it is generated by your Autoresponder which is also managing your list – which is the beating heart of your business. Lose everything else and if you still have your list you can begin again with a flying start. So anything that adds to your list is good.

Don’t forget that in terms of business risk, you do not own your Facebook page or Friends, or Twitter and your followers. Third party platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest may be effective marketing tool today – but could be gone tomorrow. And if your business is dependent on them for your traffic and marketing messages then your business could go down the swanee with them.

In contrast, you own your own list and it makes sense to protect, nurture, grow and use it.

After ensuring that your website is focused on generating a direct response from your visitors, which may well be to opt-in to your email list in exchange for some useful information, the next priority for local business owners is to ensure that you have continuing communication with those prospects.

After all they have expressed an interest in your business by visiting your site. Are you seriously intending to ignore them?

Of course, you can Tweet and persuade them to Like your Facebook page but all that takes time – the one commodity of which you have least. Should you choose to use these strategies then do ensure that at some stage you provide a Call to Action to bring them to an email sign-up form where you can capture their information.

By comparison, with email, once you have pre-loaded your messages into your autoresponder your prospects will receive personalised messages from you for as long as you choose. And if they are already part of your Facebook or Twitter community then your presence in their life is simply reinforced to ensure that you remain ‘top of mind’ whenever they decide to buy whatever your are offering.

Email may well be diminishing in its impact and use but in terms of building a relationship with your prospects it achieves:

..and email remains a powerful tool in your local marketing armoury.

The post E is for Email appeared first on Online Marketing For Business - Dewsbury.

Although direct response marketing can be achieved using any form of marketing media by far the most effective is through internet marketing – specifically because of the speed and automation advantages of online marketing.

Online, responses can be measured immediately and the merchant system actions tailored to the responses of the website visitor.

It is for this reason that the first action of any business owner should be to review the effectiveness of any page of their website landing page where visitors arrive. Is that page delivering to the visitors what they are expecting to receive AND are you generating a response from those visitors which will enable you to continue the ‘conversation’ and build a relationship with them that will ultimately result in a sale?

If not, then this is a first priority before any thought is given to SEO, pay per click or social media campaigns. Having visitors arrive at a website that does not work is like putting petrol in a car with only 3 wheels. It doesn’t matter how much ‘oomph’ you give it if the machine doesn’t work the you are going nowhere.

Checking on the direct response effectiveness of your website should be a high priority for all business owners.

​

The post Direct Response Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing For Business - Dewsbury.

It’s a fact that people respond better to being told what to do with a specific call to action than to vague requests or suggestions.

This is particularly appropriate when they have expressed some interest in your product and changed from being a visitor to your website to being a prospect.

Now you need to move them into and through your sales funnel and this requires instructions. Basically, you are providing road signs for the way you want them to go to complete the sale.

It can be simple text, an image or button or banner. As long as your call to action makes clear what the visitor is supposed to do in order to reach that point where your interests meet, when they have what they are looking for and you have just sold it to them.

No mistaking what is required here!

A call to action is what distinguishes the dividing line between marketing and selling and marks out effective, profitable websites from ineffectual, brochure sites

The success of your Call To Action (CTA) can be measured by split testing. Both one CTA against another and with and without a CTA.

The measurement of responses and the ability to split test your offers are some of the great advantages of online marketing for local businesses. They provide objective data about the Return On Investment achieved for a given investment in marketing compared to more traditional marketing methods which tend to sit in the Overheads column of your accounts providing no discernible benefits.

The post Call To Action appeared first on Online Marketing For Business - Dewsbury.

Bounce rate is just one of a mass of information provided by your Google Analytics that can help your local business marketing. Only one but possibly the most useful.

It tells you how many people left your website from the same page at which they arrived.

This might seem like a sterile piece of data but in fact what it is telling you is that your page is just not interesting enough to the person who just visited it to persuade them to visit other pages on your site.

And as the purpose of your website is to engage with your visitors in order to develop a relationship with them that’s not a very good start.

Remember your teenage years when you suddenly found yourself next to the person you most wanted to meet in the whole world? And you could think of so little to say that they drifted off with a bored look on their face. That’s the moment we’re talking about when your website visitor suddenly stopped being a prospect and became just another lost opportunity.

If what you have to say on your website is not interesting enough to persuade your visitors to stay then that’s your problem, not theirs, because your website is about meeting their needs, not yours.

Bad Bounce Rate

Here’s a snapshot from the Google Analytics of a local business owner with a real problem

The bounce rate is mirrored by the low Pages/Visit which shows that very few people looked at anything other than the page they landed on.

The visit duration confirms this. You’re not going to engage much in 30 seconds and these visitors obviously decided pretty quickly that they wanted to be somewhere else.

Compare that to this local business who has a very low bounce rate, visitors remain for nearly 1 and a half minutes and are viewing nearly 3 pages.

Interpreting your Analytics data is not hard and putting real meaning to the numbers to work out how your visitors are reacting to your web site is time well spent.

One of the great benefits of online marketing is that everything is measurable and many tools and services are free – including Google Analytics.

If you are not using Google Analytics on your local business website then it’s time to start – and if you don’t have a website yet then it’s time to worry!

Need help with any of this? Or maybe just not enough time to get to grips with it effectively then give us a call on 01924 459244

The post Bounce Rate appeared first on Online Marketing For Business - Dewsbury.

An 'out of office' message is the most basic example of an autoresponder.

However, for marketing purposes we are interested in more developed versions that will respond when your website visitors sign up to receive whatever freebie you are offering – and will then follow-up with them at preset time intervals as well as being able to confirm subscriptions, unsubscriptions, posts, and other list activities.

As a local business owner your immediate question will inevitably be: ‘What’s the benefit for me?’

And there are 2 answers:

Building Relationships with your prospects

If you offer visitors to your website something useful and relevant then they may decide to give you their name and email address in exchange. It is an ethical bribe, a fair exchange.

So don’t get wound up with personal opinions about whether you ‘like’ that sort of thing or not. What you ‘like’ as a business owner is the profit in your bottom line – or you wouldn’t be in business. Collecting the means to communicate with prospects who have willingly provided their contact information is simply a means to your own objective.

That’s why it has to be an ethical bribe. What you offer should have real value to the recipient.

Once you have your prospects contact information that they provide through some ethical bribe you offer on your website then you can continue to communicate with them whenever you choose. The advantage of an autoresponder is that you can pre-write your email messages and set up your message sequence to go out at whatever intervals you choose.

Repeated contact with your list of prospects keeps your product or service ‘top of mind’ in their head space. Even if they don’t actually open and read your messages simply the site of your name in their inbox will keep reminding them of what you provide so that when they decide to buy then you have a chance of being among the suppliers they consider at that moment.

So the marketing benefit is that an autoresponder will enable you to build a relationship with your website visitors after the first ‘touch’ of their first visit. It’s a numbers game, a fairly small percentage of visitors will sign up, you will be able to build a relationship with some of them and of those, some of them will eventually buy from you.

As well as your scheduled messages you can also send a ‘broadcast’ message to your list whenever you choose. So special events and offers can all be communicated at zero cost to large numbers of prospects at the expense of 10 minutes of your time to write an email. How good is that!

Some autoresponder services

Let’s be clear that none of this is spamming. The whole point of using a proper autoresponder service is that it is fully compliant with the law and includes an ‘unsubscribe’ link in every email you send.

Anyone receiving your emails can unsubscribe and remove themselves from your list at any time. Which is a good thing because you don’t want to be fooling yourself that you have a prospect when they are really not interested.

Saving Time

The second benefit is time. As a local business owner you don’t have any of that to spare. So to have an employee who works faultlessly, 24 hours per day, forever, costs nothing and never asks for a raise or time off is pretty exciting.

Once you set up your email sequence, which can be as long or as short as you choose to make it, then a good quality autoresponder service requires no more of your time.

So you get marketing benefits from an autoresponder without having to constantly work at it. What business would be without one?! Once you begin to accumulate a list on your autoresponder then it becomes the very core of your business.

More businesses fail after a catastrophic incident such as a fire not because they have lost equipment, stock or premises but because they have lost their business data. Progressively accumulating a list of prospects and customers on autopilot enables you to start communicating and marketing again within days.  If your list is safe - then so is your future business.

Basically, I’m only going to recommend outsourced, 3rd party service – these autoresponders operate on the provider’s infrastructure and you manage it through a web-based control panel and pay a monthly usage fee – usually only a few dollars.

It is possible to install and run autoresponder software on your own server – but as a local business owner getting involved in the technicalities of such a venture is the last thing you want to be doing.

Personally, I recommend Aweber and Mailchimp. I find Aweber easier to manage and has various additional features to help with marketing. Mailchimp has the advantage of offering your first 2,000 subscribers free for life but is oriented towards pretty html newsletters and html in email is, itself, a major obstacle.

Only ever do your marketing with text email. It is less likely to get caught up on spam filters, is smaller in file size and therefore quicker and does not have to worry about whether it will fit or be readable on the increasing number of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

If you don’t yet have an autoresponder set up on your website and would like some assistance then give us a call or use the Contact page.

The post Autoresponders appeared first on Online Marketing For Business - Dewsbury.