Generate Success

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) have voted in favour of national action which will cause large scale disruption for all business sectors across the UK and may already be causing delays to posted items in some areas already.

The Royal Mail is including daily news on service information for customers.

The Royal Mail has lost business to other companies delivering parcels and also due to the increased use of emails over letters. As part of a cost-cutting process I always recommend a business review how it can save money in postage by simply using email to send such things as invoices and make electronic payments instead of sending cheques.

Once you have paid your internet service provider (ISP) and broadband services, emails are free to use, more environmentally-friendly and for the period of postal workers industrial action, will be, more than ever before, a better way to do business.

So, it goes without saying, during the forthcoming postal strike you will be able to generate success and manage your business more effectively if you can avoid relying on the Royal Mail to send and deliver your letters or parcels.

Here is a list of things to consider while the Royal Mail postal service suffers disruption:

• Use email or telephone rather than sending letters

• Use other companies to deliver parcels

• Where possible, pay bills online or at banks, building societies and Post Offices as late payment due to mail being undelivered may result in charges

• Where possible do not rely on receiving post & let your customers know how the industrial action may affect your service or payment.

• Keep communication channels open with all your customers & let them know of any possible delays

To help generate business success, use this latest disruption in the postal service to consider ways in which you can cut costs and be less affected by further industrial action and postal disputes in the future.

There is money to be saved by switching from one utility provider to another; and the best way to compare the latest offers is via comparison websites, such as MoneySupermarket.  Changing gas, electricity and other utility providers helps thousands of account holders in the UK to save millions on their household bills.

Now MoneySupermarket.com want to know where people are spending the money they have saved and have launched a free to enter competition challenging customers to make a short video showing how they spent the savings they have made by using the website.

As an example this is how one customer used the money that she had saved to buy her dog Benson a Batman outfit!

You can see more video entries and register to take part at ‘Let’s Have The Savings‘ here. The funniest and most viewed video will win the cash prize of £500.

So if you think you can come up with an amusing video check out the site now for full details and register your chance to win the cash!

The dream of becoming self-employed or the boss of your own small business can leave the entrepreneur in us all not always addressing the issues that a well written business plan should.

The problem I found is that my several years of experience gave me the confidence to know I could deliver the services I offered, and my general ability to ‘get the job done’ assured me I could manage my own time.  But what I didn’t cater for is my lack of experience and knowledge of how to run small business and to use my business plan as a guide and management tool.

I pretty much learnt the hard way, and spent more time and energy on writing and rewriting my business plan than I had intended. Seeking expert advice would have allowed for me to have a well-oiled business plan in much less time.

In the current economic climate, though there have been UK Government statements to the contrary, the majority of banks and investors are still more reluctant to lend money to small businesses than they were 24 months ago.  So if you are looking to setup a new company or your business needs to move to the next level of growth, then I recommend getting professional advice to help with your business plan.

There are hundreds of companies offering help to UK businesses right now, and you will be able to get a good price for a quality service.  Remember, they’re in a recession too!

What you require is a custom business plan written by or with business experts who understand your individual requirements.

You may consider writing a good business plan is something you can undertake yourself, and you may be right.  But in business, time is money; and in many cases the cost of employing someone else’s time works out cheaper when you take into consideration your own hourly rate.  Something many self-employed business people tend not to do!

Writing a good business plan, one that is written in such a way to appeal to investors and banks, as much as be a monthly guide for you to follow, is a specialist area.  But remember, a good business plan is for life.   Once you have a business plan for the next 12 months or so, you need to continually update it.  So many small businesses start in business with a well thought out, well written business plan for the next 12 – 36 months, only to find they haven’t considered it to be a rolling business plan.  And when they reach the end of their initial business plan they are faced with a blank page!

So, consider your business plan to be a plan for life and if you’re serious about generating online business success, consult with business plan experts and use their time to allow you to concentrate on the business success.

The newest successful social networking kid on the block is Twitter; and if you haven’t already started using this social networking tool to gain new business leads, nows the time to start.

In essence, Twitter is a quick and simple way of keeping in touch with others by letting them know with short messages what you are doing right now.

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

But like other social networking tools, it can add value to your business, too.

The downside with all social networking is that there is no quick ‘n easy way to gain quality leads or business.  It is time consuming.  The more time you put in, the more likely you are to reap a reward.

Therefore, the main piece of advice I can give you, is to use your time wisely. Keep a focus on your goals.  Don’t get distracted or you will be several hours down before you know it, with the word ‘fun‘ replacing ‘business opportunities‘.

How can a Twitter account help your business?

By posting regular short messages on what you are doing, other twitters will ‘follow‘ you.  That means they will be notified whenever you ‘twitter’.

If you are willing to interact, answer questions, give free advice etc, your twitter will become popular; and with the odd link to your products and services, as long as it is in context and clearly not a blatant attempt to simply drive traffic to your website and leads to your business, you can find, like with all social networking tools, that Twitter will reward your business with new customers.

How do I start with Twitter?

You can get started by setting up an account and following a few simple instructions at www.Twitter.com.  But I recently found a very good free Mastering Twitter eBook which will give you all you need to know about how to Twitter.

Twitter is going to continue growing this year, so get started now.

Setting up a Pay per Click (PPC) campaign with Google AdWords is relatively simple.  But setting up a successful campaign that will earn you money and not cost you a fortune, is less simple.

Here are five tips to help a small business to set up a successful Google Pay per Click (PPC) campaign.

1. Don’t only use broad match keywords
Google offer three ways in which your PPC advert can be included in a search listing – broad match, phrase match and exact match.  By default the keywords use a broad search.  This will give you the most traffic, but it will be unqualified and result in quantity not quality leads.

Broad match catches all searches looking for one or more of the keywords you have listed; whereby a phrase match will only include your campaign if all the keywords are included in the search.

An exact search will only list your PPC campaign if the search exactly matches your keywords.

Read How to be successful with PPC for a more detailed explanation.

2. Mistyping the URL or Landing Page address will cost you
Be very careful when adding the PPC campaign destination URL or what’s known as a Landing Page.  If you mistype your website landing page address you will pay for the traffic being sent to a non-existent page.

Google will take some time to report this problem.  So always test your links from within the Google AdWords admin.  That way you can be confident the link is working and will not be charged for testing the link.

3. Google’s Content Network isn’t good with a small budget
By default, your new campaign will not only show on relevant Google searches, it will also be included throughout Google’s Content Network.  This means your advert will show on blogs, websites, other search engines and web directories.

Google’s Content Network can work depending on the campaigns, but the traffic will be less focused and therefore more quantity than quality.  Therefore, this is best avoided for campaigns with a small budget or low profit margins.

4. Separate your PPC keywords list & setup smaller campaigns
Setting up one campaign with a long list of keywords is another way of throwing money away.  You need to divide keywords into small associated lists and create several smaller campaigns.

Your campaigns can then focus on a few specific keywords and use those keywords in the title and body of the relevant PPC campaign.

Google will reward your campaigns for relevancy.  More keyword-targeted campaigns will also receive a stronger CTR (Click through Rate); meaning your campaigns will receive a higher percentage of quality traffic.  All of which will increase your campaign ranking.

In many cases where I have been asked to turnaround a badly setup PPC campaign I see one generic campaign with a list of hundreds of keywords using broad match.  In many cases the PPC campaign has been setup using automated PPC software.

5. Target your PPC campaigns by using negative keywords
Once you have created smaller, more focused PPC campaigns with specific keywords you will also need to add a list of ‘negative keywords.’

A negative keyword is a way of further concentrating a search with any keyword matching.  For example, if you were a finance company offering a factoring service, and your keyword list including the word factor, you would want to exclude any searches for, say X Factor or Max Factor.

To add negative keywords to your keywords list you need to add a hyphen before each keyword:
-x factor
-max factor

Negative keywords, along with an effective keyword matching strategy will allow you to focus your PPC campaigns which in turn will offer you much greater success with Google AdWords.

At last! This week the government “officially” confirmed the UK is now in a recession.  Something all businesses have known since well before Christmas. But now the credit crunch is affecting all UK business, no matter what size, what advice can I give you to not only survive the recession but to positively improve your business while doing so?

All UK businesses are looking to cut costs, spend less and hang on to their customers. But while certain expenditure can most certainly be contracted or cut altogether, whether a corporate golf day or lunch time visits to Marks And Spencer, there’s one area that many businesses look to cut when I recommend they increase their budget spend, especially in times like these.

Internet Marketing will help your business by attracting more customers through visibility.

Furthermore, as businesses stop trading you will need to be accessible, easily found on the web and listed high in Google, if you are going to capitalise on gaining their clients.

For those of you without a company website – where have you been?

Your business not only NEEDS a website but a professional looking, highly functional website should be at the hub of every business marketing plan.  Not having a company website is almost as bad as having a badly designed website!

For those businesses with a good website, you need to promote it with an internet marketing strategy. Internet Marketing should be responsive to your business and sector requirements, but must always include a strong strategic link building focus and an emphasis on ranking as high as possible in Google for your specifically targeted keywords.  Inbound links, topic relevancy and site authority all go towards ranking your website higher.

Now, if you are already employing an internet marketing consultant or company to manage your online marketing but are not getting a ROI (Return On Investment) or new business from this service, then it’s time to question whether they are doing a good job!

Many so-called SEO companies have sprung up in the past 2-3 years in the UK are not experts in the field of web marketing.  Most use automated tools and send pages of next to useless data showing SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but this is not going to help you or your business without a managed strategy and analysis.

What your business needs is an internet marketing program being managed by experts who manually monitor and recommend what is right for your business to acquire more visibility, more traffic, more leads, and ultimately more customers; and the most important consideration is to analyse the results.  To do so, your online marketing strategy will need to harness the power of web analytics.

Armed with a good website analytics tool and an expert internet marketing team to build, monitor, manage and offer recommendations, your internet marketing program will help you  to beat your competitors and survive the recession.

If 2008 was a tough year in business for you then I can only see more businesses going bankrupt in 2009.

To help start the year off on the right path, here is some free internet marketing advice to help you get and stay ahead of your business competitors.

Free Advice Free Offers
Entice your website and blog visitors by offering special incentives; and there’s no better way to grab someone’s attention than to include the word FREE!

Offer free advice, free postage, free information.  Things you know your competitors are charging their customers for.  Be honest, and traffic will grow.

Search Engine Optimisation is vital to your business success in 2009

You need to constantly market your business online.  Keep regularly updating your website and business blog. Fresh content keeps both the search engines and potential customers interested and aware of your products and services.

Set up regular Google Alerts for your company name and any products and services with recognisable or trademarked names.  This way you can monitor what is being written about your business, good or bad!

Similarly, www.IceRocket.com & www.Serph.com are websites that allow you to track who is publishing copy that may affect you, your name and your business.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
An ongoing SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) program is vital in 2009.  Don’t think a one-off ‘makeover’ is going to be enough.  The search engines are looking for your website and blog to continually add relevance, authority and good quality in-bound links.

Furthermore, once you start to receive high ranking for popular keywords, your competitors will also be attempting to leapfrog you in the rankings.

Target Potential Customers
Always target Google, and continue to use Google as a focus, for all your SEM (Search Engine Marketing) but never forget there is a target audience waiting for you on other search engines and directories such as Yahoo, MSN, DMOZ, AllTheWeb, Ask, Alta Vista and AOL, to name a few.

The Internet is global but don’t forget local business is as important, and in some cases easier to convert. Local search strategies should include geo-targeted paid search and natural search engine optimisation campaigns. Geo-targeted keywords restrict campaigns to consumers in specific areas where your company is looking to improve its reputation and increase sales. Include ‘landing pages’ that are specific to campaigns and promote single products and services to increase conversion rates.

Website Traffic Analysis
All focused internet marketing and website development activity will need to be analysed if you are to maximise the results.  The more information you can gather using website traffic analysis, the better.  Many traffic analysis software programs are free.  But many of these programs offer very little in the way of useful information.

We offer clients a free website stats program by AWstats but employ a much more powerful tool for serious in depth analytics.

Internet Marketing Plan
Finally, it is very important to have an internet marketing plan that you can  refer to, whether you undertake the work yourself or outsource to an internet marketing consultancy such as Buzzin Fly.

An internet marketing plan should set out the aims and goals of the program.  I also recommend a quarterly meeting that should discuss the program and provide results and recommendations for the next quarter.

2009 is going to be a difficult year for many companies, especially small businesses and SMEs.  But if you are looking for more revenue consider an internet marketing strategy as an  essential part of your marketing budget spend.

Business Opportunities on the Internet in 2009

In this current economic climate there will be more businesses going bankrupt and more redundancies to come, that’s for sure.  But this needn’t be viewed as bad news for everyone and can actual generate online business success if you stayed focused and deliver quality goods and services.

Unless you are in a niche market, competition will increase as businesses battle to keep their heads above water.  But unless you already compete on price alone, be careful not to lose sight of your current business success.

It’s true, your potential customers are possibly being more cautious with their budgets and may be spending less on products and services not earmarked as a priority.  But your customers will still be looking at the quality and service you provide.

Of course you need to consider any changes in price by your competitors but you should also keep a strong focus on what makes your business different from the rest of the market.

What is your USP (unique selling point)?

To survive this difficult time in business you need to make sure you promote and deliver your USP.  If you haven’t got a USP, this has just become your priority, if you are going to reap the benefit of business opportunities on the Internet in 2009.

Think about what you offer.  How is it different or better than your nearest competitors.  Consider why potential customers would choose to buy from or work with your business.  Even better, ask existing customers what was the reason they chose your business over others, especially any recent customers, as this should give you a good starting point to consider your company’s USP.

Once you have agreed on your business USP promote it as much as you can.

Your market may well have shrunk and become more competitive.  But in every market there are winners and losers.

For those of you using WordPress to manage your own corporate or business blog beware, the next version – WordPress 2.7 – is already in beta stage and is about to be launched for us all.  And this is going to be a big version change – one of those that cannot be ignored.

WordPress 2.7 will see some big changes that you are going to have to get used to, especially with the admin and backend.

As with all software changes there will possibly be a part of you that wishes they would stop developing the software programs you are familiar and confident with; while another part of you is considering how much better the last major update was, once you eased yourself back into your comfort zone.

As with the last major WordPress update, 2.5, the majority of the changes are going to affect the admin and not make any major visual changes to your readers.  But this version will not just be updating the admin but very much rebuilding the backend development.

Aaron Brazell has written a great post – 10 things you need to know about WordPress 2.7 and is something I strongly recommend you read if it is going to affect you.

I just had a very nice chat on the phone with a man whose first attempt at online shopping seemed to have resulted in a fraudster using his card to buy mobile phone top-ups. I don’t understand why he called us (it wasn’t one of my web shops), but I hope I did the right thing by directing him back to his credit card company’s fraud department.

While I was talking to him, I was checking the shop he had problems with. I wouldn’t have bought from it. Here’s how I checked it:-

1. Check the Page

Open the front page of the site in one browser window and then use another window to get to a page that ought to be secure (the payment/checkout page is my usual one). Look at them both. Do either of them show any logos from well-known payment (Barclays, RBS, Protx, …) or security-checking services (thawte – who else?)? That’s not entirely reliable, but it’s usually a good sign because those companies attack people using their marks without permission.

Look at the payment/checkout page – does the address in the address bar start “https”? If so, is the padlock in the browser status bar (usually bottom right) closed? That usually means it’s encrypted with a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate.

2. Check the Certificate

Open the certificate details. In Firefox-based browsers, double-click the padlock, then click the “View Certificate” button. Then pick “Subject” in the second list box. Usually, it looks like this:-

in that case, as long as the “CN” (common name) is the webserver you thought you were using and the “O” (organisation) and country code (C) make sense, then there’s nothing wrong.

Some shops now use Extended Validation certificates and give a bit more information. Here’s one from a train company:-

In addition to the CN and O, it shows Organisational Unit (OU), Location (L), State (ST) and also other address parts and company number that Firefox doesn’t display neatly. This is a bit more reassuring, but also a lot more expensive for the shop owner (around 20 times more, last I checked), so I don’t blame shops for not using them.

3. Check the Registrations

By this point, the payment processing and actual transaction are looking pretty good. Finally, I check the recipient. Find the business details on the web shop. Does it include a geographic address? If it contains a company registration number, look it up on the Companies House website.

Then I find the business details on the domain names – you can use CoolWhois to look up domain names. If any of the addresses or numbers don’t match (Website, SSL Certificate, Whois), then I call them to ask why their website says they’re based in Bristol but their domain name is registered to Bolton. If they don’t answer messages, or – worse – the domain name says “Non-trading Individual” and the address has been omitted from the public listing, I give up on them and look for another shop. There’s no point securely paying someone that you can never reach if there’s a problem.

4. Buy Stuff and Check the Statements

All being well, I then buy stuff and check my credit card statement each month before I pay it. I think any web shop owner (or webmaster – I help some people with this sort of thing) should be taking care of the basics above. Do your shops measure up?

Despite the above checks, I can only remember not buying something online once in the last year. A couple of times, I’ve worked through the above steps and it’s changed which shop I bought from – and I’m pretty sure it saved me from losing £400 on one purchase.