Ulster Bank and DogPatch Labs

It has been a while in the making and we were told not to tell anybody…..

Until now.

Combining banking with fintech, start ups and innovation

Ulster Bank and DogPatch Labs are going to start working together. Combining banking with fintech, start ups and innovation. Leveraging the international connections through RBS and the links through IBOS (which for example, gives you direct access to Silicon Valley Bank).

Melting pot of opportunities

Combine that with the 20,000 resident entrepreneurs on Smallbusinesscan and the Business Achievers Award and you have a melting pot of fantastic opportunities.

Watch this space (and this video).

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Getting Started In SMS Marketing

If a business wants to get its message out to where most people are these days, then it must reach them via their mobile devices, which in turn means text messaging. But it’s one thing to say that a business needs SMS marketing; it’s a whole other matter to actually do it.

Here is a primer for small businesses who want to jump on the SMS train and increase their customer base.

The Fundamentals Of SMS

For the sake of the neophyte, let’s pause for a definition. Short Message Service, or SMS, is defined as a message platform where users give the business permission to send out text messages of n more than 140 characters. The total character count is in fact 160, but the first 20 characters are reserved for the sender’s name. Twitter is the most well-known SMS platform.

Before You Start Marketing

Even before you decide on what sort of SMS text you want to send out, you need to have an audience in place that you can send it to. This is best achieved by having people sign up, either via a link in an email or one embedded on your website. Let them know that by signing up, they get advance word on promotions, sales, deals, and special occasions. People enjoy being in the know, and giving them this sense of exclusivity makes them more likely to sign up.

Now, as for content …

Start Small And Easy

If you’re just beginning your foray into SMS marketing, then start off with something that is basic and yet still actionable. Consider offering a discount for everyone who replies to the text by using a special code. The discount information can be sent via email to their account, possibly even using am embedded QR code.

This tactic is not only an easy way to get your business into SMS marketing, it also serves as a good indicator of how many people are reading the messages and are willing to act on them. But no matter what you include your message, heed the wisdom offered in the article “6 Tips For Writing More Effective Text Marketing Messages” and make sure that all of your messages have a call to action.

Have A Contest

People enjoy discounts, sure, but they also like having the chance to win something. Hold a contest and text the particulars via SMS. In fact, kill two birds with one stone and make it a contest for who can sing up the most friends on the text distribution list!

Promote An Event

If your business is going to be hosting some kind of special event in the near future, promote it via SMS, and again, building on the sense of exclusivity, include a special perk for the text recipients. This is particularly effective for restaurants and pubs that may be observing a holiday, or holding a viewing party for a sporting event.

Whatever You Do, Keep It Snappy

With only 140 characters to work with, it seems unlikely that there are any boring, rambling messages out there. You would be surprised. People’s capacity to waste words and not get to the point is limitless. So, be short, sweet, and to the point. Give the users the what, where, when, and why (as in, why they should care), and be done with it.

With an increasing number of people turning to mobile devices, SMS is the best way to reach them. Start off small, and build up your experience as you increase your address lists. In time, that increased list will mean more business.

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5 Tips to Repurposing Video for International Consumers

For small businesses, the opportunity to expand into the global business market has never been better; however, there are some challenges that small businesses looking to engage an international audience will have to consider. One thing that will have to be considered is what it will take to make the necessary adjustments to the marketing strategies and plans in order to reach a broader international audience. One of the immediate challenges in this area will be the need for new content.

When a company is on a constrained budget, coming up with new content to launch an international marketing campaign can be quite challenging; however, there is a simple solution to the potentially perplexing issue. Repurposing content is one of the most cost efficient and resourceful methodologies for generating content for a broader audience. There are a number different ways that content can be repurposed.

Repurposing Video

Due to the fact that video has a universal appeal that transcends language and culture, the repurposing tips offered here will focus specifically on the use of video content. According to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, one minute of video is the equivalent of 1.8 million words. Additionally, ComScore, recently release data that revealed that 45.4 percent of online users view video at least once per month. The Average user is exposed to an average of 32.2 videos over the course of a month.

1. Voiceover

One common mistake made by small business marketers is attempting to translate an existing script for a video into languages that they are not fluent in. It is also not a good idea to use less complex services, such as Google Translate, because these types of translation programs can produce unpredictable and inaccurate results. Take the time to find someone fluent in the language that the script is to be translated into. To get the best results, use a native of the country that is being targeted.

2. Use Subtitles to Introduce New Ideas and Concepts

Much in the same way as creating a voice over, subtitling will allow the marketing team to create a specific message without having to translate the complete script. It will be important to ensure that the content and the subtitles correspond in harmony.

3. Use Cultural References

It is important to be very sensitive to what the new audience is used to seeing and responding to. If not, it can possibly confuse them as to the true meaning of the message that you are attempting to deliver. For instance, different countries use different currencies and may not identify with the U.S. dollar. In this case, using currency references that are specific to the natural currency of the target audience can be an immensely powerful tool.

4. xpand Distribution Channels

Most major companies now have specific suffixes for their country, such as au for Australia, de for Germany, etc. By registering these country specific domains, it will allow for a marketing strategy with greater specificity as for as localization and cultural paradigms are concerned.

5. Time is Important

Understanding that changing the language will change the timing in which the message will appear during the video. It is important to understand that it will take a marginally different amount of time to say, “Get your office supplies here” in Italian or Japanese than it does in English. Repurposing video is not simply about translation; timing is immensely important. Because time is such an important element, it may be necessary to edit the video to ensure that the timing is on point.

The same video can be repurposed more than once with a little creativity. The idea is to determine exactly what message you are attempting to deliver to the target audience, then find the video that can best be repurposed to meet the goal. With more than 90 percent of online shoppers admitting that they find video very useful in helping to guide their shopping decisions, repurposing video is a solid way to initiate an international marketing campaign.

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5 Negotiation Mistakes That Could Cripple Your Revenue

The most essential skills in the business world are negotiating skills. If one is unable to negotiate logically, persuasively and fairly, it could jeopardize his/her business or miss out great opportunities as a result. In an attempt to argue persuasively, participants more often rely on illogical arguments that are rational to prove their points. It is wise therefore to avoid such negotiation mistakes, since they only weaken your argument.

Negotiating is sometimes uncomfortable. Trying to get an appealing price, terms and conditions often feels challenging, and most people avoid it. However, one has to negotiate for his/her business to stand. There is always fear in the beginning and there is usually no way to eliminate it. There is actually no switch to press and make one an immediate expert. One has to take a lot of time and training and work through it.

A recent survey indicated that 32% of people are fearful when it comes to negotiating and even 20% of the professional negotiators do not take pleasure in negotiating.

For a successful negotiation, planning is vital. Preparations allow one to chart a course for one’s position, plan for formidable rebuttals, consider possible compromises and alternatives and determine the outcome. Once one becomes comfortable with asking, take the skills to a larger arena. In the beginning, inexperienced negotiators will misstep. Below are five common mistakes that people make during negotiations and how to avoid them,

1. Lack of confidence

A good number of people think that it takes a brazen or bold personality to negotiate a particular deal while others think that experience is all what is needed. Instead, it takes preparations and tenacity. Even before starting the process, one should ensure that he/she have identified anticipated possible objections; mutually desirable terms and determine what motivators will augur well with the opponent. Confidence in addition means having a good heart that often endears and gives the other party a less defensive standpoint.

2. Assumption that something is not negotiable

Everything is negotiable when one thinks like a negotiator. When one decides that the terms and conditions can be altered in his/her favor, an opportunity presents. Rules are change, if one simply proposes a viable, mutually beneficial and ethical alternative solution. Powerful negotiators are outright rule breakers.

3. Failure to build relationships first

One of the greatest mistakes people make when negotiating is failing to know the other party. One need to slow down and make good connections with the people to garner helpful information that can be used to know what motivates them, what they value in life and what annoys them too. More often, people learn greatly though a genuine conversation with another person

4. NOT ASKING

It may sound very simple, but successful negotiations entails asking keenly for what you want. The fear of seeming greedy or rejection sometimes gets in the way, but it is always never personal. It is a purely a reflection that you did not table a valid argument substantiating clearly why you should get what you actually want. Actually, it is your offer that was rejected and not you.

When you get a “no” as the answer, it only means that the other party needs a little more information. People say no an average of three times before they say yes. It is therefore prudent to master the art of rejection, which is to keep asking.

5. Talking too much

Those experienced with sales and negotiation training will tell you that too much talking is a sure way to kill a deal. It is very usual for example; a salesperson can talk too much about a certain product or a service that they take you out of the purchase.

One should never underestimate the power of silence. When discussing a business deal, if you stop talking and get very comfortable with the silence awkwardness then the ability to sell the product and win the argument in the negotiations increases meaningfully. It is wiser to talk less and listen more.

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7 Questions To Answer Before You Market Your Business

What if I told you there was a simple way to kick start your business, where you spend less money, and annoy less people? Are you interested? Would it sound like magic? To me it would. But, it’s not magic. It is just marketing 101 stuff. But, this marketing 101 stuff so so so many people get wrong.

Yea you can ignore this marketing 101 mumbo jumbo. And instead hit the streets, start the cold calling and push your ‘ultimate 10% off offer’. But, how far would that get you? Not very far. And it would probably annoy.

But, as a wise old man once said to me ‘I don’t take shortcuts, because they take to long’. Let us, you and me, be honest, no short cuts, and answers these 7 simple marketing 101 question.

1) Who is Your Target Market?

Marketing is just a word for communicating what we do and how we help.

If you say ‘everyone’ is your target market you need to start over! Seriously! Why? Because a) not everyone wants your product and, b) Addressing everybody is not practical. Not enough money in the world nor hours in the day. Just. Not. Possible.

Do this instead. Choose a slice of the market, a niche, that is already served, enter it, then position yourself differently.

Yes, entering a market with competition sounds counterintuitive. The premises is sound. If a niche has competition then people are buying. If people are buying then profit is being made. All you have to do is position yourself differently from the others and you will attract your audience.

And you positioning yourself differently with your voice, your viewpoint, your expertise, customer service, or with testimonials.

The alternative is a finding a niche without competition, the classic gap in the market, and convince people who are not buying to buy. That is way, way more difficult than positioning yourself differently in a profitable market.

Another niche is to sell to (and lead) a group which you are a member of. The premises is people will buy from you, because you are one of them. Think of this as the insider helping insiders, a tribe if you will.

Tribes is not new, Seth Godin, wrote a book, about it ‘Tribes’. People gravitate into groups around a leader or ideas. Use your tribe to your marketing advantage. Rally like-minded people around your product, your idea, or your cause.

2) HOW will this Niche Become Aware of What you Have?

In marketing parlance this is the promotional part of the 4 P’s. Promotion suggest advertising and pushing. And no one likes be sold to.

How will your Tribe know about your products? If your niche is your tribe of like-minded people, then talk with them as normal and show what you have. Selling will take care of itself.

If your niche has competitors, assess their tactics, then do one better and market from your own angle.

Remember all your online business emanates from your home base — your website.

Yes, you can interrupt people with advertising, but, chances are you’ll get ignored if you don’t have a compelling story to tell them. Leading us to number 3.

3) WHAT Story are you Telling, Living, or Spreading?

The most engaging and memorable marketing is marketing told through stories. Big brands do this expertly in 30sec TV ads. The ads show how lives are transformed, get better, or are improved.

Yes, a story. But, why stories? Why not just ‘here’s our features and benefits buy from us’?

Because our brains are more active when listening to stories and stories activate the language processing parts of our brains. Both help us relate and connect with your brand easier.

Yet, the best story is the how peoples lives are transformed, improved or are better.

Stories are great only if they connect with existing beliefs and views people have.

4) Does Your Story Resonate With their Worldview?

What does your audience believe? What do they want? What are their fears?

Marketing Personas is a one powerful tool in your toolbox helping you focus your messaging to a subset of your market. Better than using marketing personas, is identifying prospects worldview.

A worldview is how people view their world. E.g. what should we do next? What is right or wrong? How should we reach our goals?

Tapping into the worldview of your audience focuses your messaging and builds a deeper bond with people.

Apple did this with their Think Differently campaign. The rallied cry called people:

…the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the trouble makers, the round pegs for square holes, the ones who see differently…

And it worked expertly. It worked because people identified themselves in this campaign. And we all identify with being a rebel at some stage in our lives, or being a trouble maker, and we all fell the system, puts round pegs into square holes.

Find the worldview your audience associates with and foster it.

Take, for example, two families. Both sets are married, home owners, have 2 teenage kids. One a VW family, the other a Ford family. Both sets work full time. One is a Apple product family and the other Android and Windows family.

Would the words and images in your marketing be the same for each family? Are the worldviews the same? No, probably not. If you ignore their worldview you’ll speak the wrong language and annoy people you want to attract and waste your money.

5) WHERE is the Fear that Prevents Action?

For us, as owners and marketeers, action is a signup/registration, or phone call or a sale. So identify the fear preventing our prospects from taking action?

Is the fear the basic I must ‘Know you, like you, trust you’, before I buy from you? Does your website ooze confidence (trust). Is social proof is missing – testimonials and social shares. Or maybe the fear is internal. Or maybe people want your product, but, just not today.

Figure out what fear is holding people from opening up their wallet and giving your their cash.

6) WHEN do you Expect People to Take Action?

If your answer is I want action ‘now’, then ask what is keeping people from saying, ‘no, I’ll buy later’. Because deferring decisions to later is safer and easier.

As owners want people action now, so figure out and fix, that part of your marketing funnel ‘allowing’ people to say I’ll take action ‘later’.

7) WHY Would People Do Business With You?

Seldom is the features and benefits of your product stopping the sale.

So, ask yourself, why would people do business with me? Is it your charm, your good looks, your humour? Maybe it’s your customer service? Or it’s the hand written thank you card after an order? Or a voucher for a coffee?

Further, what will your customers tell their friends about you? And if you ask your customers – ‘why did you do business with me?’ Will you be pleased with the answer?

And what would happen if take their answer and lead your marketing the it? As we know customers speaking about you (earned media) is 100x more powerful then you talking about you.

Kick Start your Marketing

To kick start your business and annoy less people — answer the 7 question. And like magic you will attract the right people, repel the wrong people, spend less money and be massively ahead of your competition.

Wow. That sounds like cheating.

Want to cheat more? Download for FREE this Worksheet, it walks you through the 7 question to Market your business and Annoy Less People.

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Website Localisation: Preparing Your Website to Market in Another European Country

Being in the EU offers some great opportunities to make sales in other European countries via your website. Geographically, it is fairly easy to offer order fulfilment in mainland Europe if you are based in the UK, and of course, if you sell through your website then it is very easy for people all over Europe to place orders with you. Of course, if your website is only available in the English language and you don’t do any marketing targeted at people outside of the UK, you will probably find that almost all of your sales come from your own country, except perhaps for the odd sale to expats, or sales of very niche or unique items

Branching into Other European Markets

You may, therefore, be missing out on a lot of potential business by not taking other European countries seriously as a market. If your products are suitable for mainstream customers in other countries (for example they are things like clothes, toys, hand tools or jewellery as opposed to language specific things like books, or electronics that come with UK plugs), all you need to do is come up with a strategy to advertise your website to different markets using things like targeted Facebook and Google ads, and of course, prepare your site to receive foreign customers.

Website Localisation

If you want to make your website ready to sell to people brought in by your foreign marketing efforts, you are going to need versions of all of your static content in the right languages (for example your ‘About Us’ and FAQ pages), as well as your product descriptions. It can be easy to get content like this quickly translated using a professional translation agency, and unless your product range changes very regularly you will be able to get most of your copy translated in one go. You will also need to set prices for your products in the currencies of the countries you want to sell to, which in most cases will be euros. If you already have euro pricing for the Irish market then you can use this. You’ll also need to work out shipping and handling costs to add on. You may want to also buy your site’s equivalent domain in the country you are going to sell to, for example if you have example.co.uk, you would buy example.de to direct your German customers to. If you use a .com domain you may not want to do this, as .com is universally used.

One at a Time?

You can translateyour site and adverts and start marketing in several countries at once, or you can employ a strategy that deals with one new market at a time. If you have research that suggests your products will do very well in one particular country then it makes sense to focus your efforts here and expand gradually, however if you believe your products are just as likely to sell well in any given country then it can make sense to go by the size of the market, and the expense of shipping to it (shipping to France or Germany will be cheaper than shipping to Greece, and so will add less to the total cost of buying your product for the customer).

Branching out can allow you to tap huge new markets with only the relatively small expense of some translation and some changes to your marketing strategy. Is it time you considered mainland Europe as a major market for your business?

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Content Marketing: Five Social Forums to Share Content

‘Content is King’ – this remains constant amidst the changes all around. But how many of us actually know the trick behind creating a ‘kingly Content’? Quality content is the most important element, however getting it across the right masses makes the entire content marketing process complete. If you write and share fantastic content, your community is more likely to become your client, remain your loyal client, and send you more of them.

Spread Your Words With Social Media…

#Integrating the Basic Social Media Plan

Goal: Content should serve as a means to gain followers on social channels, drive brand awareness and convert the viewers into your desired customers.
Type of content: Considering which messages are appropriate for each channel and which of them resonates with specific audience, customize the content you plan to distribute.
Tone of the channel: It is critical to determine the overall tone of the channels as and when you share content on each one of them. Check whether it is friendly, conversational, fun or professional?

#Facebook and Twitter’s Native Video is about to Transform Content Marketing

Facebook Native Video: Posting content only on Facebook limits the potential relationship brands can build with their audience. There has to be some different algorithm advantages. Keeping this in mind, Facebook developed its native video empire adding auto play, mobile function, and view counts. The importance of short and visually appealing video content cannot be overlooked. The auto play provides a great opportunity to grab visitor’s attention and engage them in real time. Content marketers can now post through native video player to drive greater Facebook Traffic.
Twitter’s Native Video: It is not just Facebook, but Twitter also launched its native player to help content marketers and advertisers create premium video content. The six-second auto play allows content creators to be more flexible with the video structuring. This is an excellent way to reach the target audience within a short span of time.

With the advent of native video players, there will be significant changes in the way content marketers create and distribute video content.

#Google Plus to Amplify your Content Marketing

Google Plus is catching up with 50% of internet users having a Google Plus account. When you connect Google Authorship with Google+ profile, it builds a confirmed connection between the content and its creator. Using Google Plus gives you the following benefits of content promotion

Enhance Visibility: Once you start posting content on Google Plus community, you establish a dynamic presence on the search engines too. The Google Plus layout is more visual.
Group Followers and Interact: You can group the followers of your brand using Google Circle and interact with your target group using Google Hangouts.
Connect to Influencers: Google Plus allows you to get connected with the influencers and make them talk positively about your brand.
Email your Audiences: If you check the little box at the bottom of your post that reads ‘Also send email to your circle’ in Google Plus, each of your followers in the circle will receive email and be aware of your content.

#The Key to killing it on LinkedIn is Content

In this content-driven marketing era, LinkedIn platform has enormous potentials

Content Marketing Score: With LinkedIn’s Content Marketing Score tool, you’ll be able to market your content effectively by measuring your audience’s engagement with the content. The tool also determines which content is getting the best response and which aren’t.
Personalized Content: LinkedIn is a great platform to learn about the geographical location when you want to address specific audience members. You can also listen to what your audience has to say through social media listening tools and accordingly craft segment-specific content.
Top Results in Search Engine: Articles already published on LinkedIn appears at the top on Google. You’re more likely to see LinkedIn articles in Google as you release more content on this popular social media channel.

#Pinterest’s Visual Content Marketing is the Buzz

With human brain processing visual information 60,000 times faster than text, people respond better to visual information

Increase the Use of Visual Content: You can add videos, functional slideshares and podcasts within Pinterest boards to make it more interesting and engaging.
Encourage Contribution: Your Pinterest boards can be set into ‘group boards’ that allows your followers to add pins to them. You can also encourage user feedbacks to improve your social media activities.
Content Curation: Pinterest is an excellent content curation tool thereby making it a two-way communication channel instead of only one. The more you use Pinterest or pinner’s photos, the better you create niche networking circle.

Sharing your Content at Optimal Times

Posting content at the optimal times gives your content an edge. There is always a best time to post to social networks. Certain times proved to drive engagement to content. Posting the same content multiple times helps it to get exposed to different time zones thereby making the content reach people living in different parts of the world.

Your social presence is an extension of your brand. Help your brand reach your target mass through this mind blowing social media content marketing strategy.

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How Local SEO Can Help Your Business

Many small and medium sized business owners think that local SEO is something of a dark art cloaked in mystery, but really it isn’t all that difficult if you have a bit of time to spend. Most webmasters can do a lot of the work themselves without relying on the services of an SEO agency, but for those who do require a bit of expert guidance, we are always here to help. And for those of you who want to have a go, here are a few simple tips to get you on the right path.

Local SEO: Identify Your Target Audience

Different audiences require different approaches to content creation. For this reason, you need to spend a bit of time considering who you are marketing your website at. A more in-depth understanding of your target audience and their buying habits will help you make the right decision when identifying keywords and devising marketing strategies.

Keyword Research

Keywords are extremely important. Search engines use keywords to determine what your website is all about, so using relevant keywords will boost your rankings. The Google Keyword Planner is a useful tool. Use the planner to find out what people are searching for in your local area and pick the keywords that most accurately describe what your business is offering. Location based keywords – for example Chicago plumbers – are important, but be sure to include non-local keywords, too.

Create a Blog

Don’t underestimate the value of a blog. All small and medium sized businesses should have a blog. A blog ensures your website is regularly updated with fresh content, which is valuable from a search engine perspective. You can build keywords into your blog posts and link to other website pages, both of which are effective SEO techniques. Including share buttons on blog posts also encourages readers to ‘share’ them on social media, which is good for boosting traffic to the site.

Local Contact Information

All small and medium sized businesses should have contact information on their website. A contact email address is not enough – you need to include a geographical address and telephone number (in text form) on every page of your website. If you have more than one office, list the details of your main office on each web page and include a separate listing for branch offices. These details are crucial for local SEO but, sadly, many businesses overlook their importance.

Local Directory Listings

Directory listings have become devalued in recent years, but for small and medium sized businesses, good quality local directory listings are worth their weight in gold. Yahoo!, Yelp, Yellow Pages and other business directories will help your search engine ranking position, but make sure your listing information is exactly the same as that on your website. Even the smallest of discrepancies will hurt you. It is also worth creating a Google+ and Google Places account.

This is only a summary of how local SEO can help your business. If you would like to learn more, contact us today for more information.

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3 Ways SMEs Can Maximise Online Marketing With no Additional Spend

There are around 58.6million internet users in the United Kingdom. Accounting for around 90 per cent of the population, it makes online marketing one of the most compelling activities to reach new customers.

With this in mind, here are three tried, tested and proven ways that any SME in any industry can reach more potential customers online without any additional spend, other than time, of course.

Embrace Twitter

Do you use Twitter? If so, how quickly is your following growing, and do you see any meaningful engagement? Popular automotive publication, Car Waffle, were able to double up on their Twitter following, hitting 31,000 followers and almost one million Tweet impressions a month in just three months, and crucially, without any spend.

In addition, their Twitter account is currently growing at rate of 5,000 followers per month, and as their audience grows, their rate of growth increases too. They also drive a whopping 10,500 link clicks every month.

What’s most interesting is the fact that if you too were able to drive this number of link clicks and the traffic only converted at a rate of 0.5 per cent – which is rather modest – it would account for 52 sales, web enquiries or email subscribers, depending on what your goal was.

That’s a fairly big deal considering Twitter is just one of many social networking platforms out there. Harness the power of others and social media alone could drive hundreds of additional conversions month in month out.

How did they do it?

Timing – Naturally it’s best to tweet when your audience is online and you can use a free tool such as Manage Flitter in order to determine this.

In addition, Twitter engagement for brands is 17 per cent higher on weekends, so if you don’t tweet on a Saturday and Sunday – which most brands don’t – you’re missing out on tons of extra engagement.

Images – Research shows that Tweets containing images will generally receive twice as much engagement. This is because the human brain can process images 60,000 times quicker than text. With Twitter’s new multi-image upload tool you can now add up to four per tweet, though one will usually suffice.

Links – Using the Bitly link shortener can make a tweet look far more visually pleasing than simply pasting in a full URL string, thus increasing the likelihood of it being retweeted. Using a link shortener also frees up more characters for you to be able to deliver your message.

Hash Tags – Use them, but use them sparingly; talking at an Expo just the other day, Georgina Parnell from Twitter said she recommends using a combination of no more than two blue elements per tweet (i.e. links, Twitter handles and hash tags).

Engage – Failing to engage with your audience by way of replying to their comments, tweets or mentions is one of the worst things you can do. Even if you don’t have time to reply to them all, you should reply to some.

Run Competitions

Let’s face it, everybody likes a good competition, right? Of course they do; however, most of us will only ever enter a competition if the prize is extremely relevant to our interests, or a lump of cash, naturally.

Although there are exceptions to the norm such as the online community of serial competition entrants, or ‘compers’ as they’ve become known. These individuals are often willing to take surveys, subscribe to mailing lists and engage via social media indiscriminately in exchange for the opportunity to win a prize.

Harnessing this community can produce an enormous boost in traffic, almost instantly. Just look at the graph below which Stoneacre Motor Group agreed to share, it shows an almost doubling of traffic to their website. Visits rose from 3,000 visits to 6,000 shortly after they announced a competition to win VIP tickets to an open air concert featuring One Direction.

However, it’s not all about traffic; a competition can be run with the aim of driving email subscribers too. Parenting blogs have proved to be particularly good at this with some adding over 10,000 email subscribers from a single competition.

Another good example is CCF, who set out to conduct a car tax disk survey and used a competition in order to drive participation, offering £100 worth of high street vouchers to one lucky winner. This resulted in 850 entries, email subscribers and completed surveys.

How do you get the most out of an online competition?

Make it simple

The more barriers you place between a visitor and your competition, the fewer entries you will receive. Competitions that perform best are those that simply require a retweet or a comment. As a general rule of thumb, try to keep the number of required actions to a maximum of two and if you ask people to enter by joining your mailing list don’t ask for too much information, a name and email address should suffice.

Harness your existing audience

If you already have a large number of email subscribers use them to drive additional engagement. The chances are they will be on social media and the average Facebook user has around 130 friends and the average Twitter user, 127 followers. By encouraging them to like, share or tweet your competition, you can very quickly spread the word to a much larger audience.

Competition Forums

There are literally dozens of online competition platforms. Most allow you to submit a competition for free. In addition, you can add a massive boost via paid competition platforms such as myukcompetitions.co.uk, who will guarantee 1,000+ genuine entries. They do this by promoting your competition to their list of 10,000 email subscribers, but a minimum prize value of £500 is required.

Here’s some of the best free to submit competition platforms:

Money Saving Expert – forums.moneysavingexpert.com

Loquax – loquax.co.uk

Twitaculous – twitaculous.com

Use Emojis

Emoji is Britain’s fastest growing language, according to Professor Evans and the research he conducted in conjunction with Talk Talk Mobile.

The research found that 8-in-10 of us use emojis when we communicate; that amounts to huge potential for businesses willing to communicate in this way, and though some may see it as unprofessional, many have already introduced its use across their digital marketing campaigns.

As far back as 2012, Experian analysed some of these businesses, 56 per cent of which reported an increase in open-rates when symbols such as emojis were included in the subject line of emails. In other research, a simple snowman symbol was shown to lift open-rates to a staggering 65.72 per cent. Considering the average email open-rate for business is 21.59 per cent and eCommerce just 16.89 per cent, that’s a pretty impressive result.

However, the use of emojis to enhance engagement stretches much further than just email campaigns. Examples of emojis being used across other marketing channels include the case of tennis player Andy Murray, who tweeted about his entire wedding day in a single tweet made up of 51 emojis; this earned him a staggering 13,848 retweets and 29,500 favourites.

In addition, some marketing executives have begun using emojis in their page titles which then show up in Google Search.

How to use emojis

Finding emojis – There are a number of online resources that list all available emojis one of the best by far is getemoji.com, as it allows you to quickly and easily copy & paste the emojis that you wish to use.

Where to use – Emojis can be used in status updates on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as well as in email subject lines and web page titles that show up in Google Search, and even in printed material.

How many – According to software engineer Thomas Dimson, almost half of all comments and captions on Instagram are made up of emojis and it seems the more you use, the more engagement you get. However, for use in email subject lines a maximum of five seems to work best. For Google Search no more than three is advised.

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How Well Do You Sell?

Conversions are the end product; no way, we can avoid that argument. The question though is not of how to convert: it is of how well can you convert. Converting well is an art, like any kind of well executed business process. But how does one recognize, measure or otherwise gauge how are they faring in this tricky art? If you have bones about the fact that digital marketing does work in as much complication then that’s one topic you can always research more on. The complication for marketers today is not getting conversions done, it’s knowing whether their customers are going home happy or not.

Selling online is easy, selling well is not. Selling well can mean two things really, either your products or services are being sold in tens and hundreds daily or your customer becomes happy with you and you have a constant stream of revenue from a few possible customers. The rest of the gritty details are what we can refer to as extras which can enhance or sometimes destabilize our working flows. As a marketer though, you want to be able to realize what these details are because they can further help us in optimizing the conversion part of our sales campaign.

PR campaigns

Lot of the marketers around the optimization niche recognizes PR as the kind of pivot which a business must adopt in order to establish a more concrete selling policy. PR has taken a new turn though because while readers love blogs where the writers and admins take effort to answer each individual comment, the mass of the building has gone to the social media. Answering the tweets, retweeting the important ones and updating information regularly not only promotes your written article, it also builds positive value for the audience.

Using CTAs

Calls to actions have been around since marketing itself. In fact, it’s debatable as to what came first. Digitally, your one good CTA can make quite a difference in how well you convert your leads to sales or subscription. Remember how performable increase their revenue by 21% just by changing the color of the CTA button.

What surprises people often about CTAs though is how often they can easily end up creating a lot of leads for their websites but no actual conversions, which brings me to the next part of my equation.

Feedback tools

Chat software and heat maps serve an integral part of this conversation. Each serve a different purpose in terms of the data they give and yet the data they end up presenting serves to be equally important. The key driving action behind feedback is improvement. Any feedback you get from your customers can give you a better chance to improve your site’s action. Plus, with tools like live chat and heatmaps you can literally drive your traffic to the point of active conversions. The key highlight is to always note the driving motivator behind your high performing site areas though and then work on the rest of your site according to your findings.

How do you put all this together?

Marketing is a composition game at the end of the day. I can give out a thousand tools and share insights by a thousand gurus but the key to any successful marketing campaign is composition. Your content, your collateral and your website have to make impact, period.

Impact however is only the beginning, once the traffic comes in the thousands and once the content gets read by even more that’s the stage where you need to accurately sum up what you have been doing with the traffic.

As it is though, selling is an art of common sense. Cater to the needs and requirements of the audience and that’s your branding done, go the extra step with their needs and they convert.

Rocket Science? It’s not but then the many variances and complications within it make it fascinating and determine the good marketers from the exceptional ones.

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