Bridging the Gap Between Sales and Marketing

Bridging the Gap Between Sales and Marketing: Although the disciplines of sales and marketing seem to share similar backgrounds, one might be surprised at the lack of internal communication between the sales and marketing teams of many small businesses. In many unsuccessful companies, there is definitely a gap between sales and marketing. Here are some of the best ways that companies have fixed this gap in the past.

1 – Connect the rewards of both departments to each other

The different pay scales that many sales and marketing departments have serve as a divide in many small businesses. Sales is a results based profession that depends on great marketing, but sales can also blame marketing for a downturn. Marketing is usually a more salaried position, but it can blame sales if its material seems to fall flat.

If the pay of both departments are linked, then both sides will have plenty of incentive to work together. The influence will create a bond that will not allow either side to completely blame the other if an idea falls flat. Ideas will also be much less likely to fall flat, because they will be tested in the real world of sales rather than on the chalkboard in the marketing department.

2 – Create opportunities for crossovers in between departments

In both departments, you likely have people who are interested in what is across the wall. Give those people the ability to move between departments and study the discipline on the other side. This will increase morale and create personal bonds that will allow for more efficiency and synergy between departments.

You can also make it your business to reward the employees who are able to take an idea from the drawing board all the way to a conversion. In other words, the people who master the entire process will be rewarded financially as well as operationally within the company. Do not be afraid to give people the opportunity to expand their own palettes without your express permission. The final result that you want is results, and sometimes you get this when you let people think for themselves and follow their hearts in their professions!

3 – Facilitate the lines of communication within your company

Too often, the sales and the marketing team are kept completely apart. The sales team is on the phone all day, with the marketing team coming up with ideas that they foist onto the unsuspecting sales team in the middle of the workday. This can engender a great deal of misinterpreted energy.

Even if you do not have employees who necessarily want to jump to either department, you should definitely have people who are empowered to discuss future changes in the program before they become law. There should never be a program from the marketing department that is placed without warning on the heads of the sales team. At the same time, the sales team should be held responsible for any marketing campaign that they do not take to heart.

Having a single liaison to handle internal communications may work best for smaller companies as long as that person is respected on both ends of the equation. The message will not get confused between parties, nor will it take a long time to deliver to the appropriate leaders in each department.

Once the sales and the marketing team get on the same page, the sky is literally the limit. Sales and marketing in sync form a positive feedback loop that help to increase the efficiency of the entire company and the ROI in each individual department action. Take the tips above to heart if you are having trouble marrying the dynamic between your sales department and your marketing team.

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Ultimate Human Performance; Using Flow as a Business Tool

In this post we’ll investigate how using flow (ultimate focus) can be useful in business and how it can lead to the ultimate human performance.

We have always had an interest in the power of the human mind. Which goes beyond being mindful, but moves also into the paranormal, spirituality, neuroscience, hypnosis, auras, chakras, Tao, physics., science fiction, gaming and more relevant to business, performance, decision making and strategy.

Vision and decision making

Core elements in business are always visioning (=strategy) and first, second and maybe third stage thinking (=decision making). Both impact on performance. Inspired by Jack Black’s “Mindstore” and after reading “Bold”, I decided to pick up “The rise of superman”.

Flow

Which is all about finding Csikszentmihalyi’s flow. In flow, we are so focused on the task at hand that everything else falls away. Action and awareness merge. Time flies. Self vanishes. Performance goes through the roof.

The advertisement for flow

Flow naturally transforms a weakling into a muscleman, a sketcher into an artist, a dancer into a ballerina, a plodder into a sprinter, an ordinary person into someone extraordinary. Everything you do, you do better in flow, from baking a chocolate cake to planning a vacation to solving a differential equation to writing a business plan to playing tennis to making love. Flow is the doorway to the ‘more’ most of us seek.

More advertisement for flow

From a quality-of-life perspective, psychologists have found that the people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on earth.Flow directly correlates to happiness at work and happiness at work directly correlates to success. A decade of research in the business world proves happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37 percent, productivity by 31 percent, and accuracy on tasks by 19 percent, as well as a myriad of health and quality-of-life improvements.

Extreme athletes and flow

Yep, it is an advertisement for flow. Steven Kotler uses the extreme athletes as the medium to tell the story of flow and what we can learn. In their case it is very simple. Extreme athletes take huge risks. Risk narrows the focus very rapidly. It’s flow or die. Literally. But what these athletes do, is showing what flow can do. Performance goes through the roof and it is iterative. One builds on the other. In between a lot of those athletes die. But they don’t care. Because they live life by the fullest. A fantastic quote from the book; “It is not often that Death is told so clearly to fuck off.”

You don’t have to be an extreme athlete

You don’t have to risk life and limb to achieve the same. The book itself is a rush. And you can learn how to get in your own flow. Like being mindful, flow is another route to happiness. Csikszentmihalyi discovered that the happiest people on earth, the ones who felt their lives had the most meaning, were those who had the most peak experiences.

Getting into the flow

So what do you need. You need risk, you need a rich environment, you need novelty and unpredictability, you need self knowledge, you need purpose, you need a challenge, you need skills, you need clear goals and you need action. Which where flow is different from meditation. You can only get into flow by doing something. It works on individual as well as collective level. This leads to focussed activity. Focused activity produced a significant reward: it alters consciousness, creating experiences very similar to “mystical.”

Goals

Goals are particularly important. When the brain is charged with a clear goal, focus narrows considerably, the unimportant is disregarded, and the now is all that’s left. Just as important, in the now, there’s no past or future and a lot less room for self — which are the three intruders most likely to yank us to the then.When goals are clear, metacognition is replaced by in-the-moment cognition, and the self stays out of the picture Applying this idea in our daily life means breaking tasks into bite-size chunks and setting goals accordingly.

Groups

In a group setting these goals need to be shared. You need familiarity, blending egos, a sense of control, close listening and an always say yes rule, our final trigger, means interactions should be additive more than argumentative.

Group flow

Group flow is a social unifier and social leveler, creating what cultural anthropologists call “communitas” — that deep solidarity and togetherness that results from shared transcendent experiences. That’s why people who seek out group flow often join startups or work for themselves. Serial entrepreneurs keep starting new business as much for the flow experience, as for the additional success

What happens in flow

You develop a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness: The merging of action and awareness. From the explicit brain system to the implicit brain system. Extremely fluid brain control. Gamma brain waves. The appearance of the Voice, the voice of intuition — the center of the zone’s mystery. Carl Jung defined intuition as “perception via the unconscious” and the Voice is the end result of that perception — the unconscious mind broadcasting its perceptions to the conscious mind.

The amygdala (fight, freeze or flight) switched off. Transient hypofrontality and quieting of doubt. The unstuck in time. Ultimate focus. This is also why the Voice comes through so clearly in a flow state. With self, time, and space erased from the picture, all explicit complexity is edited out. It’s not that the Voice is turned up louder in the zone, it’s that everything that stands between us and the message is removed from the picture. The ultimate experience and in some way connected to “Infinite possibilities”, which is all about creating the ultimate experience.

Dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins, anandamide and serotoninThese five chemicals are flow’s mighty cocktail. The same cocktail mentioned in “Out of our minds” and the cocktail created by immersive games. Video-game players get into flow so frequently that Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas have become the most widely accepted theoretical framework for explaining the lure of the joystick. Studies have shown that the amount of flow generated by a video game directly correlates to everything from player engagement to overall product success.

The business case for flow

“Because flow involves meeting challenges and developing skills,” explains Csikszentmihalyi “it leads to growth. In the state, we are aligned with our core passion and, because of flow’s incredible impact on performance, expressing that passion to our utmost”. In 2007, South Korean researchers looking at e-learning (electronic games, Web-based learning tools, and electronic tutoring) discovered significant correlation between flow and positive learning attitudes and outcomes.

Neuroelectrically, flow’s baseline brain-wave pattern of low alpha/high theta also boosts creativity, which is the essential skill for CEOs. McKinsey established that executives in flow are five times more effective than their steady-state peers.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have found that from the marketing side of this coin, online flow experiences attract customers, mitigate price sensitivity, and positively influence subsequent buying behaviours.

Creativity and cooperation are so amplified that Greylock partner venture capitalist James Slavet, in a recent article for Forbes.com, called “flow state percentage” — defined as the amount of time employees spend in flow — the “most important management metric for building great innovation teams.” Because flow is the hallmark of high performance. When we watch a live concert or a traditional sports event, we’re essentially paying to watch people in a flow state.

When performance peaks in groups there is a collective merger of action and awareness, a group flow. As a result, in group flow, spontaneity, cooperation, communication, creativity, productivity, and overall performance all go through the roof

Time-based accounting (paying people for hours worked) needs to be replaced by flow-based accounting (paying people for the amount of time they spend in flow at work). What matters is not the amount of time you’re present, but the amount of time that you’re working at your full potential.

The ultimate reason

Flow helps you learn faster. And the ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage.”

Bookbuzz

From a Bookbuzz perspective reading “Thinking fast and slow”, “The future of the mind”, “Coherence”, “Carrots and sticks don’t work”, “The shallows”, “Out of our minds”, “Bioteams”, “Reinventing organisations” and many, many other books, it seems that it is all coming together.

Flow will become the ultimate motivator. It captures everything. Purpose, meaning, learning, happiness, productivity, creativity, speed, left brain, right brain, product and service design and ultimately business success. Companies will not only get Klout scores, they will get flow scores. Helping and training to achieve and apply flow. Very happy companies, with very happy staff with very happy customers.

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Lead Generation with Marketing Automation

Are you spending too much time and money chasing your big lead instead of focusing on the fundamentals? Well! The majority of the marketers fail to focus on the basic practices that ensure success. As businesses gain access to a larger amount of customer data and customers have more options for services and products, marketing strategies have become more complex. However, technology driven marketing plan can certainly increase your lead generation.

One such technology that is transforming the marketing realm is the use of marketing automation. According to Salesforce, 2015, marketing automation will be one of the most piloted marketing technologies. The solution helps you to focus on your customers and better understand which marketing programs actually work and which does not. In short, marketing automation helps your business manages your lead base.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is software and tactics to nurture prospects, convert them into customers and finally turn these regulars into delighted customers through personalised and behaviour-trigger content. The strategy typically generates significant revenue for the companies and ultimately provides an excellent return on investment.

Why marketing Automation for your Business?

Track Consumers Interaction with Brand

Marketing automation platform enables you to track how the prospective interact with your brand. It could be in the forms of email clicks, content downloads or website clicks. These digital indications give you supreme insights into your prospect’s readiness to buy so that you are ready to deliver timely marketing message to accelerate the buyer’s decision making process.

Accelerate your Sales Funnel

As you can track engagement and behaviour of the visitors through pre-and-post buying process, you can prepare your campaign accordingly that can build trust and minimise sales resistance.

Build Stronger Relationships with your Audience

Marketing automation helps to accumulate data that can make each communication personal. It also provides deployment tools to reach your prospects in every major channel.

What are the Fundamental Elements that Drive Results?

Marketing automation program can help your company produce enormous leads and boost revenue. It lets you know when your leads are ready for a call from sales… you can know what else your system needs to be able to do. Here’s how the fundamental elements help to accomplish all your goals…

Email Marketing

60 percent of consumers read marketing emails. It has been observed that email can promote a purchase 3x times more than any social media. However, you need a strong marketing strategy to make the most of it.

List Segmentation

Segmenting your audience will make the impact of delivering the right message to the right person stronger.

Designing the Email Campaign

A professional looking email campaign including custom email authentication, SPAM analysis, and automated CAN-SPAM compliance enables you to make the most of your email marketing efforts.

Personalised Content

Making messages relevant to the unique needs of each recipient is key to effective content marketing and lead nurturing strategy.

Landing Page

An optimized email campaign send leads to landing page where they provide contact information in exchange for valuable and relevant content.

Page Design

Build and activate professional and attractive forms in minutes.

Profiling

Allow your visitors to bypass the fields they had to fill in the past and provide you with valuable additional information. This increases the conversion rates and helps you to learn more about your prospects.

Routing and Automation

Make your leads automatically move through sales cycle and into nurture automated workflow by creating rules and dependencies.

Website Tracking

Buyers are almost 70% through their buying process before they engage with a sales representative. You need to know what additional you can offer to add value to your conversation

Visitors Activity Tracking

Track your visitors activities including when they visit your site and what do they download. Make a comprehensive report of email response, website visits, and registration or form impressions.

Identification of Anonymous Visitors

Discover the companies of unidentified site visitors and expose potential leads.

Tracking Custom Link

Website activity sourced from specific efforts and related to third-party websites can be tracked by creating custom links. The activities include pay-per click programs, shared links or social media efforts.

Lead Scoring

At this stage you have to determine lead quality and prioritise them according to their interests in your products and demographic characteristics.

Develop Scoring Model

Scoring model is required to automatically score prospects based on their behaviour and demographic characteristics in response to marketing plan and online activities.

Increase Visibility

Connect the lead score model with the CRM. This will provide the sales team with activity score to report on engaged prospects.

A Few More Activities to Follow

Incorporation of CRM

Assimilation of marketing automation and CRM platform is important in delivering sales intelligence the sales representatives require to improve their conversations and follow-up work.

Integrate Web Events Platforms

Showcase your expertise, engage your audience and generate more quality leads with online events.

A/B Testing

Knowing what resonates with your target audience beforehand can ensure your emails; landing pages and forms are optimised for conversions.

Social Media Marketing

As the majority of the current and prospective customers spend a lot of time on social media, it is easy to educate and engage them. Share your messages, discover new audience, generate leads and increase sales through social media tools.

According to Nucleus Research, 2014, marketing automation drives 14.5 percent increase in sales productivity and 12.2 percent reduction in marketing overhead. The biggest benefit of marketing automation is its ability to generate more and better quality leads.

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Four Essential Ways for Small Businesses to Boost Sales through Digital Marketing

When it comes to increasing sales, nothing can compare to the power of the internet. Whether you have a local place of business or an online global presence, there is no better way to reach millions of people, literally overnight. Small businesses looking to boost sales should really investigate how to accomplish that through digital marketing. Here are four essential ways for small businesses to boost sales through digital marketing.

1) Go Mobile

Recent statistics indicate that more people shop from their mobile devices than they do from their home PCs. In fact, it is such a huge portion of the market that Google even changed their algorithms to better serve mobile searchers. If your site isn’t mobile friendly, now is the time to act. Make sure your online marketing is mobile friendly. Not only will you rank better with the search giant, but you will reach a significant portion of your market that you would have otherwise missed out on.

2) Online Discounts & Vouchers

Another great way to boost sales online through digital marketing is to advertise great savings with online discounts and vouchers not available at physical locations. People love a bargain and when they feel like they are getting a product at a saving they wouldn’t get at their local retailer, they will jump on the chance to save money. You can even find out which discounts and vouchers to offer with online tools that show in real time UK retail spending trends. This is perhaps the best way to boost sales based on buying trends.

3) Social Media

It has become almost cliché to hear marketers saying “We are social creatures.” But, in reality, that is exactly what we are. Marketing experts tell us that people will spend more money with someone they trust than from some unknown person or entity. In other words, they aren’t really spending money as much on your product as they are on you. If they trust you after having built a relationship through social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) they may even pay more for your goods than they would at another shop. Why? Again, the trust factor. Social media is great for establishing trust and if you don’t employ this as part of your digital marketing, you are losing a huge portion of the buying public.

4) Pictures, Videos and Infographics

Finally, people want to see what they are buying. Use pictures, videos and infographics to display products and to show why a consumer should buy them. Many innovative ecommerce sites have gone to 360 panoramic views of products so that viewers can see all sides in one shot. This is especially important in the fashion industry as the shopper can see both the front and the back of a garment as opposed to a stock shot of that item in a box.

Again, whether you are looking to build foot traffic in a physical location or to increase online sales, there is nothing like the broad and rapid reach of the information superhighway, the internet. Use these four essential ways to boost sales and you will see just how quickly digital marketing campaigns can make a difference.

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Mindfulness for Business People

Mindfulness is the new (jack) black in business. It is everywhere. And not just as part of personal or self development, but as part of the DNA of businesses. We doing quite some work on briefing companies about happy, mindful staff with a sense of purpose. It makes perfect business sense. Happy staff is 25% more productive.

Focus on self development

There are lots of books on being mindful as a person. From “The secret” to “The Celestine Prophecy” or from “The road less traveled” to “The monk who sold his Ferrari”. Not much in business books. Maybe “Coherence” or “Reinventing organisations”, but nothing that crosses the self development chasm to business development.

The old masters

We have always found that in those cases the old masters are worth studying. Management theory is only 50 years old and Drucker is still the godfather.

Mindfulness is a lot older then management theory. It is part of every religion and was part of ancient cultures as a way of life. The first person who brought this all together in a book was Jack Black. Another old master and also ahead of his time.

Coming to Dublin

And he is coming to Dublin too. On the 11th of June. Talking about mindfulness and business. So we decided to look at his first book, which is “Mindstore, the classic personal development programme”.

Read it

If you are into personal development, you should read it. If you are a start up, you should read it. If you are an owner manager of a small business you should read it. Everything that is now fashionable and “new” is in that book.

Balance

A balanced view on your life. Family life, social life, health, personal development, attitude, career, finance and spiritual life. His theories and advice is not confirmed by neuroscience. You are what you think. PMA is important. You are limited by your beliefs. The need to manage stress. The importance of setting goals. The importance of writing them down (only 4% does). The need to use all parts of your brain (dualbrain).

Mindfulness for business people

The need to avoid being managed by the hypothalamus. Apparently we come with 20,000 inbuilt programmes when we are born. All based on evolution and social biology. A lot are no longer that relevant. The programming in the schools (way before Ken Robinson identified this) doesn’t help either. The trick is to start doing some of your own programming. Your brain is a bio computer.

Start with attitude

It needs to be positive. So you ban negative words (and people) and you keep smiling. The mind can only hold one thought at the time. So negative thought can always be replaced. And neuroscience will tell you that it does wonders.

Quantum physics

If you belief that the mind is a quantum machine with decides on what your reality is going to be, you can see how powerful it could be. Suggest you read “The future of the mind”. Predicting Mindtech as a hotspot.

Vision

The importance of a vision. A powerful one. Forget achievable and realistic. You need to dream. Making is as visual and detailed a possible. Burning it into your brain (like burning a CD). Burning the pathways. The same way your create habits.

Vision is more important then planning. But you need to commit to that vision. Belief it. Helping your quantum computer to make it happen. You are what you think. Our thought become our realities. You are creating future history. And it become part of the programming of your bio computer.

The software to programme your brain

He gives you the software as well. The meditation techniques. The mental structures. Literally. He helps you to build a mental house space where you can apply a whole range of techniques. A mental house with a shower, a library, an editing suite, a sleeping room and anything else you can imagine. As the metaphor for relaxation, the re-energising, the mental cleansing, the affirmation and PMA, the visioning, the remembering and the dreaming.

No short cuts

The point is the burning. It has to become a routine. You need to practice and maintain your mental house. There are no short cuts. You need to take the time to do it. Regularly. The way you would exercise your body. Bruce Lee said “Knowing is not enough we must apply, willing is not enough we must do.”

There is one short cut, the famous tip of your tongue at the back of your from teeth. To bring you in a better mental state almost immediately.

It all works

I am interested to find out how this will work in a business context. Being mindful together as a team? Collective business consciousness? Inter-connectedness with communal wisdom? Business 5.0? Brainstorming in alpha waves? It sounds weird. But so did Mindstore over 20 years ago. Can’t wait to find out. You can book your place here.

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Local SEO Guide for Small Businesses

Follow our local SEO guide below to increase engagement with your customers online.

The big marketing buzz these days is local SEO, and you’re probably wondering what the big deal is. After all, isn’t traditional marketing enough to attract customers? The answer is, no, traditional marketing is no longer enough to address the mobile shopping habits of today’s consumers. People conduct local searches on their laptops, smartphones and tablets every day to find things close by, for directions, store hours, and to see if particular product is in stock.

What Connected Consumers Want

It’s not so much what consumers are searching for, it’s how they’re searching for it. Recently, Google commissioned two separate research studies for research on local SEO, Understanding Consumers’ Local Search Behavior.

Today’s consumer wants convenience. They want to find products quickly and easily. They are using mobile devices more than ever, too. If you can’t give them the information they seek, they will move on to the next business on the list. Here’s more compelling facts the Google study uncovered:

Four out of five people utilize search engines for local information.
Half of all consumers who did local searches on their smartphones frequented the store within 24 hours.
Over 60 percent of consumers use location information in local ads for a store’s phone number, address and directions.

According to ComScore, 88 percent of smartphone users and 84 percent of tablet users conduct local searches regularly, and that number is rising. With local searches resulting in twice as many purchases than non-local, businesses must understand how to leverage local SEO using strategic search marketing methods.

Here are some time-saving local SEO strategies you can employ today that will have you thanking yourself tomorrow:

Be Mobile Friendly

Optimize your website for mobile devices, because if it isn’t mobile-friendly, any SEO marketing you conduct to drive people to your site will only make them want to leave it. Why waste your time and money on marketing if your site isn’t viewable on mobile devices?

How to Start

Use tools like Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to assess how mobile-friendly your website is for visitors. All you have to do is enter the URL of your website and it generates a checklist of what you should improve, as well as a guide showing you exactly how to make the improvements. You can use their Mobile Guide to learn much more about mobile websites, too.

Be Search Engine Friendly

Make sure that your website shows up in local searches with some simple website SEO. Remember, location, phone numbers and business hours are what people look for, so be certain to update them immediately if any information changes.

How to Start

Put your complete address, phone number and hours of operation on the footer of each website page.
Add captions to images, which are the second-most read copy element on a webpage.
Add an alt tag to your website logo, including company name, city, state, address, and business type.
Include at least 300 words of quality content on your home page to let people know what your business is all about.

Be Local Listing Friendly

When listing your business, always remember to include either your NAP, or name, address and phone number, or your WAP, website, address and phone number. Be certain your information is consistent across all the different platforms and databases.

Even a tiny mistake can create major problems, such as a misplaced period. Changing your address causes problems, too, so if you spell out “street” in some listings, don’t change it to “St.” in others.

Aside from your local Chamber of Commerce or business association, add your business to as many online local directories as possible, including:

Google My Business: This is the latest Google offering and it is free. Complete your profile and choose as many business categories as possible. Upload images, add business hours, phone numbers and addresses.

Yahoo Local Basic: The basic is free, but you can also pay to use advanced options, such as Localworks and Local Enhanced listings.

Bing Places for Business: Bing accounts for one third of online searches, so set up a free listing there, too.

Apple Maps Connect: The Apple Maps app is popular, and you can add your business for free. You’ll need an Apple ID to sign up.

Be Review Friendly

Encourage your customers to write reviews for you. You should never have to pay for reviews. Subtle reminders should do the trick. Encourage consumers to leave reviews by placing an attractive reminder near your checkouts. Offer incentives, like a small discount or free gift. Add QR codes to cards at checkouts or posters in restrooms to make it easier.

Prompt people to post reviews on the following sites:

Facebook
Yelp
Google
Yahoo
Bing
Foursquare

Adding your business to various directories and review sites can bring your business to the top of most browser searches. Once you’ve done your local SEO footwork, your customers will do their footwork right to your door.

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How to Write Good Copy for your Website: A Complete Guide

Do you want to know how to write good copy for your website?

Don’t worry, it’s really not all that hard but it will improve your conversion rates, dwell time and improve your ROI from your digital marketing.

Telling tales

Let’s start at the beginning: does this web development story sound familiar?

You agonized over the design of your website
You pondered over the product pages
You searched high and low for the perfect images
You discussed endlessly your digital marketing strategy to drive visitors to your site
You pencilled in plenty of budget for PPC

And then your developer calls. It’s time to start ditching the ‘Lorem ipsum’ and populate your site with real copy.

A moment of panicked silence is followed by you dropping the phone and frantically scrabbling around for all the marketing materials you can lay your hands on to purloin phrases and pinch paragraphs from.

Web copy converts

Copy converts. It’s a powerful tool not an afterthought.

What did we think our visitors were going to do when they got to our site: imbue our messages by osmosis and convert into customers by alchemy?

Writing great web copy is absolutely central to your web marketing strategy.

And the truth is that producing effective copy for the web will not happen by cutting and pasting catalogues, sales flyers and corporate brochures.

The good news is it’s easy

The good news is that writing great copy for the web is quite straightforward, and you can learn all you need to know in what follows.

The sad fact is that there are far too many businesses out there that simply don’t create compelling or even readable copy. And there are just as many whose copy fails simply because it has written as if the web were a book or a magazine.

Writing great copy is one thing. Writing great web copy is another thing entirely.

So, let’s show you how easy it is to do it, and you need never run round the office in a blind panic again.

First things first

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The web is not a place for flowery, circuitous introductory paragraphs. If you have something to say, say it first (preferably in bold).

Think of a pyramid. It’s wide at its base until it narrows to a focussed point.

Now turn it on its head. Its point comes first and everything else builds out from this.

This inverted pyramid is how you write for the web. You don’t beat about the bush to get to your point (or key takeaway, marketing message, USP etc.). You beat all the bushes away till there is just this: and then you say it clearly. Straight away.

This tactic is not unique to the web. It’s used by journalists too who always make sure that in their first couple of paragraphs the whole story can be found.

This tactic, though, is especially true for the web. People don’t read web pages: they scan them. Study after study has proved this to be the case.

When we scan we quickly check the top and then let our eye take in what we consider the most important parts of what follows: we do not often read all of the text.

Because people are going to scan your copy you need to make sure they can get the important information and key messages upfront, or they will get lost in the mix.

When people can’t find exactly what they want straight away they vote with their clicks and your bounce rate notches up.

And first things last

Whether you are writing a blog post or a product description it’s still a great idea to wrap things up in a summary at the end of the article. (This is particularly true for longer articles/descriptions).

You could do this using bullet points, with a feature box detailing the main points or in your closing paragraphs.

The scanning eye does not take everything in. There is a good chance it may have missed what is a crucial point when it reaches the end of your page.

By summarising your key points (and maybe even including a link back to where they appeared on the page) you can ensure that people can play catch up on what they have sped past.

Heading in the right direction?

The headline you use is critical in engaging attention. It is also critical for your SEO. Get it right and you have won half the battle. Get it wrong and you have lost the war.

Here’s Brian Clark of Copyblogger on the importance of headline:

“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. This is the secret to the power of the headline.”
(‘Don’t read this or the kitty gets it’ in Copywriting 101)

That’s how important it is.

There isn’t space here to give you a masterclass on crafting the perfect heading, but you can find plenty of tips and tricks in the Copywriting 101 eBook that can be downloaded free at the link above.

(Is it worth it? Is the opportunity to engage 80% of your visitors worth it?)

Here are some quick pointers:

Make sure your most important keywords are here:
just think about what your audience might be searching for
Adjectives create interest:
change ‘Car cleaning guide’ to ‘The modern guide to cleaning and protecting your car’
Get them interested: change ‘Car cleaning guide’ to ‘Are you wiping £s off your car’s value every time you clean it?’
If social sharing of your content is important to you try to keep your headlines under 65 characters.

Write for the scan

There are a number of other things you can do to cater for the scanning eye, but first let’s see it in action.

Typically we scan in an F-pattern:

We focus on a couple of sentences at the top of the page
Our eye trails down the left side
We also quickly glance at a few lines near the middle

Examples of the F pattern found on a corporate About Us page, a product page and a search engine results page (source: Nielsen Norman Group)

Look at how the product page (centre) and the search engine results page (right) are structured with broken up text that aids the scan.

Now look at the corporate About Us page (left), where the large chunks of unbroken text, simply leaves large sections left unread.

So what tricks can you use to encourage the scan?

Short paragraphs
Clear subheadings
Using formatting (like bold, font size or bullet points)
Careful use of images

These all, however, allow you to do the same thing: break your text up and divide it into short, clear sections.

Paragraphs

Paragraphs in books and those on web pages are very different beasts.

This is not a paragraph for the web:

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

But this is:

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.

It has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

This dummy text has even survived the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged, and even desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker now includes versions of Lorem Ipsum.

See the difference?

On the web a sentence can be a paragraph.

Huge chunks of text are like a brick wall to the scanning eye. Text that is broken up helps it do its thing (and forces you to use concise language and simpler sentences).

Subheadings

Subheadings are simply another way to help the scanning eye find what it wants.

Just as a book is divided into chapters you should divide your web pages into subsections that signpost the different points you are making.

And, of course, if you are using heading tags (

,

) you will be doing both the scanning eye and your SEO a favour too.

Bullet points and numbered lists

Another way to break up your text is with lists.

Why do bullet points and numbered lists help?

The bullet point or numbered list creates natural breaks in your copy, tends to be short and punchy – which is perfect for inviting a quick scan and they add variety to your layout.

Let me try that again:

Why do bullet points and numbered lists help?

They create natural breaks in your copy
They tend to be short and punchy – perfect for inviting a quick scan
They add variety to your layout

See what I mean?

Keep it simple

It’s important you know your audience. This will affect the sort of content you provide and the language that you use.

Accessibility is the cornerstone of the web. For most businesses it is advisable that they keep their language simple. If you are writing above your audience you will quickly lose them.

Writing simply is not easy. You have to learn to do it.

Keep your sentences short: it keeps them simple
Strip out technical language and jargon
Avoid complicated explanations or break them down into steps
If you are writing for a niche: use their language
If you are writing for a broad audience: avoid niche terms like the plague

To write simply you are going to need to forget everything they taught you in school. If you find it hard, write how you usually write, and then rewrite for the web.

Be careful where you add personality

Adding personality can bring blogs to life but it can also alienate a customer nearing a buying decision on a money page.

This comes down to brand identity. If your marketing copy has a tone of voice and personality you need to reflect this in your web copy. If it doesn’t: don’t add it.

A bit of personality on your blog posts and other content can really help to bring it to life and gain shares.

Be liberal with your links

Links to other web pages on your site are critical to its success. They are important for your visitors and your SEO.

The eye scans because it is looking quickly for important and relevant information. A link helps the eye realise there may be more relevant information on another page and it helps your visitor to get straight to it.

Links also help you keep things concise. If you go into something in more detail elsewhere there is no need to do so again every time it is mentioned.

Links also let you include a summary at the top of every page with ‘anchors’ to places on the page where this section can be found. How handy is that?

Finally links encourage the search engine spiders to crawl your entire site, leaving no page unturned.

It’s time to put it all into practice

So there you have it: a simple guide to writing great web copy.

There really are no more excuses for taking that corporate brochure and plonking it on the web.

Here are the main things you should make sure you do with your web copy:

Whenever you write say the important things first
If it’s been a long page summarise it at the bottom
Your heading must work for SEO and draw your readers in
Break your text up using short paragraphs, subheadings and formatting
Write simply and avoid jargon
A bit of personality can win the day or lose the visitor – use it carefully
Keep everything clearly linked in

Easy, huh?

Of course, the truth is that this is how the best copy is structured.

Writing copy that persuades and inspires action is another story altogether. And it’s a tale that ends in conversion.

You can find some helpful pointers in this web copywriting guide. But for now you should be happy: you are well on the way to crafting copy that is designed for the web.

And you’ll see immediate results.

The post How to Write Good Copy for your Website: A Complete Guide appeared first on Small Business Can.

Establishing Your Brand as a Small Business Owner

In today’s world, owning a small business isn’t enough. For your business to be successful, you have to build your own personal brand to help establish yourself as a household name and to bring in more business. Luckily, building your brand is easier than you probably think.

Don’t Try to Imitate Anyone

You might be tempted to try to mimic the look or personality of the bigger and more successful businesses. After all, you might think, these companies have done well, so I’m sure to do well also. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way. It’s important to come up with your own look and personality for your business, not to try to mimic someone else’s. This individualism is what will set your company apart and will make your customers appreciate what you bring to the table.

Use the Internet

You don’t have to spend a whole lot of money to get started with your personal brand. In fact, you can get started for free — or for a very low cost — by utilizing the resources that are available on the World Wide Web. For example, you can create free social media profiles and pay for an inexpensive website to get started.

Build Lasting Relationships

Once you gain interest in your company, it’s important to work on building lasting relationships with customers and potential customers. This can be done in a few ways. If you want to do things the old-fashioned way, you can use loyalty cards and written postcards or “thank you” notes. You can also send out email newsletters, coupons and more, or you can interact with customers and potential customers on social media. Many find that a good combination of all of these methods is a great way to build lasting relationships and to help promote loyalty to their brand.

Be Innovative

Don’t be afraid to be unique or to do something that other companies have not done. People love companies that are willing to be different, especially if they are taking a stand for something that they believe in.

Remember That What You Do Affects Your Business

Remember—in today’s day and age, it is easy for people to find out what you are up to, especially online. Remember that what you, as the owner or a higher-up in the community, do will have an impact on your business. Therefore, it’s important to be careful when using social media or otherwise communicating on the Internet.

Start With People You Know

It’s always good to start with the people that you know when you are working on branding for your small business. Start promoting your business on your personal social media sites, and give business cards and other promotional materials to the people in your community. Word of mouth is still one of the best ways to promote a business, and if you start by promoting your brand among the people who you do know, you will help get the word out more quickly than you probably think.

Remember Branding at All Times

Don’t lose sight of the importance of branding at any time. Any time that you communicate with customers or potential customers, make sure that you let them know about what your company stands for and what you have to offer. Don’t be afraid to promote your brand whenever possible—on vehicles, business checks and even in casual conversations. By constantly reminding people of the products and services that your small business offers, along with the things that your company believes in and is working for, you can help promote your business in the best possible way.

Establishing your brand as a small business owner is exceedingly important, especially in today’s competitive world. Luckily, following these tips will help you promote your brand in the best way possible.

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Supplier Procurement Survey 15 Infographic – The top 10 observations

The TenderScout Survey provides insight and illuminates the world of public procurement as seen by those most impacted – small and medium enterprises! This highlights of this survey undertaken with Amarach Research include:

22% of companies don’t request a debrief from the buyer – they are unlikely to ever improvetheir performance
43% of companies are unlikely to collaborate with other businesses – effectively ruling them- selves out of many opportunities
29% is the average success rate for suppliers – indicating a ‘spray-and-pray’ approach to tendering
58% of companies don’t use competitive intelligence – they lose twice as often as those that do
€25 million is the amount spent by suppliers competing for tenders that are ultimately can- celled
69% of contracts are awarded primarily on price – this is the most significant factor in winning or losing
57% of suppliers wait over three months for the result of a tender competition, which impacts their ability to operate their business efficiently
26% of suppliers are more encouraged to participate as a result of Circular 10/14 – but they’re not likely to be successful without other measures
€2.7 billion is the value of government contracts that aren’t advertised because they are below threshold
>70% of tendering companies have fewer than 50 employees – they win less than 20% of the time

Download the full report here.

TenderScout Irish Procurement Survey & Analysis 2014:15 Infographic

The post Supplier Procurement Survey 15 Infographic – The top 10 observations appeared first on Small Business Can.

Public tendering lessons learned at the smart business show

Smart business public tendering session

I had the pleasure to chair a session about the state of public tendering in Ireland at the Smart Business Show. The panel consisted of Ross McCarthy of Keystone Procurement, Tony Corrigan of Tenderscout and Tony Clarke of Kendlebell.

Learned a lot

Learned a lot. The size of public procurement in Ireland is 9 billion. With another 4 billion by the agencies. It is about 16% of GDP and a bigger chunk of GNP. That is a lot of money. Surprisingly only 26,000 companies are registered for e-tender and only 15% of those 26,000 is active.

Hot topic

Public tendering has been a hot topic on Smallbusinesscan and my impression was that SMEs still don’t get a look in. However things seem to start to change. And it is not all the fault of government. Apparently the quality of the tenders of Irish SMEs is not very good and needs to shape up if they want to be taken seriously.

Networking is important in public tendering

Tony Corrigan made the point, that tendering is not just about the tendering process. it is about getting to know the buyers and as with all business is about networking and account management (before you tender). You need to be know and you need to be liked and respected.

Different rules

The other Tony said that public tendering is very different to “normal” tendering and different rules apply. Ross said that public tendering only makes sense after you have made an assessment if it makes commercial sense and compares favourably to selling to commercial clients. You need to score at least 90% on the tendering criteria. Below, tendering is pointless. It cost on average € 4,500 per tender to tender.

Public tendering is a skill

It is a skill, but once you are in and have learned the tricks, it is a serious opportunity. You should visit the public tendering workshops that Enterprise Ireland, Intertrade, DCU and/or the LEOs provide.

Competitive dialogue

We talked about the problem of start ups getting access to public tender. If you are an innovative start up, you should look at the competitive dialogue route and find an innovate, buyer willing to work with you to develop a product or service that doesn’t exist using this innovation clause.

Consortia, professionalisation, social impact

We touched on consortia. Ross suggest that they can only work if the companies work to develop a commercial relationship that is as strong as a JV. What you build, when clustering successfully, is essentially a special purpose vehicle to win specific types of public sector work.

We touched upon the professionalism of the buyers, which is improving. We talked about cost/price being an important criteria for public procurement (maybe too much) and we talked about scoring social impact (which is not yet included as a criteria).

Opportunity

I am not doing the conversations and the questions of the audience justice. My conclusion is that is an underestimated opportunity, that the opportunity cost are still high and if you decide to go for it, you need to be professional about it. There is a learning curve, but once you are in, you have creating a competitive advantage. And now is the time.

The experts

If you have any question, I am not the one to ask. Here are the linkedIn profiles of the real experts.

ie.linkedin.com/in/rossmccarthy/en

ie.linkedin.com/in/kendlebellnaas/en

ie.linkedin.com/pub/tony-corrigan/0/362/97b/en

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Category Archives: Marketing