Manage Your Marketing Time

 

Sat here after another full on day trying to get our website in order....yep it was tired, missing bits and nothing was finished off...I feel rather ashamed that it was in such a mess. I am reminded of friends I have in various trades who are the same. Builders whose own extensions aren't finished,  gardeners whose gardens are suffering from serious neglect, window cleaners who can't see out of their own windows and on and on. Sometimes you spend so much time on fulfilling your customers' every needs and then sorting more customers that you completely neglect your own "future" business. I have now allocated time every day to get our own house in order and sort our own marketing out. Shame on me!

I should know better, after all I spend a lot of time putting other people's marketing house in order I really should know better.  No excuses!

Time to read another book on time management, or maybe just put everything I should do into practice. It's so easily done and running any business involves discipline, as you know, so I am making sure time is set aside daily to sort our own marketing out! Right back to it......customers always come first!

Targeting has never been easier!

 

 

 

We work hard to get our customers noticed on line, helping them to get to grips with social media undoubtedly works really well and is a fantastic way to grow any business without spending a fortune. Whatever marketing you do as a business needs to be cost effective but if, for a little time and effort, you can engage with an audience on social media you can get great results and the only investment you will need is your time. By targeting your audience you can effectively select them by gender, age, location, profession.

I remember the pre internet age when you could only dream of reaching people in this way. All you could do then is target people in certain ways. Leaflet drops could be targeted to certain areas (and still can, of course). TV adverts could (and can) be targeted at certain programmes to reach certain people but they would still be a broad spectrum of ages etc. Radio also could be a great source of advertising but again you can't really target beyond the fact that they were listening to a certain programme. Of course newspaper advertising has always been a great way to target areas as well but readership is always hard to judge.

Before social media came along if had gone to a company and said I could reach any specific age group you want with certain professions living in a certain area with an advert, I think you would snap my hand off. That's basically what platforms like Facebook offer you and to someone marketing their business a few years ago would seem totally amazing and to be honest, it is.

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Groups are more fun

 

Facebook Groups can get you places you didn't know you could get to! Yep definitely a place to go if you want to get to people outside of your friends group and outside the small group of page likers that Facebook actually let you get to is a group.

The best thing is it's free! Even better is that if you pick the right groups you can target the people you want to target. Many groups are set up for a reason, be that to sell things in an are or promote business in an area, maybe even to promote an interest to a group of like minded people.

So why not pick a group and start posting? No point falling foul of the posting police, so check out the rules of the group (many are set up by people who like to say say no to this that and the other) but many allow you to promote your business especially if you can do so without actually selling too obviously.

You might want to promote your business to other businesses locally and there are many groups for that or you might think a larger audience might be nice. Just search for groups, check out the rules, join and post away. Suddenly you are reaching far more people than you used to.

Tweet To Who?

 Do you like the title? I thought long and hard about that! Who you tweet to and who sees your tweets have to be the number one factor in knowing your getting somewhere. Luckily Twitter provides all the facts and figures you need at your finger tips so you can see if you are heading the right direction.

If you are going to get some traction you need some good figures and I can looking at one of the accounts we manage that this month has been a good one although we haven't tweeted quite as much, we have achieved some great results:

• Over 83k impressions
• Over 400 profile views
• Gained 16 followers

Wow not bad! We weren't looking for more followers on this account (16 is a bit pants if we were) but we were looking for more profile views and that has shot up by over 160%. This was gained by mainly by improving the impressions on this account by over 60% so not a bad result.

That's only a small insight into the approach you need to take when managing your twitter account. To understand more maybe you might visit one of our social media seminars coming shortly or even talk to us about managing it all for you.

Have a Look at What You Could Have Won

Your business image and reputation has taken you a long time and a lot of effort to build up, so don't ruin it. Don't just dabble because you have to. Like it or lump it the internet is here to stay and you either embrace it or lose out! Every day I come across businesses who have an online presence because they decide they have to but they don't want to chuck any money or time at it so what do they do? They give the most powerful marketing tool they will ever have to the office junior, the yts lad (don't think they call it that now) or even their teenage son or daughter. "Here sort that".
When I talk to them about how they can make more connections or get more work from social media or even a website, the answer is.."tried that, doesn't work".
Would you give the same person responsibility for designing the advert in the paper that you still run every week? Would you give then the job of designing your Yellow Pages advert? (Yes people still use them)
Think about what you could get from using online tools like social media platforms and websites, think about who you can get to.....It's not just kids on Facebook now you know it's silver surfers all the way so when you say...."my customers aren't on there"...no they are someone else's customers now but they could have been yours!

Build an Audience

Perhaps the easiest and definitely the cheapest way to market your business on line is to use social media. In order to make it effective you need to build a network on all the platforms that you choose to use. It is always best to gradually grow your connections and look to build an audience you can engage with and hopefully eventually get some work from.

We can help you build an audience with our training workshops that are designed to show you how to grow your potential market on line.

Twitter and You

You don't have to be a celebrity to get a lot out of twitter. Many businesses and individuals get a great deal of success from using twitter to promote themselves.

The usual response I get from people who don't use twitter is "I've got nothing to say" or "nobody wants to know what I'm doing". I have met many people through my training sessions who have said this and followed up with comments like I only want to know about Linkedin as that is more professional. Most of these people have ended up being prolific tweeters who I now follow with interest on Twitter as they go about their daily work. When you analyse your life, be it work or play there is often many things you do or see that would be of interest to potential followers. I really don't want to know about you having a cup of tea unless you are maybe enjoying the view of the black mountains from your customer's roof while enjoying it, having just re pointed the chimney. Perhaps you have just left a customer's office having just helped them improve the way they do business or just unblocked a drain whilst eating your sandwiches. Your work may well be uninteresting to you as you do it every day but people are interested in what you have to say when you make it interesting. Our training sessions can help you gain an audience show you all the basics.

Everyone has a tale to tell in 140 characters and that includes you.

Social Media Training Day

Social Media and You

Using Social Media to help promote your business is now essential, whatever size the business is. Everyone from your local window cleaner to major corporations like Coca Cola are using Social Media as a major part of their marketing. A great way to promote your products and services, social media gives you an opportunity to create brand awareness at any level.

To get into a potential customer's living room you used to have to advertise on TV or maybe in the local newspaper if you are a small business. Now major brands are spending a massive part of their marketing budgets on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. So why? Why are they even bothering with social media? Because you can target particular potential customers, social media really can be used by any size and type of business. Social Media really isn't just for kids it is a powerful marketing tool for you and your business. Your competitors are using this to their advantage so why aren't you? One great thing to remember

Our user friendly courses show you how to target followers and build fans creating a fan base for your business of potential customers. The value of the information will become obvious after you have completed the course but if you are not using the major platforms of Facebook and Twitter to woo your potential customers and build your brand this course is a must for you. We provide a basic overview of social media and then follow that with individual sessions on Facebook and Twitter. You can go from sceptical novice through to efficient user in one day with our help. We have done all the research and the hard work and pass on tips to take you all the way from novice to effective user through these sessions.

Launch of Getters Consultancy

To celebrate the relaunch of Getters as Getters Consultancy we are offering new clients the opportunity to use our new graphic design service for free when you purchase one of our web packages.

If you are interested get in touch as this is a limited offer.