E-book - The Secrets to Success on the Web - Final instalment 4/4
This is the third (and penultimate) in our series of four instalments publishing Dorset Business Mentor Mark Snare’s e-book on The Secrets to Success on the Web. To read those prior please refer to our Insights page
In this, our final instalment we publish Chapters 7, 8 & 9, bringing the publication to a close.
7 Paying for Traffic
8 Going Multi-Channel
9 Free things you should do
Chapter 7
Paying for traffic, visitors and sales
You have launched your SEO friendly new site and you are rolling out a comprehensive search engine optimisation programme while uploading videos, hammering your Facebook business page, while Tweeting and Instagramming with the best of them! What else can you do?
You can of course start paying per click, floating adverts all over the internet using things like adwords, shopping feeds and paid social media campaigns. None of these are free which is why I emphasise the joy to be found in building a site that gets loads of free visitors by being search engine friendly, but nonetheless well run paid advertising campaigns can be very successful and add great value.
Adwords
Google Adwords and other CPC (cost per click) platforms are now so involved it is almost a skill set in itself, however it is a skill set worth having as your ads can be set up very specifically on brands, keywords, negative keywords that filter out broader definitions, dynamic re-advertising which are the adverts that chase you round the internet after you have visited a site and your merchant centre feed that allows your products to show up in the google shopping results. Adwords are easy to set up but harder to master, you may want to approach an Adwords professional who can help you fine tune your effort BUT proceed with caution, some charge a percentage of monthly spend so there is a conflict of interests there. Others charge a fixed fee which may be more transparent. Nothing is as good or as cost effective as mastering the skills yourself.
Facebook and other social media adverts
Facebook offers an amazing platform to reach people with offers, deals or just plain subscriber-ship, again if you are a talented writer, marketer and film maker Facebook and other social media outlets will work for you organically. However you can hit a fast forward button and pay for attention. Facebook in particular allow you to hit very specific demographics including obvious ones like age and location and more powerful ones like matching up their listed interests with your products, services or offer.
The mistake I see regularly on Facebook is a business page set up as a person. This limits the subscriber base to 5000 which is surprisingly easy to reach with some work. You must set your business or group up on Facebook properly or you’ll get to a few thousand subscribers hit the limit then have to start again. Not good. The internet is full of easy to make errors that take a lot of undoing when it’s arguably too late. Be careful!
You can use Facebook and similar platforms in several ways, you can dish out your knowledge through links to your article, blog posts and videos which keeps people in touch with what you’re doing. Then you can make enticing offers for people to take advantage of once they have got to know your business. This is an incredibly effective selling tool as you can either set your offers to reach the audience you have built who already know you (this is free) OR you can target new people guided by the likes and interests they have put into Facebook already. It is this level of targeting that makes Facebook such a success as it puts businesses in control of who they advertise to. Gone are the days when you advertised by reaching out to the public through a magazine or newspaper hoping to reach the percentage who are interested in what you do.
The hard part with social media is momentum, in the early days you’ll be pumping out your best content, trying to find traction and your readers, but keep quality levels high and keep going, social media works like a huge concrete ball, it is hard to get going and everyone is pumping out content continuously so you can feel drowned out. BUT if you keep going, your audience will find you and the likes and shares will start happening, then your efforts will take on a life of their own. With global reach there really is an audience for anyone who cares to share.
If you are not a talented graphic designer, make your social media output professional by tapping into freelancers sites like People Per Hour, Fiver, Upwork and Freelancer. Or of course just pop “hire a freelancer” into a search engine. Find someone you like and build a relationship with them. Whatever your perceived weak spots or strengths are, you can plug the gap with a freelancer and enjoy the benefits of top presentation, this is very important when you consider paid advertising campaigns, if you are paying for clicks, make sure your presentation is top notch.
Twitter now allows you to pay for advertising too, though I would advise being original and inventive with your social media output to try and get social media to work for you for free. If you have a special offer or some stock you need to sell quickly though an enticing offer boosted out to a paid audience is a great way to get things done.
There are great phone apps to jazz up your social media output too like Phoster, a simple app that makes it easy to turn an image into an attractive poster or meme. Just search on meme generator and loads of easy to use apps come up and who knows you could have a viral hit meme on your hands with all the free exposure that comes with it!
My favourite social media marketing tool is video, nothing has more power than a video so with a little effort and a Facebook “boost” you can reach a whole new audience with some really compelling content and a link back to your site of course!
Chapter 8
Going Multi-Channel
If you go into the sale of physical goods through e-commerce then it makes sense to opt for a platform that can mesh with third party sales platforms like eBay and amazon. This allows your new business venture to get exposure and start making sales from day one. Even if your main site is new and not ranking yet, you can make sales easily and make people aware of your new venture.
The power of amazon and eBay are profound but they come at a cost, they both take a hefty percentage of the sale and do so net of VAT. So make sure when pricing things that you are still making a margin or it is all somewhat pointless!
It is very quick and easy to list products and you can even float a higher price on these channels as their popularity and level of trust with consumers allows for that. It is also a great way to test the appeal of new products with minimal effort. eBay also tells you what is trending if you need a few ideas. If you give the same name to your eBay or amazon store as your business it can strengthen your brand but be aware, competition can be really stiff here with directly comparable alternatives being suggested by the platform itself. On the plus side if you build up a catalogue of great reviews on a product that really helps your reputation and I can say from experience that people are really keen to share both the good and the bad news on something!
A good e-commerce platform will have the ability to feed images and descriptions directly to third party websites like eBay. This will produce a professional looking product page and generate invoices and accounting information in your back office system. E-commerce is competitive, with time meaning money and the ability to compete when margins get tight, make sure all your systems are as streamlined and easy as possible.
You can subcontract the design of your eBay store on a freelancing site to get a professional look there too. Good design and presentation is a classic upfront investment, the payoff comes later and is of course very hard to measure but if you make the effort your future customers will appreciate it by giving you business. Poor presentation and low quality text are something that I continually see, it always turns me off. If you want your business to grow, invest in all aspects of it. Get slack or lazy and someone will be waiting to take your place.
A slight concern with multi channel sales is data sharing, when you use another website you can bet they are gathering data on your activities and finding out what is working well for you. This can leave you vulnerable to more competition from the platform itself as well as other sellers. Stay nimble and keep a close eye on sales data as well as new opportunities to stay ahead of the game. Some channels offer to run your fulfilment for you too, this means putting your stock in their hands which I find quite alarming as it is then very simple to trace the supply chain back and source the product.
There are separate professional fulfilment warehouses you can use when you start up that will store your stock, then pick, pack and despatch orders for you for reasonable fee. This is a great tool for the e-commerce start up as storage costs are flexible and there are no nasty long leases to sign into. If you sign a three year lease on a commercial property you can bet within a year or so it will be either too big or too small as the speed of change drives your needs.
Chapter 9
Free things you should do
1) get a google account
2) get a bing account
3) embed the code for google webmaster tools or as it is now called google search console this will let google know about your site and give you tonnes of great data about your site, improvements you can make and errors that your site is throwing up. This lets you submit a sitemap and tell Google of any changes.
4) embed the code for bing webmaster tools same as google webmaster tool but for bing/yahoo loads of data and a route to let bing know what you’re doing
5) embed google analytics code, more data, more ideas on how you can get more traffic, great keyword tools
6) log into google my business and claim your free business listing, this will help your online visibility in local search
7) start your social media outreach work by making accounts with:
google+
Facebook (list as a business, not a person)
youtube
Vimeo
Tumblr
Flickr
Vine, etc…..
Social media is an area that trends, new platforms come and go with a hard core of big names that work really hard to stay popular. Decide which ones are relevant to your business and start adding content to them, this will build trust and your pipeline of contacts that know you and what you do. I search on “top social media platforms” once in a while to see what’s new.
If you search on “social media management systems” a selection of platforms will come up that allows you to add all your social media logins too, then you can broadcast over all channels from one point, lightening your load and making your output more effective. You can even line up and schedule the release of content to keep signals being transmitted even when you’re on holiday!
8) Search on “local business directories” and add your new business to a select few. By select, I mean genuine local directories that people might use OR industry specific directories that help people find specific trades and skills. AVOID automated systems that promised to generate links by adding your website to thousands of directories. As tempting as this sort of thing sounds the links are at best worthless or may harm your search engine results as they count against you.
9) When the mood takes you write some content on your topic, this can be a blog post for your own site, a piece for another blog or site owner that they might publish in exchange for a link or a swap out for existing content on your site to keep things fresh. The engines like and value activity.
10) Link up with the SEO press, I follow Search Engine Journal, Google Small Business and Search Engine Land. They can conspire to make the SEO game seem super complicated, it is of course not, the pillars are simple a quality well-optimised website with quality back links and quality social media output. Easy eh?!?
Mark Snare is a successful entrepreneur and gives his time as a mentor through Dorset Business Mentors’ program. When business owners approach us, either for personal or role mentoring within their business, we carefully assess the requirement and who of our mentors could add the greatest value.
Mark Snare is considered for matching as a mentor to business at all stages but most particularly those that are fledgling start-ups, those looking to grow where e-commerce is a significant factor, and those who are considering exit options. His particular expertise is in marketing and trends, optimised use of the internet, common pitfalls as well as developing resilience and strategy. He is currently supporting two businesses and you can read one of two testimonials here, as well as Mark’s perspective here. As you will discover this business centres around e-commerce and his expertise and support is proving very effective in contributing to their growth. To request a Mentor to support you in your business please contact us for an informal conversation about the process and to answer questions, or you can send us an email through our contact page and we will be in touch.