I am quickly beginning to realise that to blog well requires an awful lot of reading. That seems to be a strange thing to say considering blogging is all about writing, but for those of us that want to use blogging as a business tool, this is key to driving traffic to your blog.

The way it works is you comment on other peoples blog posts on your own blog. But to generate a conversation with that blogger, you need to link to his/her site to generate discussions and web links which should drive traffic back to your site. The more blogs you comment on and post links to, the more likely it is that they will link back to you and drive traffic to your blog. As you can imagine, the more people linking to your site, the more readers you will get, and hopefully participants. Of course links to your blog will also give you huge “Google Juice”.

This seems to be the engine behind building rapid blog popularity. Well, lets see how it goes. To be honest, I’ve been struggling with all the terminology and need to get to grips with tags, trackbacks, RSS feeds and more. There is a whole lot of jargon on the blogosphere!!

So you can see, if you want traffic, you need to write. But importantly you need to read other peoples blogs, comment on them and develop ongoing blog conversations.

Did you know it’s seven times more expensive to sell to new rather than to existing customers? I’m not sure where that figure comes from, whether market research or guestimate, but it’s an interesting figure none the less.

So with that in mind, surely you want to be doing everything you can to keep your customers happy and where possible increase their expenditure. Right?

Well how do you go about doing that?

First of all and crucially, you need to supply a quality product or service that consistently meets your customers needs in the first place. It’s obvious that if you don’t it will be an even harder sell.

But once you’re doing this, how can you keep your customers happy and keep them buying? As with all good sales, there’s a huge degree of listening involved. It’s a well known fact that the best salesman are good listeners as well as good talkers.

So take the time to ask you customers how they are enjoying your product. Ask what they like and dislike, whether there are other products you could sell to them, whether they would prefer you to call twice a month rather than every week, if your product meet their needs or could it be improved?

What you want to know is, are you providing what they want, when they want it, in the way they like it. If not, what could you be doing better. Remember, good salesman are good listeners.

This doesn’t have to be an expensive process. You could issue an annual survey, check out www.surveymonkey.com for a free online survey tool. Or you could conduct a telephone research process with your 50 best customers. Alternatively you could implement an after sales service system such that your sales managers call all customers after a month and conduct a quick telephone interview. If you have lots of money you could even carry out focus groups to measure peoples experience of your product.

There are lots of methods available for listening to your customers. The important thing is that you do. Remember, it’s seven times more expensive to sell to a new customer than an existing customer, so do what you can to keep hold of them.

The First Company Law Amendment Directive – a European law being incorporated into UK law – means that as a limited company you are now required to display more information on your website and company emails. Those who don’t comply risk being fined.

So what do you have to do I hear you ask? As of the 1st January 2007, you are required to include the following in all business emails: 

• company registration number,
• place of registration (e.g. Registered in England ad Wales)
• the registered office address.

On the website you are required to include:

• The name, postal address and email address of the website’s service provider.
• The name of any trade body or professional associations the business is part of, including membership or registration details.
• Your VAT number, even if the website is not being used for e-commerce transactions.
• Any prices on the website must clearly state whether they are inclusive or exclusive of tax and delivery costs. 

For more information check out this very useful legal resource:

http://www.out-law.com/page-7594

Make sure you don’t find out the hard way by getting fined!

It’s amazing how many companies there are providing marketing advice to SMBs - like us for instance. Many of them publish free articles and post newsletters that can be of incredible value, or sometimes a huge waste of time. I know because I read them all trying to find great material for my readers.

This one’s very useful. It’s all about improving the response rates from your email campaigns. Let’s face it, just sending out emails to your customers, clients, prospects and anyone whose address you have, doesn’t always provide the greatest return. The main problem is the sheer volume of email we receive. Apparently “Recent statistics show that over 50% of the tens of billions of e-mails sent daily are spam”. It’s no wonder our messages are not received.

So what can you do to improve your email marketing?

Well, for a start, read the article on BusinessKnowHow.com. It lists 8 top tips for you to think about (see below) and you can read the article by clicking on this link - http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/email-response.htm.

1. Get permission
2. Focus on your Subject Line
3. Front-load your message
4. Pay attention to the spam triggers
5. Tighten up the body of your message
6. What’s on the screen?
7. Select appropriate font colours
8. List Maintenance – Keep your lists up-to-date

For me, you should also consider that:

- keeping it simple will create a bigger impact - too many “special offers” or options will reduce your conversion rates.

- providing two versions, plain text and html, will hit a wider audience.

- making sure any links to your website are correct will reduce instant deletions.

And finally. ADD VALUE! If you provide something of use in your emails, people are much more likely to read what you’ve got to say. They will also be more receptive to your promotional material.

Good luck!

With the start of the new year and after a god festive break, many of you will be back to work with a case of the January blues. After all, following a couple of weeks of eating, drinking and partying, how could sitting in the office possibly compare?

So what can you do to help ease you and your team back into a productive frame of mind? Remember your people are a key element of your marketing mix, regardless of whether you’re a goods or a services business.

Here are 7 ideas that shouldn’t cost you a fortune.

1. Re-organise the office. A change is as good as a rest as they say, and your staff may find a new lease of life from a refreshed view, a new desk, or a different working space. Of course, this will only have a short term effect but it will help in those first few weeks back.

2. Plants. Get some new plants into your work space to help “improve the atmosphere, reduce stress, and sharpen concentration” Nick Eason, CNN. Read Nick’s article at http://www.plantsatwork.org/pdf/CNNReprint.pdf or visit http://www.plantlady.com for more info about plants at work.

3. Arrange a new year kick-off party. Get your team together to reinforce the company goals for the next year, set priorities, develop camaraderie and more importantly to have a couple of beers. This shouldn’t be hugely expensive though, after all it’s likely you have just paid for a Christmas party!

4. Introduce some staff rewards. Why not start an employee of the month award, a little hackneyed but people will see the funny side of it and you’ll be surprised how much people actually like to be recognised like this. If you allow your team to vote for the employee of the month, it adds the extra dimension of being congratulated by your colleagues and not just the boss! Maybe the winner could borrow the pool car over the weekend as well?

5. Massage your employees. Not personally, but arrange for a professional to come to your office for a day of massage therapy. What better way to look after your staff in their time of need. Benefits might include reduced stress levels, renewed energy and motivation, and decreased absenteeism. Check out http://www.stressangels.co.uk/corporate/ for more ideas.

6. Introduce music to the office. OK, so not everyone will have the same taste in music, but if you can agree some common ground rules, for example no thrash metal or Radio 1, then you might find introducing music will improve the working environment. Research has even found some types of music increase productivity – read this article for more info: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is_5_30/ai_57943400

7. Last but not least, give everyone an extra half day off. Assuming you aren’t snowed under with work, why not give everyone a surprise half day off. Today, Monday, next Thursday, whenever really, just call it a day after lunch so you can all head off into the sales before all of the bargains are totally snapped up. This one won’t be practical for everyone though unfortunately.

Of course, there are plenty of other ideas you could try and I’m very keen to hear of any experiences you have.

Andrew

In an attempt to improve its customer service, internet company Easynet recently surveyed its customers to find out what they actually wanted from their business relationship. The conclusions drawn are very interesting and useful if you run a business to businesses operation. Easynet’s focus was on receiving good service as a customer, but to my mind, the ten ideas they highlighted could just as easily be used to improve service delivery.

Overall an excellent and extremely useful report and I congratulate Easynet on taking such a proactive approach to delivering good customer service. One of the highlights of the report to me is this quote “It was clear that the key to success is to develop an open, honest business relationship” with business partners.” I agree entirely, be open, be honest and most importantly be clear in your communications and relationships.

Have you noticed in the last couple of years an increasing trend for companies not to send Christmas cards? Instead, I’ve frequently received emails with words to this effect:

But what do you think? Should companies continue to send cards, or abandon cards for the charity donation scheme? Or is a mixture appropriate, where key clients receive personalised Christmas greetings cards?

I had a poker night at home last week. I invited more friends than I could fit into my flat, assuming a couple would drop out. As you can imagine, I was quite surprised when everyone decided to come along. Great I thought, but then quickly realised I didn’t have enough chairs for them all. I didn’t have time to buy more, so I had to borrow some from a neighbour.

The basis behind emergency chairs is simple, plan for contingencies. Can you get hold of some extra chairs if you need to?

Sorry everyone, I know it’s been a while since I updated my blog, but as with a lot of you I’m sure, the usual Christmas rush is keeping me tied up at the moment. Please feel free to browse my blog and add comments to any of the other posts in the mean time. Also if you want to email any questions I’ll post them up online for everyone to read and answer.

Andrew

Sorry to quote Tony Blair in the headline there, but I suppose he is a great marketer (could you sell the Labour party all day every day?).

Give it a try, education could easily be part of your multilevel marketing mix.