SME Academy, London | Advice, Tips and training for business owners » Sales & Marketing

Is Your Online Brand Good For Business?

admin — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:43:55 +0000

Marketing your business via Social Media and Online Networking has become a popular and cost effective way of growing your business. The platforms available such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook allow you to establish your niche and communicate to them directly. Watching your customers online and following their live feeds and discussions provides you with invaluable insights into their interests and concerns. Something that previously would have cost you thousands to find out is now freely available to you.

However – and this is a big warning to you! – while there are a great deal of people finding new business contracts and profitable relationships online, there are also others that are losing out BECAUSE of online networking. How? Because they haven’t taken the necessary steps to protect their own personal brand and online identity.

When looking to enter into a new business relationship it is quite standard to ‘google’ someone to find out who they are. The results can bring up all sorts of images and information that you would prefer people not to see. When you’ve finished reading this, try Googling yourself and see what comes up.

I’m willing to bet that if you’re on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or Bebo, your profile came up (it may have been hidden a few pages into the search results). Even if the person viewing your profile isn’t a member or isn’t signed in, they’ll probably have seen your profile picture. Anyone starting to sweat at this point?
Just taking Facebook as an example, your public profile page appears on Google and in many cases displays a selection of your friends. Hmm…even if your profile pic is perfectly presentable, what about the photos of your friends? Would they impress a potential business associate?

Ok, so if you’ve now started to think about what you can do on a practical level to undo any damage to your reputation, here are some things you can do right now. The tips are about profiles on Facebook, but the principles apply to all social networking sites.

•   Change your profile name so that it doesn’t include your full name as it appears on your business webiste – abbreviate your name or use a nickname. Your real friends will know who you are.
•   If you do want prospective clients or customers to find you or you’re using the site for professional networking, seriously think about having TWO profiles, one for friends and one for professional contacts.
•   Check your privacy settings and put them up to the highest level. If your friends have a habit of tagging photos of you, go onto the page where the photo appears and click ‘Remove Tag’. Then go to your Privacy settings and alter the settings relating to who can view your pictures and videos. I recommend you set them at maximum privacy if you can bear to.
•   Look very carefully at what comments and pictures other people have posted on your profile. If they aren’t saying the right things about you or they are likely to reflect badly on you, delete them and make sure that you check regularly to see that the amusing but crude pictures, jokes and YouTube videos people tend to share don’t keep coming back to haunt you!
•   Now go to your Applications. If you’ve added applications that won’t impress people, remove them straight away. Business contacts are rarely interested to know which person from ‘Friends’ you are most like.
•   Now to your Groups. Even if you’ve got your privacy settings up to the max, the instant you join a Group, you’re appearing on the online map. The Groups you join say a lot about you and in many cases mean that your full profile is visible to any other members of that Group. If you in a moment of madness joined the ‘Why I hate my boss’ group or ‘interesting places I’ve had sex at work’, it’s probably time to leave that group.
•   Now to your Friends list. Do you really have 347 friends who you see on a regular basis? You’re probably giving every one of them full access to your profile. Just because you’ve decided that photos of you will only be visible to your friends, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to show them to anyone else. Especially if you’ve accepted a Friends request from a colleague or ex-colleague. If you really don’t want certain people to see what’s in your profile, you can either adjust your Privacy settings to restrict what people can see or consider removing them from your friends list.
•   If you communicate with your friends via the Wall feature, remember that you are having a very public conversation. If you post something like “I was so drunk last night I can’t remember what I did” on a friend’s wall, you have absolutely NO control over who is going to see it. Use the private message boards or old-fashioned e-mail for personal communications.
•   Finally, if all else fails, close your account and start again (although it is easier said than done to get your profile data removed from a social networking site).

Now, before you rush off to update your profiles to make them squeaky clean, if someone is searching for you online, you still need to come across as you. If you’re a fun-loving person who only wants to deal with people and companies who have a sense of humour and have some energy about them, that’s what they are going to be looking for on your profile. If you only include air-brushed professional studio photos as profile pics and have no applications at all on your profile, there’s a danger that you’ll come across as a bit dull or not their kind of person. So there’s a balance. Be yourself, but within reason.

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How to Follow Up On Your Leads

admin — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:17:30 +0000

Do you have lots of leads but no idea what to do with them? Sometimes our desks can become cluttered with business cards we intend to follow up but don’t get round to. Following up on those leads are be vital to your business. You invested time and money gaining them, so don’t let them just slip away. In this video I discuss how you can follow up with those leads and turn them into business.

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Bribery & Corruption

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:50:43 +0000

Having a mailing list for your business is incredibly important as it allows you to keep in contact with your potential customers and let them know about your business. Newsletters are so effective however that now everyone is offering them – so how do you get people to sign up to your offering? With a little bit of modern day bribery and corruption.

In this Video Tip I discuss how you cost effective and attractive things you can offer to entice people to sign up to your mailing list.

www.GetMoreClientsMakeMoreMoney.co.uk

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How to avoid the Feast-Famine scenario

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:30:26 +0000

Most professional service businesses suffer from the feast-famine syndrome where you’re either busy delivering on the contract or rushing around looking for new business. In this video Hannah McNamara talks about ways that you can automate your marketing and scale-up your marketing activities so that you are using techniques like teleseminars and webinars to maximise the effectiveness of your business development and sales conversations.

www.GetMoreClientsMakeMoreMoney.co.uk

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How to stand out from the competition

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:30:03 +0000

Hannah McNamara talks about what you can do to make your business stand out in a crowded market and make your marketing and business development activities more effective so that you attract more clients and make more money in your professional service business.

www.GetMoreClientsMakeMoreMoney.co.uk

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How to convert website traffic into business

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:44:26 +0000

How to get more business from your small business website.

Hannah McNamara, SME Academy Director, talks about how to convert hits and website traffic into paying clients and customers. She explains why offering special reports, ebooks, white papers and mp3 downloads can help with data capture and building an email marketing mailing list. She also discusses how to put a landing page together and get more people to opt in to your database so you can send them your newsletter, ezine or articles.

www.GetMoreClientsMakeMoreMoney.co.uk

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Could tele-seminars boost your business?

Hannah McNamara — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:03:44 +0000

Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) in London talks about an innovative way to reach more customers than you ever could through one-to-one sales meetings or telephone meetings.

For decades professional services firms have known about the power of running seminars and events to showcase their services. It can help to boost their profile, demonstrate their expert knowledge of their subject area and build relationships with both existing and prospective clients. You could also tap into this as a way of growing your business and boosting sales.

You could be forgiven for thinking, “That wouldn’t work for my business.” After all, it can seem like a big investment to organise the event, pay for the room and make sure you get the chance to mingle with everyone.

If your customers are dispersed around the country or even internationally, you might wonder whether they would be willing to travel to hear someone from your company speak at a seminar.

Running a tele-seminar or a webinar delivered via the internet could be the solution for you.

A tele-seminar is simply a seminar delivered by conference call. The speaker hosts the event and delegates dial in and enter a PIN code to access the call. Delegates can phone in from their office, home or wherever they are, so it can be much more convenient for them. The downside is that you lose the face to face contact and the ability to show people what you’re talking about. One way around this is to host the seminar as a webinar where the seminar is hosted on the internet and you can show presentations to your delegates. Another is to prepare seminar handouts which are emailed to delegates before the seminar so that they can work through it making the event quite interactive.

Tele-seminars and webinars offer you the chance to educate your customers and prospects about what you do, establish yourself as the expert in your field and promote your goods and services to a much wider audience than if you were to book individual sales meetings with them.

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When and how to ask for a Testimonial

Hannah McNamara — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:58:04 +0000

Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) explains how to go about gathering testimonials and references about your business.

Ask most successful small businesses how they get clients and customers, and the chances are they will tell you it’s through word of mouth and recommendation.

It’s said that ‘word of mouth marketing’ is the most powerful form of marketing if used correctly. The trouble is that it seems like a very passive activity. But it doesn’t have to be that way and I’ll show you how to take back control.

But first, what is it that makes word of mouth so effective? It’s because a third party is telling your prospective clients how good your company is. When you say it, they take it with a pinch of salt, but it’s a whole different ball game when someone else is singing your praises.

In reality a happy client or customer is going to be even more complimentary about what you do than you would be – unless you’ve got a horrendously large ego. The other advantage is that they can talk in your customers’ terms because well they ARE your customer.

You may already be convinced that having positive testimonials about what your company does is a good thing – but how do you get people to give them to you.

A simple solution is to ask for them.

If you’ve done a good job, your customers will be more than willing to give you a testimonial. In most cases they’re happy to do this because they know what it’s like when you’re searching for a supplier and don’t know who’s good and who’s not. They want to help other people to find someone good.

Here’s what you should do.

Firstly, start sending out feedback forms or customer surveys when you deal with customers. Ask them to rate your company and ask if they would be willing to write down some comments which you could use in your future marketing. Give them the option to do it as a named testimonial or anonymously.

Then if you’re on LinkedIn, ask clients to endorse you. If you don’t feel comfortable about this, endorse them first and they’ll probably reciprocate.

Email your best customers and say you’re putting together some new content for your website and you’d love to use them as a case study. Would they mind writing a few lines to say how your product or service has helped them? Remember to tell them you’ll include a link back to their website with the testimonial and this will increase the response rate.

Finally, there are two main reasons that people won’t give you a testimonial. 1. They weren’t impressed. If that’s the case better to find out now and have a chance to put things right. 2. They don’t know what to say. In this situation they imagine you’ll want a clever, eloquent letter and this seems like a lot of work so they put it off. Why not send them examples of what other people have written or even offer to have a quick chat and write down what they say so they don’t need to write it.

In my experience the only reason that businesses don’t have more customer testimonials is that they never asked for them, so don’t be coy.

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Up-selling: The key to increased profits

Hannah McNamara — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:51:08 +0000

Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) in London talks about ways that you can increase sales amongst your existing customers and clients.

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Transcript

They say that it costs something like 10 times as much to sell to a new customer than to sell more to an existing customer. So why are so many people only focusing on new leads? Shouldn’t we be turning our attention to the best prospects of all – our customers?

When it comes to customers, when do you think is the right time to sell to them? When they’ve already got their wallets out! I’m serious. When they’re already in the frame of mind where they’re happy to buy from you, that’s the point at which you ask them to buy something else.

In the same way that when you buy a book from Amazon they’ll suggest some other books you might be interested in, you can suggest extra products and services to your customers.

In negotiations, this technique is referred to as ‘nibbling’. As soon as you’ve got their agreement on one thing, get their agreement on something else and then see how far you can go.

Of course this assumes that you’ve got something else to sell to your customers and when you do make them an offer, it does need to be relevant to what they’ve bought.

It happens in retail all the time, for example you buy a pair of shoes and the assistant will ask if you will need some polish or in-soles. You buy a new washing machine and you’re asked if you’d like to buy an extended warranty. There are some products and services which are clearly back-end products, in order words you’d only sell them once someone has bought something else from you, such as an extended warranty or a support contract or an advanced version of what you sell. This said, I do see some businesses trying to sell back-end products at the front end and it doesn’t always make sense.

So, think about the products and services you sell. Which are the front end products and which are the back-end products? Which items are usually bought together? Is there a pattern to how people buy from you?

Once you understand this, it becomes much easier to up-sell to your customers. Not just in person, but when you’re planning your marketing activities. Your website can suggest extra products when someone is in your shopping cart or say to them, I noticed you bought X – product Y goes very well with it, shall we add it to your order?

Ultimately, up-selling is the most profitable way to do business because the costs involved in marketing to existing customers decreases at the same time as their responsiveness goes up.

For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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[Video Tip] Networking Corporate Style

Hannah McNamara — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 06:43:44 +0000

Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) talks about ways that you can network your way into corporate contracts.

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Transcript

If you have attended a few networking events you might have noticed that they are mainly populated by independent coaches, consultants and small business owners. This is perfect if that’s the market you are hoping to promote your services to, but what if you want to build your network of contacts in the corporate world?

Let’s face it – most of the people you want to connect with are employees of a larger organisation. This is the case whether you are looking for senior executives, training managers or any other member of staff.

Employees think differently from self-employed people and business owners when it comes to networking. They have a job to do and probably don’t have enough time to do it, so networking is not high on their priority list unless they are thinking about making a career move.

These people have a corporate marketing department working hard to build the profile of the organisation, so unless they are working in the Sales or Business Development functions, they won’t be networking for leads in the same way that you might be.

They spend most days fielding incoming calls and sorting through sales letter and promotional emails from people and organisations trying to promote their businesses, so they’re not likely to think, “I could do with meeting some prospective suppliers – I’ll go to this networking event.”

So if they’re not approaching networking in the same way as you, how do you get in front of these people?

Most people working in large organisations don’t go to ‘networking events’ unless they are looking for a job. Networking happens at industry conferences, seminars and training courses. People are introduced to one another at awards dinners, press launches and social events.

If you are looking to network your way into larger organisations adjust your strategy. Start to think like them. Position yourself so that you are invited to the same events that they attend.

Work your existing contacts and ask for specific introductions to a particular person in an organisation – websites like LinkedIn are useful for finding out who knows who. Be clear about what you want them to say when they make the introduction. Seek out the people you know who work with larger organisations and get to know them. Find out more about what they do and see if you can help them first, before asking whether they might be willing to consider you when they are looking for what your company does.

Above all, understand that it can take time even when you’ve been introduced to the right person. You do need to network in a slightly different way and have a longer-term strategy in mind, but if you start with the end in mind and are clear about what you are setting out to achieve you’ll have a much greater level of success.

For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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