It’s well worth take a quick look through for inspiration, suggestions or just to keep abreast of what’s happening in the field of marketing.

The is a rather nauseating amount of social networking articles but there is many other bits worth reading and the message boards could be useful to bounce ideas, slogans or problems off.

If your approaching a new client listen to what they are saying. If they are saying no then find out why. They most likely will tell you budget constraints, unable to work to deadlines  etc etc but really they are saying they don’t believe your product/service will benefit them. If they did then people can find the budget, if really can’t find the budget they would work with you in another way.

So what are people saying to you? Have you really tried probing on this subject?

I recently took a sales call from someone selling advertising, a common enough situation. They rambled on about the benefits of the advertising and how coverage is included on the website blah blah blah. I quickly looked at the website and it was awful. The design right through to the content was awfully laid out and the home page had no less than 19 flashing adverts! I told them it was bad and why it was bad before constructively advising on several areas to make it better and went into far too much detail really.

After i finished she still asked me if i was interested in placing an advert.

She hadn’t listened at all and i doubt would have relayed anything i had said to anyone in her company. Great information completely wasted.

Now i’m not an expert on webdesign but i can spot some problems that can be easily solved and your customers can do too.

If you clients say the waiting time is too long. Say right we can shorten it but there’s an additional express charge. If they say no its too much money then ask them how much would they pay? Could it be in installments? What’s their budget they can commit etc etc.

This topic is very broad and there is no clear cut right or wrong way when selling to client s but listening and then reacting to what information they are giving you will go a long way to improving your conversion rate.

Customers buy things from you, that’s right they give you money!

Many will walk away carrying a bag with your logo/advert on it so they are voluntarily promoting you to the general public.

Others may kindly give you their contact details, initially so you can send them there goods but they will quite happily let you build a database.

Above all, customers talk to each other, they say what you did right and what you did wrong, and if you did manage to get it right first time then the chances are they will be back for more (and probably bring there friends!).

You should view every customer as a giant wad of cash just waiting to be picked up. Be nice to them! If you treat them nicely and serve them well they might come back. If you treat them badly they won’t.

Repeat business is what keeps the economy going. Customers are much happy to use a company they know already and trust than run the risk with an unknown business.

Instill this service focused culture in your staff from the beginning and your company should succeed.

Its ok, i’m not going to start spouting ‘customer promises’, ‘published service standards’ or ‘appropriate waiting line length’. 

I’m really only writing this after a number of incidents over the last week.

Argos, the UK catalogue giant  seems to have lost its way when it comes to customer service, that or the staff quit caring a few years ago. While i waited for 10 minutes for my number to be called up to collect my goods i watched an elderly lady be directed around the store from counter to counter. All she wanted was to look at a watch but the people at the till couldn’t help her and sent here to the unmanned jewelry counter where she waited for 10 minutes before another member of staff (who looked about 12)  told her to go and look in the catalogue. I didn’t see her again, i hope she left the store and wont return.

Then my number was called and i walked up to the counter. My stuff wasn’t there yet. When i asked why was i called up when the stuff wasn’t ready i was told the system was automated. Yes automated! Argos couldn’t even trust a member of staff to type in a number and push a button. If that’s the way its going I’m seriously worried about the future of customer service.

Remember every customer is a potential money pot for you and your company. They will tell others (particularly if you treat them badly) about the service they receive so make sure you value each and every one of them.

Simply put Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is about making your website easier for search engines to find and understand your website. It helps them to see what purpose your site serves and then can match that up to consumers searching on relevant keywords. A lot of the time there is no cast iron perfect way of doing this hence why many people call SEO an art form.

So where do we start. Well due to it’s very nature it needs to be focussed on the back end coding side of your website. If you understand that side things then this should it should be a breeze to do. if you don’t read through some online html websites. take a look your source pages or speak to the person who helped put up your website.

SEO requires you to amend and review some small aspects of your coding to help your website be more readable by search engines. So start by going  to the biggest search engine there is.

The Google SEO guide is available by the link below and takes you through the basic, simple things that everyone should be able to do with a minimal understanding of  html coding.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

This is the starting block for your SEO activity and should get you started. A lot of the principles very are simple and the guide makes it easy to understand why they are important. 

One final though towards the future of SEO

Search engines are becoming increasingly hard to ‘trick’, previously you could simply buy links from any other website and your ranking in the search engines would improve. This doesn’t happen so much anymore so the best overall strategy you can take is to be honest and helpful. Make your site readable using the tips in the guide but don’t think putting ‘ipod’ in your keywords is really going to get you more visitors in the long run!

I came across this article recently which offers a quick summary of the many marketing blogs out there.

Top 50 marketing blogs

Its well worth having a quick look.

It offers a quick no- nonsense approach that can be understood by all whilst also showing you some common mistakes that we ‘re all guilty of committing.

Here’s the link to their golden rules but if you have time take a look through the rest on there.

http://www.cardellmedia.co.uk/goldenrules.html

I’m fed up with complex solutions to simple problems, ignorant so called experts and university graduates who know the theory but have no idea how to get things done. people can talk about Search Engine Optimisation until their blue in the face and although it’s useful it will not make your business successful if you haven’t grasped what marketing is all about. You can spend tens of thousands on advertising and not generate a single sale if you don’t understand the market. You can send hundreds of brochures/letters/flyer’s out to customer and only sell one item, does that mean it’s successful?

I believe marketing should be simple to understand and implement. Everyone should be excited about marketing, it is the core reason your business exists now and will do in the future! If you get your marketing correct then you will be successful, it is as simple as that!

Marketing really comes down to 3 basic questions.

Take a look at your business:

Where are you now?

What does it do? Is it big? small? niche? Is it a market leader? Does it make a large profit? small profit? Is it growing? shrinking? developing? Employ lots of people? Only sells in one town? Supply one company? Basically, what are you business strengths and business weaknesses.

You should already know all of that but take a fresh look, many people are very surprised by what they find.

Right got all that, here’s the next question:

Where do you want to be?

Do you want to grow? go online? sell to a different company? become less reliant on your one customer? Develop new products? move the business? expand into a new market? Basically what are the business opportunitys available to  and what are the threats to your business.

Still with me? ok heres the last question:

How are you going to get there?

New product development? new sales team? new advertising campaign? special offers? market research? PR? send a brochure out? send two brochures out? The list here is pretty endless and is easily the most visiblepart of marketing.

I intend this blog to highlight some of the many simple marketing ideas and solutions that out there and readily available for all to see, its not for experts or theorists, it’s for practical people that actually do some work!

I hope you like it and it proves useful to you.

Tom