by Team KJP | Feb 5, 2020
When we think about promoting a business, we should consider every factor, and this includes actually telling people what we do!
Do we take for granted that people already know us? Do we assume that our audience already have a good perception of who we are and what we are capable of?
Never make assumptions!
When it comes to marketing, whether that be offline or digital marketing – spell out the message you’re intending to say and stick to your message and mission.
Start With The Basics
- Who are you and what is your business about?
- What do you offer – what services or products do you provide?
- How can people get in touch with you?
- Where can people find out more about you?
These are all questions that we need to start with when marketing a business. Make it easy for people to find out about your brand, your values, your products, your way of doing things. Your customers are your life line to success. Without them you won’t succeed!
Dig A Little Deeper
Now you’ve established your presence and people are starting to know more about you, it’s time to go deeper into what you can do for them.
Do your customers know that you can offer XYZ? Are they aware that you can solve X problem?
What is it that your audience is looking for, and how can you put across a message of hope and solution?
Take time to sit in your customer’s shoes for a moment, what would pull you towards your services and what would you be looking to get from it?
Think as a customer and write your marketing directly to them.
Embrace Your Strengths
Everyone has things they are better at and prefer doing over other tasks – embrace those strengths and allow your customers to get a glimpse or taste of those strengths. People buy from people or brands that they trust, by giving them a taster of something that you’re really passionate about, they can ‘try before they buy’.
Learn From Your Weaknesses
On the flip side of your strengths, everyone also has weaknesses. But this isn’t something that shall hold you back. We learn from mistakes, we learn from trial and error and the more we do something, the better we become.
Sometimes we need to step out of the comfort zone and give ourselves a challenge – as hard as that may be to do, it gives us courage, confidence and new strings to our bow. And this is applicable in marketing – social media is a life line for businesses to embrace and to use as best as possible to grow their brand. What could you do to step out of the box, out of your comfort zone and to build relationships with your audience?
For some people the thought of being on video terrifies them – but video is one of the best forms of social media marketing and it gives direct access for clients/customers to see behind the brand, who they’re dealing with and to learn more about a business. Have you tried it?
Create An Event
Another great way for your customers to get to know what you do is to create an event. This could be a physical ‘go to’ event, it could be a networking opportunity, it could be a webinar or even a podcast. But whatever it is, it’s something tangible for people to get to know you.
Again this may be stepping out of your comfort zone but does that matter if it means your business may grow, you’re raising your brand awareness and people are starting to like, know and trust you? It’s a step toward success. It’s a path to growing a business and it’s great for you personally as you get to meet new people and your reputation grows.
The main point is that it’s good to make clear what you do and what you can provide for your customers.
Get to know your ideal audience, get yourself well established within the right circles and the right networks, and become a person of interest in your local area. The more you get out there, the more your business will flourish.
If you’re looking to raise your profile and create a better awareness of your business, we can help! You don’t have to go it alone, and we’d love to chat with you if you’d like some direction in getting started or building on what you already are doing online. Get in touch today!
by Team KJP | Jan 30, 2020
Are you struggling to get the attention that your website so deserves? Do you find it hard to drive traffic to your website or to work out why your audience is not visiting your site?
Introducing SEO (search engine optimisation). SEO is an extremely powerful tool that can help boost your site immensely when done correctly. As a small business owner, you may think that creating an SEO friendly website would cost a lot of money but actually there are tips you can do yourself if you’re not in a position to pay a professional that will enhance the productivity of your site, boost sales and of course, increase your brand awareness.
Check out our quick 5 SEO top tips to increase website traffic, ideal for small business owners …
Keyword Research
Always start with the keyword research – there’s never any harm in doing it and you’re more likely to do good than harm by digging a little deeper. Try not to assume what your customers want, guessing doesn’t get you anywhere!…you need to understand them and get into their way of thinking. Google Keyword Planner is a great little tool to help you get started.
When you get into the swing of keywords you’ll use them in titles, throughout your pages and throughout your blog content.
Understand Your Competition
By understanding the competition you know what what’s going on around you, and you can use the same tactics and tricks that other people use to attract customers. You can stay up to date with trends and industry news, which you can then use on your own website, meaning that when people are searching the net for specific info or trends, your site will be ready and waiting.
See what is working for other brands and create relative content that reflects what people are buying into. If it ‘s working for someone else, there’s nothing stopping it working for you if you put in the effort too.
Optimise Your Website
Everyone nowadays is on a mobile device and your website should be accommodating this at all times. Did you know that Google can penalise you for not having a mobile-friendly site? That’s right, in order to rank well with Google it measures organic content, mobile experience and page speed. Therefore it’s worth doing a regular run through of your site to ensure that it’s completely mobile friendly and it doesn’t have any glitches or broken pages. Google Analytics is pretty good at picking up specifics that need fixing so if you’re able to get started with analytics, we recommend you do so.
Post Regular Content
Keep your site up to date with regular updates coming through. If you have the time to blog then this is a great way to create regular, relevant content, suitable for your audience. However, not everyone has the time to start a blog, or the skills to write good content, so why not start off with publishing your own ideas or take some snaps, it doesn’t have to be text format for content refreshment. For example, you could post images that tell the story of recent projects. You could upload transcripts of happenings, or quick videos of behind the scenes. They key is not what you post but keeping it consistent.
Grow Your Social Media Network
As you explore other areas of networking your presence becomes wider and people start to recognise you. Expose your business to a variety of avenues online through social media groups, communities discussions and much more. The more you get your name out there the bigger the exposure for your business, raising your brand awareness. You don’t need to be hard selling all the time, but provide value, expertise and advice. Become an expert in your industry, get talking with people and from here you can introduce them to what you have to offer – and in turn directing them to your website.
Word of mouth is a powerful form of marketing and this is prevalent in social media making it easier for people to recommend your services or direct people to your website.
Add social media links to your website too, not only does it give more authority to Google and show more organic content, it allows any visitors that stumble on your website to find out more about you via your social channels.
Many people want to get to know more about you before they buy so by building up relationships they learn to trust you and your brand.
Wherever you are in your business journey, ensuring your website is as SEO friendly as possible will have positive effects on your online presence. Optimise and do as much as you can to give your ideal customer the experience they’re looking for.
If you’d like to talk to someone about creating credible SEO friendly copy on your website or just an expert opinion, get in touch, we’d love to help.
by Team KJP | Jan 23, 2020
Running a business takes time, energy and passion. If you’re a small business owner or solopreneur, there’s many tasks that you will be managing yourself. So how do you make time for everything?
Planning and Organisation is key. They are the fundamental ingredients to smooth running and consistency for a small business and the same rule applies when it comes to social media marketing. Marketing on any level requires planning and strategy but when it comes to creating a plan of action and engaging content for an audience to interact with, and start to learn more about your business and values, organisation becomes paramount.
Introducing a social media scheduling tool
This is when scheduling tools are most valuable and essential. Organising social media content in advance and planning what content to use is the first step but by utilising a scheduling tool so you don’t need to think about it (or panic on the day) will ease the pressure 100%. Of course there is more to social media than just posting and forgetting about it, but getting everything planned will take a weight off your mind and enable you to focus on other parts of the business.
What social media scheduling tool is best?
This comes down to preference, it’s like choosing a supermarket. You take a look at what it offers, find the best deal for you and try it out.
To name a few:
They all have their good and bad points and all have their own benefits, but let’s focus on Hootsuite as this is a popular one for small business owners and for a smaller budget.
Hootsuite
If you’re just starting out, Hootsuite offers a free version for up to 3 social profiles. This can give you a chance to try before you buy whilst giving you a feel for what it can do.
Streams
Once you’ve connected up your 3 profiles, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, you are able to see a “stream” for each profile. Just as if you were in the programme itself. For example, in Twitter you can see your home feed, inbox, tweets you’ve posted and any @mentions about you or your business. There is even a search function so you can keep up to date with your social listening, follow certain hashtags or accounts and staying current with industry news.
Calendar View
You have the ability to see a calendar view of all your content, whether that be weekly or monthly, which can be extremely helpful if you want to look back through posts that you’ve previously done. You can even use the calendar view to select specific days to post, planning as you go with regard to your posting.
Planner
This is where it all comes together, scheduling each crafted post to its individual profile and seeing a sea of posts ready to go out to the world. The pressure it will take away from you will be amazing!
What content to post on social media
Obviously you need content to fill your social media calendar with and this will vary depending on your type of business and values but the key to scheduling is to map out the content before you go to post.
In our recent Business Focus and Social Media Strategy workshop we walked through creating a strategy for your marketing content. Break down what topics and ideas you have:
- What is your audience interested in?
- What value can you offer?
- Who are you speaking to?
- Industry news/advice
- Motivational posts
There are so many content ideas within just the above that will get you thinking about how you can serve your audience, get creative!… making sure you give value in everything you post.
Analytics
If you venture into the paid version of Hootsuite you’ll gain access to analytics for your different profiles. This can help with targeting time, reaching the right people and seeing what’s working/and what’s not.
Customer Service
Having all your profiles in one place makes it much easier to stay on top of everything, including customer service. See messages all in one place when customers contact you or give positive or negative feedback. Jump straight into answering questions or replying to comments, and never fall behind in your customer service again!
When it comes to your social media marketing, organisation has got to be top priority. Plan, create, schedule >> reach your audience, grow your business.
However if it’s still too much to get your head around, we’d love to chat with you to create a plan of action that we can implement for you. Your success is our success. Get in touch today!
And if you’re happy to get started with your own social media marketing, download our free social media checklist – so you don’t forget the basics!
by Karen Petrauskas | Jan 13, 2020
Another year gives new opportunities to reach new goals, set new targets and create even more success in your business than you ever have imagined before.
It’s the perfect time to revisit your business plan and the marketing strategy that you have been following over the past 12 months and to see what new strategies you can put into place for the next 12 months ahead.
If you take a step back and think about where you were this time last year, how much have you progressed or achieved in those 12 months? You may even surprise yourself, not realising that you completed so much, evaluating can be a great process to go through in order to set new goals and achieve even more in a given timeframe.
Start with business goals and objectives
If you have one long term objective for your business, what would that be? Now break that down into achievable goals that you can work towards in smaller bite-sized periods.
- What steps do you need to make in order to reach each goal?
- How can marketing help you get there?
SMART goals
The most essential ingredient in making sure your marketing will have a positive effect in your business goals and objectives is to ensure that you are making your goals SMART.
- SPECIFIC – Focus on one clearly defined metric. Set concise goals that sum up what you want to achieve, how you will get there and by when.
- MEASURABLE – Have a way to measure the outcome of your actions.
- ACHIEVABLE – Make the goal achievable, attainable and realistic.
- RELEVANT – Ensure the goal is going to benefit your business, relevant to your overall plan.
- TIME-BOUND – Set a time that the goal should be achieved by, in line with business objectives.
When you’re setting out your marketing goals, filter them through the SMART process and direct them through each of the key points in order to create a goal that is in line with your business’s overall plan, it has benefit and purpose, it can be measured and it will maximise the impact when it is achieved. The more specific you are with your goals and how you’re going to action them, the bigger the impact will be when you get there.
When we break down each goal and step, we can give it proper recognition and attention. Our marketing efforts can then be broken down even further to match our goals and ensure we give each point its own marketing funnel.
Make social media marketing fun!
The clue is in the name “social”. Your online marketing should be enjoyable, not a chore, and play a part in showcasing and allowing potential customers to discover who you are, along with getting to know more about you.
- What do you love about your business? Shout about it!
- What do you want customers to know about you? Share it!
When you put real life emotion and authenticity into your voice, people get to know the person behind the brand, giving them opportunity to love what you’re about – eventually getting into your sales/lead funnel that will help you grow your business.
Make social media engaging
When you’re having fun and sharing what’s important to you and the business, entice people to engage with your content. And this often needs to be spelled out – they don’t necessarily know to take action, unless you ask them to.
Ask them to click through to your website, to drop a comment, to give feedback, to give opinion. People are more likely to engage when they’re invited to do so. And think about what you want them to do when they do engage, where do you want them to end up and what expectation do you have from them seeing your post?
Social media is all about the engagement. You could have 100 likes on a Facebook post just because an image looks pretty but are they actually engaging with the message you’re giving and are they ready to take action from that piece of content? How can you change the way you say something or the look / feel of your content to catch their attention for the better, and reach your ‘ideal’ audience?
Create a social media strategy
In everything you do or produce within your marketing remit, there has to be a plan or strategy behind it. A marketing strategy will help you pull everything together, give you direction and clarity on who you’re targeting, who you want to reach, why you’re doing it and how you’re going to perform the actions. A strategy guides and keeps you on track and gives you the opportunity to measure results, whether successful or not and steers the path to a better result by a given time frame.
The idea behind a strategy means that you get to know, understand, love and add value to your audience. It means that you’re not wasting time doing something that has no goodness for your business but gives you the steppingstones to really dig deep into your audience, your target market and can give them exactly what they are looking for. You can provide solutions to their pain points and provide value into their situations, even when they don’t know they need it!
So, if you’re looking to start this year with a plan, purpose and a mission, how are you going to get there? Can you put strategy into your social media marketing and give this year the opportunity to take you to new heights? Yes! We love to help you get there. Contact us and let’s talk about making this year, YOUR year for business success.
And as a free gift to you, we’d like to offer our free downloadable social media checklist, just in case you’re happy to go it alone. We’d rather give you a little step up than send you away with not knowing where to get started. Enjoy 😊
by Karen Petrauskas | Dec 28, 2019
We’ve come to the end of the year and there is so much to celebrate – sometimes we do not even think things have been that great – but just take a step back and look at where you were this time last year and realise how much you have accomplished. You’ll be surprised at the growth and success you have managed to achieve – give yourself a ‘well done’ pat on the back!
And as we move into a new year, a blank canvas of opportunities and experiences, how can we ensure that we finish 2019 on a high?
Positive Thinking
This is the very first step to take in order to see self-worth and achievement. When you’re thinking clearly and positively, you are much more likely to see things in a clear and positive light. Self-confidence comes from positive thinking and when you believe in yourself and your abilities, you will achieve a great deal more! Let’s face it, if you don’t believe in yourself, who else will?
How do you feel at the end of each day? Are you stressed, anxious, happy, thankful? Working to end each day on a positive note will leave you refreshed, able to leave your business at the office while you enjoy some personal time aside from it. When you are positive, this can be an easy thing to do, if you’re stressed about something within the business, this could be a harder step to follow.
Find the balance on how to stay positive, change your mindset to allow yourself to be confident in your abilities and achievements. And know that you can do it.
Motivation
We all need a little motivation once in a while, so how can we stay motivated in order to know that we’re on the right track and have the power inside of yourself to want to push forward in the new year? It can be as easy as finding an accountability partner or business coach or finding inspiration in someone or something else to enable you to know you can keep striving. Getting and staying motivated is vital, no matter if you’re at the end of the year and wondering whether to carry on, or mid-way through striving to meet a business goal or target, without motivation we lose focus, faith and confidence in the ability of success.
If you’re not feeling the motivation at the end of this year, but know that you love what you’re doing and you’re definitely in the right place – try a new approach, network with other like-minded business people and give yourself new (achievable) goals to etch you back in. By the time the new year comes, you’ll be wondering what all the doubt was about!
Harness the power of social media
This goes without saying, for a small business owner you must be harnessing the power of social media to showcase your brand, raise your brand identity and awareness and allow people to get to know, love and trust you. YOU are what the business is about and social media is a place where people can get to know who you are, what you’re about and the behind the scenes of your business. Show off what’s happening in the office, who you’re meeting, your networking events, your team and your clients. People buy from people, word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool and even if that talking is done online, people will shout about your business if they love what they see… and more importantly people will listen to those voices of opinion – make sure they’re giving a good impression!
What social platform will you find your ideal audience? That’s where you need to be visible. Get to know people, engage and start conversations and allow people to know that you’re passionate about what you do.
Have a plan for the new year
It’s all well and good just scraping through this year, but you need to know where next year will take you before it’s too late. Setting business goals, gaining momentum, having focus and creating a strategy will save a lot of wasted time and energy in the new year and will also allow you to know that you’ve got to the end of December with a clear vision of what’s next to come.
How can you create that plan for your small business? Break down the steps and plan each section:
- What goals do you want to achieve by this time next year?
- What do I need to do get there?
- How can my marketing play a part in those goals?
- How do I ensure my marketing efforts meet my business goals?
These are just a few steps that you can work through, and if you’re interested in learning more about business focus and social media strategy, ask us about our next workshop or 1-2-1 coaching. Planning is important, yes you may be able to get by without strategy, but how much more effective will you be if you plan out where you want to be and how you’re going to get there – before the time comes – so you’re ready to finish this year with a positive and motivating mindset.
Reward yourself
When you win a race, you’re given a medal. When you win a game, you receive a prize. It’s the same in business; when you do something good or if you achieve a goal, reward yourself! It doesn’t have to be something big; it doesn’t have to be something noticeable with the people around you but it’s great to feel good when something is going right. The end of the year is the perfect time to celebrate all the good things that have happened in your business. The end of the year is an ideal opportunity to recognise all the achievements you have made. Finish this year on a high, go out with bang as we head through to another twelve months and more challenges and opportunities to face. Smile, be happy, give yourself a prize for all the hard work you’ve accomplished.
Balance and Perspective
At the end of the day, there is never enough hours or manpower to get through everything you need to do, so don’t beat yourself up about it! If you stay on track and keep focused, plan out your work and reward yourself when you achieve, you’ll keep a balanced perspective. Balance and perspective are precious words as a small business owner as it can be hard to juggle life, manage work and home, knowing that you’re doing good or are on the right path. Keep these words in mind through all that you do, keep the balance through work, personal life, mindset, actions and achievements. And in all you do keep perspective on what’s right for you and your business and what makes you happy and inspired. When you’ve got balance, you’ll find peace, when you’ve got peace, you can focus on what you love to do.
Here’s to the end of 2019 – well done for all that you have achieved and have accomplished this year.
And happy new year! – Here’s to what is to come in 2020 – may you be blessed, full of joy and find happiness in all that you do.
If you’d like to discuss your marketing goals and strategy for 2020, we’d love to talk, contact us today!
by Karen Petrauskas | Nov 15, 2019
Life can be chaotic, we’re busy people leading busy lives and it all has the potential to become stressful after a while. Running your own business comes with its own stress points too. However, how you manage that stress and the various scenarios that take place, can play a big part of whether that stress will bring you down / create burnout, or make you stronger.
As a business owner, there are things that will keep you up at night and play on your mind, and it can be hard to switch off, keeping work and pleasure separate. So, how can you manage the stress and the constant flow of interruptions? The quicker you can learn to manage stress levels as a business owner, the better your health and business success will be.
Prioritise your time
It’s easy to get snowed under with the pressures of work, to take on everything yourself and to find yourself in the middle of high workloads without a hole to breathe from. And the way to get through this is to learn to prioritise. Without schedules or a plan, it can be easy for tasks to merge into one and to forget what is most important, leaving half-done jobs left on the table. (You may find our social media checklist beneficial)
When you get to this point, it’s time to take some ‘me time’. Burnout is a real issue and more and more business owners are facing this scenario way too often. Me time is important to take stock, refocus, rethink priorities and what matters most.
The art of delegation can be a small business owners’ best friend. It’s not a case of ‘giving up’, it’s a part of growing a business and expanding and taking on the responsibilities that you need and want to, finding other people to help support you as you grow. This takes away the stress from you, and relieves you from certain responsibilities that can free up your time for what you need to do, including taking some personal time for you and your family.
Use tools to help your business
Gone are the days where everything has to be done manually. There are many tools out there which can help with the automation of your business, tools that can make your life much easier and manageable when it comes through getting through daily tasks.
Apps, software, online-programmes, equipment etc, there any so many tools that can help you manage your business, taking the stress away from you as a solo business owner. Yes it can take a trial and error period to realise what works for you, but when you find the ones that do work, you’ll never look back!
Make a list of what tasks you need help with and research what tools could possibly help the health of you and your business. Ask other business owners what they use and what they could recommend. You could try social media groups to ask for advice and to discover new tools that already work for other business owners that you could try. In turn for finding new ways to manage your business, you can manage your stress levels.
Listen to your body
Our bodies are great at indicating when they need to stop or slow down and there comes to a point where we need to listen to those signs. If you need a break, take one. If your body needs to stop and get some fresh air, a chance to refresh and take stock – give your body what it needs.
Your body knows when it’s tired and we lose concentration when our body gets to the point that it feels it’s losing. That’s when it is time to stop – listen to your body!
A rest will give your body time to refresh and breathe. You may not be one for stopping but taking that time to refresh can far out way the time it takes to rectify any errors – it’s worth taking the time.
“Rest when you’re weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work.” ~ Ralph Marston
Learn to recognise what works well
When we’re feeling stressed, it can be easy to focus on the negative things that are happening rather that what is working well. Recognising achievements and positive outcomes can have a positive effect in our mindset. Stress comes when we feel we are not coping or are not achieving what we set out to achieve. When we switch the mindset to praise ourselves for the good and the positive, our bodies realise that we are in control of what outcomes we produce and are more inclined to think positivity and feel happier about what’s happening around us.
We can also learn from the good things too and by focusing on these things, we keep our minds active, stay vigilant and break the cycle of negative thinking.
Let go of what is not working
You may have been doing something for months or even years, but if it’s not working – ditch it! There is absolutely no point in carrying on with something that does not work for you. This can also be said for things that are not working in the practicalities of your business and personal life. Find a routine that works for you, whether that be a change in the way you manage your daily activities or the way you organise your projects. When something works, it gives you a better sense of achievement and you’re likely to feel happier in yourself and more productive.
Managing stress levels as a small business owner can be tricky but it’s achievable. Stress can get you down, it can even result in burnout but before you get to that level, do something about it. Talk to the people around you, find networking groups for support, discover different places to work or meet new faces. There are a number of ways in which you can help stress levels stay on par.
As we’ve mentioned above, delegation and outsourcing is an effective way to manage your workload which results in less stress for you. If marketing plays a big part in this and you’ve not got the time to get out there and tell people about your business, perhaps it’s time to outsource. We’re here and happy to help at the click of button, even if it’s just a sounding board to see what options are available for you. Get in touch and let’s talk.
