Dave Wilkinson
Thirsk & Northallerton Internet Marketing help

Like us on Facebook

like-us-on-facebook expand
Apr 26
like-us-on-facebook

While standing in line to buy fish & chips yesterday (don’t criticise, this isn’t an article about my eating habits), I noticed a sign stating “Find us on Facebook”. Another sign a couple of metres away stated “Give us a Like on Facebook”.

Sadly, I didn’t Like them. And not because the food was crap (it was great).

I can only Like you if you let me

Here are 2 quick tips to help me help you by Liking you on Facebook. These are simple tips that you can and should implement immediately:

Tip 1: Tell me where to find you

“Give us a Like on Facebook” tells me nothing. Facebook has millions of pages and the only way I’ll find yours is if you tell me what to look for. A simple ‘facebook.com/my-page’ is all you need to add to your signage. If your Facebook Page name is memorable I’ll remember it. If it isn’t memorable, why not?

Tip 2: Help me Like you RIGHT NOW

It takes about 5 minutes to prepare a fresh piece of fish. While I’m waiting I could be Liking you, but because you have no FREE wi-fi in your shop, I can’t. And by the time I’ve driven home, I’ll have forgotten.

Broadband is cheap as chips (excuse the pun), and you probably already have it in your business. So unlock it during business hours so all your customers have access to free wi-fi, and I’ll Like you. Yes, some people will use your broadband to look at pictures of cats instead, but the majority won’t.

This is marketing 101. Help people to promote your business and they will. Hinder them and they’ll pretend you don’t exist.

Author Dave
Category Marketing, Social Media
Comments No Comments

The 5 website improvements you’ve probably forgotten to do

Jul 26

I’ve got a new client (Hi Steve) who is really pushing me to try loads of different things to improve his conversion rates. Today in a meeting he brought up a list of about 25 things he wants me to tackle, and in my opinion, he left off 5 things that can make a big difference and take less than a day to implement.

1. Social media buttons

Yes, they slow your site down a little, and no they don’t always look great, but social media is here to stay (in one form or another) and giving your visitors a button to click to post your site on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or Google+ is a simple solution that brings results.

If you use WordPress there are a bunch of plugins to help you out. I recommend Digg Digg, or better still, Jetpack (made by the same people who make WordPress).

Read more →

Author Dave
Category Marketing
Comments No Comments

The 3 rules of inbound marketing leads

got-mail expand
Jul 19
got-mail

When I was in the engineering industry my boss had 3 rules about inbound marketing leads we had to follow (or risk being fired). I usually use these in my own business but I’ve slipped a bit lately, so this serves as a reminder to me and good advice to you.

In order of importance, here’s what you need to do every time you get a new lead:

1. Respond to leads quickly

That means today. You don’t have to stop what you’re doing and prepare a full proposal, but take 10 minutes to read over the enquiry, outline any concerns and respond with questions or next steps. The quicker you do this the less likely the prospect is to contact one of your competitors.

2. A single call to action

It doesn’t matter where in the communication cycle you are, make sure your prospect knows what to do next. The easiest way to guarantee this is to lead your prospect to the next step with no more than 1 obvious call to action.

3. Information first

You won’t get all the information you need up front and questions will have to be answered before you can quote. Tell the prospect what you need to estimate the job, get the information, then prepare your proposal.

Image credit

Author Dave
Category Marketing
Comments No Comments
Tags , ,

Social marketing and the ugliest boots in the world.

ugly-boots expand
Jul 18
ugly-boots

A few weeks ago Zachary Cohen wrote a blog post about social marketing and how a small clothing store in London nearly changed a purchasing decision he’d made.

Here’s what happened: 

  • Zac found a pair of boots on ssense.com and sent out a tweet asking his followers what they thought. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Hub Shop, a London boutique, picked up on Zac’s tweet and recommended he try a pair of boots from their store. 
  • Under normal circumstances you may consider this spam but in this case, as Zac points out, ‘they were putting one of their products in front of a customer’. 
  • Now, he didn’t end up buying the boots from Hub Shop, but he did end up subscribing to their mailing list and checking out their website. Which means there’s a chance he will become a customer at some point.

Why this is a good marketing strategy for small business

What Hub Shop did was start a conversation with someone passionate about fashion (you’d have to be passionate to wear those boots). If your small business could find the time to legitimately start conversations with 5 people each day you’d have a powerful marketing system in no time at all. And all at no cost.

Read more →

Author Dave
Category Referral Marketing, Social Media
Comments No Comments
Tags
Next Page »