marketing strategy Archives - Page 6 of 8

Sorry, I Can’t Help You…

At certain times of year I always get a few phone calls and emails from panicking people, asking me to help them market their product or service. This is often just before the Christmas holidays. This does not just happen in November, it even happens in December! So I am going to write this blog post to enlighten you, and for me to link next time I need to respond to such an email :)

My answer is simple: “Sorry, I can’t help you”. There is no magic marketing potion that works in just a few days or weeks. If you have not been taking care of your marketing until now, a burst of activity just before the holidays is not going to make much of a difference. To add to the fact that marketing takes time, you are also trying to get people’s attention at a time where everybody is shouting at them to buy this or that and the noise is deafening. [Read more…]

Can You Say No?

Most of us are good people. Most of us would be happy to do things for other people and that is, of course, a very good thing in many ways. However, when it comes to your business, it can be a deadly sin. What?! I’ll tell you why.

What are you good at? Why? Usually you are good at what you enjoy doing, and enjoy doing what you are good at. The two go together – it’s a kind of a chicken and egg thing. Then you set up a business to do what you are good at. And it is not easy. There are a lot of things to think about and it takes a lot of time to build a business. You are bound to be very conscious of the fact that you need to have an income. This won’t really work if you don’t make any money. So you start to sidestep. The graphic designer who wants to specialise in brand identity does a few pamphlets for a low cost store. The dress maker who wants to do evening dresses takes on a few jobs of fixing suites. The marketing director who loves to work on strategy and branding concedes to assisting with some Facebook marketing and AdWords campaigns.

And what happens? [Read more…]

Dear Facebook…

Many of us use social media for our marketing. I asked a few entrepreneurs to send me questions they wanted answers to regarding Facebook, and here we go! :)

What is the difference between Facebook Ads and Boosted Posts?

Facebook ads are the adverts you see either to the right of your newsfeed or even in your newsfeed. There are a number of options, such as CPM or CPC (see below) and they can serve a number of purposes.

Boosting posts simply means you are paying for more visibility for your post with your followers and their connections, or even with a wider audience.

The thing is, not everyone that likes your page will see everything you post there. There is such a huge stream of content flowing around Facebook, so they have all sorts of ways to help you see more of what you are interested in and less of what you are not. You have probably noticed that the number of people who see your posts is a lot lower than the total number of likes your page has. People who interact with your posts, by liking, sharing or commenting, will see more of your posts going forward than those who do not do anything with them. This is why interactivity is so crucial on Facebook, because it gives you more visibility without having to pay for it. Boosted posts however enable you to pay to get more visibility. Oh well, Facebook is a business after all.

When you buy Facebook advertising, what is the difference between CPM and CPC?

CPM means Cost Per 1000 Impressions – so basically, how much you will pay for a thousand people to see your ad. This is also known as PPI or Pay Per Impression. [Read more…]

Getting found on Google – 5 things to keep in mind

If I had a dollar, pound or euro for each time someone asks me how one goes about getting found on Google, well, I would at least have one nice free lunch each week :)

Search Engine Optimization – making your website, and other online information about you – visible on Google and other search engines (apparently there are others, like Bing and Yahoo ;) This used to be the realm of the techies. It was all about keyword analysis, meta data, robot txt, link building and all those fun things. Many of those things are still valid, but many are not and its impact is constantly diminishing. You can no longer get ahead in the search engines by using trickery because Google and all the others are alert and are constantly changing their algorithms to make sure that they can’t be manipulated. But you know, this is actually not a bad thing at all. It is actually really really good. Because you know what that means? It means we just all have to get better at marketing.

Hmmmm … how? [Read more…]