Our clients find that we make life simpler for them. And more profitable.
For a no obligation discussion of your company’s needs – call us 01392 477 465 today.
Google Adwords Management
As more advertisers discover the real power of Google Adwords, more business owners are using experts to manage their campaigns. The results are better conversion rates and lower business costs.
Unlike other companies where your account is simply set up then left alone – all our accounts are actively managed – which means we’re constantly monitoring, expanding and improving your campaign to deliver you the best return on investment.
Turn Visitors Into Customers
Lots of traffic means nothing, unless you have a site that converts those visitors into customers effectively.
If your site isn’t turning visitors into customers, we can help you find out why, and work with you to create a site that turns more of your traffic into actual profit.
Online Marketing Strategy
What’s going to help you build your business best?
Email marketing? SEO? Adwords? Blogvertising? Digital PR?
Too many online marketing options can be confusing.
We’ll help you build a marketing strategy to capitalise on your strengths, your resources and your unique market advantages.
Google Analytics
Analytics data is latent market intelligence which can reveal remarkable insights into your business.
We can help you see the big picture, not only by setting up the right data acquisition strategy, but helping you understand what your customers are actually doing.
Our clients find that we make life simpler for them. And more profitable.
For a no obligation discussion of your company’s needs – call us 01392 477 465 today.
Anyone who has worked with me knows I am a huge fan of the Wordpress open source platform for website content management systems.
Yet I know some small business owners who feel they must get their own “special” content management system for their particular needs. Of course, you can have anything you want in this world – you just have to pay for it.
And that’s why Wordpress works as an optimal, flexible and extensible solution for any start-up business, or a small business getting off the ground, or indeed a home-based business.
In short, no other content management platform (for me at least, and that includes Drupal and Joomla!) comes close to Wordpress for offering an optimal solution for managing web site content.
Here’s why:
- It’s free, open source software.
- It gives you complete control of content – something which is really important for search engine optimisation
- You don’t have to use it as a blog. You can use it to build a site.
- You can install it with the click of a button from almost any hosting control panel
- It’s developed by communities of developers meaning it’s robust, and at any time, anywhere in the world, you can have thousands of developers working on solutions to common bugs, problems and hacks.
- If you have a problem, just Google it. Someone, somewhere will have experienced exactly the same problem and solved it. That means solving problems faster, and less time employing developers to research and fix intractable problems
- There are thousands of “plugins” which you literally “plug in” like lego to customise the functionality
- There are thousands of free and paid-for themes meaning you can plug in simple designs
- Want to change your whole site design? Just find a developer and get her to develop a new theme for you – no downtime, no messing about with static pages
- It is AWESOME for search engine optimisation – especially if you’re a small business and you can’t afford the big fees the agencies charge for SEO.
- It is infinitely customisable. So it has all the benefits on squillions of people using it (support being one) and yet you can always make it your own.
This site is powered by Wordpress. I also know a few other companies using Wordpress. They include:
- Sony
- Ford
- Ebay
- The New York Times
- The Wall Street Journal
- Ben & Jerry
- Cambridge University Press
Just a bit of food for thought before you ask your design agency to build you something “special”. Chances are you’re going to be paying the price for a long time to come…
Agree? Disagree? Leave me a comment or retweet…
Information is enabling.
And the Internet is a powerhouse because it brings that information, from everywhere, at all hours of the day.
And that’s the problem with information too.
There’s too much of it. Far more than we could ever absorb in a lifetime.
Information becomes disabling if we are constantly “plugged in” to look for the next opportunity, the next nugget of information which might make the difference to our business.
Information becomes disabling when we’re overloaded with it, and when Attention – also a highly precious and scarce resource is wasted by sorting through low value, constant interruptions (email, Twitter and Facebook being the biggest culprits)
Being in a state of continuous partial attention is both wasteful of attention but also significantly lowers productivity.
If you don’t believe me then look at the study where text message and emails have functionally reduced IQ more than smoking cannabis.
So what’s the take home on this?
- Invest in the right information. It’s more cost-effective than rummaging around the internet for someone’s “free article” about how to do it. (That’s amking a big assumption you can even trust the information…) Even when you find information you have to make all sorts of judgement calls about whether its trustworthy. Are you too cheap to invest in expertise, or your own business? Think about it.
- Recognise when additional information gives diminishing returns, and cut your losses.
- Value your ability to focus attention and concentrate. Attention may be the most precious resources you possess.
- Unsubscribe from every newsletter you don’t make the time to regularly read, or which has low relevance for you.
- You don’t need to know everything. You just need to know what you need to know.
I could go on. But that’s all you need to know.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m swimming against an overwhelming tide.
Yes. I am a Twitter sceptic.
I’ve dipped my toe in because it’s my job to work out for small business owners how to market their companies in successful ways – and that includes looking at emerging communication means.
And I’ll tell you why first. And then why I may have to recant (and also why I have no problem with recanting).
Small Business Focus
You see, I’m a small business advocate. All my thinking and activity is geared around that.
Small business owners have two primary scarce resources: time and money. In small business marketing, owner managers often account for the latter, but less rigorously the former in measuring marketing activity.
If it takes you 10 hours to make £100 of value and profit, then strictly speaking, making the same £100 in half the time doubles your profits.
So what does all that have to do with Twitter?
Do the most important thing first.
Do the thing which will bring the most far-reaching results first. Then after you’ve done that, do the next most important thing. Then the next most important thing and so on…
For the vast majority of small business owners with limited time resources, I’ve been of the opinion that for the time and effort involved, Twitter requires a disproportionate investment to the results it will bring because of these weaknesses:
Targeting
Having 1000 followers looks great. But what does it really mean? Are they the right potential customers for you?
Time
If I told you that spending a good proportion of your day text messaging clients was a profitable thing to do, you’d laugh me out the room. But that’s what people are doing every day.
I haven’t met a small business yet for whom Twitter is absolutely the most important thing they should be improving on to increase overall sales.
The 80/20 Rule
Work on improving what generates 80% of your current business by 10% and you’ll make a lot more profit than improving anything that generates less than 10% of your entire business (I haven’t seen one statistic yet where a company claims more than 5% of its business comes from Twitter – and it was a high technology Silicon Valley company at that).
More Channels = Better Marketing?
Increasing the sheer quantity of marketing isn’t automatically best way of getting more customers. If your message is crap, it doesn’t matter how many people you reach. Of course, ask enough people anything and they will eventually buy from you.
But the smartest way to improve marketing is to improve the quality of how you communicate with customers using tried and tested marketing principles.
So, enough scepticism.
Why I May Yet Recant
1. Microsoft & Google It’s been announced by Bing (Microsoft’s search engine) that they are going to include Twitter posts in search engine results. Google followed up the same day announcing it will add it too. That means that Twitter now has a greater mainstream potential to reach customers and affect search engine results (but we’ll have to see HOW they actually do it).
2. My Dirty Twitter Secret In the past week, I just came across a dirty little Twitter secret that may completely change my mind about it. Well, it’s not really dirty at all, to be honest. But if you’re not doing this you’re missing out on a massive networking opportunity.
3. The Amoeba of Change Right now, Twitter is still in the early adoption curve. That means it’s got some way to go until it’s totally absorbed by the masses. However, I have no doubt that will happen, and it’s going to happen because of mobile phones rather than computers. Twitter is getting ready for the mainstream and the right apps to broadcast it to the masses accessibly will follow.
4. Broadcast potential. The broadcast industry has leapt onto Twitter. It may well emerge to be the best way to get their attention – if you have the right story, tell it in the right way and can get it to go viral.
Conclusion… Do I Recant?
No. Not yet anyway.
The vast majority of people are NOT on Twitter right now. Twitter, I believe requires a disproportionate amount of time to do which substantially decreases any return on your investment of time.
And that is the acid test for any small business owner: you want to invest less time in marketing and get more profit from it.
When that opinion changes, when I’ve reached a point where I can say to a business owner “Twitter is the most important thing you should be doing right now” I will happily concede, change my opinion, and recant fullyy and unreservedly.
I got an email today from a client who feels uncomfortable with “selling” full stop. And I think it’s a common problem amongst small business owners.
I used to feel incredibly shy about ‘selling’ my services. But I’ve changed a lot. And I want to explore how and why it’s changed in this post.
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(and I’ll send you a free report about how to double your business)
Value your work. Value yourself.
Put simply, if you’re good at what you do, you can create value for others. And if what you’re doing helps other people, creates value, it’s perfectly right and acceptable to expect an equal exchange of value. Isn’t it?
No-one is ‘taking’ anything from anybody – unless of course you either don’t value your own work and the difference you can make, or you’re someone who sees the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I think it comes down to self-confidence, self-belief and self-esteem. These three are core business skills. You can’t run a successful business without building them.
It’s also about refusing to become an object commodity – more of which I talk about in my audio book and seminars.
It’s all about flow.
If you have a world view, or a belief system in which you believe that every transaction is taking something from someone else – your view of selling is going to be negative.
For me, things changed dramatically when I stopped thinking about money as money and profit as profit. Instead I began to see it as flows of value. Just like the water cycle. Just like blood circulation.
When you create value in the world in the right way, you create conditions for money to flow towards you. But it’s not going to stop with you. It’s also going to flow on to other people.
In the past couple of years we’ve seen how deadly it can be for the economy if that flow is stopped abruptly. Let’s face it, our economies almost tanked for a moment there.
Economies and the lives of millions in those economies work precisely because money flows.
You choose how money flows
Playing devil’s advocate, it’s fair to say that in some parts of our economy, money flows in less healthy ways.
However, we also have a choice to take part in exactly how that money flows only when we’re part of the game. The bigger the part we play, the more change we can make.
Anita Roddick, for example, changed the flow of money towards cosmetics not tested on animals. Guy Watson changed the flow of money towards organic farming with Riverford veg boxes.
Being part of the flow of money means you’ve got a greater opportunity to promote the values which you think should change the world – whatever they are.
The myth of ‘taking’ from someone else.
According to Nick Williams in The Work We Were Born To Do, if all the money in the world were distributed absolutely equally, we’d all be millionaires.
If you’re something less than a millionaire right now, don’t worry, you haven’t technically amassed your fair share of the world’s wealth yet…
Natural Born Sellers
Not all of us are natural born sellers. I’m certainly not. But it’s a skill we can learn.
More important are the beliefs we hold underpinning what we do. You’ve got to believe you can add value to the world. That you can help people. And you’ve got to believe it’s okay to take your fair share of value back from the world in return for what you give out.
And you’ve got to believe that economies remaining in a state where there is a dynamic flow of money between people – is a good and healthy thing too. And if you have certain ideals, it’s got to be possible to hold true to them and still do what you do well – and there are plenty of examples of that.
So that’s why I’m no longer shy about selling myself or my services. I know I can make a huge and valuable difference to the business owners I help. So I feel okay about getting myself in a position where I can help them, and accept ‘value’ in the form of money as a form of appreciation.
It’s good to be appreciated.
Want more customers? Join my mailing list
(and I’ll send you a free report about how to double your business)
Thanks for joining my mailing list.
I usually send an email out every 7-14 days.
In the meantime, if you want to ask me a question,
or discuss a project, here’s how you can contact me:
Email: rob@robburns.net
Twitter: @Rob__Burns (two underscores)
Telephone: 01392 477 465
I look forward to talking to you soon.
All the best,
Rob Burns
I read an article earlier this week talking about Sony’s profits.
Where do you think it came from?
MP3 Players?
Camcorders?
Digital cameras?
Laptops?
Flatscreen televisions?
Before I read the article, I would have guessed any of these.
In fact, 70% of Sony’s total profits last year came from a totally different source: Simon Cowell and his Sony subsidiary company Syco.
I think this is a great lesson for small business.
It pays to know exactly where your profits are really coming from. Identify what brings in the lion’s share of your profits by asking yourself the following questions:
- Which clients create the most profit for you?
- Which products generate the most profit?
- Which activities create the most profit?
They are simple questions. They may or may not be simple to answer.
But it’s definitely worth your effort finding out.
The fact is a 25% increase in a tiny part of your business is really only a tiny overall increase.
But the same increase in an area which creates the majority of your profit can have an overwhelming effect on your business.
As much as anything else, it’s about spending your effort wisely in the areas it can make the most impact.
“Profit analysis” may sound dead boring but it’s really the key to expanding your business.
There was a news item this morning about a nun who died in the 19th century. She performed no miracles and did nothing particularly special. Yet she has been proclaimed by the catholic church as one of the greatest saints of our time.
Yesterday she had 15,000 visitors to her thigh bone in Liverpool. Another part of her sainted body is actually in orbit around the earth.
Why?
She’s the saint of making small sacrifices. Of doing small things well.
And that’s her secret.
It occurs to me that the difference between an ordinary business and a great business is doing the small things well.
It’s not about last-minute all-out attempts. It’s not about gargantuan efforts or grand plans. And it’s not about enduring extreme pain or discomfort to get where you are going.
It’s about the little things you do to grow your business every single day.
It’s about the small things you do well which make your customers appreciate you.
It’s the little tokens of care, which make customers want to refer you.
And above all, it’s about being consistent. Doing the right things every day.
The thing is, when you approach it on the microscopic level – the little things you do on their own don’t appear to make a difference. You can’t see the results. But if you zoom out and expand the time frame, the picture is completely different.
The cumulative difference is big.
Little streams make big rivers – as the french say. And in Peru? “Little by little one walks far.”
Just take the next small step…
