Recession – Sink or Swim

The word recession produces different reactions in different people. There is no doubt that times are hard and they're about to get harder, but is it the end of the World? Is it the end of your business? For some it is. I put it to you that there are four categories business operators fall into at this time.

1) The Over-extended
For these folk their business was already walking the thin line between operation and insolvency and any downturn in income would have tipped them over the edge. A recession is truly insurmountable for them. By now these businesses have probably already failed.

2) The Oblivious
These people have businesses which could, with a little effort, survive or even prosper in a recession. The problem is that the people running these businesses have not planned or prepared for a recession. They think that by not acknowledging the economic downturn it will just go away. These businesses will probably fail in the coming months. If they do manage to survive they will come out the other end much worse off.

3) The Overly Cautious
We've all worked for or dealt with one of these companies. These are the ones who, at the first mention of economic hardship, pucker up so tight that not a single cent gets spent. These are the companies laying off workers, slowing production, stopping advertising, canceling orders and, in all ways possible, feeding the recession.
Sadly they do this because they know it means they will survive the recession. They will worry later about the hits they've taken in the process – lost market share, lost suppliers, lost skilled employees and lost brand confidence.

4) The Opportunistic
These people don't see recession, they see opportunity. These people find a way to not only survive the recession, but to come out on top. They find a way to pick up the business lost by other companies; they take advantage of cheap advertising rates to build their brand; they forge new corporate relationships with like-minded companies and together they move forward. They know that any weakness of others can be a strength of theirs. They know that it is easier to implement a new idea now than ever.

This is a sink or swim moment for businesses. New businesses are at an advantage, not having the investment of established companies.
The Internet holds great potential for new and expanding businesses to cheaply build their brand, their customer and supplier base and to establish themselves as leaders in their fields.

Take advantage of great opportunities.

Search Engine Optimisation – How to Optimise Your Site

SEO is a difficult process. There are many tricks, many intricacies and many pitfalls.  
Leaving aside the lesser points, here are some SEO instructions that will cover the main points to optimise your web page.

1) Optimise one page at a time. Google looks at each page individually as well as your Website as a whole. If you have a Website about farm animals, don't try to optimise every page for horses, cows and sheep, have one page for each.

2) Select well-performing keyphrases. Ensure the keyphrases you select are keyphrases someone might actually search for. You can do this using the Google Keyword Tool. Read more about selecting appropriate keyphrases.

3) Page URL is important. Name your pages with keywords ie. www.farmexample.com/cows.html. This is Google's first indication that your page is relevant to a search for “cows”. To name your pages like this, the file you create for your page must be titled cows.html (or .asp or .whatever). Remember that if you are renaming a page you must 301 redirect to the new page. For example if your cows page is currently named page1.html then you should 301 redirect page1.html to cows.html otherwise Google will see it as duplicate content

4) Page Title Tag is the next most important item. The aim of your title is to provide an accurate title with as many keywords as possible. The Title goes in the head section of your page. For example: 
Cows | Example farm animals Australia | Cows, Bulls and Calves
The length of your Title Tag is up to you and there is no definite word limit, but Yahoo has one of the longest Title displays at 120 characters so certainly keep it below that. Google displays up to 66 characters, so perhaps that's a good length to aim for. My opinion is that Titles rarely need to be lengthy, so unless you can see good reason to do otherwise, aim for approximately 60 characters or less.

5) Page Description Tag is also up there. Make sure you don't just list a whole heap of keywords in here, make it a description worth reading because Google may actually display this in the results. You should use your description to sell your site whilst also including keywords. For example:  
Cows information in Example Farm Animals Australia – Information, photos and videos of Cows
Again there is no real word limit. My opinion is that the description should be longer than your title but not novel length. I personally aim for 100 characters or less.

6) Page Content. This is the body text of the page – the text people read once they land on your site. The SEO cliché is that “Content is King” and as sick of reading it as I am, true it is.
This is the part where I feel it would be unjust of me not to point out that the most optimised page in the world will convert no customers if the page content is meaningless. DO NOT fill your page content with keywords. Keywords will flow readily if the content is relevant to the keywords. It is of no use writing simply “Cows eat grass. Cows give milk. Cows have four stomachs.” This will only disappoint the page viewer and they will click back faster than your page can load.  
My technique is to write the page copy thinking nothing of keywords. I then read back over it and if there are places where I can substitute keywords without disturbing the flow of the page then I do so. NEVER sacrifice content for keywords.

So there you go, there are the basics. If it already looks too hard or time consuming or if you are competing for more sought-after keyphrases simply contact me for an SEO quote.

I'm actually pretty open to being contacted about this stuff so if you have questions ask them in a comment on this blog and I'll be happy to answer.

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Search Engine Optimisation / Search Engine Marketing – Which one is for me?

Increasing Website traffic is a great way to boost business for most companies even if their core business is not online-based. Getting more people looking at your Website means more exposure for your business, higher company profile and more chance for word of mouth.  
There are a few ways to get traffic and two of the most popular are Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).  

Search engines are the best place to start steering customers because now this is the first place people go to find a product or service. Gone are the days where we turn to the yellowpages; now we head straight for Google.

So which is the solution for you? Let's look at the differences.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Organic search results are the unpaid results that appear in your search. These are the Webpages the search engine thinks are the most relevant to your search.  
Searchers tend to pay a lot of attention to the first three organic results, some attention to the rest of the first page, occasionally they will navigate as far as the third page and they will almost never look any further.  
SEO is the art/science of enhancing the visible and invisible parts of a Website to gain increased volume and quality of traffic to the site. The aim is to make the page highly relevant to certain Keywords and phrases and for Google to consider the site highly relevant for searchers of those terms and, therefore, display the site in the organic search results. 
If your site appears on the first page for a certain Keyphrase you are guaranteed to get a share of that Keyphrase's traffic. The higher in the results you appear, the better.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
The paid advertisements on the search results page of Google are at the top of the page and down the right hand side. In other search engines they can be in different positions including at the bottom of the page and scattered throughout the search results.
The benefit of paid appearances is that they appear on the front page for your chosen Keyphrases regardless of how poorly optimised your site is. You can spend as much as you like to ensure you appear on the front page for as many Keyphrases as you wish (some limitations apply).
The disadvantage is that users do have a tendency to skim over ads and concentrate more on the organic results.  

In Summary
SEO is a long-lasting effect, putting your site in a credible, highly visible position for people searching for your type of site. It will pay dividends long after you have forgotten what it cost.
SEM is just as targeted and more guaranteed but only lasts while you're spending the money. The cost over time will be far greater than SEO.  

My Advice
Use both. Target your keyphrases hard by also paying for listing even if the organic and paid results appear on the same page. Pay more for keyphrases for which you can't achieve front page ranking.

Search engines are where Internet traffic starts. Make the most of it.

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Small Business and the Internet

Many if not most small businesses are still owned by the older generations who consider themselves beyond learning about computers and the Internet. This blog is for them.

The smartest business mind I've ever encountered belongs to Rod Dally, now in his 60s. He used to say “I don't know anything about the Internet but I know we need to use it”.  
That may not sound so profound to you, but I think that for a man who knew nothing about the Internet, knowing that he must put it to use was as far as he needed to go. He went about managing his store and staff and simply arranged for others to manage the Internet side of things for him.
Before we knew it the business had an operational mailing list, a Website showing specials and events and a login section for frequent customers. It was a huge success and the business flourished.

Even if you don't think your business needs the Internet, it will be of benefit to you to read on to discover what other businesses (possibly including your competition) are doing.

Small businesses can grow their success by using the Internet to:

• Gain new business: Yellow Pages is no longer where I go to find a business whether I'm looking for an electrician or a Web designer. And I'm in the majority now. I want to see a little bit about the business I'm about to employ before I phone them. The Internet allows me to do that. And if your business isn't on the Internet I don't even get a chance to consider you, because I'm not going to phone fifteen companies to chat about their services, but I WILL visit fifteen Websites and choose based on what I find.

• Encourage repeat business: Special offers for frequent customers and loyalty programs can be cheaply and easily implemented through your Website. You can start them from scratch, integrate them with existing programs or run them separately. I enjoy getting the latest offers from businesses I frequent. I don't enjoy spam, so make sure you decide what is a reasonable time between mailouts.

• Expand clientele: The World Wide Web has a reach, as the name suggests, worldwide. You may find that your business can start shipping product or offering services to an entirely new market interstate or internationally. I am quite comfortable these days purchasing products from overseas using my credit card. I know I need to wait for postage, but I'm OK with that.
  If you are modifying your business specifically to gain international customers you may be eligible for a Government grant through Austrade.

• Network: Use blogs, mailing lists and social networking sites (like Twitter) to share expertise with your peers around the world. Find out what did and did not work for them, give and get advice. You may even develop a relationship with someone where you refer clients to each other. I love chatting with fellow professionals. I don't see someone in my industry who'd based in the USA as direct competition, so I feel I have nothing to lose, but everything to gain by being candid.

• Research: Make use of your Website and email lists to find out from your clients whether you are meeting their expectations. Find out what they love about your service and if there are any reasons they might go elsewhere. It makes me feel important when a company asks my opinion. And by giving it I feel I have made a difference.
  

• Raise company profile: A Website gives you a presence to people who may otherwise not have seen you. This site gives the viewer the chance to see all the information you care to provide about your company, products and services. The more I know about a company the more I feel comfortable dealing with them. 
  

There are plenty of other reasons to migrate your business online.  
There are very few reasons not to.

If you are still unsure whether you need to give your business a presence on the Internet, ask someone you know who uses the Internet. Ask them how they would find someone who offers your products or services. Chances are they'll say that they would Google it. And if you're not on the Internet then Google will show them your competitor who is.

If you'd like ideas about where to go from here, call me.

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B2B vs B2C – Selling technique differences

I know my mandate here is to blog about strictly online issues, but this one overlaps into the physical world a little, so forgive me.

There is an aura around business-to-business (B2B) selling that makes people lose their sales minds, much more so than business-to-consumer (B2C) selling. Business owners in the B2B world seek experienced B2B salespeople to stock their workforce, claiming that this experience is essential to performing well in the role. Today I'm going to tell you why that's entirely unnecessary.

B2C sales is involved. Take it from someone who has been put through just about every avenue of sales training that exists, B2C sales is intense. Consumers are demanding. They shop around for the best price, they do their research on their product, they have bad days, each one of them has a different expectation of the product, a different need and a different style of communication.
As a B2C sales person it's your job to go through the steps with the individual: Greeting; assessing need; developing rapport; dispensing information; assisting with research; matching product to consumer; closing the sale; following up...
Each of these steps is essential to a successful transaction. The individual needs to respect you (preferably LIKE you, but not necessarily) enough to take on your opinion of the product and believe the information you give about it. You need to involve yourself in the sale to ensure the individual gets what they WANT and NEED.  
If this is all done well then there will be no miscommunication which will mean less likelihood of refund or negative word-of-mouth publicity. It also means more chance of positive word-of-mouth publicity and repeat business.

B2B is totally different, isn't it?  

No. It's not.  
Whether you're selling a $100 item to a consumer or a $100,000 item to a business, chances are there is still an INDIVIDUAL making the decision.  

So what's the key?

Here are some points to help you in your next sales situation, regardless of who you're selling to and how much the item or service costs:

• Do right by your customer. This is a practice all employers should encourage, because it's good for everybody. I got fired from a job when I was younger because I talked an elderly couple out of taking out a mortgage on their home that they already owned outright. I talked them into the sale, then out of it once I looked further into their financial affairs. The boss was not impressed. At another company I was promoted for the same attitude. Guess which company is still trading...

• Believe in your product or service. You might think that you're the world's best salesperson because you can put on your poker face and sell water to a drowning man, but people don't like to be sold to by a poker face, nor do they appreciate ending up with something they don't need. Believing in what you sell will allow you to get excited about it, and excitement is infectious, and people like that.

• Practice full disclosure. Everything has limits, most things have faults. Be honest about what those faults and limits are. Chances are it won't lose you the sale, in fact it will give more weight to your positive statements and cement trust between your customer and yourself.

• Deliver what you promise. Or more. Definitely not less. From the sales conversation your customer is going to know exactly what to expect and all your good work can be undone very quickly if you have promised something that isn't delivered. Surprises are only pleasant if they're something you want, don't let your customer be unpleasantly surprised.

• Keep your refund and dispute policy flexible. Sometimes a company can gain even more credibility when something goes wrong. If your company is at fault, admit it. Rectify the problem. Worst case scenario you end up doing what the ombudsman would have ordered anyway, and you avoid the wasted time, cost and tension that ensues. That said, if you follow the preceding steps, you probably won't ever get to this stage.

• Communicate. Do it during the sales process. Do it during the transaction. Make sure the customer has your contact details and invite them to contact you if they have any questions. Be happy if they do. Follow up after the sale if it's appropriate, especially after big spends (cars, houses, website builds...) because not only does it make your customer feel important, it also allows you to check on your product and gauge your success in customer satisfaction, which will help with the next sale.

If B2B has ANY difference to B2C sales, it's that when an individual purchases something on behalf of a business they are accountable to the others within that business which exposes them to criticism. If you do a good job and sell them exactly what they need, a business is much more likely to return to you next time because they know you're a safe bet.
So in B2B sales, the above points are even more important for you to follow.

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