Growing Your Business

Have you invested a lot in getting your business off the ground but now feel as though it’s reached a plateau? 

Launching a business successfully is hard enough in this day and age but achieving growth once you’ve done this is something else altogether.

If you want to take your business to the next stage there are plenty of strategies you can use to achieve this. The ones you choose will depend upon what kind of company you are and exactly what kind of expansion you are going for. 

Here are some areas you might want to consider:

Form An Alliance: Setting up a partnership with a similar kind of business, or one that complements your own, can be a very effective method of expansion. To give an example on a small scale: if you’re running a wedding planning business why not form an alliance with a catering company? Yes, you may have to shell out some of your own money initially to make it happen, but in the long-term the synergies between your companies should increase your prospects immeasurably.

Expand Online: If you don’t already have an online presence, you’re automatically missing out on a huge opportunity for growth. You need a well-designed website with clear descriptions of your products and services. So many people these days would rather buy online but they will expect to be able to do so quickly and easily, so you should make sure that the check-out system you use is highly efficient. To ensure your website has good visibility, hire an online marketing expert to implement an SEO strategy and teach you about other effective strategies – such as email marketing – to make the most of your online presence.

Open Another Site: If you have one shop or office and it simply isn’t meeting your needs anymore, it may be time to expand elsewhere. This could be to extend to another area of the country, or simply to give you further space to take on new clients or stock more product lines. Yes, physical expansion is always a risk but at some point you will have to take a leap of this kind if you want to take your business to the next level. Just make sure you have a strong, experienced management team in place to run it, that you have created a solid business plan and that you have done your homework in terms of consumer and economic trends.

Diversification: If you have taken your existing product or service offering as far as it can go, it may be time to look at selling complementary products or services. As a growth strategy, this is a fairly safe bet as you are simply building on your existing success and client base. It allows you to have several streams of income to increase sales and profit margins, and well as potentially dealing with seasonal slumps.

Should You Be Spending Less Money On Advertising? (And More On Content Marketing?)

According to AdGooroo, Amazon reputedly spent $54 million on Pay Per Click advertising during the first half of 2012. However 96% of businesses that use PPC spend on average less than $10,000 per year, and many of these are now seeking alternative marketing methods to deliver ‘more bang for their buck’.

Today’s most successful companies (we’re talking businesses of all sizes here), are fast recognising that continuous engagement with their target audience is the best way to keep their brands front of mind.

Such organisations are only too aware that advertising is a one-way medium – a marketing platform which offers no direct engagement with the audience. And as such it can be an expensive experiment.

The alternative?

Content marketing – and plenty of it.

A New York Times article (published 17 October 2012), reported on the considerable impact of PPC costs on small businesses, with one insurance company revealing that their original bid of $1 on the term “life insurance” had increased to a prohibitive $20 per click over a 10- year period.

At the other end of the business spectrum, CNN Money reported that since 2010, Nike has cut back on its traditional advertising (TV, print, radio) by 40%, in favour of creating content built around digital communities and high-profile sporting events. This cost-efficient direct communications strategy has seen Nike’s net income rise by $500 million and its company revenues by $3 billion.

Tips for reducing advertising spend in favour of content marketing:

• Set up a business blog and post new articles regularly (at least twice a week). Encourage your audience to post comments and initiate discussions.
• Produce an ebook and give it away as a free download to customers who sign up to your list on your website or squeeze page.
• Create your own YouTube channel and harness the power of video to attract more customers or clients.
• Launch a digital magazine (premium or freemium model). Many online magazine providers like Issuu offer a free trial of their software.
• Start a company newsletter (if your target audience is local you may wish to extend your offering to print).
• Create a fun app for your business. You don’t need a large budget to hire a freelance developer online from oDesk, Elance or AppBooker. (Ask the developer to sign an NDA if you are concerned about your concept being shared).

These are just a handful of the dozens of ways your brand could engage with its audience on a weekly basis.

Whilst content marketing can never be considered a quick fix; done well it amounts to a long-game strategy that could pay considerable dividends. At the same time, no-one is suggesting that businesses should stop running advertising altogether – that would be foolish. Many successful companies combine several elements in their marketing strategy. Ultimately, any activity that works for your business is worth repeating over and over.

Acclaimed US author and online advertising expert Perry Marshall says on the subject of PPC versus content: “AdWords is still doable and reasonably profitable for local businesses or those that have narrow niches and high barriers to entry. But you cannot put all your eggs in one basket. The ultimate goal for any business should be to drive as much unpaid traffic to their site as possible.”

How To Achieve E-Commerce Success

You may think that running an e-commerce business will be a breeze compared to setting up a shop and doing things the old-fashioned way. Be warned though – if you go in with this attitude you are going to run into problems very quickly. E-commerce does offer fantastic opportunities for start-up businesses: it is quite possible to reach a global client base in a relatively short space of time. However, in this fast-moving world you need to stay constantly up-to-date with ecommerce marketing techniques and technologies or you will be left behind your competitors.

Many e-commerce businesses have failed because their owners simply don’t know how to establish – and maintain – a strong online presence. With that in mind, here are some tips all small online business owners should bear in mind when they are starting out:

Business Model: It’s important that you’re very clear from the beginning exactly what kind of company you’re going to be. How will your business make money and what is it that makes it unique? What areas will you need to focus on in particular and where are the risks likely to be?

Know Your Clients: To be able to market yourself effectively to your core customer base, you have to know what their priorities are and what they are likely to respond to. How can you ensure they come to your online shop and not those of your competitors? Keep an eye on upcoming trends and make sure you keep your product range fresh, innovative and relevant.

Watch Your Overheads: If possible, competition between online retailers is even fiercer than between those who sell offline. Buy as low as possible by getting as close to the manufacturer in the supply chain as you can. Don’t rely on one supplier, but instead seek out several so you are not forced to pay more out of necessity. This way you can be sure of reasonable profit margins on the majority of your products, even if you make a loss on some lines.

Be Visible: This is perhaps the single most important rule for an online retailer. You may have great products, you may have a beautifully designed website and your customer service may be second to none. This will all count for nothing, however, if you haven’t invested in SEO. Your customers must be able to find your website so keywords, back links, advertising and blogging are all essential tools in your arsenal. SEO can be tricky to negotiate so many e-commerce businesses find it advisable to hire in an expert to ensure it’s done properly.

Communicate: The majority of e-commerce sites will rely on repeat business for the bulk of their sales. This means, if you are to succeed, your customers should have such a good experience of your website that they want to come back. Make sure all your product descriptions are clear and accurate, that you respond quickly if there is a problem and that you make it easy for them to communicate with you. Include email addresses, contact forms or comment boxes on your site, and use social media sites to encourage communication through these channels as well.

Google Penalised Your Site for Web Spam? Here’s How to Clean Up Your Act

This week, Google’s Matt Cutts has been speaking out about websites which try to fool the search engines into awarding them better rankings by unfair or dubious means. In particular Cutts was referring to “hidden text” and “keyword stuffing” – two activities which could see your site heavily penalised by Google.

Prior to this, Google released seven new videos outlining common spam-related problems and offered advice to webmasters on how to restore the good name of any websites which had been flagged up as potentially spammy.

Here we take a look at six of the most frequently-occurring website SEO problems and provide up-to-the-minute advice as to how to curry back favour with Google.


Key problem areas:

Hidden Text

Can you see the hidden text in this document? White text meets white background?

Thought not. Now you might be forgiven for thinking that Google cannot detect such underhand tactics – only they can – and they do. Frequently. And when they catch the culprits, their site rankings will suffer.

If you have been outsourcing your Search Engine Optimisation requirements to a less than honest SEO company, in all probability you won’t realise what has been happening until you get a wake-up call from Google’s “Spam Squad”, informing you that “hidden text” has been detected on your website.


Keyword Stuffing

How many times can you get away with mentioning your target keywords on your web pages? Almost certainly less than you think. Cutts advises to check all web pages for “readability” and to ensure that the main purpose behind the content you write is to satisfy your readership rather than the search engines.


Unnatural Links

These can be “paid for” links, blog comments that Google deems “spammy”, or links which do not naturally fit with the overall content of your website. A great question to ask yourself is: “Would I make this link if the search engines didn’t exist?”

Bad Backlinks

Are all the websites that link to yours legitimate? It isn’t unheard of for a competitor to arrange for sites they are in direct competition with to be tarnished with links to unsuitable sites. What if you found your travel website linked to a porn site for example?


The first thing is not to panic, because this kind of situation is easily remedied (at least in Google’s eyes). There are three things you need to do:

Disavow the unsuitable links (using Google’s “disavow” tool)

Contact the site in question asking them to remove the “bad” links

Submit a Reconsideration request to Google (with documentary evidence of your actions)


Thin Content

Doorway pages, cookie cutter sites and thin affiliate content – grabbed from merchant sales pages – provide no original content or added value for visitors.

Cutts explains that “thin syndication” – simply copying and pasting content scraped from other websites does not make for unique content. Webmasters need to add original insights that will make their sites “compelling.”

Pure Spam

This is what Cutts calls “churn and burn” content – people who set up websites in order to generate cash fast – before the sites get shut down. Cutts explains that sites penalised for “pure spam” are difficult to recover from, as most “Black Hat” sites, by their very nature, do not contain any legitimate content whatsoever.

A possible exception to this scenario could be if you purchased a website unaware of potential spam content issues; in which instance Google might be willing to look favourably upon your case, providing you can offer well-documented evidence of how the problems occurred, the steps you have taken to rectify them and are able to give an assurance that this will not happen again in the future.













Resolving content issues amicably



Keeping your business website up to date with good, clean, unique content is by no means an easy task for any webmaster. The problem is, that falling foul of Google’s content rules could impact negatively on your brand’s reputation – and your bottom line.



The good news is that Google is prepared to work with website owners who unwittingly break the rules, in order to re-establish trust with the organisation. If this is you, the main thing Google wants to know is that you have done everything within your power to clean up your site, and that you have processes in place that will ensure you do not violate its “quality content” policies in future.



Having well-documented evidence of what has occurred and how you have dealt with the “pollutant content” issues will help you get back into Google’s good books once again, so you can focus on populating your website or blog with quality content.

Dos And Don’ts Of Online Marketing

Marketing yourself online is a must these days if you hope to compete against other companies in your sector. But this is not something you should just throw yourself into blindly, as if it’s done wrong you can do yourself more harm than good. Take time to learn about the most effective methods and which are most likely to suit the kind of company you are. If you want to be really thorough you can even get advice from an online marketing consultant.

To give you an idea of what generally works and the potential pitfalls to avoid, here are some basic dos and don’ts of online marketing:

Do

Keep your website simple and easy to navigate. Don’t be tempted to try and incorporate flashy graphics or unnecessary content as this will distract from your central message. Visitors to a website generally want to be able to find the information they’re looking for quickly and easily without having to wait for graphics etc to load.

Communicate with customers. These days it’s important to encourage a dialogue with clients. Make sure your website has clear contact details – and it’s a good idea to have an area for visitors to leave comments and suggestion as well. And of course, Facebook and Twitter et al are perfect ways to encourage informal interaction so make sure you develop a strong social media presence.

Work on your SEO. This will allow you to rank higher in search engine results and gain you greater online visibility. If you don’t optimise your web content then it doesn’t matter how good your website is, no-one will see it. This can be a tricky area to navigate to it’s worth hiring a consultant, at least initially.

Don’t

Be pushy. There’s a fine line between marketing your business successfully and ramming it down people’s throats. For example, if you’re using email marketing then be selective about which customers you send each message to. Don’t send every message to everyone on your mailing list: think about whether it will be helpful to them. When it comes to Facebook or Twitter, the idea is to share information and ideas, and communicate with clients in a laid-back way rather than aggressive advertising. If you fall foul of this rule you will quickly see your online reputation plummet.

Be long-winded. Whether you’re writing website copy, compiling marketing emails or creating a Facebook campaign, less is always more. Internet users tend to scan and don’t have time to read paragraph after paragraph of text. Learn how to get your message across quickly, simply and effectively.

Be tempted by ‘black hat’ techniques. This is an absolute no-no. Cloaking, keyword stuffing, duplicating content etc are simply not worth it, even if they seem like the quick route to establishing an online presence. They can result in severe penalties and even being banished from search engines altogether.